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https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:https://medium.com/mystic-minds/when-we-see-ourselves-in-others-we-stop-hating-27f1e8a9ffdf>
"
I watch the octave of legs run fearlessly toward me, and my gut reaction is
to flinch. Something deep within, some primitive part of me, imagines the
spider is dangerous. Reason, however, insists that since I’m in England, where
most of these creatures are safe to be around, I’ve nothing to worry about.
I’ve met many people who insist they hate spiders, and maybe it’s because they
can’t relate to them. They look so dissimilar to humans, darting about
haphazardly and spinning webs to catch their prey, that spider-haters fear
them.
Fear so often becomes hate, and we tend to fear what (or whoever) we don’t
understand.
We never truly know anybody as well as we know ourselves, and even then,
perhaps we lack knowledge. As such, we easily slip into a state of tension when
we come across anyone alien to us. Their appearance, habits, and beliefs are
unfamiliar, and being near them rips us from our comfort zones.
If lucky, because we’ve traveled or been around new people often for other
reasons, interlopers might arouse our curiosity. We want to know them better,
and our attempts to understand them help us connect. They lose their
strangeness, and we lose traces of fear.
But what if we’ve led sheltered lives and met few people who are different from
us? What then? We may fear strangers (people very dissimilar to us) and
consider them dangerous."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
