From Porn to Tweets and Online Bullying; The Age of Abuse

As social divisions deepen, polarities spread, extremists rise, anger and abuse grows, is growing, is being legitimized, excused. Lies are sanctioned, truth dismissed. The abuser armed, flag-waving, ignorant, spewing vitriol and poisoning the collective psychological space, weaving a brittle web of insecurity.

There are multiple forms of abuse, from exploitation as in the case of modern day slavery, to torture and sexual violence including pornography – soft, medium and hard; insults, degradation, online and off. The motive is consistent, inflicting pain, physical or psychological, and in many cases both, one leading to the other, oftentimes laying a lifelong seed of suffering and trauma.

Pain is tied to pleasure, polarities of a time-bound movement of the self. And we live in a culture of pleasure, sensory, tied to desire: see it, want it, have it, discard it. Desire for stimulation, for comfort, for stuff, for prestige, desire to dominate, to control, to be superior. Desire entwined with competition strengthened by tribalism, extreme nationalism and religious ideological dogmatism; my nation is the greatest, my God the most Godly, etc.

The pursuit of pleasure, physiological, but more significantly psychological, in the form of security, status, comfort, and the avoidance of pain, fashions motive, determines action. In the world of pleasure and desire Love is lost, fear inevitable, and with it abuse.

The spread of competition into all areas, like a virus eating away healthy cells, coupled with conformity, act as agents of fear and division, and where these exist there will be conflict and abuse.

In search of group acceptance the individual conforms to The Power and Ignorance of the Pack; ‘Send her back, send her back.’ An atmosphere of abuse once established, its execution is guaranteed. Social, racial, gender and ethnic abuse meted out. Conformity weighs heavily, the division between the fact and the idealized image, leading to self-abuse – self harming, drug/alcohol abuse, sexual abuse; self-loathing based on failure to fulfill expectations or to correspond to the hollow archetypes relentlessly promoted – to adopt the values and habits of The Pack.

A bully’s paradise

 The Internet is the Wonder of the Modern Age, a library of unprecedented scope and scale democratizing information, dismantling distance, connecting billions around the world; a tool for creativity, knowledge and communication. In the hands of some, though, it is a weapon of humiliation, intimidation and abuse; a bully’s paradise. Twitter tirades from a racist US president, platforms of misinformation and dishonesty; politicians are intimidated and threatened, particularly women representatives: according to a global survey almost “half of women in politics have faced serious abuse, including threats of murder, rape and assault.” Adults and children are attacked – in Britain an Ofcom report found that “23 per cent of children have been cyber bullied in the last year, while 39 per cent have been subjected to offensive language online,” the picture is similar throughout Europe. And in the US, a Pew Research Center study (2017 and its got worse) concluded that “41% of Americans (adults) have been personally subjected to harassing behavior online,” and 66% have “witnessed these behaviors directed at others.” 

Terrorists, home grown or foreign based, employ cyberspace to advertise for recruits, connect to others, like minded, promote their ideology, demanding abuse and destruction; partners abuse trust, sharing intimate photographs of their lover, violent attacks are filmed, shared in ‘real time’. The number of websites specializing in child abuse, often disguised, sits at 78,589, up 37% on 2016, according to the Internet Watch Foundation (IWF). And the level of abuse shown on theses site is becoming more extreme, the content increasingly vile – rape and sexual torture of children has increased from 28% to 33% in three years. IWF’s CEO, “we are now receiving more reports of child sexual abuse content than ever before. This year we’re seeing offenders getting smarter and finding new ways to abuse legitimate Internet services.”

Huge quantities of porn, much of which shows abusive images: around a third of the www is dedicated to pornography. Billions of people every minute search for online pleasure, forming dependency, addiction in some cases, and is not addiction a form of self-abuse?

All this and more, including staggering levels of environmental vandalism, is a reflection of human consciousness, which is itself shaped by adopted values and existing systems, specifically the socio-economic model. Rooted in competition and greed, selfishness and pleasure, the pervasive modes of living aggravate the negative in humanity, are of themselves abusive, and, by encouraging division, foster abuse.

The Crisis of Abuse is being fanned by the actions, rhetoric and behavior of prominent political figures, from Trump to Viktor Orban and all extreme voices in between. It is not their creation though, nor is it the creation of some vague power separate from society, it is society and society with its structures and forms is the representation at any given time of the consciousness of those living within it: society is humanity.

Consciousness, as J. Krishnamurti repeatedly made clear, is its content, and is conditioned thereby. Among large numbers of people there is a substantive shift in consciousness taking place away from divisive ideals to more inclusive, tolerant ways of living. When, however, consciousness is filled with detritus, with the values of the market, of competition, nationalism and narrow ideological constructs, division, conflict – internal and external – and abuse follows.

A point of tension is being reached between the old decaying ways, and The New, between the imperative felt among many for fundamental change, and those backward-looking reactionary voices, that are feeding an atmosphere of abuse and division. Unity, cooperation and tolerance are the pre-eminent values of the time. Together with sharing and understanding these Principles of Goodness need to be, and (striking a cautious note of optimism), will increasingly form the foundations upon which the systems that dominate our lives are rebuilt, allowing the manifestation of the good to flourish.

https://www.counterpunch.org/2019/07/26/from-porn-to-tweets-and-online-bullying-the-age-of-abuse/

July 2019