Chloé Valdary’s Kind, Gentle and Honest Diversity Program

Are you tired of hearing about the bullying, divisiveness and unvarnished bigotry pushed by many players in the diversity, equity, and inclusion industry? Players like Robin DiAngelo and Ibram X. Kendi, who freely misrepresent the facts and statistics and hide behind abstruse terminology?

Are you frustrated that many so-called programs in the booming diversity industry completely fill the time of their sessions with preaching and refuse to leave any time for questions and criticisms from the audience? That is what I've noticed about two recent mandated continuing education diversity programs I attended (now required for all lawyers in Missouri).

I'm not claiming that all diversity programs are deficient. I don't know enough about all diversity programs. Based on many programs about which I am familiar, however (including programs like this), this is an industry that needs to be vigorously investigated for its numerous lapses in integrity. No doubt we live in a country that includes racists, but the extent to which these increasingly popular "diversity" programs solve the problem (rather than making things worse) is a troubling question.

Are you dismayed that today's social justice warriors and critical race theorists have abandoned and ridiculed Martin Luther King's dream for a color blind society? So am I, and many "diversity" programs also ridicule MLK's dream. I've learned of several programs that explicitly segregate the participants by skin color. Here is a recent instance, the Brentwood School in Los Angeles:

And especially if you have had your fill of the types of "diversity" programs exposed by Christopher Rufo, you'll find this article in The Atlantic to be a breath of fresh air: "Can Chloé Valdary Sell Skeptics on DEI? Valdary’s Theory of Enchantment elicits unusual openness, trust, and engagement from ideologically diverse observers." Here is an excerpt:

Chloé Valdary is the founder of Theory of Enchantment, a diversity and resilience training company that the 27-year-old African American entrepreneur runs from Downtown Brooklyn. Its website lists clients including TikTok, WeWork, the Federal Aviation Administration, and Greenwich High School, and asks potential customers a loaded question: “Looking for an antiracism program that actually fights bigotry instead of spreading it?” . . .

Three principles guide all of the coursework [Chloé Valdary's] company offers:

    • Treat people like human beings, not political abstractions.
    • Criticize to uplift and empower, never to tear down, never to destroy.
    • Root everything you do in love and compassion.

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Brett Weinstein and Heather Heying Urge Further Scientific Investigation Regarding the Coronavirus “Lab Hypothesis”

I thought the lab hypothesis was debunked based on many articles I've seen over the months, but here are two people I respect (based upon their Darkhorse Podcast), Brett Weinstein and Heather Heying, suggesting that the lab hypothesis needs to be rigorously investigated because they've noticed more than a few red flags. They further argue that until now, the lab hypothesis has been debunked based on social stigma rather than scientific investigation.

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The Illusion that Our Limited Personal Space is “The World”

From "Ideas that Changed my Life,"by Morgan House:

Your personal experiences make up maybe 0.00000001% of what’s happened in the world but maybe 80% of how you think the world works. People believe what they’ve seen happen exponentially more than what they read about has happened to other people, if they read about other people at all. We’re all biased to our own personal history. Everyone. If you’ve lived through hyperinflation, or a 50% bear market, or were born to rich parents, or have been discriminated against, you both understand something that people who haven’t experienced those things never will, but you’ll also likely overestimate the prevalence of those things happening again, or happening to other people.

It takes conscious effort to know what is happening outside of ourselves because we only have our own eyes to see and our own ears to hear. Further, we are the heroes of our own story and we are always working overtime for our own PR department, whether on Facebook or otherwise.

As Diana Fleischman writes,

Human intelligence is incredibly useful but it doesn’t safeguard you against having false beliefs, because that’s not what intelligence is for. Intelligence is associated with coming up with more convincing bullshit and with being a better liar, but not associated with a better ability to recognizeone’s own bias. Unfortunately, intelligence has very little influence on your ability to rationally evaluate your own beliefs, or undermine what’s called “myside bias.”

Daniel Kahneman offers additional insight about why our personal world seems to be "the" world. He calls it "What you see is all there is." It's like those automobile side mirrors that make it seem that objects in our mirror are closer than they are. Our own perceptions repeatedly fill our limited ability to attend to "the world." Our personal perceptual stream thus becomes "the world." I've described this as an "illusion of fullness," a cognitive illusion for those fail to engage in perceptual and intellectual humility.

Which brings us back to the opening quote by Morgan House. It takes conscious effort to overcome WYSIATI and, when we fail to do put forth this conscious, we inevitably overgeneralize in our ignorant overconfidence.

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The Most Important Thing we are Losing

On January 5, Sam Harris kicked off his newest season of his podcast, Making Sense, with an episode he titles "A Few Thoughts for a New Year. He covers a lot of ground in 30 minutes. I wish I could say that I disagree with him on any of the major points he is making. His main concern is that we seem to be losing grasp of our ability to work together to solve the problems we face as a country.

As always, Sam articulates his concerns precisely and he avoids taking political sides. His focus for the coming year is seeking real life solutions for the many pressing issues he touches in this podcast. I highly recommend listening in. If you can't afford it, he offers subscriptions without cost. Simply listen to the end of this episode for details.

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