Us verses Them
The mentality that needs to stop
Recently, and in increasingly more places, this mentality of “us vs them” is becoming more and more prevalent. Now, I have seen this for some time while writing about psychopathy. It is common that neurotypicals will view psychopaths as something other than human.
However, I am starting to see it everywhere, and it is not a good thing. Let’s all take a step back and realize that we are all human beings. We may not understand one another, but that in no way means that we cannot coexist. I have been living in a world with people that are so fundamentally different from me that we might as well be on different planets, but hey, it still works.
The next stage of, us vs them, is what to do about it, and the options are never, “let’s go give them flowers, and that will make everything all right.” It is always escalation, not de-escalation. Today I got this question over on Quora;
https://www.quora.com/Should-neurotypical-people-be-cured-of-being-Neurotypical
No. The answer to that is no. No one should have to stop being who they were born to be. Neurotypicals are not born inherently any one way or another. That is all decided by the individual, not the brain formation.
I could use pretty much anything as an example here. Psychopaths, people with autism, black people, white people, Asian people, young people, old people left leaning people, right leaning people, moderate people, people from X continent, there are always people that can be placed in the “other” category. I could find examples of any of the ones that I listed, but I am using the neurotypical one, because it affects the most individuals, and perhaps that will flip a switch in those that haven’t had it happen yet.
No matter who is allowed to be in the crosshairs of this mentality, it will always come to find you in the end. No one is safe from it, and it is a pernicious way of thinking that will infect a lot of people. Polarization is not a good thing. Humans are instinctively tribal. It feels good to have an other, a target to lay blame at the feet of, but that is nothing more than a lie.
The idea that someone can have a cause of their problems in a group, or an individual does nothing to help those problems, it is just a distraction from them. The problems will still be there waiting in the dark, so then what? A new target? It doesn’t end, and the targets still aren’t the problem.
We have to meet others where they are, even if they don’t make sense to us. I understand that there is a lot of anger and fear in the world right now, and it is very easy to give more power to those feelings, but don’t. Do not give in to the temptation of the easy road. Don’t persecute people for their immutable characteristics, don’t look to lay blame at the feet of those that have nothing to do with it.
When I have problems in the world, they are nearly always problems that I have a hand in. I have to figure out how I contributed, and what I did to cause my own issues. Self reflection is hard, but it is not as hard as coming back from the slippery slope of evil. For those of you unfamiliar with it, it was created by Phillip Zimbardo, the man responsible for the Stanford Prison Experiment;
The seven social processes that grease the slippery slope of evil;
Mindlessly taking the first small step
Dehumanization of others
De-individuation of others
Diffusion of personal responsibility
Blind obedience to authority
Uncritical conformity to group norms
Passive tolerance of evil through inaction, or indifference.
Do not go down this path. The end result has been horrific throughout history, and it is not something that should be revisited. Everyone calls back to WWII, but that is one example of so many that this thinking has caused.
Jordan Peterson has stated in his classes for years, you are more likely to be the prison guard in the concentration camp, then you are to be the one that saves the Jews. This is factual. It takes an incredible type of person to stand in the way of social pressure, and most people that want to won’t. They stay silent because they are afraid of the consequences. There are far worse consequences than financial, or social status, and those consequences can’t be lived down, even generations later.
The key is to never get to that point. Examine what you will allow from yourself, and don’t let social pressure let you take a stance that is contrary to what you think. Neurotypicals don’t need to cease existing, neither do psychopaths. People do not need to change their immutable characteristics, and no one is evil because of them. There is no original sin when you are born.
We are all humans. We may have problems communicating, but that is addressed with more communication, and meeting each other where we are without a prefabrication of what that meeting will consist of. If you have never met an individual before, you literally know nothing about them. If we all had to wander around with some sort of badging, like neurotypical, or psychopath, do you think that would be informative of what that person is like, what they enjoy, where they go, how they think?
No, of course not. You know that they have one thing labeled about them, and from that you might draw a lot of conclusions that are totally incorrect. If you aren’t speaking to them as a person, you don’t know their stories, and if you want to know them, you have to leave all your assumptions aside.
This is true regardless of whatever label you can place on a person, so my advice is to not label them at all past, individual. My only caveat to this would be your instincts. If your instincts are screaming that you are in danger, or the person is intending to do you harm, you are going to want to go ahead, and listen to those instincts.
I have said many times, don’t give anyone the benefit of the doubt, but also, don’t assign to them a narrative. On both occasions, let the person tell you who they are. Let them earn their way into your life of course, but by the same token, let them tell you who they are, don’t just decide a narrative for them, and expect them to live to it.
I very much recommend watching the TedTalks below by Zimbardo about this sort of thing;
https://www.ted.com/talks/philip_zimbardo_on_the_psychology_of_evil?language=en
This is absolutely perfect, thank you so much for writing this. There's definitely some people in my life that I will sending this too when the timing for me feels right.
"If we all had to wander around with some sort of badging" -- I immediately had an image of people walking down the street with those Tag Clouds (used in blogs) hanging over their heads and jostling with all the other Tag Clouds wandering past. LOL! A few really BIG words, handfuls of Medium sized, and gazillions of teensy tiny ones.
And yes, the whole us/them dichotomy captures a huge sickness at the heart of today's world. I've thought so ever since I was a child.