We judge each other on first impressions and externals. Especially these days, in the era of optics and signalling and triggered judgmentalism. We shoot first, and ask questions afterwards. We mis-identify, and accuse others based on fear and not facts.
We profile each other, we screen the world through pre-fabricated filters. Like the games we played in childhood - which wooden block fits into the corresponding shaped space? Which is the odd one out? What are the 12 differences between this picture and this one? How can we tell an enemy from a friend?
People with fake online profiles infiltrate groups and pages and chats, with specific or generalized agendas: to create mayhem and incite hatred, or ‘for the lolz’.
As shown in Arthur Miller’s play, The Crucible, about the witch burnings in Salem in North America, people start interpersonal conflict which escalated into systemic violence often for personal reasons: a petty grievance dressed up to look like a matter of social interest, requiring a public service announcement status. Hidden by policies of political correctness, hatred festers, semi-smothered and choked down.
Two terms of a minority race President in modern North America, and the 45th incumbent signals that the hatred is ok. Hatred and dislike of certain categories of people are even modeled and rewarded and given official approval. ‘We have to protect what is of value. To the majority.’ God help you if you and yours fall outside the imposed demarcations of what will be respected and protected.
We don’t often get close enough to really know anyone in the digitalised world, so this globalization of humanity is a mirrormaze. We fall back on what we know, our loyal band of followers, the true believers, our echo chamber compatriots. Our tribe.
In Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, when the conspirators kill their former leader, although they have convinced themselves that they are patriots saving glorious Rome from tyrannical dictatorship, they have a bad optics moment. They are seen by the people standing over the dead body of murdered Caesar, covered in his blood. So many against one.
It does not take long for Mark Antony to sway the people against them - in a brilliant utilization of rhetoric and leveraging of groupthink. Soon the bloodstained self-styled patriots are running for their lives. A tiny scene, one of the shortest in Shakespeare, shows a poet being ganged up on by a mob. His name is Cinna - the same name as one of the conspirators. But not the same man. He protests that he is not the person they are looking for, but his assertion is overpowered. He will do. He fits the profile. He is interrogated in the street, overpowered, and killed, in ACT III, Scene 3, of the play:

It is too easy to make mistakes like this. To mis-speak, to mis-identify, to get the wrong man. Our emotions colour our assumptions, and if we utter them without thought or filter, and act on them without awareness or concern for the foreseeable consequence, we can make terrible and unrecoverable errors.
A profile of someone is not only easily faked by someone creating it, it is also easily mis-read by those seeing it.
Jumping to conclusions about others is what we do in haste and laziness and when we feel we have to make choices in a hurry. It is not a sport. It costs reputations, and it costs lives. We are being urged in these difficult times to be restrained and to be cautious. Every day, everyone of us has a choice in every situation in which we encounter another: to act on fear and vent our frustrations, or to offer the benefit of forbearance; to check our facts before sharing information, to check our privilege before making assumptions.
To be sure that when we act, we do so with mindfulness, and not in anger, fear, dislike or hatred.
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