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Othering: The Original Sin of Humanity
Othering is a word used in academic circles, but it may be unfamiliar to many laypersons. This work introduces the word, which is a refined way of describing prejudice, discrimination, and scapegoating. The book addresses what othering is, how it has been practiced in varied contexts, and how it prepares the way for violence. Dimensional anthropology is introduced, which is the idea that there are three main dimensions of reality as it is inhabited by human the vertical axis (the Great Chain of Being), the horizontal plane (society), and individual selfhood. Othering can be present within all three of these dimensions, with slavery being an example of vertical axis othering, ethnic violence being an example of horizontal othering, and lone wolf or psychotic shooters being an example of individual othering. The most thought-provoking aspect of the book for many readers will be its application to the culture wars in our current individualistic age. Rights language is also addressed at length, since it can function as anti-othering rhetoric or as rhetoric that supports othering. The largest framework for the book is its argument that othering is a way of illuminating what the theological tradition has understood as original sin.
201 pages, Kindle Edition
Published January 18, 2021
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September 30, 2023
Othering refines the ordinary ways of describing prejudice, discrimination, and scapegoating. The author elaborates on the othering concept by employing the categories of anthropology, history (by far the longest section), rights language, and theology. Each of these categories are related to the three main dimensions of reality as it is inhabited by human beings: the vertical axis (the Great Chain of Being), the horizontal plane (society), and individual selfhood. The upshot of the author's thesis is that othering is a way of detailing what in theology has been enunciated as original sin.
Othering is a refined way of describing prejudice, discrimination, and scapegoating's applied to the abortion debate and the language of rights. My first application of the author's intent was to consider contemporary political disagreements which may be a consideration for additional elaboration. For example, Obama, described others as clinging to guns and religion, and in related debates, the language of the deplorables, over heated rhetoric such as extreme MAGA Republicans, and an injustice system which targets political opponents. I think there is an extensive political critique but the focus of the work is on competing views of abortion.
The work centers around two questions (p. 9): why do human beings engage in othering? Can someone be sensitized to one form of othering but engaged in another form of othering without realizing it? The fact that disruption, complexity, and violence characterizes society is clear with the first question but adroitly the author insightfully applies the contradiction in pro-choice advocates who are desensitized to violence towards persons when alive as fetuses.
John Locke held that human beings, cannot legitimately believe that they have the authority to destroy other human beings. To believe that such violence is acceptable is to undermine the foundations of human rights. We need to see and protect the inviolability of the life of each human being as our guiding ideal.
From Christian writers, we understand that there are moral principles that have been articulated in the sacred scriptures that have already shaped human culture in a positive direction, and they will continue to do so in the future. If we claim to be on the side of freedom, while our actions are in reality, tyrannical and violent, then we can damn ourselves. We need to take seriously the concept that all human beings are created equal as our guiding ideal.
From first wave feminism, we are to learn that historic patterns of thinking that stratify the human race into higher and lower tiers are false ways of thinking. God created the human race in God's image, male and female he created them. For Martin Luther King Jr., we can learn that the passage of time does not bring about automatic moral progress in human history. Fallen and fractured human beings resist progress.
The teachings of the Bible and the philosophy of natural law are sure and solid foundations for criticizing the unjust laws and immoral practices that human beings support when they are allowing their spiritual stupor to place them in opposition to the call to real moral progress. Pro-choice advocates that arose out of the cultural crack up of the 1960s took the womb less, sexually irresponsible, wealthy, white male as its model, and insisted that abortion was necessary to gain equality with that model, the sort of man that men rightly condemn themselves. What we need is a different model, a Biblical way of defining success in the world. Jesus and Mary would be good places to begin. Love and nonviolence are two ways of saying the same thing, and bringing a child into the world, and raising that child with a loving heart is the way God works through us to heal fallen humanity.
The Bible takes the side of the victims, not oppressors; and the Bible writers concern for victims, gradually morphed over many centuries into rights language. As a result, the talk of freedom and liberation of society from the chains of religion is misguided. It is the Bible and religious adherents who leavened society and liberated trapped individuals, contra Rousseau.
Medieval debates and philosophy are not often thought of as the starting points for discussion of abortion but the author demonstrates the importance of these philosophical underpinnings. Thomas Aquinas began his understanding of reality with analogical thinking, meaning that our human language can use analogies in an attempt to describe God, but those analogies are always limited. God remains, ultimately mysterious, as the Ground of all being, God, is not one being among other beings, not even a supreme being, but the transcendent creator, the source of all that is. God cannot be placed in the genus of beings. Aquinas' thought is rooted in realism.
This starting of Aquinas' realism was rejected by William of Ockham. This view placed God and creatures, side-by-side, within the genus beings, although God is recognized as infinite, while creatures are finite. The thinking of Ockham lead to the school of thought, known as nominalism, which departed from the realism of Aquinas. It is nominalism that came to dominate Western thought in the late Middle Ages, leading up to the Protestant Reformation. Within the nominalist worldview, the universe consists of discrete and disconnected individual beings; there is no web of mutuality and interconnectedness rooted in participation with the transcendent Creator. These individual and disconnected things may become rivals and competitors to each other. This basic assumption applies also to the relationship between human beings and God; they come to be viewed as rivals who clash.
In the abortion debate, simply stated, the pro-life position is realist while the pro-choice option is nominalist. The realist remains in communion with, and subject to, God. The nominalist, on the other hand, views life as a conflict between powers with the dominant one winning out in the end.
The deepest paradox is that modernity is usually thought of as the age in which human beings have thrown off the shackles of ancient dogma, such as original sin, so that they can be free to move into the bright shining stream of upwardly mobile progress. The fruit of modernity ends up being stuck on the largely unseen dogma that reality is at its deepest level, violence, and must be responded to with more violence. The Enlightenment ideal of rationality should be seen as crashing down with the secularist ideologies of the 20th Century. Progress for the moderns is to manage violence which has proven elusive.
It is actually the concept of original sin that frees us from anxious, grasping after control, and the continuing need to convince ourselves of our own moral innocence. We are flawed beings, and it is the recognition of our own sinfulness that frees us from self righteousness, and opens up our spirits to the sort of people who see the beauty of life is to live lives of love towards all human beings. And all truly means all, including the inhabitants of the womb.
One other note of value is the abundant bibliography offered throughout the volume to elaborate on points drawn during the work for further reading.
Othering is a refined way of describing prejudice, discrimination, and scapegoating's applied to the abortion debate and the language of rights. My first application of the author's intent was to consider contemporary political disagreements which may be a consideration for additional elaboration. For example, Obama, described others as clinging to guns and religion, and in related debates, the language of the deplorables, over heated rhetoric such as extreme MAGA Republicans, and an injustice system which targets political opponents. I think there is an extensive political critique but the focus of the work is on competing views of abortion.
The work centers around two questions (p. 9): why do human beings engage in othering? Can someone be sensitized to one form of othering but engaged in another form of othering without realizing it? The fact that disruption, complexity, and violence characterizes society is clear with the first question but adroitly the author insightfully applies the contradiction in pro-choice advocates who are desensitized to violence towards persons when alive as fetuses.
John Locke held that human beings, cannot legitimately believe that they have the authority to destroy other human beings. To believe that such violence is acceptable is to undermine the foundations of human rights. We need to see and protect the inviolability of the life of each human being as our guiding ideal.
From Christian writers, we understand that there are moral principles that have been articulated in the sacred scriptures that have already shaped human culture in a positive direction, and they will continue to do so in the future. If we claim to be on the side of freedom, while our actions are in reality, tyrannical and violent, then we can damn ourselves. We need to take seriously the concept that all human beings are created equal as our guiding ideal.
From first wave feminism, we are to learn that historic patterns of thinking that stratify the human race into higher and lower tiers are false ways of thinking. God created the human race in God's image, male and female he created them. For Martin Luther King Jr., we can learn that the passage of time does not bring about automatic moral progress in human history. Fallen and fractured human beings resist progress.
The teachings of the Bible and the philosophy of natural law are sure and solid foundations for criticizing the unjust laws and immoral practices that human beings support when they are allowing their spiritual stupor to place them in opposition to the call to real moral progress. Pro-choice advocates that arose out of the cultural crack up of the 1960s took the womb less, sexually irresponsible, wealthy, white male as its model, and insisted that abortion was necessary to gain equality with that model, the sort of man that men rightly condemn themselves. What we need is a different model, a Biblical way of defining success in the world. Jesus and Mary would be good places to begin. Love and nonviolence are two ways of saying the same thing, and bringing a child into the world, and raising that child with a loving heart is the way God works through us to heal fallen humanity.
The Bible takes the side of the victims, not oppressors; and the Bible writers concern for victims, gradually morphed over many centuries into rights language. As a result, the talk of freedom and liberation of society from the chains of religion is misguided. It is the Bible and religious adherents who leavened society and liberated trapped individuals, contra Rousseau.
Medieval debates and philosophy are not often thought of as the starting points for discussion of abortion but the author demonstrates the importance of these philosophical underpinnings. Thomas Aquinas began his understanding of reality with analogical thinking, meaning that our human language can use analogies in an attempt to describe God, but those analogies are always limited. God remains, ultimately mysterious, as the Ground of all being, God, is not one being among other beings, not even a supreme being, but the transcendent creator, the source of all that is. God cannot be placed in the genus of beings. Aquinas' thought is rooted in realism.
This starting of Aquinas' realism was rejected by William of Ockham. This view placed God and creatures, side-by-side, within the genus beings, although God is recognized as infinite, while creatures are finite. The thinking of Ockham lead to the school of thought, known as nominalism, which departed from the realism of Aquinas. It is nominalism that came to dominate Western thought in the late Middle Ages, leading up to the Protestant Reformation. Within the nominalist worldview, the universe consists of discrete and disconnected individual beings; there is no web of mutuality and interconnectedness rooted in participation with the transcendent Creator. These individual and disconnected things may become rivals and competitors to each other. This basic assumption applies also to the relationship between human beings and God; they come to be viewed as rivals who clash.
In the abortion debate, simply stated, the pro-life position is realist while the pro-choice option is nominalist. The realist remains in communion with, and subject to, God. The nominalist, on the other hand, views life as a conflict between powers with the dominant one winning out in the end.
The deepest paradox is that modernity is usually thought of as the age in which human beings have thrown off the shackles of ancient dogma, such as original sin, so that they can be free to move into the bright shining stream of upwardly mobile progress. The fruit of modernity ends up being stuck on the largely unseen dogma that reality is at its deepest level, violence, and must be responded to with more violence. The Enlightenment ideal of rationality should be seen as crashing down with the secularist ideologies of the 20th Century. Progress for the moderns is to manage violence which has proven elusive.
It is actually the concept of original sin that frees us from anxious, grasping after control, and the continuing need to convince ourselves of our own moral innocence. We are flawed beings, and it is the recognition of our own sinfulness that frees us from self righteousness, and opens up our spirits to the sort of people who see the beauty of life is to live lives of love towards all human beings. And all truly means all, including the inhabitants of the womb.
One other note of value is the abundant bibliography offered throughout the volume to elaborate on points drawn during the work for further reading.
May 31, 2023
Reflections!
on
Othering
The Original Sin of Humanity!
I am a "grocers" son, and I learned from my dad the lesson of not practicing "othering".
He ran a grocery business and Dad told me from the very beginning that we did not talk about religion, race, and political views in the business or outside on the street. He said: "All who come through our doors are equal and deserve the same service." At his funeral were people of all races, economic status, and religions. He did not practice "othering".
The word "othering" is a trendy term in academic circles, an updated version of words such as prejudice, discrimination, difference, bias and scapegoating.
Othering defines and secures one's identity by distancing and stigmatizing another. Its purpose is to reinforce notions of our own "normality" and to set up a difference of an "other" as a point of deviance. It is a process of being 'other-ed", meaning marginalized, dis empowered, and excluded socially.
Othering is very visible in our nation in all of our divisions. We see it now in the political ads. The "haves' and the "have nots", all racial discrimination and so on.
In San Francisco it is seen as bright as the sun in the treatment of homeless, poor, people of color; especially in the Mayor' s statement on the drug use in the Tenderloin: "It is time we throw out compassion and use force to solve the problem," not looking at the causes around drug use, and compassionately working in that realm.
In the Haight my young adults are simply and completely ignored. Personally I experience "othering" day in and day out.
We begin "Pride Month" the first of June, raising up the LGBTQ and Questioning community. I will wear a LGBTQ tee shirt each day to remind others of our "othering".
So what can we do to bring us into a circle of differences, caring for each other, and working out all of the problems, from climate change to extreme poverty?
A prayer by Justin McRoberts says the best way of action of all:
"May I have the strange courage
to embrace a world
I know will hurt me,
offering myself to people
I know will let me down
and giving the best of my energies
to plans that will not work out.
I want to choose
to love the world as it is,
just as I know I am loved as I am.
Deo Gratias! Thanks be to God!
===============================
Father River Damien Sims, sfw, D.Min., D.S.T.
P.O. Box 642656
San Francisco, CA 94164
www.temenos.org
415-305-2124
----------------------------------
As of now I am planning to attend the following course, as my sabbatical as I enter our thirty years of ministry. I have not been accepted as of yet, and because of the political situation it may be cancelled, but there is hope! Would love for someone to join me in this adventure:
The thirteenth Annual INTERNATIONAL COURSE in INDIA
“Gandhian Nonviolence: Theory & Application”
COST: Tuition, Room & Board FREE (though donations are accepted); all other
expenses regarding travel to & from India, visas, healthcare, & other spending is
the responsibility each course participant. Once in India, a total personal expense
budget equiv. of $300 per month would be reasonable (less, if one is very frugal).
DURATION: 4 months (Sept. 30 th , 2023 thru Jan 30 th , 2024). A Course Diploma will
be issued in a final graduation ceremony at Gujarat Vidyapith.
LOCATION: Gujarat Vidyapith, a university founded by Mahatma Gandhi in 1920,
(see: www.gujarat vidyapith.org) will host the first 2 months of the course during
which International Students attend classes weekdays, have housing on campus,
are provided vegetarian meals, and are given access to exercise facilities including
a large indoor swimming pool (free of charge). Centered in the historic city of
Ahmadabad (pop. 7.7 million), the urban campus enjoys a mild autumn climate
and is near Gandhi’s Sabbatical (Satyagraha) Ashram where the 1930 Salt March
began. Faculty associated with India’s oldest Gandhi Studies Program will teach
the course while assuming little or no prior knowledge of Gandhi or India.
To better understand the application of Gandhian nonviolence theory to practice,
December and January will include course field trips involving 5-10 days each at a
Nephropathy Center, an Organic Farm, the Institute of Total Revolution at Vedchi,
the Gandhi Research Foundation at Jalgoan, and other experiential learning travel
opportunities. Students will be accompanied by the Course Coordinator and/or
another faculty member with transportation & on-site expenses free of charge.
ACADEMIC CREDIT can be earned via arrangements that may be made by each
student with an educational institution in their home country. Examples of
mechanisms which may exist to be utilized have included credits awarded for
“Independent Study”, “Cooperative Education”, “Service Learning Internships” or
other devices negotiated by a student with their home institution prior to their
departure to India. Such arrangements need not require MOUs for credit transfer.
APPLICATION
SEND TO: registrar@gujaratvidyapith.org with cc to: doctorjhaveri@gmail.com
NAME (First, Middle, Last): ____________________________________
Address: __________________________________________ Country: _________
Email: ___________________________ Cell Phone: ________________________
Brief Bio (including educational background & activist profile):
Why I am interested in taking this course:
SIGNATURE: __________________________________ Date: ____________
DUE DATE: May 31, 2023.
(If accepted, a $20
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