It’s interesting to me how viscerally an event like the current London riots can affect people. In 48 hours, we’ve gone from a peaceful, ordered society to a violently disordered one.  A large group of people is bent on destruction and looting, and an equally large group is baying for the first group to be shot on sight.

How does this happen? Why are normally calm and placid individuals suddenly calling for blood?

In my view, it concerns the dangerous psychology of separation – the process by which we all mentally divide the world into ‘them’ and ‘us’.

Consider the rioters. When was the last time you smashed up your own home, or stole from your friends? Would you set fire to your neighbour’s car or burn your cousin’s shop? I doubt it, and few human beings would. You can only really damage things and people you don’t care about, and that means things or people you see as separate or different from yourself. You won’t hurt ‘us’ but it’s fine to hurt ‘them’.

Leaders in wartime have always understood this, which is why during World War II the British weren’t at war with their fellow humans, or even the people of Germany. They were fighting the Huns, the Jerries, the Boche…

For those who are rioting, ‘they’ have names like “rich people”, “fat cats”, “bankers”, “capitalists”, “oppressors”. Those rioting don’t see human beings, they see stereotypes, and this happens because we all allow ourselves to casually label people according to what they do or what they have. If you hurt someone who works in banking, you feel bad because you’re hurting a person. If you bash a banker, that’s much easier, because you’re dealing with a stereotype, not a human being. Except that in reality, there are no bankers, there are only human beings who work in banks.

For the frightened onlookers, ‘they’ have names like ‘thugs’, ‘scum’, ‘hoodies’, ‘chavs’, ‘Jeremy Kyle guests’, ‘criminals’. Those calling for punishment don’t see human beings, they see stereotypes. If you hurt a 14-year-old boy who is rioting (or more likely, get a policeman to hurt him for you), you feel bad because you’re hurting a person. If you hang a hoodie, that’s much easier, because you’re dealing with a stereotype, not a human being. Except that in reality, there are no hoodies, there are only human beings who wear hoods.

This madness ends, in my view, when we all remember that to take away another person’s humanity by labelling them – either as ‘scum’ or as ‘fat cat’ – is a very dangerous thing.

Of course it is appropriate to prevent criminal behaviour, and to hold people to account for what they have done. The important thing is to do it without believing that the behaviour represents who the person is, or all that they are capable of. In short, without calling them names.

Labelling is dangerous because it destroys our ability to empathise with those whose behaviour we don’t like  as fellow human beings. That in turn allows us to justify acts of violence – either personal or carried out on our behalf by the state – which drive us even further apart. Yet unless we’re going to kill those people – and the decision to do that is the decision to destroy society and turn England into a battlefield – we have to live with them afterward, side by side yet separated by simmering resentment and brooding violence.

There is another way. The way in which we deal appropriately with behaviour while remembering that the ‘other’ is a human being just like us. Then we try to understand him or her a little better, and build some bridges, perhaps even a friendship.

Why do we do this?

Because no-one burns down his friend’s shop.

– Phil Mattingly

http://www.philmattingly.com/blog/