I know it's a long video of a dry speaker, but I'd really beg everyone to watch it though. Lately I'm convinced that dehumanization is the root of all modern evil.

First and worst is the effect on the victimized groups, so horrible I don't have the heart to describe it. The slide at 5:48 says it all.

Almost as corrosive is how it enables authoritarian and corrupt regimes. Mitch McConnell was in a position to shield Trump from justice because in 2018 they preserved their Senate majority by demonizing 'invading caravans' of refugees. When Erdogan's grip on Turkey was slipping, all he had to do was stir up trouble with the Kurds and steer the conversation away from kleptocracy.

And there's another injury: the damage to the mind of the prejudiced. We might think it's safe to hate on, say, Israelis (or Palestinians, or immigrants, or the other party) if we don't know any personally and don't have the power to affect them. And yeah, in that case we probably won't harm them directly. But we harm ourselves when we practice corrosive habits of mind, which bleed into our other thoughts and actions.

This has been part of the "standard" canon of Buddhist thinking for a couple thousand years.

I don't want to shit on this speaker; he's quite good, on point, and correct. But if you'd like a deeper dive, I'd recommend reading and/or listening to Dr. Timothy Snyder's "The Black Earth" for more information on the holocaust. And I'd recommend reading books by Buddhist writers (Zen writers generally seem to be the best... they usually avoid the hippy dippy "pop-culture" version of Buddhism which is utter crap.) for more information about the corrosive effect of thinking ill of others.

So, I'm guessing Hazelnut posted this to scold us about hating on the rich. I feel it incumbent upon me to point out the rich aren't an ethnic group.

And if the rich want us to feel less alienated and less likely to dehumanize them, a good start might be to stop segregating themselves into places where they keep everything nice & clean while drowning the rest of us in pollution & decay.

To better understand dehumanization, he explains the intellectual translation of dehumanization into identity, the sense of self vs other, a sense of whether something is justifiable or not (justness), and the sense of constraint on your own actions (such as imposed by law, society), and the cusp of the "cliff" towards de-identifying others as being "other" represents how easy it is to fall rapidly down towards dehumanizing others WHEN structural constraint is eroded.

It is absolutely sensible that humans have these potentials due to the evolutionary advantage of having an "off" switch about the value of another person's life to fight them and survive if attacked, etc.

So yes, overall, very good, and I am very happy he highly credits a very motivated graduate student he had for pressing him to formulating a theory that can be explained in a 3 dimensional diagram and understood by people.

Social constraints are what make us "human," to each other, as they prevent an evolved mechanism to attack other humans, because one of the most common causes of death was murder for many eons, humans had to evolve mechanisms to not be murdered. It changed us. The more society binds our sense of action and agency, the more likely we are to see all other humans as belonging with us.

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this doesn't have to equate to societal constraint, but it may also be self-imposed constraint, I think. I used to have a shorter fuse and it was a problem I really wanted to change. I kind of happened on a form of a solution. I deal with a lot of stress, and it affected my ability to stay kind to others. In my job if I can't be kind and earnestly try to help my clients then I'll be in trouble at the worst and I won't do a very good job also.


For other reasons (my partner), I began doing more activities that became a kind of constraint on my life. I took up weekly (twice per week now) classes and physical exercise. The way the classes work is, you buy them in packs and if you don't use it by a certain date it expires. 10 classes in 2 months. It forces you to go often, in exchange for a better price.. the side effect was that I had a little extra push to go and do something good for myself.

As I did this more, I became more willing to sign up for other things. I became more active in my academic community for a while, this effect was most pronounced a few years ago and it's fading for good reasons, but I was really inspired.

I discovered that the more constraints I imposed on myself in my own life, the more empathic I became, naturally. I just had more capacity to be happy about seeing a new face, to be happy to include someone in my sphere of care and then be helpful to them to my utmost. I would do extra hours at work with a smile. With the empathy came other changes, like a revisiting of my love for music. Occasionally, I still benefit from a new discovery and a new way to enjoy life and it's because I have a routine I can't break. Every single day, I have something I have to do. No more days with no responsibility.

I used to have trouble being constantly active on a weekend but now I can do it without trying, and the result is to have even MORE energy the next day.

So...self constraint is an amazing psychological tool. Societal constraint can be helpful also (like the decision to have a time limit on my classes wasn't mine, it was the teacher's), and these things are not all or nothing singular events. They add up over time and they build towards an overall effect on how your mind works.

Dehumanization is a second order problem. Healthcare, economy, and imperialism are first order problems. Overt concern about dehumanization is at best wildly naive or at worst cynical, sycophantic, and a destructive sleight of hand designed to deflect.

The policies (both overt and covert) of the elites are far, far more dehumanizing than anything in discourse.

I do not want to personally injure any billionaires or elites. I want to change the system that gives them parody levels of power of the lives of innocents. Of course the elites believe that this would significantly injure them but that is yet another symptom of the sickness.

There are lots of jokes and shit about guillotines but the vast, vast majority of serious people in the movement are not out for revenge or want violence.

I wish I could say the same about the opponents. Anyone even slightly connected to current events is painfully aware of the silent class war that was declared on the poor and the marginal decades ago, and how it has accelerated. People are dying today because of healthcare. Journalists are murdered. The pile of bodies of innocent Yemeni and Iraqis is enormous.

But we should be nicer to people? Seriously, get the fuck out of here, that is delusional lunacy. Fuck off.

I think that his 'identity' axis is actually two variables that he's conflated, one being group inclusiveness and the other being hostility. He does that thing speakers can do in acknowledging this without actually addressing it. I don't think the relationship is simple enough to just project it onto a line like this without losing significant information; I wish they'd included the discussion because someone probably asked about this. I'm not sure how useful this model is but I suppose it's an ok way to frame thinking on the issue in really general terms, even if it does nothing to inform people about the actual dynamics of any given conflict.

Hits close to home because this relates to how my mother was the victim of a horrific crime perpetrated by what amounted to 'regular folks'. :(

Fails to treat people as beings with agency, and instead holds that they are simple organisms fully under the thrall of outside forces. Doesn't take into account that people can be predisposed to bigotry without outside forces torturing them into it. Rich people can be bigots too, and there is nothing that requires a person in tough financial times to find a minority group to scapegoat.

Also overestimates the role of fear, and doesn't adequately take into account the delight that comes with hatred. He mentions in passing that the tribes who could respond swiftly to an unexpected invasion stood the best chance of weathering them, but it doesn't explain the invaders, or the reality we've all experienced that hatred comes with a certain amount of pleasure.

Basically he seems to be holding that people wouldn't be assholes if circumstances didn't force them into it, and I say all of history says otherwise.

I have a different suggestion: people are generally only as mature as circumstances require them to be, and many of them get quite far in life with the emotional maturity of a child. Resentment, and then projecting so as to justify one's own bad behavior, are much bigger issues than genuine fear. A person doesn't have to fear economic ruin to resent that the other person owns a bigger TV, or feel that the other person doesn't deserve it.

I present The Invisible Fence Model Of Human Behavior: just as the dog will go anywhere he doesn't get zapped, so many people will feel justified in thoughts and actions that don't get them zapped with social, legal, financial, or professional penalties. So many people will be as bigoted as is acceptable simply because they can, but also behave with as good of manners as are expected of them. That's if a person opts not to do the hard work of developing their own set of principles and trying to live according to them; for most people it's much easier to go by the standards set by the group, or, if need be, find groups that accept their underdeveloped broken selves without inflicting social penalties.

No rating because, while I would one-star his model, I have to at least five-star his willingness to look into the topic.