Reading an article about Richard Spencer and the roots of his politics... It makes me wonder if or how we could exorcise that limited perspective on society (race-centric). Until we can treat our historical ills and come closer to curing our past misdeeds, transcending them and our* current zeitgeist is but a dream. Understanding the interplaying dynamics (among our psychology, history, education, economics, et al.) of today is an important start.
When a person has no tangible accomplishments to their name, nothing they have created, orchestrated, designed and built through their own devices, there's a tendency in most to glom on to something they're close to and feel they can be proud of. They name drop, they amplify lackluster achievements, they pretend they're something they're not. Out of this same low esteem comes racial identity. They have at least one characteristic with which they can claim as a source of pride -- the accomplishments of ancestors or racemates.
For an oppressed race, and there are many, being able to point to real contributions made by their race can be legitimate in countering oppression because it brings to mind and lays bare the reality that any individual of every race is worthy (and this can be important for both members and non-members of that race). For the dominant race, attaching to the accomplishments of racemates explicitly as the dominant race does the opposite -- highlights their history of oppression. Naturally the writers of history are going to recall and remember all their glorious past and forget or even coopt the accomplishments of history's underdogs.
A healthier approach for all, when we're eventually ready, would be to expand the identity beyond race, faction or country to its logical conclusion. Human. The one glaring benefit to this is it allows anyone from any race to take pride in furthering society for all (in whatever fashionable definition of furthering we might collectively choose). Those with pathological needs to be better than others (for all the reasons that disability might arise) will, of course, be unable to see the world at large in those more objective terms, and how we combat that shortcoming will have to be part of any bettering path forward.
This ethnocentric tendency may be the root attraction I have to scientific thinking. It has greater respect for repeatable, testable facts (reality) than any other school of thought we've yet designed. Adding to that a spiritual respect for the life and legitimacy of the individual, and we have a powerful secular basis for good living. One that does its best to use what we know so far (with the striving to add to our real understanding of all of nature) to serve the future of humanity in the most positive way we can, whatever our best vision of positive is that we can muster.
*"our" meaning that mentality in which it seems a healthy plurality of humanity lead their (mostly) unexamined and unchallenged lives.
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