Dealing with despair
(Nimue)
CW: Animal Cruelty
Back when I was at college, I was taught about a rather hideous animal experiment. It established that if you put a dog in a space, and electrocute part of the floor, the dog will quickly learn where to go and what to do. If there is no safe space, the dog will eventually just give up, lie there and take it. People are much the same.
Despair is a natural response to not having any options. This can take a person into apathy, disassociation, and really passive responses to situations. A passive response can look a lot like willing acceptance from the outside, but I think it’s as well not to assume it. When there’s no way out and no way to fix things, passivity – as with the poor dogs in the experiment – is all you have left.
It’s so important to have options and the scope to change our circumstances. Laws that punish people for being in difficulty are particularly abhorrent – I’m thinking especially of attempts to criminalize homelessness.
Not everyone can solve the problems they find themselves faced with. Any more than the dogs in the experiments could independently opt out of that or leave the room. Lack of resources is most often what traps people. A lifetime of being told this is what you deserve makes it hard to even think about resisting mistreatment.
Shutting down someone else’s options is not something that we might easily do by accident. It may have more to do with priorities, with a sense of what someone is worth, or what they deserve. For most of us, this will be most relevant around how we vote. Far too many politicians sell themselves on their willingness to deprive vulnerable people of options. Just being alert to this and not going along with it is a useful contribution to make.
The choices we make invariably inform the options we then have. They may well also impact on other people’s options, too. Inevitably in choosing something we may reduce the choice others have. Much of the time this won’t be problematic – so long as other viable choices are available, and no one person is being routinely limited for someone else’s benefit. It’s important to think about how our choices may impact on others, and be alert to unintended consequences. Not having noticed how your preferences limit someone else is no sort of moral defence.
It’s also worth asking what we can do to open up more options for the people around us. How can we give each other more power and opportunity? How can we make sure no one feels like they are trapped in a room where some bastard has put an electric current through the floor?
