Chocolate Charlie or Willy Wonka?

Charlie Bucket was the book's original star

(American Vintage Tales) Nobody realized what the "Chocolate Factory" was hiding, not even sassy, greedy, entitled Veruca Salt. It becomes clear that this whole franchise is not about the kids. Like Gilligan's Island, it's really a morality play about human archetypes and personifications of the Seven Deadly Sins under a sweet and sinister examiner. That's why it resonates so well.

• BOOK: Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
• FILM: Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory
• Why is Gene Wilder's Willy Wonka so weird?
• List of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory characters

There is NO more racism in the USA, none

MindSquire gave internet racists some instant karma

Message for America: racist patriots (🇺🇸)

• Racism in the United States?
• Ku Klux Klan woos kiddies with candy
• The Indian in the Cupboard (film)
• Our Friend, Martin (animated film)
• Chattel slavery in the United States?
• (What is chattel slavery?)
• Howd'ya say Chappell Roan? Chapelle Rone?
• Precious (incest and depiction of Blacks)

Dave Chappelle on race in America

(Conan O'Brien) Future Pres. Dave Chappelle on whites, Blacks, Jews

Ron Taylor ain't never seen no racism

(Spotlight by Laugh Society) We grew up watching racist-sexist movies and TV (Ron Taylor)

But not today, right, just the past? Ku Klux Klan woos kids with sweets (bazonline.ch)

"Ku Klux Kiddies" in USA: The KKK's little-known Youth Movement | HISTORY

Proud Christian Klansmen burn cross in North Carolina, 1958 (State's Exhibit No.4)

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  Sale of negroes in U.S., 1860

  If only there were a way to erase racism: Eracism Foundation (eRACE Racism) Join eRACE to show the world that we run together against discrimination, prejudice, and racism. We run for real change and that starts one sister (and one mister) at a time, with everyone reaching across the race lines. Running is our vehicle, and connection is our superpower. Invite friends (open to men and women) to team up for this important virtual event. More: eraceracismbgr.com

"I don't see color," "I got Black friends"

(The Daily Show) Satirist Leslie Jones on right-wing claims

"racism is over," and what ally-ship really means

Implicit bias differs from explicit racism

Where do American kids get these racist and sexist ideas? Ku Klux Klan, Georgia, 1948)

American racism manifesting as KKK night rally, Chicago, Illinois (circa 1920)

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Nazis borrowed many U.S. ideas

Most American racism is not overt like young white males famously display behind the safety of computer monitors, trolling others from their middle class bedrooms. It's implicit, which means it is often hidden to us. We don't realize what we're doing. It's like when satirical Sacha Baron Cohen (as Borat and as Bruno) interviewed white frat boys in their Winnebago and on the beach in Florida for Spring Break.

Frat boys with Bruno on Spring Break

(WestStainesTV) Da Ali G Show, Bruno: Daytona Beach [gay] wrestling

American branding his Black slaves

DEFINITION: An implicit bias stereotype is the pre-reflective attribution of particular qualities by an individual to a member of some social out group [1]. "Those people are all like that." This color skin equals that set of behaviors.

It is an unconscious bias that stems from a natural human tendency to divide the social world into groups [2].

We wish we could still have slaves

Racist Sexist Frat Boys Scene | BORAT (2006) movie CLIP HD

U.S. interracial "folk pornography": quadroon bride (Mosler)
("Quadroon" is a racial classification in the colonial Americas)

"John Wayne was a Nazi"?

(M.D.C.) Was the famous television cowboy Mr. John Wayne a racist?

Whipping (flogging) a slave to teach him

Implicit stereotypes are shaped by experience and based on learned associations between particular qualities and social categories, including race and gender [3], leading to racism and sexism or gender role stereotypes of how people are "supposed" to be.

Slavery in the 13 colonies, 1770s

Perceptions and behaviors can be influenced by the implicit stereotypes we hold, even if we are unaware we are holding such stereotypes [4].

Implicit bias is an aspect of implicit social cognition, the social phenomenon that our perceptions, attitudes, and stereotypes can operate prior to conscious intention or endorsement [5]. We may have taken it on from our family of origin or circle of friends, associates, and media figures.

It don't hurt 'em; they can't feel

It's real. The existence of implicit bias is supported by scientific articles in psychological literature [6]. The term implicit stereotype was first defined by psychologists Mahzarin Banaji and Anthony Greenwald in 1995 [7].

Implicit stereotypes (unconscious associations held by individuals) can influence behavior even when they contradict our consciously endorsed beliefs. This effect is particularly observable in real-world contexts such as judgments of fame and hiring processes [7, 8]. More

What do we tell ourselves and others to make our crimes seem okay? (Slavery in U.S. 1840)

• Think of it: We're done with them. Now send them back to Africa, even the ones from here (The Liberaor)
• Art of negotiation: Master Class with Chris Voss
• MindSquire; Ron Taylor; Sacha Baron Cohen; I. Rony, Seth Auberon, Ashley Wells, CC Liu (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly

Seven signs: I'm now closer to Nirvana

(Buddha's Wisdom) We're closer to Nirvana than we think: 7 signs the Buddha described in Theravada Buddhism's Pali canon.

COMMENTARY

Explained by Wisdom Quarterly: American Buddhist Journal

The historical Buddha Gautama blissfully reclines into final nirvana (wiki)

 

But what is "nirvana" and why would anyone want it?

It is "the end of all suffering" or dukkha. It is the extinguishing of all greed, hatred, and delusion (craving, aversion, and ignorance) that keep the illusion and suffering going. It is the cooling of these fires (raging flames, smoldering coals, and blinding smoke). It is the highest bliss, the dissolution of all formations, the end of samsara, the incessant "continued wandering on" of rebirth and death.

• Nirvana is the "deathless" (amata, amrita, ambrosia)
• Nirvana is the "unconditioned element" (asankhata dhatu)
• Nirvana is the highest peace, the true refuge (sarana)
• Nirvana is the freedom (vimutti) from all afflictions
• Nirvana is the liberation (moksha) by wisdom
• Nirvana is the summum bonum of Early Buddhism and therefore of the back-to-basics Theravada school

But what is it, this thing with no equal?

In Theravada Abhidhamma texts such as the Vibhanga, where Sanskrit nirvana is called nibbana in Pali, the "unconditioned element" is defined this way:

"What is the unconditioned element (asankhata dhatu)? It is the cessation of passion, the cessation of hatred [aversion], and the cessation of delusion" [Note 12].

The Dhammasangani likewise describes it as that reality which is a sphere of experience unproduced by any cause or condition, according to L.S. Cousins [111].

The Dhammasangani also describes it in numerous other ways, such as the "immeasurable," "superior to everything," as "not past, present, or future" [the Ancient Greek anionic, the "not aeons," the "timeless," the "eternal now"], as "neither arisen nor not-arisen" and as "neither within nor without" [111].

• In Buddhism, Jainism, and Hinduism, "aeon" is used as a translation of the term kalpa and sometimes maha-kalpa or "great aeon" (Sanskrit महाकल्प). A maha kalpa, which cannot be pinned down to an exact numerical figure, is often said to be 1,334,240,000 years or the life cycle of the world (cakkavāḷa).
• Christianity's idea of "eternal life" comes from a Greek form of aión (αἰών) and the word for life, zōḗ (ζωή) [6], which has been translated to mean [timeless] immortality in the majority of texts, but is argued by some [7, 8, 9] to mean life in the next aeon, the Kingdom of God, or Heaven, instead.
• According to some proponents of Christian universalism, the Greek New Testament scriptures use the word aión (αἰών) to mean "a long period" (or age-long) and the word aiṓnion (αἰώνιον) to mean "during a long period" (or similarly, age-during); thus, there was a time before the aeons, and the aeonian period is finite. After each person's mortal life ends, one is judged worthy or not worthy of aeonian life...
• Another universalist reading, prevalent among Neoplatonists due to its similarity to views expressed in Plato's Timaeus [10], is that the "aeon" does not refer to a time, finite or infinite, but instead a Greek parallel of a Judaic view of distinct natures of time, between the χρόνος (chronos) of the present "age," or עולם הזה ('olam ha-zeh) and the αιώνιος (aionios) of the "age to come," or הָעוֹלָם הַבָּא ('olam ha-ba). More: aeon

Cousins also notes that "suggestively, however, it may be reckoned as nama (name) rather than rupa [form]. This does seem to suggest some element of underlying idealism of the kind which emerges later in the vijñanavada" (the "teaching of consciousness") [111].

Furthermore, for Theravada Buddhism, nibbana is uniquely the ONLY unconditioned element or phenomenon. Theravada argues that nibbana is unitary, that it cannot be divided.

Unlike other Buddhist schools, Theravada does not agree that there are any other unconditioned elements or phenomena, nor that there are different types of nirvana (such as the apratistha or "non-abiding nirvana" invented by Mahayana) [112, 111].

As noted by Thiện Châu, the Theravadans and the Pudgalavadans "remained strictly faithful to the letter of the [Buddha's original] sutras" and thus held that nirvana is the only unconditioned dhamma (phenomenon), while other schools posited various asankhata dhammas, such as the Sarvastivadan view that space (akasha) is unconditioned) [112].

Medieval Theravada exegesis

The fifth century Theravada scholar-monk and exegete Buddhaghosa says in The Path of Purification (Visuddhimagga): "It is called nibbana (extinction) because it has gone away from (nikkhanta), has escaped from (nissata), is dissociated from craving, which has acquired in common usage the name ‘fastening (vana)’ because, by ensuring successive becoming, craving serves as a joining together, a binding together, a lacing together, of the four kinds of generation, five destinies, seven stations of consciousness, and nine abodes of being" [Note 13]. More