There is No Other

 

There is No Other

When one says “There is no ‘them’” they do not mean that they agree on and identify with everything and with everyone.  It should mean that there are no Groups with a label that I consider “other”.  I cannot say  that the “Russians are my enemy” as there is no one who fits the label of “Russian”.  People are unique and not subject to being objectified by a label.  There may be certain Russians that I don’t agree with, but they would be individuals who happen to be Russian – not the whole group with the label of “Russian”. 

 

I don’t want to be identified as “American” as that word means so many different things to everyone that it means nothing to anyone.  I grew up during the Viet Nam War where the motto for many were “My country – right or wrong”.  I do not subscribe to that.  I don’t want to identify (or be identified with) the “wrong” of my country.  I don’t want to label a person a “Frenchman” and think that that will define him sufficiently.  It isn’t enough to identify anyone with a  label – even identifying a person as a “child molester” is putting a label  on someone else that is a false, or insufficient label.  Labels do not identify or describe anyone. 

 

When we label a person, we de-humanize them and consider them as “other”.  We form this in-group and out-group (others) and form this barrier between us and “them”.  By identifying an “other” with a label, we deliberately draw assumptions that are not warranted.  That is why, in this essay, he mentions that governments try to de-humanize other people under other governments as being “other” as a beginning of the journey from “murder with language” to “murder by bullets or bombs”.