Thoughts on how we Perceive Others

So, I have a couple of thoughts. (Dangerous, I know)
I am choosing to share these thoughts on the Internet. (…even more dangerous…)

I have said this before, while I am not deeply religious, I have some deep convictions.

In the New Testament, Jesus simplified the 10 Commandments into the 2 Commandments:
Love God.
Love thy neighbor.

Regardless of any belief in the divinity of Jesus, this is a powerful philosophical view.

I take “Love God” in a bit of a Deist light. The world around us is a miracle and we are all interconnected. I appreciate our interconnected place in the world.

As John Muir was fond of pointing out, the world is yet being made thus it is still the morning of creation! It is a wonderfully empowering and fundamentally optimistic perspective.

On the more religious end, I believe in the “Our Father:”

Our Father, Who art in heaven
Hallowed be Thy Name;
Thy kingdom come,
Thy will be done,
on earth as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread,
and forgive us our trespasses,
as we forgive those who trespass against us;
and lead us not into temptation,
but deliver us from evil. Amen.

Taken out of a fully religious context and viewed in a philosophical one, it embodies the view that there is something greater than us and that we should strive to be more accepting and loving and forgiving people.

As for loving thy neighbor,

This is hard. We as people are stubborn. If someone is not like us, or not connected to us we think less of them.

I call it “othering.”

It can be as simple as “those guys across the river are not the same as us.”

“We are better than those in the city because we live in the suburbs (or vice versa).”

“He/she looks different…talks different… lives a different lifestyle…”

“They are not me…they are in fact less then me.”

“I am human…if they are less then me, they are less than human.”

To love thy neighbor we must overcome our base urge to “other.”

Different does not equal bad or less than, but we have a natural herd tendency to classify our group and who is not part of our group. This, as we know, has dangerous consequences.

When I think about who I want as my leader, I think about who will best embody the views of loving our interconnected world and who is working to overcome our urge to “other.”

I would urge you to do the same.