Where most people are concerned–and this will vary in truth depending on their level of personal integration and psychological health and maturity–there are three reasons for doing things: the one they offer others, the one they secretly believe themselves, and the real one.
Obviously, squared away people do not play games like this. I don’t play games like this. I may be a dick sometimes, but you know why. There are no spider webs in my vicinity.
Where my mother is concerned, though, she first deceives herself–she is convinced, I think, that she is a meek and helpless, utterly mild person, when in fact she regularly pushes into the world large quantities of spite and venom–then she tries to deceive others, in that she attributes to others her secret motives that she won’t own. Then she comes up with a cover story to tie it all together, seemingly.
Thirty years ago, some-odd, I was hearing phrases from therapists like “playing the martyr”, and “psychological blackmail”, and I really saw them in action for the first time in the reflective reenactments of the past two weeks I did in my mind today.
It is congenial and bland–even if perhaps most often correct–to assume that most things are what they appear to be. That that nice old man is a nice old man; that that terrible criminal is a terrible criminal; that Democrats just want all of us to be happy and educated and prosperous; that to promise something means an attempt will be made to deliver it.
But people like me: I am like someone who grew up in medieval Italy–or as a modern Corleone in New York (I single out Italy by the way, but there is no reason to assume this was not ubiquitous the world over where large amounts of money and power were concerned)–where everyone was constantly scheming and planning and promising and backstabbing, and where you had to have a plan for all contingencies, and trust your gut when you assumed the worst.
It’s more work looking behind the curtain. It’s more work being alert to people who are trying to fuck you over. And most of the time–depending on who you are, what you do and where you live–that work is wasted. Nobody is trying to get you. You’re not on any lists. The people you see around you would, most of them, pull you out of a burning car, and nearly all of them would stop by the side of the road to help you if you didn’t have a cell phone.
But the thing is, if you have this habit, and you allow it to run long enough, because you can’t help it, you DO start to see a lot of fucked up stuff the complacent people of the world take for granted they are protected from, that they assume will never affect them.
I won’t say we are on a precipice, but there are a lot of ways our system could break. And what is CLEAR to me is that our national leaders are not even REMOTELY able to discuss these things with the sobriety, care, attention, and intelligence they require and deserve.
It’s maddening. But, then, I’m used to this situation. I grew up with it.