Sunday, June 07, 2020

Stereotypes Make Complicated Things Simple

If you have the capability and want to live in the world as a free, thinking, individual it's useful to recognize complexity and thereby realize that whatever your "worldview" may be - it is most assuredly incomplete.

Unless you happen to be one of those mythical infallible individuals many things we think we know are just stories with varying degrees of fact mixed with fiction.

It's always tempting to stereotype people or groups of people to simplify, or eliminate, thought - but it's a dubious bargain to trade certainty, for freedom and growth as an individual and for society.

It takes a certain amount of courage and inner stability; to admit - I don't know, we don't know, to have faith that as a species we have the capacity for compassion, creativity and beauty while also recognizing the never ending human capacity for ignorance, greed, evil and violence.