Prejudice and Discrimination: Do traditional values encourage prejudice? Human evolution took place in a most scattered manner, in time and place. Our world is replete with varied societies, each with its own guidelines, philosophies, conventions, customs, traditions, and institutions. Each group, each society, each culture proclaims its individuality, its differences, its distinctiveness, and concocts devices, legal or otherwise, to ensure they will last forever. Therein lie the seeds of intolerance. Mankind must come to realise that each individual is not a limited member of some isolated and narrowly defined group but rather a member of the people of the planet earth. The customs and traditions of our varied cultures, religions and racial groups evolved millenniums ago, in closed, isolated and distant geographic areas on the planet. Each isolated group responded in its own way to the mystical worldly wonders of their environment. Our current knowledge of the universe and its workings is neither perfect nor complete but it is more than adequate to provide a willing mankind with an escape from the intolerance and barbarism that has poisoned and continues to poison our social behaviour. Traditional values are the cause of much conflict when different groups come into each other's living space. The conflicts that arise out of cultural differences are a consequence of each group's erroneous belief about their culture and the nature of culture. Each group holds its customs and traditions as inviolable, and any request made on the adherence is deemed an affront and becomes an excuse for punishment. One of the most destructive types of prejudice is based on someone’s race or cultural group. Take the Holocaust for example. Because of Hitler’s prejudice, six million Jews were systematically and efficiently slaughtered for no other reason than that they were Jews. Each society had its own way and means of doing things. Values may ...
