The brain and judgement

Subject: The brain and judgement.

What does the Bosnian genocide or the Rwandan genocide, where neighbours with long standing historical relationships turn on each other in a frenzy of killing, what does it tell us about the human brain and how malleable it can be.

Prejudice is a manufactured trait in which we judge others in a way which disadvantages them and sets them apart from our judgement of others. The brain becomes influenced by factors outside its own local cognisance, it becomes brainwashed by propaganda, by being fed information that is often false and design to promote a sense of superiority or disgust even fear of people. We are told to recognise people by differences such as colour or racial profiles. These profiles are stigmatised and promoted politically for the purposes of distinguishing certain sectors of a population, usually with the intention of doing them harm.

But how can the brain be so easily manipulated by outside stimuli to perform in ways which previously would have been thought abhorrent. How could the Serbs turn on their neighbours the Bosnians or the Germans turn on the Jews with a ferocity or a disdain for knowing what was going on.
The socialising process we all learn from our mothers knee is based on a set of rules and experiences which we inculcate depending on the stimulation we receive when we are growing up. Without the stimulation there is a blank hole in our personality which in later life, like a cavity in ones tooth attracts tooth decay, becomes a cause for a decay in our willingness to try to understand and question the propaganda which floods into our consciousness  particularly these days through the internet and the colloquially termed, false news.
The foundation for our social understanding is communication. To communicate is to find out for ourselves about the world and the people around us, to engage in conversation and to find that we have so much more in common than we previously believed and that the propaganda is seen for what it is, a decisive tool used by others to support their own agenda.
Of course on a one to one basis this is the way to proceed through your life but one has to acknowledge that whilst you have maybe rid yourself of your bias and prejudice the person who you were perhaps prejudiced towards have to rid themselves of their prejudice also.
Sadly it is all too easy for the pack mentality to reassert its self and the contagion of prejudice and misunderstanding re-emerge but the more we go out of our way to talk and engage to all and sundry, or at least that part of society to which we have some contact, the conversation will add to our collective knowledge that generally speaking people are much like ourselves and in the act of reaching out means that they too are liberated in their prejudice towards you.