sus
Moderator
Not capital-P Political but more like, everyday political. Soft trauma, ambient gaslighting.
What are the ways you've been warped and changed by power? The ways you feel less curious, less free? The voices you introject? The ways abusive (in the banal way) landlords, bosses, partners have fucked with your head.
What are the ways you've been warped and changed by power? The ways you feel less curious, less free? The voices you introject? The ways abusive (in the banal way) landlords, bosses, partners have fucked with your head.
X: Absorbing others' implicit expectations and models was actually historically something I was very bad at when moving to DC, which maybe meant I was relatively immune to the sort of "latent atmospheric trauma" you can get from institutions. OTOH, this inability meant I was very bad at picking up on (and thereafter vibing with) that particularly complex cocktail of freedom and authoritarianism, of radical 'personal expression' and prudeish hyper-repression, the hyper-conformist lip service to non-conformity that's hip in among young Democratic political elites
Y: There's some weird subterranean thing that connects: (a) the various forces that you're evoking & describing yourself as becoming decreasingly-oblivious to; (b) whatever it is that makes me try to limit my exposure to the most obviously Prestige In The Institution bits of university life; and (c) the thing that makes some of my once-interesting friends (from various lifeways) become kinda dead behind the eyes.