Let's talk about The Other
Because this isn't working
Across the threads of languages, dialects, and accents that create the quilt of communication wrapping around our global humanness, there is one single sound that unites us all.
It’s not a word, but any person on earth will recognize what it means immediately.
Laughter, you may guess?
Cute, but no.
Laughter is one of our least understood behaviors, used only occasionally to convey “That was funny,” and much more often as a way to communicate just about anything else.
Crying, you might conjecture?
Pain is a universally familiar expression, yes, but the sound is expressed in many different ways: as a wail, a sniffle, a moan, a hiccup.
The sound I’m talking about is the one-syllable culmination of evolutionary refinement over an unfathomable amount of time:
“EW!!!!!!!!”
More accurately, it might be spelled “Euyugch!” with a requisite accompanying facial expression.
We’ll decide on a spelling later.
For now, what you need to know is that humans developed a distinct facial expression and a distinct exclamation that could be understood across tribes, countries, and languages, for a really useful purpose, to express:
THAT IS NOT ME. I AM NOT THAT.
This is how deeply engrained it is for us to point out, out loud, in apparent horror, “That person/place/thing/food/animal is so OTHER than me, that I need to show you with my entire body how different we are.”
Back in the day—we’re talking zillions of years ago—it could have been dangerous for humans to express anything but disgust at other tribes.
Nobody wanted to get mixed up with ‘The Other’ lest they accidentally get clobbered to death for taking some snacks from the wrong fridge.
So, they’d look at each other in total disgust: EW!!!!! Euyugch! Ugh!
In other words, “I’m nothing like you. And by the way, your food is disgusting! You call that a casserole!? More like I need to casser-STROLL my way out of your village right now…”
This wasn’t, like, the most beautiful way for folks to relate to each other, but it was one way that made some sense in the early days of wordless humanity when we were still figuring out what our noses were.
It was safe to belong; it was unsafe to be on the outside. “You vs. Me” often seemed more secure than “We.” (An doesn’t it still?)
There was a lot of warfare in those days whenever safety of the group was threatened by an outsider; the primate kingdom currently reflects our history to us, with the same impulse to protect their families and territory through quick, violent reactions.
A cursory look at evolution might lead us to conclude that humans are naturally skeptical of The Other, and in fact we are equipped with tons of tools in our DNA to treat them with justified disgust.
If we share this universal sound that means “I’m not that,” then fear and repulsion toward anyone not like us makes sense, right?
Darwin’s theory of “Survival of the Fittest,” interestingly enough, came about in concurrence with the emergence of capitalism, and the two have been intertwined since.
I’ve examined my own instincts through Darwin’s lens and thought, “Oh yes, obviously, we are hard-wired to be disgusted by ‘The Other,’ to keep us safe!”
…all so I can feel less shame over my own indulgence in the convenient other-ing toward those I disagree with.
“We were never meant to get along anyway,” so how can I be blamed? Look at evolution!
Well…it’s not so simple. Darwin helped figure out a lot of much-needed truths about evolution, but he was only one person. A flawed, biased, monumental, complex, imperfect person who had a ton of blind spots—as we all do,—and a desired legacy—as we all do.
And while his research generously explained our unflattering but very human desire to compete and see each other as less valuable than our own kin, he didn’t explain how interdependency, resource-sharing, community care, and concern for the most vulnerable among us, saved our species, time and time again.
Nor could Darwin ever explain how “security” has a completely different definition for each one of us.
For some, sleeping on the streets or in a tent is far more secure than staying at a so-called ‘homeless shelter.’ Such glorified prisons are much more interested in preventing the privileged from their disgust, rather than providing true safety to our unhoused neighbors.
Quick example: Shelters segregate folks of different sexes and don’t allow animals. Many of our unhoused neighbors would obviously feel much safer to sleep next to their spouse of a different sex, or bring in their dog—the only creature who’s had their best interest at heart for years. Interdependent tent communities often feel much safer than isolated beds which foster tough competition and don’t encourage sharing of resources.
When we attach too much to “survival of the fittest,” we really miss the ways that biodiversity has clearly contributed to our thriving as a species: our different tools to evolve, our various gifts to offer each other, and our individual experiences to enrich the definition of a concept as vital as ‘security.’
I think it’s interesting that Darwin’s work and capitalism flourished at the same time because they both implicitly promised that our ‘progression’ would lead to a certain point: an ideal of perfection, or purity.
But that’s not how humans work. Humans, by definition, are imperfect, and far from pure. And it’s the promise of pure perfection that has gotten us in all KINDS of trouble throughout history!
During the 2020 Election, I watched with admitted pleasure as a young Black woman scammed Trump supporters by posing as an unlikely Republican who had been cut off by her family for her political stance. Rumor has it she got $150,000 for her guise on GoFundMe.
I don’t care to work out the ethics of what she did, but I was captivated by the response from fellow liberals. “She deserves all their money,” was the average response. “They deserve it,” was the accepted sentiment about the duped Trumpers.
And here and there, I read something that gave me chills, something to the effect of, “Trump supporters aren’t human, so I don’t care about them.”
In my circle, it was as though a massive group of people and then some had tarnished a specific ideal of humanness, so impure that they had failed our definition of ‘being human.’
The past month, I’ve been reading about the tactics of converting Hitler Youth into Nazi Adults. Post-WWI when Germany was in shambles and young people had little motivation to feel anything but apathy for their country, Hitler was a confident, vegetarian, artist leader who told them they were the future.
He promised a country full of opportunity and possibility—anything their dreams were made of. A lot of the Hitler Youth had never even met a Jewish person.
So, very effectively, he methodically painted a grotesque picture of Jews as old, rich, greedy, a threat to progress, only interested in themselves. A group who tarnished the image of a pure Germany.
This reminded me just a bit of some messaging I’ve heard before, about people who have been repeatedly called “not human.”
How quickly we are all susceptible to messaging about “The Other,” only to be questioned decades later, “How could you let it come to this?!”
Looking back at the question, “How could you let it come to this?” the answer emerges from the “Other-ing” of fellow humans, because war is simpler than conflict! Maybe not easier, but simpler.
Conflict is different from war. In fact, conflict might be the opposite of war.
War is all about utter destruction, through the only tried-and-true method of completely dehumanizing each other. You are not like me, over and over. Almost as logically clean-cut as the act of tweezing a splinter from one’s foot, it’s the idea of “If I can banish you, I’ll be whole again!”
But what happens when a group or an idea is banished? Certainly it doesn’t disappear?
Conflict is about the inevitable disagreements and fights of living alongside, through recognizing the awkward truth that I am you, over and over.
Conflict knows that a people or idea can’t disappear; they will always reappear in a different form, unless we transform together.
Conflict is inevitable when we live alongside each other, and it’s a dynamic rich in possibility. Conflict can be redemptive, reduce suffering, create greater intimacy. But it’s harder than war because it means working through differences.
At my wedding, our darling officiant Amanda spoke to this triumph in our own relationship: We are different people, and we can hold each other’s differing opinions with love, and tolerance, and listening. Conflict can bring us closer to each other because it inspires us to understand, and even embrace.
I used to deal with differences in a micro-war: wanting to destroy the opinion of another person because it threatened mine. I was terrified of conflict, so I wanted total destruction.
When I noticed all the conflict in our society, it would grate on my soul. “Why can’t we just get along??” I’d think, ever a product of the We Are the World generation. “If we all thought the same thing, we’d have peace,” I assumed, yet to realize that such an idea only came about in the violent ‘purification’ of others.
I used to be so scared of conflict. Now, I’m so worried about war.
I don’t mean ‘official war,’ where countries declare war on each other in some notarized document to be submitted to the bleakest archive in History.
I mean I’m so worried about our casual capacity to dehumanize ‘The Other.’ This is War Behavior, not Conflict Behavior.
War means ‘destroy.’ Conflict means ‘fight.’
As someone who is hoping to put a child onto this sweet green globe at some point, I’m no longer scared of them entering into conflict.
Let there be conflict!
Conflict is not only inevitable, it’s essential.
Conflict alchemizes into intimacy, conversation, creativity, and radical solutions the likes of which the old world couldn’t have fathomed in their wildest dreams. (Let the Good Friday Agreement be an inspiration to all of us who say that peace is out of reach!)
In Conflict, humankind has unearthed some of our most valuable discoveries: the friction between sticks that fuels fire; the contrast in art that intensifies meaning; the philosophy concept “The Unity of Opposites,” meaning that the existence of one thing depends on its opposing force (Can ‘cold’ exist without ‘hot,’ can theism exist without atheism, can the Red Sox exist without the Yankees??).
Let us embrace conflict. Let’s do everything we can to avoid war.
Again, I’m not talking about war between nations; I’m talking about the desire to destruct a whole People with the belief that “If we could just get rid of those people, our society would be fine.”
I’ve listened to this podcast, interviewing genius Northern Irish philosopher Peter Rollins, no fewer than 20 times since 2020. It’s become more relevant with every listen, driving home these points:
We get so obsessed with our enemy that we end up needing their existence in order to fuel our own action (Seeing them as human would actually guide us toward peace, but what’s the fun in that!?).
It’s an ancient homosapien impulse to believe that all our problems could be solved if one group just changed their minds, or, more easily, WENT AWAY. We need to keep in mind that this impulse is so human and so understandable, but so dangerous as a justification for our most egregious acts as a species.
The ONLY path toward reconciliation with ‘The Other’ is novelty, meaning something we’ve never tried before. After three decades of violence in Northern Ireland, everybody realized…it wasn’t working! They had to get together and figure out something completely different. I doubt any historian among us would ever look at decades of violence, treaties, and cutting off each other’s electricity and imagine it would lead to anything but suffering.
If I thought I had a solution, or if I thought my opinion was “on the right side,” maybe I’d be feeling less heartbroken about every single terrible thing I can think of going on in the world right now.
Perhaps unwavering, righteous opinions build a protective wall around heartache over our fellow humans suffering so much.
I get it; I want to protect myself. It would be logically simpler for me to see more of myself in one group over another, and I have certainly done it before.
But whatever I’ve believed, politically and philosophically, has melted upon seeing photos of terrorized families and photo albums peeking out in rubble.
There is no ‘Other’ when we see them as full people, wearing donated Mickey Mouse shirts smeared with blood and holding stray cats because there’s no one left to protect.
This week, I’ve stopped reading the captions to identify which horrors belong to which side. These are our fellow humans.
Long long ago, in various civilizations and through various times, we all decided on one single sound that would have universal meaning for us all:
“EW!!!!! Euyugch! Ugh!”
In recent centuries, this sound has expanded to include moral disgust as well as physical disgust. If we see someone engage in an act that goes directly against our values, our faces crinkle up as they would in the face of a slug chomping through a bouquet of roses.
I generally keep myself pretty safe-guarded from the wilds of the internet, but the past week I was back on social media to see photos right after my wedding. What a time to come back.
Of course, I was disheartened to see the usual Other-ing that comes with the territory of an attention-grabbing online economy that knows just how to whittle down millennia-old history into soundbites so people can easily parrot for their own personal agendas.
But I was equally heartened by all the disgust.
I noticed a resounding disgust in response to ‘You vs. Me.’ Not immediately; our own biases, intricate life experiences, and personal connections will understandably take precedence over stoic neutrality.
But, upon observing reactions, I saw the greatest “EW!!!!! Euyugch! Ugh!” reaction when it came to dehumanizing The Other.
Darwin wasn’t totally right. Survival of the Fittest isn’t the only explanation. In the end, we want Humanity to win. We want Conflict over War. We want Us over We/Them.
If this sounds too idealistic, I invite you to take a glance back at history and you’ll notice it’s the only pragmatic approach, the only philosophy that has ever worked.
I think it’s a big step when we utter “Ugh” to convey, “I am not you,” by which we mean “Humans can’t keep doing this to each other. And may the revolution begin with me.”
No matter how deeply and fiercely I believe in something—and I do, many things—I never ever want to de-humanize The Other.
I pray that I can exist in conflict for the rest of my life if it means entering into awkwardly intimate conversation, uncomfortable arguments, maybe even horrific fights that will take decades of repair.
I pray for all of this any day over war: the desire to destruct people because of what they believe.
May my disgust be directed toward myself for my dehumanizing actions, rather than those I dehumanize.
I’m currently writing a book about our human relationship with animals, and I’m finding that we have the hardest relationship with creatures who are the most similar to us.
My prime example is rats, who share all the human traits we hold most dear, yet are among the most despised (right up there with scorpions and two-headed snakes). I suspect that what we see in them is actually too like us, and it scares us. We say “EW!!!” to affirm that we reject any similarity.
Whenever I feel so angry toward another person, or entire group of people (often!), I ask myself, “What in them am I seeing in myself?” What are they revealing about me, to me? Because we are all so similar, and our impulses are all the same.
This is no justification for anyone’s awful awful behavior, but I wonder if there are any sparks of potential within myself, that, with the proper amount of kindling, could flare up into that level of conduct. I hope not, but deep down I know it’s possible. For me, for you, for all of us.
That’s why, I hope you will join me and take a moment, especially if you are in a physically and emotionally safe space, to examine which group of people you are currently eyeing as ‘The Other.’
It doesn’t take long to see them as less-than-human, and I know you are just as afraid as I am about sending kids into a world where hatred is a norm and war is a fact.
The nations of the world may not listen to our voices, but our families might. And how I wish those in my own family had chosen conflict over war. It’s not too late; it’s never too late.
Imagine your sworn enemy as a baby, then go from there. Curse them out if you must. But please let’s not forget that we all fall in love, stub our toes, pet stray cats, think of our grandmothers, learn to count, take interest in art, enjoy a movie, attempt to dance, like to swim, yearn to protect, hunger to belong, post to obey, ache for approval, join for comfort, desire a legacy, and want so badly to belong to our fellow humans.
This piece was very constructive and comforting for me. With the advent of the recent catastrophe in Israel/Palestine, I find every day is a minefield. It's a cake with an infinite number of layers, each one revealing more pain. Thank you.
May we all see each other as humans. Amen.
Your post helped me not be as afraid of conflict!
Hope your wedding was wonderful!!!!
I’m hoping (but we’ll see how it goes) to post more updates as we get closer to our baby’s surgery in about a week, if you want to stay updated. I know you’ve been kind to give words of comfort before.
Much love and enjoy your first months of marriage!