Reply #56: Yay! I hope you love NC as much as I do [View All]

As for the rest - most people assume that other people think the same way they do and project all their stuff on to other people. Goodness knows I do it too - like I tend to think that their hatred and selfishness is conscious and fully informed and freely chosen and that they know the consequences of their actions and want those consequences. Hence my issues with misanthropy.

They simply can't imagine having higher motives than self-interest. And we can't imagine having no motive other than self-interest. I don't think we'll ever be able to understand each other - best I can think of is to do all we can to keep them from having power and/or using that power to harm others and try and give their kids the love and acceptance that they aren't getting at home so they don't grow up quite so twisted.

I know I can be a nag about this, but prejudice isn't pretty no matter where it comes from or what group is the target. I was born and raised and still live in the South, and after my father died without a will my mother and I lived in a singlewide trailer. Hell, I've even worked at Wal-Mart and at Arby's. I don't believe any of that had any effect on my beliefs or morals or intelligence or my value as a human being. People are not the history of the region they were born in and people are not their socioeconomic level. Humans are living individuals, and by virtue of that they are all of equally infinite value. A human in a trailer in the South feels the same pain as a human in a McMansion in the Northeast and as a human in a house pitted by bullets in Iraq and as a human in a tent in a refugee camp in Africa.

Hatred of the Other may have helped us when we lived in small competing tribes, but it's killing the planet and everything living on it now. It's time for the species to grow the hell up.