Humans are afraid of the unknown. This is an undeniable fact
when considering the entirety of the race, and we humans will do anything we
can to combat our fears. One major strategy our brain uses to keep itself alive
is to learn from its mistakes; this is common among many animals.
Animals can be conditioned to associate event A with event B, and humans are no
different. We seek to condition ourselves for our survival, in fact.
If the iron was hot when we touched it last, we are far more
likely to take our previous experience and apply it to our current environment.
We will probably not touch the iron without prior caution. We also take the
accounts of our fellow humans and apply them to ourselves; it is simply the
smartest way to survive in this sense. Unfortunately, we can also be negatively
affected by our personal sorting for survival and our community’s sorting,
especially.
Plato’s republic sorted its people into classes, and a
millennia later we sort those we see into classes based on their appearance,
their accents, and their actions. We do it to keep ourselves, and those we care
about, as safe as possible. ‘Should we find anything objectionable with
attitudinally sorting in one’s own thinking?’ I believe that as long as we do
it appropriately and intelligently, we can make use of our instincts for the
common good.
Children do not have bias due to skin color or gender, but
as they grow they may adopt certain mindsets depending on the environment in
which the child was raised. It is the environment’s fault for this, and we
should take responsibility. If we accept that the woman on the bus, regardless
of her appearance or accent or actions, may not fit all the criteria we have
established in our internal file folders, we can improve our society and
ourselves. We need to respect our instincts, then respectfully remind them that
they are not always accurate.
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