I'm feeling a bit disgusted with the whole human race at the moment. I, like many others no doubt, was absolutely horrified by the atrocities committed at Manus Island, including the brutal murder of a young man, Reza Berati (pictured below). This is referred to, with such blandness by our elected representatives, as an 'incident'.
I find it hard to imagine how people can be so desensitised to the feelings and suffering of others to allow them to be treated with such harshness and cruelty and I'm not just talking about the PNG police, security guards and locals who participated in the mayhem. I was shocked to read that people had guns pointed at their heads in order to rob them of their cigarettes. Cigarettes? Really? What is wrong with people?
Well, I know what it is. It's the perception that if you're not one of 'us', you must be one of 'them' and if you're one of 'them' we can do what we like to you. Any kind of difference is enough to create this feeling of separation with another group - gender, skin colour, nationality and religion are just the most obvious. Differences in privilege, wealth, education and background are all ways of making distinctions between one group and another.
This is nothing new. The desire to belong to a group is very strong. Tribalism is a basic human urge. It must be very old because it's easily recognised in most other mammals. In order to belong to a group, there is a psychological need to define who is and is not in the group. So far so simple. That's all great. Nothing wrong with that. The problem is when politicians, advertisers, religious zealots and various other manipulators, use this simple instinct to drum up fear, envy and hatred in people and create an idea that these 'other' people are not as human as 'us', by extension making it OK if they are robbed, killed or enslaved. I'm just disgusted that so many people keep falling for it. Are we really all so stupid?
If you think about it, most of human history has involved us coming to terms with 'other' groups, from village to town to nation. It's never been easy. It's often been bloody. Marriage equality is just one example of a new frontier that we are currently struggling to come to terms with in Australia. We haven't really come to terms with our indigenous brothers and sisters, although it's (a bit) better than it used to be (relative to massacring them on sight).
We're more relaxed about southern European and Vietnamese immigrants than we once were, and not barely notice or remark on a Greek or Italian name in the football team or the judge's bench. But 'Muslims' remain a bridge too far for a lot of people. Could this be because 'Muslims' have stuff 'we' (rich white folk) want? Could it be something that we have been trying to take away from them by trickery or force for the past century like, oh I don't know, vast reserves of oil? The largest opium fields in the world perhaps? Could it be that they have been deliberately demonised in order to make it ok to invade their countries, kill them and take their stuff by force?
Maybe one day all these artificial divisions between 'groups' will be seen for what they are, just another yoke we need to throw off in order to be free. Maybe one day they will dissolve and we will be able to behold each other just as 'people', equally deserving of sharing everything under the sun, including love and compassion? I hope it doesn't take too long, for everyone's sake.
