Let’s say I don’t want you to do something.
If you don’t do the thing, I will either reward you for not doing the thing or I will do nothing, depending on the circumstances. This includes my mood and other resources.
If you do the thing, I will either punish you for doing the thing or I will do nothing, depending on the circumstances, etc., etc.
Punishment is feedback to behavior that reduces the likelihood of that behavior occurring again.
There are two types of punishment:
- Negative punishment, that is, adding something negative.
- Positive punishment, that is, removing something positive.
(Rewards kind of work the same way, but they’re often called “reinforcement,” as in “positive reinforcement,” or adding something positive; and “negative reinforcement,” or removing or avoiding something negative.)
So here’s a question: Have you actually and explicitly agreed to this system of rewards and punishment?
What happens if you question the system? What happens if you leave?
And how will you know whether the system is being run by you or someone else?
It is possible—no, it is fucking common—for people who are being abused to think they deserve what is happening to them, and for people who are outside the abusive system to think it’s at least partly the victim’s fault.
That particular piece of poison can go fuck itself.
Even if you are, yourself, an asshole, you don’t “deserve” abuse.
What you deserve is to be treated fairly and to be held accountable for what you have actually said and done, the agreements you have made, the consequences you have incurred. (Ideally, you’ll treated a little better than fairly for the bad stuff and a little less than fairly for the good stuff, but that’s probably a discussion for another day.)
In a fair system, the rewards and punishments are clearly and explicitly defined and are applied equally to everyone.
In an unfair system, the rewards and punishments aren’t just hidden and applied unequally.
They’re flipped.
That is, you will be punished for behavior that is generally considered good: standing up for yourself, showing compassion for others, holding yourself and others to your agreements, making the world a little better than how you found it.
Punishment in those circumstances will fuck with your mind.
Any Christian who is currently justifying not treating outsiders and foreigners with compassion has been punished into flipping “good” and “bad.” They have been consistently punished for showing Christian values until something inside them has broken, and they can no longer even see that their values are the opposite of what they think they are.
There are lots of examples of this, all over the political spectrum. TERFs. Anti-vaxxers (and wow have I fought with multiple liberal anti-vaxxers before). Poor people, people of color, and/or people of non-European ancestry voting for politicians whose platform involves screwing them over. Or buying from companies who support those politicians.
In fact, the closer you look at the situation, the more it seems like hypocrisy is the order of the day.
Except for you, of course.
You’re less hypocritical than everyone else—at least in the ways it counts.
—Okay, okay, either you’re laughing about now (or crying!), or you’re getting defensive, finding ways that the previous sentence doesn’t apply to you.
Here’s the deal:
Assholes punish or reward people not for their values or even according to any kind of consistent system, but because they—the assholes—feel bad or good. If they feel bad, they punish; if they feel good, they reward.
The punishments and rewards have nothing to do with the behavior of the system. Only their mood.
This eventually warps the system.
Assholes leverage systems to increase their comfort levels by inflicting punishment when they feel bad and rewards when they feel good.
REWARD AND PUNISHMENT BASED ON MOOD IS THE HEART OF ABUSE.
Abuse of power, abusive relationships, abusive systems.
We are used to surviving inside systems leveraged by different sets of assholes. It’s hard to separate out any single stream of fucking abuse and hold someone accountable for it.
So. Let’s set aside the overwhelming, well-nigh universal set of interwoven asshole-infested systems and instead aim our attention toward something that’s relatively clear and straightforward.
Accountability.
Accountability is the ability to accurately measure and report what you actually said and did.
Let’s say you’re supposed to be using your new microfiber cloths to clean your glasses, phone screen, and monitors.
This is about me, by the way. I mentioned trying to keep my glasses and screens clean in an earlier entry.
Did I use the microfiber cloths? Nope.
All the things I was supposed to be cleaning with them are dirty.
(Ugh. And my glasses and phone screen are disgusting. Let me clean all the screens. Okay, better.)
Being accountable means no excuses, no reasoning, no blaming external circumstances. Just the accurate measurement and reporting of what you actually did.
Maybe you also end up doing the thing you said you’d do. Maybe you don’t. But first and foremost, you accurately measure and report whether you did or didn’t do what you said you’d do.
Accountability should include:
- Measuring honestly.
- Measuring when you say you’re gonna.
I didn’t set up a way to check whether or not I cleaned my glasses. I know I’ve looked through them multiple times and thought, “Dang, those are dirty.” I’ve even cleaned them on my shirt, even though the microfiber cloth was sitting in a bag on my desk within reach. I saw the grime building up and did not do what I said I was going to do about it.
It’s a small thing, but it also tells me my head’s not on straight. I’m not really holding myself accountable.
And when I think about that in a larger context, it’s not just true about the glasses; it’s true about other things, too. Important things. Right now, lack of accountability is a pattern.
I’m not going to punish myself for not being accountable. I’m not going to do bad things to myself and I’m not going to take away good things. I’m not going to participate in a system of rewards and punishments to brainwash (or “train”) myself into doing or not doing certain things. I might reassess what I doing, but it’ll be an attempt to prioritize, not punish.
No punishment. Just measurement.
Microfiber plan: keep a clean microfiber cloth on my desk. When I first get on the computer, check whether my glasses and phone screen need to be cleaned. Whenever a clean microfiber cloth comes back from the laundry (about once a week), check my other screens. Write this plan down with other planning documents. (I do weekly planning and the reminder to assess my behavior will pop up with everything else.)
When I can successfully hold myself accountable, I get more done and I feel better about myself; it’s easier to resist bad habits.
We now have two different actions you can take right now to help mitigate the assholes in your life:
- Pay attention to the small fixes.
- Hold yourself accountable for doing the small fixes.
And watch who mocks, minimizes, or resists these actions.
You can find the Asshole Mitigation Plan series outline here.
