How do you deal with Truly Bad Actors?

I’ve been reflecting on the question I received last week:

How do you apply mediation concepts to the idea of Truly Bad Actors?

(1)

My first instinct is to go to Gandhi. One of the core principles of Gandhi’s ahimsa is mentally distinguishing between a person and their actions.

This allows us to judge, criticize, oppose, and separate ourselves from actions and behaviors in the world we abhor without judging, hating, or limiting the person who performed them.

For Gandhi and The Mystics (and me), this is important because each person has infinite potential, regardless of the Bad Shit they did yesterday.

Language makes this easy. All it takes is going from:

You’re such a dick.

That was a dick move.

Of course, if you do enough dick moves, nobody’s going to hang out with you, no matter how we phrase things. We’ll come back to this later.

(2)

The question is now:

How do you apply mediation concepts to the idea of Truly Bad Actions?

My second instinct is to question what I mean by “Truly Bad”.

For most people, this means something that violates their core values or something they would never have done.

This is where I find a small dose of moral relativism very useful.

Empirically, the action did NOT violate the values of the person who did it, and/or the benefits of it outweighed the costs.

Clearly, there’s a big difference between my idea of a Truly Bad Action and theirs.

If I want to influence their behavior, we both must understand Why they are doing the “Truly Bad Actions”. What deep and fundamental interests are being served? How did it get to this point?

Of course, a large dose of moral relativism will leave you thinking “There’s no right and wrong”, “Everything is permitted”, and “Which way is up?”

Don’t take a large dose.

Here’s the key takeaway from Mediation as a Spiritual Path:

Inside a relationship, understanding is more useful than judgment.

But what if you don’t want to be inside the relationship?

(3)

My friend later clarified their initial question with more detail:

For context, most of my struggle there comes from my history with Domestic Violence. Mediation revolves around getting both parties to see the other’s perspective and acknowledging how they are contributing to the problem.

In the setting of DV, imposing such a narrative can be destructive for victims and empowering for perpetrators. DV survivors already spend most of their mental energy seeing life from the perspective of their abusers at the expense of their own.

So what can you do when one person is intent on continuing to harm?”

For me, this immediately begs the question: “Why am I still in relationship?”

And my answer is always in the context of The Mystical Regard for our infinite potential.

Is this relationship serving my journey towards my infinite potential? If not, what do I need from my community in order to Peace Out?

Here’s what my friend Somia (Episode #0117), who is writing a book on DV and trauma, said when I asked her:

Empowering a DV victim can take many forms:

– Holding space for a DV victim to be heard.

– Holding space for a DV victim to reframe their circumstances from

– ‘why is this happening to me?’ To ‘why is this happening’?,

– ‘why is he hurting me? To ‘why is he hurting?,

– ‘why me?’ To ‘why’.

This helps one take a step back from being a victim to being an active agent analyzing the situation, which can be empowering.

Some of that can only happen in relationship (or in mediation).

That doesn’t mean marriage, mind you, just some situation where some relating is involved.

But if I don’t need that, leaving seems like a really good goal.

Gandhi says: Separate the actor from the action.

Mediation says: Inside a relationship, understanding is more useful than judgment.

Ank says: You don’t have to be in the relationship.

P.S.

Some relationships are hard to leave. Like authoritarian dictatorships or colonial powers. This is where nonviolent civil disobedience, revolution, and Live Free or Die stuff comes in. But, as Uncle Jamal (Episode #00001) said at 0:18:40, that’s all just Knowledge of the Tongue for me…