"I mean I think children love the idea that there are different viewpoints and different words for things and different worlds. And the more that they pretend to be other people, the harder it is for them to hate them and misunderstand them when they grow up"
About this Quote
West is sneaking a civic manifesto into a soft, actorly observation about kids at play. He starts with the lure: children "love the idea" of multiplicity - different words, different worlds - because novelty is pleasurable, but also because it grants power. Naming things differently is a kind of backstage access to reality. Once you realize that language is a set of choices, not a single natural law, the door opens to empathy and to skepticism about anyone claiming their version is the only one.
The hinge is pretend. West treats role-play not as escapism but as training: a rehearsal space where identity becomes flexible. That’s an actor’s bias, yes, but it’s also a cultural argument about how prejudice forms. Hate often feeds on distance and on lazy categories; pretending to be "other people" forces a child to do the one thing bigotry tries to avoid - inhabit motive. Even briefly, even imperfectly, you have to ask: What does this person want? What scares them? What do they know that I don’t?
The line "the harder it is" is doing work, too. West isn’t selling a fairy-tale cure; he’s describing a friction that makes cruelty less convenient. The subtext is an indictment of adult life: we educate children out of play, out of languages, out of viewpoint-switching, then act surprised when misunderstanding hardens into ideology. In a moment shaped by culture-war simplifications and algorithmic sorting, his point lands as both hopeful and pointed: empathy isn’t a trait you either have or don’t; it’s a practice you can lose.
The hinge is pretend. West treats role-play not as escapism but as training: a rehearsal space where identity becomes flexible. That’s an actor’s bias, yes, but it’s also a cultural argument about how prejudice forms. Hate often feeds on distance and on lazy categories; pretending to be "other people" forces a child to do the one thing bigotry tries to avoid - inhabit motive. Even briefly, even imperfectly, you have to ask: What does this person want? What scares them? What do they know that I don’t?
The line "the harder it is" is doing work, too. West isn’t selling a fairy-tale cure; he’s describing a friction that makes cruelty less convenient. The subtext is an indictment of adult life: we educate children out of play, out of languages, out of viewpoint-switching, then act surprised when misunderstanding hardens into ideology. In a moment shaped by culture-war simplifications and algorithmic sorting, his point lands as both hopeful and pointed: empathy isn’t a trait you either have or don’t; it’s a practice you can lose.
Quote Details
| Topic | Learning |
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