In the Wake of Ferguson, Sarkeesian, Zelda Williams, and More
This has been a particularly rough past month for the world, especially those who are prevalent in Social Media circles. We're starting to see the power that Social Media has as both a powerful and truthful means by which information can be spread despite attempts to silence it and as a dangerous weapon that can be used to hurt and harass people who challenge your ideals.
In the past month, we've had people in Ferguson fight against armies to expose the kinds of racism people experience all over the country during daily politics and interactions. We've seen people threaten harm against someone and her family simply for trying to educate people on why women can be offended by their limited representation in a creative media. We've seen people harass someone who has just suffered grief from her father's suicide, only because the harassers felt that the suicide was selfish and that depression is not a real disease.
Many socially conscious observers have taken to blogs and articles, as I am doing here, to talk about these atrocities and how we can go about advocating change. And one of the most common ideas preached by these individuals is that we're all one and the same. We're all on the same planet. We're all human. We are all fighting the same battle. We should all include one another regardless of race, religion, or gender.
The problem is that... I feel like they're wrong.
We're not all the same. Despite their good intentions, it just isn't true. In fact, the real truth is the exact opposite:
We are all different.
And that is the message we need to start spreading.
We are all different. Every single one of us is different from every single other person on the planet. Every human is an individual. It could be gender, religion, race, preference of cats over dogs, how much time and resource you put into altruism, how you feel about the color blue, whether you're better with your hands or better with your mind, whether you tend towards being outgoing and silly as opposed to introverted, what bad habits you have formed like smoking or biting nails, whether you prefer iPhone or Android, all the way to your stance on abortion.
Outside of genetic twins/triplets/etc, no two people are even close to being similar. That is the idea we should be trying to get people to understand. One should be expecting that everyone else is nothing like them. They should be celebrating it because it's that difference that makes the world go 'round. It's that difference that makes every person so wonderful and unique. If every person was the same, I would imagine society would have fallen apart already with no one to challenge any ideas.
If you think about it, all the hate comes from a fear of what's unknown and a fear of what you are not accustomed to. It's that fear of differences that creates bias and hatred and fuels people to be cruel to one another. It's what makes everyone try to find a group they belong to -- whether it's by race, religion, gender, hobby, or state of mind -- and exclude everyone else. "Those people aren't like me." "Those people will never understand me."
Trying to tell people that everyone is "the same" doesn't solve this problem. In fact, it exacerbates it. When you tell an individual that those they see as a part of different group are just like them, what most people will hear is that you're attacking them. You're "telling" them that they are closed-off and that they need to include people of a different group into their group. And that results in people becoming defensive and, often times, lashing out and become hateful of the thing they fear. You're still creating an idea of an "us" vs. "them," that "we" have to accept "them" into our group. But the lack of inclusion isn't the problem, it's the tendency towards exclusion that's causing problems.
If you're a white Christian male, another white Christian male doesn't automatically make him any more similar to you than, say, a Chinese Buddhist female. You may find lots of differences between the white individual and tons of similarities with the Chinese individual. There are just too many qualifications for what makes someone similar to and different than you. A man that practices a different faith than you could have almost identical ideas as you about how to raise children. The women with the different skin color may understand exactly how you feel about helping the environment. The transgender individual may agree almost completely on being vegetarian because of how cruel the food industry is on animals.
In other words, there are no groups of "us" and "them." There is only the individual who is the sole member of their own "group." Once you see that, you'll stop creating these larger, inclusive mental groups that promote the fear and hate of those you've decided don't fit in that group. When you realize that everyone is different, the differences no longer matter and you'll start appreciating the individual.
Every person on the planet has had a different experience than you. Thousands upon thousands of events have shaped them to be how they are much in the same way thousands upon thousands of completely different events have shaped you. No two people will ever truly see eye to eye. Even when you find your soulmate who is exactly like you and you decide to spend the rest of your life with them, you end up spending that rest of your life more often than not finding out exactly how different they really are from you.
Embrace the differences. Be willing to put yourself in another person's shoes. By understanding that, just maybe you'll start to understand why being a black person in the country automatically puts you at a disadvantage against much of the nation's authorities. Maybe you'll realize that, yes, game developers could stand to broaden the roles of female characters in video games in ways that truly represent them fairly and fully. Maybe you'll get that depression is a disease that affects the brain and that, much like people can be born allergic to cats or born blind, that it's something you're born with that cannot be controlled as simply as you think.
Everyone is different. And that's perfect.
- JC