CONTEXTUALIZING CONTEXTUALIZING, or:

~~Why being unwilling to hurt others leaves you vulnerable to abuse~~

Thread 🧵👇
1/ Almost every situation worth considering consists of some party A acting, and some party B reacting. In isolation, either party can -- plausibly! -- be made responsible for B's reaction, depending on the beholder's whims.
2/ When responsibility is assigned inconsistently, based on e.g. the respective identities of A and B rather than on a consistent framework of responsibility, anyone can believably be blamed for anything.
3/ Almost nobody has such a framework. You probably don't, either. Proof: https://twitter.com/Elodes12/status/1299394541837934594
4/ One of the most common but least understood methods of abuse nowadays, is for B to insist that A hates them; after all, why else would A do something that they know B doesn't like? Why wouldn't A stop? Hate is the only explanation.
6/ B's argument misses that anyone can interpret anything however they like. If you're the kind of person who listens to B, then anyone can make you do anything just by adversarially shaping their reactions to constrain your possible actions.
7/ DON'T NEGOTIATE WITH TERRORIST MEMEPLEXES. If you let B guilt you, you've already lost; you've made yourself vulnerable to anyone's whims. People *will* abuse this for their own benefit. Accede by choice only; not by pressure.
8/ Don't let yourself be gaslit into believing that just because your actions have the result of upsetting someone, that must mean you hate them. You were probably just living life without even thinking about them, let alone hating them.
9/ Don't be gaslit into believing you're a bad person just because you do things that others dislike.

(If that sounds like an attitude that could only ever be evil, please revisit the cited examples and consider that you undoubtedly already hold this attitude at times.)
10/ The tragedy here is that many of the people most vulnerable to this abuse, are the kindest among us; the ones who least want to upset others; the ones who are most likely to listen when someone says, "Please stop -- you're hurting me."
11/ I hope this thread shows how never being willing to hurt people can be weaponized against you, making you vulnerable and guilty in any situation -- notably, for whichever choices you make (or don't make!). Don't fall prey to this abuse.
12/ What should we do instead?

Consider the words of psychiatrist and holocaust survivor Viktor Frankl: "Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom."
14/ Consider how Adlerian Psychology (succinctly explained in the aptly-titled "The Courage to Be Disliked") teaches us to separate our own actions from other people's reactions.
15/ This is a call to arms: DECOUPLE. Culture's sanity depends on our freedom to do so.
16/ What does a culture that cannot decouple look like?

Imagine a boot saying you forced it to stamp on your face, forever.
17/ Decoupling *can* have negative consequences. But so can contextualizing. I'd much rather live in a world where everyone, including me, takes responsibility for their own reactions, than live in a world where everyone is held responsible for everyone else's experiences.
Stray thoughts on this topic: https://twitter.com/Elodes12/status/1299394808767709185
You can follow @ElodesNL.
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