Generalizing.
I completely understand why people generalize other people. Life is simpler when you are able to generalize - which is using your knowledge of patterns to categorize people. Recognizing patterns is a trait of ours that has been useful for thousands of years. Often our generalizations are completely right, and people act exactly like we predict them to.
However. Generalizing is still one of the most dangerous things you can do. Once you've generalized a certain category of people, from then on you have judged every single person that falls under that category. It's prejudice. This prevents you from meeting people under that category with an open mind, and that is in my opinion the worst way to meet anyone.
When generalizations are true, it's barely on a superficial level when it comes to knowing people. People are more complex and are defined by much more than their clothes, which part of the world they come from and their job. We should never judge people based on these things. I can't stress this enough: stop generalizing.
No comments:
Post a Comment