#40: No More Discrimination (PART 2)

【Let’s Step Out】
What’s most important is to see the individual as who s/he is and to engage with honesty and sincerity. When we do that, boxing individuals into a certain category will seem inadequately narrow and likely to veer towards a discriminatory tendency.
 
To gain the capacity to see and realize that. To that end, it’s essential that we indulge ourselves in the world so thrillingly vast and the cultures so fascinatingly colorful. No matter how comfy we may feel in our own community, holing up in there for too long will surely obscure our vision to see the beauty of diversity. Resigning ourselves from stepping out will undoubtedly deprive us of the daily opportunities to educate ourselves on the true meaning of discrimination and to appreciate our differences.
 
But then, what if we already enjoy the daily interactions in our own community with a colleague or a neighbor who’s come from another country or culture? Doesn’t that suffice to say that we’re not totally holed up? Even in such instances, however, it’s imperative to remember the fact that s/he is the minority who’s mustered the courage to dive into my community and engage under my norms and common sense.
 
To be sure, there’s a world of difference between that and we ourselves actually moving and living abroad. To move to an unfamiliar foreign country and live there for some time. That is, to ground ourselves in their community and engage under their norms and common sense.
 
There, we may come across a world that appears entirely upside-down and inside-out compared to the scenery that we’ve gotten so used to. And there, we’ll surely face the challenges of foreign culture and language. Writhing in agony and deepening our thoughts, we may come to truly realize for the very first time the real pain and humiliation endured by the minority and the cruelty of majority rules. Indeed, it is by stepping out that we gain multiple perspectives of the inside by looking from the outside.
 
To truly understand discrimination, we must first become a minority ourselves. For most of us, we can make that happen if we put our mind to it.
 
By so doing, we may come to realize what we were seeing was in fact just what we thought that we were seeing. And we may begin to see what we couldn’t see before. That, indeed, is called gaining wisdom.
 
As we gain wisdom, we’re better able to accept the differences. We’re more willingly open to the thoughts and actions that are different from our own.
 
Indeed, when one set of pre-determined thoughts and actions is forced upon us all, we’ll surely feel as if we’re being treated like archaic robots. Or, we’ll be reminded of the oppressed citizens of a warring nation who’s stigmatized as unpatriotic for courageously refusing to cooperate to a mass murder called war.

​In such closed society, deviating from the norm is strictly prohibited, and those who do so are ostracized and persecuted. The hurtful conformity that requires sameness will ultimately result in division instead of unity, and division breeds discrimination and even war.
 
Why does sameness result in division? It’s because most people naturally possess the desire to Live my life the way I want. That’s why the more freedom we have, the more accepting we become of the differences for the greater good of each and every one of us. That is, diversity breeds unity, whereas sameness breeds division.
 
By expanding our generosity toward our differences, we can defy discrimination and, instead, hone the Spirit of harmony – one of the most treasuring values in the Japanese culture. Harmony, or Wa in Japanese, welcomes people of all backgrounds and accepts our differences to cooperate together for the better tomorrow of each and every one of us. Make no mistake – there’s no harmony in a hurtful conformity called a Negative Wa which, like discrimination, prioritizes the maintenance of a group all the while mistreating or neglecting a few.
 
When we gain wisdom, we attain a big heart and a grand vision that empower us to show greater compassion for the minority, to truly realize the beauty of our differences, to proudly celebrate our diversity, and to eliminate discrimination. For that, let’s step out.

Read Next: No More Discrimination (3)【What's Trouble?】
Read Previous: No More Discrimination (1)【What's Norm?】
 
Complete Series: No More Discrimination (1)～(12)
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Read Theme: Discrimination