Dehumanization

We as a species are massively varied in our beliefs, from religious to political to any other category imaginable. When we disagree with someone, I think we feel an innate urge to justify why we have this disagreement. The less we know about the person, the easier it is to simply assume incompetence of a sort on their part so we don't need to take the time to examine our own beliefs.

I personally fight the most with this in the political sphere. On a great many subjects I simply lack the context to understand a great deal of conservative belief. Recently I heard that as much as 10% of Americans tune in daily to conservative talk radio, specifically Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck. In trying to source that claim (note: I didn't find it), I came across http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-backroom/2602025/posts, which pretty much sums up what I'm trying to talk about here in its opening sentences.

Who do you dehumanize? Who is 'that other side' that clearly doesn't understand the facts or they wouldn't hold such silly beliefs. If you recognize yourself dehumanizing, do you see it as positive (efficiency) or negative? If negative, how do you fight it?

I know the burden is on the OP to really provide the content and I've made that attempt, but I personally don't have established strategies as of yet to combat my dehumanizing tendencies rather than just a general attempt to see it from their perspective, to empathize.

 

Animal abusers. To me, they are worthless pieces of shit. If they didnt do what they do, I wouldnt get the constant urge to do foul murder. I see them more as dead - because someone should put the bastards down (PTS), certainly prevent them from breeding. I dont understand why people get their kicks painting rescued donkeys (they were very sore getting it off), kicking a dog across a room etc. I have no wish to understand them, they are each an abhorrence of nature to me. They do not see the true worth of a loyal companion. Dog sees its God, but sometimes it is decieved.

 

It's easy to dehumanize the other side... it makes it easier to maintain our own opinion and the high ground, at least in our own minds. I tend to find extreme positions distasteful in both directions. Child abuse, animal abuse, religious/racial/sexual identity intolerance all disgust me. It's not that I don't want to understand their positions... it's that I can't. Their positions are essentially indefensible. Dehumanizing them allows me to feel I am the superior person I want to think I am (I'm delusional that way), and that ALL my opinions/positions are the epitome of enlightened reason.

 

greywolf, I dont know you, we have never met - but I too think a person who does not beat or abuse animals, children, the vulnerable is way further up morals hill than the scum in the moat at the bottom. So yes, I too would say you are superior to them - and maybe I am delusional too - but if enough of us got together and took over the asylum........... world might not be such a bad place dont you think.

 

i dehumanize people who are all rhetoric and no grey matter in between their ears. to me, they're just worker ants doing the bidding of those who can think and speak better than they can. i don't care what their waving signs are saying (republican, democrat, libertarian, NAMBLA, etc.), people who let their emotions control how they behave are wasting the gift of reasoning and logic that we've all been taught in school. at that point, you aren't thinking for yourself, you're having someone else do your thinking for you which makes me as sympathetic to that person as i am to the blood cells that die every time i get a cut.

 

Nicest hug I got out collecting - only one I accepted - was from a wee lad with downs. There was no guile, just childlike innocence - he just gave me a hug because I was kind to him and made him smile. Its whats in the heart that counts, not just the head.

 

hey as long as he wasn't waving an election sign around, the little bugger's alright by me

 

Buddhists go to great lenghts to try to put things right. The most recent immolation being in China I believe. Sometimes maybe you find yourself in a place where you can repair or improve lives of those around - maybe karma worked by sending your journey in that particular direction knowing you could do a goodness, a kindness, maybe as an instrument to stop evil, cruelty or whatever.

 

I was going to say I don't dehumanize anyone, but realized that when I feel it's been done to me, I have a reaction I don't like regarding whoever I feel to be the offending party. This provides me with additional grounds for my search for commonality. IJUHP!

 

Child abusers, genocide supporters, war criminals... I believe the term I use when I'm not just swearing profusely is "Human Refuse".

 

@Baraka: I feel similarly (in that I don't -want- to dehumanize people out of convenience), but I find myself doing it out of instinct, unconsciously. That was more the intent of my question. Perhaps the answer is 'no one' for you.