Talk:Dehumanization

Text removal

Text described by The Anome as weird paranoid stuff and removed by him/her:

The empirically supported propaganda model of Herman and Chomsky shows how corporate media are able to carry out large-scale, successful dehumanization campaigns when that is in the interests (profit-making) that the corporations are legally obliged to maximise. Government-controlled media, in either democracies or dictatorships, are also capable of carrying out dehumanization campaigns, to the extent with which the population is unable to counteract the dehumanizing memes.

i'm putting this back in. If the Anome or anyone else wants to claim that empirical research is paranoid, then please actually read the research by Herman and Chomsky first. It's not paranoid, it's empirical research (external to the wikipedia) which has a simple explanation. Boud 18:27, 17 December 2005 (UTC)

I am not sure if this is a flavour of dehumanisation, but do the following situations qualify as cases of it?:

• Scruffy homeless person collapses in railway station; people ignore him, give a wide berth and carry on their buisness.
• A car driver shouts abuse at another motorist who got in his way; he would be be more polite if he encoutered the same person on a pavement who bumped into him.
• Some people engage in internet trolling but are polite and helpful to members of the community they interact with directly.

In each case an individual or group is treated with disdain or contempt under specific conditions. In general, people behaved less compassionately in large crowds or where anonymity or lack of reprisals applied. If this is a topic of dehumanisation, it should be added to the article.--ChrisJMoor 03:19, 14 January 2006 (UTC)

I wasn't sure on where the sources were, but a classmate of mine could have used some... isn't there a reference section? (I wrongfully called for sources on deindividuation, meant for this article).

In any case... yeah.

In a sense, technology can cause an illusion of dehumanization either by eroding the traditional privacy in our daily lives or by informing us of how the progress of science and rationalism tends to challenge our comforting notions of religion and humanity. The loss of privacy, especially that due to information technology, when shared by all, is not viewed as dehumanizing per se. In the extreme, posting everyone of ourselves in MRI scan, nude and accompanied by our genotype, would not dehumanize any one person, but it be viewed by some as dystopic as in the film The Man with the X-Ray Eyes. In the case of religion, for instance, the progress made by Nicolaus Copernicus (and Galileo Galilei), Hilaire Rouelle, Charles Darwin, Sigmund Freud and James D. Watson or even Hippasus was met with negative emotions in the fashion of the Luddites because such progress via science shattered naive notions that have been conceived of based on emotions such as Narcissism and, to a lesser degree, the many implications of creationism and benevolence. Freud, in particular, gave us a better understanding that our logical conscious and our emotional unconscious were in a dynamic equilibrium with each other, thereby challenging prior notions about what makes any one person's action or decision not strictly rational and not more or less dehumanizing. In that same sense, the Internet and society itself can appear to be dehumanizing if we allow it to make us to feel like a small and replaceable component of some larger machine. If we were treat others as if they were such, then that would be dehumanizing on our part.

Is it just my interpretation, or does this entire paragraph seem to be loaded with biases? For instance, by stating in the first sentence that technology causes an 'ilusion' of dehumanization, it arguably dismisses any notions that genuine dehumanization can be caused by technology. Several statements throughout seem to be worded in a fairly biased manner, such as regarding beliefs held prior to certain scientific discoveries as naive notions that have been concieved of based on emotions such as Narcissism, which appears to infer that all primitive attempts to understand our surroundings were motivated by a desire to place ourselves in a state of central importance to the world (the context of narcissism here seems to be used in a disparaging manner, at least to me). It would also seem that by saying that Freud gave us a better understanding of the human mind presents his ideas on the unconscious as indesputable. However, I would like to have other interpretations on this. 74.67.115.198 05:19, 14 August 2007 (UTC)

To clarify, I am by no means trying to propose that technology is inherently dehumanizing, or to deny that, if looked at in a certain way, certain discoveries could be interpreted as devaluing human importance, or to ignore the adverse effects that certain religous traditions have had on society. All I am trying to bring to question is whether or not this paragraph infers that ceratin technological advances only appear to have dehumanizing effects, that certain discoveries will always lead people to find their lives less meaningful, that religous tradition is inherently unreasoning, or if any other personal opinions are presented as fact, if the alleged biases are in fact lacking in evidence enough to be considered personal opinions. 74.67.115.198 06:08, 14 August 2007 (UTC)

Dehumanization in Psychiatry

Does anybody agree that people with a psychiatric diagnosis are being discriminated against in a dehumanising way? By Psychiatrists and hospital/medical staff in as far as decisions are taken out of their hands. By drugs in as far as their way of thinking is being changed. Not all people who are mentally ill have a psychiatric diagnosis, and not all people with a psychiatric diagnosis are mentally ill. In the latter case, hardly ever mistakes are admitted. It is not morally sustainable to keep a patient lethargic on potent drugs for years in order not to have to deal with the complications, and it is not morally sustainable to force anybody to take medications that are controversial in themselves, like many antipsychotics are. In psychiatric wards a lot of assertive suspicion against the patients is exercised 'just in case', no due respect is paid to the individual, and if there is anything that could reasonably be still tailored to the individual in the age of mass production, that is the so called 'healing of the soul', psych-iatry. Something very dubious is going on with all this systematic sedating, tranquilizing, calming, stabilising, etc. Fluttermoth (talk) 01:28, 1 May 2009 (UTC)

Incorrect Text or Vandalization of Article?

Is the following text properly part of the article? I think I've run across something similar intending to show the baseless nature of dehumanization of sub-populations by using an example with which we are all familiar in our lives (at least in North America) so the intent may not be malignant. Perhaps someone associated with the article should look at it. As it is, it either needs further information by way of explanation or removal.

"Furthermore, sub-minorities of the Caucasian population can be the subjects of dehumanization by the "accepted" majority. One such sub-minority are people with red hair and fair skin which have been the subject of dehumanization in both public and private arenas. A recent music video by MIA depicts the rounding up of red-headed young men by commandos who were later shot and forced to run through a mine field. The graphic nature of the music video has sparked public controversy and the detail of violence on red-heads alone within the film may justify public suspicions that red-heads already represent an additional minority-target of public dehuminization."

I notice the article seems to avoid mentioning a number of situations where a group of which I am a part is, in my lived experience, severely dehumanized to the point of being at risk in some countries of mass violence at some point or other. One is ambivalent about this omission, but perhaps it is better this way since such mentions would inexorably mire the article in controversy that would not necessarily be beneficial to getting the pure concept understood by as many people as possible. Yet somehow, the omission is disquieting for moral reasons. I wonder how this might be handled?--FurnaldHall (talk) 18:39, 24 August 2010 (UTC)