What do you think of Charlotte Bunch's quote, on how to end sexual, racial & gender discrimination & violence?

She is right of course.

Social engineering takes place all the time, the question is who is doing it and why. Everything from consumer profiling, industrial psychology, education, media, traditions, religion and more act together to shape the world we live in.

The first steps to creating a culture without discrimination and violence come from identifying what things within our existing cultures lead to that violence. And recognizing the reality of instinct and biology into the mix.

I believe that discrimination and violence have a number of keep causes which are listed below. The list is brief for the sake of simplicity.

1) Lack of empathy.

2) Competition for Scare Resource (poverty)

3) Failure to distinguish what is inside and outside our personal control.

4) Lack of exposure to diversity and fear of the other.

Each of these 4 things are culturally reinforced.

I think the first major issue, perhaps the most important of all of them to tackle, is the first - lack of empathy.

In a world of finance and mass production, when we buy something, we do not see the vast numbers of people who created it. Something as simple as a vegetable in a supermarket has arrived where it is due to the efforts of many. The farmer who planted it, the person who collected the seed, the picker who harvested it. The people who made the packaging. The distributor who took it from the farm to the supermarket. Try to pinpoint the people involved and the list ends up being very long indeed. Yet most consumers simply take the vegetable and pay over a few cents.

It is only perhaps 100 years ago in the west that authors would write of how oranges from Seville were carried by fast ship over the Channel to arrive fresh still at the Kings table. The process by which goods come to be enjoyed was much better understood. We need to get that back, because by doing so, we begin to value the people who allow are lives to function as smoothly as they do, as we contribute to theirs.

This is much easier in small communities where the dependencies are more obvious, yet that need not mean going backwards technologically. It means villages of people that move towards communal sustainability. And if those villages enjoy diverse populations and shared childcare, healthcare, education, age care, produce much of their own food and water - then issue like race and gender discrimination can be designed out of these model communities.

The second issue - scarce resources - is at the heart of a lot of discrimination too. When different factions are competing over the scraps, then it is easy to encourage them to scapegoat and blame one another, and indeed fight over resources, instead of cooperating to make what is needed more abundant. This has been the divide an conquer strategy deployed by imperialists abroad and totalitarian and dictators towards their own populations throughout history.

The third issue - failure to understand what is inside and outside our control is critical and interesting. All societies are combinations of individuals who influence one another moment by moment. That is a dynamic thing, and as an individual we are both empowered and limited at the same time. As we have differing wants and needs, there is a tendency to conflict, and the means of resolving conflict can be complex. We can blame others and ourselves for our own situations, yet this point is subtle. We can only understand change when we understand our what we can and cannot change. More importantly how with time, possibilities shift. And how working together we can achieve more. Essentially the power of enlightened self interest.

Lastly - lack of exposure to diversity - it is easy to fear what we do not known easy to condemn it when we need a scapegoat. Growing up within a village where we are depend on both genders, where sexual orientation is expressed openly. Where people are of all ages, ethnicities, both genders work fairly equally across jobs, and where everyone understands that they are interdependent - eliminates this issue almostby definition.

Those are some of the things we can do to continue to change our culture for the better.

The answer is simple, the practice is incredibly hard. Some people will always want to be/feel 'superior'.

In essence all we have to do is to two things:

1) become more self sufficient so that we do not create massive world wide earnings gaps (globally) by giving power and control to massive corporations and governments. How can we justify paying less than a $ a day to some people and £1,000,000 salary to a footballer in the West?

Self sufficiency is on many levels, personal, community, nationally, globally. Basically it means acting in ways in which control and power are kept within the locality/community and not giving control and power to others such as global corporations.

2) for each individual not to accept discrimination or discriminating practices of any person regardless of ethnicity, gender, age, sexuality, ability, religion or country in which they live. Eventually everything else develops, such as laws, policies and education.

I agree with this statement. What we have now is a lot of "band-aid" type fixes that address the after-effects of discrimination and violence. But these things are needed and are useful because you can't change the way people view these problems overnight. You have to start somewhere and sometimes that means working within the current structures and cultural climate.

In many discussions I've had on this matter, it seems like the best way to tackle these issues is starting with the youngsters. Instead of glamorizing, institutionalizing and normalizing violence, teach our youth that violence is unacceptable. And this applies across the board...no matter what gender, race, socioeconomic class, etc. Kids need people they can look up to that came from their same background teaching them these things. It requires honesty. It requires putting positive images for both boys and girls out there. Having discussions about what the media, entertainment industry puts out there isn't really reality or isn't something to model yourself after.

More fair laws and better foreign policy would be a good start. The thing is, Americans don't share one homogenous culture, we are a melting pot. Many groups blame a different groups culture for the decline. TV certainly isnt helping. Reality shows, hip hop culture (this isnt a euphamism for all blacks), and bad parenting are the real problems. Our terrible president doesnt help either.

We would have to do away with the wrestlers, football players and other sports that promote the use of brawn that is rewarded with millions of dollars. We would have to suddenly give respect to women for their brains. We would have to elevate women to the same level of respect that men hold. We would have to deplore violence in all its aspects including on the football, soccer, basketball court/field. We would have to become in short a kinder, more intellectually evloved speices than we are now.

It's pretty much a commonsensical notion, equal to: "if you want to stop the pain, pull the icepick out of your head and get morphine".

Culture changes all the time, so it's not culture that needs to be altered, rather that fundamental ideas in science and reality need to be more widely disseminated so that people can make decisions based upon truth rather than quackery. There is more harm done by the spread of quackery than anything else.

[edit] TDs from the pseudo-intellectuals perhaps? Verbiage always loses its mystery when a light is shone upon it.

I think to change our culture, we need to start with the youngest people. I see, and remember from my own childhood, children being bullied, beat up and generally harassed for not being good enough, pretty enough, strong enough, etc. The emotional and physical pain from that carries into our adult life. If we can help prevent it at its source, which includes helping children know how to recognize and report serious abuse in their own home too, then we may be able to prevent these children from having problems in their adulthood.

Case in point: Many mass murderers were abused as children, either by their parents or their peers. Think of what could have been done to stop this that wasn’t done.

it's true, culture has to change. but also laws can be very effective --when they are upheld. many countries don't have laws on the books, when they do they might not keep stats, there may be impunity, corruption, etc. Ppl need to ensure that laws are there and that they work--not an easy process.

we need to be examples of tolerance. when i read this forum, i often think, no wonder we have bullying in our schools - adults model this behavior. some of these posters are parents themselves.

anyway, a holistic approach is needed but i put emphasis on laws and policies.

I think the only way to end bigotry, tribalism, homophobia, insecurity and all the other things that lead to sexism, racism and all other forms of discrimination is for humans to evolve into higher life forms. These things are caused by imperfect humans' reaction to fear.

You can spot-treat it where it breaks through and make laws to protect victims, but I have no confidence it can be eradicated in the near future.

With the loss of isolationistic buffers in each advance of the complexity of human groupings, we become less oriented toward domination, purity and superiority dichotomies that breed discrimination and exploitation. Human society progressed from clan to village to kingdom, state and nation. Today, society is transitioning into global groupings. With that will naturally, eventually come a reorientation away from self-serving dichotomous cultural paradigms that produce segregation, nationalism, isolationism, intolerance and prejudice and a reorientation toward more humanistic, universally empowering weave paradigms.

Our cultural paradigm . . . dichotomous and contemptuous or humanistic and weaving . . . is essentially established by individuals involved in society's highest organizations in the hierarchy of influence and government. Although individual enlightenment is important, cultural changes actually occur secondary to activities launched at high organizational levels. Participation at that level of cultural determination is vital. For example, Bunch's Center for Women's Global Leadership at Rutgers University synergizes individual initiative into rational consensus and clout.

Culture is a weave of several institutions, including government, science /technology, courtship/marriage/family, education, transportation, defence/military, recreation, commerce, spirituality and health. A useful way to examine how to effect cultural changes is to score institutions like music as heard in a woven movement of several different musical instruments. If you change the notes for the oboe, for example, the harmony will change with the musical movements of the other instruments, or institutions.

Sometimes, a strategy for cultural change can begin as an adjustment in an institution that is seemingly unrelated to the desired outcome, as in this case, reducing discrimination and violence. Looking at the reverse of that, the Industrial Revolution triggered the end of an agraian society which eventually triggered the decline of the "traditional" stay-at-home-mom. The sophistication of those manipulations is mind-boggling. It is important that we inform and teach the critical-thinking skills and knowledge bases that goes into social engineering sciences, including solid understanding of psychology, anthropology, sociology, statistics, economics and philosophy, because OTHERS have those skills and, unless the public is competent enough to recognize such manipulations and participate in those movements, we are at the mercy of those who DO have those resources and who are using those resources to perpetuate violent, discriminating dichotomous paradigms.