Shankar Vedantam’s 'The Hidden Brain', talks about a swim he once took. A decent swimmer in his own estimate, Vedantam went out into the sea one day and discovered that he had become superb and powerful; he was instantly proud of his new abilities. Far from shore, he realized he had been riding a current and was going to have to fight it all the way back to shore. “Unconscious bias influences our lives in exactly the same manner as that undercurrent,” Vedantam writes. “Those who travel with the current will always feel they are good swimmers; those who swim against the current may never realize they are better swimmers than they imagine.
When John Peters was 17 years old, he was an elite baseball player. Major League scouts loved his strength, his speed, and his mechanics, but before he graduated high school, John inherited his family farm. And he gave up his hopes of playing professional sports… to grow invisible corn. Today on the show: Hometown Blues.
For generations, living openly as a gay person in the United States was difficult, and often dangerous. But there's been a dramatic change in public attitudes toward gay people. This week, we explore one of the most striking transformations of public attitude ever recorded. And we consider whether the strategies used by gay rights activists hold lessons for other groups seeking change.
I enjoyed this podcast. It begins with the story of a gay Mormon teen and how the attitude of his family has dramatically shifted over the years.
The podcast examines what happened to allow the movement for gay rights to be so stunningly successful in the US. It’s so successful that there’s been a change in people’s brains as there’s been a 33% drop in unconscious antigay bias in the USA and if trends hold, will be gone in a decade.
1) Gay people became visible nationwide for first time in US as result of Stonewall riots
2) Gay people occur throughout the population, not segregated by race or economics. So as people start coming out, they’re from all segments of society
3) The AIDS crisis of the 1980′s led gays to shift their demands from “leave us alone” to “let us in,” as they see the benefits of being included in rights & protections.
4) The AIDS crisis also showed gay people mourning for those they lost. It also pulled back the curtain in a lot of families as they learned they had a family member with AIDS from being gay
5) In 1992, Bill Clinton’s presidential campaign included letting gays serve openly in the armed forces, and spoke about gays as Americans, not “others”. This led a dramatic shift among attitudes of Democrats, but also among Independents and less so among Republicans
6) In the 1990′s, gay & lesbian stories were being told on television
7) 2004 was Prop 8 in California which took away marriage rights from gays & lesbians, and saw similar constitutional amendments pass in a number of states. This caused gay rights activists to change tactics and focus on marriage equality. That focus helped others see gays as similar to them, wanting the same things, having the same values. This made gay people seem normal and brought over many straight people as allies. (Not in the podcast, but time and again, as bigots and extremists show their ugliness, people recoil and start to identify with the other side)
8) It helps that marriage equality didn’t cost straight people anything, didn’t diminish their rights or standing. Marriage also is the engine that helps carry other rights and as people support marriage equality, they start supporting other nondiscrimination legislation
“The psychological brilliance of the strategy comes down to this - it's very difficult to fight with people who say they embrace your values.”
One influential school of thought along these lines is called terror management theory. It's based on the idea that for much of human history (and for many people on the planet today) the world - perceived realistically - isn't pleasant or meaningful, but depressing (when it isn't terrifying). Humans, perhaps uniquely among all creatures, understand that they are mortal and that death is inevitable. This, according to terror management theorists, produces incapacitating fear. Humans have adapted to such fear by turning to a variety of mental defenses, some of which involve invocations of supernatural forces.
It's easy to tell the truth when things are going great, and it's easy to be 'brutally honest' to people you dislike. But when people we love experience setbacks, terror or failure, we readily reach for the comforts of deception and self-deception.
James Stockdale: Resilience, Reality, and the Courage to Endure
This past Saturday, June 21, I attended a live performance of Hidden Brain, hosted by Shankar Vedantam. The event took place at the Bilheimer Capitol Theatre in Clearwater, Florida. The theme of the show was how perception shapes our choices. It offered seven short insights, each compelling in its own way. But for me, the most powerful came right at the beginning.
Vedantam opened with the story…
