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It has been a little while now that this fledgling community has been around and it remains one of my favorite stories about communities. A splinter of a much larger community took it upon themselves to challenge the rest and make a move to a new home. Shedding the shackles that were being placed on them was a bold move, but one that has been fantastic.
The community here is great, but here is my question. Overall, we are amazingly tolerant of others, of the choices they make, and of their beliefs. I would then be curious, if we are such a tolerant group, how do we address intolerance in our ranks? I recently came across what I can only say filled me with pity and sadness. I find it saddening that in this day and age, and especially in this group, there are still such hate-filled people.
But this poses a question: how does a group that is tolerant deal with intolerance within it's ranks? Does our acceptance of others extend to accepting someone that has thoughts and beliefs which are far from the norm within this community, or is there a limit placed on how far from our own values a member of the community may be?
(Score: 3, Insightful) by xtronics on Sunday April 13 2014, @06:32PM
Actually, it is promoted by politicians that seek to divide us - it is exploited by sports broadcasting for profit. ( People identify with "their team').
I tribal situations, outsiders were seen as a threat - identifying them as such appears to be part of the fabric of humanity. Not likely to just get rid of it.
In the end we have to teach that there is no 'we' and no 'them'. Rand wrote about this to no end - and of course was hated for it. It takes work, cognitive effort, to see and judge people as individuals. But people are generally lazy - and practice subjectivity and intrinsic philosophy.
I would hope that people would teach their children the 4-R's - Reading, Riting, rymatic and reason..
(Score: 2) by NCommander on Sunday April 13 2014, @08:38PM
You should check out the Standford Prison Experiment [wikipedia.org], and other experiments on that. I highly recommend you may want give people links to Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality [hpmor.com] which is probably one of the first pieces of fanfiction to really really make me think as it applies rationalism and logic to much of that universe while being extremely well written, including topics such as conformity, groupthink, etc. As a warning, the first few chapters are NOT the best, but I recommend it to anyone who likes Harry Potter and needs a good dose of rationality in their lives.
Still always moving
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Monday April 14 2014, @01:49PM
The problem here is that you're completely ignoring culture, and saying that it doesn't exist. Culture does exist. Groups of people do share, in general, certain values and customs and practices, so it is entirely possible to generalize people by their group, and this is precisely what we do when we speak of a culture. Yes, there's always exceptions to the generalization, which is important to keep in mind, but that doesn't make the generalization worthless.