Recognition of Pattern Isn’t Discrimination, It’s an Instinctive Survival Mechanism

Don’t allow anyone gaslight you into suppressing it

Photo by little plant on Unsplash

I was watching a documentary a few months ago about a pride of lions that made a nice kill and ate till their stomachs were literally bulging. Needless to say they wouldn’t be hunting or kill anything else for a long time, at least until the food digests.

The pride laid under a tree, lazying about, until one of them got up and made a bee line towards an almost dried up lake. There were a few zebras taking a drink and some baboons in the trees nearby, seemingly without a care in the world.

The lion got closer and in a flash, all the animals scattered and perched at a safe distance. After a few minutes with the water, the lion turned around and headed back to the pride.

Now what was the purpose of this? Well I need you to observe the behavior of the zebras and how they were able to scamper first before even thinking. The lion didn’t have any intention to eat any zebra, it couldn’t, even if it tried to, but the zebras didn’t wait around to find out.

For hundreds if not thousands of years, lions have always preyed on zebras, so the general consensus based on the prevalent situations shaped the minds of the zebras to always be wary of lions anywhere, anytime, it’s a survival mechanism installed to protect and continue the propagation of their species.

In other words, if I wanted to anthropomorphise the actions of those zebras, I would say they made a stereotypical judgment, and by the looks of it, they were wrong regarding the true intentions of the lion. However, it’s better to be wrong than to be a carcass. If zebras were to wait around to find out the true intentions of any lion that came their way, they’d be a lot less in population.

Now of course with humans there’s a lot more complexity involved. We have the ability to look at things from a more nuanced perspective. We’re dealing with common sense, logic, and emotions as opposed to primordial instincts. But no matter how much we try, there are just some instinctive behaviours we can’t, and dare I say, shouldn’t try to shake off, most especially if it involves our safety and overall wellbeing.

One of them is stereotype, and making judgments based on them. We as humans make stereotypical assumptions all the time. Imagine you needed to move your refrigerator around and needed someone to help you with it. On one hand there’s a huge, gym addict in his early 20s and on the other a scrawny 15 yr old boy. Don’t lie, who would you rather ask to come move your fridge?

I suppose you’d choose the guy in his early 20s because you’ve automatically associated his physique with superior physical strength. You don’t know the true medical condition of both of them, the gym dude could be battling with muscle wastage and only going to the gym to take steroids, and photos. The point is that you assessed him, looked into your mental library, saw that people who look like that are typically strong, and then made your final judgement, all within a few seconds. That’s stereotyping.

We need stereotypes, we need to follow our gut and not feel guilty about it. There are sometimes we won’t be afforded the luxury of nuance, and will have to make quick judgement calls. We’re not psychics, we can’t read minds, so the only thing we can use to make quick decisions are available data, statistics, and patterns.

Do not let anybody emotionally manipulate you into feeling bad for not letting your guard down in a situation that made you uncomfortable. If it involves your safety and security, my advice is that you should make ruthless stereotypes, no matter how racist or bigoted it might seem. Your gut is often spot on with its assessment.