Dr. Mona El-Farra, medical doctor and associate of the Middle East Children’s Alliance recently made headlines on Democracy Now! with her plea to end the military assault on Gaza with one powerful statement: “We are human beings.” She is, of course, absolutely right. Human beings live in Gaza, and it seems like nothing could be more obvious — if not human beings, then who or what does? And why are we paying attention? Of course, what she is really saying is something much deeper. She’s saying, that to the people in Gaza, it seems like we have somehow forgotten that human beings are there — and that raises more questions. For example: How could one forget the humanity of another and what does it tell us about who we really are?
For insight into these questions, we might first explore the basic dynamic of conflict escalation. Conflict, in itself, is not at issue — it’s the image we have of the human beings with whom we engage in conflict. Michael Nagler, president of the Metta Center for Nonviolence, maintains in his 2014 book, The Nonviolence Handbook: A Guide for Practical Action, that conflict escalates — that is, moves increasingly toward violence — according to the degree of dehumanization in the situation. Violence, in other words, doesn’t occur without dehumanization.
Nagler’s thinking about violence was partially influenced by sociologist Philip Zimbardo, who famously conducted an experiment in controlled dehumanization at Stanford in 1971. What happened? He and his students created a prison scenario where some students took the role of the guards and the others as the prisoners. Zimbardo told the guards to make the prisoners feel isolated and that “they had no power.” In six days, he used his better judgment and called off the experiment because the situation had become too psychologically real, even close to torture for some involved. One minute, they’re regular Stanford students ready to cooperate with one another for a project. The next, they’re locked in a victim-aggressor dynamic where common humanity was cast aside, making violence possible.
In order to see human beings — to humanize — we need the conditions for it. When you think of human beings in the world, what do you see? Do you see a “friendly universe,” as Albert Einstein called it? He understood the utter practicality of this question, arguing that if we see an unfriendly universe, we see unfriendly beings living in it. In a dehumanized world of scarcity and competition we will use all of the tools and inventions we have to protect ourselves from one another. It’s hard in a world of separation to “remember your humanity and forget the rest,” as Einstein said. Why is that?
Look around you — at advertisements, television programs, and the news — and you will find that there is one image of the human being that dominates, and he’s not very friendly. He is violent, greedy, hateful and only happy when things are going well for him. He’s really quite superficial — his face is ecstatic when he saves on his car insurance and his voice is monotonous when he reports on war. He’s obsessed with violence, and hungry for more. We see and hear these images, some say between 2,000 and 5,000 times a day in urban areas worldwide. Eventually, we internalize it. We come to think that this is who we are too. We see it so often, our minds stop distinguishing between ourselves and what is being projected at us.
Dehumanization, again, is a backdrop making violence possible — both directly, like a bomb, and structurally, like exploitation. By constantly imprinting that negative image of the human being in our minds, even if we don’t perpetuate direct violence, we certainly can’t deny that we live under the institutions that inflict violence on others for us, be it corporations, the military or the police. These violent structures do not go away because they appear to fulfill necessary functions, like protecting us from each other. In this framework, there is little need for discussion about the alternatives — such as unarmed peacekeeping or restorative justice — because they are simply not telling the story we believe about who we are and what makes us safe.
A low human image is dangerous precisely because it manipulates our sense of well-being and security. It is also extremely profitable for some. Ask anyone who sells weapons, builds prisons, or convinces women to wear makeup that covers their “imperfections.” We’ve been made desperate: We’ll do or buy anything that promises to restore our humanity to us, so long as it’s convenient. We’re lazy, too, you know, or so we’re told.
Taking a cue from Einstein, then, the most urgent struggle of today is to reclaim the human image and restore its dignity. Listen to what Meir Margalit, former elected member of the Jerusalem City Council for the Meretz Party and a founder of the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions, said only a week ago: “We are demonstrating not only for Gaza, but to try and save the human condition.” And violence, unfortunately, just can’t do that. If it could, we wouldn’t be where we are today, believing that while a war unfolds this is just the way that human beings operate. Sorry, there is nothing you can do but pull up a chair and watch if you’d like. Nonviolence, on the other hand, is a different story. If dehumanization is the background for violence, a higher human image is the necessary condition for nonviolence.
The story begins when we recognize that we suffer when others suffer. Psychologist Rachel MacNair expanded upon the widely known Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, or PTSD, diagnosis to include what she named Perpetration-Induced Traumatic Stress, or PITS. She makes this distinction because PTSD, she argues, is generally thought to include the victims of violence and those who have been party to what one might think of as a “gruesome act” or “atrocities,” though it tends to stop short of the analysis of what she refers to as “the ordinary killing of traditional combat.” In other words, she is showing that violence cannot be fully normalized — it registers somewhere in our psyches as trauma, and not only in the most extreme cases. Call it what we want, PITS or PTSD, the fact that we experience deep anxiety and traumatize ourselves when we inflict suffering on others is actually an extremely hopeful comment. It shows that our interconnectedness with, and sensitivity to one another, is ennobling. It shows that while human and dignity sometimes seem like an oxymoron today, they are actually synonymous. And it’s time that we recognized them as such.
Despite it being, as I argue, native to our human condition, nonviolence is a new meme. Gandhi saw this when, in 1908, he coined the word satyagraha. It had a practical value, being a new term that would serve to distinguish the form of resistance in which he was engaging from conceptions of passivity. Satyagraha was something new, something more deeply transformational and tied to an implicit faith in human nature. The Sanskrit word was built of two parts: satya, which means truth, that which is, or even more simply, reality; and a-graha, to grasp, hold to oneself. In nonviolence, we are clinging to our shared dignity as human beings. We are grasping, not illusion, but reality itself.
What is that reality? Indigenous wisdom often recognized it. The Xhosa concept ubuntu popularized by Desmond Tutu during the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in the 1990s in South Africa is roughly translated, “Through other human beings, I become human.” This is restoring a fuller sense of what it means to be human. It is not a question of our physical characteristics; instead, it takes a person and elevates her nature from “all you can understand is violence” to “I can only affirm my humanity through other people,”which is not possible through violence. This is more than a political uprising, or intifada, it’s a call to uplift human dignity through nonviolence. To quote from graffiti I saw this past June on the so-called security wall in Bethlehem, it’s an “ubuntifada.”
We may need to draw strength from our imaginations as we resist dehumanization, keeping our eyes on the problem without demeaning the person. But what greater purpose can the imagination serve than to help us do that? Carol Flinders affirms that it is one of the most powerful tools of our nature when she writes, “Imagination seems to be a vital component of genuine nonviolent resistance, for it allows us to hold on to a positive view of ourselves no matter what the world tells us we are.”
The world is telling us that we have no power, that we only care about ourselves and that we can only get dignity through violence; in effect, we are not human beings. Don’t believe it. We are human beings and that makes us powerful, because only human beings working together are capable of transforming the violence that degrades us all.
This is an extremely relevant observation. A friend recently returned from Israel and said she was surprised by the number of Israelis who did not consider Palestinians to be human beings. To the extent that such attitudes prevail in the country’s leadership, it illuminates much about nature and course of this conflict. While farm animals might be herded into a pen, subdued with harsh treatment – and should any become unmanageable, be “put down”, this can never work with people. The ethnic conflicts that run on for decades or centuries clearly illustrate this.
Thank you Stephanie for this wonderful article. Dehumanization has long been used as a tactic for violence. This is a powerful reminder that we must remind ourselves of our inherent dignity as human beings. I also appreciated the concept of ubuntu mentioned in this article. I believe it is a common concept in various cultures. For instance, in Japanese, the word for human beings is composed of two characters which mean “human” and “in between,” emphasizing the relationships we form with others that make us human. The word is said to derive from a Buddhist term for the human realm or society, and later it came to mean individuals that live in the realm. When we forget that we are part of a collective whole, we tend to use violence against others.
The most urgent struggle of today is not to “reclaim” humanness but to liberate our image of its pernicious exceptionalism Arguably racism is a scourge that has plagued the human condition for millennia, and one of the primary drivers of human on human violence. But, relatively few recognize that speciesism – belief that humans are exceptional and the rest of planetary life is inferior, aka sub-human – has been an even greater cause of violence that has now brought planetary life support systems to the brink of collapse. This belief has resulted in society wide denial that humans, like all life, are subject to the laws of ecology. We believe, against all fact and reality that humans are somehow an exception and that human laws, morality, economy and technology, i.e. science, has somehow exempted us from the ecological laws that govern life on this planet. Until we realize that “through the web of life, we become human,” speciesism will remain society’s Leviathan and human existence one that is “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short.” In this regard, Gaza has become a microcosm of what life is like under the law of human exceptionalism.
P.S. life has been evolving on Earth for some 2 billion years, humans are threatening to destroy this evolutionary heritage in a matter of a couple hundred of years.
Dear Ed, Thanks for the additional thoughts. It’s obviously a complex issue, this dehumanization and raising the image of who/what we think we are. Let’s stay in touch.
Peace, Stephanie
It’s relatively easy to see the connection between speciesism and racism. It is not a big leap for humans who believe they are superior to animals to also believe that one group of humans is superior to another. Fundamental to both is the hierarchical structure of society – one species or race of humans is above others and part of a hierarchical order of life forms. Exceptionalism is the moral expression of a hierarchical social structure. It was pretty clear in Gaza, morality only applied to one side. The Israelis justified the most horrendous war crimes, even genocide because it was necessary to defend themselves from a minimal threat – the rockets. Human attitudes to the natural world is much the same – extinction of species is OK, if it is necessary for human welfare.
Right, Ed. I’m with you and I think it is more complex when it comes to helping one another out of these structures. Nonetheless, I’ve heard your argument, but can you articulate the alternative vision–how should human beings see themselves and where are you inspired from this vision? You’ve said it already, but maybe I’m just inferring. So, just to be clear.
The alternate vision of a horizontally structured society has been expoused for a long time, most cogently in the anarchist political tradition. More recently, Occupy has gotten people like myself thinking about it more. It’s funny but I’ve been an anarchist my whole life, but didn’t realize it until Occupy. But, in the political sense at least, anarchy has so much connotative baggage that I prefer the term “horizontalism” In that regard, i have been very influenced by Marina Sitrin, particularly her book by that title, as well as “Everyday Revolutions.” A good real world example of a functioning horizontal society are the Zapatistas. They have been my greatest inspiration, especially the words of Subcomandate Insurgente Galeano, aka Marcos.
P.S. Another major aspect of an alternate vision is horizontal vs. hierarchical spirituality. A world of Gods and men vs. a world where everything has a spirit.
It occurred to me today that I was actually grateful to a woman talking loudly on her mobile phone in the subway because she was asserting her individuality and drowning out the incessant noisy advertising pap coming out of the TV screens in each carriage (I live in Bangkok).
What strategies are there for individuals to insulate themselves against this daily onslaught?
Wear earplugs? Avert your eyes? Close your eyes? Read a book? Deface a poster? Leaflet an obnoxiously violent film? Move to the country? Stay at home?
This important article will, I hope, generate a debate. Michael Nagler himself hit the nail on the head when he said that one of the most important fights of the age is to challenge the notion that corporations should be treated the same as humans.