Is that what you really think?

Have you ever noticed how lots of people out there hold opinions that are based, not on what they really think, but on what other people think?

For example, many uni students have a defacto opposition to abortion, guns and the Liberal Party, and an automatic belief in global warming, the racism of Australians and the purity and goodness of the union movement. They don't actually BELIEVE in any of these things (generally speaking), they're just positions they've absorbed from those around them.

Orson Scott Card, one of my favourite authors, has written a great little column about Sarah Palin and her treatment by the media. One of his best points is that many intellectuals (so called) have opinions on people such as Palin or Rush Limbaugh, without ever having heard their radio show or listened to their book. Their opinions are based on what those around them think, not on them assesing facts and doing some informed reasoning.

As for Palin's book, here's the link to the review of it in Card's column.

This whole thing brings me back to Avatar and that whole idea that those we treat badly we need to portray as sub-human in some form. By doing this we can justify our appalling behaviour in our own heads (such as the Spanish in Haiti and slave owners in the USA). All these people in the media constantly denigrate Palin as being stupid, a liar, a woman hater, whatever. They then use those epithets as an excuse for even more vigorous attacks on her.

There's plenty of people out there I don't like, but I can't think of anyone that I truly hate. And those people that I have hated in the past, as soon as I'm removed from them the problem goes away. Everybody has something good about them and these unreasoning and vicious attacks that seem to be quite common nowadays just indicate the nature of the person making the attack.

Think about it!

Harry