Dehumanization in the Internet World
Welcome to the World of High-Tech Group-Think
Dehumanization is a process whereby humans treat other humans without common dignity, civility, or any other traits which hint at a recognition of those persons as equally human on a fundamental level; dehumanization strips people of their human status and renders them objects or animals, thereby absolving the dehumanizing party of the responsibility of living up to their moral and ethical responsibilities.
If the term “dehumanization” sounds eerily dark, that’s because it is. It’s essentially the psychological mechanism that hides behind the masks which are the faces who’ve committed the worst atrocities, things like The Holocaust and public lynchings, things like senseless murder, all are carried out by agents who’ve successfully rendered, at least in their own minds, the party they aggress to be inhuman.
Dehumanization, it has been said, is a curious little loophole in our otherwise sound ethics, through which we allow ourselves the ability to hurt other people without holding ourselves to any sort of moral standards. After all, if someone isn’t really a human being, do the responsibilities we have towards other human beings really apply to them?
Victim blaming is a classic example of dehumanization, where the victim is blamed…
