Prejudices and stereotypes how to define them?

Before writing any kind of essay I try to find out if I understand the terms well to interpret them further. That’s why I made a small research on what is called “a prejudice”, found some examples on the Internet. Here what the Internet say: “An unfavorable opinion formed against a person or group based on a stereotype”. As there is another term that is an obstacle for fully understanding the statement – stereotype. So another effort and now I two definitions: “A generalized image of a person or group, which does not acknowledge individual differences and which is often prejudicial to that person or group”. What is so strange in these two definitions they use “prejudicial” in defining stereotype and “stereotype” in prejudice. But that is not the case.
If we take the second definition as a true one so it means that economics make the biggest mistake in the world by making models and examining its behaviour in theories. Because why it is good to generalize people for the needs of money and do not do this for simplicity of understanding other people? Main reason why we want to understand people is in my opinion that we want to predict their next steps in order to make a counter step and win in every case. If you don’t win you do not exist. Even if you lose you gain experience and when a child didn’t succeed to be born it is not a failure, he/she got a chance to not deal with all the problems of the world. So, as I said you win in every single case. Yes, it is a paradox, because why do we need to win /fight if we all are winners. Well, if people knew that there will be no jealousy, no wars and no poverty and no sad people. But, as we have no information about it we can only struggle. Nevertheless, going back to prediction we understand that is impossible to deal with everybody in order to learn their individual characteristics. We take 10 people out of 1000 that we met and make calculations about the traits of their characters then we combine similar traits and discover a formula that in our describes all those people who we examined. However, we neglect those traits that do not fit the formula as this will mean that we had done something wrong and we need to rethink over it again and again. We have no time and will for that for it can lead us to nothing which is very freighting. That formula is kind of a gun against society and having nothing can result in failure. We teach our children to save their time and others to be able to talk the same language so that save time that can be crucial in the battle. Thus, we have a “gun” and we point it at everyone who comes after that last one participated in the calculation. If he or she suits the description we get sure that it is really working, but if it doesn’t work we either wait for the next specimen or modify our theory with slight changes which we can exclude any other time. For example, even recognizing a human in my opinion is a stereotype. Let’s consider that there are 3 people in the room. Two of them are hostages of the third one (the terrorist). Now those hostages isolate themselves from the terrorist as the latter also think of the two differently. A second later there happens an earthquake and all those people have to leave the room as soon as possible. In this case “we are all human” mode turns on and everyone tries to help each other to get out. A second later everything calms down; one of the people is dead while the terrorist turns out to be an alien. What will our ex-hostage think? Well, at least we all are from this life so there is no need to give up. If we look at the smiles (for example, this one :) ) everyone will see a face, but this is just a circle with two dots in it and a line. Even if we do not put a “mouth” on the face it will depict a face for those who have seen a face in their life. This is a stereotype as well as telling that all homosexual men act like a woman and take an excess care of themselves or woman are created for being a wife. And I do not really understand why people care about stereotypes so much and think that it is a bad thing. It is natural to put a line between yourself and others. It is natural to divide all people around into groups as we do it perfectly. I would like to illustrate that below.

Me => Gender => Family => Friends => Work => City => Nation => Earth

There also can be other groupings but they are secondary as we define ourselves with those who lived in previous centuries and even years, we think we are different from our parents. But these stereotypes are based on these main ones. For example, new generation thinks that it is different from the previous one. This is a combination of “Me” and “Friends”. People with glasses are smarter than others or women are weaker than men.
As to prejudices if stereotypes are based on some kind of facts prejudice is a child of imagination. I would not call “blond stereotype” a stereotype because I assume it to be a prejudice. On which facts is it based on? Yes, there can be a person who is blond and stupid, but there are a lot of people who are stupid as well with being not blond. Then we need to call all people stupid. So it is a prejudice rather than a stereotype I suppose. Holocaust is also a result of not stereotypes of one nation being better than other, but on an opinion that it can be true.
In conclusion, I would like to sum up all the information mentioned above. A stereotype is based on natural consequences of our life struggle when a prejudice is just an opinion that strengthened its positions in someone’s mind. If a stereotype can help us to survive, prejudice can only harm others and in some cases us, too. May be I didn’t get the notion of these two terms right and made wrong conclusions cause all of the written are only my ideas and are not read in books or the Internet. By the way, there is a stereotype that it is good to read books, but I think that people can get information not only by reading (some even do not read useful books or do not get the right idea out from it or may be worse, they interpret everything in a different way as Marxist often do with Capital), but also by listening to others and observing the nature, people and everything that surrounds us. Sometimes it is even better because you get the information right from the source of it not from a person who got it from that source, too. Reading a book is like going to a concert and watching the entire concert from a smartphone’s camera. Well, it is real nowadays. However, it is good to watch a concert that was held two years ago, but you will not get the same impression as if you were there. This is the same for books: you can read a book about Ancient Greece, but you will never be able to “feel” that epoque.

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• 08.12.2016. Prejudices and stereotypes how to define them?