Mike Murray
1 min readJun 9, 2020

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It is a fundamental property of our human brain to immediately see differences and judge them as “good” or “bad”. That is a built in survival mechanism used by the mammalian brain in a stress response. It is aptly called “Black and white thinking”, but it could also be called “English or Irish” thinking, “Tutsi or Hutu” thinking, “Muslim or Jew” thinking, etc, etc. So yes, we are all racists, religiousists, ethnists, and anything else that describes how our brains identify and judge. Understanding that so we can be better is a first step. Recognizing that it is the outcome of conscious or unconscious stress and being able to identify the actual stressors seems to me to be the critical path forward. It is not easy. Moving from anger to forgiveness is an essential first step. When people are ready and feel heard.

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