We talked about what this social and personal construct mean to the self. Nothing very good we decided if we wanted a self that reflected the essentials of our working definition:
The self exists as a conscious, independent entity which perceives the world, takes information from that perception, learns from that information, makes choices based on that learning, and acts freely on those choices. The self experiences the results of those choices, accepts the responsibility of those choices and results, and the process begins again.
In terms of the ingroup and outgroup phenomenon, conscious independence has no place whatever except as something to serve as model for general fear when such independence gets someone cast out of the group. Most of my students agreed that the click demanded close to absolute conformity and nearly absolute loyalty. As with the family of origin, this group, a kind of family of choice, also wants a surrender to and adoption of its meaning perspective for the group and about the Other. This family, however, holds a form of power that a family of origin rarely uses, complete and absolute expulsion. The group makes its former members into non-persons, as the original purpose of forming an ingroup demanded.[51]
In a click, we found the essentials of domination and conformity. The dominator always exists in the power of meaning perspectives that express themselves as prejudice. Prejudice functions as a form of reasoning based on a false premise, something that is not evident to any viewer unless seen through the meaning perspective that has constructed it. Externally directed prejudice against the Other, denies that Other, a group of people and all individuals within it, the right to personhood, to be seen directly for who and what she/he says and does in the world. The dominator click denies the Other an identity other than that assigned to it by the dominating click. One that I heard more than once read like this: "All jocks are stupid (all athletes are stupid). Buddy is a jock. Buddy is stupid."[52] The power of such a meaning perspective reaches so far that many of the athletes with whom I have worked believed in their own stupidity. The enforced definitional power of the dominator violates the entire process of the search, the becoming self. That becomes an identity defined by the dominator's prejudice. Everyone in the dominating group strictly adheres to that meaning perspective because of the inherent threat of the inner prejudice that the dominating click uses to control those within it.
At the same moment the ingroup defines the Other, it automatically defines itself as not-the-Other and becomes frozen in the construction of the ingroup. In a sense, it Otherizes because the ingroup has no more freedom for the search and the becoming self than does the outgroup as Other. As Martin Buber asserts in I and Thou, if we treat another person as an "it," we become an "it" ourselves (see I/Thou, I/IT, the Other and having—October 30, 2011). Whatever regard my students felt in those situations, each knew that the regard they received manifested only if they met the conditions of membership in the ingroup, in the Us. That makes for something inherently conditional and most assuredly judgmental.
The ingroup offers protection from the loneliness and exposure that comes from living outside the confines of a group. That can mean a great deal when you feel invested in having relationships with others hoping for some form of regard from someone. If not part of a group, you may join a group-less group which offers some comfort. Some (myself included) become loners, complexly group-less and Other. It's a cold and vulnerable place with nowhere and no one to turn to for comfort.