LarryG on 19/9/2012 at 19:11
Quote Posted by scarykitties
To Vasquez: depends on your definition of "stupidity," I suppose--whether you mean "ignorance" or actually being mentally challenged.
I would certainly agree that ignorance is part of it, but being lectured about how wrong they are isn't necessarily going to fix that. What they need is to have friendly, personable connections with people of whatever minority it is that they mistrust. I'd say that it would be pretty tough for one to be bigoted against gays if they had a really close lesbian friend.
Hate from mistrust stems from fear driven by ignorance, as fear usually does. It doesn't help if one lives in an environment that promotes that ignorance and those feelings of hate. It's part natural, part one's peers, and part oneself. I'd say that one's peers have the greatest influence.
Let me offer an anecdote from my youth, over 30 years ago, when I attended a small college in the Midwest. There was a small group of white "townies" (i.e. lived and raised in town, with at most a HS education) who got their jollies beating up any black students that they could catch alone. Why? I don't really know, but I have my guesses. There also was this big, no, I correct myself, huge black guy who played the center on the college football team. Well, the football player got a part time job at a local manufacturing plant, working shoulder to shoulder with the ringleader of the fun loving townies previously mentioned. Since they were on the same work team, and since their job performance (and salaries) relied on how well they worked together, over time they worked it out. The result after about a year or so was that the townie ring leader and the college center became, not friends, but somewhat respectful of each other. I don't know what it did for the football player's opinions of whites, but it did absolutely nothing for the townie's opinions about black people in general. I knew the guy. He started out a bigoted racist A-hole and still was one at the end, just one who knew how to work with a black man he could not beat up.
The story proves nothing. It's just one case that I personally observed. But to me it says that hatred, true hatred, not simple dislike, goes way more than skin deep. That bigots can be forced by circumstances and economics to overcome their hate crime behaviors, but it does not change their core when those circumstances or economics change.
Quote Posted by Pyrian
1) One or more people do something bad. Those people belong to various groups; gender, ethnicity, religion, whatever.
2) The individuals get conflated with their most prominent grouping; it's not "these individuals" did this, but "these A's" did this. That in turn gets shortened to "A's did this" and before long it's "all A's do this", even if the fact is that the vast majority of A's do not do anything of the kind.
These are the key steps. Basically, we're looking for an over-simplified sense of causality, as we're wont to do. I'll call this the (
http://www.ttlg.com/forums/showthread.php?t=140025&page=3&p=2142570&viewfull=1#post2142570) LarryG effect.
3) Once we've concluded that all A's do something bad, punishing all A's seems like a perfectly natural response; all you need is a trigger, say, a new crime committed by an individual in group A. If you can find that individual, punish them, and if you can't, well, any A will do.
So, in conclusion? (
http://www.ttlg.com/forums/showthread.php?t=140025&page=3&p=2142608&viewfull=1#post2142608) You
are the Daemons, LarryG. You may not personally go around being a hater, but you cross the biggest gap between reasonable behavior and unreasonable, violent hate.
Wow! I get my own effect!! I would be honored, but I think you have misunderstood what I was saying in the referenced threads.
In the first thread referenced
Quote Posted by LarryG
The thing is, ethnicity does not seem to play a role. A-hole Islamic fundamentalists come in all colors of the human genome. But somehow it seems that they have taken charge of Islam all across the world and are perfectly happy bullying every other Islamite into killing non-believers (& themselves). You never hear of any of the leaders actually leading any of the charges (or carrying any of the charges); they just convince others to lay down their lives. I just wonder who is profiting from such behaviors? There must be money in it somewhere for someone for it to keep on going. Who are the "Propheteers"?
At no point am I saying that all believers in Islam are bad. In fact, I'm saying the exact opposite. What I'm saying is that there appears to be, based on news reports around the globe, wacko fundamentalists in all Muslim groups, regardless of ethnicity, who are provocateurs, intentionally advocating violence and getting dupes to carry it out. I'm saying it's not an Arab thing, or a Persian thing, or a Burmese thing, or a Indonesian, or Pakastani, or Egyptian, or Russian, or ... It instead seems to be prevalent in all nations with Muslim populations. None seem exempt from small radical groups who advocate hatred and local hate crimes and cause big troubles for everyone, non-Muslim and Muslim alike, who for the most part just want to get along with their lives without drama or grief. I don't see that I was doing any "conflating" as you call it. I'm simply trying to relate what I have observed and suggest that there are some people, somewhere who are making money or power or both off of this, who are intentionally stirring the pot whenever things get too quiet for them. I'm perfectly willing to believe that a lot of the rioters are simply dupes, who have been whipped up into a frenzy by others. I'm just suggesting that not all involved are actually true believers, but instead are cynical manipulators out for themselves and not for the best interests of their "constituencies".
I have no idea why you think the other quote supports your notion that I am a "daemon".
Quote Posted by LarryG
No. What I meant was that no Islamic ethnicity are bigger bigots and thugs than any other. I'm not saying that locally they don't pick on each other based on ethnicity. I'm just saying that no ethnicity has a lock on acting out in stupid and evil ways. It seems like all Muslims across the world have a huge number of fundamentalist believers in their midst who want to kill and destroy rather than get along with anybody who does not share their world view. They are the extremists' extremists. And we need to find a way to turn this around. But blaming some ethnicity for this won't get the job done.
Perhaps you don't know what a "daemon" is? It's a software application which is installed on a computer or server to perform a background service to other software applications. The most common type might be a license server application which validates that a network license is available before allowing user access to that network application. A Printer / Plotter queue manager is another type of daemon. So, huh?? What are you trying to say?
Perhaps you meant to imply that I was demonizing some group? The statement "... no ethnicity has a lock on acting out in stupid and evil ways" seems to give the lie to that notion. I am saying that there are lots of Islamic fundamentalists, all over the world, of all races and ethnicities, who seem to to be acting out extremely evil and reprehensible behaviors. And that we, the rest of the world, need to figure out how to redirect those destructive energies to constructive means and ends. Do you disagree?
Quote Posted by Kolya
... none of us seems to know any Muslims ...
Actually, I know quite a few, both from work situations and social. Arab, Egyptian, Pakastani, Turkish, Indonesian, Iranian, etc.. LA is very culturally diverse. It just doesn't help me understand bigotry and hatred to know them.
