I love you; I will carry this for you.
The cycle continues, like a diesel engine willing the world forward; the tension between the victim and the perpetrator creates the force of violent movement and perpetual change. Opposing forces demanding each other to exist, like the yin and yang of an inefficient existence. Could this movement be more effective? Less pronounced? Rather than violently exploding chaos and order, leaving a plume of destruction in its wake. Could there be a better way? A more effective engine? A propulsion system that is in balance and consumes less material to create energy and movement, a system that does less harm and is more in-tune.
While participating in a family constellation workshop, I had the opportunity to represent a perpetrator in an exercise that presented three different dynamics between a victim and the perpetrator. The feeling was surreal, almost too much to bear. For me, it was a concerning feeling, a familiar feeling, a feeling that I knew well. The subversion, opposition, and resonance fit like a glove. Like I was representing something with malice, an embodied rejection of the game with seductive power. I felt judged, excluded, and looked down upon.
This was a familiar pattern in my life; I have been on both sides of this phenomenon. I have identified as a victim as well as a perpetrator, and I have paid the consequences of both. It’s a dynamic I know well, a familiar feeling of being entangled with something I cannot explain. Navigating the environment in cruise control, not being able to control the systemic momentum behind me. The reality was that I had given away my autonomy to the collective. I happily abdicated my ability to respond and had given away my responsibility to the entangled identity to the larger sense of the position. I represented all the victims; I acted as all the perpetrators in a way. Justifying my actions with righteous judgment wilded by an individual in pain.
When I was a young boy, I studied at a boys’ Catholic school; the education system was rigid, dark, and unemotional. During recess, we would play a game called “tunnel.” The premise of the game was to kick a ball between the legs of a target. If you were successful in this endeavor, all the participants would kick the tunneled victim until they reached a pre-designated safe space. It was a primitive game that represented this abdication and punishment.
I suspect that this systemic momentum is what we all use to subconsciously justify our actions, giving us permission to act collectively and wash our hands of the consequences. We easily go with the herd's current, like a buffalo jump, charging towards certain doom. The individuals are not aware of their fate until it’s too late. No single bovine is at fault; the herd subconsciously reacts to the external source and is set in motion. If enough individuals in the pack identify and manifest their own reactions, it can lead to senseless atrocities. To mass abdication, a diffusion of ownership to the many. Maoist China rises from the Century of Humiliation; the Third Reich is preceded by the humiliation of Germany. These movements underscore the dangers of the identification of victimization en mass.
Our responsibility as individuals is to ourselves, to our ancestors, and to our descendants. We must get to the bottom of the unresolved trauma (URT) that entangles us to identify as the victim or the perpetrator, the URT that lies hidden like a land mine waiting to explode. A whole system waiting to be activated and dealt with, inherited from our ancestors and repeated out of love. Perpetrators, perpetrating and victims, victimizing.
“On the rails of righteous judgment; the train of atrocities rides strong.” ZuluOne
Since participating in FCT* modality, I have been able to process my URT* with love, honoring my ancestors for giving me life, and, with their permission, move forward, stepping into my full potential.
*Family Constellation Therapy
*UnResolved Trauma
John Acosta
留言