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OUR LIBRARY
Not every topic fits neatly into a standard blog post.
Some subjects are complicated and have many different sides that need careful examination and thorough research. They require more analysis, more thought, more depth.
With that in mind, we created this section to do a deeper dive into stuff we think is important and deserves a longer, more detailed look.
Why Do We Maintain Discriminatory Policies?
Inclusion isn't just right;
it's smart.
Seems like a silly question, I know!
Yet despite all that pesky evidence about how discriminatory policies harm everyone, communities persist with them for some truly outstanding reasons:
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Economic "Genius"
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Nothing says "smart business strategy" like deliberately shrinking your talent pool and customer base
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Why have a thriving, diverse economy when you can have the satisfaction of knowing you're "keeping people in their place"?
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Brain drain is actually a feature, not a bug—who needs doctors, engineers, and entrepreneurs anyway?
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Social "Harmony"
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Unity is overrated; constant tension and resentment really spice up community life
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Why solve actual problems when you can spend all your time managing the conflicts your policies create?
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Nothing builds character like having to constantly look over your shoulder and wonder who your neighbours really are
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Political "Wisdom"
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Stable governance is so boring—much more exciting to have regular protests and civil unrest
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Why focus on fixing roads and schools when you can spend your budget on enforcement and legal settlements?
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Democracy works best when significant portions of the population feel completely excluded from it
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The "Heritage" Excuse
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"We've always done it this way" is definitely a sound basis for policy in the 21st century
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Tradition is more important than results, obviously
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Why evolve when you can fossilize?
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The "Zero-Sum" Delusion
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Clearly, if someone else succeeds, it means you're failing—that's definitely how economics works
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Resources are finite, so better to waste them on discrimination than risk someone else getting ahead
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Competition is scary; exclusion is easier
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The "Control" Fantasy
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The illusion of superiority is worth any actual cost to community wellbeing
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Better to rule over a declining community than be an equal member of a thriving one
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Power over others is definitely more valuable than collective prosperity
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Of course, the real answer is usually some combination of fear, ignorance, short-term thinking, political opportunism, and the human tendency to double down on bad decisions rather than admit mistakes.
But where's the fun in being straightforward about it?
Are Racist and Discriminatory Policies in the Best Interest of Our Communities?
Why Discriminatory Policies Weaken Communities and Inclusive Approaches Build Prosperity
This piece presents a comprehensive argument against racist and discriminatory policies, demonstrating how they harm entire communities—not just targeted groups. It systematically examines the economic costs (reduced productivity, talent flight, lost innovation), social damage (weakened cohesion, political instability), and human toll (violated dignity, intergenerational harm) of discrimination.
The document contrasts these negative impacts with evidence showing that inclusive communities consistently outperform discriminatory ones across economic, social, educational, and health metrics. It concludes that inclusion is both a moral imperative and a practical necessity for community prosperity.
The Multiplication Effect:
Why Building Bridges Beats Building Walls
What’s holding us back as a community, as a society?
Now, in the autumn of my years, I have more time to think about such stuff.
I often wonder what the heck we’re doing here and why? Why do we so often seem to be putting sticks into own spokes? Why aren’t we taking advantage of our cultural mosaic? Why are we putting up walls instead of building bridges?
We often appear to be blocking paths to our own potential for success through a variety of self-defeating patterns that fragment our collective strength precisely when we need it most.
This reflective essay examines how self-sabotaging behaviors prevent communities from reaching their potential. The author identifies key barriers including tribal thinking, misinformation, short-term focus, and trust erosion that fragment society when collaboration is most needed.
The central thesis revolves around the "multiplication effect" - when diverse groups collaborate rather than compete, they don't just combine strengths but generate entirely new capabilities through network amplification, cognitive diversity, and compounding social capital. The piece argues that our interconnected global challenges demand interconnected solutions, and that choosing bridge-building over wall-building creates exponential benefits that extend far beyond what we can immediately see.
The essay concludes with an urgent call to action: in an era of existential threats, collaboration isn't optional—it's an evolutionary imperative that will determine whether we unlock our collective potential or remain trapped by artificial divisions.
The Lazy Man's Guide to Hatred
"Ready, fire, aim: The modern approach to complex problems"
Discrimination emerges effortlessly from our psychological need for simplicity and certainty.
By framing complex social realities into neat "us vs. them" categories, people can bypass the demanding work of understanding historical context, systemic issues, or individual human experiences. Instead, entire groups become reduced to convenient stereotypes - immigrants transform into "foreign invaders," LGBTQ+ individuals become threats to "traditional values."
This mental framework makes discrimination feel not just acceptable, but psychologically rewarding. When economic anxiety or social chaos creates discomfort, marginalized groups become ready-made scapegoats, allowing people to channel their frustrations without confronting more complex structural problems. Racist and discriminatory tropes persist precisely because they offer emotional satisfaction - the illusion of understanding and control - while requiring no actual engagement with the humanity of those being targeted.
Most insidiously, this process operates below conscious awareness. People don't typically set out to become discriminatory; rather, they slide into prejudice through the path of least cognitive resistance, mistaking the comfort of oversimplification for genuine insight.
The facility with which we fall into these patterns suggests that discrimination isn't an aberration but a predictable outcome of choosing psychological ease over the harder work of genuine understanding.
Why We Choose Easy Enemies
Over Hard Truths
This essay is a sarcastic critique of modern polarization and "ideological chauvinism" - the tendency to adopt rigid tribal thinking instead of engaging with complexity.
Using biting irony throughout, it exposes how people choose intellectual shortcuts by picking a "team" and sticking to it, avoiding the hard work of critical thinking and nuanced understanding.
The author argues that this tribalism is particularly harmful when directed at vulnerable groups like LGBTQ+ individuals and immigrants, who become convenient scapegoats for complex societal problems. The piece reveals how this seemingly comforting psychological framework - which provides certainty and belonging - actually perpetuates discrimination, wastes social resources, and prevents real problem-solving.
The central irony is that while tribal thinking promises to simplify a confusing world, it ultimately creates more of the very problems (division, conflict, instability) that drove people to seek simple answers in the first place.
The Comfort of Cruelty
Your Comfort Zone Is Killing Your Community
This essay argues that truly thriving communities require moving beyond comfortable homogeneous groups to embrace diversity and inclusion.
The author uses a conversational, slightly sarcastic tone to explain that while we naturally gravitate toward people like us, building bridges across differences actually strengthens communities through greater innovation, economic growth, and resilience.
The piece outlines practical strategies like creating authentic connection points, building inclusive infrastructure, developing cultural competence, and fostering honest conversations about differences. The central message is that sustainable community building requires both structural changes and individual growth—stepping outside comfort zones not just to be nice, but because diverse perspectives and genuine inclusion make communities stronger and more adaptable.
Applying Pain Reprocessing Techniques to Address Bias and Prejudice
This essay draws an analogy between Alan Gordon’s Pain Reprocessing Therapy (PRT) for neuroplastic pain and the ways we can retrain the brain to overcome bias and prejudice. Just as chronic pain arises from the brain misinterpreting safe signals as threats, prejudice stems from unconscious biases treating human differences as danger. The framework introduces adapted techniques:
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Bias Tracking (like somatic tracking) to notice stereotypes and assumptions without judgment.
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Catching Biases (modeled on catching fears) to recognize, pause, and reframe automatic prejudicial thoughts.
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Addressing Avoidance Behaviors by engaging safely with diversity rather than withdrawing.
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Context-Specific Applications across workplaces, schools, communities, healthcare, and law enforcement.
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Building Long-term Resilience through positive intergroup contact, diverse media, and reframing historical conditioning.
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Measuring Progress by recognizing reduced anxiety, increased curiosity, and more authentic connections across difference.
At its core, the essay argues that through mindful awareness, safety reappraisal, and curiosity, we can rewire neural pathways away from fear and prejudice, fostering deeper human connection and genuine appreciation of diversity.
"I learned that courage was not the absence of fear, but the triumph over it. The brave man is not he who does not feel afraid, but he who conquers that fear."
Nelson Mandela
Mandela's words embody the essence of both Pain Reprocessing Therapy and bias reduction work. Neither approach aims to eliminate fear entirely—unconscious bias and pain signals will continue to arise automatically. True courage lies in choosing not to buy into these fear responses, using mindful awareness to observe them without letting them drive our behavior. This is precisely what "catching your fears" and "catching your biases" teach us to do.
"The enemy is fear. We think it is hate; but it is really fear."
Mahatma Ghandi
Gandhi's insight perfectly captures the core parallel between neuroplastic pain and prejudice. Just as Gordon identifies fear as the fuel that maintains chronic pain, Gandhi recognizes that what we perceive as hatred or racism is fundamentally rooted in fear. Both bias tracking and somatic tracking target this same underlying emotion—the brain's misinterpretation of safe signals as dangerous threats.
"Fear is the path to the dark side.
Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering."
Yoda
Star Wars: Episode I –
The Phantom Menace
Though fictional, Yoda's progression maps perfectly onto both the pain-fear cycle and the bias reinforcement loop.
In chronic pain:
fear of sensations → anger at the body → hatred of the condition → prolonged suffering
In prejudice:
fear of difference → anger at perceived threats → hatred of other groups → societal suffering
Breaking this cycle at its source—fear—prevents the entire cascade, which is why both approaches focus on creating genuine feelings of safety rather than trying to address the downstream emotions.
The Diversity, Equity & Inclusion Conundrum
Congratulations, DEI! You've achieved the rare distinction of becoming more controversial than pineapple on pizza. What started as a well-meaning corporate initiative has somehow evolved into a polarizing acronym that launched a thousand think pieces and at least one presidential executive order.
The basic premise seemed reasonable enough: maybe we should remove barriers that prevent qualified people from getting opportunities based on irrelevant characteristics like skin color or gender. Revolutionary stuff, truly.
But somewhere along the way, DEI became the Rorschach test of American society. Supporters see it as long-overdue course correction – a systematic approach to addressing the fact that "meritocracy" has historically had some rather glaring blind spots. They argue that leveling the playing field requires acknowledging it was never actually level to begin with.
Critics, meanwhile, view DEI as elaborate societal overcorrection that replaces one form of unfairness with another. They worry we're creating a system where being the "right" demographic matters more than being the right person for the job – and potentially stigmatizing the very people we're trying to help in the process.
The real kicker? Both sides claim to want the same thing: a fair society where everyone gets a shot based on their abilities. Yet somehow these three innocuous letters have become shorthand for every unresolved tension about race, class, and opportunity that America has been awkwardly avoiding at dinner parties for generations.
But here's the inconvenient truth hiding beneath all the heated rhetoric: discrimination and systemic racism didn't magically disappear when we started arguing about DEI programs. While we debate the perfect policy framework, the underlying problems these initiatives were designed to address remain stubbornly, persistently real – regardless of how many executive orders try to wish them away.
Conservative politicians and media have transformed "DEI" from corporate terminology into a political weapon used to attack any content addressing race, gender, or sexuality. This represents a broader pattern of scapegoating marginalized groups rather than addressing complex societal issues, driven by zero-sum thinking and fear of sharing power.
This critique argues that while some diversity programs may need reform, wholesale rejection of inclusion efforts is counterproductive and ultimately harms the communities and institutions these attacks claim to protect. America's growing diversity requires inclusion tools regardless of labeling.
A critique of the systematic dismantling of DEI initiatives
The Scapegoat Strategy:
Why America Chooses
Blame Over Bridges
The Cruelty Blueprint:
Engineering Harm Through Institutional Design
This commentary examines how institutional cruelty operates like architectural design—systematically planned and built into our social systems with deliberate precision.
Writing as both an architect and humanitarian, the author argues that harmful policies aren't accidents but carefully constructed systems that anticipate and counter resistance, much like architects design buildings to control human movement and behavior.
The piece identifies a crisis of "moral compartmentalization" among leaders who simultaneously implement harmful policies while performing acts of charity—like criminalizing homelessness while volunteering at shelters. This fractured approach to ethics creates cascading institutional failures, erodes public trust, and makes collective action nearly impossible because everyone has learned to hold contradictory positions.
The author particularly focuses on local leaders—school board members, mayors, hospital administrators—who wield enormous power at the scale where abstract policy becomes lived human reality. Their moral fragmentation becomes contagious, modeling for society that it's acceptable to serve opposing masters simultaneously.
The solution calls for "integrated leadership" that can bear moral complexity without fragmenting, and for applying architectural thinking to social systems—designing institutions with the same systematic, human-centered approach architects use for buildings. The ultimate message: if cruelty can be architected, so can compassion.
Anti-LGBTQ+ hate is on the rise globally.
It's deeply concerning and reflects a broader pattern of increasing hostility toward marginalized communities worldwide. This surge in hate is evident in various forms, including protests against drag events and LGBTQ-inclusive policies, vandalism of Pride symbols and community spaces, harassment and threats targeting LGBTQ+ individuals and allies, and baseless accusations used to justify discrimination.
Worse yet, some jurisdictions have implemented policies restricting LGBTQ+ visibility and rights, while others have seen increases in discriminatory legislation. These incidents range from verbal harassment and online abuse to physical violence and institutional discrimination, creating an atmosphere of fear and marginalization for LGBTQ+ communities and their supporters.
All the more reason for a deep-dive into the matter.
Our LGTBQ+ Collection
The Case for Ending Religious-based LGBTQ+ Persecution
Addressing ongoing LGBTQ+ stigmatization
This document is a passionate advocacy piece addressing the harm caused by non-affirming religious institutions to LGBTQ+ individuals. The author argues that religious-based discrimination represents a structural problem requiring urgent legal and social action, not just symptomatic responses to protests and hate speech.
With Condemnation and Lack of Acceptance Comes Harm
The Hidden Costs of Rejection: How stigma damages lives and society
This document presents a comprehensive overview of the widespread harms experienced by 2SLGBTQIA+ individuals in Canada, particularly those stemming from stigmatization and non-affirming religious institutions. It details various categories of harm and emphasizes how these harms create ripple effects throughout society and argues for collective action to build acceptance and affirmation.
How Respectability Politics Rewire the LGBTQ Brain
How conformity rewires our neural pathways for oppression
This article examines how respectability politics—the pressure for LGBTQ+ people to make themselves "palatable" to mainstream society—creates harmful neurological changes. The authors argue that chronic suppression and the need to conform literally rewires the brain, strengthening fear-based neural pathways while weakening those tied to authenticity and self-advocacy. The piece advocates for authentic resistance and visibility as forms of collective healing.
The Cost of Targeted Hate Against LGBTQ+ Communities
Anti-LGBTQ+ hate costs Canada more than you think
This report analyzes the escalating costs of anti-LGBTQ+ hate in Canada, where hate crimes based on sexual orientation increased 69% in 2023. It examines the personal trauma, societal disruption, and economic losses caused by discrimination - from healthcare burdens and lost productivity to reduced community cohesion - while calling for comprehensive policy solutions.
The Shameful Truth About Grooming and Pedophilia
Scapegoats & Smoke Screens: How false 'groomer' accusations endanger real child protection
This analysis examines how the term "grooming" has been weaponized for political purposes, explores the evidence behind these accusations, and identifies the institutions with documented histories of child sexual abuse. The data reveals a troubling pattern of deflection, where organizations with proven abuse records redirect attention to vulnerable communities with no evidence of elevated risk to children.
When Thoughts, Prayers, and Patience Aren't Enough
A case for institutional accountability over interpersonal niceness
Three well-meaning LGBTQ+ faith leaders discuss how to gently persuade anti-LGBTQ+ institutions to stop psychologically torturing queer people—after extensive theological homework proves it's biblically permissible to treat humans like humans.Meanwhile, those same institutions systematically engineer a legal theocracy to erase LGBTQ+ people from public life.
This analysis suggests that treating human dignity as a debate topic while people suffer and, in some cases die, might not be effective—maybe it's time to stop bringing theological footnotes to a political knife fight.
Spoiler alert: The power of friendship does not, in fact, conquer institutionalized oppression.
The Disturbing Hypocrisy of Non-affirming Institutions
When Sacred Becomes Toxic: The hidden costs of religious discrimination
This document is a strongly worded critique of "non-affirming" religious institutions, arguing they hypocritically preach love while discriminating against LGBTQ+ individuals, causing great personal and societal costs through increased mental health issues and family breakdown. It advocates for ending "gentle dialogue" in favor of forcing accountability through courts and economic pressure.
Understanding Neuroplastic Pain in LGBTQ+ Individuals
What Stories Does Pain Tell
This document explains how anti-LGBTQ+ discrimination causes neuroplastic pain—chronic pain from nervous system changes rather than tissue damage. Daily discrimination and trauma create chronic stress that rewires brain pain pathways, leading to conditions like fibromyalgia.
Research shows that LGBTQ+ individuals have significantly higher chronic pain rates compared to heterosexual people. This creates a costly healthcare burden that could be prevented through anti-discrimination policies and inclusive environments.
How to Change the World
You Can Make Change When You Change Your Mind
This text argues that changing one's mind about LGBTQ+ rights creates powerful ripple effects that can transform society. It explains how personal shifts in attitude lead to broader social change by reducing harm, influencing others, and challenging discriminatory policies.
The document highlights the economic and cultural benefits of LGBTQ+ inclusion, provides historical examples of progress, and offers practical strategies to combat anti-LGBTQ+ sentiment in their communities through education, advocacy, allyship, and creating safe spaces.
Abortion is all about human dignity.
The problem is we can't seem to agree on the protagonist.
That's the fundamental tension at the heart of the abortion debate - it's like a drama where everyone agrees the story is about protecting human dignity, but we're all reading from different scripts about who the main character is.
On one side, we have those who see the fetus as the protagonist - the innocent, vulnerable character whose story of potential must be protected at all costs. It's a compelling narrative: tiny, defenseless, with a whole life ahead of them if only given the chance.
On the other side, there's the pregnant person - already here, already living, already juggling a complex life with dreams, responsibilities, fears, and circumstances that no one else can fully understand. She's not just a supporting character or a convenient plot device; she's a fully realized human being with her own agency and dignity.
The thing is, when we're forced to choose our protagonist, we should probably go with the one who's already here, making conscious decisions, and living with the consequences. The pregnant person is the one who knows her own body, her own life, her own capacity. She's the one who will ultimately carry the physical, emotional, and economic weight of whatever excruciatingly difficult decision is made.
It's not that the potential for life doesn't matter - it's that the actual, present life of a thinking, feeling, autonomous human being matters more. In any story worth telling, we tend to side with the character who has the wisdom, experience, and moral agency to make their own choices about their own life.
The dignity argument works both ways, but only one of these characters can actually exercise it.
An investigation into one of our most contentious hot-button issues that,
in some parts, just won’t go away
This document offers a comprehensive analysis of the abortion debate in America, written following the overturning of Roe v. Wade. The author examines the complex, multi-faceted nature of abortion through various lenses including human rights, medical, socio-economic, moral, religious, legal, political, and racial perspectives.
The text is structured as an investigation into what's "really at stake" in the abortion debate, moving beyond the typical pro-choice vs. pro-life dichotomy to ask deeper questions about motivations, consequences, and societal impacts. The author argues that overturning Roe v. Wade has created chaos and uncertainty without solving any problems, leading to dangerous situations for women and healthcare providers.
Key themes include questioning the true motivations behind anti-abortion movements, examining who bears the costs when abortion access is restricted, and exploring whether current policies actually serve society's best interests. The document combines research, commentary, and personal reflection to challenge readers to think more critically about the abortion debate's complexities and long-term implications for American democracy and social welfare.
