What We Reach For, and Where It Can Lead
How we connect and disconnect. It starts small: the ordinary things we reach for, and the people we feel at ease with. From there, how those ordinary starting points can quietly grow into something much harder, and how to notice the shift early enough to choose differently.
Start here. Notice what feels familiar first, then step into all six stages.
Before anything else: what's the first thing you gravitate toward without deciding to, a person, a habit, a comfort? No wrong answer.
Preferences are not a problem. Liking what you like, and the people who feel familiar, is part of how you love. This quest is only about noticing it.
Think of the last small thing you gravitated toward without deciding to: a song, a meal, a person you sat next to. What made it feel easy?
Now think of something just outside your usual circle: a food you have not tried, a kind of music you skip past, a group you have never asked to join. What is the small "not for me" you say about it? You do not have to change your answer, just notice it is there.
That noticing is the whole quest. For most people, it stays exactly that: a preference, and nothing more. If you are curious how this same noticing, left unchecked, can grow into something heavier over time, there is more to see. No pressure either way.
What you just noticed, a preference, is where this model starts. It does not stay small for everyone. The full chart traces how an ordinary preference can, step by step, harden into bias, then prejudice, then discrimination, then hate, and in the worst cases, killing. Each stage names its real weight plainly, and the real history behind it, Jim Crow, Japanese internment, the Holocaust, the Trail of Tears, and more recent examples too, is one tap away whenever you want to see it.
It is heavier material either way. Nothing here is softened to make it easier to look at, some of it is simply one tap further in, so you can go at your own pace.
You can look at all six stages now, or stop here. Either choice is complete. This is not a test you pass by continuing.
The full model, all six stages and the real-world examples, unlocks through the reflection above: press the gold button, notice both answers, and keep going. It stays out of view until then on purpose.
From Preference to KILL, and back again
This is the real model, plainly named. Nothing below is softened.
→the way forward, stage by stage
←the way back, stage by stage
Every stage has its own exit ramp straight back down to Preference, plus every closer step in between — reducing activation and diversifying exposure can walk you back several stages at once. This isn't a ladder you climb down one rung at a time.
Discrimination model by Dr. Ruth Diaz. Graphic and information by Sotalo. Made for Bridgemakers.
Each stage above has its own way back, not one generic fix. This quest just asks you to use the one that actually matches where you are, instead of all six at once.
Before anything else, just notice where you feel this in your body right now. There is nothing to fix here, only notice.
Pick the one stage, of the six, where you recognize yourself or your community most honestly right now. Do only that stage’s reverse-arrow practice this week, not all six at once.
Which single step back, named plainly in the chart for the stage you are actually in, are you willing to practice this week?
Picking one once doesn’t settle it. What you practiced is choosing a real, specific step back instead of gesturing at all six stages at once. Actually doing that step this week still has to happen; that part is not finished by noticing.
Your reflections so far
Where you stand in the field
Preference doesn't start from nowhere. The field you move through already treats some identities as the unmarked default and others as something to explain, tolerate, or exclude, before anyone in the room has made a single conscious choice. The wheel below is that field mapped, fifteen wedges at once. Placing yourself on it honestly is its own kind of reflection: it can show you which stages of this model you're more likely to be doing the reaching in, and which ones you're more likely to be the one reached past.
A macro-level example
Everything above traces escalation between people. The same shape, a small risk factor hardening into rivalry, rivalry into coercion, coercion into war, is what a real museum exhibit maps at the scale of nations: territory, power shifts, rivalry, mismatch, coercion, leaders, domestic turmoil, the same handful of causes recurring across eight American wars. Why War? The Causes of Conflict, a permanent installation at the Flying Heritage & Combat Armor Museum: full reference, rebuilt interfaces and diagrams, not just photos.
Your quest progress
Each stage above carries its own small quest — notice, then answer honestly. Completing one also reveals that stage's real artwork on the rail. Tap any stage to jump back to it.
The Wheel of Privilege and Power
Fifteen wedges, three rings. For each one, pick where the field tends to place you: the inner ring, where the room was built around you and rarely asks you to explain yourself; the middle ring, where you're conditionally tolerated as long as you stay palatable; or the outer ring, where the field excludes, pathologizes, or renders you invisible. This produces no score. It produces a landscape, the shape of your own position across all fifteen wedges at once, which is the whole point: the wedges don't add, they alchemize.
Full provenance and quote in the i button next to the title above.