Mitigation

Mitigation, according to Google: "The action of reducing the severity, seriousness, or painfulness of something."

            Mitigation weakens or removes worth from positive qualities, or dilutes the potency of negative qualities or circumstances, depending on who is being judged.

            Typically the clearest case of mitigation at work is the double standard. When a practice or trait is viewed as okay, accepted, or even respected for one group(typically with some mention of special circumstances) and yet seen as abhorrent when found in other groups, there is mitigation involved.

            Mitigation occurs as a result of perception; in this context, it is the influencing of positive and negative factors in favor of one’s one preferences. Mitigation of the harm a member of one’s own has done, for example, or the benefit of the doubt as a mitigating factor in regards to the reasoning for harm. Rather than acknowledge that there is a problem with one’s own pack(and therefore ideology, mannerism, etc) people choose to mitigate, to explain away the issue in such a way that creates a new target, or softens the blow(in name only).

            As mentioned before, change is difficult, and mitigating allows a group to convince themselves that they do not need to change, because “It’s not a big deal.”

            Mitigation is harmful because it overlooks, ignores, or dismisses the very real catalysts behind behavior or circumstance. It allows people to write off targeted malevolence as a fluke, or a random attack. It allows people to label the subconscious and pervasive attitudes toward some groups as isolated sentiments among  ‘lone wolf’ characters. It allows people to justify violence, abandonment, marginalization under the guise of sympathy for the aggressor, as if hurt feelings or desperation were an excuse to cause harm, or more important than the well-being of the harmed.

            Mitigation is also used directly on ‘other’ tribes. In such cases, however, it is not the harm that these others perform that is mitigated. When one group mitigates another, is the good that is downplayed. Just as one makes little of their own faults to avoid critiquing their own way of life, one must eliminate any benefit or positivity from the other’s actions in order to ‘prove’ them inferior. If the other group performs well, how can one denounce their customs and deny their equality?  One must then acknowledge their standing, and therefore no longer do they have an excuse to discriminate or marginalize, and therefore they must change the way they view themselves and the world. As I have said, change is difficult. It is much easier to deny or reduce whatever good comes from the other(particularly when it runs contrary to personal belief disguised as ‘common knowledge’) than to acknowledge it.

            In the effort to understand others, it helps to identify the things we look to first when observing and interacting with other groups. If one finds, for example, that they can only identify negative things about a particular group of people, perhaps those views are unwarranted. This is particularly true if the negative qualities they are quick to point out in others can also be found in their own tribe, yet not without with positive qualities or justification to ‘balance it out’. As human beings, we should strive to see others as they truly are, the good, and the bad, and be able to think critically about what we have seen within others and within our own groups. Doing so will reveal the merits of the other, and more importantly, the common ground. We have more in common than we do differences.

            When one cannot find the good in others because of the bad they see in them, yet are able to identify the good in their own people, despite the presence of the same negative qualities, this is mitigation. This is a view where one is not looking to learn, but to classify. One is not looking to grow or understand, but to label and disregard. 

            In short, mitigation is another tool that we use to avoid reconciling with our morality. We mitigate to avoid finding evil in ourselves or our loved ones, we mitigate to ignore others so we do not feel guilt for their circumstances or for our selfishness. We can overcome this of we look to ourselves, to our loved ones, to those whom we associate with, and those whom we avoid. We can identify qualities as they are—neutral. We can find the good and the bad, and recognize that those traits are not associated with anything other than themselves. People are people.