Rudiments of Why Extremist Reactionaries Have Become So Virulent

That animals displace stress on each other has been known even before research showed how this works in different species and different environments.

Since we humans are the the most complicated and imaginative creature, living in many different conditions, we have many more ways of displacing stress.

The word catharsis provides an introduction into how complex we are when it comes to managing our emotional states. The range of expression we possess through language and culture is too vast to unpack here.

For the purpose of understanding why certain persons form a habit of ad hominem attacks on what they disagree with and the persons who represent those perspectives, it should suffice to say ridicule and insults are one form of stress displacement humans use.

These ways of expressing ourselves are not necessarily unfriendly. There is a nuance to teasing respectfully. However, when fear and anxiety are running at a fever pitch, the barbs can become a gateway to violence.

The practice of extreme expression, wild hyperbole to shock and frighten others, is another means of displacing stress. Taking pleasure in seeing others discomforted relieves some of the anxiety and fear we have, if we have cultivated this behavior.

Again, these are habituations that occur over time and are fostered by our birth circumstances and upbringing, the experiences we have over a lifetime and our disposition towards difference and novelty.

Put simply, the more fearful we are of difference and change, the more acutely we feel a need to displace our fear by making others fearful and anxious.

This is by no means a habit restricted to one segment of the political spectrum. Fear is contagious. When someone starts a chain of stress displacement, the emotional energy can go viral.

The irony about our current political situation is that fear of change is driving “conservatives” in radical directions.

Even before the modern age, humans work themselves into frenzied movements based on rumors, lies, and superstitions. Our imagination is at once a gift and a burden.

Stress displacement can take on elaborate ritual forms, which can be playful or lethal, symbolic or literal.

Human sacrifice and execution under the law are separated only by the specific rationalizations used to justify the ceremony. The outcome and the underlying reason is the same: To regain or reaffirm the proper order.

When we understand matters in this light, we can begin to see how personal stress displacement can grow and be compounded by shared fears and anxiety, real and imaginary.

If a group has a shared grievance, real or imaginary, they may seek to displace their common stress through acts of mob violence or by gatherings in which to express their mutual grievance.

Conversation itself can be another outlet for releasing stress. We may consider it to be a human form of grooming we observe in other primates.

We humans are fundamentally animals. Our biology in detail differs hardly at all. The underlying makeup of our brains and bodies, the mechanisms from which our behavior derives, are exactly the same stuff as a monkey or a mouse.

What is very different is the range of what we can do because of the complexity of our imaginations, language, and cultures.

Because we are in ourselves and yet not in control of everything, if anything at all, which has gone into making us who we are at the present moment, we all too often let our fears of the unknown and all we cannot control drive us to see differences as a threat and to lash out as a means of regaining our emotional equilibrium.

And of course there are other ways, but once habits have been formed, it can be difficult to create the right environment for positive change to occur.

Obviously in our current context of divisive tribalism, such positive changes become more difficult; negative patterns of behavior for stress displacement are reinforced by group think and peer pressure.