Monday, October 28, 2024

The Others

This is related to Eli 23.2s Master's thesis (which I can't tell you about yet), but in thinking about it, I had an adjacent idea of my own.

Everyone knows about "othering" by now. It's a classic tactic in politics (largely used by one party, at the present moment). 

What I don't think people realize, though, is that there's a component of othering related to myth.

Othering is now being used to to separate people into humans and monsters. Non-white immigrants? Monsters. Transgender people? Monsters. It's not just that they're "others," they're not even human.

In other words, they have a mythic status. 

Why would you turn other groups into monsters the level of myth? Well, who slays monsters in myths?

Heroes.

So if you can make a group of people into monsters, it makes "sense" that you'd need a hero to come in and save the humans.

That's some twisted, dark shit at work.

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