The three principal questions everyone has when encountering something or someone new are (a) What’s familiar or “like me,” (b) What’s not familiar or not “like me,” and (c) What’s important about…. When it comes to people, the cliché has been, “Birds of a feather flock together.” Whether we’re talking about cultures, philosophies, or people, the main question is, what constitutes being “of a feather.”
One of the metaprograms in NLP is usually referred to as “same/different” or “match/mismatch.” This metaprogram addresses whether someone’s first tendency is to look for things that match or are the same as what he or she already knows or believes, or whether the first tendency is to look for what is different or doesn’t fit. One of the problems with the way this metaprogram is usually viewed is that the focus tends to be on superficial similarities and differences rather than on values—the “What’s important?” factor. In other words, how do you—and people in general—decide which factors to use in determining which characteristics fits the “like me” or “familiar” category and which belong in the “not like me” category? It seems to me that for most people the process of making this determination is less-than-fully conscious and often occurs before the characteristics themselves are evaluated.
The impetus for my pondering about this were recent news stories about the “Birthers,” those who question whether President Obama was born in this country, and Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour’s comments in support of the White Citizens Councils during the 1960s, when civil rights were reshaping the U.S. landscape. In his “I have a Dream” speech, Martin Luther King said that he had the hope that [his] four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. I had to wonder how it was possible that, of all the possible “like me” and “not like me” stuff that might be considered when looking at others, skin color (or ethnic background, or country of origin, or religious beliefs) could override everything else.
The obviously obvious is that skin color and gender are the two most visible physical characteristics of humans. Along about the time that Gov. Barbour made the news for his comments, I happened to be watching Gwen Ifill anchor the news for PBS. My thought was, “I have more in common with her than I do with Gov. Barbour—she is more ‘like me.'” That led me to wonder about how we decide what’s important when we encounter something new. Obviously, for some people, one characteristic or quality is the sole determining factor. And, in some cases, I can understand that. I have seen automobiles I would prefer not to own because I didn’t like their color. I would prefer not to eat certain foods because of taste, texture, source, or methods of production. The higher-order of importance in cases involving race (or ethnicity) and gender, however, is sentience (the ability to feel or perceive). Cars and most food (at least once it is prepared) don’t have feelings—they don’t care whether they are liked and accepted by humans. Broccoli doesn’t care whether President George H. W. Bush likes it.
Humans (and most other living things, to one degree or another) are another matter. When I was first in the Army, the chief chaplain (a colonel) at Ft. Campbell, Kentucky, where I was sent for basic training, said that it was OK to kill Vietnamese “because they didn’t have souls.” In retrospect, I wonder whether he really believed that, or whether he was simply doing his share to demonize the Vietnamese (primarily members of the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese, but his phrasing implied all Vietnamese) and defined them as “not like me.”
Defining “like me” and “not like me” is, of course, a staple of politics because it is already one of the things the brain is “hardwired” to do. In the early phases of our evolution, tribes marked out territories, and “our tribe” needed to protect our territory against incursions by “other tribes.” The divisions between men and women were marked out in basically the same way, with each having separate “territories” and some degree of demonizing the “other.” Once these concepts become ingrained, they passed from generation to generation through the process Don Miguel Ruiz refers to as “domestication.”
Through the centuries, wars have been fought for land and other resources and for the “hearts and minds” of others, to make them less “other” and more “us” or have them die in the process of resisting. This is the human amygdala at work. If “we” can persuade others that someone is “not like us,” their amygdalae (plural) generates a fear response, and we can use the fear to influence their behavior, whether by the way they vote or by being willing to go to war. Unfortunately, what worked for humans in small tribes going to war against their neighbors with rocks and spears, has become self-defeating as civilizations became more complex and weapons became more sophisicated. As Walt Kelly’s Pogo famously said, “We have met the enemy, and he is us.”
It seems to me that; rather than automatically allowing one aspect of a person, place, or thing to determine our course of action, we would do well to examine additional characteristics before deciding whether color (or other superficial qualities) or character (qualities that may not be immediately obvious to the eye) was more important. We may discover that being willing to delay judgment enriches our lives, not only personally, but also culturally. Policy decisions benefit by being made on the basis of rational goals and and proven strategies for achieving them. It is not as though we lack information about the consequences of past actions. As the saying goes, if we keep on doing what we’ve always done, we’re sure to get more of the same. A quotation often attributed to Einstein is, “Insanity is continuing to do what you’ve always done while expecting a different result.” Regardless of whether Einstein actually said it, the concept is worth noting.
One of the nice things about starting a new year is that it is a perfect opportunity to change unsuccessful patterns of behavior and change in ways that have a better chance of leading to results that will better serve our purposes.
