Intergroup Conflict Quotes

The effect of violent dislike between groups has always created an indifference to the welfare and honor of the state.

I have no idea how one stops one group, one race, from hating another. The hatred between human groups has never been cured, except by time.

Human beings may hate a distant enemy in theory, but they generally prefer to kill their neighbors.

Ethnic and religious conflict remain the most intractable and dangerous problems in the world today.

Christians are supposed to love each other. Communists are supposed to share bonds with all proletarians and other communists. Every ideological group proclaims universality, and all of them bicker internally, never displaying unity except in the face of a common enemy. Humanism today is the common enemy of Christians.

Some people want to have controversy between the races.

I think it's totally possible and plausible that racial balkanization is a recurring aspect of the nature of human politics.

Our moral sense really evolved to bind groups together into teams that can cooperate in order to compete with other teams.

Black people are just constantly immature in their thinking, undisciplined, and we suffer as a people. This is not about race in the sense that black people got to get something better than whites or Latinos or Asians. This is just basically that we keep complaining about what we don't have and what we can't do, and then, when we get in positions to do stuff, we fight amongst ourselves like savages.

The key thing about us is that we all belong to multiple tribes. Even if we are predisposed into dividing the world into 'us' and 'them,' it's incredibly easy to manipulate us as to who is an 'us' and who is a 'them' at any given moment.

I can't totally talk about why we divide, but... it's interesting because we're doing this scene today that's sort of the pinnacle of that. Two gangs fighting against each other, ultimately knowing that... ya know, it's like friends fighting friends. To me it's fun, personally.

We are not in a situation where the minorities are demanding something and the majorities are pushing back saying 'We don't want it.'

Dividing into teams doesn't necessarily mean denigrating others. Studies of groupishness have generally found that groups increase in-group love far more than they increase out-group hostility.

As a species we're fundamentally insane. Put more than two of us in a room, we pick sides and start dreaming up reasons to kill one another. Why do you think we invented politics and religion?

Race, Religion, Ethnic Pride, Nationalism does nothing but teach you how to hate people you have never met

Racists violate the principle of equality by giving greater weight to the interests of members of their own race when there is a clash between their interests and the interests of those of another race. Sexists violate the principle of equality by favoring the interests of their own sex. Similarly, speciesists allow the interests of their own species to override the greater interests of members of other species. The pattern is identical in each case.

So long as we continued to attach more importance to our own narrow group membership than to the 'global village' we would propagate prejudice and ignorance. There was absolutely no harm in being part of a small group - indeed, with our hunter-gatherer band mentality it gave comfort, provided us with an inner circle of friends who could be utterly trusted, who were absolutely reliable. It helped give us peace of mind. The danger came only from drawing that sharp line, digging that ditch, laying that minefield, between our own group and any other group that thought differently.

If you look back at history or you look at any place in the world where religious groups or ethnic groups or racial groups or political groups are killing each other, or families have been feuding for years and years, you can see - because you're not particularly invested in that particular argument - that there will never be peace until somebody softens what is rigid in their heart.

If you are British, you soon get used to people not loving you. The Irish remind us of offenses from 100 years ago. Perhaps we should react to what the French did to us even longer ago.

Our Blacks Are Better Than Their's

We have to understand how the extremists got the way they are. Without that kind of understanding, we'd never really get to know them. I put in nothing about their childhoods. But what I have put in is stuff about the weird symbiotic relationship between us and them.

The underlying dynamic of many communal wars is a security problem driven by mutual fear. Especially in states lacking strong central governments, communal groups worry that other groups with historical grievances will try to settle scores.

Even if the members of different communities find each other physically and/or behaviorally strange, irritating, or annoying, and do not want to associate as neighbors, they may still engage in mutually beneficial trade if they reside spatially separated from each other.

I think it is inevitable that we make Us/Them distinctions but there's nothing inevitable about who counts as a Them.