The first time I ever tasted a raw onion, I cried my eyes out because I hated it so much. The burning taste was so vile I threw up. Since then, I have never wanted raw onions anywhere near me. I don't keep them in my house. I make sure they are not near my food when I order in restaurants. This is how I protect myself from danger against the havoc that onion wreaked on my taste buds.
I have categorized that onion into the "dangerous" box in my mind. Along with power tools and spiders.
Power tools, raw onions and spiders don't change. They can vary, but basically in their molecular or genetic make up, they are elements which do not change.
Humans posses a very clear defense mechanism called categorization. The world is far too large to encompass without it. Remember when you learned to sort in kindergarten... circles go with the circles, squares go with the squares? Categorization is a way for humans to deal with the vast world in front of us.
Sometime, someone came across a member of a certain race or religion and made a decision about the way that person affected their life. Defense mechanisms arose and they placed that person in a "dangerous" or "safe" category in their mind, just in the same way that I did with the onion.
Humans whose brains have evolved past kindergarten however, can understand that onions are objects and people are people. Where raw onions have no ability to change or evolve, humans posses many different variations in personality, upbringing, traits, intelligence etc.
So basically either you're smart enough to realize that you can put all onions in one box but you can't do that with people....
Or you're still in kindergarten putting squares with squares, circles with circles, onions with onions and power tools with power tools.
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