Abusive systems, Human shields, Power and Modifiers

On Abusive systems

Written circa 19 October, 2023; originally published on another platform 20 October, 2023 circa 01:00.

Yesterday I considered sharing some thoughts and I would've started by saying I'd written 10 pieces in 5 days. Today, it's 12 in 6.

Because my thoughts tend to come from observations on a particular day, I stop myself from sharing once I've observed a certain change in the particulars I was responding to. I kind of assume my thoughts are unneeded and unsolicited but there are some things that continue to circle back around.

I've been trying to describe the patterns between certain kinds of interpersonal abuse and systemic abuse, particularly systemic abuse that occurs under white supremacy.

As systemic abuse reflects in interpersonal abuse taking lessons from interpersonal abuse can help regain internal control while dealing with systemic abuse at least to a degree that allows work, action, and hope to persist.

I'm never sure when I'm talking to myself or others as well.

Still decided to just pull some small notes from these thoughts, unorganised, unconnected.

A lot of interpersonal abuse (between partners, between parent and child, between friends, between relatives, between an employer and employee, between organisation and member, etc.) is culturally learned and specifically mirrors systems of abuse that have had any impact in that culture. If you breakdown long-term interpersonal abuse that does a lot of work in someone's mind to fundamentally change how they see the world and themselves, you will often find similarities if not perfect reflections in systems of abuse (many of which are founded in white supremacy), colonialism, imperialism, etc.

It seems a lot of the current experience is not only triggering with regard to violent traumatic events and genocidal acts but is also triggering with regard to an induced state that is comparable to a state you would enter in an emotionally abusive interpersonal relationship with consistent and unending manipulation that occurs in short bursts.

Sustaining yourself through emotional abuse and manipulation is helped by establishing your own fundamental truths that do not address specific arguments or move with new information and maintaining confidence in those truths.

A lot of conflict amidst manipulation or with a party aiming to coerce your submission will also turn towards details, accusations, and an ever-growing series of claims. They'll bring to you one issue, you begin to respond, before you do it's 5 accusations, by the time you get to the 5th it's 10, before you reach the 10th there are 20, you think okay I'll get back to the others let me respond to the latest the 20th and now there are 50, you're tired and a bit slower now you've just attempted to address the 21st and there are 100. Especially if there's genuine situational urgency, you cannot sufficiently consider the information, critically think, make deductions, reflect on your own feelings, and respond to it all in time. Sometimes this flooding isn't done consciously and happens in a sort of fit. Sometimes it's quite malicious. Either way, it can give the sense you are drowning in confusion, overwhelmed, and further unable to grab hold of reality.

When you're questioning reality and being flooded with new information and claims, having truths as a guide is very grounding and you can often at least find your way back by checking how the new information relates to the fundamentals and address what most needs addressing promptly.

I'm not someone who devalues emotion or thinks it inferior to logic and reason — they go hand in hand and rely on each other — but a lot of manipulation plays with language [rhetoric, connotation, and denotation], takes advantage of agreed definitions while distorting them, and focuses on triggering emotions.

Where you may ordinarily make use of emotion and other faculties to do your reasoning and make your arguments and establish confidence, a lot of manipulative language will do its best to isolate you from your other faculties and play only with emotions; it may also intentionally bring them to extremes which can serve to coerce your agreement faster or just induce dysregulation. It can be beneficial for someone aiming to abuse you to induce dysregulation as that state has the potential to severely debilitate you, halt processing, halt balanced and critical thinking, delay action, foster hopelessness, and leave an open space for an abuser to build a reality for you.

Often if we're discussing interpersonal abuse ie. familial abuse, partner abuse, etc. we can hope to establish an outsider, a safe person who will maintain fundamental truths for us when we shake. They maintain these truths for us until we can regain our strength.
These people are critical.
They may intercept attempts to build false realities while we're vulnerable.
This sense of support and community can be applied elsewhere.

Again, thinking on the connection to abuse some truths that come to mind for me:
You do not earn not being abused.
You do not earn the right to not be abused.
You do not prove that you do not deserve to be abused.
If you end up in an argument of whether or not you or another party has earned the right to not be abused there are very different questions to be asked entirely and the questions are not to be asked of you but of whoever is arguing the right to not be abused is conditional.

Knowing my fundamental truths, if I begin by denouncing observed abuse and the response is along the lines of "this is what should've been done to prevent the receipt of abuse", "had this been done the recipient would've been deemed worthy of not being abused", "did the recipient do what they were supposed to do to be beyond the threshold of not being abused", etc. I can recognise the questions being asked of me and proof being requested are not relevant to what I find most important.

I may not be able to answer all of the questions that come and I may need time to process and exercise discernment with response to specifics, but I can identify that we are having a more fundamental disagreement and me answering a series of questions or providing proof will not resolve that.

If the response I receive suggests some recipient needed to first meet a set of demands or requests to not be abused when my fundamental truth is no one earns the right to not be abused, then that's our issue and my focus. That returns me to the initial argument, grounds me in my reality, and prevents potential spiralling if I'm to face a flood of new questions and claims.

On Human shields

Written 30 October, 2023 circa 17:07; originally published on another platform 30 October, 2023 circa 17:09.

I've been thinking about this "human shields" rhetoric for a few days and it seems so senseless that I'm tempted to believe I must be missing something because the argument begins to deconstruct in a single follow-up question and surely such weak arguments would not be so confidently repeated.

The way this phrase has been used is a very strange distortion of language. Truthfully, I don't think every user is making these distortions consciously; they're just carrying on the implied understanding and context clues they subconsciously picked up on without investigating or interrogating the language they use.

Often when we've (socially, culturally) discussed human shields, we've used the term in the context of something like an armed robbery. Say there are hostages. Say someone police are seeking to apprehend walks out with a person, a full human in front of them with a gun to their head. They've walked out with a human shield.

Obviously, in practise, we have issues a bounty with policing, we have demographic biases and prejudice but on a basic level, if someone is being used as a human shield you avoid the risk of hurting that human. If I'm not mistaken, typical protocol is not to shoot through the human shield hoping or assuming it will reach your target.

I find this a distortion of language because 'human' is a modifier. 'Human' is a modifier for 'shield'. "They're using a shield" "Oh, what kind?" "A human one". The addition of 'human' is quite literally a humanisation of the concept in your head.

What we're instead seeing with the use of "human shields" is dehumanisation. We're seeing people operate as if 'shield' is a modifier for 'human'. "They're a human being" "Oh, what kind?" "The shield kind" as if existing as a shield could ever be the sole purpose for any human being.

You add 'human' to check your initial instincts. If we're talking about an inanimate object you move more freely when met with a shield. 'Human' is a reminder No, you cannot do that you must move with care and grace because this is in fact a human. You have a human life to prioritise. 'Human' as a modifier is to suggest you have more tact not less.

But people aren't using 'human' as a modifier for 'shield'. They're using 'shield' as a modifier for 'human', as a justification for less care, less grace, less tact, less understanding of what it means to be met with a human life. An entire human.

That, to me, is a very strange distortion of language.

What's more
The shielding claim otherwise does not hold up anyway and is a deflection, but let's say I did believe. If my response to "human shield" is "protect because they're human" and your response to "human shield" is "kill because they're in my way" we've got a very different problem, a very fundamental one.

Considering the argument of "human shields" is a good time to return to your most fundamental truths and beliefs.

On Power

Written 31 October, 2023 circa 10:55; originally published on another platform 31 October, 2023 circa 12:34.

More distorted language or rather language it is essential to dissect.

When some hear ‘power’, ‘dominance’ they think ‘unbridled’.  They think ‘impenetrable’.  They think ‘force’.  They think ‘control’.

I have fundamental differences and consequently disagreements with these people.  When I hear ‘power’, ‘dominance’, I think ‘responsibility’.  I think ‘duty’.  I think ‘care’.  I think ‘guide’.  I think ‘control’ but more specifically and maybe more importantly ‘self-control’.  I think ‘restraint’.  I think ‘discipline’ and of course its accompaniment ‘self-discipline’.

But most instinctively, I think ‘responsibility’.

Power to some is primarily to not be met with any challenge any blockage any impediment to the whims of any given day.

Power to others is commitment to care and firmness in such.

Addendum circa 12:34 31 October, 2023.

Less to do with distortion more to do with assumptions we take for granted in communication and how our agreed-upon definitions differ.

On Modifiers

Written 31 October, 2023 circa 10:43; originally published on another platform 31 October, 2023 circa 14:17.

But we do grammatically know how to use modifiers as they pertain to humans we do it all the time. In fact we take plenty of modifiers (usually demographic labels) and use them to communicate which lives are to be less valued, less protected. Take the pandemic we've yet to resolve and the notion it's only a problem for disabled humans. We knew what a modifier was then and we know what it is now. We knew that 'human' implied value and duty of care so a modifier was needed to take away from that to tell you instead there is no duty of care, there is little value, and there is allowance to cull the population. I don't agree with the use, but we knew how to use modifiers then. We knew saying human alone meant responsibility. It meant a life you protect.

Now that human is a modifier again to suggest responsibility to suggest a duty to protect it's as if you release understanding of that grammatical structure and take shield as your modifier instead. You understand the rules of the language but you bend it to your will. More specifically you bend it in whichever direction supports the culling of a population. Pick and choose your structures, pick and choose your modifiers, make new choices every day. So long as the choice allows a supporting argument for your movements on any given day.

It's as if your mind is feverishly hunting for reasons not to care. Reasons to bear no responsibility. And I mean so long as you're looking for reasons you will find them. Because they don't have to be valid reasons to anyone else just enough to soothe your soul and guide your actions. If you are simply the kind that needs a reason to not care and devalue you will find one or create one if you do not.

Addendum circa 14:17 31 October, 2023.

I don't usually like sharing my thoughts without running through them first but I was still thinking on the convenient use of "human shields".

Hopefully, it's clear this isn't how 'disabled' should be used but powers that be know the society they're working with and they know the biases that exist in the population they're working on and they know how to exploit them.

14:18

I guess all to say when the end goal is some kind of "ideal" population some kind of "supreme" state, language will be manipulated how it needs to be in that present moment and goalposts will consistently move.