Is the American public broken in spirit — as clinical psychologist Bruce Levine suggests?

05 June 2018

Is Dr. Levine onto something?

Clinical psychologist Bruce Levine addressed the American public's inaction in the face of Establishment oppression.

He makes (and later fully supports) an insightful point:

Can people become so broken that truths of how they are being screwed do not "set them free" but instead further demoralize them?

Has such a demoralization happened in the United States?

Yes. It is called the "abuse syndrome."

How do abusive pimps, spouses, bosses, corporations, and governments stay in control? They shove lies, emotional and physical abuses, and injustices in their victims' faces, and when victims are afraid to exit from these relationships, they get weaker.

Does knowing the truth of their abuse set people free when they are deep in these abuse syndromes?

No.

When people become broken, they cannot act on truths of injustice.

U.S. citizens do not actively protest obvious injustices for the same reasons that people cannot leave their abusive spouses: They feel helpless to effect change.

The more we don't act, the weaker we get.

What sets them free is morale.

What gives people morale? Encouragement. Small victories. Models of courageous behaviors. And anything that helps them break out of the vicious cycle of pain, shut down, immobilization, shame over immobilization, more pain, and more shut down.

Let's go slightly deeper

First, people legitimately do feel helpless to nudge national affairs in the directions that they wish.

That's the issue I alluded to yesterday with my comment about rotten institutions.

It is difficult to turn matters around, when all mechanisms for non-violent change have been captured by Uncle Sam's Plutocratically Pilfering Pimps.

Second, this is not entirely just a morale issue.

You cannot go anywhere, if you have not picked at least a direction.

One of our societal problems is our refusal to think about economics and politics at basic levels. We Americans cavalierly assume that our loosely ignorant definitions of capitalism, and its counter-models, are all that there are.

We presume that what we think we know, meaning the status quo, has unfortunately been corrupted by bad guys.

We stubbornly avoid coming to grips with the truth that the United States' Laissez Faire Model's corruption is built directly into it.

This misinterpretation of Reality is a more a reflection of our habitual lack of thought, than it is of learned helplessness. Our inability to think critically tacitly approves the very System that actively and unavoidably generates oppressive behavior.

It is difficult to change things, when one does not recognize who, or what, the real enemy is.

In truth, we cannot use our plutocratically captured System to fix itself. This 'rock and hard place' conundrum is where a deeper prescription for hope has to begin.

The moral? — Ignorance and lethargic complacence — with a heavy dose of learned helplessness — characterize our situation

We can do something about these. And I agree with Dr. Levine's implicit proposition that learned helplessness needs to be the first to go.

Next time someone in political or economic authority pisses you off, plot a way to make them 'eat shit'. Let anger overcome a sense of futility. Become the cornered animal. Get tactical help from clear-thinking friends.

Figure out where the levers of power are in specific situations.

Who's afraid of whom?

Who's vulnerable to what, if this dispute goes public?

How much stink can we make, if we don't give up?

Divide and conquer works just as well fighting up, as it does oppressing down.

Revenge against injustice is sweet, no matter what the Powers that Be, including their allegedly religious teachers, try to tell us. This is part of what Dr. Levine is saying, even though he is probably too civilized to speak it.

Make it personal. Be primal.

Plutocracy's pillaging killers are screwing with innocent lives. Sometimes we have to "become the bear" — as a psychologist I once knew told me.

Anger, well controlled and creatively directed, can be your survival friend.

Start small. With Toddling Bear. And build.

The Repressing Establishment is afraid of disorder. Disorder interferes with its pillaging. Create tumult at an Establishment weak point. When the Plutocracy's reacting clouds of oppression gather — meaning the combination of police and Establishment-favoring law — move to another chink in its armor.

This strategy parallels Chairman Mao's guerrilla resistance advice. His small-things-first philosophy sparked the numerically and economically most monumental change in recorded history. Mao's strategic and tactical concept is not confined just to war.

My reference to History's past strategy raises the ignorance element that I mentioned. We cannot plot a good path, when we don't know anything.

See where I'm going?

If we want to change things, we have to get off our asses, analyze what needs to be done, pick possible patterns for remedial action, and summon the fortitude to act on them.

If we start with the courage resist, that decision alone will give us the confidence to progress with overcoming ignorance and complacence.

Small successes breed habit. Resistance to injustice has to be habitual. We fatigue 'the Man' by making him trip over every nasty thing that he tries to impose on our backs.

Are you a sacrificial sheep, or a self-standing bear?

Choose.

That's how we begin.

It is difficult to act like a slaughterable mutton-head, when seeing through the equivalent of a tiger's eyes.

PeteFree.com

Is the American public broken in spirit — as clinical psychologist Bruce Levine suggests?