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I truly think this is how George Lucas originally envisioned Star Wars.

The best defense the human brain has against this is to completely dismiss those external ideas by deeming them too stupid to even allow inside. I am as guilty of this as any person who has ever lived.

It's why we look at powerful or famous people and slap that label on them when they do something we just flat-out don't agree with. George W. Bush is a perfect example of that. Regardless of whether or not you disagree with his politics, just blowing him off as "dumb" is about the worst way to debate his worth. Yep, he couldn't speak in public for shit, but he did something most of us couldn't do: graduate Yale, get a business degree from Harvard and become president. Dismissing him as just stupid closes the door on actual conversation about what made him such a huge disappointment in the eyes of the average American.

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We do it with everything that's locked inside that core belief system. My atheist friends constantly insult the intellect of my religious friends and vice versa. Liberals and conservatives. Anti-abortion and pro-choice. Pro gay marriage and people who are all like, "Ew, those people touch each others' matching genitals."

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I'm just sayin'.

We've been utilizing these dismissals for so long that I think we've lost sight as to what it actually is and what it does to those we use them on. I'd like to say that we should all stop doing it, but I'm not entirely sure that's possible. But at the very least we can catch ourselves doing it, right? Keep your eyes open and see how many times you do it in a week. I think you'd be surprised.

For more Cheese, check out 5 Ways to Avoid Your Terrible Parents' Mistakes and 5 Ways We Ruined the Occupy Wall Street Generation.