“ I learned that to humiliate another person is to make him suffer an unnecessarily cruel fate.” —Nelson Mandela
March 13th, 2023 - Anchorage, AK - Issue 21
One thing about outcomes is that they are difficult to predict and control. There is a lot of complexity to unravel about even just the psychosocial dynamics at play in outcomes for humans in the contexts of their individual lives and the existence of their species.
One thing about humans that can be used to determine outcome is that they are very driven by an aversion to rejection, criticism and what can be in essence a combination of both, humiliation. It’s interesting that this aversion should be such a widespread sentiment, especially when humiliation is so difficult to avoid in the current conditions of modern human life.
Elie Weisel is famously quoted as saying:
“I swore never to be silent whenever and wherever human beings endure suffering and humiliation. We must take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented.”
People really focus on the second half of this idea. It is frequently wielded alongside an accusation of not doing enough or a call to make one’s voice heard. The necessity to take sides, as presented by a survivor of one of the most brutal manifestations of hate in human history, is related to the idea of intercession for one another, in the face of suffering and humiliation.
An ongoing inability to behave pro-socially, hopelessness, violence and suicidality are all statistically evident outcomes of humiliation. One would think that the question of what would it mean to never be silent in the face of suffering and humiliation would be a bit more forefront in everyday discourse given the lethal prevalence of exactly these outcomes. Instead, The Journal of the American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law says that “despite its prevalence in forensic contexts, humiliation has been subjected to relatively little conceptual or empirical scrutiny.”
The effects of humiliation are wide ranging and instances of it are thoroughly borne out in the experience of modern life for many people. It could be argued that the hours and types of labor and social expectations demanded of people have undergone a shift for the less humane. Prisons are overflowing, torture practices are uncriticized, people are exposed to the elements living without a home, parenting norms accommodate punishment, and health care is cost prohibitive to many people- to name a few ways modern life humiliates. In the social expectation realm, people riff on the internet all the time about what they do and do not like in fellow humans and what constitutes cringe and largely treat those they encounter in physical reality as figurative game show participants in Life With Them. (Because really much of life has been reduced to a game show setting anyway, hell, even our partnering behaviors have become fodder for this exact type of entertainment)
For something so clearly risky as continual degradation of human dignity, one would think the statistically dangerous outcomes would serve to deter continued degradation. Instead of more creative responses, humiliation is deployed as if it is an at all effective antidote amidst a sort of learned helplessness in the face of unsatisfactory human behavior. In reality we have communication tools and vast community accountability mechanisms with which to mediate unsatisfactory human behavior.
If all the hazards really were being correctly factored in, it may just be found to be important to collectively practice a sort of suffering/humiliation reduction.
WWADWWAD (?) Featured Curiosities:
-This required reading of a solidly research-supported indictment of the ignorant lunacy of transphobic hate
-This rare mainstream news phone interview of Marianne Williamson that’s somewhat devoid of bias
-This reckoning with the supreme discomfort of actual authenticity
-This experientially illuminating thread about animals
-These beautiful words and its accompanying design inclusive of the sweet quote “blindside them with your light and your aligned actions”
Upcoming Events
Online/Worldwide, AKST Time:
Daniel Ellsberg’s 92nd Birthday- April 7th
Local, AKST Time:
All Ages Bethlehem Shalom, SunDog, Pill-Oh!, & Kodi Hannah Show - March 16th at 6:30PM at The Nave , $15/$10 with repost
Fight Back Against LGBTQ+ Hate- March 18th at 2PM demonstration organized by PFS&L, Town Square Park
Trapped in Transit: Transgender Storytelling with Visionary Filmmakers Aitch Alberto and Sydney Freeland- March 29th at 9AM, cost: free, online, register here
18th Annual UAA Undergraduate Philosophy Conference - March 31st and April 1st, location: The Den in Library 307, more info here
Community Action Night- April 10th at 6PM, location TBD, text (907)891-3909 for info