I recently listened to an amazing podcast with Joe Rogan and Jonathan Heidt which I highly recommend checking out. One of the topics that came up was how to fight the current sociopolitical climate and how to make real change, or rather how to get back on track to diminishing racism, sexism, and other forms of judgment based on people’s appearances.
As they mention in the podcast, Martin Luther King Jr. called out to his “white brothers and sisters” several times in his famous speech. Countless other influential people who fought for the rights of the oppressed have aimed for change by pointing out the similarities between all people, and asking members of opposing groups to understand where they’re coming from without attacking those groups.
We’re not doing that anymore. There are a number of factors and I won’t claim to have done the research to prove it statistically, but I think it’s clear that we’re seeing a trend away from the progress of the last 50 years. What we’re seeing now is lots of name-calling, divisiveness, dismissing opinions of people based on their race or gender or socioeconomic status, and we’re seeing this from all sides. This is catalyzed by social media, and has led us to the tension we feel today.
We can change this and get back on track, and I sincerely hope that we will.
If we can open our ears to people with different opinions, listen to them as people and not as the “enemy”, and realize that we’re all just people, we can get back on track. We can agree that everyone, regardless of who they are, faces certain human problems. We can feel for someone from a completely different world because we’ve had the feelings that they are having at some point in our lives. We can start talking to each other logically and clearly, and more importantly we can start listening to each other without labeling or extreme bias. We can stop focusing on what colour our skin is or what gender we are, and realize that none of that is important if we want to become closer to one another, build trust, and ultimately live in a world of true equal opportunity.
Richard's Blog 