This week’s discussion was centred around the drama triangle; a model created by Stephen Karpman illustrating unhealthy relationship dynamics. The triangle is made up of three roles; the victim, the hero and the villain.
Each of these roles subvert responsibility, perpetuate drama and keep us from developing ourselves or the relationships we find ourselves within.
Are you the innocent victim to which circumstance is your ruler, oppressor and hero?
Are you the symptom saviour, the energetic vampire feeding on virtue signalling and creating dependencies whilst avoiding treating the cause?
Are you the villain, hiding behind disengaged analysis, taking the blame, and avoiding the joys of life?
From relationships and interpersonal dynamics, to societal and global responses to crisis and modern day issues, the drama triangle can be and was explored thoroughly throughout these scales of relating in the two discussions held this week. We explored the roles we play and asked what lies beyond the roles of villain, hero and victim. Discovering a signal for presence and radical self-responsibility. Relegating our mental problem solving, stories and reactions to the backseat and turning our attention to understanding the other’s perspective and working on an interpersonal relationship with the othering that occurs within each and every one of us.
In revealing aspects of our human nature lost in the shadows, we found empathy and contextual understanding for why people do what they do. In doing so developing an empathy for those unfortunate enough to execute the most heinous of crimes and discovering the true evil that lies in the collective’s systemic response; the justice system.
It is clear that our actions in punishment go far beyond the evil that is being punished. Our societal or cultural shadow expressing itself subconsciously through the punitive systems we create.
Dostoyevski explores this realisation as he recounts witnessing an execution by guillotine. As a man in shackles walks up to the executioner’s block Dostoyevski ponders the altercation that lead to the murder and subsequently this man’s execution. Throughout the whole exchange of two individuals, each of them could have chosen differently in an infinite amount of ways. Unfortunately their choices led to a climax in which one killed the other.
Now this man, a murderer, is walked, hands and feet in shackles, handled by two guards all the way to his unescapable execution. There is no opportunity for autonomous choice to take a different path from death. Which is more evil? The murderer who along with the victim had an infinite amount of opportunities to change the outcome or a system that we have created that leads a man to his death without any opportunity to change his fate?
This query of thought was one of many insights gained in our discussions.
We also explored the drama triangle at the scale of global crisis with climate change. We recognised the different camps. The political heroes, virtue signalling, distracting the public from any causal treatment that may disrupt the economy and create any meaningful change. Even the creators of the narrative, the focus upon apocalyptic narratives, blame and problems needing to be fixed. The reactionary deniers who come from a similar context of change aversion and confronting past wrong decisions in fear of backlash. Then we have an apathetic population who rest the locus of responsibility upon our incompetent, traumatised, heroic, villainous leaders whilst making minimal movement to be the change.
There are an infinite amount of ways to see this dynamic play out through the focus upon global crisis. Even with the current pandemic we see reactionary polarisation occurring via these selfish protective roles we take on. On a global level we are using victimising tools that protect from taking radical self-responsibility for the world we are creating.
Why has this adaptive mechanism emerged, what is the evolutionary necessity and what lies outside of this victimhood dynamic and how do we learn from its wisdom to develop the tools we need to attend to this modern and ancient world we live within?
We discovered the necessity to bring forth our conscious awareness to each role within us. Recognising the play on different scales of relating; global, social, personal and interpersonal. If there is an aversion or inability to recognise a role, then this signals the need to inquire and recognise the villain, victim or hero. In creating a relationship with these roles we develop empathy for ourselves and the other. Building our contextual understanding for one another. This gives us the objectivity required to navigate the rewards and costs and gain more sovereignty in our response ability.
We are being asked to expand our empathy and responsibility. Yet who are we beyond the masks we wear?
What happens when you take radical responsibility? What happens when your ability to respond to the world is radical?
What would the world look like?
To tie in the title, ‘fighting dragons’, we brought to our awareness the resistance that creates the drama triangle. The fear of the dragon within us externalised in the perpetual battle of good and evil. However, good and evil are stories, not inherent within the makeup of reality, neutral beyond our interpretation residing in the chaotic order of nature. So perhaps with our new found awareness of the good and evil that we hold within us we can use our will to surrender and listen to the ultimate wisdom and evolutionary push and pull of complimentary forces. For I am no-one without the other, there is no good without bad and no perpetual energy, movement and life without the opposing polarities. So once again I encourage a radical affirmation for everything that exists, live your ritual written within you and celebrate the diversity of outstanding rituals of learning that abound around us.
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