In this article I would like to address anyone who has ever judged another human being based on her/his skin color, gender, nationality, culture, religion, size, financial situation, marital status or shoe brand.
Well, I guess that's all of you!
Yep, even you back there in the liberalist line! Don’t hide behind your ‘Stop Hate!’ banner and forest of hashtags. You know you are guilty too!
We are all ‘Discriminals’. And we just can’t help it.
Because discrimination and stereotyping are based on an implicit bias, hard-wired into our brains since we climbed off that damned tree
We have a built-in tendency to categorize another human being as either « Us » (in-group) or « Them » (out-group). When we meet a stranger, this happens quickly outside of our awareness, not necessarily connected to our conscious beliefs.
And this makes sense, because there was a time when it was a question of survival to make a quick judgement about another dude stumbling into our territory.
Imagine for a moment that you are a prehistoric Homo Sapiens, taking a nap after your afternoon hunt, peacefully scratching your naked butt. Suddenly an unknown fella’ shows up in your cave, making strange sounds you can’t decipher. In the blink of an eye, the ‘fear-center’ in your brain (the Amygdala) lights up and you jump to your feet to kick his ass out of your turf. Maybe he is a nice guy, but you can’t risk him stealing your food.
He is not from your herd, he represents DANGER.
If, to the contrary, you recognize the familiar face and sounds of one member of your family, your brain's Mesolimbic system fires up with all its yummy ‘reward system’ and you welcome your brother with open arms.
Even if he will eat all your food without moving a finger for it. Family, right?
In order to protect us, to help us survive, our brain evolved to reward the familiar, US, but distrust and fear the different, THEM.
And here’s the catch: even if we are not living in caves and running around all naked and hairy (if all goes well), we still rely on the same neuronal pathways and reflexes as our pre-historic selves in the above-mentioned example.
Evolution is a slow engineer, it does not come up with a new hardware very often. On an anatomical level, our brain is pretty much the same as it was tens of thousands of years ago.
To the contrary, civilization is quite a busy developer and tries to force a bunch of new software on this old-school computer every generation or so.
One does not have to be an IT expert to know that when you install a brand new version of a software on an old computer, really annoying things can happen! If it works at all.
There are major ‘bugs’ in the human brain trying to catch up with the rules of modern society and globalization
Take the ‘fight or flight’ stress response for example. When you are staring at your boss while he is insulting you, your body reacts the same way it would facing a predator: your heart rate goes up, your muscles tighten, your stomach wants to send back the lunch you just finished. You contemplate the situation: should you run out of the office or punch him in the face.
According to the rules of modern society, in most cases you do neither. So you just stand there, body all tuned up, palms sweaty, your brain swimming in adrenaline, cortisol and testosterone. You better go out for a run or have a good cry in the bathroom, otherwise this un-drained physical state will take a serious toll on your body. Chronic stress, heart attacks, back pain, burn out and all the other stress-related delicacies that make our healthcare systems strive.
Evolution developed an excellent set of pathways to protect us in the face of danger.
Ironic that is is the very same stress response that kills us slowly today.
Research seems to somewhat confirm that discrimination is another ‘bug’ in the system.
Although most of us do not have to fight for food and water against other tribes on a daily basis, we continue to use and reinforce this ancient 'Us versus Them' pathway to identify ‘different’ as scary and untrustworthy.
In fact, as I see it, we thrive on it! We apply this implicit bias to more and more social characteristics, that has absolutely nothing to do with someone being a threat to our pathetic lives.
Why?
First, if you think about it, there is no immediate advantage, reward to override these reflexes.
We know that our brain has limited processing power (for some more limited than others), thus it relies on shortcuts, tells us to do what is easy right away.
Consequently, when you see, meet someone utterly different, strange, your mind automatically goes: ‘Just go with it mate, judge away!’
Doing it otherwise means that you have to actually use your Prefrontal Cortex (that is the most developed part of your brain) to silence your Amygdala (the 'fear-center') in order to override the feelings of mistrust and disgust.
In other words, you have to actually THINK!
And that’s a bummer. Because thinking demands extra energy that we usually prefer to spend on more important things. Like trolling on our phones for example.
Second - and this is just a philosophical speculation on my part - because we found a way to use this pathway to give our fragile and thirsty egos a quick fix, a kind of free reward.
Let me explain: if ‘Us’ means 'Good', somehow ‘Them’ automatically means 'Less Good'.
Thus, the more different, weird someone seems in terms of physical traits, lifestyle, fashion sense, religious or political views, life choices...the better we can think we are.
"OMG, she's so fat...I am not" "What an ugly outfit...I look nice today"
"Jeez, what a racist...I am sooo cool being such a exemplary liberalist" "
At this point, we do not fear The Different, we despise it. And this simply makes us feel just a wee bit better about ourselves.
Genius!
Let's be honest, this happens to all of us from time to time. Just for a split second.
And it's all fine, until you keep it to yourself and swim in your warm feeling of superiority in silence!
The problem is that unfortunately some people are so insecure, unloved and unhappy with their insignificance that their brains need to go the extra mile, they need to make the feeling last longer. So they insult, bully, get into fights, build walls and start wars.
This is utterly dangerous stuff. Because discrimination is not only a 'bug', it is a virus.
It spreads.
Miserable people from a group attack another group who will most of the time fight back, becoming now an eventual danger, an enemy. Fear of the different, of the ‘out-group’ is thus validated and reinforced in the minds of both groups. Finally the originally sane people will join in too, because now of course they are also miserable due to all the senseless hate and fighting.
The whole thing becomes again a real question of survival, although it started from a fake feeling of threat and a need to feel superior.
The damn snake bites his own tail. The circle is not only closed, it gets bigger.
Violence creating violence, misery creating more misery.
Racism is the perfect example.
By acting on the reward-fear system of our brains, discrimination gives an easy and short-term remedy to our most profound fears, probably stronger than that of any real danger: the fear of our own insignificance.
It fills a void, sometimes greater than hunger:
the need to belong, to be loved and to be accepted as we are.
Still wonder why it is so difficult to cure the world from discrimination and all the suffering it entails?
We have not found a remedy yet.
But I believe that there is an antidote out there...
No! Nope! Not Love! Lay down your #LoveIsTheAnswer hashtags for a minute.
We have to be more creative than that.
Our collective success as a human race depends on it.
Note: I will not cite a bunch of articles here. This is not wikipedia, nor a scientific journal. Do your own research! And debate if you feel like it.
Coming soon: "The Antidote to Discrimination"
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