Why We Demonize Others
And why the pandemic makes it worse
To demonize a person or collection of people is to think of them as evil. Putting others in that category seems to justify negative attitudes and destructive actions toward them.
Interestingly, demonizing assumes a moral universe within which good and evil not only exist, but vie with one another. According to the dictates of such a universe, evil must be condemned, overcome, and even punished. Many people fancy themselves arbiters of the whole process.
Yet few realize that they operate with these grandiose presuppositions when they denounce others for their opposing beliefs and behaviors. Even fewer could name a source for the moral imperative that allegedly authorizes them to police others.
The universal dichotomy
Every system of belief includes the notion that good stands in opposition to evil. Each offers a unique blueprint as to how good will/should overcome evil, or at least counter-balance and neutralize it. However poorly understood, this basic moral framework undergirds much of human thought and action.
It forms the basis for all religious and philosophical systems, embedded within respective cultures from which it spawns a wide variety of divergent worldviews and behaviors. In the Western…
