Humans tend to divide the world into tight groups. We identify with our family and friends. Loving and protecting them is easy for us. Thinking badly of them or rejecting them disgusts us, because we identify with them. We lack objectivity to judge them. It is one of the reasons so many people endure more than they should in abusive relationships from which they should flee.
These days I am reading a book that describes how the descendants of the Nazis live. Some denounced and rejected the acts of their parents. Others, however, failed to turn their backs on either their parents or their heritage of hatred. Gudrun Himmler, for example, was the daughter of Heinrich Himmler, the head of the SS, one of the most powerful people in Nazi Germany, a man who established and controlled the concentration camps. He led the killing of some six million Jews, in addition to that of millions of Soviet, Polish and Yugoslav civilians. The daughter, however, remains a faithful defender of the ideas and figure of her father.
Instead, we tend to create imaginary and equally un-objective distances from other humans. They are "the others." Among the many cognitive biases we suffer from is the tendency to see the straw in someone else's eye ... and not to see the beam in their own.
It is a universal flaw: psychologists explain that when we find fault with others we immediately feel better in comparison, and that we tend to have long memories and little patience with those who do not belong to our direct circle, but short memory and a lot of tolerance with ourselves.
That trend escalates any conflict.
One strategy to improve our coexistence with the rest of the world is this: when you reproach someone - «that selfish person wakes me up in the morning walking carelessly upstairs ...», «often hypocritical, he takes everything and never cares about others ... »- ask yourself:« Have I ever done this? ».
Remember that temporarily, when you get angry with others, your brain has trouble remembering all the times that you have done something similar. And that separates you from others, puts distance, complicates our coexistence.
In the 2nd century, a Stoic philosopher named Hierocles found a very simple and effective way to help us put ourselves in the shoes of others. Imagine a series of concentric circles: you are in the center, then there is your family, your friends, your neighbors, fellow citizens, compatriots ... The last circle is that of humanity.
Hierocles encourages us to try to feel comfortable in any of these circles, to bring them closer to us mentally, to walk through them. It invites us to remember that all circles are full of human beings like you and me, and that we should treat each other equally.
Thousands of years later, philosophy calls these "empathy circles." Fortunately, history shows that we distinguish less and less between circles, and that we are able to identify more with people of different sex, condition and cultures. Be part of the peaceful conquest that we are gradually achieving!