Isn't there a difference between liking and 'being like' someone? If you think about it, we 'like' people who are 'like' us in certain ways which are important to us. We have a lady friend who fancies herself as a Pagan or a Wiccan, but is not very philosophical about anything in particular. She once said that all of her girl friends were attractive - as if that was a prerequisite for being her friend. She apparently identifies herself primarily with the social-emotional behaviors that go along with being 'cute,' 'petit,' or 'pretty,' which she is.
We have had acquaintances who were not physically attractive by most common standards - males in particular - who identified themselves with their intellect (common definition). Perhaps multilingual and with some pet interests, but nothing which ameliorated their incredible arrogance towards most people. Such people were hesitant to insult only those folks who might have a higher academic degree than they did - everyone else was treated condescendingly.
We have all met holier-than-thou types who attempt to identify with a superior morality. They usually adopt quite literally proclamations from scriptures which restrict certain behaviors and go about life proclaming these things as if they were sharing an important spiritual message with all the sinners (not themselves of course). In reality, these people are boasting about their own self-control which they believe constitutes true morality (when in fact it doesn't).
Perhaps the most common and base individual is the one who only 'likes' those who [s]he sees as belonging to his/her ethnic group. I see this all the time in ethnically polarized Miami where Cubans, Haitian, African Americans and European Americans rarely cross the ethnic divide to be friends and even less frequently to date with a real intention for partnership. Yes, guys might want to sleep with an 'exotic' beauty from another tribe, but no one wants to work on transcending the obvious differences in order to connect on 'nuclear' rather than 'electron shell' levels. Real 'fusion' (union) with another usually has to involve the other being 'like' not unlike - religion, language, skin color, etc.
Beneath ethnic bias is ethnic hatred. Rarely, for example anti-Jewishness is rarely a matter of religious bias - even from Arabs. It is essentially politically motivated with a religious flavor. It is thus not antisemitism (Arabs are Semites too) but anti-Jewishness. When I was in 7th grade, a much larger Italian Catholic bully and his friend approached me for his experiment. Raised in Catholic school until 7th grade, he was taught anti-Jewishness and he wanted to demonstrate something to his friend - which backfired. I had begun to grow my dirty-blonde hair out (it was 1966) and Vinny approached me at my locker and said "Hey, you look just like Jesus." Expecting my face to change with the intended insult, I remember thinking 'Hmmm, this guy is Italian/Roman Catholic, and he probably thinks very highly of Jesus' and I smiled and said "Thank you very much." Well, HIS face fell, he said nothing, and they both walked away. That brief moment was a seed-moment which sprouted years later when I sought to understand Who and What Jesus the Christ is to the world.
My own upbringing suggested that 'Christians' were not your friends and the symbol of the cross was just a tad less sinister to my family than a swastika. I had to learn a whole lot more about Christ than the average Gentile (non-Jew) to understand that any so-called 'Christian' was not a Christian merely because they were Gentile or that they professed being Christian. In fact there were so much stupidity in the world that I'd heard adults say that Jesus was Catholic! Catholic means 'universal,' and if Christ is representative of any singular Truth, it is that human beings are generically ONE. Science shows that we are genetically ONE as well. Exaggerating differences to to point of hostility is based on a Lie. Satan is called 'The Father of Lies' and haters clearly belong to Evil.
Looking at differences can be a means to tracing the idiosyncrasies of ethnicity to a Center - wherein we are all ONE, but most of the time differences merely divide people. Most people are sunken in their senses like the mammals they are. Without transcendence in a human mammalian life, that is all people will be - what the Gnostics called 'Hylics' - humans who identify with their physicality. Those who are pathological create smaller and smaller subsets of that physicality with which to identify until they have become like 'The Children of the Damned' - all looking pretty much alike genetically, with more inbreeding planned and the inevitable results of mental and physical deformity - deformity of the mind-body - psychosomatic deformity - deformity of the 'soul.' Racial cleansing, genocide and the most evil of political regimes follow from this - the Children of the Damned making Hell-on-Earth and imagining it to be a heaven of their own making. As to these Nazi types, the words of Jim Morrison might apply: "I've been down so God-damned long, it looks like up to me." Let's pray that haters will realize that it is Compassion alone that makes a a human mammal into a human being.
Peace.
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γνῶθι σαὐτόν - Gnothi Seauton - Know Thyself
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