OPPOSITION DEFIANCE EXPLORED

 Though I can find no evidence, I could swear I wrote a previous post about “oppositional defiance disorder” usually described as a child’s stage of development.  But the post is gone.  Sorry if this is just a repeat, but it seems important enough to repeat, esp. now.

This website relates ODD to ADHD and surely that’s justified if only in terms of anger arising from frustration and injustice.

https://www.additudemag.com/oppositional-defiant-disorder-in-adults/

“Adults with ODD are more than just aggressive and irritating from time to time. They feel mad at the world every day, and lose their temper regularly. This may manifest as verbal abuse or road rage. Adults with ODD defend themselves relentlessly when someone says they’ve done something wrong. They feel misunderstood and disliked, hemmed in, and pushed around.

“Constant opposition to authority figures makes it difficult for adults with ODD to keep jobs and to maintain relationships and marriages. They are particularly quick to anger, they are impatient, and they have a low tolerance for frustration. They see themselves as mistreated, misunderstood, and unappreciated. They see themselves as the victim rather than the cause of the pain in the family system.“

“ODD has a strongly genetic component. It runs in families and several people in the same family may be affected. It often begins in childhood with patterns of rebellion against adults and their rules. Some children with ODD outgrow the condition by age eight or nine. But about half of them continue to experience symptoms of ODD through adulthood.”

This website includes a self-test.

I see this as built-in to our culture now.  There seem to be two modes:  aggressive and passive.  Aggressive can be violent to the point of murder.  Passive is one I’ve used myself rather often: simply standing and staring as though not speaking the language.  In fact, verbal ODD is pervasive when contrasted with actual defiant behavior.

Certainly there is justification for ODD now: out of work, evicted, broke, infected — some of it randomly and some of it imposed by cultural injustice or bosses and politicians taking advantage of the opportunity.

“Individual therapy teaches people with ODD a series of techniques for managing anger, controlling emotions, and solving problems. It can provide positive alternative behaviors to replace defiant ones. This type of therapy works best when it begins early in life, when family and social interactions aren’t ingrained and difficult to change.”

Suggestions abound about which pills to take, all very fine and civilized if the environment allows it.  Otherwise there are fistfights, rebellions and even wars.   I don’t see discussion in terms of universal cultural addressing of what is making people so rage-ful.  The real cure is justice, listening and empathy.  

An enraged father who acts out his frustration at home creates a whole family that becomes angry, if not intimidated, fearful, and distorted.  But so many jobs are frustrating, not least those of cops.  My own father was aggressively angry when we kids were small, but as he aged he went to passive defiance, saying “duh” and staring at us.  Hard to know how much of this is genetic, but some for sure.  It’s my paternal family’s style.

The major insight of Steve Benen’s book, “Imposters”, is that the Repubs discovered how much damage they could do by simply failing to do anything as well as blocking everyone else.  If this were defined as Oppositional Defiance Disorder, the idea might lead to insights.  So that suggests a third route of defiance: getting very very rich, rich enough to ignore law.  

It also begins to explain that if you are frustrated by the Rule of Law, you can simply ignore it.  No need to punch the lawyer — just go silent and uncooperative.  Of course, cops know that the cure for that is violence, but it becomes a habit one takes home.  How does the Rule of Law have any relevance if it’s not enforced?  Again and again we see our mighty leaders simply shrug and the monitors (those not fired) finally shrug as well.

Magnifying a child’s transitional frustration and opposition as a strategy for control into an adult’s disrupting defiance and then to a cultural feature that could bring down the nation is still not addressing an even bigger horizon — the failure to handle cultural sea changes that many cannot understand or even survive.

My parents were struggling with the transition from an ag-based world and its morality to that of the industrial revolution which they never quite mastered, much less getting past the first signs of a new world order based on knowledge and abstract skill. Both my parents were fascinated by the new knowledge of cosmos and cell metabolism, chimps and hominin brains, but they had nothing to put in the place once occupied by “God.”  My mother was much attached to the idea  of a forgiving Jesus but married my father even though he publicly announced he was an atheist.  My maternal grandfather, who was certainly ODD, threatened to skewer him with a pitchfork.  Maybe it was a safe aggression on her part to defy her father in the name of love.

Searching for a new approach, I watch David Attenborough’s films.  Get distance, way up high or way down deep.  Look at the enormous masses, the devastating losses, and then the incredible beauty and fittingness of individuals.  I see these factors in my index groups:  Blackfeet, young gay men and UU ministers.  It’s in my memories of Leland Ground whom I noted in a post, BECAUSE he was one who tried to guide his despair and rage into salvation.