THE GENESIS OF COUNTERFACTUAL BLACK PERCEPTION IN AMERICA

For many of us, and in large part because of the limitations of human abstraction, the world we live in began the day we were born. We see mixed schools, desegregated neighbourhoods, and a myriad of races in the workplace and surmise this as our experience: unity. We see the semblance of equality in the absence of legal discrimination, so if we are not paying attention, it is easy to wonder “what everyone is talking about” when the incendiary R word comes up—racism. Percolating amidst the chants for reform and petitions for change is the question, “what did I miss?” Well, about four hundred years, but that’s for another day. While those four hundred odd years should be diligently explored in your own time, this short article attempts to illustrate the genesis of counterfactual black perception in America in order to explain how systemic racism has regrettably gone unchecked for eons. With this in mind, we can begin to disassemble the untruths woven into our justice system's structural anatomy.

We all know the basics when it comes to American history and slavery, and although the chronology of events is recounted in western education ad nauseum, the detail that is almost always glossed over is “how?” How did more than seven generations of people either idly stand by or actively participate in the enslavement of black people? The answer is essential to understanding why the residue of early America furnishes the landscape of today’s systemic racism: anti-black propaganda. It is through this contortion of black identity that slave owners were able to justify a brutally enforced racial hierarchy, and why law enforcement implicitly finds justification for its use of excessive force against an entire community today. This article expounds on the genesis of counterfactual black perception in America in order to illustrate how this uncorrected illusion is at the heart of today’s systemic racism.

The Beginnings: Erasing of Identity

Anti-black propaganda found its origins in the intentional corrosion of African identity. Once Europeans recognized that uncompensated black labour could be exploited to construct developing nations, they quickly got to work on a plan to delegitimize black integrity. The system that was enjoying a transatlantic slave enterprise had identified best practices for justifying enslavement: dehumanization, dehumanization, dehumanization. These practices provided a springboard for the unsympathetic commodification of black labour, inasmuch as plantation owners were satisfied in suppressing, exploiting, and tormenting their slaves under the misbelief that black people were not only inferior, but indeed, not even human at all.

In order to create a new black identity, however, the first needed to be erased. Plantation owners divested enslaved Africans from their heritage by giving them white names like Betty or Johnny, and their owners’ last names as a mark of proprietorship. The western degradation of Afrocentric identity, later finding momentum through anti-black rhetoric, is integral to understanding the centuries-long passive complicity in the slave trade and the continued institution of racism that is responsible for George Floyd. Read on…

The Creation of a Counterfactual Identity through Anti-black Propaganda

The gutting of African identities would not be enough to dehumanize one race and spellbind another into complicity. More work needed to be done. In the 1700’s and beyond, anti-black campaigns were orchestrated to malign black reputation and preemptively deter challengers to the slave trade. Western education, the printing press, posters, signs, and postcards depicted black people as barbarians who, if left unoppressed, would pose a grave danger to the white man. The advent of “scientific racism"--which proposed anthropological typologies to distinguish human races as genetically superior--further gave credence to this theory. Not only were blacks painted as inferior, but warped scientific racism was used to ratify the misperception of their threat. A report by physical Samuel A. Cartwright in the Medical Association of Louisiana (1851) stated that, “Negroes, with their smaller brains and blood vessels, and their tendency toward indolence and barbarism [must] be kept benevolently in the state of submission.” (Source: the dawn of American Slavery: Jamestown 400 special report). The result of faulty science, eurocentrism, and negative black imagery was the legitimization of violence against an entire race. It is worth noting that this misperception was not, and has never been cured.

Post-Slavery: Reaffirming Black stereotypes

The failure to debunk the myth resulted in an opportunity to instead reaffirm it in a newly segregated America. Although abolitionists were successful in ending slavery, they had failed to demand black integration into white society. The black community—under the growing ethnonym “African-Americans”—were thus streamlined into impoverished neighbourhoods where they were denied access to proper healthcare, education, and employment. As a result, the late 1800’s to the mid 1900’s saw the rise of American ghettos, where restrictive real estate covenants and redlining—the systematic denial of federal funds to black neighbourhoods—continued to lock AA’s out of fair opportunities. Children were poorly educated in schools that were funded by local property taxes and received marginal allocation of resources. Marred by chaos and desperation, these children were plucked from their schools and ferreted into juvenile detention facilities in a practice that would come to be known as “the school to prison pipeline.” Criminalized for adolescent behaviours, these children would spend their lives in and out of correctional facilities.   

As a result of harsh ostracization and the denial of essential government aid, American ghettos saw a rise in drug trafficking as a means to sustain a living. Peaking in the 1970’s, Ronald Reagan’s “war on drugs” was a government-led initiative to rigidly prosecute the consumption and distribution of narcotics in largely black and latino neighbourhoods, and is often considered the infancy of mass incarceration. Despite statistics demonstrating roughly equal drug use and sales amongst black and white races, research shows that prosecutors were twice as likely to pursue mandatory minimum sentences for black people than for white people who had committed the same crime. Additionally, even though black people made up 35% of those arrested for drug possession, they made up 75% of those imprisoned for it. So strong was the presumption of black guilt that only two-decades earlier, a 14 year old boy, Emmett Till, was lynched after being accused of wolf whistling at a white lady in a grocery store. In 2007, his accuser, Carolyn Bryant, admitted to a university researcher that she lied.

Nonetheless, what the war on drugs highlighted above all was America’s failure to recognize that it had created fertile breeding grounds for crime and then ruthlessly persecuted the fruits of its own doing. Now, through warped imagery and statistics, white America could wag its righteous finger and say “I told you so” as it pigeonholed black America into a new stereotype of "thugs and looters" (sound familiar?), an outgrowth of the original anti-black narrative. Abandonedly floating through bourgeois living rooms, above their scoffing and calls for over-policing, however, remained the true, overlooked statistic--that white crime was the highest percentage of crime among all races. (Source: Maguire and Pastore (1995), p. 388). The explanation? anti-black propaganda.

Implicit Biases in Modern Society

Centuries of eurocentric evangelism later, the distorted image of the black man has become all but defensible. How do you argue against a stereotype that has been proselytized from generation to generation through junk science, biased media, and intentional miseducation? As hard as it sounds is as hard as it is. Following the war on drugs, excessive policing methods against African Americans has continued to be shockingly commonplace in modern society, and while disproportional use of force has myriad psychological components, one of its key catalysts is the unreasonable fear of the black man. Although not directly exposed to scientific racism and the anti-black imagery of their predecessors, many Boomers and Gen X’ers have inherited hand-me-down racism in the form of implicit biases. This helps make sense of why institutional racism is still a thing. Despite being unarmed, despite being undangerous, and despite posing no conspicuous threat, officers are accustomed to using disproportional violence against African American’s because it is proportional to the threat in their minds. A threat developed through the centuries of intentional besmirching of black identity, from barbarians to gangsters. The explanation? anti-black propaganda.

Conclusion

The eruption of a race pandemic in 2020 is a relic not of accident, but design. To wake up in this world as a white person and say, “I understand that I am privileged, but I am not entirely sure why,” is a statement not to be faulted, due to the complexity of a caste system that has engineered both segregation and complicity. To make better sense of this, these two clauses need to be broken down.

“I understand that I am privileged” means to understand  that you are able to walk out of your house—or in Breonna Taylor’s case, to be asleep in it—without fear of being killed for the colour of your skin.

“But I don’t understand why.” The “why” is because you have no stigma attached to your racial identity. The white identity has not only been celebrated as innocuous, lawful, and benevolent, but for a long period of time, superior. Emergent outliers to this racial identity are labeled as rogues and misfits, well-meaning people who found themselves in the wrong crowd, or were failed by their parents. Minority races, on the other hand, are non-beneficiaries of the “benefit of the doubt.”

The contortion of black identity has a distinct chronology. In the first stage, early anti-black stereotypes were engineered to keep white people complicit in the commodification of black labour. To justify their suppression, black people were labelled as dangerous for their incivility. In the second stage, during the nineteenth and twentieth century, the anti-black narrative evolved to depict a novel danger: criminals. Instead of exploiting unremunerated black labour, the new agenda was "keeping the streets safe" from black and latino "thugs" through mass incarceration, despite overwhelming crime statistics showing either equal or higher rates of white crime. In the final stage, and where we have arrived today, these developing typologies have matured into implicit biases that show up as an unreasonable suspicion of the black man. This explains why when Treyvon Martin was killed, they said, “he probably deserved it.” This explains why when Tamir Rice was killed, they said, “he looked like a threat.” And this explains why when George Floyd was killed, they said, “but what did he do before they knelt on him?” In other words, he must have been dangerous, because what else could he be?

In short, privilege can be surmised as the ability to roam the streets without the crushing weight of mis-identity. A mis-identity engineered through racist propaganda. A mis-identity that has been involuntarily passed down from generation to generation not only because of a systemic failure to cure it, but a systemic intention to reaffirm it. A mis-identity that you have taken no part in creating, and that makes up no parts of who you are. A mis-identity that, on a good day, will mean the police are called on you for no reason at all, but on a bad day, will mean the end of your life.

Cognitive Dissonance in the Black Lives Matter Movement

Although wrongful death at the hands of law enforcement, as it relates to ethnic minorities is regrettably no new concept, the age of technology has more recently allowed us to capture such chilling episodes of malpractice, that are in turn quickly dispensed to the rest of the world through common social media outlets. I suppose this is why many people describe our era as the 'age of enlightenment', insomuch as the vast availability of information no longer affords us the luxury of ignorance as an excuse, and many of us have concorantly taken the initiative to invest in this wealth of knowledge and entrench our understanding of what can be described as a "new reality" (albeit, a reality that is only ostensibly new).  

With this era of edification, rich in unrelenting, unassailable material on the genocide of the black population - from Eric Garner who was choked to death by an NYPD cop with his hands up, to Terrence Cutcher who was leaning motionless against his vehicle whilst being apprehended and still fated to a gruesome, execution style slaughter nonetheless, to 16 year old Kalief Browder, who was incarcerated without conviction for allegedly stealing a bookbag, serving 2 years of his 3 year sentence in solitary confinement that ultimately drove him to suicide, and many more harrowing episodes of innocent people dying indefensibly at the hands of law enforcement - why is it, then, that so many people still continue to refute the idea that indeed such calculated carnage, which draws stark parallels to autocratic systems of ethnic cleansing, manifests in our society virtually every single day? 

Why is it that, no matter how many articles are unearthed, videos displayed, footage released and images dispersed, there are still an unfathomably large body of people who persist with retorts such as "he should've just complied" or "she must've been acting up" or "It was definitely his fault, because the police know what they're doing". Although in some instances non-compliance may have been a factor, there is no statute in existence that demands life as the price of minor civilian-officer discordance. Such ironfisted consequences are typically the motif in tyrannical classifications, but certainly not under the veil of democracy that the west so contemptuously champions. Even when innocence is ratified and compliance proven, there seems to be nonetheless an unyielding point-blank-refusal of what seems so unequivocally apparent. The question then remains, why?

Typically, we would ascribe this to a sheer lack of exposure to information, but with that glitch being amiss, it is is thus necessary to turn to psychology for an enriched understanding. The term 'cognitive dissonance' may be familiar to many psychology scholars, and is a useful tool in understanding why so many reject the Black Lives Matter movement altogether. Believe it or not, it isn't always down to an inherent, untapped pool of racism embedded in one's psyche (although that often seems the obvious cause.)

The term cognitive dissonance refers to "the mental stress or discomfort experienced by an individual who holds two or more contradictory beliefs, ideas, or values at the same time... or is confronted by new information that conflicts with existing beliefs, ideas or values.
 
...An individual who experiences inconsistency tends to become psychologically uncomfortable, and is motivated to try to reduce this dissonance, as well as actively avoid situations and information likely to increase it."

In accordance with the unflinching malpractice of the judicial system, cognitive dissonance is employed by much of society as, in fact, an unconscious means of survival, detaching from anything that may threaten the sanctuary of life under the state. Traditionally, the state exists in order to protect us, as purported via time-honoured accounts of the Social Contract, by classical philosophers such as Rousseau, Locke and Hobbes. The aforementioned contract invites us to relinquish some autonomy in exchange for protection from the state against those who may harm us. In cede of such autonomy, we put our trust in the system and law enforcement officials to ensure the consummation of this umbilical protection.

Through millennia of acceding this arrangement of plausibly fair protection, our minds have, for eons, been conditioned to accept that the state is, and can only be 'good'. Should we squelch such an ideal altogether, it is likely that anarchy would ensue, threatening our way of life and very survival. This is the point at which many of us prefer to 'keep the light off'. The concept of dicey law enforcement or a precarious legal system directly contradicts the values that we have adopted for centuries in order to cultivate a safe haven for ourselves, our children and for posterity. Cognitive dissonance allows us to uphold the infamous American slogan of 'justice for all', in believing that such a pietistic system is only capable of serving what it has habitually promised - equality, fairness, compassion and redress. The up keeping of which necessitates a dream-like trance, or else summons the dangerous idea that we ourselves may be unsafe from its perilous ambit. Regrettably for many ethnic groups, the realisation of which is not a choice.

In acquiescing the innocence of the American black male and the grievous violations of human and civil rights, the belief holder must concomitantly find the state culpable. Since the trusted state can not be found accountable for any nefarious act, the blame must be deflected back onto the victim for surely having 'provoked' the ensued onslaught. Leon Festinger explored early accounts of cognitive dissonance in his 1956 book  "When Prophecy Fails", in which he exclaimed, 

"People engage in a process called "dissonance reduction" to bring their cognitions and actions in line with one another. This creation of uniformity allows for a lessening of psychological tension and distress."

In demonising the victim over the miscreant, we reinforce the safe ideal of the 'good' cop and the 'bad' civilian, who was justifiably exterminated.

With all of the above being considered, the question remains, is it possible to dissuade people from rigidly clinging to such counterintuitive dogma? To which I would say yes. However, this will not be achieved solely through reinforcement of information that proves a case again and again. While this is necessary for wearing down the veneer of dissonance, understanding must be entrenched through education of behavioural psychology. The kernel of the rebuttal flower. This is no easy feat, but coming face to face with the sheer existence of this envisioned dichotomy between systematic good and evil, and all it's inconsistent implications, will eventually propel us into a coerced awareness, allowing the rose tinted glasses to ultimately fade from their blinding crimson hue.

Open Letter To The United States President

Dear President Barack Obama, 

CC. Jeb Bush. Ben Carson. Chris Christie. Ted Cruz. Carly Fiorina. Jim Gilmore. Mike Huckabee. John Kasich. George Pataki. Rand Paul. Marco Rubio. Rick Santorum. Donald Trump., Hillary Clinton. Martin O'Malley. Bernie Sanders, Jill Stein

Following the new H.R. 158 bill that restricts Iranians and others from admission into the U.S. (which recently passed the House of Representatives with an overwhelming majority), I feel it not only necessary, but also obligatory for myself, as a targeted party of this movement, to write to you alerting you of some grave oversights that not only violate and negate, but also contradict the sheer Americanism that underlines the national constitution, before this goes any further.  

For those who don't know, the new bill proposes that people of certain ethnicities, namely those who hold dual citizenship with Iran, Iraq, Syria and Sudan, be restricted from United States entry. This means that as an Iranian who was born and raised in the UK, I would not be permitted to travel to the USA without applying and paying for a VISA, a luxury which my white, black, latino, chinese etc. peers are by default entitled to as citizens of Europe or the USA.

Yes, my parents are from Iran. Yes, I have dual-citizenship. Yes, I have visited Iran. Twice to be exact. This is because my father's family, for the most part, still reside in Iran. It would be a grave act of ignorance to assume this is compromised of an undercurrent of any political agenda, nor is it likely that any of these political theologies can have genetically rubbed off on me, simply because there was a one year window in which my parents lived in a country that was fundamentally islamic before I even existed. Outside of genetic premeditation, where one was born and how one was raised constitutes the biggest precursor to individual blueprint, sculpting mentality, behavioural patterns, political beliefs, savoir faire and cultural dynamic. Certainly not some mute and alien history which is only a fragment of one's ancestral genealogy, and runs millennia further back than it's current governmental disposition.

Yet, as I sit here justifying my story to you, a part of me is dispirited at the autocratic semblance of the country that compels me to explain away my race, creed or colour in order to be granted acceptance. A country that was once the spearhead of egalitarianism, that promised liberty and justice for all, now instead backdates it's disposition hundreds of years through imposing ethnic sanctions on it's clemency, totally and effectively nullifying amelioration.  

Since humans fear the unknown, let us try education over banishment to mollify fears. Iranian history teaches us a lot about how 'dangerous' and 'threatening' we truly are on this sphere of terror, that we have been clumsily thrust upon. Firstly, to go back a little, the widespread diaspora of the Iranian people all over the world is largely a result of the 1979 revolution, which vanquished the Pahlavi dynasty and the Monarchic administration under the Shah (King, backed by the USA). This was succeeded by a fundamentalist Islamic regime. Their polarised native support was largely rooted in the conservatives who felt the westernisation and secularisation of the country had gone too far under the Shah, who's ideals mirrored the liberality of the U.S. and the West. It had been, in fact, a time when Iranian democracy superseded it's governmental contemporaries in the West.

Prior to the revolution, Iran was a country of deistic autonomy. It was ripe with Mosques, Synagogs, Churches and Temples. Subsequently, the Islamic revolution drove out those who were not prepared to stay and live by the hardline ideals the new regime had adopted, resulting in the diaspora of hundreds and thousands of Iranians, seeking asylum in Europe and America. How, then, can those who have uprooted their entire existence to hotfoot the extremisms of a certain ideal, be not only bound by those beliefs, but also have their children punished for it? Further, let me remind you that no acts of terror in the United States or Europe have ever been linked to Iranian people. This demonstrates poor cognisance of our history and culture, and frankly lazy investigation ahead of a loaded mandate. Please do not treat recklessly such a delicate and convoluted thing as ethnicity. If you wish to act, act on understanding, scrutiny and knowledge.

As UK nationals with Iranian citizenship, our parents are children of the Shah. We are the children of the children of the Shah. Nobody can take liberty, compassion and democracy from the core of our being. No matter how much it is sullied by an egregious stigma. Yes, there are some people in Iran who agree with and comply with extremist ideals, just as there are members of the Westboro baptist Church in the USA who believe that "all fags should be killed", and Neo-Nazis in California who would burn a jew at the stake if given the opportunity. Neither of which, might I add, are having their citizenships challenged despite acts of terror within their community. Nor must either one acquire a surplus visa to be granted reentry.

To go ahead with the amended Visa Waiver program also constitutes a grave and flagrant miseducation of American citizens about the nature and intent of Iranians. The bill, entitled “Visa Waiver Program Improvement and Terrorist Travel Prevention Act of 2015", will marginalise and defame an entire ethnicity through vocabulary alone. In such fragile constituents, we must be careful what we teach Americans about who foreign bodies are. To be branded under a terror prevention act has far reaching implications that mar the reputation of Iranian people and slaps a caveat on our once unequivocal citizenship. It ultimately forces us to move to a mental and cultural space that begrudges us the entitlements we were born with, and relegates us to second-class citizens. This will perpetuate a perception of Iranians as terrorists in the American eye and can lead to violence, expulsion, distrust, alienation and misinterpretation of a body of people who comprise a great deal of the American public, ultimately creating more problems than it solves. Further, outside of jeopardising merit and galvanising racial notoriety, it also gravely dampens morale and dissipates the union between ethnicities that constitute the charismatic and dynamic melting pot of the USA. We are vilified into the proverbial monster that not only are we not, but we, too, are running from. European and American Iranians are artists, doctors, lawyers, philosophers, scientists, pharmacists, humanitarians, politicians, comedians, actors, musicians, and have been elementary to advancements in the aforementioned fields. What we are not, is terrorists.  

Some might say that the visa 'improvement' act is "no big deal", since having to pay for a visa is seemingly only a minor setback but is a worthy solution to a universal problem. This is a dangerous standing to endorse because it instigates racial profiling and ethnic finger pointing. It permits us to accede that some races must be punished in order to protect others, an ideal that will foster a discordant society. The bill requires that we, as European and American Iranians, pay for a separate visa to even be considered entry. One that my black, white, chinese etc. compatriots are exempt from. I can not pay for who I am, nor where my parents were born. Doing so would injuriously compromise my integrity. This requires no lengthy explanation, since it is clear how discriminatory and unjust a thing it would be to prejudicially levy taxes on my race. 

I understand that Americans are afraid. I, too, am afraid. But one thing I have learnt is that edification is a far better pacifier than reprehension. So, perhaps the first step to mitigate fears is to re-educate the American public on who Iranian people are. Why not teach them of our history, why not show them through our works of art, science, philosophy and literature who we are, to muffle the misconception that introduces us before we have the opportunity to speak. A government that exists in our homeland can not account for the millennia of majestic and richly dynamic culture intrinsic to our history and being. Restricting entry does not banish fear, but promulgates fear. The only way to nullify fear is through education so that fear, if necessary, exists only where it is due.

All things being considered, I am of course in favour of finding methods to deter terrorism. I can't pretend that I hold the answer, but what I can say with a great degree of certainty is that banning and restricting people on the bases of their race or religion alone is not it. Not only is this ineffective, but it is also counterproductive, forging a moral fissure at a time where union is imperative. National and international disparity, at this time, engages the divide and conquer ploy that ultimately backslides us into the demise of Western democracy and the instigation of an anarchic renaissance. Fear and misunderstanding can be tolerated to a certain degree, but what can not be tolerated is the illusion that people can be categorized by race, gender, sexual orientation or religion. People are free-standing, dynamic and autonomous individuals, who can not be held accountable for the actions of their demographic counterparts. If we are to reprimand people on such a basis, it will not be long until all those who were formerly protected under civil rights are locked in a punitive chokehold. 

So in conclusion, Mr President, since at this point you must be wondering, who am I? I am a person who believes in unity. I am an advocate of humanitarianism, a proliferator of ubiquitous justice, an empath, and an egalitarian. Above all, my ultimate and final goal in this lifetime is to better the world, through the dissolution of divisive concepts and edification, evoking a sentiment of compassion, empathy and union. This is the British-Iranian that you are teaching your citizens to be afraid of, while the Caucasian male who shoots children in schools continues to be lauded for his superior ethnicity. What's wrong with this picture?

Finally, For all intents and purposes, I consider the United Kingdom to be my country, and I have explained myself in lengthy essay format for just a glimmer of hope at being permitted entry into yours. Please note that nobody is asking you to do the same in order to enter mine, because no matter where you are from, what you look like, what your peers have done in the past or where your parents were born, we, as children of diplomacy and liberty, accept you. I hope that my words will echo in your conscience and remind you what that means. 

Sincerely yours,

Ms. E. Le Bon.

My People, Your People

What happened on Friday 13th November 2015 shook the world. The city of Paris was desecrated by a series of terror attacks. Lives were lost and hearts were broken. The devastation that occurred was largely  incited by the stupor at the infiltration of the seemingly impregnable western blanket of safety. If ever there was an infrastructure of concrete cultural asylum, western democracy was undoubtedly nestled at the root of it. 

What followed shortly after the events was a slew of social media support, polarised by a juxtapositional force of backlash. Social media users immediately divided into two camps; 1 - Those who quickly aligned with Parisian turmoil and changed their profile pictures to a blue, red and white camouflage, a long with #prayforparis hashtags on instagram, and 2 -  People who were outraged by the seemingly disproportionate sympathy that was otherwise lacking in other worldly disturbances.  

The good news is, both camps are right. In part.

The bad news is, this doesn't help anybody. 

Firstly, lets consider Facebook's newly instated feature which allows users to show their Parisian support through a quick altercation of their profile picture, a sentiment that echoes the former gay pride movement. Here, we must beg the question, did the chicken come first or the egg? Because one can find grounds for indignation here, considering these are strongly Western grievances, which have yet to be mirrored for foreign damnation. But then, we must wonder if Facebook's feature is fundamentally rooted in the overwhelming social response for upheavals close to home, that are otherwise vacuous. If this is the case, it may be our personal delegation of empathy that requires closer inspection. 

What seems to be the underlying problem in this intercontinental imbroglio is the concept of "my people" and "their people". By this, I mean the conditioned mentality that draws an invisible divide between races, subraces and nationalities. Most of us will spend our lives growing up and becoming increasingly familiar with the culture we live in. We also develop strong emotional and cultural ties to our heritage and ancestors, thus forming a meritable camaraderie with people we consider at one with. These become 'our people.' From thereon out, the bulk of our empathy is largely skewed and limited to persons who fall under such a category. Take, for example, hallmark historical travesties that we choose to pronounce. Often, American's will take to social media to call for remembrance of 9/11, The Jews will make light of the holocaust, Armenians will remember the genocide and so on and so forth. Is this wrong? No. It is simply how the human psyche has been conditioned to evolve. Realistically, nationalism makes little sense. 'My country is better than yours because i was born in it.' However, it is a social device that is imprinted upon us at birth in order to bind social sects and protect and preserve our land - more than likely incited through pre-historic municipalities, where social groups required a strong, intimate identity for survival. We can not ignore these social nuances that are imbued in our genetic imprint. However, as man evolves, we must also progress beyond that which is limiting us. It is time for us to understand that there is no "my people". There are only people. And all people are comprised of the same things that hurt us and heal us, and a skewed empathic compass is no longer excusable through negligence. 

Every living creature on this earth has an equal right to life, and every loss is an equal travesty. The imagined hierarchal subdivisions of social value could be easily diffused if media and social outlets would not drive our focus so densely in one direction, to where we become conditioned to place less emphasis on lives that we do not so easily relate to.

Empathy, in itself, is usually derived from a point of understanding. If we can understand somebodies pain, we can feel it at their level. This is a beautiful mechanism, however, it is limited only to our understanding. It is easy to feel empathy in acts of barbarism that correlate with the daily lives we live. "That could've been me," is usually the catalyst for compassion. But empathy can not be relative. We become so ingrained in our idiosyncratic cultural strokes that it becomes difficult to understand the pain of a foreign body as pain in itself. This was largely the precursor to the acquiescence of slavery. The lack of cognisance and understanding of black people as people, but instead an alien body of beings, permitted a grave omission of empathy, which culminated in one of the most reprehensible acts in human history. 

Our sense of humanity seems to be distorted by proximity and familiarity, which has manifested an emotional diaspora. We forget that a child is a child. In pakistan, in Palestine, in Japan, in Syria, in France. Our lack of foreign alignment allows us to displace the empathy that we should justly feel.  

Are people upset that people are praying for Paris? No. People are upset by the disproportionality of social upheaval. Why is this the case? Two reasons. What the lack of support does do, and what the over-zealous support can do.

Firstly, it is worthwhile to recollect that some of the most notable calamities in social history are marred by nonchalance and social inertia. People often consider the holocaust to be the result of intensely anti-semitic Hitlerites. In actual fact, the impetus that materialised such a profound miscarriage of morality was largely apathy. Ian Kershaw notably remarked "The road to Auschwitz was built by hate, but paved with indifference."  

Apathy is single handedly the most powerful tool for the catalyst of evil. A tool that is designed by capitalism in order to consolidate the proliferation of that very evil. With that being said, I arrive at my second point, what support can do. 

It is difficult to accept how powerful a tool our voices are, and yet how dormant they remain for the bulk of worldly issues that require our attention. Moreover, the disproportionality of how and when we choose to use our voices. For example, let us recall when that majestic Lion was shot, and the world was riveted in acrimony. Following thousands of statuses, hashtags, pictures and petitions, major airline companies eventually called for the cessation of air-trafficking of endangered species. Elsewhere, the mass outrage of orca captivity that spiked the boycotting of sea-world culminated in the remission of orca whale hunting and captivity.        

This demonstrates how effectively the union of society can move towards more utopian ideals. So it is understandable that one might feel indignant about the lack of such unity in other pressing issues. Surely, equal vehemence for atrocities and barbarism not native to us could evoke the moral reconstruction that we are perilously starved for. 

In short, don't stop showing support. The overwhelming display of love, empathy and affinity is the dose of synthesis the world has long called for. However, don't spare it either. It is time to understand that there is no such thing as "my people" and "your people". There are only people. And all people have an equal right to life, and an equal entitlement to concern. 

If this concept of "their people" was eradicated, we would likely see a remission of warfare, since combat is entirely based on the prevalence of one body of people over another. This is funnelled by the illusory conceptualisation of disconnection and dissolution. As long as people are divided by 'us' and 'them', the force that wills each camp to prevail will triumph in evil-doings, in this continued state of dystopia. This is the realisation that, ultimately, we must ubiquitously arrive at. And this recognition, that all people are "our" people, begins within the individual. 

The Woman I Would Like To Be

I would like to be a person who is fundamentally happy. By being this, I am aware that I must constantly make sure I am making myself and others happy by giving generously with no expectations of returns. I would like to be extremely successful in my career, as I have worked many many many many years for it, and I believe my pay off is now due - I can feel it on the horizon and I know that it will be abundant in nature. I would like to be a calm and peaceful person, someone who is unfazed by anything negative, petty or childish in life. Even the things that are genuinely distressful, I would like to have a calm, quiet inner strength that is impervious to any penetration of negative vibrations. This is how I intend on becoming a happy person, by maintaining my core - even when my exterior world is vigorously shaking. I want to be kind in the face of anger, patient in the face of aggression, understanding in the presence of sorrow, and laugh at myself when I get it wrong. I would like to be a wonderful lover - to the man I end up with,  I want to be kind, gentle, faithful, devoted, enduring, loving and above all, I would like to give of myself all that I could possibly give, without the fear that it would or could be unrequited. I want him to know how deeply devoted I am to him, and to feel loved like he never has before. I want to devote myself to the betterment of other people, to my husband, to myself, to my future children, to people I know and love, and to strangers around the world. I want to contribute in the ending of suffering, I want to feed someone who is starving, clothe someone who is naked and help someone who is sick. I want to do that and then do it a million times over again. When the time comes, I want to be the best possible mother that I know I can be. I want to tell my children that I love them everyday and I want to do everything in my power to make sure that they know this, and to provide them the best possible life in this world of utter chaos. I want to be there for my children through every moment life throws at them, good and bad, and I want to be a rock for them, a mentor, a giver of love and a pillar of strength. I want to spend a lifetime inspiring people - as many people as I possibly can. I want to provide them something that changes their lives for the better, a song, a quote, anything that can reinforce their being and nourish their soul. Anything that speaks to them deeply. I want to be a voice for people who do not have a voice. I want to stand up for those who are too afraid to stand up for themselves. I want to be a person who understands all sides of every story and emotion, and respects all humans, all animals, all life, and this universe, in knowing that my very existence on this planet, the mere fact that I am breathing as I write this, is an utterly phenomenal blessing. Above all, when the time comes for me to leave this earth, I want to look back in quiet retrospection, smile, and say that I lived.

Thrive

You know those moments, those rare, memorable moments in life, when something is said to you, and it's so profound and so inspiring that you never forget the exact moment you heard it, and the precise message accompanying it?

One such a moment happened to me a few months back. I was sitting in my friends house, getting ready in her sisters room, whilst she was sat on the floor with her legs folded reading me an excerpt from a book. I remember thinking that I would be bored and probably not pay much attention but I couldn't help but feel eerily motionless as the words tumbled out of her mouth one after another. I couldn't help but be paralysed by the reality of what I was hearing, whilst simultaneously feeling shivers travel up and down my spine. It was something I have always known but finally learned that day, and since then my life has never and will never be the same again. So all I want to do today is to share that excerpt and hope that somebody else gains something from it too.

It's funny. People achieves all levels of success and the one thing they constantly remind us is that the most important thing in the world is love. And family. And being there. And watching your kids grow. And building a unit. That is what we die with.  Not our merits or medallions. So why do we work so hard to achieve something we know can't make us happy, and forsake the one thing that we know will? This is how we lose sight of the true purpose of life and get lost in the societally constructed illusion that we always have to be better. Work harder. Be smarter. It's always one more deadline, one more promotion, just one more week, one more month, one more year. Then suddenly, you wake up and time is lost. And so is everyone you ever loved. And you're sitting in your million-dollar apartment wishing you could give up every penny to get back the only thing that could complete you. And ultimately, that is the prize. Love. Wisdom. Sanity. Spirituality. Growth. Consciousness. The Third Metric.

There are no pauses in life. There is no later, after, or some day.

We are forever wanting to be there. But "there is no there there."
There is only here.

There is only now.

--------

Arianna Huffington - Thrive (Excerpt) 

I remember it as if it were yesterday: I was twenty- three years old and I was

on a promotional tour for my first book, The Female Woman, which had become

an unexpected international bestseller. I was sitting in my room in some

anonymous European hotel. The room could have been a beautifully arranged still

life. There were yellow roses on the desk, Swiss chocolates by my bed, and French

champagne on ice. The only noise was the crackling of the ice as it slowly melted

into water. The voice in my head was much louder. “Is that all there is?” Like a

broken record, the question famously posed by Peggy Lee (for those old enough to

remember) kept repeating itself in my brain, robbing me of the joy I had expected

to find in my success. “Is that really all there is?” If this is “living,” then what is

life? Can the goal of life really be just about money and recognition? From a part

of myself, deep inside me— from the part of me that is my mother’s daughter—

came a resounding “No!” It is an answer that turned me gradually but firmly away

from lucrative offers to speak and write again and again on the subject of “the

female woman.” It started me instead on the first step of a long journey.

My journey from that first moment of recognition that I didn’t want to live

my life within the boundaries of what our culture defined as success was hardly a

straight line. At times it was more like a spiral, with a lot of downturns when I

found myself caught up in the very whirlwind that I knew would not lead to the life

I most wanted.

That’s how strong is the pull of the first two metrics, even for someone as

blessed as I was to have a mother who lived a Third Metric life before I knew what

the Third Metric was. That’s why this book is a kind of a homecoming for me.

When I first lived in New York in the eighties, I found myself at lunches and

dinners with people who had achieved the first two metrics of success— money

and power— but who were still looking for something more. Lacking a line of

royalty in America, we have elevated to princely realms the biggest champions of

money and power. Since one gains today’s throne not by fortune of birth but by the

visible markers of success, we dream of the means by which we might be crowned.

Or perhaps it’s the constant expectation, drummed into us from childhood, that no

matter how humble our origins we, too, can achieve the American dream. And the American dream, which has been exported all over the world, is currently defined

as the acquisition of things: houses, cars, boats, jets, and other grown- up toys.

But I believe the second decade of this new century is already very different.

There are, of course, still millions of people who equate success with money and

power— who are determined to never get off that treadmill despite the cost in

terms of their well- being, relationships, and happiness. There are still millions

desperately looking for the next promotion, the next million- dollar payday that

they believe will satisfy their longing to feel better about themselves, or silence

their dissatisfaction. But both in the West and in emerging economies, there are

more people every day who recognize that these are all dead ends— that they are

chasing a broken dream. That we cannot find the answer in our current definition

of success alone because— as Gertrude Stein once said of Oakland— “There is no

there there.”

More and more scientific studies and more and more health statistics are

showing that the way we’ve been leading our lives— what we prioritize and what

we value— is not working. And growing numbers of women— and men— are

refusing to join the list of casualties. Instead, they are reevaluating their lives,

looking to thrive rather than merely succeed based on how the world measures

success.

The latest science proves that increased stress and burnout have huge

consequences for both our personal health and our health care system. Researchers

at Carnegie Mellon found that from 1983 to 2009, there was between a 10 and 30

percent increase in stress levels across all demographic categories. Higher levels of

stress can lead to higher instances of diabetes, heart disease, and obesity.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, fully three- quarters

of American health care spending goes toward treating such chronic conditions.

The Benson- Henry Institute for Mind Body Medicine at Massachusetts General

Hospital estimates that 60 to 90 percent of doctor visits are to treat stress- related

conditions.

 The stress we experience impacts our children, too. Indeed, the effects of

stress on children— even in utero— were emphasized in the journal of the

American Academy of Pediatrics. As Nicholas Kristof put it in The New York

Times: “Cues of a hostile or indifferent environment flood an infant, or even a

fetus, with stress hormones like cortisol in ways that can disrupt the body’s

metabolism or the architecture of the brain. The upshot is that children are

sometimes permanently undermined. Even many years later, as adults, they are

more likely to suffer heart disease, obesity, diabetes and other physical ailments.

They are also more likely to struggle in school, have short tempers and tangle with

the law.”

One reason we give for allowing stress to build in our lives is that we don’t

have time to take care of ourselves. We’re too busy chasing a phantom of the

successful life. The difference between what such success looks like and what truly

makes us thrive isn’t always clear as we’re living our lives. But it becomes much

more obvious in the rearview mirror. Have you noticed that when we die, our

eulogies celebrate our lives very differently from the way society defines success?

Eulogies are, in fact, very Third Metric. But while it’s not hard to live a life

that includes the Third Metric, it’s very easy not to. It’s easy to let ourselves get

consumed by our work. It’s easy to allow professional obligations to overwhelm

us, and to forget the things and the people that truly sustain us. It’s easy to let

technology wrap us in a perpetually harried, stressed- out existence. It’s easy, in

effect, to miss the real point of our lives even as we’re living them. Until we’re no

longer alive. A eulogy is often the first formal marking down of what our lives

were about— the foundational document of our legacy. It is how people remember

us and how we live on in the minds and hearts of others. And it is very telling what

we don’t hear in eulogies. We almost never hear things like:

“The crowning achievement of his life was when he made senior vice

president.”

Or:

“He increased market share for his company multiple times during his

tenure.”

Or:

“She never stopped working. She ate lunch at her desk. Every day.”

Or: “He never made it to his kid’s Little League games because he always had to

go over those figures one more time.”

Or:

“While she didn’t have any real friends, she had six hundred Facebook

friends, and she dealt with every email in her in- box every night.”

Or:

“His PowerPoint slides were always meticulously prepared.”

Our eulogies are always about the other stuff: what we gave, how we

connected, how much we meant to our family and friends, small kindnesses,

lifelong passions, and the things that made us laugh.

So why do we spend so much of our limited time on this earth focusing on

all the things our eulogy will never cover?

“Eulogies aren’t résumés,” David Brooks wrote. “They describe the person’s

care, wisdom, truthfulness and courage. They describe the million little moral

judgments that emanate from that inner region.”

And yet we spend so much time and effort and energy on those résumé

entries— entries that lose all significance as soon as our heart stops beating. Even

for those who die with amazing Wikipedia entries, whose lives were synonymous

with accomplishment and achievement, their eulogies focus mostly on what they

did when they weren’t achieving and succeeding. They aren’t bound by our

current, broken definition of success. Look at Steve Jobs, a man whose life, at least

as the public saw it, was about creating things— things that were, yes, amazing and

game changing. But when his sister, Mona Simpson, rose to honor him at his

memorial service, that’s not what she focused on.

Yes, she talked about his work and his work ethic. But mostly she raised

these as manifestations of his passions. “Steve worked at what he loved,” she said.

What really moved him was love. “Love was his supreme virtue,” she said, “his

god of gods.

“When [his son] Reed was born, he began gushing and never stopped. He

was a physical dad, with each of his children. He fretted over Lisa’s boyfriends and

Erin’s travel and skirt lengths and Eve’s safety around the horses she adored.”

And then she added this touching image: “None of us who attended Reed’s

graduation party will ever forget the scene of Reed and Steve slow dancing.”

His sister made abundantly clear in her eulogy that Steve Jobs was a lot

more than just the guy who invented the iPhone. He was a brother and a husband and a father who knew the true value of what technology can so easily distract us

from. Even if you build an iconic product, one that lives on in our lives, what is

foremost in the minds of the people you care about most are the memories you

built in their lives.

In her 1951 novel Memoirs of Hadrian, Marguerite Yourcenar has the

Roman emperor meditating on his death: “It seems to me as I write this hardly

important to have been emperor.” Thomas Jefferson’s epitaph describes him as

“author of the Declaration of American Independence . . . and father of the

University of Virginia.” There is no mention of his presidency.

The old adage that we should live every day as if it were our last usually

means that we shouldn’t wait until death is imminent to begin prioritizing the

things that really matter. Anyone with a smartphone and a full email in- box knows

that it’s easy to be busy while not being aware that we’re actually living.

A life that embraces the Third Metric is one lived in a way that’s mindful of

our eventual eulogy. “I’m always relieved when someone is delivering a eulogy

and I realize I’m listening to it,” joked George Carlin. We may not be able to

witness our own eulogy, but we’re actually writing it all the time, every day. The

question is how much we’re giving the eulogizer to work with.

In the summer of 2013, an obituary of a Seattle woman named Jane Lotter,

who died of cancer at sixty, went viral. The author of the obit was Lotter herself.

“One of the few advantages of dying from Grade 3, Stage IIIC endometrial

cancer, recurrent and metastasized to the liver and abdomen,” she wrote, “is that

you have time to write your own obituary.” After giving a lovely and lively

account of her life, she showed that she lived with the true definition of success in

mind. “My beloved Bob, Tessa, and Riley,” she wrote. “My beloved friends and

family. How precious you all have been to me. Knowing and loving each one of

you was the success story of my life.”

Whether you believe in an afterlife— as I do— or not, by being fully present

in your life and in the lives of those you love, you’re not just writing your own

eulogy; you’re creating a very real version of your afterlife. It’s an invaluable

lesson— one that has much more credence while we have the good fortune of

being healthy and having the energy and freedom to create a life of purpose and

meaning. The good news is that each and every one of us still has time to live up to

the best version of our eulogy. This book is designed to help us move from knowing what to do to actually

doing it. As I know all too well, this is no simple matter. Changing deeply

ingrained habits is especially difficult. And when many of these habits are the

product of deeply ingrained cultural norms, it is even harder. This is the challenge

we face in redefining success. This is the challenge we face in making Third

Metric principles part of our daily lives. This book is about the lessons I’ve learned

and my efforts to embody the Third Metric principles— a process I plan to be

engaged in for the rest of my life. It also brings together the latest data, academic

research, and scientific findings (some of them tucked away in endnotes), which I

hope will convince even the most skeptical reader that the current way we lead our

lives is not working and that there are scientifically proven ways we can live our

lives differently— ways that will have an immediate and measurable impact on our

health and happiness. And, finally, because I want it to be as practical as possible, I

have also included many daily practices, tools, and techniques that are easy to

incorporate into our lives. These three threads are pulled together by one

overarching goal: to reconnect with ourselves, our loved ones, and our

community— in a word, to thrive. 

The Social Substratum: It's not you, it's me.

As human beings, we tend to have a certain perception of ourselves as a homogenous body of people. This perception is generally not inward-facing, 'self-centred', or at least 'self-orientated' beings. We are drunk on the mirage that we are outward facing beings that live for love, passion, happiness, unity and community. But there is a fundamental omission in this stance, that is - not taking in to account the question of what attracts us to those things. This article is for everybody who has ever asked the question "why me" or "what did I do to deserve this?" or who has ever felt in any way that they have been treated wrongly or unjustly by others. There is a skewed reality of the human psyche that, if not correctly understood, could lead to self deprecation through lack of awareness.  The substratum of the social psyche is almost unrecognisable, in stark comparison to it's veneer. 

There is a very definitive point about the gregarious nature of human beings. One which is not commonly or frequently identified. Most people spend their lives believing that "who they are" as a person, how they act and what they do, are the social pinpoints of their popularity. People often misconstrue being liked or disliked by others as a direct reflection of who they are as a person. The truth is, however, that human beings are primordially 'inwards' by nature, meaning that every single one of us gravitates towards the things that make us feel good inside, and away from the things that do the opposite. This gravitational pull towards 'good feelings', is applied directly to all aspects of life - who our friends are, what we do for a living, where we go and what our hobbies and opinions are - i.e. the things that perpetuate and validate ourselves. Most times, however, we will perceive the object of that feeling (i.e. a person or place) as a wholly, self-contained 'good' object, as opposed to the service it provides us for selfish gain. We are subconsciously geared towards that which is pleasing, and away from that which is deemed toxic. 

Born on this premise is the development of how social beings interact with one another. What drives us to and away from the people we associate with is primarily based on our egos. In layman's terms, the things that supplement or impair our egos. Different people are driven by different stimulants: money, power, wealth, good looks, good humour, intelligence, love, and so on and so forth, but the thing about the people who possess these things, and our attraction to them, is that it is not the person with the intelligence and humour that we like, it's the feeling that their intelligence gives us when we engage in a witty debate.  The incredible feeling inside released thorough endorphins when they make us laugh, or even how good it feels inside to see them smile, that we are absolutely intoxicated by. It is our ego saying: "this makes me feel good, so I like it. I want this as often as possible, and if it's denied from me, I want it even harder." It is not us loving them, it is us loving the part of ourselves that they either provide or reinforce.

Not too many nights ago, I was lying in bed, wide awake, at 4am. I was trying to piece together a puzzle in my mind, when it hit me. An epiphany. It could've been one of the greatest discoveries I had made to date. I was trying to understand why certain people feel love for those by whom it is unreciprocated, the times people have felt this for me, the times I have felt it for others and the times it had been mutual, and I hit upon the absolute crest of this phenomenon. I discovered that people fall in love with those who invest interest in them. With those who care to ask them what they think about the colour purple, do they eat spaghetti on tuesdays and why do they like dogs? It seems so simple, yet everyone who I shared this thought with agreed that indeed, it had been accurate for them too. The reason is that people are constantly seeking egoic endorsement and self-ward dividends, they are constantly looking to tell their story and express themselves. Once a person identifies with, or cares to indulge in your story, this is when we mentally orchestrate a pseudo-mutual nexus that is commonly misappropriated as love (*simplified). It is so flattering, and humbling at the same time, for a person to show a genuine, deep-rooted and vested interest in you. Your sense of self becomes legitimised and corroborated through this source of interest, so we forge a bond with said source. We are important for this brief time. Of course we cry love. The source of which has become a self-aggrandising auxiliary device. I then understood why there were times in my life and past, where people had felt a much greater connection with me than I did for them, because I had spent a great body of time heavily invested in these people, while these people did not care to do the same for me, thus, I was unable to identify a mutual bond. 

Friendship is a primary example of the propagation of this inward-'good feeling' that we so direly crave. Friends provide you with love, care, an open ear and an honest tongue. These are all 'services' which perpetually recondition the ego to be bound to said person. Not only is it selfish, it's also selfless and outward facing which inadvertently becomes inwards again. Being there for others, in turn, feels good and fortifies the manacle between two bodies, substantiating ourselves and satisfying the need we have to love others.

There are people we meet who we just 'don't have a good feeling about.' It may be nothing they have said or done, but based on this 'gut feeling' we are deterred from such people. But we are driven by the inbound sensation. Not the external reality. Truthfully, our perception of reality is heavily distorted, and skewed by our sense of self. This is why we often judge people too quickly, before taking deliberate care to know or understand them, because we are deterred by the domestic disservice caused as a byproduct of a person's words or actions. Or simply how they hold themselves. The need to judge or berate said persons is impelled by a feeling of indemnity we arrive at when we fortify ourselves through negating that which is not 'me'. This has no baring on the other, but limits our ability to connect boundlessly. We are incarcerated by our sense of self, and slaves to it's fickle will. 

This is the same principle that evokes social groups cemented by common elements. The rich favour the rich, classes tend to fraternise therein, and ethnic and racial groups are heavily segregated. People with similar interests and intellectual capabilities do not divaricate their social setting. This is because we subconsciously aspire towards that which is, in essence, US. That way, we constantly and consistently reinforce and immortalise our self perception, inadvertently validating ourselves through the company we seek. This is why Rumi says "the beauty you see in me is a reflection of you." Because, truly, what you love in someone else is appeasing to a place in yourself. 

While this may seem like a superficial or shallow perception of humanity, awareness is the very tool that can help save us from self-victimisation in the social environment. We are propelled into a feeling of inadequacy whenever castigated or subject to reproach. Often times, this weighs on our perception of 'who we are'. We question ourselves and our validity. I've seen first hand, people feeling bad about themselves because their opinions or actions were challenged, or others did not agree with them or see their point of view. This is the precise thing that awareness will ultimately nullify. The intertwinement of 'who we are' with 'what people think', since what people think is really who THEY are. Through this, we can learn to become comfortable in our own skin, in knowing that our entire being is not compromised every time somebody disagrees with or dislikes us, but simply that we provide an egoic service that befits some people better than others. Or at least in different ways. And every ego is entirely bespoke. Even the person with the most fascist, misogynistic, racist, myopic and ignorant opinions can find at least one person to agree with them. And what do you bet that they love that person? And gravitate towards them? Even without knowing anything else about them, their past sins and success, or their characteristics. That becomes secondary and almost irrelevant, since their alignment to your opinion becomes primary, and falsely emblematic of their entirety. They feel good about it and so do you. These two parties reinforce and reflect one another, and act as magnets towards each other thusly. This is the very clog in the wheel of social decorum. 

At this point, you have two options. One of them leads to peace and sanity, one of them leads to a perpetual sense of inadequacy and loss of consciousness. 1 - Align yourself with everybody. Agree with whatever people dictate, and surely, you will be 'liked.' Do not challenge what is said, concede to the majority and bite your tongue. 2 - Understand that a persons need for you to agree with them is a reflection of themselves. Not you. Their feelings towards you, which are in either direction predicated on an allegiance with or against them, is a reflection of their feelings towards themselves. A person who does not require validation, will never feel invalidated by you. This allows room for truthfulness and sincerity. 

I was recently talking to a friend who had gone out to a friend of a friend's party. She had come home very upset by the way this person had treated her. She was very hurt by the disregard and belittlement shown towards her. We engaged in some discussion and we both came to the fair conclusion that the way she was treated was not at all based on who she was as a person, since the accused had never met my friend and knew nothing about her, but based on an explicit feeling inside of her self - anger? jealousy? threat? discomfort? unfamiliarity? anything you can name, something that aggravated her ego, and caused my friend to ask the question of why she was 'disliked' by this person, failing to understand that this person did not dislike her, but simply disliked the feeling inside of herself. This is something inbuilt within all of us, and the phenomenon behind most capricious social conflict. But enlightenment and maturity may hopefully teach us not to succumb so easily to our egoic impulses, that we ultimately alienate people because they are not aligned with our sense of self. This will aggrandise the eminence of the ego and cause us to lack humility and develop a superiority complex. This is why celebrities and people of a certain clout tend to develop superiority complexes. They are so often reinforced and agreed with, that their ego's are ennobled and their sense of reality becomes disproportionate and distorted. It then becomes difficult to accept a challenge to this disproportionate sense of self, because it is so widely eulogised. The ego lives in a constant state of self-perpetuating hedonism and glorification. The 'good feeling' is aggrandised and ultimately fully desensitised. Everything good doesn't feel good any more, which ultimately leads to numbness and the loss of aliveness. This is where we hear the saying "too much of a good thing can you kill you." Aligning yourself with that which is outside yourself will ultimately stabilise your centre. This is consciousness. 

Because of our inclination towards the self, we have constructed a life where we are surrounded by people who make us feel good, as opposed to the qualities they posses as a person. We are enslaved by this commitment to the self. Practicing abstinence from that feeling can be extremely enlightening. Conversing with somebody we normally wouldn't converse with, or spending time with somebody who operates dissimilarly to us gives us great foresight. It allows us the ability to see others for who they are, as opposed to the service they provide us. Those flickering moments are extremely beautiful, when one can actually look into somebody's soul and genuinely be fond of it, without it having to serve us any selfish purpose. I believe that is the window to true love. The point at which we step out of ourselves, step out of our self-constructed 'roles', and actually see people for the first time, free of archetypal social constructs, and free of the egos need to correct or override an alien perspective. Everything is not self. Open your mind to that which is the other. When people open up to you, they present to you the looking-glass into their souls. Be humble enough to honour their bid. When we listen without the intention to talk, i mean genuinely listen, when we speak without the intention to appear a certain way. When we surrender our ego, let go of the pretence, allow ourselves to feel belittled or offended, and still have no ill-feeling toward the person who caused it, we dehumanise the ego and allow love to dwell within us. Because love and the ego can not coexist. One will always negate the other. The ego is the opposite to love, since the ego can only put itself first, bound by it's own selfish and whimsical impulses.

This then begs the question, if we are magnetically attracted towards that which makes us feel good, then why are we so inveigled by the people who hurt us? That is a false sense of love, but actually possesses the greatest hold. As most insecurities do. Based on the aforementioned, it would be safe to assume that if something doesn't make us feel 'good', we'd be deterred from it. But, of course, the human psyche is not facile by nature. In opposite sex relationships (and sometimes same-sex), this is where the grey area lies. The ego no longer says "that doesn't feel good, i'll be on my way", it now regresses to an elementary phase of being and says, "why don't I make YOU feel good?" which is perhaps a stronger desire all together, than our own desire to feel good. This is because instinctively, if we aren't making others feel good, we tend to question ourselves. We feel belittled and 'who we are' is undermined. since it is not satisfactory to somebody else, it is no longer satisfactory to ourselves, and thus we berate ourselves and disinherit the self-determined 'good feeling'. The ego then ties an attachment to this object. It is usually a person who has rejected us (and therefore our sense of self). Our egos designated métier is to rectify that, by searching for means to launder itself. That is why we blindly cohere to that person and often times miscalculate this as love. It isn't love. In my (very humble) opinion, true love manifests itself when the need to correct the egos scorn is removed. When there are no games, when the soul is laid bare in front of each other, and it is beautiful and enticing in all it's flaws. Whether it hurts you or heals you. Whether it aligns with your sense of self or not. Because the self is thusly relegated, in favour of something more important.

Ultimately, the way people treat each other is almost always based on the self, and never the 'other.' Therefore, it is detrimental and emotionally damaging for the other to take this as a challenge on who they are, as opposed to understanding the internal and ephemeral nature of social inclination. 

'That which I love is never really you, but always me.'