Fall Freedoms

Antidote for a Mean World

It's a mean world. Teenagers now construct entire websites devoted to bullying individual classmates and violate their classmate's privacy by "sexting" their nude photos to strangers. Reality television programs scream "You're Fired!" and "You have been voted you off the island!" while reality "stars" dish out and endure temper tantrums, sarcasm, character assassination, personal attacks on their appearance and name calling. The art of besting your opponent with verbal violence has become so commonplace we take for granted that it is an acceptable way to communicate.

Even government has sunk to new lows when congressmen shout "You lie!" during the President's speech and protestors compare our newly elected president to Hitler. We may think words are harmless - just a way to blow off steam. A popular saying is "I'm just saying!" But are words harmless? I am not advocating for censorship but we must start looking at how our words - even and especially those concepts contained in our entertainment and music - impact our behavior and our quality of life.

Words have a huge impact on those we are closet to. We can literally rip our loved ones to shreds with what we say. Words not only hurt our feelings and cause psychological and emotional damage - words can lead to actions and hateful words can lead to physical violence and even murder. For instance, "horror rap" was recently implicated in a quadruple murder in Richmond, Virginia. The suspect is a rapper whose lyrics boast "You're not the first, just to let you know. I've killed many people and I kill them real slow. It's the best feeling, watching their last breath. Stabbing and stabbing till there's nothing left," (McCroskey in "My Dark Side"). Of course this rapper hasn't had his day in court but the gory details of the multiple murders indicate the bodies were horribly mutilated.

It's a mean world. In some ways it always has been. And in some ways it is getting better. After all, the ideas that slavery is an abomination and wife beating is illegal are fairly recent concepts in the past six thousand years of human history. On the other hand, the last few years have seen a measurable increase in various forms of violence. For instance, violent crimes perpetrated by women in the USA more than doubled from 1987 to 1994. The U.S. Department of Justice's Bureau of Justice Statistics reported an increase in rapes and sexual assaults, and in violent crimes committed by intimate partners in 2007. This is in contrast to an overall reduction in violent crime.

Interestingly, the crimes which are increasing involve our intimate relationships, and our sexuality. Worldwide, domestic violence is on the rise as the world economy falters. It would seem that while we are becoming slightly more civil to each other in some respects, the way we treat those we are closest to: our wives, husbands, romantic partners and children is becoming more and more hateful.

There are many labels used to describe the ways humans attempt and often fail to connect. Codependency, Love Addiction and Domestic Violence denote different aspects of heartache and failure in the arena of the human heart. For a life form which so completely craves intimacy and love, we don't seem to possess many skill sets which would help us to achieve our aims.

Instead we posture for dominance and control and waste a lot of energy trying to protect our fragile hearts from appearing too vulnerable. Even with the best of intentions we all fall short at times taking what looks like a short cut to happiness.

Words are powerful. We can create joy and healing with our words or we can dismantle even the most resilient self-esteem with our cruel comments. If a stranger or casual acquaintance launches a verbal attack, we will feel momentary pain but often we can correct our emotional trajectory with a variety of defense mechanisms. We might discredit the comments as coming from someone we have no regard or respect for. We might chalk it up to their real or imagined mental deficiencies. And sometimes it is easy to attribute motives to the verbal attack which cast aspersions on their veracity. For instance if we know this person is jealous we can easily dismiss their words as a failed attempt to soothe their own suffering.

But when someone we love sabotages us with a verbal barrage, we can feel completely defeated and irreparably damaged. Our family members and loved ones are often privy to our most intimate failings and fears. They know where all the tender spots are hidden and they know just how to hit them so we feel the most hurt.

We don't know how to connect. Instead we blame, shame criticize, label, defend, attempt to control our partners and "fix" our relationships. Primary emotions such as sadness, hurt and fear are vulnerable so we cover them up with secondary emotions such as anger. Our partners are NOT mind-readers and expecting them to know how we feel (they would if they really cared, right? Wrong!) is expecting them to perform a magic trick. Sharing our feelings leads to the connection we crave!

If we are truly honest, we discover that underneath our verbal violence exists a core of fear sometimes verging upon terror. The truth is we are all afraid. By attacking others, we attempt to hide our vulnerabilities. But this false sense of security comes at a high price: the walls we build to protect ourselves are the same walls that prevent us from being fully loved.

What do you think? Please email your comments and your feedback will help shape the next article!