In the context of what we are talking about today,
generalization is a conceptual process
whereby common properties are identified
within individuals in a group,
and then, that concept is formulated
so as to make a general claim about the individuals of the group.
A stereotype is a generalization about members of a group.
And it's often a belief or a perception
or an impression that is widely held.
Now in today's world,
stereotyping and generalizing is considered bad,
it's considered wrong,
it's considered immoral.
In other words,
ignorant and shameful and definitely not politically correct.
And by the way,
if you're interested in learning more about political correctness,
you can watch my video titled:
Political Correctness
But here's the thing:
Today, I'm here to talk to you about
why the "baby" of generalizing
should not be thrown out with the "bathwater" of generalizing.
The mind identifies patterns
and it groups them together.
It works rather like a computer in this way,
and this actually helps you to make quick decisions
and it helps you to survive.
So here's painful truth number 1.:
It's not actually possible
to stop generalizing and stereotyping.
Your brain can't NOT do it.
It was designed to do it.
The truth is really just
that you don't support prejudice or discrimination or ignorance.
Maybe you've been on the receiving end of the hurt
caused by generalizing and prejudice.
So you say things like:
"I don't see color, only people."
Or: "To generalize is to be an idiot."
Or: "I don't believe in stereotypes."
The problem is, your mind does.
So you spend your time
denying commonalities and identifying exceptions
so you are nothing like those shameful hurtful ignorant people
that you don't want to have anything to do with.
Seeing the patterns and commonalities
that exist within the individuals of a group,
causes you to have expectations.
Here's what I mean by that:
Let's say that you had an interaction with one or two snakes
that were red, yellow and black.
And you saw somebody die
as a result of that snake biting them.
You would automatically decide:
"Red, yellow and black snakes are poisonous and lethal".
This,
just like any expectation,
is both positive
and detrimental.
Here's what I mean:
Good, because you are definitely more likely to survive
if that yellow, black and red snake
happens to be a coral snake
and because, by the way, they're really poisonous,
because you had that generalization, you didn't touch the thing.
Bad, if...
That snake you're seeing is a red, yellow and black snake
that happens to be a king snake
(totally harmless),
and you flip out and kill it unnecessarily
because of that generalization.
I'm going to give you a list of generalizations
so you can get the idea about what generalization ultimately is.
Snakes bite,
superheroes wear capes,
it snows in the winter months,
men are stronger than women,
asians are awesome at math,
potatoes have brown skin,
Jews are greedy,
babies can't walk,
Humpback Whales give birth in hawaii,
blacks are poor,
you have ulcers if you have stomach pain,
weight loss, nausea, heartburn and dark tarry stools,
homework is hard,
criminals come from troubled backgrounds,
americans are loud and arrogant,
dogs are nicer than cats,
family is always there for you,
teens are rebellious,
if you want to be successful, you have to go to college,
pretty girls are bitches,
everyone can heal...
Oh, and my personal favorite:
Generalizations are false.
If you want to enhance your own awareness around this,
I want you to stop this video before you continue it,
and write a list of the generalizations and stereotypes
that you yourself hold.
Especially the ones that were formed
through personal experience.
What you will have noticed
about this exercise
around understanding generalizations and stereotyping
and hearing the examples I gave you,
is that people don't tend to really care about generalizing and stereotyping,
unless they perceive that generalizing or stereotyping
to be hurting themselves or someone else.
This means you will have felt that cringy emotional charge
relative to some of the examples I gave,
and not really to others.
We can all come up with stereotypes and generalizations
that we feel are mostly true,
despite their being exceptions.
And we can all come up with stereotypes that we feel are
actually untrue and unfair, even.
What I want you to accept is that generalization is a conceptual tool.
It can be super beneficial,
it could also be super detrimental.
But this means,
that generalizing and even stereotyping
isn't something that should be thrown out,
contrary to popular opinion.
Instead, it's something that should be carefully used.
Generalizing is one of the principal measures
by which knowledge proceeds.
It allows us to identify and recognize commonalities
and therefore patterns within a group.
Generalizations can be thought of as a polarity
to individuality and difference.
A spiritual teacher or a philosopher
could reasonably argue
that the recognition of "sameness",
which is inherent in generalizing or which is inherent in stereotyping,
is inherently in and of itself
less ego based or egotistical,
than the recognition of difference...
Of individuality.
Now it's my bet,
that any of you who are super against stereotyping
or super against generalizing,
would never have thought of yourself as the more egotistical
of the two type of people.
But it could be reasonably argued.
Why?
What is ego?
Ego is a sense of separate self.
Now, if you're somebody who detests generalizing
and detest stereotyping,
what you are actually fighting for
is difference and individuality.
Ego.
Let the debate wage on...
But something that you need to accept,
is that we are both different than others,
and also the exact same as others.
Without generalization,
we could never talk about commonalities,
trends, tendencies or patterns.
And all three are critical when it comes to awareness.
It is as important, when it comes to awareness,
to identify commonalities, trends, tendencies and patterns
as it is to be aware that there are exceptions.
For example, let's look at your personal growth.
It's very important that you see the generalization of:
"I have a problem with intimacy
in my life in general".
And you will have decided this
by looking at what you do on a daily basis
and what your common pattern is
on those days.
It's not going to help you at all,
when it comes to personal awareness if you say:
"Well, Tuesday, I had a really in-depth conversation with somebody,
so see there's an exception,
so I don't have an issue with intimacy".
It is going to damage your personal process,
and I can say this from a lot of personal experience
in my particular career,
that people tend to, when you make a generalization about them
or identify a pattern that is common amongst their behavior,
they tend to fight against it with individual examples,
instead of accept the reality
of that being the trend.
That doesn't actually benefit you at all.
See, you can only make a change when you recognize something.
It's important to recognize generalizations like:
"Christians value modesty".
Why?
So that you don't get on a plane,
fly to the deep south of the united states of america
and get dressed in a bikini,
because it's way too hot,
and then wonder why everybody is looking at you like
you're some sort of pest.
Are you ready for me to trigger you for the sake of your awareness,
and stretch you even further?
It's important for us to acknowledge
generalizations such as:
"Black people are poor."
Even if there are some black people that are extremely wealthy.
Why?
Unless we recognize the commonality in the first place,
we will not look into the "why" behind it
or even see it as a societal issue, in the first place.
I also chose this last highly triggering example,
specifically to make you aware of how a stereotype or generalization
may be something that we fight against one minute,
and demand that others accept the next.
For example, if it's a normal day
and a white person walks into a fancy restaurant and thinks:
"Why the hell is a black person in here? Because, they're poor..."
People will fight against that stereotype.
Because it's ignorant.
But if it's a day that the government puts an economical law into place,
that affects low-income citizens and therefore the black demographic harder,
people will fight for the public to accept
the stereotype that blacks are poor,
so as to highlight the injustice,
and doing so, is suddenly considered educated.
people also tend to fight stereotypes
with other stereotypes.
For example:
"Women are terrible drivers."
Somebody could argue with that,
with another generalization:
Well, that's because men don't let women drive,
when the car is a shared asset
and the whole time they are driving they're just criticizing them anyway,
and so not only do they lose confidence,
they also get less practice.
Both are generalizations.
Painful not so comfortable truth number 2.:
All generalizations and stereotypes exist for a reason.
The question is:
Why do they exist and for what reason?
I didn't say that all generalizations and stereotypes
exist for a good reason, or because they're right.
For example,
the stereotype that latino people are super family oriented,
exists because culturally they believe
that the family is both the source of identity
and also, protection against hardship,
and so they act like it.
The stereotype that witches worship the devil,
exists because the early catholic/christian churches
wanted to enforce cultural control
by turning citizens against,
and justifying their punishment
of women who did not conform to their ideals of womanhood.
Some stereotypes are absolutely false.
Some have been intentionally created regardless of inaccuracy,
to cause harm.
But the thing is, is that the person creating those stereotypes
isn't really thinking about deliberately trying to cause harm,
instead that harm is...
Like a byproduct of them trying to get whatever it is that they want
out of creating that stereotype.
Uncomfortable truth number 3.:
A great many stereotypes are actually an accurate assessment
of patterns, tendencies, commonalities and trends.
It is not particularly aware of a person
to say that all stereotyping and all generalizing
is bad, wrong and untrue.
The bottom line is,
to be truly aware,
you need to be able to see patterns in yourself
and patterns in groups of people too.
Not just individual patterns.
You need to see both.
Now, let's look at the more,
shall we say...
"dark side"...
of generalizing and of stereotyping?
Sure. But this will be way easier for you to accept
because for most of us in today's modern world,
this isn't really much of a stretch.
Generalizing and stereotyping has a really bad reputation
for a very good reason.
And to understand that reason
you have to look at the etymology of the word stereotype.
What it means is a firm or solid impression.
This is where you get into trouble with generalizing and with stereotyping.
With firmness and with solidness,
this implies a lack of flexibility and a lack of openness.
So it essentially implies
that you can get into the trouble of closed-mindedness.
You have to leave a pliability
for exceptions and for differences,
if you're going to grasp the totality
of the world that you live in and the universe at large.
It is not that generalizations are untrue,
it is that they can open you up to the danger
of making one story, the only story.
And that can hurt you and everyone else around you.
Generalizations and stereotypes can open the door for pain,
ignorance, discrimination, prejudice,
the justification of injustice, enabling,
the destruction of relationships,
and the stifling of individual freedom and success.
In fact, there's this thing called: "A Stereotype Threat".
Let me explain this really quickly:
Imagine that you're a person who has tattoos
and you walk into a party full of people
who you know have the stereotype
that tattooed people are not educated,
that they're dangerous, that they're promiscuous...
Now what's going to happen when you walk into that party
is that you're going to be afraid of
inadvertently confirming the stereotype.
You're also going to get really defensive.
Now, because you're feeling defensive and on edge,
the likelihood of you doing something to actually confirm that stereotype
is pretty high.
And thus...
You become the rule instead of the exception,
like you really want to be.
The main thing that is causing you to throw the baby out
with the bathwater of generalizing or stereotyping,
is the fact that you really don't want
somebody to fail to see, feel, hear
and completely understand you and your personal truth,
because they've simply decided you fit into some sort of a pattern.
Intimacy, which is really to see into somebody,
but it's more than that, it's to see into them,
to feel into them, to hear them,
to come to completely understand them.
That's the basis of loving someone.
So if somebody just writes you off as:
"I already get this person"
and they don't see, feel, hear and understand you,
there is no possibility
for you to feel loved or close to someone.
On top of that,
you don't want to feel judged
by someone who you've decided doesn't know you well.
You feel hurt when your complexity is denied
and you're robbed of your rich nuanced uniqueness.
You want to be known.
You want others who you identify with,
to be known.
You also don't want other people or things
to suffer from not being known.
For example,
let's say that a person really loves
and therefore is identified with, sharks.
They've spent their whole life studying them.
It's gonna cause this person intense levels of pain,
when people don't know sharks well
and make broad sweeping statements such as:
"Sharks are all man-eaters."
Right? Because they perceive
that the sharks are going to start getting hurt
because of that generalization.
All of this boils down to the fact
that you detest generalizing and stereotyping
because you perceive
that if somebody holds that stereotype
or that generalization,
then someone's gonna get hurt.
In other words,
if a person does not recognize the differences
that do or can exist,
that there will be painful consequences
for you or them or something else involved.
And there very well might be.
Contrary to popular opinion,
generalizing and stereotyping
is an essential and natural feature of your mind.
It is not a cultural, unnatural glitch in your mind.
If you did not have this feature,
you could not think thoughts like:
"Japanese people speak japanese."
You would fly to japan
and you'd start speaking to them in your native language.
You couldn't think thoughts like:
"Actually babies can't support the weight of an adult."
And so, you would roll over on them
and then wonder why the hell they're lifeless.
Now to say that somebody is an addict, is a generalization.
That's not all of who they are,
but for somebody to say:
"Oh my gosh,
i'm an addict"...
Now when we say that somebody is an addict,
or they have an addiction,
that's a generalization.
That's not the totality of who they are
or what they have, is it?
No.
But it's critical for somebody
to get to that place where they say:
"I'm an addict or I have an addiction",
in order for them to actually face the addiction head-on.
You can't create healing,
unless you're able to generalize in that way.
What we need to do is to develop the ability to discern the accuracy
or inaccuracy of a general statement,
rather than to say that a statement
is untrue because it is general.
We need to develop the capacity to accept the truth
of a generalization or a stereotype,
even if and knowing that,
it is not the whole truth, or nothing but the truth
and exceptions exist.
Otherwise we're throwing awareness away
for the sake of a sense of our own personal goodness and rightness.
An aware person generalizes.
But they generalize with the awareness
that exceptions and differences exist.
They can make a statement such as:
"Jellyfish sting",
without that implying that all jellyfish of every type
and everywhere, always sting humans
that they come into contact with.
The stereotype is still true,
without it being the only truth,
with no exceptions.
Generalizations can be inaccurate and harmful.
They can also be accurate and beneficial.
They are a very important tool
for comprehension,
for learning and for communication.
This means,
question your generalizations
and why they exist.
This means,
make your generalizations flexible,
instead of not making them at all.
If you have any questions about generalizing or stereotyping,
feel free to post those questions
in the comments section below this video.
And never forget the wise words of Mark Twain:
"All generalizations are false,
including this one."
Have a good week.
If you liked this video,
be sure to share it,
like it and also subscribe to my channel
so you can see more content like this.
But I want to personally thank you
for taking the initiative and having the bravery
to step into the space of awareness.
Not only for yourself, but for the benefit of those around you.
Subtitles by: Tanya Duarte