Unfamiliarity Breeds Contempt

This is, of course, true of more than just the fear, hatred, cruelty and neglect we show animals. It is true of almost every creature, human and other, we fear, despise, and mistreat. We hate and fear ëterroristsí because we are not exposed to the plight that so many people in struggling nations live with every day, which seeds the desperation their actions manifests. The suicide bombers hate and fear us in return because they donít know us, donít know that weíre not just shallow, amoral, mindless consumers prepared to destroy the planet, and their home, to meet our arrogant and insatiable materialistic appetites.

English-speaking and the French-speaking Canadians have never got along well, largely because most of us wonít or canít talk with each other, and donít see just how much they have in common.

The old fear the young, and the young fear the old, because they have so little contact with each other. Except for those who have regular contact with them, we fear those who are physically and mentally disadvantaged, because we don’t know how to relate to them, don’t know what they’ll do.

The poor hate and/or envy the rich, and the rich fear that the poor will steal from them, or worse.

And we all fear nature — from the farmer paranoid about coyotes and poultry flu to the city-dweller paranoid about mosquito bites, bacteria and viruses. So we poison coyotes with agonizing strychnine, trap ‘vermin’ with torturous leg-hold traps, kill millions of factory-caged birds rather than adopt responsible, sustainable farming practices, and spray our homes and lawns with toxic chemicals that destroy ecosystems and poison every creature that comes near them, including ourselves.

It is in our nature to fear and shun what we do not know. Discretion is the better part of valor, after all, and creatures who are cautious tend to outlive those who are rash in confronting the unknown. Our dislike of people who are different and unfamiliar has a second Darwinian advantage: It increases the genetic heterogeneity and physical separation of tribes and hence reduces the spread of communicable diseases.

In the crowded modern global village, however, this Darwinian advantage becomes a disadvantage: Although we are in physical proximity with different cultures, we don’t mix with them and hence don’t know, distrust and often end up in conflict with them. Our economic and military reach vastly exceeds our cultural grasp, so we pass and exercise judgement on other cultures (often with the best of intentions, though sometimes not) without understanding what we are doing or the effect of our reckless presumption that everyone shares our goals, ideals and values. Our intolerance of those who are not like us makes us angry, hateful, violent, distrustful, paranoid, and ultimately numb and indifferent to the suffering of ‘others’.

And as we lose touch with nature, and become disconnected from all life on Earth, we forget who we really are, and we destroy the natural world and all its creatures without knowing or caring what we are doing.

This destruction of ‘otherness’, of heterogeneity, of difference, is a vicious cycle: Lack of diversity means we have less opportunity to meet and see and appreciate cultures, creatures and environments different from our own, so we become even more distrustful of them, and indifferent to them. The conservative dream of one single global culture, all of us indistinguishable from each other, and of one single species squeezing out all others’ rightto exist, is the world of the Borg — with zero diversity comes zero tolerance.

The death of nature, and of culture.