Now, let me explain myself before you start getting any wild ideas. When we are born, we are born into a family, a time and a place, beliefs and habits, and into a society. As we grow up, we are very much like a seedling; being watered by all the aforementioned factors. Water, nutrients, pests, and diseases that are supplied to us by our family and surroundings. In our day and age, external factors such as mass media have also entered our lives as influential sources of opinion. More personal and in proximity are internal factors; the characters, mindsets, and behaviours which we pick up around us. Essentially, we mirror what we have heard and seen from the age and time we began to understand and remember. All this brainwashing, the painting of our brain, and building of our identity is what is more socially-acceptable and politely known as conditioning.
This conditioning happens, not only by familial upbringing, but by a collective of institutionalised systems. Including political and national frameworks which give rise to seeds of prejudice. Low levels of tolerance aggravate an already sandcastle-like planet that is teeming with people on the verge of violence. There are a number of psychological techniques behind the ways in which we are brought up. This process passes with no one really realising that it ever happened. Conditioning takes subtle and intangible forms which manifest themselves through human actions and spoken word.
We are brainwashed, but differently. According to all the factors that can possibly be knitted together, we are that piece of work. Take racism; discrimination and racism are very normal things. We all have some discrimination and racism in us. The animal kingdom showcases the defiance one can show to another animal. Let alone differing species, animals show aggression towards their own species who come from different tribes. Mingling doesn’t work very well in this case. Similarly, we may be a part of a technological age, but our evolutionary traits, consequently our behavioural traits towards people different from us haven’t changed very much. We may not have realised it, but there was an instance of judgment, even apprehension, that was left unperceived by your conscience on meeting someone different than usual yesterday. Judgement, a highly constructive yet foul quality does not escape us. The experiencing of and tolerance shown towards a person different than usual differs for an individual with higher levels of exposure and understanding of cultures and races. However, reading about other cultures, and thinking that you understand them is a shaky assumption.
In hatred and prejudice, applying human reason or an actual experience of another does not matter. If you hate someone, you hate someone. Simple. But we aren't cavemen. Right?
Emotions of fear and phobia are hardwired into our neurological and biological systems. The genetics of preprogrammed systems that show in our responses and actions. But we no longer live in the prehistoric age, neither are we cavemen. I’m afraid you can’t use that as an excuse. Murderous self-defence is a prehistoric trait that made survival possible. It was not wrong: fight furiously when threatened.[1] Evolutionary psychology is inborn and universal. Anger, even annoyance of a winged insect you have to keep swatting away; are primary, hardwired emotions. Hatred is not a primary emotion, and is learnt. Feelings of hatred manifest themselves in a number of ways. We are left unaware of the ways in which we are conditioned, brainwashed to feel and think that certain things are normal and acceptable. Sometimes, many of those things are in reality, draconian.
If we were to apply the Pareto principle, 20% of the world’s population is probably tolerant towards others. That’s one billion five hundred and forty million (1,540,000,000) of 7.71 billion (7,710,000,000) people (2020 world population figure). It’s likely that that percentage is lower than ideally calculated.
Racism isn't necessarily wrong. In its overt and aversive forms, hatred is a very normal emotion. It is however concerning and dangerous, when individuals have actively understood otherwise. Yet, choose to continue to demonstrate hostility and violence towards someone too different to be respected when maintaining personal space is an option. Therefore, take a moment to think over how you learnt hate and how you understand hate.
Reference
[1] Nigel, Nicholson. 1998. “How Hardwired Is Human Behavior?” Harvard Business Review. https://hbr.org/1998/07/how-hardwired-is-human-behavior.
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