Humainologie creative dialogue this coming Wednesday March 10 Zoom link and good questions

“I don’t like that man. I must get to know him better.” - Abraham Lincoln

“One can choose to go back toward safety or forward toward growth. Growth must be chosen again and again; fear must be overcome again and again.”

- Abraham Maslow

You are always welcome to join the creative dialogue without any advance preparation. The “good questions” are just a suggestion that might make the experience more memorable for yourself and others. They are not a “homework assignment.”

Here is the Zoom link provided by Shinobu for our creative dialogue this coming Wednesday March 10.

Topic: Humainologie creative dialogue Time: Mar 10, 2021 06:30 PM Mountain Time (US and Canada) Every week on Wed, until Apr 28, 2021, 9 occurrence(s) Please download and import the following iCalendar (.ics) files to your calendar system. Weekly: https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/tZcqdemvqz0pGtOJpFiLOstEwGfsUBRFqS9S/ics?icsToken=98tyKuGrqTkqHdGTsxmARpwqB4joc-3wmCFejbdytg_DCgx8cRfTIcVEIYddIv7B Join Zoom Meeting https://us02web.zoom.us/j/83720756307?pwd=WVU2OGo3ZjMzWVMwdlVZUzY1RVMwdz09 Meeting ID: 837 2075 6307 Passcode: 12345

You have previously received my synopsis of Ibram Kendi’s book How to Be an Antiracist. Below this message, I have appended the complete list of ““some of the steps we can all take to eliminate racial inequity in our spaces,” provided in the book itself. Once you’ve read the synopsis and looked at the list appended below, consider the following questions. In the first set, the questions are about racism and antiracism. In the second set, the questions are about your own personal growth. Please pick three questions (choosing from either set or from both sets) and develop your responses in preparation for Wednesday.

Set I

· Based on my synopsis of Ibram Kendi’s book, can you specify some manifestations of racism you have noticed in Alberta (or wherever you currently live)?

· Using that list from the book (appended herewith), of “some of the steps we can all take to eliminate racial inequity in our spaces,” can you come up with one or more steps that you personally could take to get started?

· Using that same list and beginning to imagine a bit more ambitiously, can you think of one or more mentors here in Alberta whom we might invite to help us strategize an approach to effective antiracism right here in Calgary (or wherever you currently live)?

Set II

· Share with us a story from your own experience with personal growth and how you have achieved it in the past.

· Imagine something that is realistically possible (but just barely so) for you to achieve over the next one to three years, something that you would love to achieve. (Could be a life skill, or development of a new habit that would work to your advantage; or it could even be the “quest” you told us you were planning at last Wednesday’s creative dialogue). As a prototype to come up with an idea, you can use Ibram Kendi’s dream of surviving cancer and of helping to create an antiracist world. Share your “almost impossible dream” with us on Wednesday.

· Now, perhaps using as a model Ibram Kendi’s “dream team” approach and his list of actionable steps to creating an antiracist world, begin to develop your own list of steps toward achieving your “almost impossible dream.”

· Recall James Clear’s “Atomic Habits” approach and – using that as well the list you are developing based on Ibram Kendi’s ideas – specify one tiny step that you could take before our next dialogue event, to get started toward your “almost impossible dream.”

· What would it take to set you in motion toward your “almost impossible dream”? A reward? A series of small but increasingly irresistible rewards you would give yourself after each step toward your dream? A mantra? Something unpleasant to use as a spur to goad you into action?

Carpe diem,

Arthur

Ibram Kendi’s list of steps we can all take to eliminate racial inequity in our spaces:

Admit racial inequity is a problem of bad policy, not bad people.

Identify racial inequity in all its intersections and manifestations.

Investigate and uncover the racist policies causing racial inequity.

Invent or find antiracist policy that can eliminate racial inequity.

Figure out who or what group has the power to institute antiracist policy.

Disseminate and educate about the uncovered racist policy and antiracist policy correctives.

Work with sympathetic antiracist policymakers to institute the antiracist policy.

Deploy antiracist power to compel or drive from power the unsympathetic racist policymakers in order to institute the antiracist policy.

Monitor closely to ensure the antiracist policy reduces and eliminates racial inequity.

When policies fail, do not blame the people. Start over and seek out new and more effective antiracist treatments until they work.

Monitor closely to prevent new racist policies from being instituted.