[1] Racism occurs as acts of prejudice and discrimination by one person against another motivated DNF at 18%.
Some simple distinctions need to be made.
[1] Racism occurs as acts of prejudice and discrimination by one person against another motivated by a value judgment based on racial characteristics.
Absent acts of prejudice and discrimination, racism ceases to have ground in which to exist.
[2] The foundational belief of racists everywhere is that everyone's racial characteristics are the most important determinator of their value as a human being.
[3] Every social division enables a pathway for political and financial exploitation. People seeking to exploit others will inflame social division for personal gain. Race is an easy 'go to,' for anyone seeking to exploit social division for personal gain.
[4] Grounding our relationships in a deep appreciation of our common humanity enables empathy and compassion, breaks down the walls of social division, and disempowers the mechanisms of exploitation.
[5] The most powerful antidote to racism is indifference to racial characteristics.
My advice: practice indifference to our differences - especially to the incredibly shallow and superficial differences of our appearance.
When I DNF books, I have a policy of not rating them, unless I have DNF'ed because the book is egregiously offensive. In which case, I will assign one star. This book qualifies for this category.
Robin DiAngelo has obviously gone to some effort to validate, reinforce, and generally inflate the tires of the fundamental belief informing rabid racists everywhere: that racial characteristics are important.
She studiously ignores the possibility of indifference to racial characteristics as a natural antidote that subverts racist practices.
Her philosophy defines your immutable and unavoidable race as the key determinant of your life. You have no control over your destiny. Your life will occur in accordance with your race. You are disempowered and without agency.
The best you can hope for is to be aware of your racial destiny. For which awareness you can sign up for one of her classes for a nifty fee.
What a toxic, self-serving ideology on display this mess of race hatred is.
I don't fit inside her ideological box, and it's healthier for everyone to step outside her toxic ideology and grasp your natural agency and empowerment.
Free yourself from the nasty belief that our superficial racial characteristics are important. Get off your knees and stand upright upon the empathic ground of our common humanity. Break down the walls of social division and exploitation. Claim your natural birth right, seize power over your life, and become the captain of your own destiny.
You are so much more than the color of your skin - don't allow anyone to diminish you by convincing you that your skin color is all that you are.
Every attempt to diminish you is a psychological attack upon your well being. Refuse to be a target.
The most fundamental power any of us have is the power to define who we are through our choices and actions in life. Every time you allow someone else to define you - you give your power to them.
Seize mastery over your own life - make your own choices, take your own actions and define your self.
Do not delegate responsibility for who you are to anyone else - that is just denying your own power.
Strongly Not Recommended, '1, we are not the color of our skin,' stars.
[Originally written in May 2021. Revised in September 2023] A post script. Marxism is architected on splitting the community into opposing groups. The bourgeoisie vs the proletariat. Your immutable group membership determines your fate in life. Personal characteristics and choices are irrelevant. [Begin Edit] Now that all the current crop of Marxists Monopoly Capitalists [End Edit] have grown up in a society that valorises wealth over poverty, they have given up the old unprofitable focus on class and and shifted to the green-fields of race and gender. But the architecture remains the same - your immutable group membership determines your fate in life. Personal characteristics and choices are irrelevant, and the social divisions thus engendered are exploitable for personal gain by those who articulate the ideological boxes in which they would force you to live.
The great shame of our historical moment is the number of people who volunteer for ideological servitude and personal disempowerment to our would be masters.
Such behaviour, boggles my mind.
[Sept '23] P.P.S. I've come to the conclusion that Western Civilization is a secular religion which worships two gods: Wealth and Power. The fundamental axis of conflict within our culture and society is between permanent extractors and value creators. The primary form of oppression is by the ultra-rich of the poor. The ultra-rich fear, and fear greatly, the unification of the poor against them. They have every reason to divide the poor against each other and will do so at every opportunity. Politics, as it occurs, is primarily a tool box of the ultra-rich to pit the poor against each other while securing their own wealth and power. Fostering race hate is simply an exploitable tool within the political tool box.
This book, and its core thesis of entrenched and immovable race hatred, speaks for the dominant power dynamic between the rich and the poor - and not against it.
For this reason, I condemn the author's thesis, and reject it....more
"Copernicus removed Earth from the center of the universe, set the heavenly bodies in rotation around the Sun, and introduced Earth's daily rotation on its axis."
And, that certainly set the cat amongst the pigeons. I still think that many in our modern civilization hanker for a world in which humanity, and each one of us is - at the center of the universe. (The lust for significance is strong within our modern culture.)
This paradigm shift was only equaled by Darwin and Einstein.
This book has had a profound impact on my own thinking about how any culture evolves (or stagnates) over time. This book is indispensable if you want to understand human culture and society....more
This is an excellent go to resource on the use of psychotropic compounds by pre-industrial societies.
A fascinating topic in it's own right, detailed iThis is an excellent go to resource on the use of psychotropic compounds by pre-industrial societies.
A fascinating topic in it's own right, detailed in full, and marvelously illustrated.
Some of the images in this book remind me strongly of experiences I've had just sitting around doing nothing. Pretty amazing stuff and worth a read by anyone with a curious mind....more
"One thing that comes out in myths is that at the bottom of the abyss comes the voice of salvation. The black moment is the moment when the re
"One thing that comes out in myths is that at the bottom of the abyss comes the voice of salvation. The black moment is the moment when the real message of transformation is going to come. At the darkest moment comes the light."
The Power of Myth is a beautifully illustrated collection of interviews of Joseph Campbell by Bill Moyers.
This is a very accessible and enjoyable book that presents a concise summary of the core ideas distilled from a lifetime of scholarly effort in the worldwide study of myth by Joseph Campbell.
Strongly recommend this book to anyone with a curious mind....more
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