Us and them: Identity, nationhood and religion

Humans have evolved through pre-history to recognize friends from foes. The knowledge was a potential lifesaver. Being in the wrong place at the wrong time may have resulted in life lost. Friends were ‘us’, enemies were ‘them’. Individuals made marriage choices from ‘us’ and not ‘them’, unless they wanted to end up like Romeo and Juliet. ‘Them’ have no right to life, but can be killed without consequence, indeed with adulation. So, aboriginees, native Tasmanians, first Americans tribes and African bushmen could be wiped out without an uproar.

Have we learnt? World War 2 had a degree of them and us about it, which has been maintained in the infinite appetite for war films and books. Children’s stories have raised interesting angles. Elinor Brent Dyer, writing during the war, distinguished between good Germans and Nazis, and taught her pupils at the Chalet School the principles of working towards peace. Others were content to bathe in German gore. Michael Morpurgo asks ‘Friend or Foe?’ when children find a downed German bomber crew, one injured and the other who saved his life. Where should loyalties lie in such circumstances? After the war, it was assumed that the German and Japanese had a psychological disease from which they could be cured by education (I owe this insight to Wendy Toon). This was to turn ‘them’ into ‘us’ again.

Beyond all that local politicals, ‘us’ and ‘them’ have for long been decided by skin colour. The Victorians filled black and brown skulls with peas to try to provide that white skulls had greater capacity. They failed, so they invented the intelligence test, white biased of course. Racism influenced empire, marriage choices, educational opportunity and for many years even human rights itself. Declaring a race ‘sub-human’ had particular consequences in German Namibia and later Hitler’s Reich, where racial extermination became official national policy.

The half-century after world war 2 has seen a steady process of turning ‘them’ into ‘us’, with, we have to admit, not a little backlash. Probably, and hopefully, two hundred years from now, the entire world population will be various shades of brown and we will wonder what all the fuss was about. That is one thing at least that Star Trek was wrong about. Personally, I thought I was half Irish, half English, but found only recently that I am Anglo Scottish. Friends are British Muslim, British-Indians, British Pakistanis. Nationhood is essentially redundant, despite everything certain fringe political parties tell us. We are humans and world citizens. Full stop.

©Stephen Bigger 2008