Pulling a fast one
Lack of differentiation and empathy explains animal cruelty. Including human-animal cruelty but with a difference. Humans are intentionally mean. Other animals aren’t. The reason is the herd of wild beasts in the mirror, that’s the reverse of our metaphysical ancestor, isn’t alive. It’s an unliving image that emerges backward from the forward movement of the living Self. Lifeless because in every respect it must be the reverse of its host. Containing no trace of Love or feeling, Logic or thought. Because its role in the Logic of Definition is to motivate evolution and Creation with questioning and friction, instability and unrest. With eternal irresolution. That must include lifelessness.
Abusive parenting, like animal abuse, originates with an attribute of the human-animal Psyche that’s lifeless. And so lacking in sensitivity to a degree that can be shocking, deserving of labels like “Machiavellian” and “psychopathic.” Evocative of feelings of such negative intensity that no punishment can be too severe.
Yet you’ve concluded that to make an issue of provocations and the emotions they stir up is allowing yourself to be manipulated. Into making play-acting seem real. So why make feelings aroused by abusive behavior an issue? The perpetrators standing astride their fountainheads of invincibility are obviously smitten with their self-image or it wouldn’t be so hard to dislodge. We could declare that its costs to others are nothing but manipulations and erase them from the record, but then what? The perpetrators would think they pulled a fast one. Right. Every movement to them is part of a contest of wills where someone gains and the other loses, and this would be a big gain for them even if they are oblivious to the damage they do.
Facing facts
If their behavior and the choice of the manipulator that’s behind it are going to be rejected it has to be with an awareness of their costs. Isabel Myers’ Gifts Differing (1980) says the body-centered personality type we’ve identified as psychopathic is prone to wrongdoing and one of the reasons is it’s slow to recognize the costs of its behavior. We could expunge everything negative from these thoughts and limit ourselves to conclusions. But if we did so authoritarian parents would then take this like Bill Barr took the Mueller report, as exoneration. Adding justification for even worse abuses.
On the one hand the Course guides us toward Loving Friendship based on mutual respect and Innocence. Guilt, like ass-kissing arrogance, has no place there, so the idea is to let everyone off the hook. By practicing forbearance. Refraining from retaliation and punishment. Seeking understanding through differentiation and empathy.
Identifying provocations and their costs may seem to go against the grain by feeding guilt and retaliation with justification. But it has a different purpose. To supply a link in the sequence of Logic without which it couldn’t reach its logical conclusion. The factual basis upon which choice must be made. To do without this link would usher us from premise to conclusion without requiring an act of character to justify it. Facing facts.
Owning up to the consequences of our behavior whether or not it’s attributable to our manipulators. Whether or not it’s illusory. The gun didn’t just go off. Someone pulled the trigger. Someone died.
Each step in the proper order
Now the question can be asked: what made it happen? Why did it happen? What can be done about it so that it stops happening? Who must be responsible and accountable for the parts they played? What is it for each individual to conclude on the basis of their own conscience? Is there a metaphysical explanation that puts it all into perspective so we’re not just going around in circles?
Without asking we’d be leaving behind unfinished business for someone else to take care of, in this life or maybe another. When the way of wisdom and character is to take each step in its proper order, one at a time, and to do it right. No shortcuts, No cutting corners. With patience and concentration. I Ching Hexagram 4. Youthful Folly. Rikyu (1989), the Japanese tea ceremony. Do it any other way and the plane crashes. Lives are lost. Lives are ruined.
Forward toward personhood
The voice from mirror lake comes from a source that loves us. Its role is to stimulate Self-Awareness by stimulating our thoughts through questioning. That over time conditions us to think with greater clarity until a figure emerges that’s recognizably ourselves. Chiseled from stone by questions. Beginning with “Who are you?”
Because in this world of make-believe every tool of the entertainer’s trade is employed to make us play-actors. To make us believe that the play is real. Where the action is. And we have no choice but to live inside it. Challenging character with integrity and Free Choice to stand up to the lie, because none of it is true. By undoing the deception. By tossing our masks, costumes, and scripts. By dumping our manipulators and learning to think for ourselves, with help from Guidance that doesn’t manipulate. So that Sapiens can move forward toward personhood and from there to Free Choice. Sovereign individuals in our own right.