Ah, Tom, as always, in your search for absolute answers in a relativistic universe, you miss the whole point. You came so close too, in this post, and still managed to sail right past it, eyes wide shut. "Us" and "Them" aren't places, they are directions; they are not points rigidly fixed in a philosophical grid, they are continuous and unbroken axes stretching into an infinite conceptual space. What is the word you like to use so much?..."vectors". Vectors have a magnitude AND a direction. No matter where you oscillate on the spectrum, as the mad prophet Techster assures us, there are higher and lower frequencies.

"Us" and "Them" are the reason there is so much injustice in the world, and why the victims of it collaborate in perpetuating it forever. As long as you can convince the oppressed they have the right to oppress others, or that they can someday earn that right, man will continue to exploit his fellow man, not just economically, but psychologically and socially. I guess it's part of our hominid heritage, social apes bound in hierarchical bands; so maybe there isn't much we can do about it at a fundamental level. But let us at least refrain from ideologically legitimizing it with contrived political and economic justifications.