I think at this point we're all appropriators. We don't live in the world in which these texts were written. Nobody knows who Elijah was, corporeally. Or if he'd even recognize anything he saw when he came back. It would take some explaining, at least! And Jesus Christ? Just explaining cars would be a conversation. The past is a foreign land, the middle east is (for Americans and Europeans) a foreign land. The Bible was written across many historical periods and even the editors were most recently working on it over 1,500 years ago at best. A lot of bloody water has passed under the bridge!
I find the irony of the quote from The Go-Between significant.
In the book's prologue, Leo Colston chances upon a diary from 1900, the year of his thirteenth birthday, and gradually pieces together a memory that he has suppressed.
…
In the epilogue, the older Leo summarises how profoundly the experience has affected him. Forbidding himself to think about the scandal, he had shut down his emotions and imaginative nature, leaving room only for facts. As a result, he never has been able to establish intimate relationships. Now, looking back on the events through the eyes of a mature adult, he feels it is important to return to Brandham some 50 years later in order to tie up loose ends.
The past might feel to us like a foreign country, but it is a land that can continue to shape us in ways we can't, or won't, remember. Kevin Gardner wrote in a revaluation of the work: “Hartley's haunting tale of lost innocence underscores the modern experience of broken time, a paradox in which humanity is alienated from the past, yet not free from it, a past that continues to exist in and to control the subconscious”
I don't think I bear any hatred, but my eventual conclusion has been that it is 2000 years past. We don't live in the 1st century anymore. It's a long-past trauma.
Who for?
I think you're concentrating on the effects that you are able to perceive in your own attitudes to others. In this regard, my own experience is that even stuff that happened just a handful of generations ago in my own family continues to have an effect on my family today, and that this requires significant effort to uncover and interrogate and understand.
But I think the more serious consideration is the people who experienced the trauma, and their descendants, which relates to the issue of transgenerational trauma or historical trauma.
The other side of the coin of wanting the past to stay in the past amounts to telling a people group with a very long history of trauma that it's about time they got over it. And if this is a general principle, we need to know how long ago the trauma of previous generations needs to be before it no longer informs currently living generations. 2000 years? 1000 years? 500 years? 200 years? 100 years? How can any of us say, on behalf of every other people group on the planet, that what happened in the past stays in the past? Who among us can make that calculation of behalf of other people?
There is no arbitrary limit that I can find to the duration of transgenerational trauma or historical trauma.
I worship the Triune God in Jesus Christ. I do not worship the context of the first century Roman occupation of Jerusalem and surrounding environs.
If that were really true, Christians would stop going on about the crucifixion. Detaching a violent historical event from the violent historical context that gave rise to it doesn't look to me like an act of respect or remembrance.
Excellent point, I think I'm responding to what I observe in Christians who try to go straight to the Bible as if 2000 years haven't passed. It's ignorant. I'm also thinking of some and not all Zionists I've had conversations with where if you look at the horrors presently going on in Palestine they'll bring up centuries-old massacres as justification for what Israel is doing. They do not speak for all Zionists, let alone all Jewish folks, but it's an argument I hear enough that it sticks in my head as a case study in wrong. So I feel obliged to address it.
The past has echoes, yes. And trauma can run down generations, yes. But I still think it's unreasonable to speak of centuries-past conflicts as if they had the same salience as present day conflicts. For instance, if I decided to go punch a French Catholic Priest in the face in retaliation for the St Bartholomew's Day Massacre, that'd be certifiably deranged, I think.
There comes a time to admit that the past is past. History echoes, certainly, but there's more harm than good in acting like grievances must be carried through to the present. This is why I call it appropriation. I can pick up my historical context. I can also alter it, I can mend it, I can cut things off of it, I can sew things onto it. And what I do with it is my responsibility as a living member of a living religious body.
I'm not a zombie acting on the grievances of my dead ancestors, even if I choose to remember them with a certain respect. I'm a Mayflower descendant, I'm not obliged to defend the pilgrims in all of the things that they did. Some of what they did was indefensible. Best be honest about that.
I'm not telling a person "Get over it." But when I see a tens of thousands of people being killed in a war and I look at it and someone says "well...400 years ago, some of their ancestors murdered some of our ancestors, and that's always how it goes, so we have to do this to make ourselves feel safer!" I might question that. They say "hurt people hurt people" but that doesn't justify domestic violence. Does it? I've seen that one play out. At some point an adult has to take responsibility instead of reflexively acting out their trauma.
There are better ways to work out your trauma than committing war crimes or taking it out on your spouse because someone hurt you and you don't know what to do with the pain.
I wouldn't' say "Get over it!" But I would say that a person has responsibility for how they process their trauma. That much has certainly been outright demanded of me, literally, personally and professionally. My objection to "Get over it!" isn't that it's bad advice, but that it's impossible. What you say is "figure it out, work through it so you don't hurt other people around you." Because the alternative is that you will hurt people and pass the trauma on to another generation.
And that's how you can try not to be another case study in "trauma runs down generations." I think that's fundamentally Christian. Christ showed us ways to break the damned cycle. Let's actually try it for a change instead of wallowing in our tragic backstories, eh?
I certainly carry generational trauma, though my case isn't that heavy. I don't mean to boast like I'm a serious case, but I have felt this struggle and I have watched other people go through it and I have also seen the wreckage when people fail. Why am I wrong to expect people to try?
Far as the cross, I think the cross is one way to understand the choice not to retaliate and to let a conflict end even if it requires sacrifice and loss of self. And sometimes that's the only way forward, to resurrection. So I might think the cross is pretty important, even if my church doesn't harp on it that much.
At some point an adult has to take responsibility instead of reflexively acting out their trauma.
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But I would say that a person has responsibility for how they process their trauma. That much has certainly been outright demanded of me, literally, personally and professionally. My objection to "Get over it!" isn't that it's bad advice, but that it's impossible. What you say is "figure it out, work through it so you don't hurt other people around you." Because the alternative is that you will hurt people and pass the trauma on to another generation.
Bullfrog, thanks for your reply. I'm afraid that much of what you describe in your post sounds to me like victim blaming.
“Victim blaming can occur when individuals or society hold victims of trauma responsible for their suffering, which can further perpetuate the cycle of trauma and hinder healing for both victims and their descendants.”
“This mindset assumes that personal responsibility is the ultimate decider of what happens to each person, which can make someone feel less empathetic toward others. It can serve as the foundation for an individual's worldview, coloring many of their opinions and reactions without realizing it. They might ignore how power dynamics between survivors and an abuser can take away free will.”
I can pick up my historical context. I can also alter it, I can mend it, I can cut things off of it, I can sew things onto it. And what I do with it is my responsibility as a living member of a living religious body.
Good for you. There's an implicit assertion that everyone else has the same degree of agency in respect of their pasts, which I find problematic. Trauma, like oppression, discrimination and marginalisation, is not the least bit equitable in its harmful effects.
Thanks for that. I appreciate your take, and it's definitely a piece of the truth. I'm familiar with the dynamic and victim-blaming isn't something I want to do.
That said, I'll admit I am thinking of contexts where unresolved trauma leads directly to abuse, and in that frame, victims who do not take responsibility for their trauma can turn into abusers. I don't know if I need to bring up specific examples that aren't mine, because this isn't purgatory, but I've watched a lot of people - often men sometimes women - act out in truly horrific ways to their partners and families. And - to my seasoned eyes - the simplest explanation for their truly horrid behavior was their constant assumption of victimhood. And in a sense, it's true. You can draw a straight line from how they were treated to how they treat other people. It's eminently logical, even reasonable, from a self-centered perspective.
By only being a victim, these people deny their own agency in their own crimes against their neighbors.
And this is not something I'm making up for fun or profit. I'd be happier if I didn't know some of these people. I don't want to name names because I think confidentiality is important and thankfully I'm merely an observer in these situations, not a direct victim myself.
But I do believe, from these experiences, that there is a responsibility - even as a victim - to find appropriate ways to process your pain so you don't create more victims because of your own failure. It sucks, yes. It's grotesquely unfair, yes. But *gestures vaguely at current events*. There's a lot of that these days.
Blame isn't useful, I agree. But accountability is useful. And responsibility is necessary. Hurt people hurt people, as they say. At some point the cycle has to stop, for the sake of the future.
Wikipedia doesn't explain it very well in my view but there's this part that seems relevant
Initially a drama triangle arises when a person takes on the role of a victim or persecutor. This person then feels the need to enlist other players into the conflict. As often happens, a rescuer is encouraged to enter the situation.[4] These enlisted players take on roles of their own that are not static, and therefore various scenarios can occur. The victim might turn on the rescuer, for example, while the rescuer then switches to persecution.
The reason that the situation persists is that each participant has their (frequently unconscious) psychological wishes/needs met without having to acknowledge the broader dysfunction or harm done in the situation as a whole. Each participant is acting upon his or her own selfish needs, rather than acting in a genuinely responsible or altruistic manner.[citation needed] Any character might "ordinarily come on like a plaintive victim; it is now clear that the one can switch into the role of Persecutor providing it is 'accidental' and the one apologizes for it".[4]
@Basketactortale I've never heard of that and it looks extremely helpful.
And, at a cursory glance, it looks extremely helpful because each of these are "roles" and none of them are complete persons. And it's better to be a complete person that can assume a role voluntarily. That's how it should be.
Of course, this is not easily done, and blame is not generally a useful tool, which I think might be where @pease and I might find common ground?
I think what I was seeing in victim-blaming was that while victimhood is real, it's dangerous when it becomes a core part of identity. I have enough adjacency to suffering in my own life that I am legitimately a little terrified of identifying too much as a passive victim who is simply incompetent to handle his own trauma. I think the model helps clarify the hazards of that.
That said, I don't think it's fair to belittle people's suffering and and pain.
To get into more detail...
Personal context, I work with disabled people and I have a lot of contact with notions like "dignity of risk," which elucidate that it is super important to give people challenges that they can handle, this is very important to human experience.
If, for instance, someone has cerebral palsy so an extreme where they physically cannot move their arms or legs, it'd be absurd to play Jesus and tell them to get up and walk.
Mind, if Jesus wants to show up at a place like my job and do that...He's perfectly free to. It'd be terrifying.
But most of us mere mortals can't do that. But you can and should try to provide opportunities for someone with that kind of CP to stretch their legs a bit so they can retain what movement they are capable of.
There's one kind of abuse to demand the impossible. There's another kind of abuse to deny the possible. And working out where that line is can't be handled as an abstract problem because it comes down to the individual person you're dealing with.
I think that of course there are people who are victims and who have been crushed beneath the wheels of life in one way or another. And I think the challenge for those of us who are not victims (in that moment, I agree that these are not static roles) is to resist being oppressors and to resist being rescuers. Generally I think we tend to be one or the other, either trying to make them change or do the work for them.
Instead I think we often/usually need to put down the idea that we know what's best for other people. We need instead, I think, to stop ourselves taking part in this unhelpful triangle and instead try to be helpful, first by listening to what the person is actually saying about themselves and then trying to actually be encouraging them to take steps to achieve their own goals.
Some say that this is psychobabble and gobbledegook but it feels right to me.
@Basketactortale , broadly, works for me. And in particulars, you can accuse "victim blaming," or "enabling" or any number of psychological terms that may be appropriate, but it depends on the specific situation.
Per this board, that's why it's important to keep in mind the particular context.
And now I'm trying to figure out how to tie this back into a discussion of how people deal with the possibility of Hell...
That triangle might be one vision of hell. People are always identified in terms of pain, because pain is the only identifiable feature in existence? Hm.
The drama triangle framework “helps us understand the dysfunctional roles people tend to adopt to deal with conflict”. I'm not sure how helpful this is in relation to trauma, as it assumes all the people involved maintain similar degrees of agency and is couched largely in terms of taking personal responsibility. (Although it does briefly consider the harmful backgrounds that might give rise to some of the traits.) Also, I think it adopts a particularly individualistic perspective on both the problem and solutions - it doesn't appear to significantly address structural or institutional aspects.
In relation to agency, my understanding is that trauma is the stripping away or distortion of agency - in which traumatic events themselves are only the starting pistol. A significant (if not primary) aspect of healing from trauma involves recovering an undistorted sense of agency. By its nature, for the majority of us, it's hard to imagine how to what extent this is possible without active help and support.
Because of this, and because oppression, discrimination, marginalisation, etc are societal problems, I think understanding and dealing with trauma requires more than an individualistic perspective.
Thanks for that. I appreciate your take, and it's definitely a piece of the truth. I'm familiar with the dynamic and victim-blaming isn't something I want to do.
That said, I'll admit I am thinking of contexts where unresolved trauma leads directly to abuse, and in that frame, victims who do not take responsibility for their trauma can turn into abusers. … And - to my seasoned eyes - the simplest explanation for their truly horrid behavior was their constant assumption of victimhood. And in a sense, it's true. You can draw a straight line from how they were treated to how they treat other people. It's eminently logical, even reasonable, from a self-centered perspective.
By only being a victim, these people deny their own agency in their own crimes against their neighbors.
Blame isn't useful, I agree. But accountability is useful. And responsibility is necessary. Hurt people hurt people, as they say. At some point the cycle has to stop, for the sake of the future.
I'm afraid I see in this a fundamental misunderstanding of the relationship between trauma and agency (and responsibility). How can people without agency take responsibility for their trauma? Or deny their agency? It's all still victim-blaming. Responsibility lies with the individuals and societies that create and inflict trauma, that remove agency from those who are traumatised.
I also see a particular irony in that an important part of your job appears to be helping people maintain agency over their lives.
Personal context, I work with disabled people and I have a lot of contact with notions like "dignity of risk," which elucidate that it is super important to give people challenges that they can handle, this is very important to human experience.
If, for instance, someone has cerebral palsy so an extreme where they physically cannot move their arms or legs, it'd be absurd to play Jesus and tell them to get up and walk.
Mind, if Jesus wants to show up at a place like my job and do that...He's perfectly free to. It'd be terrifying.
But most of us mere mortals can't do that. But you can and should try to provide opportunities for someone with that kind of CP to stretch their legs a bit so they can retain what movement they are capable of.
The idea that some groups within society are more deserving of agency than others, just highlights the extent to which discrimination and marginalisation are embedded in our societies.
And now I'm trying to figure out how to tie this back into a discussion of how people deal with the possibility of Hell...
My rather blunt answer is to consider what God thinks about our societies, and individuals in our societies, who are comfortable with the perpetuation of systemic oppression, discrimination and marginalisation of individuals and groups in our societies, as well as the personal infliction of trauma by individual members of society on one another. And what kind of message he might need to send the world to persuade us to do anything differently.
@pease : I think we're talking about different circles of analysis. On a social level, I agree, but on an individual level, you need to recognize agency where it is. Otherwise I fear we reduce people to pawns in a game that we're playing for our own sense of righteousness.
I know a lot of black people - like some of my co-workers - who wouldn't appreciate me telling them that they're helpless victims of a racist society. As much as that might be true on a systemic level, and I can see the role discrimination has played in our lives, it's rather a patronizing attitude to take on a practical level.
Note, I'm not denying your analysis. Intersectionality is a thing. You might notice I mentioned physical disability. And yes, the ironies are very real. Try navigating someone around in a wheelchair. Try working with someone who doesn't have the capacity to speak more than a single word at a time. I have a lot of experience with some extreme forms of "distorted agency." I do know what that's like. Disability isn't the same thing as being the victim of racial discrimination or the inheritor of generational trauma, but it is a form of "distorted agency." But even with distorted agency, it's extremely important to recognize the agency that is there, instead of reducing people to puppets for a "righteous" plan to "correct" them. And if one is so bold as to "correct." that work is best done very carefully and handled on an individual basis.
My job does involve such "correction," and it is done very slowly, very minimally, with very serious oversight from a committee of professionals and people with personal investment. It's an extremely serious business. I would expect the same respect, or even more, if I tried to apply that logic to someone who was in full possession of their faculties.
Along those lines, I could make a hilarious caricature of the white person telling the black person that they're a helpless victim of society and incapable of exercising their own agency, but...it writes itself right there. I prefer my "irony." It's more realistic. It's nuanced. And it's where I've lived for the past 20 years in an ethnically diverse neighborhood in the city of Chicago.
I was just talking to a co-worker the other day about his experience as a Nigerian immigrant. He was a black man, broken English, but a great worker. He carried the shift and made my life very easy. I'm a "floater," always the fill-in at my job. He took a moment near the end of the shift to say where he was from, he's in his 60s, showed me his three kids, a doctor in Hong Kong, another in England, and a third in the USA. All of them quite successful.
Now, by this "racial minorities have no agency" hermeneutic, if I'd taken that attitude with him...I can only imagine the insult I'd have delivered. It would have positively reeked of condescension. But I don't treat real people like that. I've known far too many and the few times I've attempted to, it didn't work. I can keep it in the back of my mind, sure. I can keep in mind that he's probably getting away from an incredibly corrupt place. I could've queried about the bombing in Nigeria, but it'd probably be an awkward way to start a conversation with a gentleman I had just met. And he's not in Nigeria now, he's here. He's a proud man with a good job and he's very proud of his kids. That's face he wants to show me and I'll graciously accept it. I think we got along well.
Ironic? Yes! My world is full of irony! That's because I'm old enough and been around enough that I can internalize the intersectional "woke" narrative and also have real conversations with real people of various kinds of color and keep in mind that Real People are more important than Social Categories.
On the other side, I can claim where I'm from and I can talk about where I'm from. If you start talking to me about where I'm from, there's a pretty good chance you'll offend me if you don't know much about where I'm from because you'll hit a bad note, and I'll notice it before you do. And that is how you respect my agency. Do not tell me I lack agency just because I've had it harder than you have. In my culture, that's deeply insulting.
Similarly, I try to stay away from telling people of color that they don't have agency because they have persecution histories. I know from experience that that's really touchy territory, and I'm not God.
And I'm honestly not sure I'm qualified to tell anyone what God thinks. That's playing God. I'll tell people what I think God is saying, but I have to mind the gap and remind myself that as reflective as I am, I am not God and cannot with perfect certainty tell people what God thinks about our societies.
All that said, yes. If you're saying that this is what inspired Jesus to use hellfire and brimstone imagery, for all of my "don't play God" reservations, I think we're on the same page there. I've just learned to be careful, for I have been burned for being too arrogant.
And I'm honestly not sure I'm qualified to tell anyone what God thinks. That's playing God. I'll tell people what I think God is saying, but I have to mind the gap and remind myself that as reflective as I am, I am not God and cannot with perfect certainty tell people what God thinks about our societies.
I don't know of anyone who can perfectly tell what God thinks about our societies. We all have our own perspectives. Someone told me it is like looking at a moonshine across a lake. You can have several people standing along the shoreline, and everyone will say that moonlight is coming directly to them.
Even the writers of the Bible do not agree on what God thinks.
I am working on a sermon for Sunday. It is about how Andrew and another disciple started following Jesus after John the Baptist told them Jesus was the lamb of God. They just started following. Jesus turns and asks them what they are looking for. They asked Jesus were he was staying. Jesus says come and see. They stay the night with Jesus. The next day Andrew goes and seeks out his brother, Simon. He simply tells Simon, "We have found the Messiah." Staying one night with Jesus did not make Andrew a trained theologian. He certainly did not know where the next few years would take them, but it was a simple invite, "Come and See," that started it all.
If you really need to know what qualifies you to speak about God, it is in your baptism where you became a child of God. In that baptism you received the Holy Spirit, you receive that Spirit whenever you hear the Word. Even Jesus says sometimes you may be called into court, but you are not to prepare a defense, only speak the words which the Spirit will give you. Trust the Spirit.
@pease : I think we're talking about different circles of analysis. On a social level, I agree, but on an individual level, you need to recognize agency where it is. Otherwise I fear we reduce people to pawns in a game that we're playing for our own sense of righteousness.
I'd agree there is an extent to which we're talking about different things. For me, this thread branch is primarily about historic/transgenerational trauma experienced by groups of people, and the way it leads to the loss of agency.
In this regard, it particularly struck me that the only place in your last post where you refer to trauma is to say that disability isn't the same as inheriting generational trauma (which seems uncontroversial). I think you're also taking a primarily individualistic perspective, which makes sense, if that's your experience, but I think it only partially informs the issue of collective trauma.
One point you raise is that telling individuals they don't have agency is insulting. It's hard to disagree with that - I think what you describe would be insulting in most cultures. Lacking agency isn't something you can just bring up in conversation with people who may or may not lack agency. (Let alone talking about trauma.) For me, this isn't about telling individuals that they don't have agency, it's about understanding what it means for groups of people to experience transgenerational trauma. One important aspect is how this differs from individual trauma.
When a group experiences traumatic events, such as war, genocide, or displacement, the impact can be felt across generations. Collective trauma shapes how people see themselves, relate to others, and how society functions. Unlike individual trauma, collective trauma is distinguished by its broader social scope, its potential to influence cultural values and norms, and the interconnectedness of individual identities within the collective. Understanding collective trauma is essential for developing healing strategies that reach beyond individual therapy to include education, public policy, and community-based support.
All that said, yes. If you're saying that this is what inspired Jesus to use hellfire and brimstone imagery, for all of my "don't play God" reservations, I think we're on the same page there. I've just learned to be careful, for I have been burned for being too arrogant.
Having had a chance to reflect on my blunt answer, it increasingly occurs to me that Jesus had two messages, one for the oppressed, and one for the oppressors. But we guess at the what people of the time made of this, and how they'd have heard it.
I'm rather surer that the way we understand the message of Jesus today, and his pronouncements on the afterlife, has been significantly influenced by church authorities which included people who had a vested interest in restricting the agency of people in their care.
@pease , To the bit you quote, I think I'd agree, and I think that might be where we're caricaturing ourselves a bit. I could call myself a victim of trauma (certainly trauma-adjacent) in some aspects, which is probably why I'm getting a little cranky in this conversation. I've watched people receive trauma and become paralyzed in a way that flirts with a kind of psychological hypochondria or learned helplessness.
And I bring that up with no intention of ignoring the real experiences of trauma or the harm it produces. I do think I'm playing an analogy to disability, and I love the phrase "distorted agency" because that describes the situations I experience extremely well. It's a wonderful expression.
I think that, again, depending on the person, or even the group, you have to consider each case on its own terms. And there is always harm to factor in, limitations, etc. It's just dangerous to use words like "victim," I think, in isolation, because they can create a sense that someone is merely or only a victim and that can lead to psychological paralysis and compound self-distortion.
We learn a lot not to push people to do things they can't do, but it's also harmful to deny that people are capable of doing what they can do, and that is a hard tightrope to walk sometimes. And certainly, to err too far in either direction is a form of abuse.
It's more blatant with disability but I think trauma also works and it takes a kind of deep listening and empathic understanding to get there. You have to hear potential and respect dignity and power where it resides, and it's always there, though distorted.
On a collective scale, education about history and context and setting policies accordingly are very important, yes. I agree with you there. "Informed" is good.
@Gramps49 , yeah...I get that. I've just seen some real cons in my life going around telling people they were speaking "from the Spirit" when the historical record makes it very evident they were speaking from their egos and wish-fulfillment fantasies. I like testing spirits, preferably with double blind scientific studies.
Trauma, by definition, is a response to external stimuli. It's a response. Since the event is psychologically overwhelming, it is probably difficult to speak of the initial response being one that includes agency. I think agency is more involved when an individual is well-enough to seek care for their experience of trauma and their involvement in this care.
There is also the phenomenon of self medication by damaged people. This was described by the analyst Masud Khan, who argued that the first step in therapy can be to scrutinise this self-care, to see how damaging it might be. Obvious examples are drinking, affairs, drugs, etc. Well, Khan knew all about them!
Thinking about generational trauma, here's a story about it.
Connie Hart was a Gunditjmara Elder in Melbourne, Australia.
As you may or may not know, First People nations in Australia often experienced abuse into the 20th centuries, often being herded into missions. Sometimes these were people from wildly varied language groups, moved off their land and pushed into places far from their ancestors.
Auntie Connie was an expert basketmaker. She learned from her mother in secret. When the time came for her relatives to ask for training in basketry, at first Connie refused. Eventually she agreed, but only if the doors were locked and the blinds pulled down.
Auntie Con was so traumatised by the erasure of her culture in the mission that she thought if she told anyone her memories of the traditional ways, the police would come round and take away the children.
With reference to this discussion, Auntie Con and the surviving members of her cultural language group were/are clearly victims of generational trauma. There is no "fixing" this. There is no way that this great wrong can be put right.
But I think there are ways that Auntie Con and her children and grandchildren can be helped to deal with that trauma.
Partly it is about other people helping people like Connie Hart to salvage something from the mess. In her case that was giving her a special place of honour and respect in the wider community in a space that honoured and valued and preserved and valued traditional practices.
I don't think it's enough, that it could ever be enough. But something, I believe, in this context if not in others, is better than nothing.
Comments
Who for?
I think you're concentrating on the effects that you are able to perceive in your own attitudes to others. In this regard, my own experience is that even stuff that happened just a handful of generations ago in my own family continues to have an effect on my family today, and that this requires significant effort to uncover and interrogate and understand.
But I think the more serious consideration is the people who experienced the trauma, and their descendants, which relates to the issue of transgenerational trauma or historical trauma.
The other side of the coin of wanting the past to stay in the past amounts to telling a people group with a very long history of trauma that it's about time they got over it. And if this is a general principle, we need to know how long ago the trauma of previous generations needs to be before it no longer informs currently living generations. 2000 years? 1000 years? 500 years? 200 years? 100 years? How can any of us say, on behalf of every other people group on the planet, that what happened in the past stays in the past? Who among us can make that calculation of behalf of other people?
There is no arbitrary limit that I can find to the duration of transgenerational trauma or historical trauma.
If that were really true, Christians would stop going on about the crucifixion. Detaching a violent historical event from the violent historical context that gave rise to it doesn't look to me like an act of respect or remembrance.
Excellent point, I think I'm responding to what I observe in Christians who try to go straight to the Bible as if 2000 years haven't passed. It's ignorant. I'm also thinking of some and not all Zionists I've had conversations with where if you look at the horrors presently going on in Palestine they'll bring up centuries-old massacres as justification for what Israel is doing. They do not speak for all Zionists, let alone all Jewish folks, but it's an argument I hear enough that it sticks in my head as a case study in wrong. So I feel obliged to address it.
The past has echoes, yes. And trauma can run down generations, yes. But I still think it's unreasonable to speak of centuries-past conflicts as if they had the same salience as present day conflicts. For instance, if I decided to go punch a French Catholic Priest in the face in retaliation for the St Bartholomew's Day Massacre, that'd be certifiably deranged, I think.
There comes a time to admit that the past is past. History echoes, certainly, but there's more harm than good in acting like grievances must be carried through to the present. This is why I call it appropriation. I can pick up my historical context. I can also alter it, I can mend it, I can cut things off of it, I can sew things onto it. And what I do with it is my responsibility as a living member of a living religious body.
I'm not a zombie acting on the grievances of my dead ancestors, even if I choose to remember them with a certain respect. I'm a Mayflower descendant, I'm not obliged to defend the pilgrims in all of the things that they did. Some of what they did was indefensible. Best be honest about that.
I'm not telling a person "Get over it." But when I see a tens of thousands of people being killed in a war and I look at it and someone says "well...400 years ago, some of their ancestors murdered some of our ancestors, and that's always how it goes, so we have to do this to make ourselves feel safer!" I might question that. They say "hurt people hurt people" but that doesn't justify domestic violence. Does it? I've seen that one play out. At some point an adult has to take responsibility instead of reflexively acting out their trauma.
There are better ways to work out your trauma than committing war crimes or taking it out on your spouse because someone hurt you and you don't know what to do with the pain.
I wouldn't' say "Get over it!" But I would say that a person has responsibility for how they process their trauma. That much has certainly been outright demanded of me, literally, personally and professionally. My objection to "Get over it!" isn't that it's bad advice, but that it's impossible. What you say is "figure it out, work through it so you don't hurt other people around you." Because the alternative is that you will hurt people and pass the trauma on to another generation.
And that's how you can try not to be another case study in "trauma runs down generations." I think that's fundamentally Christian. Christ showed us ways to break the damned cycle. Let's actually try it for a change instead of wallowing in our tragic backstories, eh?
I certainly carry generational trauma, though my case isn't that heavy. I don't mean to boast like I'm a serious case, but I have felt this struggle and I have watched other people go through it and I have also seen the wreckage when people fail. Why am I wrong to expect people to try?
Far as the cross, I think the cross is one way to understand the choice not to retaliate and to let a conflict end even if it requires sacrifice and loss of self. And sometimes that's the only way forward, to resurrection. So I might think the cross is pretty important, even if my church doesn't harp on it that much.
So much for me not preaching, ha!
“Victim blaming can occur when individuals or society hold victims of trauma responsible for their suffering, which can further perpetuate the cycle of trauma and hinder healing for both victims and their descendants.”
“This mindset assumes that personal responsibility is the ultimate decider of what happens to each person, which can make someone feel less empathetic toward others. It can serve as the foundation for an individual's worldview, coloring many of their opinions and reactions without realizing it. They might ignore how power dynamics between survivors and an abuser can take away free will.”
Good for you. There's an implicit assertion that everyone else has the same degree of agency in respect of their pasts, which I find problematic. Trauma, like oppression, discrimination and marginalisation, is not the least bit equitable in its harmful effects.
Thanks for that. I appreciate your take, and it's definitely a piece of the truth. I'm familiar with the dynamic and victim-blaming isn't something I want to do.
That said, I'll admit I am thinking of contexts where unresolved trauma leads directly to abuse, and in that frame, victims who do not take responsibility for their trauma can turn into abusers. I don't know if I need to bring up specific examples that aren't mine, because this isn't purgatory, but I've watched a lot of people - often men sometimes women - act out in truly horrific ways to their partners and families. And - to my seasoned eyes - the simplest explanation for their truly horrid behavior was their constant assumption of victimhood. And in a sense, it's true. You can draw a straight line from how they were treated to how they treat other people. It's eminently logical, even reasonable, from a self-centered perspective.
By only being a victim, these people deny their own agency in their own crimes against their neighbors.
And this is not something I'm making up for fun or profit. I'd be happier if I didn't know some of these people. I don't want to name names because I think confidentiality is important and thankfully I'm merely an observer in these situations, not a direct victim myself.
But I do believe, from these experiences, that there is a responsibility - even as a victim - to find appropriate ways to process your pain so you don't create more victims because of your own failure. It sucks, yes. It's grotesquely unfair, yes. But *gestures vaguely at current events*. There's a lot of that these days.
Blame isn't useful, I agree. But accountability is useful. And responsibility is necessary. Hurt people hurt people, as they say. At some point the cycle has to stop, for the sake of the future.
Wikipedia doesn't explain it very well in my view but there's this part that seems relevant
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karpman_drama_triangle
And, at a cursory glance, it looks extremely helpful because each of these are "roles" and none of them are complete persons. And it's better to be a complete person that can assume a role voluntarily. That's how it should be.
Of course, this is not easily done, and blame is not generally a useful tool, which I think might be where @pease and I might find common ground?
I think what I was seeing in victim-blaming was that while victimhood is real, it's dangerous when it becomes a core part of identity. I have enough adjacency to suffering in my own life that I am legitimately a little terrified of identifying too much as a passive victim who is simply incompetent to handle his own trauma. I think the model helps clarify the hazards of that.
That said, I don't think it's fair to belittle people's suffering and and pain.
To get into more detail...
Personal context, I work with disabled people and I have a lot of contact with notions like "dignity of risk," which elucidate that it is super important to give people challenges that they can handle, this is very important to human experience.
If, for instance, someone has cerebral palsy so an extreme where they physically cannot move their arms or legs, it'd be absurd to play Jesus and tell them to get up and walk.
Mind, if Jesus wants to show up at a place like my job and do that...He's perfectly free to. It'd be terrifying.
But most of us mere mortals can't do that. But you can and should try to provide opportunities for someone with that kind of CP to stretch their legs a bit so they can retain what movement they are capable of.
There's one kind of abuse to demand the impossible. There's another kind of abuse to deny the possible. And working out where that line is can't be handled as an abstract problem because it comes down to the individual person you're dealing with.
Instead I think we often/usually need to put down the idea that we know what's best for other people. We need instead, I think, to stop ourselves taking part in this unhelpful triangle and instead try to be helpful, first by listening to what the person is actually saying about themselves and then trying to actually be encouraging them to take steps to achieve their own goals.
Some say that this is psychobabble and gobbledegook but it feels right to me.
Per this board, that's why it's important to keep in mind the particular context.
And now I'm trying to figure out how to tie this back into a discussion of how people deal with the possibility of Hell...
That triangle might be one vision of hell. People are always identified in terms of pain, because pain is the only identifiable feature in existence? Hm.
The drama triangle framework “helps us understand the dysfunctional roles people tend to adopt to deal with conflict”. I'm not sure how helpful this is in relation to trauma, as it assumes all the people involved maintain similar degrees of agency and is couched largely in terms of taking personal responsibility. (Although it does briefly consider the harmful backgrounds that might give rise to some of the traits.) Also, I think it adopts a particularly individualistic perspective on both the problem and solutions - it doesn't appear to significantly address structural or institutional aspects.
In relation to agency, my understanding is that trauma is the stripping away or distortion of agency - in which traumatic events themselves are only the starting pistol. A significant (if not primary) aspect of healing from trauma involves recovering an undistorted sense of agency. By its nature, for the majority of us, it's hard to imagine how to what extent this is possible without active help and support.
Because of this, and because oppression, discrimination, marginalisation, etc are societal problems, I think understanding and dealing with trauma requires more than an individualistic perspective.
I'm afraid I see in this a fundamental misunderstanding of the relationship between trauma and agency (and responsibility). How can people without agency take responsibility for their trauma? Or deny their agency? It's all still victim-blaming. Responsibility lies with the individuals and societies that create and inflict trauma, that remove agency from those who are traumatised.
I also see a particular irony in that an important part of your job appears to be helping people maintain agency over their lives.
The idea that some groups within society are more deserving of agency than others, just highlights the extent to which discrimination and marginalisation are embedded in our societies.
My rather blunt answer is to consider what God thinks about our societies, and individuals in our societies, who are comfortable with the perpetuation of systemic oppression, discrimination and marginalisation of individuals and groups in our societies, as well as the personal infliction of trauma by individual members of society on one another. And what kind of message he might need to send the world to persuade us to do anything differently.
I know a lot of black people - like some of my co-workers - who wouldn't appreciate me telling them that they're helpless victims of a racist society. As much as that might be true on a systemic level, and I can see the role discrimination has played in our lives, it's rather a patronizing attitude to take on a practical level.
Note, I'm not denying your analysis. Intersectionality is a thing. You might notice I mentioned physical disability. And yes, the ironies are very real. Try navigating someone around in a wheelchair. Try working with someone who doesn't have the capacity to speak more than a single word at a time. I have a lot of experience with some extreme forms of "distorted agency." I do know what that's like. Disability isn't the same thing as being the victim of racial discrimination or the inheritor of generational trauma, but it is a form of "distorted agency." But even with distorted agency, it's extremely important to recognize the agency that is there, instead of reducing people to puppets for a "righteous" plan to "correct" them. And if one is so bold as to "correct." that work is best done very carefully and handled on an individual basis.
My job does involve such "correction," and it is done very slowly, very minimally, with very serious oversight from a committee of professionals and people with personal investment. It's an extremely serious business. I would expect the same respect, or even more, if I tried to apply that logic to someone who was in full possession of their faculties.
Along those lines, I could make a hilarious caricature of the white person telling the black person that they're a helpless victim of society and incapable of exercising their own agency, but...it writes itself right there. I prefer my "irony." It's more realistic. It's nuanced. And it's where I've lived for the past 20 years in an ethnically diverse neighborhood in the city of Chicago.
I was just talking to a co-worker the other day about his experience as a Nigerian immigrant. He was a black man, broken English, but a great worker. He carried the shift and made my life very easy. I'm a "floater," always the fill-in at my job. He took a moment near the end of the shift to say where he was from, he's in his 60s, showed me his three kids, a doctor in Hong Kong, another in England, and a third in the USA. All of them quite successful.
Now, by this "racial minorities have no agency" hermeneutic, if I'd taken that attitude with him...I can only imagine the insult I'd have delivered. It would have positively reeked of condescension. But I don't treat real people like that. I've known far too many and the few times I've attempted to, it didn't work. I can keep it in the back of my mind, sure. I can keep in mind that he's probably getting away from an incredibly corrupt place. I could've queried about the bombing in Nigeria, but it'd probably be an awkward way to start a conversation with a gentleman I had just met. And he's not in Nigeria now, he's here. He's a proud man with a good job and he's very proud of his kids. That's face he wants to show me and I'll graciously accept it. I think we got along well.
Ironic? Yes! My world is full of irony! That's because I'm old enough and been around enough that I can internalize the intersectional "woke" narrative and also have real conversations with real people of various kinds of color and keep in mind that Real People are more important than Social Categories.
On the other side, I can claim where I'm from and I can talk about where I'm from. If you start talking to me about where I'm from, there's a pretty good chance you'll offend me if you don't know much about where I'm from because you'll hit a bad note, and I'll notice it before you do. And that is how you respect my agency. Do not tell me I lack agency just because I've had it harder than you have. In my culture, that's deeply insulting.
Similarly, I try to stay away from telling people of color that they don't have agency because they have persecution histories. I know from experience that that's really touchy territory, and I'm not God.
And I'm honestly not sure I'm qualified to tell anyone what God thinks. That's playing God. I'll tell people what I think God is saying, but I have to mind the gap and remind myself that as reflective as I am, I am not God and cannot with perfect certainty tell people what God thinks about our societies.
All that said, yes. If you're saying that this is what inspired Jesus to use hellfire and brimstone imagery, for all of my "don't play God" reservations, I think we're on the same page there. I've just learned to be careful, for I have been burned for being too arrogant.
I don't know of anyone who can perfectly tell what God thinks about our societies. We all have our own perspectives. Someone told me it is like looking at a moonshine across a lake. You can have several people standing along the shoreline, and everyone will say that moonlight is coming directly to them.
Even the writers of the Bible do not agree on what God thinks.
I am working on a sermon for Sunday. It is about how Andrew and another disciple started following Jesus after John the Baptist told them Jesus was the lamb of God. They just started following. Jesus turns and asks them what they are looking for. They asked Jesus were he was staying. Jesus says come and see. They stay the night with Jesus. The next day Andrew goes and seeks out his brother, Simon. He simply tells Simon, "We have found the Messiah." Staying one night with Jesus did not make Andrew a trained theologian. He certainly did not know where the next few years would take them, but it was a simple invite, "Come and See," that started it all.
If you really need to know what qualifies you to speak about God, it is in your baptism where you became a child of God. In that baptism you received the Holy Spirit, you receive that Spirit whenever you hear the Word. Even Jesus says sometimes you may be called into court, but you are not to prepare a defense, only speak the words which the Spirit will give you. Trust the Spirit.
In this regard, it particularly struck me that the only place in your last post where you refer to trauma is to say that disability isn't the same as inheriting generational trauma (which seems uncontroversial). I think you're also taking a primarily individualistic perspective, which makes sense, if that's your experience, but I think it only partially informs the issue of collective trauma.
One point you raise is that telling individuals they don't have agency is insulting. It's hard to disagree with that - I think what you describe would be insulting in most cultures. Lacking agency isn't something you can just bring up in conversation with people who may or may not lack agency. (Let alone talking about trauma.) For me, this isn't about telling individuals that they don't have agency, it's about understanding what it means for groups of people to experience transgenerational trauma. One important aspect is how this differs from individual trauma.
Meanwhile, Having had a chance to reflect on my blunt answer, it increasingly occurs to me that Jesus had two messages, one for the oppressed, and one for the oppressors. But we guess at the what people of the time made of this, and how they'd have heard it.
I'm rather surer that the way we understand the message of Jesus today, and his pronouncements on the afterlife, has been significantly influenced by church authorities which included people who had a vested interest in restricting the agency of people in their care.
And I bring that up with no intention of ignoring the real experiences of trauma or the harm it produces. I do think I'm playing an analogy to disability, and I love the phrase "distorted agency" because that describes the situations I experience extremely well. It's a wonderful expression.
I think that, again, depending on the person, or even the group, you have to consider each case on its own terms. And there is always harm to factor in, limitations, etc. It's just dangerous to use words like "victim," I think, in isolation, because they can create a sense that someone is merely or only a victim and that can lead to psychological paralysis and compound self-distortion.
We learn a lot not to push people to do things they can't do, but it's also harmful to deny that people are capable of doing what they can do, and that is a hard tightrope to walk sometimes. And certainly, to err too far in either direction is a form of abuse.
It's more blatant with disability but I think trauma also works and it takes a kind of deep listening and empathic understanding to get there. You have to hear potential and respect dignity and power where it resides, and it's always there, though distorted.
On a collective scale, education about history and context and setting policies accordingly are very important, yes. I agree with you there. "Informed" is good.
@Gramps49 , yeah...I get that. I've just seen some real cons in my life going around telling people they were speaking "from the Spirit" when the historical record makes it very evident they were speaking from their egos and wish-fulfillment fantasies. I like testing spirits, preferably with double blind scientific studies.
But you're not wrong. It's another balancing act.
Connie Hart was a Gunditjmara Elder in Melbourne, Australia.
As you may or may not know, First People nations in Australia often experienced abuse into the 20th centuries, often being herded into missions. Sometimes these were people from wildly varied language groups, moved off their land and pushed into places far from their ancestors.
Auntie Connie was an expert basketmaker. She learned from her mother in secret. When the time came for her relatives to ask for training in basketry, at first Connie refused. Eventually she agreed, but only if the doors were locked and the blinds pulled down.
Auntie Con was so traumatised by the erasure of her culture in the mission that she thought if she told anyone her memories of the traditional ways, the police would come round and take away the children.
With reference to this discussion, Auntie Con and the surviving members of her cultural language group were/are clearly victims of generational trauma. There is no "fixing" this. There is no way that this great wrong can be put right.
But I think there are ways that Auntie Con and her children and grandchildren can be helped to deal with that trauma.
Partly it is about other people helping people like Connie Hart to salvage something from the mess. In her case that was giving her a special place of honour and respect in the wider community in a space that honoured and valued and preserved and valued traditional practices.
I don't think it's enough, that it could ever be enough. But something, I believe, in this context if not in others, is better than nothing.