Prejudice, hatred and empathy

Harm

Human beings have a seemingly infinite capacity to cause harm to other human beings. History, as one testament to this, is soaked in blood and hatred. The source of the cruelty inflicted by people is the failure to identify with the victim; not seeing them as sharing the same value and having the same ability to feel suffering and joy as you.

This lack of empathy leads to the vilest word ever invented: "subhuman". Such a contradiction (human is not human but still human) is a void that draws the basest cruelty out of people. It can justify such horror and prejudice.

Prejudice has three main stages:

One - Discrimination says, "you have no right to be different". This reveals a deep insecurity about who you are if you cannot tolerate difference; the existence of different people doesn't have to threaten or undermine who you are.

Two -  Segregation says, "you have no right to live amongst us if you are different". This can manifest as separate social areas for different racial groups, separate living areas (ghettoisation) and then exploitation of the isolated population (slavery).

Three - Elimination says, "you have no right to live if you are different". Adolf Hitler demonstrated to humanity the ultimate end point of prejudice; the systematic and industrial scale murder of whole populations of people deemed different (holocaust).

Discrimination amounts to punishing the person for their difference, whether skin colour, gender, intellectual or physical limit etc. The assumption of a victim's responsibility for these characteristics is totally misplaced. DNA threw you into the world with these things already determined but they were not chosen by you. Responsibility is a consequence of the ability to choose and this only comes once you are fully in the world (e.g. it is absurd to accuse me of a crime before I was born). Therefore, we are not responsible for those characteristics determined before our birth (e.g. susceptibility to Parkinson's or why we have two eyes). Blaming and punishing people for these things is absurd.

Love

Human beings also have an infinite capacity to love other human beings. This is our contradiction. Love starts with empathy: the ability to imagine yourself as somebody else, feeling what they might feel and valuing your feeling.

Prejudice

Analogy: Nature dresses a child and we blame the child for wearing the clothes. 

We did not choose our skin colour, gender, facial characteristics etc. We were thrown into the world with these decisions already made for us and before we had the ability to choose anything. 

Why are we judged as if we did choose those things? Why are you judging me for the cut of my birth day suit?

A general error

Feminists create a box to place all men in and then fight the box they’ve created. Masculinists choose a description of all women and then complain about the description they chose. Racists decide to characterise other people in a certain way then fight their own description. 

These individuals judge selectively and then fight and hate their own judgments; out of the 7,000,000,000 people on Earth there are both strong and weak men and women (depending on how you define “strong” and “weak”), good and bad from every country (again depending on the definition of “good” and “bad”) so any general description will fail to capture all cases. Such generalisations are wrong specifically.

A similar error can be made with Parkinson’s; it is a highly variable disease so any prediction of its progression is creating a specifically shaped box, which sufferers choose to lie in. Such predictions are selective and have no hope of accurately describing the progression of your disease because the basis of the description has yet to include your case.

On Prejudice

Why is the way we look so important to us? Why is something we had no control over and can claim no responsibility for held to be the nucleus of who we are? For example, I was thrown into the world with a particular face and body type but I didn’t choose those characteristics so why am I judged as if I had?

Of course such visual cues are an easy short hand to quickly assess the people we meet but such judgements are entirely arbitrary. Despite the claims of the media there is no “successful” body type or “beautiful” face unless you accept what you are told and believe such a narrow definition. Again, the face you have wasn’t your choice so judgements based on it don’t apply to you; such judgements judge the person making them.

Racist or sexist individuals or those prejudiced against disability make the same error of assuming the judged person is responsible for their skin colour, gender or disability. What nonsense! There is a great difference between possessing a particular thrownness (e.g. I am a white male with Parkinson’s) and being responsible for it (e.g. I didn’t choose to be a white male with Parkinson’s). Such judgements miss the individual being judged and are therefore meaningless.

How should we be judged? For who we are, not what we are.

"Good evening Mr Hobble-along..."

Someone on a bike has just said these "profound" words to me as we passed each other on the street. I ignored him; what is he and his observational skills (he noticed my symptoms, give him a Nobel prize!) to me? Nothing; just another person who happens to be in the world.

Then it got me thinking. Why did the person on the bike behave like that? I think he was trying to boast his own fragile ego by bringing others down. Such behaviour reveals how uncomfortable he is in his own skin; why else attempt to put scaffolding around your ego if it was robust and strong? He exposes his weakness by saying such things. Why can't he boast his ego by helping others? It is sad that it takes less effort to be nasty; being kind requires considered effort to move aside your selfish needs and let empathy take over; apparently it is beyond some people. Who is the one truly hobbling along?

Dealing with the preconceptions of others

We all make assumptions and form preconceptions about the incredibly complex world in which we live. It is the only way to navigate such a world. However, some people don’t then go on and question whether such assumptions are valid in a given situation. These people live at the surface of their awareness.

For example, my tremor was particularly prominent one afternoon. I went into a shop and the person behind the counter said to me, “are you feeling cold, sir?” Maybe I missed the joke but I decided to be honest, so I said, “no, I’ve got Parkinson’s disease.” A flood of apologises emerged from the person. He wished me a good evening and I said, “I will and I’ll warm up too!” A little bit of self-deprecating humour showed that his supposed superior response to my tremor was totally misplaced. Maybe I taught him something that day.

Another example I’ve encountered is when people equate my physical disability with my level of intelligence and talk…really…slowly…to…me. I happen to have a doctorate (DPhil) in Genetics from Oxford University so I think I understand what you are saying! Such “do…you…under…stand?” people should assume their listener does understand and then, if the need arises, modify the assumption.

A far harsher form of preconception you may encounter is prejudice, which can be defined as judging people (usually negatively) based on physical characteristics or ethnicity or disability. I believe such a judgement is absurd. We were thrown into the world in a particular state when we were born (Heidegger calls this our “thrownness”). Nobody is responsible for their thrownness; we didn’t choose whether we were male or female, had dark or light skin, were susceptible to Parkinson’s or not etc. Therefore judging a person’s thrownness is an empty judgement; the judgement doesn’t apply to the person being judged. Indeed, it’s a judgement about nobody. Judgements should be made on the basis of who people are, not what they are.

I feel sorry for people who live their lives without empathy and self-awareness.