“Hurt people hurt people.” This is a well established idea that has been embraced openly in psychology. I personally have done so, not out of intention but out of the normalization of harmful acts from my culture. It’s taken years of self awareness practice to address these behaviors and I still find myself slipping into some or finding new ones.

How we grow up is basically operant conditioning. Media and surrounding communities tell us how to feel about what, right down to how we present self through interactions and preferences. When a person chooses to slide outside of those passively set boundaries, people that are hierarchically above said person come down hardest. Could be a principal, parent, pastor, even elder siblings feel just is shaming, mocking, isolating ie emotionally abusing someone into the box that is expected of them.

Here’s the trick: they are doing exactly what they have experienced. Its not that they enjoy or even understand the boxes, its that they were hurt by the boxes until they choose them out of psychological survival. Any one human challenging a system that pyramids on top of them is bound to feel the weight to continue that painful expectation and pressure.

An example comes along historically in voting. African American males were awarded the right to vote (1870) 95 years before the African American female(1965). White women awarded sooner by just 46 years(1920). This illustrates a racial and gender hierarchy established by the white men in charge of who has what rights to voice their personal opinions. Not to mention that poor white men that were not allowed to vote until 1964, just one year before the women of color. Do remember that the right to vote does not guarantee that the state or city allowed any of these people to do so. Rich white men maintained the top of the hierarchy in America after escaping the royal’s control.

This illustrates that not only did white men hold tight to their box, but chose to legally control others. This continues in a racial and class trend. Pain passing all the way down the line with voting rights. It doesn’t stop with history allowing all to vote, not that it does. People brought in from other countries for the benefit of cheap labor are expected to sit silent even now even as their employers dodge policy and punish/control with arrests for the choice to bring the workers here illegally.

Let’s not forget the disabled who didn’t to have access into buildings or college until a rich white man in a wheelchair who was previously able bodied began the disability rights movement in 1973 determined to have his lost privileges reinstated. Thank goodness he felt supported by the Black rights movement. Yet again, the hierarchy maintained, even if those that came before did pave the road for effective actions in changing society. I am grateful for such paving; however, its a continuous clear illustration that the society in America has been and maintains hierarchical pain passing.

These days the hierarchies continue to be used in exponential patterns. By this I mean if one has multiple-ismed placements, each lowers the assumed ‘value’ of the human at hand. Someone of color, poverty, and disability that’s male is treated with more value than someone also female or of another country/religion/sexuality etc etc. The divisions of human facets continue without exception or individual inclusion. In this way ableism motivates emotionally disassociating especially in cases where multiple -isms are already in place. Who would want real self awareness/actualization/authenticity in a place that punishes for face value?

The real questions are: who will stop needing to usurp another’s autonomy or right to personal identity outside of stereotyped survival assumptions? When will enough people choose basic equality to grant the equity needed to escape scarcity even in personal emotional exchange? Or do people have a need to behave this way due to close quarters like how animal behaviors change to volatile hierarchy inside zoo life captivity? Or is it simply because each individual making a choice to live inside their stereotyped box creates a need to make another’s?

Side noting that these -ismed hierarchies come without consent. People refusing to value another will simply not hear a clearly spoken “No”,and when ‘no’ escalates in volume or action out of self protection, shame will reign. They will not recognize intellectual worth or input. They will dismiss capacity and skillsets. They will create elaborate validation for their avoidance of valuing the other. They will focus on only the difference present, no matter how many similarities. These people are also choosing these behavioral stereotypes for themselves. Thusly, the narcissist is born in the perfectionist self isolation per a system set in motion historically in traumatically controlling spaces that valued capital/property/control over the human rights of the globe. A socially conditioned/upheld pain passing that now originates in self.

*waits for civilized acceptance to become standard*