Joel Brown
Is this the world we want?
"If you’re treated a certain way you become a certain kind of person. If certain things are described to you as being real they’re real for you whether they’re real or not."
— James Baldwin
This might seem obvious when we think of children, who so readily become doers of what was done to them, but less conspicuous in the broader sense of how society treats it's citizens. If the society in which you were born denied you your dignity and humanity, treating you like cattle for free labour, then even after freeing you generated the toxic conditions that kept you psychologically and socioeconomically enslaved, you will in a sense, be doomed to becoming a self fulfilling prophecy without intervention. If your parameters of reality, morality or dignity are defined to you convincingly using fables and lies, then it will be real to you steadfastly.
Part of how we free ourselves from a matrix of false reality is to examine our society closely, read history critically, investigating our religious beliefs concerning ourselves and others, look at how we treat our lovers, children, neighbors, employees, prisoners, asylum seekers, sexual and ethnic minorities...Are we creating monsters, who remain entrapped in a false sense of reality about who they really are and what they basically deserve?
Delusions of white cis-hetero patriarchal supremacy have created a world built on specific presumptions about the inherent legitimacy of certain groups over others, and structured heirarchies of worth and dignity that pedestalise a few a crush those deemed least worthy.
Is this the world we really want?