21: Dehumanization

Dehumanization involves regarding other people as being less than or other than human as a means to avoid feeling guilty for neglecting or abusing them.

It's generally easier to dehumanize someone if they are different from oneself: those of different age, gender, race, religion, social class, and the like are reduced to stereotypes who are devoid of rational thought and follow assumed patterns.

Uniforms are a method of dehumanization: when we see someone in the uniform of a waiter, a clerk, a police officer, a soldier, or any other profession that wears a uniform, we do not see them as an individual but as a type of person, a kind of automaton whose behavior is constrained to his role.

The author cites a few examples: a rioter who crippled a police officer and the victim of a rape who talked to her assailant to gentle his attach. While dehumanization is common among violent criminals, it is by no means limited to them. Supposedly "decent" people dehumanize others routinely as well.

Dehumanization is common in the medical profession, to prevent doctors, nurses, and healthcare providers from feeling too attached to patients, particularly the terminally ill, to avoid suffering the grief of their loss. The author observes that nurses often refer to patients by their condition rather than their name, such as "the stroke in bed six."

The Stanford Prison Experiment is an infamous study in dehumanization, in which a group of students was divided into prisoners and guards and quickly became hostile to one another - not only dehumanizing their fellow students but themselves as well, falling into their roles, and quickly shedding any sense of human decency. (EN: Which seems a form of "inauthenticity" as discussed previously.)

Dehumanization is a common tool of political propaganda: after splitting a society into "us" and "them" a politician will dehumanize "them." The Nazi party's propaganda dehumanized the Jewish people, just as the Democratic party's propaganda dehumanizes businessmen today.