If you are a Muslim you are a terrorist.

If you are a Scot you are mean and frugal.

Fat people are greedy.

I’m Anglo-Irish so it is a foregone conclusion that I am socially repressed (no sex please we’re British) and a dumb Paddy.

There are thousands of examples of these stereotypes in existence, ranging from banal to savage.

Stereotyping is essentially a defensive mechanism. It is a way of denigrating your enemies or opponents to weaken them in your mind and make yourself feel much better about who you are and what you represent.

Stereotyping in the Christian ethos begins with the concept of original sin. According to that doctrine, we are all sinners simply because we are human.

That is one of the silliest propositions ever devised but think of all the hurt, guilt and suffering it has caused.

Stereotyping is also a much used political tool. Perhaps the worst case in recent times was the demonising of Jews by Adolph Hitler. Pogroms had occurred before Hitler but he took extermination to a completely new level.

Despite the horrendous consequences of Hitler’s ‘final solution’, anti-Jewish sentiment still exists and appears to be growing. The human race has very fickle memories.

At any level, be it simply recognising what appears to be a cultural or racial trait, or conducting industrial scale genocide, stereotyping is a not only dangerous but misleading.

At the beginning of this essay, I wrote about the stereotyping that existed in Papua New Guinea prior to independence.

These days, this has been watered down a lot, perhaps because tribalism has weakened and there has been more cross-cultural marriage. But stereotyping still exists, particularly in politics.

One of the reasons there are no women in Papua New Guinea’s parliament can be put down to gender and political stereotyping.

There are even aspects of stereotyping in the current fracas over who should be PNG’s prime minister.

People see Peter O’Neill as largely representative of a particular regional highlands bloc of politicians.

The so-called opposition, on the other hand, has a lot of coastal people in its ranks.

Commentators are drawing conclusions about what Peter O’Neill might do based on his reputation as a devious and stubborn Southern Highlander.

If he was a coastal man people would think he’ll give up and resign fairly soon.

Expecting people to perform according to type is no way to run anything, be it a nation or a book club.

We know, or think we know, there is some truth in stereotyping and often make important decisions on that basis.

But there are always very many people who don’t conform to type. As the saying goes, some people lead, some people follow, but some people don’t.

They are the ones you have to be wary about.

And guess what? They tend to be our heroes and heroines.