Diversity Management, Equality, Equal Opportunities, Affirmative Action, News & We The People!

A “meme” is a psychological property. Like a virus it seeks to survive by drawing sustenance from other memes that confirm and reinforces its existence, it will replicate itself horizontally and vertically to guarantee it has future sustenance and reinforcement and survival. To tell it to go away or to stop working is a futile nonsense, it will simply mutate and disguise itself under any spotlight. This is why “awareness training” and the like will “always fail to deliver equality of opportunity.”

I saw an episode of Star Trek “Voyager” this evening, the episode was called “Memorial” It was about the Voyager crew forcefully and painfully experiencing the “memories” of a massacre of many innocent people 300 years previously on some far flung planet. A malfunctioning monument to the massacre on that planets surface was broadcasting the painful memories.

The crew decided to repair the monument because they wanted to ensure that the record of the massacre remain available to future travellers who will learn from and benefit from the available detailed record of the event in that they will know of the damage caused by the terrible incident and not repeat such folly in their own lives and cultures.

It stuck me that on planet earth far worst follies than what had happened in the voyager story have occurred, over and over again. Those incidents have been very damaging to our human culture. So much more damaging than mere words can be expected to convey.

Perhaps the most damaging in our human history has been the “Transatlantic Slave Trade” that sold innocent human beings for commercial profit, the trade spanned centuries, it transformed the entire world and its transformation is very much with us today still, eating away at our decency and respect for each other, our security and safety with each other and with the very planet that sustains us, eating away at our very sanity as individuals and as a culture.

The Transatlantic slave trade set off the so-called western industrial revolution.

It fuelled the taking of land and the murderous dehumanisation of its “natives” across multiple continents bloating its practitioners with incredible wealth and privilege.

It encouraged the insane concept that groups of humans beings are superior to others, it encouraged and endorsed the disrespect towards human beings, the natural environment and our planet’s ecosystem. It fractured and devastated the cohesion of brother and sisterhood that binds us together as one.

The Trans Atlantic Slave Trade and its insane practitioners taught and reinforced the concept that “great wealth” and privilege comes from disrespecting and dehumanising others - Their “Ideology.

That great wealth and privilege comes from similarly disrespecting the natural environment.

That great wealth and privilege comes from disrespecting the ecosystem that sustains the very life on our planet.

As someone once said:

“An idea is something you have.”

“An Ideology is something that has you!”

Better be a wholesome and sustainable one.

These “memes” became entrenched in the structures, systems and professional practice of our institutions, organisations and individuals on a hitherto unprecedented scale.

The practitioners of the Atlantic Slave Trade wanted them there and could afford to have them put there via public relations programs of whatever ilk, because without them they would not have been able to conduct their horrific “business.”

One cannot enslave their equal.

One cannot “dominate” the natural environment and ecosystem unless one is “Superior to it, has majesty over it!

These “memes are still very much with us today, they have not been removed from our culture.

These “memes are literally “Killing us!”

Day by Day!

Evidently the overwhelming majority of us have not learned much from the “history lessons” about the Trans Atlantic Slave Trade where we have been fortunate enough to have a glimpse of it with reference to the way we relate to “others” among us. We are still living the lie of these memes.

Still telling ourselves often subconsciously, often secretly, sometimes openly of our superiority, to other humans, to the natural environment, to our planet’s ecosystem.

Still propagating the memes vertically and horizontally in our culture through our social structures, institutions, systems and practice.

When we damage the lives of others expressing theses memes we also damage ourselves because we are out of synch with the world around us and must always be working against it by definition.

The descendants of the “victims” of the practitioners of the Trans Atlantic Slave Trade are “today’s victims” of the current “beneficiaries.” passed down through the ages this meme.

Many bury their heads in the sand of denial that the effects are still reverberating among us, reverberating throughout our world despite the facts.

Many simply don’t care because they think that the headlong dive to our oblivion grants them some petty privilege or status, many are simply miserable individuals who have no other way to achieve a modicum of “self esteem” except to maintain the conditions that oppress and are destroying us all and our planet.

Many simply want to drive a bigger car or to live in a bigger house!

How to kill a meme?

A meme is a psychological property. Like a virus it seeks to survive by drawing sustenance from other memes that confirm and reinforces its existence, it will replicate itself horizontally and vertically to guarantee it has future sustenance and reinforcement and survival. To tell it to go away or to stop working is a futile nonsense, it will simply mutate and disguise itself under any spotlight, this is why “awareness training” and the like will “always fail to deliver equality of opportunity.”

To kill a meme we must brake its cycle of transmission, just like with a virus.

To kill a meme, as psychology 101 will inform us we must change the environment in which it thrives, make that environment hostile to it.

To kill a meme we must starve it of its affirmation and reinforcement activity, supported by personal and institutional practice that disables its transmission.

Our social structures that support systems that support practice are the main transmission mediums for these negative memes under discussion. Yes individuals and groups as private persons do transmit these negative memes too, however it’s our social institutions that are the really big transmission media.

They compel us to do our jobs a certain way that can often seem entirely normal because they have been established in some cases for hundreds of years. - Examples include our national institutions and larger corporations that were actually founded to support the Trans Atlantic Slave Trade. (Some world famous banking and other financial institutions immediately come to mind.)

Effective Diversity Management techniques seek to modify institutional structures, systems and professional practice in such a manner that employs the use of “Objective Criteria” in the context of decision-making and implementation. The decision makers then cannot apply the memes to the decision-making processes. The memes cannot then be transferred or reinforced.

The memes “Starve,” and wither away because they are not reinforced by action! Not transmitted by compelled infection.

An international, western based memorial to the ” victims” of the Trans Atlantic Slave Trade and their decendants, has been a long time in the building, opportunities to learn from this brutal ugly past remains minimised and we are in constant danger of repeating it in it’s full blown glory.

All commentary and utility welcome.

Floyd Campbell is Principal of
CAMPBELLCONSENT DIVERSITY
Specialist in Diversity Management
Consulting, Training, Research & Marketing
http://www.campbellconsent.com

Transatlantic Slave Trade:

http://www.liverpoolmuseums.org.uk/maritime/slavery/triangle.asp

http://www.liverpoolmuseums.org.uk/maritime/slavery/index.asp

http://www.nmm.ac.uk/freedom/viewTheme.cfm/theme/triangular

http://www.nmm.ac.uk/freedom/links.cfm

Memes:

http://www.campbellconsent.com/memebased.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meme

http://www.memecentral.com/

http://pespmc1.vub.ac.be/MEMIN.HTML

http://maxwell.lucifer.com/virus/alt.memetics/what.is.html