Thank you Mr Anaya for your comment. For me the current situation can only be dealt with when we apply morality and ethical standards equally, because actually the issue of racism is used to claim moral superiority by people who are not only guilty of the same, but are often engaged in it more than the people they tend to blame and accuse. We also see that people are very comfortable in denouncing racism (old and new) as long as it is of a particular kind, i.e. by one particular ethnicity upon another particular ethnicity, but when it happens in reverse, they refuse (!) to acknowledge it or to call it out. This is a real problem, because what we have then is a kind of moral tyranny that is pathological and driven purely by ideology.

This tendency is now so wide-spread that it could very well lead to real tyranny (if it isn’t already …) Any and all kinds of hypocrisy and double-standards have to be called out, have to be pointed out continuously and consistently (persistently!). That is the ONLY remedy to regain and maintain balance. Hypocrisy is the ultimate enemy – and also the ultimate evil, because it allows evil to be done in name of good. This is not simply the banality of evil, because that is when people are cogs in a bureaucratic wheel who follow orders, because they are unthinking and indifferent and they comply with order from authority (Hannah Arendt explored this theme very well).

No, it is something different and it’s worse. This kind of evil – hypocrisy and double-standards – is pathological when it is deliberate, which seems to be the case in most cases related to the subject of racism nowadays – people seem to be very aware that they have double-standards when it comes to these issues, yet they persist and practice their double-standards aggressively anyway.

We need a return to God. I’m afraid that’s the only force that can save humanity from this dark age we are going through.

Thank you very much for your feedback, professor. I agree with you that conflict resolution is of huge importance today in all spheres of life, it is not something limited to foreign affairs or geopolitics anymore. Therefore we must work on understanding the human condition and always try to find the middle way. With concerted effort I believe we can achieve this goal if we set our minds to it. It is however important for us to increasingly understand human behaviour on a deeper level. For example we don’t see the concept of ethnocentrism explained or debated much, yet it is an underlying factor of what is best described as tribalism, which is still very much with us.

Having experienced and seen some of the complexity in dealing with differences between communities and groups in terms of achieving ongoing social cohesion (always a fragile state of affairs), in South Africa and Northern Ireland, assisted in writing this piece. I hope this approach to ethnocentrism could be of benefit on a practical level to reduce the polarisation that seems to be a feature of many countries were diversity is a factor. Please feel free to share far and wide.

Thanks again for reading and for taking the time to comment.

Sincerely,
J.J. Montagnier

You have given a good example using ethnocentricity. You are very wise in understanding that we need not eliminate ethnocentricity, any more than we need to eliminate conflict— but we do need to eliminate the self- and -other destructive ways in which we let our ethnocentricity play out in our relationships to others.

Nicely done. Thank You.

Jerry DeGregory (PhD Sociology, from University of Missouri, USA)

Debra, your thoughts are much appreciated. The synchronicity of thought that occurs through the energies of the days are truly enlightening and revelatory – unity through diversity – sharing similar thoughts uniquely as a contribution to the whole 🙂

love, in lak’ech, Debra