How do we create division in our society?

Michael Rossi
September 9th, 2010
Advanced Placement English Literature
How do we create division in our society (Respond in 15 sentences)


Division occurs on a small level, within the educational system. Students often organize themselves into cliques that share a similar interests or physical features such as the nerds, jocks, Blacks, Caucasians, Hispanics, Skaters, or any other kinds of cliques. Each of these groups are different organs in the student body that are magnificent on their own, but ultimately exist to give life to the student body. Just as an animal cannot survive with only seventy eight of any one organ, a student body would perish without variety. The more these groups try to focus on the differences between each clique, the more difficult brotherly unity becomes and the cancer of disunity begins to eat away at the student body clique by clique.
On a larger scale, countries are often guilty of spreading this cancer through foreign policy. A supreme example of this would be the tension that existed between the United States and the Soviet Union during the cold war. The United States government felt the need to contain communism as they considered it a grave threat democracy worldwide. The government portrayed communists are grotesque looking men whose heads were as blank as their hearts. America was thrown in to such hysteria that (for a short time) they began the red scare, hunting communists as puritanical Massachusetts had hunted witches.
Both large scale and small scale division often call for those who alien others to first dehumanize them. Rather than think of the soviets as our brothers from Russia or Kazakhstan, we were first ready to call them communists. Rather than recognize our peers as a community as brothers and sisters, one is often quick to categorize outsiders at school into a stereotype or clique, rather than try to welcome him or her as a brother. This connection emphasizes the fact that even modern world leaders are not exempt from a childlike form of alienation against their foreign brothers and sisters. If not put in check, a rugged sense of individualism can result in individual insanity or give rise to tyrannical rulers of an entire nation.