The cycle of abuse

Cutting the fuse of humanity's self-destruction

Abusive people are that way because they have accumulated internalized trauma, enough so that they have identified with the humiliations of their past. This is not an excuse; it is an explanation.

Their subconscious or inner child (or whatever you want to call it) has innocently concluded that, since they’ve been mistreated so much, then they must not be worthy of better treatment. This is just a tragic pattern recognition with an erroneous conclusion (pretty much like modern academic scientism that has nothing to do with true science).

Innocent children and naive adult inner psyches will blame themselves for being victimized than blame the actual abuser. When we are abused, we subconsciously recognize the pattern of abuse, but then our child-like subconscious erroneously falls for a false attribution fallacy: it attributes our abuse to our own failings instead of our circumstantial environment. The tragedy is that the abusers aren’t to blame either - not really. If anyone is to blame is damn random luck that put you in the same environment with them.

Usually, abuse begins in the parental home, an environment that we never chose and can’t leave during our developmental years - the most crucial time of our lives. Once we grow in an abusive environment, we solidify a self-loathing mindset, since we assume that we invited the abuse. We conclude that we deserved to be abused - as if the blank slate of an innocent child ever deserves any abuse or punishment. But this is the nature of the innocence of children…

This is why it’s called the inner child - it’s so naive and innocent that it will blame itself for being abused before attributing fault to the true culprits: the actual abusers who cowardly abuse whenever they opportunistically hold the power - and only then.

The vicious cycle of abuse

Victims of abuse - self-defined and tormented by their humiliations - seek desperately to mitigate the pain of their self-loathing. As a knee-jerk reaction, they go for a sense of self-aggrandizement through abusing others; the same way they were abused. This is the only way they know how to feel powerful: by making others feel powerless, just as they felt powerless when they were abused. They know how their victims feel; they’ve been in that position too. It makes them feel powerful to be able to make someone feel powerless.

The irony is that all abusers abuse for the same reason; to mitigate their own self-loathing from being abused themselves. And so the cycle of abuse spins.

The added irony is that the more we abuse people, the more we contribute to an abusive world. The more abuse we dish out, the more abusers we create, and the more abusers they create… until the abuse comes back to find us again.

The straw man for abusive behavior

I reject the premise that, if you don’t show “tough love” or an abusive demeanor to supposedly “discipline” others, then they will somehow take advantage of you, or your children will become “spoiled” and “undisciplined.” This is simply a confession of weakness on our part, and an inability to inspire those who already look up to you enough to want to imitate you.

Weakness is the inability to command respect without having to inflict fear.

When we are weak, we exploit circumstantial opportunistic power to threaten others into reluctant indignant submission. We can’t teach them why it’s in their best interest to behave in a desirable way, since we are either too weak to make an argument for it, or we were also taught that “might is right.”

With threats, we teach the wrong ‘why:’ they don’t learn why they should behave well. They only learn to behave a certain way only when we’re not looking, simply to avoid punishment. They don’t internalize the reason and the morality behind a certain desirable behavior. If anything, they become indignant of the desirable behaviors they were forced to perform, and they will rebel against them as soon as the power dynamic shifts against you - and the power dynamic will shift sooner or later.

Abusive “tough love for discipline” is just an excuse to be abusive only when you have circumstantial perceived power. The proof of this is that you don’t use the same “tough love” on people with whom you can’t be “tough.”

The justification of “abuse for a greater good” is sick and twisted; the only thing it teaches others (especially children) is that the only way they can influence others is with the same abuse.

Then we complain why the world is so insane and abusive to us.

Flawed leadership

During my days as an army officer, I could easily distinguish the weak leaders that no one would respect (let alone obey in war), and the strong ones who, without lifting a finger, could inspire you to want to fight valiantly. The weak ones wore this facade of bravado, had this air of fake toughness, deliberately faking their voice to sound deeper and louder, always jumpy and irritated due to their high estrogen levels, always abusive and rude to anyone with a lower rank.

The strong leaders didn’t have to speak loudly. The strong ones see no honour in abusing someone who circumstantially happened to have found himself beneath him in an arbitrary power structure. The strong ones don’t need to put an easy target down to feel strong only by comparison… the strong are so assured in their strength that empowering others does not threaten them, even if others do become stronger: their self-esteem does not rely on dick measuring and petty antagonisms that nobody’s asked for. The strong don’t have to climb a hill and shout “I’m strong!” for everyone to be convinced; people just know who the truly strong are because strength leads by example, not coercion.

In the army, I only met a handful of truly strong leaders, and I wondered why they were wasting their lives in the psychopathy of the military. All the other officers and professional soldiers I met in were all faggots wearing shoes too big for them to fill. (Call me homophobe all you want - you know what I meant.)

The weak know that they are useless, that they have no worth or value for others to want to imitate. So, the weak rely on the circumstantial power granted to them opportunistically whenever they get it: the faggoty cop is tough only while he’s on duty… the abusive parent only during his children’s childhood… the public schooling teacher only after the school bell first rings.

The strong are strong regardless of environment. I remember the few actual leaders I found in the army never raised their voice to any “inferior,” but instead took the challenge of pushing hard against their “superiors.” I even remember the coolest ever commanding officer I ever had telling his commanding officer to go fuck himself in front of peers and soldiers. And his commanding officer (one of the most faggoty, twitchy, irritated weakling I have ever met) cowered and said nothing… awkward silence ensued. Like a menopausal cat lady on Xanax, the ranking officer showed his true weakness when push came to shove: now imagine that useless pretender in combat…

And the result of weak abusive leaders? We, the reluctant conscripts, were so demoralized by the constantly abusive and completely uninspiring weaklings we were forced to suffer as “leaders,” that we made a secret pact: in case of war, we’d turn our guns against our own officers, and then flee - we would not obey orders to go our deaths from such faggots. We’d instead execute them and leave, maybe fight in unorthodox guerilla warfare - still better than dying as cannon fodder.

This is the effect of abuse: it has the opposite effect from what you appeal to in order to justify it. Abusing others for a “greater good” will only create a greater evil than the initial evil you used to justify abuse.

The same goes with parenting: you don’t show “tough love” or teach “discipline” when you abuse your child physically, verbally, or emotionally. You don’t protect your child by being harsh; you only teach the child that “might is right,” and that reason has no place in society; only circumstantial power. If you scream at the child for not wearing a seat belt, you don’t teach the child why the seatbelt is important. The child won’t wear the seatbelt because he admires you, and wants to be like you by wearing the seatbelt. No. With abuse, you teach the child that, when he grows up and has circumstantial opportunistic power, he can enforce any arbitrary behavior on anyone, regardless of logical or moral benefit of that behavior.

But most importantly, you teach your child that you are weak, and you lacked the strength and constitution to be inspiring enough to be imitated.

So, you see, if you have to be abusive to people - especially children - to supposedly teach them something “for their own good,” you accomplish the opposite. You hurt them to supposedly save them from hurt, but all you achieve is teach them that abuse from a position of circumstantial power gets things done. So, guess what… they will definitely abuse you when the tables are turned - guaranteed.

By abusing people (especially children), you damage them by distorting their perception of good and evil: you teach them that evil is permissible as long as we conjure up any arbitrary “good” justification. Every evil since the inception of evil has been conducted over this premise: that evil is “good” when the “good” is deemed greater. But this is just evil, period.

By abusing people, you demonstrate to them your weakness: that you only abuse whenever you are in a position of circumstantial power… whenever the power of the government grants you superiority… whenever someone’s fear of unemployment makes them your inferior in your eyes… whenever a child’s innocence makes them an easy victim for your self-gratifying abuses - abuses that you’re too scared to inflict on people your own size.

By being abusive, you abundantly prove that you are weak, and that you lose no opportunity to cowardly exploit circumstantial power just to pretend to feel powerful for a minute - because you are fundamentally weak. Strong people don’t need to jump at the opportunity to exercise power over others. They know they are strong regardless of arbitrary, random, and fleeting external power structures.

Abuse is the root of evil

The book ‘The Origins of War in Child Abuse’ by Lloyd deMause connects the dots for a deep analysis of how child abuse directly correspond to warlike mentality and intent. This book will change the way you see the world. Cultures that normalize child abuse - in which parents can publicly hit or scream at their children without social backlash - tend to be the most warmongering. Abused children become abusers themselves, and when they can’t have the power structures they need to abuse others without backlash, they join the military and seek war so as to be able to kill, torment, pillage, and rape legally, without having to face any consequences. And this sentiment is exploited by similarly warmongering rulers.

War justifies and chastises atrocity. War is the perfect utilitarian excuse for evil to be treated as good.

This psychodynamic is clear: The abused constantly suffer from the trauma of humiliation, which they keep reliving. The only way they know how to mitigate their constant suffering is to - in turn - be abusive to others, preferably, in the same way they were abused. It’s the only way they know for them to feel strong; if they can make someone feel weak the way they felt weak, then they will feel strong, right? But that isn’t true strength; it’s but a cheap substitute. Resorting to putting someone down for you to feel strong by comparison isn’t making yourself stronger; abuse is actually a confession of and entrenchment in your weakness.

Abuse is evil - always, absolutely, objectively, undeniably, without exception. There is no justification for evil (to clarify, self-defense is not evil).

“Good” that requires evil is not good. All evil is predicated on the premise of a “greater good.” The moral subjectivists will claim that “what constitutes evil and abuse” is subject to interpretation, but that’s a topic for a different analysis. Don’t you worry - I have you covered. But let’s just agree now that ANY abuse towards a child, anything that you’d be too scared to do to an adult your size, is evil and abusive; especially when we know that children are innocent, passive, impressionable, sensitive, and unaccountable. Yes, children aren’t responsible for their failings - their parents are.

Conclusion

We’ve all been abused, somehow, by weak opportunists who happened to find themselves in circumstantial perceived power over us. When abuse takes place during our childhood (when we are extremely sensitive to abuse, and extremely vulnerable to abusers), the trauma that settles in takes hold and is more profound.

Be it abusive parents who supposedly “didn’t know any better” or who “wanted to teach us discipline,” or even child-hating public miseducators deriving sick satisfaction from the power-high of imposing themselves onto little children… All these usual suspects of abuse keep using the same excuses for their power lust. And their abuses keep perpetuating a social culture enthralled in Stockholm syndrome; venerating our abusers because we want to be just like them; one day, when we get to have power over someone else… someone innocent preferably.

What can we do?

Be kinder and more respectful to people, ESPECIALLY children. Give them the benefit of the doubt. If anything, do it to contribute to a less abusive environment. Abusing people is like pissing in a tiny swimming pool in which you have to swim; the stench will come back to you.

“But what about those who abuse us?” Defend yourself if you are threatened physically, but when they are verbally or psychologically abusive, do not kowtow to them. Feel free to disassociate; they will lose the privilege of your company. Use defensive/reciprocal abuse, if need be (as long as you are not the initiator). But even if you reciprocate, do it with empathy. Even monsters might one day feel remorse. Give them that benefit of the doubt, at least. Give yourself the benefit of the doubt too, that you are not an abuser.

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Parents

A good parent is one who takes the time to connect, to communicate, to reason, to engage, to encourage, to teach by example and logic rather than threat and intimidation. If anything, be a good parent for your own self-interest: when it’s your turn to be slow, weak, and in need of patience and care, your children will reciprocate the same kind of ruthlessness you showed them; not out of spite, but from your example.

Positive-peaceful parenting is the only hope for humanity, if we ever hope to make it better, more peaceful, more constructive, more meaningful.

In the age of wide access to free information, there are no excuses for ignorance…

HIGHLY recommended reading, especially for parents:

1. ‘The Origins of War in Child Abuse’ by Lloyd deMause

2. ‘Peaceful Parent, Happy Kids: How to Stop Yelling and Start Connecting’ by Dr. Laura Markham

3. ‘No-Drama Discipline’ by Daniel J. Siegel & Tina Payne Bryson

4. ‘The Whole-Brain Child: 12 Revolutionary Strategies to Nurture Your Child's Developing Mind’ by Dr. Daniel Siegel

5. ‘How to Talk So Kids Will Listen & Listen So Kids Will Talk’ by Adele Faber & Elaine Mazlish

6. ‘Parenting from the Inside Out’ by Daniel J. Siegel & Mary Hartzell

7. ‘Peaceful Parenting: The morality, psychology, and science of ethical child-raising’ by Stefan Molyneux (including Peaceful Parenting AI)

8. Peaceful Parent Institute (articles, books, courses, counselling)

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Thank you for reading. I appreciate your time. All my work here is free.

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