We live in a time where we quickly put people in boxes. Maybe we have more in common than what we think? Introducing All That We Share. The English version.
This is what I believe in.
People are people. Every step forward made by different peoples coming together for the peaceful coexistence and betterment of both has been by looking at what we all have in common - not focusing on our differences and disparities.
When I talk about how I am against dividing people into boxes, I’m talking about how this video starts. I consider it evil to be teaching young people that the most important facets of who they are should be based on factors the majority of the rest of the human species WON’T be able to relate with. Because EVERY SINGLE PERSON has SOME trait about them that is not within the bubble of “normal” or “majority.” Something about EVERY ONE OF US is something that most of the rest of the world will never really understand or relate to. So maybe don’t make those things what you NEED people to relate to before you can treat THEM like a human being deserving respect and consideration from you.
Because if the most important things are what set you apart - nobody can TRY to include you without diminishing what you’ve been taught is important.
Anyone trying to focus on what makes us the same, what makes us equal, what makes us able to relate with each other and see how much we share - you’ve been taught to see as someone denying or dismissing or sidelining something you consider critical - and which most other people will never really fully and truly be able to understand.
Your segregation is of your own doing when this is what you’ve been taught. And that’s why I think it’s wrong that you’ve been taught to think this way.
Imagine instead a world where your skin color, gender, sexuality, etc, aren’t important. Where all anyone cares about is what you can accomplish together. If you can do the job, you get the job. If you can exist peacefully with the other person, you do. If you like the same kinds of movies, you enjoy movies together. If you don’t; you enjoy whatever you DO have in common, together.
That’s not a world that is possible when you treat the superficial and ultimately unimportant differences as the most crucial aspects of your identity. When you define yourself by a group classification and take on all the offenses and wrongs that can be claimed by a group - and you do the same to others, and judge them by all the ills you attribute to THEIR group - even if the two of you as individuals have no reason for conflict, YOU have created a situation where conflict is all that’s possible.
No individual is a victim of the entirety of history - nor is any individual a perpetrator of such. We can’t acknowledge individuals who ARE a victim of a wrong, or punish individuals who ARE perpetrators of a wrong, if everyone is BORN INTO being stamped as victims and perpetrators. When you’re just seen as good or bad, deserving or undeserving of compassion and consideration, based on what you were born as - these things become meaningless.
What makes bigotry wrong in the first place is viewing people not as individuals with their own strengths and flaws and merits and ills - but viewing them by whatever group they were born into, or stereotype labels you want to apply to them. The current political ideologies describing themselves as opposed to bigotry have become nothing but vehicles for blatant and unabashed bigotry. Everything you believe that amounts to “______ people are ______,” whatever you fill those blanks in with, whether good or bad, IS BIGOTRY.
So stop it. Because the world is fucking scary enough without people needing to fake horrifying, evil shit to justify and validate their belief of the world being even scarier and more horrible than it actually is.