ZinZam

Acceptance, a two way street

May 24, 2006

I originally wrote the following today to be posted as a blog entry, but it got disorganised and messy towards the end. I'm going to post it anyway as a raw unpolished work because I think it still captures the essence of what I was trying to say. That is, we all have to accept eachother for who we are.

quote:

I was at uni today (like I am everyday, *pays out lazy arse arts students who complain they have to come in two days a week*), and saw a banner on a table which said "Islamic Awareness day". To be honest I'm aware that there are Islamic people, but I wasn't aware it was "Islamic Awareness day".

Then I thought, why would I need to be aware of this, isn't a good multicultural mix being unaware of our differences in socity. Then it hit me, it's their religion, it doesn't accept us. Now this brings me onto the topic of this blog post acceptance.

Where does acceptance start? In the western world we are fairly accepting, but if you take a closer look we're shockingly rejudice, this still sadly includes sexism, racism, homophobia, etc... So what's the point? Acceptance goes both ways! Thats right, I have to accept you have your views, and you have to accept I have mine. Unfortunately we are terrible at being able to do that, look at bullying in school yards.

Of course I accept you don't have to accept anything, but it would be easier if people would just accept that. So therein lies a problem, we have to accept acceptance, or accept to accept to accept.

The other problem is drawing a line of how far we go with our ability to accept, what kind of behaviour is tollerable. A good gauge is behaviour that doesn't cause due grief to other people. This would allow us to not accept anti-social behaviours such as violence and manslaughter. But if people aren't accepting, natural behaviour may cause due grief to other people. For example, if we aren't accepting of women in the workplace, because of our inability to accept this it may cause due grief to us like people used to faint when people used profanity in public.

This brings us to a new gauge, behaviour that doesn't cause due grief if the behaviour is accepted. For example, if we just accept women in the workplace, it won't cause anyone or anything grief. This is a situation where everyone is happy.

This works, because manslaughter creates grievous bodily harm. The only issue left now is violence towards animals. But if we have the model of causing grief, we can also apply it to animals. But where do we draw the line, animals for food? do we kill the cockroaches (go the maroons!), or get that can of sly spray out? These are entirely different issues, but they are something to think about nonetheless.

So in conclusion we should be more accepting of people peoples cultures and beliefs, even if they impede on our own traditions because at the core of it, we know it's the right thing to do, which when you think about it is the core belief we all have in common.

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