Image: Title card from the ABC television series Black-ish (2014–2022).
Used for commentary and critical discussion.
Author’s Note
This essay began with an ordinary family evening, watching an episode of Black-ish with our children. What began as laughter over a fictional encounter with children’s dolls soon became a conversation about symbolic annihilation, racial identity, and the stories through which societies communicate who belongs and what possibilities are available to them.
In developing the essay, I found myself returning to the work of Drs. Kenneth and Mamie Phipps Clark, the lessons of Dr Asa G. Hilliard III, and an experience from February 2010, when I addressed questions of race and human connectedness at Maharishi International University. I have also drawn upon contemporary debates over historical representation, demographic change, and the influence of digital media. These connections are not intended to suggest that every disagreement over identity or representation arises from the same motivations. Rather, they invite us to examine the assumptions and institutional arrangements through which some experiences become central to our collective understanding while others remain marginal.
Ultimately, this reflection is as much about responsibility as it is representation. The stories we inherit influence how we understand one another, but they need not determine the stories we continue to tell. As a parent, scholar, and participant in the world we are collectively creating, I remain interested in what becomes possible when we examine those stories with greater care and allow our professed commitments to human dignity to find fuller expression in our conduct.
—Baruti KMT-Sisouvong, PhD
Recently, while watching an episode of Black-ish as a family, I found myself returning to a concept I first encountered during my studies in sociology: symbolic annihilation. It was not a concept I had anticipated discussing that evening, but the circumstances presented themselves in a way that made the connection almost unavoidable.
In the episode (Season 3; Episode 17), Diane and her mother, Dr. Rainbow Johnson aka “Bow,” attempt to return a doll that their neighbour, Janine, had given Diane. Their efforts lead them into a revealing encounter with the world of children’s toys, where the available representations of white success seem almost limitless, while those of Black success are conspicuously restricted. Among the offerings are Sassy Sadie, portrayed as a runaway slave, and Sassy Selma, a civil rights activist with eleven children.
The scene is intended to be humorous, and it succeeds. Yet beneath the comedy resides a rather serious observation about the ways societies construct and communicate identity. The white dolls, and thus white girls, are afforded an abundance of personalities, experiences, and imagined futures, while the Black dolls, and thus Black girls, are largely confined to representations of historical oppression and struggle. The issue is not that those histories are unworthy of remembrance. On the contrary, both enslavement and the struggle for civil rights remain indispensable to understanding American history. The difficulty arises when such experiences become the principal, or even exclusive, means through which an entire population is represented.
As I explained to Chloë and Emerson with both Tennyson and Malcolm paying minor attention, symbolic annihilation describes a process through which particular groups are marginalised within the cultural narratives of a society. Coined by Dr. George Gerbner, a communications scholar, to explain how representations in “media systematically ignores or leaves out certain populations, sending a message that they do not matter in society.” The term gained wider acclaim and is especially associated with the work of sociologist Dr. Gaye Tuchman. In Tuchman’s formulation the concept concerns the ways people may be rendered socially insignificant through omission, trivialisation, or condemnation. It invites us to consider not only whether people appear in the stories a society tells, but how they appear, what roles they are permitted to occupy, and what possibilities those representations communicate.
The dolls in the episode were present, but their presence did not necessarily amount to meaningful recognition. Indeed, their restricted identities suggested that representation itself can become a vehicle for reinforcing the very limitations it ostensibly overcomes. A group need not disappear entirely from public view to experience symbolic annihilation. Sometimes, its members need only be represented through a narrow collection of identities that leaves little room for the complexity of their humanity.
This distinction between visibility and recognition stayed with me as our conversation continued and caused me to reflect on the lessons we learn before we even know we are learning.
The episode also reminded me of the research conducted by psychologists Drs. Kenneth and Mamie Phipps Clark, whose studies involving Black and white dolls became an important part of the historical and legal conversations surrounding racial segregation in the United States. I had encountered their work during my early academic development, and it resurfaced in my thinking through the scholarship of Dr. Layli Maparyan, currently serving as President of the University of Liberia in Monrovia, Liberia.
Working during an era in which racial segregation was enforced through law and institutional practice, the Clarks investigated how children understood racial categories and the social meanings attached to them. Their research explored questions of racial identification, preference, and the ways discriminatory environments might influence children’s developing perceptions of themselves and others. In some of their studies, Black children attributed more favourable qualities to white dolls, findings that raised troubling questions about the psychological consequences of living within a society that systematically privileged whiteness.
The Clarks’ research was conducted within particular historical circumstances, and its findings may not be treated as a universal account of how all children perceive race. Nevertheless, the questions their work raised remain important because children do not develop their understanding of themselves in isolation. They encounter a world already populated with categories, expectations, hierarchies, and representations that communicate which characteristics are admired, which identities are normalised, and which differences are regarded as undesirable; much of which is mediated by the adults and authority figures within their environment.
Long before children acquire the language necessary to analyse these messages, they may already have encountered them through toys, television programmes, books, classroom interactions, advertising, and conversations among adults. Such encounters may not determine how every child will understand themselves or others, but they unquestionably contribute in both big and small ways to the cultural environment within which identity develops.
This is one reason the scene and storyline in Black-ish struck me as particularly revealing. A doll may appear to be a simple object intended for play, yet the world of imaginative possibility it offers is shaped by decisions made elsewhere. Someone determines which dolls will be manufactured, which characteristics they will possess, what stories will accompany them, and which populations are sufficiently important to warrant a broad range of representation. As a result, it may be argued that what appears on a store shelf is therefore connected to a much larger collection of social assumptions about identity, commercial value, and cultural legitimacy. The child encounters the finished object, often without seeing the decisions and historical conditions that made it possible. As a result, I believe it is worth asking what children learn when they repeatedly encounter a world in which some people appear capable of becoming almost anything, while others appear principally as representatives of a particular social problem or historical struggle. Equally important is the question of what children learn about those who are not represented at all.
These questions are not confined to toys, nor do they end with childhood. They follow us into the institutions through which societies educate their members, preserve their histories, distribute opportunities, and establish the boundaries of belonging. Here, I am reminded of something Dr. Asa G. Hilliard, III often reminded me: “To not allow people to begin our history with the enslavement. This is a lesson I took with me beyond the shores of Atlanta to that of Iowa where I encountered a noble proposition that “The world is my family.”
As I reflected on our family conversation, my thoughts returned to an experience from late 2009, as I was serving as Student Body President of the Global Student Council (GSC) at Maharishi International University (2009-2010).
During that period, an incident involving a faculty member’s use of a racial slur towards a Black student had brought questions of race and institutional responsibility into particularly sharp focus. Within that broader context, our university community engaged in a series of conversations concerning diversity, identity, and the relationship between our professed ideals and our everyday conduct with one expression of those efforts being The World Is MY Family: Diversity Lecture Series. After an initial meeting during the month of January to kickoff the event, the following month during the evening of 18 February 2010, I delivered the opening remarks for its second installment, titled The Matter of Race.
We began the evening with excerpts from two speeches by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. The first, often referred to as Around Midnight, recalled a period during the Montgomery Bus Boycott when King confronted intimidation, exhaustion, and the considerable burden of continuing a struggle whose outcome remained uncertain. The second was the conclusion of his final speech, delivered at Mason Temple in Memphis, Tennessee, on 3 April 1968, the evening before his assassination.
I remember explaining why we had selected those particular recordings. Beyond their historical significance, they offered an opportunity to encounter aspects of Dr. King’s experience that were not always emphasised in more familiar accounts of the Civil Rights Movement. His public achievements were widely recognised, but the personal struggle, uncertainty, and moral resolve that accompanied them deserved attention as well.
Following Dr. King’s assassination on 4 April 1968, an elementary school teacher in Riceville, Iowa, named Jane Elliott developed what became known as the Blue-Eyed/Brown-Eyed exercise. Seeking to help her students understand discrimination, Elliott created a classroom experience in which children were treated differently according to an arbitrary physical characteristic. The exercise subsequently attracted both considerable attention and criticism, particularly concerning its methods and the ethical questions associated with inducing experiences of discrimination. And while we were unable to secure her in-person services due to our meager operating budget, after speaking with Ms. Elliott personally to explain the incident and our programming idea, we were not only able to introduce her work but we were authorized by Ms. Elliott herself to screen Stolen Eye as part of our effort to examine how seemingly ordinary human differences can become the basis for social hierarchies.
Looking back, I find the relationship between Drs. Kenneth and Mamie Phipps Clark research, Jane Elliott’s classroom exercise, and the fictional dolls in Black-ish particularly striking. Although they emerged from different historical circumstances and employed very different approaches, each directs our attention towards the meanings societies attach to human differences and the consequences those meanings can have for how people perceive and treat one another. Yet the significance of our gathering at MIU extended beyond an examination of race as a social phenomenon. We were members of a university community organised around Consciousness-Based Education, with a shared commitment to the development of human potential. Our philosophical orientation invited us to recognise a fundamental dimension of life that transcends the distinctions through which human beings ordinarily identify themselves and others. The question then before us was whether that understanding was adequately reflected in our conduct.
In my opening remarks, I encouraged those gathered to approach the evening with open minds and open hearts, and to carry whatever insights emerged into the ordinary activities of our lives. I asked that we demonstrate, through our actions, a commitment to making the world better for all its peoples. The emphasis was deliberate. Because the affirmation of universal human dignity is meaningful, but it does not automatically prevent us from reproducing inherited assumptions, prejudices, or institutional practices that diminish particular members of our communities. A philosophical commitment to the unity of life must find expression in the ways we encounter difference, exercise responsibility, and respond when our actions fall short of our ideals.
The Sanskrit expression Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam, commonly translated as “The World Is My Family,” provided the organising theme for the series. It offered an expansive vision of human connectedness, one that encouraged us to look beyond the divisions of race, nationality, religion, and culture. Yet even then, I understood that the expression was not merely a description of an already accomplished social reality. It was also an invitation to examine the distance between the world we professed to recognise and the world we were actively creating. Because, if the world is indeed our family, how do we account for the circumstances in which some of its members must continually demonstrate that they deserve to belong? That question continues to roam around my mind all these years later and compel me to interrogate the stories we permit and the voices we heed. Because sixteen years have passed since that gathering, and the questions we explored remain deeply relevant. Indeed, recent developments in the United States have brought renewed attention to the relationship between representation, historical memory, institutional authority, and civic belonging.
Disputes over books in public schools, the interpretation of American history, the presentation of exhibitions within national museums, and the place of immigrants and U.S. numerical minority populations within the country’s evolving identity have become prominent features of public discourse. These controversies are not identical, nor should they be treated as though every participant shares the same intentions. Questions concerning educational appropriateness, parental authority, institutional independence, historical accuracy, and the responsibilities of public institutions deserve careful consideration on their own terms. Nevertheless, when viewed through the lens of symbolic annihilation, these developments invite a broader enquiry into the conditions under which particular histories and identities become visible, marginalised, or contested.
According to PEN America, nearly 12,000 instances of school book bans occurred during the 2025–2026 academic year, a figure encompassing various forms of restriction, including temporary removals pending review. As of this writing, the state of Texas has garnered the distinction of being the sole state with the highest number of bans numbering 8,001-9,000 with Florida landing in second place with 4,001-8,000 bans. The number does not mean that nearly 12,000 distinct books were permanently prohibited. It does, however, indicate the scale of ongoing disputes over what students should be permitted to encounter within educational settings.
Among the contested works are books addressing race, racism, sexuality, gender identity, and other aspects of human experience. Supporters of particular restrictions may understand their efforts as expressions of parental responsibility or concerns about age-appropriate materials, while critics argue that some restrictions diminish access to the experiences and histories of populations already underrepresented within educational institutions. For me, the question that piqued my interests is not whether every challenged book belongs in every classroom or library. Rather, it concerns the cumulative consequences of decisions that determine which experiences are available for examination and which are placed beyond the ordinary reach of students. Because a society’s understanding of itself is shaped not only by the information it possesses, but also by the information it makes available, the interpretations it legitimises, and the histories it chooses to preserve.
The same questions arise when considering institutions such as the National Museum of African American History and Culture. Its significance lies not merely in preserving the experiences of a particular population, but in contributing to a more complete understanding of the United States. The histories of enslavement, emancipation, Reconstruction, segregation, resistance, cultural innovation, and civic transformation are not peripheral to the American experience. They are inseparable from the nation’s development. And to recognise these histories does not require diminishing the experiences or contributions of other populations. Rather, it requires acknowledging that the national story has always been more complex than any single group or perspective can adequately represent.
This is where the politics of being seen becomes especially consequential. When historical recognition is treated as a competition, the inclusion of one population’s experiences may be perceived as a threat to another population’s place within the collective narrative. Yet the expansion of historical understanding need not operate through displacement. A more complete account of the past can enlarge our shared understanding without requiring anyone’s erasure. The difficulty, however, seems to arise when recognition is understood not as an opportunity for greater accuracy and mutual understanding, but as a contest over whose experiences possess the authority to define the whole. Such debates often lead to some grappling with issues of visibility, changing demography, and belonging.
Within this milieu, and much to the chagrin of some, we cannot ignore that the United States is also experiencing continuing demographic and cultural change. Its population reflects an increasing mix of ancestries, religious traditions, languages, familial structures, and identities, developments that invite important conversations about national cohesion, immigration, civic responsibility, and the meanings associated with American identity. For some, these changes represent the continuing evolution of a society that has always been shaped by movement, encounter, and cultural exchange. For others, they raise concerns about the preservation of familiar traditions, institutions, or social arrangements.
Admittedly, I remain uncertain that these responses are uniform and thus reducible to a single explanation. Nevertheless, acknowledging the diversity of opinion among Americans of European ancestry should not obscure the persistence of racial attitudes that associate national identity, cultural legitimacy, and political authority with the preservation of white demographic dominance. I was reminded of this while reflecting upon an interview conducted by Eddie Huang with Jared Taylor, founder of American Renaissance, for the television series Huang’s World. During their exchange, Taylor articulated his concern that demographic change would lead to the dispossession of white Americans, expressing the belief that the United States was fundamentally a nation built by and belonging to people of European ancestry. Huang challenged that understanding by drawing attention to the contributions of other populations and his own experience growing up in America as the child of Taiwanese immigrants. What made the exchange particularly revealing was not simply Taylor’s willingness to say the quiet part out loud, but the underlying assumption that the increasing presence of one population necessarily entails the displacement of another.
Although Taylor’s explicitly racial conception of national belonging cannot be attributed to white Americans generally, elements of the demographic anxiety he expresses extend beyond his particular ideological community. The extent of that overlap requires careful distinction, but it would be a mistake to regard such concerns as confined to a handful of individuals or anonymous online commentators. They appear in broader public debates about immigration, cultural identity, and the changing composition of the American population. The question, therefore, is not whether every person who expresses concern about demographic change embraces Taylor’s worldview, but how frequently assumptions about racial ownership and the legitimacy of belonging influence the ways people interpret that change. When the presence of fellow citizens is understood as a loss of territory, influence, or identity, diversity ceases to be regarded simply as a feature of an evolving society and becomes framed as a struggle over who possesses the right to define the nation.
That such anxieties extend beyond the explicitly racial nationalism articulated by Taylor is reflected in research conducted by the Pew Research Center. In an April 2024 survey of registered American voters, 39 per cent of Donald Trump supporters indicated that the declining proportion of white people within the United States was bad for society, compared with 10 per cent of Joe Biden supporters. Across the electorate, nearly one-quarter of registered voters expressed this concern, while 64 per cent regarded the demographic change as neither good nor bad. Interestingly, the same research found that 65 per cent of registered voters, including 64 per cent of white voters, considered the country’s racial, ethnic, and religious diversity a source of societal strength. For me, these findings reveal a more complicated landscape than one of simple acceptance or rejection of diversity. They suggest that an individual may recognise the benefits of a diverse society while simultaneously regarding a reduction in the relative demographic prominence of a historically dominant population as undesirable.
The distinction is consequential. The survey does not establish that those expressing concern about demographic change embrace Taylor’s worldview, nor does it reveal precisely what motivates each respondent. Nevertheless, it does demonstrate that apprehension about the declining proportion of white Americans is neither confined to the most outspoken proponents of racial nationalism nor merely an impression created by inflammatory exchanges on social media. Such attitudes are measurable within the broader electorate, raising important questions about the relationship between demographic change, perceived group status, and national belonging. When the increasing presence of one population is interpreted through the perceived loss of another’s position, the question of who belongs becomes entangled with the question of who has historically possessed the authority to define belonging itself.
At the same time, social identity research provides useful ways to understand how perceived changes in group status can influence attitudes and behaviour. When a person’s sense of belonging becomes closely associated with the historical prominence of a particular population, the increasing visibility of other groups may be experienced as a challenge to an established social position. This possibility deserves attention because it reveals how demographic change can become entangled with questions of legitimacy. Because a society may grow increasingly diverse while continuing to rely upon cultural narratives that implicitly associate authentic national belonging with particular racial, religious, or ancestral characteristics. Those who fall outside these expectations may find themselves formally included within the political community while encountering persistent suggestions that their presence is somehow conditional.
Such experiences need not involve explicit exclusion from citizenship or participation. They may emerge through repeated questions about where someone is really from, assumptions about religious or cultural compatibility, portrayals of certain populations as inherently threatening, or public narratives that treat some Americans as more representative of the nation than others. For me, the distinction between visibility and belonging becomes important here. Because a population can be highly visible in public discourse while being represented primarily as a problem to be managed, a threat to be contained, or an exception to an assumed national norm.
In such circumstances, greater visibility does not necessarily produce greater recognition. Indeed, increased visibility may become the very condition through which a group’s legitimacy is questioned. The dynamics of social media introduce another dimension to this phenomenon, as digital platforms permit narratives about particular populations to circulate rapidly, often reaching audiences far beyond those in which they originated. Research into automated accounts, commonly referred to as bots, and human-coordinated online activity has demonstrated their capacity to influence the tone and direction of public discourse, amplify divisive narratives, and elicit reactions from human participants. These effects may be compounded by platform algorithms that privilege engagement, particularly when emotionally charged or antagonistic content attracts greater attention and increased revenue for the associated platform. Consequently, the significance of such activity lies not merely in the number of automated accounts participating in a conversation, but in their capacity to shape the information environment within which real people form impressions, express opinions, and respond to one another. The resulting exchanges may be entirely human in their expression, even when the conditions contributing to their emergence have been artificially influenced.
What matters, however, for the present enquiry is the capacity of repeated and seemingly ubiquitous representations to shape the environment within which people interpret one another. A message encountered once may be dismissed. A message encountered repeatedly, across numerous platforms and institutional settings, may gradually acquire the appearance of common knowledge, even when its underlying assumptions remain unexamined. Which brings us back to the dolls.
The problem was not simply that Diane had been offered an unappealing toy. It was that the available representations communicated a restricted understanding of what Black identity could encompass. The same underlying concern arises whenever a society repeatedly presents particular populations through narrow, reductive, or threatening narratives. The question then is not merely whether people are seen. It is whether they are permitted to appear in the fullness of their humanity as opposed to functioning solely within the constructs they inherit.
Within my Seven Layers of Manifestation framework, I distinguish among Pure Consciousness, Universal and Natural Laws, the Phenomenal World, Human Consciousness, the Human-Derived World, Constructs, and Outcomes. The framework is philosophical and conceptual, intended to provide an orientation for examining relationships among consciousness, experience, and the worlds human beings create. And one of its central implications is that the social arrangements we encounter are not necessarily inevitable features of existence. Many are products of human interpretation, historical circumstance, collective agreement, and institutional development. Although they may become deeply embedded within the structures of everyday life, their origins remain patently distinguishable from the natural phenomena upon which human societies depend.
In the matter of the construct of race, keen observers will note a particularly consequential example. While human populations exhibit observable physical variation, the social meanings assigned to those variations have changed across historical periods and cultural settings. The categories through which societies classify people, and the privileges or disadvantages associated with those classifications, are shaped by human institutions and practices rather than dictated by biological difference alone. And we must not forget the fact that these arrangements are socially constructed does not render their consequences imaginary. On the contrary, constructs can acquire extraordinary material significance when incorporated into laws, educational systems, economic institutions, housing arrangements, and patterns of interpersonal behaviour. Simply stated, a social category may originate through human interpretation, yet its consequences can influence the opportunities available to individuals and communities for generations.
This is one reason I find the relationship between consciousness and social organisation worthy of continued exploration. Human beings inherit many of the categories through which they understand the world long before they develop the capacity to examine those categories critically. Through education, experience, and reflection, however, we may begin to recognise the distinction between the world as we have learned to interpret it and the world as it might otherwise be understood. Ever bearing in mind that such recognition does not automatically produce social transformation. Nor does an expanded philosophical understanding eliminate the need for institutional reform, historical analysis, or practical action. It can, however, create an opportunity to reconsider assumptions that have become so familiar that they are rarely questioned. Because we may not be responsible for originating every construct we inherit, but we participate in determining whether and how those constructs are reproduced. The question, then, is not simply what stories have been handed down to us. It is what responsibility we bear for the stories we continue to tell.
In revisiting my remarks at MIU in February 2010, I shared a quotation from an anonymous source that has remained with me over the years:
“The Temple in the Heart of Man is an unfinished Temple. We are building it every day.”
The passage went on to describe that construction as a process of developing moral insight, strengthening character, and broadening sympathy and understanding to include people of every race and creed.
Admittedly, I have returned to those words on numerous occasions, and they seem particularly relevant to the questions raised by our recent family conversation.
The image of an unfinished temple suggests that human development is not a condition we achieve once and thereafter possess without further effort. Rather, it is an ongoing process through which our understanding, conduct, and relationships may be refined. Moreover, the same is true of institutions and societies. Their commitments to dignity, fairness, and inclusion cannot be established solely through declarations of principle. Those commitments must find expression in the ordinary arrangements through which people encounter one another and participate in collective life.
An educational institution may affirm the value of every student while remaining unaware of practices that diminish particular members of its community. A society may celebrate its diversity while preserving narratives that treat some of its citizens as peripheral to the national experience. An individual may sincerely believe in the equality of all people while continuing to rely upon assumptions inherited from a social environment that has not been adequately examined.
These contradictions do not necessarily render our ideals meaningless. On the contrary. They reveal the work required to bring our actions into closer alignment with them. This is what I hoped to communicate to our university community in 2010, and it is what I continue to consider as a parent, scholar, and participant in the broader world. And such was on display when Chloë, Emerson, and I began discussing the dolls in Black-ish. For me, we were doing something quite ordinary. We were watching television together, laughing at the humour, and talking about the observations that emerged along the way. Yet the conversation also provided an opportunity to examine the social meanings embedded within a seemingly simple encounter.
I do not know precisely how they will remember that evening or which aspects of our discussion will remain with them as they grow older. What I do know, however, is that such conversations contribute to the intellectual and moral environment in which their understanding of the world continues to develop. And for Mina and me, that environment matters. Because the stories children encounter help inform the possibilities they imagine for themselves and others. The institutions they inhabit influence whose experiences they regard as significant. The examples set by adults contribute to their understanding of what it means to live alongside people whose histories, appearances, beliefs, and experiences differ from their own. Admittedly, none of these influences determines a person’s future. Yet taken together, they form part of the conditions within which individual and collective possibilities emerge.
Sixteen years ago, standing before a university community, I invited those gathered to consider how our understanding of human connectedness might be expressed through the lives we lead and the institutions we help shape. Today, sitting with my children, I find myself returning to much the same question, although from a different vantage point.
We cannot choose every story we inherit, nor can we control every representation that enters the world. But we can examine the assumptions those stories carry, interrogate the limitations they seek to impose, and contribute to a wider understanding of the people with whom we share this extraordinary human experience.
Perhaps the politics of being seen is ultimately about more than visibility. It concerns the conditions under which people are recognised as full participants in a shared world, with histories worthy of remembrance, experiences worthy of understanding, and possibilities that extend beyond the categories others have assigned to them. And in that sense, the temple remains unfinished. So we continue to build it through the choices we make, the stories we preserve, and the humanity we recognise in one another on an ongoing basis.
For me, the fundamental question is whether we are building a world in which more people can see themselves—and one another—with greater clarity, dignity, and possibility.
What say ye?
Suggested Practice — Examining the Stories We Encounter
Over the coming week, choose something familiar: a television programme, a children’s book, a news report, a museum exhibition, or even a collection of advertisements. Give particular attention to how different people and populations are represented.
Consider who occupies the centre of the story and who remains at its margins. Which individuals are portrayed as capable of complexity, achievement, vulnerability, and change? Which appear principally through a narrow collection of characteristics, historical experiences, or social problems? And whose presence, although relevant, may be missing altogether?
As you reflect, consider how your own understanding has been shaped by the stories you have encountered throughout your life. You need not arrive at an immediate judgement about the intentions of those responsible for a particular representation. Instead, begin by observing what the representation makes visible, what it leaves unexplored, and what assumptions it may invite you to accept.
If an opportunity arises, extend the enquiry through conversation with someone else, particularly a younger person whose understanding of the world is still taking shape. Listen as carefully as you speak. The purpose is not to prescribe what another person should think, but to cultivate the capacity to recognise more fully the humanity and possibilities of those with whom we share the world.
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About the Author
Dr. Baruti KMT-Sisouvong is a scholar of consciousness, researcher of human development, and Certified Teacher of Transcendental Meditation® based in Cambridge, Massachusetts. His work explores the relationship between Pure Consciousness, neuroscience, and social systems, and how deeper awareness can inform both personal growth and institutional transformation.
He is the Founder and Chief Meditation Officer of Transcendental Brain, an initiative examining the intersection of consciousness research, cognitive science, and high-performance decision-making. He is also President of Serat Group Inc. and Founder and Director of Radical Scholar Inc., a nonprofit dedicated to consciousness-based research and public scholarship.
Alongside his wife and teaching partner Mina, he co-directs the Transcendental Meditation program for Cambridge and the Greater Boston area. He is also the host of the On Transcendence Podcast and Founder of International Meditation Hour, a quarterly global gathering dedicated to the unifying power of silence.
His writings—spanning frameworks such as The Model for Perpetual Growth and Progress and The Seven Layers of Manifestation—explore the evolving relationship between consciousness, leadership, and society.
He writes from the conviction that the most important race is not between nations or machines, but between the conditioned mind and the awakening soul.
To learn more about him, visit: https://barutikmtsisouvong.com/.