However, most prejudice is considered as negative. According to Prejudice, Julia Galef once revealed that “ We need to learn how to feel intrigued instead of defensive when we encounter some information that contradicts our beliefs” while delivering a speech at Ted Talk in 2016. She tilted her presentation as “Why you think you’re right - even if you’re wrong”. During her speech, she conveys the idea of how our feelings and emotions affect the way we judge someone or something by the terms “The soldier” and “The Scout”.
Julia Galef is a writer and a public speaker. She was born in Maryland into a Jewish family. Galef has delivered lectures to organizations including the Center for Inquiry and Secular Student Alliance. Her topics focus on the common confusions and popular misconception of rationality.
According to the concept of prejudice, we are not born with prejudice. People learn prejudice from the people around them. During delivering the speech, Galef illustrates the term “The soldier mindset”, which emphasizes that humans are similar to the soldiers. In the war field, the soldiers need to defeat the enemy in order to protect themself and their side. Us, the soldiers, are all raised by the single-story. We join the war with the mindset that our enemy is dangerous so that we should get rid of them. In order to strengthen her perspective, she gives an example of the way people cheer up when the other team committed a foul without examining if it is right or wrong. Besides, she also focuses on the term “The Scout mindset”. Scout’s job is not to attack or defend but to discover what is the truth even though that’s unpleasant or inconvenient. The Scout can say that “ Looks like I might be wrong. Doesn’t mean I’m bad or stupid”. In real life, both the soldier and the scout are essential.
In order to strengthen her point of view, she threw back to the 19-century France. In 1894, the French government launched a big investigation to find out the spy that sold the military secrets to Germany. Even though they found no past history of wrongdoing, no motive to sell the information, and the handwriting was not matched, they sentenced Alfred Dreyfus, who was the only Jewish officer in the army, to life imprisonment on the Devil’s Island. As a consequence of not finding out any evidence, they claimed that Dreyfus was not only guilty but also sneaky. However, even after Dreyfus was in prison, they found out that the information was still leaked to German. Instead of declaring Dreyfus to be innocent, they believed that there’s another spy. Based on that, it reveals, people who are prejudiced, tend to judge people from what they were told instead of what they experienced.
At the end of the presentation, she states “What do you yearn for? Do you yearn to defend your own beliefs? Or do you yearn to see the world as clearly as you possibly can?”. In order to make our global become better, we need to change the way we feel toward someone or something. Instead of focusing on how dangerous someone is, we should understand that not all of us are absolutely similar. Even though prejudice has both good and bad sides, the negative aspect is inevitable. Due to the way we treated people with selfishness, many social problems are caused. The negative side of prejudice limits our perspectives. However, it can also be adjusted to make the world become better.
Prejudice is one of the greatest attributions that control our way of thinking. According to the agents of socialization, we are shaped by those entities, such as family, peers, and schools. Due to the concept, we are not born with prejudice but taught to be prejudiced. I was born and raised in a Vietnamese family. When I was young, my family told me to use chopsticks properly because we are Asians. Because of prejudice, Asians are known as a group of people who eat rice and use chopsticks. Due to the fact that we’re Asians, we consider Americans as a group of people who eat bread and pasta by forks. Studies have shown that a person targeted by stereotype expectations held by others may end up behaving as the stereotype. As a consequence, we limit our perspective and observe the world through our own lenses.
Prejudice also drives people to become confused about their place in society. Skin color, gender, religion, political view, and social class are attacking people relentlessly. Hartley’s studies show that prejudice does not depend on negative experiences with others but depends on the negative information we obtained throughout our life span. Because of movies and news, thefts and kidnappers are usually wandering around the streets at midnight. Somehow, these images indirectly stay in our memory and drive us to fear the people we encounter on the street in the middle of the night. There are not always kidnappers or thieves out there. They could be someone, who comes home from a night shift, or a tourist, who wants to enjoy the night sky.
Last but not least, we should contribute to the rise of positive prejudice. In order to show favor to our group of people, it is not necessary to evaluate other groups negatively. People can be proud of their groups and respect other groups at the same time. If we could not empathize with someone’s belief, we can learn to respect them or at least learn to tolerate them. Instead of framing conclusions about others, it is better to give them a chance to express their stories.
Prejudice is not impossible to be reduced. The key is not to concentrate on how smart you are but on how you feel. Your emotions contribute to your attitudes. Changing your mindset would make you feel unpleasure but you can widen your knowledge. Based on Julia Galef, “What do you yearn for? Do you yearn to defend your own beliefs with the Soldier mindset? Or do you yearn to see the world as clearly as you possibly can with the Scout mindset”? The answer is at your fingertips.
Works Cited
"Julia Galef." Wikipedia, Wikipedia, 28 Jan. 2020, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julia_Galef.
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