Barbelith Underground > Conversation > Dealing with your own prejudice

So we inevitably do something called heuristic space management, where we use assumptions / prejudice / stereotypes to make snap judgments about the 99% of the information possible to access that we will immediately discard. Human beings can't avoid discriminating but, if they develop some reflectivity and self awareness, they can avoid discriminating unfairly.

I’m finding this interesting, as one of the roles I believe prejudice plays is give us a series of ready positions that enable us to reduce a world that can be terrifying and unknown down to a size that we can manage and believe is a known quantity. Seen in that way it’s a defense mechanism to prevent us from being hurt or overwhelmed. Vocalising prejudice can then be seen as a way of demonstrating to people outside ourselves that we are defended against the unknown and therefore an attempt to communicate what we believe to be our strong position (a further defense), and attacks on this position will therefore likely activate further defense mechanisms.

So if this is the case I’m interested in whatever ways we have available of honouring the desire for self-protection while allowing ourselves to be open to new experiences and seeing the world in different ways. My stance in debate is often to try to win the other person rather than merely be the victor, and attempting to speak to a layer in them that is deeper than the defensive position is one way I might attempt to do this.

This is a thread about dealing with prejudice in ourselves, and I’m coming to the realization that the same methods used with other people can also hold true for ourselves. To ask yourself what your prejudice is trying to achieve will often yield fascinating answers, to then spend time imagining and constructing other ways to achieve those things and negotiating terms and conditions, contexts in which certain behaviours and beliefs are appropriate and inappropriate might give oneself a number of better ways of living.

It’s a subject that fascinates me. I’m interested in collecting thoughts and techniques that have this kind of maneuverability, to get to the person behind the defenses and stated beliefs. And while many people might quite reasonably state that it’s not always possible, I find it much more fun to start with the assumption, “What if it is?” and then learn from my mistakes and successes.