Anarchists Are Not Immune

Exploitation of Borderline Personality Disorder

I should start this by saying, I am not attempting to constantly target anarchists as bad. It may seem this way lately because I am seeing the coping mechanisms in myself which were activated from being in a supported group of anarchists who have their own need for control dynamics, not questioning the authority of the group or its ideals, or for finding easy or convenient defaults for any reasonable questions of the entire group philosophy past a certain point. So as a disclaimer, this is not a new default position. This is just a calm look at how this disease of borderline personality disorder has overtaken in my view the whole of society, how it happened so easily and what one, like myself, can do strategically to remain ever vigilant in finding emotional health and balance as well as intellectual objectivity in a world overtaken by control dynamics.

When people can only see things in black and white, all good or all evil, then you know the ultimate mind control program has worked to create borderline personality disorder in the masses. Look around at the left/right paradigm. How much are people hating the opposite position and refusing to hear individual reasons? I acknowledge the futility of listening to the opinions of people whose ideology is steeped in an unconscious bias to merely hate the other side for being other and basing their own preferences on doing the opposite of whatever the one they hate is doing. It makes sense why we’d stop listening and tune out these kinds of opinions. They are a worthless, waste of attention. But might there be something to what the other side prefers in certain cases? Might we challenge ourselves to acknowledge policy is not completely wrapped up in a perfect bow of good and evil?

If this gravitation toward some binary ideal is so prevalent in our society, might we also acknowledge it has affected all of us to some degree or another. If this has become the default position for humanity, and it’s pretty clear that it has, it’s not too outrageous to assume we have our own default unconscious biases. Maybe we start to notice it when we share a meme that we didn’t fact check and get that itching feeling that the binary position was just a little too easy and convenient.

A good barometer for telling how much this programming has affected you or to what degree is to ask yourself how comfortable you are with uncertainty. Remember that age when you thought you had an answer or there had to be a right answer for everything? Then remember when you grew out of that and realized thinking you had all the answers was pretty silly? But, have you unconsciously slipped back into silliness in a different form?

People who are extremely insecure really dig in to polarization (good vs evil, or for a time everything is all bad until or unless it’s suddenly 100% perfect). If one has extreme borderline personality disorder, one can’t handle not knowing everything. One tends to fill in gaps of uncertainty with beliefs about things that make him or her feel safe but also, to have an identity of good that is aided by the virtue of one’s “better” opinions.

Here are a couple examples of unconscious default positions: “Trump knows what he is doing and must have a master plan to save us.” or, alternatively, “Whatever Trump is doing that seems good must be part of an evil agenda because I know government agents are always doing evil intentionally and whatever looks good must be to lure people in and trick them into being happy so he can disappoint them later.” Obviously, these are extreme, almost cartoonish examples, but it’s for good reason. The subconscious often reads like a cartoon. It heads your exploration into unknown territory off at the pass by telling you these things are real, and that they are life threatening. It won’t convey these messages so much in a narrative way so you hear how silly it is. If you are not looking, you will not hear your unconscious speak in these exact words, but in the realm of feelings, these can be hidden messages that if not explored hide behind a lot of fear. Most often, looking into the unknown or challenging a long held belief or even encountering another way to look at something will set off an instant fight or flight response. The human ego that dominates the subconscious can’t distinguish between a threat of death or a threat of losing one’s identity. Once that response is triggered, physical and psychological damage are possibilities if not yielded to. It’s not that people are mostly pretty shallow, because they probably are. It’s that such feelings must be explored at a time when they are not consuming us. The ego that sends those messages might be right. You may be in a risky situation. You don’t want to train yourself to completely ignore those signals. There’s a time and place to explore such things. I have recently found great comfort in somatic coaching. Journaling is another tool to open up a dialogue with the subconscious mind and it’s deeper motivations.

Nevertheless, as we swim in a sea of this priming toward default borderline position, we may start to notice anarchists are not immune to it. They, too, give attributes of angels and demons, superheroes and supervillains to political and/or social figures in the anarchy movement. You may step on their toes by explaining that their heroes are human and sometimes flawed. Many overt borderlines have felt hurt or betrayed in the past so they feel safer forthwith assuming everything that comes next will be a betrayal. It’s just as bad if not worse for anarchists as it is for those polarized left and right. Having escaped the left/right paradigm, there is this sense of superiority one feels having made such progress. When you hear the disdain when saying words like “statist” you may be able to acknowledge the polarity of emotional preference between statist vs non-statist or anarchist. This is the ego, idealizing again, another polarity. If you find yourself saying with absolute conviction, “This is the only moral or right position.” outloud, you might already see the outlines of the programming setting in. Would you be willing to stop and consider a “good” reason why anyone would ever have for using a government or would you instantly need to shut that conversation down with some broad brush stroke, virtuous platitude argument that makes any other thought on the matter seem useless and illegitimate? Might there have been a legitimate reason that governments under any other name have risen up in every culture throughout history aside from all of humanity being less logical and evolved than you are today with all of your perfect, right answers? Pretending or believing oneself to be in a neutral (neither left nor right) or principled position can mask a lot of cognitive dissonance coping bias.

Uncertainty leaves things open to discernment on a case by case basis. It makes sense that we agree with people in some areas and others we do not. Politicians are just people. But people who do not trust their own abilities to discern things (maybe they’ve been let down in the past) tend to do this “all good/all evil” thing as a default to protect themselves from being wrong again and getting hurt in the future. If someone finds himself angry all the time or hurt all the time on his own or of his own accord, he feels in control. He feels smart by comparison to stupid, happy people who are too dumb to realize they are about to be wrong again in ways that will obvious hurt them terribly. I won’t give (such and such) the satisfaction or power to hurt me (again). I would rather hurt myself. This decision to self-harm feels like a powerful move to people who are suffering from insecurity and an unchecked ego.

In spiritual communities, people will be stuck in the all good position. It’s often referred to as “emotional bypass.” Everything is always awesome. One might work exhaustively to justify every bad thing has some better purpose and find oneself accusing anyone who acknowledges hardship or any other with whom one has disagreements as being “toxic” or “negative.” Again, we see the hallmarks of borderline illness, the characteristic polarization between positions of “positivity” and “negativity” based roughly on suggesting half the feelings a human being might experience, which makes one human as “bad” or “toxic.” We can see the folly of potentially not experiencing grief for fear it doesn’t convey enough hope in a higher power, or that one might be faithless by experiencing a healthy full range of emotions that objectively speaking as a spiritual person, the Almighty gave us to experience. It’s not always easy to acknowledge or much less process feelings of sadness, disappointment, hurt or anger. Suppressing those feelings and attempting to label everything that happens as a “blissful gift” is yet another artful dodge from discernment. I believe many spiritual traditions have played into this mind control program.

Many people who see these programs can still idealize themselves for having seen them and in that alone, still manage to fall prey to polarizing the more evolved consciousness over the lesser. We should all be vigilant not to overlook our subconscious and perhaps the hidden need therein for solace or respite from a chaotic, borderline world that lies underneath all of our coping strategies.