Getting to know the authoritarian parent
The mattress tag
Why do you always put quotes around “realists”? Because of their idea of “reality.” An all-encompassing big picture presided over by a know-it-all. There at the beginning and still “there” now. A state of perfection that they can attain if only they can deny all change, all movement, that’s stolen it away from them. So they can rest in peace under the protection of “God” in his “heaven,” knowing that justice has been served by sending the rest of us to hell. “Heaven” they imagine as a static status quo, never to be disturbed by the slightest change, the slightest movement.
Utter nonsense peddled by the tag attached to all Movement, put there by the Logic of anything goes implied by the absence of a big picture. An implication of Reality in reverse, that wants to take Movement in the opposite direction. That we’re stuck with. A mattress tag warning of instant death if it’s removed. That happens to be true since it would stop Creation and inactivate Mind. And so we soldier on, obstructed by “realist” “conservatives” making their perverse contribution to progress but contribution, nonetheless.
Perfection that never existed
Is this relevant to authoritarian parenting? The Mind of our metaphysical Self and the thinking of the figures in its hallucination – Sapiens – are obstructed by the condition of the tag. Made active by our ancestral Self’s and our own state of self-unawareness. The loss of Self-Awareness automatically switched to reverse-awareness of what’s not there, specifically the implication of an absurdity: the message on the tag of a mythical state of perfection at the beginning, unmoved and unmoving. Like the twilight zone of emergency lighting that comes on automatically in a power outage, surreal and spooky.
In our surreal and spooky twilight world Sapiens is divided into two camps. Both manipulated by the absurdity but one less than the other. The other is ape-humans short on differentiation and empathy being manipulated backward in time. Devoted to manipulating the other camp backward with them. The authoritarian parent’s personality type is firmly grounded in the ape-human camp. Being manipulated is what interferes with their emotional accessibility. With their ability to be there for any of us. Their manipulator is a predator programmed not to care for us but to capture us. By manipulation. To take us back into its hallucination: a state of unchanging perfection that never existed. Madness. Psychopathy.
Reflection of a reflection
All the attributes of the body-centered personality type are engineered for one primary purpose: to remove all limits of discipline from the wildness of the herd of beasts that it is. The limits of introspection searching Conscience; reflection connecting with Guidance from the discipline of Logic and the relationships of Love; thinking and judgment that subject circumstances to the rules of analysis, capture their meaning, and define their purpose. All these the friend of Sapiens, the enemy of ape.
Faculties of Mind and Character whose absence can get a person thrown in jail when its anti-sociability engages in overt law-breaking. But it can also get careerists promoted to positions of influence in a world that values Machiavellian tribal expedience over the inhibitions of Conscience. In a world of perverseness inclined to recognize and promote itself. Reflection of a reflection.
Back off!
Years ago, I heard from a friend and professional mentor of an authoritarian parent who had a strange reaction to a routine suggestion. The parent had turned 50, a time for self-evaluation. Her mentor prepared a list of questions she could reflect on. An acquaintance suggested What Color Is Your Parachute (1970), but she declined both. Not at all unusual if she’d already taken stock. But what her reaction made clear was that she hadn’t and, moreover, had no intention of doing so. Why? It seems she was answerable to a force within far superior to any mortal judgment that would presume to tell it what to do. Perfection itself, and so in no need of self-evaluation. She didn’t deign to communicate this in normal conversation. It was communicated with a grunt signifying contempt for an idea that was beneath consideration.
In that moment she was her manipulator. A suggestion of the brute that would command the stage later in the presence of her child, a little boy. A specter of beast. Wild and intimidating. Impervious to any but its own influence, warning of hell to pay for disobedience. Her mentor now found herself attending to a human a moment before, transformed by what seemed a growl into an alien’s threat to back off. To mind her own business and not trouble her about introspection again.
The know-it-all come alive
And so she didn’t. Until the enormity of her client’s arrogance, her assault on reason and parental irresponsibility became apparent. Until its part in the parent’s emotional inaccessibility and psychological abuse of children called her mentor to duty. Not only out of professional concern but as a person empathizing with another who had been taken captive by a herd of wild beasts.
This is why the “realist’s” insanity is relevant. Because it’s not an implication in our unreal world, inactive and harmless as it is in Reality. It’s active and harmful. It’s the know-it-all come alive presiding over its mythical big picture. A manipulator-“God” who wields its influence by “God’s will” and wills us to join it in its putrid, unchanging status quo. Its paradise of “perfection” that’s actually a palace of paralysis. Where anything that moves with life is an abomination and anything that contributes to learning is anathema.
The manipulator welcomed by Sapiens’ metaphysical Self into its Mind to “save” it. By ape-humans into their Psyches to rule as it pleases. Imposter. Usurper. Authoritarian parent.