I read a book for school dealing with the termination phase of U.S. Indian relations. In the book the govt. wanted to terminate the special status of American Indians by paying off outstanding debts. The legislative leader was a senator from Utah, and he wanted to show how well the system worked on the Utah Indians. The Ute reservation in Utah had three different Ute tribes, two from Colorado, and one from Utah. As the Utes saw the writing on the wall they made a strategic move in deciding who was "us". They decided that anyone of the tribe with 50% Ute blood or less would be considered them, or other. This decision affected the Utah Utes the most as they had interbred more than the other Ute tribes. When the termination order came around the Ute leadership struck a deal that only those "other" Utes would be terminated and the rest would maintain their Indian status.
To me this seems like a logical and deliberate step in the definition of "us" for economic and political reasons, and I'm OK with that. I wonder if there is ever a time when those are not the reasons why we define groups the way we do.
During the Cold War the us/them mentality was a common propagandistic tool, just as it was in WWII, WWI, and anytime a group of people feel the need to be mobilized against another.
I think that part of this might come out of the western religious traditions which are all dualistic in nature, and this spills over into all other thought processes.
Maybe that is false, because even in non-dualistic traditions the us/them issue arises. I have also heard that when ever there are more than three or four people in close proximity an us/them situation will develop. I listened to a thing on the bio-dome experiment and although all the people in there were scientists and friends groups formed that were antagonist towards each other.
This is not to say that the groups aren't fluid, change in who is in or out can happen quite rapidly and also depends on the circumstances. If you look at the typical family model there are levels of us/them:
- my wife and children
- my parents and siblings
- parents and siblings in-law
- grandparent, aunts, uncles and cousins
- grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins in-law
Really I think that it all has to do with economics, not just economics of money, but economics writ large, of trading or working in someway for something be it money, status, information, but that is another post.
3 comments:
A tangental thought:
I was just reading CS Lewis talking about how Christian and most religious thought can't actually be called dualist because in a dualist system both sides are equal. If there is an equal struggle between good and evil, than both sides must think they are right and might just be having a difference of opinion. Religion by its nature labels some things as morally wrong, and therefore there must exist some higher law above the two dueling forces.
I'm not sure that a dualistic system needs to be equal, just in opposition, or tension.
I think you're right about the economics of the situation. Rational people work for their own self interest. The beauty of a capitalistic society is that in order to obtain the greatest benefit for ourselves, it pays to work with others. We don't cooperate for the good of society, we do it because we are looking out for number one. This premise seems much more realistic than the socialistic idea of working for the "betterment of society." This is upheld by the low economic productivity in Communist and Socialist countries.
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