On Racism

February 17, 2022 1 By Editor

More than half the planet’s population believe the physical body is a sheaf. When we remove the sheath we are left with two things, the soul and consciousness. Some say these are one thing and others say they are separate.

Let’s run with the soul and consciousness being separate. There are some interesting outcomes from seeing these as separate—it means some beings have a soul but no consciousness, others can have consciousness yet no soul, some people have both and others have neither soul nor consciousness. This gives a near infinite amount of flexibility in justifying how people are treated.

If a being lacks a soul, then they are not really people and we can treat them, well – like soulless animals. What about a person with a soul and no consciousness, does their death make a difference? If the soul and consciousness enter a body separately (or together), the question becomes – when do they enter the body? At conception? While transiting the birth canal? When the body first hits the open air?

I once had a women in her late twenties tell me it is after the first five years that a body should be considered a person, before that, the mother should have a choice to abort the child. I took her line of thought to show a lack of reasoning and conceded that she obviously had the moral high ground but that perhaps society should allow a body to be aborted up to age of thirty.

I have been dancing with a thought. Suppose a person is separate and distinct from the physical body – something along the lines of what half the people on the planet believe – soul/consciousness is separate from the body. This thought, in one form or another, is a central tenet of Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, and likely every other religion on the planet. Let us assume it is true and apply it to racist/sexist.

In our mind, remove the skin, remove the flesh, remove the sex organs. In our mind, make the person completely separate from their bodies (if you object and purport a person is solely their physical form then picture people as brains in vats connected to computers that allow them to communicate). Now in our mind, apply the same to everyone. Now, who is the racist/sexist? Would they suddenly conclude everyone is the same? I think not. What if everyone was born in this disembodied (or brain in a vat) state; would discrimination stop? Again, I think not.

Despite being disembodied, the essence of each individual still exists. To me this indicates that for the racist/sexist/ethno centrist/anti Semite and whatever other hate group – their target, is simply that, a target, a convenience. At the core is a desire to gain advantage by pushing someone else downward, to get ahead by standing on someone else, to claim and create an advantage over others not based on behavior but by differentiating and proclaiming themselves better (or more deserving) than the other based on inconsequential surface features such as skin, sex, birth place, language, religion. It is a lazy person person’s thought process and a self-centered me, Me, ME argument.

Look around, listen to their words, the practitioners of hate are easy to spot. They are the ones saying ME ME ME. I should get more – just look at those other people, look at their skin, look at their sex and orientation, look at where they are from, look at what god they pray to—THEY are bad. I am good. Give me what I want (or give it to those I say to) and take it from, or deny it to, those OTHERS.

Racist and sexist come in all colors and both sexes – to find them, just look and listen.