A reminder of the Karpman drama triangle: victim, persecutor, rescuer.
A familiar role, victim. I'm the holy innocent, long suffering. You (or they) are the persecutor: demonic, implacable, uniform, hellbent. Rescuer: the external hope, often dashed, immediately replaced.
I can also play rescuer. There's always a victim to rescue.
I've engaged a little, in my life, in external causes. I was a revolutionary communist for some time, writing pamphlets, attending demos. I've been other things. I happen to fall into a number of minorities, so there's fuel, there, too. Nothing wrong with causes, and positive change has to come from somewhere. However, behind my doing of good was a psychological war machine.
My conceptualisation of the world on large societal questions mirrored the dynamic of the Karpman drama triangle in my own personal life. I was more of a do-gooder than a doer of good. The doing of good was a vehicle for acting out my own unresolved drama. I was highly emotionally involved in the Manichean struggle of the victim (or the rescuer of the victim) against the persecutor. There was only one radio channel playing: the radio channel of the ideology that thus divided the world cleanly and violently into the holy innocent fighter for rights against the persecutory system of maleficent forces, uniform in their mindset, motivations, and actions. In my communist phase, I saw everything through that prism. Everyone was dehumanised into their roles in the Marxist struggle, and I could or would not admit either differing views or construals, let alone complexity. There was one model: that was it. Everything else was wrong. Nothing else existed. Nothing else was real. It was the only thing that mattered.
The phase lapsed after a couple of years.
Since then, I have frequently dropped into the same paradigm, on different issues each time, and, for a while, I become tedious, harping on the same frayed bit of sociological theory and then seeing it everywhere. To the man who has only a hammer, everything looks like [insert current object of loathing]. Behind my sense of victimhood is weaponry, cloaked in righteous indignation. You are either with us or you are with the enemy.
Although my threshold for pain is high, it is not unlimited, and I eventually relent, and, rather than seeing patterns, I start to see chaos, and the unfathomable complexity of actual reality.
I know a little. I know more about what is small and close. I know most when I am dispassionate and disinterested. I know most of all when I listen to others' point of view, when I read widely and broadly, and when my mind is completely still.