Delusional pain hurts just as much as pain from actual trauma. So what if it's all in your head?
Octavia E. ButlerRead
Most of us, if we're not careful, tend to dehumanize the enemy.
Interpretation
What this quote means
This quote warns against losing our humanity by viewing opponents as mere objects rather than individuals.
Octavia E. Butler highlights a common psychological tendency to dehumanize those we consider as enemies. This behavior can lead to justification of actions against them and a loss of empathy, ultimately eroding our moral compass and understanding of the shared humanity that exists even in adversarial relationships.
Themes
DehumanizationEnemyEmpathyHumanityUnderstanding
In practice
Example use cases
This quote can be used in a speech about promoting peace and understanding in conflict zones.
More from Octavia E. Butler
All quotes βI don't write about good and evil with this enormous dichotomy. I write about people. I write about people doing the kinds of things that people do.
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My characters hope for better lives.
Octavia E. ButlerRead
I pecked my stories out two-fingered on the Remington portable typewriter my mother had bought me. I had begged for it when I was ten.
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When I was 7 and went to the zoo with my second-grade class, I saw chimpanzee eyes for the first time - the eyes of an unhappy animal, all alone, locked in a bare, concrete-floored, iron-barred cage in one of the nastier, old-fashioned zoos. I remember looking at the chimp, then looking away.
Octavia E. ButlerRead
The lovely thing about writing is, well, two things. One, writing fiction allows us to bring an order to our lives that doesn't exist in real life. And two, it allows us to create human characters that we know better than we will ever know anyone in real life.
Octavia E. ButlerRead
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