One of the biggest sources of blocks to changing the world into a better place is people - in particular, those people suffering from a Newtonian worldview, and/or LBI, and/or FBU, and/or FoC.
The problems with those people are twofold:
- the direct blockages they cause; and
- the blockers they potentially teach their children to be.
That second point is how most forms of bigotry are perpetuated.
However, in trying to address that second point, it is VITAL to use ONLY BPM methods, as the means shapes the end (I must do a "definition" of that on my glossary one of these days . . . I refer to it quite a bit).
There are terrible examples of governments, societies or other groups enforcing a way of thinking on people without choice, and doing so for ends that fit my definition of evil - for instance, the nazis in Germany, and the Marxist-Leninist version of communism in the USSR - and what has been happening in China.
Also highly questionable has been the social engineering of elite schools, which have been sources of misogyny and other forms of bigotry and corruption for centuries, and some religions - e.g., neochristianity, which has been a mixed bag that has included being a source of misogyny, child abuse, and other forms of bigotry and corruption for millennia.
That means trying to compel people to think in a certain way is wrong.
Furthermore, given the resistance people have to being compelled to do anything, which can be good (e.g., the resistance to oppression seen in the USSR - and, to a lesser extent, China) or bad (e.g., the [at times violent] resistance to public health measures seen in the COVID-19 pandemic), it is questionable how effective that would as compared to patient, persistent,. intelligently adapted education - for instance, few people (outside of nations like the USA) see wearing seat belts as a bad thing, few people still consider smoking without health problems, and people have gradually started moving away from discrimination to a , if not more inclusive, at least a least exclusionary point of view.
To make that clearer, no-one outside criminals and a few sadists / sociopaths / psychopaths considers slavery acceptable.
The changes that have been accomplished give hope that calmly presenting the facts as to why things like discrimination are wrong in schools (and elsewhere, perhaps), including supporting that with what evidence is available, and responding to any counterarguments as constructively as is possible, will reduce - not eliminate - the perpetuation of the evil that is bigotry.
However, to accomplish this, it is necessary to keep the following in mind:
- resisting the evil of bigotry is exhausting, and can scar those involved in it (including teachers and activists), so support and replacement / relief is necessary (much as rotating soldiers from active to behind-the-lines duty is necessary in a war - and this IS a war, one against small-mindedness, ignorance, and hate);
- peer influences can be as or more significant than parental / authority figure influences - for better or for worse;
- children can influence their parents to change to being better in a wide range of ways (including some rough characters I have seen mellow and mature when they became parents); and
- while this is being done, laws may be necessary. As the great Dr Martin Luther King, Jr. said:
It may be true that the law cannot change the heart, but it can restrain the heartless.
Everything I've written above also applies to the climate crisis, where out-of-touch dinosaurs are putting the survival of our and many other species at risk.
