The desire to socially categorize others into groups that fit our own understandings is not a foreign concept to the masses we desperately try to coexist with. This attempted simplification of society can most generally be referred to as stereotyping; with a stereotype being a fixed, over-generalized belief about a certain group of people.

One would love to believe that only people blighted by perpetual ignorance fall prey to the appeal of stereotypes, but the shocking truth is that every one of us on this Earth stereotypes others and judge that which we don’t understand. We stereotype others by appearance, religion, sexuality, and even ethnicity. Feverishly exercising our brain’s coveted ability to compartmentalize what it sees and relate it to previously received information.

The use and acceptance of stereotypes in our society has very effectively served to simplify, or in essence ‘dumb down’ our social world. By design, stereotypes reduce the amount of processing one has to do when crossing paths with someone new. In turn this has only led to the general decay of authentic socialization on a massive scale. In present times an integral part of life in the first world is determined by ones placement in predetermined ‘in-groups’ and ‘out-groups’; a fact which is blatantly contrary to the belief that our society is so far evolved.

For it would seem that our generation is faced with a problem of segregation not unlike the ones we have grown up reading about in history books. A threat of an all-consuming prejudice that longs to undermine the large steps our species has taken in the last century alone.

Stereotyping while benign in small amounts, has gone too far in the society we currently exist in. It might very well be part of the human condition, but this does not mean it should be given free reign to trample rampantly over all hopes of civil and social equality. While consuming energy is necessary to human survival, if an individual was to begin partaking in cannibalism it would be most heavily frowned upon, would it not? We are more than pitiful structures of flesh subjected to the whims of our most basic chemical emotions.

Why then are we content with letting our very minds slip further into a bigoted decadence?

Why do we sit like starry eyed sheep while the wolves of our own apathy continue to form crop circles of isolation inducing hate around us?

THERE IS NO US VS. THEM

We are all human; we share the same planet, and experience many of the same struggles. We all long to create, to inspire and to be inspired. We all experience the soul shaking awe in the face of our vast existential youth, and all long to understand why we are all here, and where we will ascend to. We are the same, but different, fellow travelers on a dangerous path towards an ever distant horizon, and that is beautiful. True equality is a product of actively pursuing the resolve that enables one to let go of society’s marketed hate, and to bid the bitter taste of stereotyping farewell.

For in the end all our lofty ideals and delusions of grandeur will inevitably falter; crashing down in a sea of weathered monuments and broken lungs, but the unalienable rights to love and experience fellowship will remain in steadfast resolve.