# The Arbitrariness of Kinship

By Nina Lu · 2022-07-20 · Things That Matter (Medium) · Original: https://medium.com/@ninajlu/things-that-matter-the-arbitrariness-of-kinship-1d16957ec6bd

If belligerent aliens descended upon Earth tomorrow, as they do in many futuristic sci-fi movies, I have faith that humanity would band together and deploy our collective intelligence and resources to combat this alien threat. We would put aside the differences that we have — the artificial divisions of nationality, political affiliation, sports team allegiances, and other petty human squabbles to defend our beautiful home planet. Why? Because compared to the aliens, we all look pretty similar indeed. A more cynical way to view this would be to say that humans always need to find someone to outcast, to view as “other,” in order to prop up their own sense of belonging. And aliens from another galaxy just seem more “other” than any a member of our species, even if they have a different stance on abortion.

![](https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/460/0*vptCIluNGViYBpfC.jpg)

Kinship is arbitrary as is apparently our conception of what is neat and orderly.

In my Product Launch class at Stanford, we analyzed a case about contact lenses for chickens, which simulated having cataracts, effectively blinding the birds. When I began reading the case, I was horrified. _Who would do such a thing to a lovely animal? Make them blind? How unthinkable?_

The case went out though to talk about chicken hierarchy. For whatever reason, chickens determine a pecking order. A hen, once deemed to be the lowest in the pecking order, will then be subjugated to arbitrary and vicious attacks from her compatriots. They will peck her until she bleeds and sometimes until they have killed her. A well-meaning hobbyist farmer may attempt to remove the bullied hen, bloody and with clumps of feathers missing, from the pen (if she is still alive), but the hens only find another hen to pick on. Why? Because there must be a hen at the bottom of the pecking order I guess. In industrial farms, the loss associated with hens pecking each other to death is bad for profit margins since each hen that is killed by her peers is one that can not lay eggs or sold to generate economic profit. As a result, industrial farms have employed various techniques to prevent this loss. The most popular is debeaking, which is exactly what it sounds like — cutting off the beaks of chickens so that they can not peck each other to death. This causes all sorts of problems for the chickens. For example, the chickens experience trauma so great and profound that they are actually unable to lay eggs for a couple days following the debeaking procedure. Also sad is that chickens are unable to feed properly with half a beak and must eat sideways, drooling while they feed and unable to reach grain at the bottom couple inches of the trough.

_The cataract contact lenses don’t sound so bad now, do they?_

![](https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1024/0*3MVzPq_Vnhzm1emF.jpg)

From one of my favorite childhood movies, Chicken Run. Behind their friendly smiles, these are actually murderous.

Anyways, I wish for humanity that we may be better than these chickens. That we realize all feelings of kinship as inherently arbitrary and realize the common humanity, even in our greatest enemies. For they too have families, parents and siblings who love them. _Isn’t everything a matter of perspective?_

I do not condone people who act violently against other humans, who wish ill onto others. For me, this is unconscionable. These are extreme and terrible ideas. We should love each other like family and wish well upon others into eternity, even those who have hurt us, because we are not so different after all.

One thing Stanford did very well was helping us form kinship with our ~450 classmates. I felt the greatest and most profound sense of belonging and well-being recently on post-graduation trip to Indonesia with my classmates. We hiked the jungles of Sumatra, sailed around the Komodo Islands on a live aboard boat, took cooking classes in Ubud, and lounged at Potato Head in Bali. We faced blood-sucking leeches (that no one informed us about) and had to scrounge together 46mill Rupiah in cash to buy new plane tickets when our flights were unceremoniously cancelled by AirAsia. And yet, none of these felt insurmountable because we were in it together and instead all of these adversities felt like grand and exciting adventures. We built so many memories together that provided endless laughter and merriment for me, even as I recall them weeks later. What a beautiful experience! To feel belonging and acceptance is the greatest feeling in the universe. I also reflect on how arbitrary my class was at the GSB. Kirsten Moss and the admissions department could have assembled probably 5–10 classes of equal calibre and accomplishment instead of our own. And yet we were the ones chosen for this magical experience and I am so grateful to have been part of it. Things were not always perfect at Stanford but my experiences at the GSB were profoundly meaningful to me because of the people I got to experience it with. These shared memories then formed a solid base to feel kinship toward my classmates, however arbitrary the original set of people were.

Seen this way, the experience of kinship is inherently arbitrary. Maybe you went to the same college, maybe you were in the same fraternity, maybe someone just reminds you of yourself when you were younger. Why certain people click and feel connection is not always clear but it is magical when it does happen. Like most people, I like people who like me. There is a positive feedback loop with human connection in addition to natural disposition and your collective life experiences. For me, as I’ve gotten older, things I touch and see have increasingly started reminding me of others. Anything with Sailor Moon on it reminds me of my sister. When I see something on upskilling, I think about my classmate Miriam and our adventures in Bali. I hope that as I build more happy memories, the entire world will be blanketed in this love, so that everything I see reminds me of someone I love, an experience I’ve shared with someone, or a funny story that makes me chuckle to myself. I used to care about what I wore but now I wear the dresses and clothes my sister and my mother gifted me, even if they are unflattering, because I wear them and I think about their love for me. When I was young, I would keep the clothes my mother gifted to me but never wear them. The hideous red turtleneck? Yep, I kept that, but in the back of my closet for sentimental reasons. Now, I wear them all because when I wear them, I feel loved and beautiful in the reflection of their love.

I am grateful for the people I have shared my life thus far with and the kindness they have shown me. And I love also those I have not met yet or may never meet. There is comfort in knowing you exist.

To return to the original thought experiment that started this entire rant, kinship is arbitrary and relative. The rampant polarization that plagues modern society and America today could be seen as a consequence of our desire to find an “other” to hate and our inability to see ourselves reflected in our enemies. In this time of division and strife, my hope is that we may find in ourselves, the capacity to love fully and unconditionally and find kinship in all other humans, however arbitrary that kinship might be.

I’ll close with this story from Dave Grossman’s On Killing, which goes into the dehumanization that must be employed to distance soldiers from their enemy to enable them to kill:

> “There is a constant danger on the battlefield that, in periods of extended close combat, the combatants will get to know and acknowledge one another as individuals and subsequently may refuse to kill each other. This danger and the process by which it can occur is poignantly represented by Henry Metelmann’s account of his experiences as a German soldier on the Russian front during World War II. There was a lull in the battle, during which Metelmann saw two Russians coming out of their foxhole, and I walked over towards them…they introduced themselves…\[and\] offered me a cigarette and, as a non-smoker, I thought if they offer me a cigarette I’ll smoke it. But it was horrible stuff. I coughed and later on my mates said “You made a horrible impression, standing there with those two Russians and coughing your head off.”…I talked to them and said it was all right to come closer to the foxhole, because there were three dead Russian soldiers lying there, and I, to my shame, had killed them. They wanted to get the \[dog tags\] off them, and the paybooks…. I kind of helped them and we were all bending down and we found some photos in one of the paybooks and they showed them to me: we all three stood up and looked at the photos…. We shook hands again, and one patted on my back and they walked away. Metelmann was called away to drive a half-track back to the field hospital. When he returned to the battlefield, over an hour later, he found that the Germans had overrun the Russian position. And although there were some of his friends killed, he found himself to be most concerned about what happened to “those two Russians.” “Oh they got killed,” they said. I said: “How did it happen?” “Oh, they didn’t want to give in. Then we shouted at them to come out with their hands up and they did not, so one of us went over with a tank,” he said, “and really got them, and silenced them that way.” My feeling was very sad. I had met them on a very human basis, on a comradely basis. They called me comrade and at that moment, strange as it may seem, I was more sad that they had to die in this mad confrontation than my own mates and I still think sadly about it.”  
> ― **Dave Grossman,** [**On Killing: The Psychological Cost of Learning to Kill in War and Society**](https://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/804474)