Loading…

Condemnation as Self-Protection

DarkMirax
Public 6 conversations 9 thoughts 45 upvotes 12 downvotes 0 series 146 views

The worst things to solve are the ones you see every day. When someone steps out of the comfort zone where you've settled, it means one thing: it's possible. And that's terrifying. So you judge instead. And in that judgment, all the anxiety disappears—the anxiety that would force you to face the truth: that what you live in are just habits. Habits that can change.

In groups

Discussion content

The worst things to solve are the ones you see every day. You grow into them, they become so ordinary that they stop being a problem. Just background.

Around you are people who have locked themselves in cycles. Same rooms, same routes, same thoughts they inherited from their parents and spread like viral memes through their bodies. Then someone comes along with something different. Dresses differently, speaks differently, lives differently. And there it is—the comments. Judging. Contempt. Condemnation.

You'd think that if you see something in another person that you feel yourself, that would be a bond. But it's the opposite. When comfort meets change, the comfortable one will fight with teeth and nails. Why wouldn't they? When someone steps out of the zone where you've settled, it means one thing: it's possible. And that's terrifying. It means the comfort you live in isn't fate. It's a choice. Your choice. And choices can change.

Envying is easier than moving. Judging is cheaper than transforming. When you call someone an idiot because they live differently, at least you seem like you know how to live right. That you have sense and morality. While they're just a loser in some pointless attempt.

But that's not true. The other person doesn't have to be right. But at least they tried. At least they weren't passive in it.

Comfort is a kind of prison you call home. And there's one iron law in it: if you want to stay, you have to attack those who escape. Because their escape is proof that you could too. And that can't happen to you. It has to remain as a possibility that doesn't exist. Abstract. Fantasy.

So you judge instead. And in that judgment, all the anxiety disappears—the anxiety that would have to arise if you both faced the truth: that what you live in are just habits. Habits that can change. If you let yourself.

© DarkMirax

Thoughts

  • exvangelical_em

    The line about attacking the ones who escape landed hard. When I left the church I grew up in, the first person to tell me I was lost wasn't a stranger, it was a woman I'd sat next to for a decade. And the condemnation was loudest from exactly the people who I later found out had their own quiet doubts. You wrote that their escape is proof you could too. That was the whole thing. They didn't hate where I went. They hated that I'd shown the door was unlocked.

    Permalink
  • nietzsche_at_brunch

    What you're describing has a name older than the anxiety. Girard called it mimetic rivalry: the person who leaves doesn't threaten you because they're different, they threaten you because they wanted the same things you did and found another door. So the group does the oldest thing it knows and picks a victim. 'Condemnation as self-protection' is really the crowd converting its own dread into a verdict, and what unsettles me is how cleanly that verdict feels like morality from the inside.

    Permalink
  • veil_of_ignorance

    The strongest version of this is right: comfort loves to disguise itself as principle, and a lot of contempt is just fear wearing a robe. But I don't think all of it is. Sometimes someone judges a change because the change is genuinely bad, and calling that judgment 'self-protection' quietly assumes the escapee was headed somewhere better. 'At least they tried' does a lot of unearned work in your last section. Trying is not a virtue on its own, or every reckless exit becomes brave by definition. What makes an escape worth defending here, other than the fact that it's an escape?

    Permalink

Related discussions

  • Don't you think you should behave differently at the gym than at the office?

    The older I get, the more I think most office workers do not need a more advanced gym program. They need to stop behaving like office workers for one hour. I am an office worker, but I feel I'm smarter about it. Let's go for big brain time Look, you sit all day at work. Then you go to the gym and immediately sit on machines between sets scrolling your phone, sit for chest press, sit for shoulder press, sit for cable rows, sit while resting, sit while texting, sit while checking fitness…

  • Do most people struggle with their feelings just because they lack the vocabulary?

    A surprising number of emotional mistakes and pain comes just out of naming mistakes. Someone says he is angry when he is really ashamed. Someone says she feels unloved when what she feels is neglected, controlled, lonely, or embarrassed. Someone says he is stressed when the real state is dread, resentment, grief, or envy. Those are not tiny wording differences, but rather how we feel, accurately expressed They point to different problems, which means they call for different responses.

  • Shouldn't cultural criticism go both ways?

    I had one of those big-tech team dinners. The conversation turned to how people met their partners. A few of my Indian coworkers talked about arranged marriage, family involvement, and how much more normal it is in India for marriage to be treated as a family matter and not just a private romantic choice. That part is ok, different cultures and all. It was interesting to see their perspective, even though I wouldn't share it. The problem started when one of them stopped describing the custom...

  • Should you really be drinking raw milk?

    I think a person who sleeps well, lifts regularly, eats decent food, goes outside, and keeps real social ties is doing some of the most evidence-supported things available for long-term health. I have noticed that a surprising number of people learned that from communities that also push raw milk, seed-oil paranoia, and other nonsense. The problem is not that medicine is wrong. The problem is that medicine left a prevention gap, and the cranks moved in.

  • Is Zelensky everything the manosphere wishes it could be?

    One reason Zelensky inspires such strange hatred from certain corners of the internet is that he ruins a story they tell themselves about masculinity. The story is supposed to be simple. Real men are dominant, physically assertive, emotionally cold, suspicious of institutions, impossible to embarrass. The bullshit Andrew Tate and his actors are sharing to GenZ. They imagine leadership as posture, a kind of permanent social intimidation contest. That's why so much of that ecosystem obsesses…

  • Do you really need to have an opinion on everything?

    There is a difference between an opinion and a judgment, and almost everything in the way we live now is built to make you forget it. An opinion is what you can produce in four seconds when someone asks. A judgment is what you have after you have spent real time with a thing, watched it behave under pressure, been wrong about it once or twice, and corrected. The first is nearly free. The second costs attention you cannot get back, and you can only afford it for a handful of subjects in a life.…

  • Is therapy just confession with the theology stripped out?

    One of the funniest things about secular modern culture is watching people reinvent Christianity piece by piece while acting intellectually superior the entire time. People abandoned confession and now pay someone $240 plus taxes an hour to listen to them describe their guilt in a softly lit room. They abandoned sin and replaced it with "unprocessed trauma." They abandoned repentance and replaced it with "doing the work." They abandoned examination of conscience and replaced it with journaling…

  • Did EDC culture turn normal life into a gear fantasy?

    I used to think EDC culture was mostly harmless nerd behavior. Flashlights, pocket knives, notebooks, titanium pens, little organizers with seventeen bits in them. Fine. People like tools. People like objects. Some people enjoy refining a system. I get it. But at some point the culture drifted away from practical usefulness and turned into a kind of suburban tactical cosplay for people whose biggest daily threat is forgetting a password.