Demonize and dehumanize
How human systems of power sustain themselves
This essay is about power, and the various ways that systems of power protect themselves. The primary mechanism used to sustain human systems of power is othering. Let’s define what that is.
“Othering” refers to the process whereby an individual or groups of people attribute negative characteristics to other individuals or groups of people that set them apart as representing that which is opposite to them.1
Power, and those who have it, are intentionally covert and duplicitous. As an example of how this works, billionaires are an obscenity. In a rational and sane society, no single human would be permitted to have control over such a vast amount of resources while a large percentage of the society barely scrapes by and lives paycheck to paycheck, often working multiple jobs to get by.
Let’s unpack this a little further. On average, the billionaire class collectively makes about $3 billion every day. That class of humans, on average, pays an overall tax rate of 3%, while the middle class averages about 40%. If billionaires were taxed at 10%, it could lift billions of humans out of extreme poverty.2 The billionaire class protects itself by supporting and funding the idea that capitalism is good and socialism is bad. This strategy has been very successful, resulting in an American society that has no universal health care and the most expensive medical industry in the world. Go to any state and promote universal health care. It won’t be long before the indoctrinated show up ranting and raving about the greatness of American society and waving flags. These people have no critical thinking skills and don’t realize they are rabidly defending the continuation of class warfare by arguing against their own self-interests.
The intentional othering built-in to the culture and social mores of the USA promotes myths such as the idea that anyone can pull themself up by the bootstraps. This is patently false. Wealth inequality is a feature, not a bug. Someone who lives in a food desert and has to rely on public transportation while surrounded by the endemic violence that accompanies poverty is systemically and statistically unlikely to break the cycle and become wealthy, at least by legal means.
Wealth inequality, a form of othering, is also perpetuated by religion. Systems of human power are designed to maintain and grow the systems. The systems do not consider human equity, rather, they resist it.
A strong correlation exists between inequality and religion, such that societies marked by high inequality are more religious than those with more egalitarian income distributions. What explains this correlation? Insecurity theory argues that high inequality generates intense insecurities, leading the poor to seek shelter in religion for both psychological and material comfort. This article develops an alternative perspective that reverses the chain of causality. It argues that religious institutions and movements frequently resist both the centralization of state power and socialist efforts to organize the working class. As a result, powerful religious movements constrain state-led efforts to provide social protection, increasing income inequality. Analysis of the historical record and contemporary data from 19 Western democracies reveals strong evidence that past periods of church-state conflict shaped the size and structure of welfare state institutions and, by extension, contemporary patterns of inequality.3
Intentional othering dehumanizes poor people in many ways. Our social systems are intentionally designed by those with power and wealth to perpetuate myths including the idea that poor people are lazy bums who “feed” off of working people and their labor. There are subtle and blatant racist factors built into the fabric of American power systems. Political systems and government agencies perpetuate the myth that poor people refuse to work while actual poor people are underpaid because a good chunk of the middle class is mentally ignorant about what it is like to be poor in America. That is by design. That is also an abomination against reason and critical thinking. Billionaires, much like slave owners a century ago, don’t want their subjects to be educated enough to demand meaningful systems and social change.
The real problem is that the powerful refuse to pay reasonable, livale wages. They tacitly support poverty because it benefits their bottom line. The Republican party, in particular, is designed to repeat lies about wealth and power inequality.4
I do not hate America. It is my adopted country, and I want to make it, and the rest of the world, a better place for as many humans as I can. Next week’s essay will continue to unpack human inequality, social systems designed to perpetuate that inequality, and what you and I can do about demonizing and dehumanization by design.
This essay is part of a series: Demonize and Dehumanize.
One thing about extreme wealth that frustrates me is that it is simply greedy. I mean, how much money does a person need? The obscenely wealthy have more money than they can spend but they seem to be laser-focused on getting more money. The only way I can even approach understanding this is thinking that the money isn't their true objective, power and influence seem to be what they want. A simple way to defuse "demonize and dehumanize" would be to live by the golden rule but I'm not holding my breath.
Regarding the top 1% ers, - "They tacitly support poverty because it lifts their bottom line" is on the money. There certainly appears to be a consensus among the wealthy elite. Don't make any big waves because the system is working - for us. As educational standards give way to more profit driven agendas, we're going to see more and more economically depressed people voting against their own self interests. Very discouraging.