The Essence of Our Work
Supremacy is the thought that someone else is beneath you. All humans have had supremacist thoughts, through all time, including today.
Supremacy’s roots lie in psychological insecurity. Psychological insecurity is pervasive, which explains why many current approaches to fighting supremacy are themselves supremacist. For example, in attempting to fight racism, many approaches traffic in racial essentialism - the belief that the essential, most important characteristic about a human being is the category of race to which they belong. This encourages and even rewards participants for caricaturing, prejudging, and disparaging others on the basis of race. This accelerates a rhetorical arms race, which defines the culture war today, and explains why we often feel that race relations are getting worse, not better.
Theory of Enchantment exists to fight supremacy at its roots.
The psychological insecurity that forms the roots of supremacy is a way of relating to oneself. This means that supremacy is a relational problem that requires a relational solution, and that this starts with one’s relationship with oneself.
This is where we come in.
Theory of Enchantment teaches people how to practice being in a healthy relationship with themselves first, without which they could not be in a healthy relationship with others. Once a person is able to accept the parts of themselves they feel ashamed of, they will be able to accept those parts in their neighbor.
Imagine. If a person is at peace with herself, she will not be captured by supremacist thoughts because she will have no need for them. Difference will become a source of curiosity instead of a threat. She will feel steady in her psychological security, released from the need of a coping mechanism like supremacy. This is a state of Enchantment.
And this is where we will take you.
“This is not hyperbole; I feel like Theory of Enchantment absolutely changed the way I am living life. It has absolutely changed the way I interact with all people, even my family, my kids, my husband, my extremely conservative parents, and my extremely progressive friends. It has absolutely changed me personally, not just at work, or with race relations, but with human relations.”
Our trainings are based on these 3 principles:
Treat people like human beings, not political abstractions;
Criticize to uplift and empower never to tear down or destroy.
Root everything you do in love and compassion.