Many who experience trauma, particularly when it is severe and prolonged, feel alienated from both themselves and from the rest of the world. It is a phenomenon that appears inherent to complex trauma, but one outside factor acts as a multiplier – the failure of others to appropriately empathize and relate to the reality of what has transpired. They often do this by collectivizing their cowardice to enable avoiding having to deal with reality.
The Abuser’s Culture
History is riddled with famous examples of this external influence, this collective sin. From the Germans who stood by and did nothing, to the stigmatization of atomic blast survivors in post WW2 Japan, to survivors of rape and domestic violence, victims of complex trauma know all too well how most of the outside world fails in the most spectacular ways to offer appropriate reaction and response to what has been imposed upon them.
This inappropriate behavior has many shapes; invalidation, denial, minimization, avoidance, relativization – the list goes on. One can think of it as all the ways that people go about not caring about things that happen to others every day until it happens to them or theirs. At its core, this is an expression of narcissism and empathic failure.
The Group Dynamic
The primary mechanism that lets otherwise good people morally fail this way is the collectivization of responsibility, the sharing of cowardice. When others go about ignoring evil, it makes it much easier for people to justify acting the same way. If everyone else is doing it, or not doing it, then it must be OK, or at least permissible by default.
While some of the most famous and heinous evils can be explained this way, the phenomenon is pervasive. Particularly in a globalized world, fellowship in moral failure can be sought out for anything and everything. When many join us in wrongdoing, we are able to minimize our own participation, or worse, dignify it as good and right.
From looting to concentration camps, the examples of collective vice are endless and notorious. But these types of examples are also obvious to non-participants. The phenomenon takes a more covert and thereby insidious form when it is cowardice instead of active participation that is collectivized. When everyone is responsible, nobody is responsible.
Collective Cowardice
The collectivization of cowardice can manifest both as inaction and as aggression. Cool non-judgment of the heinous is much easier when others validate it by labeling it as virtuous or spiritually advanced. Similarly, aggressive use of invective is normalized in baseless and collectivized allegations of racism, sexism, ableism, chauvinism, discrimination, and endless ways in which people claim victimhood through immutable characteristics.
In stark contrast to these collective guilt and victimhood demands, people who experience complex trauma do not want to be seen as victims – we just want to be understood, to have the reality of the brutality imposed on us recognized as real.
In a twisted and harrowing show of moral failure, the default is to resort to empty peptalks, platitudes, and denialism. Perversely, when the denialism is pointed out, the default is to use denialism to deny denialism.
When It Happens To You
For example, when a person is brutalized by being falsely accused of a heinous crime, it is nearly categorically denied that the false accuser is guilty of anything nearly as bad as the nature of the false accusation. While the peril to the falsely accused can be a matter of literal life and death, the false accuser never faces the same peril that they impose. This is true legally nearly everywhere, and as incomprehensible as it may be, most people actually agree with that… until it happens to them, to their son, to their daughter.
The Hypocrite Calls For Action
Suddenly they demand fire and brimstone, calling on the warriors to have their backs – the same warriors they laughed at when they were warned of what would happen. The previous attitudes are hardly ever atoned for, and people will claim and even believe that they always felt this way, despite having spat in the eyes of others who experienced the same thing right up until they became the victim.
An atrocious example of similar dynamics was recently on display when the monster Shivanthi Sathanandan was carjacked and posted a selfie with beet juice on her pouty face. LOCK THEM UP UNTIL THEY ARE TRIED AND CONVICTED, in all caps, as if it were the most obvious thing to her, became her attitude when she was victimized. Yet up until that moment, she (im)famously and vehemently demanded DEFUND THE POLICE.
Collectivization is the culprit. Simplistic solutions to complex matters become truisms. The responsibility for ignoring the most heinous deeds is spread out. Glorification of cowardice becomes entrenched, and complex trauma victims are inevitably retraumatized by the resulting well-meaning and blasé attitudes and the thoughtless blathering of ingrained catchphrases like “you’re just dwelling on things, it’s time to move on with your life”, or “you should just [whatever]”.