What do we do when our clear “oppressed” and “oppressor” categories become too narrow?
This will be a heavier post than usual, and a little ‘off-brand’ shall we say, but ideology has everything to do with mental health, and I have been carrying these thoughts around and thinking through what to do and how to express them as a person, and an artist. This post will mention war, death, terrorism, and a critique of marxist thought. feel free to scroll on if these are sensitive topics for you.
This post is primarily about groupthink ideology that has crept into our homes, hearts and minds, but this can’t be discussed without giving time to the Israel-Hamas war, which has exposed some already existing, deep ideological rifts in attitudes in Australia. I have also observed this within the field of therapy and the attitudes of therapists (and maybe specifically in the small niche world I’m in… this will be a very specific post). I will be referencing Hamas ideologies and how people fall for ideas like these when using a marxist framework to understand social complexities, but I could have named any number of different ideologies as the game play is similar.
‘I Won’t Dine At This Table’
2023 29.7x42cm
This is my visual representation of dangerous ideologies [insert whichever one you’ve been exposed to] - Beasts eating a toxic meal. I wish no-one dined at the beasts table and gave them an ear. I wish no-one would drink the poison because we become beastly ourselves. I wish people did not consume what the beasts have to offer.
There is another way, it is gently inviting, it doesn’t impose, doesn’t force people to bask in it’s light, but for those who have eyes to see this door may we walk through it instead.
I have felt a simmering fire within me for awhile now and wonder if finally perhaps it is the quiet persons turn to speak up and say something. I don’t routinely or loudly add my voice to public or online commentary because not everything we think deserves to be broadcast (like, who am I? I don’t know anything. I’m not even 30), and people who I think are misguided or even wrong are allowed to be wrong in whatever way they want…. but there comes a time when speaking your mind is important.
To be clear:
To be human is to ‘MOURN WITH THOSE WHO MOURN.’ And ‘WEEP WITH THOSE WHO WEEP.’ And to SEE THE HUMAN who is your neighbour.
THE PRINCIPLE: We* believe- or perhaps we should believe -That human life has a stamp of sacredness we don’t ascribe to other living things.
Anyone, on any side of any war or conflict who REJOICES when their neighbours are harmed or killed is WRONG. Death is not something we should wish on our enemies or celebrate.
Ultimately, people are not our enemies. Ideology and ideas are. It is tragic when people give themselves over to bloodthirsty and destructive ideologies wherever in the world it happens. It is necessary that when they act in the name of that destruction and carry that out they must be stopped. The idea that life is sacred is also why it is important to protect life when there are clear aggressors who do not agree and are trying to end it.
Okay, now that is out of the way.
NEW IDEOLOGIES HERE
There is a real underlying “anti-west” “anti-faith” specifically “anti Judeo-Christian” sentiment that has been bubbling away below the surface some time now in Australia, and other parts of “the west” too. I’ve noticed it in academia. I’ve seen it evidenced in social media posts by professional mental health acquaintances who critique “Christian privilege” as a blight in our society to overcome.
(I did challenge that, by the way, and wondered if one is able to “convert” to become “privileged” and further more…are we supposed to think, according to this framework that being “privileged” is an inherently helpful or good thing, or a bad thing? Is it better to aspire to be oppressed? Or to aspire to have “privilege” and use it for good? Because they certainly implied it was a bad thing to have ‘christian privilege’ …So many unanswered questions..)
I’ve felt this sentiment at gatherings with “friends” where increasingly I have felt uncomfortable to the point of avoiding those friendships because of the cynical throw away comments mocking Christians despite the fact that I’m in the room.
The ideology and worldview I am talking about tends to lump in anything it doesn’t like and denounce it as an evil package deal- capitalism, patriachy, landlords (lol), being western or having “white-ness”, being religious though specifically holding a Judeo- Christian worldview…Does any of this sound familiar? You may have noticed that frequently, if you know someone’s critical opinion on one of these, you can pretty accurately guess their opinions on about 10 other things.
This game of being “anti” whatever is deemed as “oppression” (there is even a movement for “anti-oppressive therapy” as an entire framework) and viewing the world through this narrow and inadequate lense plays fantastically into the hands of groups like Hamas. The existing sentiment fits with their charter and ideas hand in glove and is partly how they are able to win minds all over the world.
I’ve seen it increasingly in calls like “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” with seemingly no thought about what that rallying cry might actually mean for the population of Israel and Jews everywhere (is that ideology not oppressive to a population?)
Or worse, when people are questioned on this rhetoric, I’ve seen the response “we don’t care about them [the population of Israel], they can go to hell”
Not every slogan that has the word ‘free’ in it really stands for freedom (this applies to many of the political catch phrases of our day…many are deceptive and sound noble on the surface, and don’t actually mean what they claim to mean).
I read the entire Hamas charter on a lunch break last week (I’m fun at parties). Part of the charter states “the only thing that overcomes iron is iron” Do the people skipping school and holding signs in Australia stand for that idea and realise the implications?
There is a political ideology at work calling for death and championing it when it happens. It will not stop until it achieves its aims. It is driven by hate. It is plainly evil. It is truly “oppressive” if we want to use that language- of its own people and its neighbours. Before a weapon was even raised it wished for death and destruction.
I have seen the broad commentary online that:
“ISRAEL BAD” “PALESTINIANS GOOD” or
“ISRAEL COLONIAL EVIL OCCUPIERS” and “PALESTINIANS INNOCENT FREEDOM FIGHTERS” and it doesn’t work…
There are death-loving Palestinians calling for and celebrating with Hamas when Israelis are slaughtered. They are not interested in freedom. They are not interested in life or peace. Peace talks are specifically condemned in the Hamas charter.
There are also (I’m sure) grieving, peace-loving Palestinians who probably fear for their life if they dared go against the grain of their government- and we don’t even hear their voice in all the chaos- it’s been robbed from them and doesn’t fit neatly into the narrative anyway, so whose ears are listening? We should stand with and care about them.
There are probably revenge-seeking Israelis who are cheering when the IDF bombs a target or the civilian death toll rises (I have not actually seen evidence for this and am told if Israelis held these views it would be uncommon and immediately called out, but I’m making a broad point about how ANYONE call fall prey to ideology, to be fair)
There are also peace-loving Israelis who desperately wish to feel safe in their own TINY country when much of the world through history has wished death for them. They wish for PEACE- for them AND where possible, everyone else too. We should stand with those who prefer peace.
So what happens to this way of thinking when we are confronted with the uncomfortable truth that humans on all sides can be guilty of being ‘oppressive’ despite their geographical location, AND at times can be the victim of themselves, their own ideology, as well as the death-loving ideology of others?
We are not simply our groups, and it should be self-evident that we have been given the gift of intellect to think and reason and our thinking does not always fall into neat, intersectional (God I hate the intersectional game) binary categories that match our “group” thought. This rigid way of thinking may even be called a ‘cognitive distortion’ or ‘generalised thinking’ (unhelpful thinking styles often focussed on in CBT) so it is beyond me that mental health professionals anywhere adopt such a simplistic, concrete idea as a worldview.
AN ALTERNATIVE
Those of us who live in societies that allow this true diversity of thought and expression should count ourselves as not just lucky, but blessed. This freedom should be preserved, everywhere it can be. And Israel is one of those places.
This is my call: Can we actually think beyond what is expected of us? We don’t have to be “activists” who become more dogmatic than what we oppose.
We don’t have to participate in every protest our friends participate in and chant slogans that sound good on the surface.
We don’t have to embrace what our “group” tells us to think. We can have varied opinions on things, and it is not a cop-out to see that some things really are complex geo-politically.
Also, God forbid we admit we may not know all of the details between neighbours far away. Maybe it’s okay to say “I don’t have enough information”
Wolf In Sheep Clothing
2023
Ideologies that sound good, that provide us with meaning (where there is a meaning void in the secular West) and that apparently give us an identity. These can function like a ravenous wolf. Initially we get taken in by the soft woolly coat and how lovely he appears, only to let him into our homes and have him slowly wreak havoc.
I recently caught up with a therapy colleague who I haven’t seen for awhile and for the first time in a long time felt free to share my genuine thoughts and opinions. It made me realise there may be others who are self-censoring in the name of ‘fitting in’ or feeling the pressure to adopt certain ideologies. We could actually talk with some naunce without using a narrow framework to discuss our ideas. I hadn’t realised someone else in a similar context (thinking things through as people and professionals and holding in common our Christian and Jewish values) may be as bothered as me- I was silently carrying it around. It felt like a long sigh of relief.
It was a refreshing, uplifting conversation. If nothing else, the current world events are exposing undercurrents that already exist and allowing some of us quieter ones to find and connect with one another.
“Death for the sake of Allah is the loftiest of its wishes.” and- “The time (16) will not come until Muslims will fight the Jews (and kill them); until the Jews hide behind rocks and trees, which will cry: 0 Muslim! there is a Jew hiding behind me, come on and kill him!” - Hamas Charter
Not all ideologies are equal, and it’s necessary to denounce the ones that really are oppressing and ensnaring people.
Dare we be people who aren’t afraid to think critically, who are known for our consistent principles and not our political games, known for our consistent vocal defence of human life, who mourn when all people become captive to destructive and hateful ideologies. May we wish for their psychological release from such damaging ideas.
Dare we call out obviously dangerous ideas clearly when we need to speak clearly. And also dare we reject the idea that society is made up of strictly “oppressed people” or “the oppressor class” and start remembering people are complex individuals.
Can we reject this oppressor-oppressed paradigm masquerading as ‘care’ and ‘compassion’ especially when it’s only awarded to the ‘oppressed people’ we decide fit our politics for the wolf in sheep’s clothing it actually is? Which is this: An invention that has only stirred up hate and division since its’ inception in the minds of Marx and Engels in the 19th century.
Dare we be people who have a sacred sanity in an increasingly insane world around us.