"Beauty confronts us with the requirement that we place ourselves among...the redeemers, the leaders in the protection of life. Once you have seen the bush on fire, you are not going to get out of the assignment unless you close your eyes to the beauty.... [You] either have to close your eyes or go back to Egypt and set the people free." - Rev. Dr. Rebecca Parker, "Rising to the Challenge of Our Times"

Thursday, October 16, 2008

From an article by Jon Hanson, "The Blame Frame: Justifying (Racial) Injustice in America"

"Because humans crave justice, salient suffering or inequalities activate an 'injustice dissonance' within us. Too often, we alleviate that dissonance, not by addressing the injustice, but by creating an illusion of justice through assumptions, arguments, or stereotypes about the blameworthiness of the victim."

Seems like a lot of folks are having to alleviate a lot of dissonance these days about a lot of things, and a lot of illusions have been created in the process. In the perennially apt words of Aunt Liza, "oh dear oh dear oh dear."

2 comments:

adamf said...

That's a great quote, Emily.

How can we learn to sit with dissonance?

wordsfromhome said...

Perhaps we have tpo stand so that it can resonate n a lower frequency.