there are two aspects of coercion, let's call 'em material & existential they're not fully separable, but if we tried: 🗡️ material coercion = "do what I want or face a huge punishment. your choice" 😳 existential coercion = "you must do X. anything else is unthinkably bad"
Two aspects of coercion: material and existential
18 tweets · October 2023 · 102 likes · 4 retweets · read on Twitter
material coercion is external: severe consequences that one agent inflicts or threatens on another, to gain compliance. perhaps it differs from mere incentives in the overwhelmingness of punishment. not a mere penalty but one intended to dwarf any benefit had by disobeying
existential coercion is internal: one's experience of the world becomes warped such that noncompliant options are unthinkable in ongoing situations, generally mediated by shame or guilt 😳, but eg a salesperson can use other kinds of pressure to collapse awareness ⌛️
*pure* material coercion is rare that is, that material coercion is usually also accompanied by some amount of convincing people to not feel free to consider disobeying (ie existential coercion)
why is *pure* material coercion rare? 1. it requires being honest about the fact that you're coercing someone else's will that's just as real as yours, which: a) is hard for non-psychopaths to stomach b) encourages rebellion 2. it's costly & crude! (& requires catching them)
pure material coercion requires a substantial physical power-over relationship (⛓️ imprisonment or 🗡️ violence or 🌽 monopoly on goods/info) otherwise the person will simply gtfo tho there's also eg "withholding sex/affection from monogamous partner"... a kind of monopoly there
ah: and a common phenomenon where the individual coercer doesn't have a monopoly on anything but the person's other options aren't really any better (this shows up with landlords or employers sometimes)
but even here—lots of people are very keen to psy-op this woman into thinking life can't be better than this! to make her think she doesn't have other options. vs "yeah, it sucks, here's how I cope/improved/escaped etc" twitter.com/TTEcclesBrown/…
they're, in essence, instantiating a worldview where wanting better is entitled/naive/etc a crab-bucketing, envious world, where people are controlled by sklavenmoral/invy:
Hanzi Freinacht describes a progression of how societies have controlled people and points out that fear only lets you punish people for what you can catch them doing, whereas guilt & shame control people on much subtler levels metamoderna.org/another-kind-o…
all of these mechanisms, he notes, manipulate the ego and insofar as society is organized via subjugated egos, these are clearly the means by which it's done
however, many of us sense, there's a possibility of organizing humanity in manner that's less egoic and more fluid/nondual—respecting our fundamental freedom to do what we want the basis is win-win opportunities that are obviously mutually attractive once seen
whether or not that's possible, or viable at scale, it's certainly possible to do inner work to shift one's own way of being in a way that accords with your own fundamental freedom
that is, you can develop a kind of willingness to actually entertain what would happen if you didn't comply, which can allow you to be essentially unhookable by others' attempts at existential coercion
now in some cases the answer is going to be really obvious—some consequences are terrible! but you can still experience free choice about the matter
ohh: it's not just negative consequences: if you have shadow desires you haven't integrated, then someone might still be able to existentially coerce you via those (cf @CurziRose's handshake model of reality distortion fields, idk where it's written up)
it seems to me that I am free from existential coercion insofar as I am: 1. willing and able to welcome & weigh everything I want (not wish I wouldn't) 2. considering every consequence a conceivable cost (not a catastrophe)
put another way: