swanpinions

However, when we are confronted with behavior we do not understand, what was once invisible becomes visible—and unexplainable. Reactions to this experience are so common we have a word to describe those who confront us in ways we do not understand: we say they are “crazy.” We create a divisive binary: we are sane, they are insane.

Creating divisive binaries is a pattern of behavior that exists at every scale of human interaction, from the individual, to the societal. In his review of James C. Scott’s 1998 book, Seeing like a State: how certain schemes to improve the human condition have failed, Venkatesh Rao succinctly describes this behavior as “the rationalization of the fear of (apparent) chaos.” He outlines a recipe that explains why “a very predictable failure pattern keeps recurring” in almost all areas of human experience:

1. Look at a complex and confusing reality, such as the social dynamics of an old city
2. Fail to understand all the subtleties of how the complex reality works
3. Attribute that failure to the irrationality of what you are looking at, rather than your own limitations
4. Come up with an idealized blank-slate vision of what that reality ought to look like
5. Argue that the relative simplicity and platonic orderliness of the vision represents rationality
6. Use authoritarian power to impose that vision, by demolishing the old reality if necessary
7. Watch your rational Utopia fail horribly

The big mistake in this pattern of failure is projecting your subjective lack of comprehension onto the object you are looking at, as “irrationality.” We make this mistake because we are tempted by a desire for legibility.

This is the central driving force of injustice and oppression: through our desire to make legible that which we cannot read, coupled with a fear of our own limitations made visible to us by a confrontation with that which we do not understand, we unwittingly perpetrate extraordinarily brutal levels of non-consensual violence, even and especially when we think we are doing good.

All oppressions use the following, invariable pattern: obscure, divide, conquer, and homogenize. That pattern is oppression; that is the DNA of evil itself. Evil cannot be conquered, for any attempt to resist evil using conquest empowers it anew.

—From Triads to Triadic Relationships: Polyamory’s superpower is not what you think – Atlanta Poly Weekend 2012 Opening Keynote

I see this so often. So, so often. In every kind of abuse, bullying and hate.

• “Lol, why do subcultures have to keep making up new words?” = Look at a complex and confusing reality; Fail to understand all the subtleties of how the complex reality works
• “All these new words for what you feel are just bullshit!” = Attribute that failure to the irrationality of what you are looking at, rather than your own limitations
• “Just speak normally using the words we have! You’re not any different from normal people, stop trying to sound like a special snowflake!” = Come up with an idealized blank-slate vision of what that reality ought to look like; Argue that the relative simplicity and platonic orderliness of the vision represents rationality; Use authoritarian power to impose that vision, by demolishing the old reality if necessary
• People are erased, witch-hunted, and called “not real” = Watch your rational Utopia fail horribly.

Or, here is another one:

• “Why are all these suffering people suddenly speaking? People didn’t suffer from this in the past! (It can’t be a flaw in me, it’s never because I was partly responsible for creating a reality that made them feel like they had to shut up.)” = Look at a complex and confusing reality; Fail to understand all the subtleties of how the complex reality works
• “They must be faking it! Look at how many autistic people there are now! Look at how many people claim to have multiple personalities! Look at how many otherkin are claiming species dysphoria! I can’t imagine that there is any good reason for this, like more people feeling confident to speak because the social justice movement is making progress, so they must be fakers or crazy!” = Attribute that failure to the irrationality of what you are looking at, rather than your own limitations
• “We just need to shut them up, push them out of the community, or laugh at them! Then the community will go back to being the perfect ideal where nobody suffered! We know what it was like in the past so we know how it should be in the future, doesn’t matter if people and society change!” = Come up with an idealized blank-slate vision of what that reality ought to look like; Argue that the relative simplicity and platonic orderliness of the vision represents rationality; Use authoritarian power to impose that vision, by demolishing the old reality if necessary
• People are erased, witch-hunted, and called “not real” = Watch your rational Utopia fail horribly.

I see these patterns all the time. I feel like I was born with the ability to see them and no one else is looking. And it makes me feel frustrated, like Cassandra, when no one listens and I see the same hate happening again, and again, and again.

But it’s not a special power I have. The evidence is obvious. Just look.

However, when we are confronted with behavior we do not understand, what was once invisible becomes visible—and unexplainable. Reactions to this experience are so common we have a word to describe those who confront us in ways we do not understand: we say they are “crazy.” We create a divisive binary: we are sane, they are insane.

Really, this one paragraph is probably the most important thing you could read tonight. For everything in life. Because oppression isn’t about “whether this group is Really Oppressed” or “whether that group suffers more” or “whether anyone has been murdered in this group yet” or “whether that group has scientific proof of existing”. Oppression isn’t a pass or fail, people, it’s a pattern! It’s a goddamned PATTERN! It’s a set of behaviors that we believe we have the right to do, and unless we deconstruct that same, stupid pattern, we are going to be fighting oppression, in some way, for the rest of our existence as this species.

“A very predictable failure pattern keeps recurring in almost all areas of human experience.” And it will keep recurring until we fight the pattern. A group is in some way oppressed at the moment that someone uses that pattern against them and the pattern works because that group is weak and does not have social power. It’s not about how much you have been hurt, because it’s a pattern that will MAKE SURE you get hurt, at some time in the future, if you have not been. It’s a pattern that does nothing good for society, and just makes us believe we can keep hurting people in small ways, until it blows up into a big problem and it’s too late to undo the damage.

It’s a pattern and we can see it and it’s our duty to stop it.