In this New Yorker article, Paul Bloom discusses the popular opinion is that perpetrators of violence dehumanize their victims in order to justify their actions. While there are numerous instances of dehumanization in history, such as Nazis tattooing numbers on the concentration camp inmates, Bloom argues that these instances are the abusers’ attempts to humiliate their victims, and thus they must, at some level, see them as human beings capable of humiliation. The racist gestures and name calling from Astros first baseman Yuli Gurriel during the World Series this year towards Dodger’s Yu Darvish were an attempt to throw him off his game by humiliating him. If Gurriel really saw Darvish as less than human, he would consider such behavior useless. The intent was to embarrass and distract. In addition to the dehumanization of victims, humans also have the tendency to dehumanize horrible criminals, attempting to distance the behavior of a mass murderer or rapist from humanity. Criminals are often said to be acting under the influence of an animalistic rage or passion. But anthropologist Alan Fiske and psychologist Tage Rai believe that the exact opposite is true– that criminals often act from a very logical and human to right some wrong, “teach someone a lesson”, or create fairness in the world. The desire for vengeance is a very human trait, and thus a large part of criminality cannot be assigned to lack of humanity. This also extends into misogyny, a mindset that many people credit to the belief that women are less human than men– that they lack the same intelligence, and that they can be owned as objects. However, crimes that run along this worldview often are in retaliation against the very personhood of women. Philosopher Kate Manne argues that men have come to expect certain things from women, such as “attention, admiration, sympathy, solace, and of course, sex and love”. It is not that men see women as objects incapable of free will and choices, it is that women often choose against their expected behavior. Men who kill and rape women for these choices are also often seen as less than human, but in reality, they are logically extending their beliefs about the role of women to the extreme, and punishing “bad women”, not acting on rage or insanity.

The oppressors of human rights and perpetrators of violence have always had some justification– the slaveholders with their extended Darwinism, the Nazis with their scientific terms for murder. This justification, however, would not have been necessary if they really did not see black people and Jews as human. The human capability for cruelty is worse than we’d like to think. Psychologically, as soon as we see another human being, they are a potential “true friend or beloved spouse”, or, more sinisterly, “and intelligible rival, enemy, usurper, insubordinate, betrayer”.  Human perception of other humans is what makes hate and cruelty possible– one could not be cruel to a rock, and even cruelty towards animals is seen as more severe when the animal is more humanlike. The attempted justification of this behavior shows that all perpetuators see their victims as human, and thus feel the wrongness of their actions on some level. The proposed science behind cruelty– that it was confusion or failure to see the victim as human, was kinder than the truth that seeing others as human is the cause for cruelty. At least with this explanation, cruelty could be corrected by a physical brain implant, or education or training. But if humans intentionally are cruel to other humans because they are humans, the solution is a lot more difficult.

 

Bloom, Paul. “The Root of All Cruelty?”. The New Yorker. 27 November 2017. Web. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/11/27/the-root-of-all-cruelty

Waldstein, David. “Astros’ Yuli Gurriel Escapes World Series Ban, but Will Miss 5 Games in 2018”. The New York Times. 28 October 2017. Web. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/28/sports/baseball/yuli-gurriel-apologizes-racist-yu-darvish.html?_r=0