What is the big deal?

When it comes to your physical origins, in other words your descendants and where they originally came from, what amazes me is how we are happy to hate each other for that alone. I live in
Australia and its easy to see its a multicultural country. It has people who originate from America, Asia,Africa,Europe and the eastern Mediterranean. I can understand that there may be preferences to which cultures you would rather interrelate with. Not only that, you may find that some cultures that you are completely alienated with. As far as I can see there is no problem with that, we have free choice of who we want to become friends with. But what I find amazing is how we can qualify that our culture is superior (doesn’t matter which culture that may be) and thus find it easy if not our birth-given right to hate other cultures other than our own. Personally, I see that as a real week standpoint for any human, how ignorant can you be? I know when cultures become over infused with religion, its easy enough for one to dislike them. Specially if that religion is trying to dictate to you how you should live, but I was more trying to look on a day to day level. The other funny thing I have found in my own travels is that as much as one says he is a patriot, it doesn’t take long to see he hates plenty of his own kind also. As this occurs, then the finger starts to point once again to where that particular mistake originated from. “ No, he’s not from here his from the next island.” Surely if this is that common, there must be something wrong with our genetic coding as it is ludicrous.

reply to post by ancientthunder


In some cases it is necessary to distance yourself from "your own kind" in order to make it known that you do not have anything to do with something that may have happened. For instance, when people speak about terrorists and al quaeda, etc.. I have to say "No, just because I am of middle eastern descent, I do not agree with "THOSE PEOPLE" who do those things" in order to distinguish myself from them. I am in redneck country, where racism is rampant and people are pretty ignorant. I have to distinguish myself from "THESE PEOPLE" who are close minded and radical in their own sense, spouting racism and making ludicrous claims about others. This is the reality of the world.

Ethnocentrism is culturally universal. Every culture views everybody else as barbarians. Us and Them is a universal way of organizing cultures and worldview. Culture is all about creating social barriers between groups. What's amazing to me is how arbitrary these cultural divisions are: skin color, clothes style, model and make of your car, music you listen to, what you eat, what you buy etc etc. etc.

There are some psychological experiments that show this division is instinctual and automatic. We are social creatures and creating solidarity within a community that protects itself from "outsiders" is essential for survival. It is natural for us to see the "Them" as threatening strangers and rogues.

We are not the only primate that behaves this way. When will we be able to just get along? When people stop being completely unreliable jerks and just start treating each other like neighbors and brothers and sisters instead of giving each other reason to fear one another. Some call me an irrational dreamer though and it is perhaps the greatest, most challenging, complicated sociological problem ever. Someone (everyone) needs to get to work on this right away!

sorry for all the edits!:

reply to post by anonymoz
In your particular case its understandable and its more of a reaction to a generalization in the first place. But that is exactly what I mean, we are manipulated in to hating each other and its obvious that it can only get worse. As we separate ourselves, from others because of rumors alone. Take an example, If you saw a dog and it was a fox terrier that had a terrible disease and smelt very bad, nobody could hardly blame you for separating yourself from that. But if soon after you were in the streets, shouting beware of the fox terrier as it is the bringer of the plague and evil. Then you have a serious illness of your own.

reply to post by ancientthunder


I couldn't agree more. This is the ignorance of man. I believe we have much left to learn and while some of us can rise above the masses, the masses will still prevail. As time is going on, the amount of people willing to tolerate, learn, and understand only becomes greater. Eventually I believe that this will be a distant memory, if we make it that long as a race.