[Neurons] 2021 Neurons #49 YOU ARE ONLY ONE OF A COLLECTIVE

[Michael Hall]

From: L. Michael Hall

2021 Neurons #49

August 6, 2021

How Self-Actualization 

Can Save Politics #7

 

A BAD IDEA:

YOU ARE ONE OF A COLLECTIVE

 

Critical Theory and its derivative, Critical Race Theory (CRT), does not see
you as an individual person.  No.  Instead you are viewed as a member of a
collective.  You are defined in terms of your Race, your Economic Status,
your Politics, Your Gender, your Religious, etc.  Who you really are is a
function of your group identity with several identities, and because of that
you may be defined in terms of multiple identities- which leads to the idea
of intersectionality.

 

Now once you are a member of a collective, you are seen and related to not
as the unique person that you are, but stereotypically through the group
that you belong to.  So if you are black, then you are expected to be a
Democrat.  That's how "black people" think and what they value.  If you
don't, then something wrong with you.  In this bad idea, your group identity
is supposed to be the most critical and dominating factor about you.  Yes, I
know it sounds like sci-fi, like the Borg Collective on Star Trek who wants
to assimilate you.

 

By this theory, if you belong to the group that historically created
problems long ago, you now have "white guilt."  And this is so regardless of
how non-prejudiced you actually are.  CRT posits that we are to identify and
treat people according to their group identity- which ironically is as
racist an approach as there is.   Next, to make this bad idea even worse, if
people in your race did something bad- you share a collective guilt with
them.  CRT asserts this about "white people."  If you are "white," you
automatically inherit white guilt, white racism, white superiority, etc.
Supposedly, it is inherent in you so inescapable that there's nothing you
can do about it.  Talk about a determinist ideology.

 

Now in General Semantics, Alfred Korzybski defined this as the problem of
identification.  Whenever we identify one thing with another, we make them
equal to each other, the "same."  Yet in reality, there is no sameness, so
to identify is a form of unsanity.  We have made ourselves less sane.  Taken
to the extreme, it leads to insanity.  Language is part of the problem here.
It is so easy to say "he is X."  Or, "they are Y."  The other side of the
problem is the inability to make important distinctions between things.

           All black people are not the same.

           All white people are not the same.

           All members of X group are not the same.

 

Identification is the process of lumping a whole group of people into a
single category and then treating them all the same.  Of course, that's
irrational.  They are not all the same.  Ultimately this idea is bad because
it is so disrespectful of people and so dismissive of individual uniqueness.
It leads to misunderstanding each person in his or her own right.  And such
stereotyping is just another form of prejudice and racism.

 

Imposing group identity or identities on people is one of CRT's bad idea.
Here's something else that makes identifying people via a group a bad idea -
with group membership personal responsibility vanishes.  It gives way to
group responsibility or more accurate, group blame.   A much better idea
comes from NLP, the idea of personal responsibility.  How you personally
respond arises from your unique personal abilities to think, feel, speak,
and act as an individual person.  Your response-ability gives you the
personal power to think, speak, and act on your own behalf.   This empowers
you to never be a victim!   And this arose, as did NLP, from the Humanist
Psychology movement that Abraham Maslow and Carl Rogers inspired from the
1940s onward to the 1970s.  Here the emphasis is on the dignity and value of
each person.  You are more than, and different from, your group association.
It is your differences that makes you special and unique.




 

 

L. Michael Hall, Ph.D., Executive Director 

Neuro-Semantics 

P.O. Box 8

Clifton, CO. 81520 USA                             

               1 970-523-7877 

132607 NeuroSemantics Executive Learning Front Cover

 

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