Do you dehumanise others?

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Do you dehumanise others?

Post by Blind groper » Sun Jan 26, 2014 10:48 pm

Subject taken from New Scientist magazine. 18 January 2014, page 39.

Researchers have found that all humans have a tendency to treat people, not of their family, tribal, or social group, as less than human. This leads to treating others very badly.

Adolph Hitler referred to the Jewish people as viruses, parasites, and rats. We know where that led. The Hutus referred to Tutsis as cockroaches. We also know where that led.

I had the personal experience, when in Papua New Guinea, of seeing local tribespeople referring to others not of their tribe as less than human. The result is that those Papuans will assault, rape, or murder non fellow tribespeople as if they were so much trash, while treating their fellows with respect and consideration.

The fact that dehumanising others is natural does not make it desirable. I have this idea that the degree to which an individual is civilised depends on the degree to which they can overcome this tendency. Anyone who treats others as if they were inhuman are barbarians.

This extends to those we might normally think of as enemies. For example, if you catch a guy burgling your home, and you have a gun while the burglar does not, do you shoot him? If you do, that is a sign you are in the act of dehumanising another person, which makes you a barbarian. A more 'civilised' inidividual will use his superiority in weapons to arrest the burglar, instead of firing.

Some people at New York University showed a lot of students a computer program in which a barbie doll image was slowly morphed into human. They were asked to note at which point they considered the image to be human. Those told the model for the image was from another university left it much later to identify the image as human, compared to those who were told the image came from a student at their university. This shows that the tendency exists even in sophisticated western peoples.

Creating 'teams' and including others on your team reduces this tendency greatly, at least for those teams.

Nationalism may be unhealthy, in that it creates a class of people in your mind - the 'others' - who are seen as less human.

How do you rate yourself? How do you rate those around you? Are you and they civilised, or barbaric, actively treating others as less than human?

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Re: Do you dehumanise others?

Post by FBM » Sun Jan 26, 2014 10:54 pm

You mean that moving, noisy furniture that I have to put up with almost every day?
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Re: Do you dehumanise others?

Post by mistermack » Mon Jan 27, 2014 12:04 am

This is perfectly normal territorial human behaviour.
We are a tribal species. You can't see the members of neighboring tribes as friends, or they will piss all over you, and take all you've got.

The nice people went extinct thousands of years ago. Luckily, OUR ancestors were ruthless selfish bastards, which is why we are here.
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Re: Do you dehumanise others?

Post by JimC » Mon Jan 27, 2014 2:27 am

My class of teenage boys starts the year as sub-humans, of course. A few graduate to human under my tutelage...
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Re: Do you dehumanise others?

Post by Tero » Mon Jan 27, 2014 4:06 am

Let's go over the hill and kill the males and steal the younger women!

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Re: Do you dehumanise others?

Post by cronus » Mon Jan 27, 2014 4:58 am

There's a big difference between letters on a screen and human beings. Most overlook that. :coffee:
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Re: Do you dehumanise others?

Post by Seth » Mon Jan 27, 2014 5:28 am

Blind groper wrote:Subject taken from New Scientist magazine. 18 January 2014, page 39.

Researchers have found that all humans have a tendency to treat people, not of their family, tribal, or social group, as less than human. This leads to treating others very badly.

Adolph Hitler referred to the Jewish people as viruses, parasites, and rats. We know where that led. The Hutus referred to Tutsis as cockroaches. We also know where that led.
Causation/correlation fallacy I'm afraid.
I had the personal experience, when in Papua New Guinea, of seeing local tribespeople referring to others not of their tribe as less than human. The result is that those Papuans will assault, rape, or murder non fellow tribespeople as if they were so much trash, while treating their fellows with respect and consideration.
Maybe it's quid pro quo.
The fact that dehumanising others is natural does not make it desirable.
Doesn't it? I think it depends on the nature of the relationship with the "others." In Papua New Guinea, it's very possible that dehumanizing "others" is a well-developed survival trait necessitated by the environmental and social conditions that prevail there.
I have this idea that the degree to which an individual is civilised depends on the degree to which they can overcome this tendency. Anyone who treats others as if they were inhuman are barbarians.
Which comes first, the chicken or the egg?
This extends to those we might normally think of as enemies. For example, if you catch a guy burgling your home, and you have a gun while the burglar does not, do you shoot him?
Maybe, maybe not.
If you do, that is a sign you are in the act of dehumanising another person, which makes you a barbarian. A more 'civilised' inidividual will use his superiority in weapons to arrest the burglar, instead of firing.
Simplistic nonsense. What if the burglar is holding a knife to your kid's throat, or is coming at you with a crowbar. Now, if you were to say that the use of deadly force against an intruder where no imminent danger of the use of force against a person in the house exists is "uncivilized" I might be persuaded to agree with you. Then again, burgling someone's house is a distinctly antisocial and uncivilized act to begin with, which raises the question of how much respect does the victim owe the burglar with respect to the burglar's "rights?"
Some people at New York University showed a lot of students a computer program in which a barbie doll image was slowly morphed into human. They were asked to note at which point they considered the image to be human. Those told the model for the image was from another university left it much later to identify the image as human, compared to those who were told the image came from a student at their university. This shows that the tendency exists even in sophisticated western peoples.

Creating 'teams' and including others on your team reduces this tendency greatly, at least for those teams.

Nationalism may be unhealthy, in that it creates a class of people in your mind - the 'others' - who are seen as less human.
Unless it's healthy to create a class of people who are "others" because they are a danger to your own society or nation.
How do you rate yourself? How do you rate those around you? Are you and they civilised, or barbaric, actively treating others as less than human?
Yes, no, sometimes, never, and maybe. It all depends on the particular circumstances.
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Re: Do you dehumanise others?

Post by Blind groper » Mon Jan 27, 2014 7:00 am

Seth

When I used the example of a person shooting at a burglar, I had in mind a video I saw recently. This was taken from a security camera. It was a jeweller and a couple of would-be robbers.

The robbers sprayed pepper spray at the jeweller, who fell back. They smashed a glass tray and began picking up jewellery. The jeweller got up with a gun in his hand and started shooting. The two robbers ran for the door, but the jeweller shut it and locked it with a remote system. The robbers curled up into fetal positions in the corner, with the jeweller continuing to shoot. Shortly after, the police arrived and arrested the robbers. Both had received one single wound, and both were able to walk out, showing they were not terribly badly hurt.

Obviously, and fortunately, the jeweller was a lousy shot, since he sprayed bullets with total abandon. But I label him asshole number one. Scumbag of the worst kind.

He did not actually have to fire more than one single warning shot. Both robbers had essentially immediately surrendered. Yet he tried his best to kill them. Basically, he was trying to commit murder, and only his ineptitude saved the two robbers.

Had this happened in my country, the jeweller would have been immediately arrested, and locked up. He would be tried for committing grievous bodily harm and for attempted murder, and almost certainly served at least ten years in prison. However, this happened in the USA, and I suspect he was released.

The jeweller clearly dehumanised the two robbers, and was prepared to kill them as if they were not humans, but just targets. I call that jeweller a total barbarian.

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Re: Do you dehumanise others?

Post by Blind groper » Mon Jan 27, 2014 7:00 am

Seth

When I used the example of a person shooting at a burglar, I had in mind a video I saw recently. This was taken from a security camera. It was a jeweller and a couple of would-be robbers.

The robbers sprayed pepper spray at the jeweller, who fell back. They smashed a glass tray and began picking up jewellery. The jeweller got up with a gun in his hand and started shooting. The two robbers ran for the door, but the jeweller shut it and locked it with a remote system. The robbers curled up into fetal positions in the corner, with the jeweller continuing to shoot. Shortly after, the police arrived and arrested the robbers. Both had received one single wound, and both were able to walk out, showing they were not terribly badly hurt.

Obviously, and fortunately, the jeweller was a lousy shot, since he sprayed bullets with total abandon. But I label him asshole number one. Scumbag of the worst kind.

He did not actually have to fire more than one single warning shot. Both robbers had essentially immediately surrendered. Yet he tried his best to kill them. Basically, he was trying to commit murder, and only his ineptitude saved the two robbers.

Had this happened in my country, the jeweller would have been immediately arrested, and locked up. He would be tried for committing grievous bodily harm and for attempted murder, and almost certainly served at least ten years in prison. However, this happened in the USA, and I suspect he was released.

The jeweller clearly dehumanised the two robbers, and was prepared to kill them as if they were not humans, but just targets. I call that jeweller a total barbarian.

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Re: Do you dehumanise others?

Post by Hermit » Mon Jan 27, 2014 7:54 am

Seth wrote:
Blind groper wrote:Researchers have found that all humans have a tendency to treat people, not of their family, tribal, or social group, as less than human. This leads to treating others very badly.

Adolph Hitler referred to the Jewish people as viruses, parasites, and rats. We know where that led. The Hutus referred to Tutsis as cockroaches. We also know where that led.
Causation/correlation fallacy I'm afraid.
Whenever a relationship does not suit you, you call it mere correlation. When it does, you promote it to causation. I note that you have not addressed that issue the last four times I raised it here, here, here and here, except to say that you can't be bothered to back up your assertion that more guns cause less crime after I produced a graph from a pro-gun site that illustrates that there is not even a correlation between gun ownership and crime frequency in the USA.
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Re: Do you dehumanise others?

Post by Svartalf » Mon Jan 27, 2014 9:04 am

JimC wrote:My class of teenage boys starts the year as sub-humans, of course. A few graduate to human under my tutelage...
Do they pass the gom jabbar test?
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Re: Do you dehumanise others?

Post by JimC » Mon Jan 27, 2014 9:04 am

Svartalf wrote:
JimC wrote:My class of teenage boys starts the year as sub-humans, of course. A few graduate to human under my tutelage...
Do they pass the gom jabbar test?
:lol: :tup:
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Re: Do you dehumanise others?

Post by Audley Strange » Mon Jan 27, 2014 10:07 am

Blind groper wrote:Subject taken from New Scientist magazine. 18 January 2014, page 39.

Researchers have found that all humans have a tendency to treat people, not of their family, tribal, or social group, as less than human. This leads to treating others very badly.

Adolph Hitler referred to the Jewish people as viruses, parasites, and rats. We know where that led. The Hutus referred to Tutsis as cockroaches. We also know where that led.

I had the personal experience, when in Papua New Guinea, of seeing local tribespeople referring to others not of their tribe as less than human. The result is that those Papuans will assault, rape, or murder non fellow tribespeople as if they were so much trash, while treating their fellows with respect and consideration.

The fact that dehumanising others is natural does not make it desirable. I have this idea that the degree to which an individual is civilised depends on the degree to which they can overcome this tendency. Anyone who treats others as if they were inhuman are barbarians.

This extends to those we might normally think of as enemies. For example, if you catch a guy burgling your home, and you have a gun while the burglar does not, do you shoot him? If you do, that is a sign you are in the act of dehumanising another person, which makes you a barbarian. A more 'civilised' inidividual will use his superiority in weapons to arrest the burglar, instead of firing.

Some people at New York University showed a lot of students a computer program in which a barbie doll image was slowly morphed into human. They were asked to note at which point they considered the image to be human. Those told the model for the image was from another university left it much later to identify the image as human, compared to those who were told the image came from a student at their university. This shows that the tendency exists even in sophisticated western peoples.

Creating 'teams' and including others on your team reduces this tendency greatly, at least for those teams.

Nationalism may be unhealthy, in that it creates a class of people in your mind - the 'others' - who are seen as less human.

How do you rate yourself? How do you rate those around you? Are you and they civilised, or barbaric, actively treating others as less than human?
Yep we have the ability to dehumanise people. Like, when I refer to economic terrorists as scum, or when you also refer to George Zimmerman as scum.

I think it's a benefit as much as a curse. I think that if we could not do such, we would not have been able to exploit the shit out of others to build and sustain our civilisations. Sometimes there are external threats also and it is useful if sending young men to kill other young men for your benefit, to make sure those young men are at least indoctrinated into killing your enemies.

It would be nice if we could all just get along, but we can't and while we have in and out groups we will have dehumanisation. Solve that problem and I think we'd all be dehumanised.
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Re: Do you dehumanise others?

Post by Seth » Mon Jan 27, 2014 5:30 pm

Blind groper wrote:Seth

When I used the example of a person shooting at a burglar, I had in mind a video I saw recently. This was taken from a security camera. It was a jeweller and a couple of would-be robbers.

The robbers sprayed pepper spray at the jeweller, who fell back. They smashed a glass tray and began picking up jewellery. The jeweller got up with a gun in his hand and started shooting. The two robbers ran for the door, but the jeweller shut it and locked it with a remote system. The robbers curled up into fetal positions in the corner, with the jeweller continuing to shoot. Shortly after, the police arrived and arrested the robbers. Both had received one single wound, and both were able to walk out, showing they were not terribly badly hurt.

Obviously, and fortunately, the jeweller was a lousy shot, since he sprayed bullets with total abandon. But I label him asshole number one. Scumbag of the worst kind.

He did not actually have to fire more than one single warning shot. Both robbers had essentially immediately surrendered. Yet he tried his best to kill them. Basically, he was trying to commit murder, and only his ineptitude saved the two robbers.
Yes, he's lucky he didn't kill one of them with a shot after they had surrendered, that would have been a homicide. However, given the circumstances at worst I would have charged criminally negligent homicide because the robbers initiated the attack and it's understandable, if not cognizable, that the store owner might fire more shots than absolutely necessary because he was in a state of panic. Therefore, a lesser charge would be appropriate. Then again, if he walked calmly out from behind the counter, walked up to the cowering robbers and methodically shot them once each in the head, THAT would be premeditated murder.

Oh, you NEVER fire warning shots. You ALWAYS shoot for center-mass with the intent to prevent the assailant from continuing the activity that prompted you to shoot him in the first place. And once he's stopped that activity, as in this case, you stop shooting.
Had this happened in my country, the jeweller would have been immediately arrested, and locked up. He would be tried for committing grievous bodily harm and for attempted murder, and almost certainly served at least ten years in prison. However, this happened in the USA, and I suspect he was released.
You might want to verify that, though since no one was killed it's highly likely he was, given the circumstances. Our prosecutors tend to overlook a victim's overreactions in self-defense against a robber to some degree, particularly if no one is killed.
The jeweller clearly dehumanised the two robbers, and was prepared to kill them as if they were not humans, but just targets. I call that jeweller a total barbarian.
From what you describe, and not having seen the tape, I suspect the last thing he was doing was "dehumanizing" anyone. I think he was scared shitless and was improvidently spraying bullets around in a panic and had only one intent: to keep the thugs from killing him...which is exactly what happened, meaning his tactic was effective and the right thing to do because he survived and no innocent person was harmed (luckily). Indeed, it's highly likely that the reason he kept shooting was because he had just been sprayed in the face with pepper spray which probably blinded him, leaving him no recourse other than to shoot at random to try to avoid being killed.

That's not very good gun-handling technique given the risks to bystanders but it's certainly defensible, particularly since no one but the robbers was injured. I would certainly advise him to take some more shooting lessons in the future and to avoid spraying bullets around if possible because of the danger to innocent bystanders, but I wouldn't fault him for shooting the robbers one little bit. They asked for it, and they got more than they expected. Sucks to be them.

The lesson here is "don't rob jewelry stores."
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Re: Do you dehumanise others?

Post by Bella Fortuna » Mon Jan 27, 2014 5:41 pm

Do you dehumanise others?
You dare ask me that, you worm?!
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