“Us Versus Them”
Abstract
This research paper addresses the vast and complex compendium of humanity’s timeless-ageless inability to get along with and understand one another. It addresses the causes of our ignorance and intolerance of each other. Our hatred and conflict with each other. This paper is about the very psychology of the behavior of humanity that has remained static for our entire history of existence. “Ever since man first stood upright, we have continued to write our blood-stained history. (M.S.Gdw. anime series).” With a number of credible, authoritative, and professional literary and scientific sources and extensive data, this paper will examine the complexity of the psychology of humanity’s most defined and enduring behavior, our conflict with each other, our human nature of “Us Versus Them”.
Introduction
“Us Versus Them” is a monstrous problem that has plagued our entire human history and continues to do so even today. This research paper will examine and analyze this problem. First, we will look at some of the broad causes of “Us Verses Them”; our biological behavior, our economic behavior, our sociology behavior, and our differing philosophical worldviews. Second, we will look at specific targets of hatred, such as “race” (nationality/ethnicity), “affiliations” (political, religious, social, and economic), “gender” (societal role and sexual orientation), and “weaknesses” (disabilities, age, diseased or having a weak immune system, poor/weak at speaking or being not socially skilled, and unattractive physical appearance). Third, we’ll look at the psychology involved with the manifestations of the negative physical acts. Within each of these three topics, there will be literature reviews, data, discussions, and conclusions. So, now we’ll be first looking at the fundamentals; humanity’s biological, economic, social, and philosophical behaviors.
Literature Review and Data
According to (McConnel, Brue, and Flynn, 2009), “Biologically, people need only air, water, food, clothing, and shelter. But in modern society people also desire goods and services that provide a more comfortable or affluent standard of living” (p. 3) and we, in our economic rational behavior, compete over these needs and wants due to “Scarce economic resources mean limited goods and services. Scarcity restricts options and demands choices. ...Economists call such sacrifices opportunity costs” (p. 4), but we do so purposefully as “Economists assumes that human behavior reflects rational self-interest. Individuals look for and pursue opportunities to increase their utility–the pleasure, happiness, or satisfaction obtained from consuming a good or service” (p. 4). Also, according to Coon and Mitterer (2009), “...humans are social animals...” (P. 622) and “Social psychology is the scientific study of how individuals behave, think, and feel in social situations” (p. 622). Lastly, according to Washburn (2008), philosophy is the love of wisdom, which is knowledge or understanding (p. 2), and as humans, we strive to gain knowledge and understand the world we live in, and thus construct our own worldviews and ideologies (p. 5).
Discussion and Conclusion
Humans, as living organisms, biologically have needs such as air, food, water, sleep, shelter, and clothing, and the right to them, as we, like all life, have the right to stay alive. Also, as humans, we behave economically, we make our decisions in a rational and opportunist fashion, and we have needs (socialization) and wants (“material goods” like an expensive car) that extend beyond our basic needs for life and survival. As social animals, our behavior is ruled by other humans, by society, the “Iron Cage”, and we are born being completely helpless and dependant as we know nothing and are capable of performing only the basics of life (body functions, like for example, respiration and reflexes) and sucking and crying as babies, unlike many other organisms that are less helpless and less dependant. However, we can learn almost anything, as we are completely and a very capable “blank slate”. There’s very little genetically (“nature”) that affects us, it is almost entirely learned (“nurture”). We are taught to be what we will become by other humans. We are molded by other humans, we don’t mold ourselves. Sociology is the bridge from a human baby to a human adult. Other humans make, define, develop, mold, train, and teach us into being who are or will become, as we have actually very little control over ourselves and who/what we become, due to the “Iron Cage” of society. Lastly, we have our philosophical worldviews and ideologies, such as political, religious, social, and ethical, that influence, guide, or determine our behaviors.
In conclusion, human behavior is already extremely complicated and conflicting, without even getting into the psychology of human beings yet! But, let’s next look at some specific targets of hatred before we delve into the psychology behind our hatred and our manifested behaviors and actions that arise and occur from our hatreds.
Literature Review and Data
According to Elmore (The Psychology of Hate Crimes), “While hate groups can pose a serious threat to communities, research suggests that the vast majority of offenders are not members of organized hate groups. Additionally, recent data suggest that over 50% of perpetrators of hate crimes are under age 25. According to the U.S. Department of Justice (2001), 31% of hate-based violent offenders and 46% of hate-based property offenders from 1997-1999 were under age 18.” (p. 3).
Racial hatred is a serious problem and according to (Anonymous) (Open Hearts, Open Minds: The Keys to Tolerance, 2009), “I hate white people, the Latina girl spat at her white teacher. You hate me?, the teacher asked in disbelief. You don’t know me.”, “Respecting and appreciating other people may not sound hard to do - but obviously, it is still a challenge for many people around the world. Intolerance of different ways of thinking and different ways of life has led - and continues to lead - to the loss of human rights, war, and genocide.”, and “After 9/11 many people demonstrated intolerance of Muslims.” According to Elmore (The Psychology of Hate Crimes), “Many reported crimes are motivated by racial bias. In 2007, more than half of the 7,621 single-bias crimes reported to the FBI (50.8%) were racially motivated. Of 1,256 hate crimes in 2007 motivated by bias based on ethnicity or national origin, the FBI found that 61.7% were anti-Hispanic. And, in 2007, the FBI reported that 18.4% of hate crimes based on race stemmed from anti-white bias.” (p. 2).
Religious hatred is another serious problem, and according to Elmore (The Psychology of Hate Crimes), “Bias and violence against Arab and Muslim Americans reached its height after the tragic events of 9/11. It is estimated that there were more than 700 violent incidents targeting Arab or Muslim Americans or those perceived to be Arab or Muslim Americans in the first nine weeks following 9/11. Due to a lack of understanding of religious differences, Sikhs have been mistakenly targeted as Muslims. Since hate crimes are defined as real or perceived group membership, these incidents are considered hate crimes. Most religiously motivated hate crimes are acts of vandalism, although personal attack are also common. In 2007, the FBI reported that the great majority of these crimes were directed against Jews (68.4%), followed by anti-other religion (9.5%), and anti-Islamic (9.0%) hate crimes.
Gender and sexual orientation related hatred is also a serious problem, and according to Elmore (The Psychology of Hate Crimes), “In 2007, there were 1,460 hate crimes based upon sexual orientation reported to the FBI, of which 59.2% were classified as anti-male homosexual bias. In a study of lesbian, gay, and bisexual persons, researchers found that roughly 1/5 of the women and 1/4 of the men had been the victim of a hate crime since age 16 (Herek et al., 2007). One in eight women and one in six men had been victimized within the last 5 years.” (P. 3). Also, males are having a hard time dealing with the change in society while trying to maintain their social-sexual role and identity of masculinity, of what they feel it is to be a man. This is according to Levant, R.F. (1996).
Disabilities hatred is yet another serious problem, and according to Elmore (The Psychology of Hate Crimes), “In 2007, 62 hate crimes against individuals with mental disabilities and 20 hate crimes that target those with physical disabilities were reported to the FBI. However, other research suggests that persons with disabilities are 4 to 10 times more likely to be a victim of hate crimes than persons without disabilities. There is also evidence that persons with disabilities are at risk of being abused by those whose job it is to serve or to protect them. Studies have shown that in cases of sexual abuse of persons with disabilities, 48% of the perpetrators were employed in the disability services field and gained access to their victims through the work setting.” (p. 3).
Discussion and Conclusion
It makes sense that young people commit much of the hate crimes as there’s a lot of reasons and causes for them to do so, and thankfully it’s hard to form hate groups (though we still have major gang problems across the country) nowadays as they’re socially shunned and/or taken down by law enforcement if need be, but this means more single individual perpetrated hate crimes occur. Parent and peer pressures and socialization, easily influenced by defamation and stereotypes. Sadly, it’s “cool” to defame and hate certain groups of people, like the Jews, and most of them don’t even know why they do. “Hate the Jews”, even today it is still as strong as ever, has become or stayed a cool “political slogan line” especially among the young (especially on the internet and political rhetoric or demonstrations by liberals) and everyone as well. Now, there’s hostility towards Muslims and Hispanics, due to 9/11 and immigration issues respectively. Also, younger people are more aggressive/violent and emotional as they have more of their hormones flowing around within their bodies. They’re more likely to act out their hate and/or frustrations.
“Race” is the easiest target of hatred, as we hate people whom are different, and “race” is the clearest, most visible, literally with skin color and body/facial bone structure, difference in people. It’s always been our human nature to want nothing to do with people who are different from us (except gender-wise, as we desire and need sex, to continue our species). We form our groups, teams, gangs, countries, and communities of people whom look the same, think the same, and do and act the same as we do. People of European-descent have been one of the worst perpetrators of “racial” hatred in history. Europe, and its many countries, has long been at war with each other. A lot of “racial” (ethnicity and nationality) cleansing or purging, long before Hitler and his mass murdering of Jews, homosexuals, and gypsies. Early on, it was the Romans and those inhuman, non-civilized (which was very inaccurate, as the Romans were much less civilized than other people) “barbarians” (non-Roman). Next, European’s turned their hatred towards the “heathens/pagans”, and the Holy Land (Middle East, Jerusalem) and the Muslims, who were in control of it, with their Crusades of atrocities against the inhuman Muslims. Than, European’s hatred extended to Africans or any dark-skinned person, thinking of them as inhuman animals, and not even sub-human. Sadly, this was carried over to America by them as well, towards the Native Americans, those inhuman “savages”, by the English and Spanish, and than to slavery of Africans and other dark-skinned people, those inhuman “niggers”, and the formation of the Klu Klux Klan (KKK), by the English-Americans in the their newly formed U.S. country until we finally had our Civil War and civil rights movement with MLK, and others. But, sadly it still persists today even as early in our little children, of both “white”-European and “black”-African children, as done by CNN’s somewhat recent shows (“Black in America”) on it. Even the “black”-African children thought that they as black-dark skinned were the “bad” ones, and the white-light skinned were the “good” ones. Europeans aren’t the only ones guilty though of historical “racial” hatred and crime. Asia, and their countries, have been in hateful conflict with each other, especially between China and Japan (Japan’s “Rape of Nanking” war atrocity, genocide, and mass raping of the Chinese). There’s also the hated Mongolians (the “Mongol Horde”, defamatory calling them a Horde as if they’re monsters) that China was at war with (as well as the Mongolians being at war rest of Asia and the eastern half of Europe). They’re also the origin of the defamatory word, inhuman “mongrel”. Also, as we all know, the Middle East, is in hateful conflict with it’s own countries and countries outside of it as well, and with the different ethnicity of people there and around the world (it’s not just due solely to their different religions). Those inhuman “infidels” (non-Muslims) and the Muslims’ “jihad” (struggle) against them.
Religious hate crime is also ancient in its history and often tied/complementary to “racial” hatred, and continues as strong today as ever, especially with the Middle East and their intolerance with inhuman “infidels” (non-Muslims) with their heinous murders-war crimes (suicide bombings and 9/11, and hostage taking and/or decapitations of them, i.e. Iran Hostage Crisis and Daniel Pearl, a member of the press) around the world of innocent people. It’s also getting bad within the U.S. as well, as we have many religious crimes. Atheists vandalizing, burning down, or disrupting services of religious buildings, that leader of a church in Florida who proposed to burn the Koran a while back on the news, the Mosque being built just a few blocks from Ground Zero, and etc.
Gender and sexual orientation based hate crimes are serious problems as well. Recently on the news, a college student committed suicide after being secretly videotaped and exposed having gay sex. There’s probably been crimes caused by the political issue of homosexual marriage/civil rights and with the military’s “Don’t ask, don’t tell” policy currently in legal limbo. Sadly, there’s the massive problem of violence against women by men. This is heightened by the fact that society has changed away from the man’s social-societal role and identity and also putting more and different demands and stresses upon him. This is important to understand as it is likely the underlying cause of much crime perpetrated by males upon society and females. Even more disturbing, whether just reported more or an actual increase, we’ve seen more cases/acts of crimes of pedophilia, especially by women (usually school teachers) on/against young males, young male teens or even male children. This might be partly due to female’s greater power within society and sexualization by our media and society. Lastly, females are becoming much more violent and getting into more physical fights. This could even be a strange twist in gender-societal-sexual roles, as males become more “feminine” to fit into our society, females are now having to take over the “masculinity”, and are now the somewhat more aggressive and violent ones, fighting with each other over or to show off to their male partners.
Disabilities or societal-perceived disabilities is the last of the big targets of hate crimes. Being physically and especially mentally disabled, is a huge stigma and widely despised by society. This is mainly our animal behavior, as a physically disabled animal deteriorates from the pack’s/group’s survival, and especially a mentally disabled animal as well, many animals (including humans sadly, well not usually physically/violently, but we destroy their lives in other ways) will physically attack, tearing apart the mentally disabled animal and killing it, as it too deteriorates from the ruthless order of the pack/group which helps ensues their survival. Poor social or speech/speaking skills is another huge target of hate crime. Since we’re social animals, we disturbingly-criminally feel it is alright to target such people with hatred or hate crime. I never understood what speech or socialization skills has to do with intelligence (Stephan Hawking had his social and speech skills wiped out by his disease, but his great intelligence was completely unaffected), but people whom can’t speak well or whom aren’t very social, misanthropes or “loners”, are always thought of and treated as if they’re stupid or mentally ill (political examples: Bush and Palin), and are often accused or associated with being criminals. Every time you hear a crime on the news, they jump at labeling/defaming the person a “loner” as if that has anything to do or cause of why the accused criminal did what he was accused of doing. As if people with lots of friends or good speaking skills are immune to committing crimes, how absurd! We treat misanthropes or “loners” as if there’s something wrong with them. You must have bundles of friends and constantly “bird-chirp or monkey-chatter” with other people, otherwise there’s something wrong with you! We really crucify/abuse/mistreat/vilify/defame humans whom aren’t as verbally hyper-social as most humans tend to be. We can speak with our bodies and our actions/deeds/character/high standards (“actions are worth a thousand words”) as well, but humans are so obsessed with the verbal language/speech. By always needing to be “hand fed like a baby” with verbal language, we never truly learn to actually understand each other. Also, “lips lie (Mark Land)”, and yet we’re obsessed with verbal language, despite the ability to so easily lie with it. It’s much more difficult to fake or lie with body language or your actual actions. When humans only listen to verbal speech, they become deaf to everything else, and cripple themselves from truly understanding one another.
In conclusion, these targets of hate crimes have posed as an immovable barrier/obstruction towards understanding and getting along with one another, “Us Versus Them”, as sadly, this continues to be our social and psychological behaviors, for as long as humans have existed. Well, now it’s finally time for the psychology of our human behaviors.
Literature Review and Data
According to Coon and Mitterer (2009), “Power or the need for power, is a desire to have impact or control over others (McClelland, 1975)” (p. 389), and “Power assertion, the use of physical punishment or coercion to enforce child discipline (p. G-12). Also, “Aggression is any response made with the intent of harming a person or object” (p. 469). Lastly, “Anxiety, when you are anxious you feel tense, uneasy, apprehensive, worried, and vulnerable” (p. 475).
Discussion and Conclusion
Unfortunately, I’m reaching the limits of this research paper’s requirements, so there’s much more about this massive area of psychology than I’m able to discuss. But, here’s the brief psychology of our behaviors that result in our attitudes of hatreds and acts of hatreds:
Basically, it’s all about power, the ability to get what you want and/or need by controlling other people through various ways, such as aggression (physical force), intimidation (threat of physical force), “sociology and/or politics” (using or threat of using sociology, society, popularity, numbers/quantity/group opinion/mobs/gangs, social status, and/or wealth/economic power), and “sexuality” (using or threat of using or not-using/giving: attraction/seduction, a gender’s body/prostitution/contract involving sex, and/or the desire for sex). Power, as well as for the practical reasons, is also very pleasurable and thus desired independently. Then, there’s also how we respond, either fight (anger/aggression) or flight (fear/anxiety), to threats or obstacles to our pursuit of power, and all the “spoils” that come from having power or attaining power. Lastly, our behaviors of hatred is motivated by envy/jealousy toward others, whom have power or something specific that we need or want to have but don’t have. One clear example of this, is “Class Warfare”, the rich (“haves”) vs the poor (“have nots”).
In conclusion, psychology plays a massive role in the behavior of our hatreds.
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Originally Posted by HegemonKhan
(or it's more likely that our illustrations of aliens have merely been a subconscious documentation of how we're changing/evolving into these "aliens")
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