We have become a society that no longer wants to or even can take responsibility for what it produces. The alt-right, for example, is another word for institutionalized racism, but much easier to swallow.
All discomfort needs to be assuaged, mollified, turned into something we can stomach or ignore.
It’s painful to call things as they really are.
Humanity is on a march to the cliff, the cliff of man-made ills. As we fatalistically prepare to hurl ourselves over the edge, there is something we need know: this suicidal urge is not destiny, it’s a choice, and choices unlike destinies, can be altered.
Can we make the choice to change directions before we careen off the edge?
Yes, we can, if…
Biased and discriminatory ideas repeated over and over become commonplace, and the concepts behind them, no matter how odious, are soon normalized.
Speak long enough about how loathsome or scary some people are, and pretty soon, that is all we know about them.
Takahashi makes some excellent points in her article about men and violence. She calls attention to the fact that while 99% of all mass killings are committed by men, the media don’t ever point out this fact.
Forty years ago the women of Iceland went on strike to protest the gender imbalance in wages and leadership.
Forty years ago the women of Iceland went on strike to protest the gender imbalance in wages and leadership, and to demonstrate the invaluable role that women played in Icelandic life.
In our keynote, Dr Amy Parrish and I ask the question, “why are the most pernicious problems we face, including war, poverty, and social inequality, also the most ubiquitous and resilient?”
The dependable old explanation, “it’s in our genes”, no longer cuts it.
I will be speaking at Aerojet Rocketdyne’s In2:In Thinking annual webinar series “Thinking Together About”.
My presentation is on Thursday, July 14th, from 11:30am-1:00pm PST, on the topic of “Thinking Together About Positional and Non-Positional Thinking”.
Google Chairman Eric Schmidt is puzzled, he’s repeatedly said so.
And the source of his puzzlement? He doesn’t understand why there are so few women in the tech sector, including his company, Google.
I believe he’s actually baffled, because sometimes things can be so ubiquitous as to be invisible.
It is only in the last ten thousand years that humans (read: men) have steered our collective feet in the direction of war. Yet, men are not to blame for war today. Rather, the gender imbalance in leadership and decision-making is.
