Intolerance Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words

Intolerance - Essay Example It is, in a sense, a human nature. This behavior is nicely captioned in the phrase â€Å"Us and Them†. Our tendency to think and feel in terms of â€Å"Us and Them† may have arisen early in human evolution, since it has adaptive consequences and universal presence. Although human beings have continually adapted to overcome adverse and potentially dangerous conditions during the course of evolution as we are not the naive servants of biology, however, we are still unmindful of the deleterious consequence of intolerance. Ideologies, alliances, and partners are built on the foundation of this structural division. The above reflections raise a wider issue about our motivations, posit a law of our psychological nature, or a necessary truth about all conceptually, or logically possible worlds. The preemptive immediate challenge is to accommodate with respect, justice, and good feeling to our diversity of national origin, ethnicity, religion, age, and gender etc., at a time wh en the world is faced with charged geo-political climate and dwindling economic resources. We can’t afford to have the luxury of any hedonistic outcomes such as tribal loyalty, jingoism, in group ‘Us’ aggrandizement, and out group, ‘Them’ disdain. It is important to understand how individuals respond to and adopt the principles of coexistence and evolve into a dynamic and vibrant society like brothers, or else will perish like fools as aptly said by, Martin Luther King, â€Å"We must live together as brothers, or perish together as fools.† The essay describes through two articles, observation and findings that demonstrate the intolerance towards a group or individual, ’us’ and ‘them’, with appropriate citation and reference. It will also explore similarity and differences with the Bennett article on transition shock. And demonstrate symptoms,  responses, stages and resolution that occur in each of the two articles. Milton J Bennett (1977, P.45-52) in ‘Transition Shock: Putting Culture Shock in Perspective proposed that cultural shock is but a variation and subset of reactions by significant change across a broad spectrum of circumstances. In a more interdependent world, survival depends more on cooperation than on competition, with the realization that countries with the highest disparity in wealth have the greatest incidence of stress, violence, and crime (Albee 2000, P.845-53). The powerful have been more impacted socially, and economically, from the consequences of intolerance; with the result have greater responsibility to exercise tolerance and justice. One does not have to look elsewhere to see the effects of oppression as in the United States itself has many of different kinds. Article1-The Stanford Prison Experiment Black men, though constitute less than 6% of the general U.S. population, they account for 48% of the state prison population (Haney & Zimbardo 1998, P. 709-22), the authors reflect on the lessons of their Stanford Prison Experiment, some 25 years after conducting it. They had put a few young, healthy people into prison like environment, after six days of the mock imprisonment the out come was shocking for the researchers as well as the general public, as within a short period, otherwise healthy, emotionally strong young