Human intelligence is stoppered by a right many things: ignorance, raw emotion, Yahoo answers. The list goes on.
One particularly damaging roadblock to rational thought and human growth, in my experience, is generalization. I see it everyday, mostly because I generalize right along side everyone else, this article included.
It’s the easiest impulse to let through for those who are sensitive to offending a certain group in a blatant way, but still want to make fun of them. I can definitely appreciate that, but I know it shouldn’t always be taken seriously.
I appreciate a lot of what generalization has to offer. It saves a lot of time. “Republicans want to lower taxes on the wealthy even more” versus “Some Republicans, after already having lowered taxes on the wealthy for the past four decades, want to continue the failed Bush tax cuts, disguising it as a populist move to put money back in the pockets of those whom the tax cuts will damage the most.” Basically, there’s only so much time to qualify a statement.
They can be plenty funny, too, in an offensive “we all know this is completely wrong” kind of way.
These are outweighed, however, by the damage generalization can do. Books, TV, and music particularly annoy me.
Reading is awesome, but the generalization that those who read a lot are inherently smart is completely flawed. There are countless awful, awful books out there, and if you spent every day reading each one of them, you wouldn’t be any smarter or any more informed than anyone else. I’m pretty sure I’m just saying that you need to earn the “dork” label.
The same goes for music and TV, with the difference for TV being that it’s a common stereotype that everyone who watches a lot of TV is wasting their time, or is just dumb. It’s true that there are a lot less good TV shows than there are good books, but it’s still a hasty generalization.
Beyond the examples that probably only annoy me, there are the generalizations that have ruined people’s lives. You know, all those lovely “isms.” The “isms” are all stereotypes that have survived with the help of those who don’t clarify that not every generalization is a harmless witticism. In fact, few are.
I’d like people to simply notice when they generalize. Really, just notice. If you can glean how badly your mindset is blocking intelligent discussion and human reason, but don’t see a problem with it, then it’s unlikely there’s anything anyone could say that would stop you.
You have a right to be stupid, as do I. I’ll exercise it, as will you. All life forms make mistakes, as the Doctor would say, but you should probably just notice when you do.
Actually, I’ll risk generalizing on this one. You definitely should notice when you do.
