What is “Othering”?
Othering has its origins in the basic ability to differentiate between oneself and others. We see it develop early in childhood, but before a certain stage, children don’t understand that how they feel is not necessarily how other people feel. This is also the root of something like culture shock, wherein we enter another culture that is so different from any of our previous experiences that it can be physically distressing. It changes us, forces us to build new, wider paradigms to contain our changed understanding.
Once we’ve learned that a distance exists between each of us, all social life becomes an exploration game. We know every other person is literally “an other”, and from there it is a question of quantity; we just want to see how much of an other they are. What do I share in common with you? With that person over there? With someone on the other side of the world? What are our differences? What does all this mean for how we should think and behave? We are constantly looking for what we have in common, and each item we don’t have in common with another is marked against them.
It’s important to return now to a central human fact/flaw: the tendency to think in extremes. If a person can’t find enough in common with another person, they don’t usually think, “Wow, I don’t have much in common with that person, but I know they’re still a human being and we still have more which unites us than separates us.” That’s difficult. It’s easier to apply a simplistic label and leave it at that.
Questions like these are the root of othering, but they aren’t the thing itself. Othering in this context is the practice of assuming some form of intrinsic difference between individuals and groups.
Here’s an example: take yourself and the most different other you can think. Imagine you’re a soldier fighting for your country. Imagine this other person is fighting for their country. So you’re on opposite sides, spending every day trying to kill each other. In these contexts we usually find the most extreme form of othering possible. When your job is to hurt or kill, labelling your enemy as a lower form of life makes it all easier. “De-humanization” is the term. In this case, what you are claiming is that even if that ‘animal/thing’ had been raised next to you, in the same family, and you’d known them all your life, they would still not deserve human respect because they are intrinsically different.
What does it really mean to say that we are all human?
It means that you can imagine a scenario where that other human grew up in a family just like yours. That means they act like you, think like you, and have similar goals as you. If you can imagine that, then you can imagine the reverse proposition: if you had been raised the way they were, you would be like them. You would be doing the same things they are, believing the same, wanting the same. Ours differences, with rare exception, are not intrinsic. They are situational.
What does this have to with Global Pandemics?
Othering is not productive. In fact, I have a hard time brainstorming a framework where othering would be more useful than… well, not othering. Its function is to make stereotyping easier. Stereotyping is a form of heuristic— a helpful shortcut that reduces the investment of thought and emotion that we have to make moment-to-moment. I don’t like reducing my cognitive and emotional investment, unless doing so is temporarily necessary for my well-being.
Healthcare workers are under more strain right now than they probably ever anticipated their profession would bring them. Even emergency services, who (I hope) were aware that stress might be a factor in their careers, might not have foreseen this level of risk. PPE shortages, extreme overtime, short-staffing, the possibility of infection by a deadly virus, etc. All compounded by lots and lots of panicking people demanding priority.
The response in the media has been to call them heroes. In fact, anyone being forced to work right now is being called a hero. I am going to call this ‘positive othering,’ because the intention is good.
However, positive othering is still othering. It is unhelpful. By using a collective label, we separate essential workers from ourselves. Taking mental shortcuts means not thinking about it further. It allows us to settle for less, put no further energy in, get on with other things.
We have a chance right now to wake up to some injustices. The concept of minimum wage and unskilled labor, for example. In an emergency situation, it turns out that many, many minimum wage unskilled jobs are essential. This should be stunning. This should redefine the foundation of society. Everything else starts with these jobs.
Calling them heroes is not enough. They aren’t heroes. They have to work, or they will lose what they have. There is nothing intrinsically different. We must have more empathy. Two conclusions come to mind:
- If we were in their situation, we would be doing the same. Placed in a difficult situation, we too would do what we had to. That should be a positive thought.
- If we were in their situation, what would we want? To be called a hero? I wouldn’t. I’d want a raise. I would want to be treated with courtesy and respect. I would want job security, and protective equipment to cut down on my chances of getting sick and bring covid-19 home to my family.
Let us do less to separate ourselves. We need more empathy. “If I were that person, what would I be feeling right now? What would I want? What would I be afraid of?”
Keep in mind that there is a segment of society whose agenda is to indignantly suggest that we can’t know what an other feels. This is a separation, and it is false. I am not talking about being arrogant, or that listening is unnecessary. But it is just true that we are more alike than we are different, in every case.
