The Us vs. Them fallacy and Entrotopia

Sweet mother of crap I'm blogging. Clear out folks, make way for another quanta of the 'geist. I though I'd never do it. Sure I'll check the few blogs I read, toss my opinion into the mix for some sound worrying by the netfolk, but this? I suppose it will be seen as inevitable in retrospect.

So what is this silly fallacy? To me it's probably the core of just about everything that wrong with us. It is the basis for all the isms that allow us to decide our group is better than that other one. Everyone is guilty of it, the most high minded folks will still point to a 'them' when distributing blame. The problem is we are all wrong, but in a way that allows our arguments about 'them' seem plausible.

Demonstrating my point is going to be tricky, some clever folks have suggested that providing a 'them' obviates the fallacy part, and then we are basically back to discussing how shitty the 'them' is. This is true, but it misses the point. I'm not suggesting that the lines we use to separate don't exist, just to remember that those lines are often illusions, and can be moved with disquieting ease. More to the point, that it is the perception of the line that disconnects their humanity from yours, allowing inequity proportionate to the perceived separation.

So great, I've described the mechanism, where then is the fallacy? It lies in the notion that the 'us' and the 'them' are so fundamentally different that they wouldn't behave essentially the same way if the situation was reversed. I suspect most folks will decide I'm wrong, which makes sense, if this idea was generally accepted I suspect we'd probably treat each other better. It's pretty hard to acknowledge that the gentle soul that is you would inevitably turn into a tyrant given the right conditions.

This is the important bit for me, if we accept that the structure, the circumstances that direct the person or culture then the method to change away from inequity is to modify the structure, not the individuals moving through it. Simply put, if we don't want tyrants ruling us, we have got to stop allowing them to.

The tricky part for me is whether this is possible or not. If so, by what mechanism? Do we really want to? If we could erase those lines and create a utopia of equity and freedom from tyranny shouldn't that be our singular purpose?

My conclusion is that we don't want to, and we shouldn't. All movement is the result of a disparity in forces, perfect equity is it's own tyranny. We will all experience it, after a fashion, in the heat death of the universe.