The right of individual conscience.
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The tyranny of opinion based on indoctrination of partisan beliefs, popular fear and peer pressure (bordering on mass psychosis), misinformation, and acquiescence has reared its head throughout history, including American history.
As I have become older, I realize how much being young entails a conformity to what is considered "hip" or "cool," all measures of what popular culture dictates is acceptable.
At the same time that older adults tend to become inflexible in their ways of doing things and seeing the world, I might add that youth is often very insecure about its very identity, which may still be in formation or transition, and defaults to what is essentially a form of "group think," as in high school where peer approval is so important. I think that that "high school" mentality evolves into the college and post-college years as well: the fear of being different, which is to some extent a fear of being an authentic individual who has no need to look around as ask: him or herself, "Well, what is everyone (else) doing?" and, instead, knows what he or she really wants.
Just because Beyonce is on the cover of every other magazine or newspaper and is selling millions of her latest album doesn't mean that she is any good, or that "you should like her."
Just because The New York Times has consistently supported the American civil rights movement (without ever looking at it from a more distanced, critically nuanced angle) does not mean that there is another way to interpret the events of the last half century, one that includes the experiences of other minorities, as well as whites. rather than dismisses them as unimportant. There was violence in the civil rights movement and African-American community which has not been acknowledged.
My exposure to the local newspaper The Stranger helped me to see how tyrannical the system of peer approval/pressure is: how fear of being called "a weird-do" or "a racist" prevents people from even thinking things that stray from the dogmas of a certain shrill liberal block that has attained "a critical mass" to influence how others think and keep them "in line."
Reading this week's The Stranger's article on Officer Hall of the SPD, whose Facebook comments were described as "an embarrassing rant," I realized how powerful stigmatizing other people is by presenting them in a slanted, distorted mirror.
Publications such as these do not investigate a situation in a search for the truth because they already know a priori what the truth is: Blacks are oppressed and are heroic, they cannot oppress anyone, like a mathematical axiom.
It is not so much different from the demagoguery.
"Diversity" as defined by a certain clique of people, diversity within certain parameters: gay and/or black and/or liberal and/or young and/or potty-mouthed...
(The African-American experience, though an important one, is one of many historical-cultural prisms, and is not necessarily the central guiding force of this country, even though many liberals have taken it to be indistinguishable from a religion. There are no chosen peoples among us).
The intolerance for other, opposing opinions is manifested by the vilification and savage put-downs of those with independent views ("stupid," "rant" "delusional," "crazy," "racist,"...).
But I think that integrity goes hand in hand with a strength to be different, to be's truest self, even at the price of societal scorn and ostracizing.
I was born with a congenital heart murmur and a badly misaligned left shoulder which has made my backstroke--in swimming--woefully lopsided and slow. I do not smile so much as grimace, at least when photographed. I cannot help to be anyone other than who I am.
"'He beat me. He robbed me, He insulted me. He abused me.' 'Repeat these thoughts, and you live in hatred,' the Buddha said. 'Abandon these thoughts and live in love.'"
-The Dhammapada
http://www.pa56.org/ross/Buddha.htm
'The victim of our own story..." "How attached are you to your 'hard luck story.'" "The willingness to replay that past scenario."
http://gaia.dharmaseed.org/talks/?search=resistance#
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