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Something there is, it seems to me, that we of the homo sapiens species – well, at the very least a majority – tend to read and listen to only those views, opinions, and perspectives with which we agree.

Such an endemic trait isn’t limited to just about politics and religion. Those two topics are, however, the ones that are most prevalent.

Now, having rather awkwardly worded my topic for today’s column endeavor, please let me share just a tiny bit of some of that which was written by Isabel Wilkerson in her “challenging” book “Caste – The Origins of Our Discontents.” The author is the recipient of the Pulitzer Prize and the National Humanities Medal, among other notable literary awards and accolades. She has lectured at more than two hundred colleges and universities across the United States and in Europe and Asia. Busy lady.

In early 1934 in Germany, the early stages of the Third Reich, the seeds of evil were sown, and began to grow. That is, the implementation of achieving “racial purity.” Out of this came, not very much later, the Nuremberg Laws. The course set, and over the next decade emerged, increasingly so, the greatest organized and horrific measures ever perpetrated upon fellow human beings. Genocide, it came to be called. Shoah. Holocaust.

Can you guess which country the Nazis first looked at, emulated, in their reign of terror? The United States.

They saw how, even though slaves had been emancipated some 70 years prior, there was still a caste system solidly established in the U.S. “Jim Crow” was alive and thriving, particularly in the South.

One of Germany’s bureaucrats and legal scholars scrutinized the conditions in the U.S. for “guidance“ in how best to employ similar measures in the Fatherland (Vaterland).

Thanks to a power immeasurably higher than man’s, ineffably so, this country did not ever go down that road of suffering, shame, and inhumanity anywhere near the extremes that the Nazis did.

Should you decide to read the book, mentioned near the very beginning of today’s column, you will be exposed to beliefs that were patently false, and many historical facts you most likely had never encountered.

At the very least, you will be challenged to think, and to do so in a way which isn’t conventional or comfortable to most of us. (This book was a gift from our younger daughter.)

Don’t just take my word for it

Peace.