Contrast: (v) to compare to show differences

 If dinosaurs had figured out how to get along with each other instead of hanging out in packs of those who were similar in style, then I don’t know whether the human race would have been given the chance to occupy the planet.

So perhaps it’s time for us to learn from the dinosaur’s mistake, which is:

If raptors hang out with raptors, and the T. Rex only hangs around with other T. Rexes, pretty soon everyone who doesn’t have exactly the same height, weight and scaly skin that you do is an enemy—to be attacked and eaten.

Dinosaurs were very successful at contrasting their differences, which stalled cooperation and promoted conflict.

Nowadays, some ingenious individual with a doctorate sits in his or her laboratory and decides the best way for human beings to get along is to contrast their differences, teaching us to be tolerant based upon those discoveries.

Lo and behold, just like the dinosaurs, once things are contrasted, we start wanting to hang around those who look, act, agree, walk and talk just like us—and rather than having an epiphany of appreciation for those who are different, we consciously, or even unconsciously, alienate them as inferior, and eventually contrive ways to attack and hurt them.

If dinosaurs had realized they were all dinosaurs—that they were covered with similar skin texture, though it may have differed in color—they could have ruled the world for many more millennia.

But they contrasted.

They found differences.

And in finding them they created adversaries instead of commonality.

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