Exploring the Theory of Enchantment in Anti-Racism

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This episode was recorded on September 15th, 2021.

Chloé Valdary and I discuss The Theory of Enchantment, her personal brand of compassionate anti-racism. Chloé has been featured in Psychology Today and the NY Times. Her work with Theory of Enchantment attempts to bring compassion to diversity training and fight bigotry with love.

We covered a range of topics surrounding her practice, structural racism in the US, the civil rights movement, the best way to criticize one another, the power of Truth, white fragility, and what one could expect from her (rather unique) diversity seminars.

Find more from Chloé @cvaldary

https://twitter.com/cvaldary

& check out her program at

https://theoryofenchantment.com

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Timestamps

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[00:00] Intro

[00:30] Chloé’s background

[01:52] Why did Chloé want to talk?

[02:53] Reading Dr. Peterson’s Maps of Meaning in a lockdown

[03:38] What is the goal or focus behind Valdary's work?

[04:05] “Supremacist thinking occurs when a human being experiences... some type of deep insecurity within themselves" - Chloé Valdary

[05:08] Jordan’s list of questions through Chloé's looking glass

[05:49] Sources of racism

[12:36] “There are problems money doesn't solve. It would be lovely if [that] produced full security in every aspect, but it doesn't" - Jordan Peterson

[12:57] Working with corporations on DEIS

[16:55] Debating the validity of lived experience

[17:11] “Are you an unquestionable authority on the nature of your lived experience? The answer is yes and no" - JP

[21:23] “[Race] certainly isn’t the best way to conceptualize diversity” - JP

[23:46] Examining the pathos behind two great leaders in the civil rights movement: Dr. Martin Luther King & Malcolm X

[27:34] Chloé’s experience as a teacher

[33:06] Learning to appreciate complexity in both the individual and the diverse

[36:17] “Raising everyone’s material standards… is ultimately insufficient" - JP

[36:34] Seeing people as political abstractions

[38:14] Alienation, diversity training, and rural America

[44:28] “There are arbitrary pre-conditions to our existence that we didn't choose to deal with" - JP

[48:25] How to uplift (never destructive) criticism

[51:07] Variance in coping mechanisms

[54:44] Everyone is starving for (words of) encouragement

[57:07] Rooting everything in love and compassion. Where do those guidelines come from?

[01:03:45] Wonder Woman, Power, & Truth

[01:04:52] The human capacity to destroy the planet

[01:09:29] I'm convinced that there is nothing more powerful than truth in the word." - JP

[01:17:31] “Part of the problem in the West is this false understanding of meaning as derived from propositions when it is, in fact, participatory ways of knowing that give rise to propositions in the first place" - Chloé Valdary

[01:18:48] The meaning of the word ‘enchantment’

[01:26:23] “The objective of ToE is to bring people back to this relational way of being and to be in balance with their own complexity" - Chloé Valdary

[01:26:59] What Chloé does at a ToE seminar

[01:32:16] “People have access to the truth… [regardless of] socioeconomic standing" - JP