Hey Crni- I am not sure. For example, I dig hot chicks. My prejudice is hottiness. If she's hot, I am interested. Don't get me wrong, I am near 50 now, married to a beautiful woman, and I don't cheat, but a hot chick will get me thinking. And I don't give a shit of she's black, white, indian, asian. Smoking hot has no racial tint. And she doesn't have to be smokin physically. She can be really awesome badass cool, and so what if she carries extra poundage. I don't care. Hot is hot. I am prejudiced? Yes. A sexist- yes- I like strong powerful women who are confident and capable- real equals. I like a woman who I can trust to be a capable partner and who can push me to be a better man. That's part of hottness.
Prejudice isn't natural. Rather, its a consequence of fear and fear is a reflection of a lack of confidence and courage. Curiousity is as primal as fear. If it weren't we'd still be living in the fucking caves.
We learn prejudice, we create it. We choose to live with prejudice. And we do so because, often, someone teaches us to be prejudiced. And that sucks.
But if that's true, and I think it is, than its kind of cool too. Because if prejudice ie learned, acquired, indoctrinated into us, than we can learn, acquired and indoctrinate ourselves into a mindset of tolerance, curiousity and empowerment. If you want to, you don't have to live by prejudice, even if sometimes people will treat you with it.
The real question, brother, is who wants you to act with prejudice against your fellow man? Why might someone want you to live with fear or hatred of someone, to cultivate intolerance of another, simply because they are different, when you know, in your heart, that such intolerance is a sub-optimal response to difference? Who benefits from dividing us through intolerance? For those who do are echoing what David Hume (in his critique ofthe social contract) warns us about in discussing the nature of despots. It is directly in contrast of what classic liberalism (in the Lockean ideal) and thus liberal democracy is all about.
Let me lay an idea on you that I got from David Ignatiev in his dicussion about the violence and intolerance found in the Balkans back in the 1990s. "Intolerance is a form of divided consciousness in which abstract, conceptual, ideological hatred vanquishes concrete, real, and individual moments of identification…. To the degree that individuals can ever learn to think for themselves- and so become true individuals- they can free themselves, one by one, from the deadly dynamic of the narcissism of minor differences. In that sense, the function of liberal society is not merely to teach the noble fiction of human universality, but to create individuals, sufficiently robust in their own identity, to live by that fiction."
My advice, be fearful of those who spread prejudice and so would enslave you with your own fear and hatred.
