Greetings.

We offer these podcasts freely and your support really makes a difference.

To make a donation, please visit tarbrock.com.

Namaste and welcome.

One month ago I read a book by Arthur Brooks and it's called Love Your Enemy.

He's a Harvard professor and president of the American Enterprise Institute.

And the main theme was about our societal addiction to contempt.

Contempt is defined as anger that's mixed with disgust.

And it's a very toxic form of othering, as you know.

It's really a way that we can dehumanize the other and it leads to violence.

It's also the greatest predictor of divorce, contempt and relationship.

And when it's turned inward in forms of self-hate and harsh criticism and so on,

it really puts us in a kind of prison where we can enjoy our life.

Or we can't really be a creative or really feel much love for our world.

So since the domestic terrorism last weekend, this word keeps coming up for me.

I've been thinking about the book that I read and how much suffering arises out of contempt.

How fueling fears of bad others just leads to violence.

And it's often racial and I've also been thinking of course of Tony Morrison,

who is just much loved and recently passed Noble Laureate.

And she really used her language to combat the kind of dehumanizing ideologies, really.

And I always come back to one phrase that she said, it just struck me so much,

which is that in this country, American means being white

...