Once upon a time there was a kingdom of people who pursued happiness. Nothing was more important to them than being happy. The happier they became, the happier they wanted to be. The source of the people's happiness was a magic Happiness Machine. Whenever the people felt unhappy, they would pour their troubled feelings into the Happiness Machine. The magic machine would melt their feelings down and purify them. The residue of their troubles became dross, and the dross was drained away and dumped into a distant part of the kingdom. The people would take their purified feelings and go away singing and feeling happy. The years and centuries went by, and the happy people became happier and happier because of the wonderful effects of the Happiness Machine.
There was only one problem. Another group of people lived in a distant part of the kingdom where all the dross was dumped. The dross made them very unhappy. And the more dross that was dumped, the unhappier they became. Unfortunately, these poor, unhappy people were not permitted to use the happiness machine, because the one thing the magic machine could not do was purify its own dross.
The unhappy people complained to the happy people about the problems they had with the dross.
But the Happy People ignored their complaints. When they were confronted with the terrible results of their happiness, these Happy People simply took their troubled feelings to the Happiness Machine and it made them happy again. It was easy to believe that it was not the dross of their own troubles that made other people unhappy. Rather, they convinced themselves that the unhappy people were just incurably unhappy and that they had nobody but themselves to blame for their unhappiness.
It was not long before the unhappy people began to protest more insistently about their situation. They organized marches and demonstrations. They demanded that the dross be removed from their part of the kingdom. And they demanded a fair share of happiness for their people. But the happy people turned a deaf ear to their protests, which only served to make the unhappy people angrier, and they protested all the more.
Finally, the happy people could no longer ignore the protests. They used force to put down the protesters, and arrested and jailed the leaders. They passed laws and organized military force to control the unhappy people. Many of the unhappy people were killed. This only made the others angrier and more unhappy. They began to plot and plan how they could destroy the Happiness Machine.
The conflict and tension caused a severe drain on the Happiness Machine.
The conflict and tension caused a severe drain on the Happy People's happiness. In addition, to everything else, many of them were becoming uneasy about the way the unhappy people were being treated. All these new troubles made the Happiness Machine work even harder, and consequently, even more dross was produced. They had to build an even bigger and better Happiness Machine to take care of the happiness needs of the people; consequently, the dross was piled higher and higher and spread farther and farther into other parts of the kingdom, which made more and more people unhappy and angry. It was not long before the unhappy people were in a constant state of rebellion.
Then a new and even greater danger arose. The Happiness Machine became so large and productive that there was no place on Earth left to put the dross. The piles of dross crept closer and closer to the homes of the happy people and to the place where the Happiness Machine was operating. Now the Happy People were threatened not only by the rebellion of the unhappy people, but also by their own Happiness Machine.
The new danger caused even greater internal conflict and tension among the happy people. Some wanted to build an even bigger Happiness Machine in order to deal with the crisis they were facing. Others began to see that the Happiness Machine was not the solution to their problems, but the cause. They wanted to reduce the size of the machine, or even dismantle it altogether. Some even began to wish that they could join together with the unhappy people to find solutions to the problem and build a new society together. (Dismantling Racism : The Continuing Challenge to White America, by Joseph R. Barndt).
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