Barriers to Change: Fear, Being a Victim, and Not Saying No is Automatically Saying Yes

in #philosophy8 years ago (edited)

Letting a problem continue, by not saying anything, does not help yourself. It can even harm your self-interest in the long run.

If you're not against a certain something, then you're supporting it by the default of letting it stand. You let it continue by supporting it by not trying to stop it. It persists by others supporting it and continuing to create it. Neutrality does not oppose an active force. This applies in multi-faceted ways throughout life.

Abuser and Victim

For example, abusive behavior (verbal, physical, whatever) creates a false dichotomy of an abuser and victim that most of us tend to trap ourselves into. People will tend to either identify themselves as a weak victim and do nothing, or identify themselves as the strong oppressor who at least isn't a weak victim.

The latter appeals to those who fear being victimized, who instead chose to be victimizers of others and perpetuate the self-deluded justification of abusing others. And then others fear what will happen if they dare speak up more strongly (if at all) against something wrong, so they let it continue, and don't stand up for themselves strongly enough to put a stop to it. It persists.

Identifying with the aggressor, abuser, oppressor, dominator, violator, etc., will tend to promote a mimicry of that behavior to establish oneself as being in the position of not being a victim. The false dichotomy perpetuates through fear on both sides.

This is not beneficial to the short term self-interests of the one being abused, and certainly extended durations of abuse are not good for their self-interest either. It's also not beneficial to the one abusing, which will be revisited in closing this piece.

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The Apophatic Way - NO! Stop. Stand up. Act!

How can something stop being, if people let it be? Wish that someday, in some distant future, things will "organically" change for the better while others are still actively creating the opposite?

Nothing will change if you let things keep going. It's that simple.

Social engineers, manipulators, "dark occultists", controllers, dominators, abusers, etc., use this simple dichotomy against us. Trauma can be applied on an individual basis, but also on a larger group collective consciousness.

In society as a whole, if we don't speak up about important issues, yes complain about them, which creates conflict, controversy, tension, interference( yes that sucks)... then things won't change. If we let things continue, that's a tacit acceptance, saying yes because we are not saying no. Fear also comes into play at this level, just as with more individual victimization

This is how life and reality function. If something is a problem, or even a benefit, and people let it continue, then it will continue, and possible grow. But if you want to change things to be less of a problem, or less beneficial, then actions need to be taken to affect change.

Trauma

Life is filled with various levels of trauma that affect us emotionally and psychologically. Trauma is a harm that is not so easily seen, and can affect our selfview and worldview for a long time, if not for life. We can are automatically scarred by many of life's events - engraving and etching experience into our characters to shape who we are.

There is a lot of damage that we sustain from growing up and being conditioned into falser potentials of ourselves through the fake, sick and insane society that surrounds us. We are fooled and conditioned into being fools.

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Healing

So....

Do you know you're being fooled?

Do you? How would you?

It's one thing to be fooled, and another to be aware that you are being fooled, and yet another to be aware you are being fooled and then put a stop to it!

Do you know about methods and mechanisms of mind control, manipulation and deception?

Do you know if you're lying to yourself, fooling yourself, or being self-deluded?

If you don't know the methods of manipulation that other can use on us, or we use on ourselves, then how can you know if your doing it to yourself?

Understanding how we can be manipulated is required to stop being manipulated.

Understanding how we can be fooled is required to stop being fooled.

Understanding how we fool ourselves is required to stop being a fool.

How much about language and symbolism do you understand?

How much about philosophy do you understand?

How much about psychology and consciousness do you understand?

How much time and attention has been spent, and is being spent, learning about such fundamental understandings of reality?

Learn about those topics. Learn about methods of manipulation, mind control and deception. Learn about logic, fallacies, and cognitive biases in order to learn how to think better.

Revisiting Trauma

In closing, I'll return to the abuse, victim and fear topic. If you want to learn how we are imprisoned in consciousness through our conditioning in society, then it takes time to change and heal from the illness that makes us sick falser versions of our potential selves. Learning is the first step. Knowledge empowers change. Ignorance of these above topics does not promote positive beneficial change to ourselves or others.

This can tie into the previous example of abuse. People who seek to abuse others are not in a developed psychological or emotional state. They don't seek to gain attention in a mutually respectful way. They want attention by continuing the abuse cycle. They suffered, so they get attention from others by making them suffer, creating useless conflict, tension, harm and pain towards others.

They were once traumatized, or suffered some abuse, and it affected them psychologically and emotionally as they developed and shaped their selfview and worldview of how they understood themselves and the world. It turned them into a vicious mean person who lashes out towards others. They are still traumatized children inside their consciousness, who haven't grown up and matured, acting out the trap of being an abuser so that they can keep oppressing others and feel powerful.

They are simultaneously an abuser and abused, by themselves. To understand reality more deeply, required recognition of others. To live with others, we need to recognize others and ourselves mutually, so long as we/they do not harm others which requires the need for action to stop us/them. When you abuse people, it's doing something without a rational justified cause, contrary to the justified in their actions of someone who steps in and stops another who is doing harm. Abusers are not justified. They harm their own self-interest in a society or community. We are not separate parts of the system and community we are in. Treating others with abusive behavior, is not to be tolerated. Ever. Stop being a victim, and stop letting it continue!

The only way for abusers to stop their false dichotomy trap of trying to empower themselves by putting others down, is for others to stop them. We need to speak, act, and stand up, if we want to change ANYTHING in life. Passivity, being quiet, not speaking up about an issue, is not doing anything either. Speaking, is an action. Truth doesn't speak for itself.

Related:


Question:

Do you want more "heavy" or "deep" topics? Do you want more "light" or quick news? Do you want both? Let me know what you think and what you would like me to post about. I made a post a long time ago asking what people wanted me to write about, but didn't get much feedback. I might make another to see ;)

The "gamble-luck" of rewards and certain voting behavior has led me to lower my overall quality output to compete with the attention economy in Steemit. I started with the "heavier" stuff above, but shifted towards the "lighter" content that more people seemed to like. One takes me more time to write while I usually get less rewards compared to the other which is less effort but more payout.

If you actually read some my content because you value it, please let me know what content you read and value ;)

Thank you!

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I was bullied for practically all of my school life. I was even tormented by someone I thought of as my friend. It took me years to work out that people just don't behave like that in what we call normal society.

It can be difficult for a victim to recognise that they're being victimised.

It can be difficult to go against the crowd when everyone around you is against one individual.

It can be supremely difficult to judge what the right thing to do even is.

We absolutely, positively, desperately need more moral education in schools and at home. Not just "this is what our holy book says" but also, "this thing is wrong no matter what" or "this thing should be right".

And I recognise that formalising those rules is going to be tricky business, because we all have the baggage of yesteryear trailing along with us.

I learned to think about life inside other people's heads (possibly one of the reasons I'm a writer) and I can't fathom why nobody else learned about this. It's not that hard if you have an imagination. But then, I'm recognisably weird.

Thank you for your valuable feedback and contribution. Moral truth/law is the most important thing for humanity to learn more deeply.

To answer your question at the end of the article, I would like the occasional personal story of your life and experience. To give an example, I read your story of how you organised your day, as a steem content creator. I found that very revealing on many levels about the level of commitment you have to advancing your craft on Steemit.

You've done personal stories before. This is simply my vote to encourage you to do more.

Thanks for the feedback. Those are the least likely post I will ever make ;) Just letting you know. hehe But I will keep it in mind, thanks again.

Very good article there, @krnel - well written.

In my experience, speaking up actually lead to being bullied. As a bully can in most times act it out when the environment made it possible ie. potential bullies who gather together to be feared and feel powerful. they then ganged-up on you. Reporting it to the higher up most times are met with unbelief or over-sensitivity to the issue where proofs are needed. In the worst scenario, the bully 1st reported that she was bullied and not the other way around. Personal statements of being bullied didn't count, even if other people came forward for being bullied before by the same person. Till now, this person is still bullying other staff yet the management ridicule those speaking up.

Thanks for the feedback! Yes, that's because of psychological biases and fallacies, such as group think and herd mentality, and again fear comes into play. They stand for whats popular and bully you into silence for standing up against the mainstream current of the current condition they are attached to as the way reality is. They don;t care for truth or honesty or whats right, and then they identify with the victim or abuser... and pick the abuser... because they don't want to be a victim.

if you're friends stood with you, you can put the bully int heir place, Strength in numbers. That's how a community work, for good or bad. Mob rules isn't a good thing. Truth and morality are.

I feel for ya. Thanks for your story again. I'm anti-bully and anti-troll, if you read the "related" post I have.

And workplace juvenile consciousness is common due to power of hierarchical structure, those who seek to dominate gravitate towards those jobs as well.

Minorities in a workplace are usually the ones who are targeted.
Also, bigots know on when to play as victims manipulating those people around them. I kinda like the workplace juvenile consciousness thing, they don't accept this as they can't see themselves whereas its so blatantly staring at them.
I do believe that most times they are insecure and incompetent, needing other people to feel secure, strength in numbers.

Yes, being comfortable alone, solitude, is hard for many and seek to be with others for validation.

I prefer this kind of posts by far. I've been reading more of your posts in the pasts days. Don't get me wrong I love both type but I read the mainstream media news way too much in my life and most of their science news is borderline meaningless to me nowadays. Anyway, all of this to say I prefer this type of post. There's not comparison possible but again I'm glad people are seeing your other type of posts. It keep them in touch with the news especially the scientific discoveries. Keep up your tremendous dedication.

Thanks for the great feedback. Appreciate you telling me what you like. I'll be trying to do more of my original work/content :)

I think a child that is not bullied will never bully others, because this the the root of the problem
"Freedom is what you do with what's been done to you." -
Jean-Paul Sartre

Most likely indeed. It gets taught for the most part, not inherent.

This is the material that I like-- your posts are one of the few places that I can find studies of the human conditioning vs. human nature, and it seems important that such information is pointed out, repeatedly, so that all of us can say 'NO' with more volume.
People may not want to be interested in their own minds, and knowledge can't really be forced on anyone, but to make the info available is critical to our progress as earthlings, I believe.
To therefore answer the last part of your post; it's past time for this information to be made common knowledge, so... more!

Indeed, thank you for your feedback. That is why I have been putting out info for free for three years on my site, trying to just get the info out so at least people can get to it from google if you search for truth and seek to learn. High quality content like this is required to change the world and further our progress indeed.

Thanks again for your input, appreciated.

What's the name of your site, Google sent me back here to Steemit--

Hehe. I'm curious, what did you search for?

http://evolveconsciousness.org/

On StartPage I searched 'Kris Nelson', page one, saw a utube referring to a Steemit related interview, then I think your 'introduceyourself' post, which I clicked to look for the link there--
thanks for the link, I will check it out

Such a great post! I like it all, but especially the deeper philosophical ones like this.

I found myself spending almost all weekend thinking about reality and my relation to it. It began with a listen to Jeff Berwick's interview of Bernhard Guenther and progressing to his Veil of Reality website. I watched 2 of his videos and felt a cognitive dissonance building within me. It deepened as I went on to watch Steve Richards videos on the Holographic Kinetics website.

I am highly skeptical, yet open minded.

When I think of this world and the state it's in I see many cause and effect relationships. Is there any "top" of the pyramid? Man thinks he's at the top of the food chain but is he? Is consciouness an infinite chain of fractal relationships between entities? If so it isn't possible for a particular fractal instance to know where it exists in the hierarchy.

My former religious orientation leaves me susceptible to manipulation when it comes to such topics, but by scientific / engineering mindset and knowledge of the Trivium Method trigger questions I cannot answer for lack of data.

Why do I feel compelled to find a conclusion to the question "What is reality" or "What is consciousness" when clearly the data is limited? We are all groping in the dark for answers. If we rigidly adhere only to empirical evidence we will not be open to new discoveries. Forming a question implies you don't have an answer to it. It is an unknown and the opposite of empirical data.

Questions push us beyond the empirical in an attempt to add to the empirical. Where does intuition and inspiration come from? Are they simply internal and external triggers that stimulate a creative process from the raw material of our memory?

Thanks for the feedback. Accept not having an answer. That's part of the path to REAL knowledge. Many fantasies and beliefs, purported and accepted as "truth", are derived because of this insecurity we have, of not knowing and needing to invent an answer. I have done quite a bit of work on that aspect as well hehe. You can find my first posts on such issues of Symbolism and Belief, and truth as well.

Some questions can't be answered, yet we can't accept that so we invent fantasies to fill the gaps in our comprehension. It's dangerous, not knowledge and make us fools.

Question anything, but don't fabricate answers as if they are "truth" when thy are only invented speculations of belief in imagination. ;)

There is an eternal battle between truth and falsity, and belief is the middle ground of discovery where many get lost.

Intuition and inspiration are capacities of consciousness which emerges from a brain. Consciousness is not demonstrable as an expression existing outside of a body. Existence comes first, then consciousness. Look into objectivism for the basics of a grounded philosophy.

heavy post! I had to read some parts twice to understand them :)
to answer your question I think you should play in the middle , for example this post was really heavy and kind of long(which of course was necessary for such topic). the reason behind success of light topic is that people actually finish it but when it is heavy and long , not everybody takes the the needed time and will drop it after reading couple of lines (it happens to me sometimes).
you have a lot of followers which like different topics, I say don't worry about it and post whatever topic you think is interesting enough to share.
I know I would read them all :)

hehe, :) thanks for the feedback