Other

So we want to be around people that are like us, and we make the people that are not like us, them.

Othering, which is related, obviously making us feel as if those are alien people that are not part of our particular tribe.

And then siloing, which I guess is kind of combining the two of those together.

Flesh that out for us.

That's how we bring meaning into our lives.

The dark side of it is it is also how we create groups of us versus them and start to tell ourselves that we... are distant when we may not be.

Othering, of course, as you said, when we put distance between us and them for whatever reason, and the reason doesn't have to be that meaningful.

Siloing is the stories we hear accurately and the stories we hear not so accurately because of who we feel is on our team and who we feel is not on our team.

And this is a show that goes back to our first season.

So John is the director of the Othering and Belonging Institute at the University of California, Berkeley.

He's a lawyer, a professor, a civil rights advocate, and really just a remarkable human being.

So in the episode, he unpacks the wisdom of a lifetime.

So that sort of involves a variety of facets.

So one of them is what we might call othering of someone.

Othering is not acknowledging or even seeing the core humanity in someone, the core dignity all humans have, or even the context that we all bring with us, the backstory.

It's seeing someone as alien to you, which of course allows you to justify treating them in a way you would not treat another human.

The other is that there's often a lack of restraint in incivility.

Completely released from the very idea there is otherness.

Ananyatvam.

Otherness is-- other word is ananyatvam.

Anyatvam is otherness.

Ananyatvam is the absence of anyatvam.

Um, and I hope that, you know, we get treated with a fair lens as opposed to people jumping to conclusions, 'cause I think that's one of the hard parts, and something we discussed so often during the filming of this, is the, is the sort of othering.

Mm-hmm.

Right? Othering is a big problem, not just in Canada, but in the West, of if you criticize anything, you're labeled very quickly a fa- a s- you know, whatever ter- whatever term is designed to-

Negatively

...

And I think, you know, all of us, I love that idea of you hold your identity Loosely enough so that when something comes at you, as is happening a lot in the world right now, that, you know, feels like it's threatening that or it's going to require you to change something, you can get through it without feeling like you are about to be destroyed.

And so much of what we're seeing, you know, the Otherness and Belonging Institute talks about in moments of change, rapid change, people sort of go inward, right? No, like I must keep myself safe.

And you begin to other and you, you know, that's where you get the vitriol and the anger because literally it's existential dread.

But if you can hold your identity lightly and say, well, I get to retell this story and I get to recreate myself in the face of whatever it is that's coming.

this guy.

Otherness is the problem.

That, that's what we gotta deal with, this, this idea that diversity is our strength, otherness is, uh, a, a given.

Otherness is the goal, it's the aim, it's the ambition.

We have to become a, a nation of otherness.

What is otherness? It's curry and, and cumin smelling, uh, uh, you know, stinking up your country.