An intolerant species.

I dunno, killing others who were different probably helped us compete successfully for food and women.

Might say clan hatred has was a biological imperative. And pretty funny when you preface it with 'In Soviet Russia...'

Realistically though I don't believe that. Just responding to a kind of naive post.

 

Becoming tolerant and nonjudgemental is a matter of a paradigm shift. Its not a neurophysiological trait, its a learned response. Haven't you ever noticed that children don't seem to discriminate based on color,wealth, or any other trivial matter?

 

Maybe it helped mankind in it's primitive stages but it's only making things worse now. So much for evolution...

Why should anybody make another person's life any more miserable than it has to be?

 

For the same reason we tailgate; to push him/her to the limit of his/her driving experience, and beyond

Hotwater

 

If children are tolerant then wouldn't we have to say that intolerance is a learned response?

Anyway I'm not sure children are tolerant. To me that word means putting up with something you are not completely happy with. I don't have kids, but do they do that? Or does behaviour like sharing come naturally for them, and tolerance come in later to curb the ego.

 

It the wicked doings of the Ego my friend, not the true nature of ourselves.

 

this thread is pretty intolerant of humans.

 

100% correct. Most ignorances and prejudices of those different to "ourselves" can be attributed to attempting to hold onto a deeply ingrained illusion of truth, as doing that is far easier than it is to look for the actual truth. It is easier to criticise what "we" don't understand, than it is to try and understand it.

We are all flesh and blood at the end of the day, and as long as you are not hurting anyone by being who you are, why should you suffer discrimination of any kind?

I would say humans have not really evolved much at all from centuries past. On the surface, it may appear as if we have, but the violence, intolerance and hatred that has always existed in our world is still very prevelant today.

And I would have to totally disagree with the notion that children are "tolerant". Intolerance and hatred of others' differences actually begins at a very young age. What do you think school bullying is? Kids are much more likely to be bullied if they stand out in any way, or are noticeably weak. It is true that nobody is born prejudiced, but many children pick up prejudice very early on in life. Nobody who is prejudiced suddenly only became prejudiced when they hit adulthood. The fact that bullying is such a huge issue, would seem to negate the notion that children are tolerant.

 

To Op. Intolerance is a natural response of not just humans but animals period. Yes, humans are smart enough to rationalize against or for it but lets not forget that we share 98% DNA with chimps, so we are bound to have some of that chimp-ness remain. Also I think we can take a que at how humans, as a whole, treat other animals. From that point of view, is it surprising at all the we generally treat each other like shit? We have the brains to change but c'mon we're way too lazy for that, change is slow my friend. My $.02

 

I disagree, especially with younger kids. Left on their own little guys tend to be pretty tolerant up until the point that their adult mentors spread poisonous ideas into little brains. Perhaps you are right in saying the potential for intolerance is there but I think it comes from the adults in a kids enviroment. Over the years of watching my friends raise their children it seems the kids mirror the value given to then. Just my .02 cents worth

 

No, you're actually agreeing with me.

Just because I say kids can be intolerant, doesn't mean that I think they become intolerant without negative outside influences. Like I said in my previous post, I really don't think anyone is born prejudiced and intolerant. I learned very quickly how cruel other children could be, as I was bullied on my first day of primary school. A pattern which continued until the day I left high school. I stood out for a number of reasons, and I suffered a lot from other kids as a result of that.

I think the reason why bullying is such a problem in our schools more than anything else, just shows how intolerant of difference our world is. And how quickly some kids pick that up. Some pick that up from parents, but some also pick that up from peers who got it from their parents. Also, the intolerance in general society definitely does wash off onto the younger generations.

 

In sum this all rings quite true to me. Being innately liberal is as natural and sensible as I can be. The fact that this right wing perspective even exists makes me wonder if we're really playing this game of human experience on the same field.

We are

Those capitalist elitists that have been trying to show the world to us through television live just like a person like me might but in a whole different headspace

We are here to love and accept

Where others might not

It's perfectly natural

It's our place in this space

 

I think we do rather well considering there are now 7 billion of us. Surprised we dont run killing each other more than we currently are or have

 

There will always be a natural division between those who hate, and those who tolerate. Call it left, right, red, blue, green, or orange, it's still about hate vs. tolerance.

I do think I picked up a good bit of liberal thinking from college professors and high school teachers, mostly because I wasn't getting much exposure to that point of view anywhere else. In the 1970's, in the South, if you saw a documentary on air and water pollution as a child, you probably saw it in a classroom. You might have heard your parents mention it at home, but they were more likely to have talked about the local economic benefits of the big, new industrial plant with the tall smokestack.

Even today, I strongly suspect that educators play a more important role in red states, where most kids would not otherwise be exposed in any significant way to the opposite point of view to that of the local culture. If you live in New York or New England, that's not so important.

Down here, educators tend to be much more liberal than the general population because they value proven facts more highly than beliefs. Of course, the right wingers want to label them communists or socialists because those words sound more exotic and scary to those who don't understand.

In the '70's, one of the commonly applied labels was "******-lover", because the academic community opposed racism.

I'm sure that getting rid of genetic mutants improved the tribe's gene pool. It's just not a relevant concept anymore. We're not operating in "survival mode". We can learn to handle things differently.

Very true. They learn that shit from adults. And then they need to unlearn it.

Somehow, I skipped over this point earlier. Buddhists don't fit this pattern. They don't fight or evangelize, at least not in any significant way. That has won them a ton of respect from me. eace: Some variants of Buddhism are more of a philosophy than a religion, in the Western sense of the word.

Similar things could be said of Taoism and Hinduism, which you didn't mention. Hindus are so tolerant and open-minded that they have a "Temple to the Unknown God", just in case they left anyone out of their theological system. That's about as far as you can get from fighting against other beliefs.

And what you say about atheists is true of militant atheists, but there are many who simply avoid thinking about or dealing with religion as much as possible. They get no attention because the media can't make an interesting story out of their approach.

 

I think little children can/could be taught to be any way "we" want them to be. There has been no discrimination that I could ever see in kindergarten-1st grade,for example. The little ones see no color. Given that the parents are tolerant,the children will begin to get all the signals that some are less equal than others from TV,their peers and other such advertising, some overt and some very subtle. If the parents are intolerant, it's difficult(but not impossible) to resist the intolerance. Remember those little Nazi kids spouting those white power slogans? It's obvious they wern't born with those attitudes.
My little grand daughter's best friend of the past few years is a little black girl in her class and they have so much fun together--it's really fun to watch them,but the day will come when some little twerp will call her friend the N word. And if I know my grand daughter like I know my kids--that twerp is going to be sorry.
My father was extremely prejudicial and the rest of my family was somewhat prejudicial,however I knew at 6 or 7 that there was something wrong with them and it just never took with me. Later I found out that there was guilt in my family carried clear back from the civil war era, because my grand mother's side of the family "owned" human machinery in Missouri.
I'm not discussing the BIG picture as I did in my previous post--just personal stuff that had some to no effect on me as I grew up in this society.
It's a complicated subject-prejudice-and bullying. As long as there are prejudiced adults,prejudiced young ones will follow. Seems pretty shallow and ignorant--no--stupid --to instill hate and disdain in young ones. It was tried with me--and it didn't work. But I'd be willing to bet that it had some effect on me in ways that I didn't or don't even realize.

 

Hate is a level of tolerance. Our metabolic temperature creates a level or zone of tolerance. Our diet and personal comfort creates a level of tolerance. The ozone layer provides a level of tolerance.

The tolerant are adaptable.

 

thats exactly what i was saying.

Black kids don't make white kids unhappy. or vice versa. Its not a matter of something making someone unhappy, its a matter of not noticing any differences in the first place.

Its instinctual to categorize things. Humans naturally do this with just about everything. Its the way the brain filters information.

However, it is not instinctual to attach a positive or negative connotation to these categories. Positive and negative connotations are learned.

 

That's what I was going say. We aren't the only assholes. :2thumbsup:
Dolphins kill for sport, ants wage wars. It's everywhere. If humans had never killed for any reason, we would have overrun this planet a long time ago.

http://www.cracked.com/article_16762_the-6-biggest-assholes-in-animal-kingdom.html

 

I hate to say it....but....the reason is.....technology! We are all guilty of it. Technology has helped us progress greatly, but it has also hindered us greatly as well. Imagine if we all lived as if the Native Americans did? The world would be a much different and better place. Just my outlook on it.

 

i suppose it did take the native americans longer to kill each other than modern people.