September 23
A prejudice is an opinion without judgement. The child receives it before it is able to examine, and the adult takes it for what is most his own — when in fact he has simply never questioned it. Examine, before you hold true what fell to you early.
Pocket Philosophical Dictionary, "Prejudices" (freely rendered)
Listening mode
A prejudice is an opinion without judgement. The child receives it before it is able to examine, and the adult takes it for what is most his own — when in fact he has simply never questioned it. Examine, before you hold true what fell to you early.
The convictions you argue about are seldom the oldest ones. For those you have gathered reasons, you know the objections and have defended them before. What you took on very early lies deeper. It doesn't present itself as an opinion at all, more as simply the way things are: what counts as rude, whom you distrust, what you don't talk about.
It usually becomes noticeable only when someone does things differently. A colleague mentions her salary openly, a guest leaves half his meal on the plate, and unease stirs in you before you have had a single thought about it. This unease is not an argument. But it shows you where something sits that you have never questioned.
The difficulty is that such assumptions are often attached to people. Examining them can feel as if you were examining the people you got them from. Some things hold up. Then you go on believing them, only no longer in the same way. Others dissolve. In their place there is at first no better certainty, only the unease from before, which now has no reason and yet stays on for a while.
