I have been thinking about our last conversation quite a bit, Herman. We really zoomed in on anti-Semitism and the complexities around Israel, but there is this nagging feeling that we were just touching one part of a much larger, much older machine. It felt like we were looking at a single symptom of a global condition.
Herman Poppleberry at your service, and I completely agree, Corn. It is like looking at one specific fire when the whole forest is prone to catching light. Today’s prompt from Daniel is asking us to zoom out. He wants us to look at extremism and bigotry as a general human phenomenon. We are talking about religious groups, skin color, language, origin, basically all the ways humans have found to draw lines in the sand and say, you are not one of us. It is the architecture of "The Other."
It is a heavy topic, but a necessary one. Daniel’s prompt really gets to the heart of it with three big questions. First, how far back does this go? Is this a modern invention or is it baked into our DNA? Second, is the world actually getting more hateful, or are we just seeing more of it because we are constantly plugged into the global nervous system? And finally, how do we actually fix it without just relying on the legal system? Because, let’s be honest, you can’t legislate what’s in someone’s heart.
Those are the right questions. And honestly, looking back at the history, it is both fascinating and a little bit depressing how consistent these patterns are. If we want to answer Daniel’s first question about how far back this goes, the short answer is as far back as we have records. In fact, the very first written records we have often involve one group of people explaining why the group next door is terrible.
I figured as much. But I am curious about the scale. Was it always widespread prejudice, or was it more localized tribalism? I mean, if you only ever meet fifty people in your life, your "worldview" is pretty small.
Well, the line between tribalism and prejudice is pretty thin, right? If you look at ancient Sumer, which is often called the cradle of civilization about five thousand years ago, you see city-states like Lagash and Umma that were constantly at each other’s throats. But it was not just about resources or territory. They developed these really elaborate narratives. We have the Stele of the Vultures, which is this incredible stone monument from about twenty-four hundred B.C.E. It depicts the victory of Lagash over Umma, and it doesn't just say "we won the war." It depicts the enemies being devoured by vultures and describes them as being fundamentally cursed and hated by the gods.
So even then, it was not just, "they have the water and we want it." It was, "they are fundamentally different, spiritually inferior, and therefore dangerous."
Exactly. It’s the moralization of conflict. There is another famous example from ancient Egypt during the Middle Kingdom, nearly four thousand years ago. They had this concept of the "Nine Bows." This was a formalized, state-sanctioned list of the traditional enemies of Egypt. On the footstools of Pharaohs, you would often see depictions of these nine groups—Nubians, Libyans, Asiatics, and so on—so that the Pharaoh was quite literally stepping on his enemies every time he sat down. It was a visual representation of the divine order, or Ma'at, crushing the "chaotic" outsiders. It did not matter if an individual from those groups was peaceful; they were categorized by their origin as being outside the circle of humanity.
That is interesting because it suggests that as soon as we started organizing into large societies, we started defining ourselves by who we were not. It’s like the "in-group" needs an "out-group" just to feel cohesive. But what about the Greeks? We often hold them up as the pinnacle of reason and philosophy, the fathers of democracy. Surely they were more enlightened?
Oh, the Greeks were masters of this, Corn. They actually gave us the word "barbarian." For them, it was a linguistic prejudice first. A "barbaros" was just someone who did not speak Greek. To their ears, other languages sounded like "bar-bar-bar," which is where the word comes from. It was basically an onomatopoeia for "gibberish." But it quickly morphed from a language observation into a deep-seated moral and intellectual judgment.
So if you didn't speak the language, you were just... less than?
Precisely. By the time of the Persian Wars in the fifth century B.C.E., the term "barbarian" had become synonymous with being effeminate, cruel, and incapable of self-governance. Aristotle actually doubled down on this in his work "Politics." He argued that some people were "slaves by nature" because they lacked the rational faculty—the "logos"—that Greeks supposedly possessed. He believed that for a Greek to rule over a barbarian was not just a matter of conquest, but a matter of natural law, like a soul ruling a body.
It is wild how they used their intellectual prowess to justify something so primal. It makes me wonder if prejudice is actually a byproduct of our intelligence. We are so good at categorizing things in nature—like "this fruit is safe" and "that one is poisonous"—that we just applied that same logic to other human beings.
That is exactly what social psychologists call the "cognitive miser" theory. Our brains are trying to save energy. Categorizing people into groups is a mental shortcut. The problem is when those shortcuts become rigid, essentialized, and loaded with negative value judgments. And as history progressed, these justifications just got more sophisticated. In the Middle Ages, the primary lens was religious. If you did not follow the right version of the right faith, you were not just wrong, you were an agent of evil. We saw this with the Crusades, the Inquisition, and the horrific "blood libel" myths directed at Jewish communities that we touched on last time.
And then we hit the Enlightenment and the colonial era, which feels like a major turning point. That is when we start seeing the pseudo-scientific justifications for racism, right? It feels like that’s when the "modern" version of bigotry really took shape.
Yes, and that is a particularly dark chapter because it took the prestige of science and used it to cement hierarchy. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, you had people like Carl Linnaeus, the father of taxonomy. When he classified the animal kingdom, he also classified humans. He didn't just list physical traits; he assigned moral ones. He described "Europaeus" as "governed by laws" and "ingenious," while "Afer," or Africans, were "governed by caprice" and "negligent." This was not just random mean-spiritedness. It was a systemic attempt to justify the exploitation of entire continents. If you can convince yourself that the people you are colonizing are biologically different and inferior, you can sleep better at night while you are extracting their resources and labor.
So to Daniel’s first point, it is ancient, it is universal, and it has shifted its "flavor" from religious to linguistic to pseudo-scientific over the millennia. But that leads us to his second question, which is arguably more urgent. Are we living in a world that is becoming more prejudicial and hateful right now? It certainly feels that way when you scroll through social media or watch the news. It feels like the "global village" is actually a global shouting match.
This is the million-dollar question, and as of February twenty-first, twenty-six, the data is complex. There is a real tension here between what we might call the "information density" of our era and the actual frequency of hateful acts. If you look at the long-term historical data, people like Steven Pinker argue that we are actually living in the least violent time in human history. We do not have state-sanctioned gladiator matches or widespread public executions based on ethnicity like we used to in the Middle Ages or the Roman era.
Right, but violence is only one metric of hate. You can have a society that is relatively peaceful on the surface but absolutely boiling with resentment and bigotry underneath. And I think that is what Daniel is getting at. Does the internet act as a megaphone for a small number of people, or is it actually creating more bigots?
I think it is a bit of both. There is this concept called "affective polarization." It is not just that we disagree on policy; it is that we genuinely dislike and distrust the people on the other side. Technology has definitely accelerated this. In the past, if you had a really fringe, hateful opinion, you might be the local crank in your village and everyone would just roll their eyes at you. Today, you can find ten thousand people online who agree with you in ten seconds.
So it validates the prejudice. It gives it a community, a vocabulary, and a sense of "righteousness."
Exactly. It creates these echo chambers where the "other side" is constantly dehumanized. We see the worst five percent of the other group highlighted on our feeds every single day because outrage drives engagement. So our brains, using those same ancient shortcuts we talked about, conclude that the entire group is like that. It is a feedback loop. But we also have to consider that we are more aware of prejudice now than ever before.
That is a good point. Things that were considered totally acceptable fifty years ago—certain slurs, exclusionary policies, casual stereotypes—are now, rightfully, seen as bigoted. So is the amount of hate increasing, or is our threshold for what we tolerate decreasing?
I think our threshold has definitely lowered, which is a sign of moral progress. If you use a thermometer that is more sensitive, you are going to record more instances of heat, even if the room temperature hasn't changed that much. However, we cannot ignore the actual rise of extremist movements globally. According to reports from the United Nations and various human rights watchdogs in twenty-twenty-four and twenty-twenty-five, we have seen a measurable resurgence of ethno-nationalism. From Europe to India to the Americas, there’s a "retreat to the tribe" happening.
Why do you think that is happening now? If we are more educated and more connected than any humans in history, shouldn't we be moving in the opposite direction?
You would think so, but there is a psychological phenomenon called the "backfire effect," and another one called "group threat theory." When people feel like their status, their economic security, or their cultural identity is being threatened by rapid change—whether that is technological, economic, or demographic—they tend to retreat into their primary identities. They become more tribal. And the speed of change in the twenty-first century is unprecedented. We are asking people to adapt to more change in a decade than their ancestors did in three centuries.
So the "global village" ended up making us more aware of our fences rather than tearing them down. It is like we are all living in the same apartment building now, but we are all arguing over the noise in the hallway and who gets to use the laundry room.
That is a great way to put it. We are in close quarters, but we do not necessarily have the social tools to handle that proximity yet. We are using hardware that was designed for small tribes on the savannah to navigate a world of eight billion people. Our "monkey brains" are overwhelmed by the sheer number of "others" we encounter every day.
This brings us to the most important part of Daniel’s prompt. How do we actually combat this? Daniel mentioned that we have the tools for a "Big Brother" style world where we could prosecute every instance of hate speech, but that has its own massive problems with free speech and state overreach. So, what are the meaningful ways to reduce prejudice that actually work? What does the science say?
This is where the research gets really interesting, and it is more hopeful than you might think. One of the most solid theories we have is called the "Contact Hypothesis," or Intergroup Contact Theory. It was first proposed by Gordon Allport in nineteen fifty-four. The basic idea is that under the right conditions, contact between members of different groups will reduce prejudice.
But wait, didn't we just say that proximity in the global village is making things worse? If contact was the answer, wouldn't the internet have fixed everything by now?
That is why the "under the right conditions" part is so crucial. Allport argued that just throwing people together isn't enough. In fact, if the contact is competitive, hostile, or unequal, it makes things worse. For contact to work, you need four specific conditions: equal status between the groups, common goals, intergroup cooperation, and the support of authorities or custom.
So, it is not just standing next to someone on a bus or seeing them in a comment section. It is working with them on a project where you both need each other to succeed.
Exactly. There is a famous, albeit controversial, study called the "Robbers Cave Experiment" from nineteen fifty-four. They took two groups of twelve-year-old boys at a summer camp—the "Eagles" and the "Rattlers"—and basically turned them into rival tribes. They gave them separate cabins and had them compete for prizes. Within days, they were shouting insults, burning each other's flags, and raiding cabins. They had created intense prejudice out of thin air between boys who were otherwise identical.
How did they fix it? Did they just give them a lecture on being nice?
No, lectures didn't work. They tried just bringing them together for movies or meals, but the boys just used those opportunities to fight and throw food. What finally worked was creating "superordinate goals." The researchers secretly sabotaged the camp’s water supply, and both groups had to work together all day to find the leak. Then the camp truck "broke down," and they all had to pull it with a rope together to get their food. By the end of the week, the groups had merged. The prejudice evaporated because they were no longer "us versus them," they were "we."
That is powerful, but how do you scale that to a whole society? We can't exactly sabotage the water supply for the entire world just to make everyone get along. Although, with climate change, maybe we are already in that situation?
You’re not wrong, Corn. Shared global threats could, in theory, be superordinate goals, but only if we perceive them that way. On a smaller scale, we can look at how we structure our institutions. Schools are the big one. There is a technique called the "Jigsaw Classroom," developed by Elliot Aronson in nineteen seventy-one in response to the racial tensions of school integration in Texas. Instead of a traditional competitive classroom where students compete for the teacher's attention, he broke students into small, diverse groups.
How does the "Jigsaw" part work?
Each student in a group is given one unique piece of a lesson—say, a biography of a historical figure—that they have to teach the others. To pass the test, every student needs the information from everyone else in their group. You can't succeed unless your teammates succeed.
So you turn the classmates into essential resources for each other. You literally cannot afford to ignore or devalue the person next to you.
Precisely. And the results were incredible. In schools that used the Jigsaw method, prejudice dropped, self-esteem went up, and academic performance improved, especially for minority students. It turns out that when you are dependent on someone, your brain stops looking for reasons to dislike them and starts looking for ways to understand them. It forces the brain to switch from "category mode" to "individual mode."
It makes me think about how much of our modern life is designed to be solitary or competitive. We buy things online, we work from home, we consume media that reinforces our own views. We are losing those "third places"—the parks, the community centers, the local clubs—where people of different backgrounds used to mingle and cooperate on small things.
That is a huge part of the problem. When we lose those spaces, we lose the chance for our biases to be challenged by reality. We are left with the "parasocial" versions of people we see on screens, which are often caricatures.
What about education more broadly? We always say education is the answer, but what kind of education actually reduces bigotry? Is it just learning facts about other cultures? Because I know plenty of "educated" people who are still incredibly narrow-minded.
Facts help, but they aren't a silver bullet. You can know a lot about a culture’s food and history and still hold deep-seated prejudices. The more effective approach is what is called "social-emotional learning" and "perspective-taking" exercises. There is fascinating research showing that when people are asked to write a story from the perspective of a member of an out-group—to really imagine their daily life, their struggles, their feelings—their unconscious bias scores actually go down. It’s about building the "empathy muscle."
I wonder if storytelling and media have a bigger role to play here. I mean, think about how much our perceptions of different groups are shaped by the movies we watch. If every villain in a movie looks a certain way or speaks a certain language, that’s a "lesson" we’re learning without realizing it.
Absolutely. This is called "parasocial contact." If you don't have a friend from a certain group in real life, a well-developed, complex character in a TV show can actually serve as a proxy. It's not as effective as real-life contact, but it can prime the brain to be more open. The key, though, is that the character has to be a human being with flaws and virtues, not a stereotype. Stereotypes just reinforce the existing mental shortcuts.
So, we have contact theory, common goals, and perspective-taking. But what about the people who are already deeply radicalized? The ones who are already in extremist groups or spending sixteen hours a day in hateful forums? You probably can't just put them in a Jigsaw Classroom and expect it to work.
That is much harder, but there are organizations like "Parents for Peace" or "Life After Hate" that are doing this work. They often use "formers"—people who were once in extremist groups themselves. The core of their approach is usually not arguing about ideology. You can't argue someone out of a position they didn't logic themselves into. Instead, they focus on the underlying emotional needs that the extremist group was fulfilling.
What kind of needs are we talking about? Is it just about hate?
Usually, it’s about belonging, purpose, and a sense of significance. Most people join extremist groups because they feel lost, marginalized, or invisible. The group gives them a clear enemy to blame for their problems and a community that "values" them. To get them out, you have to provide a different way to meet those needs. It's about building a bridge back to society rather than just pushing them further away with prosecution and shame. Shame often just drives people deeper into the arms of the extremist group.
That is a really important distinction. Prosecution might stop a specific act of violence, and it’s necessary for justice, but it doesn't stop the hate. In fact, it might even fuel the narrative of martyrdom and persecution within the group. It’s like cutting the head off a hydra.
Right. It’s the difference between treating the symptom and treating the cause. We need laws against hate crimes and incitement to violence, of course. But if we want a less hateful world, we have to look at the social fabric. We have to ask why people feel so disconnected that they find hate attractive in the first place. We have to look at economic inequality, the loneliness epidemic, and the way our digital platforms are designed.
It feels like a lot of this comes down to empathy, but I’ve heard you mention before that empathy can be a bit of a double-edged sword.
It is. There is a great book by Paul Bloom called "Against Empathy," where he argues that empathy is actually biased and parochial. We naturally feel more empathy for people who look like us, speak like us, or share our background. If we rely only on empathy, we might end up being "kind" to our own group while being indifferent or even cruel to others. He suggests we should rely more on "rational compassion."
What’s the difference?
Rational compassion means you don't necessarily need to "feel" someone's pain to decide that they deserve respect and fair treatment. You do it because it is a consistent moral principle. You don't have to "love" everyone to acknowledge their human rights. It moves the conversation from a fluctuating emotion to a steady principle.
I like that. It’s more sustainable. So, looking at where we stand today compared to previous eras, what is the verdict, Herman? Are we winning or losing the war against bigotry?
I think we are in a period of intense transition. We have inherited these ancient, tribal brains, and we have built a world that is far more connected and complex than those brains were ever meant to handle. We are seeing a lot of friction because of that. But we also have a deeper understanding of human psychology than ever before. We know what works to reduce prejudice. We have the "medicine"—the contact theory, the cooperative models, the perspective-taking tools. The challenge is having the political and social will to actually implement those things on a large scale.
It is like we have the cure, but we are still arguing over whether or not we are actually sick. Or worse, some people are making a lot of money by keeping us sick.
Exactly. The "outrage economy" is a real thing. Hate is very engaging. It keeps you clicking, it keeps you watching, and it keeps you voting. But it is a hollow kind of engagement. It’s like eating mental junk food. It feels intense in the moment, but it leaves the society malnourished and ill.
You know, it reminds me of that old Cherokee legend about the two wolves fighting inside every person. One is full of anger, envy, greed, and lies. The other is full of joy, peace, love, and truth. The grandson asks, "Which wolf wins?" and the grandfather says, "The one you feed."
It is a classic for a reason. And as a society, we have to decide which wolf we are feeding with our algorithms, our school systems, and our political rhetoric. If we feed the wolf of "us versus them," we shouldn't be surprised when it starts biting. But we can choose to feed the other one. We can choose to design our digital and physical spaces for cooperation rather than conflict.
So, for our listeners who are feeling overwhelmed by the amount of hate they see online, what is the takeaway? What can one person actually do in their daily life to combat this "ancient machine"?
I think the first thing is to be aware of your own brain’s shortcuts. When you see a headline that makes you feel a surge of anger toward a whole group of people, stop and ask yourself: "Am I being fed a stereotype? Am I seeing the worst five percent of this group? Who benefits from me feeling this way?" Awareness is the first step toward de-programming those tribal instincts.
And the second thing?
Actively seek out those "common goal" opportunities. Don't just live in your bubble. Join a community garden, volunteer for a local project, join a hobby group that isn't politically or ideologically charged. Talk to people as individuals, not as representatives of a category. It sounds simple, but it’s the only thing that has ever actually worked to break down the walls of prejudice.
And maybe be a bit more skeptical of the "outrage machine." If a piece of content is designed to make you hate someone you’ve never met, it is probably not giving you the whole truth. It’s probably just trying to sell you something—even if it’s just an advertisement for more hate.
Definitely. Media literacy is a huge part of the solution. We need to understand how we are being manipulated by the attention economy. We need to be the masters of our tools, not the other way around.
This has been a really profound dive, Herman. I think Daniel’s prompt pushed us to look at some uncomfortable truths about our history, but it also pointed toward some very practical ways forward. It is not just about "being nice," it is about structural changes in how we interact and how we perceive the world.
Exactly. It is about designing our world to encourage our best instincts rather than our worst. It is a long game, Corn. It’s the longest game in human history. But it is the only one worth playing if we want to survive as a global civilization.
Well, I think that is a good place to wrap this one up. We covered a lot of ground, from ancient Sumerian city-states and Egyptian footstools to modern summer camps and the "Jigsaw Classroom."
And we didn't even get to the Zoroastrians or the Casta system of colonial Spain this time! But maybe in a future episode. There is always more history to uncover when it comes to how humans draw lines.
There is always more to explore. If you have been enjoying "My Weird Prompts," we would really appreciate it if you could leave a review on your favorite podcast app. It genuinely helps us reach more people and keep these conversations going. It helps us feed the right wolf, so to speak.
It really does. And thank you to Daniel for sending in such a challenging and important prompt. It is a follow-up we definitely needed to have after our last session.
You can find all our past episodes and a way to get in touch with us at myweirdprompts.com. We are also on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and wherever else you get your audio fix. If you want to drop us a line directly with your own "weird prompt," you can email us at show at myweirdprompts.com.
We love hearing from you guys. Your questions are what keep this show moving. Until next time, I am Herman Poppleberry.
And I am Corn. Thanks for listening to "My Weird Prompts."
Goodbye everyone.
Goodbye.
