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Sunday, June 23, 2019

Like “Deviant Urges,” Stereotyping Is Part Of Being Human

How tempting it is to speak or write to people's worst self - to "talk down" to people. For one thing, that worst self is often what they are showing us.

I think the real obstacle to addressing the best self of other people is our inability or unwillingness to identify things we have in common with them. Or we fail to identify things our agendas have in common.

For example, I will probably always face unwillingness to hear about the many times I've sensed a fiery spark of gorgeous Divine humanity in people who have committed sexual atrocities against children because so many people refuse to fully accept that child abusers have the same human ability to choose we all do. It's much easier to categorize some people as incurable "them"s than to squarely face the many times we ourselves were tempted by and even gave into unhealthy urges.

So it's very easy for me to dismiss good-hearted people as ignorant, stupid, or even evil just because they have so far remained closed to the humanity of people they only know third-hand. It's especially easy because I've been called everything in the book myself by such people.

But more stereotyping of them by me won't help my messages get through; only connecting on a human level can ever do that. Same thing goes for reforming the "bad guys," in my opinion.