If People Police Your Life Choices | Clarissa's Blog

If People Police Your Life Choices | Clarissa's Blog

I think one of the reasons people can get all hurt and offended -- and I include myself in this category in the past -- is if one has the world view that other people are basically harbingers of a kind of universal morality.   You watch them and listen to them because you want to address this universal morality, either by conforming to it or by trying to change it.

This turns out to be a singularly useless world view, above all because every passing stranger then takes on the appearance of being a universal policeman.

Much as this perspective is encouraged by certain schools of academic thought and by consumerism, it is masochistic.   It correlates with the old epistemic dichotomy:  "Subjectivity is only inside my head.  What others think of me is necessarily objective."

There's a certain trivial truth to this statement on one level.  And then, there is the common equivocation (logical error).

Of course, trivially, you are a subject and others, viewing you from the outside, will necessarily "objectify" you.

But a lot of people seem to equate the word "objective" with being morally truthful about something.

So a merely trivial statement of fact turns into:  "I'm just all about me and have no moral compass, whereas others are very accurate in their perceptions and have the right to morally judge me.   After all, they're doing it FROM THE OUTSIDE."

If one is caught up in this ridiculous world view, one will definitely take the views of trolls too seriously.  

One has to learn to rethink how the world actually functions.

Shamanism is one way to achieve a different understanding, but this approach is painful and takes time.