Where I’m Misunderstood Most When It Comes To Cultural Innovation – Norton’s Mind
Where I am misunderstood most when it comes to my take on cultural innovation is in how universal ethics based on the content of one’s character methodically select out those who can’t meet the standard I, as a leader, am setting and achieving.
I have zero political power. Yet, I neither have to say nor mean “whites only,” or insert-racial-group-here-only to be occasionally slandered as racist by disingenuous people…or to find that the majority of people I end up hanging around tend to be some kind of “not black.”
All you have to do is set a very high bar…for almost anything, in any element of your life: Certain sports. Academia. Daily life. Whatever.
And as you genuinely strive for innovatively high (and ever-higher) standards of living and character as determined by empiricism and universal principles of objective morality (whether one chooses to believe in that or not, pertaining to moral relativism), there inevitably creates a social hierarchy.
And that absolutely does not have to be based on race (my take isn’t), but you’ll inevitably (and sadly) see a kind of correlation in the execution of my cultural ideas.
…and this is a phenomenon that occurs without me having any kind of “systemic power.” I am a minority of the minority.
I’d dare say that’s why moral relativism is so attractive to an increasing amount of damaged people in the world, because they need that to be the case for their characters…but that bit would be mild conjecture.
If you look at mainstream black American culture from the bird’s eye view, what do we see in the media? The clash between celebrities like Cardi B (who’s made her entire career out of sexually objectifying herself and setting that as an example), versus Candace Owens (who’s made her entire career being virtually the polar opposite, hate her or love her).
Now, let’s observe what the “content” of any person’s character would be (regardless of religion or race or whatever). What is the content of a person’s character?
Is “intelligence” an element of a person’s character?
How about “empathy”?
What about “self-discipline”?
There are virtually countless elements of character that one can assign different respective values to in varying arrangements at the micro, individual level…that yield an output manifestation of a culture at the macro, collective level.
And different input values mean different manifestation outputs, regardless of whether you are a moral relativist or not.
If mainstream black American culture (and “mainstream” is the keyword, as in I’m definitely not throwing all black people under the bus here) popularizes a value structure that we see manifested through its icons like Cardi B (in reference to the same example, who has more popularity than Candace Owens), then…
…even in a world, a microcosm of experimentation if you will, genuinely based on nothing more than the content of a person’s character…
…devoid of any kind of “systemic” power in its leadership…
…its leadership having no power over its citizens other than elected representative authority to lead by optional example.
…then even in MLK’s world…
…most blacks of today would still end up on the bottom of even MLK’s inevitably forming social hierarchy.
Where is the racism in that scenario? There is none.
You don’t even need “systems” for that to happen in the current state of black American culture. Inequality of values would ultimately yield social inequality, regardless.
Mike Norton is an American award-winning marketing strategist with a BA in Internet marketing from Full Sail University.
He’s also the CEO of Wolven Industries and OMI Firm, as a physicist studying part-time at the University of York. He is the bestselling independent author of Fighting for Redemption, and a veteran of the United States military who is a 7-time winner of the USS Dwight Eisenhower award for essays of world peace and respect.
As a mostly self-educated vagabond, he gains inspiration from a myriad of experiences wrought from the adventures of his nomadic lifestyle. He prolifically writes and journals where ever he goes in the world, from one country to the next.