Them versus us
Divisive discourses are the greatest threats to humanity
The trend to treat the “other” as dumb, alienated, infantile or just evil is dangerous and not helping.
They deserve hell !
No. People do not deserve to die or receive years and years of punishment in prison. Nobody deserves to be beaten or injured or killed.
Once we slip on this slope of thinking that some people are more deserving of life, freedom and health than others, there is no limit in the amount of violence we can inflict on the “out” group because we crossed the threshold of viewing them as another kind of “us”, humans.
The capacity to feel empathy for someone who is hurting is as important as the need for rules to avoid violence. All violence. The direct violence from anger, the state sanctioned violence from police officers, the violence of the mega rich, the domestic violence, the workplace violence, the rape culture, racism, ableism, etc. No suffering is an excuse for violence against people.
That being said, not listening to people’s feelings is actually also very dangerous because it leaves only the demagogues to pretend that they care. I know it is hard for some people to acknowledge that there are profound wounds and sufferings in the hearts of the protesters from the “right” as much as it is hard for some other people to acknowledge that there is suffering from the protesters of the “left”.
But the problem is that everyone wants to feel a sense of belonging and of being heard, recognised, seen. People tend to use their limited understanding of other people’s issues to dismiss their voice. But there is no objective measure of suffering. What seems “light” from the outside can feel terribly “heavy” from the inside.
This is the biggest and most dangerous blind spot in the human brain: we prefer to dismiss the other as less than human instead of considering that we lack empathy, imagination and knowledge of the issues at hand.
Because we all live in bubbles, we tend to be blind to many issues people outside of our world can have. Men do not understand women’s issues with rape culture. Women do not understand men’s issues with insecurity. People from the city do not understand the feelings of disregard from the people in the country. People in the country do not understand racism issues from people in cities. Rich people do not understand the struggles of the poor. Poor people do not understand the struggles of the rich.
“But their struggles are fake !! They are just entitled self centered [add insult here] !!”
No they are not and it does not matter how you want to draw the line between the “real suffering” and the “fake suffering”. This line will only reveal your personal blind spots and biases and won’t tell anything about the real world.
Even if it is hard, the only way to heal our relation to one another is to start listening and stop yelling.
No healing comes from violence.
But why don’t we listen ?
There are reasons behind the fact that we are so blind to the suffering from people outside of our group. It’s not simply that we do not understand or want to take the time to listen.
Of course there is the fact that changing our opinions is hard and makes us vulnerable. Understanding that we might be wrong is humiliating and if we have an insecure feeling of self worth, this might be impossible to cope with.
The second reason is that opposition to another group is a very easy way to feel a sense of belonging. Fighting against “them” makes “us” closer. If we start to listen, we know that we will loose the capacity to continue living in this split world view and we will effectively loose the sense of belonging with the group. When we already feel threatened, loosing the warmth of “our kind” is often too much to bear.
The third reason lies in what the other person’s story might tell us about ourselves and our responsibility in the state of the world. Again, this can hurt our feelings of greatness or worth.
I think that all the other reasons such as the fear of “loosing privileges” or the “projection of evil” on the other group or the “pleasure to lash out anger”. All of these are just manifestations of the three reasons highlighted above.
How do we heal ?
As we can see, the only way to heal is to help others and ourselves feel greater self worth. All the reasons for this “us versus them” way of thinking are rooted into issues of belonging and self worth.
Feeling that we have value outside of any validating group is the foundation from which we can have the courage to distance ourselves from the group, to review our convictions, accept our responsibilities and stand for everyone’s right to peace.
I don’t really know how this feeling arises in ourselves but I do know that by lending an ear, giving a welcoming hand and not judging others, we sure help them feel less rejected and in pain.
And maybe, this can have an effect on our hearts and feelings of worth too.
This will take time and courage.
