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The Dark Star of BPR

From the beginning of recorded time human beings have built structures to safeguard against what they feared would harm them. Build fires and fences, dwellings and families to protect and sustain self. Build walls and traps construct barriers and pens to keep predators away from what one sought to protect.

Over time what began as a self-centered pursuit morphed into relationship building; a desire of like-minded people to form a group to provide increased protection and help each other to get more things: food, water, land, possessions, wealth, weapons.

They acquired these gains primarily by waging war on other groups of people, which made those who were warred on, either subservient if they lost, or a force to be reckoned with if they emerged victorious.

The groups that won much more than they lost became arrogant through the weight of their accomplishments and began to believe they were better, smarter, more gifted, indeed superior to those they conquered. They became Bigoted against other groups of people.

Through the years the descendants of the bigots started to pre-judge all members of groups different than their own, and to automatically classify them as individuals who were either equal or inferior to them; never would the bigots believe that any person of another group could be superior.

This pre-judgement, this Prejudice was used to exclude people labeled inferior from participating in the activities of the bigoted group and getting a piece of their opportunity. These beliefs, strengthened and fortified over hundreds of years, were supported by the creation and implementation of laws which were enacted by the bigots and enforced by those who were prejudiced.

These laws and rules were crafted to keep the bigots in perpetual power, and to keep those they deemed subordinate or different, away from what they and their prejudiced supporters believed to be exclusively for them; opportunity, leadership, ownership, riches and generational wealth.

The system they produced to maintain this exclusivity is now known as Racism and constitutes the third leg of the BPR triumvirate: exclusion, inequity and partiality. Deeply rooted in our world culture; bigotry, prejudice and racism form a dark star to follow because they navigate in the dismal, murky world of greed, fear and injustice.

The objective of BPR, exclusion of others to maintain dominance, spawn’s resentment and anger, produces hatred and fear, yields confusion and despair, which results in chaos and devastation.

“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it” wrote George Santayana, the Spanish/American philosopher in the 1905 masterwork, ‘The Life of Reason: The Phases of Human Progress’.

Sustaining the BPR for centuries no matter the cost has brought us to where we are now, twenty years into a brand-new millennium being misled by the Czar of BPR. A bigoted fool as leader of the free world, who rages against other groups, distorts and fabricates truth, and divides our nation’s people into warring camps using deception, outright lies, false promises, fear mongering and disruption.

Finding a shining star to light our path to a brighter future means a reversal of course; a full 180 degree turn from the dark star of BPR. Build bridges, not walls. Choose diversity over exclusion. Use fair play instead of cheating. Replace injustice with equity. Unite us into one mighty and cohesive group by promoting shared purpose and shared opportunity. Understand that “us against them” makes us all weaker and afraid.

If this sound like a course too tough to follow, consider the alternative: continuing to ride the dark star of BPR to a miserable place where we’ve forgotten who we are: human beings all; each but a temporary inhabitant of this world.