Wednesday, June 17, 2015

Oppression

Oppression is the exercise of authority or power in a burdensome, cruel, or unjust manner.



Social oppression
Social oppression is the socially supported mistreatment and exploitation of a group, category, or team of people or individual.

Institutionalized oppression
"Institutional Oppression occurs when established laws, customs, and practices systematically reflect and produce inequities based on one’s membership in targeted social identity groups. If oppressive consequences accrue to institutional laws, customs, or practices, the institution is oppressive whether or not the individuals maintaining those practices have oppressive intentions."


Systematic oppression
Police and law themselves are often examples of systematic oppression. The term oppression in such instances to refer to the subordination of a given group or social category by unjust use of force, authority, or societal norms in order to achieve indoctrination. Through institutionalization, formally or informally, it achieves the dimension of systematic oppression. 

Oppression is customarily experienced as a consequence of, and expressed in, the form of a prevailing, if unconscious, assumption that the given target is in some way inferior. Oppression is rarely limited solely to formal government action: an individual may be the particular focus of oppression or persecution and in such circumstances have no group membership in which to share, and thus maybe mitigate, the burden of ostracism.

In psychology, racism, sexism and other prejudices are often studied as individual beliefs which, although not necessarily oppressive in themselves, can lead to oppression if they are codified in law or become parts of a culture. By comparison, in sociology, these prejudices are often studied as being institutionalized systems of oppression in some societies. In sociology, the tools of oppression include a progression of denigration, dehumanization, and demoralization; which often generate scapegoating, which is used to justify aggression against targeted groups and individuals.


The Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the concept of the "human rights" in general were designed to limit oppression by giving a clear articulation of what fundamental freedoms any system should allow to all of the people over whom it has power.


When oppression is systematized through coercion, threats of violence, or violence by government agencies or non-government paramilitaries with a political motive, it is often called political repression. More subtle forms of political oppression/repression can be produced by blacklisting or individualized investigations.
Transnational systems of governance that can often be oppressive include colonialism, dictatorship, imperialism, absolute monarchy and totalitarianism, and can generate a resistance movement to challenge the oppressive status quo.

Resistance
Several movements have arisen that specifically aim to oppose, analyse and counter oppression in general; examples include Liberation Theology in the Christian world, and Re-evaluation Counseling in the psycho-therapeutic arena.


Let us look pragmatically at our daily life. We all recollect occasions in which a fellow took an action which resulted in his gain and our loss: we had to deal with a helpless person. We can recollect cases in which a fellow took an action by which both parties gained: he was intelligent. Such cases do indeed occur. But upon thoughtful reflection you must admit that these are not the events which punctuate most frequently our daily life.

Our daily life is mostly made of cases in which we lose money and/or time and/or energy and/or appetite, cheerfulness and good health because of the improbable action of some preposterous creature who has nothing to gain and indeed gains nothing from causing us embarrassment, difficulties or harm. 

Nobody knows, understands or can possibly explain why that preposterous creature does what he does

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Microsoft Business Intelligence (Data Tools)

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