Muse wrote:
I had an acquaintance on another social media service.I use that media
primarily for communicating with the people I work with in theatre. One day
the acquaintance put up the comment “the American race is congenitally
suicidal and stupid.” I started with: “All of them? All 330 million of
them?” Then I went to “And what exactly do you mean by ‘race’?” He blew up
at me. I said no more and removed him from the people whose messages I see
or who see mine. He wasn’t really a friend, and I most certainly wasn’t
going to be hiring him.
Dehumanisation is a deeply destructive activity. The fact of the matter is
it isn’t just done by the powerful in order to control the less powerful.
All groups do it. We do it to protect ourselves. Someone hurts us and we
over-generalise why that person hurt us in order to avoid others who might
hurt us (whether they will or will not). We may also do this because someone
we know, or someone we identify with, has been harmed. It also prepares us
to overcome reservations about committing emotional or physical violence
against others. We just dial down the empathy, and start calling people
names or worse.
During the Republican presidential primary, Kteily and Bruneau surveyed 200
Muslims in the US…On average, the Muslims in the sample “felt strongly
disliked and dehumanized by both Trump and non-Muslim Americans more
broadly.”…This survey wasn’t designed to be nationally representative of
all the Muslims living in America. Instead, it was designed to figure out
what happens inside the mind of someone who feels dehumanized.
“And the consequences were big,” Bruneau explains. The more Muslims felt
dehumanized by Trump, the more they dehumanized Trump. The more they felt
dehumanized, the less likely they were to say they’d report suspicious
activities in their communities.
The research predicts a vicious cycle. Trump’s policy and rhetoric gin up
fear and dehumanize Muslim Americans. That provokes a more violent response
from certain individuals in the Muslim community. Trump responds. And
suddenly the whole country is a more hostile, less safe place for everyone.
— The dark psychology of dehumanization, explained
<
https://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2017/3/7/14456154/dehumanization-psychology-explained>
We live in a society that has become ever increasingly competitive due to
the widening rich/poor divide. We live in a culture that encourages
self-consciousness and insecurity in order to sell things. Everyone has
become the enemy. We have actively created a “dog eat dog” society. When we
become that atomised as a society, we have no way to trust one another
sufficiently to rise up and create change. This is how civilisations
dissolve into chaos.
It is entirely possible to change all this. It’s why I follow the work of
Learning for Justice (formerly Teaching Tolerance) and the Southern
Poverty Law Center.
https://www.learningforjustice.org/
https://www.splcenter.org/
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
