This isn’t related to advertising at all — I’m not even going to try to rationalize any kind of connection like I sometimes do. It’s just important. It’s also a topic that’s bizarrely controversial in today’s polarized political climate, and… why? But I wanted to talk about it, because it’s important.
I want to talk about how people are naturally inclined to be good and compassionate and caring, and how easy it is to take that away from us.
There is a strategic process, a tactic, for overcoming our natural inclination for compassion. Because regardless of what we’re seeing now, people are, in general, (reasonably) inherently compassionate. Our social tendencies, documented since caveman times, are to take care of each other. And no matter what a society is facing, it’s difficult to overcome the surface force that keeps us from accepting dehumanizing behavior.
But that holds until we break a very important seal: going from “dehumanizing treatment is unacceptable” to “dehumanizing treatment is acceptable for certain, specific people.” Once we go from “it’s never okay to do this” to “it’s okay to do this under certain circumstances,” that inherent part of us that’s dedicated to compassion and human dignity is removed from consideration. And it isn’t being done accidentally.
Inflection point
This isn’t a slippery-slope argument — it’s an inflection point. Because once we’ve broken that seal, the people in charge don’t have to continue convincing us to overcome our natural abhorrence of dehumanizing treatment. They simply have to update the list of people for whom dehumanizing treatment is acceptable, and updating lists is something people find far easier to accept. It’s okay to dehumanize those people, because they committed crimes. Just not anyone else. Well, it’s also okay to dehumanize those other people too, because they’re a drain on society. That’s all. If it’s just them, it’s fine.
And if we focus on the list, and not on the actual wrongness of the treatment, that compassionate part of our brain stops getting pinged. And we start mocking the people who are still getting pinged, we say they’re overreacting. paranoid, even spiteful, and the entire issue of dehumanization is swamped by polarized political conflict. And society becomes worse for it, just a little, creeping bit at a time.
And sometimes it’s only when you or someone you love is added to the list that you remember it’s actually not just a list. That it’s never been just a list.
Dehumanization in front of us
Right now, we’re seeing dehumanizing treatment of undocumented migrants. Families are being torn apart at the border and in their communities, are swept up in immigration raids. The men recently deported by way of Guantanamo were marched around in shackles for a photo op, and more than a quarter of them had no criminal record outside of unlawful entry. But we overlook the dehumanization because they’re on the list. And it’s okay to treat these specific people this way, and that list will never grow, certainly not to the point it affects good, law-abiding people. We’d never accept them being added to the list.
Whenever the Holocaust — yeah, I know — is discussed, inevitably someone will say, “I don’t know how people could do that to their neighbors. I could never.” There’s a reason they could. It’s because that innate, human compassion was long since overcome, and brutalizing their onetime friends and neighbors had been added to the list.
The Jewish people have faced demonization for most of history, but it intensified after Germany blamed them for losing World War I. They were villainized and denigrated, but treating them that way was seen as acceptable, because it’s just them, right? Nobody else. Nobody who doesn’t deserve it. (Their sentiments, absolutely not mine.)
So when Hitler came into power and started passing increasingly cruel laws targeting them, it was already accepted that treating them that way was okay. And as the list of laws grew and grew, and the list of people it’s okay to dehumanize — political dissidents, disabled people, LGBTQ+ people — grew, it was easier for the German people to accept, because they’re just updating the list. These people are getting added to the list for a reason, right? Accepting, and participating in, dehumanization is thus perfectly reasonable.
Humanity for all
That’s a reason they could, and it’s a reason we could, because we’re also humans subject to the same compassionate tendencies and vulnerable to the same insidious tactics. It’s hard to break our seals, but once those seals are broken, it’s shockingly easy to accept updates to the list. It’s already part of our ongoing history — the dehumanization of enslaved people, of incarcerated people, of so many more, so horribly, because of some Reason. And in a time when the list is growing, with the threat and promise of future growth, sitting back and seeing it as just a list, ignoring that ping in the compassionate part of our brain, threatens our own humanity
Don’t let your seal be broken. Don’t sit back and accept when your neighbors — and they are your neighbors, if not on today’s list then maybe tomorrow’s — are added to the list because of some Reason. Don’t forget that deep down, that sense of compassion that has been inherent to us since it created society knows what’s being done is wrong, and that part of us doesn’t believe compassion comes with conditions — it’s outside forces that tell us that. Don’t let them use you like that. Be a human, and remember other people are human, too. Don’t let anyone take that away from you.