| Groups often have a name for those not | | | | Bradley's version of the King Arthur story, the |
| members of the group. Us and them, a way of | | | | term once-born suggests that those who forget |
| thinking that once had survival value, though no | | | | past lives, forfeit future immortality. |
| more. Throughout history there have been those | | | | Hippies thought of squares as those who were |
| who were surviving together and those who | | | | not hip. The word, taken from Black street |
| competed or even opposed one another's | | | | culture, meant more than street wise. You were |
| survival. The word Arapaho, according to James | | | | hip if you "got it" that you were living under white |
| Michener in Centennial, means the people. The | | | | oppression and must be alert-and trickier than the |
| Arapaho, a tribe of the Colorado plains, must also | | | | oppressor. In the 1960s and 1970s, |
| have had a word for everyone else. In Clan of | | | | Correct-skinned young people in large numbers |
| the Cave Bear, the Neanderthals referred to the | | | | refused to accept entitlement or join the |
| Cro-Magnons as the others. | | | | corporations and politics of oppression. A Black |
| Mountain people sometimes speak with scorn of | | | | lady asked a hippie with a Jewish Afro, one who |
| flat-landers. People who lived on islands off the | | | | lived in a spiritual community, "You all don't |
| coast of Maine refer to main-landers. In the sixties | | | | consider yourselves white folks, do you?" He said, |
| and seventies, hippies spoke of squares, which | | | | "Naw, naw we don't." |
| originally meant those who lived in square | | | | A term such as couch potato refers to people |
| cornered houses. Pagan, witch, and heathen were | | | | who are unaware of what is going on and, for |
| used as pejoratives by Christians, though both | | | | that reason, sitting around not helping stop it. Yet, |
| pagan and witch are now happily taken up by the | | | | if we want others to help, we can't be calling |
| groups themselves. | | | | them put-down names. There is something a little |
| During our school days we have known kids who | | | | bit shameful about being caught calling people |
| were labeled nerds, meaning social misfits-misfit | | | | names. Like the time a hippie child pointed to the |
| being another outsider term. With Nintendos and | | | | cashier who was tallying the family's groceries and |
| computers came the word geek, someone who | | | | asked, "Mom, is that a square?" He didn't ask, "Is |
| knew a lot about computers though, as with nerd | | | | she a square?" His parents had spoken of squares |
| and misfit, not much about social living. Geek is | | | | as if these others were not human! Such thinking |
| now honored. If you have a computer problem, | | | | is a luxury we, the pursuit of happiness people, |
| call a geek. | | | | cannot afford. When the folks in great numbers |
| Often a term for the others also means the | | | | become awakened to the necessity for survival |
| unenlightened or unaware. In the Harry Potter | | | | action in world-wide cooperation, there will be no |
| books, people without magic in their blood line and | | | | more us and them. Even the oppressors, while |
| unaware of the existence of magic, were called | | | | they must be stopped, are only some of us. |
| muggles. In The Mists of Avalon, Marion Zimmer | | | | |