(May 28, 2013 at 7:17 am)festive1 Wrote:(May 27, 2013 at 10:41 am)dazzn Wrote: [quote='festive1' pid='450558' dateline='1369659223']Just in general, I think society has progressed positively in the past 2 centuries. I'm not trying to judge historic people by modern standards and fully recognize everyone is a product of their times.
This. Everyone has their prejudices, whether they recognize them as such, or not.
The challenge is to recognize prejudices for what they are, unfair biases of an entire group often based on individual examples. And ultimately to overcome them.
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Who says that we need to do so?
Prejudices are part of human nature. It's only contemporary morals that cite they are wrong. Go tell people 200 years ago that prejudice is wrong, and see what they say lol..
You're right, prejudices are part of human nature. We know this, so what function did/does it serve? Well in prehistoric times I'd imagine it was very helpful in preventing death. One person is killed by a rival tribe, and a prejudice forms to prevent others from dying the same way. That would be helpful. However, in modern society, we are so diverse, socially, prejudices can do far more harm than good. Really the only way humans are going to continue, when you get right down to it, is if we can manage to not kill each other (leaving aside some horrid plague or some such that comes along and wipes us all out), we have to at least tolerate each other. Prejudices don't help in that arena, actually quite the opposite.
Who cares about co-operation? It's also accepted "in modern society" that people can hold any opinion they choose.
Look, the world is not a perfect or "nice" place. Why do you care if people dislike others? We can opt to dislike others on any basis we choose, can we not?
