Limbo
I think that standards for human behavior are kinda like playing limbo - people are always going to try to squeeze under the bar, because people are born selfish and ignorant. If you set the standard too low (like, you're only going to allow other people this much right to their own humanity), then they're going to be especially nasty because they don't have a lot of wiggle room. If you raise the bar higher (like, dude, can't we all get along?), then it gets easier to breeze through.
For instance, and I think this is true more often than not, people who are the most dead-set against issues like gay marriage, are the people who don't know any gay people. They have a very low bar. They stick to people who believe what they believe, and have the same lifestyle, and so they stay at a lower-bar level. People who raise their own bar, who convince themselves to get out there and experience diversity, tend to have less mean-spirited attitudes. They kinda just dance right under that bar. They don't have to twist themselves into something unrecognizable as human in order to scrape the bottom.
People need a bar, but the point of life is the reverse of a game of Limbo. You're supposed to see how high you can climb, not to see how low you can go.
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For instance, and I think this is true more often than not, people who are the most dead-set against issues like gay marriage, are the people who don't know any gay people. They have a very low bar. They stick to people who believe what they believe, and have the same lifestyle, and so they stay at a lower-bar level. People who raise their own bar, who convince themselves to get out there and experience diversity, tend to have less mean-spirited attitudes. They kinda just dance right under that bar. They don't have to twist themselves into something unrecognizable as human in order to scrape the bottom.
People need a bar, but the point of life is the reverse of a game of Limbo. You're supposed to see how high you can climb, not to see how low you can go.
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