Unconscious bias

A great deal is made nowadays of the concept of unconscious bias. It is meant to describe the collection of inner patterns that we have accumulated without necessarily being aware of it, patterns that guide our assessments, reactions and decisions in a…well, unconscious way. Some theories make that an evolutionary advantage. Those reactions are usually very quick and thus save us time and mental / emotional energy when dealing with a number of situations. Unfortunately the origin of this ”advantage” is probably in the very distant past where having to choose in a split second if we should fight or flee was indeed a reality. It also applied at least partially to a number of more recent centuries where wars of different scales and physical brutality were commonplace in most of the world. But then the world changed, though not everywhere. Those patterns remained though, at first being tolerated for a century or two. But nowadays they have come under more and more scrutiny.

When analyzed closely, it becomes obvious that the basis of those quick, faster-than-conscious-thought reactions, varies greatly. Some are rather universal and transcultural. Like the fact that mothers are usually the ones looking after the children at home, so we just assume that’s always the way it is / it should be. Some are obviously a construct of history and discrimination that tends to perpetuate itself: some races are somehow better, surgeons are men, etc. Numerous experiments have shown how much these biases continue to shape our reactions, relationships, decisions, etc. And oddly enough, as the world, especially the Western world, has become more competitive and busier and busier, the conditions are ripe for those biases to show more as we try to react faster and faster and thus have less time to filter them through our consciousness and question their validity as well as their utiliy. Simultaneously, we have started to realize how often they can make us react in unacceptable ways. What’s more the range of acceptability has also shifted a lot and exposed the bias issues ever more acutely.

So what’s the way out ? If this is about the unconscious, how can we make it better ? The standard recommendations are to first and foremost try to slow down and give ourselves time to filter everything at conscious level. Clearly though, this is hard to do consistently. The time pressure most of us feel most of the time is against it, as is the motivational aspect of it. Most people will tend towards the company of other people with similar biases and then life goes on happily…We then have the option to regularly introspect about our biases and how they influence us. How many of us can make that a regular practice ? And then we still have to replace them in our unconscious with a different algorithm or keep watching what we say and do and try to catch ourselves from following old grooves. Very hard work indeed.

But there IS a way out: expand our consciousness naturally, so those obscure patterns acting from the shadow are in full light permanently. Instead of maneuvering us from the hidden depths of our ego or conditionings, we not only see but spontaneously transcend those biases. Because we can be fully in the present with an enlightened awareness, our reactions and behaviour get detached from them and what we do, say and think is anchored in reality rather than mental or emotional patterns. A great secondary effect is that we can relax from second guessing ourselves and we let go of guilty feelings generated by after-the-fact reflections and realizations of bias. This is not an instantaneous happening after Self Realization but the light and size of our awareness grow pretty quickly once we establish regular meditation practices. Thus we can replace tiresome thinking and self-doubt with confident daylight navigation of our own Self.