Viewpoints filled with hate

It seems like the world is going insane. Turn left, turn right, open a news media website and there will be one or more likely several items which have hate filled agendas. If it is not one section of a community it is another, viewpoints abound which could be considered extremist. They are hate filled and the warriors behind these views have no insight into what this does. I see it, I recognise it and I've felt it myself, then, I changed my mind. It is part of the growing up process. Further this process is not physical it's mental, it is understanding the world has many people in it, and let others live how they want to live, for why get bothered?

Of course there are always reasons to get bothered about stuff. To get bothered about the Nazi who walks through your door and no matter how hard you want to say feck off, you can't because they are a member of your family. And if they just didn't have this particular view on life then they'd actually a very OK person. I might want to change this person and have tried to combat their views but as they are still a teenager they have to make their own way in life, their own mistakes, and they get upset if they're told nazism is wrong and toxic. The choice then boils down to whether I want this member of my family in my life or to disown them. Then I think back to being their uncle and having lots of fun playing with them and do nothing. I want to believe behind this extremist aspect of their personality is just a vulnerable human being, an ordinary person who's had a life of bad cards. One hand after the other has just been unfortunate. Unfortunate to have an alcoholic father, a depressive mother who only thinks about herself and to attend a school to find they are in the ethnic minority in their own country. There is no accounting for the experiences other people have, choices are made out of those experiences and taking a step back helps understand this.

We are all human beings. What makes us intolerant is poverty, poor education and lack of exposure to others. When I was a kid there were many taboos. Sexuality being one of them. It wasn't until my twenties I witnessed homosexuality. It was on a holiday to Germany. Two men dressed in complimentary leather trousers and jackets walked down the street holding hands. I was taken aback, I'd never seen this kind of behaviour in the UK and I'd lived just outside of London. I knew of homosexuality of both gays and lesbians but to see this simple behaviour in real life was my first experience of it. To tell the truth I have never been bothered about it, but I have felt the opinions of others encroach on my own self and wondered if I should agree with them and their views. At the time I just simply didn't have any view at all. So perhaps this is why I just simply accepted people were different but they were still just humans. It was my contact with the religiously minded which I found to be intolerant of sexuality. Intolerant of the behaviours of others. Yet the constant question is why on earth should the observer be bothered? If these behaviours are not harming them why should they mentally think they are? Maybe it is better to feel good knowing they are part of the in-group and those there gays, are without doubt in the out-group, in more ways than one. So fecking what. I will state though on record, my encounters with lesbians, which isn't something I go out of my way to do in any sense has also been implicitly hostile. It seems to me they just don't like to converse or have anything to do with men, or certainly heterosexual men. They are standoffish and will not engage in conversation at social gatherings, will not even acknowledge my presence, I might smile but will not get a smile back. No doubt they have their own hang ups and probably meeting a normal hetererosexual who just wants to have an ordinary chat about the weather or some other banality is a no no. It's probably written in the 'How to be a Lesbian Handbook' which I just would not be allowed to get my hands on. Due to the sign on the book shelf saying 'not for men'.

My perceptions of the world and of people have changed, I wouldn't say enormously, but rather subtly to the principle of let live. Hate and bigotry upsets me, but my recognition of it is because I know what it is like to be a bigot and to hate as well. I hate extemism and I'm bigotted in my view about this. I also very much dislike the right wing political agenda in any form it takes because for some reason it is a self serviing agenda and poses as anything but self serviing to hijack the vote of the unsuspecting gullible types. Effectively the right has encouraged bigotry and hate by poor education and the constant allowance of poverty. For the right a divided society makes the right strong, the right needs hate and ignorance to survive. And it's the highest levels of right wing politics who reap the benefits and riches of society. I know hate, for I have hated my upbringing by my own mother and her failure to be a mother a support. I began reducing my emotional reliance and bond with her at the age of five. It wasn't a great childhood and so I cry when I hear of children who also have bad upbringings or experiences. The reality is some people in this world are unlucky, like the nazi relative, they just get dealth duff cards and then don't know how to make the best of them.

Hate and prejudice stems from an inability to look inward and an inability to engage with those contrary thoughts to your own, or those people the hate is directed at. The sum of our experiences and the sum of how we perceive those experiences is what makes us who we are. I can continue to confirm my mental attitude by reading biased literature or I can challenge it and expose it to alternative reasoning. Then I may well find I am wrong at which point a lesson has been learnt.