Meaning making: psychological pathways to harm

The Buddhist perspective I read went on to say that vice comes from lack of knowledge or lack of perspective, this doesn't excuse the action but allows us to see it clearly and move forward from it.

So it removes hatred, fixation, etc.

That was attractive. The trouble was, I wasn't convinced by the "harm is just mis-seeing" point. But maybe I could take the second part of the Buddhist idea, attach to the front of it a better, psychological explanation and move on that way...

So my version would read: "Harms by others are caused by specific behavioural pathways with psychological explanations. Understanding these don't excuse the action but allows us to see them clearly and move forward from it,"

So what are the pathways to causing harm?   Eventually, I came up with a long list and it took me a while to separate them out and to separate pathways from mechanisms.  I realised you might be able to test if a pathway was a genuine pathway not a mechanism by using an "internal logic" quotation. I did this right of the bat so there are probably lots of errors and omissions and I'm sure my list is not exhaustive.

You can easily test these out by taking your most recent peeve / character in a novel / film and ask yourself what was the pathway to harm?   

I didn't include genetics because I don't think it's a pathway.  I think it's something that, depending also on environmental factors might make someone more inclined to take a certain pathway to cause harm. They are background risk factors. The same is true of environmental factors and upbringing.

The list could be ranked and divided any number of ways.  A court of law would certainly differ in categorisation. 

Non-vice pathways

1. Ignorance / unaware / misjudgement pathway.  This is accidental harm.  "I didn't realise / think it through.  It was a mistake".  
   
   
2. Moral conflict pathway: trolley problem, genuine assisted suicide partners, medical triage choices. "I did it to help".  Can be dangerously close to "misguided care".
   
   
3. Curiosity/ boundary testing pathway e.g. non desperate, non-compulsive shoplifting "I did it to see if I could get away with it".  Typical adolescent "high jinks" pathway.  This looks similar to the incentive based pathway but the fact that wrong-doer may benefit materially is not the primary motivation. It can slide into incentive based harm.
   
   
4. Obedience pathway: I was told to / just doing my job.  That's how the Nazi's thrived and how councils end up being ridiculed for "jobsworth" decisions ("for non UK readers: It was more than my job is worth not to" ). The 1960s Milgram experiments show the extraordinary susceptibility of people to authority figures, even to the point of administering lethal injury (when told to, subjects administered electric shocks they didn't know were fake to actors posing as victims.  In some cases, subjects administered shocks that would have been fatal had they been real.)
   
   
5. Conformity pathway: A cousin to obedience "I did it because I wanted to fit in".  Classic peer pressure induced harm. 
   
   
6. Emotional disregulation pathway: Unpremeditated assault e.g. "I saw red". Typically followed by regret or rationalisation.
   
   
7. Role compartmentalisation pathway: This is happening in Minneapolis just now. "In this role, different rules apply.” This  pathway is a moving of a goalpost.  E.g illegitimate harm is legitimised through e.g. non-legal means. Or "rules" regarding harm are suspended.
   
   
8. Occupational pathway: This is a pathway to harm caused by the military and similar groups, controversially seen as legitimised  harm.

9. Addiction / compulsion pathway: There is harm that drives the addiction, hence "I couldn't help it" and harm carried out under the influence of the addiction such as drugs / alcohol, "I didn't know what I was doing".

10. Survival pressure pathway "I did it because I was starving"

    
    
11. Institutional / structural / systemic.   This pathway to harm includes failure of care: institutional neglect, bystander harm, siding with perpetrators.  It is is harm caused by indifference, bureaucracy, tickboxes.  Systemic betrayal is aresult of this pathway.  “This is just how things work.”

12. Control as protection / Misguided care / Paternalism / Coercive "help". “I know what’s best for you.” This can fall close to a vice-based pathway depending on intention.

    
    

Vice-based pathways

1. Instrumental, incentive or cost / benefit based pathway:  "I did it because I calculated it was worth the risk / reward to me / harm to others"
   
   
2. Identity or Status protection or expansion pathway
   
   
   “I can’t afford to lose who I am / my position / what I have
    Also: "I'm entitled.  I deserve it.  I'm owed it / They started it / Because I'm good / right/ justified." 
   
   
   This category includes a wide range of mechanisms to cause harm.g. silencing critics, scapegoating, retaliatory harm, domintion, ego-building in narcissitic patterns, at other's expense, narrative distortion, reputational damage, power hoarding.
   
   

3. Enjoyment pathway.  Sadists and "dark triad" personalities would use this pathway "I enjoy the humiliation / pain // messing with other people's ideas of good/ truth etc".   Control / manipulation, cruelty, provocation are mechanisms.  The perpetrator will like get enjoyment from these too as well as the results.  Cathy Ames in East of Eden is a classic example of someone taking this pathway.  Note, that none of the explain the psychological reason someone takes a particular pathway to harm.  

4. Ideological pathway: "I did it in God's name" "The cause is higher than the person"

Moral disengagement 

This is a well studied phenomenon where people detach their moral standards from their behaviour.  They know what's wrong.  They just choose not to see / admit it.

E.g.  “They deserved it”, “It wasn’t that bad”, “I had no choice”, “Everyone does it” "They brought it on themselves" "It wasn't my fault", "It's not a big deal", "It's just how it is" "You misinterpreted".

It is the line of least resistance that people take to avoid thinking about or feeling  the wrong.  It allows a neutralising of conscience because the mind is built to preserve an tolerable self image. 

In the literature it's often described as what allows harm to happen.  But I think it is less a pathway to harm but more a cognitive mechanism that enables, sustains, or conceals other harm pathways.  It's more facilitating and sustaining than generative. 

Is this the default lubricant for wrongdoing because of its ubiquity? It's hard to pin down because it's so common it's almost invisible.  It doesn’t require ideology, authority, pathology, or passion, just ordinary self-talk.

Clues are denial, reframing actions / facts, blame-shifting, diffusing responsibility, downplaying etc

It also sounds close to ego protection: but the identity pathway is a route to harm: I'm going to cause this harm because I deserve X or I'm right. Whereas moral disengagement is more a self-justification after the fact for whatever the actual pathway to harm was.   You can tell moral disengagement is not a pathway to harm because it is an excuse and an excuse is not a pathway.

Habitual drift 

This is also not a primary pathway to harm, but a post harm effect.  Small office stationary thefts are the classic example.  The pathway was identity entitlement "e.g. I deserve it" plus instrumental (cost benefit analysis: "I probably won't get caught and if I am it'll be a slap on the wrist").  Small violations become normalised over time.  The person stops experiencing the act as "wrong".   

Much wrongdoing uses multiple pathways

This was something else I noticed: 

E.g. a fraudster may use moral disengagement, reinforced by habitual drift, protected by identity narratives.

Pigface used several pathways and many mechanisms within these.  Clear pathways were:

- Incentive based

- Identity / status protection/expansion- enjoyment

- Control as protection

- Enjoyment

with  moral disengagement as an enabler

The pathways to harming me taken by social services were institutional and structural harm primarily, + role compartmentalization with  moral disengagement as an enabler. It was compounded by institutional harm from the other organisations mentioned and the general unawareness in society.  

Pathways explain why harm is initiated; mechanisms explain how it succeeds; enablers like moral disengagement explain why it persists.

Conversely, sometimes, a behaviour like "resource competition" might use one of several pathways depending on the context.  It might be about survival, or identity protection / expansion or instrumental.

Did it help move what happened into the past?

That's the key when it comes to recovering from trauma.  Do those memories reactivate? Do things in the world trigger them or trigger sensations of fear and lack of safety?

Did understanding the pathways to harm that exist and that were taken in my case help me? 

It was an interesting exercise.  Maybe it helped detach me a bit. Or maybe it confirmed some degree of detachment. I could do the whole thing completely unemotionally, even thinking about the things Pigface did. So maybe it has helped. But I think I will still get triggered by many things, and still feel unsafe .

Other ideas came to me during the exercise which made me think there was more to it than understanding the psychological reasons I was harmed. And then I realised - and had even stated it above.  That was just it.  I didn't know the psychological reasons.  I just knew the pathways.  Even while I had been careful to separate pathways from mechanisms from tendencies from character types, I had missed the main point.  I could now take a good guess at the pathways the abuser took.  But I still didn't know the why behind it. I was doing a Bertrand Russell, trying to excavate to find the truth and not getting there and not now wanting to excavate, at least not that way.   By now I didn't think knowing why was really going to help me.