“We find that whole communities suddenly fix their minds upon one object, and go mad in its pursuit; that millions of people become simultaneously impressed with one delusion, and run after it, till their attention is caught by some new folly more captivating than the first.” ― Charles Mackay, Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions , 1841.

A few years ago while I was waiting for a flight, I overheard a very interesting conversation between two gentlemen which I'm gonna paraphrase below:

“I used to believe that we were born in the unluckiest generation of recent times, but then one day I realized that our parents had to go through two world wars and a huge economic depression”.

And then it dawned on me, I don’t have a clue how it might’ve felt like to live through the great depression, or in Hitler’s Germany, or under Mao’s China, or inside Stalin’s Gulags...

I know I’m supposed to say: “I’ve seen some real shit in my life”, but I really didn’t.

Not with that magnitude anyways.

I mean I’ve read the books, watched the documentaries, watched the movies as well (with a salt shaker in one hand, remote on the other).

But I can’t say I know exactly how it might’ve felt like to live through those horrific times.

Now, all of us like to believe that if we lived in those times that we would’ve done something about it, that we would have stood up against the machine or that at least we would’ve spoken our minds.

Let me tell you, now I realize it’s not an easy thing.

A few months ago, I saw a huge divide between my friends, there was a gentleman called Donald Trump – Don’t worry I’ll spare you the politics in this post, this is purely about psychology – that came out and said:

"They're bringing drugs. They're bringing crime. They're rapists.

... And some, I assume, are good people."

Now when that happened, some of my friends on one side called his statement racist, others went even further called Donald Trump racist.

Personally, I couldn’t disagree with him more, because Mexicans are most definitely NOT rapists, they’re just people like everyone else.

Living in the Age of Outrage

Here’s the interesting part, what I didn't see coming:

The other part of my friends, took serious offense that the others were calling the “Mexicans are rapists” statement as a racist statement.

“Everything they disagree with must be racist” They kept saying time and time again.

So I tried to understand their point of view, I'm voluntarist, I don't have political affiliations but I don’t believe in conservatives, democrats, vegans… There is just Jenny, Jessie and Pablo, it’s just people.

So then those acquaintances, mainly ex-libertarians turned Alt-right (I don’t know what Alt-right means) said that they feel emasculated by liberals, that they’re attacked by SJW in dark alleys, that they are losing their manhood.

The dark alley was a joke, I just wanted to add humor in the mix.

Needless to say, the outrage had nothing to do with the statement in question. It was just a programmed reaction that was automatically induced whenever anyone pronounced words like: Racism, xenophobia, Nazis..etc.

The sad part is that they spend countless hours complaining about the ‘left’ trying to silence free-speech while they were doing the very same thing.

“Right? Left? Two wings of the same birds” Said Cicero.

Now, remember when I said we all hope we’ve said something about it if we lived in that era?

Well, there is dehumanization process going on in the world and I personally, don’t wanna live in a world ruled by strict rulers that suck the life out of life just because some assholes need some "strong authoritarians" to rule them.

There is No “Us”, There is No “Them”

During the Holocaust, the Nazis referred to Jews as rats. In the Rwandan genocide the Tutsis were labeled cockroaches, and as I’m typing this there are soldiers out there that are being trained to identify their victims as rag-heads.

You see, devils don’t use forks, they use labels and dog-whistle words.

Worse even. They make people do that for them.

If someone says something uncomfortable, you just stamp a label on them to throw away the arguments, andvoilà! There are plenty of those to go around from conspiracy theorist to capitalist pig to socialist and everything in between.

This is not how voluntary communication should work.

The Lucifer Effect

"At the core of evil is the process of dehumanization by which certain other people or collectives of them, are depicted as less than human, as non comparable in humanity or personal dignity to those who do the labeling. Prejudice employs negative stereotypes in images or verbally abusive terms to demean and degrade the objects of its narrow view of superiority over these allegedly inferior persons. At the core of evil, the sentence is: At the core of evil". ― Philip Zimbardo, The Lucifer Effect

An enemy threatening one’s personal well-being and the society’s national security… Hmm, where have we heard this before?

Historians deem dehumanization as the most central aspect to war. Politicians always tend to paint the "enemy" who put “our” oil or Lithuium in “their” land with the darkest shade of black, often presenting them as “barbarians”.

Children of a Lesser God

Presenting them as less than human is a the single most repeated trick that politicians use to play the populace as a violin and get them to support horrific wars that otherwise they themselves may consider as maniacally induced genocides.

Must we keep falling for the same trick every single time?

I mean, you know full well that we are all losers in that cruel senseless game.

The truth remains that painting your enemy as less than human is an age-old thing, some might even say that it’s a Modus Operandi for the criminally insane.

2017 can be a truly beautiful year, but it could be politically ugly. Marine Le Pen will most probably win the French election, just as the far right is winning the hearts and souls of desperate people in search for outlets to defuse their frustrations.

“Transference of fear and self-loathing to an authoritarian vessel. It's catharsis. He absorbs their dread with his narrative. Because of this, he's effective at proportion to the amount of certainty he can project.” ― The Locked room, True Detective.

But at the end of the day, none of this really matters.

If we ignore politics and focus on improving our own personal situations and help whoever we can in the way, that could be enough.

Let’s not keep focusing on the millionth spin-off for the never-dying “Us Vs Them” manipulation technique.

Because as everyone knows, as every person in the planet knows, as every motherfucker that ever walked the face of the earth knows:

We are all losers in that cruel, senseless game.

“It neither kills outright nor inflicts apparent physical harm, yet the extent of its destructive toll is already greater than that of any war, plague, famine, or natural calamity on record - and its potential damage to the quality of human life and the fabric of civilized society is beyond calculation.

For that reason this sickness of the soul might well be called the 'Fifth Horseman of the Apocalypse.' Its more conventional name, of course, is dehumanization.” ― Ashley Montagu, The Dehumanization Of Man.

Image Sources: 1 – 2 – 3 – 4 – 5 – 6