Systemic Oppression Made Clear
In 2020, can you see me now?
The world celebrated the metaphor of clear vision for 2020. We brought the year in with promise and hope. 2020 was going to be the year of breakthrough. Well, as the cliché goes, “be careful what you ask for.”
Sometimes the path to a breakthrough is a breakdown. In that case, we should expect greatness because the breakdown has been upon us since the year began. We see flaws in our systems globally, culturally, and personally.
Clarity Is Not Comfort
While 2020 is delivering on clarity, we are learning that the price of clarity is discomfort. The moral of the story is that you can build wealth from oppression, but not wellness. In the current light, we have to acknowledge that the United States has never been well. All of its systems were designed out of a toxic ideology of oppression.
The danger of being in a toxic system is that our minds have to adapt to the system. We don’t become our authentic selves. We become our survival selves. We try to change the system with a recognition that our efforts may cost us our lives. We ignore the system and become its victim, which also costs us our lives. The third option is to live with a psychological duality of participation and resistance that leaves us distant from our authentic selves.
