this post was submitted on 06 Sep 2023
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Bravo to you for seeing people as people. Obviously none of your coworkers made a conscious choice to be intolerant, it's just an emergent phenomenon given their experience with the people around them, an effect you're noticing happen in yourself.
I don't know how to achieve it, but I think there is only one way to combat intolerance, and that is to move people from an outgroup to an ingroup. People tend to not care about people in their outgroup, but tend to be intolerant of people they fear in their outgroup. People who have their family, their church, and their compatriots in their ingroups are referred to as nationalists, and when nationalists are convinced to fear their outgroup, you get fascism.
They are intolerant of the LGBTQ community because they have (unfounded) fears that there is an "agenda" to erode their religions and force people to be like them. You are intolerant of them because you have (often well founded) fears that their actions fuel systemic intolerance that has a very real impact on your livelihood.
I think the only way to flip this on its head is to break this pattern, for each of you to view each other as part of your ingroups. Now, it would be fair to say that's too hard, that would be unreasonably difficult to become that close to them, and you'd probably be right. I think that's why many in this thread have instead settled for seeing them as less than human, not worth "saving". But that's what I think would need to happen.
Excellent comment. I think it’s fair to say that a lot of friendships start with realising you have something in common with someone else. When you focus too much on what’s different between you and someone else, like only thinking of someone as being part of the lgbtqi+ community, or being a religious nut, you don’t give yourself head space to see the other things that could potentially unite you.
It's also tempting to think that certain politically motivated groups have exploiting nationalism down to a science at this point. It sure seems that way if you look at the media. So it could be that OP has more work cut out for them than is tenable.
Still, if my options are: go to war, or treat people like humans and then go to war, I'll choose the latter. Personally, I'd rather die at the hands of a bigot than live treating anyone as irredeemable subhuman garbage. But I understand why living is the more important priority for most people. So it goes...