When was the last time you defended something that you believed in? Was it discussing dinner with your partner? Perhaps talking about an upcoming election or standing up for a friend in need?
Now, think about why you defended it. Was it for personal gain? Were you fighting for something based on your values or someone else’s?
Most likely, you defended it because you found nobility in your cause, no matter how small the dispute or how it started.
What I just described has been unfolding on an unprecedented scale across the United States, and indeed much of the world, as universities have had intense protests and debate related to the conflict between the State of Israel and the militant organization Hamas in the Gaza Strip. The war began on October 7th when Hamas launched an offensive into Israel which killed more than 1,000 Israeli citizens, and took hundreds more hostage.
Because of globalization in the modern world, this conflict has evolved beyond the region and has taken the world by storm. So much of the world is interconnected in a way that makes increases in visibility and complexity inevitable. Almost every recognized party in the United Nations has taken some stance on the issue. In addition to governments taking a stance, social media and rapid communication from primary sources have brought the conflict to places it might not otherwise have reached.
In addition to the vast increase in the conflict’s visibility, existing political and social debates, particularly in the United States, have seemingly heightened the stakes and scope.
Numerous analyses of the situation unfolding at universities in the United States tragically lack an understanding of human psychology in a collective. Think of it this way: when you and your coworkers, classmates, or friends stood up for something that you believed was right, you felt more power than when you were fighting on your own.
“There’s power in numbers” is the well-known adage invoked in these situations. However, what is often missed in this adage is that there is a more significant internal power for each person involved and the external influence gained by having multiple minds and bodies supporting a unified view.
Nazism’s rise to uniformity provides an extreme example of this. The Weimar Republic was a debatably ineffective government while it was in power. Nevertheless, it was the main government in Germany at that time. Germany was in chaos after the First World War, and the people of Germany desired order and stability without much regard for what may have been lost in the process: their individuality.
People saw the Nazi Party as the bringer of the much-desired order, stability, and economic growth. Personal morals and values gave way to the will of the many, and the collective was born. As many people surrendered control of their morals and values, an individual gained control over the wills of tens of millions. This was immensely dangerous When the government of Nazi Germany claimed the Jewish people (in addition to many other oppressed groups such as Jehovah’s Witnesses, disabled people, and more) were to blame for the problems affecting Germany, almost every German believed them, defended them, and fought to enforce this agenda. More than eleven million people were murdered because one man had the wills of over seventy million human beings at his fingertips and a burning rage at groups of innocent souls.
What is unfolding across the United States today is nowhere near the severity of the terrible and brutal events of the Holocaust and World War II. However, it is an important time in history to study as it shows the worst of what happens when individuals unite under a single cause (with a corresponding set of morals and values) and choose to lose their individuality.
Today, people similarly choose to surrender their individuality. This happened over the last month as encampments have sprung up across the US to defend what was supposed to be one “noble” cause.
This isn’t about Palestine or Israel anymore. As a student at the University of California Los Angeles, I watched people beat each other within an inch of their lives with no regard for anyone’s (including their own) personal safety or well-being. I watched people, not one mile from my home, scream words of hate at each other, calling for the dissolution of a state that protects people whom no one else wanted in their country. I watched people lose themselves to what they thought was right while promoting extreme prejudice and violence against what they thought was wrong.
This isn’t justice. This is what happens when a person gives up being one person and becomes part of a vast sea of collective consciousness, unified under one value: to win. Instead of promoting justice, the goal of the movement now is simply to win. As I watched the protests at college campuses nationwide unfold, I realized that there were so many causes people were claiming to support, and that the initial claims of justice underpinning the movements had been abandoned. All that mattered was that only one group was left standing after the dust settled. When a person sacrifices individuality, they lose the ability to think of other individuals as individuals. There is only the “other”.
If you were wondering how the situation could become this dire, this is how. We, as human beings, cannot sacrifice our core values for a cause, belief, or group that we may not even fully understand. Protest is right. Discourse is just. Change is necessary for the progression of human civilization. The existence of human civilization is proof that we are living embodiment of order in a universe that unilaterally trends towards disorder as a fundamental law of physics.
What took place across the country was not that. Chaos unfolded because people forgot what makes each human powerful: our uniqueness and individuality. This is not to say that one cannot associate with a cause or group of people. However, there is an important distinction to make here between the concepts of the collective and the community. Many of the movements embroiled in this conflict have given to the collective which sacrifices each member’s ability to make their own decisions on what they want to support and what they value. What we, as a species, need is community, a collection of individuals acting as individuals. What people have started to forget is that we can have nuance. We can disagree amongst ourselves. You can disagree with people who are on the same “side” as you. This isn’t harmful or disorderly nor is it going to destroy any particular cause or movement. This is strength. This is real unity.
I am appalled by how people whom I consider to be my peers have lost their individuality with varying degrees so thoroughly to a cause simply because it started with a small idea of what was right and what was wrong. It’s so much more than that now. It’s about winning and losing. It’s about “us” and “them”. It’s about who one group wants to see suffer and who one group wants to see prosper.
The most upsetting thing is that shockingly few stopped for a second to consider if the words they said, the posts they shared, or the actions they took aligned with their internal values and beliefs. Few stopped to wonder if what they supported was connected in any way to the reality of the situation they were supposed to be defending.
What makes us human is our ability to decide, choose, and, most importantly, change. When you forfeit that, what is really left?
“The views expressed in this post reflect the views of the author(s) and not UCLA or ASUCLA Communications Board.”
