Not as ________ as Us

Yesterday I came up with three different things I wanted to write about, and now I can't remember a single one of 'em. Fall has descended on the cove with a slow southern drawl; chatting up each tree individually. Yesterday was the coldest day we've had so far, and the staff walked as briskly as the air.
Ah! Remembered something!
In one of my last posts, I talked about how we reduce people to one word caricatures and when we do, we can justify treating them as subhuman. I am realizing how often I do it to some degree.
This was especially prevalent when I had to drive around the NoVA/DC area often; road rage is a form of this reduction in the value of fellow peoples. That person is no longer someone who just wants to get home; he's the asshole in the Toyota.
The ability to reduce the worth of someone else allows us to increase our self-importance; since they are not as ______ as us, then we are better. Ergo, we "deserve" to get what we want, and right then. It's why we're terrible at patience, courtesy, charity, graciousness, peace. All I can see is me.
And nothing in society does a thing to curb this practice! We are increasing our sense of isolation; we do not have to talk to people anymore. Everything is automated, automatic, and numeric. Even at the hospital you aren't called in by a name; you are a number. It's our country's foreign policy in a nutshell: be like us or suffer the consequences.
There's an Anne Lamott quote that says, "You can safely assume that you've created God in your own image when it turns out that God hates all the same people you do."
I want to live a life of grace in being able to see someone as wholly human, warts and all, and be able to respond to them as such.