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this post was submitted on 05 Apr 2024
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I don't believe this is true, I don't believe I personally could ever take pleasure in another's serious pain (i.e. doesn't include laughing at my friend slipping on a banana). While many in nazi germany may have had a bit of repressed sadism, many others had to be tricked or coerced into doing banal evil things.
It’s all about empathy. If you dehumanise a group enough they become “other” to your human subconscious, and you exhibit sociopathic behaviour toward them.
The problem is that it’s a self-fulfilling prophecy. If you dehumanise someone to the smallest degree and feel guilt (because you’re still a good person), your subconscious will dehumanise them further in order to cope. (e.g they’re criminals so they’ve probably done worse). Then the next time you abuse them, it becomes easier.
This self perpetuating cycle keeps happening until you feel absolutely no sympathy for them, and consequently no guilt.
Now, the real question is whether or not you’re capable of dehumanising someone to begin with. I personally think that yes, we’re all capable, and all it takes is some bad influence (e.g bad preconceptions/media brainwashing), and in the case of police officers, a healthy dose of peer pressure.
I don't think dehumanization works on everybody. Dehumanization works on already kinda shitty people that view themselves as above others. I am not like that personally and I'm sure I'm not nearly the only one. I simply don't see myself as entitled to cause suffering in any other conscious being, human or not (except that which is necessary to sustain life as an omnivore -- which I am entitled as a living being).
You are not like that, currently. But in the right environment and in the right situation, you’ll find out that to the contrary, you are exactly like that.
Humans are wired to (justifiably or not) vilify anyone who’d pose a threat to their safety, or the safety of their loved ones. Vilify a person or group too many times (e.g with daily mass media brainwashing) and they will be completely dehumanised, eventually.
Now, that threat doesn’t have to be physical, or even real. Just perceived threat is enough. It doesn’t have to be substantiated either.
Look at every racist and extremist in existence and try to understand where they’re coming from. They weren’t born that way. Their environments made of them what they are.
You're right, I left out self-defense, which is in fact a situation where I would cause suffering, but this is not unnecessary suffering, it is necessary for my safety. And I would not go beyond what is needed for safety. Dehumanization does not apply here.
I know exactly where they are coming from. Racists are blaming a peoples for the perceived bad behavior from a subset of that group, prejudice, this is wrong and a sign of a shitty person.
I am a trans Mexican woman amongst other "undesirable" categories. My main enemy consists of a subset of white men, they are the ones primarily keeping me down, does it make sense for me to hate white people? Am I a decent person for being anti-white because some white people harm me? No.
I don't hate white men, I hate those individuals who may be white men, but I don't hate their color or sex, I hate their acts. I don't dehumanized white men.
So you’re saying that there’s a certain group of people that dehumanization works on? And a different group that it doesn’t work on? Two distinct categories of people?
Clearly, what's your point? There are many groupings people can be put into depending on perspective.
Only that dehumanization does not literally mean they don’t think the people are human.
What the word refers to is a situation in which moral vulnerabilities are present only in some other group, which the home group doesn’t fall prey too. That they’re a slightly different type of human, which is missing some moral safeguard and therefore presents a threat in a way the home group could never present.