Can We Look At Bigotry Like A Virus?

[Seil]

I Am Legend - The Bob Marley Scene

Originally Posted by Will Smith

He believed he could cure racism and hate, literally cure it by injecting music and love into people's lives. One day he was scheduled to perform at a peace concert, gunmen came to his house and shot him down. Two days later he walked out on that stage and sang. Somebody asked him why. He said the people who were trying to make this world worse are not taking a day off. How can I? Light up the darkness.

Looking into it a bit more, I found out that in 1976:

Two days before "Smile Jamaica", a free concert organized by the Jamaican Prime Minister Michael Manley in an attempt to ease tension between two warring political groups, Marley, his wife, and manager Don Taylor were wounded in an assault by unknown gunmen inside Marley's home.

Taylor and Marley's wife sustained serious injuries, but later made full recoveries. Bob Marley received minor wounds in the chest and arm. The shooting was thought to have been politically motivated, as many felt the concert was really a support rally for Manley. Nonetheless, the concert proceeded, and an injured Marley performed as scheduled, two days after the attempt.

It's a neat idea about hatred and bigotry, but I don't think that you could literally inject love into a person. Well.... you could, but that's too much of an adult discussion for the forums.

But can we look at bigotry like a virus? I have very minimal experience with looking at the human brain, so I was wondering... could we look at bigotry as a virus? Something to be cured chemically? Obviously there are mood altering drugs on the market, and each alters or introduces chemicals to the brain.

If it is possible to do so with prescription medication, why is it not possible to alter the brain in such a way that someone could love instead of hate?

Also, Mac, I'll try to keep my trap shut during most of this. (=3)

[Professor Smarmiarty]

Brain is far too complex for that. It wouldn't work. Best you coul do is jsut put people on a chemical high but that is damaging long term.
You're better off looking at the societal causes of hate and bigotry.

[Archbio]

Wasn't that how 28 Days Later started?

[tacticslion]

Originally Posted by Smarty McBarrelpants

Brain is far too complex for that. It wouldn't work. Best you coul do is jsut put people on a chemical high but that is damaging long term.
You're better off looking at the societal causes of hate and bigotry.

This is pretty close.

Really, it boils down to personal choice to accept or reject what is handed to you, and how you choose to look at something, combined with people's innate ability to take something - no matter how good the basics and intention - and screw it up, royally. While you could make an alegory of hate like a virus and love like a cure, you're not going to be able to do so on a physical way, unless you've got some really wierd reality-altering powers (specifically the ability to instantly re-arrange all the synaptic configurations in a brain), and even then you could only cure a specific instance in the now, instead of curing it "forever", because people will still make choices and problematic mental-emotional associations over time - there's no way to cure that.

Ultimately, prejudice is going to happen, and bigotry from it. Prejudice - having a judgement before real experience - is not always a bad thing. For example, I am prejudiced against taking a lava bath. I submit that I've never tried it, have not researched it, and, regardless of promises that if I stay in one for an hour or longer I'll never have to worry about being sick again, I'm not interested in either, because I've got a prejudice. Bigotry is prejudice taken to the next level. Because prejudice can be a good thing in the appropriate context, people being people will always find a way to abuse it and bring it into bigotry. Unless we find a way to cure the human ability to make mistakes - no, we can't eliminate it entirely.

That said, what we can do, is - as a group - work so that the socio-cultural (and, if you share my world-view, spiritual) influences that aid in maintaining and promoting bigotry are eliminated*, or at least diminished to the extent that bigotry is the province of the few. As it stands now, however, there are so many types and forms of bigotry (I presume you mean racial, but there are even many kinds there) held by so many people across various strata of society, that it will be a long and frusterating climb.

*This may be impossible, in the end.

Edit: hey, Archbio, be careful! While you make a funny point, this might be too-serious thread for that kind of post (I'm not sure, so you'll probably want to ask a mod).

[Amake]

Grant Morrison has touched on the same subject. If we consider humanity a single organism, all kinds of destructive thoughts, emotions and behaviors can be viewed as diseases. And the good thing is, the more we're subjected to them, the better resistance we build against them. We're self-perfecting in that way. One might argue a benevolent god allows evil to exist for that reason, if one wanted.

I guess the question is if we should let nature take its course or try to speed up the process with creative drugs. It might just be my conditioned reflex to say no to drugs, but it seems to me the process would give better results if it's allowed to take longer. However hard it may be to look at, say, some rabid xenophobe and not try to help him think better, I don't really believe you can force any lasting enlightenment on anyone.

[Seil]

Well, touching on Archie's idea, and going on what Barrel said, I imagine we'd end up in something like Equilibrium, or at the verl least Dazed and Confused.

That being said, as a culture, I find that the elder generations always seem most at odds with things - from the small stuff like technology and tattoos and piercings to the larger stuff like bald-faced racism.

When I went to high school, a lot of my friends focused on experiential learning in order to make their decisions, and on the whole were easy going, tolerant people.

[Hanuman]

See: Equilibrium

As for experiential learning... that's 7 syllables... Zen is one.

[DFM]

Originally Posted by Archbio

Wasn't that how 28 Days Later started?

My god, all these cages are full of love monkeys.

[Meister]

Equilibrium

The theme of being made to be physically unable to feel or express emotions regared as negative reminds me more of A Clockwork Orange, actually.

[DFM]

All I really remember about that movie was the author guy saying "She was very badly raped" because it's like saying she was very badly murdered.