The handy psychological term "projection" derives from the nonsensical world of Sigmund Freud's psychodynamics - but, albeit for extremely different reasons than Freud suggested, the actual phenomenon of accusing others of one's own motivations contains a great deal of validity.
The reason for projection is that we use "our-self" - how we see the world, how we are personally motivated, what we are trying-to-do - as the basic model by which we understand "other people" and the world generally.
Of course, knowing this phenomenon, it is possible to do otherwise - or even do the opposite; but the level of self-awareness in the managerial and leadership class of The West is... well, it is extremely low.
The people running things are essentially either bureaucrats - obediently trying to please their bosses; or else psychopaths - self-centred and short-termist types - who don't care enough about other people to realize that they may be differently motivated.
Therefore, unless they are continually watched and controlled; They will continually be giving themselves away, will repeatedly be revealing their real and underlying motivations, by their criticisms and accusations against others.
That is what I mean by the term "projection".
Examples abound!
During the birdemic - anyone who objected to the state bureaucrats and media Moghuls was labelled as a science denier; while the accusers were simply inverting or throwing-out a century of medical knowledge concerning epidemics and respiratory viruses.
Those who objected to mass pecking with an unnecessary, ineffective and dangerous agent; were labelled as being dangerous gamblers with the public health! Parent who cared about the safety of their children, were labelled as selfish and short-termist - by those whose interests (money, jobs, status, promotion) was enhanced by pushing the peck.
When the Fire Nation war came along; the inversions were legion. The Fire Nation were accusing of provoking the war, deliberate escalation, suffering massive casualties from "human wave" tactics, of imminently running-out of munitions, etc (continuing) - all of which were knowingly being done by the side making the accusations.
More generally; They accuse anyone who notices, publicizes and opposes the explicit (UN Agenda 2030, Great-Reset) and massively-documented for decades global plan for totalitarian omni-surveillance and micro-control of everyone except an "elite" of (implicitly) wise and just leaders; variously, as "climate denialist" and as a "conspiracy theorist".
In a nutshell; Their projections are an insight into their own natures, their motivations, their intentions.
We can easily understand the way that They regard us, and regard the world, by observing that of which They accuse their enemies.
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Explanatory and Contextual Note:
It might be asked how it is possible to escape from the accusation of projection - after all, it could and will be said that someone like myself is also projecting ("You are projecting!". "No, it's You who are projecting!... &c."- Maybe I am projecting even more and worse than Them!
That is what inevitably (because intrinsically) happens to someone whose explanatory model goes no deeper than "psychology" - one who uses psychology as their ultimate and bottom-line explanatory model... Everything is ultimately reduced to "a matter of opinion", which itself reduces to whoever has the greatest power and influence... And we are back to square one!
The "answer" is that we all need to become explicitly aware of our own most-basic (metaphysical - including religious) assumptions concerning the nature of reality. In public discourse, we can and should expect that such assumption be made clear.
Metaphysical assumptions are the true bottom-line and ultimate distinctions; while psychology (or politics, or economics, or whatever) is only ever a proximate explanation; only valid insofar as the metaphysical assumptions are known, and are coherent.
In this regard; They will not make clear their metaphysical assumptions, and will indeed deny the validity of metaphysics - stoutly maintaining all discourse on a surface and "sound bite" level of emotive manipulations and assertions about "evidence" and "facts" - which They can easily control.
Projection is such a problem - here and now - exactly because the mainstream, official, mandatory modern discourse is a futile cycle of ungrounded assertions; that exclude metaphysics; and that operates entirely at the surface and proximate level, and with sound-bite (two step) logic.
In a nutshell: the leadership/ managerial class are themselves slaves to projection because (by assumption) they see no deeper than psychology and its manipulations; and all possible depth is excluded by the anti-spiritual, atheistic materialism/ positivism/ scientism/ reductionism that permeates (and is enforced by) the whole official world.
It's astonishing. Somehow the projector manages to impute his own dark motives to others while remaining pure and righteous in his own eyes. How is this trick pulled off?
ReplyDelete@Ron - I think the worst problems come from the fact that evil cannot imagine real good; and always interprets it as a mask for selfishness.
ReplyDeleteAn excellent example is Saruman's always wrong understanding of Gandalf, throughout the Lord of the Rings.