US/others

When I first read the excerpt from Edward Said's book, "Orientalism", it reminded me of the show, "Lost". In the show, a plane crashes on an island and the survivors make lives for themselves on the island when they become convinced that they will never be rescued. However, there are already inhabitants on the island who are referred to as the Others. "Orientalism was ultimately a political vision of reality whose structure promoted the difference between the familiar (Europe, West, 'us') and the strange (the Orient, the East, 'them')".  We have created an US/others binary that stems from tending to alienate the Other, just because something is unfamiliar. When in reality, we are just uneducated about the place, the people, and the culture.