Judgement and Hate

     Firstly, I'd like to say that I am ever so sorry for not blogging nearly as consistently as I set out to. Recently moved, and school is drowning my writing creativity :P Enough excuses....

     Half way through this school year, I started at a new school. I only go to class twice a week, but when I do I'm hanging out with high school students, teenagers, human beings (I know crazy right). When I first came to the school I kinda shut everyone out, just until I got comfortable; but once I did I noticed something strange.
     Negativity. Everywhere. I know I know "Rane they're teenagers, like you, but full of angst and rebellion", but I never thought teenagers to be like that, even before I was one. Teenagers are weird, some of us think we're invisible, and can take on the world, and others think of ourselves as the epitome of awful. I realized that there are both of those kinds of people in my classes, and some people who are in between. But one pattern I learned is that everyone has an opinion ("no duh Rane, everyone has opinions"), but get this, they all have at least one negative opinion. They all have something they are very much against.
     A couple weeks ago, we had a dispute on gay marriage in English. We were comparing gay marriage rights to the Salem Witch Trials, and stumbled upon a dispute about raising children with two same sex parents and such, and I was surprised at how much homophobia and judgement was in that conversation (If you want I could make a blog post about that entire thing). Something to take into consideration, is that those may be the opinions of their parents speaking, those opinions were taught to them at a young age and they grew up thinking they're right. The conversation escalated quickly, and I was fighting back every urge to storm out of that classroom, but I realized that to make it stop I just had to shut up.
     Today, in art, I was talking with a boy and girl from my class about religion and beliefs and opinions on certain things, and what not. When it was brought up that the boy didn't like people of a certain religion (for the privacy of this person I won't reveal any names or the religion). When I heard this information, I was shocked. I asked him why and after a bit of conversation, he came to the conclusion that most of the people he hates, are of that religion. In all honesty I thought that was ridiculous (I didn't say that of course), it almost seemed silly. So I said "well you don't like mean people, the religion has nothing to do with it". He replied with "No, but..." and went on with an argument that didn't make sense to me, I kept cutting in, trying to get him to understand that what he was saying didn't give a good enough reason to hate everyone from a certain religion. But finally I just said "Never mind I'm not even gonna try" and I shut my pie hole.
     I got a bit side tracked from my main topic (that tends to happen when I write at 11:30 at night) but my point, is that you can't change someone else's opinion. In the end, pretty much everyone thinks that they're right. And since it does no good to keep trying to persuade your opinion to someone, it wont' work; so what do we do? Stop loud mouthing your opinions for everyone to hear (harsh, but true). If someone doesn't specifically ask you your opinion, don't give it. You never know who you're going to offend, or how it could affect someone.

     I hope this all made sense, just something I wanted to throw together before bed.