I think of my family as overall very good humans. I’d find a way longer list of flaws in myself.
However, as I grow older and maybe given the fact that I spend almost all day studying things, I am becoming rather intolerant to what seems to me very narrow minded views of many important topics:
- which sources of information they consult
- how they extrapolate from single events to all humans
- how easily they discriminate others, different from them
- how lazy they are to read anything longer than a tweet, etc.
I understand also that:
- parents they grow older and so on,
- plus the fact that they didn’t have either internet,
- or maybe travel so much,
and may hold opinions that are almost racist, or very exclusive, or have hatred for some minorities and so on.
I wonder if others have this kind doubt / problem / struggle as well, and how do you deal with it, other than just ignoring it.
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I didn’t stress about it because one thing I know for sure: this phenomena was happening for generations before mine and I am absolutely certain it will continue to happen after me.
I am trying to treat opinions and ways of my parents and my children with as much respect and civility as I can muster.
As people get older, their brains’ capacity to handle new or conflicting information decreases. It becomes much easier to just accept things at face value, take shortcuts in reasoning and engage in black-and-white thinking. Most topics are rather complicated and require quite a bit of curiosity, open-mindedness and effort to truly understand.
I would say it’s most likely going to be a balancing act with your parents: if they say things that are blatantly racist and offensive, you can share your view and try your best to educate them, and with some other topics, if they are open-minded and willing to discuss, you can do the same. If not, then it’s best to politely decline to discuss/ignore. Better to focus on the things that you have in common than the things that divide you. Also, like you said, they are the product of their societal and cultural environment and we are a product of ours. What would we be like without the internet 🫣
To me it comes down to respect, tbh. A lot of my family is pretty narrow minded, but only some of them are disrespectful of others.
My mom is overtly racist, and believes that everyone on earth is scrambling to get into America to live a quiet suburban WASP-y life. You’re supposed to live on a quarter acre, mow your grass every weekend, graduate high school, go to college, get married, work the same job for 48 years, women are supposed to be housewives, and this is what everyone wants. Ask any random person anywhere on the planet and their wildest dream is to live in Plano, Texas, or Champaign, Illinois. And if you’re not in for that dream, my mom thinks you must be a communist.
That’s a narrow mindedness I cannot tolerate.
My older sister wants that life, she thinks it’s the best life, she doesn’t understand people who don’t want that life, but she doesn’t think less of people who want something else. That’s a narrow mindedness I can tolerate.