despair is inevitable

The five tenets of social injustice identified by researcher Professor Daniel Dorling are:

elitism is efficient

exclusion is necessary

prejudice is natural

greed is good

despair is inevitable

I'm reading Professor Dorling's book at the moment. I feel at turns angry, stunned and called to action (or at least deeper thinking and self reflection) by what I'm reading. He posits that:

Elitism, exclusion, prejudice, greed and despair will not end just by being recognised more clearly as unjust. Slavery did not end by abolishment. Women were not emancipated by being allowed to vote. Child abuse by dangerous labour did not end with the Factory Acts.
It is in our minds that injustice continues most strongly, in what we think is permissible, in whether we think we can use others in ways we would not wish to be used ourselves.

My most favourite part I've read so far is the rejection of the fiction of inherent intelligence and the description of the very few adults in European history who helped rescue and shelter Jewish people in occupied Europe.

It is worth repeating that when the rescuers' backgrounds were looked into it was commonly found that their parents had set high standards for them as children, high standards as to how they should view others, and their parents did not treat them as if their were limits to their abilities, nor did they tell them that others were limited.

I would like to think that despair is not inevitable...I would like to be part of that revolution.


Y Cate


image from http://www.borders.com.au/book/injustice-why-social-inequality-persists/23606330/