In Toni Morrison’s novel Beloved the narrator notes that, like the South, the Civil War era northern states also hated Black people but happened to hate slavery more. Of course, this succinct summation of the callousness, if not ugliness, of the politics of difference and scale is applicable elsewhere: for example, they may hate libertarians but hate liberals more; hate Hispanics but abhor Chinese people even more; and loath Jews but despise Muslims far more, etcetera, etcetera.
Racist and other bigoted sentiment is typically environmentally developed/acquired during childhood, often enough even passed down generationally, if not also genetically. Especially if it’s deliberate, exposing very impressionable cerebrally-developing children to such an environment of baseless contempt and overt bigotry amounts to a formidable form of child abuse.
If the parents won’t do it for plain moral reasons, they then should do their own children a big favor by NOT passing down onto them such destructive anti-social/-societal sentiments and perceptions (including stereotypes and ‘humor’), since such rearing can readily make life much harder for those children. It fails to prepare them for the practical reality of an increasingly diverse and populous society and workplace. It also makes it so much less likely those children will be emotionally content or (preferably) harmonious with their multicultural and multi-ethnic/-racial surroundings.
Children reared into their adolescence and, by extension, young adulthood this racially-charged way can find themselves seemingly always feeling angry yet not really knowing exactly at what. They also may feel self-compelled to move to another part of the land, where their own ethnicity/race predominates, preferably overwhelmingly so. This serious social/societal problem can/should be proactively prevented by allowing preferably-all young children to become accustomed to other races/cultures/faiths, etcetera, in a harmoniously positive manner.
P.S. I consider myself lucky in having had a mother who, unlike many other people I’ve met over my lifetime, did not even subtly express prejudiced or disdainful sentiments about people of other races and cultures. On the contrary, she, though being of Croatian heritage, openly enjoyed watching/listening to the Middle Eastern and Indian subcontinental dancers and musicians on the multicultural channel. Most memorable for me was being emphatically told at a very young and therefore impressionable age by her about the exceptionally kind and caring nature of our Black family doctor. I believe that in doing so she had a positive and lasting effect on me.
Meanwhile, mostly relevant to the social and political turmoil seemingly everywhere are the words of American sociologist Stanley Milgram (1933-1984), of Obedience Experiments fame/infamy: “It may be that we are puppets — puppets controlled by the strings of society. But at least we are puppets with perception [and] awareness. And perhaps our awareness is the first step to our liberation.”
There’s relatively little compassion in the world when compared to the very plentiful anger or rage. I’ve noticed myself getting angrier over the last few years, especially about domestic and global injustices, or at least how I perceive them as such. Maybe my anger is largely related to the Internet’s ‘angry algorithm’ sending me the stories, etcetera, it has (unfortunately correctly) calculated will successfully agitate me into keeping the (I believe, overall societally-/socially-damaging) process going thus maximizing the number of clicks and scrolls I’ll provide it to sell to product advertisers.
At least as individuals, we can try to resist flawed human nature thus behavior, however societally normalized it may be, once we become aware of its potential within ourselves. Once cognizant of it, perhaps enough of us could instead perform truly humane acts in sufficient quantity to initiate positive change on a large(r) scale.
Those that disliked his work and especially its findings tried their best to discredit him.
The social scientist was heavily criticized by almost everyone for, quite simply, exposing post-WWII Western ‘civilized’ society (which includes everyone) as maintaining the potential to commit atrocities against other innocent human beings — perhaps even another Holocaust. He largely proved his point(s) via the Obedience Experiments. I believe that many/most of his fellow Jewish professors, with some being Holocaust survivors, were particularly incensed by his publicized suggestion that their fellow Americans could ever be complicit in the kind of genocide witnessed in Nazi Germany.
Being the early 1960s at the time of the Obedience Experiments, the Vietnam War hadn’t yet revealed just how atrocious western civilization can actually behave; and perhaps at that point in time society simply couldn’t handle Milgram’s revelation. (Also noteworthy is that his critics seemed not to care that almost all of the test subjects, albeit initially understandably shook up, later rated the experiment as “a good life-experience”.
Sadly, with some of Milgram’s own relatives having been Holocaust victims, I can understand him being bothered by the notion those millions of victims may have horribly suffered and/or died with no value, purpose or ultimate gain to humanity in the form of a great lesson learned AND practiced. That their immense death-camp pain and loss of life was in vain, when it did/does not have to be. Something solidly positive, a silver lining of sorts, can be attained from all of that horror.
I don’t buy it. I am reminded of Arendt’s charge that the Nazi murderers were just clerks and had no real hatred of the Jews they were sending to their deaths. Her charges were subsequently found to be a load of horse dung. The Nazis loved killing Jews.
Many human beings are perceived and treated as though they are literally disposable and, by extension, their great suffering and numerous deaths are somehow less worthy of external concern, sometimes even by otherwise democratic, relatively civilized and supposedly Christian nations.
A somewhat similar reprehensible inhuman(e) devaluation is observable in external attitudes, albeit perhaps on a subconscious level, toward the daily civilian lives lost in prolongedly devastating warzones and famine-stricken regions. In other words, the worth of such life will be measured by its overabundance and/or the protracted conditions under which it suffers; and those people can eventually receive meagre column inches on the back page of the First World’s daily news.
It clearly is an immoral consideration of ‘quality’ of life and people, yet it is much easier for a conscience to allow when the victimized are essentially seen as an innately much lower lifeform who also look different from us.
With each news report of immense yet unnecessary/preventable daily sufferings and civilian death tolls internationally, I (though a big fan of Christ’s miracles and message) can feel a slightly greater desensitization and resignation. I’ve noticed this disturbing effect with basically all major protracted conflicts/famines globally since I began regularly consuming news products in the late 1980s.
Sadly, contrary to what is claimed or felt by many of us, deep down there’s a potential monster in each of us that, under the just-right circumstances, can be unleashed — and maybe even more so when convinced that ‘God is on our side’.
It’s shamefully true that the victims of one place and time can and sometimes do become the victimizers of another place and time. (We saw this with Zionist Israel's decades-long serious abuse of Palestinians, and we’re especially seeing this with the atrocities happening in Palestine now.)
It seems that no matter where one starts, it always comes back to fingering the Israelis for some alleged atrocity.
Nothing compares to what was perpetrated by the Gazan monsters, in particular, the fucking non-combatants that so many are so fucking concerned about, as if they have earned the right to be considered hiuman.
Please, give me a goddam break. Israel by all rights should have carried out a scorched earth policy against Gaza. Then all the bastards could find some real victims to fucking feel bad about, like the Christians in North Africa or the Iranian people being slaughtered by the Islamist bastards holding the country of Iran hostage since their glorious revolution.
I am done with anyone who equivocates on the subject of Israel against their goddam Islamist enemies.
In Toni Morrison’s novel Beloved the narrator notes that, like the South, the Civil War era northern states also hated Black people but happened to hate slavery more. Of course, this succinct summation of the callousness, if not ugliness, of the politics of difference and scale is applicable elsewhere: for example, they may hate libertarians but hate liberals more; hate Hispanics but abhor Chinese people even more; and loath Jews but despise Muslims far more, etcetera, etcetera.
Racist and other bigoted sentiment is typically environmentally developed/acquired during childhood, often enough even passed down generationally, if not also genetically. Especially if it’s deliberate, exposing very impressionable cerebrally-developing children to such an environment of baseless contempt and overt bigotry amounts to a formidable form of child abuse.
If the parents won’t do it for plain moral reasons, they then should do their own children a big favor by NOT passing down onto them such destructive anti-social/-societal sentiments and perceptions (including stereotypes and ‘humor’), since such rearing can readily make life much harder for those children. It fails to prepare them for the practical reality of an increasingly diverse and populous society and workplace. It also makes it so much less likely those children will be emotionally content or (preferably) harmonious with their multicultural and multi-ethnic/-racial surroundings.
Children reared into their adolescence and, by extension, young adulthood this racially-charged way can find themselves seemingly always feeling angry yet not really knowing exactly at what. They also may feel self-compelled to move to another part of the land, where their own ethnicity/race predominates, preferably overwhelmingly so. This serious social/societal problem can/should be proactively prevented by allowing preferably-all young children to become accustomed to other races/cultures/faiths, etcetera, in a harmoniously positive manner.
P.S. I consider myself lucky in having had a mother who, unlike many other people I’ve met over my lifetime, did not even subtly express prejudiced or disdainful sentiments about people of other races and cultures. On the contrary, she, though being of Croatian heritage, openly enjoyed watching/listening to the Middle Eastern and Indian subcontinental dancers and musicians on the multicultural channel. Most memorable for me was being emphatically told at a very young and therefore impressionable age by her about the exceptionally kind and caring nature of our Black family doctor. I believe that in doing so she had a positive and lasting effect on me.
Meanwhile, mostly relevant to the social and political turmoil seemingly everywhere are the words of American sociologist Stanley Milgram (1933-1984), of Obedience Experiments fame/infamy: “It may be that we are puppets — puppets controlled by the strings of society. But at least we are puppets with perception [and] awareness. And perhaps our awareness is the first step to our liberation.”
There’s relatively little compassion in the world when compared to the very plentiful anger or rage. I’ve noticed myself getting angrier over the last few years, especially about domestic and global injustices, or at least how I perceive them as such. Maybe my anger is largely related to the Internet’s ‘angry algorithm’ sending me the stories, etcetera, it has (unfortunately correctly) calculated will successfully agitate me into keeping the (I believe, overall societally-/socially-damaging) process going thus maximizing the number of clicks and scrolls I’ll provide it to sell to product advertisers.
At least as individuals, we can try to resist flawed human nature thus behavior, however societally normalized it may be, once we become aware of its potential within ourselves. Once cognizant of it, perhaps enough of us could instead perform truly humane acts in sufficient quantity to initiate positive change on a large(r) scale.
You speak eloquently of the cause/effect of learned but not understood hate. I appreciate your words and pov.
Ditto.
I think that Stanley Milgram’s work has been thoroughly discredited.
Those that disliked his work and especially its findings tried their best to discredit him.
The social scientist was heavily criticized by almost everyone for, quite simply, exposing post-WWII Western ‘civilized’ society (which includes everyone) as maintaining the potential to commit atrocities against other innocent human beings — perhaps even another Holocaust. He largely proved his point(s) via the Obedience Experiments. I believe that many/most of his fellow Jewish professors, with some being Holocaust survivors, were particularly incensed by his publicized suggestion that their fellow Americans could ever be complicit in the kind of genocide witnessed in Nazi Germany.
Being the early 1960s at the time of the Obedience Experiments, the Vietnam War hadn’t yet revealed just how atrocious western civilization can actually behave; and perhaps at that point in time society simply couldn’t handle Milgram’s revelation. (Also noteworthy is that his critics seemed not to care that almost all of the test subjects, albeit initially understandably shook up, later rated the experiment as “a good life-experience”.
Sadly, with some of Milgram’s own relatives having been Holocaust victims, I can understand him being bothered by the notion those millions of victims may have horribly suffered and/or died with no value, purpose or ultimate gain to humanity in the form of a great lesson learned AND practiced. That their immense death-camp pain and loss of life was in vain, when it did/does not have to be. Something solidly positive, a silver lining of sorts, can be attained from all of that horror.
I don’t buy it. I am reminded of Arendt’s charge that the Nazi murderers were just clerks and had no real hatred of the Jews they were sending to their deaths. Her charges were subsequently found to be a load of horse dung. The Nazis loved killing Jews.
Many human beings are perceived and treated as though they are literally disposable and, by extension, their great suffering and numerous deaths are somehow less worthy of external concern, sometimes even by otherwise democratic, relatively civilized and supposedly Christian nations.
A somewhat similar reprehensible inhuman(e) devaluation is observable in external attitudes, albeit perhaps on a subconscious level, toward the daily civilian lives lost in prolongedly devastating warzones and famine-stricken regions. In other words, the worth of such life will be measured by its overabundance and/or the protracted conditions under which it suffers; and those people can eventually receive meagre column inches on the back page of the First World’s daily news.
It clearly is an immoral consideration of ‘quality’ of life and people, yet it is much easier for a conscience to allow when the victimized are essentially seen as an innately much lower lifeform who also look different from us.
With each news report of immense yet unnecessary/preventable daily sufferings and civilian death tolls internationally, I (though a big fan of Christ’s miracles and message) can feel a slightly greater desensitization and resignation. I’ve noticed this disturbing effect with basically all major protracted conflicts/famines globally since I began regularly consuming news products in the late 1980s.
Sadly, contrary to what is claimed or felt by many of us, deep down there’s a potential monster in each of us that, under the just-right circumstances, can be unleashed — and maybe even more so when convinced that ‘God is on our side’.
It’s shamefully true that the victims of one place and time can and sometimes do become the victimizers of another place and time. (We saw this with Zionist Israel's decades-long serious abuse of Palestinians, and we’re especially seeing this with the atrocities happening in Palestine now.)
It seems that no matter where one starts, it always comes back to fingering the Israelis for some alleged atrocity.
Nothing compares to what was perpetrated by the Gazan monsters, in particular, the fucking non-combatants that so many are so fucking concerned about, as if they have earned the right to be considered hiuman.
Please, give me a goddam break. Israel by all rights should have carried out a scorched earth policy against Gaza. Then all the bastards could find some real victims to fucking feel bad about, like the Christians in North Africa or the Iranian people being slaughtered by the Islamist bastards holding the country of Iran hostage since their glorious revolution.
I am done with anyone who equivocates on the subject of Israel against their goddam Islamist enemies.