Contempt and the Boy Code: Why the World is Headed to "Hell in a Bag"

The Boil-Down: Wherever I turn, there is someone vocally lamenting the state of the modern world, and with good reason. The condition of the global economy, human health, contemporary politics, and social problems are not only legitimately and measurably bad, a startling portion of the internet's websites capitalize on our anxiety and fear by encouraging us to look at these problems up close, over and over again. This article offers a causal etiology based upon integrated trauma theory; that is, based on my understanding about how human self-centeredness and human suffering develop, I'm suggesting a point of origin from which the world's most devastating problems originally came, and from which they cyclically regenerate. (The reader will also detect that I don't believe the human world is more narcissistic now than it was at any other point in human history; rather, we humans have simply found more industrial and high-tech ways to harm ourselves, others, and our surrounding environment in the last hundred years or so.) Note: the concepts in this article apply to girls, boys, young humans identifying as non-binary--everyone.

The Details: In previous entries to the Eyes Wide Open blog, I have introduced and described the concepts of triangulation, narcissistic gravity, and groupthink to refer to forces which act upon human beings with harmful impact. Paired with (as well as contributing to) psychological trauma, these affect our relationships, our business dealings, our political leanings, and societal structure and process. But do triangulation, narcissistic gravity, and (ultimately) groupthink really affect gas prices? Yes--not only do they factor into the rising cost of petroleum, but in the way citizens interpret and understand such unfavorable changes. However, a deep dive into American capitalism's dependence on fossil fuels, the fiendish plot of some megalomaniacal world leader hailing from the former Eastern bloc waging senseless war, and other such phenomena, will have to wait for a future entry.

The focus here will be on the institution of the family (in the larger context of community), which throughout history has been attacked and controlled by innumerable external evils: famine, pestilence, natural disasters, kings, landlords, corrupt church and community officials...and other families. With equal tragedy, families have historically (and with alarming salience and consistency) been attacked from within. Marriage and Family Therapy guru Murray Bowen identified and named something called the family intergenerational transmission process, a biopsychosocial family phenomenon by which a given lineage's genetic code, rules, customs, and folkways are passed on from generation to generation. I would add, that along with any adaptive traits and qualities come the toxic, triangulated pain of unresolved trauma, and therefore narcissistic gravity. So whether it's genes, feelings, or strategies, our family trees pass on to us a mixed bag that is deep inside us partly at birth, partly by the time we reach age six, and the rest by the time our brains are done growing prior to age twenty-five or so...and it is each person's job to be aware of it and deal with. We keep some of it, it's best to refine some of it, and to be healthy we must let the rest of it go.

Through the eyes of Integrated Trauma Theory, the Eyes Wide Open blog is presenting the reader with this option for viewing the world's problems; this option asserts that the evil in the world would not exist without narcissistic gravity, triangulation, and groupthink. And, this option reveals what makes those three problematic phenomena possible: false empowerment and absence of empathy, both of which catalyze the transmission of contempt from narcissistic perps to their victims.

In the previous "boy code" blog entry , William Pollack is credited with identifying gender straitjacketing, which traumatizes most boys due to premature emotional separation from attachment figures and the connections they can provide for healthy development (connections more commonly provided to girls as they grow up). Another reference in the same blog entry names psychologist Terry Real, whose Relational Life Therapy (RLT) confronts people with habitual narcissism (my term) to regret their habitual contempt and let it go. In its place, persons in recovery from contempt learn to express empathy and accountability. In the words of Terry Real, contempt can be pointed at the self (shame), or projected at others (grandiosity). He also identifies an important form of "child abuse" that occurs when the child chooses to do something entitled and no one stops him: false empowerment. The falsely empowered child is receiving from the parent an implicit message that is okay for him, the child, to act in a way that serves or amuses himself while taking from or harming others. Living without empathy for others amounts to emotional violence. Growing up inside the "boy code" discourages empathy; however, you don't have to be a boy to grow up without learning how to have empathy for others.

There are a couple of ways in which false empowerment finds space to thrive in families. Likely the most common way is distal parenting (which can amount to non-parenting), which usually means the mother or father, or both parents, are physically uninvolved--and no other powerful attachment figures are filling the absent role. This does not have to mean that Dad left on a bender three years ago and hasn't come back. Even when loving, mostly responsible, involved parents allow their children unsupervised space--up in their rooms, in the basement, in the back yard, at the playground, in the car--children will naturally act on ideas and impulses which begin to develop false empowerment. So many parents are so busy, so tired, so distracted, so willing to concede to their children. Some are too isolated, too depressed, too detoured by work, friends, hobbies or addictions. Mix in a toxic dose of not me denial (my child would never do bad things), and the environment leaves ample breeding ground for false empowerment. This narcissistic entitlement can reach unmanageable proportions in some children, to the point where--by the time these children are in their teens--the parents feel battle fatigued and abused. These are the children who will command cruel groupthinks with lies to destroy their peers' reputations, crush the feelings of others with their words, and who will commit acquaintance rape without guilt or consequences. They allow themselves to live with contempt for others (I'm okay, you're not okay); they are skilled at escaping accountability, and they don't even know how to express empathy--nor do they care to learn.

Other factors can contribute to physical and emotional distance between parents and children, including crises of medical illness and injury, physical or intellectual disability in a parent or a child, marital problems, financial or legal stress, and persecution by outside individuals or institutions. But the absent parenting described in the previous section implies that their child does not have to account for the things they do. This leads to a toxic core belief: Psychology Today's Alice Boyes refers to the result as a cognitive distortion known as moral licensing. Moral licensing justifies the double standard of allowing the self to do unfair or harmful things others are not allowed to do, or would not allow themselves to do. But there is another way the quality of parental attachment can encourage the moral licensing of false empowerment in a child: by overtly enforcing the child's superiority over others. In Creedence Clearwater Revival's song Fortunate Son, Bruce Hornsby writes about the tax-dodging double standard enjoyed by children born to the rich. In the Dead Milkmen song Bitchin' Camaro, the singer casts himself in a roguish light by admitting that he ran over "some old lady" with his car, and "I didn't get arrested because my dad's the mayor."

There are parents who purposefully bestow moral licensing to their favorite child or children within a family. Years ago, I treated an alcohol-dependent man who spared his favorite daughter the wrath he saved for the other six children and his wife--or any other consequences, for that matter. Other toxic perks included accompanying Dad to the bar at age twelve, where she hung out on a stool next to all of Dad's drinking buddies while the bartender filled and refilled the girl's very own rock glass. I am aware of another family who personify a stereotype concerning wealthy patriarchs. Whenever he feels it necessary, the aged father calls his adult sons into a side room to discuss important matters to which only males are privy; mother, wives and sisters are forbidden to know what goes on during such meetings. While holding powerful and highly-respected professional titles in the community, these adult sons are carefully murmured about even by peers as felonious, drug-addicted narcissists and sociopaths. Legal or moral consequences would never stick to such privileged white men. These are the kind of men who gut corporations for profit while victimizing hundreds human employees, help money institutions engage in financial trickery, hire lawyers to create shell companies to avoid paying any taxes, deregulate laws to commit massive environmental crimes, and pander to sex trafficking. Our babies will learn what we teach them to learn or give them room to discover, whether we intended for specific lessons to land on them or not. The same boys who are forbidden to experience vulnerable emotions for themselves, whose parents withhold comfort from a young age to make boys "tough," learn from those parents to ignore the feelings of others without accountability. The mixed message whereby parents show their children they are not worthy of nurturing, but they're better than everybody else, is a recipe for narcissistic gravity.

Let me repeat myself: our babies will learn what we teach them. Their quality of survival depends on what we show them. Many species of animals, particularly birds and mammals, depend on attachments for healthy development. This dependence includes learning how to be their most adaptive, knowing how to do what they need to do in order to survive and be their best selves. Neuroscientist Sarah Woolley and colleagues have published brilliant research, some of which has uncovered an adaptive connection songbirds seem to share with humans. The mammalian brain contains a structure known as the canonical cortical microcircuit, which lends to sophisticated cognitive ability. The same Dr. Woolley lab team that discovered a similar circuit in birds, also published findings that songbirds learn how to sing from their fathers. Adult females select a mate partly based on quality of song, so a growing male's ability to develop a top-notch mating song is a crucial part of biological fitness, and he relies on his father to teach him.

Young humans have their own needs: a little girl watches her mother to learn what to do as a woman, and watches her father to learn what kind of man to seek as an adult mate. When parents are not there when young children eat breakfast, take a bath, bed down for the night, play with other kids in the yard, interact with animals, and wander through the convenience store, the absence of structure will create a vacuum--and opportunities for children to do whatever will and whim may dictate. Children of certain temperamental profiles will be guided purely by hedonism, and will not develop the perspective of the other. They will not know how others feel when they do certain things--or they will not care. There will be an absence of empathy, and a toxic presence of false empowerment. I kid you not, they may take what you showed them (or failed to show them) into their adult lives, poisoning their friendships, stepping on the necks of others in order to advance in their careers, orchestrating hostile takeovers, enslaving poorly paid and abused workers in heartless capitalistic enterprises, or enabling oligarchic narcissists with their corrupt existence as politicians.

But when parents are there (not to hover and micromanage, but rather) to love, model, teach, advise, and consult (without triangulation or contempt), as well as shape the consequences by which kids learn, their children will value their own humanity and the humanity of others. They will know how to properly maintain the environment around them, how to make things grow, how to recognize and manage their own emotions and wounds, and how to keep the group dynamics of activism and career healthy and fair.

What You Can Do: Trauma theory (as interpreted in my practice) looks for healing solutions at the intrapsychic level: how can I help my mind recover from the traumatic things that happened to me--which are preventing me from living as a functional adult? Our children need empathy and structure. In order for us to deliver that, we must be consistently stable attachment figures. It is key for us to provide a safe, structured, stable place for our children's minds and bodies to grow. We must be connected to the child rather than just in control of the space; our power must be gentle, empathic, and contempt-free. Our insecurities and bad feelings are not her problem, and must not take a front seat to the child's needs. Also, the child's wants must be earned. Whether we are okay is not her responsibility; her behavior is her responsibility. She must be kept safe, told "no," instructed by available loved ones when she makes mistakes, and taught to care about the rights and feelings of others. For us to parent in this healthy way, we must have our past hurts and our core fears reconciled. Often that can only be accomplished in effective individual (and once you have a partner and kids, relationship or family) psychotherapy. If you don't love yourself, live with respect, empathize with others, and have good boundaries with the rest of the world, your children are at risk to grow up dancing with selfishness and contempt (first contempt for self, and eventually for others). They likely will be unaware of the importance of caring about others or how to even do that. They will lack empathy, lack clear boundaries, and live with false empowerment.

The next part of the answer lies in inoculating our families and communities with a formula for healthiness. If we are to have any hope of healing our deeply troubled society, the populace is going to have to put forth serious time and effort into helping others nurture their children with a much higher dose of love and structure, and into refusing to tolerate the occupation of governmental and corporate power by individuals and groups who entitle themselves to false empowerment without empathy. We will have to unite to speak out against it, educate others, personally intervene upon it, vote against it...some of us will have to devote our lives--or even give our lives--to fight it. Many of the avenues ostensibly established to regulate this kind of narcissistic gravity have been intentionally corrupted by human groupthink to neutralize their potency, so we will need to supplant this corruption and/or create new avenues, policing them against the subversive forces which are always at work to prevent change. Start a conversation, start a small group, start a website or a non-profit activist organization, or join or contribute monetarily to one after questioning whether it is corrupt or abetted. Individual posts on social media, in and of themselves, may or may not be likely to effect enough force to create a change, but you never know. The force that created the Grand Canyon began with a series of trickles.