These are two very conflicting, almost contradictory, words. US being me and my family; my cohort; my language speakers; with my skin colour; with my belief system – in other words my “comfort zone”.
But THEM – they are none of the above and are therefore unknown; not to be trusted; possibly dangerous; certainly to be avoided if at all possible.
Now I’m sure this has been so since humans formed tribes for protection purposes many, many, millennia in the past. One would hope that the antagonism, hatred, death and destruction that resulted would, by now, be something to look back on with shame.
Unfortunately not. Now, far from casting blame I would just draw attention to what I, personally, consider to be some of the underlying “causes” for this very, not to say, dangerous, situation:-
Formal religion hasn’t helped. In fact it has, in my view, been the underlying cause of much grief. Think the Crusades – those infamous campaigns to recapture the “Holy City” of Jerusalem that had been taken by the Islamic Sultanates ruling over large swathes of the “Holy Land”. Them – Bad Islamists and Us – Good Christians.
Then there have been the millennia long “antagonism” between various sects of ALL religions – Catholic vs Protestant; Sunni vs Shia. Hindus don’t like Muslims (and visa versa) – so the simmering conflict between India and Pakistan continues. Then of course the Jews – they killed Jesus, you see, so no one likes them!
Through the great sweep of history to the present day – South America and the Spanish “conquest” of the Aztecs; the “colonisation” of North America, Africa, Australia, India and many Asian countries has been a, possibly, subconscious example of scapegoating. Then there were the religious wars - Protestant vs Catholicism - of the 16th and 17th centuries and even today with the “differences” in Palestine and Israel, Turkey and Armenia, Saudi Arabia and Yemen.
The wall between the state of Israel and the Palestinian territories on the West Bank is a “protection”. As well as being a security fence, it also represents a psychic barrier. The danger is that people come to think that those on the "other side" are irredeemably evil and inhuman.
This is similar in intention to the now demolished “Berlin Wall” – the wall built between the Evil Capitalist West and the Good Communist East (the USSR).
Then of course the most horrendous of all “differences”, those charged by Hitler for causing the financial collapse of Germany after the First World War (1914 – 1918) - the millions of Jews, Gypsies and mentally troubled, exterminated at the hands of the Nazis during the 1930s and early 1940s.
The list is almost endless. And what has been achieved?
Nothing. Except a retreat to and repositioning of the old standby – the Scapegoat.
It’s all YOUR fault.
Scapegoating: A Chilling Truth About Human Behaviour.
When it comes to interpersonal conflict, humans have long preferred to blame other individuals
or groups rather than look, deeply, at their own behaviour. Scapegoating is when an individual or group selects another person or group to bear the responsibility for any conflict or social dis-function. The person or group that is targeted and blamed is the scapegoat.
This can be understood if it is believed that the person who falls into the scapegoat role would typically be a person who is the least like the in-group members who seek cohesion and conformity among each other. After all, one of the functions of conformity and cohesion in groups is survival, and outsiders who demonstrate difference from the group, may be considered a threat.
History is practically written by a narrative of scapegoating. In the Torah (first compiled in about the 6th Century BCE), it is said that men who engage in homosexual behaviour should be stoned to death. In the late seventeenth century, some locals in colonial Massachusetts didn’t no how to settle political and religious differences, so when a few women started acting on their own, they were labelled as witches and hanged. And of course, survivors of sexual assault are frequently branded at fault by the perpetrators and by systems of power.
Some people wonder how we could be so fatally blind, but the chilling truth is that in each of these examples, the people who blamed the scapegoat genuinely believed the ‘scapegoat’ was wrong and deserved punishment. Invariably, when we hear about these instances, our own reactions are of outrage. “How could someone do such a thing? Surely, we would know better than those people?”
The thing is, our outrage at scapegoating often contains an assumption – that the perpetrators intentionally blamed or targeted the scapegoat. Thus, they are bad, and we are good. Unfortunately, it’s not that simple, and we’re all, subconsciously guilty of similar scapegoating dynamics, however difficult this is to acknowledge.
Only a quick glance at history, as previously mentioned, is needed to reveal the chilling truth that humans prefer to scapegoat and save face, than to sit with and accept their own “stuff”. This doesn’t necessarily make some people “bad” and other people “good,” but scapegoating does illustrate how complex human psychology can be. Ultimately, scapegoating will not cease to exist as long as people continue to have minds that cannot tolerate personal internal conflict or an acceptance of their own shortcomings. We all indulge in the belief that we are good human beings.
It is also a little acknowledged truth that the people we meet tend to be, almost mirrors to see ourselves reflected. What we might not like to see in our reflection, we "transfer" to the "other" as a dislike of THAT person. And so it goes on!
For all the technological progress humans have made, the progress of our social dynamics has not advanced nearly as steadily.
It is still US (good people) and THEM (bad people).
