A "Black Swan Event" is when the unexpected occurs, causing a huge mindshift and change in how the world works. People never imagined that Black Swans existed, until the discovery of the first Black Swan... (as per book "The Black Swan", by Nassim Nicholas Taleb, 2007, that sold over 3 million copies)

Is a perception change the next Black Swan Event? Consider that by changing perception we might change the world. Look at everyday things from different angles. Find beauty in the unexpected...
Change our thinking, change our actions, change our world!

See that all people are part of God's puzzle and have something to give. Black swans do exist. The ugly duckling was actually a swan who needed to discover himself and where he fitted and be who he was meant to be. To the last, the lost and the least, you are beautiful as you are.
May all who visit this page feel God's touch and experience His blessing...

Saturday 12 January 2013

We Are Each More Alike Than We Think

My last few posts have dealt with the discrimination mindsets we hold towards other people. I realise some of these thoughts may feel quite confronting for some of you, especially if, after reading an article, you recognise a stereotype you may hold towards a specific group of people. Perhaps you see a stereotype I may hold. I try to ensure my thinking aligns with Biblical principles, where God does not discriminate.

Perhaps you are not quite sure why I raise certain topics? I am a white person who was born in South Africa and who grew up there, when apartheid (translated from the Afrikaans as keeping apart) was still underway. For me, apartheid meant I did not see non-white people at my school. It meant that I grew up with a non-white domestic worker who lived in a small room attached to our house, and who looked after me and my siblings after school, and who cooked for our family. I played sometimes with her children, who stayed with her for a while when they were small, and who were then sent to the township to live later on, and who visited occasionally. It also meant I was sometimes afraid when I went to a cinema to watch a movie, as I had recently watched footage on the news showing the aftermath of bomb blasts or bomb threats, which was due to terrorist acts by the ANC to force the eradication of apartheid. I remember the day a group of soldiers came and swept our high school (secondary school) grounds for land mines that may have been planted. I grew up with a mindset of needing to be protected from people who were out to kill me or steal from me and who thought they'd be given my parent's house, as our domestic worker told us she had heard would happen when apartheid ended. That for me was apartheid.

When I started my first job a few years before apartheid ended, there were two non-white managers in the office. I sometimes wondered if people stared when we went out for a lunch time meal together. The two managers were really great people. One of my family members lived close to Joburg, and she noticed many non-white people moving into her designated whites-only neighbourhood a few years before apartheid ended. Apartheid had run its course. How a small white minority thought they could keep a burgeoning non-white majority from taking part in democracy is somewhat astounding. Apartheid needed to go and thankfully South Africa had a peaceful transition and I watched with the world as Nelson Mandela walked out of prison.

Yet now, 18 years after apartheid, the country is far from healing. I get angry when people tell me, as a white South African citizen, that I am not legitimately part of my home country, where I was born, and these same people may tell a non-white person, who might be a very recent immigrant from another country, that he or she has more right to be there than I do. Imagine if someone were to tell you that you should not be living in the country where you were born, because of historical events? Yet I do recognise that apartheid was wrong and that democracy was the only way forward and I do see that quotas are needed to ensure jobs are now distributed according to the country's demographics. I wish South Africa could live as a true Rainbow Nation, embracing all her people and showing a different model of peace to the world.

I believe all of us hold some form of discrimination mindset towards other people and it is a process I believe can be unlearnt. We tend to group people into boxes in our minds, perhaps classing people who look a certain way as stupid, or as somehow not quite having the same intensity of feelings as we do. For example, if a busload of children in your neighbourhood has an accident and children are killed, I imagine you might feel deep pity and you may imagine the anguish the parents feel over the passing of their children. Yet, imagine if this same accident were to happen to a busload of children in a country where the people look very different to you. Do you relate to these children the same way? Some people might feel the same emotions towards this event unfolding, but many of us might lessen the importance of the event in our minds, unconsciously supposing the parents there feel less anguish perhaps, yet I am sure parents of all nationalities and cultures feel the same heart rending pain at losing a child.

People are all composed of the same underlying flesh and blood and beat with the same heartbeat, the only difference is on the surface. I guess this is a simplistic statement, especially if one considers the impact different upbringings may have on people, as well as the impact of our individual innate natures, but you may see how similar people are at heart if you take a person from one country and displace that person into a very different upbringing in another country. That same person might become a remarkably different person who thinks in a different way.

Can thought patterns be changed? I believe the answer is, yes. Maybe each of us is more alike than we think?

No comments:

Post a Comment