Boycott The World (I'll be back to business soon... I promise)

Many of you know that my wife and I have recently lifted our boycott of a national retail giant. The details surrounding said boycott are not of issue at the moment. What is at issue is my difficulty acclimating to our "non-boycott" state. We've spent the last 5 years conditioning ourselves to avoid contributing to this universally ubiquitous retailer's bottom line until our point of contention was adequately resolved. Now that we're no longer boycotting this establishment I've noticed that many of the habits, tendencies and even the emotional under-current that we developed as a result of disciplining ourselves to avoid this particular retailer still remain. I cognitively know that the reasons for our boycott no longer exist and yet it's difficult to fully feel comfortable visiting the establishment.

Interesting paradox.

Now let's extrapolate that.



There are people that walk this very earth who have been ingrained throughout their lives to think and/or feel anxiety toward entire demographics and/or people groups. There can be mountains of facts, statistics and documented verifiable examples that indicate that their preconceived notions are baseless, but one must make a conscious decision to operate in opposition to a view that they've spent their entire life convincing themselves is true if they ever hope to overcome their ingrained biases. I'm having trouble overcoming 5 years of self-administered programming; I can only imaging what it's like to try to overcome a lifetime of indoctrination administered by the very figures that we instinctively believe care most about us and have our best interest at heart. I don't believe that the difficulty of improvement excuses one for not changing for the better; what I do believe that the first step in bridging the gap between people/people groups/demographics is for each to take a brutally honest assessment of themselves, attempt to get the best possible idea of what really exists at their core and then determine how said ideas, convictions and impulses influences how we relate to each other.

Refusing to interact with people who have a bias against you doesn't change their bias, it only reinforces it through absence of an example contradictory to what they've come to believe. Grace, understanding and deliberate, non-antagonistic interaction with diverse people-groups is the only way we can ever hope to bridge the gap and erase the lines that divide us all.

For those who are comfortable with the division that exist, that's okay too. All things come to pass, including those who seek to maintain the status-quo.