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mass avoidance
mass avoidance
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mass avoidance
Mass avoidance is the widespread norm of not personally engaging with others or in something that seems uncomfortable or threatening.
Need experience
Where vulnerability avoidance occurs on a personal level, mass avoidance occurs on a collective level. If few of us can feel safely vulnerable to be totally honest with others, or with ourselves, more of us will assume avoidance is common. Other reasons emerge to avoid the avoidable.
Avoiding all that seems or is unpleasant crystallizes into a shared norm. We admit our fears to no one. We keep our guard up all the time. We provoke each other’s defensiveness, blaming each other. Fewer of our needs ever fully resolve. We suffer more and more. We function less and less.
Defunctionalizing
Refunctionalizing
Examples
The widespread evasion of our natural tendency to first estimate the trustworthiness of others by their most visible features, lest we get publicly labeled as a bigot.
Relational knowing
The fewer others are dropping their guard to expose their full authenticity, the less likely you will risk dropping your guard to expose your authentic self to raw rejection. The more others avoid, the more you avoid. The more we all avoid, and socially punish those who expose their authentic full being, the more normatively we all avoid matters we would otherwise face more courageously.
Complementary refunctions
Impact engagement
6/16/23