Have you seen the third installment of the Equalizer movie series yet? I’m a big fan of this genre of movies, and I especially like Denzel’s portrayal of Robert McCall, the warrior/assassin who, out of the goodness of his heart, seeks justice (or maybe vengeance?) for those who aren’t able to get it for themselves.
The character of Robert McCall is a super-duper government-trained assassin who can kill a room full of thugs in nine seconds. In contrast, the apparent bad guys are bullies who have gained their power through intimidation, theft, manipulation, coercion, human trafficking, drugs, and murder.
Now that I’ve been red-pilled, the irony of this duad doesn’t go unnoticed.
Obviously, I’m not the only one who enjoys watching the hero take out the bad guys. Movies like this are hugely popular, and that speaks to our collective desire for a hero to save us from the bad guys of the world, but who determines who the bad gals and guys are?
Emotional wounds, like physical wounds, fester over time. For those of us who have been abused, assaulted, manipulated, coerced, and mistreated, the more we ruminate on what happened to us, the bad person eventually grows to giant-size proportions. We rarely, if ever, consider that our perspective was formed at the time of the initial event with the level of understanding we had at that time. Even if we were older – say twelve or thirteen – we still weren’t psychologically equipped to properly assess what happened, yet we use those mind files as references well into our adult lives.
The moment we realized that we were powerless to stop whatever it was that happened to us, we gave birth to an anger monster. Because this anger monster is our child, we nurture it by finding ways to justify it, and every time we justify it, our desire for punishment grows. Punishment validates our hurt feelings. Left unchecked, this anger-monster child will grow into a fire-breathing dragon that inflicts pain and suffering on others.
We become the very thing we are angry at. We say things that hurt people. We do things that are manipulative, coercive, mean, and abusive, and we justify our actions in the same way our abusers justified theirs. This is how the cycle of abuse and harm continues through the generations.
No one likes to feel powerless.
No one likes to feel weak, and no one likes to be taken advantage of.
With all the knowledge we have gained over the years about human behavior, why isn’t the cycle of abuse stopping?
Lately, I’ve been reassessing my previously reassessed perspectives, trying to figure out what I missed in my healing journey. If I had resolved my childhood trauma, my PTSD wouldn’t have been triggered during the pandemic, so which mind file wasn’t resolved?
Was it the abandonment file?
If this file was referenced, who abandoned me? The medical system? Systems are made up of individuals, so saying that the medical system abandoned me isn’t fair because there were plenty of doctors and nurses who refused to go along with the oppressive status quo. Several doctors spoke out against the dangers of gene therapy, masking children, social distancing (which is anti-social conditioning), and locking healthy people in their homes. I learned a long time ago that medical professionals are not gods. They are people who make mistakes the same as everyone else.
Was it the government? I didn’t have an emotional attachment to the government, so it wasn’t possible for this institution to abandon me. Still, I did develop a healthy mistrust, and that mistrust eventually became fear. The fear caused me to wonder how much power this institution had over people and if that was how it was supposed to be.
The legal system? Again, there is no emotional attachment to begin with, so there is no possibility of abandonment, but, like the government, I became increasingly mistrusting and afraid of them. I found it unbelievably shocking that members of the police were eager to beat protesters with batons, use tear gas on a crowd that wasn’t violent, and even trample people with their horses. Why would anyone trust an institution that justified this kind of behavior?
The general public? Hmmm. Admittedly, I was shocked at how many people were blindly obedient, but I have no emotional attachment to the general public, so again, the masses couldn’t have abandoned me.
Personal friends? I don’t know. Like most people, I kept in touch with friends and family on Facebook, but when I realized that Facebook was openly censoring information and that everyone I knew was falling for the propaganda, I deleted my account. I believe that what you participate in grows, and I refuse to participate in a platform that was and still is intentionally manipulating people.
When I learned how pervasive the use of manipulation and intentional conditioning through our education system, movies, and TV, the more selective I became in what I was willing to watch.
The fact that our military used psychological warfare against its own people was shocking. You can read that admission here. Unsurprisingly, the documents used for the propaganda program have gone missing. I bet the dog ate them.
If it wasn’t abandonment, then which archetypal wound was opened? Or was I also a victim of the military-grade psy-ops going on?
I’ve also been pondering the rise of evil. I wholeheartedly believe that there is an evil energy at work here. It has poisoned the minds of hundreds of thousands of people and it must be stopped. I feel like we’ve all taken a huge step backward into the 1930s because it feels to me like the atrocities of the 1940s are being repeated.
Consider this sentence from the introduction of Erich Neumann’s book, Depth Psychology And a New Ethic. It’s the first sentence.
The problem of evil is one of the most central problems of modern man. No appeal to old values and ideals can shield us from the recognition that we live in a world in which evil in man is emerging from the depths on a gigantic scale and confronting us all, without exception, with the question: “How are we to deal with this evil?”
Erich wrote this book during the Second World War. In his preface, he asks:
Have problems of ethics or even of a ‘new’ ethic any relevance at all in an age dominated by a dance of death, to which National Socialism in Germany was little more than a prelude?
The nations which only yesterday were proclaiming their solidarity in the battle for the freedom of mankind, are now competing against each other in the production of atomic bombs; and who can doubt that the unthinkable of today will be the commonplace of tomorrow? What is the point, in a world situation such as this, of the ridiculous ‘ethical’ question and the still more ridiculous answer, “It all depends on the individual”?
It's fascinating that decades later, we are in the same position – don’t you think? It seems to me that the cycle of abuse that runs in families extends to systems. Isn’t that the definition of chaos theory and the Butterfly Effect?
Ever since I can remember, I’ve always believed in God. I couldn’t explain to anyone what I thought He/It was, but I knew He/It existed. Oddly, now thinking back, it was only when I began studying the science of psychology, that I started questioning my belief and faith.
Over the years, I’ve researched multiple belief systems and still cannot say, with 100% conviction that I know who or what God is, but I can say with 100% conviction, that I know there is something that is informing and learning from all of us who inhabit this mess of a world.
I also believe wholeheartedly that evil exists. I’ve seen it and I’ve felt it. I’ve been in a room with people who have willingly given themselves over to the dark side and I know that you can’t negotiate with them.
Thank you for stopping by Transforming Trauma! Please help me build my audience by liking and sharing this post. If you can relate to anything I’ve written, please let me know in the comments.
I will be taking the rest of December off and will return in the new year with a focus on spiritual themes. I hope all of you have a very Merry Christmas and a wonderful New Year’s Eve!
“We rarely, if ever, consider that our perspective was formed at the time of the initial event with the level of understanding we had at that time.” This is a very important point, which I remembered yesterday as I was recalling some incidents from my childhood, and recognising that the memories and perceptions I carry now were formed when I was very young.