There is a Taoist thought, “To understand the limitation of things, desire them.”\u00a0 As you want something, you realize all the things you have to do to obtain it and all the downsides of your desire.\u00a0\u00a0 Sometimes, you find out your desire was a ‘grass is greener on the other side’ situation.\u00a0\u00a0 Here in the United States of America,\u00a0 a lot of people had a desire to be special, to be different, to be exceptional.\u00a0\u00a0 The idea or philosophy of American Exceptionalism is challenging to put into words, but it can be seen in action.\u00a0 Many Americans have this arrogance or expectation of supremacy.\u00a0 Like many things involving tribalistic concepts, if we engage in behavior, it is justified, but if something happens to us, then it is wrong by default.<\/p>\n
Another downside of American Exceptionalism is this inability to admit fault.\u00a0 We have citizens in our midst who can do no wrong, and when confronted, will find a way to continue to not be wrong in their minds.\u00a0 The evasion is done through stonewalling, mental gymnastics, projection, and a host of justifications that allow them to continue not to have to modify their behavior.\u00a0 One of the most prolonged, darkest, and most damaging examples of this is racism.<\/p>\n
Since the inception of colonies through the present day,\u00a0 racism has played a devastating role in the lives of Americans.\u00a0 Whether we are talking about massacring existing civilizations, treating people as property, or enacting policies explicitly designed to exclude a subset of people,\u00a0 racism has widened the gap between white people and the rest from the start.\u00a0\u00a0 The truth is not always beautiful, nor beautiful words the truth.\u00a0\u00a0 The reality now is the attitudes of the American Exceptionalism crowd have shifted from torch-bearing, through uncomfortable, to intolerable.<\/p>\n
The nation grieves.\u00a0\u00a0 People once thought of the USA as a place where god itself placed a magical barrier around its political borders, where all bad things were just divine punishment for not being pious enough.\u00a0 Fortunately,\u00a0 the reigns of reality are being seized, and a bandage hiding scars hundreds of years old is being ripped off.\u00a0\u00a0 However, admitting a problem is just the first step.\u00a0\u00a0 We have the people who look at American Exceptionalism and hold up their confederate flags, an ideal built on slavery and racism, with genuine pride to tell others to leave.\u00a0\u00a0 Those people will pretend to acknowledge the problem and then with a ‘but’ proceed to negate the premise of their original statement.<\/p>\n
In the Tao Te Ching, Lao Tzu teaches us, “Confront the difficult while it is still easy, accomplish the great task through a series of small acts.”\u00a0 Unfortunately, in this case, such is no longer possible.\u00a0 We can’t save the lives ruined by systemic racism for the lost generations.\u00a0 How do we address the lands and loans parceled out to the select demographic, and what that meant to people who came later, who inherited wealth and opportunity?\u00a0 How do we begin to talk about political policies and prison populations, both designed to hurt?\u00a0 How does The United States of America, a nation who for generations marketed itself as some beacon of morality, standards, and law while simultaneously codifying rippling inequality? This same inequality has forced us into the streets and diminished us to banging on the table in Congress like children afraid of not being exceptional.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 For many privileged people, equality feels like oppression.<\/p>\n
The USA can no longer be the person who had one spectacular play in a high-school football game,\u00a0 made possible through critical blocks from African-American teammates, and sit around bragging about it to everyone for years.\u00a0\u00a0 It is an old story,\u00a0 it doesn’t highlight everything that happened, and it simply isn’t enough.\u00a0\u00a0 Those glory days were a long time ago.\u00a0\u00a0 If the USA wants to be positively exceptional again,\u00a0 it needs to earn it the right way.\u00a0 The USA needs to be a leader and pioneer in global affairs the way kids used to think it did when they looked at the Star-Spangled Banner,\u00a0 and not by gun-barrel diplomacy and staggering hypocrisy.<\/p>\n
I don’t have the answers for how to make amends for hundreds of years of abuse and neglect.\u00a0 I don’t even have answers for the hurt I’ve, individually, caused as a part of ‘The War on Terror.’\u00a0 I can stand up and say what I did was wrong.\u00a0 I knew it then, and it has actively haunted me for years.\u00a0 I am cautiously optimistic the growing choir of voices joining together to rip the bandage of exceptionalism off to get at the heart of the problems of systemic inequality is finally outweighing the ‘but’ crowd.\u00a0 When the right thing is profitable, we are moving in the forward direction, even if that is a cynical thing to say.<\/p>\n
Admitting fault is hard for a lot of people to do.\u00a0 Questioning one’s beliefs, perspectives, ideas, etc., can also be a difficult task.\u00a0 The more natural path is to fall back on answers that can’t be challenged, like tradition.\u00a0 We are going to do this because we do this.\u00a0 It is an answer that justifies itself in the eyes of someone looking for an excuse.\u00a0 However,\u00a0 what if the original reason was wrong from the start?\u00a0 Racism is wrong from the beginning,\u00a0 and whether it is justified through religious or cultural traditions, it is wrong now, and the chain needs to be broken.<\/p>\n
Lao Tzu writes, “Knowing others is intelligence; knowing yourself is true wisdom.\u00a0 Mastering others is strength; mastering yourself is true power.”\u00a0 The USA has rattled sabers, patrolled the deep, and peered down from orbit.\u00a0 Despite all of its force projection, it has yet to come to terms with itself.\u00a0 We are only now throwing monuments of racists into rivers; many erected long after the war to assert dominance.<\/p>\n
Lao Tzu also reminds us, “When nothing is done, nothing is left undone.”\u00a0\u00a0 While it is too late for the fallen victims of our tragic past,\u00a0 we can build a better future.\u00a0\u00a0 We can, through the ‘series of small acts,’ stop causing further damage.\u00a0\u00a0 Racism is at its worst and most horrifically successful when acted upon -when things are done.\u00a0\u00a0 As we continue to do what’s right and put the framework in place to ensure nothing can be done,\u00a0 we need to remain vigilant to make sure nothing will be undone as well.\u00a0 We have seen what happens otherwise with the reversal of the Voting Rights Act, for instance.\u00a0 The healing process will take time and be fraught with resistance; the people who believe in American Exceptionalism and is itself a limited idea that applies to a narrow band of people.\u00a0 We are and can be better than who we were.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
There is a Taoist thought, “To understand the limitation of things, desire them.”\u00a0 As you want something, you realize all the things you have to do to obtain it and all the downsides of your desire.\u00a0\u00a0 Sometimes, you find out your desire was a ‘grass is greener on the other side’ situation.\u00a0\u00a0 Here in the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[338],"tags":[291,179,168],"class_list":["post-27593","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-considered-thoughts","tag-291","tag-anger","tag-hope"],"yoast_head":"\n