So today i'd like to talk a bit about tolerance, and the lack thereof, which has been bothering me for quite some time now.
Now there is tolerance in several ways, some of them are more practical then others.
For example, here in Holland there's entire populations that aren't tolerated for no other reason then just being in our country. Obviously i'm talking about immigrants here.
But a more practical example could be found in America for example, where rival gangs contest eachother for a city block or street.
And all the while i'm thinking, what on earth for?
Why do people behave so intolerant to others? It isn't like all the problems in Holland would be solved when we deported all the immigrants back to their old country, nor does it do a person in America any good to 'own' a street through violence.
And in that last case, i really have got to wonder if that truely is the legacy of your life you want to leave behind after you pass away?
More then anything it's important to keep an open mind towards others, in their customs, beliefs, dresscode, hobbies, or whatever other thing people can be discriminated on these days.
It's such a shame that you'll miss so much of what the world has to offer, just because you insist on hating others blindly.
Some people deserve to be frowned upon, but only if their own actions deserve such a treatment.
I just can't see how you can hate a whole social group, because it's impossible they all did something wrong to you.
For example, not every immigrant here in Holland is a person who keep an agressive stance towards others while hanging around on the street, nor is every immigrant a lazy bum who doesn't want to work, yet most often the entire immigrant group is labeled as such even though 99% of them doesnt warrant such a label).
There has been certain media that has helped me open my eyes to this rising problem.
One of them is the movie Schindler's List, but other films surrounding the World War 2 Holocaust has also contributed to this.
Schindler's List however is something of a unicum however, because in my eyes it stands head and shoulders above the rest, even above such 'classics' as The Pianist.
It offers a larger view on the systematic slaughter of the Jewish race, with views inside concentration camps like Auschwitz and workcamps around Poland and the Chzech Republic.
The Holocaust is one of the clearest examples of where intolerancy can lead to: millions of Jews and other 'untermenschen' (worthless people, basically, people that are less than humans, closer to rats and other vermin)found their death in concentration camps and mass-killings because the people in power couldnt be tolerant to their way of life.
They were viewed as different and unworthy, and because of this got singled out and the blame of everything that was wrong in Germany was stuck on them.
An entire populace got infected with a blind hate toward Jews and they got deported and killed enmasse.
It didnt matter if they were kids or elderly people, your only chance of life was being able to work. And at best this only gave you a couple of months to live in an utter hell of constant tension, malnutrition, death and human misery all around.
German SS soldiers as depicted in 'Schindler's List', hellbent on killing any Jew they encounter that hid from them when the Warsaw ghetto was being cleared out.
Since the Holocaust has already happened people keep a much clearer eye on the way governments and armies behave toward other countries and it's people, but a true tolerancy has not been reached.
Lots of people still remain hateful to others for no true apparent reason, and i think it's still not impossible for something like the Holocaust to happen again.
When the world goes blind with hate once more, we will have to miss out on yet another thing that was offered to us before, and the world will grow a little more bland each time.
Remember that because of intolerancy, entire cultures have gone to waste: the American Indians, Maya's, Inca's, and the Aboriginals aren't far from being wiped from the face of the Earth either.
Now we admire their stance in life, but back then they got slaughtered as the foulest demons.
My message to all of you is this: keep an open mind, open the gate and throw away the key, because you might never know what you will have missed out on.
An entire culture wiped out because people couldnt find it in their hearts to accept their culture and way of life, trying to 'educate the ignorant Indian' (who has done so well for thousands of years before the white man arrived), or just killing them outright for their territory instead of trying to live peacefully and cooperatively.
In conclusion: We really need to stop fucking with other people's livelyhoods!
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