Prejudices. We all love them, do we? Truth be told, people are often being judged as 'don't have that much prejudices about people!' This shows that most people see prejudices as a bad thing, because they are being associated with discrimination. If you think Chinese guys are annoying, you'll probably never like one and maybe you can start descriminating them. I personally know a lot of people stuffed full with old, dull prejudices that now do not make this much sense anymore. They have had their best time, but those ideas are still in the minds of who we deal with every day. But why do we have prejudices, anyway? Well, let me explain that. Prejudices are a very important part of how our brain works. You can call in 'generalisation' too. Imagine yourself, noticing every one thing that happens. That would be an annoying life. What would tests be hard! You would get all nervous and wouldn't be able to concentrate on what you need to do or that horribly tough question. Our brain needs to generalize. We need to be able to focus on what's really important in our lives. We don't only to that when seeing, but also hearing, feeling.. You don't hear everything. You don't feel you're wearing clothes after a while. But we also do this when expressing opinions. If we would look at every single person on our globe, we would go berserk. It's too much information to hold. So, people generalize. They need to add structures to a big heap of information. But often this 'generalization' becomes negative. We develop opinions about certain races, places, hair colours, anything you can recognize an individual with. Sometimes this turns into discrimination, but more often these are prejudices. Prejudices developed by your own brain. Another cause can be society. It may seem all of us shove causes off to society, but this is the rough truth. Think about the church and gay marriage, for example. Who ever said gay marriage was bad? Someone ever developed the idea that it was of no good, and now the church continues to spread that idea. Unknowingly, a lot of young children but also adults are filled with prejudices every day. Around us, too. Friends, family, teachers, co-workers.. Their opinions have a big effect. On all of us. You trust them, so you take their opinions. When you know enough people you can develop prejudices, without even knowing you ever did. Maybe not even wanting to. I have prejudices too. Everyone does. Not all of them are bad and I probably knowonly of half of them, but there are some I don't like. Why wouldn't I like Asians? What's wrong with them? I have no idea. Maybe society pushed me to. Maybe I developed them myself. But I try to have only prejudices necissary to process information. If I don't know why I have a prejudice, chances are big it's of no use. If you are a big critic about certain happenings, people around you, places, then maybe you should take a look at which of your opinions are prejudices and which are not. I think we all agree that it's not the best thing to have too many and get 7 year old kids calling eachother niggers because they've learned to. Because they've learned 'niggers' are bad for our society. Or just because they like to make fun of eachother. But what I would like to point at, is that you should not have prejudices about people with prejudices.. How cryptical it may seem. We are born with them, we all are. Judging someone because they 'have too many prejudices' is simply ironic. |