Personhood and Dehumanization
What dimension of a person do you think would be the most offensive to insult? I’m sure that you do not have to think long to come up with a decent list of things: sex, race, economic status, disability, appearance. Some of you might even say that it depends on the person, their personal sensitivities and/or their history of pain.
While I might agree with all of this, I want to make the case that it is something else entirely. Enter: the ad hominem abusive argument. Its very nature is dehumanizing because it focuses in on attacking the person and does not even address the argument itself. From a psychological standpoint, it is the insult behind the insult that really breaks us. Think about it for a minute. What was it about the insult to your sex, race, or disability that really got to you?
Let me provide an example to illustrate my meaning. If someone says: “Oh her? She is a whore”, there are two things that are communicated in this statement. The first is a simple observation: the person in question is being labeled something based on a behavior, aesthetic, personality traits or all three. The second thing, however, that is being communicated by implication is that the "whore" has less or even no worth or value. This, in essence is dehumanization. Inherent in insulting the value or worth of a person is calling into question their personhood.
What is so interesting about these types of value judgements is that the people that propagate them are saying something about what it means to be a person. In fact, the insult-ee is declaring that there are specific criteria that must be filled for this being to be considered a person - and the insult-ed has not held up to this imaginary checklist of standards.
Friends, this is the reality that we live in: each of us deserves love and respect (among other things) not because we are human (though this matters) but ultimately because we are created imago dei.
In recent years I find myself coming back to the truth of the imago dei. The reason I find myself coming back to this fact is because of the failure of the current Christian mindset. Christians are excellent at identifying and also ostracizing the “other”. We need to strive to be a community that loves and takes in the sick, the poor, and the least of these (along with everyone else) - the "other". This idea isn't intended to be doctrinal but rather as a challenge to the current Christian framework.
