I am not Them

There needs to be a wave of change. A serious campaign sweeping across continents against stereotyping! Well, just joking :D Negative stereotyping hampers the well-being of an individual. The positive version can bring a civilization down. Choose an Engineer for instance, from a premier college in South India or anywhere in the world, to lead a vital infrastructure project as his/her first. This could be a catastrophic decision if it is based on positive stereotyping.

We get into the trap of assuming and labelling people we meet, because it is convenient to do so. Yes, it is a trap of convenience which makes us lazier. Lazier to think and come to a conclusion. Lazier to make a judgement after investigation based on behavior or historical evidence. Even judgements based on past evidences would be naïve but let’s take for now that we can’t help that if we are to behave in a certain way with that person. We are lazy to think at all. I do not want us to play Sherlock Holmes to deduce the personality of the individual. All that needs to be understood is that we are better ignorant than holding false opinion about other people. What we should not take for granted is the projection of group characteristics on to an individual. Yes, it has been researched upon that a person would have cultural, social identities in addition to the individual identity. But is it right to assume so is what we need to ask ourselves.

The human race itself has certain characteristics which are common but when an alien assumes a sample human would think and respond in a particular fashion, he is wrong. He might be dealing with a cannibal or a serial killer. That humans eat one another for breakfast, lunch and dinner and humans are cold at heart certainly would be disastrous conclusions the alien guy might make. Yes, these are aberrations in the species and when aberrations are more and more, it is best to take ourselves one at a time.

It is much easier to take things together, then classify them based on common traits and study. Makes our job easier in studying other species. What about our own? Let’s leave the right and wrong part of it aside for now. We do not deal or communicate with Class Amphibia or Class Pisces so much as we do with Species Homo sapiens. In fact we do not need them for survival as much as we need ourselves. Hence it becomes important to understand each of us specifically than attribute group characteristics to individuals. Because of what is at stake. 

For instance, in communal or political riots, who is the revenge taken on? Thousands of innocent people die because the other thousand thought they could play avengers. Here we do not see the fight of a few people originally involved. It slowly becomes a clash of ideologies. Now, the revenge is no more targeted on individuals. This is a serious mistake. If we do not change, human race could be the price we pay for it. Until we confirm being the sole thinking beings in the Universe, Us would mean mankind and not any race, religion, caste or creed. Let patriotism mean being proud of world citizenship. Whoopsie! it is starting to sound like a peace sermon.  

I do not wish to conclude this piece in a solid style. Even if I did, I do not want to be judged based on what I write. I did not touch upon positive stereotypes much only because it maybe causing lesser harm. Again, this is an assumption! I can be proud. I may feel sad. I am us and not them.

Disclaimer: Just another bunch of words. The deeper you dig, the shallower it might seem :)