We are ALL ONE -The Movie
This is very important. It's the medicine for a world.
Monday, February 09, 2009
Monday, February 02, 2009
A Change in Common Knowledge
When I was a child and then a teenager, I thought everyone lived the way I did, or at least those who lived around me in all the places I had lived in my life. I thought nothing really changed. I thought all relationships were basically the same kind of relationship I had. This doesn’t seem to have changed much among those ages, since most children and teens cannot imagine a world without cellphone and TVs and computers, etc. It’s unimaginable to most of them to think of people taking days to go from one small town to another just down the road. They can’t imagine that what takes them an hour to drive took a day for someone riding a horse.
When I became a young man, I thought things were changing into something totally new. I could see my generation questioning and behaving in ways that seemed to never have happened before. I could see the social forces of change which drew us together and threw us apart easily, in all the people in my generation. I thought we were something very new indeed.
When I was older, in my thirties, I could see that things did change, had changed, from generation to generation all through history, in every culture, despite the social structures put in place to prevent change. I could see that something altered the way people reacted, changed their perception, something subtle, yet intense. But I could not figure out what that was, although I knew from observation that it was crucial for Human survival.
When I was in my forties and early fifties, I could tell what was changing was the center of the bellcurve of reactions and attitudes. The fringes remained as extreme as ever, self-defeating knots of belief so entrenched that the individuals could not get out of those ways of thinking and acting, but the huge center of that bell curve, the masses of people, did change, in tiny increments that I could barely detect but which had profound influence on all aspects of life for everyone. I tried to understand what that was, with little success.
Then, in my late fifties, I suddenly realized that what had changed was ‘common knowledge’, the knowledge, information, experience, and even mis-information we absorb from our culture on a day to day basis. This is what changes.
For instance, I spend decades living as the only white person in a black neighborhood, and it was apparent to me that most of my neighbors were as trapped in certain attitudes as I had been as a teen. They had a ‘brotherhood’ of oppression’, which caused their ‘race’ to be the first and most important of criteria as to how to judge others. It’s not surprising, and not all black people had that attitude, but it was apparent in even the most successful black TV and movie stars.
And it was a trap, a way to keep their thinking in tight loops of self-disparagement and horrific judgment. I did a little poll once while standing in line in a community college book store. In the long line of people waiting to buy their textbooks were people of all ages and ‘races’ and religions.
I went up to each and asked “When someone approaches you, walking down the hallways, what do you notice first about that person?”
All the people who were white, oriental, or foreign replied they looked at the wealth of other person’s clothes and the attitude shown by their walk, and how likely they would be to turn violent or abusive. Inotherwords, was the approaching person a threat of any kind?
The several black people in the line independently replied, ‘I notice first what race they are’.
When I announced to the line my results to the same people still waiting for the store’s computers to start working again, the blacks were all totally surprised. They could not imagine that anyone would see ‘race’ as not being the most important factor in their brief assessment of the approaching person.
That’s when I realized why so many blacks think everyone not black is automatically prejudice, if only a little bit. If in their ‘common knowledge’ their ‘race’ was the most important of all data, and their personal and social status was determinate upon their ‘race’, then the idea that people might not see ‘race’ as high priority data would be almost unthinkable.
But now we have a black president.
For those who identify with their ‘race’ as the most important of all data, this must be a breakthrough. For the first time, they have living proof that those who say they are not prejudice against blacks, and don’t even particularly notice the color of someone’s skin, are actually telling the truth.
This is a big growth step in America and the world’s ‘common knowledge’ bell curve.
When I became a young man, I thought things were changing into something totally new. I could see my generation questioning and behaving in ways that seemed to never have happened before. I could see the social forces of change which drew us together and threw us apart easily, in all the people in my generation. I thought we were something very new indeed.
When I was older, in my thirties, I could see that things did change, had changed, from generation to generation all through history, in every culture, despite the social structures put in place to prevent change. I could see that something altered the way people reacted, changed their perception, something subtle, yet intense. But I could not figure out what that was, although I knew from observation that it was crucial for Human survival.
When I was in my forties and early fifties, I could tell what was changing was the center of the bellcurve of reactions and attitudes. The fringes remained as extreme as ever, self-defeating knots of belief so entrenched that the individuals could not get out of those ways of thinking and acting, but the huge center of that bell curve, the masses of people, did change, in tiny increments that I could barely detect but which had profound influence on all aspects of life for everyone. I tried to understand what that was, with little success.
Then, in my late fifties, I suddenly realized that what had changed was ‘common knowledge’, the knowledge, information, experience, and even mis-information we absorb from our culture on a day to day basis. This is what changes.
For instance, I spend decades living as the only white person in a black neighborhood, and it was apparent to me that most of my neighbors were as trapped in certain attitudes as I had been as a teen. They had a ‘brotherhood’ of oppression’, which caused their ‘race’ to be the first and most important of criteria as to how to judge others. It’s not surprising, and not all black people had that attitude, but it was apparent in even the most successful black TV and movie stars.
And it was a trap, a way to keep their thinking in tight loops of self-disparagement and horrific judgment. I did a little poll once while standing in line in a community college book store. In the long line of people waiting to buy their textbooks were people of all ages and ‘races’ and religions.
I went up to each and asked “When someone approaches you, walking down the hallways, what do you notice first about that person?”
All the people who were white, oriental, or foreign replied they looked at the wealth of other person’s clothes and the attitude shown by their walk, and how likely they would be to turn violent or abusive. Inotherwords, was the approaching person a threat of any kind?
The several black people in the line independently replied, ‘I notice first what race they are’.
When I announced to the line my results to the same people still waiting for the store’s computers to start working again, the blacks were all totally surprised. They could not imagine that anyone would see ‘race’ as not being the most important factor in their brief assessment of the approaching person.
That’s when I realized why so many blacks think everyone not black is automatically prejudice, if only a little bit. If in their ‘common knowledge’ their ‘race’ was the most important of all data, and their personal and social status was determinate upon their ‘race’, then the idea that people might not see ‘race’ as high priority data would be almost unthinkable.
But now we have a black president.
For those who identify with their ‘race’ as the most important of all data, this must be a breakthrough. For the first time, they have living proof that those who say they are not prejudice against blacks, and don’t even particularly notice the color of someone’s skin, are actually telling the truth.
This is a big growth step in America and the world’s ‘common knowledge’ bell curve.
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