Reduction of persons
by Elouise
Reduction of persons
into friends and enemies
betrays small vision
driven by fear
Snap judgments
drive compulsive sorting
of good versus everyone else
Diminishing circles of friends
birth expanding circles of enemies
Profiling writ large
defaces our common humanity
Vain attempts to maintain control
over an imagined world
guarantee nothing–
not even my survival
at the cost of yours
***
With thanks to the Oxford English Dictionary for its entry on ‘uniform’ as a verb. Here’s a choice quotation from the July 1887 edition of Harper’s Magazine: “It is a human device to uniform people into friends and enemies.”
© Elouise Renich Fraser, 5 June 2017
Response to WordPress Daily Prompt: Uniform
Telling the Truth 
Awesome post
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Thank you 😊, not that it’s a happy post….
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of course not but it’s awesome because it’s related to reality of humans.
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and it had been expressed wisely
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we humans are indeed a strange lot at times….I long for a world filled with love and compassion and all treated with dignity and respect ❤
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Indeed. We must keep our faith alive, and know love and compassion will happen in small ways even now. Which gives me hope for tomorrow.
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and who better to thank than the OED? 😀
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I love it! 💜
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Then I trust you spell correctly and do NOT use Mr Websters corruption, as in meter for metre and liter for litre! and visit the Lincoln Centre in NY not the Lincoln Center!
I rate Mr Webster with Genghis Khan 😦
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Well…I’m still a US American, you know! 🙂 And I consider you a highly literate adult male who can make sense of whatever I say or spell. So I’m just going to relax and let it flow. Now isn’t that a high compliment? 🙂
And just to make you feel even better, I have a huge in-print volume of the Oxford Encylcopedic English Dictionary on my shelf right here in my office, and a heavy duty two-volume unabridged set of the OED on a book stand in my living room. So there! That should be enough to reassure you that anything you write will be clear to me as well. 🙂 All well-used, I might add!
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