Can We Look At Bigotry Like A Virus?

[tacticslion]

Originally Posted by Smarty McBarrelpants

Brain is far too complex for that. It wouldn't work. Best you coul do is jsut put people on a chemical high but that is damaging long term.
You're better off looking at the societal causes of hate and bigotry.

This is pretty close.

Really, it boils down to personal choice to accept or reject what is handed to you, and how you choose to look at something, combined with people's innate ability to take something - no matter how good the basics and intention - and screw it up, royally. While you could make an alegory of hate like a virus and love like a cure, you're not going to be able to do so on a physical way, unless you've got some really wierd reality-altering powers (specifically the ability to instantly re-arrange all the synaptic configurations in a brain), and even then you could only cure a specific instance in the now, instead of curing it "forever", because people will still make choices and problematic mental-emotional associations over time - there's no way to cure that.

Ultimately, prejudice is going to happen, and bigotry from it. Prejudice - having a judgement before real experience - is not always a bad thing. For example, I am prejudiced against taking a lava bath. I submit that I've never tried it, have not researched it, and, regardless of promises that if I stay in one for an hour or longer I'll never have to worry about being sick again, I'm not interested in either, because I've got a prejudice. Bigotry is prejudice taken to the next level. Because prejudice can be a good thing in the appropriate context, people being people will always find a way to abuse it and bring it into bigotry. Unless we find a way to cure the human ability to make mistakes - no, we can't eliminate it entirely.

That said, what we can do, is - as a group - work so that the socio-cultural (and, if you share my world-view, spiritual) influences that aid in maintaining and promoting bigotry are eliminated*, or at least diminished to the extent that bigotry is the province of the few. As it stands now, however, there are so many types and forms of bigotry (I presume you mean racial, but there are even many kinds there) held by so many people across various strata of society, that it will be a long and frusterating climb.

*This may be impossible, in the end.

Edit: hey, Archbio, be careful! While you make a funny point, this might be too-serious thread for that kind of post (I'm not sure, so you'll probably want to ask a mod).