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If you're on YouTube a lot you've probably been recommended some videos by the JCS Criminal Psychology channel. It's been blowing up, with the video from last week about the Parkland shooter garnering 33M views. https://t.co/VKqodKJaxt
If you're a fan of true crime podcasts, docus, etc., they are the gateway drug to the crack that is this channel.Watching the videos it hit me how someone could get a PhD in criminal psychology and still be about as vulnerable to interrogation and giveaway tells as anyone else.
One video was especially insightful. I'd recommend watching it, but it brings up the archetype of the antihero in a novel way that hit home for me. https://t.co/4HgOCGXrce
The antihero has a lot in common with a villain, save for 2 very important features:A glimmer of humanity,and noticeable vulnerability.The high-contrast versions of infamous antiheroes are one thing, but I suspect you encounter iterations of the archetype in day-to-day life.
It's a very compelling archetype strategically speaking, because, frustratingly, we tend to seek ways of resolving our own dissonance toward these characters, and so whatever little humanity/vulnerability is intermittently offered is lapped up.
I find this happening in my own experience in dealing with "difficult people", and this is especially salient to me as a people-pleasing type.I will look for glimmers, and when I find them, it's like I think I'm making progress, and that I uniquely understand their inner truth.
A similar dynamic plays out in relation to bigots. When they intermittently allow for something marginally egalitarian, I will give them a lot more credit for it than they deserve, purely due to the contrast and to my own desire to believe in the potential for redemption.
It's easy to pathologize the archetype, blame it and be wary of it like one would of a psychopath.There's more value in noting what arises from your own shadow given how you find yourself responding to it.I find myself answering to my own convictions, values and strength.
Because if I need glimmers for reassurance, for validation, what does it say about the origins and quality of my own convictions?To encounter this shadow of humanity and vulnerability, is to notice the quiet desperation behind my illumination of it. https://t.co/7cIlhkdyEO