Or who benefit from X. Examples include anti-homosexuality conservatives with gay people, or Ayn Rand types with the uninsured. Personal interaction doesn’t have to be in person; it could be over a message board, for example.
I’d prefer to avoid X being a simple political difference of opinion, because we discuss that all the time. I’d like to stick to the circumstance where executing their political opinions would have a definite and negative impact against the other person personally. Obviously, all political perspectives welcome, and direct stories from the horse’s mouth is okay.
Don’t discuss politics or religion or whatever the point of contention may be. Stick to weather, sports, celebrity gossip, kids, economy (without assigning blame) or any of the other interests they don’t disagree on. Knitting or yodeling classes anyone? Be the mature adult they envision themselves to be. I work with several people where he voted one way and she the other. I’m fairly certain they still sleep together.
Well, this is why I tried to take it away from a simple difference of political opinion. I mean, it’s hard to deal personally with a person and NOT have the fact that you think their marriage should be annulled and that they’re mentally ill affect your dealings with them. Similarly with Ayn Rand types around a person on Medicare.
I think the best example I can think of is someone I know (not terribly well, and not interested in getting to know better) who really hates and loathes black people. Dyed in the wool racial bigot.
Of course, he does encounter black people in day-to-day life.
From what I’ve seen, he seems to be very distant but also polite to them. As long as they reply equally politely he’ll continue to act polite and avoid offensive words/terms/phrases.
If they aren’t equally polite back it gets really, really ugly. I mean fights, bodily injuries, call the police kind of ugly.
I try to avoid the guy, even though I’m not in his target group.
People “different from me” don’t bother me. I travel in the third world a lot. I’ve gotten used to walking down to the streetmarket for morning coffee, and seeing several hundred people along the way, and all of them are black and most are Muslim and some are barefoot and they eat with their fingers and few can read and write and most live with their extended family and still owe their father in law two goats as a bride price and there might even be (but probably isn’t) a terrorist sympathizer among them.
You can get used to people different from you, and learn to live with it, and embrace them as part of your social community, if you set your mind to it.
The contrast between Broomstick’s and jtur88’s stories is really the key point here.
Some folks are real fired up about differences and others are not. The more fired up one is, the more their life is buffeted by all those differences they encounter. And the more they’ll tend to withdraw into a world, both physical and virtual, where they don’t have to encounter whatever difference(s) stick in their craw.
Through gritted teeth is about as nice as some folks deal with their Other. Worst case is when a group of haters encounters a solo of the hated group and mob mentality takes over. This is how diner patrons (or more likely bar patrons) turn *en masse *on somebody of the “wrong” sort who just happens to walk through the door.
As a supporter of Taiwanese independence, I’ve encountered a number of people in personal interactions who strongly support the idea of China taking over Taiwan. I either avoid the topic or just talk about it briefly and try to move on. I don’t hold it against them; if I were in their shoes I’d probably be supporting the very thing they are supporting. It’s just that I was born into a different set of shoes.
“shut up and stop talking to me about X”
Seriously. Internet is one thing, but IRL I’m not interested in people using me a sounding board while they pontificate on their political soapbox.
We are volunteers for an organization. We love working for this organization. We have been doing this for the past 5 years.
New volunteers arrived at the beginning of the month. Day after the election one came up and asked how we felt about the election. We were like, ok, because we don’t like to talk about politics at our ‘work’. He laughed and said “heh, yeah your candidate lost didn’t she. I can tell by your reaction”
Two days later his partner showed up. I politely asked how she was doing, no mention of politics. She responded; “I’m doing great! My candidate won.” She then laughed like mad.
I am having a very hard time dealing with this couple. In the past 5 years we have worked with folks of all persuasions. We have had weekly get togethers and monthly parties. I have no desire to party with these people or work with them at all.
A few months ago a guy dropped an “n” bomb sitting at tha bar. During the awkward lull that followed, I stood up and moved to the other end of the bar. A minute later, my buddy Chris, having noticed what I’d done, followed. A third guy joined us.
By that point the asshole recognized the censure, and began loudly berating us, but we were talking about something else by that point and just ignored him.
I was just being lazy, but sometimes just ignoring people affects them more than arguing/discussing.
I always like to tell people. “Congratulations! You should write a memoir so future history students won’t have to wonder ‘how did they let this happen’…if there are any.”
Bartender! Another round of ‘N-Bombs’ for my friends!
I consider the the circumstances of modern life to be the climax (to date, anyway) of a long-term trend towards dehumanizing social conditions.
Fifteen thousand years ago I suspect that people understood life, both of the everyday and of the “what does it all mean” variety, clearly enough that most people reached the same conclusions and considered most of it self-evident and self-explanatory, and what they didn’t was mostly external: death and injury and illness, the vagaries of weather and of food supply, the behaviors of the cave tiger, etc.
Then we created social structures of inequality and to protect them from rebellious uprisings, a structure of imposed beliefs, stuff everyine is “supposed to believe”, evolved and got in the way of people reaching their own understanding of the world; and things became complicated.
In very recent history (measured in centuries or even decades) there has been a pulling back from rigid belief orthodoxies about what you are “supposed to believe”. But modern life is very complicated and far from self-explanatory. The majority of people stop trying to sort stuff out in their own heads by the time they’re 20 and emulate people around them who seem to be surviving with reasonable happiness, but others puzzle and ponder with more effort and reach very different conclusions, and then communicate with all they can, trying to change people’s attitudes and understandings.
I don’t hold anyone to blame for where they’ve ended up, the contents of their beliefs. I’m not interested in designating anyone “culprit”. (I may worry about someone’s effect on the world, and may consider their acts evil, for lack of a better word, but I don’t consider that a person can be evil in any meaningful way). The world spawns confusion and confusion has many victims.
I know plenty of racists who hate black people in general, but when meeting them in person take them on a case by case basis, and usually act non-racist towards them. “The black family at my church is fine, and my doctor is an upstanding black citizen, and my buddy from work is cool, but I still think that on the whole, black people are stupid, lazy criminals.” :smack:
“The Jewish people are being exterminated”, says every party member, “this is very obvious, it’s in our program, elimination of the Jews, extermination, we’re doing it, hah, a small matter.” And then they turn up, the upstanding 80 million Germans, and* each one has his decent Jew. They say the others are all swines, but this particular one is a splendid Jew.*** - Heinrich Himmler (scroll down for quote)
In the spring of 1982, I was working North Sea offshore oil platforms. Our crew (340 total) had a lot of Brits and Argentinians. For the young-uns, England and Argentina were having a shooting war (Falklands) at that time. The Brits were very respectful and even expressed sincere condolences when the Belgrano was sunk. The Argentinians returned the gesture when the Sheffield went down. Instead of arguments they ended up drinking and playing poker together. There were no fights or arguments that I was aware of for the entire length of the war.
After that, I figured I should be able to get along with almost anyone.
That type of attitude is very common in the South. It is where the phrase “Love the individual, hate the group” comes from. I actually believe it is more healthy, at least functionally, than the opposite “Love the group, hate the individual” that you see much more often in the North. A lot of people misunderstand racism in the South. That is the area where black and white people mix most on a daily basis and we aren’t just talking middle class professionals. It is also rednecks, white trash, gangsters and degenerates of all sorts. A racist that dedicated very much energy to widespread hatred would run out of time and go insane the first day. You wouldn’t be able to function if things were really as bad as many people assume. Instead, most people are nice and polite to everyone even if they don’t belong to their preferred group.
I never understood why someone would even ask a question like one in the OP even though I have heard it many times before. I don’t pick friends or acquaintances based on beliefs at all. It is just about personality, personal history and chemistry. One look at my Facebook feed shows that. I have got blacks, Mexicans, Costa Ricans, gays, rednecks, white trash, highly skilled professionals, anarchists, racists, loopy liberals, criminals, guidos, neo-conservatives as well as sportos, motorheads, geeks, sluts, bloods, wastoids, dweebies and dickheads and that is just personal friends. I also have the same plus much more here.
I don’t want to live an echo chamber or bubble plus I don’t like boring people except as accountants. I already know what I think so there is no need to duplicate that with a bunch of clones. I would be friends with a Black Panther or a neo-Nazi as long as they were nice to me. I already have friends that are more screwed up than that. Things would get boring otherwise.