Finding Happiness in today’s society
Prejudice and Racism
Regarding prejudice and racism, we believe that racism is the “face of sin” from a religious standpoint, and a “moral cancer” from a societal perspective. My position is that there are only three groups of people who do not consciously exhibit hatred, prejudice and racism in life. When given the choice you do not want to belong to the first two groups.
Groups Of People Who Do Not Consciously Exhibit Hatred, Prejudice Or Racism:
Group No. 1: People who are dead.
Group No. 2: People who are in such denial, or are so ignorant or naive, etc., that they fail to realize and admit to their underlying prejudice and racism. Most of us belong, at least in part to this group.
Group No. 3: People like Mother Teresa and Rosa Parks. These are people who have transcended hatred and racism and love themselves and other human beings. This is the group we are trying to get in. These people dedicate their lives to the service of other human beings. They never or seldom exhibit negative, angry, hateful, prejudice or racial behavior.
Summary
Hatred and prejudice is alive and well in this world. However, since hatred and prejudice is learned it can also be unlearned and replaced with tolerance and/or acceptance and/or love. It takes courage and honesty for a person to admit that he or she has these attitudes or characteristics. If you watch the TV talk shows or listen to the radio you will note that, whenever this topic is discussed, most participants do not express support for those people who exhibit hatred and are prejudice, but interestingly enough they never admit to harboring it in themselves. In fact, in my never-to-be-humble opinion, many of the most self-righteous individuals who disparage others who are haters and pre-judgers are themselves secretly harboring their own hate and prejudice.
Early Learning
Hate and prejudice is learned early in life and is, in effect, a defensive posturing in order to protect one’s self. As infants, we naturally feel helpless and threatened by many of life’s obstacles. We become traumatized by our early experience of separateness and isolation and by the lack of sufficient love, caring, compassion, concern and support early in life; and as a result we fight back with fear, frustration, anger, hatred, destructiveness, prejudice and racism. We become terrified, robotic spectators of life instead of being intimately involved at a deeply loving, sharing level. We are closed down, isolated and fearful. We build up a wall of hatred, suspicion and prejudice in order to defend and protect ourselves from other people and the world around us.
Family Heirlooms
The opposite of love is lovelessness – which includes negativity, hatred, prejudice and racism – which is an attitude that is usually learned early in life and is an attitude that has been passed on as family heirlooms from generation to generation. It is time to break up that family pattern and learn a new lifestyle. Prejudice and racism has become such an accepted part of life that we just expect it and accept it as the status quo.
Most of us, on the surface, deny racism, prejudice, and hatred and often profess to equality among our peers and colleagues. However, at deeper and more subtle levels, we all have, and continue to express, prejudice toward our fellow man. If we are ever to rid ourselves of this poison in our society we must recognize it, face it squarely in the eye and effectively and actually deal with it.
Let us follow the lead of people like Rosa Parks and build a society where there is equal opportunity and a place for us all.
Requirements for Personal Change
The basic requirement is that you need to make a personal commitment to change. Superficiality has to be replaced by genuine empathy and compassion for ourselves and for our fellow man. Through this type of caring, our emptiness, hopelessness and sense of demoralization will dissipate. This caring is the sharing of our self, our inner core of being that is essentially us. This sharing of our true self is essentially an act of giving of ourselves without an anticipation of reward. If it becomes distorted by external demands or expectations; it becomes a superficial entity, an object, a play thing. This is not true caring; it is simply going through the motions of detached, robotic, pretending without real involvement.
This, dear reader, is also known as Political Correctness.
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