The manifesto is published in Atlantis Magazine issue #36.2

Othering

When we skim the news headlines, see someone on the streets, look at a new movie poster, our brain groups these daily experiences into categories and simplifies our complex world. This helps us to react quickly and effectively to new things, based on biases we’ve built throughout our lives. Turns out, humans are not the only animal capable of doing this. Mice do surprisingly well at categorizing patterns, even when presented with new sorting rules, just like what humans do when learning new information (Reinert et al., 2021). 

The impulse to divide and classify is not a flaw, it is a cognitive function. But when these divisions harden into moral hierarchies, they begin to shape how we imagine our neighbors, our cities, and our borders. We live inside imaginaries that reward division and give attention to unity through common enemies. Nation-states are organized around borders. Economies are organized around competition. Digital platforms are organized around sorting and amplification. Political movements often organize around opposition. These are not neutral systems. They cultivate habits of othering. “The act of treating someone as though they are not part of a group and are different in some way” is the definition of othering according to Cambridge Dictionary (figure 1). This process of division feels so natural, we often do not recognize ourselves as active participants in this process. 

This manifesto begins with a refusal of that comfort. It refuses othering as a passive act, and invites us to reflect, to see patterns of othering, to become more critical and conscious in the way we imagine our world.

figure 1: othering. Illustration created by author

“Hell is other people”

“Hell is other people” is a famous line from No Exit (1944), a philosophical play by the French existentialist Jean-Paul Sartre (1905-1980). It is frequently misunderstood as a rejection of social life. Sartre’s insight was more subtle: we suffer when we are reduced to simplified versions of ourselves through someone else’s gaze. We are flattened into “the funny one,” “the difficult one,” “the smart one.” These labels stabilize social interaction and make us legible at the cost of complexity.

We participate in this reduction as much as we suffer from it. We resent being misrepresented, we are so much more than they will ever know. Yet, we routinely make others less real, less full, less contradictory than ourselves. First impressions matter, we say. And often they do. We judge by the first words spoken, the first gestures made. These labels are hard to shake. When we realize, or rather remind ourselves, that others are as complex as we are, that they carry histories we cannot see, contradictions we cannot immediately reconcile, and inner lives as dense and fragile as our own, the ease with which we sort them begins to falter. The pause between assumption and understanding widens the possibilities for cooperation through mutual respect, by seeing each other's values and where they are coming from. 

Would I be able to understand my worst enemies?

Moral indignation

“The surest way to work up a crusade in favor of some good cause is to promise people they will have a chance of maltreating someone. To be able to destroy with good conscience, to be able to behave badly and call your bad behavior 'righteous indignation' — this is the height of psychological luxury, the most delicious of moral treats.” - Aldous Huxley, from his introduction to Samuel Butler’s book, Erewhon

Be careful of those who view their own people as the “pure ones”, or believe that their group alone embodies righteousness. As Bertrand Russell (1954) argues, when we sort humanity into saints and sinners, pure and impure, we create a moral framework that allows groups to justify punishing whatever they dislike. Moral certainty becomes a license to inflict cruelty on the other. We should be able to argue with a neighbor and still treat them with respect. But when someone labels others as monsters, degenerates, or subhuman, the goal is justification for violence that follows (Thomson, 2025). Dehumanization prepares the ground for harm. As Russell suggests, cruelty becomes masked as justice; aggression is reframed as moral duty. 

Othering is the infrastructure that makes this possible. Whether this leads to war and genocides that “have to happen”, lynching and murders, segregation of your neighbors, or even “just” bullying your classmates, it does not help to make the world a better place. As Simon Longstaff (2022) puts it: “Instead of tormenting others for their own good — and, perhaps, for the good of the world — the virtuous will seek to engage and persuade, exemplifying (rather than subverting) the ideals they seek to promote. If ever there is to be a “Republic of Virtue”, it will have no place for the righteously indignant.”. In other words, we can and should disagree without dehumanization and have conflicts without cruelty. This starts by refusing the act of othering and the framing of the world in absolutes.

How can we be good if they are not bad?

Moral crusaders in the age of digitalisation and the power of friendship

In the age of digitalisation, we like to share our lives and our opinions on the internet. Sitting in our room with a small light-up screen in front of our faces, it has become easier to say whether we agree or disagree with an issue. It is also easier to be judged by our views as it is to be excluded from other views. Ingroups and outgroups multiply through algorithmic polarisation. Moral certainty becomes contagious and simplifies narratives into heroes and villains. It has become so easy to be trapped in echo chambers, and at the same time we see the rise of a loneliness epidemic. Maybe, as we harden our boundaries of what we accept in the world, it becomes harder to sustain care across differences. Remember, we are all as complex and contradictory as we are. We should take friendship seriously, they offer us an open window into a different world and interrupt the ease of caricature.

But what if the difference turns into the defense of cruelty? When someone justifies violence or denies the humanity of others, we can no longer move towards a collective future. To sustain care across differences is not to tolerate harm. It is to refuse dehumanization. It is to insist that before anyone was an opinion, they were a person. If we are serious about dismantling othering, then friendship is not sentimental—it is structural. It is one of the few spaces where complexity survives flattening. It demands patience without disposability and allows disagreement without erasure.

Friendship rehearses another form of power. We have inherited an imagination of power as domination—power over. It is embedded in statecraft, warfare, economic competition, and cultural supremacy. It assumes that coherence requires exclusion, that unity requires an enemy. History is full of alliances forged through opposition. “The enemy of my enemy is my friend.” These coalitions can be effective, especially when the enemy is abstract: corruption, degeneracy, impurity. But unity built on fear requires constant maintenance. It must continually identify threats, amplify danger, and justify aggression. Energy is spent sustaining outrage.

There is another possibility: unity organized around a shared practice of care. Agreement-based unity does not depend on hostility. It does not require inventing the other. It sustains itself through attraction rather than repulsion. Friendship shows us this difference at a small scale. Two people remain close because they share curiosity, affection and trust. They negotiate, listen, and disagree without dissolving the relationship. In friendship, power becomes the capacity to act with.

If othering fragments power by organizing it around fear, collective agency must organize differently. Not around who we oppose, but around what we want to protect and build.

We are all in this together

Othering is pessimistic, it assumes the worst in people. If you are familiar with the Golem Effect, you will know that such assumptions can become self-fulfilling prophecies. When we expect less from others, we subtly shape the conditions that make those expectations more likely to come true. Suspicion breeds defensiveness and distrust invites withdrawal.

Rutger Bregman (2023) argues that most people are decent and fundamentally inclined toward cooperation and care. He suggests that trust is generative. When we assume good intentions, we create the possibility for them to emerge. Empathy resists othering because it interrupts the cycle of projection and fear. Care, in this sense, is more realistic than cynicism.

Perhaps the deepest form of othering lies in how we separate ourselves from other animals. We coined the term “creature” just to mark this self exclusion (figure 2). Depending on culture, region, and tradition, some animals are considered food, some family, and some disposable. Through language like “livestock,” “pests,” or “ man’s best friend,” we determine their moral worth.

figure 2: definition of creature. The author is the creator of this collage and retains all rights to the images included.

This manifesto is not an argument for moral purity, but for awareness. We share the same system of life. When we other animals absolutely, we rehearse the same logic that allows us to other humans selectively. The boundary is never as stable as it appears. To move collectively is to recognize entanglement. An imaginary of separation cannot sustain collective agency.

To practice equality is to begin with perception: to refuse the flattening of others and to stay in relation even when distance feels easier than care. Radical courage is the quiet decision to resist easy opposition and to question one’s own side when it drifts toward dehumanization. From there, practice must scale. We can imagine cities, schools, and digital spaces designed for inclusion and dialogue rather than outrage. We are entangled. The future depends on whether our imagination can catch up, and whether we dare to organize our power, not around fear, but around shared care.

If we want futures rooted in collective power, we must practice them now. And that decision begins with how we choose to come together.

By the power of friendship!

 figure 3: the power of friendship :D The author is the creator of this collage and retains all rights to the images included.

Acknowledgements

Some philosophical insights in this work were inspired by Johnny Thomson’s Mini Philosophy social network. His efforts made philosophy accessible in a way that allowed me to discover the names of thinkers and theories I could explore independently, providing a foundation for much of the research and reflection contained in this manifesto.