“those of us raised and/or educated in western systems of thought have been trained to read and evaluate ourselves and others according to status-quo stories. We have been indoctrinated into a supremacist worldview—an overreliance on rational thought, scientistic empiricism, and hierarchical binary thinking that creates a restrictive framework that labels, divides, and segregates based on socially defined difference and sameness. Yet when we automatically label people by color, gender, sexuality, religion, nationality, or any other politically charged characteristics and/or presumed embodied, psychic, political differences, we build walls between ourselves and these others. We isolate ourselves from those whom we have labeled “different.” This automatic difference-based labeling process distorts our perceptions, creating arbitrary divisions and an oppositional “us-against-them” mentality that prevents us from recognizing potential commonalities.”
- AnaLouise Keating, Transformation Now!
