Here's a radical thought as we continue to consider the trappings of the Halo Effect. (I've dubbed the other side of the idealization coin as the Horn Effect to describe cognitive bias that results in the demoralization of others.)
People
don't like to think that thinking very well of a person
or
others thinking very well of them
as
something negative.
Consider
how this might work in light of how abusers treat victims when
they're trapped in 'middle management' in a high demand system. As
the other side of the coin to Lifton's description of the duality
required of doctors under the Third Reich (discussed in the previous
post), we might reverse the roles to see how the victim also uses
the healing-killing paradox by default.
While some may learn to use evil to accomplish good, they would not
accomplish much without those who accept that evil, accommodate it,
and support it.
It has been said that uber men need a scapegoat, and such wartime habits of objectification have also been a frequent subject on this blog. From the NeoConfederate to the Occidentalist, to exact the acts required during war, one must demoralize and dehumanize the enemy. I like how a Zionist author notes that scapegoats can't be truly annihilated, for there will be no balancing entity on which to lay ongoing blame. Such systems seek to “subjugate, humiliate, and then assimilate” that demoralized foe.
It has been said that uber men need a scapegoat, and such wartime habits of objectification have also been a frequent subject on this blog. From the NeoConfederate to the Occidentalist, to exact the acts required during war, one must demoralize and dehumanize the enemy. I like how a Zionist author notes that scapegoats can't be truly annihilated, for there will be no balancing entity on which to lay ongoing blame. Such systems seek to “subjugate, humiliate, and then assimilate” that demoralized foe.
If you
are the one who has been assimilated, you must come up with a
strategy to survive as the living scapegoat, finding your own bubble
of survival where you joyfully support those who exploit you.
Actually, those in 'middle management' like the Nazi doctor also
become their own brand of scapegoat, for there's always someone who
passes their own blame down to the middle man. It helps to keep them
just as entrenched in habit through emotional blackmail. From the
system which shares in common good emerges an obsequious cultural
hegemony – where everyone agrees to participate the machine
that has been created. Under other circumstances, most people
wouldn't do so, but over time and under the right and wrong
pressures, people forget that they can live in community without
coalescing with the domineering authoritarian rule and the rigid
caste system that they all sustain.
The
recent
post about the seeds of ideas of powerlessness as well as the
example of the woman who was on her journey out of the Christian
Patriarchy movement show the neglected consequences of what can
happen when someone has been told and believes wrongly that they are
the horned demon. They end up finding it quite easy to resort to
placing halos on others – and wishful
thinking by seeing everyone as virtuous and wonderful so that
their fragile world does not crumble. They already bear so much of a
burden of blame, and Pollyanna fantasies offer them some placation as
well as a powerful hope which allows them to hold up under so much
or too much reality.
The
fantasy sustains the surviving until they can find their way to a
better alternative. Some people chose to make the bargain to stay
where they are, as the devil you know is safer than the devil you
don't. And such speaks to the pervasive nature of pessimism when a
soul believes that everyone dons a halo, except for them.
Neglecting
the Destructive Nature of Halos
Part of
the reason why I don't write about idealizing others as destructive
concerns the nature of the recovery process. The timing of such a
message to someone in acute pain who has just realized that they've
been a willing participant in a cultic system that causes harm needs
to encouragement. They need to understand the way abusers take
advantage of those they harm and exploit so that they can recover and
develop a sense of wholeness. They were not the aggressors in the
process. Someone either knowingly or unknowingly fell into a trap
and used them through deception and subterfuge. Coping with this and
recovering from that harm takes a lot of time and self-love and
self-forgiveness.
I think
that there is an ever present awareness felt by everyone who exits an exploitative relationship that hero worship and halos do prove to be
destructive, even if they don't understand things in those terms. To
me, the outer layers of that realization create the pain one feels
when they start to realize that their group or their relationship is
not all that they'd thought. It's necessary at this point for the
wounded individual get to a safe place to work on finding a sense of
wholeness. Emotionally, you're like someone with a critical wound
that needs emergency care to stop the bleeding and time to allow for
healing. Those considerations take precedence. If you've ever had
abdominal surgery, especially as you become older, you develop a
great appreciation for just how long recovery can take.
It is so
easy to blame the aggressor who is well deserving of their own burden
of blame, but the passive side of abuse that seems like it's not so
bad. And morally – it's not. As a survival mechanism when a
person is depleted and has few or no resources, it's not. But once
those wounds have healed sufficiently, the problems of using too many
halos come to bear. They don't work in the wider world. Halos
become destructive to those who put them on everyone for they become
vulnerable to harm by those who don't deserve the trust that comes
along with them. Hurting oneself isn't as destructive as hurting
others (which always hurts the perpetrator in some way), but it is
destructive just the same. And the time will come when the person
who is far too free with bestowing halos in a Pollyanna view of the
world or even just a hobby horse part of it feels the pain of the
loss that it brings.
The halo
places the idealized person who never seeks such a pedestal in a hard
place which does them a disservice. They find that others expect the
impossible of them. Because they are inflated to something other
than who and what they are, they become vulnerable to unfair
standards and their own feelings which easily give way into
inferiority. They find that they are compared to some object of
fantasy, and while they may be thought of in a positive light, it
also reduces them to something else.
The
Other Reason for Neglect
Plain
and simply, this CRI is one of those that hits so close to home for
me, so I find it painful to acknowledge, especially so openly for so
many to read. Though like my post on playing poker, those who get to
know me quickly learn that I wish to think well of too many. (I'm
not giving away any secrets by writing about such things!) If I'm
not vigilant or when I'm a bit off center, it becomes my path of
least resistance. It was what I lived from the cradle, and I have my
bad days, though their number is no longer as great.
I
remember when I first read the analogy of emotional healing as that
of peeling an onion. In self-hatred which I assumed from those
horns that I believed that I'd been born with, I asked God to just
slice me down the middle to perfect me, avoid the longer process of
ongoing growth and healing. I was terrified, and because I felt like
annihilation was always just a breath and one mistake away, it seemed
preferable. Such fear is common and comes about from a
neurophysiologic process in Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD).
Soon
after I learned about thought reform and felt this way, I found
myself challenged by a quote from an unlikely source – Salinger's
The
Catcher in the Rye.
I read the book for the first time after seeing the quote printed on
the tag of a bag of herbal tea as it danced along the side of my Far
Side mug. (What an example of jumping from the sublime to the
ridiculous!) Upon
reading the book, I learned that Salinger quoted Wilhem
Stekel, “The
mark of the immature man is that he wants to die nobly for a cause,
while the mark of the mature man is that he wants to live humbly for
one.”
Christians treasure the virtue of sacrifice, but they most often come
as daily, small ones that few notice.
In Lifton's book, the Nazi Doctors, the first section of chapters bears the title of “Life Unworthy of Life.” That was the deeper lesson that I learned through those seeds of scandal planted in my young heart and from the shaping of my perception through PTSD. In a sense, this is the same message that my friend grappled with after growing up in a dysfunctional family to find herself living in a dysfunctional marriage. She sought out the religious patriarchy movement as some remedy, but patriarchy only amplified her sense of unworthiness. She had many choices before her when she left parents, yet she selected a mate that was not healthy for her, and she turned to a religion that was worse. She made bad choices, just like I did and still do along with the rest of the human race.
In Lifton's book, the Nazi Doctors, the first section of chapters bears the title of “Life Unworthy of Life.” That was the deeper lesson that I learned through those seeds of scandal planted in my young heart and from the shaping of my perception through PTSD. In a sense, this is the same message that my friend grappled with after growing up in a dysfunctional family to find herself living in a dysfunctional marriage. She sought out the religious patriarchy movement as some remedy, but patriarchy only amplified her sense of unworthiness. She had many choices before her when she left parents, yet she selected a mate that was not healthy for her, and she turned to a religion that was worse. She made bad choices, just like I did and still do along with the rest of the human race.
We who
survive are still alive, and when we heal, we can grow beyond those
things which we used to just survive. We can learn better ways to
live fully that honor ourselves, others, and ideals that mean so much
to us. (I'm still growing and learning and hope to continue so long
as I live.) Maybe we might even apprehend that abundant
life stuff that Jesus said that He
came to bring to the broken, wounded, and bruised.
For
Further Reading until the next post:
- One of the $3 Kindle books about Cognitive Bias at Amazon.com
- Judith Herman's Trauma and Recovery
- Bessel Van der Kolk's The Body Keeps Score
- Francine
Shapiro's Getting
Past Your Past
