Where is Western Pride re the West, Muslim Shame re Islam?
Projective Identification, Stockholm Syndrome, Battered Wife Syndrome,
Emotion Displacement, The West and Islam.

Where is Western Pride
re the West?
Where is Muslim Shame
re Islam?    
or:
Projective Identification,
the Stockholm Syndrome,
Emotion Displacement,
The West and Islam.


Projective identification. That concept has been coming into my mind in relation to Islam. In a nutshell, projective identification is when one person (or group) disowns part of their feelings, and puts them into another person (or group). For example, if one person has an inner taboo against anger, he or she may push that anger into another person and then condemn them for it. 

When it comes to Islam, emotions are not where one would expect them. As many have asked, where is the Christian outrage at the slaughter of Christians? One could also ask, where is the Christian outrage at Muslim outrage over any attention to content of Islam we find unethical (like the utterly inferior status of non-Muslims within Islam, like death to apostates)? 

One could also ask: where is the Muslim shame at revering someone who, according to the Sira, had sex with (in the West, his behavior would almost universally be identified as rape) a woman whose husband he had just had beheaded (along with all the other adult males of his tribe), who gave out the other women of that tribe as sex slaves to fellow Muslims? Most of us know all too many things we view as unsavory - shameful, very likely - about Mohammed. So we could ask: where is Muslim shame about these things?

The sense of shame I hear about most is the shame of the politically correct about the horrors committed by the West. Note: I've grown up hearing of, and agreeing with, all that Europeans have done wrong re indigenous peoples. But then it makes sense to see the Islamic conquest of the territory now held by Muslims as at least equally something to be horrified by and ashamed of.

Where is the horror and shame? Why don't people in the West at least wonder why we should recoil at what Europeans have done while we're not taught to recoil from Islamic history, and while Muslims are not asked to recoil in horror and shame at their history? 

And what about Western pride in all the West has accomplished - including the massive advances in human rights and freedoms, as well as the technological achievements? Yes, many horrors - but what about the reasons for pride and celebration?

One part of the answer is clear. Education and the media have pushed the responses to be as they are.

To see the power of being told what to look for, see this video (if you haven't already):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vJG698U2Mvo

For more info:
http://www.theinvisiblegorilla.com/gorilla_experiment.html

It's the same with "emotion passing". It doesn't just happen - there's a whole society pushing emotions to be felt a certain way - pride, shame, outrage, horror. 


Is there anyone, by the way, who carries Christian outrage for the non-outraged Christians? 

It's amazing how few counter-jihadis / Islamorealists are outraged. In other words, by and large we don't carry that outrage for the non-outraged Christians. Instead, the tone of much counter-jihad writing is reasonable - even though Islamorealists clearly feel passionate about what we're doing, or why do it in a world less than eager to hear our truths? 

Does anyone carry the outrage? Maybe instead of managing to get rid of the outrage, many non-outraged Christians displace it - and feel outrage at Islamorealists. 


Clearly, projective identification doesn't explain all the misplaced emotions. There's just plain old displacement: if it's dangerous to show anger at your boss, it may be easier to get angry at your dog. 

And then there is the Stockholm Syndrome, also identified as the Battered Wife Syndrome - identification with the aggressor, lack of concern for one's own safety and rights. Bill Warner's Why We Are Afraid: A 1400 Year Secret documents in detail 1400 years of violence against non-Muslims - 1400 years of the inculcation of the Stockholm Syndrome in the West.


Anyway, here's my current last thought on projective identification and emotional displacement.

Most of us are aware that Islamorealists interfere with which the knowledge we're supposed to have about Islam and the West, and which thoughts we're supposed to be able to think about Islam and the West. Maybe a good chunk of the reason this is so hard to achieve is that to move the bad thinking we need to undo deeply rooted blocked feeling, inappropriate feeling. 

This is something feminism pointed out repeatedly re rape and incest. Rather than rapists being shamed, rape victims were shamed, and the families of victims tended to feel ashamed of the rape having been done to the victim. As for families of incest perpetrators, they often closed ranks around the perpetrator, feeling for him rather than for victims.

We (counter-jihadis, Islamorealists) interfere with socially encouraged "emotion passing." In other words, instead of keeping the focus on the potentially hurt emotions of nice Muslims, we look at the Christians being used as sex slaves and slaughtered. That changes everything. 

It could even lead to pride in our better culture, and in the better cultures and religions of those being violated - as well as horror and outrage at what is being done.

But emotional change often isn't easy to accomplish - often even within ourselves. 


This stuff on projective identification and also emotional displacement - on "emotion passing" - it's stuff I'm mulling over. 

Lots to think about.

What are your thoughts on the subject, and your experiences?

Elsa

December 28, 2014
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Where is Western Pride in the West,
Muslim Shame re Islam?
Projective Identification,
Stockholm Syndrome,
Battered Wife Syndrome,
Emotion Displacement,
The West and Islam.

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the Stockholm Syndrome, pride, shame, horror -
the West and Islam -
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