CONTEMPT AS AN ADDICTION
A bit ago, while watching public TV, I saw one of those book review shows where they interview obscure non-fiction authors and instead of clicking over to a murder mystery or my You Tube rant of the day. I listened in…
I saved the link to the book and thought I might read it and tried not to feel jealous about the publicist that got him on the show. My mind wandered and I shared it with a few friends who know I like to read stuff and that was that.
I like philosophy and the history of ideas and one of the concepts he raised was the notion of contempt as a form of addiction. He was also quite eloquent in explaining that our desire to explain things and the desire to understand things and make them simple so we can better deal with it may have the opposite effect of making things more difficult when we confront people and ideas that are painful and seemingly different than from our own perspective. It is exhausting and wears us out.
We actually get very little practice in avoiding conflict and difficult people. Contempt as an addictive quality seemed at first to be a simplistic promotion of 12 step programming everywhere gone wild. In 12 step programs, you do learn about the risks of contempt prior to investigation. It can be a trigger for your drug of choice. It is soul crushing. I never really thought of it as a pattern of behavior as a go to default when in unfamiliar territory. However as I eased out back into the world, I realized I had begun spending time with folks that were critical all the time. This experience and heightened my awareness that for some folks, contempt was their “go to” way of being. There was no grace.
Oh my… but then an incident or two occurred this past week and today in fact when it struck me that we are deeply affected by the company that we keep. If I was spending lots of time with critical, cranky folks that would more than potentially have an impact on me.
Hurt people hurt other people and that most people who are angry “enjoy” other miserable folks and don’t seem to know that they have a choice about it. On the other hand, things can quickly get out of hand, and something you thought you could handle or brush off sticks to you like glue. Most often they are not angry at you, but they are angry, and whether it’s your child, your spouse, your employer, or a total stranger, your head gets caught in the lion’s mouth.
We like to think we have a choice about how we respond to things, but in the heat of the moment, we don’t and are not even remotely aware that our emotions are fueled by our surroundings. Much less do we think we have a choice about how to respond IN ADVANCE …
Thinking about contempt as a form of addiction allows you to recognize it, have a plan in place and other tools to mitigate the damage when we start spreading contempt and unbridled criticism all around. If the only response you’ve got is fear, anger, contempt, you quickly become a piece of work with an impenetrable force field. Autopilot without a place to land. You are a danger to yourself and to others. Throw in politics, natural disasters, missed flights, whiney kids, poverty and limited resources or access to support; contempt can quickly escalate worst part of feeling the lack of control we generally have over most things.
Spending time and encouraging yourself to see yourself literally rising above for a different perspective and practicing how you might deal with conflict and contempt serves you well. If you believe the universe is conspiring against you and there is no calm soothing voice challenging the narrative; you are toast.
Peter T. Coleman postulates that it is the experience of actually finding folks to support an alternate world view is essential. Isolation and few opportunities where you can exchange and challenge strongly held beliefs have become the norm for many. Consider for a moment how you may want to change that.
https://www.yesmagazine.org/opinion/2021/10/04/toxic-politics-polarization
“Viewing today’s culture of contempt as an addiction offers clues of a way out. When I worked with addicted adolescents in my 20s, I discovered two things mattered most to their abilities to escape addiction’s grip — extreme suffering and persistent support. The spiral of addiction is most likely broken when people physically and emotionally bottom out, such that they realize that their addiction is too powerful to fight alone, and when they find a program of support that can help them build a new life — by finding new “people, places, and things” that help to replace their past life of addiction. The effects of these programs are supported by sound science. “
“My lab just did a reanalysis of a bunch of data to compare the top one percent of counties in America in terms of political polarization with the bottom one percent. One of the concerning trends that I talked about, the physical and virtual moving away from each other, is the thing that is mitigated in the least polarized counties by sports teams, workplaces, unions, religious organizations. The most important preventative notion is mixing. And intentionally doing that, whether you’re an urban designer, or mayor, or in a family, and you realize that everybody in your life has the same political opinion, maybe you need to figure out how to introduce some kind of dissonance into that conversation.”
Coleman’s book The Way Out describes strategies to allow you is a vital and timely guide to break free from the cycle of mutual contempt. What if the universe was conspiring to help you? You need to practice hanging out with a different sort of folk as a starter. It’s worth a try!
