“The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which.”
George Orwell, Animal Farm
The Trigger
I watched a Youtube video that helped me clarify what I already believed.
The video warned against the dehumanisation and justification of bad treatment meted out to those identified rightly or wrongly as ‘narcissists’.
Beyond the core topic, the speaker also makes a strong case against dehumanisation of a person or a group of people who disagree with us or do something that hurt us or others.
This made me think about dehumanisation of individuals because of their political affiliations, religious beliefs or personality disorders.
The Basic Principle
Cruelty can’t be the answer to cruelty. That’s a basic principle. Even our justice system is based on reformation and not retribution while handing out a punishment.
But I don’t fully endorse the absolute lack of boundaries, laws or instruments that bring order in our surroundings.
One can see insane propaganda launched by pro-Palestinians and pro-Israel crowd in different parts of the world. Complex history, ideas about colonisation, religion, past acts of cruelty and oppression are used to justify violence on both sides.
A similar divide can be seen between pro-BJP and anti-BJP crowd in India. The US is not lagging far behind. Pro-Trump and anti-Trump rhetoric has already lead to two assassination attempts.
Even I have often come very close to feelings of schadenfreude though I consciously know that celebrating someone else’s fall is not correct.
The same events could happen to me as well if I were unlucky. Using logic of ‘cosmic laws’ like Karma or concepts of ‘destiny’ can’t be justified when celebrating other’s pain.
Self-compassion, Pain and Dignity
Some of these regressive thoughts do seem attractive because we want to settle accounts of pain and wrongdoing with revenge. We want our opponents to burn in hell and suffer from torture.
If all these ideas are taken to their logical conclusion, we should find descendants of every criminal and corrupted individual and slit their throats to settle accounts. That would burn down the entire human species.
Though some say that civilisation is a thin veneer held together by the state’s monopoly over violence, we must strive to find the root cause of all sorts of physical and emotional violence and work towards eliminating them.
For example, bad parenting and lack of love during childhood creates all sorts of monsters. Fixing parenting practices could prevent creation of more monsters in future.
While we are at it, we can’t completely ignore mistakes that we have done and things that have been done to us.
For starters, we can learn to bear pain with dignity and try to prevent it from turning into monsters ourselves. And secondly, we can sincerely apologise for mistakes done by us and find a better way to behave in future.
I don’t see any solid solution to the millions of strifes around us. But surely, if we stop dehumanising our perceived enemies and try to have a compassionate conversation about things that trouble us, we might move towards a more peaceful and happy world.