Othering

Othering

The ‘Other’ was coined as a philosophical concept by GFW Hegel some two centuries ago as a counterpoint to the Self. 

In modern sociological and feminist discourse it has become a weaponised term.  It is not, as someone once suggested to me, a typo of 'Mothering'!

Society is built of in-groups who have normative values and behaviours.  This is the way that humans have evolved.  We might see it in early nomadic ice age tribes, or in the guild structures of mediaeval towns.  Ethnic groups have clustered together, just as those of similar trade or economic standing have always done, or children, women and men.

Modern feminist debate often centres around demonising what they describe as ‘Othering’.  To ‘Other’ someone is to see them as ‘Other’ to your social group.  This is considered very bad by feminists.  Since the current moral imperative is to be ‘inclusive’ and as ‘We Are All One’ we must not perceive anyone as ‘Other’ to ourselves, even if they are a stranger. 

As was recognised by Hegel, ‘Otherness’ is a logically necessary concept in describing the world if we are not to resort to solipsism, and yet modern thought seeks to collapse the distinction between Inner and Outer, whether that be psychologically Inner and Outer, or materially.

I have been somewhat incredulous at the ludicrous extent to which this is politicised and used as an attempted weapon of social control.  This amusing little website claims that ‘There are no others’.  None at all.  While it is admitted that ‘there’s a powerful evolutionary drive to identify in some way with a tribe of people who are “like you” ’ it nonetheless argues that this leads to an ‘insidious’ inclination to ‘other’ people.

https://therearenoothers.wordpress.com/2011/12/28/othering-101-what-is-othering/

Really all it is saying is that the writer doesn’t like the fact that the creation of in-groups as an evolutionary strategy exists.  This seems to be based on some kind of assumption that we have moved beyond the need for such survival strategies.  Feminism sees any group which has achieved ‘hegemonic’ stature as essentially ‘oppressive’, despite the fact that these kind of cultures provide stable milieus for complex societies.

This seems to me to be either a catastrophically naïve error or a purposefully intended attempt to undermine what must be a basic survival instinct.  Stay with those who are like yourself.  They share your genes and your culture.  If you stick together you have a better chance of survival.  Allowing strangers into your midst engages unnecessary risk.  The ‘Other’ may in time become friend, but it needs to earn that trust, that friendship.  The feminist wants you to give that trust without it having been earned, and if you don’t you are a bad person.

I imagine my reader will by now have surmised that there is a connection here with the psychology of the migrant invasion in Europe, November 2015.  The feminist sees the traditional protection of territory as ‘Othering’ the outsider, despite the fact that limited resources are a very important factor here.  Since in that ideology ‘There is no Other’ everyone is part of our own Global, Universal Tribe in the Global Village.

And yet simple game theory will inform us that unless the incomer respects the values of the group that it is accepted into, the system will collapse. 

This is a classic Cultural Marxist move in which reality is inverted and the truth turned upside down.  In the long established way of the world, life and evolution, creatures established their territories.  The dominant members of these tribes and clans would be responsible for defending them from ‘Others’;  but now, the alpha males who previously were responsible for maintaining the boundaries and protecting their people are now made to be the enemy, and the enemies who would invade are encouraged to do so and celebrated for it.

What we see taking place with various people in the aftermath of the Paris Bataclan massacre who are urging us to take more refugees to show our compassion is a pathological expression of this refusal to recognise the ‘Other’, or to see beyond the immediate situation at the larger consequences of endless mixing with it.  The Muslims all know that we are each Other to the Other, but too many Europeans delude themselves that this is not so, that ‘There is no other’.  That to ‘Other’ someone is to dehumanise them.

And so the Liberal European population has been brainwashed into laying down their arms, into refusing to stand up for themselves because we have to ‘treat others as ourselves’.  Everyone?  Does that mean we have to give them all our stuff?  House and feed them?  Let them destroy our civilisation?  One refugee, fine.  A million?  You have to think again.  Probably half the population of the world would like to get into Europe and get a Social Security cheque.  We have to defend against this.  It is not evil to seek to survive in the face of millions who would seek to exploit your civilisation. 

This is about boundaries.  One of the most important factors in human development is the establishment of personal boundaries.  To have a sense of responsibility for oneself and not to over rely or intrude on another.  Systems Theory tells us that we need cell walls, osmotic membranes that protect, select and filter what is permitted to come into the cell.  This is interface between Self and Other.  Where the Known meets the Unknown.

It is also about the poor countries who are losing their most energetic young people to a grandiose and false dream of seeking their fortune in the golden paved streets of Europe.  The Pied Piper of Mr Soros is enticing them all away form their own countries to destroy others.  Villages in West Africa have collapsing economies because all the young men are taking ‘the back way’ across the Maghreb to come to Europe and get rich.  There are downsides for others than ourselves.

We are going to see an interesting process in the coming weeks following the Friday 13^th massacre.  The politicians, liberals and general leftists are going to insist that we keep taking more migrants, insisting that we ‘shouldn’t give in to fear’ and that turning migrants away would in some way be ‘giving terrorists what they want’.  And yet we have already seen borders being closed.  Sweden had already, incredibly, closed its border before the atrocity, simply on the basis of there being too many causing a ‘threat to public order’.

A large number of State Governors in the USA have declared they will not be taking Syrian ‘refugees’ following the atrocities, and France has closed its borders.  This is clearly a chaos situation which is not going to improve unless measures are taken to prevent further deterioration of the situation.  It will doubtless continue to slide for a while as the EU leaders prevaricate.  Meanwhile the resolve of the European peoples is rising.  It is quite clear that the Videgrad 4 ~ Poland, Czech/Slovakia and Hungary are taking a firm stand and that is important for Europe as a whole.  These countries, and others in the East, still have ancestral memories of the Ottoman Empire and its depredations over hundreds of years.

They know that all civilisations periodically face the ‘Other’, and that it is in this that they are tested.  A nation, people or civilisation who are unable to distinguish what is ‘Other’ has lost its sense of Self, of Identity, and is vulnerable to being taken by the ‘Other’ as New Orleans was to being flooded by the sea when the levees broke.

Defence against the ‘Other’ is what all civilisation has ever been about, it is the ancient myth of Osiris keeping back the chaos of Set and the desert.  A civilisation or nation that opens its arms to the ‘Other’ has lost the will to live and submits to its own demise. 

The war for the soul of Europe has now begun.  We must find our Self, and repel the Other.  The alternative is for Europe, the jewel of civilisation, to sink into an endless night of oblivion, as chaos rushes in and its light is extinguished.