Respect IS earned, not given. So treating people with the mindset of "I'm going to do to you what you do to me!" is fairly stupid, no offense. Treat people how YOU want to be treated, not how they treat you.

Stupid is being nice to someone who doesn't give a damn about you and letting them walk all over you. No offense.

No, that isn't stupid. Not even close to being stupid. You call humankindness stupid? I call your actions stupid for acting like that towards anyone, regardless of the reason.

I know this is going to make me hated, but for the sake of common courtesy, I'll leave my prejudice in spoiler tags. I hate

Their kind sicken me with their pathetic attempts to justify things in one way or another, I really wish their disgusting kind would just die off so decent living lifeforms could get on with their lives.

"There are only two things I can't stand in this world. People who are intolerant of other people's cultures... and the Dutch." -Nigel Powers.

For the most part alot of people just need to lighten up, I live in Canada. Very multipcultural and all that jazz. I went to school and work with people from many different parts of the world and they all like to poke fun at one another, such as their culture and background.

It is different if it is actually said with hatred, that crosses the line.

I call you determining how we should all deal with all the people in the world pompous...and stupid.

I call blind human kindness stupid. And naive. There's nothing wrong with starting out being nice to everyone, even being willing to forgive once or twice. But when someone proves to be a consistent and predictable dirtbag or insensitive idiot, I don't feel compelled to exhibit kindness or civility towards them.

EDIT: However if that's what makes you happy then fine. I don't really care about changing other people's morality to suit my own (unlike you seem to, which is ironic in a thread dealing with bigotry).

The better and more mature would treat someone with kindness, especially if they don't deserve it. Better yourself, and then maybe the world might be a better place. But that won't happen, will it? Not when you treat someone with an eye for an eye.

Yeah Ive been arrested a few times and the young cops around my age couldnt of given a damn about my side of the story i was already guilty to them but the officer who did the interviewing couldnt of been more charming then if his name was mr darcy and he was in his 50s and at the time i was 25 now he earned my respect and my cooperation the others i wouldnt spit on them if they were on fire.

People especially teens and young advlts think respect is something they deserve automatically and im 30 and i try an be as respectful as i can to new people just because thats who i am i may not respect the person but i respect myself enough to not make them think im some peasant folk.

I've always been like that even at school with teachers and to be honest i was only ever respectful of 3 teachers but treated the others with respect out of respect for the ones i liked and because i knew these 3 teachers spoke about me to other teachers.

Which for a yorkshire lad who had an i still do have a pretty heavy yorkshire accent 20 years after moving showed me respect that they would defend me when they didnt have too and in school i met alot off the north south divide bull [censored] that still exists today kinda like the east coast, west coast crap in the us and the amount of narrow minded jerks in school who thought i was stupid was to many to count.

Needless to say those 3 teachers one who was a yorky like me and had also recently moved to kent so we became close just because off being in the same boat until he changed school due to a rumour.

Now if i posted that in my first post im pretty sure this thread would of been locked i do agree though.

I usually just ignore them and am passive about my vengeance. I pretend they don't exist, I half-heartily listen to them when they talk and act bored around them. I'm only nice to them because I was raised that way, and it's better for me that I don't start a fight I don't think I can win. Last thing I want or need is to give them a perfect reason to make me the focus of their bigotry and asshattery.

I think there's a middle ground somewhere around here. You don't have to be their doormat, but you also don't have to sacrifice your own self-dignity by stooping to their levels.

Though I admit, I do follow your beliefs. My niceness to [censored]s is simply tolerance. If I can remove myself from the situation, I will. If I can't, I tolerate it for as long as necessary. If they need help, I just say that I'm too busy at that moment.

Let me ask you a simple question.

Why treat everyone with kindness?

There was this idiot that went to the same school as me when I was younger, and he hated me. Whenever I happened to be around him with other people he would treat them as friends and brethren, but he would totally ignore me or look at me with disgust. One time when I played a football game, he was the referee, and when we were supposed to walk on the pitch and greet each other, the referee greeted everyone (as he's supposed to), but when it was my turn he ignored my hand, and just moved on to the next guy. At another game I was a goalkeeper, and after a brutal encounter with another player I broke my leg, but he kept the game going, but I assume that's just because he's stupid. People started shouting at him and calling him a terrible referee. This would be the case for every other encounter I had with him, and I did encounter him quite often because some of my friends back then liked him. He has done some despicable things against me that I will always remember, but I'll save that for later.

Many years later, when he fortunately was way out of my life, I went to vote for a political party because it was election day, and to my disgust I found out that this exact guy was a candidate for some conservative Christian party, and just looking at his smug face on that poster made me physically ill. Yes, even to this day I despise this poor excuse for a human, and I hope that I'll never see him ever again.

The only reason he hated me was because my father is a Kurd.

The world would be an even better place if people didn't feel the need to shove their ideologies down other's throats.

BTW I never said I'm "better" than anyone. I'm probably not, so you can judge me from your high horse all you wish. But at the end of the day I just do not care. My ideology in this matter is born from life experiences you couldn't be expected to know about, and I don't feel the need to "justify" it to anyone, including myself. In a sense I embrace my human nature for what it is; not good, but efficient.

I grew up in a low/middle class Cuban neighborhood in FL, US. And racism wasn't that bad outside of the hood because it's expected. The first time I experienced racism in the flesh though was in the military. Either you yield to their indoctrination or you're a pariah; no punches pulled. You more or less have to hide who you are ethnically and culturally and bite your tongue or you won't fit in. I know some people might disagree with me, but again this my own personal experience.

Members of my family wouldnt like you then based on that even though they dont know crap about the kurds except what they hear on the news or because half if not most of the jobs in the uk were been done by poles, kurds and serbs kinda like now but its Afghanis, Iraqis, Iranians and other muslims.

And that's what I don't get. Why do people take one little thing like 'Oh, you're a Kurd?' or 'Oh, you are of a different race/six/ethnicity/sixual orientation/nationality?' and just hate that person for it despite not knowing a good goddamned thing about that person him/herself? Then they're totally fine with everyone else and act all peachy and friendly to them.

I don't have a problem with what you are, or what you look like. I'll treat you right, but I'm not going to be your personal doormat if you choose to treat me wrong.

First off, I want to say that commas are useful. Secondly, contrary to modern sentiments, bigotry is not the worst offense a person can commit. Our little lizard brains will always be fighting its primitive genetic tendencies, and xenophobia is one of those. Hard coded. So I don't condemn bigots as harshly as most people do.

I hate anyone/group demanding special treatment because of race/color/six/ethnicity/country of origin/etc.. I also hate anyone/group denying someone else normal access to society because of race/color/six/ethnicity/country of origin/etc.. Just due to this philosophy, at one time or another, I've probably hated most groups, from one side or the other.

I agree, but people just seem to love focusing on one thing & blowing it out of proportion

My boss at work is the biggest bigot around, no pun intended. Anybody that isn't white, isn't of Anglo-saxon decent, and wasn't born and raised in the dirty southeastern USA is automatically scum of the Earth and un-American in his eyes. So basically almost nobody is free from his pretentious judgement.

It's funny too. He is homosixual and I'm almost certain he's been unfairly judged before in his 62 years, especially in the southeast. Bigotry knows no logic. Bigotry knows no bounds. It's a demon inside people and it possesses them like something really scary.

Just the other day he was telling me how much he hates the way Obama smiles, or how big his ears are, or how fat his wife's rear was. I asked him how that's even relevant and he just BLEW UP! I mean red faced and running out of breath (not from yelling loud but from talking so angrily) kind of blew up about how he hates (I'm not gonna say the word), and it became apparent that this Kennedy and Clinton supporting registered Democrat is just plain racist. He kind of scared me like he was going to do something violent.

Bigotry knows no logic. Bigotry knows no bounds.

Writing people off for any reason other than the attributes they've actually demonstrated is insanely stupid. To be honest, I have a hard time thinking of bigoted people as "highly-intelligent" despite any other intellectual credentials they may possess, because (IMO) in order to be bigoted one has to set aside quite a bit of common sense and critical thinking.

That is one of the bigots little mysteries.

Again though i can be just as bigoted especially to anyone from the uk so im properly one off the most unpatriotic brits you will ever talk too but as ive said ill treat everyone as an individual even though I cant wait to leave the uk and all off these bad memories behind.

Here's a question as a reply; why not? What makes you so much better than anyone else that you actually treat them like dirt instead of kindness?

And Isaac Newton dabbled in alchemy. One of the greatest thinkers of all humanity couldn't summon common sense when it was most needed.