Classic Ways To Otherize

Culture is the most hard-to-define part of an organization. At the very least, it consists of the relationship between expectations and tendencies within a group of people. These expectations develop over time as unwritten rules of correctness. 

Any religion can get easily lost in group culture because culture is heavily influenced by constraints that the group has to manage such as economic resources, power dynamics, and sese of self (which is a factor of acceptable freedoms and sense of identity). Culture can develop as a mindless reaction to these constraints or it can be engineered to decenter from a survival mode of battling these constraints towards transformation through defining ideals and collaborating in creative imagination in transcending these constraints. 

For instance, instead of a church saying homosexuality is wrong based on constraints of the olden days that pressured ethnic groups, who felt that population created more power and thereby produced heirs to expand their armies, we may now confront these constraints as no longer real as wars are no longer won by size of armies but by technology and so technology advancement has provided insight into how optimization of ways of mining intelligence in society is crucial such that inclusion of LGBT people through democratic means and equal opportunity in fact gives a society more advantages. 

Exclusion used to be the prescription to make it easier to create boundaries and define allegiance to a nation, a crown, or an ethnicity and determine loyalty.  This called for the exclusion of larger and larger groups of people for establishing trust and security making trusted circles smaller and smaller for easier determination and definition of common interests goals to rally around. Again, those times are gone. Ethnicities are now more porous with people traveling more than ever before and intermarriages not just more possible but more appealing as even social media helps us become more familiar with each other. The 6 egrees of separation is now considerred to have shrunk to 3.5 or something close to that number, at least on Facebook. 

Yet, some people have not lost the propensity to create a smaller circle of trust. In my country, we have long practiced porousness of culture staving off ethnic conflicts among our more than 100 ethnicities.  We have a long history of free travel, radical welcome, and intermarriages such that the cultural predilection towards people who are "impure", or has foreign genes remain intact over centuries.  Justification of fears of the foreign include feelings of safety especially when resources have to be conserved properly, as if people are simply consumers or objects and not producers of both goods and culture. 

Here's a few insidious tricks of defining "other" people as threats subtly creating "safety circles" that in fact create its own monsters and enemies by doing so.  Before people can actually exclude others, they must follow these basic steps.  

Step One: Act benign: Publicize your gardening, sewing, weaving activites, activities that make you look like you can be alone without a single carbon footprint or, take it a step further, don't even create an imprint on the politics of those around you.  You have no evident personal ambitions but to support the organization goals, you tend to avoid rank and accountable positions. Cultural influencers know that rank is unnecessary and conversations are key.  Don't upset the order of things, support leaders, be non-confrontational, don't take sides. Do'n't rock the boat. Shock is to be avoided. 

Step Two: Be empirical: Objectivity is the foundation of Western Civilization. That means don't take sides, be professional, not personal. For whatever that means and from whatever lens you are taking in the experience, the evaluation, and the articulation of expressions, behavior, personalities, styles, rhythm, and sense of the world your collagues might be demonstrating, is measured by standards that are time-tested and established to be real and true. Politeness, manners, correctness, and rightness are all truly obvious fair measurements of experience. This is a logical next step to Step One. Avoid shock and show no emotion when ariculating your objectivity.  This is how credibility is established, having no personal stake but only the good of the human race, because, yes, you can speak for the whole human race, can't you?

Step Three: Act concerned: Give voice to what is politically correct. Show up, provide acts of service, lead committees and intiatives, give money, and invest in the organization. Better yet, buy the organization by outdoing any other donor.  Now you own the life force! What you say matters now and they don't want to lose you. No one wants to lose a big sum in one go, pun intended.  The organization will now measure initiatives and actions based on whether you, the biggest bet, can understand it or not.  Your comprehension becomes the measure of all things. Then if you act concerned, it becomes treated as the concern of the entire human race. 

Step Four: Prescribe Caution:  The only logical next step to Step Three. What is concern without a word of caution especially if it sounds empirical and wise.  And when we say wise, we mean ancient or well-accepted or time-tested. Examples of well accepted cautionary words include concerns about how feelings will be affected because feelings are weird objects we dont' want in our beings.  It also includes caution on how the organization may suffer because organizational self-preservation, as we learned from the Catholics, makes organizations endure even it is at the cost of integrity, which is harder to measure anyway compared to donations. Caution is enough. People don't usually push for conversations that confront these dangers, the mere mention of it is enough to stop silly change initiatives that are a bottomless pit anyway.

Step Five: Draft Sweeping Policies:  Here is what separates the amateurs from the pros. Policies make covenants clear, especially because interpreting them through time and its changes can be guaranteed by a few credible individuals in the organization. I mean, talk about credentialing, professionalizing, formalizing, and plans.  I mean why gain the trust and allow a leader to be swept by the changing tide of public discourse when you can shut it down with fancy end-games. You don't have to even consult and open participation of stakeholders if it comes from a good intentions, right? Why don't you announce a huge improvement in inclusion, say exclusion has diminished significantly with people in the know now in charge of better strategies. Policies do not need conversations that can be nasty and out of control. When you can just listen to official representatives of sectors, you may disregard the outliers and renegades within. Policies define that uniform treatment is fair treatment.

Step Six: Dominate the Story:  There is nothing more confusing than a complex story. We love intersectionality but we can only proceed incrementally so it is important to think only one step forward each time. The United Nations is a bad idea right? They are so inept, so obviously that kind of representation does not address the fact that some oppressions are worse than others. We cannot focus on all of them at the same time! Every story has only one set of villains or a singular villain only and we need to simplify to make history happen. The mind can only take so much. Sorry for the sectors that need to be sacrificed at this time, they are not as urgent as the most urgent especially if you only look at one singular villain's mark  Who cares about the seven dwarfs if Snow White is dead!

Following these does not automatically define otherizing people, but these steps can be used to otherize people. It's like praying does not necessarily make strangers of others, but it can be used to do so. The key to inclusion is conversation and attention. Turn your attention away from the center of power and pay more attention to the others, more imporantly, engaging in deep conversations with them.