How to talk to a bigot

 Self confessed bigot Doug Stevenson on bigotry, what makes a bigot, how to deal with your own bigotry, and how to talk to a bigot in this Ted Talk:



Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

A common enemy: the only thing that will ever unite us?

Image
 It's been said that the only thing that truly unites people is a common enemy. How true is that? We divide into groups, into tribes, each tribe's members having affiliation with the next. We know what's common with us: our skin color, our nationality, our gender, our sexual orientation, our interests.  Some of us are Red Sox fans; others White Sox. We might hate the damn greedy, stupid Republicans or the Snowflake bleeding heart Democrats . We're sick of the immigrants taking our jobs , or the goddam queer hanging around our kids. We resent the rich guy who has more money than we'll ever see, or the homeless guy because we think he'll steal from us. We hate the rich Jew , we might think who controls the wealth;or the Muslim , because he's probably supporting terrorism.  In the following clip, from the movie Independence Day, the president is rallying the people not just of America but the whole world to fight the alien invasion. Is this the only real o...
Read more

The psychology of Hate

Image
 Why do we hate? Is it just that we fear others that are different to us? Do we fear, and therefore hate the unknown? Is hatred the underlying cause of prejudice, or is it fear? Is the root of hatred fear? The following video explores this and other questions about why we hate:
Read more

Why humans run the world

Image
 In his Ted Talk lecture, Yuval Noah Harari explains how human beings differ from animals in their ability to coalesce and work together in large numbers. He explains how human beings are unique in that they use fictions in order to come together and agree on a principle which isn't real. Money, for example, is such a fiction, as are corporations and nations. Similarly, human beings forms groups who identify with such fictions. Nations, races, political groups, religions...all abide by rules and beliefs established by the group. And groups vie against each other for power; each group using its own beliefs and values to compare itself to other groups, and accept or reject, or incorporate those beliefs or values into its own.
Read more