Generalizations

If someone said, "All engineers are the same. They're just working to further enrich themselves and to screw over the rest of us," you would respond that this is entirely incorrect, and that the speaker seems to know very little about engineers. And, of course, you'd be right.

The thing is, the statement is just as wrong if you substitute any other group for engineers. "All billionaires are the same," "all Jews are the same," "all Belgians are the same," "all Republicans are the same" -- all of those statements are making the same mistake: they are assigning characteristics to people based on their perceived membership in a group, rather than regarding them as individuals.

It's an over-generalization, an over-simplification, and it's mistaken, about 100% of the time.

Now, maybe you would respond, "What about Nazis? Weren't they all the same in some very important ways?"

I'm glad you asked! No, they weren't. You know Oskar Schindler, the guy played by Liam Neeson in that movie, the guy who saved all of those people's lives and sabotaged the German war effort in WWII?

He was a Nazi. A member of the Nazi Party. He joined the party for business reasons, and he started to work against it when he could no longer ignore the death camps and stuff.

Individual human beings will constantly surprise you, if you go to the trouble of paying attention to them.