Order ready-to-submit essays. No Plagiarism Guarantee!
Note: Our papers are 100% human-written, not AI-generated.
We Write Essays for Students
Tell us about your assignment and we will find the best writer for your paper
Get Help Now!
”
Similarity and DifferenceAny time we want to talk about thinking more clearly, we need to look at what obstacles may be in the way of us accomplishing this task (of thinking more clearly). We all know that we go through a socialization process as we grow from infanthood to adulthood. This means we have been trained to think in certain ways in order to accomplish certain tasks. Much of this training is positive. We are trained to use language, to solve problems, to compute mathematically, to care for ourselves, to drive cars, etc. But some aspects of our mental training may not always serve our best interests as adults. In this unit, I want to mention three aspects of how we have been trained to think that might be considered obstacles to clear, wise thinking as adults. The first I want to mention is that we are trained to place more emphasis on differences we perceive than on similarities. An obvious example is how a difference in skin color can overwhelm all other similarities two people may share. Little differences often mean a lot to us. Huge similarities often go unnoticed. So we are equally able to see similarities, but we are socialized (or trained) to focus on and emphasize differences. This over emphasis on differences leads us to categorize groups as being opposites, when the group’s members may actually have much more in common. Republican/Democrat, pro-life/pro-choice, male/female, Catholic/Lutheran, Christian/Muslim/Buddhist, the list could go on and on. Lutherans divide themselves into different kinds of Lutherans. Baptists divide themselves into different kinds of Baptists. School kids separate out into cliques. Differences are certainly important discriminations to make. But we often allow differences to overwhelm the similarities that the same groups have. For instance, we could argue that men and women exhibit many more similarities than differences. “Pro” and “Anti” hunting groups often hold many core environmental values in common. This emphasizing of differences over similarities is behind many of the ways we treat groups other than those we belong to. In this lesson, we are looking at obstacles to thinking clearly. Our first step is to recognize what a perception of difference, not balanced by a similar understanding of similarity, will do to our Thinking. Let’s look a little more deeply at one example of what we have been talking about. Here is your third writing assignment for this Unit. For this assignment, I would like you to consider Humans vs. Animals (meaning non-human animals). First, make a list of similarities and differences between Human and Animals. You should have somewhere between 10 and 20 of each. Second, explain which you think are stronger between us over-all: our similarities or our differences. Be specific/give detail! Third, looking just at the differences, explain which of these differences between Humans and Animals make it possible for us to treat animals the way we do: we buy them, sell them, own them, eat them, perform painful experiments on them, and even kill them when they become inconvenient. Of course we have at some times done all of these to humans. But these behaviors are not socially acceptable to do to humans. So what about animals make it socially acceptable to behave toward them as we do? I am not asking you to say if you think it is right or wrong to, for instance, perform experiments on animals. The question is this: given the many commonalities/similarities we have with animals, what are the differences that allow us to treat them in the ways we do? Again, do not just list the differences. Explain why those differences lead to these behaviors. Thinking NarrowlyWeb Page Previous Next
Welcome to originalessaywriters.com, our friendly and experienced essay writers are available 24/7 to complete all your assignments. We offer high-quality academic essays written from scratch to guarantee top grades to all students. All our papers are 100% plagiarism-free and come with a plagiarism report, upon request
Tell Us “Write My Essay for Me” and Relax! You will get an original essay well before your submission deadline.
