If you follow politics, you might have noticed that politics dealing with “us vs them” works very well where the “them” is considered an enemy. The “us” and “them” could be based on religion, caste, language or any other such thing that comes to your mind. Why does it work this well? You might think that if a person belongs to a particular religion, they have deeply internalized their religious beliefs and if they come across any conflicting belief, they react in… not an ideal way, to say the least. This leads to politicians exploiting their radical mindset and using it for their own benefit. While this is correct, I feel that it lacks nuance. So let’s explore this “us vs them” mindset on an individual level, rather than on a societal level.
Think of an apple (I promise this is relevant). How does a very young child think about an apple? Let’s assume that the child is coming across an apple for the first time. Their parent tells them, “Look! An apple!” This is the first time they have registered the word “apple” in their mind. They observe the apple closely. Over time they build an image of how an apple looks, tastes and feels like. Whenever they think of an apple, they think of something round and red. But then they come across a tomato, which is also round and red. Their parent asks them “What is this?” and they answer “an apple”, but to their surprise, the parent says, “No! This is a tomato!” The concept of an apple in the mind of the child is updated with this new information. Notice the difference here, the first time the child saw an apple, they started to build a concept of what apple is and when they came across a tomato, they started to build a concept of what apple is not. Over time, the definition of apple adjusts as the child encounters new information, for eg, a green apple. They ask “but this is not red, how can it be an apple!” As time passes, the concept of an apple is solidified in the child’s mind. By identifying what is an apple and what is not an apple, they have sharpened their understanding of an apple. By the time the child grows up, the concept of apple is very strongly solidified in their mind. Assume that we don’t know what a dragon fruit is. If someone comes up to us, shows us a dragon fruit, and tells us very convincingly that the dragon fruit is an apple, what will our reaction be? The solidified, sharpened concept of an apple in our mind as something with a smooth, hard surface, generally red, with 1-2 seeds in the middle is shattered to pieces when something else is called an apple. You were sure that the dragon fruit was in the “not apple” category but suddenly the new information says that it is an “apple”.
Does the analogy make sense now? Similar to the apple, we have built an identity of ourselves, an impression of the self, a definition of what “I” am. The sharpening of the self image requires defining what “I am not”. It is essential to define what “I am not” to get a clear sense of what “I am”. The definition of “us” needs a “them”. If you think things like “I am good at drawing”, “I like sweets”, “I am lazy”, you also think things like “I am not like my brother”, “I am not a liar”.
Let’s come back to the apple analogy. What will our reaction be if we come to know that the dragon fruit is actually an apple (obviously it is not the objective truth)? We may be confused, we may outright reject it, we may refuse to accept that it is an apple, we may think that “may be in this culture, they call this an apple, but this is not our apple”. Some people may also say, “Oh, I guess there are apples that look very different. Maybe I didn’t know all varieties.”
Now if we scale up this confusion to the level of self image, can you imagine what level of confusion it will cause to the person’s mind? It may lead to an identity crisis. The person may suffer from depression. In my opinion, we need a “them” to stay sane because we define “us” by “them”. We need an enemy for survival, not growth, just plain survival. I am obviously not using the word “enemy” in a conventional sense here. The enemy could be anything that is in the “them” category.
When this psychological need of a “them” and the evolutionary need of staying in a community combine, the societal level of “us vs them” is born. I feel that most of the mythological stories in religions embody the ideal “us” and “them”. For eg, Lord Rama is the ideal “us” and Ravana is the ideal “them”. I feel a lot of people incorrectly attribute religion/caste/language/race to be the root cause of the us vs them mindset. I would argue that is not a religion/caste/language/race thing, it is rather a human thing and it seems to be very difficult to avoid as long as homo sapiens exist. Greed for money and power, the hunger for more is also a human thing and it also seems to be very difficult to avoid as long as homo sapiens exist. Even if religions cease to exist, people, in my opinion, will keep on fighting for other reasons and greedy and powerful people will capitalize on it. So it is important to not delude ourselves into thinking that any political party, be it the current ruling government or the opposition will be able to stop the us vs them behaviour. The best we can do, in my opinion, is to be aware of this basic human nature and avoid the us vs them mindset wherever possible while acknowledging and accepting it as part of being human.
This was my attempt to dissect a very complicated and nuanced topic. May be you found it insightful, may be I wasn’t able to properly justify my points. Whatever is the case, do let me know what you think about this. Thanks for reading, see you next time!