“Think Like Them” is indeed interesting, and I commented on that post with something small to get started right before your comment there.

Joshua, thanks for the comment and coming over. It’s nice to meet you too.

About Raf not working for you, Raf may really be liking really like your site because of your interesting posts and questions.

Regarding your question, I think “stereotypes and preconceived notions” are indeed part of our mechanism, though we learn such traits because of the way we are raised and what we learn by observing others around us, and through elements like books and television.

It can be hard to switch off such a mechanism in order to be less biased, but it is possible. I think the trick is not to generalize. Something about a character, ethnicity, some element like income, or even religion or something completely random, may prompt us to generalize someone, but I think if we can stop that generalization from being imprinted completely into our minds, we can slowly have a way to remove the automation we have when we judge people right on the spot.

“Do you love rap music?” because of being black, “Are you from China?” because of looking “oriental“, “Are you from the south?” because of supporting about religion and government too much, “Are you gay?” because of not being bothered by gay people, and so on and so on. All these things come from some past experience, even if those experiences weren’t our own and we observed them in some manner. I think if we make an effort, we can switch off such basic instincts. Even “You are a personal blogger and simply talking about life. You can’t compete with any of the A-listers” is a stereotype because of thinking “So far, I don’t know any personal blogger who makes money, and money in my view makes A-listers become famous, thus Personal Bloggers are not famous, and if one isn’t famous, one is not important.”

What do you think?

Good to meet you!

(I swear Raf does not work for me!!)

read the latest which contains the part ” we fear something we don’t understand”. maybe you want to write something on it, I’ll be glad to read

BeachBum, thank you for the comment. Thank you for the encouragement.

I have to re-design my site a bit too. I have considered advertising before and have been approached by some advertisors too, but so far, I cannot think of a way to blend advertising into this site in a non-annoying manner.

Nice business name, by the way.

Raf, thank you for the comment too, and I am honored that you and the others find this post interesting.

That is indeed interesting, and I am glad you edited your comment to include that additional information. I think it is better to think about a topic and consider it in a relevant perspective, instead of assuming “Wow, this topic is boring because it talks about boring things, let’s move on.” Of course, there is nothing wrong with moving on, and sometimes ignoring some blogs can be a good thing since one is not obligated to read any blog I think.

However, like you said, if there is a way for us to indeed pay attention, we can find even the most remote articles to benefit or make us think in some manner.

Thanks for sharing.

Keep up the interesting posts!

BeachBum