I talked elsewhere about how bigotry is becoming the new ‘wokeness’ in our country. Now the trouble with bigotry is that it is like a poison, a cancer of some kind. It refuses to stay ‘localized’. Once it gains admittance and entry it spreads to other areas.
It is essentially a way of thinking. And once you start adopting bigoted modes of thought , it will not take too long for that to become your default mode , your way of looking at the world.
That is why may be it is not surprising that we have many kinds of bigotry today -religion , language -you name it , we have it. Of course , some times attempts are made to package these – to present these arguments in a ‘refined’ fashion . But make no mistake -this is just vacuous “whataboutery” and still bigotry.
Given how negative an emotion and a mode of thinking bigotry is – it’s attractiveness has always surprised me. It dehumanizes those it targets , it denies them their own identity. It is tinged with hatred. Surely , the inside of a bigot’s head must not be a very pleasant place. Yet bigotry finds so many adherents.
Perhaps , one of the explanations is that it is an ‘easy’ way of thinking. The world is a complex place. The truth is nuanced and difficult to grasp. There is already so much cognitive load on all of us.
Under these circumstances , perhaps bigotry offers an easy way out. A bigoted mode of thinking is always characterized by facile and easy explanations of the world. There is hardly any nuance. Arguments are easy to grasp. You don’t care about the truth. You are just interested in self gratification.
Why bother understanding nuances , when there are facile conspiracy theories that have immediate appeal? Truth seeking is hard work. Being bigoted is easy.
Bigotry is also about identity reductionism. As Amartya Sen says, identity is a complex entity. We are not defined by our religion alone. Or our language alone. There are many things that make us up.
Bigotry denies this rich complexity , by reducing everything to one factor. In recent days , in our country that factor seems to be religion. It is easy to say that people from XX religion are a particular way or all people from YY religion are in danger.
We keep forgetting that there are various kinds of people amongst adherents of every religion- there are nutcases , there are fundamentalists , there are conservatives , there are the non practitioners , there are the devout, there are people who don’t care about their religion . That is true of every religion – Hindu , Muslim , Christian doesn’t matter.
Talking in terms of religious ‘blocs’ is ridiculous and dehumanizing to the say the least. That is what Bigotry does. It turns everything into a culture war.
Bigotry is causing some real , tangible problems in our country today – chief among them the ‘othering’ of minority religious communities.
There is another intangible problem that it is causing – an erosion of modes of thought. Disregard for the truth , impatience with nuance , lack of a scientific temper , irrationality -to name a few. Of course the cause and affect is neither clear nor linear. I think they just feed off each other.
This erosion in the right modes of thinking is equally dangerous. The biggest , most important battles are always fought in the realm of ideas.
Those of us who value diversity , appreciate complexity and nuance and are respectful of the truth should continue to tirelessly endeavor to defeat bigotry in all it’s forms.
REALLY RANDOM RAMBLINGS 