Dehumanization Impact

Dehumanization justifies genocide, nuclear war, and

environmental disaster
Berube 97 (Berube, David. Professor. English. University of South Carolina.
Nanotechnological Prolongevity: The Down Side. 1997.
http://www.cas.sc.edu/engl/faculty/berube/prolong.htm.)
Assuming we are able to predict who or what are optimized humans, this entire
resultant worldview smacks of eugenics and Nazi racial science. This would involve
valuing people as means. Moreover, there would always be a superhuman more
super than the current ones, humans would never be able to escape their treatment
as means to an always further and distant end. This means-ends dispute is at the
core of Montagu and Matson's treatise on the dehumanization of humanity.
They warn: "its destructive toll is already greater than that of any war,
plague, famine, or natural calamity on record -- and its potential danger to
the quality of life and the fabric of civilized society is beyond calculation.
For that reason this sickness of the soul might well be called the Fifth Horseman of the Apocalypse.... Behind the genocide of the
holocaust lay a dehumanized thought; beneath the menticide of deviants and dissidents... in the cuckoo's next of America, lies a
dehumanized image of man... (Montagu & Matson, 1983, p. xi-xii). While it may never be possible to quantify the impact
dehumanizing ethics may have had on humanity, it is safe to conclude the foundations of humanness offer great opportunities
which would be foregone. When we calculate the actual losses and the virtual benefits, we approach a nearly inestimable value

Dehumanization is nuclear war,

environmental apocalypse, and international genocide. When people
become things, they become dispensable. When people are dispensable,
any and every atrocity can be justified. Once justified, they seem to be
inevitable for every epoch has evil and dehumanization is evil's most powerful
weapon.
greater than any tools which we can currently use to measure it.

Dehumanization outweights all other impacts; it justifies all

forms of atrocity
Maiese 3 from beyond
(Michelle Maiese, graduate student of Philosophy at the University of Colorado, Boulder and is a part of
the research staff at the Conflict Research Consortium, in July 2003. Found
athttp://www.beyondint.../dehumanization) GH

Dehumanization is a psychological process whereby opponents view each

other as less than human and thus not deserving of moral
consideration. Jews in the eyes of Nazis and Tutsis in the eyes of Hutus (in the Rwandan genocide) are but
two examples. Protracted conflict strains relationships and makes it difficult for
parties to recognize that they are part of a shared human community . Such
conditions often lead to feelings of intense hatred and alienation among conflicting parties. The more severe the
conflict, the more the psychological distance between groups will widen. Eventually,

this can result in

moral exclusion. Those excluded are typically viewed as inferior, evil, or

criminal.[1] We typically think that all people have some basic human rights that
should not be violated. Innocent people should not be murdered, raped, or tortured. Rather,
international law suggests that they should be treated justly and fairly, with dignity and respect. They deserve to
have their basic needs met, and to have some freedom to make autonomous decisions. In times of war, parties
must take care to protect the lives of innocent civilians on the opposing side. Even those guilty of breaking the law
should receive a fair trial, and should not be subject to any sort of cruel or unusual punishment. However,

for

individuals viewed as outside the scope of morality and justice, "the

concepts of deserving basic needs and fair treatment do not apply and can
seem irrelevant."[2]Any harm that befalls such individuals seems
warranted, and perhaps even morally justified. Those excluded from the scope of morality
are typically perceived as psychologically distant, expendable, and deserving of treatment that would not be

acceptable for those included in one's moral community. Common criteria for
exclusion include ideology, skin color, and cognitive capacity. We typically
dehumanize those whom we perceive as a threat to our well-being or values.
[3] Psychologically, it is necessary to categorize one's enemy as sub-human in order to legitimize increased
violence or justify the violation of basic human rights . Moral exclusion reduces restraints against
harming or exploiting certain groups of people. In severe
cases, dehumanization makes the violation of generally accepted norms of behavior
regarding one's fellow man seem reasonable, or even necessary.

Dehumanization allows us to see people as disposable and

thus extinguishable, setting up a chain of events that
terminates in endless war and genocide.
Dillon, Professor at the University of Lancaster, 1999 (Michael,
ANOTHER JUSTICE, POLITICAL THEORY VOL. 27, NO. 2, APRILL 1999, JSTOR)

Otherness is born(e) within the self as an integral part of itself and in such a way
that it always remains an inherent stranger to itself." It derives from the lack,
absence, or ineradicable incompleteness which comes from having no security of
tenure within or over that of which the self is a particular hermeneutical
manifestation; namely, being itself. The point about the human, betrayed by this
absence, is precisely that it is not sovereignly self-possessed and complete,
enjoying undisputed tenure in and of itself. Modes of justice therefore reliant upon
such a subject lack the very foundations in the self that they most violently insist
upon seeing inscribed there. This does not, however, mean that the dissolution of
the subject also entails the dissolution of Justice.Quite the reverse. The subject was
never a firm foundation for justice, much less a hospitable vehicle for the reception
of the call of another Justice. It was never in possession of that self-possession
which was supposed to secure the certainty of itself, of a self-possession that would
enable it ultimately to adjudicate everything. The very indexicality required of
sovereign subjectivity gave rise rather to a commensurability much more amenable

to the expendability required of the political and material economies of mass

societies than it did to the singular, invaluable, and uncanny uniqueness of the self.
The value of the subject became the standard unit of currency for the political
arithmetic of States and the political economies of capitalism. They trade in it still to
devastating global effect. The technologisation of the political has become manifest
and global.Economies of evaluation necessarily require calculability. Thus no
valuation without mensuration and no mensuration without indexation. Once
rendered calculable, however, units of account are necessarily submissible not only
to valuation but also, of course, to devaluation. Devaluation, logically, can extend to
the point of counting as nothing. Hence, no mensuration without demensuration
either. There is nothing abstract about this: the declension of economies of value
leads to the zero point of holocaust. However liberating and emancipating systems
of value-rights-may claim to be, for example, they run the risk of counting out the
invaluable. Counted out, the invaluable may then lose its purchase on life. Herewith,
then, the necessity of championing the invaluable itself. For we must never forget
that, "we are dealing always with whatever exceeds measure. But how does that
necessity present itself? Another Justice answers: as the surplus of the duty to
answer to the claim of Justice over rights. That duty, as with the advent of another
Justice, is integral to the lack constitutive of the human way of being.

dehumanization outweighs its the Fifth Horseman of the

Apocalypse
Montagu and Matson 83 Esteemed Scientist and Writer; and Professor of American
Studies at University of Hawaii [Ashley and Floyd, The dehumanization of man,
http://64.233.187.104/search?q=cache:hnDfqSFkJJwJ: www.cross-x.com/ vb/archive/
index.php/t-939595.html+montagu+matson+dehumanization&hl=en]
**We disagree with the authors use of gendered language

The contagion is unknown to science and unrecognized by medicine (psychiatry aside); yet its
wasting symptoms are plain for all to see and its lethal effects are everywhere on display. It
neither kills outright nor inflicts apparent physical harm, yet the extent of its destructive toll is
already greater than that of any war, plague, famine, or natual calamity on
record -- and its potential damage to the quality of human life and the fabric of civilized society
is beyond calculation. For that reason, this sickness of the soul might well be called the
Fifth Hourseman of the Apocalypse. Its more conventional name, of course, is
dehumanization.