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Example- I can define prejudice as pre-judging. I do this almost every day of my life. I pre-judge what I will buy for dinner, what friends I choose to have, what neighborhood I want to live in, what movie I watch, what book I read, where I will vacation, and many more pre-judging choices. Can’t see anything wrong with prejudice as described. It is a potential for safety and longevity.
That’s your own very creative definition Gene. It has nothing to do with the dictionary definition, as you point out.
PREJUDICE, noun
1. Preconceived opinion that is not based on reason or actual experience.
2. Dislike, hostility, or unjust behavior deriving from unfounded opinions
3. Harm or injury that results or may result from some action or judgment
The mini-judgments you make during the day have more to do with wisdom, I think. Those wise choices you make after deliberating on the matter also have something to do with the reality recognition responses of the cosmic mind. None of that would be prejudiced.
Fair enough. Woe unto anyone who minimizes my mini-judgements, calls them prejudice.
Do you think that it is possible that the lower Adjutant could be ancestral to prejudice? Quick response.
What does quick response have to do with prejudice?
I’ll try:
Responding to situations without thinking.
Mindless reflex.
Lack of personal evaluation.
Back to Webster: “an adverse opinion or leaning formed without just grounds or before sufficient knowledge.
Observing the silly things my dog can be afraid of because he don’t understand – the vacuum cleaner, fire, thunder, a pack of coyotes. (Maybe coyotes he does understand)
He also responds quickly to small things that move, it’s like ringing the dinner bell, I need to train him how to respond to the baby great grand kids, how to control that trigger.
Don’t you think that this sort of thing could devolve into the prejudices that humans encounter because of lack of response to the higher Adjutants – knowledge and wisdom??
How do you account for prejudice, where do you think it comes from?
My thoughts are that pride is more like selfishness but prejudice is more linked to primitive survival instincts.Quick response has no definition either. Instinctual reaction perhaps is your dog’s deal…and often enough with humans perhaps even but that’s not prejudice. Prejudice requires ego…self and it reflects a personal perspective of a specific issue. It is not thoughtless, it is an egoistic demonstration of opinion based, most often, on a lack of knowledge or understanding wrapped in self importance….your dog don’t do that. It is a belief that one’s own opinion is both accurate and important…a subjective value that has little or no regard to an objective view or any other’s subjective opinion either.
It is a dismissal of study, learning, and change regarding any opinion gripped so tightly as to prevent gaining any additional information which might adjust one’s own opinions. Closed mindedness. It is a symptom of ignorance embraced. It demonstrates a need for education and experience as well as extreme immaturity and egoism….self importance. And it is a great obstacle to intellectual and spiritual progress and it is no gift from any Adjutant…..it prevents progress within….and without…personally and socially.
How do you account for prejudice, where do you think it comes from? My thoughts are that pride is more like selfishness but prejudice is more linked to primitive survival instincts.
I do think that mankind, being of animal origin, has a natural inclination to reject anything/anyone deemed to be foreign and to dominate anything/anyone perceived to be weak. It is part of the survival of the fittest meme. But prejudice is more than than survival. It is a form of primitive stereotyping and distrust, a refusal to entertain and accept differences in order to maintain a personal status quo, or comfort zone. Prejudice is an inability to trust anything outside of this zone, and I personally think the root is fear and ignorance. Simply put, prejudice results in negative discrimination whereas wisdom results in positive discrimination. That’s the best I can do right now.
One may be ignorant without prejudice….the eager student who acknowledges a lack of knowledge and understanding and is willing to transcend the current state of ignorance with knowledge….but prejudice is always based in ignorance and its willful embrace….an obstacle to learning and growing.
132:3.4 [Part IV]
Revealed truth, personally discovered truth, is the supreme delight of the human soul; it is the joint creation of the material mind and the indwelling spirit. The eternal salvation of this truth-discerning and beauty-loving soul is assured by that hunger and thirst for goodness which leads this mortal to develop a singleness of purpose to do the Father’s will, to find God and to become like him. There is never conflict between true knowledge and truth. There may be conflict between knowledge and human beliefs, beliefs colored with prejudice, distorted by fear, and dominated by the dread of facing new facts of material discovery or spiritual progress.100:1.1 A child evaluates experience in accordance with the content of pleasure; maturity is proportional to the substitution of higher meanings for personal pleasure, even loyalties to the highest concepts of diversified life situations and cosmic relations.
Can we also say that prejudice is immature? Doesn’t prejudice prevent loyalty to the “highest concepts of diversified life situations and cosmic relations.” If you can’t entertain diversity, you can’t entertain the elliptic symmetry and curvature of cosmic relations. You’re kinda stuck in your own little playpen with it’s walls. Right?
How do you account for prejudice, where do you think it comes from? My thoughts are that pride is more like selfishness but prejudice is more linked to primitive survival instincts.
I do think that mankind, being of animal origin, has a natural inclination to reject anything/anyone deemed to be foreign and to dominate anything/anyone perceived to be weak. It is part of the survival of the fittest meme. But prejudice is more than than survival. It is a form of primitive stereotyping and distrust, a refusal to entertain and accept differences in order to maintain a personal status quo, or comfort zone. Prejudice is an inability to trust anything outside of this zone, and I personally think the root is fear and ignorance. Simply put, prejudice results in negative discrimination whereas wisdom results in positive discrimination. That’s the best I can do right now.
I tend to agree with you and Brad – but:
I still see evidence of a quick response pattern to your description, a lower Adjutant engagement, no real thinking involved.
I also think morality has an impact on accepting differences, sometimes misguided. And I think experience tells us that not all differences should be accepted and this seems to me like survival, another lower Adjutant engagement.
Having an open mind to differences should be differences that enhances not retards growth and security. Accepting all differences without discrimination- we’ll, you do so at your own risk imho.Papers 99 – 102 are my favorites.
The things that gets my attention right away in paper 100 are first right up front first paragraph the focus is on the individual.
“RELIGION IN HUMAN EXPERIENCE
THE experience of dynamic religious living transforms the mediocre in- dividual into a personality of idealistic power. Religion ministers to the progress of all through fostering the progress of each individual, and the progress of each is augmented through the achievement of all.
Spiritual growth is mutually stimulated by intimate association with other religionists. Love supplies the soil for religious growth—an objective lure in the place of subjective gratification—yet it yields the supreme subjective satisfac- tion. And religion ennobles the commonplace drudgery of daily living”And then – how many times are the words progress and growth repeated.
And then that statement that portrays love as an objective lure.
As for progress I see it as a spiritual thing and growth as a mind thing.
And love, it’s true nature has nothing to do with feelings – it is not ours – it’s an objective lure, a reality. However while experiencing this lure it touches our feelings – supreme subjective gratification
Pretty cool stuff.Accepting all differences without discrimination- we’ll, you do so at your own risk imho.
No one says you have to accept all differences. We’re not supposed to all think alike – like mechanical robots. Nor are we all made alike (racial colors were created on purpose). But, we are supposed to allow others to have their differences without discriminating against the person who has them. You can love the person without loving everything they think, do and say. Loving the person also requires you to look past the color, race, religion, gender, sex behavior, age, culture, country of origin, social class, education, political affiliation, personal hygiene, physical appearance, clothing choice, music preference, food preference, and social ideology, among many others that seem to separate us these days. Heck, if I didn’t look past all that stuff, I wouldn’t like anybody. I wouldn’t have a friend in the world.
Accepting all differences without discrimination- we’ll, you do so at your own risk imho.
No one says you have to accept all differences. We’re not supposed to all think alike – like mechanical robots. Nor are we all made alike (racial colors were created on purpose). But, we are supposed to allow others to have their differences without discriminating against the person who has them. You can love the person without loving everything they think, do and say. Loving the person also requires you to look past the color, race, religion, gender, sex behavior, age, culture, country of origin, social class, education, political affiliation, personal hygiene, physical appearance, clothing choice, music preference, food preference, and social ideology, among many others that seem to separate us these days. Heck, if I didn’t look past all that stuff, I wouldn’t like anybody. I wouldn’t have a friend in the world.
Agree completely
Linking prejudice to loyalty is interesting to consider….prejudice is self centered….loyalty to one’s opinions and beliefs….the subjective view which results in error….inevitably.
Loyalty to truth and growth and love and God within leads to a desire to learn more, and learn the better WAY into truth, beauty, and goodness…and does require the relinquishment of preconception when it understood to limit us and our ability to learn and grow.
100:1.1 (1094.3) While religion produces growth of meanings and enhancement of values, evil always results when purely personal evaluations are elevated to the levels of absolutes. A child evaluates experience in accordance with the content of pleasure; maturity is proportional to the substitution of higher meanings for personal pleasure, even loyalties to the highest concepts of diversified life situations and cosmic relations.
One might conclude that the loyalty to personal growth and transformation replaces the loyalty we have to self importance and our material life…the transfer of the seat of identity.
112:5.4 [Part III]
Human beings possess identity only in the material sense. Such qualities of the self are expressed by the material mind as it functions in the energy system of the intellect. When it is said that man has identity, it is recognized that he is in possession of a mind circuit which has been placed in subordination to the acts and choosing of the will of the human personality. But this is a material and purely temporary manifestation, just as the human embryo is a transient parasitic stage of human life. Human beings, from a cosmic perspective, are born, live, and die in a relative instant of time; they are not enduring. But mortal personality, through its own choosing, possesses the power of transferring its seat of identity from the passing material-intellect system to the higher morontia-soul system which, in association with the Thought Adjuster, is created as a new vehicle for personality manifestation.“100:1.1 (1094.3) While religion produces growth of meanings and enhancement of values, evil always results when purely personal evaluations are elevated to the levels of absolutes. A child evaluates experience in accordance with the content of pleasure; maturity is proportional to the substitution of higher meanings for personal pleasure, even loyalties to the highest concepts of diversified life situations and cosmic relations”
Isn’t this about the ideal process of maturity, separating our feelings from real meanings and values as we acquire them? Children don’t have anything but feelings.
It takes my mind to paper 16.6 – the cosmic intuitions.Isn’t this about the ideal process of maturity, separating our feelings from real meanings and values as we acquire them? Children don’t have anything but feelings.
I guess it depends on how you look at it. Certainly real meanings and values generate feelings within us that can’t and shouldn’t be overlooked, such as feelings of compassion, brotherhood, love, assurance, and feelings of service toward our fellows.
157:2.2 And when the feelings of service for your fellow men arise within your soul, do not stifle them; when the emotions of love for your neighbor well up within your heart, give expression to such urges of affection in intelligent ministry to the real needs of your fellows.
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