"They" are people.
Some slave owners in the early years of this country considered their African slaves to be animals. It probably made it easier for them to justify slavery. After all, if slaves are animals, how are they any different from livestock?
But those slaves were people.
Today, protesters are camped out on Wall Street in New York speaking out against corporate greed. I can empathize and I think the protesters are on to something. I also believe this could be the beginning of a change in the way we do things in this society. But I hope we don't forget that the folks who run our corporations are still people. In fact, many of them are a lot like us.
We tend to "objectify" people we don't agree with. It's human nature and it makes it easier to mistreat them or to point judgmental fingers. A martial arts black belt once told me that if someone were to assault him, they would cease to be a "person" in his mind and would instead become a "target".
The problem with objectifying others is that we open the doors to treating them as something less than human, to mistreating them in the same way we may have been mistreated. No matter what abuse we have endured, it is wrong to stoop to that level in return. We must always remember that "they" are people like us. The way we treat "them" says something very profound about who we really are.
Walt Kelly, the Pogo cartoonist wrote, "There is no need to sally forth, for it remains true that those things which make us human are, curiously enough, always close at hand. Resolve, then, that on this very ground, with small flags waving and tiny blasts of tiny trumpets, we shall meet the enemy, and not only may he be ours, he may be us." The last line later was reduced to, "We have met the enemy and he is us".
Some slave owners in the early years of this country considered their African slaves to be animals. It probably made it easier for them to justify slavery. After all, if slaves are animals, how are they any different from livestock?
But those slaves were people.
Today, protesters are camped out on Wall Street in New York speaking out against corporate greed. I can empathize and I think the protesters are on to something. I also believe this could be the beginning of a change in the way we do things in this society. But I hope we don't forget that the folks who run our corporations are still people. In fact, many of them are a lot like us.
We tend to "objectify" people we don't agree with. It's human nature and it makes it easier to mistreat them or to point judgmental fingers. A martial arts black belt once told me that if someone were to assault him, they would cease to be a "person" in his mind and would instead become a "target".
The problem with objectifying others is that we open the doors to treating them as something less than human, to mistreating them in the same way we may have been mistreated. No matter what abuse we have endured, it is wrong to stoop to that level in return. We must always remember that "they" are people like us. The way we treat "them" says something very profound about who we really are.
Walt Kelly, the Pogo cartoonist wrote, "There is no need to sally forth, for it remains true that those things which make us human are, curiously enough, always close at hand. Resolve, then, that on this very ground, with small flags waving and tiny blasts of tiny trumpets, we shall meet the enemy, and not only may he be ours, he may be us." The last line later was reduced to, "We have met the enemy and he is us".
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