Accusations of bigotry were something one rarely heard of, until recent times. Now, fingers are pointing in rage in every direction, labeling people as bigots, seemingly for having an opinion.
In the US, they proudly profess the importance of their 1st Amendment rights to free speech. However, it seems to have descended that the 1st Amendment now only applies to a select few who seem to “know wat is best” for everyone else. Anyone who disagrees with them is apparently a bigot.
So, what is a bigot?
The dictionary defines a bigot as “obstinate believer in a religion, political theory, etc, who is intolerant of others and tries to impose his or her views on others”.
I guess the “etc” in that sentence might include a popular social trend or movement as well.
But there is an incredible “invisible” mirror here, and its name is Projection.
Projection is an aspect of us that reveals itself when we notice a flaw in another person, and instead of feeling compassion for the person, we become stirred up, sometimes enraged.
This happens because the flaw we are seeing, we too have that flaw, but we are either in denial or we have a very good justification. But the problem is, it is there for all to see.
Now before you get on your high horse and point out errors in the argument, there is a catch. If I was to see a young man hit an old lady over the head and steal her purse, I might have an angry response. And may try to chase him down. But in that moment, my personal motivation may well be the care of the woman and, the care of her attacker who I realise cannot go on living his life that way.
If my motivation is to punish him, there might be something else going on in my universe.
None of us are perfect human beings. And that is the cool part about our projections. Being much more conscientious allows us to get interested when we have an agitated response to another person. We can discover things about ourselves that we can explore, own, and integrate.
If you are sitting in blame toward another person, you have your own transgressions, likely against that person, you might need to clean up.
This topic of projection has been known and understood for thousands of years. It is written about in the teachings of Jesus in The Bible, and was also discussed by The Buddha, Lao Tzu, and the ancient Greek Philosophers.
Another saying I like is, “When someone is pointing their finger and accusing, they are actually confessing”.
So, when I hear someone pointing a finger at another person who has an opposing viewpoint and accusing them of being a bigot, I get a clear and almost instant picture of who the bigot is.
Does being a bigot make them a bad person? No! It just means they are a person who is lost in self-righteousness and has lost control of their own mind. Scrubbing public toilets for a week or so should help them to restore some humility.
Getting lost in such a place of self-righteousness, if not corrected, can lead to a catastrophic loss of all sense of genuine personal morality. This is the starting point of the road to brutality, murder, and extermination.