I can understand why Malcolm was so militant at first, why he didn't give a fuck about what other people thought or how they felt about what he had to say. Martin was so peaceful in public, so gracious and forgiving and humble but it must have been difficult. When people look at you and make judgments it's infuriating to the point where you just want to grab hold of them and give them a good shake. People's biases and their inability to see beyond their own immediate world of circumstances leads to a countless number of misconceptions. To think that a person thinks they know who you are by what you look like or how you dress is just so maddening that it's sometimes even hard to understand how you feel much less to explain it to someone else. It's something that a person could never really understand unless they experience it. I can only assume that it is a similar feeling that women get when men make judgments about their character by they way they choose to dress. There is certainly something to be said about the fact that clothes can be taken off and changed whereas skin color and often times even social class stays with you for the duration of your time on earth. But even the novel idea of judging a person by what they wear is such a toxic one because the vast majority of our judgments are completely unwarranted and uninformed.
Human beings are so malleable and impressionable that it does not take a complex lie to fool us, even a simple one can take hold in our minds and blossom into an entire world view based on an untruth. The sources of this misinformation are so abundant that we can scarcely escape being tainted from birth. Having the misconceptions and biases of our parents and all that came before them just unloaded onto us as an inheritance. We are rarely afforded the opportunity to truly think for ourselves and to truly forge our own paths. To make our own decisions about what is right and what is wrong what is valuable and what is not. Instead we are beholden to traditions, beliefs and the collective sum of all the misconceptions that our species have manage to accumulate since we first discovered our consciousness.
This is our greatest fault and as such is the case we are bound to repeat the same mistakes over and over in hopes of achieving a different results. We allow the most egregious atrocities in the name of beliefs that have no merit as tools for teaching morality. Doctrines that often do more harm than good, that sow seeds of hatred and division. So far none of us have had enough time in existence to figure it all out yet instead of using the little time we have for progress we have chosen to be lazy and let others think for us. JFK famously said that we chose to do things like go to the moon not because they are easy but because they are hard. "...because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills...". This is how we should live, taking the hard route; not doing things because that's what we have always done or that's what we were taught to do. We should live to beat our own paths, make our own decisions and question everything until the answers are found.
Human beings are so malleable and impressionable that it does not take a complex lie to fool us, even a simple one can take hold in our minds and blossom into an entire world view based on an untruth. The sources of this misinformation are so abundant that we can scarcely escape being tainted from birth. Having the misconceptions and biases of our parents and all that came before them just unloaded onto us as an inheritance. We are rarely afforded the opportunity to truly think for ourselves and to truly forge our own paths. To make our own decisions about what is right and what is wrong what is valuable and what is not. Instead we are beholden to traditions, beliefs and the collective sum of all the misconceptions that our species have manage to accumulate since we first discovered our consciousness.
This is our greatest fault and as such is the case we are bound to repeat the same mistakes over and over in hopes of achieving a different results. We allow the most egregious atrocities in the name of beliefs that have no merit as tools for teaching morality. Doctrines that often do more harm than good, that sow seeds of hatred and division. So far none of us have had enough time in existence to figure it all out yet instead of using the little time we have for progress we have chosen to be lazy and let others think for us. JFK famously said that we chose to do things like go to the moon not because they are easy but because they are hard. "...because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills...". This is how we should live, taking the hard route; not doing things because that's what we have always done or that's what we were taught to do. We should live to beat our own paths, make our own decisions and question everything until the answers are found.
I don't mean to condescend, but you are almost there. Soon you will realize, like I said last November, that people are incapable of doing anything except what they will do. Their life experience determines every action and inaction; all their prejudices, all their beliefs are created by circumstances, which are largely out of their control. For example, the parents to whom they were born, the schools they attended, or their teachers. Shaping individual behavior is truly a community effort; it really does take a village.
ReplyDeleteLastly, once you come to this realization, you will be able to appreciate people where they are in life. This will not, however, be without frustration. As you alluded to earlier, you may want to shake people to get them to wake up from the proverbial sleep. They, however, lack the benefit of your life experience and will hopefully get to where you are in time, which to a great degree is based on a set of circumstances that were largely out of your own control. All you can attempt to do is subtly try to shape behavior through your own actions and interactions. Arguments even the best crafted tend to cause people to defend their already illogical positions.
Appreciate where you are; some people will never even get to this point after a lifetime of lived experience.
"Arguments even the best crafted tend to cause people to defend their already illogical positions. " I agree with this because its quite an unsettling feeling to have one's entire reality questioned but that is the only path forward. If we take up the point of view that we can never really choose anything because most of who we are is out of our control then how is that argument any different from pre-destination. Granted there needs to be a solid base to build a strong structure but one of the most admirable qualities of the human condition is the ability to rise above your station and reach things that were previously deemed improbable or even impossible. The great thing about science is that nothing is absolute; it is all just a tentative understanding until something stronger comes along. As such is the case it has been our fortune that some of the greatest leaps in out history as a species have originated from a set of circumstances that was not considered conducive to anything out of the ordinary.
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