this post was submitted on 08 Dec 2025
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Such a weird take, every single other thing isn’t binary, yet suddenly racism is? Self reflection and critical thinking are what’s lacking.
Shouldn’t have to be taught to treat others with respect or how you would treat yourself.
Critical Thinking Skills are the most important skills you can learn, polish, and employ on a daily basis. It is the proper way to think, and if you haven't downloaded the Critical Thinking software into your brain, then your brain will invent its own chaotic adhoc thinking style, and you will be at the mercy of predators who will manipulate your mushy mind.
I had an English teacher in the 70s who was really subversive, and taught much differently than normal. I was out of school for years, and as the Conservative movement was growing, I wondered why I wasn't falling for it, despite listening to Rush Limbaugh at lunch nearly every day.
Then I realized it was because I had strong Critical Thinking Skills that allowed me to recognize and resist propaganda, even really seductive propaganda like Limbaugh's.
Then I realized that the reason my Critical Thinking Skills were so good was because I had gone through three years of Mr. Clark's English and Shakespeare classes, and he was only using those subjects as vehicles to teach us Critical Thinking Skills, and then practice them every day until they were just our default way of thinking.
Mr.Clark literally taught us to think properly, and he did it entirely by his own design, outside of the purview of the school system. He was far more subversive than I ever gave him credit for. He was expertly manipulating our minds, as teachers are supposed to do, but he was highly effective, and we are lucky he was motivated by good.
After I realized all that, I tried to contact him to tell him I was onto him, but he had passed away 5 years before. He may have been the most influential person in my entire life, and I wish I could have told him that.
A lot of people think and are taught in a very binary way.
To be fair, before a certain age kids really can't contextualize anything beyond binary. Its either good or bad.
For a real world example, there's a new solar farm not far from where we live. The company that set it up engaged in some shady bullshit acquiring the farm land which was entirely owned by small family farms, with a couple of family farms effectively forced to exit the farming business by their shady bullshit. For my mother in law who's a huge MAGA supporter, she bought all of the propaganda about renewable energy being terrible, so the local scandals over this solar project fit right into her worldview. My wife and I want a better world, so we take a more nuanced view of "that was bullshit but at least the panels will be generating clean electricity for the next 20-30 years or more" my kids are caught in the crossfire as both my in-laws and we attempt to inform them, but not directly throw the other adults under the bus. My 6 year old has really struggled with understanding how they should feel and it's taken multiple long discussions over multiple years to get to "solar panels are good but taking good farmland is bad"
Any discussion with important nuance is extremely difficult with young kids because they really can't understand nuance yet. They can kinda understand "yes but" with enough education time but more complex than that it completely falls apart. Kids can't fully wrangle with complex thoughts and metacognition until basically adolescence, and before that point it's largely just black and white reasoning.
So in short, kids will be taught in a purely binary manner until about age 10-12 when their brains are finally developed enough for more complex reasoning, and anyone who checked out of learning around that age will likely be pretty deficienct in more complex skills and issues
No disrespect, but I disagree. Respect is absolutely a learned behavior.
what ever respectful means is a defined by your culture. What is considered respectful is different in the uk versus the us, at least that’s what thought this post was about.
Kids absolutely need to be taught this. Kids don’t magically share, or treat each other with respect. You teach kids how to be respectful everyday.
You teach behavior and biases, but it's well observed that kids naturally don't see distinctions between groups of people until it is taught to them, and that kids do feel empathy naturally, and will feel upset about perceived injustices and such. Isolating a white kid so they don't see a Black kid until they're 15 is a learned thing, if they're raised in a shared environment, they won't see a difference. What you teach is how to act on it (like sharing), how to handle emotions about it. Restricting experience is teaching.
Umm that’s racism…. You’re describing what it means to be racist. If you need to be taught that only certain things/people/races/religion/colour are to be respected… that’s why people think black people don’t have livers.
You are the issue mate, full disrespect. You are racist. If you choose be respectful to someone only to blend into those around you… you don’t deserve any respect.
You need to be taught to treat others the way you would yourself?
Or are you teaching your kids who and what to respect? Because you’re doing the latter, not the former and are perpetuating these issues.
This has nothing to do with culture at large, that’s justifications for rasicm, and that’s what you’re teaching your kids. The exact issue that’s trying to be pointed out.
Self-reflection and critical thinking are almost always defeated by social conformance among healthy well-adjusted humans. For a social animal, it is more important to agree with the group than to be objectively correct.
By racism you mean? Those are leaned behaviors that take over from being taught that others are different from you.
Humans inherently care, and love each other. Anything else is taught by someone else who thinks they know what’s okay.
The only objectively correct way to treat anyone else is how you treat yourself. Anything else is just learned hate.
The hell you on about? I ain't givin shit about anybody who's not already in my friend circle and sure as hell last time I checked I am human. Empathy varies a lot in humans, some people are naturally caring, some don't give a damn if most people around them die, most are somewhere between so chill out.
Let others reap what they sow. Extend some respect at first and give benefit of the doubt but if they aren't worth it, they simply aren't worth it. Anything else and you're gonna get used, trampled and disrespected.
And that extends to racist, homophobic or transphobic idiots who cannot argue for their stance. If a black person killed your dog and that was only black person you ever saw, yeah, fair you have bad opinion.
But if you're like one of my coworkers who hates gay folk cause it's fun, not respect, die in a ditch.
Please don't talk at me. You're not really addressing or engaging with what I said. You have a point to make that's got nothing to do with me, take it to the top level.
Of course people don’t like it when it’s pointed out that they were actually taught to be racist.
You made a wildly racist remark in response to someone saying that everyone should be treated how they treat themselves.
Of course you’re gonna get called out.
Lmao, this is basically religious thinking, with the inevitable "problem of evil". If people inherently love each other, where does hate come from?
From being taught that someone is different from you in some way.
Does this seriously need to be explained? And do you think babies naturally hate? That they are capable of it without being taught? They know to love and snuggle with humans, any. They’ll even snuggle with a deadly lion. They need to be TAUGHT otherwise.
Babies don’t care about colour, or religions, they don’t even know what the fuck that stuff is dude. Until they are taught.
And who teaches? An another human, right? But doesn't that human also inherently love other humans? So he must've been taught to hate too. If you go step by step into the past, at what point is hate introduced into human society?
Babies are not fully developed human beings, they don't have a society, culture, or almost anything else, including basic survival mechanisms, so they're a pointless comparison. It is ridiculous to think they, left to their nature, wouldn't develop communities, trust and suspicion, stereotypes, etc. that can eventually build up to racism. We have documented wars among literal apes, humans are definitely not much nicer in their natural state (whatever that might be - it can't be just "being a baby").
And the human teaching the baby can CHOOSE what to teach the baby. If you’re teaching it to respect XYZ during ABC, you’re teaching it hate.
Babies and kids share, yes there will be fights, that’s also human nature, but look at those reasons. To provide shelter for those close. They aren’t doing it out of hate, it’s for protection or other issues.
Just because someone takes your food doesn’t mean you go to war, invite them, share with them. Yes it can go south, but that’s also taught behavior. The chain has to be broken somewhere, and if you need it to be pointed out that you’re one of the issues… well the cutters are there. Just because the past has hate, doesn’t mean you need to perpetuate it forward.
You've picked a difficult idea to defend, alright, but you literally just ignored my main question.
Why would a human, whose supposed intrinsic tendency is towards care, helping, etc., teach the opposite?
Until you answer this directly I see no point in further discussion, especially as in the rest of the comment you're slipping further and further into absurd idealism (along with underhanded accusations against me just because I don't share the same Disney cartoon sort of conception of racism as you do).
No I haven’t at all, all you’re doing is defending racism and other hate.
Where hate comes from? From thinking we are superior to OTHER beings, like say apes. Now when you think black people are apes… you can see where the hate starts. From OTHER EXAMPLES. It’s not originally from hate towards another humans.
The issues is, to them they aren’t human. I think I’ve already addressed this….
So, all humans have inherently tend to care for and be nice to other people, but people can be bad to other species, and evil in human society arises when people (for whatever reason) decide to view other people as whole other species. Did I get that right?
Have you ever discussed these ideas with other people, IRL or online?
Yes, you never discussed basic human nature and how we’ve evolved over time? I figured you had some knowledge on the subject since you were talking like you know something.
You’re just a troll then? Has anything I said even gotten through that thick skull of yours?
It’s funny, you are the one with the indefensible position, all I’ve done is explain past history to you lmfao. And your answer was, where do the hate start. That’s well documented throughout history, no one has the time to explain it to you. That’s on you.
If hate is inherent, why don’t everyone hate? Why is it only a small portion of people can’t handle that emotion properly? Maybe because it was taught and they are using it wrong…? If we had to teach love, we would have been dead a species long before this topic would be possible.
Maybe think about your point before bloviating about it? It doesn’t even hold up to a little thought.
You peppered your comment with some really nonsensical assumptions about me and my position, but I'll single out just this one:
This most directly shows your inability to hold a serious dialogue. Not once did I even imply this ridiculous idea to be true. I criticised your position, but you could only assume that I hold the mirror opposite view, and not perhaps some position outside of Disney love-vs.-hate morality altogether. There is no room for nuance with you, all that can be discussed is the mystical "inherent human nature", and any other way to conceive of human behaviour is simply impossible. This is even more radically closed-down than usual religious thinking.
If you can't respect just the basic literal meaning of the words I wrote and instead have to make up what I said, there can be no dialogue.
Go sealion somewhere else.
I don’t believe that you are this obtuse. Someone shouldn’t have to explain the entirety of multiple subjects just to appease a bad faith argumenter.
I tried giving you the benefit of the doubt, but you obviously don’t want to engage in good faith, you’ve made this abundantly clear.
I’m out, cheers troll.