How was your empathy weaponized today?
Current events have me seeing our relationship with reality through the lens of attachment styles (a.k.a. this Pluto return is really bringing out the armchair psychiatrist in me ☕️).
I imagine that there's a repeated emotional abuse via narrative hypnosis going on, and it is designed to drive us to the ends of the HYSTERICAL <---> NUMB spectrum, making space where we ask questions like "how did we get here?" and "is there more than one explanation?" uninhabitable.
I'm seeing lots of "how to cope" advice. As though any of this is natural. As though ongoing conflicts repackaged as overnight emergencies that require ALL! your emotional energy NOW! is something we should expect and learn to cope with. As though human suffering isn't manufactured in large part by an incessant need for control of the many by the few. How to cope is to discover how to be uncontrollable.
That, and learning how to be ok with feeling wrong.
How does a tendency to auto-identify with victims come from a denial of the abuser/abused person within? How have I been wrong in the past and and instead of accepting that as part of my flawed self, I reject it through the glorification of victimhood? How am I vindicating my own inner child whose needs were not met by attaching to another's victimization, imagining that I can alleviate it for us all? This wrongness felt as abuser/abused is always looking for the nearest exit, and these glowing screens will happily provide the illuminated pathway. But this exit just keeps leading to yet another darkened room. Wait - are we in a bad movie or a plane crash?
I feel my empathy being weaponized when anxious attachment to current events is normalized/encouraged and an avoidant or even secure response demonized (i.e. if you're not outraged you're not paying attention). Meanwhile, secure attachment traits such as:
+ appropriate boundaries
+ confidence
+ low anxiety
+ optimism
+ clarity about needs and wants
+ mutual respect
+ little fear of intimacy or abandonment
are nowhere to be found in public life.
Who profits when I can take in the news of the day, then put my phone down and go for a walk? Not the horrific industrial complex that profits from my weaponized empathy. I’m grateful I follow people with diverse perspectives, from black liberation socialists to libertarian homeschoolers to conservatives to anarchist witches to energy healers, who have come to similar conclusions.