Change

My sermon today is about change. Specifically, I will explore how and why change can cause us to act or decline to act, especially when facing existential threats. A fundamental dynamic of change is how circumstances around us change. Given enough time and the right conditions, even radical, harmful change may not be perceived as a threat. There are several reasons why we humans struggle to perceive such harmful changes:

Sensory Perception: Our senses are attuned to detecting sudden changes. For instance, a loud noise is easier to notice than a gradual increase in volume. This evolutionary adaptation helps us avoid immediate dangers but not long-term, subtle threats.[1] This focus on the present can make it difficult to grasp abstract, long-term threats that don’t directly impact our immediate survival.
Mental Adaptation: Our brains adapt to our surroundings. As changes occur slowly, we adjust our baseline for what’s “normal.” This is known as the adaptation level theory.[2] The crab in the boiling pot adage is an example of this.[3]
Cognitive Bias: Confirmation bias can play a role in this. We tend to focus on information confirming our beliefs and then downplay evidence of change. This can make it challenging to recognize gradual problems, especially if they contradict our momentary beliefs or initial assessments.[4]
Present Bias and Discounting the Future: This is associated with “Cognitive Bias.” Present Bias happens because our brains tend to weigh immediate rewards or dangers more heavily than those far off. This Bias allows us to prioritize short-term benefits over long-term consequences, hindering our ability to address existential threats like climate change that unfold gradually. In our present sociological context, we do not perceive existential threats to one group as affecting us because… to put it simply... we are not affected yet.[5]
Psychological Numbing: Repeated exposure to negative stimuli can lead to psychological numbing. We become emotionally desensitized, making it harder to react to ongoing harm.[6]

It is essential to understand that all these factors are arrayed against us now. Don’t think for a second that there are not very smart people at work who apply the principles of evolutionary psychology and its insights into human behavior to adversely manipulate populations. People armed with such knowledge exploit our biological limitations to subvert our society for their gain. In terms of fomenting and maintaining racial hatred, they do this by a variety of means, such as:

Exploiting In-Group Favoritism: Humans evolved with a tendency to favor members of their own group (in-group) over outsiders (outgroup). Malicious actors can exploit this by:

• Fueling Social Division: framing issues in terms of “us vs. them” and creating a sense of threat from outgroups. This can be used to justify discrimination, prejudice, and even violence.[7] Here’s an alarming statistic: on April 13 of this year, a study by the Violence Prevention Research program at UC Davis published in the JAMA Network Open found that 56% of Americans who carry firearms in public believe violence is justified to advance political objectives.[8]

1. How is in-group exploitation for social division used? If you are a Democrat, you are actually a Communist, Fascist, sexual groomer in disguise. You love people of color because want to use them to replace white people in the United States.

• Another way to exploit in-group favoritism is through Scapegoating: identifying a specific outgroup as responsible for societal problems. This diverts attention from real issues and fosters hostility toward the targeted group.[9] As a result of scapegoating, nearly four in 10 Americans (38%) said they believed in the “white replacement theory”.[10]

1. How is scapegoating used? The people seeking asylum against oppression in their countries are actually rapists, murderers, and criminals who have been let loose to pollute the blood of the United States. They are vermin and not even real people.

Another misuse of evolutionary psychology is:
Manipulating Social Status: Our desire for social status can be used to control behavior. Techniques include:

• Appealing to Dominance: Framing messages to appeal to people’s desire for power and control. This can promote aggressive or domineering behavior, especially towards outgroups.[11]

1. How is the appeal to dominance used? The ruling power will promote and reward aggressive or domineering behavior towards outgroups. If your politics are liberal, there is something wrong with your brain. If you are a person of color, you do not deserve your place in society. If you are not Christian, then you worship the wrong god and are a danger to this rightfully Christian nation.

The final misuse of evolutionary psychology is:
Targeting Our Biases: Evolutionary psychology identifies various cognitive biases, such as confirmation bias. This can be exploited for manipulation through:

• Tailored Messaging: This refers to crafting messages that resonate with people’s pre-existing beliefs, regardless of their accuracy. This reinforces confirmation bias and makes people resistant to opposing viewpoints.

1. How is Tailored Messaging used: How about this for using pre-existing beliefs, regardless of their accuracy -–Critical Race Theory is teaching young people to hate our country and, more specifically, that white people are evil. Another way confirmation bias is reinforced is by stating over and over again that a person who is “woke” is not open to opposing ideas, which has the effect of… wait for it… making the target of their “wokeness” resistant to opposing viewpoints. Have you noticed how black academicians and leaders in Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion programs across the country are being systematically attacked for plagiarism? Or how about charges that a large number of high-tech companies are failing because of their DEI policies? These implications are carefully designed to subliminally reinforce a belief that people of color cannot be trusted with engineering or technology that puts white people at risk. In the case of black academicians, the belief is that their scholarship is always suspect because they were put in positions they are not qualified for because of affirmative action and not because of merit.

We need not look far into history to find the genesis of deep-seated stereotypes against people of color that present-day social engineers can easily manipulate to use in their toxic concoctions.

How does all this come together? The misuse of evolutionary psychology allows people to be pretty terrible to each other. We have seen how psychological theory has been used to change the very fabric of our democracy -—so strap in, my friends. We are in for a rough ride.

The first part of this sermon has been relatively dry... academic, even. I apologize for that. It is essential to lay the intellectual groundwork explaining what happened to our nation and why. Now comes the less intellectual part... the part about feeling what many of us have not allowed ourselves to feel and opening our eyes to what we have refused to see.   

Because I am a student of history, I believe our country faces a prolonged future of extreme political upheaval. This upheaval will include the normalization of political violence, wholesale disenfranchisement, attacks on LGBTQI+ people, more restrictions on women’s reproductive rights, more polarization and government gridlock, the rise of authoritarianism and White Christian Nationalism, and a concerted effort to eliminate gains made to address racial and ethnic inequities.

There are many things to say about how and why our divided nation has become this way. Indeed, our biological inability to perceive harm over time plays a crucial role. For example, because of...…political violence, the threat of its increase, talk of a civil war, book banning, the mass murders of children in schools due to gun violence, the disintegration of long-held social contracts, attacks on women, immigrants, people of color, trans people, and gay people...…across the board, it is clear we face many hurdles that threaten our existence as a nation. Yet, it seems many of us are paralyzed. We are overwhelmed, shut down, and pretend that all is well.

By now, many of you know that Carol and I plan to leave Lake County and our beloved church community here and immigrate to Panama. I will not spend the precious time we have today to recount all the factors that have brought us to this choice. However, the main reason why Carol and I intend to leave is because of change.

We realize the cost of living will rise beyond our ability to remain comfortably in this area, even after accounting for reaching full retirement age and taking our social security benefits. The fact is that we can do far better economically in many other countries. The cost of living in Panama, for example, is 40-60 % lower than here.  

The other, and main, reason we are leaving is that our country has become toxic to me. The fact is that our nation has changed around us. Even though most of us have witnessed the profound changes, we have not felt them in our guts in the same ways. Why? Because of evolutionary limitations that prohibit us from perceiving danger, we are working against ourselves. Of course, the architects of the chaos around us understand this quite well.

If you have difficulty understanding our decision to leave, let me put it to you this way: If you were me - a black man - seeing that the country of my birth is quickly and systematically unraveling all racial progress we’ve made in the past 60 years towards diversity, equity, and inclusion, would you be inclined to stay in that country? If you were not black but were married to a man such as myself, would you not also wish to leave the same country?

I tell you this in all sincerity - you cannot possibly feel, in your guts, what I feel because you were not traumatized in the ways I have been. Unlike most people, I have actually documented that trauma. You can purchase a one-act play called “On The Fence” from Amazon that describes, in excruciating detail, many incidences of racial hatred that was directed at me.

Go to anatomyofhate.weebly.com for a complete description of how a division of Lockheed discriminated against my small firm, committing fraud against the government and our company, stole our proprietary software, and engaging in a vicious and racially motivate effort to cheat my company of millions of dollars. When I confronted upper management of the company with evidence of their actions and asked them why they engaged in this behavior they told me, “We think that is too much money for somebody like you!”  

I, like many African Americans of my generation, was profoundly affected by racial discrimination starting in my childhood. We caught the tail end of the Jim Crow era, and even though I was an Air Force brat, leaving the safe confines of the base was often painful. The nearly 50 years of social progress since then that I earnestly struggled and hoped for is being systematically and quickly eroded. I must confess that I have been personally triggered lately by the racially vehement rhetoric and legislation designed to erode civil rights gains. It sickens me that my life in America may be book-ended by racial failure.

The fact that American democracy is fundamentally threatened would have been unthinkable a few short years ago. A few years ago, when I wrote my first historically-based “Harlem Voices” musical, I never dreamed it might be banned from school libraries in many places in our nation. The second musical, “Harlem Voices: Revisited,” will join it as being sure to be banned because they will now violate laws against making people feel “discomfort” in schools and private businesses when being taught about racial discrimination in U.S. history.[12] [13][14][15][16]

Twenty-five years ago, could you imagine it possible that we Americans might reelect a twice impeached person convicted of being liable for rape and fraud and who faces serious and credible criminal charges ranging from leading a nationwide insurrection to election interference? As I said earlier, my friends, this country has changed around us. For us, the change is so credibly threatening that we feel it is prudent to leave.

I believe the pendulum of change towards a dangerously far-right ethos in our country is happening too quickly and powerfully for most of us to comprehend. Regardless, these changes are inevitable, and they will be as profound as any faced by pre-Nazis and pre-Fascistic populations in the last century. The people engineering this change have been at it for a long time. They have not merely hoped for this change. They have been seething in the background, planning, forming militias and think tanks; they have appointed judges, adapted their tactics, forced their way onto school boards, taken over state legislature, and systematically subverted the liberal democratic intentions of our laws. They have promulgated messages of hatred and victimization. They have told the big lies because they understand the psychology of mass coercion works best that way. Cognitive dissonance matures into obedience when those big lies are allowed to metastasize.

What can we do about this? “How, Clovice, can we hope to undo the damage?” you might ask. Well, I think it’s too late to change the tide. For us, it is more dangerous to be here at this time than it is for most of you in this congregation. Carol and I will leave so we can continue the fight against the radical changes to come from a safer place, regardless of who wins the White House in November. We will join a nascent movement of people like ourselves described as “Blaxit”. These are people of color who are leaving the United States for the same reasons we are. Importantly, “Blaxits” are leaving for many of the reasons why James Baldwin and others like him starting leaving this country a century ago. Put simply, this has been a bad marriage for we “Blaxits”, and it’s not getting any better. It’s just time to go.

Here is something to consider: the people who have made these changes to our nation have done so because they are hateful. They wish people to be disconnected from one another. They adapted to the environment of liberalism, which they despised. They then set about, systematically, to subvert the liberal democracy they found so offensive. They have succeeded in creating a movement to fundamentally transform our society into one that will preserve their notion of white dominance.

My proposal for countering this anti-liberal, anti-democratic movement that is sweeping like wildfire across this nation and around the world is simple in concept. It is inspired by Christianity and is guaranteed to bring our planetary civilization into proper alignment. Remember this acronym: LAST
LOVE
ADAPT
SUBVERT
TRANSFORM

Love the people who hate you. Love all people through connection and work against forces that seek to disconnect us from one another. Love the planet and work against forces that seek to exploit it.

Adapt to profound changes when they occur. Do not martyr yourself. Hide in whatever closet is closest. Get a flag and wave it proudly from your house. Change your party affiliation to the dominant party while it is possible but vote for liberal causes and candidates during an election. Blend in.

Subvert any system that seeks to maintain power through hatred and division. Undermine it in every way possible while preserving human life (including your own). Strive to employ art, beauty, parable, humor, and life-enriching technology. Promulgate messages of human connection and love. Provide education that uplifts the human spirit rather than that which promotes fear.

Transform the society around you into one that celebrates freedom, promotes liberty, and honors the rights of all people as equal members of the human family. Work for diversity, equity, and inclusion for all people. Use the UU principles as a basis for everything you do in the public and private spheres. Speak your truth boldly while you continuously listen to the truth of others. And listen to me...…you put this collar on me so I can say the hard things. So, I am only going to say this one time. The transformation I’m talking about means this congregation needs to sign on to the proposed 8th UU principle. Start from there and work towards a truly multicultural world. Make ourselves accountable to dismantle racism and all other oppression in ourselves and our institutions. If we don’t see the need for this kind of self-transformation, then we don’t deserve to be here. There are bigger fish to fry!

Do you want to know how to overcome the tsunami of change facing us?

LAST to Love, Adapt, Subvert, and Transform all systems based on hatred and oppression. If our nation can manage that, Carol and I might be able to return someday. In the meantime, we’ll be fighting for diversity, equity, inclusion, and basic human rights in our nation from the safety and peace of another country.

Namaste
Clovice A. Lewis, Jr.