The Psychology of Fascism - The Shadow of Victim's Mentality

[Hardkill]

32 minutes ago, Emerald said:

It's okay to call out someone's behavior as harmful as that is an accurate descriptive label that a person can actually reflect on and work on.

And it's even okay to stop people from engaging in harmful behavior through setting very firm boundaries and systems of justice that discourage people from engaging in harmful behavior.

All of these are part of wise discernment, justice, and boundary setting.

And you can get a person to reflect on their actions far better by calling them "harmful" than calling them "evil". And that's because "harmful" is a practical realistic label that is reflective of reality, while "evil" is a moral label that is ambiguous and implies something fundamentally shameful and bad about someone's nature.

When we label someone as evil, we tend to see evil as its own cause. And we paper over the root cause of those "evil" actions. And it cuts us off from unconditional compassion towards ourselves and others. And at that point, all root causes are unconscious to us... and all we can do is to try to defeat and eradicate evil... which makes us behave in an evil way.

That's the trick. The second we say the word evil, we become evil and perpetuate evil. 

So, I don't use the word evil to describe anyone or anything unless I'm specifically talking about evil as a concept.

And when we start labeling out the world in terms of the paradigm of good and evil, this is where the Devil gets us... and we feel shame.

And we either internalize that shame and feel like we are evil. Or we externalize it and name off others as the evil-doers... which has led to all sorts of wars, genocides, murder, the crusades, medieval torture, etc.

This is what happens when we believe in evil. If we believe in the paradigm of good and evil (because of a deeply engrained human bias to see ourselves as good) we start to believe that we are the "good ones" fighting the "evil ones". And this causes us to be "evil."

In the Genesis story, that is precisely why the Devil tempted Adam and Eve eat of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

He knew that getting them to see the world through the moralistic lens of good and evil, would produce shame in them and cast them out of the garden... and that everything would become split apart (to Devil means to split in two, so he is responsible in this story for humanity's moralistic dualistic thinking).

And this is the original sin for that reason. And it is the MOST important sin to avoid. 

That's why it's very unwise to start labeling other people (or ourselves) out as evil as it gets into the realm of moralism, judgment, shame, scapegoating, hatred, etc. and all the evil and ignorance that comes as a result.

Instead, stick with practical realistic and descriptive understandings of pure non-judgmental discernment... like "x behavior creates y result." "Do I want y result? Yes or no?"

My ethical compass is simple.... do your best to cause as little harm as possible. And this is plenty enough to discern which actions to take without the need to get into judgment and labels of good and evil.

I made a video about this called "The Most Dangerous Archetype" where I talk all about the issue with operating through the lens of good and evil...

 

Well, we have to at least call Trump and others like him as absolute monsters and corrupt down to their core.

Edited 9 hours ago by Hardkill

[Joshe]

@Emerald that makes sense. Swapping evil with harmful doesn’t make me feel as negative towards the thing, so I’ll contemplate that some more. That said, I have the ability to recognize the evil/harmful behavior as stemming from ignorance rather than something inherently bad in the person. I would never call a person a devil directly, because that certainly would be a moralistic attack, which would perpetuate evil. 

One issue is “harmful” lacks description. Evil or “devilry” includes ignorance and blind selfishness, which produces “harm”. “Devilry” is very specific. If we want to solve problems, we have to identify them. I suppose just using the words ignorance and blind selfishness would suffice and we can dispense with devilry. IDK, lots to consider here. 

Either way, I think your approach seems healthier for the collective and maybe even for myself. Thanks for explaining.