Becuase Everything Else Sucks

6 Billion of “Them” - and Only One of “Us”

By evmonk
Published Monday, June 11th, 2007, 2:28 pm
Filed under: World Issues, Society/Culture

A web-based video project titled “6 billion others” has gotten some buzz on the internet in recent weeks, and for good reason. Its stated goal is to “create a sensitive and human portrait of the planet’s inhabitants.” Enter the site and view one or two of the early interview compilations to witness the powerful impact this kind of collective story-telling can have.

While the site doesn’t officially launch until next year, the six directors employed by project leader Yann Arthus-Bertrand have already conducted 6,000 interviews in over 65 countries. Soon we’ll all be able to add our personal stories into the mix. I don’t think it’s possible to overstate the importance of this venture.

A natural extension of video portrait projects like the Washington Post’s OnBeing, “6 billion others” has the potential to fundamentally alter the way we think about human beings and interconnectedness in the same way that the upcoming Encyclopedia of Life will hopefully revolutionize our thinking about life on Earth.

While inconvenient, it’s undeniable that the human story has largely been driven by the adversarial paradigm of “us” vs. “them.” Whether families or gangs, religious sects or nations, the demonization and dehumanization of a nameless and faceless “them” seems to be the most powerful way to bind groups of people together for a common purpose.

War always relies on this dehumanization to mobilize us against each other. For those who say that the propaganda of demonization is necessary because without it, for example, Hitler would have taken over the world, I would argue that dehumanizing those who are corrupted by the lures of power, revenge, and unquestioning belief - whether Nazis or Islamic fundamentalists extremists - ultimately trivializes and perpetuates the threat such ideologies pose to humanity. By refusing to acknowledge this madness as deeply human, and even seeing it within ourselves, we do little to prevent it in the future.

We could well have recognized and even empathized with the collective spell the German people were under during the rise and fall of the Third Reich while at the same time preventing their armies from sweeping across Europe and taking innocent lives with reckless abandon. Might we have searched for more creative ways to break that spell - and perhaps avoided the post-WWI arrangements which fostered so much resentment in the German population and allowed Hitler’s rise to power - were we not ourselves intoxicated with a blinding desire to crush and punish our enemies? It is possible to passionately confront and resist those with whom we disagree without hating them.

And it’s not just in war that this paradigm rears its poisonous head. This is the same world view espoused by Billy O’Reilly when he rallies his mostly white audience against immigrants by saying that they will “break down the white Christian male power structure.” Whether this power structure is, in the long run, a good or a bad thing for humanity is irrelevant. Just as in war, all that matters is that our group prevails.

The problem with this zero sum way of thinking (our gain is someone else’s loss, and vice-versa) is that the only force it acknowledges has the power to bind human beings together in common cause must come from the outside. In other words, aliens have to attack us before we start acting like we’re all in this together. Unfortunately, our ability to blow ourselves up is rapidly accelerating and we may be long gone before aliens come into the picture.

For better or worse - and I would argue it’s overwhelmingly for the better - these walls of dehumanizing divisions are being broken down by the internet. This is why “:6 billion others,” and the capacity it engenders in us to see the Other in a more human light, is so vitally important to our common future.

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3 Responses to “6 Billion of “Them” - and Only One of “Us””

  1. I love the Internet… I think its a medium like no other and it has to be protected…

    Hugo
    06/12/07 at 4:33 pm

  2. Why is an islamic fundamentalist equated with a Nazi, why not say christian fundamentalist. A fundamentalist is one who believes in core values of their religion, I think you might have meant islamic extremist. Also have you listened to Ron Paul, religion is not really creating terrorists, injustice is.

    karen
    06/12/07 at 6:58 pm

  3. Thanks for the feedback. As far as I can tell the internet provides the best opportunity humanity has ever had to truly learn from our mistakes and grow in an increasingly positive direction.

    @ karen

    Good points. You’re right that the use of the word “fundamentalist” isn’t accurate. I added that phrase to place the idea I was talking about – the danger posed to societies when groups are “corrupted by the lures of…unquestioning belief” – in a contemporary context. But it doesn’t fit as a parallel to Nazi ideology, which was more driven by a desire for power, control, and revenge, than by belief. And I don’t mean to distinguish between Christian and Islamic fundamentalists, or between Christian and Islamic extremists. A fundamentalist is a fundamentalist, and you’re right that they don’t inherently pose a physical threat to society in the way extremists do. I fell into that trap of false association which is so helpful to the Us vs. Them frame.

    I also agree absolutely that religion is not the only, and not even the primary, cause of extremism. And Ron Paul does have a pretty solid understanding of the roots of terrorism and extremism. Blaming terrorism on Islam, or any religion, simply doesn’t vibe with the emerging conception of what drives terrorist groups.

    I would only argue that a fundamentalist approach to life – whether we believe unquestioningly in God, or in nothing, or in money, or in power – helps foster the conditions under which extremism (mainly through violence) becomes a viable option for advancing our group’s “truth.” As long as that unquestioning belief is there, even if it is unconscious, we become susceptible to the lures of violence and control over other people.

    On the broader nature of the post, I think that “6 billion others” – or at least the empathy towards the Other that it can hopefully help develop in us – has the potential to demonstrate a path beyond this paradigm of power and control and our unquestioned belief in its supremacy.

    By showing both the diversity and the fundamental similarities that all human beings share, we hopefully gain a better understanding of our existence and how we can use our extraordinary gifts to benefit humanity as a whole, and not to manipulate and control each other.

    For instance, I’m not sure we’d be waging war in Iraq if we had access to compelling video interviews/compilations expressing the thoughts and hopes and dreams and fears of 100,000 Iraqis in 2002. If the people of Iraq were demystified and humanized in our media, rather than demonized (through the symbol of Saddam), then we may not see war – which kills tens or hundreds of thousands of innocent and human Iraqis – as a viable option. We might agree that Saddam is a horribly corrupt dictator and a deeply and dangerously troubled human being, but we would probably disagree on the best ways to oppose his poisonous influence.

    “6 billion others” can’t do anything by itself. But the project, along with all the other fresh things happening on the internet, will hopefully help us move permanently beyond the idea that “all that matters is that our group prevails,” regardless of whether it’s a good or bad thing for humanity in the long run.

    evmonk
    06/13/07 at 12:54 am

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