How to deal with inequality in this world?

[Wyze]

I have extreme issue with perceived inequality and often it leads to bad situations/endings (I get too angry). For example, when I witness someone is given a free pass and another person was not, this greatly upsets and angers me...then I want to speak out and it always ends badly.

Is there a way of thinking or new frame of reference that can help/cope with this?

(I am thinking this may be too much Green thinking within me)

[bejapuskas]

@Wyze Try reading Katie Byron, Leo recommends her. Her techniques are very effective, you just have to do them. The book's name is „Love what is“. It helps you spot every problem inside you in order to stop judging.

It could even be blue level thinking, but I dont know you... Realize, that by doing this, you arent helping anyone, especially not yourself. Why be stressed out because of a stupid accident, rather than be happy always?

[XYZ]

Is your attitude about inequality different in situations when you are personally placed at an advantage or disadvantage to others, as opposed to a detached observer? 

 

[Wyze]

@XYZ I think both. When I am personally affected by the advantage/disadvantage; it becomes particularly bad. I have been in situations where I was expected to favor one person over another and that upsets me as well. I rather be at and see everyone at a neutral stance as much as possible.

@bejapuskas Thanks for the recommendation. I will check her book out. Its interesting that you also think Blue is involved in anger over perceived injustice? This concept is new to me, can you explain your train of thoughts to me?

[XYZ]

Acceptance that inequality and biases will always exist, and not being emotionally invested in these aspects of human nature. This includes your own biases which you may or may not be consciously aware of.

More pragmatically, think of how "social justice warrior" policies and political decisions that try to enforce equality of outcome (rather than equality of opportunity) tend to only create more inequality and systemic biases.

Reminds me of this entrance to the holocaust exhibit in the Museum of Tolerance:

Edited November 12, 2018 by XYZ

[Leo Gura]

@Wyze Realize there is no other way it can be. Everything that happens is inevitable.

Reality is perfect no matter how bad it may seem to the ego.

[Elisabeth]

3 hours ago, Wyze said:

Is there a way of thinking or new frame of reference that can help/cope with this?

Observe social hierarchy on a personal level. Observe how you like seeing one of your friends more than another. Observe how hard it is to take with the same seriousness the words of someone who's physically attractive and charismatic vs. someone who is shy. Observe which people you respect an follow and why. Observe how you want to help your relatives at the expense of strangers. Observe how you immediately sympathize with someone who shares your views. 

Think about how these biases play out in groups. Can you see how hierarchy and inequality arises from the bottom? How unavoidable it is?

Edited November 12, 2018 by Elisabeth

[CreamCat]

You don't know what will happen. There is always room for both improvements and deterioration. If reality is perfect, it can be made more perfect.

Shift your focus from petty inequalities that you see in your neighborhood toward unnecessary mistreatment and extreme inequalities that exist.

• There are great inequalities among species. Humans eat cows, pigs, chickens, monkey brain, and various other animal species. This is unnecessary mistreatment. Lab-grown meat will improve the status quo.
• Hundreds of thousands of people in south sudan are starving to death because their enemies use hunger as a weapon of war. Their enemies prevent food from getting to these people.
• People in north korea are murdered, raped, and fed to dogs by soldiers. North korean government is a giant cult.
• Artificial intelligence will eradicate most jobs in the 21st century. No place is ready for this kind of unemployment. Prepare to embrace the impact, or prepare for it. If there was no preparation, it would be possible that hundreds of millions of people starve to death.

If you were productive enough to do something about these things, you wouldn't get so mad over petty inequalities.

Edited November 12, 2018 by CreamCat

[Wyze]

Thanks guys, you gave me alot to think about.

[Shadowraix]

16 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

@Wyze Realize there is no other way it can be. Everything that happens is inevitable.

Reality is perfect no matter how bad it may seem to the ego.

This helped me a lot.

I have my own desires of how I want the world to be and I can surely advocate for them and reality's present state may or may not align with what I want. At the end of the day my desires can give me something to strive for, to participate in the story but the outcome was inevitable and so I must always accept the result. Its my only choice.

Good bad right wrong bleh its all just what you do and don't like/desire/want and that is relative so I can't really hold anybody to my standards as some authority.

[Sahil Pandit]

@Wyze Take a second to realize how privileged and unfair it is that you live right NOW in 2018. 

Consider how far you have come compared to past generations.

Look at how "unfair" their lives were compared to ours!

Shocking, isn't it?

(sorry this might sound off topic, but i wanted to put things into perspective.) 

 

[Hellspeed]

Realize as soon as possible that none of us is equal. We only share 2 truths: Breath & Change. 

All of us are is different stages of discovery, so it is impossible to create equality based on an ideal society. 

[Shadowraix]

7 minutes ago, Hellspeed said:

Realize as soon as possible that none of us is equal. We only share 2 truths: Breath & Change. 

All of us are is different stages of discovery, so it is impossible to create equality based on an ideal society. 

I think you are thinking of equality/inequality a bit differently.

[Emerald]

For this, I think it's important to reconcile the inherent perfection of the absolute along with the inherent imperfection of the relative as an extension of the perfect absolute. 

So ground yourself in the absolute as this is Truth, and the awareness that no matter what happens it's all 100% perfect. But do not forget about the relative or waive it off as unimportant. The relative is also an extension of the absolute, and it's important to live an embodied life if you're going to get the most out of living the human experience. 

So, understand that everything is ultimately already perfect, but also recognize that so much could be improved relatively. And if it calls to you, seek to understand the systems that produce the inequalities that you perceive. Then, you'll know how these problems can be addressed, and be able to do so.  

Also, find your motivations. Why do these inequalities bother you so much? Is it a genuine problem that has negative effects on many people? Or is it just the principle of the thing?

[Wyze]

9 hours ago, Emerald said:

 Also, find your motivations. Why do these inequalities bother you so much? Is it a genuine problem that has negative effects on many people? Or is it just the principle of the thing?

To be honest, I do think there are more to my perceived inequality than I am willing to admit. I think I want to protect my self and my awareness from seeing that despite being born in this day and age - there are still inequality, which will be inevitable. These inequalities affect my perception and my worldview and I find it affects my relationships with those who are not impacted by it.

I think partially its a sad and lonely realization.

[Emerald]

2 hours ago, Wyze said:

To be honest, I do think there are more to my perceived inequality than I am willing to admit. I think I want to protect my self and my awareness from seeing that despite being born in this day and age - there are still inequality, which will be inevitable. These inequalities affect my perception and my worldview and I find it affects my relationships with those who are not impacted by it.

I think partially its a sad and lonely realization.

It's important to understand the inequality comes as a result of systems. And those parts of systems that create inequalities also squelch consciousness and integration on the macro level. So, if your goal is to have a more conscious society/world that's better to live in, your own inequalities give you the perfect door for exploration of these systems. If you are in a non-privileged position for power, you are in a privileged position for wisdom and insight about the whole system. 

So, it's just a matter of being able to see what you perceive as purely negative from a different (and better) angle. It may be less comfortable to live with inequality... but it will also make you aware of certain shadows within humanity in ways that people who have more privileges may never have. Through this you can make yourself more resilient, stronger, more aware, and more wise.

It will also help you learn how to dismantle these systems so that others in the future don't have to experience the same. Some people crumble under this weight. So, it's important to dismantle them for the sake of avoiding that and expanding society's consciousness in general by removing its bindings.

So, even thought the inequalities are difficult to deal with, there is a way to do the alchemy of soul with them, where you turn water into wine and exalt yourself to your highest.

Understand that hardship can go two ways. It can help build you up if you're resilient. It can break you down if you're not. 

[Wyze]

@Emerald Yes I can see what our saying, looking for the silver lining in the situations/inequality. I think cognitively I know all this, but on an emotional level, I think it is the saddest thing.  I feel I am unable to connect with people, even genuine people who are oblivious to some of the issues. It angers me that I have to experience things in a different way, and expected to smile and be super agreeable to the situation so I don't look like a weirdo for having emotional outbursts. It feels like an eternal punishment.

[Emerald]

9 hours ago, Wyze said:

@Emerald Yes I can see what our saying, looking for the silver lining in the situations/inequality. I think cognitively I know all this, but on an emotional level, I think it is the saddest thing.  I feel I am unable to connect with people, even genuine people who are oblivious to some of the issues. It angers me that I have to experience things in a different way, and expected to smile and be super agreeable to the situation so I don't look like a weirdo for having emotional outbursts. It feels like an eternal punishment.

If you don't mind my asking, in which way do you experience inequality?

For me, it mostly comes through the lens of being a woman. And then just looking on the internet and seeing all the misogyny that I didn't know existed prior to the days of the internet... and how it interacts with so many of the insights I had into my own repressed femininity and self-hatred the years prior. And that salting wounds that are so deep that they are on both the personal and the ancestral level. It's like seeing a really ugly part of humanity's shadow, and how it crosses over so many psychological, social, biological, and sexual human threads. It's this really complex ancient dark curse of a thing, that's both a riveting and terrifying monster to hunt. And I'm obsessed with it like a hunter who wants its head hanging on my wall, and a mad scientist that wants to know all its machinations.

But the social boundaries are really stifling. People who are of any class that's considered default are very sensitive about anything related to their class being brought up. They're not used to dealing with situations in relation to that class. So, they get uncomfortable easily, like someone entering into a cold pool. But people of classes not considered default are already in the cold pool, so we're both used to it but the discomfort is constant despite its manageability. So, it's difficult to make a person from the default class listen and understand without having a negative emotional reaction or so many ego defenses thrown up. The water is too cold for them, and many freak out even though it's just a temporary discomfort. 

My solution (that doesn't fully solve the whole problem of Course) is to try to understand the system that's creating those inequalities as deeply as possible. This helps me get more perspective on how and why those patterns have come about, and also the solution for core problems. Plus, it gives me a sense of detachment to view the issues from a less personal perspective as well. It helps me avoid victim's mentality.

[1x0]

On 12/11/2018 at 8:25 AM, Leo Gura said:

Reality is perfect no matter how bad it may seem to the ego.

I just started another thread with a similar question but more severe here...

struggling with letting it go as a belief....

[Wyze]

8 hours ago, Emerald said:

If you don't mind my asking, in which way do you experience inequality?

I experience gender and racial inequality. My personality is the opposite of the socially accepted stereotypical behaviour of those. And I have had so many experiences of being treated differently and bullied due to these 2 facts.

Quote

But the social boundaries are really stifling. People who are of any class that's considered default are very sensitive about anything related to their class being brought up. They're not used to dealing with situations in relation to that class. So, they get uncomfortable easily, like someone entering into a cold pool. But people of classes not considered default are already in the cold pool, so we're both used to it but the discomfort is constant despite its manageability. So, it's difficult to make a person from the default class listen and understand without having a negative emotional reaction or so many ego defenses thrown up. The water is too cold for them, and many freak out even though it's just a temporary discomfort. 

I really like this analogy, I've had people out right denial the gender and race issue. I've had people try to pretend that I am of a different race/class to be able to feel they can talk to me.

I think deep down, I am not angry at them individually. I can tell some people just never questioned their many assumptions and some are brought up in extreme closed off societies and have very unrealistic expectations from people who are different from them. But I think its the fact that society needs me to pretend that this is all "ok", while being openly discriminated against; it is really emotionally taxing. And my lack of coping mechanisms because no one wants to talk about the long term effect of living in the "cold water"; and how to cope with this until society matures and moves onto the next level (which is going to be a long time)

Edited November 15, 2018 by Wyze