this post was submitted on 11 Nov 2023
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And he might have ended up being a standup dude in another time.
That’s something that I think about often.
The average intelligence of the population of the world isn’t that great. Most people accept whatever reality is instilled in them. If you take a little baby and raise it up to think of some people as animals, they’ll probably never question it, and being surrounded only by people who accept that reality, they’ll never have a reason to question it. I very rarely meet a person who has ever really questioned their reality. It always surprised me when I do.
Most abolitionists came from a world where they were they weren’t exposed to slavery, so they were able to question it. Even then, only around 2% of the population were abolitionists, they just fought really hard for their cause until it rose up high enough to actually be considered for action.
I’m not even putting myself into that small group of people smart enough to question their reality. If I hadn’t grown up with the internet there’s a good chance I’d be a preacher in a Pentecostal holiness church somewhere. That small handful of people who question their reality help spread their questions to the idiot masses.
That’s why I admire people who fight for positive change above all other people. They fight an uphill battle daily. Sometimes they win big and I’m grateful they do.
I have to agree here from experience.
One of my kids came out as gay. I grew up in a very homophobic environment in the 70s. I would quite often called timid people puffs etc. Sometimes around my kids, because that was how I grew up. You discouraged timid behaviour to stop them getting bullied. Realising one of your kids is gay was a real eye opener for me as to how bad these phrases are.
I would never treat a gay person differently. I just saw it as an expression that was common when I was young, and also in the environment I worked in. For context, I used to play squash with a guy from work, who everyone was convinced was gay. He actually got married in a heterosexual relationship a few years later, but whether he was or wasn't never bothered me. This ofc doesn't excuse the practise, it just shows how warped I was.
General Sherman early in life was quite alright with slavery and a casual racist against Black people, and later became an ardent anti-racist (at least, anti-racist with regards to anti-Black racism). He noted, some years after the US CIvil War, when asked by younger folk how so many people could have blithely accepted slavery, that man is more a creature of habit than originality.