Like most issues that stir strong emotions, the Confederate Flag is really about something more fundamental - the attachments we use to construct our identities.
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An attachment is anything outside of yourself, be it an object, a symbol, an idea, and making it a part of your own identity.
And on the surface there’s not anything wrong with that, it helps you to make sense of your world, it helps you to categorize what is and isn’t worth your time...
But the problem with attachments is if you make something a part of your identity, it becomes very hard to see that thing for what it really is.
And it’s extremely hard to let go of something that you consider to be a part of yourself. It’s like someone asking you to cut off your arm. No amount of facts or evidence is going to make you do that.
In fact, many studies have shown that when people are confronted with facts that disprove their beliefs, it just causes them to dig in their heels even further.
There’s a big debate right now over the confederate flag, which is actually quite relevant to this discussion, but first a little history.
But the important part of this story is what happened after the Civil War. The flag… Kinda disappeared.
For about a hundred years, it wasn’t flown over any capitols, it wasn’t a mainstream symbol of the south, it was just a thing from history. There were some continuing secessionist groups that would use it, but they were fringe elements.
All that changed in the 1950s with the beginnings of the civil rights movement and the move to desegregate the south.
Once again, the federal government stepped in to enforce the ideals of the rest of the nation on the south, and once again the south rebelled.
While they didn’t go so far as secede this time, they did resurrect the battle flag as a symbolic gesture of war, and statehouses all over the south began flying the flag. And the symbol stuck.
So, yeah… Like it or not, both in the civil war and during the civil rights movement, the flag was flown in an effort to preserve a racist system. It is very clearly associated with that.
But does that very clearly make the people who support flying the flag racists? Not necessarily.
Because it’s not like most of the flag supporters look that flag and think about how much they hate black people. Again… it’s an attachment.
For a lot of southerners, it represents a lot of positive things from their upbringing, and they identify with it. This flag is a part of them. This is how attachments work.
And when you tell someone that their attachment represents some of most shameful and despicable ideas in human history… It’s gonna get ugly. This is how attachments don’t work.
But no matter how sincere these guys may be when they say it’s about “heritage, not hate”, for far too many people in the country, it is about hate.
White supremacist extremist groups in this country have adopted this flag as their symbol. They stitch it on their clothes, they fly them at rallies, they use it as a means to intimidate people.
And the reality of society is no matter what it means to you, when that happens, it’s game over, man. You’ve got to let it go.
Whether it’s seeing attachments in other people or separating yourself from your own attachments, understanding this concept is, I think, is one of the most fundamentally important things we can do as a species.
Because whether you’re voting for someone who’s working against your interests or supporting a symbol of hate, you can’t move forward while you’re digging in your heels. In the end, you’re only hurting yourself.
The Confederate Flag Controversy: Why It's Not About The Flag - Answers With Joe | |
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| Entertainment | Upload TimePublished on 29 Jun 2015 |
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