Us vs Them, Part III

Living With “Them”

In Part I, we examined how people create “us” and “them.” In Part II, we followed those boundaries as they became social and political realities—shaping identities, institutions, borders, and ideas about who belongs.

But if group boundaries are a persistent feature of human societies, perhaps eliminating them is not a realistic goal.

This brings us to the final question:

If human beings will always form groups, how can they live together?

The answer cannot simply be to eliminate differences. People will continue to disagree about religion, politics, economics, national identity, and almost everything else. Nor can every disagreement be resolved through assimilation.

The more realistic challenge is to prevent ordinary differences between groups from becoming existential conflicts—and to create larger circles of belonging in which competing groups can coexist.

The question, ultimately, is not whether there will always be a “them.”

There probably will.

The question is what we choose to do about it.

Does This Mean Conflict Is Inevitable?

At this point, the argument may sound pessimistic.

If people inevitably form groups, and if the markers of belonging can constantly change, does that mean permanent conflict is unavoidable?

Perhaps tension is.

But tension is not the same thing as war.

Two people can disagree profoundly without trying to destroy one another.

One can believe in communism.

The other can believe in capitalism.

One can be religious.

The other can be atheist.

One can support Israel.

The other can oppose it.

They can still live in the same society.

They can still work together.

They can still be neighbors.

They can still recognize one another as legitimate human beings.

The problem begins when disagreement becomes existential.

The question changes from:

Which of us is right?

to:

Which of us has the right to exist?

That is a very different conflict.

The first question allows disagreement.

The second turns disagreement into a struggle over survival and belonging.

What Civilization Actually Does

Civilization cannot eliminate disagreement.

It cannot make everyone share the same religion.

The same political ideology.

The same culture.

The same economic philosophy.

The same national identity.

And perhaps it should not try.

The achievement of civilization is something more modest.

It is the creation of mechanisms through which people who disagree can continue living together.

Elections allow competing political identities to fight without physical violence.

Courts allow conflicting interests to be resolved without private revenge.

Markets allow people with different values to cooperate without agreeing about those values.

Laws establish boundaries within which competing groups can coexist.

Shared citizenship creates a larger circle that can contain smaller circles.

These institutions do not eliminate “us” and “them.”

They create a framework in which multiple “us” and “them” relationships can coexist without turning every boundary into a war.

The Problem of the Final Enemy

Perhaps the greatest danger appears when a society stops seeing its opponents as another group within the same larger community.

They become something else.

An existential threat.

A contaminant.

A traitor.

An enemy.

Once that happens, compromise becomes betrayal.

Coexistence becomes surrender.

The other side no longer has a legitimate place within the larger circle.

The conflict is no longer about competing interests.

It becomes a struggle over belonging itself.

And this is where ordinary group psychology can become politically dangerous.

The question is no longer merely:

Who are “us”?

It becomes:

Who is allowed to be “us”?

That is the point at which a political disagreement can become a conflict over the boundaries of the community itself.

What Can We Learn?

Perhaps the lesson is not that human beings should stop forming groups.

That is probably impossible.

Nor is the lesson that all differences are imaginary.

They are not.

Languages are different.

Religions are different.

Cultures are different.

Ancestries are different.

Political beliefs are different.

The lesson is something more subtle.

Differences do not automatically tell us which boundaries matter.

People assign importance to differences.

The same difference may be decisive in one society and irrelevant in another.

An accent may determine belonging in one context and mean nothing in another.

Religion may define a community in one society while political ideology defines it in another.

Ancestry may be treated as irrelevant by one population and as decisive by another.

The characteristic is real.

Its social meaning is not predetermined.

Belonging Before Difference

Perhaps, then, we should be careful whenever someone explains a conflict by pointing to a single difference.

“They hate us because we are different.”

“Those people can never belong here because of their religion.”

“They are fundamentally different from us.”

“People of that ethnicity are naturally incompatible with us.”

Such statements may describe an existing social boundary.

But they do not necessarily explain where the boundary came from.

They may simply rationalize it.

Perhaps the more fundamental question is always:

Why did this difference become important?

Why this difference?

Why now?

Why these people?

Why this boundary?

And why should this characteristic determine who belongs?

These questions move us from the surface of group conflict to something deeper.

Human beings seem predisposed to create circles of belonging.

We divide the world into “us” and “them.”

We do it through language, religion, ancestry, nationality, politics, class, culture, and countless other categories.

But the categories are not fixed.

The boundaries move.

The markers change.

People enter circles.

People leave them.

People are welcomed.

People are excluded.

People assimilate.

People are expelled.

People create new circles.

And sometimes they fight over who gets to draw the boundary.

Perhaps that is the permanent human problem.

Not how to eliminate “us” and “them,” but how to live in a world where there will always be an “us” and a “them.”

The goal, then, is not to abolish belonging.

It is to prevent belonging from becoming a license to deny the humanity of those outside our circle.

Perhaps belonging comes before difference.

And perhaps civilization begins when we learn that not belonging to my circle does not mean not belonging to humanity.

Applied to the UNRWA clientele–Israeli conflict, that principle points to a moderate first step: dismantle the institutions that have turned the conflict into a permanent identity. Dismantle UNRWA. Dismantle the UN itself. Resettle the clientele. And end the greatest identity theft in modern history: stop calling the UNRWA’s clientele “Palestinians.”