Put Labels On Cans And Boxes, Not People

It is easy to hate members of a group that you have little contact with, basing your evaluation on some fuzzy, second hand perception. Should you encounter a member of said group one on one, you’d likely be surprised at how unlike your preconceptions they actually are.  On the other other hand, you can declare your undying love for a group, an ethnic, racial, social, religious division all day long, and then will be shocked to meet some of them and find that they’re nasty, or disagreeable a-holes! How can this be?

Frankly, I’d advise you to toss your labels under the bus, and deal with all humans one on one. Judge the individual, one by one, if you must judge them at all. Our tribal tendencies make us want a simple classification system, that would allow us to glance halfway at anyone, and determine whether they are friend or foe. Life isn’t that simple anymore, but we keep trying!

Humans are cursed with a million years of evolutionary baggage, that makes us consider anyone different to be a potential evil enemy. You my friends, make decisions on who you like or hate for reasons as shallow as the color of a person’s eyes or hair! Forget race, language or ethnicity, you can hate someone over what they’re wearing on a given day! It gets pretty tragic, and if it didn’t cause so many horrid problems, it would be amusing.

For all that society has done to discourage this tendency, the governement works flat out to keep it alive. You can’t fill out anything without being asked a hundred question about your race, language, nationality etc. Doesn’t foster much blindness to our differences, does it?  Look, God mints souls in one form; human. The only question worthy of asking, or of judging people on is this; are you or are you not a decent human? All the rest is nonsense. Good or evil makes a fine dividing line, for evaluating your fellow humans. Labels work best on containers. Try to remember that.

Jack