"Blink" - Chapter 3, The Warren Harding Error"

This was an interesting chapter, dealing with first impressions and how we are all unconsciously biased because of them. For instance, the author uses the example of how Warren Harding was essentially elected to President of the US, based mostly on the fact that he was good looking, and not at all on his ability or qualifications to run the country. As a result, he ended up being one of the worst US presidents, at least until Bush Jr. took over...

While the author's premise in this book is that we are all driven by our unconscious conditioning in our decision making processes, his solution to the conditioning of first impressions is to change the experiences which make up that impression.

"If you are a white person who would like to treat black people as equals in every way - who would like to have a set of associations with blacks that are as positive as those that you have with whites - it requires more than a simple commitment to equality. It requires that you change your life so that you are exposed to minorities on a regular basis and become comfortable with them and familiar with the best of their culture..."

I do feel that my own community has worked hard to address these types of conditionings, but I also feel that for some reason we have failed in the area of racial diversity. While we are all incredibly diverse in our representation of religious beliefs, gender roles, and political awareness - we still have a markedly low population of people of color. We do acknowledge that our tradition is primarily one of White European background, and perhaps this is in part an explanation. However, it has always seemed to me that there is some other mechanism at work - and I have been both puzzled and disturbed by this.

I do know that our rituals, for instance, are created with this White European bias as the foundation for how the ritual is crafted and executed. I also know that there is often resistance to change of any kind with respect to all of those elements which make up the flow of the ritual. One of the reasons for this resistance is simply the fact that these rituals have been done a certain way for many years and some members are really attached to the flow and any change at all is not welcome. But it has also been my experience to note that any suggestion of introducing something new to the flow of a ritual that may come from a tradition other than White European is also resisted, and I am not entirely convinced that the reason is simply one of change/newness. There have been other members of the community that have also noticed this bias, and have spoken up - often these are the same members that are people of color. And I have also noticed that this topic is often not met with the same open-mindedness that we normally apply when discussing matters of gender conditioning, religious differences, or political positions.

Just some observations here, food for thought.

It's been a long time

Since I posted last.

I actually have had a lot to say, but have obviously not said it here. :)

Re-committing to the process now, and will use this space to talk about the aspect of spirit, as it relates to Chinese medicine.

Where I go from there, who knows?