Thanks!

Capitalism, the nature of the system, the nervous system of the U.S., is working to perfection. The American Dream is turning into a nightmare. While millions of people go without the white fence, many millions more aren’t satisfied with just a white fence. More, more, more…that’s the name of the game. Your success and identity is defined by not only what you own, but how much.

“The Business” dictates and is successfully segmenting and dividing people in order to market their brands and identity. The more they can segment and divide the people, the more opportunity they have to make money…selling to four individuals is certainly much more profitable than selling to one family. Four iPods will make Apple more money than one.

One of your biggest and most inherent needs is physical human contact and compassion. One business sells you products that divide and minimalize physical human interaction, while another tries to sell you exactly that.

They are transforming us into the Me Generation, the iGeneration, whatever you want to call it…you’re being segmented, bought, sold, and toyed with. You are losing your identity and it’s only becoming harder to find. As a generally compassionate and caring species, we are sacrificing ourselves for our distractions. Shiny colored balls are all around us and we’re constantly chasing after them.

If you were in an intimate relationship with The Businesses, you would be screaming rape. And rightfully so, because you are being fucked and don’t even know it.

Millions of businesses are aiming at you and firing with everything they have, and the people are too busy dodging bullets to fire back. Everywhere you go, you’re cornered and bombarded with advertisements that are designed to pull at the heartstrings of your innermost desires, your fears, and your insecurities.  And once they’ve got you in their grasp, even within reach, they can use and manipulate you to the point where they are replacing your desires with their own.

You’re too fat, too thin, unhealthy, lonely, depressed, insecure…There’s always something wrong with you. You need this, this, this, this, and that to help make you better. People you don’t even know are telling you what you should be. They’re buying your identity and then selling it right back to you.

You ever wonder what the meaning of life is? The meaning of life is really pretty simple. It’s what YOU want it to be. And it’s being confident and honest in your decisions and assessment of yourself. While everyone is trying to give you their version of what life is or should be and what they think you need, you’ve got to be increasingly more aware of their motive, their message, and most importantly, you need to be increasingly more aware of yourself and how these things affect you.

Mostly used by “religious” types as an argument for the existence of God. Proponents of intelligent design say it is a scientific theory. The phrase and concept is used to combat current scientific theories regarding evolution and the origin of life.

Get it straight and don’t believe the bullshit. Regardless of whether the theory of intelligent design is valid, intelligent design is not science…just an intelligent way to maneuver the concept into the fabric of our lives and get the masses to conform to a certain belief.

Will Durant

How do children respond to stereotypes about race, religion and gender? A child-development expert looks at contradictions in kids’ behavior.

Newsweek WEB EXCLUSIVE

By Anna Kuchment

Updated: 11:05 a.m. MT Feb 26, 2007

Feb. 26, 2007 – Child-development experts have spent years studying geekdom: what it is that makes one child more likely to be rejected by another. But University of Maryland professor Melanie Killen took a different approach. Instead of focusing on social deficits, Killen, associate director of the Center for Children, Relationships and Culture, focused on another category of rejection—when children are excluded because of gender, race or ethnicity rather than their behavior. Killen calls it “group membership.” Her study, “Children’s Social and Moral Reasoning About Exclusion,” published in this month’s issue of Current Directions in Psychological Science, shows that kids become aware of group membership from at least the time they’re in preschool. But, while kids universally feel that it’s unfair to reject someone based exclusively on their gender, race or religion, there are some situations in which they do so anyway. Killen spoke to NEWSWEEK’s Anna Kuchment about why that’s the case. Excerpts:

NEWSWEEK: Why are we so fascinated with the question of exclusion and inclusion?
Melanie Killen: As adults, we all have to navigate social groups. We’re in hundreds of groups throughout our lives: at work, in higher education, in community organizations. Every time you join a group there are entry rituals—you have to apply, you have to know the group’s prior history. Understanding these nuances is a key to social and professional success.

Why did you decide to focus on group discrimination, rather than on “Mean Girls”-style popularity contests and bullying?
Our approach is: yeah, there are times when kids are rejected because they’re not good at social skills, but there’s a whole other dimension we need to look at, and that’s intergroup relations—when kids exclude others not because of social skills but because they’re a girl or a Muslim. As adults, we don’t think about that so much in children. That’s part of why adults have wars and why countries don’t get along, but it’s gotta start somewhere. We wanted to know: how early does it start and what categories do kids use to reject each other?

And what did you find?
That kids become aware of gender first. Young kids [preschoolers] understand that people have different skin colors, but they don’t use that to classify people by activities or interests. If you asked them, “What do white kids like?” they wouldn’t be able to tell you. Stereotypes about race and ethnicity come in during elementary school. As kids get older, they’re aware of group dynamics, and they pick up the stereotypes of the culture and start using those as reasons for exclusion. They’ll say, “It’s OK not to let him in the club because he likes different things.” Adolescents start to become very aware of group function and what makes kids want to hang out together. Those reasons start to be more influenced by stereotypes.

Tell me about some of the discussions you had with preschoolers.
We’d tell them a vignette or scenario. “Girls are playing with dolls and a boy wants to play with them, but the girls say ‘no.’ Is that all right?” What we found is, if you asked them that question, a majority of kids say it’s not all right. They’ll say, “That wouldn’t be right because he’ll feel sad.” But if you make the situation more complex and say, “A group of girls is playing with dolls and there’s only room for one more person. Would you take the boy or the girl?” Then they’ll say, “Well, maybe the girl, because she knows about dolls.”

How were those different from the conversations you had with high-schoolers?
The similarities were that young kids, just like adolescents, have stereotypes about others and also recognize the unfairness of excluding someone just based on those stereotypes. But what’s very different is that adolescents are much more sensitive to group dynamics and group function in both a positive and a negative way. In a positive sense, they understand that for a group to work well there has to be a shared interest. The negative side is that they might still equate shared interest with shared race and ethnicity.

Your research gets at the larger question of: is it ever OK to exclude? Is that something you’ve thought about?
What we say is that exclusion is not the same as other transgressions, like hitting someone for no reason or denying someone resources for no reason. Those are moral transgressions. But exclusion is different because there are plenty of times in society where exclusion is OK. A typical example is baseball—if you’re not good at baseball, you’re excluded.

But exclusion based on group membership is different. What we find is that, universally, if you really pose it to them in terms of exclusion based solely on group membership and no other association like competence, skill or merit, it seems that our interviewees would view that as unfair and wrong. There seems to be a universal feeling that exclusion based solely on group membership is unfair if you don’t know anything else about that person’s talent and ability. There is this sense of fairness that seems to be universal.

Is this sense inborn?
Our research suggests it’s not strictly innate and not strictly learned, but it’s an interaction. Infants come into the world with a social predisposition. They like faces, they like people, they love to look at kids. And we think that’s part of the basis for some kind of moral orientation toward fairness and equality and that really does come out of peer interaction. They negotiate and develop a concept of equality.

What can be done to prevent this type of exclusion?
Intervention doesn’t have to teach them that it’s wrong to do this. They already understand that. But what we have to work on is helping them see when a situation involves exclusion based on group membership, because sometimes they get confused. They think they’re making a decision that’s fair, but it’s really based on stereotypes. For example, if you ask kids about a music club that excludes kids based on race, the younger kids will say it’s wrong. But as you get older they’ll say if you don’t like the same music it’s OK. But then that’s based on stereotype. Kids understand fairness but what they don’t get is when using a stereotype might interfere with that.

What can parents do?
We think schools and teachers and parents should do much more to talk to all kids about how groups form, about exclusion and what makes it wrong and when you might be being biased in a situation. A lot of the exclusion that’s based on race and gender comes from kids in the majority who are just not aware of the experiences that kids who are minorities have.

We also think it’s important for parents and teachers to promote diversity in friendships and playgroups early on. When their kids turn 5, parents often start having playdates only with girls or only with boys. They move into perpetuating a segregated culture. And why is segregating by gender so different than segregating by ethnicity?

Is there an evolutionary basis to exclusion based on groups?
I don’t think there is in quite the way it’s portrayed. There’s a biological tendency for primates and humans to form groups, but just because you like your group doesn’t mean you dislike or go against the out-group. With primates and humans, there’s a social predisposition toward fairness.

URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17347064/site/newsweek/

For most of us, the term diversity almost immediately conjures up visions of people, but not just people, different-looking people…people of different races. All this does is focus on race. And the term “race” is one of the most socially-constructed, loaded terms in the world…and especially in the U.S.

These are all forms of newspeak that are meant to point out differences based on physical appearance. It’s meant to keep you judging people based on what they look like.  Instead of coming together and really understanding and celebrating culture, we are dividing and separating ourselves from one another by pointing out differences and calling non-white people minorities…even if they are in fact NOT the minority.  Minority is another great newspeak term that is meant to diminish the non-white individuals of the world. It’s saying that because you are different, you are inferior. Look at the words themselves…

The word majority insinuates power while minority insinuates just the opposite, inferiority. And the more the “majority” can keep the minority divided and fighting amongst themselves, the majority will strive even more. It’s essentially labeling people based merely on looks. It’s racial profiling. And it’s been woven into the fabric of our society for a long time. The census is a great example.

And while it is illegal to discriminate someone based on race, it’s happening to us all the time…and most of us don’t even realize it!

It’s time we transition the conversation from diversity to culture. America is not a “melting pot,” rather it is a quilt of cultures (a cultural mosaic)…each patch having its own identity and meaning, contributing to the quilt as a whole. Understanding and comprehending different cultures is the next big step to take.

We really need to get past the differences of diversity, and onto a new level of understanding culture. While diversity is exclusive, culture is inclusive. It is this approach of inclusiveness and understanding that we as a people need to take. There are so many different types of culture, not just in the U.S., but throughout the world. And with the proliferation of technology and the internet, cultures are crossing one another more and more everyday. The culture lines are blurring more and more, and they aren’t limited to race.

Diversity is dead. Culture is alive.

Maybe we’re not as intelligent as we think we are.