Acceptance is Peace
How often do we look into the eyes of our enemies; really look into them, without biases and without preconceived ideas? This painting is about the extreme regret that two enemies feel after meeting each other after seemingly ages of hating one another, and realize that they have no real hate for one another, and instead feel love. Why do we develop hate, distrust and dislike for those we don't even know? Social psychology may have some answers.
How we see ourselves in the world may play a large part in how we see others. Our identity is very important to us, and we spend our whole lives establishing ourselves as individuals and as members of groups.
We have the ability to differentiate ourselves from others through comparison. We are born without separate identities, and are given only our eyes, ears and minds to receive the information life gives us. All we can see is the way the world reacts to us. We make decisions to place ourselves in situations that are rewarding to us.
Most people seek out similarities or desired qualities in others, almost like we're trying to find mirrors of ourselves so we can learn about who we are. Its very comfortable to stay with others who are similar to us, but to avoid stereotyping about other, its better to meet a variety of people and learn to see ourselves in new perspectives.
Identification
between people leads to peace
Identifying with as many people
as possible is the best way to begin acting in kind ways because when
we see others as similar to ourselves, we are more likely to feel
empathy towards them and also feel a desire to help. To begin this we
may have to work on in-group, and out-group affiliations.
When a person says, "I am a student," they identify themselves with other students, and establish an in-group. Perhaps in conversations or debates, they may be more willing to support the rights of other students than those who are not students (or those who are in their Out-Group). The more often we publicly proclaim our affiliation with a group, the more we feel connected to that group and feel as-though our identity rests with our group's identity.
It's also very easy to feel anonymous within the large crowd of a group. Anonymity can lower the inhibitions we feel, and might make us do things we'd otherwise feel ashamed of. The white head coverings of the Ku Klux Klan make a perfect example of another level of anonymity.
We like our identities to be enduring, stable, and constant. The best description of this is ethnicity. When one of our major in-groups becomes ethnicity, we face the danger of developing racial prejudice. The United States is unique in that most races do not solidly identify themselves with regions of land and religions, but in other countries oftenthis is the case and it can lead to major tensions. For example, Israel and surrounding countries have been the scenes of countless battles over Holy Land. Groups feel their identities being threatened and react in fear and violence. We seem unwilling to look at our enemies in as people and not faceless forces.
Feeling
connected to others increases kindness in times of
need
We seem to view people that we
don't have connections to as more similar to each other than those
that we do know. When we were young, adults all seemed to blend
together, but our peers jumped out at us as specific and unique
people. This is an example about the homogeneity that people see in
those that they feel are not similar to them. Racial slurs and
prejudice are the products of this unfortunate human
tendency.
We walk around the world with tainted eyes making unfair judgements about others. No one likes to think that they are prejudiced, but then who are the people who participate in hate groups, ethnic cleansing, racial, gender, and ethnic discrimination? Those people are just like us in many ways, perhaps they are us. Why do we let ourselves become this way?
When we hear through the news or over the Internet of the misfortunes of others, it's very tempting to feel that they are suffering because of their own stupidities, or faults. It makes us feel safe to distance ourselves from those who are suffering by reassuring ourselves that it couldn't happen to us. This is called "self preservation," because it gives us a necessary sense of security.
There's also a little something called "cognitive heuristics" that means we use mental shortcuts just because it's easier on our minds to make grouping assumptions about others than to try and understand the intricacies of each other.
Expectations
can determine friendships
Media, the environment, and pop
culture help us develop defined ways of thinking. On television we
see representatives of groups acting in ways that are socially
prescribed. This, along with social interactions and rewards lead us
to believe we should behave in certain ways. Very small children
learn through watching adults that people who look different don't
spend much time together.
We develop expectations about the reaction of others, and these preconceived ideas influence our actions. We may expect interactions with a certain type of person to be stressed and uncomfortable, and so we may avoid the situation or, inadvertently make the interaction stressed and uncomfortable because we think it has to be this way. We call this prediction turned reality a "self- fulfilling prophecy."
These expectations, or specific bad interactions with certain types of people can send us down a spiral of bad relations. We talked before about the homogeneity we see in other groups. Should we have a bad experience with an individual in an out-group, we may make the incorrect assumption by using mental short cuts that all people in that group are like the one individual we experienced. After these bad interactions we begin to project out distrust, fears and uneasiness onto others of that out-group. People can sense dislike and may react reciprocally with equal dislike and so the circle continues, feeding our flames unhappiness.
Feeling
good about ourselves makes us more open to learning about and
becoming friends with others.
We need to be secure within the
importance and worth of ourselves so we can react healthily to
others. We also need to meet new interactions with confidence and
open minds.
We have the ability to develop atmospheres of trust. Seeing people as individuals is the first step, and feeling like a stable individual ourselves is the second step. When we do not fear for our identities, we don't react violently when they are threatened.
Strong affiliation towards a group can cause us to react when that group comes into conflict with another. The key to not feeling threatened is identifying with the other group.
Vulnerability and fear will continue so long as we fear for our personal identity. If we all expand our feelings of belonging, we might find that we care and wish to help people of all races, genders, and religions.
Meeting others on levels of identical power, bound by a desire to achieve a common goal, is the best way to ensure peace. We all have the responsibility to be aware of how we view others, so that we might better attempt to understand where negative thoughts about people, or groups of people, are derived. Once we recognize the illogic of such negative thoughts, and dissolve feelings of anger, we can work towards more peaceful relations with each other.