Oh, My Poor, Poor Little Boundaries

The older I get, the more I see how many ways there are for societies, or individual psychology, to swing back and forth between opposite wrong extremes. There have been times -- probably most of the world's history -- when people were not encouraged to air their complaints openly. Especially if they belonged to an oppressed underclass, and of course there have been oppressed underclasses for most of history. But modern life, more than most eras, is plagued by the opposite extreme. Western civilization has not only largely liberated people from the sit-down-and-shut-up requirement; it has in many cases invited individuals to make up their own criteria for when they have a right to complain, and about what, and against whom. In fact, some people are permitted to make up accusations out of nothing... are led to expect that their accusations will automatically be believed... and, even given these privileges, are also permitted to act as if they are still part of the oppressed underclass. If you are in the right victim group, if you have the right self-pity narrative, you don't even have to allege that you were physically assaulted, politically persecuted, or financially exploited. You can just invent your own hot buttons, and then suddenly announce that someone's pushed them. You can take offense at the most casual, trivial thing someone says or does, and fabricate some way in which this "violates your boundaries," "makes you feel a hostile atmosphere," or "injures your self-esteem." You can make someone out to be a villain, for something which 99 percent of people would never even imagine getting angry about. This trend, naturally, causes innocent persons to be branded as hateful, or oppressive, or threatening, or bigoted, or uncivilized. And then, sometimes, insult is added to injury when the inventor of the false accusation "generously forgives" the falsely accused person... for an offense that never actually happened in the first place. This comes close to what C.S. Lewis had in mind when he wrote, "Sometimes, saying 'I forgive you as a Christian' is only another way of continuing the quarrel." In this way, a person who has intentionally chosen to be self-deceptive enough to make up grievances against innocent acquaintances, can choose the further self-deception of thinking, "Oooohh, I'm so noble for forgiving that other person"... when in actual fact, that other person did not even do the imaginary bad deed which is now being "forgiven." There are those who, seeing me expose the current wrong extreme, would be certain to take the lazy mental shortcut of assuming that I want society to go all the way back to the other extreme -- all the way back to a time when legitimate complaints (of domestic abuse, for instance) were ignored. Any who said this about me would be wrong; but of course, they would be given a free pass on it by the popular culture. The very possibility of discussing right and wrong to any good purpose has been impaired by the DAMNABLE SATANIC LIE that "Perception is reality." This is what allows self-pity addicts to make up their whining laments about how their precious little feelings have been hurt -- by things which no rational person would even consider being upset about. Perception is NOT reality. Reality is reality, and it is the moral duty of perception to pursue an ever-clearer awareness of reality. But I am not optimistic about this understanding being re-acquired by the mass of humanity in my lifetime.