This meme popped up on social media feed one day, and it trigged some thoughts that have been rattling around in my head. Many years ago, I saw an office cartoon hanging on my manager’s wall listing all the exhausting, reflexive, impulsive responses they get from workers when dealing with everyday work situations. It struck me as profound. Mainly because I saw some of those attributes in myself and wanted to do better. So I actually copied it down and remembered it. Used it to examine (question) some of my own behavior.
Then, for years, I’ve sort of started a mental collection of arrogant and snobby emotional/intellectual excuses and that people use to deflect truths they don’t want to hear. Usually, it my list was populated by excuses (self-justifications) by fat white American liberal Democrats with their selfish arrogant stupidity, but I realized it could be anyone… Christians… atheists… Content isn’t the determining factor; context is. The tools are always the same. These are devices mindless, thoughtless tools… automatic, mechanical, tricks, apparatus, planned, contraption, gadget, instrument, stupid tattoos, … anything that people use in a moment to avoid (deflect) accountability (responsibility) for their selfish behavior and declare a virtue signal.
Bottom line: when you’re confronted (or if you’re confronting someone else) with a truth, our fleshly knuckle-dragging Neanderthal basic reaction is to reject it. Our ego wants permission. We want confirmation (petted). We want our ego assuaged, not our failures exposed and prompted to do better. If you’re clueless/thoughtless, then your flesh will be ‘triggered’… either by a passive or aggressive narcissistic response, … one response will either cut others down in self-defense (aggressive, dominate, combative, blame), or the other response will be to block people and cut them off in an eviscerating shunning move (passive, dismiss, disarm, block, shame, snub, eliminate) which supposedly ‘blocks’ or ‘eliminates’ a toxic person or potential threat. There are the only two directions that every conversation will go with a narcissistic person – either combat or avoidance. Sometimes both within minutes of each other (stab and run). Both intend to shut you up and shut you down. Both are exhausting. Both will blame YOU for having an extensive failure in character (never themselves, of course). Dealing with narcissistic people can be emotionally and mentally exhausting. Unfortunately, this is a reality that anyone in ANY leadership role (even parenting) quickly learns and has to face.
So I copied and pasted the meme here, and began actually writing down all the deflections I could think of. Here is my fool’s list of intellectually-lazy deflective devices: Can you think of more?
“Stop being negative and critical. You should be more supportive.”
“Just another white male trying to suppress and control women!”
“Call the police! He’s dangerous! He’s threatening me! RAPE!”
“White supremacist!”
The cartoon hanging on the wall in my manager’s office showed a overweight woman drooped over a chair in complete exhaustion. She was surrounded by children each appearing disgruntled. The caption was, “I don’t need to exercise… I already get a work-out each day from my trainees dragging their @$$, flying off the handle, jumping to the wrong conclusion, beating a dead horse, cutting each other down, and stabbing each other in the back!”
The obvious point being was that it an emotional and mental work-out dealing with people’s drama each day. I realized this was more than just a cartoon (meme, we’d call it today). It was a profound truth. Years later I would learn the term “Emotional Intelligence”. If you’re ever in a leadership position… either by choice, or force by pushy abusive narcissistic women… you will be accused of bad behavior…. sexism… arrogance… ‘always wanting to argue’… or being a bully… or any other sexist male stereotype you can think of. No matter what. That’s their ‘out’. That is just a reality of male leadership. You are always the bad guy. And you have to learn how to deal with it effectively.
They strongly want to believe their mythologies (presumption of virtue) only want flattering affirmations (feed that ego!), and/or permission to keep plunging head-long in the wrong direction (narcissistic enablement). People have a whole liteny of ways to deflect ‘negative’ or undesirable commentary (anything that doesn’t flatter and permit). I actually started writing them down
. Today, in the world of News, journalists have even beg
combat or disregard
guess.. infer.
presumption, presume
‘If you’re not outraged, you’re not listening‘ literally means if you’re not offended by the same things as me or allowing my bias and offense to transfer to you (carrying my burden, transfering offense), then you’re not listening or you don’t care or are complicit.
Related Articles
No user responded in this post