“In his magnum opus, The Nature of Prejudice, Allport reasoned that bigotry often boils down to a lack of acquaintance. Its antidote was just as simple: Bring people together, and they’ll awaken to their common humanity. A similar thought led Mark Twain to quip, “Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts.” In psychology, this idea came to be known as “contact theory,” and it caught fire. Allport’s book, published in 1954, became a bestseller; he delighted in spotting it at airports and malls alongside beach novels. Thanks to him, optimists everywhere came to believe that hatred was a misunderstanding and that contact could fix it.”― Jamil Zaki, The War for Kindness: Building Empathy in a Fractured World
When you think you know something, in some cases everything, think again and again,
Question assumptions.
Slow to judge.
Quick to extend a hand.
Get closer, ask more questions, don’t believe what you hear.
Check your sources on all sides.
Beneath the surface, complexity and nuance.
Make up your own mind.
Kindness, empathy, proximity.
Love well.
“The answer to growing complexity in the social sphere is renewed efforts at participation by each one of us, or else a progressive decline of inert and unquestioning masses submitting to government by an elite which will have little regard for the ultimate interest of the common man.”― Gordon Willard Allport