Amerika

A manifesto published Sunday — subtitled “Oui, nous pouvons!”, the French translation of Obama’s campaign slogan “Yes, we can!” — urges affirmative action-like policies and other steps to turn French ideals of equality into reality for millions of blacks, Arabs and other alienated minorities.

“Our prejudices are insidious,” Carla Bruni-Sarkozy, a singer and wife of President Nicolas Sarkozy, said in an interview with the Journal du Dimanche newspaper, which published the manifesto. She said she hoped the “Obama effect” would reshape French society.

Nations across Europe rejoiced over Obama’s victory, seeing it as a triumph for American democracy and a world weary of President George W. Bush. But Obama’s election also illustrated an uncomfortable truth: how far European countries with big minority populations have to go getting nonwhites into positions of power.

AP

If you don’t like the truth of something, redefine the word.

The French wanting to be French can become “prejudice,” because God help us if every person on earth can’t move to France and start pretending to be French.

Denial of reality results in dismantling things that exist and replacing them with emotional crusades. In this case, a former model/prostitute has convinced people she’s a messiah because she has decided to follow the pity train. Pick someone to pity and whose cause you can champion and suddenly you look like a brilliant altruist, even though you’re more known for spreading your legs than opening your mind.

On the converse:

We have to end adolescence as a social experiment. We tried it. It failed. It’s time to move on. Returning to an earlier, more successful model of children rapidly assuming the roles and responsibilities of adults would yield enormous benefit to society.

Nevertheless, early adulthood, early responsibility, and early achievement were the norm before the institution of adolescence emerged as a system for delaying adulthood and trapping young people into wasting years of their lives. To regain those benefits, we must develop accelerated learning systems that peg the rate of academic progress to the student’s pace and ability to absorb the material, making education more efficient.

Adolescence was invented in the 19th century to enable middle-class families to keep their children out of sweatshops. But it has degenerated into a process of enforced boredom and age segregation that has produced one of the most destructive social arrangements in human history: consigning 13-year-old males to learning from 15-year-old males.

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And for too many middle-class and wealthier young Americans, adolescence has been an excuse to delay work, family, and achievement—and thus contribute less to their own well-being and that of their communities.

Business Week

Deny reality and you sew the seeds of long-term problems.

Tags: neurosis, self-deception