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Hmm. Do you try and respect everyone purely for personal happiness reasons, or do you really believe that everybody should be respected, no matter what kind of

• 13ren 18y ago
  It's not a "should", but a belief that everyone is the same, in some sense; an identification. By happiness, I mean an experience of freedom and clarity that tells me this is the right way: that to think less of another human being is to think less of this one. No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friend's or of thine own were. Any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind; and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.
  • h34t 18y ago
    That's an interesting perspective. So... if I think along the lines of "some ideas and actions are much better than others" instead of "some people are much better than others" ... I can retain my ability to differentiate from good/bad or better/worse, without heaping judgment on human beings themselves... I can retain the ability to empathize with others, even when how they act disagrees violently with my personal values? Makes quite a lot of sense to me. It seems that we have our natural way of thinking working against us on this one... from Fundamental attribution error on Wikipedia: "People have an unjustified tendency to assume that a person's actions depend on what "kind" of person that person is rather than on the social and environmental forces influencing the person"