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The bully-victim dynamic has gotten out of hand. It was always bad but now it’s worse because this dynamic is monetized and people are paid well for playing these roles.
We have professional bullies and professional victims, and here’s the plot twist: they frequently trade places and the dynamic starts all over again.
The dynamic is about how well you can hurt and dominate another person who has nothing to do with you but has become a target through projection. And if bullies are really insecure, they rally others to jump on the projection and persecution bandwagon.
On the other side, bullying is how well you can phrase your complaints and manipulate people’s empathy. And if enough empathy isn’t forthcoming, then the victims and the supporters lash out with their form of projection and rally others to jump on the cancellation bandwagon.
And then we enter societal and cultural stagnation, imprisoned by a tension that never seems to end because we won’t look at the root causes in family dynamics and history and overcome these problems together.
There is in people’s minds a taboo against looking at family dynamics. The internalized parents can be so harsh, so punitive, that the adult becomes trapped in the childhood role and can’t break out to question, evaluate, and work toward a new perspective. Instead, the defense mechanisms kick in and can descend to destructive levels, whether against the self or against a scapegoat.
In other words, people can’t and won’t grow up. Society coasts, then stagnates, with a population of eternal adolescents. Innovation and culture grind to a halt because minds are trapped in a toxic dynamic. It’s tragic.
This endless loop of suffering is time consuming and expensive, the price we pay for not looking within and doing the work.
It’s time to rise above partisanship to see how we played into this dynamic and understanding we must take some measure of responsibility of pulling our collective head out of our collective ass.
There’s got to be a better way of going about things.
We have professional bullies and professional victims, and here’s the plot twist: they frequently trade places and the dynamic starts all over again.
The dynamic is about how well you can hurt and dominate another person who has nothing to do with you but has become a target through projection. And if bullies are really insecure, they rally others to jump on the projection and persecution bandwagon.
On the other side, bullying is how well you can phrase your complaints and manipulate people’s empathy. And if enough empathy isn’t forthcoming, then the victims and the supporters lash out with their form of projection and rally others to jump on the cancellation bandwagon.
And then we enter societal and cultural stagnation, imprisoned by a tension that never seems to end because we won’t look at the root causes in family dynamics and history and overcome these problems together.
There is in people’s minds a taboo against looking at family dynamics. The internalized parents can be so harsh, so punitive, that the adult becomes trapped in the childhood role and can’t break out to question, evaluate, and work toward a new perspective. Instead, the defense mechanisms kick in and can descend to destructive levels, whether against the self or against a scapegoat.
In other words, people can’t and won’t grow up. Society coasts, then stagnates, with a population of eternal adolescents. Innovation and culture grind to a halt because minds are trapped in a toxic dynamic. It’s tragic.
This endless loop of suffering is time consuming and expensive, the price we pay for not looking within and doing the work.
It’s time to rise above partisanship to see how we played into this dynamic and understanding we must take some measure of responsibility of pulling our collective head out of our collective ass.
There’s got to be a better way of going about things.
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