Small experiences....Massive generalization!

This is one tendency among most humans that is not highlighted too often - we tend to generalize our opinions about anything and everything based on what we experience in life.

I come across people everywhere who talk about the behavioral aspects of a particular community, one strangely different group of people in office, complications in relationships, things that make us happy, good and bad practices, the rules of attraction and so many other things. It is almost addictive. I meet someone else another day and hear another version of the same stuff with one added fact. Then, in a month's time, the buzz about this new fact is everywhere.
The addiction comes from the fact that people don't keep their concepts to themselves but make it a point to let them grow through others which in turn get imprinted even on a little kid who hears his mom and dad discussing it at home.

Generalization is a disease, a virus that spreads over days, years and generations.

Even as we usher into this super advanced age in a rapidly developing country like India, it hurts when I see people living as per rules (generalizations) that have been ingrained in them so deep that however hard one may try, its impossible for him to open up and use his own mind in dictating terms for his life. I have a few friends who have totally given up trying to get their point across to their families about how things have changed with time, how a few things that seemed to be of utmost important in their generation have absolutely no meaning in the world today.
Its difficult for the old guns to come in terms with any change in those things that have worked well for years. But isn't it the job of the new generation to educate them from what they experience and see around? And isn't it expected that atleast some of the many new life concepts would pass those steel gates built for themselves by the experienced folks? Experience comes by learning, so did these people actually stop learning once their kids grew up and started experiencing the new world?

Anyway, upbringing is just one of the mediums for the propagation of generalizations. A few of my college friends would tell me that love marriages are unacceptable in their families. Period. I ask them, "Any reason?". Then they talk of all they have heard about the instability arising out of love marriages as they read about everywhere, about their parents telling them about that distant relative whose wife left him in troubled times etc. Some are pretty optimistic that the system has worked great always and there is no reason to disturb it. Love would develop after marriage as it always does. At times i feel they are trying to justify something that they themselves don't believe in. They have all the education behind them that tells them to free their mind but they are too afraid to break the shackles, the system.

Generalizations are not limited to families, they go on to affect big entities like communities, states and countries. We are all divided because of generalizations about a particular segment being the good community and the other being the nasty one. I have heard people talking about how cunning people from a few states can be and how one particular community can not be trusted because of the numerous cases running against members of that community for bloodshed. One is made to believe that it is better to maintain safe distance from the person living even next door belonging to that community. "How does it matter if our kids have grown together and go to the same school and take the same bus home? Its time to maintain caution n let our naive kid know too." In most of these cases, most of us don't even care to learn from our experiences. "Afterall, all our people couldn't be wrong". One fails to spare a thought that most of these people they have learnt from have in turn heard things from other people.This is the worst form of generalization that I have observed. It only propagates hatred in a world that is hungry for love. As one of my very close friends once said "But all they write in newspapers can't be wrong". I could only say, "Yes my friend, but tomorrow if my community is in news for something bad, would you start doubting me too?". It is common sense but more often than not, it goes unheard.

There are going to be occasions when people experience something bad, there would always be people who feel betrayed and helpless, there would be marriages that would go bad, there would be breakups and wars. If these are experiences that are shared that lead to all the generalizations, all we are doing is propagating hatred and misconceptions. There is nothing in the world that can be generalized in the true sense. Every person has a right to be his own self, lead a life that he finds appropriate. The need for education is not limited to the ones who haven't attended school. There is no school that runs a course on 'Common sense'. Staying happy and satisfied is an art and spreading that little bit of happiness in your life with your loved ones and that neighbour next door is the human nature that the Creator might have actually imagined. If every person just makes a conscious effort to overpower the forced misconceptions brought through the system into his family with that sheer human power to think and act in the right, uninfluenced and constructive way, our short lives could actually be much more merry!