Seen on social media:
“It’s not ignorance that makes us stereotype people by their skin color or religion, it’s preconceived ideas.”
Well, in that case, forget your preconceived ideas and step in front of a moving bus, preferably one traveling at 80kph and just metres in front of you.
To do that would be ignorant, because you have a well informed preconceived idea that it will… never mind, I am just being racist.
But the race is on, so what the whitey, I will continue:
Natural selection conditions us to learn from mistakes. As Bush Jr once misspoke: “Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, well… you can’t” or something to that effect.
The point is, I use stereotypes and preconceived ideas to stay alive. So should you. Does that mean I hate gingers? No? When I used to catch the last train home, did I avoid eye contact with the Aborigines prowling the train? Absolutely yes! Shamelessly so. And if I were naive they would have smashed my head in, I am certain. Because I saw it happen to others on a regular basis, hence I formed preconditioned ideas.
But I digress. I just made a statement based not on ignorance, but on rational analysis. Ignorance would be to trust every “migrant” because they are “needy victims”. That is every bit as biased and representative of preconceived ideas as, I dunno, calling soccer players soft whiny pricks, or politicians corrupt, or fashion models as sexy, or physicists as geeks.
Having said that, preconceived ideas need to be cast aside in the presence of facts. A kind-hearted interaction with anyone, no matter what race, creed or gender should remove any negative bias “against the individual”. Treating people in contradiction to facts like that is inappropriate.
So, when you prove your point by stepping in front of the speeding bus, know that you are a kindred spirit with the Greens, with the apologists, with the progressives, who would rather die than face reality. Just try not to be holding their hands as they do it.
Photo by Mike Licht, NotionsCapital.com 