This post is dedicated to the prisoners at Guantanamo Prison: uncharged, unheard, unrepresented, unconvicted -- the whole thing is unjustified. Their lives are dependent on the ability of ordinary citizens OUTSIDE the prison to intervene.
Oppositional defiance -- that is, defiance of authority -- is something that I know from both sides, in marriage, teaching, law enforcement, politics. If there’s another person involved, you’re bound to have an occasional need for them to do something or they will need YOU to do something. What you do about it rather depends upon the cause, nature, and other details of both the opposition and the means of defiance. Mostly what I can do at this point is generate questions.
1. Is this demand something you really cannot do?
2. Is it something you can do but just don’t want to? Because maybe you’re the one who will take the consequences -- not the other guy. Or your morality won’t allow it.
3. Is the other guy just plain wrong?
4. Is the opposition coming from outside you both?
5. Is it a false opposition that might stop if it were reframed?
6. Is there a competition going on? Maybe for vital resources?
A recent opposition of mine was with a doctor. He wanted me to be inert, compliant, quickly dealt with, not a trouble-maker. I wanted time, focus, reassurance, and a report of what he found. The defiance took the practical form of moving to a different doctor. I evaded by being polite in the moment, then sending a letter. There’s a political component to oppositional defiance, a need to demonstrate that one is right. As it happens, the doc I left opposed the law permitting assisted suicide. Plainly, he thinks the lives of patients belong to the doctor.
But the hell with the fancy dynamics of it all -- change has to happen. The revolution must be completed. Why should a person have to defy and explain their defiance? Why isn’t it self-evident that the one who is demanding something should have to justify that demand? And if it’s a reasonable demand, why not comply? Is it because it’s a demand instead of request, open to negotiation?
Why must some people be rapists in order to respond to sex? Because it’s not really about sex, but about the addiction to force and control. I’m watching “Damages” in which one plot thread is the teenaged son of the Glenn Close dominating and controlling character. Their relationship is entirely controlled by strategy. (I’m not recommending these, just listing them.) I observe the following controlling strategies:
1. Prepare options ahead of time so you have the advantage of surprise. The boy is out of control so he is seized and sent to a prison-like “school.” He pretends to comply. He also expresses a desire for freedom. His mother agrees to spring him from the “school” and gives him the papers for emancipation. He doesn’t sign them, but returns home now that he’s escaped the school. On the surface he is compliant. We know better. He is also very good at predicting his mother’s behavior. But his mistake was being out of control.
2. Use rule-based laws and consequences: legalities, moving the individual from one category to another (emancipation, mental health diagnosis). Society makes this easy by defining trouble-makers as either crazy or criminal. Join your labor union; defend civil service.
3. Hire muscle and confine the individual. (arrest, boarding school, asylum, chemical restraint) Some will go so far as murder, at least in the movies. Prepare escape routes and stay alert. Study maps. Sit where you can see the door.
4. Use behavior modification. This one really makes me scream. It only drives the defiance underground where it is far more dangerous. Or it can break people so that they are dependent for the rest of their lives. But it can work in both directions.
5. Don’t involve people or things that could be hostages. This one is hard. One doesn’t want to be inhuman enough never to attach to others or even things, but it only makes sense to protect what you care about. I was careful not to have children.
6. Test for reality constantly. Don’t be bluffed.
7. Never trust flattery. Accept it as a possibility and test it. Same with threats.
8. Frustrated or enraged or drunk etc. people can lash out without knowing their own strength or even intending to do it -- they surprise themselves. Don’t you be surprised -- watch closely. Practice on animals: what signs does this cat make that it’s about to jump? (Freeze, stare, lick nose, GO!)
9. Counter-diagnosis: what is making this person insist on domination? Ego? A higher boss? Maybe S/HE’s the defiant one. Maybe s/he’s scared. Address that. Don’t get so wrapped up in yourself that you can’t see the other person.
10. Is it coming from the social role: doc, cop, or whore? Use that. Students know exactly the constraints on teachers in public schools: no contact, grades justified, protocol observed, no hint of sexuality -- those conditions force vulnerability on the teacher while trying to protect the vulnerability of students.
11. Hoard your energy for the long haul. Play the long game.
12. Role play in advance so you have in mind some strategies.
The goal of the strategies below is to shift the frame of reference in the brains of these bossy people away from the side with checklists, protocols, indicators and categories, over to the side where they see you as a person like them. Some will say this is from the left brain to the right brain. My list below is kind of silly. You can probably do better. But sometimes being silly is disarming.
1. “Please tell me your name.” (Surprising how many caregivers don’t do this when any waiter or even receptionist will do it.)
2. Wink.
3. “Would you hold my hand for a minute?”
4. “What were you like when you were my age?”
5. “Would you give me ten minutes to tell you about myself?” (You might need to carry a timer.) If they say they don’t have ten minutes, ask for five or two.
6. Write or draw something funny on your skin. Something the OTHER guy will think is funny.
7. “What’s your favorite . . . “ color, TV show, etc.
8. Give them a piece of candy or a poem. (You don’t have to write it.)
If this backfires on one person, try it on the next. Do a little adjusting and inventing. Try to read body language. Make this sort of thing a hobby. Read Eric Berne’s “Games People Play,” and even better Claude Steiner’s “Games Alcoholics Play.” (They’re often three-handed, which confuses oppositions.) You don’t have to learn any fancy theories to understand these books: just pay attention.
In any prison, the guards and the prisoners begin to get acquainted and to understand each other, even to like each other. A culture grows up between them. Someone didn’t like this at Guantanamo and replaced the former guards with much harsher new ones. The biggest mistake the “government” has made is not understanding their prisoners.
When the price is too high, the oppressor cannot win. They cannot force people to live, as jailers on reservations know. At Guantanamo no strategy, no intervention, will make a difference now. It has become inhuman. The place has become predatory while refusing to kill the prey. This country is being run as though it were a kennel, an agribusiness, a corporation based on profit. Guantanamo is another Abu Ghraib. Those people in Washington DC are NOT the government -- they are a sideshow. We should oppose and defy “them” But we don’t know who the real authorities are. We’re dealing with a “black” ops system that excludes our black president.
More to come that’s not so political. Maybe.
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