View from the North 40: A double-header fight of Them vs. Us, They vs. We

I’m not much into Them and They or Us and We, but the struggle between Them and Us and They and We has been growing in the last decade.

I heard it in town last week, a conversation about Them. The conversation, which did not include me, by its volume did not exclude me either. It filled the room with talk of They and Them as opposed to Us and We, and about how a grown man, one of Us, might become one of Them by virtue of proximity to too many of Them.

The problem with Them is that They don’t do things right or look right or think right or value right, you get the gist of it, which is to say They are unfamiliar.

The important thing to remember, apparently, is that They aren’t the Us’s and We’s.

That’s a real problem in that un-familiarity breeds more contempt than actual familiarity does.

We generally know who the Thems of the world are, whether we know them as Them or not. Here is, perhaps, some reassurance: If you are wondering, maybe worrying, whether you are one of Them, you probably aren’t. If you have to ask, it ain’t you.

The Thems know who they are, and most stay safely sorted into their respective groups according to color, weight, class, education, gender, beliefs, etc. Some overlapping of identities does occur.

Each of the Thems is like a Venn diagram — you know the diagrams with the overlapping circles. Each circle is labeled with a Them-ness identity that They have internalized. The circles overlap where They have a shared Them-nesses. The single quality shared by all the circles is to be labeled Them.

It’s a simple multi-layer system that helps the Thems internalize and re-live all that makes Them not one of the Us and We, so They will also want to stay apart from Us.

The science backs this up.

Us and We are a pretty cohesive group. We have differences, of course, but those differences aren’t a whole diagram away; it’s like having different color hair. It’s not much of a difference, the color changes over time, whether it’s sun-bleached in summer or turning gray over time. Or We’s can dye it to whatever We want, whenever We’s want.

I was raised to be Us, but even at a young age I felt that Us’s and We’s didn’t have enough room for me and my awkward social skills. I felt more like a Them, but without anyone in my circle. So I was just Me, working to find my Thems and to shed my Us-before-Them thinking, which always is a work in progress.

I have a small clan of Thems, but mostly I have been fortunate enough have met a lot of You who I value as much as my own Thems, and this is a pretty comfortable place. Or so I thought.

I’ve thought for some time that the Us’s and We’s have laid siege to the Thems and Theys, who have sheltered in place, protected by sturdy barricades and a system of underground tunnels to access their needs outside the walls.

As I listened to that conversation, I thought, “That’s the trouble with Us’s, they’re so self-righteous. They lump everybody who isn’t them into the same category, as if Thems aren’t all individuals like We's are, with the same needs as Us's.”

At that point, the whole argument in my head turned inside out. I was calling Us’s Theys and Thems We — as if they were interchangeable.

It occurred to me, then, that at their heart, every Them group is their own Us.

It isn’t two sides Us and Them, we’re all Us’s and we’re all Thems depending on our perspective — looking out from our own position, or looking into someone else’s.

The Us vs. Them argument is invalid.

I think I had it right before, as a kid. Life should be about Me and You, all of You and all Me.

——

It's just a more complicated way of saying what the three musketeers said with all for one and one for all at http://www.facebook.com/viewfromthenorth40 .