This is certainly not a new topic within this blog although it has perhaps not been explicit for a while. I think the last time I waxed lyrical on Usandthemism was in this post. So many instances of this ‘disease’ crop up pretty much daily – and the problem is that most of the examples are far more complex and nuanced than most people are willing (or perhaps able) to perceive.
Straight away in this post I have a perfect example of where this could have been problematic even for me. There are many sources of wisdom to be found. A while ago I thought I had located one that resonated a lot with my ideas. However, that person then – seemingly – started to support things that I could not get my head round. It would have been easy to then dismiss this source and never again read anything he wrote. That, though, would have resulted in my missing much wisdom – such as these posts on substack.
It doesn’t take much thought to equate Two Sides-ism with Usandthemism of course. Where the writer (Charles Eisenstein) also won me round was when he wrote about his reasoning for seemingly going away from what I expected him to espouse and embody. In reality – and here I am assigning my own interpretation of his acts not in any way supported by his own words – he had sort of taken his own advice on how to work against two sides-ism and – while he did not necessarily agree with everything he was seemingly supported it gave him the opportunity to perhaps influence things in a way that would not have been possible if the barriers had remained up.
So often it seems that the default position in any discussion is adversarial. Be it partisan politics or hard-nosed questions from reporters or panels on TV (and I include things like Question Time here) it is almost always us and them – or more often “and them over there as well – and them ….”. Seemingly it is not possible for things to be couched in terms of unbiased and informed discussion. Better to get the other person’s back up and then we can have a good old rammy😂.
Think about how many situations you have seen recently where you heard someone blaming some “other” for something that they didn’t like. Immigration is, of course, an easy target for usandthemism – but as I said in the post linked above eventually “us” becomes “me” because in some way we are individuals who do not have too much in common with anyone else. Are we not all immigrants to a certain extent – unless we still live in the house where we were born. Country borders are in many cases pretty arbitrary. Laws governing who can migrate are probably even more arbitrary.
If someone moves (legally) from one country to another – how long, or how many generations perhaps – does it take before they stop being an immigrant. Those who move illegally are – rightly – in a different situation. However, even then the questions must be asked about why – are they fleeing persecution for instance.
Of course there are examples where it is right and proper to bar entry to a country, or a city, or a club – however that should never be simply because it is “one of them” and they must be banned. Stigmatising “them” is not going to help in any way – it will make “them” more likely to avoid any attempt at reconciliation and it will make “us” much more quick to put the blame on “them” for more and more of the ills of society that should be sorted in much more sensible ways.
Back in my first writing on usandthemism I touched briefly on politics and the tribes within the UK parliament. Watch any coverage and you are immediately greeted by the spectacle of (in many cases fake) antipathy towards the “other side”. I always thought that (grown up) debate was an art form where you scored points by the skill of your argument – seems that as far as our parliament goes (and it is also reflected in others) this is not the main purpose, rather it is to diminish the ideas, knowledge, character, whatever of whoever is “across the ballot box”.
Tonight I sort of witnessed the same thing from across the pond – although they do things a bit differently there. Regardless of the differences there was something in common that screamed at you. One side did not countenance any differences of opinion from the other. I have touched on some problems of this sort of parliament before I think, but when the split is always along party lines there must surely be something nefarious going on. Surely some (on both sides) are actually “in the middle” and could be swayed either way to ensure that a fair and just consensus is arrived at – rather than the ideas of (probably) a small proportion being supported regardless of whether they are good ideas or not.
As an aside, albeit an important one, the issues of truth, reality and others that I have written about recently loom large here because, in many cases, it is impossible to tell who is grounded in reality and who is simply espousing make-believe. (what is not said should also be considered)
Whether “One Big Beautiful Bill” is a good thing or a bad thing for the American people will play out over the coming months and years – I for one have no idea, although I suspect that if history is anything to go by it is not all good.
Probably more to come on this topic…