Stop the ISms

STOP AND TAKE A  CLOSER LOOK

A little rebellion is a good thing....well ...maybe if we take it in context.  “Americans” of all  ethnic groups, genders, ages, abilities, creeds, and  (you fill in the blank) have been part of civil discourse and civil disobedience from the colonial days on.   If you  need proof  read. The People’s History of the United  States by Howard Zinn. Perhaps the difference. Now is  our current context is right in the caldron  of a health-economic-social disruption and there’s more.  More?  Holy Moses... now  I’m going to  make this  feel  even a little worse?   I hope so—-sort of.

I think our current  situation has made it clear that some of our major systems aren’t running on all cylinders for  all the citizens of the U.S. or the world for that matter.  We are sort of  jumping g off the Titanic and  most of the life boats  have leaks.  To top it off we are looking in the wrong place for the repair kits.  

Let’s  start with racism—oh. Wait let’s start with sexism—oh no those are hard let’s. Move to careerism, ageism  ableism elitism ... - and the ISMS go on and on and on.

Maybe race isn’t the problem even if some people. Make  decisions based solely on race.  Maybe discrimination based on age isn’t the real problem even though some don’t understand the wisdom brought about by experience.  Maybe gender stereotyping isn’t. The problem even though  some humans seem to want to control who  does what with which other people or even with their own body parts.  So Sexc, ability, race, religion , age, national origin etc... may not  be the problem?  Nope  Nope Nope...

It would seem to me that the  IS—M IS THE  PROBLEM.  

What?  

It can be problematic to  define or understand any. Other. Human being.  Sometimes we can’t even understand ourselves.  Then we slap the. IS  in there in our thinking and we not only assign a physical. Descriptor on someone, we pile on a whole bunch of  assumptions about who or why someone IS based on characteristics that the universe sometimes assigns randomly and unfairly.  

When we call/name something with the IS  certainty we infer that  this state of being is  permenant and not situational.  In a dark room  with no sound who is  the law enforcement. Officer of African American  lineage?  

The Largest Challenge  we Face

From 10,000 feet it seems the largest  barrier we used to face was apathy and  a lack of awareness  about the experiences. Of many people.  Now that we see different experiences exist, we seem to be having a. Problem defining what experiences mean in public and in private lives.  The  “peace and joy” cool part is that we don’t have to go to the  “is/m”  p place 99.9% of the time.  Peace and Joy often. Stemsz from. Helping your selves and others  becomes rather.than be.  

So let’s start by stopping the “IS”Sm

More Tomorrow