It really drives me nuts now both Conservatives and Liberals generalize about eachother. Conservatives make liberals out to all be skittle-throwing, baby killing whores and liberals make conservatives out to all be gay-bashing, bible-toting ignoramuses. It's all very unfair and I wish people would cut it out.
I mean, I see it mostly on the internet and mostly from young people of my age group. That bothers me. We're supposed to be the well-educated, well-informed generation. Shouldn't we realize that generalization is a logical fallacy? That it does not a valid point make? It really frustrates me when I see generalization in debates too. Things get heated and people result to childish insults.
One thing I saw today on THIS site that made me angry was someone saying that they would cut somebody off right in the middle of their argument justifying their point of view to make a point of their own. That is completely idiotic. When you want to cut somebody else off and not let them present their own point of view, how are you learning anything? That person would be angry if somebody did the same thing to them and they were exhibiting the same sort of ignorance that they were accusing those they wanted to cut off of.
Everyone deserves a chance to explain how they feel, to justify their argument/view of things. What kind of point are you making if you block somebody else except to point out how childish you are? You may hear a lot of the same uninformed, ignorant arguments backing something up over and over again, but maybe one day, if you just listen and give people a chance, you might hear something new that you hadn't heard before. That's actually happened to me. It happened to me today. I heard a completely new view of something that I hadn't before and if I'd gotten mad and blocked that person out, I would have missed out on a totally new way of looking at something.
Like I said in my other post; give the idea chance, even if you don't like the person speaking or writing it. It's always so easy to generalize and block out someone, and this encourages prejudice and turns debates where people could actually learn new things, to arguments where nothing can be learned because people are too busy shouting or trying to make their own points to learn something new.
