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Dare To Defy The Enormous Power Of Generalisations?
They may be useful, but they aren’t absolutely true. Let’s defy them one variable at a time.
Generalisations are easy to complain about. We don’t like being put in boxes. Indeed, there is hardly a more insulting way to treat a fellow human being. Stereotypes are particularly bad, since all we ever did to deserve one was to be born in a particular place and/or in a particular time.
That said, generalisations are extremely useful. We couldn’t make sense fo the world without them. When they say that there is truth in stereotypes, they are also right. Stereotypes don’t make themselves, and no, there’s no global conspiracy to make us believe certain things about certain people. There’s a history behind them, a real history of things that happened and were reported. Often, though, once we utter the argument of generalisations serving a purpose or of stereotypes holding some truth, we seem to completely forget about half the argument: “a purpose”, “some truth”.
Generalisations couldn’t be further from being infallible. Stereotypes aren’t absolute truths. Generalisations are blunt tools. Stereotypes are mostly flawed. The former will let us down when we apply them to tasks that require precision and the latter are guaranteed to always offend someone. If…