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Chloé Valdary & the "Theory of Enchantment" (plus Jordan B. Peterson interview)

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Theory of Enchantment
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chlo%C3%A9...nchantment
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(recent article) Enchantment and the Black-Jewish Divide
https://sapirjournal.org/aspiration/2022...sh-divide/

EXCERPTS (Chloé Valdary):  I grew up Christian while observing many Jewish customs...

[... ] In the end, extremist groups like the Nation of Islam or the JDL invariably fall into a co-dependent relationship with their opponents — at once violently hostile and also mimetic. James Baldwin’s observation that “the oppressor and the oppressed depend upon each other” rings true here. Instead of offering liberation, these groups create a closed and oppressive system defined entirely by their relationship with those whom they denounce as oppressors. To break with that destructive pattern, they would have to renounce their very reason for being, which helps explain why they have been able to persist for so long while failing to achieve the kind of spiritual transcendence that’s required for actual liberation.

[...] The Nation of Islam and the JDL are, of course, at the fringes of their respective communities. So why do I discuss them?

First, because the impulses the groups represent are more widespread than the groups themselves. Second, because the two groups (or at least those who might still gravitate toward their messages) stand at the pointed ends of their communities’ most destructive emotions, which need to be reckoned with. And third, because they offer a view into the psychology of damaged relationships — of pain turned into anger, anger into bigotry, and bigotry into politics.

[...] How do we overcome all of this — what’s my “moonshot” approach for building a different relationship between racial and ethnic groups?

First, while it is definitely an anti-racist moonshot, it is not the same as the current popular wave of what John McWhorter, of Columbia University, calls “third wave anti-racism” and even “neoracism,” which, he argues,

"teaches that racism is baked into the structure of society, so whites’ “complicity” in living within it constitutes racism itself, while for black people, grappling with the racism surrounding them is the totality of experience and must condition exquisite sensitivity toward them, including a suspension of standards of achievement and conduct."

This form of anti-racism may sound like an antidote to racism, but it is in many ways simply a replica of it. Far from being an extension of the legacy of historic civil-rights leaders such as Frederick Douglass, Dr. King, or Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, this version of anti-racism often has more in common with the Nation of Islam, or, for that matter, the JDL.

Instead of doing away with caricature and stereotyping based on skin color, this form of anti-racism actually incentivizes people to caricature and stereotype. Instead of overcoming historic racism and its social and intellectual underpinnings, many of today’s anti-racist efforts simply invert the original white-supremacist doctrine: Just as the classic white supremacists said that to be black was to be inferior and to be white superior, this anti-racism equates blackness with goodness and whiteness with evil.

The result is predictable: Telling people they are defined by the color of their skin, indicted by immutable characteristics, can only breed frustration, paranoia, and resentment. Such a worldview of scarcity — a zero-sum, us-versus-them mentality — only perpetuates racial power struggles. It’s one of the reasons race relations in the United States seem to have gotten worse, not better, in the era of “anti-racism.”

This is not the direction society needs to go. Luckily, there is an alternative.

For years, I have been at work on what I call the “Theory of Enchantment.” The word “enchantment” suggests magic, and in some sense that is exactly what I mean by it: the enchantment of seeing a world filled with everyday people whose gifts — at first hidden from others, or even from themselves — can redeem, heal, and save us... (MORE - missing details)

Theory of Enchantment fundamentals

https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/0i7UQWRbXHs

Theory of Enchantment -  Chloé Valdary  interviewed by Jordan B. Peterson

https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/63QQ8E6rd1A
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