The Empire of the Most Easily Triggered

Photo by ruslanshug

In How to Be Free I argue that neurosis is the norm for humans. By this I mean that we have an insecurity about our own worth which makes us especially prone to negative emotions. As a result our ego - our conscious thinking self - is preoccupied with self-defence - we are ego-embattled. Our rigidly defensive personality can be conceived of as our character armour (to take a concept from the psychiatrist Wilhelm Reich). It is a protection against threats from without - the criticism of others - and within - any potentially disorienting emotion, such as fear, anger or grief, or impulse, such as sexual lust, which we keep repressed.

The more embattled the individual, the more important it is to maintain strict control over their own psychology, and this may be paralleled with an impulse to control the social world around them. So I expressed the view in my book that this need might explain oppressive rule, with those who are most insecure about their own worth feeling the need to rise to the top of the hierarchy and impose discipline on the masses. That may be a bit over-simplistic, as competent leadership can also bring people to the top of a hierarchy. Not all leaders are tyrants. It may, however, go some way to explaining the motivation behind tyranny. After all, the life of a tyrant can be a harsh and unpleasant one, and so a fear-based need may explain the surrendering of opportunities for care-free enjoyment.

At the moment we are faced with a different kind of authoritarianism - the decentralised authoritarianism which arises from Critical Social Justice Theory and its mob-enforced political correctness. It is no coincidence that the tertiary institutions where this new dogma was born also popularised the “safe space” and the “trigger warning”. Insecurity is the driving force behind this form of authoritarianism as well.

In some ways this could be seen as a reverse of the phenomena which Critical Social Justice Theory is ostensibly aimed at addressing.

While racism may have originated in tribal conflicts and sexism in friction resulting from the division of labour between nurturers and group protectors, it becomes ever more severe through a process of negative feedback as individuals become more and more insecure. These responses rigidified into armouring. The insecure individual dehumanises, silences and attacks those he has already exploited or mistreated in some way, because they are to him the outer mirror of that quiet voice inside which tells him he is doing wrong. Of course there can be other aspects of the phenomena arising from something like repressed sexuality which causes him to see members of another race as sexually dangerous or to see women’s sexuality as a threat.

The insecurity which arises from Critical Social Justice Theory is different, but it can lead to a similar kind of fear-based oppression.

What we need to be aware of is the inability to tolerate difference, in this case difference of opinion. The secure individual may view another individual’s difference of opinion on some key question as a challenge, but they will not interpret it as a personal attack.

I think what has happened with Critical Social Justice Theory is that it provides a false explanatory structure for the world. A sound explanatory structure will have a healing effect on the traumatic wounds an individual may be carrying. It will make the individual more courageous and less resentful. It will give them a way of understanding any bad treatment they have experience in life as something which doesn’t reflect badly on them as an individual and direct them toward a positive strategy to addressing the injustices they find in the world around them now. It will make them more tolerant of differing opinions and better able to engage in productive discourse with those who hold them.

But Critical Social Justice Theory is a poor explanatory structure which feeds on the wounds of the traumatised individual, encouraging feelings of resentment and directing them against anything, such as reason and evidence, which might undermine that explanatory structure. It encourages confirmation bias.

Just as racists and sexists are easily triggered, and thus have tried to maintain control over society in order to keep their fears or guilts at bay, so those who have a very poor explanatory structure as their only strategy to live with whatever wounds they are carrying - and the anxiety which arises from them - will end up trying to exercise control over any social manifestation of the realities this explanatory structure is in denial of.

I keep coming back to Biblical concepts, even though I’m not a believer in the supernatural.

To me the Kingdom of Heaven is the society which would arise if our insecurity about our own worth were healed. It is the absence of the control impulse. Love is open, honest, spontaneous and generous communication. It is a process which brings us together naturally when we give up trying to control each other. Reason and evidence provide the grounding for this as they are the way in which we discover our collective reality.

Critical Social Justice Theory is an attack on love and reason. Thus I identify it with the Anti-Christ, that which falsely claims to be solving the world’s problems but actually is anti-The Kingdom of God.

We are told, in the Bible, that there will be a final conflict before the arrival of the Kingdom of God, that there will be a Judgement Day and many will be thrown into The Lake of Fire.

If you are caught up in a false explanatory structure which is your strategy for holding all your psychological pain at bay and you are telling yourself that you are the good guy fighting for a better world, it is going to be very painful to be confronted with the truth that you are on the side of destruction and have been deceived. All the pain rushes back in and with no defence. Perhaps that is what is meant by being thrown into The Lake of Fire.

But if that is true, the good news is that it isn’t eternal. The Kingdom of Heaven still lies on the other side of that agony, because love is the sea that refuses no river. All that is needed is to stop fighting against it.

The Anti-Christ May Come As a Social Justice Warrior

Drawing by vladischern

I’ve reached a crossroads where I realise that I need to take a stand and make my position clear.

I was telling a Christian friend yesterday that I’ve come to the conclusion that predictions of the rise of an “Anti-Christ” in the Bible refer to the domination of the world by a particular dogmatic cluster which has been described by various people as “critical theory”, “identity politics”, “postmodern Marxism” or “cultural Marxism”. The latter two terms may not be completely accurate, but what matters is what is being pointed to by them, not how accurate the name is.

There are other people who are much better than me at dissecting and critiquing these ideas. I recommend Jordan Peterson or Bret Weinstein.

The reason I have come to identify these belief systems with the figure of the Anti-Christ is that they promise what Jesus promised - an end to the injustices of the world - but it is not what they deliver.

For me, as an unbeliever, Jesus represents a principle of truth, love, non-judgement, forgiveness and generosity. Love - open, honest, spontaneous and generous communication - is the answer. But I believe that the dogma of identity politics, which has spread through our culture, brings lies, hatred, judgement, vindictiveness and selfishness, all the time claiming to fight those things.

When ye therefore shall see the abomination of desolation, spoken of by Daniel the prophet, stand in the holy place, (whoso readeth, let him understand:)

Then let them which be in Judaea flee into the mountains:

Let him which is on the housetop not come down to take any thing out of his house:

Neither let him which is in the field return back to take his clothes.

And woe unto them that are with child, and to them that give suck in those days!

But pray ye that your flight be not in the winter, neither on the sabbath day:

For then shall be great tribulation, such as was not since the beginning of the world to this time, no, nor ever shall be.

And except those days should be shortened, there should no flesh be saved: but for the elect's sake those days shall be shortened.

Matthew 15-22

The “abomination of desolation” refers to offerings give to a false God. To me the significance of this expression is that we are coming to a time when “social justice” replaces love as our highest good. Justice is important, but, by its very nature, it can only be achieved by force and control. Love, the attitude which allows us to treat all our fellows as equal embodiments of the divine, leads us toward healing and a better world for all naturally.

The rise of the “Black Lives Matter” movement has made it all so clear. The cat is out of the bag. We have a movement which claims to be about saving black lives, but it calls for the defunding of the police. Since far more black lives are lost to violent crime than to police brutality, this means it is promising one thing and delivering the opposite. If you point this out you may be labelled a racist. This thought virus is powerful and deadly. The sensible approach to reducing police brutality would be to spend far more money on the police so that they can spend more time training and so that enough police can be employed that it is very easy to fire any police officer the first time they show signs of racism or a propensity to use excessive force. No matter how dissatisfied anyone is with the police, they should be able to realise that any power vacuum created by a reduction in the effectiveness of the police will be filled by violent criminals.

When I went onto Twitter today I found someone who appreciates my writing saying : “If you've ever heard me say that heteronormativity is a product of patriarchy, this is where I got the information from. The book is called "How to Be Free" by Joe Blow.” The following pages of my book were attached to illustrate this.

So here is my crisis. What do I do when I find my writing being associated with that which I identify as the Anti-Christ?

I don’t blame anyone for making this connection. I talk about some of the same things that are talked about in critical theory. I talk about the psychological basis for patriarchy and fear of homosexual desire. But I don’t support calls to “smash the patriarchy” as those in the grip of identity politics sometimes do. I talk of patriarchy mainly in the past tense, because our society no longer excludes women from positions of power.

What about “heteronormativity”? It is defined as “the belief that heterosexuality, predicated on the gender binary, is the norm or default sexual orientation. It assumes that sexual and marital relations are most fitting between people of opposite sex.”

I don’t really disagree with that. Gender is binary. Biologically there is male and female. There are psychological characteristics which we identify as masculine or feminine. There isn’t some third gender with which we identify characteristics. Of course there are men who exhibit more feminine characteristics and women who exhibit more masculine characteristics, and there some people who have about an even mix. It is like colour. There are only three primary colours. All the other colours are mixtures of those. All gender identities are mixtures of the masculine and the feminine. And heterosexuality is the statistical norm, and heterosexual families are the organisation best suited to producing healthy children - all other things being equal.

None of that is to say that we should idealistically insist on that which may be the statistical norm. There are many ways of doing things effectively in the world.

In my book I posit that bisexuality is the underlying form of sexuality. I arrived at this conclusion as a result of what I learned about our close primate relatives - the bonobos - who engage in erotic exchanges irrespective of gender. Also because we have the biological capacity to share erotic physical pleasure with others irrespective of gender. And because many heterosexuals are uncomfortable with homosexuality, which implies, to me, that there is a contrary desire for it buried beneath the public face. All of this is just speculation on my part.

Another incident which has focused this problem in my mind has been the treatment of J. K. Rowling over her discussion of transsexuality. I read her blog post on the topic, which I found to be remarkably sensible, well-informed, open-minded and compassionate. Yet, she has been roundly attacked. This tells me that we are at a very dark time. To speak the truth in a way which challenges this pervasive dogma is dangerous, but necessary.

Some may think me paranoid to use concepts like thought virus or even demonic possession to depict what is happening, but I think it helps to visualise how it works - the way that it has a life of its own, which operates through people without them being aware of what is happening to them.

I’ve said that idealism is the root of all evil and is a thought virus. Identity politics (lets stick with that term) is the most dangerous form of idealism which has ever existed, because it has spread most broadly to the global community. Religious groups have often done terrible things because of an idealistic insistence on imposing their dogma on others. And communists and fascists have slaughtered millions as a result of their idealistic dogma. If the current lie can be exposed in time, it may not come to that. But I have no doubt that, if not exposed as the lie that it is, this current dogma will lead to even worse horrors and, in fact, the end the human race.

So, there, I’ve explained where I stand. If anyone wants to quote my writings as a way of supporting this dogma, they are welcome to. That is their business, not mine. From the very beginning I’ve renounced what I call “the control strategy”. I take no ownership of my ideas. They are offered to be used as the person receiving them sees fit. To my mind this is how I differentiate myself from what I call “the Anti-Christ”. You will see those who are in “his” thrall trying to control others expression through intimidation or censorship.

I am, and have always been, on the side of freedom and love.

"Ye shall know them by their fruits." Matthew 7:16

The Economy of Love

Gentoo penguin colony on the rocks and glacier in the background at Neco Bay, Antarctica
- Photograph by Vadim Nefedov

Love is a mode of communication characterised by openness, honesty, spontaneity and generosity. It is also the bonds and emotions which accompany such a mode of being with others. The underlying message which it conveys is one of unconditional acceptance.

Love is the default relationship mode for humans. This may be hard to believe when we look around us at all the evidence of selfishness, prejudice and malevolence. We might believe that love is a precariously artificial thing which we only achieve by transcending our more basic nature, but that is not the case.

Love is what occurs when there are no barriers to it. If it is the exception it is simply because there are many barriers which can impede it. Think about the Antarctic. All you see is ice. Now that ice rests on rock. For us to see that rock, the ice would need to melt, but the fact that the ice is what we see doesn't mean that the rock is not the more basic and pre-existing phenomena.

Love is what happens between us when we feel truly safe. Not just safe physically, but secure in ourselves psychologically. It happens because if feels pleasurable.

It is a very basic principle that organisms, when all else is equal, open up to what is pleasurable to them and withdraw from what threatens them with pain or injury. If our existence is threatened then our attention may shrink back to ourselves and focus on meeting the challenge or we may reach out specifically to someone who can help us to meet the challenge. This is a conditional exchange. Our connection with them is dependent on their ability to help us to meet that current challenge.

For me the pleasure principle argues against the idea that we are essentially competitive. Where competition arises it is a temporary barrier to love. If we lived in a village during a time of food shortage, then our hunger might drive us to fight over what food is available. But as long as there was enough food, our tendency would be to return to a loving mode of relationship, because it feels most pleasurable.

What I'm deliberately ignoring here is the barrier to love provided by chronic emotional disturbance. This is the Antarctic ice which keeps the rock of love in us buried. If we are lucky, in our intimate relationships, we are able to thaw out enough to uncover it for a while.

The essence of this chronic emotional disturbance is compromised self-acceptance. What undermines our self-acceptance can be varied - suffering abuse at the hands of others, being heavily exposed to unreachable ideals of one kind or another which make us feel that we are unacceptable by comparison, being harshly judged by others, feelings of guilt about some of our actions, etc.

The message of love is unconditional acceptance and its expression requires that, for the moment, we feel unconditionally accepting of ourselves. To be focused on some aspect of ourselves which we feel to be a flaw is to not be fully focused on the other person. In love we forget about ourselves even as we give full expression to our essence.

This chronic emotional disturbance is really love deprivation. But it is important to remember that such deprivation does not necessarily lie in not being shown love by others. We need to be able to received love, and this is where the barrier tends to lie. Love, as I've said, is a mode of communication, and communication is a two way process.

To receive love we have to feel safe. We have to be able to open up to it. Our compromised self-acceptance leaves us feeling insecure and defensive, and for this reason we develop character armour - a rigid structure of self-perception and mode of interacting with the world. The aim of the character armour is to provide protection from external threats - to feel safe we need a practiced form of response - and from internal threats - a way to bottle up any feelings of hostility or despair.

The character armour is a barrier to giving or receiving love, because it stops us from being open and spontaneous. How would we do trying to make love with a suit of armour on? Our flesh would not touch and our movement would not be sinuous. Our bodies could not meld into one. The same is true psychologically. Love is a spontaneous dance. It can't be rehearsed.

Compromised self-acceptance takes either a passive or an active form.

Depression and other forms of mental illness are examples of mostly passive compromised self-acceptance. The message has been communicated to us - either directly by one or more others or more pervasively by some aspect of the culture - that we are not good enough. We passively take that message to heart. We may battle with it, but the battle is mostly internal.

What happens with the active form of compromised self-acceptance is that we set out to defend ourselves against the message that we are not good enough, or, in the extreme, to get revenge for having been subjected to it.

We may become obsessed with "proving" something about ourselves, by seeking status or material extravagance or something like that. We are thinking about what we do and what we have says about us. We are self-centred.

When severe insecurity about self worth combines with exposure to idealistic moral "shoulds", we may be so desperately cornered that we feel compelled toward some kind of revenge for our state. The "shoulds" require us to behave lovingly, but our severely compromised self-acceptance makes this impossible. If we were to take onboard the "shoulds" then they would destroy what is left of our self acceptance, leaving us suicidal. Hence the savagery with which we may attack those "shoulds" or anyone or anything our mind associates with them.

Photograph by Vadim Guzhva

This is the origin of malevolence in all its forms. Malevolence is clearly one of the major barriers to love.

Let's look at an example. Our self-acceptance has been undermined to such a degree that we feel the need to be comforted by sameness in those around us. People of a different race or culture leave us feeling insecure, because they give us a sense of uncertainty about whether they accept us. But then someone criticises us as being racist. The ideal is that we should feel about and behave towards others the same way irrespective of race or culture. This may set up a negative feedback loop. Our sense of insecurity in the presence of "the other" is grounded in our fear that we are not good enough. It leads to behaviour which causes us to be judged not good enough. Thus the insecurity is increased. The presence of "the other" becomes, in itself, a condemnation, which, if we are to keep from total loss of self-acceptance, must be resisted. This can lead to violently hostile feelings toward "the other", ironically generated by the insistence that we feel and act benevolently toward them.

The ways in which hostility between groups and individuals in our society, and all the other barriers to love, are generated are multifarious, but the underlying principles of the process are simple. Self-acceptance is undermined by mistreatment by others and exposure to unreachable ideals. Undermined self-acceptance makes us more likely to mistreat others. The only thing which can solve the problem is the cultivation of self-acceptance. The message of acceptance from others can help in this, but only if we are able to receive that message, something that our character armour impedes. Simply showing love to those who have hostile feelings towards us may actually increase those hostile feelings if they see our loving behaviour as a criticism of their unloving behaviour.

My aim here is not to directly suggest strategies for removing the barriers to love, but to provide a simple articulation of the phenomena which may be helpful in arriving at those strategies.

We need to understand that love is the default and that the barriers to it are outgrowths of compromised self-acceptance. The message which needs to be communicated is one of unconditional acceptance, not of behaviour but of the individual who betrays that behaviour, because hostile behaviour is, ultimately, a defiant response to what the individual experiences as an unjust withholding of that acceptance. It is acceptance that we are not unworthy because we are scared or angry that heals. When we act on our fear or anger in a way which harms others, the likelihood of our receiving that acceptance from others or ourself recedes. Thus the means for redemption and reconciliation where the damage has already been done are the Holy Grail we must seek.

Photograph by rawpixel

"Thou Must" vs. "Fuck That!"

Copyright: kornilov14 / 123RF Stock Photo

I’ve always experienced a tension within me between feelings of frustration and the imperative to “do the right thing”. When the frustration dies down, “doing the right thing” comes naturally. But when it builds up, there is a part of me that doesn’t want to “do the right thing”. To do so at such times requires discipline. But it is right. This I don’t question.

When I feel at peace and full of generosity, I just want to be kind and helpful. But at other times, reason and conscience act like an electrified fence to keep frustration from bursting through. And just as an electric fence is hardly likely to truly pacify the herd, but rather make them feel resentful and oppressed, so the feelings of frustration can be exacerbated by the pressure to “do the right thing”, even when it would come naturally in a peaceful state of psychological freedom.

We are surrounded by messages of what not to say about people. How are we supposed to referred to the intellectually disabled? What kinds of things should a man say to a woman, and what should he not? What are we to call people of particular races? How are we supposed to respond to people’s religious beliefs, especially if they seems silly to us or we feel that they are hurtful to others? What about personal appearance? What if someone is really obese? What if we find someone physically repulsive?

There is no doubt that being polite and tolerant is the right thing. But when the pressure builds there is a little man inside me that wants to say the cruellest thing possible. He’s fed up with “doing the right thing.”

There is no problem when I feel at peace, and that is most of the time these days, but when I feel this contrary spirit well up in me and yet I continue to “do the right thing", I feel like a liar and a hypocrite, because I’m putting on a false, socially-acceptable front. This in spite of the fact that nothing would be achieved, and much would be lost, by not doing so.

And it seems as if this contrary spirit can be conjured up where it didn’t exist by the preaching of the well-meaning. Tell me I mustn’t be racist, sexist, homophobic, or whatever and I want to use terms like “nigger”, “slut” or “faggot”. Because “doing the right thing” feels like oppression when you are implicitly threatened with punishment if you don’t do it.

I think this is why offensive humour plays such a role in our culture. We’ll “do the right thing” as long as we can let off steam by watching Borat do everything we know we mustn’t.

At the moment, I think this contrary spirit is contributing to the popularity of Donald Trump. He’s a real-life Borat. The only problem is that he is a politician who wants to lead one of the most powerful nations on the planet. I love Borat, but I wouldn’t vote for him. To many Trump no doubt feels “honest” for the same reason that I feel like a “liar” when I don’t allow myself to express the offensive things that are going on in my head.

Photo from Reuters

Now I’m not suggesting that we stop being polite and respectful, or that we just give up hope of the Trumps of the world ever finding that inner peace that would enable them to be polite and respectful themselves. But I do think we need to try to come to a better understanding of the relationship between that part of us which says “thou must” and the part that says “fuck that”.

I use my own inner life as a way to try to understand the world around me. If I find that the “fuck that” feelings are increased when the “thou must” comes on strong, is it not possible that the way we push for greater tolerance in the world may not be generating more intolerance? The “fuck you” may be offensive, but it is also defensive. It is a response to what feels like oppression. And if it feels like oppression then it is oppression. The problem is that we can’t see internal psychological oppression. Haven’t we all felt it though at some time, in some way. That point where there is just too much exploding in your head and someone tells you you shouldn’t be unkind and you just want to punch their face in.

There are no easy answers, but if we want to avoid social disintegration - if we want to achieve a society of sustainable equality and respect - if we want to be able to work together to solve the problems which face us - there is a commodity we really need to make our number one priority and that is what I would call “psychological space”. When we feel pressured to “do the right thing” it makes us want to do the opposite. This is especially true of those who do the wrong thing most of the time. Instead of concentrating on arguing about who are the good guys and who are the bad guys, it would be more useful to view every human being as a resource the efficient functioning of which is in the interests of us all.

We could think of ourselves as cars. The people who do the wrong thing are like cars which are very short of petrol. We try to get them to go down the road. We stand in front of them giving them a lecture on which road to take. If they don’t move we get behind them and we try to push them. We get frustrated and we kick them. But the reason they don’t do what a car is supposed to do is because they are all out of gas. We tell someone off for their bigotry or selfishness or violence, but if they don’t have the psychological room needed to do any better, then we are wasting our effort.

When we confront the terrible conflicts raging through the world, from the battlefields to the boardrooms to the bedrooms, it may seem that what I’m saying is impractical philosophising. If someone is trying to make your life a misery, you can’t just say “I know it’s just because you’re out of gas” and expect that to make things better.

But I think that acknowledging that we are all in the same boat, that each of us behaves only as well as our psychological space allows, is a good starting point. Then we can work on what opens up that space within us. How can we find a way to let out all of our frustrations in a non-destructive way? How can we learn to be guided by the principles that foster community without feeling oppressed by them? How can we learn how to unconditionally accept ourselves?

The more space we make in ourselves, the more capacity we will have to help those who are "out of gas".

Copyright: jacklooser / 123RF Stock Photo

Book Review : Dataclysm - Who We Are When We Think No One's Looking by Christian Rudder

Christian Rudder was one of the founders of the dating site OkCupid. Running a site like that involves making decisions based on observations of people's behaviour gathered from their computer data - what works or doesn't work when it comes to helping people hook up? The concept of studying the kind of data which can be gathered from social media and search engines in order to build a better picture of the society in which we live became an obsession for him and he began sharing what he discovered on his blog. This book provides an overview of this topic. It asks the question : "Who are we when we think no one is looking?" In the past we have been dependent on surveys for much of our sociological information and they are limited by the size of the sample and the possibility that those responding to them may not always tell the truth even in situations which guarantee anonymity.

This is very much a book aimed at a popular audience and it does what such a book should do - it entertains, it informs and it encourages thought. Rudder doesn't take a rigorous scientific approach. He is content to let his personality and life philosophy shine through in his presentation and interpretation of the data. This is one reason why the book is so entertaining. Rudder comes across as a witty, likeable guy and there are times when his book is laugh-out-loud funny.

But interpretations of data are only as good as the depth of reasoning the interpreter has put into them. It is easy to jump to conclusions. For instance, Rudder presents data which shows that the percentage of searches for gay porn to porn as a whole on Google is relatively even across the United States, and concludes that this "frustrates the argument that homosexuality is anything but genetic". While it is true that it argues against the paranoid view that people are "recruited" to homosexuality, I'm not sure he has thought through the full breadth of the debate about genetic vs. environmental factors in the generation of sexuality. Firstly, a genetic origin doesn't necessarily mean an even spread. Dark skin is definitely genetic, and there are some countries where the majority are dark skinned and others where light skinned people predominate. When we say that something is genetic we are essentially saying that it travels in bloodlines. This doesn't mean that it can't be an underlying tendency passed on by those in whom it is not active of course. But there are socially-arising phenomena which, because they go so deep into the nature of what it means to be human, are fairly evenly spread through different societies. My own belief is that we are all born with the potential to be "polymorphously perverse" bisexuals and that our "love map" (to use a term coined by psychologist John Money) - the filter of fixations and inhibitions which determines what turns us on and what turns us off - is formed by environmental factors, many of which are very subtle. As with chaotic systems, small events early in life can lead to major changes in the human psyche. Rudder implies that we should expect a variation in the prevalence of gayness in different states based on their relative tendency toward liberality vs. conservatism on the topic. It is true that growing up in a homophobic environment would tend to lead to inhibitions about male-male sex, but since we also have a tendency to fixate on those aspects of our nature we feel least able to simply accept (the tongue in the sore tooth effect), we might expect these two things to balance each other. Also, it has to be said that even those who support gay marriage may sometimes subtly express a sense that it is preferable to be straight, which could have an effect on the forming sexuality of a young person. One needn't live across from the Westboro Baptist Church to feel nervous about kissing your same sex partner in public. And, even if homosexuality were inborn, this needn't mean that it is genetic. Some have suggested that it may be related to the mix of hormones provided to the fetus, something which can be effected by stress. It would not be surprising to find that stress is fairly evenly spread across U.S. states.

The book reads like a mystery story where the collective human psyche - or sometimes the collective psyche of a race, gender or sexual orientation - is the culprit being stalked. Around every corner is more descriptive evidence. Sometimes it can be funny when a study of the words most typical of a race or gender or sexual orientation backs up well-known stereotypes. It can also be a little depressing. We long to be surprised about some aspect of human nature, but statistical norms are probably not where we are likely to find such surprises. It is worth remembering that major change can begin with an individual, and individuals are invisible in this kind of mass data. If the internet had existed in 600 AD, and so this kind of data collection had been possible, the tweets and Google searches of a guy named Muhammed would have been an invisible drop in the bucket drowned out by the masses talking about that era's equivalent of Lady Gaga or Justin Bieber. But today one of the big statistics we may be gathering is how many people follow the religion that he established. These tools are extremely useful in tracking changes in society, but the birth of those changes is the place where we may still be surprised.

Christian Rudder

Another limitation, as Rudder acknowledges, is that this kind of information can tell us the "whats" but not the "whys". We can see what people are doing, but we can't see their motives or know whether the motives behind a shared behaviour are also shared or are diverse. The data is grist to the mill but not an end in itself.

Sometimes the information raises as many questions as it answers. Rudder places a lot of emphasis on the discovery, from beauty rating statistics on OkCupid, that non-blacks tend to rate blacks as less attractive than whites, asians or hispanics. He presents this as evidence of, possibly unconscious, racism. For me this raises a number of interesting questions. If I tended to rate black women as less attractive than white women, for example, would this be because a racist low opinion of black women was causing me to see them as less attractive? Or is it possible that a tendency to find black women less attractive, which might be purely biological and have nothing to do with my opinion of their worth, cause me to subconsciously see them as less worthy? Rudder refers to studies which have shown that women who are viewed as attractive are more likely to be successful with job interviews regardless of whether the interviewer is a man or woman, thus how attractive we are judged to be can lead to social injustice, and if perceived attractiveness is distributed unequally to the various races this could have a similar effect to conceptual racism. I'm not sure where this leaves us, but part of me wants to know if it isn't enough that I view someone else as my equal. Do I really have to find them physically attractive as well? Do we even have any control over who we do or do not find attractive?

The book doesn't only deal with aggregated statistics. It is often at it's most compelling when dealing with aspects of internet culture itself. There is an account of the origin and spread of the concept of "personal branding", some hilarious anecdotes about internet marketing campaigns gone wrong and some horror stories about the phenomenon of the Twitter mob. I'm sure most of us have seen examples of this. The two examples Rudder concentrates on are one in which a teenager made a joke about the age of the earth and was viciously attacked by a mob who apparently believed she was serious. The other was of a woman who made a racially insensitive joke, found that it spread very quickly, leading to a mob salivating over the prospect of her losing her job, which is what happened. Why does this kind of thing happen? The structure of the phenomenon is an ancient one - it was there behind the "witch" burnings and the Crusades, and is still with us wherever a woman is stoned for adultery, wherever someone is lynched, wherever anyone launches a "Holy War" against "evil"... There are multiple layers to our psyche. The most superficial layer is our ego, which compromises the public face we show the world as well as our private self-image. Below that is what Sigmund Freud dubbed "the Id", the dark and turbulent repository of feelings we have repressed or disowned. Below that again, I believe, is our deepest nature, one of pure love and kindness. The ego can be a fragile thing. Faced with the turbulence of what lies beneath we can feel very insecure about own self worth. This can lead us to try to establish our identity as "the good guy" by singling someone else out as an "evil-doer" and attacking them. Not only do we reinforce our self-image but we get to drain off some of the scary aggressive feelings that otherwise might threaten us. This can be such a seductive strategy that once one person puts it into action there will tend to be plenty of others ready to join the "Jihad".

This is an immensely entertaining book and one which I think will play an important role by inspiring interest in a field of enquiry which shows great promise of helping to enlighten us about ourselves.

Hurt-Proofing Ourselves

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The other day I was having a discussion with a friend about whether or not a particular song in a famous Broadway and Hollywood musical amounted to an offensively racist caricature. I was countering the arguments for it being seen as racist, but I knew that, for me, it was just a game. The song made my friend angry. To me it was just a song in a musical which I enjoy.

I thought about this further to myself, but didn't express my broader thoughts on the topic at the time. “Nothing offends me," I thought. “As far as I'm concerned someone could do a whole musical in blackface and I wouldn't be bothered by it. It wouldn't make me feel bad personally, and why should I be offended on someone else's behalf. Aren't we all able to be offended for ourselves without any help."

This may seem callous or selfish. I'm not saying that this is how everyone should view these things. But if we examine what is going on here I think we can learn something useful.

We have a saying : “Sticks and stones may break my bones, but names will never hurt me." But we know that this is not true. Other people's insults and putdowns do hurt us. Often they hurt a lot. But why?

To understand this we need to go back to our childhood. The reason we had greater emotional resilience and a greater capacity for joy when we were young children is because our self-acceptance had not yet been compromised. We seemed to ourselves acceptable because nobody had yet taught us that we might be unacceptable in any way. As we got older we were subjected to criticism by adults and other children. If we understood this as an expression of displeasure with our behaviour alone and not a sign that there was something essentially wrong with us, our self-acceptance would not have been compromised. But this can be a fine distinction for a child to have to make. Also we were taught a value system and a set of social norms. If these were unreasonably harsh then we probably developed unforgiving expectations regarding our own behaviour. We developed a conscience which was less like a friendly guide and more like an oppressive dictator who punished us for all failures to follow his orders by undermining our sense of ourselves as acceptable.

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The basis for mental health is unconditional self-acceptance. But what happened as our self-acceptance was eaten away is that it became conditional. We could accept ourselves if we were good. We could accept ourselves if we were successful. We could accept ourselves if other people accepted us. This is a very vulnerable position to be in because others can undermine our self-acceptance at any time by removing the conditions on which that self-acceptance depends.

We may not realise it but we live within a kind of psychological economy in which the traded commodities are the requirements for self-acceptance. Most of the control others exercise over us and of the control we exercise, or try to exercise, over others comes from the application of self-acceptance bribes and threats. When we treat someone well, we help them to bolster their self-acceptance. If we try to control another's behaviour by, for instance, making them feel guilty or shaming them in front of others, we are attempting to blackmail them into behaving in a way which conforms with our own wishes or beliefs about what is right or wrong by trying to take away the conditions for their self-acceptance.

The good news is that we can drop out of this sick economy. Or, if we chose, we can continue to use it against others while being invulnerable to it ourselves. I'm not saying that that would be a healthy thing to do, but it would be possible. The healthy thing to do is to hurt-proof ourselves and teach others how to do likewise. The more hurt-proof individuals there are in the world, the less scope there is for anyone to oppress others.

Of course not all forms of oppression are based on exclusively psychological transactions. Those in positions of power can make decisions prejudicial to those they don't like for whatever reason. And there is always the possibility of violence. But if we are hurt-proof we have a better base from which to deal with problems of organisational prejudice or violence. And there is more solidarity between hurt-proof individuals to stand against such forms of oppression because social relations between such individuals are not compromised by the inherent fragility of self-acceptance exchanges. The less we need the more we are there for each other.

So how do we hurt-proof ourselves?

Let's go back to that saying : “Sticks and stones may break my bones, but names will never hurt me." Why do names hurt us? If we are black, why does it hurt to be called a “nigger"? If we are gay, why does it hurt to be called a “queer"? Why does it hurt if someone says we are “ugly" or “pathetic" or “a  loser"?

Dustin Hoffman as Lenny Bruce in the movie Lenny (1974) 

doing his infamous piece about racist words

The reason is that we don't fully accept ourselves. Our self-acceptance has been worn down by this kind of thing. We've taken the put-downs “on board". We have allowed ourselves to get to the point where our self-acceptance is dependent, among other things, on people not calling us these things. When people do so, it upsets our emotional equilibrium. It makes us feel angry or hurt or frightened. Of course the fear may sometimes be applicable if the behaviour is indicative of a desire to do violence to us.

The way to hurt-proof ourselves is to re-learn unconditional self-acceptance. I say re-learn because we knew how to unconditionally accept ourselves as young children. The learning process we went through was that of learning that we were unacceptable or could be unacceptable in various ways. So hurt-proofing can be understood as a kind of unlearning or deprogramming of the unhelpful lessons we learned growing up. We are not brainwashing ourselves to believe that we are acceptable. We are rediscovering a more accountable truth about ourselves.

This may all seem very theoretical, but there is a very powerful and simple strategy which can help us down this path. Unconditional self-acceptance is something we practice, and the more we practice the more proficient we get at it. It is like building up a muscle. This is an important analogy because, while we want to become more like our child self, what we don't want is the child's vulnerability to having its self-acceptance under-mined. Back then we had unconditional self-acceptance because we had not yet been exposed to the harsh realities of life among those whose loss of such self-acceptance also undermined their acceptance of others, including ourselves. For a few years we are usually protected from the full savagery of the neurotic economy of the psyche. We need to regain our state of health, but we also need to know what we did not know as a child, and that is how to protect that state.

Re-gaining unconditional self-acceptance can involve constantly reminding ourselves that we are acceptable irrespective of what we do, what we feel, what we think, what we have and what others think of us. You might question the inclusion of “what we do". Aren't we unacceptable if we do something really terrible? The problem with this way of thinking is that we are blackmailing ourselves. We are saying that the reason not to do something really terrible is that we will remove our self-acceptance if we do. But a shortage of self-acceptance is most likely the motivating force behind doing something really terrible in the first place. The natural state of the unconditionally accepting, and thus non-neurotic, individual is one of benevolence, love, clarity of mind and creativity. If we wish to persuade ourselves not to do something really terrible, the best argument is not that it would make us unacceptable, but that it would be against our own best interests. People who do really terrible things rarely have very rewarding lives. And past actions can't be changed, so to view ourselves as unacceptable because of a past action, no matter how terrible, would only be appropriate if viewing ourselves that way was going to make us less likely to do something like that in future. Since lack of self-acceptance is the root cause of destructive actions, this would be likely to have the opposite effect.

We might want to make use of an affirmation. In this case, why not use the simple affirmation : “I am acceptable." The problem with some affirmations, it seems to me, is that they can set up expectations. If we say : “I am as calm as the lily pad that floats on a tranquil pond," that's all well and good until the next time we lose our temper, and then our self-acceptance is likely to be undermined by the fact that we haven't lived up to our own affirmation. “I am acceptable," doesn't seem to have any short-comings and it is a simple expression of the truth with which we are seeking to reconnect.

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But this is not the powerful strategy. The powerful strategy is one which we can use when presented by anything which might emotionally destabilise us, especially things others might say which tend to leave us feeling angry or hurt.

In our state of conditional self-acceptance, what happens if someone says something to us which compromises that state? What if someone upsets those conditions on which our self-acceptance depends? The first thing which happens is that we take on board what they are saying. If it were a missile we would say that it hits home. Then, if we don't collapse in a heap, we mount our resistance. We tell ourselves why what the other person has said is not true or not relevant. Or we tell them, perhaps angrily. So we may fight back, but only after having been wounded. The habitual defences, conceptual and or verbal, that we use to defend ourselves in these situations are a fundamental part of our character armour. Character armour is a structure of defensive habits. It tends to come into play when we feel threatened, but it can also be something we hide behind in anticipation of being threatened.

If we think of the words or attitudes which might upset us as missiles and ourselves as a ship against whose hull they are aimed, then there is an alternative to the armour which only comes into play after we have been struck. That alternative involves making the ship itself so invincible that the missiles explode impotently like amusing fireworks rather than doing any damage.

This involves a trick which gives us control over the emotional transaction.

Let's look at an example :

Fred comes up to me on the street and he says : “Joe, you're a disgusting piece of shit."

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I don't respond. What I say to myself is : “Fred is a person who is saying that I'm a piece of shit."

Of course this is a skill which might take a little while to learn. We need to learn to take pause, and that in itself can be a challenge. But the more we practise the easier it gets. It won't protect us the first time, but it will after the point at which it becomes habit.

What are we doing when we take this approach? We are removing ourselves from the subjective situation and giving ourselves a way to look at it objectively.

What we would normally be doing is going through this kind of process :

“Joe, you're a disgusting piece of shit."

(I'm a piece of shit. Hey, wait a minute. I'm not a piece of shit. How can Fred say something like that. I'll get Fred for saying I'm a piece of shit.)

Fred has got to me.

Even if my response is modified somewhat by saying “Fred thinks I'm a piece of shit", this is still something which might make me feel less acceptable.

By thinking “Fred is a person who is saying that I'm a piece of shit" I am stripping the situation down to the bare facts. I am not validating the opinion that I am a piece of shit. I'm not even validating the idea that Fred genuinely thinks I'm a piece of shit. He is a person who is saying that. (Of course, it might be more correct to say "he is a person who said that" but somehow the present tense has a more powerfully distancing effect to the past tense.)

Rather than being a person who experiences themselves as being under attack we have put ourselves in a role comparable to that of a scientist observing Fred's behaviour as if he were an amoeba on a laboratory slide.

From this perspective our assessment of what has been said becomes evidence-based rather than emotion-based. Fred is someone who is saying that I'm a piece of shit. Is there evidence for his point of view? Why might he think this way? Is there something wrong with him? Are there factors not directly related to me which are influencing his current attitude? We have the equanimity to ask ourselves these questions because we didn't take on board what Fred was saying directly as a transaction in the economy of self-acceptance. And the more we practise this approach the more our self-acceptance becomes disentangled from what others have to say about us.

You might think I'm advocating a life-style of cold rationality. Nothing could be further from the truth. This is a technique to be used where it is useful, not something adopted as an habitual approach to life. If I'm walking down the street and a pretty girl smiles at me I'm hardly going to say to myself : “There is a member of the female gender who is looking at me and curling her lips in a way traditionally associated with friendly feelings." It feels good to be smiled at. This strategy is aimed only at learning how to become invulnerable to social transactions which would leave us feeling disempowered. And it is aimed at disempowering those who would hold us to ransom over our own self-acceptance.

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This is also a strategy we can use on ourselves. Let's look at a way it might be used to help us beat addictive behaviour. Maybe I have a problem with chewing my nails. There I am chewing my nails and thinking “I just can't stop chewing my nails." I'm hardly likely to learn to stop when I'm arguing so persuasively against my own ability to do so. Let's try that again. “I'm a person who chews his nails." Not much better, because I'm tying my self-identity to the fact that I chew my nails. “I'm a person who is chewing his nails." Now I'm clearly faced with the situation, with nothing to undermine any strategy I might come up with to help me stop. And the situation seems much less overwhelming.

By following this strategy we can take ourselves out of the defensive position, and this brings tremendous benefits. Over time we find that we don't need our character armour, and it is only when we no longer need it that we discover just how much of an impediment it was.

When we are armoured we can only acknowledge reality to the extent that it doesn't seriously threaten our armour. Where to acknowledge the truth about something would destabilise us, because our self-acceptance is conditional on that thing not being true, we are forced to live in denial.

Let's say that Sally sees a beautiful clearing in the woods and thinks it would be the perfect place to set up a vegan donut stand. People say she is crazy, you can't sell donuts in the middle of the forest. But she goes ahead and buys the land and builds her donut stand. And it turns out to be a big success. She's never succeeded at anything before in her life. Everyone said she was a loser. Now people are travelling all the way into the woods to buy her delicious donuts. People don't call her a loser any more. They love her because of her donuts. But then, one day, an ecologist comes and tells her that the place where she has built her successful donut stand was once the breeding ground of the fluorescent woodpecker. As a result of her donut stand, this beautiful bird has become extinct. We will never see one again. What can she do but put her fingers in her ears and go "blah-blah-blah"? In her own mind her acceptability as a human being is dependent on the ideas that she doesn't harm animals and that her donut stand is a success.

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Many of us have our own vegan donut stands and our fluorescent woodpeckers. It is the truths we can't face about ourselves, because they would compromise our fragile self-acceptance, which lead to a spectrum of problems from failed marriage to war. Love is a form of communication characterised by openness, honesty, spontaneity and generosity. If a relationship is between two people whose self-acceptance is not conditional, it will be a loving relationship. But a relationship of dependence based on fulfilling the other party's conditions for their own self-acceptance is bound to be fraught with tension and not conducive to love. Why does marital infidelity sometimes make us so mad that we will kill our partner and risk spending many years in jail? Because our self-acceptance has become totally conditional on having a faithful partner. We would view the incident as a trivial one if this were not the case. It is the damage done to our fragile ego which keeps it from being trivial. And for many patriotic individuals, the belief that their country is a knight in shining armour and any country which would attack it or interfere with its interests could not possibly have a legitimate grievance, is a major feature of their character armour. If this were not the case, peace in the Middle East would not be such an elusive dream.

Let's look at the subject of political beliefs. I'll keep it very simple. I'm not interested in how political beliefs differ, only in how we relate to our own political beliefs and those of others. So we'll just talk about one person who identifies themselves as a conservative and another who identifies themselves as a liberal.

How grounded a person's political belief system is, whether conservative or liberal, is dependent on their level of self-acceptance. If our self-acceptance is unconditional then we will look around us at the world and take in what is going on and listen to all sorts of different ideas. There will be no need to filter what we take in in the way of information or ideas in order to protect us from anything which might contravene the conditions of our self-acceptance. This means that, when we form our belief system, conservative or liberal, it will be founded on a lot of information and a clear understanding of what various individuals on both sides of the political spectrum propose. Such an individual will have stability when it comes to discussing politics as they will in all other areas, as a result of the solid foundations of their self-acceptance. But if someone's self-acceptance is heavily compromised and thus conditional, their political allegiance may quickly become a part of their character armour. I'm acceptable because I'm a liberal. I'm acceptable because I'm a conservative. This leads to two things. If I'm acceptable because I'm a liberal, that means that conservatives are not acceptable. So I am in a strongly adversarial position from the get go, where the vehemence of my opposition to conservatives may become a crucial element in maintaining my self-acceptance. Also, to maintain my position, in the absence of the grounded understanding achieved by the unconditionally self-accepting individual, I will need to filter out or deny any information or ideas which might call my insecure liberal position into question. I may also find myself focussing obsessively on the misdeeds of individual conservatives as a way of reinforcing my liberal-good, conservative-bad dichotomy. And, of course, all these things would be the same if I were a conservative whose conservatism was a crucial part of his character armour.

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We can get an idea of how armoured someone is in their political views by how angry they become at those with the opposite allegiance. This doesn't mean that a person whose political views are less armoured may not view the fact that so many people push for an opposite approach as a problem, but they will not feel it as a personal affront. A doctor recognises that cancer is a problem, but he doesn't launch into a tirade about the evil of cancer. He calmly sets about doing something about the problem. When we look around at a lot of the political conflicts that are going on in our society we can see just how many of us are so desperate to hang onto our fragile vision of ourselves as good guys standing in opposition to bad guys that we are not living in the real world.

So lets get back to where we started with the question of protecting ourselves or each other from racist musicals. Being subjected to abuse and prejudice because of one's skin colour can tend to undermine one's self-acceptance. A musical in which white actors wear black face, in this day and age, might be one straw too many for the camel's back, even though all that is happening is that a bunch of actors are putting a particular kind of make-up on their face. The thing itself is trivial. The effect it has may not be. To someone who has learned the art of unconditional self-acceptance, it's intrinsic triviality is clear. It is no skin off their nose how somebody else decides to comport themselves on a theatre stage.

Now I'm not advocating that we reinstate the institution of the Black and White Minstrel Show. I use this example in order to highlight a significant problem and two approaches to dealing with it. Racist musicals are not a common problem in our society, but other hurtful expressions are. There is hate speech and cyber-bullying on the internet. And many of us are subjected to verbal abuse at other times.

The main approach we take to trying to address these problems and protect those most vulnerable to them is by trying to control such expressions. We may legislate against them and/or we may try to shame those who engage in such practices into stopping. But control strategies never actual solve problems. They may contain them temporarily or they may push evidence of them from one place or time to another place or time. Laws and social pressure give us the ability to force individuals to repress expression of their hostile feelings, but repression doesn't make those hostile feelings go away. The roots of hostility can only be healed when everything is out in the open. The road to health is one which leads towards freedom not away from it.

I'm not arguing that we should abandon attempts to control expressions of hostility. I'm only trying to highlight the limitations of that approach.

The other approach is to promote an understanding of how we can hurt-proof ourselves. We can't possibly protect a psychologically vulnerable individual from all of the expressions of hostility or prejudice which might be painful for them, but we can easily teach the skill of hurt-proofing, so that they don't need such protection. And the same technique addresses other problems. Take body image. We can't protect a vulnerable teenager from seeing fashion magazines, but teach them unconditional self-acceptance and they can't possibly develop anorexia or bulimia.

But one word of warning. Don't try using the method I've outlined above out loud with someone. To have one's power taken away to such a degree must be incredibly frustrating. When having an argument with a friend I responded to his expression of a particular opinion with “You are a person who is saying that. Why should it effect me?" He ended up physically attacking me. Be aware that, if words cease to hurt you, some may resort to sticks and stones.

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