Midweek Meander Around the Issue of 'Othering'.

I experienced some synchronicity a few days ago. Synchronicity was once explained by Carl Jung as being “meaningful coincidence”. A Quora friend had recommended to a questioner a very good piece by John Powell, from The Guardian:

Us vs them: the sinister techniques of ‘Othering’ – and how to avoid them.

I decided to read the piece. 'Othering' wasn't part of my everyday vocabulary. Snips from the piece will follow in a mo. Synchronicity occurred that same day when, towards the end of a slow trek, evening by evening, through a streamed sci-fi series (Amazon Prime), Electric Dreams, based on short stories by Philip K. Dick, we reached an episode titled "Kill All Others". There's a review of the episode HERE.

My nutshell synopsis: Philbert Noyce is a quality-control factory worker of the future, one of three in a vast factory powered by robots which needs just 3 humans when it once needed 3,000. Noyce is a decent guy, dislikes the hate speech being offered up by the single presidential candidate on offer - it appears there is in place a one-party political system. What we, in 2019 might consider to be hate speech is always capped by a catch phrase, also used frequently on billboards :
"Kill All Others".
'Others' were anyone who dared not to toe the line in respect of government edicts and approved opinions. No critical thinking allowed!

'Othering'.
That experience of synchronicity persuaded me to start scribbling! Following are snips from the aforementioned piece, plus one other article available on line. These helped to clarify, for myself, various aspects of 'othering'. Perhaps any stray passer-by might find them of interest too.

From John Powell's piece, linked above:

Humans can only process a limited amount of change in a short period of time without experiencing anxiety. It’s a natural human reaction – but how we respond to that anxiety is social. When societies experience big and rapid change, a frequent response is for people to narrowly define who qualifies as a full member of society – a process I call “Othering”. An alternative response is seeing the change in demographics as positive, and regarding the apparent other as enhancing our life and who we are. This is what I refer to as “belonging and bridging”.

Othering is not about liking or disliking someone. It is based on the conscious or unconscious assumption that a certain identified group poses a threat to the favoured group. It is largely driven by politicians and the media, as opposed to personal contact. Overwhelmingly, people don’t “know” those that they are Othering.

So while today’s global anxiety has been precipitated by globalisation, technology and a changing economy, demographics play a crucial role in the process of Othering. The attributes of who gets defined as Other differ from place to place, and can be based upon race, religion, nationality or language. It is not these attributes themselves that are the problem, of course, but how they are made salient, and how they are manipulated.

I am therefore particularly concerned with how Othering shows up in today’s power structures: how it is used to divide and dehumanise groups, and capture and reshape government and institutions. For society’s leaders and culture play an oversized role in helping us make sense of change – and so greatly affect our responses to anxiety...........

People don’t just figure out on their own that collectively they need to be afraid of another group. Leadership plays a critical role. Often people who have been living with one another for years are made to feel suddenly that those differences have become threatening..

So how do we respond to our collective anxiety today? Either we “bridge”, reaching across to other groups and towards our inherent, shared humanity and connection, while recognising that we have differences; or we “break”, pulling away from other groups and making it easier to tell and believe false stories of “us vs them”, then supporting practices that dehumanise the “them”......

If we are to combat the rising tide of extremism across the globe, we must actively create bridges across difference, and resist strategic exploitation of our collective anxiety. For when we bridge, we not only open up to others, we also open up to change in ourselves – and actively participate in co-creating a society to which we can all belong.

The opposite of Othering is not “saming”, it is belonging. And belonging does not insist that we are all the same. It means we recognise and celebrate our differences, in a society where “we the people” includes all the people.

From: Otherness 101 - What is Othering?

This psychological tactic may have had its uses in our tribal past. Group cohesion was crucially important in the early days of human civilisation, and required strong demarcation between our allies and our enemies. To thrive, we needed to be part of a close-knit tribe who’d look out for us, in exchange for knowing that we’d help to look out for them in kind. People in your tribe, who live in the same community as you, are more likely to be closely related to you and consequently share your genes. As a result, there’s a powerful evolutionary drive to identify in some way with a tribe of people who are “like you”, and to feel a stronger connection and allegiance to them than to anyone else. Today, this tribe might not be a local and insular community you grew up with, but can be, for instance, fellow supporters of a sports team or political party.

But there’s no doubt that grouping people into certain stereotyped classes, who we then treat differently based on the classes we’ve sorted them into, is a deeply rooted aspect of human nature. Intergroup bias is a well established psychological trait.

Poem by ― Kamand Kojouri (Goodreads)

“They want us to be afraid.
They want us to be afraid of leaving our homes.
They want us to barricade our doors
and hide our children.
Their aim is to make us fear life itself!
They want us to hate.
They want us to hate 'the other'.
They want us to practice aggression
and perfect antagonism.
Their aim is to divide us all!
They want us to be inhuman.
They want us to throw out our kindness.
They want us to bury our love
and burn our hope.
Their aim is to take all our light!
They think their bricked walls
will separate us.
They think their damned bombs
will defeat us.
They are so ignorant they don’t understand
that my soul and your soul are old friends.
They are so ignorant they don’t understand
that when they cut you I bleed.
They are so ignorant they don’t understand
that we will never be afraid,
we will never hate
and we will never be silent
for life is ours!”
― Kamand Kojouri (Goodreads)

I've highlighted two lines which I find particularly striking. We are, all of us as Carl Sagan wrote, made from stardust. We humans came from the self-same ancient batch of that stardust. Once we, as atoms and particles, nestled together on the shores of the universe. It is sad that we no longer choose to remember that, but strive constantly to divide ourselves, one from another.