Such behaviour is a product of misguided egotism

Protesters carry signs during a march on Martin Luther King Jr. Day in Times Square, called Rally Against Racism: Stand Up for Haiti and Africa, in New York on January 15, 2018. Today anyone who is not “mainstream” American cannot be sure that their status is safe in the US. PHOTO | TIMOTHY A. CLARY | AFP

What you need to know:

  • Those in the so-called “in-group” develop an egotistical feeling that they are superior to the “others”, however defined.
  • The challenge for the critical thinker is to stop themselves at the point they start feeling superior to others.

Over the last one year or so, the United States of America has gone through a transition, from a political leadership that was keenly aware of the impact of power and its expression on ordinary people to one in which it would appear that power is projected and expressed as an end in itself.

Central to this change is the treatment of minorities of all shades.

In the previous administration, minorities felt that they were part of the fabric of the nation, and the downtrodden were actively uplifted.

Today anyone who is not “mainstream” American cannot be sure that their status is safe in the US.

Similarly in Kenya, after the promulgation of the 2010 Constitution, many Kenyans looked forward to a new era in human rights protections and the gradual development of more equal society that respects minorities and uplifts the downtrodden.

DISCRIMINATION

In the brave new Kenya, we expected to enjoy the full protection of the law, and have a platform to expand the civil spaces in which our creativity and pursuit of happiness would find expression.

Eight years down the line we are seeing a concerted effort to rollback those constitutional gains, and the blatant disregard of others.

In order to address this problem in society, one needs to re-examine the source of these exclusionary attitudes and behaviours that give rise to discrimination and the many “isms” that plague our world today.

Last week I had a brief discussion with a learned individual I met in the course of my work.

We got to discussing life forms and their evolution, and his view was that we humans are the highest life form and are therefore greater than all others.

BRILLIANCE

His reasons were that human beings are uniquely endowed with the ability for “complex” thought and the manipulation of our environment for our own benefit.

According to him, we rule the world because of this.

This argument sounds pretty logical to any human, and we would all unthinkingly accept it as true without the intervention of some critical thought.

Can we conclusively say, for instance, that other life forms do not intelligently manipulate the environment for their benefit, and are therefore lower than humans in the hierarchy of life?

When a worm in the intestines of a human lays eggs and then compels the human host to complete its life cycle one way or the other, all unconscious, would we consider the worm more purposeful than the human? Is it then a higher life form?

BIGOTRY

What of the hypothetical virus that is sexually transmitted, and which then increases the sexual drive of the infected person, increasing its probability of transmission?

Is it a higher life form than the human carrier?

The view that the human is the centre of the universe and, therefore, the greatest living thing on earth, also known as the anthropocentric view, is the beginning of our bigoted attitudes towards fellow humans.

The step one rung below this comparison of the human with other life forms constitutes the comparison of one human being group against another, based on common attributes or behaviours.

RACISM

Those in the so-called “in-group” develop an egotistical feeling that they are superior to the “others”, however defined.

Whatever attributes are used for this distinction are then practically cast in marble, and used as the yardstick for determining the value of other humans and the kind of treatment they should endure.

This is the foundation of racism, tribalism, ageism, sectarianism, and other exclusionary practices common in these and other parts of the world.

The challenge for the critical thinker is to stop themselves at the point they start feeling superior to others, or that they are part of a superior group of human beings, and to consider that their own behaviours might not be the product of reasoned deliberation, but intended to meet the needs of another organism inside them.

Every time we think we are cleverer and stronger than others, we must ask ourselves to what extent we are in charge of those attributes, at a personal level!