that “blame the outsider” mentality is why i think that the terms “native american” / “african american” etc, while unwieldy, were a good idea. they subconsciously reinforce that the groups are permanent part of the country and makes it a bit harder for us to perform the mental ‘exile’ ritual
your brain is hardwired into protecting your tribe. as such, given any problem, your body will head towards into believing that the problem is caused by a foreign presence in your tribe (for whatever that definition is in practice), and is best resolved by scapegoating that presence, and expelling it.
anytime you catch yourself thinking a sentence along the lines of “it’s the new hires fault”, or “i just need to get rid of this one part of my personality”, or “it’s the fault of this racial/religious/national group, we need them to go home”, well, you’re probably wrong. you’re just letting your brain go on easy mode and that’s the simplest response
it’s wrong because ‘tribe’ is usually the wrong metaphor for the situation. your body is not a collaboration of independent mental archetypes, and nations and workplaces are better served by rules, checks and balances, and inspections that keep order and guide even culturally new people into productivity and greater good.
it’s interesting how many cultures had (have?) actual scapegoating rituals where an animal, often a goat, would be ritually blamed for everything wrong in the tribe, then either slaughtered, or just thrown out. this was the origin of yom kippur, the greeks did it, so did african tribes. the greeks i think later upgraded to using slaves though since i guess those were cheaper than hooved livestock
it’s just frustrating to see the same stupid solution applied to everything over and over, on every scale, and knowing that it will not achieve anything besides keep splintering us into more fragmented mental concepts of “tribe”.
please attempt to force your brains into post-invention-of-agriculture states, plox.
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