How People Defend Themselves Against Hope: Lerner Responds to Cindy Sheehan’s Resignation
Dear HumanDHS Friends!
On 14 Jun 2007, Michael Britton wrote the following reflections in connection with the article, “Lerner Responds to Cindy Sheehan’s Resignation” published by Tikkun:
On May 30, 2007, Rabbi Lerner wrote a statement in Tikkun that addressed an issue of relevance to our Human Dignity and Humiliation Studies Network. When people believe the world can be made better and that their efforts can make it so, only to find their efforts humiliatingly defeated at every turn, they can turn the resulting disillusionment against themselves. Not wanting to be burned again, they can angrily reject their own hopefulness as “naive.” And they can become furious at leaders who “tempt” them to believe that the world can be changed for the better and that they can play a role in making it happen.
Our work in this Network centers on a shared concern that the world move away from behaviors, beliefs and language that cause humiliation, and move toward behaviors and beliefs that accord personal dignity as a life experience among all of humankind, not just some. In putting that cause forward, we are are suggesting that such change really can happen. We are inviting people to dare to be hopeful and to dare to believe that working toward this objective really can make all the difference. In doing so we need to recognize that, for many people, such an invitation touches a very sore spot within, a place that has lived through disillusion and arrived at an angered refusal to be “tricked” into hoping again. We need to recognize the pain at the heart of that anger and accord respect to the anger and the history behind it. But we also can respect our own right to perceive and name the dynamic at work. People have a right not to hope again. We have a right to recognize that this is what is going on.
I wonder how many who are angered by hopefulness would, hypothetically, prefer the world to be the way we are striving to make it. And I ask myself: Is there really a reason that people who don’t believe in hoping should not participate in doing the things that could make it so? Are belief and hope really prerequisites for doing right things? Can we collaborate, those of us who believe it will help and those of us who believe the effort is futile? The hopeful and the angry? Why not?
Michael Britton
This is the relevant section (published with the permission of Tikkun):
Peter Gabel and I have analyzed in Tikkun the way that a hopeful movement or leader often unleashes a complex of feelings, partly of hope, but partly of fear. People remember, either consciously or unconsciously, moments earlier in their lives in which they opened themselves to love, kindness, generosity or hope, and then were deeply disappointed when it was not reciprocated in kind, or when they actually felt humiliated for making themselves vulnerable.
Fear that that humiliation or deep disappointment may happen again leads many to defend themselves against such an outcome by doing everything they can to negate the feelings of hope that are being elicited by a hopeful movement or a leader who is hopeful. Sometimes this will manifest in “acting-out” at a meeting,insisting that “the plan” (whatever it is) cannot possibly work, or that there is no evidence that it will, or that everyone who is involved in the project at hand is really missing the point, or that there is the wrong leadership (the people providing it are deficient in their sensitivity to racism, sexism, homophobia, egotism, process, psychological sensitivity, people who are physically challenged and otherly-abled, or some other similar fault in them). Or
they will attack the leadership personally (”she is just out for power”) or they will attack the underlying ideology even though they knew what it was before joining this particular group. Or they will complain that a fabulous and brilliant teacher or speaker is speaking too long, or that the email are too long to read–even though they often read books with less substance that are longer or listen to dumb television programs or movies for much longer. People are endlessly inventive in ways to protect themselves from feeling the humiliation that they fear might come back if they were to allow themselves to hope or to believe and work for a world of love, and then act lovingly toward fellow members of their movement or the leadership of the movement.