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What do you do and/or wish everyone would do that helps to promote understanding and comfort and a sense of belonging and togetherness and trust between all people?
I was taught to treat others the way I like to be treated and that's always worked for me. It erases racial, religious, economic, gender, generational, and cultural lines when you accept, appreciate, respect, and care for each other.
What do you do and/or wish everyone would do that helps to promote understanding and comfort and a sense of belonging and togetherness and trust between all people?
Racial divisions are rooted in concrete social and economic inequalities. Deal with that issue, and all that comfort and trust stuff will take care of itself.
The best way to conquer is to stop insisting being labeled by your ancestor roots. If your an American citizen, that's what you are, period. I have deep Italian roots but I don't say I'm Italian American, that's silly. Certain groups, that are born here in the U.S. and who's parents were too, demand a certain phrase that sets them apart from the rest, thickening the racial divide.
Here's a good take on it: WE CAN'T BLAME WHITE PEOPLE ANY LONGER by Bill Cosby
I was taught to treat others the way I like to be treated and that's always worked for me. It erases racial, religious, economic, gender, generational, and cultural lines when you accept, appreciate, respect, and care for each other.
I was taught and I believe the same thing. Only the liberals in this country who don't even know me tell me how I think. I just say oh well, if people want to cary that perceived nastiness around with them there is nothing I can do. Let them be a tool. That's their right.
I think the best thing you can do on a personal level is just take people as they come, treat them like individuals and with respect. That includes respecting thier point of view even if you don't agree. At least listen and try to understand. And don't assume.
As we can already see, that can be a hard one for people to do. Heh.
Just realize that nobody is different. Everyone is everything. Watch the PBS show Faces of America. In that show, Henry Louis Gates digs into the family trees of a dozen well known persons. In the final episodes, they do basic genetic testing and discover that nearly everyone on the show is related to someone else on the show, leading to approximately the following...
Gates: So, Eva, do you think you are related to anyone else on the show?
Eva Longoria: No, I don't see how.
Gates: Well, you are.
Longoria: What? Who is it?
Gates: Yo Yo Ma.
Longoria: What??? Yo Yo Ma is Mexican???
Gates: No. You're Chinese.
Just realize that nobody is different. Everyone is everything. Watch the PBS show Faces of America. In that show, Henry Louis Gates digs into the family trees of a dozen well known persons. In the final episodes, they do basic genetic testing and discover that nearly everyone on the show is related to someone else on the show, leading to approximately the following...
Gates: So, Eva, do you think you are related to anyone else on the show?
Eva Longoria: No, I don't see how.
Gates: Well, you are.
Longoria: What? Who is it?
Gates: Yo Yo Ma.
Longoria: What??? Yo Yo Ma is Mexican???
Gates: No. You're Chinese.
And so it goes...
I love this. We are all related if we go back far enough. That's on an intellectual level but on a practical level I think people have got to let go of their ancestral labels and just be Americans. Sure, you can hang onto your cultural foods, customs and beliefs, you can trace your ancestry, but putting it in the background and being an American first would help us to truly mesh together.
I don't believe in quotas or preferential treatment because that only leads to resentment. We have had it for a while and it seems to have done some good. But now, I think it's gone on for too long.
I can't solve the problems of the world but I know that in school when the teacher read us books in which the main character was someone of a different race, it would help us to understand that we all have the same basic needs, we have the same feelings, no one group is better or worse than any other. I said the teacher READ US BOOKS just because a lot of people won't read on their own. A teacher can READ books out loud even in high school--or show films and the students will probably absorb it. Discuss it, teach it.
As far as what the government can do? Maybe someone else will have some ideas. I believe in education that teaches us to understand people who are different from ourselves.
Learn more about the culture instead of admonishing it. Open your mind and be more tolerant of other cultures you don't know. There is so much beauty in the world from all ethnic lines.
What do you do and/or wish everyone would do that helps to promote understanding and comfort and a sense of belonging and togetherness and trust between all people?
Even if everyone suddenly took a powerful drug that made him feel "one with all humanity," I don't see much changing in the world, or in America. The sociopaths who run our nation have NO human feelings--none at all, and certainly none that can be used to change their behavior. I guarantee the uber-wealthy (the top 1/2 of 1% that control all wealth and income) would get exclusive control of the drug (with the "Drug War" already to go) and would then use it to collect the very last pennies that managed to keep the masses alive.
But let's imagine there ARE some good people in power, and they want to honestly try and help the Thread Starter get going in his thought process. First, what stops humans from feeling the way we want them to feel (that we are all one brotherhood that succeeds or fails as a unit)? Social psychologists have produced thousands of studies that invariably conclude that: "people define themselves in terms of social groupings and are quick to denigrate others who don't fit into those groups." A PBS Documentary followed one experiment where a third grade classroom was divided into 2 groups (blue or brown eyes), with the blue eyed group being given some preference over the other. "Within minutes, the blue-eyed children sadistically ridiculed their unfortunate classmates, calling them "stupid" and shunning them in the playground during recess." The experiment was then flipped and the brown eyed children were given preference, and the exact same thing happened.
(http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/...chology-crowds)
To get into such a complex discussion, we'll need much more than a bunch of suggestions of ways to improve things by promoting understanding, comfort, a sense of belonging, togetherness, and trust between all people.
And what does "Promote Understanding" mean? Why would that help anyone act better toward his fellow man? We are all aware that people in America today has some similarities (like all being human), and often share more specific similarities when we gather in groups (race, socioeconomic level, intelligence, personality, athletic ability) Or understanding differences (some Dads go to work, some deal drugs, some collect gov't checks, some families don't have Dads much at all)?
Even in PRISONS, gangs separate into white, Asian, hispanic, and black--every single time, everywhere across the worlds. It couldn't be more fundamental, and it isn't about wealth and poverty. It is built into our genes--not that white is good and black is bad, but that "us" is good and must be protected, while "them" is bad and dangerous.
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