I have experienced almost exactly this, at several levels. From benign social interactions through to EDI sessions with first year undergraduates (the Tory example is almost verbatim). If one was in a relationship with a person like this, you would regard it as emotionally abusive and run for the hills (or the next). Ta for referencing btw, have just pulled down a few of Leyen recent articles on the mind and dehumanisation! As a humble biology/stats type, one rarely gets to dip the toe outside of the field.
Hope you and the family had a most excellent Christmas, and I look forward to more of your writing in 2023!
Thank you! Yea… I’ve been very perplexed about this topic for a while. I couldn’t understand how people could be seemingly obsessed with the idea of “terrible people” dehumanising others… but then turn around and speak about the “terrible people” as if they weren’t *people*… So I started reading… Finding out that thinking of people as “machines” was a different type of dehumanisation blew my mind! It’s obvious when you read it- and like you, I’m sure LOADS of people have direct experience of this- and it makes loads of things fall into place…
Thanks for this fascinating piece. I've read it after a day of covering council elections for a local newspaper. I interviewed candidates from the different parties afterwards and was struck by how much the groups hated each other. And yet their views all overlap quite significantly. This is a council dominated by a Labour group with significant numbers of Greens and Lib Dems and one Tory. It seems that in politics you're almost obliged to dehumanise the other parties to shore up your belief in your own group. They only saw each other in terms of bad intentions and lacking in humanity when clearly everyone had come into this work to get things done. Before I started this job five years ago I felt this way too, being a strong supporter of one party, but having met sincere people on all sides I don't believe any of them have bad intentions. Maybe becoming politically homeless over gender stuff a while ago has influenced my thinking on this. I was really interested to read your thoughts on seeing people as machines - it makes a lot of sense.
I have experienced almost exactly this, at several levels. From benign social interactions through to EDI sessions with first year undergraduates (the Tory example is almost verbatim). If one was in a relationship with a person like this, you would regard it as emotionally abusive and run for the hills (or the next). Ta for referencing btw, have just pulled down a few of Leyen recent articles on the mind and dehumanisation! As a humble biology/stats type, one rarely gets to dip the toe outside of the field.
Hope you and the family had a most excellent Christmas, and I look forward to more of your writing in 2023!
Thank you! Yea… I’ve been very perplexed about this topic for a while. I couldn’t understand how people could be seemingly obsessed with the idea of “terrible people” dehumanising others… but then turn around and speak about the “terrible people” as if they weren’t *people*… So I started reading… Finding out that thinking of people as “machines” was a different type of dehumanisation blew my mind! It’s obvious when you read it- and like you, I’m sure LOADS of people have direct experience of this- and it makes loads of things fall into place…
Sometimes right, sometimes wrong, always interesting, intelligent and passionate
Thanks for this fascinating piece. I've read it after a day of covering council elections for a local newspaper. I interviewed candidates from the different parties afterwards and was struck by how much the groups hated each other. And yet their views all overlap quite significantly. This is a council dominated by a Labour group with significant numbers of Greens and Lib Dems and one Tory. It seems that in politics you're almost obliged to dehumanise the other parties to shore up your belief in your own group. They only saw each other in terms of bad intentions and lacking in humanity when clearly everyone had come into this work to get things done. Before I started this job five years ago I felt this way too, being a strong supporter of one party, but having met sincere people on all sides I don't believe any of them have bad intentions. Maybe becoming politically homeless over gender stuff a while ago has influenced my thinking on this. I was really interested to read your thoughts on seeing people as machines - it makes a lot of sense.