I was in town today, and I saw someone, and I was told that there were people around town saying that new bad things about me. Kinda like I thought I was Jesus or something, like I thought that I was someone special to God, but I have always maintained as far as I can remember, that I write, as a pen for God (what i always aid on Facebook those years), and it’s probably from the people I once helped, helping in the past that are ashamed of me now.
Cognitive dissonance. People want to see themselves as good. When their actions contradict that, it’s usually easier to change the story than the behavior. “I‘m not being cruel, I’m just telling the truth” or “they had it coming” resolves the discomfort without anyone having to apologize.
Or if they, in the past, was in a group of good people, but the leader became disliked for some reason, all of a sudden they agree with the storytellers rather than stay faithful.
I had a dream this evening which was rather interesting and fitting. I was having a nap this evening because I was tired, and I went to a carnival in the dream, and these people were at the carnival that I used to know, and they ignored me, and I couldn’t understand what the problem was, and this went all through the dream at the carnival, I keep bumping into different people and they all ignored me, and I realise that they were the people I used to help in the past.
Albert Bandura described how people switch off their conscience with a few moves: relabeling cruelty as something nobler (“I’m protecting people“), spreading responsibility (“everyone’s saying it“), or seeing the target as less deserving of empathy, especially (even thought at one stage they needed this person) because they now want to distance themselves from the person who they once or even still love, reputation is more inportant to them.
If someone is being treated badly, onlookers often decide the person must have deserved it, because the alternative, that bad things happen to people unfairly and they’re taking part in it, is much more uncomfortable. The “just world” bias works this way. So, even if they liked or loved that person, they now blame the victim because it is the in-thing now to do.
And all that reminded me was of Peter in Jesus in the Bible when Peter denied Jesus, Peter was willing to take from Jesus for many years, and Peter was willing to help Jesus when no one is noticing, but as soon as Peter realised someone was watching and the people saying bad things about Jesus he denied him.
You know his character assassination. When people hear a Character Assassination, they can fear being friends with the person who is being character assassinated, and so they join in with the gossip or a smear campaign, adding to it, and the hate campaign can now feel for them socially rewarding, they get acceptance, new friends, sympathy and so on. It buys for them acceptance, and it feels righteous, which is a powerful combination. Siding with the crowd against one person is often about safety rather than conviction.
People are like this, when they want something from you don’t take it, but they are more interested in their reputations then being loyal to someone who really truthfully helped them, and instead, because they are shallow in mind, they will be loyal to people who don’t matter.
When someone is helped by a person who then becomes the target of gossip or criticism, standing by them can feel risky. Being associated with someone who’s being talked about badly might cost them socially, so some people quietly step back, even people who benefited a lot from that help. It’s usually less about not caring and more about fear of being judged by association, and sometimes about the discomfort of owing someone who is now “unpopular.” Still, it’s disloyal, and it hurts, especially when the person who helped never asked for anything back.
Peter is probably the best-known example. He had spent many years with Jesus, and he’d even said he would die alongside him. But when Jesus was arrested and Peter was recognized in the courtyard, he denied knowing him three times. It wasn’t because he didn’t care. He was afraid of what being associated with Jesus would cost him. The Gospels say he wept bitterly afterward, so the denial clearly hurt him too. The other disciples weren’t much different: when Jesus was arrested, they scattered and left him on his own.
Those who are denied or turned away from when they never actually wanted to hurt anyone, instead he or she wanted to be helpful, are in very old company because Jesus experienced being let down by people he had helped and loved.
That doesn’t make it hurt less, but it means the pain isn’t a sign that the helpful person did something wrong by helping.
Fear is what sometimes drives people to abandon someone, not a lack of love. That doesn’t excuse it, but it can make it a little easier to carry. Some people, like Peter, come back with humility when they’ve had time to face what they did.
What I find troubling in my personal; experiences is that this isn’t a flaw of a certain type of person to be a part of gossip, or a Character Assassination, or a Flying Monkey. Almost everyone is capable of it in the right circumstances, which is why honest self-examination matters so much.
Albert Bandura didn’t treat cruelty as something only “bad people” do, he delved deeper into the studies of human nature and behaviour in certain conditions. He showed that ordinary people, through a handful of everyday mental moves, can do harm while keeping their self-image intact. That’s why it applies so widely, from workplace gossip to much larger atrocities.
His famous Bobo doll studies in the 1960s showed something related: people, especially children, learn behavior by watching others, including aggression. So cruelty can spread socially, and once it’s modeled and rewarded, joining in feels normal.
Psychologist Albert bandura, led the study at Stanford University, with 72 children (aged 3 to 6) from the Stanford University Nursery School. The children watched some adults either act aggressively (punching, hitting with a mallet) or peacefully toward an inflatable Bobo doll, while a control group saw no model.
The children who saw the aggressive adult copied those exact physical and verbal attacks themselves.
The boys showed more overall physical aggression, and both boys and girls imitated same-sex models more closely.
Social Learning Theory: The results proved that people acquire new behaviors through observation and imitation rather than just direct rewards or punishments.
If moral disengagement works by switching off conscience through specific excuses, then noticing those excuses in yourself (“everyone’s saying it,” “they deserve it,” “I’m only repeating what I heard”) is joining in with the others and acting their thinking out and not your own, like mob thinking, you disown your own mind, your own thinking, your own emotions and follow the crown. Like an unthinking sheep.
Imagine caring deeply about someone, and then disliking that person because the crowd does.
People can deny or gossip and lie about someone who they once liked, or even loved, but now think that they will never see that person ever again, so they believe that they will never see that person face to face again, but God doe snot let people get away with that.
God wants us to be responsible for our words, the things we do, and the carpet or truth or lies we spread, each has its own reward and also its own result.
Remember the story about the person who tells lies and gossips and is in court for it, and tries to get out of it, but the judge says go on your way home, while walking rip up some paper, and when you come in tomorrow pick those pieces up and bring them to court, and of course this could not be done because the paper was whisked up with the wind, like lies, denials, and gossip, and this is how the judged proved that the gossiper, the slanderer is guilty.
Please remember, whatever you do, God and Satan are watching, reading to reward you in your own way.
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