Recently,
I published another article on the relationship between the configuration of
criminal expression in a society, on the one hand, and the configuration of
different kinds of stimuli in the living environment on the other. In other words, how does the extreme
anti-social aggressive behavior of certain members of society become activated
and influenced by the fields of experience in which they live. However, I have come to realize that, as not
all antisocial aggressive behavior is criminal, there is still a whole other
area of hurtful conduct to be considered in relation to humans and living
environments. In terms of law
enforcement, this lower key hurtful conduct is simply under the radar. Which doesn’t mean that it can’t leave a
meaningful imprint on the people who are on the receiving end of it.
Just
as with crimes, we can divide this lower key hurtful conduct, these slights as
it were, into slights of passion in connection with more traditional natural
environments and slights of numbness in connection with modern technological
environments. Slights of passion would
include directed insults, slander, mocking, bullying and seeking out
fights. These are slights where there
are focused targets for anger, aggression and resentment that are stimulated
not only by the targets themselves but by all the passionate organic stimuli
that are activated within more traditional natural fields of experience. The organic stimuli in more traditional
living environments elicit a lot of strong emotions in a person, emotions that
will tend to metaphorically explode a person apart unless he finds outlets on
which to release them. And a person in a
more traditional natural environment needs only focused targets to keep his
emotions focused so that he doesn’t explode apart in the process of expressing
his strong emotions. So, independent of
whatever supposed grievances that a person might have against someone, having a
defined discrete figure for the target of his emotions creates a funnel for his
emotions that, without its presence, could lead to the sender getting hurt in
the process of expressing his emotions.
Again,
just as with crimes, we can see an increasing transformation in the nature of
slights as modern technology has displaced nature and more traditional
architecture and living arrangements. A
lot of the new slights can be put in the category of omission rather than commission. Because of smartphones and computers, people
are increasingly communicating in less bonded more mediated ways. First, there was the loss of a person’s
visual presence with the telephone. No
more body language and gestures. Then
there was the loss of the audio voice with emails and texts. No more vocal inflection. Slights or miscommunications occur as a
result of the lack of completeness in such an imperfect method of sending
messages that can’t fully convey the sender’s intent. But even in the external world, the numbness
created by modern technology permeates the content of human communication. A lot of retail and service people don’t
bother to say hello to their customers and have difficulty even acknowledging
the human presence in another person. And
think of the classic scene today of a group of preteens sitting around
clustered together texting people who are someplace else and finding themselves
incapable of properly relating to the kids sitting next to them. These are slights against human nature. Perhaps these modern preteens are too numb to
even be aware that they are being slighted.
If everybody goes through life today with their lives so mediated that
they barely metaphorically rub up against one another, what is there to compare
the anemic nature of their contacts to?
And
yet, in spite of the numbness, there are people who are aware that something
has gone wrong in human connection. And
these are the people who don’t sink easily into a numb robotic posture. These are the people who suffer from the
increasing lack of meaningful imprints that they are both trying to make and
receive in the context of their daily social contacts. These are the people who fall prey more
easily to the emotional disturbances generated by modern daily life. The cause of their pathology is not some
focused problem. Rather, it literally
surrounds them. So although specific
slights of numbness, specific omissions, can be hurtful to the person who
receives them, the cumulative effects of multiple slights (a cumulative effect
that we do all experience to a greater or lesser extent today) have their own
harmful results. And given the increasingly
technological environment in which we all live today, for those who are
particularly sensitive to this pattern of omission, it is difficult to escape.
Now
just as with the evolution of crimes, so with the evolution of slights, there
has been a great deal of overlap in the presence of slights of passion and
slights of numbness in human history.
There are still plenty of situations even today, where one sees the
expression of slights of passion.
Bullying, and fraternity hazing are still rampant. Mocking and slander are still present in the
tabloids. Although one might ask if
these slights of commission are always slights of passion, purposely directed
at the apparent target. Or is it that, in some cases, perhaps the focused
targets are almost accidental and chosen to stimulate the aggressor to life by
creating a trumped-up target, in order to fight off numbness. These are what we would have to call
transitional slights, having aspects of both slights of passion and slights of
numbness.
In
any case, there is no doubt that slights of numbness interfere considerably
with the capacity of people in modern technological society to bond with one
another. These slights are both causes
of and symptoms of psychopathology today.
And on a larger scale, they interfere with the effective functioning of
families, communities and societies.
(c) 2019 Laurence Mesirow
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