Quite often I will see people with tattoos about someone who has died.
A friend, a child, parent, partner; a picture or writing with a name, something obscure maybe that was special to the deceased.
Sometimes is a bumper sticker. Or like me, portrait drawings on my Facebook.
It’s socially acceptable. Esteemed even. It is built into society that some types of trauma/ sadness/ grief are “ok” to “celebrate”.
However, how about rape? How about the physical and mental abuse of disfunctional upbringings?
Is there a sticker?
Many over the last few decades have tried to “raise awareness” of various causes of trauma.
Notice the social difference here. “Raise awareness” vs actively already “celebrated” trauma.
Someone like me can be seen as having a lot of “trauma”. Because I can post pictures of the dead.
You won’t see me post a picture of me being held down as a child. That’s not a bumper sticker people are going to honk at.
However, it’s far far deeper than that.
The trauma that doesn’t have a social category at all outside of actualism is “being a self”.
A ‘self’ is the very malice and grief which spawns every trauma.
Every single human is traumatized is the most profoundly insideous way.
Those who lose a few people get to have a socially acceptable cry about it. Everyone else is expected to completely ignore their fundamental pain because it’s not acceptable to question the vast majority of what really happened to you.
I have seen stats from 1 in 5, to 1 in 3, and am personally aware of at least one country where is is closer to every single female has been molested and or raped.
Even this, is barely making the “raise awareness” headlines. Some pitifully small amount of government money is spent on in it Australia.
Women are expected just to carry on. No bumper sticker for you.
This doesn’t even touch on the tumble weeds blowing across the “awareness” of sexual abuse of males.
Yet, beneath and beyond these horrible facts, is the root cause itself.
As of now, less than a couple of handfuls of people have seen that cause and done what needed to be done.
I don’t suppose you have tik tok andrew? It seems that Gen Z have indeed made trauma a virtue (and all sorts of traumas), it’s like this cultural shift with the younger generation that I’ve noticed when @Sonyaxx scrolls her tik tok.
The problem is that it ends up being some perverse game ‘I’ play to score social points, it’s quite bizarre.
I can see it starts with an attempt to normalise talking about things but it ends up glorifying and maintaining the status quo.
Agreed though, the root cause of trauma remains unquestioned, of course because to question it would be to propose the end of trauma and ‘I’ am addicted to suffering, to being ‘human’.
I wouldn’t put it that way. Id put it more that ‘I’ am trauma , in and of itself. Remember when actually free the experience is that ‘you’ never existed in the first place. All the trauma is as if it literally never happened. The slate is completely clean and never was dirtied to start. There’s no recovery — nothing bad happened in the first place.
There’s no such thing as a permanent emotional scar.
The point I was making is that the “attempt to normalise talking about things” reveals a hierarchy of what is already glorified, and all the layers which are not already glorified.
One could make a chart.
Off the top of my dome;
Already glorified trauma by society/blind nature
Death of loved ones. Go to town on this one. Tattoos, songs, bumper stickers, movies, poems; this harks back to “ancestor worship” and is celebrated with holidays even.
War. Same as above. If you “served in war” it’s a touchy one though. On one hand there is the the social acknowledgement of “sacrifice”, but don’t actually tell the rest of us too much. Especially if you killed anyone other than the people we are currently all being told to hate. Never mention war crimes or that you or anyone involved enjoyed it. Unless you feel suicidal about it with guilt etc, and write a book.
Romantic Heartbreak. Probably should be number 1 through to 100.
{Insert any number of variations on these three}
Raise awareness, because it’s not acceptable.
Rape.
And anything else which doesn’t neatly support the paradigm of society being fundamentally good and worth fighting for.
Hmm I see where you are coming from but is making a list of such hierarchy not the very act of maintaining trauma via glorifying it? It is just that now the uncool traumas also get to be the cool kids, but trauma itself persists.
I am referring to for example putting rape on the same scale as dying in war, so now it is ‘fair’. But what exactly does that do? (with regards to eliminating trauma).
I guess if we extrapolate this to actualism and say that the only true trauma is ‘being’, I can see the risk of ending up playing the same game. Now we all win the jackpot as we have the ultimate reason for our trauma, we are all winners in the hurting game haha. Although I am somewhat playing devils advocate here.
What I notice is that there is a very subtle habit, something that is taught as part of being ‘human’ and that is to be proud of one’s suffering, that to suffer more is to be more noble, that there is a prize to suffering.
I can see this belief is installed because humanity has not found a way out of suffering, it is accepted as set in stone and so a virtue is made out of being the best sufferer. It is required in order to continue indoctrinating people into the ‘real world’, that all this suffering must make some kind of sense in the end, why else continue doing it lol! There must be a meaning to it.
It kind of reminds me of this logical fallacy. It is like humanity got stuck in mud and then just continued going further into it, so much so that eventually the simple act of stepping out of this mud is considered insane and only coping mechanisms for diving further and further into it are considered wise lol.
As Claudiu said regarding pure intent; it about allowing the true cause, me, to be myself, as in ‘i’ am ‘trauma’ and ‘trauma’ is ‘me’ which sidesteps the “being the best sufferer”.
Yes its such a difference! To have trauma happen to ‘me’, that slight splitting away leads to so much complication, so many reactionary responses, which cements the whole drama in place.
Whereas to see that ‘I’ am the trauma, then the way forward can lead to a genuine resolution.
I have absolutely used a trauma as a form of social capital, to get people to want to comfort me. I think that’s a big part of why people don’t want to become free of these things. It also becomes a kind of badge of honor, “I have suffered so much, it is what makes me impressive.”
Yeah, the greater the ability to suffer, the greater the depth of character and if not, then one is superficial…Like Richard said “Suffering has become a virtue and enjoying a sin”
The peverse part of trauma, is that you feel this need for it to have happened for a purpose to have learned from it, grown from it, a struggle to make sense of it.
My sense of self rather than be like “phew a clean slate, what a relief at the idea of immolation” is like but what were all those years of suffering then! This need to give everything a meaning, a narrative or purpose…I am not a fucking character. That the past has to count, this is what I realised was powering my depression, like gosh all the years and experiences wasted because of depression and then feel worse about it rather than do anything about it lol.
I can see myself holding onto all the baggage still. Like the atheist identity, lone wolf identity, nerd identity…now I have a depression identity, trauma identity…then nothing has to change. They are all part of that walking down the same old same old road.
I use it as an excuse, to procrastinate, to not socialise. Like not only is it a virtue and badge of honor it becomes a get out of jail card. Sorry I was a dick…I have depression. Then anybody challenges you to change, it becomes a defence mechanism as well, you don’t know my suffering! Fuck you!
It seems that Gen Z have indeed made trauma a virtue (and all sorts of traumas), it’s like this cultural shift with the younger generation that I’ve noticed when 
