The Janus Face of Dehumanization & Reimagining the Human
What does it mean to BE human? Let's explore...
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Something to always remember is that life is dualistic in nature. So there is a duality to the ways dehumanization shows up and plays out in current society.
Let’s explore them.
First is the dehumanization we are very familiar - commodification, which is the rendering of a person down to a commodity. Once commodified, that person is seen as an object that can be used, traded, discarded.
Many of us know this type of dehumanization through the institution of chattel slavery that lays the foundation of our current economic system. The triad of anti-blackness, anti-indigeneity, and whiteness emerge from this restructuring of life.
NOTE: The collections "Rest is Resistance", "Ebony and Ivy", and "Groundings With My Brothers" from my Patreon all touch on these issues. Check out the collections of each title for more in depth reflections and prompts for embodied reflection.
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The other side of dehumanization is deification. This is when a person, or persons, are seen as more than human. They are given a “god-like” or “angel-like” status on Earth, making them more than human.
Therefore non-human.
Therefore, dehumanized.
We see this prominently in celebrity culture, but it is rooted firmly in monarchical societies like the British royal family. Prince Harry wrote about this in his autobiography "Spare" when he was recalling the ways the British press treated and wrote about him after the death of his mother Princess Diana.
"My existence was just fun and games to these people. I wasn't a human being to them. I wasn't a fourteen-year-old boy hanging on by his fingernails...All was justified because I was royal, and in their minds royal was synonymous with non-person. Centuries ago royal men and women were considered divine, now they are insects. What fun to pluck their wings."
This is a telling paragraph as it both reveals the ways dehumanization works to rob people of their human experience. AND, we also see how power constructed itself and PLACED ITSELF ABOVE HUMANITY as a way to justify ruling over humans.
NOTE: See my Patreon collections on "Spiritual Warfare" and "The Disordered Cosmos" for more on this.
While we are also seeing the decline and decay of that type of institution, its impact has had irrefutable damage to how we understand who and what the human, living and life are.
Neither side of this dehumanizing coin benefits anyone in the long run.
So, it is up to us to take back the concept of the human from this colonial imagining and ask ourselves:
What does it mean to BE human?
See our species is one that cannot survive without one another. Human babies require constant nurture and care to survive and those who provide that care themselves also need to be cared for. It's that circle of life.
Yet, that circle has been fractured. Purposefully broken so that hierarchy based on capitalism's definitions of value and worth takes precedence.
What does it mean to TAKE BACK the human from capitalism?
We learn to dehumanize others by first dehumanizing ourselves. And we tend to learn this in our childhood through the institutions of the family, school, and Church as we are taught to give up our authority to another while also being denied the autonomy of being a person.
When a society does not value children nor sees a child as a separate Self from the parent(s) we are taught that one only has value and worth once they become an "adult". Adulthood in these extractive systems is based around your ability to be a "productive" worker FOR that society.
What does it look like to call back your humanity by nurturing your inner child?
What would it look like to truly give children personhood?
How would that impact how you saw your Self?
I'll stop there for now. More to come.
Let me know what comes up for you in the comments!