Beyond generalisations: Breaking ‘All Women’ and ‘All Men’ mindset

Gender stereotypes have been present in society for centuries, shaping the way we perceive and interact with one another. We are taught to believe that certain qualities and characteristics are inherently “masculine” or “feminine,” leading to the generalization that “all men” or “all women” think or act in a certain way. However, this narrow way of thinking not only boxes us into defined groups, but it also feeds into the mindset of consumerism and throwaway culture. After all, if all men are the same and all women are the same, then any person can be easily replaced with another. But the truth is, people are not replaceable goods, and we are not the same even if we share the same gender.

Fortunately, there has been a growing movement to challenge these harmful generalisations and move towards a more nuanced understanding of our unique traits, beliefs, and characteristics. Nobel-winning economist Amartya Sen argues that we should embrace the multitude of identities that each person has, rather than pigeonholing them into a single category based on one characteristic. This means acknowledging and celebrating the many partitions that shape who we are, such as our nationalities, occupations, social status, languages, politics, and more.

It’s time to break free from the cycle of harmful generalisations and stereotypes and start seeing the beauty of each person’s uniqueness. Each individual on this planet is irreplaceable, and we should treat one another with the care and compassion that comes with recognising this fact. So let’s celebrate the many facets of human identity and move beyond the damaging notion of “all men” or “all women” mindset.

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US AND THEM not US VS THEM: A few lessons from a dog park

What can a dog park teach us about bridging great societal divides? Brilliant talk. I cannot think of a more appropriate time in our lives to hear this message. There is a difference between US AND THEM and US VS THEM. We all can go beyond our own identities and ‘packs’ to find common ground with those we may disagree with on personal, work-related, social and political grounds. We are all humans after all – this human identity is common to us all…

All HUMAN lives matter!

“How a revolution erupts from a commonplace event – tidal wave from a ripple – is cause for endless astonishment…

First, a piece of news about something said or done travels quickly, more so than usual, because it is uniquely apt; it fits a half-conscious mood or caps a situation… On impulse, perhaps to snap the tension, somebody shouts in church, throws a stone through a window, which provokes a fight… As further news spread, various types of people become aroused for or against the thing now upsetting everybody’s daily life. But what is that thing? Concretely; ardent youths full of hope as they catch the drift of the idea, rowdies looking for fun, and characters with a grudge. Cranks and tolerated lunatics come out of houses, criminals out of hideouts and all assert themselves.

Manners are flouted and customs broken. Foul language and direct insult become normal, inkeeping with the rest of the excitement, buildings defaced, images destroyed, shops looted… Angry debates multiply about things long since settled: talk of free love, of priests marrying and monks breaking their vows, of property and wives in common, of sweeping out all evils, all corruption, all at once – all things new for a blissful life on earth…

Voices grow shrill, parties form and adopt names or are tagged with them in derision and contempt. Again and again comes the shock of broken friendships, broken families.”

(from “From Dawn to Decadence: 500 years of Western Cultural Life”
by Jacques Barzun )

Yes, black lives do matter, as white lives, Asian lives, Muslim lives, Christian lives – all HUMAN lives. Murderers and killers of innocent people should be held accountable for their brutal actions. Unfortunately however so often protests against brutality and injustice turn into a disastrous avalanche of the identity violence – by race, nationality, religion, occupation or other identity groupings.

In his book “Identity and Violence”  Amartya Sentakes argues that viewing human beings as members of just one identity group is not just morally undesirable, but descriptively wrong. Instead, Sen invokes the myriad identities within each individual. The people of the world can be classified according to many other partitions, each of which has some—often far-reaching—relevance in our lives: nationalities, locations, occupations, social status, languages, politics, and many others, including identity common to all – HUMANS. Because all of us contain multitudes, we can choose among our identities, emphasizing those we share with others rather than those we do not.

Let’s focus on our shared identity as HUMANS while fighting against injustice, brutality and violence in this world.

All HUMAN lives matter!

Credits:

• Image 1 from Musée du Louvre, Paris
• Image 2 from usadailyexpress.com
• Image 3 from Pinterest

Where is your home?

I had a few very good friends in the place where I was born but often felt like a stranger there. My heart did not seem to belong to that place, which I used to call home.

I wonder sometimes where my true home is. The image below is probably the closest to how it would look and feel: with rugged coastline, rebellious waves, untamed breeze, soft sand, green bush and a silent hug. A place where you could be what you are: with no need to explain anything, no questions to answer, no crowds to hide from…

From http://www.planitnz.com

I’ve been to that place a few times in my life and it always felt like home.

What about you?
Where is your home?
Is your home in the place where you were born?

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Today you are you, that is truer than true…

“Be yourself; everyone else is already taken.”

? Oscar Wilde ?

😉

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Fat Cat in a Hat – What’s Wrong with that?

From MeetVille

Have you noticed how often people are blaming ‘those who are in charge’, ‘the bigwigs’, ‘the CEOs’, ‘the fat cats’ for all sorts of things? I had a few such comments on my blog in recent months, which made me think a bit more about that. Are all ‘bigwigs’ and ‘fat cats’ so bad?

From FuturityFirst

Stereotyping (i.e. putting people into groups and categories) is based on a normal cognitive process: the tendency to group things together. In doing so we tend to exaggerate:

• the differences between groups
• the similarities of things in the same group

From Stereotyping

I never trusted faceless stereotypes and generalisations when people get assigned to a particular group on the basis of one characteristic or one of their identities. The group of ‘the bigwigs’, ‘the CEOs’, ‘the fat cats’ might in fact include very different people with varied life experiences, values, beliefs and views. Take, as an example, Sir Angus Tait, the founder of Tait Communications and The Tait Foundation that donated millions of dollars over the years to a variety of causes. As Michael Chick, Tait’s former CEO, said: “Angus was an immensely determined yet compassionate man, a great innovator and mentor for so many.” He might have been the ‘bigwig’ in his company but a truly admirable one.

Sir Angus Tait

The same in the past. Among wealthy people from the noble class there were some who cared about others and were trying very hard to push for changes in the society. In Russian history, there were Decembrists – noblemen united in an attempt to release their motherland from the chains of autocratic oppression, that was keeping Russia in poverty. There were hundreds of them, inspired by the constitutional governments of Western Europe. Members of the aristocracy, they were the first to rebel and attempt to overthrow the absolutist regime of the Tsar. However their uprising was a failure. They were condemned as criminals of the state. Five of them hanged, others incarcerated. More than a hundred sent into exile, sentenced to thirty years of hard labor in the mines of Siberia.

Decembrists’ wives followed their husbands into exile, leaving everything behind: their families, their children, their possessions, their lifestyle. One of these women – Maria Volkonskaya, the quintessence of class, a princess – had a newborn son.  All she wanted to take with her was her little baby – the Tsar did not allow her even that. They were never allowed to return…

If only the Decembrists won on that cold winter day and changed the course of Russian history – then, may be, there would have been no revolution, no civil war, no Stalin, no loss of millions of lives, no floods of blood, no tears and pain… 😦

‘The bigwigs’, ‘the fat cats’ – let’s try to see real people behind all these stereotypes. Some of them might be very bad, but a few might make us pleasantly surprised. 😉

From Think Rich, Look Poor

Related posts:

• A mite of a girl !..
• By sowing frugality we reap liberty…

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Salad Bowl of Multiple Identities

“We don’t need a melting pot…, folks. We need a salad bowl. In a salad bowl, you put in the different things. You want the vegetables – the lettuce, the cucumbers, the onions, the green peppers – to maintain their identity. You appreciate differences.”

Jane Elliot

“My first exposure to murder,” the Nobel-winning economist Amartya Sen writes in “Identity and Violence” “occurred when I was 11.” It was 1944, a few years before the end of the British Raj and a period of widespread Hindu-Muslim riots. The victim was “a profusely bleeding unknown person suddenly stumbling through the gate to our garden, asking for help and a little water.” Rushed to the hospital by Sen’s father, the man died there of his injuries. He was Kader Mia, a Muslim day laborer knifed by Hindus. He had been asked by his wife not to go into a hostile area of then-undivided Bengal. But he had to feed his starving family, and he paid with his life.

To the young Sen, this event was not just traumatic but mystifying. How was it, Sen asks …, that “… human beings … were suddenly transformed into the ruthless Hindus and fierce Muslims…”? And how was it that Kader Mia would be seen as having only one identity — that of being Muslim — by Hindus who were, like him, out in the unprotected open because they too were starving? “For a bewildered child,” Sen remembers, “the violence of identity was extraordinarily hard to grasp.” And, he confesses, “it is not particularly easy even for a still bewildered elderly adult.”

From Why Do Bad Things Happen to Good People?

In his book “Identity and Violence”  Amartya Sentakes aims at what he calls the ” ‘solitarist’ approach to human identity, which sees human beings as members of exactly one group.” This view, he argues, is not just morally undesirable, but descriptively wrong. Instead, Sen invokes the myriad identities within each individual. The people of the world can be classified according to many other partitions, each of which has some—often far-reaching—relevance in our lives: nationalities, locations, occupations, social status, languages, politics, and many others, including identity common to all – HUMANS. Because all of us contain multitudes, we can choose among our identities, emphasizing those we share with others rather than those we do not.

Let’s focus on our shared identities and appreciate differences for peace around the world.

From We Are Allowed to Be Human

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Was it easier for you to accept the differences between the women in the video below, once you saw their shared identity?

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