Part 2: Choose Compassion in Action: The Hidden Cost of Dehumanizing (and the Dignity Line)
- Carolyn Sharp
- 23 hours ago
- 6 min read
At Hadrian’s Villa, I felt something I did not expect, not just awe, but a kind of familiarity. Moss and grass soften the edges of crumbling walls. The remains of gardens and gathering places still suggest what they were built for: beauty, devotion, celebration, and the simple human need to come together.
As we walked through the ruins, I kept noticing how familiar the pattern felt, not because history repeats perfectly, but because the human nervous system does. Rome is a masterclass in layering. Beauty on top of brutality, art on top of conquest, daily life built over old violence.
And here is the part I want to deepen.
The nervous system does not only repeat history, it repeats strategies.
When threat rises, we move toward survival. We scan, we brace, we simplify, we look for danger and we look for someone to blame.
We also have a competing and equally important drive, the drive for connection. We are wired to seek safety in relationship, to belong, to be seen, and to be protected by our people.
Under stress, those two drives can collide:
We want closeness, and we want control.
We want to stay human, and we want to be safe.
When we do not know how to hold both, we often reach for the fastest shortcut the brain has: We turn people into categories.
Bringing this into the present
People are understandably disturbed by what is happening right now. We are scared, we are angry, we feel and are threatened.
And you can see the survival instincts playing out everywhere.
Even at the Olympics, athletes expressing their thoughts about current events are being met with violent threats. Then those threats lead to people dehumanizing the threateners. Then that dehumanizing leads to more escalation.
All of it costs us so much:
It costs us sleep, it costs us steadiness, it costs us the ability to disagree without exile, and it costs us the capacity to solve problems together.
This is not a moral failure; it is threat physiology.
When we feel unsafe or powerless, our brains narrow. We simplify and sort the world into safe and dangerous, good and evil.
That narrowing can feel like clarity, especially when we are scared or furious. It can also feel like relief, like we are finally landing on solid ground. But this strategy comes with a cost.
When our nervous systems go into threat mode, it becomes easier to treat other people like categories instead of humans. Once we do that, cruelty starts to sound reasonable, revenge starts to sound like justice, and contempt starts to sound like truth.
I want to name this plainly, because I see it in the news, in comment sections, in conversations between friends, and in the way public conflict is leaking into private life. I see it in the impulses in myself to go there.
Why fear and rage pull us toward dehumanizing
When we feel unsafe or powerless, our brains look for a target. We want a clean story and a clear enemy. We want someone to blame, because blame gives the nervous system a sense of control.
That is why, in moments of collective stress, language changes. We start hearing:
· Animal and disgust language (“monsters,” “vermin,” “criminals”)
· Exile language (“they don’t belong here”)
· Certainty language (“anyone who disagrees is…”)
· Permission language (“they deserve whatever happens”)
Dehumanizing language is powerful because it numbs empathy. And numbness can feel like relief when we are hurting, angry, and scared.
But numbness is not healing, and healing is what we most need.
The hidden cost of dehumanizing and plotting revenge
Dehumanization does not only harm “them.” It changes us in ways that hurts us physically, emotionally and relationally.
1) It trains your nervous system to live in threat
When you rehearse contempt, your body stays braced. You may feel energized, but underneath is chronic vigilance.
It shows up as shallow breath, tight jaw, insomnia, doom-scrolling, a hair-trigger startle. Even when you are not in direct danger, your body acts as if you are.
2) It shrinks your capacity for intimacy
If your mind practices turning people into categories, it becomes easier to do that at home too, especially under stress. Our family members become enemies when they disagree, do something irritating, or don’t give us what we want.
Contempt is portable, and transferable.
I have seen this again and again in my work with couples and teams. The fights happening on the streets and in the news escalate fights at home. Couples, parents, colleagues, and friends become more reactive, less collaborative, and more contemptuous with one another.
When the world feels unsafe, the nervous system looks for a place to discharge. Too often, it discharges on the people closest to us.
3) It makes repair feel like betrayal
Once the story becomes “they’re monsters,” any move toward nuance can feel like weakness. Any attempt at understanding can get labeled as disloyal.
In families and partnerships, this shows up as more zero-sum interactions. Someone has to win. Someone has to lose. And if you try to soften, you are accused of not caring, not seeing the danger, not being on the right side.
Repair starts to feel like surrender.
4) It creates the very world you’re afraid of
Revenge fantasies are a kind of rehearsal. They normalize harm as “understandable.” And when harm becomes understandable, it becomes more likely.
This spreads and mistakes become unacceptable, and accountability becomes unsafe. People hide, lie, double down, or attack, because there is no room left to be human.
These are the patterns that scare me the most.
Beyond the horror of what is happening on the streets, at the hands of whichever side you are against, the impact on us, in how we take sides, in how we talk, in how we treat one another, is having a profound effect on our humanity.
A boundary that protects your humanity: The Dignity Line
Here is a simple rule, borrowed from many philosophers and psychologists, which I teach couples and teams and I offer to all of us to practice.
The Dignity Line is the boundary between conflict that can be repaired and conflict that becomes corrosive.
When we cross it through contempt, labels, and dehumanizing shorthand, connection collapses, problem-solving collapses, and repair collapses.
Crossing the line sounds like:
· Animal or disease language
· “They’re all…”
· “Anyone who supports that is…”
· Jokes about violence, punishment, or extermination
Staying above the line sounds like:
· “I’m scared and I’m getting rigid.”
· “I’m furious, and I don’t want to become someone I don’t recognize.”
· “I can name what I oppose without erasing someone’s humanity.”
What struck me in Rome is that this boundary is not new. Ancient societies wrestled with the same question we are wrestling with now, what do humans do with fear, power, grievance, and difference. The ruins are not only a warning. They are also a reminder that we have always had to practice restraint, dignity, and repair if we want to live together.
In other words, the problem goes way back, and so does the possibility of a solution.
This is not about being nice. Nor is not about pretending harm is not harm.
It is about refusing to let threat physiology turn you into someone who can only see enemies.
It is about protecting your capacity for relationship, for repair, and for wise action.
Bringing it back to your real life
If you are wondering whether this matters, I want you to look at your closest relationships.
Notice what happens after you have been steeped in outrage for an hour. Notice what happens after you have been in an online argument. Notice what happens after you have been with someone who speaks in sweeping labels.
Do you feel more open, more patient, more able to listen?
Or do you feel tighter, sharper, more certain, more ready to strike?
This is not a character flaw; this is nervous system math.
And it is exactly why we need boundaries like the Dignity Line. We need it not to control other people, but to protect what is most precious in us.
A bridge into what comes next
On our last evening in Rome, we passed the Colosseum lit up against the dark sky. It is stunning, and it is also a reminder of what humans can normalize. In early Rome, killing and aggression became sport and competition became deadly. Crowds gathered to watch, not because they were uniquely evil, but because cruelty can become culture when fear and power take over. Does this feel familiar to you at all?
Civilizations do not only fall from outside pressure. They also erode from the inside when contempt becomes normal and cruelty becomes reasonable.
If you read Part 1, you already have the first tool I am practicing, choose curiosity over judgement. Curiosity helps us slow down the snap-to-certainty that threat physiology demands.
Part 2 is the next tool, choose compassion in action, by staying above the Dignity Line even when you are scared and furious.
In Part 3, I will offer the final tool and a more practical snapshot of what I am taking home from Rome about fear and rage, how to work with them without letting them turn into hatred or revenge. This is what I am trying to contribute to the world right now.
So the question becomes less “How do I stop feeling this?” and more “How do I stay human while I feel it?”
Stay tuned and let me know your thoughts.
Here's my TEDx talk, if you wanna check it out:
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