Us and Them

Yesterday I was embarrassed for my country. Never before to this extent have I been this embarrassed. Our school is hosting foreign exchange students from Korea. I have discussed what type of school I teach at, so you can imagine this student's culture shock as he sits in my special education grade 9 math class listening to the white boys call each other "dawg." He must think Canadians are the stupidest people on the planet, as I went over and over something I had already been teaching for the past few days. Cultural stereotypes aside, my class is slooooooooooooow, and he already understood what we were learning. At least I gain some perspective as I think about the differences between our countries.

Us and Them. Throughout history, this has been the cause of wars. Our circle of Us grows larger, but so does the Them. We started off as close-knit family groups, then tribes, then towns, cities, city-states, countries. Even as we speak nations are vying to join the EU, a union of countries. If what Star Trek predicts is correct, once we discover (or are discovered) by extra-planetary civilisations, the world will unite as one big Us against the universal Them. The future in Star Trek is great because there is no war on Earth. What occurs in the stars is a whole other matter. I hardly think that we are likely to go out peacefully just to explore, without trying to conquer and make clear the division between humans and aliens. But I digress. That is a long way off in the future, at any rate. Let us speak for now of the Us and Them that is so near.

Really, Us and Them is a false dichotomy. It is first and foremost a product of our need to belong, to feel special because we are a part of a group. The idea that we are part of an exclusive connection of people is tempting, but it only works if we are exclusionary at the same time. There can be no Us if there is no Them. Thus, people are left out of these groups to fend for themselves or become a part of their own exclusionary group. As a high school teacher I see this on a day to day basis.

The other reason we are so interested in forming groups is because we like to classify things. From the time we are very young (eat the red ones last) to our modern day science (mammals, amphibians, etc.) we put things in groups. It stems from the early days when Ugh would say "this berry is good, but Ook ate this berry and died." It was necessary as a means to survive, and continues to be necessary for scientific progress. However, is it socially necessary?

It would be naive to look at the world and see everything as being the same. We are each unique and our cultures offer so much that is different that it would be a shame just to melt it all together into one bland paste. But our discerning perceptions go into overdrive when we see what we perceive to be the enemy. Can we really tell just by looking at someone if they mean to hurt us or not (think of the date rape situation)? We were always warned about judging a book by its cover, and with good reason. Not to be taken to one extreme or the other, of course.

"We have met the enemy, and it is us." -Pogo