It is my firm belief that the average person is not malicious at heart. Despite the sheer number of dickheads perpetrating dickheaded acts on a daily basis, it gives my mind a degree of stability to believe that these trespasses against reason and my own comfort and convenience stem more from ignorance than any actual desire to inflict harm. You can't really hold something against someone when they didn't even know it was a problem... they're not psychic or anything, because no-one is, because psychics are a bunch of frauds from A through to Z. People's ignorance means they might not know what constitutes dickheaded behaviour, and given sufficiently terrible information, one could come to believe that dickheaded behaviour is actually positive and helpful and so continue to perform acts of subtle, well-meaning dickheadry.
If you're having trouble conceptualising that, imagine someone who, having been raised in a racist household, was under the impression that non-whites were subhuman. From birth, their home environment was quietly antagonistic to non-whites and they had never had enough exposure or interaction with non-whites to realise at a young age that they're people too. However, they grow up to be a pretty nice person (save this one serious character flaw) and as an adult, having internalised this bias to the point that they accepted it as a truth of the world, they meet a non-white person. Now, if they were an otherwise decent person, they probably wouldn't lash out at them, especially if they saw other white people treating them with kindness. However, they also view them as subhuman, so how do you reconcile that? What you get is the most subtle kind of racism, wherein they treat the person perfectly pleasantly, but with an almost dismissive condescension. Shit like walking on eggshells, clarifying stuff to them needlessly, not really listening to what they have to say... that kind of thing. It's the same for basically any bias, against homosexuals, the handicapped, people of different faiths... any bias you can think of.
What sucks about this specific kind of prejudice is that it seems to come from a good place. To the person committing it, they aren't being racist, they're being tolerant and accepting. The problem lies not with their intentions but from the misinformation they've been fed. It's upsetting that some prejudices, racism, homophobia and religious intolerance in particular, are so ingrained in certain parts of the world that these little subconscious biases are more common than one might think.
On a completely separate topic, I'm finding it harder and harder to believe the world is getting more free given how willingly people seem to want to give up their freedoms. Rationalisations like "if you aren't doing anything wrong, then you have nothing to worry about" are a nonsense, assuming a concrete definition of "wrong" and also assuming a completely fair and impartial law enforcement system that has no agenda or biases. Both of these assumptions are inherently flawed. This is purely personal, but I've never understood why people were so comfortable being filmed without permission, particularly in public space.
Food for thought.
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