Ji-Yun-My pervasive thoughts from today's lesson

Today's lesson reminded me of the concept of 'self-deception' that I read about in a book called 'Leadership and Self-Deception'. A person deceives (or betrays) oneself when they act contray to what they feel they should do and when they betray themselves they begin to see the world in a way that justifies their self-betrayal. When they see a self-justifying world, their view of reality becomes distorted and they enter a box. Overtime, certain box becomes the characteristic of them and carry that with them. Why do they choose to betray themselves instead honoring what they feel and know is right may be based on several causes. I want to say when it shows in a collective form like this it is due to lack of personal power. There are several levels of personal power and they were exercising power by association. When people want to feel powerful but they are lack of the pewrsonal power (the more importantly internal power as someone mentioned in the blog) they associate to form power.
In case of slavery it was a collective, societal self-betrayal. People at that time knew that 'all men are created equal'. Most of them knew that their actions were contray to their belief but they chose to betray the belief and then began their justification by bringing in science and reasoning. Those of us who have a bit of science background are well aware that selection, processing and interpretation of data can always represent the researcher's intent. They had to make something, somebody wrong to make themselves right. So the society was built on that betrayal or the box. What we experience today as a society is the result of the societal betrayal of the past. The society as a whole needs to be out of the box.