I-Thou in an Up-Down World: Lasting Friendships

The psychiatrist Harry Stack Sullivan wrote, "When the satisfaction or the security of another person becomes as significant to one as one's own satisfaction or security, then the state of love exists." What is the state of parity that needs to exist in genuine friendship? Friendship could be defined as putting another's existential reality on a par with our own, for we all, as Martin Buber observes, wish to be confirmed in our being by another and to have a presence in the being of the other. It is hard to imagine genuine friendship without this fundamental equality and interpenetration of values and experience. But it is also an uncomfortable social truth that differences, stigmatized, rapidly become disparities. Disparities, even when socially addressed, can remain powerful tacit divides. How then can friendships be developed and sustained across deep divides—of opportunity, ability, education, wealth, privilege, culture, belief, and experience? What allows us to stay in I-Thou relationships in an up-down world? We are interested in stories, memoirs, poetry, and creative non-fiction from and about people who have successfully maintained long term friendships across deep divides. What inspires these friendships? What are their rewards? What are the special challenges they bring? How do they change our understanding of our own gifts, privileges, and limits? Our understanding of the defining power of larger social forces? Our understanding of the defining power of fundamental affection? How is our own existential reality enlarged by the commonalities we discover in these friendships—and the differences? Are these friendships more fragile or more resilient than ones with people who are more similar to us? What can be said inside these relationships that can't be said outside them? What goes unspoken? What is unspeakable?

Country of Publication

United States