Us Versus Them

In wondering why there always seems to have to be an "us" versus "them" in the world, I ran onto this quote from Carl Coon, a US Ambassador in 2004.

"This sense of group identity is essential to the way humans organize into social units. The "us versus them" syndrome is a foundational element of human nature; it assumes that you treat other members of the "in" group differently from "outsiders". The difference between being a murderer or a wartime hero depends on whether the person you kill is part of your group or not."

If you stop to think about it, the only way we can justify killing another person, even in war, is to demonize them. During the Second World War I can recall all the terrible cartoons of "Japs" with slanted eyes and huge buck teeth. The movies were every bit as bad. They were sheer propaganda.

Do some of you remember those days and how terrible we pictured the German people, the Italians and the Japanese to be? If you read history from both sides of the conflict you learn a lot about what was "real" and what was not.