We will unashamedly confess that Albert Einstein’s revolutionary theory [E=MC squared], as advised, uniquely and famously, revealing a fundamental link between space and time, is far beyond our own comprehension. We would, however, take the liberty of introducing the reader, to our far more comprehensible, empirical theory which may, similar to Einstein’s’ “Theory of Relativity,” be succinctly and universally expressed in an equation, viz., [PD=+/- EE]. Our latter formula, by contrast, is easily comprehended and understood as representing the empirical phenomenon that the perception of physical differences is a direct product of one’s extent of personal experience. Said concept may be understood in wise street language as: “To the other guy, you are the other guy.” Said easy-to-explain conception, nevertheless, is often unknown or ignored, with consequences ranging from ordinary (ignorant) misunderstanding to the fear and loathing implicit in racial, religious, or ethnic bigotry.
It is an unfortunate but, nevertheless, accurate, observation, complicating the empirical fact of the extant natural and ethnic diversity of Homo sapiens, that there has eternally existed a universal and innate tendency of the individual persona, to see himself as the exclusive model or insular criterion in unfair and critical comparison with diverse others. Such failure may indeed have a prehistoric cautionary impetus, but, perceived contemporaneously, is an irrefutable indication of ignorant insularity and lack of empirical experience with those of disparate appearance and belief. Educational advancement and, most especially, the enlightening revelations garnered from travel are among the specific antidotes for this atavistically, anti-social precautionary perception.
It is inarguable, that our Nation, with the possible categorical exception of its aboriginal Indian peoples) has essentially been populated by immigrants and their descendants, and is, empirically, a “melting pot” or a National conglomerate of ethnicities, races, and citizens of diverse nationalities. Our unfortunate history, nevertheless, has been one of strife, hatred, fear, and denial of natural and legal rights for “minorities,” i.e., groups of color or ethnos in variance with the controlling majority population, dominant by virtue of its arithmetic ascendency.
There have been many examples in history, of those who aspire to autocratic leadership and promote racial, religious, and cultural bias and prejudice, in furtherance of their desire to attain autocratic control, who tactically promote and encourage divisiveness and dissension in a multi-ethnic and varied racial Nation. We unhappily include in this Machiavellian fraternity, our own past President, Donald J. Trump. It was the famous novelist and circumspect thinker, Aldous Huxley, who, notably, stated, “The purpose of propaganda is to make one set of people forget that other sets of people are [also] human.”
In past essays, we have strongly encouraged parents of young children, in addition to properly educating them in the traditions and beliefs of their (happenstance) birth into their particular family, that they are advised of the existence of others of different beliefs, and possibly, diverse appearance who are equally acceptable. Such early lessons and later education and later objective experience, in our view, constitute means, preferable to aspirational and possibly, unobserved, statutory promulgations. It is positive enlightenment, not the vague threat of possible retribution, that has the most promise and likelihood of moral and legal success.
The concept of the frequently heard comment as to a speaker’s possession of a “foreign accent,” is empirically and contextually instructive. Uniformly, every conversational party has a perceptible accent to any other speaker or listener who is reared in another language or diverse Nationality from his. The heard perception of an accent is universally attributable to the “other guy.”
-p.
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