De-othering

The word “other” is also a verb. To other is to treat groups of people as fundamentally different or inferior.

It’s in our nature, but leaders amplify it for scare-mongering. Those immigrants. Those Muslims. Those Chinese. They’re the problem. They’re not like us.

That message is broadcast and echoes all around you, which intensifies feeling it’s a fact.

It builds a huge wall: us versus them. It repels you from that wall, to make sure you can’t see them, because that would complicate the simplicity of polarizing.

We categorize the animal world into species. Species are so different that they can’t mate, can’t switch, can’t be both a cat and a bird. The problem with othering is thinking of people as so deeply different that they are like a separate species.

It’s an enticing belief because it helps you jump to a conclusion, so you can stop thinking. Those people are just weird and bad, and that’s that.

I’m so interested in othering, because I noticed it in myself. I grew up with the usual stereotypes that shaped my worldview. Then I moved to the city, where you meet people from the other side of that wall.

Like a great story where the heroes oppose an evil enemy tribe, but then one person falls into enemy hands and realizes that tribe is not evil and is not the enemy, and you get the wow moment of understanding a conflicting point of view. Stories tend to make only two sides, so they can take sides and switch sides. But imagine a longer story that does this twenty times, so you can’t even think of them as sides anymore. That’s what I’m trying to do with my life.

I’m on a slow background mission to reverse the othering in my worldview. It’s a fun challenge.

When I notice I’m othering, I undo my conclusions, and cross that wall. Understand and internalize a conflicting point of view. I try to join every tribe, to show myself we are not separate species.

This year, I heard the word “other” as a verb, and it called all of this to mind. So now I can give my mission a succinct term: de-othering.