What I'm interested in...

I'm passionate about lots of things, material and non-material, but one thing that always gets me talking, and one thing that I always have an opinion on is human rights. I am a strong believer in religious tolerance, equal rights, and peaceful coexistance. I sometimes feel like I might be the only one my age who actually thinks about these things on a regular basis (outside of school) but that doesn't necessarily stop me from stubbornly defending my beliefs to others. In my family, we're mostly a bunch of white, christian, republicans...except for me. Ahaha, but I think they've learned to deal with my liberal hippie-esque views on society. Now here's where the ranting begins. I feel that in our world today, people say that they are tolerant of another group of people, but really judge them and feel superior to them. And yes, I will confess that I have done this before. But I've learned that where you're from or what group you're a part of hardly defines you at all. And scientifically, we're all members of the human species. We all go through the same trials and good times and emotions. For example, a white jewish man might have a black muslim co-worker, and both would say that they "respect each other," but that doesn't mean that they would ever see each other on the same level. They're held back by religious barriers which can easily be broken. All that they need is tolerance. Dictionary.com defines tolerance as: a fair, objective, and permissive attitude toward those whose opinions, practices, race, religion, nationality, etc., differ from one's own; freedom from bigotry. So basically, they need to see each other as people who work at the same place, and have the potential of connecting on the same level. Everyone has the potential to love another person, and you might discover that you truly care about someone that you thought was completely different from you. But you tolerate each others differences; you look past those to see that we're all the same. We all have rights, feelings, and an inherent ability to see only flaws in people. All we have to do...is forget them.