Despite the fact that human nature has evolved little since the dawn of humankind, our most basal emotions remaining largely unchanged for tens of thousands of years, one of history’s constants has been our general inability to truly understand one another. While humans have changed in both appearance and ability – from walking upright to developing the technology to walk on the moon – we still feel the same primal things we felt so long ago: happiness, sadness, pleasure, pain, pride, guilt.
However, our inability to establish human connections has, to an extent, remained just as constant. This much is evident in the various wars humans have engaged in, whether between nations (World Wars I and II, for example) or between different sides of the same country (America’s Civil War). It seems people have overlooked our overwhelming similarities with one another, allowing comparatively small differences – cultural distinctions, religious differences, variations in skin color and sexual orientation – to dictate human relationships or the lack thereof.
Over time, as people have populated different areas of the world and simultaneously encountered others who are not exactly the same, stereotypes have developed and, whether as a consequence or cause of these judgments, discrimination has emerged as a growing problem worldwide. This issue takes place on a large scale and is all-inclusive and encompassing: no one is safe from some sort of misperception or misunderstanding by someone else from a different background. America, long proudly called “the Melting Pot,” is certainly not exempt from the mistreatment – emotionally if not physically – of immigrants and other foreign visitors. We have labeled the Irish angry, the Jewish cheap, the French pompous, the Spanish overemotional, the Russian entirely unfeeling, Mexicans incompetent, and the list goes on and on.
How my heart sings 