Meghan and Harry had a chat with Oprah. Which had eventually been broadcasted on TV. Basically, there was nothing new nor really interesting there. For me, anyway. Yet there’s a lot of reaction.
I don’t really care about the reason for which the royals have treated Markle the way they did. About the reason which convinced the couple to speak up. The individual reasons for those who comment on the internet to do it as each of them had chosen to do it.
There are two points I need to make here.
The fact that they are rich and famous doesn’t change the fact that the oppression they’re speaking about is real….Maybe they experience it differently… maybe they have it easier when speaking about it… but opression continues to be dealt. Among us, by people like us.
And, secondly but just as important, those three weren’t discussing about mere oppression. They were talking about racist oppression!
Could this be the reason for so many people taking issues on this subject?
I fully agree with Sowell but the fact that Sowell is right doesn’t change the fact that we’re the ones responsible for present day racism.
As a mediator, I was trained to differentiate between needs and wishes. Between something which will actually make your life easier and something you just fancy. And to understand the fact that everything we do has consequences.
A father has asked me the other day: ‘What had I done wrong? My only son hardly ever speaks to me…’
‘When did the rift became apparent? How early?’
‘Things went fine until he had become an young adult. OK, we had some ‘misunderstandings’ when he was a teenager but he seemed to had overgrown them… Until sometimes in his early 20-ies when he really rebelled. And told me everything he couldn’t tell me – his words, about how he felt while growing up.”
‘And what exactly were his grievances?’
‘He was cross at the manner in which I was telling him things. At the manner in which I was trying to stimulate him. He’s very bright, you know, only didn’t do much in his life. Not by a long shot! And I kept telling him that. I still do, as a matter of fact.’
‘You see, no matter whether you go to the church or to a brothel, the soles of your shoes will get thinner. This doesn’t depend on where you go. It only depends on the road you chose and the manner in which you shuffle your feet. Same with words. What you’re trying to say is, indeed, very important. But even more important is the manner in which you try to get the message across. Whenever your ‘target’ becomes angry at you … the message will be truncated in the process… Even more importantly, the ‘target’ will retain a ‘bad’ memory of the whole incident. And if more and more ‘bad’ memories keep piling one on top of the other… But not everything is lost! The very fact that he took the trouble to talk out the matter with you means he was not ready for a ‘divorce’. Not then, anyway…’
One of the best examples of professional grade propaganda which had recently crept up on my FB wall
As always, the ‘gaslighters’ use ‘the obvious’ to get inside our heads. Once there, they actually twist our minds.
In fact, the professional propagandists act like viruses do. They use the internal mechanisms of the target to alter its ‘software’. To ‘convince’ the target to act in a manner favorable to the ‘virus’ rather than in its own interest.
And the fact that both sides – or trolls embedded there?!?, use the same ‘tools’ only makes it harder for the targets – for us, really, to defend ourselves. To maintain our sanity.
Let’s go back to the example at hand. Yes, it’s ridiculous to blame this child for Pearl Harbor. This is the evident part of the meme. Only it’s very legit to blame those who deny that Japan attacking Pearl Harbor was ‘murder’. Legit enough to become a must. Just like it’s a must to blame those who deny the Holocaust.
Same thing with slavery. And with other crimes of the past. Blaming people alive today for what their ancestors had done in the past is ridiculous. Just as ridiculous as denying that past crimes had consequences. Some of which continue to pull us down today.
Present day colored people in America – and Roma people in Europe, continue to suffer the consequences of having been enslaved for many generation. Denying that only burdens entire societies. It burdens the colored people themselves and, on a way larger scale, it burdens the rest of us. The colored people having less opportunities than the rest of us is a waste for the society at large. The disproportionate number of crimes and felonies perpetrated by the colored people are a cost shouldered by all of us. Meanwhile, the blame is not entirely ‘theirs’. Had they been ‘defective’ in any way would have prevented any of them from ‘prospering’. Hence we’re dealing with a rather ‘cultural’ thing. Which cultural thing has appeared at the intersection between us and them. We had enslaved them. We had kept them at arm’s length until not so long ago. So many of us continue to look down on them. We consider it’s their individual responsibility to pull themselves up! And how are they supposed to do that? Statistically speaking, and in the present conditions, not only the most talented and the very lucky among them….
How are we going to proceed? Continue with the blame game – and play into the hands of those who want us weak, or attempt to do something about it? To find a real solution?
While everything mentioned above is absolutely true, we must also remember that it was the whites – who had first reached the ‘proper stage of development’, who had given up slavery and invented ‘human rights’. On the other side, it is also true that the whites did reach the ‘proper stage of development’ by exploiting the rest of the world. Only ‘this’ wasn’t invented by them! I don’t want to go into the finer details. All of you know, very well, what had really happened ‘on the ground’.
So. What are we going to do next?
‘Delete’ everything the white people have contributed only because they have been the last to exploit the rest of the mankind?
Or accept the fact that evolution works in an oblique manner?
To cut a long story short, some 25 years ago I started trading on the Bucharest Stock Exchange. The market had been freshly reinstated after the fall of the communist regime and most of us so called investors were quite naive. Due an incredible amount of luck and a small but very useful spark of intelligence I made a fair amount of money. For that time… In an attempt to maximize my profits, I went back to school. Where I learned the difference between fundamental and technical analysis.
I’m not going into details. It’s enough for you to know that no matter how different they are, both fulfill the same psychological function. They ‘clean up’ the slate. They help the decision makers distance themselves from the objects they have to decide upon.
What?!?
A stock – or any other tradable item, is no different from a bicycle. We, human beings, become attached to things we already have in our possession. We find it harder to divest ourselves from something than to buy into something new. We tend to procrastinate when having to choose between multiple opportunities to buy and to ‘defend’ an already made decision. An already acquired possession. Fundamental and technical analyses do nothing but bridge these two ‘chasms’. Help us across.
OK. But has any of this to do with propaganda?
Well, market analysis is a tool used by the decision maker himself. Propaganda is a tool used by somebody who intends to influence the decision maker. Using the same psychological mechanisms.
While market analysis attempts to clear the ‘sentimental fog’ which distorts the factual information available to the decision maker, propaganda works its way in the opposite direction. Facts are presented in such a way as to ‘smuggle’ them, below the radar, into the minds of the intended targets. While market analysis is meant to help decision makers overcome their biases, propaganda is meant to fine tune those biases towards ‘encouraging’ the decision makers into adopting the decision coveted by the propagandist.
Somebody sent me this picture. See how things work? Most people consider themselves as being free from racism. Also, most people consider that other people – namely the politicians and the journalists, have ‘vested’ interests. And that these ‘other’ people use ‘divide and conquer’ to maintain their grip on power.
The key word here being ‘other’. It’s the others who engage in such heinous acts. Never ‘our’ people.
But do you know what bothers me most? I’ve been subjected to communist propaganda for the first 30 years of my life. I’ve never dreamed it would take me another 30 years – and a stint of daily trading on the Stock Market, to figure out how propaganda works. Only to find it being used by people who declare communism to be the scourge of the Earth.
Well, since communism actually is a scourge, how about we NOT using the same tool as those who try to infect our minds with it? For no other reason than propaganda yielding communism having been a complete failure….
How do you determine the scope of a conversation? What the other guy has in mind when talking to you?
You interpret whatever ‘comes’ from the ‘other’ side… there’s no other way, right? But what if both of you have opposing views on the subject? If you don’t seem to see eye to eye on the matter? Do you give up, considering the other party as too ‘thick sculled’ to matter?
‘OK, and what alternatives are there?’
The way I see it, people who speak to others might be driven by any combination of ‘trying to convince the other’ and ‘trying to learn something’. Let me deal with the extremes first.
Somebody is trying to mess up with your mind if/when your arguments are dully noted only to be later dismantled, ridiculed or both at the same time. When you are never asked to elaborate. When you end up feeling that the other guy doesn’t really hear what you have to say.
Somebody is trying to learn from the encounter – not necessarily from you, if … the opposite is happening. If you end up with the impression of having been heard. Of an exchange having had happened. Both of you might end up entertaining the very same ideas each of you have started with but…
In practice, most people do learn at least something from each conversation. No matter how determined they were, at the beginning, to convince the other.
But sometimes I do wonder… what if the real goal of too many of those who ‘surf’ – pun intended, the social media is to keep the rest of us busy? As in ‘waste our time’? Slow us down in our attempt to learn? To make at least some sense of what’s going on around us?
Regulations don’t really work unless they reflect the mindset of the majority…
And here’s how it works.
The rule about driving on the ‘right’ side of the road is observed without much need for enforcement. Because the consequences are clear. And consistent, unless you drive a tank.
People had the same problem with condoms. Until HIV came along… Nowadays very few people engage in casual sex without one.
Give us time and … if SARS-CoV 2 will be around for long enough…
Let’s face it, in the present circumstances the picture above might mean a lot of things.
It can be a prank – somebody might have made the whole thing up just for the fun of it. It can also express the frustration of somebody who isn’t such a good speller. Or of somebody who suffers from dyslexia?
What really interests me is how we, the ‘intellectual’ public, react to things like these. Do we understand the frustration which lies at the bottom of this? Do we even try to?
Or we just dismiss it as being a manifestation of stupid?
No, I don’t consider the economy as being more important than life preservation. Some very sound arguments can be found here.
But I’m absolutely convinced that treating the ‘others’ with disdain is what brought us here in the first place.
You don’t like the manner in which the likes of Trump treat those who don’t agree with them? Then why are you doing the very same thing?
A transformation so drastic that somebody needs to have been at both ends of the process in order to accept that what came out was the same thing as what went in.
The Universe has already went through Metamorphosis 0.1 and 1.0. The ‘Big Bang’ and the apparition of life.
We’re witnessing Metamorphosis 2.0. Awareness’ coming of age.
Individuals becoming aware not only of their own awareness but also of their place in the order of things. Communities becoming aware that each of their individuals are paramount. That ‘no one left behind’ is the only thing that keeps the community together. Individuals understanding that each of them is equally important yet none of them indispensable.
Individuals and communities alike opening their minds to the fact that none of them might exist without the other.
The worst thing about your parents passing away is the fact that from that moment on, every time you’ll turn to anybody for help that somebody will first pass judgement on you.
nicichiarasa 