There is a certain type of person who lacks vision.
They believe what they are told, provided the information comes from a “good source” (someone who looks and sounds like them).
They do what they are told, provided the commands come from an “authority figure” (again, someone who doesn’t challenge their assumptions of what authority looks like).
They find their boxes quickly in life and they stay firmly within the walls of those boxes because the inside is so comfortable and the outside is so very, very scary. Sometimes, the inside of the box is uncomfortable, too, but that’s life and surely outside the box is worse.
We are all, to some extent, this kind of person.
But let’s try a little exercise:
Let’s imagine a fictional country that prides itself on being very box-like. In this country, there is a rigid social order: one race holds itself to be superior, one sex holds itself to be superior, one religion that holds itself to be superior, etc. No one new may enter unless they have an engraved invitation, which is usually reserved for people who look and sound like the ruling class or who at least have a lot of money. We’ll call this fictional country Boxistan (because I am very bad at coming up with names).
Let’s imagine that the fictional ruler of Boxistan, who represents a minority of the population, develops a fictional illness —say, Rectocranial Inversion Syndrome, which everyone knows to be fatal due to lack of oxygen. In Boxistan, only the best of the best get to go to college and, perhaps ultimately, win grants to conduct vital medical research. “Best of the best” for our purposes is defined as people who look like the ruling class or are nonthreatening and brilliant.
Now let’s imagine that the person who could have saved our fictional ruler is born poor elsewhere, in a country that struggles with poverty, war, famine —the usual suspects —and tries to seek refuge in Boxistan. Or perhaps our fictional scientist is born in Boxistan, to a family that isn’t quite right, in the sense that they are poor or of the “wrong” race, or perhaps our fictional scientist is of the “wrong” sexual orientation.
Our fictional ruler would asphyxiate and die.
It is not outside the realm of possibility that the answers to some of our problems might come from people who don’t look or sound like us or who come from unexpected places. It’s likely, in fact. If you consider that the population of Boxistan is over 300 million people, but the population of people in Boxistan who aren’t the “right” sort are over half of that number, and the population of the world is over 7 billion people, it is likely.
If I were that fictional ruler and really thought about those odds, I’d be terrified. He is slowly wasting away for no reason at all. It’s too bad he can’t get enough oxygen in there to think clearly and do the math.