Dehumanizing Our Enemies
Last night, while working hard to kill time and slack around, I started surfing Myspace. I've talked about Myspace before, and you know, Internet, that I do not have an account. I wasn't trying to look up anyone in particular, I would just find one person and then browse their friends until I found the next person that I knew.
I wound up reading a lot of people's profiles who I haven't spoken to since high school, and even then we did not speak very often. These were people that, for one reason or another, I didn't get along with.
Many of the females I always thought were stuck up jerks, or airheads, or whatever else you want to say about "those kinds of girls." It was middle school and high school; you know how that works.
As I read about where life has taken them I was surprised. In high school I thought I was smart and they were stupid. I thought about "important things" and they thought about the mall. I respected people and they used them. But the profiles I read last night reflected nothing of the demons that I had created.
These people were doing things with their lives: they were in trying to maintain steady and loving relationships, they were working in health clinics or fighting for the United States in Iraq, they have a very sick parent who almost died and they are concerned... they have their secrets and their darker moments, too.
From one person's,
its really weird all the things that go through your head when youre in a situation like that. i just remember thinking all the time how i would never be able to go fishing with him again, how he'd never be able to hug me, or we'd never get to talk again, and a million other things that would never be able to happen again. i kept replaying in my head past memories with him that i had taken for granted.... things like this just filled my head all day long for those couple months.
It was a powerful realization for me about compassion. I have no idea (and never will) what it's like to be them.
It's so easy to dehumanize the enemy.
1 Comments:
Oh, my, yes it is. I understand the need to do this - like if someone is attacking someone you love and you need to beat him to a bloody pulp. But, when it comes to humans who are struggling to get through life, and we see them as weak or no-good, that is bad.
Geez, did that make sense?
Anyway, compassion comes in many forms. Feeling the way you did does not make you less human, less compassionate or less a kumquat. It takes someone who is a compassionate human to make the realization you did.
Many happy trails
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