Quote:
Originally Posted by ilnjscb
Agreed woj but so is violence and superstition. The reason we have the internet and chocolate cake is some smart people decided to ignore those baser instincts. It can be done, it takes the capacity to recognize why it should be done.
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denying who and what we are as a species doesn't make you enlightened. it just means you're naive about who and what we are and in love with a cute idea about how things should be.... even though its never and never will happen.
racism and hate is not as simple as teaching someone "they're bad" - though the teaching clearly helps. when resources are limited, when resources are in dispute, when one group has disproportionate influence over the resources of another and so on or even when these perceptions exist, people form tighter and tighter group bonds, in-groups to point at the out-groups and on and on it goes until tensions boil over. this is who we are as a species. this is what animals do.
all of our behaviors are survival related and the result of eons of group and individual selection. they don't just popup because someone got uppity and decided to start talking shit about another.
we're all just as capable of genocide as we are of empathizing with and helping others. it simply depends on the circumstances leading up to the event.