AGIR, if I am 'acting like a little schoolgirl' in my reaction to your' thinly veiled attack on Jews, then several other posters on this thread go to the same school as I do!

No one on this site, with the possible exception of Runner and Proxy, demonstrates the negative aspects of 'we/they ideas' more than you do.

davidf:

<Of course we are culturally conditioned, but I think we can develop ways to examine and override our cultural conditioning>

Highly doubtful.

<I've looked at myself and don't like some of what I see>

I know what you mean. Ditto.

Lexi,

intolerance is a survival instinct, not a malignancy, probably a compound of instinct and acculturation.
Our culture has reached a degree of sophistication (actually sophistry) wherein we stylishly embrace intangibles like tolerance. This is a luxury born of security, complacency and sheer hubris, and would be dropped the moment our material prosperity and superiority was threatened, Actually, it is only observed in the breach as it is.

This is a gloomy view of course and I'd like to think we were capable of holding to our principles in extremis. But we are incapable of observing them even when we're on top, as we are or have been. We are not going to solve human antagonism by taking thought, unless we can think outside ourselves and our context, and act materially.

You should read Rorty, Rawls, Fish, anti-foundationalism generally. All the evidence suggests there is no essential self. The self is merely an introjection of cultural discourses, manifested uniquely in each one of us, like a snowflake. As Freud despaired, and Lacan corroborated, the only self that abides beneath is a primitive and unreasoning thing.
All our philosophy and religion and reasoning are vanity, as Solomon says.

I don't say this as an absolute--many do--but I think it is a sobering draft and purgative that we all should imbibe. It's the kernal of Buddhism, Hegel, Krishnamurti and even modern science.

Anyway

Squeers,

Relationships are our primary teacher. They are the context in which we either grow or deny ourselves and others the opportunity to do so.
There are simple keys to happy relationships, which is not to say that these keys are always easy to use. One key is this - we experience peace and harmony to the extent to which we love, forgive, and focus on the good in others and in ourselves. None of this means that we lack the capacity to set boundaries, say a healthy, "no" or stand up for ourselves when we need to. Relationships are the central issue in a peaceful, powerful life. Anyway... I found an old article
reprinted from The Age, 11/2/1980 by Jenny Tabakoff of the Sydney
Morning Herald entitled - "Them and us, or is it me?" In it she states: "As everyone knows, the world is divided into two categories: Other People and Us. Other people snore. Other people have garlic breath. Other people publicly take the straw out of their milkshakes to suck the ice-cream blob off the end. We do it only when no-one is looking. Other people get drunk and put lamp shades on their heads, we are the life and soul of the party. Other people are rude when they don't stand up on buses and trains; we're dead tired so no one can expect us to. Life could be defined as a long process of putting up with Other People's irritating habits. Yet I am constantly amazed at how tolerant even the most intolerant people are of their own foibles... Sound hypocritical? Let's face it. Life is only tolerable when we can look down on someone else."

Sorry Lexi,
but that sounds like some half-pissed broad writing for a tabloid (even being a broadsheet is no guarantee of respectability these days).
In the real world the only two categories that counts are the haves and the have-nots!

Squeers,

Lighten up - The Age article was done tongue-in-cheek.

You state that -
In the real world the two categories that count are the haves and the have nots? I would put it another way - it's what we do about it - that really counts. That should be cause for optimism - especially if we were to chose a society that was maximally fair.

Squeers wrote:

In the real world the only two categories that counts are the haves and the have-nots!

Dear Squeers,

That is reductionism to a we/they idea. The Marxists decided who was a have and who was a have not. The result of that decision was mounds of corpses. In Cambodia a criterion for being a have was being a university graduate so they killed them.

Your real world is not a real world but a world defined by ideology.