Before we talk about how to help others, let’s talk about anchoring the self, that is, in being your own person.
There are lots of ways to do this; what I give here is just one case study: hope.
So if assholes are common (and they are)…and the people who consciously or unconsciously are on some asshole’s support crew are even more common…and if our systems and institutions have been infiltrated and warped by assholes past and present (and wow have we seen that of late with Shitler and his crew)…
What hope do we have of fixing anything, ever?
Every good thing we do is going to get subverted and derailed by assholes, as we do it, and it sure as hell won’t last.
Why bother?
…
Okay, first: all hope is irrational.
Hope doesn’t come from thought, but from emotion. Emotions are based in something other than rationality. Hope is irrational. We can only hope something happens when the outcome isn’t guaranteed.
If you catch yourself thinking that hoping for something is irrational, that thought itself reflects an unreasonable narrative.
…
Second: hope is irrational, yet also anchored in reality.
An irrational expectation of a guaranteed outcome is not hope, but false hope. Real hope is not confident about outcomes.
Real hope takes action, and where it can’t take action, does whatever it can to get out of the way of what it hopes will happen. It’s a cheer squad, it’s the parent who believes in you unconditionally yet compassionately, it’s the bestie who is ride or die. Hope is a real, committed vote for the best possible (or impossible) outcome.
People who shut down hope aren’t trying to anchor you in reality; they’re trying to anchor you in a false narrative.
If that narrative were guaranteed to be real, nobody would need to tell you not to hope.
…
Third: hope is not a waste of time.
Hope allows us to subvert black-and-white, either-or narratives.
If someone says only people who act a certain way belong inside the community, it can be hard to not act that way, even if that behavior seems unreasonable.
For example, bullying trans people in bathrooms was never going to keep women or children safe from abuse. There’s just no logic to that sort of thinking.
But when staying part of a community means accepting a narrative that trans people using bathrooms hurts women and children, it can be hard to call bullshit—you will likely lose access to all community resources, including the ones you provided yourself.
Hope for change allows you to remain conscious of bullshit narratives, and lets you see opportunities for action. If you haven’t given in to despair, you can step up and protect trans people as they are being bullied, you can defend their presence in your community, you can learn about trans people from trans people and spread that information, you can support other people’s privacy in general, and you can hide trans people in your basement if it comes to that.
Hope is a solid, reliable method for protecting ourselves from black-and-white narratives.
…
Fourth: you don’t have to feel like a good person (or even feel like a person) in order to hope.
People who are inside black-and-white, either-or narratives have been trained to feel like shit when they go against the narrative. Otherwise they get kicked out.
Assholes count on people’s self-doubts, dislike of upheaval, apathy, and more to keep them from having to face consequences. But just in case…when they can, they will also instill a sense of “badness” in anyone who might go against them.
Why not? Assholes need to dump their sense of “badness” on someone, after all. They can’t stand it in themselves. That badness takes the form of shame, that is, a sense that who you are is inherently bad or wrong.
If hope is irrational, you don’t need to be “good” or “reasonable” in order to hope. Hope isn’t “deserved.” It just is, and it anchors us to something outside rigid narratives.
Even assholes hope.
…
Fifth: you can hope without it making you a bad person.
Consciously accepting one’s hopes is hard for a lot of people.
Does it make me bad if I hope that…?
Let’s get some perspective: assholes and their support systems warp how humans, as a whole, treat each other and our planet. Is what you are doing worse than that? Does it even compare?
Who is worse, the asshole who doesn’t want to face the consequences of their own actions, or the person who wants the asshole to face the consequences of their actions?
Who is worse, the asshole who built or hijacked a system that isolates and ostracizes anyone who doesn’t serve the asshole, or the person who hopes for a change to that system?
Who is worse, the asshole who has spent their entire life taking advantage of others, or the person who (ahem) keeps a bottle of champagne ready for their inevitable demise?
Hope is not inherently shameful. It is a conscious desire for something to happen or not happen. That’s it.
If the central problem with assholes is one of consciousness—that is, if assholes don’t have awareness of anything other than themselves in the current moment—then the solution may be one of consciousness.
Maintaining awareness seems to be the essence of mitigating assholes: defending yourself, disempowering assholes within systems, handling assholes with compassion, and understanding one’s own asshole traits and handling them so they don’t damage others.
Hope is one way to maintain that awareness.
It’s not the only one, though.
Other ways include finding perspective of your place in the universe, adhering with clarity and compassion to a philosophical or faith tradition, learning how to feel pain and other negative emotions without judgment, therapy, critical thinking skills, and more—lots more.
…
I can be both unique and awesome and not all that special.
I don’t need to be perfect or really even all that good in order to love or be loved.
The things I feel ashamed of in myself could be strengths if I stopped shaming them.
I don’t have to be right or wrong. I can be myself.
Real people and events are usually a mix of “good” and “bad,” and I’m no exception.
The people who love me most might not have been ethical about how they treated me, nor I them.
I can face disappointment.
I can face consequences.
I can understand someone else’s point of view without letting it be more important than mine, and also without trying to suppress it. And I deserve the same treatment from other people.
I get to be selfish about my sense of self. I can be compassionate without losing my selfishness.
I get to change my sense of self over time.
I get to separate out the elements of self that do not belong to me.
I get to decide when to let other people see my self without modifying or eradicating my root sense of self.
I get to hope.
…
You can find the Asshole Mitigation Plan series outline here.
