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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Suma who wrote (227130)	4/15/2007 1:32:52 PM
From: epicure	Respond to of 281500

Lumping, or generalization, is supposed to make life easier for humans, and I think in general it probably does. All humans do it- from generalizing that today will be like yesterday, to generalizing about what sorts of people one is likely to be most compatible with- you know how quickly most of us sort people in to the "possible friend", or "absolutely not" categories, after just talking to someone for a short time. The problem, imo, is that generalizations like the above, which are prejudices (pre judging- and there is nothing inherently wrong with that- it speeds our lives up)- do not allow for much change, and they don't allow for new types of thinking. Prejudgment must, by definition, be mired in past judgment- because that is the substrate one uses for "pre" judgments in the future. Now while the past can be a good substrate, if one was incorrect at some point in the past, then all future prejudices can be contaminated, if they rest on that prior prejudgment. I think a lot of how we view prejudice in this country, and in the world at large, needs to change. We need to rework the old substrates, because I think they are contaminated with faulty assumptions. At the very least it would be intellectually healthy to examine them, even if they are not faulty, but I have no doubt faults will be found. I guess I think we needed a freaky look at our assumptions in this area, a la Freakonomics :-) A rational rigorous look at why we think what we do about all sorts of prejudice- including, but not limited to, antisemitism.