We are living out a big mandate/requirement/expectation/permission slip to outsource morality to the government and associated institutions. It doesn't work, either for the institutions or for the individuals. All it does is corrupt the one and turn the other into a crowd of useful idiots where genuinely thoughtful and active citizenship ought to be. We are reaping the rewards of this right now and a great many of us are not even capable of recognizing it because of how far it's gone..
I think it can also have to do with having experiences of being able to distinguish oneself, especially where consequence occurs. I actually think everyone pretty likely has had these experiences because the inescapability of social pressure is pretty much part of human life. Some people might forget to remember the times they, say, had an experience with a sibling, a neighborhood kid, a classmate, wherein they acted in ways that social pressure would not have dictated. Because I'm the natural works there are often multiple, and sometimes contradictory, social pressures at play, it is a matter of memory, reflection, and framing, to have an understanding for one's own self that "you are a 35% kind of person." It is a major boost to realize that you are, rather than that you are not.
It is a matter of framing the experience, because you could just add easily do a mental search and come up with all of the times you complied, even with misgivings. So, in ones own development, it is a dynamic then of seeing that you have done and do exercise your agency, and also, that you have the capacity to distinguish when your agency is active in this way. Nobody refuses to comply in every instance, so there is a lot of grey.
Back to the fertile grounds to be found in likely every single person. Who, really, lives as an authoritative automation? If there is a there there where being a person with a soul is concerned, then existence in full compliance is just not possible. It's there. Eliciting it is really an exciting (to me) engagement!
Back to likely places to dig. When I think of my family members who seemed all in on masks and vaccines, the variance is still there. For example, the family member who gets every COVID shot, but no more the flu one because getting it always provokes what feels like a flu. Or the long string of medical mistakes that are known to the individual or family. The experience of having been unsafe under the safest authority around is very very common. And naturally, these experiences spark a response that it is only a small step to be able to recognize for oneself that minimally agency of thought was an action. And, because memory is malleable, it is sufficient to return to the memory and discover that aspect of the experience to them mark that agency as a central and objective piece of the experience.
We are living out a big mandate/requirement/expectation/permission slip to outsource morality to the government and associated institutions. It doesn't work, either for the institutions or for the individuals. All it does is corrupt the one and turn the other into a crowd of useful idiots where genuinely thoughtful and active citizenship ought to be. We are reaping the rewards of this right now and a great many of us are not even capable of recognizing it because of how far it's gone..
No argument here.
On the upside, it’s like in therapy, now that we know the problem we can do something about it.
Agree! That is the project of my substack, and the nonprofit of which it is apart. Here's hoping we can get something done before it's too late.
Wow, what an excellent piece!
https://unbekoming.substack.com/p/the-anthropological-reversibility
https://indepnews.org/en/academic-dissent-at-universite-laval-during-covid/
Also thanks 😊
The past conditions created much more sociopathic traits.
One key influence was leaded gas which affects IQ and increases violent tendencies.
Also, many who did the experiment knew it was fake so they just went along with it.
More info here:
https://robc137.substack.com/p/the-milgram-experiment-and-how-we
I think it can also have to do with having experiences of being able to distinguish oneself, especially where consequence occurs. I actually think everyone pretty likely has had these experiences because the inescapability of social pressure is pretty much part of human life. Some people might forget to remember the times they, say, had an experience with a sibling, a neighborhood kid, a classmate, wherein they acted in ways that social pressure would not have dictated. Because I'm the natural works there are often multiple, and sometimes contradictory, social pressures at play, it is a matter of memory, reflection, and framing, to have an understanding for one's own self that "you are a 35% kind of person." It is a major boost to realize that you are, rather than that you are not.
It is a matter of framing the experience, because you could just add easily do a mental search and come up with all of the times you complied, even with misgivings. So, in ones own development, it is a dynamic then of seeing that you have done and do exercise your agency, and also, that you have the capacity to distinguish when your agency is active in this way. Nobody refuses to comply in every instance, so there is a lot of grey.
Back to the fertile grounds to be found in likely every single person. Who, really, lives as an authoritative automation? If there is a there there where being a person with a soul is concerned, then existence in full compliance is just not possible. It's there. Eliciting it is really an exciting (to me) engagement!
Back to likely places to dig. When I think of my family members who seemed all in on masks and vaccines, the variance is still there. For example, the family member who gets every COVID shot, but no more the flu one because getting it always provokes what feels like a flu. Or the long string of medical mistakes that are known to the individual or family. The experience of having been unsafe under the safest authority around is very very common. And naturally, these experiences spark a response that it is only a small step to be able to recognize for oneself that minimally agency of thought was an action. And, because memory is malleable, it is sufficient to return to the memory and discover that aspect of the experience to them mark that agency as a central and objective piece of the experience.