Unconscious sado-masochism, the chronically offended and the political games doomed to fail
I: Introduction:
Freud with Skinner?
In this essay I will briefly present
the most relevant aspects of my theory of unconscious sado-masochism for its
applications in socio-political issues, as well as the concept of “games doomed
to fail”, the political games that are rigged from the start.
One point of intersection between
Freudian psychoanalysis and Skinner’s behaviorism is their way of viewing
self-destructive/self-sabotaging behavior in individuals. Like I mentioned in
my article about behavioral psychoanalysis1, whereas Freud sometimes
thought that symptoms and self-destructive behaviors persist because there is a
“secondary benefit” to them, Skinner thought that pretty much any
behavior persists because it is “reinforced” (rewarded), which would
automatically include the self-destructive ones. I interpreted this as both of
them saying essentially the same thing: when a person engages in a repetitive
behavior that does more harm than good to them in the long-term, there is some
sort of “benefit” or “reward” associated with it, regardless of whether the subject
is aware of it or not.
Take, for example, Freud’s view of the etiology of
psychosomatic illness, where he thought that patients “cling to their illness”
because there is some sort of secondary benefit of being physically ill (not
going to war, attention and/or power over family members, etc.)2. It
must be made clear that in Freud’s example, he is not talking about people faking
being ill (so they don’t go to war, for example), he’s talking about people literally
becoming ill with various physical symptoms (physical pain, weakness,
fainting, vomiting, flu-like symptoms, anything) that have psychological causes.
I will apply this idea in order to
give one example of such “masochistic” behavior that is reinforced, that is
relevant in today’s discussions about political correctness, cancel culture and
various forms of alienation3 – more specifically, the alienation based
on identities like race, gender, sexual orientation, etc. (“identity politics”).
II: ‘Chronically
offended’ – what is that?
Let’s call the people I am describing
“chronically offended”. I already discussed this behavior in chapter III of “Brainwashed
by Nothingness” but I did not call it in this way, I described it in the larger
context of phobias. The way it manifests is this: the chronically offended
person is offended by a particular topic, person, phrase/word, etc. and either:
1.
Intentionally
looks out for it
2.
“Accidentally”
always ends up in situations where they witness the object that offends them,
by “coincidence”
It shall be made especially clear that what I describe
by “chronically offended” does NOT include the people who actually make
a genuine effort in avoiding whatever makes them offended, triggered or
somehow uncomfortable. If someone is offended by a particular ethnic or homophobic
slur and makes efforts to avoid hearing it, for example, they are not what I am
describing here. Here are some actual examples of being chronically offended:
1.
From
‘progressives’: being so offended by certain (ethnic, homophobic, etc.) slurs
that you intentionally look for videos of people saying them so you can “cancel
them”. Being so uncomfortable with seeing blackface that you intentionally look
for videos with it and get angry at the people who did it.
2.
From
‘conservatives’: being so triggered by people burning the flag that you
intentionally look for videos of people doing it so you can cancel them as
well.
3.
From
any political camp: being so angry or troubled by people with political views that
are radically different from yours and their “bad takes” that you spend all day
watching videos with them.
4.
Apolitical
example: hating an artist’s music so much that you go on all their videos in
order to comment on them explaining how trash their music is, while playing the
respective song in the background.
All of these scenarios can be summarized as follows: “I
hate seeing this so much, I’m gonna watch it again and again!”.
III: Share my
suffering!
An extra observation that should be noted
is that in almost all of the cases that I observed, there is a tendency of the
chronically offended to share their suffering with others.
If a video surfaces of some public
figure doing blackface or saying racial slurs in the past, the chronically
offended will not only repetitively watch that video again and again, but also
make sure that everyone else sees it too, so that other people are offended as
well!
Years ago, a Romanian Youtuber (“Katalin
Talent”) recorded himself urinating on the flag, then burning it and then
posted it on Facebook. That clip was so offensive to patriots that they not
only had to intentionally go and watch it over and over, they had to
show it on national TV, so that all the other patriots that are going on with
their day, minding their own business and watching TV are also getting triggered
about it!
This is the first reason why I
mentioned “unconscious sado-masochism” in the title and not just
unconscious masochism: the chronically offended are unaware (unconscious) of
the ways in which they are enjoying their suffering (masochism) while also gaining
enjoyment, in part, from inflicting a sense of suffering into others (sadism)
through sharing the offensive material.
IV: What is
the hidden benefit, the reward, or the secondary gain? Two possibilities.
If we accept this
psychoanalytic-behaviorist view of repetitive behavior, we must find out what
exactly is the secondary gain from these behaviors, how is the behavior
reinforced? In what way are the chronically offended “enjoying their suffering”?
I propose two scenarios:
1.
The
hero/savior complex
2.
The
victim complex
The first possibility is that the chronically offended
person is suffering from what I call the “hero complex”. The hidden benefit is
the pleasure for putting someone down below their level, from “saving” others,
from “rescuing” others from whatever they consider an “aggressor” or “enemy”.
The general formula is this: the pleasure/reward of saving others from “bad”
people outweighs the pain/punishment of being offended.
This is what most commonly happens in today’s “cancel
culture”. The people with a hero complex genuinely suffer when they observe
people engaging in whatever they deem ‘offensive’ (blackface, burning the flag,
etc.), but they also gain pleasure for moralizing someone who they deem morally
inferior to them. Whenever the pleasure of moralizing a “morally inferior”
person outweighs the pain of witnessing such a person in the first place, their
behavior will change such as to put them in such scenarios more often (for
example, intentionally looking out for things to ‘cancel’).
This is why we must understand that the chronically
offended are not “faking” being offended, just like Freud’s patients did not
fake their illness when they benefited from it. Freud’s patients were genuinely
suffering when they were ill, there was just some way they were enjoying it simultaneously
that they weren’t aware was connected to the illness. Similarly enough, the chronically
offended who say they wish that people would stop doing blackface/slurs/flag-burning/whatever
genuinely mean it, in the sense that they hate this part of the whole
ordeal, they just aren’t aware (conscious) that if people stop doing
those offensive things, there would be no one left to moralize, no one left to
virtue-signal to that you ‘saved’ them, and they would be worse off overall.
This is why the chronically offended are not either
enjoying or suffering when they witness someone being ‘offensive’, they
are doing both: enjoying their suffering. There is some way in which
they suffer, and some way in which they enjoy, and they are not conscious of
the ways in which their enjoyment is related to the offensive act. This is the
formula for any unconscious masochism under my own paradigm of behavioral
psychoanalysis4.
The hero complex can be summed up as follows: “Look at
me, I’m such a good person for standing up against evil! I consciously think I
hate evil, but I actually also partially like evil because it gives me the
opportunity to look like a hero when I stand up against it!”.
The victim complex would be the alternative scenario.
Here, the chronically offended are gaining pleasure out of their own suffering not
through overpowering the offender, but through remaining in the powerless state
where others can give them sympathy. The secondary gains are often various
forms of attention/sympathy and the subtle ways in which this gives one power. It
could be summed up as “I’m such a powerless, defenseless victim, look at how
much people attack me, save me!”. The end-goal of the victim complex is the
same as the hero complex: moral superiority. In the hero complex, the person
unconsciously enjoys seeing evil because this gives them a chance to stand up
against evil and be morally superior to someone, whereas in the victim complex,
the person unconsciously enjoys seeing evil because this removes themselves
from moral responsibility.
We see the
victim complex at play in the endless “oppression olympics” of
intersectionality. The general formula is this: “I hate being oppressed,
because I am disadvantaged, but I also unconsciously love being oppressed,
because this means that if I do something unethical, it’s less evil and more
justified than if a privileged person does it”. Of course, this should be
clear: not anyone claiming to be oppressed or a victim is suffering from this
victim complex (only some), just like not all the people who suffer from a
victim complex are wrong about the fact they are oppressed (only some). Unconscious
sado-masochism always manifests as avoiding the truth, not as blatantly lying.
So genuinely being oppressed/disadvantaged and having a victim complex (being
unaware of the ways in which this also benefits you) are not mutually exclusive:
a victim complex can manifest in many ways: exaggerating how oppressed you are,
or unconsciously provoking people into actually oppressing you, or taking
advantage of the fact that you were already oppressed despite you not bringing
it onto yourself, etc.
The simplest to understand and most “classic” example
of the victim complex in politics is “I am [insert disadvantaged group here], so
I can’t be racist/sexist/etc.”. Thus, the oppressed person simultaneously hates
being discriminated and loves it, loving the fact that this removes them of
moral responsibility in the eyes of some other people. For example, a chronically
offended black individual might both hate when people are saying racial slurs
towards them, and also love that because of this, their unethical actions right
after might be more “justified” or “understandable” in the eyes of others (“We
have to understand that he was very mad after that, he lost control for a bit,
imagine living like him and hearing that everyday, you will snap eventually,
etc.”).
One thing that could happen in a victim complex is
unconsciously provoking others into being racist/sexist towards you such that
you can now get the opportunity to act like an asshole and feel less moral
guilt or be less reprehended than if you were to act like an asshole without
being discriminated against. This is the main lesson of behavioral psychoanalysis:
don’t reinforce punishment, otherwise people will start to punish themselves
just for the secondary reward. In this example, a person may observe (either consciously
or unconsciously) that they get less scolded for being an asshole to others
right after experiencing racism than in other cases, and if they love being an
asshole to others, they may (either consciously or
unconsciously/unintentionally) provoke others to be racist towards them just so
they can have the opportunity to be assholes (either that, or unconsciously
putting themselves in situations with a higher probability of experiencing
racism, etc.).
Revenge is a big part of the victim complex. The
examples are all over politics, but not only, there are many apolitical examples
as well from everyday life: if I like to do harm to someone else, I may unconsciously/unintentionally
provoke the other person into doing harm onto me first, and only after
do harm onto them, so that I feel less moral guilt. In this example, I am simultaneously
loving and hating the fact that they hurt me first – I dislike/suffer
from how they hurt me, but like/enjoy that now I can hurt them too with less
moral guilt.
We can now view the second reason why I titled this
article “unconscious sado-masochism” and now just simple masochism. The
enjoyment often includes making others suffer too, and not only through sharing
the offensive material with others so that as many people are offended as
possible, but also through the very acts of revenge, feeling morally superior to
others, etc.
Never is Zizek’s joke about the Slovene farmer more
relevant than now, in my description of sado-masochism: Once there was a
Slovenian farmer who worked on his farm. One day, a god-like figure approached
the farmer and offered him a deal. The god-like figure says “I will do whatever
you request to you, but whatever I do to you, I will do twice that to your
neighbor”. The farmer thinks for a moment then replies: “Take out one of my
eyes”. This joke sums up the agenda behind excessive political correctness and
cancel culture: please take out one of my eyes (offend me) so that I can have
the opportunity of taking out both of yours (cancel you).
It shall be noted that someone can have both a hero
complex and a victim complex simultaneously on the same issue. This is often
seen in people who identify as part of certain groups who are discriminated/offended/etc.:
Americans who fight against flag-burners, black people who point out blackface
and racial slurs, etc. (they are both the victim and the hero/rescuer)
V: Lacan –
you will NEVER be satisfied
You will never be fully satisfied.
You can only achieve short-term, partial satisfaction. You will always want
more and more. Or at least, this is one of the main fundamental axioms of Jacques
Lacan’s psychoanalysis in my opinion: we think we desire (want) this and that
object, but what we actually desire is desire itself – we desire to desire.
You will always want more and more money, you will always want more and more
fame/views/likes, you will always want a better and better body (more fit, more
shredded, more muscular, more thin), the search is endless for that perfect
satisfaction that you will never get.
Isn’t this exact same thing going on
inside our modern-day political correctness? Isn’t the game of political correctness
rigged from the start, designed in such a way such that you can’t win,
you can never satisfy the chronically offended (hence why they are chronically
offended)? This would be the natural conclusion from our analysis of their
hidden motives: they unconsciously wish for people to be evil towards them in
order to have who to feel morally superior towards. In the absence of people
who are evil towards them, they will have to either:
1.
Intentionally
or unintentionally provoke people into being more evil towards them
2.
Intentionally
or unintentionally putting themselves in situations with a higher probability
of having evil done onto them
3.
Extending
their own definition of “evil” to be more encompassing
Number 3. is the one that is most often seen in the endless
game of political correctness. Take, for instance, the racism in the USA against
black people. Society started out easily: “you’re not allowed to do blackface”.
Alright, I don’t see how an actor modifying the color of their skin in order to
play a role in some movie is in any way similar to the Minstrel shows from the
past where people made fun of black people by imitating stereotypes with genuinely
racist intentions, but it’s not a huge demand. After people stopped doing
blackface, they (they = the politically correct chronically offended of all
races) now needed another way to feel morally superior, so they extended their
definition of “racist acts” to include saying/writing slurs like “nigga/nigger”,
regardless of whether the person is actually doing it with racist intent, or
whether they’re just singing along to some song, quoting someone else, or
talking about the word itself from a meta-perspective like I just did in this
sentence. Slowly, people stopped doing that publicly and now they again lack a
reason to “cancel” people, and since they love the feeling of moral
superiority that the act of condemning evil itself gives them, they have to
invent more and more absurd things that they deem “racist” or somehow evil:
cultural appropriation, etc.
The lesson to learn from this is that political
correctness is a game that is doomed from the start, you can not win it: its
whole purpose is for condemning people.
If you attempt to satisfy the wishes of the politically correct (stop
saying this, stop doing that), they will keep inventing more and more things
that are racist, sexist, homophobic or somehow “offensive” and you are back
to where you started. In other words, they will never be satisfied.
There is another “endless game that you can never win”
that I’ve described in a previous article: racial equity. It is the game
played by advocates of identity politics supporting “affirmative action”, “positive
discrimination” and other euphemisms of revenge, the ones who believe that
equality of outcome is more important than equal treatment. This is why
identity politics, political correctness and cancel culture are all three
inter-related, forming a “triangle of unsatisfied desire” that some label as “wokeness”
lately.
I’ve already discussed the topic in the previous
article, “WHY YOU WILL NEVER ACHIEVE "RACIAL EQUITY" - WHAT NO
POLITICAL CAMP TELLS YOU”5. The summary is this: race is a social
construct that underwent many redefinitions throughout history in order to
serve political agendas. If you aim for a goal of racial equity (ex: the
average salary of a “white” person should be the same as the one of a “black”
person), you will never achieve this because the closer you get to your goal,
the more society will redefine the definition of “white person” such as to
include more rich people and/or redefine the definition of “black person” such
as to include more poor people, re-creating the illusion of racial inequity, and
you are back to where you started.
The only way to “win” this game is to not play it in
the first place: help disadvantaged/poor people regardless of race. Helping 10
000 white people or 10 000 black people or 5000 white + 5000 black people
should all be three morally equivalent scenarios, even if they each have
different effects upon racial equity. In the same way that countries are borders
that are arbitrarily drawn on the globe, we should also imagine races
and ethnicities as imaginary borders around humans: you chose an arbitrarily
selected number of mostly rich people and called them “Race 1” and an
arbitrarily selected number of mostly poor people and called them “Race 2” and
said “Look at all the racial inequity!”, but this doesn’t say anything
meaningful about the objective reality you live in.
1: https://lastreviotheory.blogspot.com/2022/07/blog-post.html
2: “It must be
admitted that there is difficulty in adapting social demands to their
psychological condition. This was experienced on a large scale during the last
war. Were the neurotics who evaded service malingerers or not? They were both.
If they were treated as malingerers and if their illness was made highly
uncomfortable, they recovered; if after being ostensibly restored they were
sent back into service, they promptly took flight once more into illness.
Nothing could be done with them. And the same is true of neurotics in civil
life. They complain of their illness but exploit it with all their strength;
and if someone tries to take it away from them they defend it like the
proverbial lioness with her young. Yet there would be no sense in reproaching
them for this contradiction.
(…)
Think of the war
neurotics, who do not have to serve, precisely because they are ill. In civil
life illness can be used as a screen to gloss over incompetence in one’s
profession or in competition with other people; while in the family it can
serve as a means for sacrificing the other members and extorting proofs of
their love or for imposing one’s will upon them. All of this lies fairly near
the surface; we sum it up in the term “gain from illness”. It is curious,
however, that the patient - that is, his ego - nevertheless knows nothing of
the whole concatenation of these motives and the actions which they involve.
(…)
We describe all
the forces that oppose the work of recovery as the patient‘s “resistances”. The
gain from illness is one such resistance.” (Sigmund Freud, 1926: “THE QUESTION
OF LAY ANALYSIS - Conversations with an Impartial Person”; Part V)
3: More on
alienation: https://lastreviotheory.blogspot.com/2022/08/alienation-what-is-it-and-can-there-be.html
4: Take, for
instance, the psychological game described by Eric Berne under his magnum opus “Games
people play”:
“The most common
game played between spouses is colloquially called "If It Weren't For
You," and this will be used to illustrate the characteristics of games in
general. Mrs. White complained that her husband severely restricted her social
activities, so that she had never learned to dance. Due to changes in her
attitude brought about by psychiatric treatment, her husband became less sure
of himself and more indulgent. Mrs. White was then free to enlarge the scope of
her activities. She signed up for dancing classes, and then discovered to her
despair that she had a morbid fear of dance floors and had to abandon this
project. This unfortunate adventure, along with similar ones, laid bare some
important aspects of the structure of her marriage. Out of her many suitors she
had picked a domineering man for a husband. She was then in a position to
complain that she could do all sorts of things "if it weren't for
you." Many of her women friends also had domineering husbands, and when
they met for their morning coffee, they spent a good deal of time playing
"If It Weren't For Him." As it turned out, however, contrary to her
complaints, her husband was performing a very real service for her by
forbidding her to do something she was deeply afraid of, and by preventing her,
in fact, from even becoming aware of her fears. This was one reason she had
shrewdly chosen such a husband.”
We can see in this
scenario how her husband’s prohibitions were both reinforcing and punishing at
the same time. She was only aware of the punishing/painful side of it, however.
We could say that she was only conscious of the way in which she was hating it,
and unconscious of the way in which she was also loving it. She was hating the
fact that he’s prohibitive of her stated demands, and unconsciously loving (“enjoying”)
the fact that she’s not confronting her fear. In other words, she was unaware
that her “net increase in happiness” from the fact that she’s not confronting
her fear was related to her husband’s prohibitions in the first place.
Similarly enough, the chronically offended are unaware that their “net increase in happiness” from ‘cancelling’ someone they deem morally inferior is due to that in the first place, they are only aware of the ways in which they hate the people who are offensive, not in the ways in which they use them as an object of their own enjoyment. Or Freud’s patients with psychosomatic illness, there was both a “decrease in happiness” from the illness and a “increase in happiness” from it, but the patients were only aware of the former.
5: https://lastreviotheory.blogspot.com/2022/08/why-you-will-never-achieve-racial.html
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