Today’s post is inspired by Braving the Wilderness by Brené Brown. (Yes, I’m still learning from her work!) I’m still processing the bit I listened to most recently (Chapter 4, if you’re curious. “It’s Hard to Hate Close Up. Move In.”), so I hope this makes sense.
We are all experiencing pain in some way – emotionally, physically, spiritually, or some combination of the above. It’s easier to hate than to acknowledge our pain, or find the roots of that pain.
Our families and culture believed that the vulnerabilty it takes to acknowledge pain is weakness, so we were taught anger, rage and denial instead. But what we know now is that when we deny our emotion, it owns us. When we own our emotion, we can rebuild and find our way through the pain.
Braving the Wilderness, by Brené Brown
With the current political, health, and economic situation, primarily in North America since I can only speak to my own experience, we are seeing a rise in the us vs. them mentality. Whether it is folks taking sides on mask/no mask, Democrat/Republican, individualism/community connections and supports, or Black Lives Matter/Blue Lives Matter/All Lives Matter, people have strong opinions one way or the other.
You are completely entitled to your opinions and perspectives. I have strong feelings on a lot of those issues.
The danger comes when we start dehumanizing the other.
What does dehumanizing look like? It looks like demonizing the other side. It looks like name calling, especially calling the other animals, insects, or inanimate objects. It looks like removing individuals and only addressing the category.
Dehumanization has fueled innumerable acts of violence, humanrights violations, war crimes and genocides. It makes slavery, torture, and human trafficking possible. Dehumanizing others is the process by which we become accepting of violations of human nature, the human spirit, and, for many of us, violations against the central tenets of our faith.
Braving the Wilderness, by Brené Brown
When the other is less than human, they no longer deserve the same respect and consideration. We can direct all of our pain (read: hatred) at the other because they are evil, bad, or just wrong.
Many of us remove people from our social media who are on the opposite side, until our feeds become an echo chamber with wilder and crazier theories, memes, and arguments as to why the other is so horrible. The pandemic and requirement for physical distancing and isolation only worsens this effect, because we are not able to have conversations with individuals to understand their point of view, whether we agree or not.
The following quote really hit me hard:
If you’re offended or hurt when you hear Hillary Clinton or Maxine Waters called “bitch”, “whore”, or the c-word, you should be equally offended or hurt when you hear those same words used to describe Ivanka Trump, Kellyann Conway or Theresa May.
If you felt belittled when Hillary Clinton called Trump supporters “a basket of deplorables”, then you should have felt equally concerned when Eric Trump said, “Democrats aren’t even human.”
When the President of the United States calls women “dogs” or talks about “grabbing pussy”, we should get chills down our spine and resistance flowing through our veins. When people call the President of the United States a “pig”, we should reject that language regardless of our politics and demand discourse that doesn’t make people subhuman.
When we hear people referred to as animals or aliens, we should immediately wonder, “is this an attempt to reduce someone’s humanity so we can get away with hurting them, or denying them basic human rights?”
If you’re offended by a meme of Trump photoshopped to look like Hitler, then you shouldn’t have Obama photoshopped to look like the Joker on your Facebook feed.
There is a line. It’s etched from dignity. And raging, fearful people from the right and left are crossing it at unprecedented rates every single day. We must never tolerate dehumanization—the primary instrument of violence that has been used in every genocide recorded throughout history.
Braving the Wilderness, by Brené Brown
People on both sides of any argument or conflict are just that – people. They are people in pain, people with unmet needs. It’s time to rehumanize the other.
I have been guilty of dehumanizing the other in the past, of sharing those memes or lashing out in my pain. When it comes to people, I choose to move in, to seek connection and understanding. Because people are hard to hate close up.
Blessings,
Mary