Jul. 19th, 2010 04:10 pm
Random lightbulb
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textualdevianceFor years, I've always been confused when I get really hostile reactions to some of the things I say or do that are designed (in my head) to be a way to keep a particular situation from devolving. I've never understood why saying something that boils down to, "hey, can we take a step back here and try to discuss this calmly?" makes people go completely off their nut.
I think I just got it: It's projection.
People who are always on the attack will automatically interpret any attempt to keep them from attacking as a counterattack, and not an attempt to disarm. Because their own intentions in these situations are always hostile, they assume hostile intentions in others who oppose them in any way.
It's the same thing, essentially, as people who claim that being asked not to discriminate is in itself a form of discrimination. For instance, anti-gay Christians who think that being prevented from discriminating equals an attack on their religion itself.
About 20 years ago, I was involved with a quasi theater group that had a lot of hot-headed personalities, and the meetings we had sometimes went completely off the rails. I was on one side of one of those situations, where I and one other person were going back and forth on a small point of contention, and really derailing anything else from getting done at the meeting. To try to keep things from getting out of hand, I suggested, in the middle of the debate, that she and I take our particular conversation "outside." And instead of being seen as an attempt to keep the rest of the meeting on track, she (and the other hot-heads in the group) saw it as an actual threat of violence: That what I was trying to do was to get her to physically go out back of the building so we could throw some punches.
Now, I'm such a pacifist that it would never have even occurred to me to try to solve our disagreement with violence, so I was absolutely gobsmacked that anyone read what I said that way. But they did, and that incident later came back to haunt me when they decided to kick me out of the group over a similar controversy (we were on a road trip, and I politely asked one of our roommates if he wouldn't mind sleeping somewhere else if he intended to stay up late and party, since I needed to sleep early to drive home the next day for work.)
Really, this is a keenly libertarian (and childish) worldview: The idea that any attempt to prevent someone from causing harm is an unreasonable curtailment of their "freedom" and therefore an attack. It's really no different than a child deciding that her parents are "mean" because they won't let her throw dirt at her playmates.
Reasonable, mature adults who want to live in a civilized society don't act like that when they're asked to treat other people with respect, or to otherwise consider the needs of others before they act. They don't assume that they're entitled to do anything they want to no matter whom they may hurt, and cry foul when they're faced with consequences for doing so.
I think I just got it: It's projection.
People who are always on the attack will automatically interpret any attempt to keep them from attacking as a counterattack, and not an attempt to disarm. Because their own intentions in these situations are always hostile, they assume hostile intentions in others who oppose them in any way.
It's the same thing, essentially, as people who claim that being asked not to discriminate is in itself a form of discrimination. For instance, anti-gay Christians who think that being prevented from discriminating equals an attack on their religion itself.
About 20 years ago, I was involved with a quasi theater group that had a lot of hot-headed personalities, and the meetings we had sometimes went completely off the rails. I was on one side of one of those situations, where I and one other person were going back and forth on a small point of contention, and really derailing anything else from getting done at the meeting. To try to keep things from getting out of hand, I suggested, in the middle of the debate, that she and I take our particular conversation "outside." And instead of being seen as an attempt to keep the rest of the meeting on track, she (and the other hot-heads in the group) saw it as an actual threat of violence: That what I was trying to do was to get her to physically go out back of the building so we could throw some punches.
Now, I'm such a pacifist that it would never have even occurred to me to try to solve our disagreement with violence, so I was absolutely gobsmacked that anyone read what I said that way. But they did, and that incident later came back to haunt me when they decided to kick me out of the group over a similar controversy (we were on a road trip, and I politely asked one of our roommates if he wouldn't mind sleeping somewhere else if he intended to stay up late and party, since I needed to sleep early to drive home the next day for work.)
Really, this is a keenly libertarian (and childish) worldview: The idea that any attempt to prevent someone from causing harm is an unreasonable curtailment of their "freedom" and therefore an attack. It's really no different than a child deciding that her parents are "mean" because they won't let her throw dirt at her playmates.
Reasonable, mature adults who want to live in a civilized society don't act like that when they're asked to treat other people with respect, or to otherwise consider the needs of others before they act. They don't assume that they're entitled to do anything they want to no matter whom they may hurt, and cry foul when they're faced with consequences for doing so.
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