Your world, your imagination. Maybe

I recently read an interesting article about prejudices. Everyone has them I suppose, I know I certainly do.  I'm prejudiced against black widow spiders, rattlesnakes and, having been stung by a scorpion once, I'm extremely prejudiced against them.   Well, maybe in this case the word prejudice isn't correct.  Let's just say that I'm extremely wary of them, totally dislike them but nonetheless have a healthy respect for them.

No, the kind of prejudice I'm talking about is defined as "an unfavorable opinion or feeling formed beforehand or without knowledge, thought, or reason".  I know all about that and have experienced it constantly though out my life in one degree or another.  I grew up in a small town where about 30% of the population were immigrants, either first or second generation.  I went to school with them and counted them among my friends.  I didn't understand some of the stories they told me about how they were treated by others who were more like me with their fair skin and local accents.  At about that same time in my life I learned that I wasn't exactly without ethnic roots myself.   My mother's father, whom I never knew except from old photographs,  was Native American.  I learned from my mother's stories of the taunts and bullying and outright hatred from others simply based on one's background or the tint of one's skin.

Currently I'm an immigrant, an American abroad.  I have to admit that in most of the places I've been I've been accepted for what I am, not where I came from or what I look like, my accent or my inability to pronounce my adoptive country's language.  That hasn't always been the case though, and I've met with a few instances of hostility simply because I'm American.  I've come to the conclusion that all this is just sheer stupidity.

But back to the article.  According to research done by Brock University, Ontario, Canada, children with low intelligence tend more towards racist attitudes when adults.  And let's face it, racism is prejudice.   The article went on to say that some anti-prejudice programs encouraged people to see things from other's points of view.  The researcher's comments were that mental exercises of that nature may be too much for people with a low IQ.  Now I'm sure that there are some very intelligent people with racist attitudes.  I'm not sure that I've ever met one but back-ground would surely need to be considered.  If you are brought up with strong prejudicial views in a strongly prejudicial community I'm certain that some of those views would be inherent.  Of course, one could argue, if one were smart, one would learn that those views are, as the definition states "without knowledge, thought or reason".

One of my first feelings of wonder in Second Life was the diversity of ethnic backgrounds to be seen.  Not just the backgrounds but the wild and awesome avatars.  I've met dragons and robots and more and it amazes me at the creativity of people in choosing how they look.  I've met white avatars who really weren't white in RL,  women avatars who really weren't women in RL, and vice versa.  I've met a strange and fascinating group of people behind those avatars and I'm thankful that I don't have the prejudices that would prevent me from doing that.  People who don't recognize that, to me, just simply miss the point of SL.

Your world, you imagination, as SL use to advertise.  Just leave your prejudices on the other side of the monitor, please.