The victim claims they are hurt by your actions, bullying you into an apology and extracting promises for future consideration.
The insidious aspect is that they prey on your empathy/sympathy: they use your best traits to hurt and control you.
Tag: danger
- Theme: Growth
Audience violence
°
1–2 minutesIn several concerts I have attended, the audience is bombarded with palpable, pummeling sounds, and the lights are shifted from the band members into the audience.
The pulsing retina attack makes the band unobservable, faded to black amidst an after-image glow sliding across your field of vision.
This obscuration of the band’s image in favor of committing soft violence to the audience feels like revenge. And it appears to have taken its toll as the audience stumbles forth from the venue, having paid to be made into twitching, blinking, deaf, and vacant fans. - Theme: Self
Observer violence
°
1–2 minutesThere has become a doubling, where once the observer was doing violence to the observed through objectification or judgment.
The observer has always been attacked back: overstimulated with impossible desires and pitched ads. But today the viewer is made aware of their position as objectifiers and consumers, complicit as the cause of celebrity anxiety and depression.
The observer observes themself observing, inflicting damage upon themselves for causing the double-bind of the celebrity who is anxiously unable to fulfill their image or be themself. - Theme: Culture
Recruiting for dysfunction
°
1–2 minutesWhen recruiting for a cause, organic mutation leads to impossible promises and tainted origins.
Only a few members will align with your long-term familial agenda: finding the appropriate dysfunctions to thrive is a numbers game. - Theme: Self
Causing pain by existing
°
1–2 minutesIs it possible to exist in the world without touching another in a way that causes pain? Consider the environment and relationships: Is our passage marked by waves of harm, the price of living? Or is harm a symbiosis by which both parties confirm their existence?
Put another way, can you sit still, or do you work to escape the beating of your heart? - Theme: Growth
Destruction for Difference
°
1–2 minutesIndividualism is not building-up-towards or revealing-the-self, but destruction of the common, which translates as novel difference.
The seduction of new knowledge is arcane insights, which dissolves social norms for self separation. The knowledge -an alchemical agent for change- need not be new, merely distinct.
(Those who do not destroy the common are conformists, hence not individuals in this sense.)
- Theme: Growth
Certainty is boring
°
1–2 minutesWe all primarily want certainty until we have it. Then, bored out of your mind, you start disrupting your stability.
Uncertainty, mystery, and danger are the spice of life.
Much like a child learning to explore, we constantly gravitate back home for safety, build up our courage, and go adventuring again. - Theme: Self
The dangers of the path more traveled
°
1–2 minutesWe can turn on auto-pilot when walking familiar terrain, but when even one condition changes, the common becomes doubly treacherous due to assumed familiarity.
Upon recognition of one variable askew, slow down, engage the novel, and do not berate yourself for caution.
- Theme: Systems
Contradictions are System Alerts
°
1–2 minutesFrustration at contradictions is an alert: the system is not serving us.
For instance: we have starvation amidst abundance. We are more connected than ever, yet people feel more alone and despondent.When a system’s goals are out of alignment, either the stated goals are lies, or the system is not built to accept adaptive feedback.
- Theme: Growth
You can’t be harmless and thrive in the world
°
1–2 minutesIt is a paradox to thrive in the world and be harmless. To thrive means you exceed survival, which means you have some skill. You may choose to appear harmless, but with sufficient skill, you are armed for harm.