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othering

concept · in 55 videos (2007–2026)

Imagining a group as fundamentally different, a 'them' rather than part of 'us'; in 2008 John argued that global poverty is not a 'them' problem but an 'us' problem.

Videos by year: 2007: 1 · 2008: 3 · 2009: 3 · 2010: 3 · 2011: 2 · 2012: 2 · 2013: 2 · 2014: 5 · 2015: 9 · 2016: 5 · 2017: 3 · 2018: 5 · 2019: 3 · 2020: 2 · 2024: 1 · 2025: 5 · 2026: 1

Also known as: us and them, treating people as a them

Also named in the threads: John asks Nerdfighters to make candle-of-hope videos for Rwanda (2009)

Questions

Often together

What comes up in the same parts of the videos; the number is how many parts.

Save the Children (6) · United States (13) · aid effectiveness (2) · empathy (3) · malaria (3) · Europe (4) · extreme poverty (3) · global health (2) · Donald Trump (3) · United States presidential election (2)

What the videos say

The most important statements of each year; all statements.

2007

  • 2007-06-29 · How to be a Microfinancier Part 2 — Hank admits, ashamed, that he was surprised the poverty-stricken women turned out to be people with a community, doing much of what we do except things that cost money. — 00:01:26
    • Hank rejects the impression from TV commercials that poor people are too sad and downtrodden to relate to: they are just people in horrible situations. — 00:01:55

2008

  • 2008-04-08 · Nerdfighting in Bangladesh — John: Guilt works and is probably the best way for charities to raise money, but the ads make viewers think the poor are fundamentally different, a 'them'. (hedged) — 00:01:22
    • John argues global poverty is not a 'them' problem but an 'us' problem: we should help, but it is us we need to help. — 00:01:22
    • John says Nerdfighters taught him over 15 months that there is no them, only facets of us: every imagined 'them' turned out to be part of us. — 00:02:20
    • The children Shawn works with may not know in-your-pants jokes, speak English or have fast internet, but they are still part of us. — 00:02:20
  • 2008-04-10 · Barack John Obama Green — Hank: Watching John's video from the day before, Hank noticed it sounded familiar, and he intercuts John's 'us problem' lines with Obama's speech. (playful) — 00:00:55
    • Hank recalls being taught in school the hierarchy of needs: people lacking basics like housing and food don't care about higher levels such as social status and self-realization. He says that is totally untrue. — 00:01:57
    • Hank says the hierarchy was made by someone who never faced the first need; lacking food does not make you an animal who doesn't care about others or doing good, it means you can't do those things. — 00:01:57
  • 2008-11-05 · On Loving One Another or Dying — John says people who disagree with you are not evil, do not want to destroy America, and are neither terrorists nor fascists, but complicated people who contain multitudes. — 00:02:24

2009

  • 2009-03-15 · Lighting a candle for Rwanda — John says that 15 years ago the US, the UN and Europe got almost all of 'our people' out of Rwanda unharmed, leaving the hundreds of thousands killed to conclude they were 'a them'. — 00:00:54
    • John says it seems valuable, 15 years later, to tell Rwandans 'you are not them, you are us', acknowledging their loss and sharing hope for their country's future. (hedged) — 00:01:23
  • 2009-03-18 · Lighting Candles for Rwanda — Hank says that, with the anniversary near, John and he, the Harry Potter Alliance and Candles for Rwanda ask viewers to show Rwandans they are cared for as neighbours, friends, 'one of us'. — 00:00:57
  • 2009-07-12 · On Iran, Islam, and Amazingly Stupid Comments — John: To the claim that they're all Muslims who want to destroy America, John replies that Islam is not a single monolithic thing; all religious traditions are massively diverse. — 00:01:56
    • John concludes that with every revelation, religious or secular, some respond by making the world better and some worse: the revelation isn't the problem, we are. — 00:02:55

2010

  • 2010-09-20 · Life Is Like Pizza — John says the fundamental thing all critical reading does is reveal that there are no easy definitions that distinguish 'us' from 'them'. — 00:03:00
  • 2010-12-17 · PROJECT FOR AWESOME 2010: Save the Children and Partners in Health — John says he and the newsman fell into the same trap of assuming the graffiti was political and angry: as humans we habitually imagine people far away or in different circumstances as fundamentally other. — 00:01:08
    • John says Nerdfighteria has already learned that people in very different circumstances are not fundamentally other, having seen what happens when you stop seeing people in poverty as other and start seeing them as part of us. — 00:01:26
  • 2010-12-20 · Thoughts on the Project for Awesome — Hank is impressed that video quality and participation keep rising, that people work together as equals because they want to, and that 'we are all people being people' whatever our circumstances, with implications beyond P4A. (hedged) — 00:03:02

2011

  • 2011-06-24 · On Religion (Redux) — John: So the words Christian, Muslim and Jew are very hard to define; John, a Christian, shares more theologically with some Muslims than with many of his fellow Christians. — 00:01:50
  • 2011-12-17 · We Built a Well in Haiti — Hank: What astounded Hank in Haiti was not the medieval-level hygiene but that the people are, in the important ways, exactly like him, his friends and family: caring, fun-loving, communal, wanting better for their children. — 00:00:00

2012

2013

  • 2013-04-16 · Flags and Helpers — John says a flag is what you sing your anthem and pledge allegiance to: a symbol of a particular us (Zambian, Norwegian, American) that makes everyone else a them. — 00:00:29
    • John says the marathon flags stand side by side, none higher, for a larger us sharing a human endeavor that does not require a them. — 00:00:58
  • 2013-12-17 · THE PROJECT FOR AWESOME 2013 IS UPON US! — John says these people are worth investing in and, though they live far away, they are still our neighbors. — 00:03:15

2014

  • 2014-04-22 · Understanding the Central African Republic — John says people, especially in the US, imagine Africa monolithically as poor, undeveloped and other, though it is a large continent of very different nations. — 00:00:04
  • 2014-07-29 · Listen: Thoughts from Addis Ababa, Ethiopia — John says humans are generous within their social networks, but lack of access to Tumblr and YouTube leaves people in absolute poverty voiceless online, so we imagine their problems as other. — 00:02:22
    • John says if our kids were dying of malaria and diarrhea we wouldn't stand for it, but these are our kids: our world is very literally their world. — 00:02:41
  • 2014-08-12 · EBOLA! (...meningitis) — John thinks people are obsessed with Ebola because it is novel and very fatal, but also because diseases endemic to the developing world seem Other. (hedged) — 00:02:28
    • More than half a million people will die of malaria this year (2014), yet malaria is not imagined as a disease 'coming for us', whatever 'us' means. — 00:02:36
    • When Americans make the Ebola outbreak about America, they do a great disservice to themselves and to the communities actually affected. — 00:02:51
    • Addressing that infrastructure problem instead of panicking about Ebola reaching 'us' would reduce transmission and also save many lives from malaria, typhoid and meningitis. — 00:03:14
  • 2014-09-23 · Looking Away — John says the poor are voiceless in too much contemporary discourse: the boy's mother has no Twitter or YouTube channel, so we hear her challenges less directly than others'. — 00:01:04
  • 2014-10-21 · Ebola: What IS Terrifying — John: We imagine diseases like cholera or malaria happen to poor faraway people, but Ebola shows the us/them dichotomy is false: better health care in Liberia is good for all humans. — 00:01:39
    • John hopes we learn that, with communicable diseases today, threats to the health of any humans are threats to the health of all humans. (hedged) — 00:03:23

2015

  • 2015-01-27 · Will Life Get Better for the Poor? — John says we do not actually live in two worlds; it only feels so because no one in his neighborhood, or whom he follows on Tumblr, Twitter or Instagram, has stunted kids. — 00:02:34
    • John says how we imagine 'us' must include people in poverty, because there is just one world; distant, foreign-seeming problems are human problems, us problems. — 00:03:14
  • 2015-01-30 · Thoughts from the Edge — Hank says that in the last week he has tried to see the US political debate as a tumultuous but productive boundary between ideologies, and occasionally it is. — 00:01:45
  • 2015-02-10 · Understanding Boko Haram — John says it is also important to understand that literally 99.9% of Nigerians do not support Boko Haram. — 00:05:56
    • John says that a few days ago two Muslim volunteers in a northern town gave their lives to stop a Boko Haram suicide bomber from entering a market where she would have killed hundreds. — 00:06:04
  • 2015-07-07 · Understanding the Financial Crisis in Greece — John concludes there is much blame to share, but without listening to others' narratives and imagining all members as an 'us', Europe cannot share a continent, let alone a currency. — 00:07:23
  • 2015-09-04 · Addicted to Outrage — Hank calls the fear that the 50% of Americans around us are thoughtless, terrible and foolish America's most common irrational fear, as irrational as guacamole tarantulas. (hedged) — 00:00:21
    • Hank's armor against the outrage cycle: awareness of his own cognitive biases, belief in the fundamental goodness of others, who want good things for themselves and their families, and compassion. — 00:02:48
  • 2015-09-08 · Understanding the Refugee Crisis in Europe, Syria, and around the World — John: Against 'it's not our problem' or 'we have to take care of our people', John says we are one species sharing one interconnected world, and all humans are our people. — 00:06:49
  • 2015-09-18 · Muslims Aren't Dangerous — Hank writes that the vast majority of people are good, that the debate rests wholly on the idea that this is not true of Muslims, and that many in America have come to believe it, which terrifies him because it rests only on fear and prejudice. — video description
  • 2015-12-11 · The Refugee Crises: Project for Awesome 2015 — John argues that though it is easy to call the refugee crisis not our problem, history shows there is no such thing as other people's problems. — 00:02:08
    • John says disease, poverty and violence are shaped but not controlled by borders; with Ebola, antibiotic resistance, the Syrian war or Gambella refugees, everyone loses by turning away. — 00:02:27
  • …and 8 statements more in 2015 — all statements of 2015

2016

  • 2016-03-08 · Aida and Majeeda: Thoughts from the Azraq Refugee Camp — John: No one can have a life when the world treats them as other or less valuable; John says we must fight that dehumanization, because seeing others' humanity lets us glimpse our own. — 00:03:55
  • 2016-03-11 · The Politics of "Parks and Rec" — ask: Hank wishes we could all be more like Leslie and Ron, caring passionately about our beliefs without demonizing those who disagree, which has never in his life been harder. — 00:03:25
  • 2016-06-07 · Zaatari: Thoughts from a Refugee Camp — John describes the usual excuse: horror is unfortunate but unfixable 'human nature', and protecting 'ourselves' justifies treating 'them' as less than fully human. — 00:02:57
    • John says Zaatari reminded him that human nature is not just a force acting on us but something we create together in deciding how to treat each other and the world. — 00:03:14
  • 2016-06-21 · Syrian Refugees in the United States: One Family's Story — John says refugees are politicized and too often called threats for their ethnicity or religion; the claim that civilizations are incompatible imagines culture as a discrete, unchanging unit, which it isn't, and ignores the facts. — 00:02:05
  • 2016-07-19 · Pretty Bad Ways to Start a Conversation — John says 'they say' is also a bad start: a non-specific 'they' constructs a false us-versus-them dichotomy. — 00:00:42

2017

  • 2017-01-31 · Understanding Trump's Executive Order on Immigration — John: Imagining Syrians monolithically is as dangerously simplistic as imagining that ending refugee resettlement will solve US security challenges. — 00:05:00
    • Imagining a diverse group of over 100 million people as a terrifying, singular Other only encourages others to imagine us that way. — 00:06:52
  • 2017-02-03 · Are We Making Things Worse? — Hank wants to act for his beliefs without attacking those who disagree: not every Trump supporter is like Milo or Richard Spencer, 50% of Americans still approve of Trump's job, and treating them as a monolithic block of racists does more harm than good. — video description
  • 2017-08-18 · What I've Been Thinking About — Hank says America has a long, consistent history of not defining black people as 'like us' and of oppressing them, a tradition that runs up to today. — 00:02:21

2018

  • 2018-01-23 · On Emergencies — John is totally unconvinced that these problems are not our problems or that Sierra Leone's health system should be fixed entirely within Sierra Leone. — 00:01:29
  • 2018-03-13 · Who Should We Root For? — John: Against those who call soccer the stupidest human activity, John says football is about community: it matters because we share it, and shared endeavors across divides remind us we are all in this together. — 00:02:59
  • 2018-05-22 · The Liger Delusion — John worries many believe that their 'we' sees the real reality while those who disagree are mere sheeple, a term that literally dehumanizes others; 'wake up' implies only opponents fall for the liger delusion. — 00:02:30
  • 2018-07-27 · Why Environmentalists Hate Captain Planet — Hank says environmentalists must work with these real people to pass policies; having been literally dehumanized by a movement that now wants good-faith discussion isn't helpful. — 00:02:40
  • 2018-11-27 · On The Melian Dialogue — John says when more people can live healthy lives and seek education, life improves for the strong as well as the weak: more potential innovators, and we are a deeply interdependent species. — 00:02:55

2019

  • 2019-07-23 · What to Love and How — John: But usses can create thems: John cites Melinda Gates that every society blames its outsiders, yet the urge to create outsiders is the problem, a lens he finds very helpful. — 00:01:56
  • 2019-08-23 · The Amazon isn't "Burning" - It's Being Burned — Hank says nationalism is an inherently exclusionary ideology, which is why fascism, nationalism and racism so often walk together. — 00:04:39
  • 2019-10-01 · Why Are Poor Countries Poor? — John: If these problems aren't ours, John is troubled by how we define us: he doesn't want to be part of an us that makes a them of the world's most vulnerable. — 00:05:55

2020

  • 2020-10-27 · The time I met Joe Biden — John says the Trump administration has no comprehensive responses because its idea of governance is populism, not policy: a clear us and them, with only a Trump vote stopping them. — 00:02:26
    • John rejects that idea of governance: we will not us-versus-them our way out of COVID, climate change or anything else. — 00:02:55
  • 2020-11-06 (said on 2020-11-05, implied) · Just Some Election Thoughts… — Hank says the US has a right-wing populist president because many believe people who are not 'real Americans' make their lives worse, a label drawn culturally, racially, by politicized oversimplification or by loyalty to Trump. — 00:02:01

2024

  • 2024-09-13 · My Governor is Weirder than Yours — Hank says his neighbours often have different worldviews but mostly want the same things; an extreme view of America doesn't fit even people he disagrees with. — 00:29:13

2025

  • 2025-02-18 · Gastrointestinal Hypermotility in Tuatara — John: The P4A reminded John that we do not need a them in order to create a strong us. — 00:01:27
  • 2025-04-25 · How We Form Opinions — Hank says fear of outsiders runs deep, so racism should be strongly taboo and invoking it extremely immoral, with taboos too against inflammatory rhetoric that closes minds and stalls progress. — 00:08:43
  • 2025-06-13 · Moving to Hope from Hopelessness (3 ways) — Hank says acting out of hope and a vision of the world we want is humanizing; acting out of fear is dehumanizing. — 00:06:20
  • 2025-07-04 · This Graph Changed My Life — Hank says 'those people' are not simple, unified or monolithic: four-fifths of them think climate change is real and very few are committed climate skeptics. — 00:04:32
  • 2025-08-15 · What Trump is Doing to Universities — Hank says the bigger reason is the core of authoritarianism: deciding with the 'true citizens' who is in-group and out-group, and universities are almost tailor-made for the out-group. — 00:05:18

2026