312. Who are my people?

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I was having a conversation about xenophobia and antiimmigration sentiment yesterday. My interlocutor was passionately stating that he cared about his people much more than about others, and that he objected to others, as he called them, taking benefits, rights or anything else from his people. For him, his people were his co-nationals. I got to thinking that, in this, he is probably no different to anyone else. For some, their people are their family, whose interest is above anyone else’s, regardless of justice or fairness. For others, their people are their tribe, nationality or race. For some of us, our people are all humans (I would in principle not exclude other sentient extra-terrestrial beings if we were to make contact with them at some point). So, in a way, we are all equally tribal, but different attitudes to issues such as immigration depend on how we define our tribe, and who we see as The Other, as opposed to We or Us (rather than the epistemological Hegel/Husserl concept)

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