US AND THEY

MY THEORY OF THE TEN POINT SYSTEM OF THE

"US AND THEY"

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I think that humans have a built-in genetic "thing" about establishing a method for determining who is "us" and who is "they. This could have helped us in our early development by, for instance, determining who among us are homocidal murders and who are non-homocidal murders.  You catch my drift.

Now in present day this Us and They presists without necessity; like the appendix.  Here's what I mean.

I was talking to a dear friend, (and Kent's name will remain anonomous), and he talked about the class structure in England.  I asked him how people who were all the same color, ate the same food, watched the same sports, etc, could be codified into a Us and Them.  It turns out it is language. And he was quite explicit in his explanation of slang and such that informed people whether you were an Us or a Them.

That got me thinking, and with enough wine I do that very well.  I think everyone has criteria for determining who is an Us and who is a Them and it is based on ten factors...kind of.   (But don't get confused, because the ten factors vary between groups)

For instance, you are a white man from the South and you meet a man who; watches football, likes NASCAR, eats fried chicken, works hard, brings his own beer to gatherings, etc, etc, buuuuuut....he's black.  Oooops.  Nine out of ten is not good enough.....he is automatically a They.

I am of the opinion that everyone needs ten connectors to comfortably interact with another human being.

But it's not just skin color. Example 2:

Hi, I work hard, give to charity, raise responsible children, pay my taxes, I'm white, etc......and I'm Jewish.

"Well, Jesus killer, get the fuck off my porch! You flunked my ten list!"

But it's more subtle than even that. Two neighbors meet and they have EVERYTHING in common....except one is Methodist and one is Baptist.

"Your heathen son ain't never marrying my born again daughter."

(ASIDE: Born again? Think about that for a minute or two.)

You see where this is going don't you. I would like to suggest that we make one tiny change in this insanity. We tweek the number down for ten to nine. Then after we get used to that, (about a million fucking years from now) we could drop it to eight, etc.)

Imagine....."Hi, I didn't try to kill you or steal your shit."

"Then you are a friend of mine."

(I would like to apologize for the many spelling errors in this post. My spellcheck is amok. It underlines EVERY word I type. I hope it's readable.)