How Culture and Bigotry change the BRAIN
“Bigotry Is a form of cultural pollution”
A bigot’s ‘rights’ ignore how culture shapes our brains.
“Culture gets under your skin, and deep into your brain. From the perspective of neuroscience, this idea is called “neuroplasticity”. In our early years, our brains and minds are highly plastic. They depend on sensory input to grow and develop. In this phase of lives, our brains and minds take shape around the major habitual features of our environments. By early adulthood, our minds and brains have developed elaborate structures. We have more ability to act on and change our environment. But the cultural shaping of our brains and minds predispose us to act on and interact with our environment in line with our established ways of seeing the world. In the context of our biological dependence on culture, federal attorney-general George Brandis’ “right to be a bigot” is the right to pollute the shared cultural environment in which we live and raise children. It is the right to express views that, however much you feel are your own, you came by, largely unconsciously, simply in the process of living. If you then have a nice big megaphone through which to broadcast your bigotry, your impact on that cultural environment will be significant. From my many friends who have suffered its slings and arrows, I know that the content of bigotry is, above all, very dull. It’s very “same old, same old”. The pain of it comes from its capacity to narrow both individual and cultural horizons.” ref
To read more check out the link: “A bigot’s ‘rights’ ignore how culture shapes our brains”