Them versus Us......

The silence was deafening. No explosions, no bombs, no gunfire, no screaming,

just the gentle sloshing of wet boots trudging through the relentlessly falling snow.

Time suspended, there is only now; life in every step they manage

to take forward.

 

When "tribes" go to war, the individual ceases to exist.

It becomes them against us.

The others becomes the "enemy", murder becomes killing, and killing the enemy in war is viewed as the soldiers duty.

By depersonalising, by removing common human traits from the "enemy"  may I suggest that it becomes easier for one human to kill another. It then becomes the "enemy", not another human with feelings, desires, families, dreams, and hopes, just like us that we kill. Even in peacetime we often tend to depersonalise those who are different to us; "those kinds of people", "people that dress like that", "people that think like that", "people that listen to that kind of music, eat that kind of food, vote for party "X", and so on. By making them "them" we can detach from their humanity and view them as a whole rather than

a group of individual human beings.

Henri Tajfel; a British psychologist; suggests that "stereotyping"(putting people into groups and categories) is based on a common/normal cognitive process. Human beings have a tendency to group things together and by doing so we often exaggerate the differences between different groups or the similarities of things within the same group. "We see the group to which we belong(the in-group) as being different from others(the out-group), and members of the same group as being more similar than they are". "Them" verses "Us". The group we identify with is our "in-group" and the groups we don't identify with are the "out-groups"

What we consider to be "normal" and appropriate behaviour in the groups we belong to, becomes our reference point.

Yet, every group consists of individuals, with many common human needs. We seek certainty, yet also variety, we seek to feel needed, we seek love and connection, we seek growth and to contribute.

Understanding and identifying our biases(inclination or prejudice for or against one person or group, especially in a way considered to be unfair) can be helpful when we are trying to assess or understand others.

Our biases, for instance, may prevent us from being able to see "good" aspects/points in others, and we may view things from how we think/feel about something/someone rather than from actual facts/evidence. We may decide that someone is untrustworthy because we are biased against the way they dress, look, speak, et cetera rather than the other's actual actions.

Personally, I find it helpful to ask myself how I have come to hold the views that hold, are they founded on hearsay or are they founded on my own inquiries? When my son started to listen to Heavy Metal music and wear "Goth" clothing I asked him to tell me what he liked about the music, and the "Goth "clothing style. (Being a professional musician, I wanted to try to understand rather than dismissing his choices just because they were foreign to me.) After gaining some insight into how my son experienced the music, and listening to some of it with him, it was no longer foreign to me, and although I still do not like the "growling" there are some "metal" bands I really enjoy listening to at times. Adopting others biases may be a quick way to feel accepted by others; "In this group we don't like the colour green, so if you want to be included, you can't like the colour green", or "If you want to be included in this group, you must like all colours, or you can not be included".  (Bias can influence us to hold views either of "all good" or "no good".)

It can be tough to discover ones biases, because often they feel like "that's just the way it is" and to lose them may be experienced as loss of a part of oneself, of a part of ones identify.

To belong, is regarded as one our basic needs, so challenging our position within a group we belong to by holding differing views may result in us becoming excluded from that group and this can be very challenging for many of us since a sense of certainty is also regarded as a basic human need.

Whether we call someone an enemy or friend, them or us, as individual human beings we have our humanity in common.

We all feel, think, love, care, and seek to fulfil our basic human needs on this one planet called Earth.

If it hurts us to lose someone we love, chances are that it hurts them to lose someone they love as well. If it hurts us to be shot at, bombed, tortured, belittled, humiliated, chances are, that so will they.

If "them" are us seen from their perspective, then they are "them" from our perspective.

We are both them and us, depending on our perspective, but regardless, we are all one humanity.

 

"One way or another, we all have to find what best fosters the flowering of our humanity in this contemporary life, and dedicate ourselves to that." (Joseph Campbell)