Partially Entirely Human

In yet another stunningly honest, brilliant podcast this past week, therapist, author and researcher Brené Brown, in her usual clear, straightforward style threw down the goods on shining an unflinching light on dehumanization and accountability if we are to move toward anything resembling unity in this post Capitol-attack moment…

Or, for that matter, in any future moment in which we’d like to see a state of national unity as anything more than a passing aspirational ideal of a bunch of 18th Century dreamers.

It ain’t front page news that the last several years have marked the acceleration of a march toward authoritarianism and all the distorted features of fascism that come with that territory.

We’ve now come right up to the edge and, looking over this deep precipice, have some serious soul searching to do – including looking to see if there’s a viable human soul still at the core of the American heart.

My personal belief is that there is – otherwise I wouldn’t be wasting time, attention and pixels…

The challenge is that we’re so bloody practiced at demonizing, categorizing, separating and, as Brené Brown points out, dehumanizing others that any path forward is going to be a steep climb.

That’s not a bad thing, because steep climbs take conscious effort, focus, discipline, responsibility…

But giving one’s power over to authoritarianism…?

That doesn’t take a whole lot of effort – though it does rely on folks actively and willingly surrendering their own authority and responsibility…

Including the responsibility to see other human beings as – well, as what they truly are: other human beings.

Dehumanization is a sneaky process that most of us can slip into easily, quickly and unconsciously.

For instance, another vehicle pulls in front of you unexpectedly and, though you’ve never met them before and you know that even self-driving cars require a flesh-and-blood human operator behind the wheel, you find yourself muttering an opinion that the driver is either the spawn of a canine or a specific bit of displaced anatomy out for a ride…

Bam! Instant dehumanization.

A more insidious, deadly form of dehumanization has been practiced and leveraged by propagandists for ages. The success of authoritarians (and wannabes) and their regimes relies on pumping objectifying, dehumanizing disinformation out into the world.

There’s an order to rolling out these campaigns, starting with those who clearly stand to gain personally through power and/or position – a lucrative contract here, a plum political appointment there…

In order to secure those offices and positions, however, the foundation needs to be widened and strengthened. To shore-up the base, one needs to lay it on heavy and deep – and that requires a broad reach.

Speeches, pamphlets, posters and angry young men (mostly) in brown shirts worked handily as a ramp-up to early November in Germany back in 1938…

In the lead-up to early November, 2020 through January, 2021 (so far) in the US, Facebook, Twitter, 4Chan, Parler and a smattering of other social media and news platforms got the job done handily and, for the most part, in the broad, bright light of day.

Here’s the kick in the teeth: It worked brilliantly…

Back to Brené Brown: In her podcast she discusses research on the way the Alt-Right sees certain groups of people based on their perceptions of the percentage of their humanity – on what fraction of humanness the people in those groups are perceived to possess.

I won’t spoil it for you – and if you haven’t yet, do your own due diligence and listen to the whole episode – and just know that those percentages are chilling…

And while it’s tempting to point to “them” as the factually guilty, dehumanizing party, there’s a high probability that more than a touch of dehumanization is (also factually) embedded in that very pointing.

So where does all this lead…?

Brené Brown points us toward accountability.

And as part of having that accountability stick, I want to point all of us toward that place I often direct myself and my readers…

To look at and into one’s self to find – and take responsibility for – the ways in which we objectify, belittle and dehumanize people in our world.

You know, “them.”

The thing is, the slope is slippery and even the most misguided, ill-behaved and dangerous human beings in our midst are, in fact, still human.

Because once humaness becomes anything less than a sacred non-negotiable, we’re done.