Why do people vow to kill others they've never met?
Why do people from different religions curse one another?
Why can't we all just get along?
To get our species past these problems, we first need to understand where they come from.
To quote my colleague Steven Baum at the University of New Mexico, who is much more of an authority on this than I am, this is not about anger. It isn't really about hatred either. It's about something much more fundamental - much more basic.
Differences.
From the beginning of time, humans have had difficulty accepting differences. If someone is different from me, then they have to be better or worse. The phrase "separate but equal" has never been a part of our collective history.
Steve Baum and another colleague of mine, David Moshman at the University of Nebraska, explain this in exquisite detail, and in elegant simplicity, in their writings. I urge you to consult their books and journal articles for a much more in-depth treatment of why people just cannot seem to get along. Dave Moshman has a great article that just came out in the journal Identity, and it should be required reading for anyone who wants to understand genocide. If you want a copy, email him at dmoshman1@unl.edu.
But I will do my best to explain it here, in my own words. Hatred, genocide, and terrorism all start with differences. I am an X, and you are a Y. You can substitute any groups you want for X and Y, and the same principles hold. You are different from me, and different must mean better or worse. All too often in our history, different has meant inferior. My group is better than your group. Sounds like a third grader taunting another third grader, doesn't it?
One of my major academic interests is in identity, and identity goes a long way toward explaining genocide, terrorism, and other forms of inter-group violence and hatred. Social identity theory, originated by Henri Tajfel in the late 1970s, holds that people derive much of their self-worth from the groups they belong to. The groups that I belong to are called "ingroups," and the groups that I don't belong to are called "outgroups." The more I identify with the ingroup, the more I will believe that it is deserving of favoritism and all of the good things in life, and the more I will believe that the relevant outgroups (other religions, other countries, et cetera) deserve the short end of the stick - discrimination, misery, or worse.
Osama bin Laden was once quoted as saying that the Middle East was God's favorite part of the world. This is a perfect example of the principle I'm illustrating here. Do you really think that God, who created everything that exists, would single out one subcontinent as "better" than everything else? Or is this just social identity principles at work? Many Americans think that the United States holds a special place in God's favor. Is this any different? As I alluded to in my August 6th posting, Americans believe that the United States deserves God's favor and that terrorists and insurgents in the Middle East deserve God's punishment - and many in the Middle East think they have God's favor and that we are evil. So who is right? Or is this ALL a function of social identity dynamics, having little or nothing to do with God at all?
Once people have been separated into ingroups and outgroups, the next step is to determine how much of a threat each outgroup is to the ingroup. These threats do not have to be physical - in fact, cultural threats are often more salient than physical ones. The United States and Al Qaeda each regard the other as a threat to its existence and to its very way of life. The spread of Western - largely American - culture into the Middle East is regarded as a grave threat to the traditional principles and lifestyle cherished by fundamentalists in that part of the world. Images of scantily clad women, expletive-filled music, and rebellious young people - all strongly associated with Western cultures - run completely counter to traditional cultures where women are expected to be modest and subservient, and where young people are supposed to be respectful and to defer to their elders. So, in essence, our culture represents a strong threat to the values that some fundamentalists seek to defend and preserve.
I have to stop and give my own opinion here. I think that most fundamentalist ideologies - not just Islamic but also from other religions as well - are demeaning and disrespectful to women and are so rigid that they simply do not work well with today's technological and interdependent world. At the same time, however, our culture is disrespectful in many ways. The sense of entitlement that today's young people seem to have is disgraceful - and the way in which many of them talk to their parents is even worse. All of this is, of course, depicted in our movies, our television shows, our magazines, and our websites. And, as we know, the rest of the world is constantly bombarded with American media influences. So this is one of the reasons why we are perceived as a threat in other parts of the wold.
Once an outgroup is perceived as a threat, the next step is dehumanization. Outgroup members are, in the eyes of the ingroup, stripped of their humanity - and they become a single entity, a single mass of evil that must be destroyed. Although I am both an individual and a member of a group, my individuality no longer matters to those who regard me as a member of the outgroup. "Americans," "Jews," "Blacks," and other groups become single entitites that are regarded with disdain - or worse.
Dehumanization also allows outgroups to be scapegoated. Scapegoating occurs when a single group is blamed for all of the problems facing a country, region, religion, et cetera. Differences between the ingroup and outgroup are exaggerared, and similaties are minimized, so that our association with the outgroup is greatly reduced. They are no longer like us in any way, and they are a "cancer" that must be eliminated. (This is the exact word that Slobodan Milosevic, former prime minister of Yugoslavia, used as justification for the "ethnic cleansing" that occurred in the Balkans during the 1990s.) This is exactly what happened in Nazi Germany, and this is why so many German citizens not only let the Holocaust happen - they participated in it. The Jews were the problem. They were the reason why the German economy was in ruins, the reason why other Germans did not have what they wanted or needed. It was all because of the Jews.
Clearly, scapegoating is a useful way for charismatic or oppressive leaders to focus public anger away from themselves and toward someone else. Just like a bully deflecting negative attention away from himself and toward another child, these leaders blame the outgroup for all of the problems that the ingroup (country, religion, ethnic group) is facing. Oppressive Middle Eastern regimes do this all the time - and often we are the scapegoat. This allows them to deny the most basic freedoms to their people - and not to have to take responsibility for it.
Once an outgroup has been dehumanized and scapegoated, ingroup members are free to maim and kill members of the outgroup with impunity. It has now become a battle between "us" and "them," where "we" are better, morally right, favored by God, and justified in doing whatever we have to do to put "them" in their place - or get rid of them altogether. In Rwanda, the Hutu and Tutsi ethnic groups refer to one another as "cockroaches." Religious fundamentalists often label others who don't share their beliefs as "sinners," "infidels," and "heretics." Especially in cases of religious groups, we believe we have God on our side - and that the outgroup doesn't.
And then, as Dave Moshman and Steve Baum outline so eloquently in their work, after the genocide has been completed, we deny that it ever happened.
Most people don't even know that the Taino were the original inhabitants of many Caribbean islands, including Puerto Rico, Cuba, and Hispaniola. The Taino were wiped out by Christopher Columbus and his men, and then the whole thing was covered up. The Taino disappeared from history.
The Holocaust occurred less than 70 years ago, and already people are trying to deny that it ever happened. This is despite the fact that there are still people alive who survived it. Not only people from other countries - like Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad - but also some in our own country, have claimed that the Holocaust was a myth. Have these people ever talked to a Holocaust survivor? Have they ever seen Schindler's List? Have they ever visited the sites where the concentration camps once stood?
First we separate, then we dehumanize, then we destroy, and finally we deny.
This is what is behind genocide, terrorism, religious persecution, and a host of other problems facing our species today. This is what we will have to get past if we are to advance as a species - and if we are to stave off the major calamities that have been forecast in the next 50 years, including extinction.
If we are to survive as a species - and if we are to even have grandchildren and great-grandchildren, we will have to stop doing this to each other, and to ourselves.
We will have to hear God's message, sent through every prophet, master, and religious figure who has come to give us wisdom and direction:
WE ARE ALL IN THIS TOGETHER.
WE MUST LOVE OUR NEIGHBORS - AND WE ARE ALL NEIGHBORS.
WE ALL SHARE THE SAME HOME - THE HOME THAT GOD GAVE US TO STEWARD AND PROTECT.
When we allow these destructive social identity dynamics to take hold of us, we turn away from the eternal wisdom that has been given to us, and we allow our differences to divide us. Until we realize that different does not mean better or worse, that each of us is both an individual person and a member of a group, and that God loves all of us equally, the horrors that we have foisted upon ourselves will continue to occur.
We cannot afford to let this keep happening.
Will we wake up before it's too late? And what will each of us do to make sure that we do?
No comments:
Post a Comment