> Do they really, naturally? I don't think that many people are walking around, constantly repeating an inner mantra like "I'm a white middle-aged male", always comparing everyone against what they themselves look like in the mirror? Who does that?
The term "naturally" implies that it is an automatic function (e.g. breathing is natural). Did you not realize this or are you intentionally leaping to the straw-man argument?
> It's my experience that most humans are only thinking like "beasts" if they have been conditioned to do so.
I didn't mean "beast" in any bad sense. I simply meant that human beings are evolved creatures, hormonal, emotional, and often instinctive in their approach to social situations. We are not a rational abstraction.
We don't have to 'force' ourselves to be rational all the time, because mostly we aren't rational and rationality would be the long method of coming to the same conclusions. The typical person doesn't have to rationally process every quirk of someones facial or body language to decide on what emotion is expressed---that would take forever. Instead we have mental shortcuts built into our psyche which while are irrational, are also usually correct.
When it comes to issues like racism, it is a case of our natural instinct being wrong instead of right for a change.
Yes some people are ever curious about the "other", but this isn't the norm.
I know what you meant by naturally. I also think we could discuss this for ages and not come to an agreement. I don't subscribe to evolutionary pop psychology, we're simply not speaking the same language.
The term "naturally" implies that it is an automatic function (e.g. breathing is natural). Did you not realize this or are you intentionally leaping to the straw-man argument?
> It's my experience that most humans are only thinking like "beasts" if they have been conditioned to do so.
I didn't mean "beast" in any bad sense. I simply meant that human beings are evolved creatures, hormonal, emotional, and often instinctive in their approach to social situations. We are not a rational abstraction.
We don't have to 'force' ourselves to be rational all the time, because mostly we aren't rational and rationality would be the long method of coming to the same conclusions. The typical person doesn't have to rationally process every quirk of someones facial or body language to decide on what emotion is expressed---that would take forever. Instead we have mental shortcuts built into our psyche which while are irrational, are also usually correct.
When it comes to issues like racism, it is a case of our natural instinct being wrong instead of right for a change.
Yes some people are ever curious about the "other", but this isn't the norm.
For further discussion, can anyone find a copy of this article ( http://dlib.eastview.com/browse/doc/12134981 ) outside the Paywall so everyone can see it?