Let’s kick this off with a bit of a thought exercise…
Imagine for a moment that you judge people solely based on the colour of their skin. Or perhaps you hold prejudices against their sexuality, gender, race, religion, political beliefs, or something else. The specifics don’t really matter just yet because we’ll be cycling through various biases together soon enough. What’s important is that, for the sake of this exercise, you agree to judge others based solely on some arbitrary measure or another. You’re not concerned with their character, actions, or how agreeable they are. It may not even matter how they look once our chosen metric relates to an affiliation or belief. All you care about is this one thing—a single, indiscriminate criterion that dictates whether they’re worthy of your admiration or disdain.
Now, picture every single person on this planet—man, woman, or child—lined up according to how closely they align with your chosen metric. For simplicity, imagine they’re arranged by skin colour, from the fairest of skin tone to the darkest. Regardless of where on this spectrum your admiration lies, you know that somewhere near the opposite end is a group of people you must detest.
Next, imagine you’re tasked with pinpointing the exact spot along the length of this line where your feelings shift—where someone stops being worthy in your eyes and becomes someone of lesser value than the person next to them due to the colour of their skin. You already know that there’s a group you hate because they’re different from you—they’re either too dark or too light. But where exactly does that group begin? Could you confidently single out the person where everyone beyond them is deemed inferior?
How dark is too dark? How light is too light? Are you comfortable selecting a point in the line where you’ve undoubtedly included small children and babies among those you’ve decided to abhor? And what do you do when someone who, based on their ethnicity, should have a darker complexion ends up on the lighter side of the spectrum? Or when someone of Caucasian descent has skin dark enough to place them closer to the darkest end? Does the fact that skin and race are indiscriminate of one another amplify the complexity of the task at hand?
Chances are, this isn’t an easy concept to grasp. It might be straightforward when dealing with extreme differences, or the endpoints of our line. But when those differences are subtle, identifying the point where one person becomes lesser than the next becomes much harder. Someone you might have condemned based on their skin colour if assessed in isolation could end up in the surprisingly large group that you find not different enough from yourself to warrant loathing.
Now, let’s try again, this time arranging people by religious creed. Maybe you’re an atheist, a Muslim, a Christian, a Shinto, or a follower of Sikhism. Regardless of your belief, you’ve decided that anyone who shares or practices your faith is admirable, and anyone who doesn’t is to be despised. What does your line look like now? Does shuffling people based on their beliefs make it easier to identify where your willingness to tolerate different ends?
If you’re a Christian, do you accept followers of Judaism or Islam? After all, all three religions share concepts like sacrifice, justice, peace, the afterlife, and loving God. Is it not splitting hairs to decide that someone’s beliefs or practices are close enough to your own to be accepted, while the person standing next to them —who shares many similar principles, should be reviled? And how do you account for someone who says they believe what you do, but is non-practicing? Are they placed before or after someone who actively engages in worship even if that worship doesn’t look exactly like your own?
Alright, one last scenario. Let’s narrow down the number of people in our line and see if that makes things easier. Because if you’re anything like me, judging someone based off their skin colour, or beliefs isn’t easy. So this time, we’ll limit the line to people from your own country and arrange them by their political affiliations—from those who most align with your views to those whose stance is the least like your own.
Could you walk along the line and locate that specific point where your agreement or indifference turns to hate? If you’re on the left, do you detest someone on your side of the aisle if they agree with a comment or policy from the right? Or if you’re on the right, can you accept that there are people on the left who appreciate, or even respect, the political leaders of your preferred party? Again, how different is too different? And how much divergence from your own viewpoints are you willing to accept?
This isn’t easy is it?
The theoretical exercise you’re being asked to perform is highly problematic. It drastically oversimplifies complex issues like identify and discrimination, whilst simultaneously reinforcing harmful stereotypes. And that’s before you begin to factor in the multifaceted idiosyncrasies that, for better or worse, make each of us unique. Chances are that if you were actually faced with performing this task, you’d wind up confused and frustrated before ultimately throwing your hands in the air at the impossibility of the assignment, or selecting a location within the line at random.
We’re going to put a pin in this exercise and come back to it. But first… Let’s briefly talk about online poker.
Or more specifically, we’re going to talk about doomswitches. A doomswitch is a hypothetical mechanism that online poker players believe a gaming site can toggle to rig a game either for or against a player. When a player claims to have been “doomswitched,” they describe going through a series of seemingly skewed hands where their losses pile up quickly, making it feel as though the site is intentionally working against them.
In reality, players understand that while poker is largely a game of skill and probability, there’s also an element of luck and randomness involved. They know that the concept of a doomswitch is just a joke. Sometimes, no amount of skill can overcome the randomness of being dealt a two and seven off-suit or facing a beginner who defies the 1-in-649,739 odds to hit a royal flush. Yet even though poker players use the term with tongue in cheek, it still lends itself quite nicely to where I was heading with those endless lines of people…
The world feels as though it has become an increasingly chaotic place. People are divided, angry, struggling with rising living costs, caught up in culture wars, real wars, or venting online over some perceived slight. Many feel isolated or alone, and like the hits just keep on coming—almost like someone has flipped a doomswitch in their lives, skewing the hands they’ve been dealt.
But that’s not entirely true…
Yes, inflation is straining many households, and the financial pressure is very real. Similarly, there are very real conflicts resulting in the needless deaths of far too many. But let’s set these ubiquitous facts aside for a moment and talk about some of the other factors driving division. To do that, let’s revisit the idea of our endlessly long lines of people and examine why it’s so hard to quantify hate when we’re all standing shoulder to shoulder. The answer is simple: we’re all connected, and we’re not as different as we are led to believe.
If we go back to our original line arranged by skin tones, the person at the very start and the one at the very end of that line would share a human genome where 99.9% of their genetic material is remarkably similar. Within that remaining 0.1% would be the single nucleotide polymorphisms that would define our race, as well as the bases that makes each person unique.
If we consider our line based on secular beliefs, there really isn’t much difference between an atheist who believes in treating people with respect and a Christian who follows the Golden Rule. Or a Muslim who abides by the principle of “an eye for an eye”. The teachings are the same. They’re just delivered differently. Even in our political line, there’s more common ground than we realise. Even in a country as seemingly divided as the U.S., over 100 policies have majority bipartisan support.
So why do we feel so divided? Why are we so often afraid or angry?
Because fear and division sell. And there are people so desperate for their five minutes of fame that they’ll exploit our minor differences, prying them apart until those insignificant cracks feel like chasms.
These bad actors often speak in absolutes, using polarising language to incite anger or fear. They do this not because they truly believe in what they say, but because they don’t need to. Their goal is to gain trust, not to stand by their words. If they can frustrate and antagonise, they can also mobilise and achieve their own ends; whatever they may ultimately be. But here’s the thing; the only people who speak in absolutes are absolute liars.
Politicians don’t genuinely believe their opposition will cripple a country; they just want to be part of the ruling majority, and are sometimes prepared to make morally ambiguous decisions or proclamations to do so. Many racial or religious bigots don’t hate based on race—how could they? Race is a socially constructed concept that can shift depending on numerous factors. Instead, they harbour hatred for nonsensical reasons, often rooted in something within themselves they refuse to acknowledge.
Writing about bad actors always feels a bit disingenuous. I don’t blog as much as I used to, primarily because I’ve come to realize that the loudest voices are often the least inspired. Creating content that might be shared on platforms where disinformation spreads intentionally—or misinformation inadvertently—feels like I’m no better than the very people this post aims to condemn. But despite the contradiction of me standing on my own soapbox here, there is a point to all of this that makes me feel almost OK about temporarily becoming the kind of person I despise.
We live in a unique time. Thanks to platforms that thrive on cloud capital and likes, our overexposure to content, and our tendency to overinvest in the words and images projected onto screens, people, organizations, and algorithms have become increasingly adept at finding and exploiting the tiny fissures between us. These differences are then widened into gorges that many of us become fearful to cross. The more fearful or hateful we become toward our neighbours, our government, or anyone else, the more likely we are to consume—or even produce—misinformed content that keeps ourselves and others perpetually fixated on our devices.
We’ve become ensnared by emotive language and progressively polarizing ideas pushed by incendiary individuals who just want our attention. They create content to keep us glued to screens, making it feel as though someone has flipped a doomswitch in our lives, convincing us that they alone have the answers to all this manufactured fear and division.
But if that’s true, where do we go from here?
Honestly, wherever you choose. After more than a decade of blogging that has seen me endlessly transitioning from enamoured to disillusioned with sharing thoughts and opinions online, I’ve come to understand that trying to change someone’s mind is like playing chess with pigeons. It doesn’t matter if you win—the pigeon is still going to defecate all over the board and strut around like it won anyway.
There’s no profound insight here. And the words that I write won’t have the slightest impact on those who think differently than I do. Instead, there’s just one man’s realisation that the world of division and hate speech we seem to be hurtling toward doesn’t feel fulfilling, palatable, or even representative of reality.
Despite what many bad actors say, there’s much more to the world than black and white, left or right, or whatever binary they choose. Much like the lines we draw, there’s a middle ground. And once you consider that middle ground, the differences that some people or organizations exploit become much less significant. You begin to realize that, much like a game of online poker, everyone in this world is just trying to play the hand they’ve been dealt. Most of us aren’t inherently evil or wrong; we’re just trying to make the best of the cards we have. Unfortunately, sometimes we’re led astray by a handful of bad actors and fuck-heads who attempt to engage our doomswitches to divide and segregate for their own selfish means.
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The Renegade Press 
Due to the, stereotypes we’d been, socialized on, based off of our interactions with, first, our parents, we learn and, internalize their, values, and, these values over time, became, set, and, it would be, next to, impossible, for these, prejudices to get, sltered, even if we come across, those, who fit to these, prejudices we were, socialized with, from earlier on in life. We are, more than likely to distrust, to hate, the groups of people that our own parents hate, because, that is how children are, socialized, to, inherit the, exact same, prejudices that our own, parents, have. So, it’s basically, impossible for us to, be, unbiased, if our parents are, discriminatory, as it is, all, modeled, behaviors.
Best not to get led astray then
Excellent, thoughtful, post. Bias and discrimination are very complex due to the incredible number of variables (upbringing, environment, education, economics, etc…), and these days, information is so fluid that it gets easy to be swayed one way or another. You have many great lines. One that caught my attention is, “Many feel isolated or alone, and like the hits just keep on coming—almost like someone has flipped a doomswitch in their lives, skewing the hands they’ve been dealt.” And what drives division is what you mention later, “Because fear and division sell.”
In the end, we are as you allude to in your writing, incredibly similar. Outside of the variables we experience growing up which shape our minds/lives, we are in this together and try to make the best go at life with the cards we draw. The doomswitch you describe is new to me, and explained very well… and you end this post beautifully: “… we’re led astray by a handful of bad actors and fuck-heads who attempt to engage our doomswitches to divide and segregate for their own selfish means.” It is exhausting, and a paradigm shift is needed, and I am optimistic one will arrive.
The only way to win the game is not to play
Fantastic blog post, Chris!
Just out of curiosity, do you need a hooded Calvin Klein jacket by any chance?
I agree with a lot of what you’re saying, the divides are being used by those who want us to continue being ‘led’, isolation and fear are running riot.
I was brought up in a world where women’s uses were very very limited, in a place where coloured skin didn’t exist, yet my mother never gave me her bias, it was all around me yes, but she gave me space to see for myself, to judge on actions nothing else. It was the most important gift she gave me, being poor and having nothing else she made sure I was equipped to see properly.
Things will change they always do, and I understand the frustration about the ‘online’ world, I too have withdrawn from it mostly because of the divisions I see and the hatred being touted as ‘truth’. It does well to remember that everyone has the same worries as everyone else and yes sometimes it feels like the hand we’ve been dealt is a losing one from the start, but we never know what the river card will give us in the end til it’s turned.
I love this post and what it espouses. I love the insightful way the points are made. But reading them always makes me sad, because the people who need to be exposed to this content and concepts will likely never see them. And if they do, they will still reject the premise on which they are expressed.
Hearing the statement “you cannot logic someone out of a belief they didn’t logic themself into”, really changed the way in which I perceive and engage with bigoted people.
At most, I am happy to know that there are others who think this way. And to know that in various ways, we are holding space for each other.
Great thought experiment and post! Might I suggest, heading over to Substack, too. I’ve found a community of like-minded and like-hearted writers there that remind me what it is to have hope. And I think that’s so important. Because hope is motivating; it motivates me to write, to connect with others over our shared human experiences and emotions, and I believe the more we connect, the more it becomes apparent the “divisions”between us are illusory. It’s the only way I know how to battle the fear-mongers, by spreading hope and fostering connection.
I’m with you 99.9% of the way, Chris. The exception that I am imagining is in dealing with someone whose religion (like ISIS) or beliefs (far right or left extremes) dictate that anyone who is an infidel or a non-believer deserves to perish, and they make it their policy to carry out their judgment.
I enjoyed reading your considered thoughts in “Doomswitch.” I even left a comment on your blog about limitations I imagined that might exist when it comes to encountering people dedicated to eliminating opposition by force. I admit that I am prejudiced against ISIS adherents as well as fascists and Putinistas. My feeling is that if a person believes that anyone who opposes them deserves to die, then I wish upon them that which they wish upon their opposition. This feeling is in-line with what I told my current girlfriend when we were getting to know each other. I said, “The only thing I can’t tolerate is intolerance.” It may seem paradoxical, but that’s just me – a human bean – like all the other beans on this planet. I am sending you this link to one of the stories I posted on my own blog, “As I Lay Living.” I hope you will read it Coyote in the Room https://jjacobik.wordpress.com/2024/04/13/coyote-in-the-room/
You’ve reminded me of the Ford Pier song ‘Kill The Intolerant’.
That’s a lot of words. There will always be “us” and “them”. Pick your gradient.
You literally just came to mind the last day or so and how I would love to read another post of yours, so it was cool to see you publish again. Thank you! Even if we don’t see eye to eye on everything, I always enjoy hearing your perspective. I love the way you use words and share your thoughts. Hope you’ll continue blogging. We might not change anyone’s minds. But then again…we just might. At least we are sharpening and clarifying our own mind and views in the process, right?
short story long.
The best and most thought-provoking read I’ve had in a very long time. Well said.
Your words really resonate with me. Thanks for sharing them.
If you’re a Christian, you deal in the absolute of love, because that is who God is and why He provided Jesus so we could all have access to Him who is love, so that we might be like Him and also be loving. If you do not love, but instead you kill steal or destroy, then in the end, you will be unacceptable to His standard of love and loving, [of a new “system” where ONLY those of love are ‘permitted to continue] which by access to this standard through Jesus having removed all obstruction to IT which is actually HIM, that He made freely available to all who wanted it, (wanted HIM who IS LOVE), the means to obtain Him. So by rejecting the means of access to God who is love, they reject both love and themselves in the process. As far as racism goes, when you have been brought up in a relatively peaceful society which suddenly changes on your TV screen to images of an Asian pouring boiling water over a baby, to images of African youths running down other African youths in the street and knifing them to death; to images of an indigenous person who cracked open an innocent person’s skull with a paving stone who went to the aid of a woman in distress, and many, many other images and media information that carries the same constant denominator, that of immigration from countries where the standard piece of equipment they carry is an AK47 and where women are treated with less value than a camel. Yes there already exists and is futuristically going to be enforced, a dividing line which separates those who are destructive to life (including to themselves) from those who are involved in creating and sustaining life in a way that ensures that real, loving, freedom of life persists, instead of real hellish captivity to the things of hate. Through Jesus, ALL that which has previously be seen as an obstacle to love and loving, has been totally and absolutely removed from existence, having been considered to have been put to death with Him on His cross. WE died with Him to the old ‘life’, the old ‘way’, and paradoxically through believing this, WE are also granted access to this love and are therefore considered (and found) to be alive with Him. and which access and which life only WE can reject by denial of it, of Him. In the early days it used to be Hungarians and then Yugoslavians going beserk and who made the headlines because of the PTSD they suffered through local wars in their home countries; other cultures brought with them their own particular breeds of crime gangs. Sexual immorality has become a non-event as far as modern society goes, because they have accepted the position that the only good and correct standard is one that has been removed altogether, claiming “love” as their justifier. but they, being unaware of the true nature of this very “love” that they claim for themselves, unaware that it is an absolute travesty of that which real love provides, may hopefully somehow discover the truth before it is too late, (As I write, there is a radio report of yet another stabbing).
As to absolutes, I can only point to Israel who provided our understanding of God, even though they have denied themselves access to Christianity; that their story has been one of self discovery and of discovery of God (although He ‘discovered’ them)(“now that they have come to know God, or rather, to be KNOWN BY God”) [Jesus said, “depart from me you who do evil, I never KNEW you] and which is now a story of their imminent possible destruction as the nations once more gather around them in rage. When people reject the life of love and peace, THEY reject THEMSELVES – it is not therefore surprising that others reject them also, especially if they are of the same compromising disposition, (probably those of the “middle ground”). But the true God through the body of Jesus has forgiven us all, has justified us from ALL THINGS to free us from own death from our own guilty conscience of our own life’s journey to begin again, this time in the knowledge and assurance and experience of the God of love and the acceptance of a clean conscience. “Crossed over from death to life”. If earth bound Israel survives this current crisis and Jesus or “ant-Christ” does NOT appear, eventually another crisis will arise and He or they finally WILL. PS Christ’s coming will be instantaneous and inescapable, accompanied by loud noise and fire, whereas any “anti-Christ” will simply be a vehicle for a “New World Government” even if they exhibit certain “magical” or powers of super-technology.
I realise the length of this comment and how it may be considered as biassed and racist, maybe even a perfect example of what you have been talking about, and that if it or any part of it is published, that it may not be edited in a way that disregards my intent and desire for truth. Be that as it may, it is what it is and if instantly deleted then that’s OK, possibly just the chance to “speak” was a good exercise. Thanks Chris. I hope your “doom switch” remains “off” 🙂
At least in your final paragraph you were somewhat self aware….
Thanks for your thoughts, Cris, both insightful and well written. I love blogging as a form of creative expression even though I find myself no longer being part of it, instead living in the harsh and beautiful world of flesh blood and nature. You caught me by surprise. Thanks for expressing something that I no longer express to the online world, no longer receive likes for, no longer bare my soul to.
Best wishes, Jeni
This post should be required reading for humans – all of them. A logical argument against false dualities is as rare as nutrition in a fast-food restaurant. Thank you for demonstrating critical thinking is not extinct.
-erzsebet
PS Bonus points for crafting a rational argument that incorporates pigeon poo!
Yes, this paragraph has got me inspired to write something too!
The part of this post that really made me think was when you mentioned lining all people up, and pinpointing where your mindset shifts. I wonder how people, including myself, would answer this. I have to sit with that one.
So true, everyone should read this. Thank you for being someone that knows what is truly going on.
Saving this to read later.
This is quite deep to fully fathom in one sitting and without a cup of coffee. hehehe.
Thanks for dropping by my site anyway.
“(T)he single nucleotide polymorphisms that would define our race…” …don’t exist. Whatever we mean by “race,” it doesn’t correlate with what we know about the genome. Research it as deeply as you like: the further you go, the more you’ll see that race is genetically meaningless.
The Scholastics taught that to know the essence of a thing, consider its causes. And everything has four causes:
-Efficient Cause: this is the ordinary sort of cause-and-effect that we are taught and think about today. You already know what efficient causes are; these other three causes I’m about to list will probably sound strange to you.
-Material Cause: the stuff that a thing is made from. The material cause of a table is wood; the material cause of mathematics is numbers.
-Formal Cause: the abstract concept imposed upon a thing to make it what it is. The formal cause of this rubber and copper over here is a power cord. If I repurpose it into a dog leash, it will still be rubber and copper, but its formal cause will have changed from power cord to dog leash.
-Teleological Cause: The conscious intention that motivated a thing’s creation. We created blogs so that we could communicate ideas. God created the Sun so that His Earth would have light and heat. I repurposed my power cord so that I could take Fido for a walk.
A question worth thinking about: in term of these four causes, what is the cause of race?
A really insightful and well put perspective, I’ll read this many times over just to make sure I get every ounce out of it.
As an avid consumer of historical fiction, and in this case, I do include much that seeks to justify its own existence by calling itself documentary, I find it almost comical that people believe bias on the basis of any singular defining attribute is something we can either take responsibility for or blame on current societal dysfunctions.
I know this neither strengthens nor weakens the point you set out to make, but I thought I should mention it as it adds an area of depth when delving into the root cause.
Humans are innately petty, competitive little creatures that will invent an excuse to distain each other- with or without provocation even under the most ideal of circumstances.
Each generation believes itself superior to all those that have gone before them, and as a result, refuse to assign any merit to the lessons learned by previous generations.
I say we provide future generations with a true and accurate accounting of world history, give it a few hundred years to sink in and see what happens.
Your post brilliantly uncovers the divisive tactics shaping our perceptions. How do you envision fostering unity amidst this chaos?