Is there really an 'us' and a 'them', or are distant and different people just facets of us?
John has held since 2008 that there is no 'them', only facets of us, applying it to people in poverty and to refugees, and in 2025 said a strong us needs no them. Hank shares the view, from calling poor women he met 'totally just people' in 2007 to saying in 2026 that we are all in it together.
Axis: there is no them ... groups really are separate / other
Concept: othering
Positions by date: 54 records in 54 videos. shift and revise mean the position moved; tension — disagreement with the other speaker.
John
| date | how | position | video |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2008-04-08 | first on record | John: there is no them, only facets of us; poverty is an us problem, and the children in Bangladesh are part of us. | Nerdfighting in Bangladesh 00:02:20 |
| 2008-11-05 | restate | John says political opponents are not evil, terrorists or fascists but complicated people who contain multitudes just as you do. | On Loving One Another or Dying 00:02:24 |
| 2009-03-15 | restate | John says the Rwandans abandoned in 1994 were treated as 'a them' and should now be told 'you are not them, you are us'. | Lighting a candle for Rwanda 00:01:23 |
| 2009-07-12 | restate | Against 'they're all Muslims who want to destroy America', John says Islam, like every religious tradition, is not one monolithic thing. | On Iran, Islam, and Amazingly Stupid Comments 00:01:56 |
| 2010-09-20 | restate | John holds that critical reading shows there are no easy definitions separating 'us' from 'them'. | Life Is Like Pizza 00:03:00 |
| 2010-12-17 | restate | John says humans habitually imagine distant people as fundamentally other, but Nerdfighteria has learned they are not, seeing people in poverty as part of us. | PROJECT FOR AWESOME 2010: Save the Children and Partners in Health 00:01:23 |
| 2011-06-24 | restate | John says religious labels can't cleanly divide people: someone in every tradition will deny you belong, and he shares more theology with some Muslims than with many fellow Christians. | On Religion (Redux) 00:01:50 |
| 2012-11-04 | restate | John says imagining those who disagree with us as crazy, evil or traitorous makes compromise, listening and even friendship hard, and insult-driven politics is more dangerous than either plan. | Policy and Politics: Brotherhood 2.0 Week Begins 00:02:55 |
| 2012-12-17 | restate | John says children dying in poverty are not fundamentally different from his son and are not 'other' because of where they were born. | THE PROJECT FOR AWESOME 2012 IS HERE! Save the Children. 00:01:50 |
| 2013-04-16 | restate | John: national flags make others a them, but the marathon's side-by-side flags stand for a larger us that does not require a them. | Flags and Helpers 00:00:58 |
| 2013-12-17 | restate | John says the refugee children are worth investing in and, though far away, are still our neighbors. | THE PROJECT FOR AWESOME 2013 IS UPON US! 00:03:15 |
| 2014-07-29 | restate | John says the poor become 'others' to us online, but the dying children of the poorest countries are our kids and our world is their world. | Listen: Thoughts from Addis Ababa, Ethiopia 00:02:41 |
| 2014-08-12 | restate | John questions who the 'us' is that diseases are imagined as coming for, and calls making the outbreak about America a disservice. | EBOLA! (...meningitis) 00:02:44 |
| 2014-09-23 | restate | John says the poor are voiceless in public discourse: the boy's mother has no Twitter or YouTube channel, so we don't hear her challenges as directly as others'. | Looking Away 00:01:04 |
| 2014-10-21 | restate | John says Ebola shows how false the us/them dichotomy about disease is; better health care in Liberia is good for all humans. | Ebola: What IS Terrifying 00:01:47 |
| 2015-01-27 | restate | John says we do not live in two worlds; 'us' must include people in poverty, and distant problems are human problems, us problems. | Will Life Get Better for the Poor? 00:03:14 |
| 2015-02-10 | restate | John insists Boko Haram does not represent Nigerians or Muslims: 99.9% of Nigerians oppose it, and two Muslim volunteers died stopping one of its bombers. | Understanding Boko Haram 00:05:56 |
| 2015-06-09 | restate | John says he too often imagines others as merely sick, merely poor or merely a 'them' to an 'us' that includes him. | What Does It Mean to Be Human? 00:00:58 |
| 2015-07-07 | restate | John says that unless Eurozone members can listen to each other's narratives and see all members as part of some 'us', they cannot share a continent, let alone a currency. | Understanding the Financial Crisis in Greece 00:07:26 |
| 2015-09-08 | restate | Against 'it's not our problem', John says we are one species in one interconnected world and all humans are our people. | Understanding the Refugee Crisis in Europe, Syria, and around the World 00:06:49 |
| 2015-12-11 | restate | John rejects calling refugees not our problem: on this planet there is no such thing as other people's problems. | The Refugee Crises: Project for Awesome 2015 00:02:13 |
| 2016-03-08 | restate | 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. | Aida and Majeeda: Thoughts from the Azraq Refugee Camp 00:03:55 |
| 2016-06-07 | restate | John rejects treating 'them', however defined, as less than fully human for self-protection; human nature is something we create in how we treat each other. | Zaatari: Thoughts from a Refugee Camp 00:03:03 |
| 2016-06-21 | restate | 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. | Syrian Refugees in the United States: One Family's Story 00:02:05 |
| 2016-07-19 | restate | John says 'they say' is also a bad start: a non-specific 'they' constructs a false us-versus-them dichotomy. | Pretty Bad Ways to Start a Conversation 00:00:42 |
| 2017-01-31 | restate | Imagining a diverse group of over 100 million people as a terrifying, singular Other only encourages others to imagine us that way. | Understanding Trump's Executive Order on Immigration 00:06:52 |
| 2018-01-23 | restate | 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. | On Emergencies 00:01:29 |
| 2018-03-13 | restate | 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. | Who Should We Root For? 00:02:59 |
| 2018-05-22 | restate | 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. | The Liger Delusion 00:02:30 |
| 2018-11-27 | restate | 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. | On The Melian Dialogue 00:02:55 |
| 2019-07-23 | restate | 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. | What to Love and How 00:01:56 |
| 2019-10-01 | restate | 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. | Why Are Poor Countries Poor? 00:05:55 |
| 2020-10-27 | restate | John rejects that idea of governance: we will not us-versus-them our way out of COVID, climate change or anything else. | The time I met Joe Biden 00:02:55 |
| 2025-02-18 | restate | The P4A reminded John that we do not need a them in order to create a strong us. | Gastrointestinal Hypermotility in Tuatara 00:01:27 |
Hank
| date | how | position | video |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2007-06-29 | shift | Hank says TV commercials had led him to see poor people as too downtrodden to relate to; meeting the women, he rejects that: 'they're totally just people'. | How to be a Microfinancier Part 2 00:01:55 |
| 2008-04-10 | restate | Hank, picking up John's 'us problem' video, rejects the hierarchy of needs: people without food still care about others and doing good; they just can't. → refers to Nerdfighting in Bangladesh | Barack John Obama Green 00:01:57 |
| 2009-03-18 | restate | Hank says we should show Rwandans we see them as neighbours, friends and 'one of us', with hope for their future like ours. | Lighting Candles for Rwanda 00:01:45 |
| 2010-12-20 | restate | Hank feels P4A shows we are all people being people wherever we are and whatever our circumstances, with implications beyond P4A. | Thoughts on the Project for Awesome 00:03:12 |
| 2011-12-17 | restate | Hank says the Haitians he met are, in the important ways, exactly like him and his friends and family. | We Built a Well in Haiti 00:00:00 |
| 2015-01-30 | restate | Hank argues the boundary between American ideologies should be celebrated as a productive gradient: ideological diversity marks a thoughtful nation, not a divided one, and we should stop listening to those telling us to hate each other. | Thoughts from the Edge 00:02:52 |
| 2015-09-04 | restate | Hank says the fear that half of Americans are thoughtless, terrible and foolish is irrational, and counters it with a belief in the fundamental goodness of other people. | Addicted to Outrage 00:00:21 |
| 2015-09-18 | restate | Hank says a video defending Muslims would ignore the actual problem: the bias and fear-mongering that create suspicion and hatred. | Muslims Aren't Dangerous 00:00:33 |
| 2016-03-11 | restate | 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. | The Politics of "Parks and Rec" 00:03:25 |
| 2017-02-03 | restate | 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. | Are We Making Things Worse? video description |
| 2017-08-18 | restate | 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. | What I've Been Thinking About 00:02:21 |
| 2018-07-27 | restate | 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. | Why Environmentalists Hate Captain Planet 00:02:40 |
| 2019-08-23 | restate | Hank says nationalism is an inherently exclusionary ideology, which is why fascism, nationalism and racism so often walk together. | The Amazon isn't "Burning" - It's Being Burned 00:04:39 |
| 2020-11-06 (said on 2020-11-05, implied) | restate | 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. | Just Some Election Thoughts… 00:02:01 |
| 2024-09-13 | restate | 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. | My Governor is Weirder than Yours 00:29:13 |
| 2025-04-25 | restate | 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. | How We Form Opinions 00:08:43 |
| 2025-06-13 | restate | Hank says acting out of hope and a vision of the world we want is humanizing; acting out of fear is dehumanizing. | Moving to Hope from Hopelessness (3 ways) 00:06:20 |
| 2025-07-04 | restate | 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. | This Graph Changed My Life 00:04:32 |
| 2025-08-15 | restate | 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. | What Trump is Doing to Universities 00:05:18 |
| 2026-01-23 | restate | So all people are valuable, Hank says: they are not competing with you but helping you, if indirectly; we are all in it together. | Two Unrelated Destroyers of Trust 00:02:31 |
Dates are upload dates, which set the order. Where the speaker gives a different recording date in the video, it is added as "said on YYYY-MM-DD, implied" (derived from the date said in the video).
Timeline notes
- Hank: first recorded event is shift (earlier stance may be outside 2007–2026 or unrecorded)