Respect, dignity and rights entangled with responsibility
Sexism, racism, discrimination is not present at birth, they are taught.
To change the ugliness of superiority of a human over another, for any reason, requires generational change.
Most people are blind to their prejudice. It has been normal operations for the sum of their life.
This type of change is hard. Urgent.
Entangled with it is any sense of individual superiority, the rights of an individual over another human, creature or earth, to take, exploit, extract, use, abuse.
It lives in neoliberal economics, capitalism, classism, caste systems, in-group – out-group.
It is perpetuated by ‘not-enough-to-go-round’, winner takes all, the loser in the schoolyard.
It is embedded in patriarchy.
Like any cultural change, the path is rocky. Two steps forward, one hundred steps back.
Those at effect must guard against becoming poisoned by the same superiority and righteousness of the perpetrators.
We might return again and again to respect, dignity, rights never separate from responsibility, and integrity in all things.
Photo taken September 7th 2021
