I would argue that it may make sense–I am still thinking about this–to broadly classify all self limiting, all voluntary constriction, as forms of masochism. Conformity which goes beyond the basic civility and courtesy needed to avoid conflict would then be a form of masochism.
And those who choose to indulge in that form of masochism–which is frustrating, since you are complicit in your own confinement–sooner or later take it out in cruelty.
If you are afraid to be yourself, sooner or later you will find yourself tormenting and limiting others. The converse would also be true, which is that open, honest people are always happy to see, and assist in, the growth of others.
Continually looking first and foremost to the opinions of others, without even attempting to consult ones own mind and feelings, would then be a form of this masochism, which leads to sadism.
In my own view, I think this explains the obsessions with violence and cruelty in our popular media.
I will from time to time go into stores in the mall, like Spencers, to see what kids are up to, what they are buying.
In my most recent trip this week, I saw dolls of the “minions”, I will call them, of the Squid Game. They were childrens toys. I can’t see any adult buying them. So I had to wonder how many adults were letting their kids watch that show. It is likely a lot. I was careful with my own kids, but most parents are too tired–and too brainwashed into never saying no to their perfect little angels–to stop it.
And Jason, from Halloween, was everywhere. Not as a villain: more or less as an icon, as in t-shirts with his picture, saying Happy Halloween. Or one that had him on a bridge with a bloody knife, and someone dying below, with the caption “just the tip”.
You know all this is sick. It’s obvious. Average Americans from half a century ago would be horrified to see all this, particularly being foisted on the minds of children. The Left used to oppose violence in the 70’s and 80’s. Tipper Gore opposed violence and misogyny in the media. You remember that? Back then, I suppose they (I will exempt Tipper from this, since I think she was reacting as a thoughtful adult to truly vile things) thought violence supported militarism, which supported American wars. There may well be some truth to that idea. But all that is gone, isn’t it? Any notion of restraint, or boundaries, or “this is too much”. Gone. It’s gone.
A guy I know in a bar was telling me a few weeks that he is obsessed with the Halloween franchise. He said he goes to bed watching the most violent movies he can find. He talked about how some movies have “good kills”.
Now, I don’t think in the slightest that he is violent, or likely to become violent. But he also unlikely to become a beautiful person. He is unlikely to become open and kind and creating acts and works of beauty. In his particular case, I think he had a really horrible childhood, with all the usual things like emotionally unavailable parents, continual moves, constantly shifting emotional landscapes, and no security anywhere. If you are fucked with continually by “humanity”–before that is even a concept you can understand–then you learn to hate people, and I could see how he could learn to enjoy seeing humanity beaten, murdered, and abused. It resonates with the damage in his own soul.
I am good at what I do, but I doubt I will ever tease any of those stories out of him. I’m interested, but there is much he has worked really, really hard to forget. I understand that.
In all honesty, more than once, in trying to help people, I think I have hurt them. In general, I think I do more good keeping my damn mouth shut. It’s hard to say.
And I have trauma too. It seems likely that sometimes I myself am cruel, after going through long enough rationalizing iterations to fool even myself. Until it is healed, it finds ways of leaking out. Always. In all of us.
And when you consider that there are millions like him, how much would it take to weaponize people like him, politically, if you could convince them they were in the right? He himself is a conservative, but the problem is across the board. I see daily how CHILDISH the Left has become. Infantile. Utterly unwilling and unable to do even BASIC acts of thinking for themselves. It all amounts to “I’m going to TELL on you.”
This is the basic emotional dynamic of authoritarian regimes. As I have said, the children’s island Milan Kundera described in “The Book of Laughter and Forgetting” was, I think, consciously intended as a metaphor for a reality he had seen and suffered from.
Here is the thing: few of us are born to do advanced mathematics, or write great poetry, or do any number of difficult things. Your IQ, and your innate aptitudes, will limit you. You can always improve, but only within a range. History has seen very few Einsteins, Bohrs (I can’t resist noting that in the main dispute of their lives, Bohr won), or Teslas.
But all of us have a mind, a heart, and a body. And all of them are continually receiving a wide variety of information, and there are many, many people out there who lack conventional intelligence who nonetheless reliably reach good conclusions by consulting their intuition, their gut, and their feelings.
Most people fail to use a large portion of this natural intelligence, with which I think all of us are amply endowed. Most of us may not be able to design a computer, but most of us can live happy lives in congruence with those around us, and pick up on the large things happening around us. But “education” removes much of this natural intelligence, such that certain things are so stupid only educated people believe them.
To take one obvious and current example, it is apparently a demonstrated demographic fact that so-called “vaccine resistance”–which as a term I hope you will readily see is already propagandistic, and intended to constrict the Hassle Free Zone, by working an Us and a Them into a truly complex issue–is highest among the MOST and the LEAST educated. I would qualify, I think, in the most category, but I interact continually with the least, and their mistrust is gut level, but I think it is perfectly on the money.
And it IS the money, isn’t it, driving all this? They feel that. And blacks, in particular, are in many cases getting this sick feeling that “here we go again”–again, with reason, in my view.
The creed of Individualism, which is unique to Western culture, at least as an articulated philosophy (with many culture having practiced it in effect, like the Tibetans as far as I can tell), is really about giving individuals this SPACE to develop AS individuals.
[With regard to Tibet, Alexandra David-Neel, who spent a lot of time in Tibetan monasteries before the Chinese fucked everything up, noted that we call them “monasteries”, but that other than periodic public gatherings, they were NOTHING at all like Western monasteries. Each acolyte has his own practice, given to him by his own teacher. You might have 300 monks, all doing slightly different practices in solitude. The monks were gathered together physically, but most of them lived alone, and followed their own path. This, in my view, is one reason why so many interesting things developed in Tibet.]
Obviously, all of us value caring and sharing and compassion, if we are morally sane. All of that is a part of Individualism, which seeks nothing less than the continual personal growth of all members of a given social order.
Collectivism, as the opposite, seeks nothing less than the submission and domination of the individual, and a cessation to whatever growth was possible for them in this life. I think fairly regularly of Cuba, where in effect time stopped some time in the early 1960’s. Spontaneity stopped. Experimenting stopped. Personal openness stopped, since openness invited oppression.
Fear and Collectivism cannot be separated. Shame and collectivism cannot be separated. Trauma and collectivism cannot be separated.
And most of human history has consisted in Collectivisms of various sorts. Think of the medieval Church. You were in, or you were incinerated. There was no room for the individual. This basic template has played out regularly on the world stage, nearly everywhere. The people white Europeans found in the Americas when we invaded, because they had vast amounts of space, were most likely vastly more open to personal experience.
Knowledge is always local, isn’t it? It is seeing through your own eyes. This is vastly easier when you are not a member of an authoritarian empire of one sort or another, telling you who to be, and what to believe, and punishing you if you fail.
I have commented on this before, but I think the life path of young Alisa Rosenbaum was set before age 5. I listened to her biography, and when she was 3-4, her mother offered her one prize immediately, or a much bigger one if she waited a year. She chose the latter. When the time came to get the prize, her mother–who I suspect was a narcissist–had forgotten about it completely, and gave her nothing. I don’t think she ever forgot that. I think her whole life was in effect dedicated to preventing other people from making that same mistake. Get what you can, she said, when you can, and through effort of your own. Never let people take things from you, and most particularly your mind and soul.
And of course she had a front row seat for the events in Saint Petersburg. If memory serves, her fathers pharmacy was seized by the Bolsheviks. She watched the chaos from the middle.
Intellectually, none of this is really that complicated. But people with emotional problems–particularly unrecognized and thus unacknowledged ones–choose on some level to make the simple complicated, because within the complicated all manner of lies are made vastly easier.
And lies, of course, become the mortar of personality formations which are destructive, but which are protected because, if liberated, they lead to pain. That pain can be dealt with, processed, grown through, but most people lack the passion to do that work. It is hard, but it is the only worthwhile game on this planet.
As I continue to say, there are many reasons for pessimism, but at root, where we are going is not what people REALLY want. They feel the lack, but they don’t know how to fix it. They are not happy, and our current path will make them even more miserable. These are powerful arguments for a sea change.
At some point, I think I could evolve into a teacher, but I am not there yet. As I said, I think I see cruelty leaking out of me, too. Until then, speaking the truth as clearly as I can will remain my highest and best use of my time and talent, as I see it.