Chapter 9 About Abuse
About Abuse https://pathfindere.blogspot.com/2020/04/about-abuse.html
I am thinking about abuse. If I told you my life story, you would find narrative evidence for abuse. There is certainly a distinction to be made that some lives are harder than other, and a hard life in particular is not necessarily abuse. It can be traumatic, but even trauma has filters that allow it to be processed and or accepted as actually trauma or not. There is no doubt, more people know about trauma today and so anything that disturbs them can be elevated to 'trauma,' but that doesn't necessarily make it so. As a counselor, when I hear narrative of others- as a counselor who is also, most the time, human, I think 'fuck- I got off easy.' Seriously, i hear some shit and I think my life was golden, comparatively.
Comparative analysis is a double edged sword. It's dangerous. Like the story of some rich folks going into a village and telling the kids they are poor. Before this knowledge, they played and had fun and life was what is was. Suddenly, someone's judgment changed their world. Comparatively, there were distinctions and judgments, and then counter judgments, and maybe even resentments- 'why do you have so much, when others go without.' That is a mindset we must all contend with at some point in evolution of psychology.
Comparing is human. To be afraid is human. To compete is human. To be kind, to be loving- also human.
Abuse tends to originate in abuse- it's generational. There is a reason why professionals explore generational abuse- they're looking for the patterns and chains so that we, society, the experiencers, the professionals, can find ways to end it. Hell, if there is any truth to epigenetics, then mental illnesses like 'PTSD' can be transmitted genetically- maybe the kids don't understand why they're more empathic, or why they're more shy, or why they jump at loud noises… Wouldn’t be interesting if those diagnosed with ADHD are actually just people that inherited PTSD from one of their parents or grandparents? Why don’t we study that? Seriously, even if it’s not genetics- almost every kid I had diagnosed was behaving normally within the context of their family of origin. The kids weren’t ill. The parents were pathological, but if crazy parent brings me a kid, I am not allowed diagnose parent. And, I am not allowed to say the kid is contextually responding to shit in their environment. 90 percent of the mental health of kids would be vastly improved if we treated the fucking parents.
Most people don’t want to hear they’re part of the problem. That’s human.
Children acting out are responding to something. Telling kids to not be shy, not be such a 'scaredy-cat,' well, probably the wrong tack if they're responding to internal cues that were instilled to increase chances of survival without trauma. Beating them in hopes of beating it out of them, well, if behavior is explained by epigenetics transmission of trauma like symptoms, you just gave the genes validation and enhanced the thing. Allow me to iterate, Epigenetics highlights that old wisdom: 'the sins of the father will last seven generations.'
More than one expert will tell you abuse is about power or control. What you may not know is that controlling others is a way of vicariously controlling one's own emotions. Person emotes, they act out thinking it will change the feeling. Many people who are fearful overcompensate with rigidity of expectations, and take a hands-on approach to control everything. It is usually not meant to be malevolent. Hypothetically, if you have one person in the family who is notorious for over reacting or being easily aggravated, the people, 'the system,' tend to find ways to appease them. If 'matriarch' is happy, everyone is happy. Sometimes that's a team approach. Sometimes that job is delegated to one person. The 'peacemaker' of the family. I didn't make that term up. That's a valid term for a role assignment from the perspective of family systems. In my situation, I made myself feel better by making sure the matriarch was in a good mood. I learned to control my moods by controlling the moods of others, which is unsustainable, and leads to blaming others for my bad mood. Now, that's control. It took years to get out of that, mostly by overreacting and cutting ties with people I was enmeshed with in an unhealthy way. It is one of the reasons why people with trauma have attachment disorders. Society is part of our family system. Society plays a regulatory force in terms mitigating family suffering. In the old days, it was the community, or the church. If you go back far enough, you will find the group, the nomadic lifestyle, where there were no secrets and community violence was likely squashed pretty quick. You either participate in the group by the rules, or you were sent packing. Abuse is maintained by our privileged sense of privacy. Now a days, the societal response has been to put people in jail. That's been huge in terms of stopping the immediate violence for that family, but it has not solved the societal problem. On the other hand, being too open leads to public abuse, where the society at large retaliates for real or perceived threats. (Society’s over-reaction and simplification could be an indication that more of us have generational abuse than we are willing to admit.) People accused, rightly or wrongly, for abuse become abused by people who would not consider themselves abusers. Abuse is built into our social environment. Take bullying, for example. Most of us have experienced it. Especially if you were the new kid. Some of that is just human testing each other's metal. A person who laughs off a threat usually becomes likeable, and no further bullying occurs. The people who demonstrate an exploitable weakness tend to see an escalation in bullying. Asking for help from teachers or others tends send the bullying underground. Zero tolerance hasn't ended abuse, it's just shifted the power to the authority, and made the majority of it that still occurs invisible until someone suicides and brings it to light- starting a whole new fight to try to figure out who failed.
The thing is, our society has been run with stick and carrot for too long. We have not invested in ways to ensure basic needs, to alleviate fear, and to reduce competition. If anything, we have increased competition. I am sure I am not the only one who sees sports as comparable to the gladiator days. Why else would we invent armor for athletes? How did Rome fair? We also live in a very unique time in history, affluence is abundant. Even in this abundance, there is a disproportionate distribution of wealth. I am not saying that is a good or bad thing. I am just saying, if you do the math, do the measurements, that's just reality. In some cases that might be good. Bill Gates, for example, he's intelligent, kind, and a philanthropist. I like Elon Musk, and think he is our best chance to get on Mars; I also think it was a bone headed move to put a Ferrari in space just because 'I can.' Would Gates run for President of the US? No. He likes working from the sidelines. Comparatively, if we looked at Trump, he has lots of episodes of success, and lots of failures, tends to come back on top- but there is no evidence of a philanthropist legacy-everything he has done is for self, maybe immediate family. And, you hear that and you may think I am slighting him- I am not. He is allowed to spend his money anyway he wishes. As all of us are. My track record with money has not been good. Then again, I am not competing with like of Gates or Trumps. Comparatively, I am no one. I would vote for Gates or Oprah.
I am in the trenches. I live in the trenches. I work in the trenches. Social work pays the bare minimum. The people I work with tend to be at poverty level. I have been told I picked the wrong field if I was looking for success. I made more working at the Airlines. That was hard work. Not mentally, just physically. Lifting, working in extreme weather. Most the time, the weather was great- and it I a joy to labor in the sun. I did that for 24 years. Half of that time, I was a cheer leader to motivate crews to do the same thing. Over time, I think a good many of the old timers will tell you, the younger they are on being hired, the less 'work ethic' they had. That was my experience. The younger my crew, the more cheering was needed. But I also boxed that idea in something I had heard before. My dad had a different work ethic and value than I, though he never called me out on it. My maternal grandfather had a different work ethic than my dad, and he did call us all out on it. I love my present employment. I have experienced shame for not trying to make more money. That's abuse, too, by the way.
Funny thing about mental health, it's likely to be the next big thing. After a pandemic, people are going to be suffering for a good time to come. Medical professional are likely to get hit hard with 'burn out' and vicariously induced PTSD, or second hand trauma. You can only work a person so hard so long before they drop. Not enough people in the medical field is actually a problem, and not a problem of accident. Some of it was designed. In order to keep a doctor's pay high, the schools would limit how many people were accepted into med school. That's a fact. Even before this crisis, we were already shy of doctors, so much so, Nurse Practitioners have been more and more utilized as providers because there are just not enough doctors. That, and companies don't want to pay exuberant fees to get a Doctor. Fewer Doctors want to work community mental health when they can open private practice and get paid substantially more- and pick and chose their clients. Many doctors don’t want to deal with the hard patients. It's not just because doctors wanted to maintain their superiority of income. Some of it is also because med school is expensive, and competition to get in is great. Medical care is too expansive, and so companies hire lesser to accommodate that. Some of the lack of doctors is also because fewer people want to deal with the unreasonable amount of paperwork and lawsuits.
Nothing happens in a vacuum.
Abuse doesn't happen in a vacuum. Abuse is a multifaceted, complex thing- from a sociological perspective, and is not just because there are 'bad' people. There are bad people. There are more people who are suffering and just reacting out of emotions and wrong thinking than there are bad people. People who suffer will tend to respond emotionally, before thinking. And this is before we add in addictions or mental health problems. Even educated people can behave badly when they are in an emotional state. And funny thing is, there is a good number of us that like to see people brought down to their worse- we like to provoke and prod until people break. We like to see people brought down, especially if it can be done publicly. You can have a good man who knows he has anger issues, is prone to violence, but who doesn't want to respond that way- he can be prodded until he reacts. Sometimes the first reaction is to get away, and in that, other person blocks escape, and what's left? Usually physical contact. The law is very clear, that's a jail-able offense.
The thing is, all people are one crisis away from a mental health label. Or a criminal one.
How many people have you propped up? How many people have you encouraged instead of belittled or blamed? Maybe you have. Something true about people who have dealt with abuse- they do try to be supportive and understanding, which exasperates the problem because people that are fearful or think they have no value feel insulted by any hint of sympathy. It increases anger. It increases anger because there is also an internal fight, the abuser torture themselves because they also carry the stigmas of society, and believe if they were better they would see the fruits of this in terms of financial prosperity. It is the lie that keeps abuse going. Many intelligent people fail to thrive in this economy. It’s not just about smarts.
What does an animal do if all avenues for escape are blocked? The same thing a human does. Statistically, a man is bigger, heavier, and has more muscle mass than female. Statistically, just shoving someone out of the way to give you space to flee could result in an injury. And if the home is the only place one has to be safe and you have to flee that, that's not just a female problem, that's a human problem.
Right now, fear is rampant. Much of the fear is actually due to valid concerns. Men are still expected to be providers, especially if you have kids. A man, with or without kids, is expected to at least be independent and capable of self-sufficiency. If he fails, he is socially disparaged to a greater degree than a female. Though women can be mandated to pay child support, and they can be punished if they fail, more men are in jail for failure to perform than females- in this particular arena. Again, this is only statistically true, not a qualitative stance on its correctness.
During the pandemic, people have been asked to stay at home. All normal social engagements that could lead to a reduction in stress have been cut off, blocked, and in some cases even leading to civil penalties, not limited to being fined. Sometimes, the only break a family got was when mom or dad went to work. Sometimes the only breaks kids got were when they went to school. Abuse is not about men or women, it's about humans and societies. We don't really want the state in our lives, because we get emotional about our families, good or bad, and so if CPS shows up, inevitably there is a fight. That fight is also a complex social discourse, where people have to fight the stigma of what it means by failing so badly that the state is stepping in, some of it is fear of being punished, because we don't look at mental health as opportunities to educate or fix; traditionally, we just jail folks. Jailing folks without any behavioral interventions or mental health interventions exasperates the problem. Seriously, what happens in jail if you’re labeled an abuser? If words gets out you beat a kid, or molested a kid, whether it’s true or not, you’re likely to get the shit beat out of you or killed. If you’re an abuser due to generational abuse, do suppose more beating will extinguish that thing in you, or reinforce it?
The numbers are not out yet, but I suspect there will have been an increase in family violence during this pandemic mitigation. There have been some news reports that suggest that is true. Men and women are fearful they will not be able to provide for their families. They are stressed. When the adults are stressed, the kids are stressed! Kids that are stressed act out. Parents who are stressed by kids that are stressed overcompensate. If the predictions are accurate, we may see a thirty percent increase in unemployment. Experts have been predicting that was coming even before the pandemic, due to modernization, improved robotics and AI, and the evidence for that is more than one country has been contemplating how to implement a Universal Basic Income. We, the US, are not there yet. We, in Texas, are not there yet. We shame people for using any social resource. I can personally assure you, no one on SSI, or SSDI, are living the high life. They are not competing with Gates or Trump or Rockefeller. People make judgments. Most the time, that internal judgment is "that's not fair he gets help but I get nothing." My first thought to this is 'fuck you, life is not fair.' My second thought is, oh, you're tired. You see others getting ahead when you are working hard just to maintain, or sliding backwards. People will talk. We judge. We will see someone use food- stamps, then watch them drive off in a BMW and report them to the state. Well, did you ever consider that car was donated to them? In Texas, you pretty much need a car, because public transit sucks.
There will be a growing class of men who will be unemployable. They will not get jobs. The coal jobs that went away, well, we're not getting those back because robots are doing it better and longer and don't need a vacation. This is not a bad thing. Men don't have to die from lung disease or suffer physical injuries due to back breaking, dangerous work. In terms of injury, sports players and coal miners both suffer. The difference is in salary. We say we like people who work hard, but they generally get paid the least in our society. The only reason sports players get paid the big bucks, is because their injuries are spectacles. People like to watch that. People like to watch reality TV; who would have thought, my family could have had their own television show. I could have been paid to be maladaptively dysfunctional.
Competition for the jobs that will become available will be steep. Salaries will decline. Frustration, anger will increase. We don't teach people coping skills. We don't really educate people. That is evident in the US from the fact that people were given time off to go home and isolate and they went to the beach. We don't teach people to be parents, one of the most valued thing we all have. Just the biological ability to reproduce is not a guarantee you will be a good parent. If that were true, there would no child abuse. The parent gene would have kicked in and there would be no child suffering. The children and the elders will suffer the most in the days to come. We may actually become baser. I offer Trump as evidence for that. It is my opinion he is more pedestrian than presidential. He blamed the Chinese for a virus. That's just moronic. Who in their right mind blames their neighbor for giving them the flu? He is pulling the funding from WHO, world health organization. If that's not abuse of power, I don't know what is. Never in the history of mankind has an organization like WHO been more necessary. People who blame others for their mistakes tend to get labeled. People who blames others, lie, fail to acknowledge their own lie or mistake, tend to get DSM V labels. The WHO is not responsible for a lack of leadership in our House. The games of politics has led to a lack of leadership in all arenas. Also, not 'completely' picking on Trump. He is facing something that is out of his league. He is being attacked from all corners. The sociopathic qualities that made him a reasonably successful business leader of some fame, and ultimately gave him the charisma to take office, won't get him out of a problem that requires intelligence, wisdom, education, and more than a cabinet of people that worship him. This was not an accidental crisis; it was created by a person who fired people he disagreed with and replaced them with stooges. This was created by blocking intelligent reporters from asking valid questions and replacing it with a questionable news agency. It was created by a shit storm of attacks by a society that should recognize he is fucking nuts, and if you push people that are nuts, they double-down on crazy! It was created by a history of politics that is steep in abuse- lies, flat out lies, misdirection, and lobbying, all of this is about money, not making society better. It's about a population of voters who were taught to vilify anyone who disagrees with them or their philosophy. That's not just tantamount to abuse- that's abuse. I am not blaming. We tend to mirror our leaders, and that's how people have been elected. They shut down conversations through ridiculing others.
If you and I go to the store with friends, and one friend shop lifts- all of us go to jail. Elected official and royalty were caught in criminating ways with Epistein, they get off? Probably literally. You or I write a bad check, we go to jail. Elected official writes a bad check, it was just oversight? You are I break the law, like rape someone, we go to jail. A police rapes a woman, he gets “abuse of power” and doesn’t go to jail and can keep working in his field. All of this is examples of abuse. It time for a real conversation about abuse. You don’t have to double down and write more laws- you just have to hold more people accountable to those laws. Maybe if police and elected officials were held to a higher standard, and given greater penalties that would stop their shit? Maybe not. But imposed disparity is abuse.
Economic disparity is abuse, if people are blocked from playing. Our abuse is generational. We have been encouraged by the wealthy to work harder based on a philosophic idea that by doing so- you, too, can rise. Millions of people came to America on a dream. Some succeeded. Statistically, the odds of you becoming successful in American is the equivalent to a sports enthusiast in high school getting called to the major leagues. Seriously, focus on school, not sports. There is evidence that as education goes up, abuse trends down. Not zero. There is a multiplicity here. As addictions go up, abuse trends up. You can be educated and have addiction. There is correlation between poverty and abuse. There is a correlation between poverty and community violence. Poverty is not about being 'bad.' Too many people suggest a lack of productivity means you are less than, mentally, physically, spiritually. If you have that book 'the Secret' on your shelf, throw it the fuck out. You're not less than because you failed to embody a particularly artificial moralistic attribute. In fact, statistically, you are more likely to become wealthy if you're a sociopath! People who actually give a fuck don't step on others or destroy the environment leaving that problem for the descendants of this generation to fix.
Our economic is system is no longer fair; it may never have been fair. Iteration, I offer a simple model to demonstrate this: play monopoly. At some point in the game, things trend well for one, regardless of ability- there is some luck involve, and no matter happens from that point forwards, people drop out of the game, and ultimately, there can be only one. That game is not the game we won't to play in real life. For whatever the past was, it got us here. That's not a bad thing- if we use it to improve our clarity of insight. We are here. There is never been a better time to implement change than now. If we delay, this moment was a gift of opportunity. Whatever future now you're in, that will become the now that is best for change. I hope this is rock bottom for our nation. Probably not. I hope this rock bottom for the world. Probably not. Things could get worse.
We need a Universal Basic Income. People need a safety net so that people can at least meet basic needs and recover- without fear it will be terminated if they fail to recover- without fear of stereotypes. No one can recover from zero, or negative. A hand out on the street may give a person food, but not a recoverable injection to get back in the game. Education needs to be free. Society either pays for the education, or pays for the jails. America has the greatest number of incarcerated people in the world, which is absurd for a country that brags about being the freest nation in the world. We have more incarcerated people than China. So, what does that mean? More bad people in America? No, what that means is we're neglecting the basic needs of a good portion of America, and you're about to see that get worse. The fact we haven't had riots in this country yet, that's amazing. The run on toilet paper- well, riots may be next.
Unfairness is by definition abuse. It leads to more abuse. You may be thinking, 'life is not fair, grow the fuck up, John.' I concur. That is actually something an adult can internalize. When kids say it's unfair, they tend to react, or act out, if a sense of fairness is not moderated or reasonably explained. If you assume for the moment that the average person's reading level is seventh grade, then telling the average person 'life is not fair,' is likely not going to work in your favor. In the absence of employment, telling a person to work harder is likely to get you clobbered. Yeah, that's abuse. But that's generational. You're not going to shut this conversation down by taking the stereotypical parent's response and stating, 'life is unfair.' Social life is what we make it.
The nature of work has changed. The nature of compensation has changed. Our ways of interacting, they haven’t changed- but they could. We know so much more about mental health and abuse than we ever did before. This is fixable. We could end it. And we all want to, so- why are we not getting any traction in this arena?