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Manuel Ch. Anderson (Pretoriano) wrote:
The mission of Stereotypes is to make us feel comfortable and "secure" in our world believing we "already know something" about the elements presented at time and space. The wrong is that we start to act and react automatically without making the effort for to employ "discerniment" to perceive things just as presented without "filtering"
PRAETORIAN
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I couldn't agree more, Manuel.
We base judgement on our experience, and also use other people subjective experience. This is done with the best intentions - to stay safe.
However, there are stereotypes for everything, and very often they are created and sustained by ... m-m-m not very clever people.
If you face an unfamiliar situation you either fail to find an adequate response based on your experience, make assumptions that everyone (involved) is out on the mission to harm you; or you act spontaneously and gain new experience.
It is our nature to assume everything unfamiliar to be dangerous until proven otherwise. But I think it is ignorant and is the main reason for violence. "I will hurt him before he gets a chance to hurt me".
Try to apply some stereotypes to yourself and see how ridiculous it will sound. I am a Russian living in England and I have long hair, therefore I must be an illegal immigrant and a drug dealer
Using the example with Nigerian drug dealers, where do you stop assuming and generalising? Do you avoid that area? Do you avoid all Nigerians? Or all black people? Sound a bit ridiculous, doesn't it? I am blowing this out of proportion just to get my point across. What I am saying is if you think like this you will soon run out of places where you feel safe.
This is not a Budo way. If you can't go to certain parts of the city where you live, this means you lost and whoever didn't want you to go there won without doing anything, you did the job for them. I think the Budo way would be to go where you need but without harm for yourself and, if possible, for others.