My mind is a whirlwind of thoughts this morning. I was reading this article for school last night. This week focuses on cultural difference and how that impacts treatment. Miller (2010) talked about five different cultures that affect humans. The first is the universal human culture. The second is the ecological culture, which is how we live based on our geographical environments. The third is the countries we live in, which have their own rules, regulations, laws, and customs. Fourth is the specific region we live in and the differences there. The fifth is the racioethinic culture in which we were born. On top of these, we have other differences based on the life led, especially if you are a part of a minority group. Minority groups can be gender, sexual orientation, social class, religion, age, disabilities, and more.
It talks about how we all have our own biases. We had to take this work training once, and the point of it was to make us aware that we all had biases and to get more comfortable acknowledging them. It was a pretty impactful training and one of the most successful in changing the culture to make such things more acceptable to discuss. Most of us would probably like to think we don’t have biases. In my mind, it is hard to differentiate a bias from judgment. I think they are in the same family. While going through the reading, I was reflecting on what mine are. I watched my reaction to each section in the reading to determine what thoughts or feelings arose.
I was thinking about this on my walk with Charlie this morning. I realized that my biases stem from ignorance or lack of exposure. It is much like dogs not socialized to be around people or other pets. Do we judge the dog for not being socialized? While we may not blame the dog, if you’ve ever had a dog who was not socialized or who you did not socialize, I am sure you have wished he could be different at one point or another. You’ve wished he could change and be chill around people and other animals. This, at least, is true in my case with my dog Charlie. I did not socialize him properly when he was young. Does this mean he can’t change? No, not at all. However, if you’ve ever experienced this, you also know that changing this is not easy. He reacts based on fear, as do people. Is it fair to compare my dog’s socialization to how people form biases? I am not sure, but it made sense in my head when I was walking him this morning.
Therefore, if you follow this chain of thought, one of the most important things a parent can do is to socialize their child around all types of people. Every minority or culture mentioned above and as often as possible. This reminds me of one of Brene Brown’s quotes, “People are hard to hate close up. Move in.”
We all like labels, though. This reminds me of the year my parents sent my sister and me to camp for a week. My mom either got a brand-new label maker, or she was convinced someone would take our stuff. She labeled everything that we took in our pack. She even labeled the case that held my soap. I am surprised she didn’t label the soap itself. I digress.
I’ve been using this analogy lately about how humans are like snowflakes. You can quickly think we are each the same. However, when you get close, you realize that each is unique. While we may be unique, we are also each beautiful and all made up of the same atoms and molecules. We are all just wandering around this big blue ball with a timer looming. We each are subscribed to this series called My Life. In this series, we are each a horse running a race with blinders on. Periodically, the blinders come off, and we wander around the pasture. All my analogies are about animals today, apparently.
I’m not exactly sure what my point is. However, when I am out in the pasture, I grapple with wanting to be amongst the herd and wanting to be as far away as possible.
Cover Photo by Chelsey Marques on Unsplash
Shaynanigans 