THE POWER OF PREJUDICE

Who ever thought that prejudice has power to change the world? It does. It is as powerful a mass human motivator as religion and belief, patriotism and nationalism, greed and need for wealth, exploration and exploitation for conquest and expansion, loyalty, obedience, and unquestioning respect for royalty and authority. They are all two-faced indoctrinated motivators of guiltless human behavior.

Prejudice, racism, and hatred of the “Other,” are taught to the young as a good, just as are religion and patriotism. The fruit of this education lies in the acceptance of heinous tasks as promotion of benefits for humanity. Crusading armies created and motivated to convert or kill accept their mission as holy. Rape, mayhem, and slaughter, destruction of whole societies, “spoils of war” and theft of land and property, are all accepted as the commission of beneficial acts for those who “belong” to the right and righteous nation, ethnicity, or religion.

This is not the world of early man. This is the world of the 21st century. Today is the time of the Pharaohs, the time of Torquemada and the Crusades and Nazi Germany. Today’s use of power is the same as the use of power throughout the history of Man. Wealth and weaponry clearly enable power to be exercised. Less clear is the harmful use of religion and patriotism to achieve the goal of wealth and power aggrandizement. And finally, it is most difficult to accept the teaching of prejudice as consciously or subconsciously intentional to achieve the same goal.

The destruction of Aztec and Mayan civilizations, the conquest of the natives of North America, the Nazi Holocaust and the Rape of Nanking, Cambodian torture and today’s slaughter in Darfur, along with large and small episodes of conquest and destruction of “Other” peoples and their societies through the centuries by warriors steeped in hatred.

Can we call this behavior primitive? Can we call it savagery? Can we call such behavior modern and civilized?

What People, what religious group has stated, “To save a single life is to save the whole world?” That People has been a primary target for destruction throughout its existence. It is today the single most abhorred People in the world. It is the People that has saved more lives and given life more meaning than any other group through the centuries of human existence. Yet it is powerless against the humongous power of the prejudice arrayed against it. It is the Jewish People.

To be or not to be, that is the question;
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing, end them. To die, to sleep;
No more; and by a sleep to say we end
The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to — 'tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wish'd. To die, to sleep;
To sleep, perchance to dream. Ay, there's the rub,
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come,
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause. There's the respect
That makes calamity of so long life,
For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,
Th'oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely,
The pangs of despised love, the law's delay,
The insolence of office, and the spurns
That patient merit of th'unworthy takes,
When he himself might his quietus make
With a bare bodkin? who would fardels bear,
To grunt and sweat under a weary life,
But that the dread of something after death,
The undiscovered country from whose bourn
No traveller returns, puzzles the will,
And makes us rather bear those ills we have
Than fly to others that we know not of?
Thus conscience does make cowards of us all,
And thus the native hue of resolution
Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought,
And enterprises of great pitch[1] and moment
With this regard their currents turn awry,
And lose the name of action.[2]
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