Thank you, Ermine. I am close on 80. I was raised in a society where views were very conditioned and often very flawed. I have spent my life attempting to release myself from that and understand, as closely as I can without being another, how others feel and experience. My attempts will never cease because I will die before I can come even close to such understanding. However, I have an open mind, don't consciously discriminate on any grounds and check myself quickly if I realise that I am doing so unconsciously as a result of conditioning or whatever.
I agree whole-heartedly that what you say is a desirable way to behave and likely to achieve much more healthy understanding than seeing other views or understandings as representing the people that hold them. Ideas and issues are not the people that hold them. All human beings, in my view, have the same potential for positive and negative behaviours in all types of areas and many factors influence that. Quick, judgmental and reactive responses do little or nothing to facilitate learning and are more likely to entrench false or unhealthy attitudes than to change them.
Thank you for your well-said comment. Yes,try educating yourself on a topic instead of making it up as you go along.
Thank you, Ermine. I am close on 80. I was raised in a society where views were very conditioned and often very flawed. I have spent my life attempting to release myself from that and understand, as closely as I can without being another, how others feel and experience. My attempts will never cease because I will die before I can come even close to such understanding. However, I have an open mind, don't consciously discriminate on any grounds and check myself quickly if I realise that I am doing so unconsciously as a result of conditioning or whatever.
I agree whole-heartedly that what you say is a desirable way to behave and likely to achieve much more healthy understanding than seeing other views or understandings as representing the people that hold them. Ideas and issues are not the people that hold them. All human beings, in my view, have the same potential for positive and negative behaviours in all types of areas and many factors influence that. Quick, judgmental and reactive responses do little or nothing to facilitate learning and are more likely to entrench false or unhealthy attitudes than to change them.
Thank you for your understanding.