An 1899 chromolithograph of U.S. cavalry pursuing American Indians, artist unknown. Source: Werner Company, Akron, Ohio. Published before 1923. In the public domain.
by Anthony J. Marsella
PATHWAYS TO GENOCIDE
I do not know what actions the Trump presidential administration will take regarding the energy-genocide-ecocide tradeoff in which “Oil” always seems to win. I do know, however, what actions the existing Obama administration has taken! Oil trumps people! Oil trumps pollution! Oil trumps reason! It is ecocide! All aspects of nature are at risk: water, air, land, animals, and people. It is genocide! Do we forget the man-made disasters associated with oil production? Imagine the consequences of a pipeline rupture for the upper Missouri River! Remember! It is lawys after fact apologies and inadequate compensations. Too late!
Standing Rock now is symbolic with “cide.” It is ecocide, genocide, suicide, and nationcide. (See www.fun-with-words.com, for a list of hundreds of words ending in “cide.”) In all instances, “cide” refers to the act of killing.
Yes, it is Genocide! This traumatic frightening term has been commandeered by so many others across the world, justified in all instances, but now reluctantly assigned to the destruction, violence, and war characterizing centuries of abuse against the Native American Indians. It is a final battle, apocryphal in proportion.
Genocide is a term coined in 1944 by Raphael Lemkin to describe the deliberate and systematic destruction, in whole or in part, of an ethnic, racial, religious, or national group. It is defined in Article 2 of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (CPPCG) of 1948 as “any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial, or religious group, as such: killing members of the group; causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; deliberately inflicting on the groups conditions of life, calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; [and] forcibly transferring children of the group to another group. (Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. Note: “ethnical”, although unusual, is found in several dictionaries) (Wikipedia Website).
The pathways to Genocide are many; each pathway carries with it the potential for destruction of a people and a way-of-life. The push is always the same! “You are either with us or against us,” demonic leaders cry as they seek total control. Homogenization is sought; a world of total agreement and conformity to a catastrophic vision in which protests must be subdued, even if it requires the destruction of lives and ways-of-living.
Anthony J. Marsella, Ph.D., a member of the TRANSCEND Network, is a past president of Psychologists for Social Responsibility, emeritus professor of psychology at the University of Hawaii, and past director of the World Health Organization Psychiatric Research Center in Honolulu. He is known nationally and internationally as a pioneer figure in the study of culture and psychopathology who challenged the ethnocentrism and racial biases of many assumptions, theories, and practices in psychology and psychiatry. In more recent years, he has been writing and lecturing on peace and social justice. He has published 15 edited books, and more than 250 articles, chapters, book reviews, and popular pieces. He can be reached at marsella@hawaii.edu.
Statue titled, Monument to Multiculturalism by Francesco Pirelli, in front of Union Station, Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license. Author: paul (dex) from Toronto.
In my last post, I discussed homogenization, a dangerous ideology. Today I discuss a competing ideology, Multiculturalism. An ideology is a systematic set of beliefs that define a preferred or favored vision of a way-of-life or governance or social formation. In many known ideologies, specific assumptions, premises, and historical foundations and arguments are advanced to promote and defend the ideology’s adoption or empowerment. Uses are often made of symbols, myths, and historical events and forces to enhance the appeal of ideologies, sometimes bringing them to mythic proportions. Scores of ideologies exist, especially within the economic, social, and political areas of thought and action.
Examples of ideologies shaping individual and nation behavior include capitalism, communism, socialism, fascism, feminism, Zionism, Marxism, militarism, libertarianism, state-ism, and anarchism. These examples embody different disciplinary (e.g., philosophy, economic, history, theology) and societal sectors (e.g., government, judicial, military, education, religion/faith-based) areas.
Often times, ideologies co-opt religious/faith based, moral, and media resources to further favored goals and ambitions. Nothing is as powerful as beliefs rooted in self-righteous justification in the cause of god or a supreme being. The use of force, violence, vilification, valorization, and legal advantages to promote “causes” is not uncommon. The concentration of power in an ideology’s movement can lead to excessive control and domination, gathering force as they become “crusaders” buoyed by good intentions and purpose.
The ideology of Multiculturalism is based on an appreciation and promotion of diversity among various cultural, ethnic, and racial groups. Multiculturalism considers diversity an essential resource for survival because it adds the virtues of resiliency derived from variation, alternatives, and choices in belief, behavior, and world views. It keeps options open.
When Octavio Paz, Mexican Noble Prize winner in Literature, claimed, “Life is diversity, death is uniformity,” Paz was calling attention to the fact that diversity is the very nature of life — an expression and revelation of life’s abundant manifestations and displays. I share this view, and have written of Lifeism, an ideology positioning “humans” as a part of life, rather than life’s dominant and preferred expression.
Multiculturalism as an ideology evolved in response to the events, forces, and personalities of the turbulent years and tears of change and social upheaval between 1950 and 1980. The post WWII years witnessed major socio-political changes and upheavals in the United States and the world, converging and consummating in new awareness and appreciation of the importance of diversity, justice, inclusion, political correctness, and the politics of identity. All found support in a multicultural ideology respecting human rights, equality, and dignity.
Multiple and Varied Cultures
These years experienced major cultural changes and massive social movements. There was a rising awareness — consciousness — that “culture” was a critical concept, and a major force in shaping individual and collective behavior. It became clear that “culture” was too critical to be reserved for esoteric studies of exotic tribes by anthropologists. Culture was present in the lives of all human beings, both internally and externally.
Table 1 lists some major social, economic, and political events, forces, and people shaping the emergence of contemporary Multiculturalism as an ideology.
Table 1:
Examples of Forces, Events, and People Associated with Multiculturalism
(Circa Post WW II Period – alphabetical order)
Assassinations and Overthrows
Civil Rights Movement
Consciousness of Ideologies
Counter-Culture Movements
Developments in Information and Communication Technologies
Drug Subcultures (e.g., Marijuana, Cocaine, Hallucinogens)
Ethno-Cultural Conflicts/Ethnic Cleansing
Fall of Berlin Wall
Feminist Revolution
Globalization
Liberation Psychologies
Massive International Migrations Waves
New Political Alliances and Unions (e.g., EU, NATO)
New World Order Efforts
Post Modernism
Racial Protests and Riots
Post WWII Colonial Wars and Liberations (Africa, India, Indonesia)
Refugee and IDP Problems
Vietnam War, Balkan Wars,
Wars and Conflicts in Middle-East and West Asia
War on Poverty (Johnson Era)
Understanding Culture
Although culture had long been a topic of study, especially in anthropology and history, social upheavals of the 1950-1980s brought an acute awareness of the socio-political contexts of culture. Colonialism was revealed not as an inevitable unfolding of change as “civilized” progress but as invasive and exploitive abuses to control and suppress mind, behavior, and social position formations. Minority populations, conquered people, and occupied nations understood the cultural relativism, and the possibilities of release and escape from the chains of dominant social, political, and economic orders.
The term “culture” became applied with accuracy and regularity as a noun/adjective: the culture of poverty, the culture of racism, the culture of violence, the culture of oppression, the culture of colonialism, the culture of war. Culture was no longer confined to an ethnic tradition or identity; it was recognized as a complex clustering of self-perpetuating historical, societal, and moral forces, shaping and being shaped, by hidden ethoses, institutions, and definitions of personhood (e.g., “institutional racism”).
Culture was now to be studied, understood, and scrutinized as an explanation for understanding past, present, and future. Social, political, and economic leaders with insights into the abuses of history maintained in dominant cultures challenged sources of domination and control. Leaders became lightning rods for social change – voices crystallizing protests, and illuminating abuses and violence inherent in power asymmetries. It was a time for change in the social fabric and the moral order.
The tolls of raising consciousness regarding marginalized people brought violence and death to many leaders. Consider the examples of Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Jr., Caesar Chavez, Che Guevara, Malcolm X, Black Panthers, Ignacio Martin-Baro, as well as elected national leaders considered threats to existing Western social orders, including Mossadegh in Iran, Allende in Chile, Mandela in South Africa, Zapata in Mexico, Patrice Lumumba in the Congo. Here William Blum’s (2004) book, Killing Hope, Stephen Kinzer’s (2006) book, Overthrow, and Chalmers Johnson (2010), book, Dismantling the Empire, become essential reading – harbingers of our future, by acknowledging past crimes and offenses. The social, economic, and political roots of “culture” became the path to for understanding injustice and resisting oppression. Multiculturalism became an ideology for correcting for history’s abuses. Colonization is always colonization of mind (Goodman & Gorski, 2014).
Multiculturalism in Counseling, Psychology, and Psychiatry
It was only a matter of time before revolutionary thinkers–including Paulo Friere (1997) in his volumes on pedagogies and Ignacio Martin-Baro (1994), in his volume Writings for a Liberation Psychology– recognized the inherent abuses associated within Western psychologies of political domination, repression, and control. Tod Sloan (1997) acknowledged this reality when he concluded Western psychology was a source for perpetuating “Westernization” as an ideology, replete with its ill-suited values and methods for a changing world.
Multiculturalism acknowledges and emphasizes the role of the distribution of “power” in every domain of human activity. All relations are ultimately about power and its distribution. Even those areas claiming immunity from political interference and power distribution are, in fact, subject to it by guiding thought and practices according to the preferences, wishes, and concerns of those in power.
The term “inclusive” became popular to describe to the importance of “including” people – giving them access and acceptance – because they had been ignored or denied a spectrum of opportunities and services. The playing field was being expanded, but it did not guarantee those in power would yield their largesse. We know that “absolute power corrupts absolutely,” and this was the case in our nation and around the world as Western political and economic dominance pursued hegemony.
With hegemony came abuses of invading and occupying another nation — often a third- world nation — by imposing and infusing cultural values and traditions. It was a new way to conquer and control using American popular culture as the strategy for control and domination (e.g., individualism, consumerism, commodification, competition, materialism, celebritization, corruption, technology). This was now the pathway for forcing a “homogenization” of world cultures. Differences existed, but efforts were made to deny them because they challenged the hegemony of those in power. The task for the government/corporate system was invasion by “cultural” conquest, and “colonization of mind” (e.g., Goodman & Gorski, 2014).
Amidst an ocean of ideological struggles in a global era, it is clear “Multiculturalism” was, and is, the essential ideology for a global era! Accepting and implementing this ideology among individuals, groups, and nations remains the task of our times. In contrast to homogenization, the preferred ideology of those in power and position seeking control and domination, Multiculturalism embraces the reality of life’s diversity and differences – the beauty of variation. All other ideologies “pale” in complexion, complexity, and comparison.
Author: Anthony J. Marsella, Ph.D., is Professor Emeritus, University of Hawaii, Manoa Campus, Honolulu, Hawaii, 96822. He is the author and editor of twenty books, and more than 300 publications noted for challenging the ethnocentricity and biases of Western psychology and psychiatry, and for advocating peace and social justice.
Statue titled, Monument to Multiculturalism by Francesco Pirelli, Union Station, Toronto. licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license. Author: Robert Taylor from Stirling, Canada.
By Anthony J. Marsella, Ph.D
Homogenization
We live in a global era! This is a fact misunderstood, denied, distorted, ignored, or used for advantage by those with power and privilege. Our lives and fortunes are
interdependent. Single, isolated events, once unknown or disregarded, now generate and multiply ripples across the world. Causal explanations informed by ideologies seeking control and domination through uniformity can only result in conflict. Epic ideological struggles are at hand.
Amid our global era, dominated in thought and action by a few nations, we are witnessing a struggle between homogenization versus heterogeneity. Uniformity versus differences is appearing at all levels. It is a struggle for diversity versus imposed identity. While past decades were defined as struggles for world domination between communism and capitalism, our global era has given rise to ideological struggles across technological, political, religious, and economic efforts to establish a mass global society – a world order – promoting and sustained by “homogenization.”
For those seeking control, uniformity, and conformity, differences – diversity — in a mass society are seen as sources of distraction and disruption. Mass surveillance, monitoring, and archiving generate uniformity. Individual and group variations are being compelled to yield privacy, rights, and variations in life styles to pressures for an ordered and planned society – homogenized in all areas. Within this context, multiculturalism, as an ideology, is considered a foe.
Uniformity, Conformity, Compliance: The New Orthodoxy
Developments in information processing and technologies are exercising powerful influences on social, economic, political, and moral systems. They are enabling and facilitating forces in power to control and dominate variation — diversity — favoring efficiency and compliance with uniformity. Differences are targets for imposing order. They are considered sources of “chaos” or error to be subdued and integrated into a homogenized world in which “order” is the ethos. But chaos is the fruit of diversity – and diversity is the source and expression of life itself. Efforts after order – rooted in the assertion of control by those with power, wealth, and position – serve narrow interests. Ultimately, oppression emerges as arbiter.
The inability of those in positions of power to deal with challenges to their preferred ideology of “homogeneity” is the major struggle of our times – an ideological struggle being imposed upon the world of variation, in favor of an ideology of uniformity unsuited for our global era. The myriad of differences in thought, appearance, and ways-of-life in varied expressions face extinction from the massive power invested in monolithic and monopolistic proportions in different industries and services including Big Ag, Big Education, Big Energy, Big Government, Big Medicine, Big Phar, and Big Military. There is an inherent ideology in all these “Bigs” – an ideology favoring dominance and control. There is no room for variation from the perspective of the Bigs!
But don’t believe them! Read about the multicultural alternative in my next post here on engagingpeace.com.
Anthony J. Marsella, Ph.D., is Professor Emeritus, University of Hawaii, Manoa Campus, Honolulu, Hawaii, 96822. He is the author and editor of twenty books, and more than 300 publications noted for challenging the ethnocentricity and biases of Western psychology and psychiatry, and for advocating peace and social justice.
