From the time we are born, we are told not to mess with things that may harm us. Some of the items make since, such as steak knives and stray animals. Some of the items may not, such as people and anything different than us. Often, more times than not, those last two go together.


When we're children, we see our parents actions. We watch them hate and discriminate people of other races. Then, we get the ideas programmed into our brains that, maybe since our parents can do it, it's okay if we do. That's when we start stealing toys from the kid with the glasses, and pulling on a little girls pigtails, and after that reign of terror, we throw blocks at the kid who is different than us. The kid that just wants to fit in.


We then grow into teenagers, who are taught bullying is bad. Of course, this is before we learn about popularity. After that, we grow into beings that only care about their looks. If one girl doesn't look good, or one guy chooses not to join the football team, they are the topic of gossip for the day.


Finally, we become adults. We go to college, then have kids of our own. With that, we bring the standards of hate and fear that our parents taught us, and the ones we taught ourselves. We pass these standards on to a whole new group of unsuspecting children.


Why are we this way? Why do we turn against any person that is different than ourselves? It's the same scenario as the steak knives and the stray animals. We fear them. We fear any person that is different than us because, we are afraid they are going to be better than us. If someone is better than us, then we'll just disappear into the background. We, as humans, just can't fade into the background.


We can also claim this feeling comes from not knowing. We don't know about the other person. We don't understand them. But, these thoughts can also be brought back to fear. Don't get me wrong, it's a natural human reaction to fear what we don't know but, maybe we fear the wrong unknown.


It shouldn't matter what race, gender, age, religion, or anything else you are. What ever happened to all men are created equal? It's a true statement because, we are created equal. Instead of the constant need to destroy each other, shouldn't this be the root of our thoughts about mankind? Shouldn't we be more focused about unity? The answer is simple. We should. We should but, our fear of people conquers our love for them, make it very difficult to think that way.