So, I have seen a few posts by members claiming that others are 'not human'

[midnightblack]

To say rape is human, for example, is to suggest it is the norm, how things should be, and acceptable. Obviously, that’s not the case, so rape is inhuman – an outside the normal thing that the worst among us may commit. Those that do unacceptable acts are unacceptable. If you do inhuman things, you are inhuman.

You could translate that approach to just about anything. In a totalitarian regime, those that dare to speak against or question the authority of the leaders are frequently branded as inhuman, enemies of the people and so on. No matter what they do, humans are humans. Some may come to regret their misconduct and find a way to atone for it. Others may fail to do so, but you cannot deny the simple reality of what they are.

[LeatrixSage]

You could translate that approach to just about anything. In a totalitarian regime, those that dare to speak against or question the authority of the leaders are frequently branded as inhuman, enemies of the people and so on. No matter what they do, humans are humans. Some may come to regret their misconduct and find a way to atone for it. Others may fail to do so, but you cannot deny the simple reality of what they are.

That's basically what I am poking a finger at, that societal perspective and weight shapes what is or is not appropriate. It taps along the line of moral relativism while also pointing out that moral relativism is utterly immoral in and of itself. For example, one culture believes it is moral for a woman to suffer because she does not dress correctly. But, another sees forcing a woman to suffer for any reason as immoral. Believing that all people are worthy of being seen as entirely equal in all ways demands a certain amount hypocrisy. You can't have it both ways. But, no matter which way you go, you ultimately walk into totalitarianism. Either you cannot risk offending someone by suggesting that an immoral act makes a person inhuman, or you must ignore the immoral act and value the individual based on their humanity.

[LeatrixSage]

If humans do something, how can it be inhuman?   Certainly it can be cruel or destructive or vile but it can't by definition be inhuman because if it was, humans would not be capable of it.

This is just an absurd way to look at a very serious issue in our society. It's a completely destructive mindset.

Sorry, missed this one: As a survivor of said offence, I found it a fabulous way to rebuild my own self worth. I was human, worthy, acceptable, good. He was none of those things. He is inhuman.

[clonkertink]

I can see the issue that is being targeted here, the idea that making another living person “not human,” makes it easier to hate them, as inherently negative. A simple example could be the NAZI dehumanization of the Jew in WWII.

However, I would like to point out that this is also a mental safety mechanism for humanity in general, to make their enemy less than human. The behavior of classifying things/people that are frightening or antagonistic as “not human,” is a natural psychological response to fear that produces a sense of safety through superiority. One should be aware of their own behaviors and actions enough to understand when and where that response is reasonable, and when it is not. That includes allied forces, and modern people, talking about NAZIs as less than human.

I appreciate the noble sentiment expressed in the effort to refrain from accepting the line of thought that denotes someone that is capable of inhuman cruelty is, therefore, inhuman. I cannot, however, entirely agree with the validity of ignoring the fact that inhuman acts should make that individual inherently ‘inhuman.’

Civility only exists because of shared societal pressure that we apply upon each other to create the generally accepted “good behavior.’ The social pressure against the inhuman is a part of that. We would consider it inhuman to harm a child, commit rape, murder, torture, etc. And, through the shared hatred of those that would do those things, we mediate those behaviors out of the arena of what is civil and acceptable. The very struggle against seeing other people as inhuman is a product of western societal pressure that insists every person – no matter how horrid or awful – has inherent value by dent of being a human.

Blind rage and hatred against everyone and anyone that looks like someone that did something inhuman, would be just as ignorant – in my humble opinion – as not hating the individual that did do something so horrid to be considered an inhuman act. I have to assume it is the former that is actually meant to be expressed here. It carries more weight and validity when viewed from that angle, and I entirely agree with that perspective.

That being said, I don’t at all agree that calling someone/something inhuman would imply that humanity wasn’t the problem. On the contrary, I think it highlights our shared expectation that humanity is inherently good, and we should continually insist that only the very best of behaviors were acceptable to be expressed as human, or humane. Inhumane and inhuman should be the laundry list of detestable things we are capable of, but refuse to accept as the “norm,” for ourselves.

To say rape is human, for example, is to suggest it is the norm, how things should be, and acceptable. Obviously, that’s not the case, so rape is inhuman – an outside the normal thing that the worst among us may commit. Those that do unacceptable acts are unacceptable. If you do inhuman things, you are inhuman.

I must disagree with this fervently. To dehumanize the atrocities of the past,\ is to ignore history. It is to say, "We would never do what they did." And that's simply not true.

My grandfather fought against Hitler. He also fought against gay rights. The war bred an instinctual hatred of the Japanese in him, to the point that he almost spat when I said I wanted a saxophone manufactured by a Japanese company.

If rapists were inherently inhuman - if it was simply an act committed by aberrant individuals, exceptions from the broader "good" of humanity - then we wouldn't have conversations about rape culture. We wouldn't be talking about the attitudes towards women, that have been passed down from father to son from the very earliest days of homo sapiens. These attitudes have played upon our natural instinct towards prejudice, and have allowed our society as a whole to let rapists completely avoid punishment even in modern day.

There are people in America who believe that racism is over - that the legacy of slavery has been dealt with. But that's simply untrue. Racism persists -has been passed down through the generations - to this very day, and this distancing from the past enables that racism. It is only by acknowledging our own capacity for prejudice that we are able to overcome it.

[Love And Submission]

The thing that hurts me the most about this is that when people say stuff like this, You’re talking about someone's son, you’re talking about someone's brother, you’re talking about someone's father.  You might despise certain people in the world but those people have families and they have people who care about them.

It’s easy to follow the trends and dehumanise certain groups of people, I see it all the time but I think we have to get better about this stuff as a society because it’s only making things worse as times goes on. This country is divided and it’s filled with angry people, by dehumanizing certain groups you’re just contributing more resentment to a country that’s already filled with resentment.

Honestly, I’ve suffered from depression for basically the entirety of my adult life and the dehumanization that I see in the world on a daily basis is a big part of the reason for that.
Certain groups of people in this country get treated horribly, especially recently, and it’s something that keeps me up at night. It eats away at me a lot of the time and makes me not the nicest person to deal by my own admission.

The other thing that drives me crazy, is that a lot of people I see supporting this ideology think that it’s absolutely morally repugnant if you view them as a collective in the same light they view other people.


It’s infuriating to see certain people dehumanize others because of mistakes they’ve made in their past feel slighted when people do the same thing to them.

If you want people to truly see you as equal as others, maybe you shouldn't demonize a  significant percentage of them.

[midnightblack]

That's basically what I am poking a finger at, that societal perspective and weight shapes what is or is not appropriate. It taps along the line of moral relativism while also pointing out that moral relativism is utterly immoral in and of itself. For example, one culture believes it is moral for a woman to suffer because she does not dress correctly. But, another sees forcing a woman to suffer for any reason as immoral. Believing that all people are worthy of being seen as entirely equal in all ways demands a certain amount hypocrisy. You can't have it both ways. But, no matter which way you go, you ultimately walk into totalitarianism. Either you cannot risk offending someone by suggesting that an immoral act makes a person inhuman, or you must ignore the immoral act and value the individual based on their humanity.

If I were to put this in simpler terms, I'd say that we have to acknowledge the fact that all humans come with both good and bad. Whichever of them ends up carrying more weight is generally up to the society shaping the individual and their own personal choice. People aren't equal, neither in opportunities, abilities nor aspirations. The idea that they could be made equal is a fallacy that has caused the most damage among all the horrors of the XXth century. However, people remain people. Dehumanizing a criminal, even a rapist, is no different from dehumanizing based on ethnicity, gender, beliefs and so on.

[LeatrixSage]

The thing that hurts me the most about this is that when people say stuff like this, You’re talking about someone's son, you’re talking about someone's brother, you’re talking about someone's father.  You might despise certain people in the world but those people have families and they have people who care about them.

It’s easy to follow the trends and dehumanise certain groups of people, I see it all the time but I think we have to get better about this stuff as a society because it’s only making things worse as times goes on. This country is divided and it’s filled with angry people, by dehumanizing certain groups you’re just contributing more resentment to a country that’s already filled with resentment.

Honestly, I’ve suffered from depression for basically the entirety of my adult life and the dehumanization that I see in the world on a daily basis is a big part of the reason for that.
Certain groups of people in this country get treated horribly, especially recently, and it’s something that keeps me up at night. It eats away at me a lot of the time and makes me not the nicest person to deal by my own admission.

The other thing that drives me crazy, is that a lot of people I see supporting this ideology think that it’s absolutely morally repugnant if you view them as a collective in the same light they view other people.


It’s infuriating to see certain people dehumanize others because of mistakes they’ve made in their past feel slighted when people do the same thing to them.

If you want people to truly see you as equal as others, maybe you shouldn't demonize a  significant percentage of them.

People aren't equal, that's rather my point. Nor do I expect to be seen as equal. People are simply too nuianced for that.

But, what's truly interesting here is that you are championing the humanity of a rapist to their victim, because it's wrong for the surviver to dehumanize their attacker.

Thank you so much for proving my point. ^.^"

In order for all people to have equal value, you must inherently forgive, and therefore accept, the rapist, murderer, and child molester as equal in value to the innocent. I appreciate the noble sentiment, but I simply cannot agree.

[LeatrixSage]

I must disagree with this fervently. To dehumanize the atrocities of the past,\ is to ignore history. It is to say, "We would never do what they did." And that's simply not true.

My grandfather fought against Hitler. He also fought against gay rights. The war bred an instinctual hatred of the Japanese in him, to the point that he almost spat when I said I wanted a saxophone manufactured by a Japanese company.

If rapists were inherently inhuman - if it was simply an act committed by aberrant individuals, exceptions from the broader "good" of humanity - then we wouldn't have conversations about rape culture. We wouldn't be talking about the attitudes towards women, that have been passed down from father to son from the very earliest days of homo sapiens. These attitudes have played upon our natural instinct towards prejudice, and have allowed our society as a whole to let rapists completely avoid punishment even in modern day.

There are people in America who believe that racism is over - that the legacy of slavery has been dealt with. But that's simply untrue. Racism persists -has been passed down through the generations - to this very day, and this distancing from the past enables that racism. It is only by acknowledging our own capacity for prejudice that we are able to overcome it.

I appreciate your perspective. You have some very valid arguments there, and a logic that I can't easily argue against. Thank you for the reply, and for sharing your thoughts.

If I were to put this in simpler terms, I'd say that we have to acknowledge the fact that all humans come with both good and bad. Whichever of them ends up carrying more weight is generally up to the society shaping the individual and their own personal choice. People aren't equal, neither in opportunities, abilities nor aspirations. The idea that they could be made equal is a fallacy that has caused the most damage among all the horrors of the XXth century. However, people remain people. Dehumanizing a criminal, even a rapist, is no different from dehumanizing based on ethnicity, gender, beliefs and so on.

I disagree, I feel holding someone accountable for their own actions is completely different from judging someone based on the actions of someone else of their race or gender. When an individual makes the choice to destroy the humanity of another individual, why should they not have their own humanity brought into question?

[midnightblack]

Holding someone accountable for their actions is not the same with dehumanizing them. Someone who has committed rape or murderer can one day turn around and have a positive contribution to the world, just as well as they could slip up again and receive whatever sentence is due. Coming up with reasons to devoid anyone of their human condition, regardless of what they did, is a downward spiral that will ultimately only lead to more suffering, regardless of how lofty your moral vantage appears to be.

Even bad karma eventually expires.

[LeatrixSage]

Holding someone accountable for their actions is not the same with dehumanizing them. Someone who has committed rape or murderer can one day turn around and have a positive contribution to the world, just as well as they could slip up again and receive whatever sentence is due. Coming up with reasons to devoid anyone of their human condition, regardless of what they did, is a downward spiral that will ultimately only lead to more suffering, regardless of how lofty your moral vantage appears to be.

Even bad karma eventually expires.

Bloody well written, I concede the point.

Thank you so much, to you and the others, for such stimulating and satisfying debate. I very much enjoyed playing the devil's advocate for this one. This was something I struggled with for a very long time. But, ultimately, I do agree that a person can come back from whatever horrible thing they may have done in their past.

I still don't begrudge the natural psychology of dehumanizing that which we fear, but I do agree that it is a behavior that we should understand and monitor as much as any other human behavior.

But, again, thank you for the discussion.

[PurpleRat]

For me it's not as much as dehumanizing the ones who have already done something, but as prediction of future acts similar to this.  If we speak about people who do terrible things as inhuman, we see them as something else. Some excepted bad things, which just suddenly appear out of nowhere.

If we speak about the "bad people" as still human, who are just doing terrible things, we learn how to recognize some traits from other people. We learn, that any one of us- humans- can be capable of terrible actions. So we learn how to protect our selves, when possible (for example the feeling "this might be toxic behavior, I would rather stay away) or even understand our own thought "hey, this is terrible, I should work with myself about it"

If we dehumanize terrible people, then we just kind of give up, and accept it like something mysterious, while it actually is just simple human being, with super bad traits, who we could handle.

[Phoenixrisen]

Either you cannot risk offending someone by suggesting that an immoral act makes a person inhuman, or you must ignore the immoral act and value the individual based on their humanity.

I see you've conceded the point, this is more for anyone who was nodding along to the quoted sentence and hasn't, if any exist.

That is a false dichotomy. I have been raped, lived through various forms of domestic violence, and even been on the wrong side of a gun when horrible people came into my home and put my exhusband into the hospital for two days. I don't have to ignore any of those 'inhuman' actions to see the people who enacted them as human. Their behaviors were immoral by the stint of their humanity. A cat toying with its prey isn't being immoral, it's being a cat, it doesn't subscribe to or as far a we're aware understand human momorals. Human morality does not apply to the truly nonhuman.

I'm not saying there aren't victims of horrible things who gain peace by dehumanizing the people who did the thing, it's never been a healthy coping mechanism for me personally, but everyone heals differently, healing is a very individual thing. I'm saying to hold people accountable to human morals and laws requires the general whole to acknowledge they are still human. If they're not human, then what call do we have to hold them to human standards?

[LostInTheMist]

My issue here is that I have a hard time seeing the Republican leadership (the President, McConnell, Barr) as human. I see the extremists as human; I know a lot of them are in forced servitude, and I want them to be free. But our own leadership is evil and inhuman. (Not the same thing, but both descriptors apply.) For many years I maintained that the Republicans were wrong, but still dedicated to serving the country. Now, if there's a bill on the floor or a suggestion, you can anticipate that either the Republicans in the Senate are against it, or the President is against it, and the Republicans in the Senate will fall meekly in line.

If a bill were introduced that would end all racial injustice, end poverty, end every problem on Earth, Trump would be against it, and the Republican Senators would fall in line.

When he was impeached, Senator ROMNEY of all people was the only Republican who voted his conscience as the Republican Senators abdicated their oversight powers. And now the President feels he can do whatever the hell he wants, and he's testing that.

I can only hope we'll still have elections on November 3rd so we can kick the fat bastard out of office.

[LostInTheMist]

Since I can't seem to edit my post....

This is a flaw in my architecture, I know. But I don't understand how on EVERY SINGLE ISSUE, the Republicans can stand in opposition. Universal healthcare, sure. I mean, it's good for the human race, but the Republicans have been bought and paid for by the major health insurance companies. But there have been plenty more, like providing lifelong benefits to first responders to the September 11 attacks who have been dying of health conditions without it. They were finally shamed into accepting that. And not condemning the crimes against humanity Trump has ordered committed at the border.... How can you be human and not see as inhuman taking a child from his or her mother and never giving them back, letting them both die in these concentration camps?

So, maybe I'm wrong in seeing the Republican leadership as non-human.... But I need them to give me some evidence they are human beings before I concede that they are.

[stormwyrm]

People talk sometimes of a bestial cruelty, but that's a great injustice and insult to the beasts; a beast can never be so cruel as a man, so artistically cruel. The tiger only tears and gnaws, that's all he can do. He would never think of nailing people by the ears, even if he were able to do it. — Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

[Oniya]

Due to people abusing the privilege, the ability to edit PROC posts was removed over a year ago.

[Avis habilis]

But I need them to give me some evidence they are human beings before I concede that they are.

ANNE
Villain, thou know’st not law of God nor man.
No beast so fierce but knows some touch of pity.
   
RICHARD
But I know none, and therefore am no beast.

[LostInTheMist]

ANNE
Villain, thou know’st not law of God nor man.
No beast so fierce but knows some touch of pity.
   
RICHARD
But I know none, and therefore am no beast.

Interesting assertion. I'll grant that, if we take the above as true, the lack of pity that the leadership has shown, in particular related to the plight of illegal immigrants on the U.S./Mexico border, would mean they are, in fact, not beasts.