Our society and the culture we live in can create miracles. We can drive our energy towards landing a person on the moon. We can create public-serving libraries to educate all for free. But when the normalized ideas of a society are oppressive and harmful, that collective force can have a huge negative impact on our culture and the opportunities available for certain marginalized groups in our culture.
The Four I's of Oppression begin with IDEOLOGICAL ideas. These are the stereotypes we live with that shape our decisions. Girls don't follow those career paths. Men shouldn't stay at home. People of color shouldn't try to be President. Based on what you see around you, ideas have been normalized even if they haven't ever been verbalized. You see them on T.V., in advertising, and in the town you live in. Even though we have massive technology that allows individuals to see perspectives and opinions from every different place and viewpoint, unfortunately I think that our technology is only making the Ideological Extreme worse. In the past, while you probably read the Newspaper that followed your political leanings, and while you watched the news program that confirmed your bias, now similar content is pushed your way on the internet through ads and social media. It provides no semblance of balance, and without actively seeking other viewpoints, it is easy for a person to suddenly believe that everyone believes this extreme viewpoint to be true. All the things I read confirm it! All the posts agree with me!
People can find themselves in their own Ideological bubble; a self righteous prison in which they are always right.
At an individual level, we feel these ideological values through our Interpersonal interactions, the Institutional decisions around us, and we Internalize other people's values as if they were always true and correct. As a mother of 3 children I am so cautious about their use of technology and social media. Even as I love our ability to learn so much from the internet, I worry that technology is a vehicle that can bring extreme and unhealthy ideas into their lives. As young people with limited real world exposure I don't want them thinking that everyone should look like an Airbrushed Image. I don't want them to think that as a young person they will have a nice car or apartment. I don't want them normalizing extreme lifestyles or extreme viewpoints.
Oppression happens when the subjugation of a group of people has been normalized. People don't even think it is happening because it has been an embedded part of the society we live in. It is the way schools are funded in certain neighborhoods. It is in the exclusion of people through Legacy Admissions. It is in the media that shows a dominant narrative and portrays it as the truth. The very word "normalization" had a meaning change in the wake of the American 2016 political election. The link to the Merriam Webster dictionary is here. Instead of describing a 'norm', the noun has taken a much more active and aggressive meaning: "Normalization originally described a return to a state considered normal. Later, it was used to describe the act of making something variable conform to a standard. Recently, we've seen it used to describe a change in what's considered standard. In this new 'normalization', the standards change to make something considered an outlier 'normal' - not the other way around."
I am all for the normalization of inclusion, kindness and charity. Perhaps that is the way to fight the Four I's of Oppression and the normalization of hate.
Hi Mary! Nice post. I agree with you on allowing our kids access and use social media. I struggled with that as my son naviagted his young teenage years. Now he is 19yrs old and some of the things he tells me about and how they have changed his oppinon and outlook on things, is if I'm going to be honest, scary. There are so many ideological oppressions out there and social media has made it that much worse in my oppinion.
ReplyDeleteHello Mary, I enjoyed reading your post and also agree that technology and social media can and does make oppression worse. It allows young children to be more exposed to discrimination which in the long run can cause negative impacts on their mental well being.
ReplyDeleteMary, I really enjoyed reading your post. I too, thought a great deal about media when reading through the text and watching the video. I do think that media has made the ideological extremes more pronounced and harder to manage. The number of people who subscribe to a single belief or thought process seems to have greatly increased and I think it's because the algorithms on the web bombard them with the information they want to read. If one chooses not to, he or she doesn't have to read any opposing viewpoints. The media becomes saturated with what they want to hear. Exactly as you have stated above- a self righteous prison, for sure!
ReplyDeleteHi Mary, I thought your post was great and what resonated with me was the first couple sentences you wrote. We live in the great place where we can do things unimaginable but yet we still have such a great deal suffering related to oppression. Oppression can hinder someone from pursuing their dreams, if they feel they won't succeed or they lack encouragement they may subdue to these oppressive thoughts and give up on themselves. On top of that oppression is known to cause chronic stress and poor mental health.
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