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Over the years as I have been part of various friends groups, I've come to gather the following observations:
1) You can't separate politics and worldview from your friendship. Political leanings may not seem a big deal to many, but in India we run on a different tangent (1/n)
1) You can't separate politics and worldview from your friendship. Political leanings may not seem a big deal to many, but in India we run on a different tangent (1/n)
2) The nature of the humour in the group is important too. You can't have bigoted humour and pass that on as 'normal'/'playful' in any way. This includes jokes on gender, colour, race, caste and religion, among other things. (2/n)
3) It's mostly in the later teen years when you realise problematic friendships that have been picked up from school/college that are still lingering around as part of your friends circles. In such a case, you can either try to correct your friends' behaviour or walk away. (3/n)
4) With that being said, you do have a moral obligation to make an effort to help such friends to unlearn and realearn certain concepts, like you have. However if you don't see them respecting such efforts, there's no point beating around the same bush. (4/n)
5) Don't make yourself feel guilty about the fact that you'd lose some precious friendships over such 'trivial' issues. You rather have 2 friends who share the same belief system about what's ethical and what's not, rather than functioning around a large circle of bigots. (5/n)
6) Ultimately, the choice lies in your hands. By functioning a problematic friends group, you either get labelled as the pedantic individual who always wishes to 'correct' others, or you're just whiny and want all the attention to yourself. Scope for reformation is low. (6/n)
Therefore, use your privilege and social capital wisely, even with those you befriend. As much we don't realise it, such interactions hold a huge impact on we generally turn out as individuals in the larger scheme of things.
Thanks for reading this thread. (n/n)
Thanks for reading this thread. (n/n)
