Love Your Neighbor
Racism!
It’s the trump word of the lamenting left.
The visceral judgment that dominated my psyche was, “How could they!”
“How could such racism still be so prevalent?”
The rage and judgment was so thorough, and… and, final!
It’s upon further reflection that I’ve begun to see, more clearly,
Aspects of my own personal judgments.
I saw myself as open and understanding.
I could speak fluent republican.
If the situation demanded, I was relatively certain I could convey a republican ideology.
I understood the platforms.
I could empathize with the arguments.
I could stand in their shoes and see their world.
Well, sort of.
There was a flaw in my game.
My affluent friends’ conservative perspective, was what I understood.
I missed an entire demographic of republicans.
The ones I never understood.
The “middle American republican”,
The blue collar, disenfranchised, 2nd amendment, God fearing, republican.
The “alt right” republican…
This person was off my radar.
In fact, it gets worse than that. I had no respect for them.
I just wouldn’t have engaged.
I don’t even know if I could have spoken with them.
I’m not so sure what that even means?
Maybe, that I felt there was no room for compromise with “those” people?
I metaphorically disowned them without understanding the ramifications.
I completely missed my own personal prejudice.
What I’ve come to recognize is, I’d lost my sight of the ability to empathetically engage with the people I so easily disregarded.
It was vitally important for me to remember the circumstances that are required to be able to engage in higher stages of consciousness.
It’s a basic tenet of Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy of needs that basic needs must be met in order to engage in higher levels of consciousness.
This is key.
If I want the alt right to embody concern for all of humanity, I have to recognize and have concern for them also.
In order to do that, I need to engage them, to understand them.
I have to understand what their needs are.
I need to empathetically embody their perspective.
It’s imperative to remember that engaging in empathy doesn’t require you to surrender your beliefs. All it requires is understanding someone else’s. Even if you vehemently disagree with them.
Deep empathy isn’t easy.
Somehow it’s easier to empathize with pain.
I think a lot of us do this quite well.
Empathizing with hate and anger is much more difficult. But, if you are to understand the root of the problem, then this is the path. We need to remember there is rationality behind these ideologies and if you do not understand their rationalities, you’ll never understand the origins of their wounds.
Wounds that need to heal.
We need to broaden our compassion and concern.
The world is in pain.
The alt right is in pain,
And we all know what people do who are in pain.
I recognized I had a rather dogmatic belief. If you are a racist, xenophobe, and/or misogynist, I thought you were a bad person and therefore, unworthy of consideration and ultimately, compassion.
This is a gross error and over simplification.
I believe human beings start off as intrinsically good.
Actually, intrinsically pure.
It’s the culmination of negative life experiences that results in hatred.
Hatred isn’t innate.
If my desire is to eradicate racism, I will not succeed by employing repression; pushing them down and dehumanizing them. I will not succeed if I do not stop treating them as an other.
This is the very embodiment of the prejudice that I judge.
Carl Jung referred to this as shadow.
Although the wounds are fresh, I need to understand this.
I need to embrace radical forgiveness.
I need to open my heart and home.
Kindness and love is the path.
People change when they feel purpose.
People feel purpose when they feel respected.
People feel respected when they feel included.
People do not hate those that they know.
“If you imagine someone who is brave enough to withdraw all his projections, then you get an individual who is conscious of a pretty thick shadow. Such a man has saddled himself with new problems and conflicts. He has become a serious problem to himself, as he is now unable to say that they do this or that, they are wrong, and they must be fought against… Such a man knows that whatever is wrong in the world is in himself, and if he only learns to deal with his own shadow he has done something real for the world. He has succeeded in shouldering at least an infinitesimal part of the gigantic, unsolved social problems of our day.”
~Carl Jung
