Projection
A Tragic Projection
In 1907 there was a woman named Klara who was unfortunately diagnosed with breast cancer. The family physician at the time was a Jewish man named Eduard Bloch, and he informed the family that her condition was terminal after attempting to perform a mastectomy to remove the tumor. Her son begged and pleaded with the doctor to try and cure his mother despite the circumstances. The doctor agreed and began to perform various primitive forms of chemotherapy on Klara. He used a drug called, “iodoform”, which is basically a fancy disinfectant. He figured that if he applied it to the wounds of the mastectomy, he would be able to fundamentally napalm the rest of the cancer. This obviously did not work. Instead what it did was put Klara into an excruciating amount of pain for 46 days. Klara was being burned alive from the inside for over a month. She later died due to complications of the treatment.
Now this is of course tragic all in itself, but the result of this failure could possibly be directly correlated to one of the worst events in human history. You see, the son that pleaded with the Jewish doctor to cure his dying mother, was Adolf Hitler. When Adolf Hitler was confronted as to his reasonings towards his hatred of the Jewish people, he brought up how both the Jews and the communist party “stabbed” Germany in the back during World War 1. He mentioned how the economy was controlled by Jews at the time. He believed they were “inferior” to a “perfect” race he was trying to create. Yet he never mentioned the experience with the Jewish doctor and his mother. Now it is completely possible that his hatred for the Jews, in his mind, had nothing to do with that tragic event in his life. But subconsciously it is more than likely that the manner of the death of his mother was directly correlated to an openly Jewish man, and he recognized that. Therefore, it placed a little seed in his brain that began to grow as various different Jewish organizations started to rise to prominence in his lifetime.
What he was experiencing was a form of projection. An irrational emotional connection to something based on past traumas and experiences. This form of projection is incredibly dangerous because it takes a deep understanding of self awareness in order to detect. Everyone gets upset about SOMETHING, but it takes a more level headed individual to ask themselves, “but WHY am I upset?”, before opening their mouths or taking action.
Growing Up
"With that fear of being punished and that fear of not getting the reward, we start pretending to be what we are not, just to please others, just to be good enough for someone else. We try to please Mom and Dad, we try to please the teachers at school, we try to please the church, and so we start acting. We pretend to be what we are not because we are afraid of being rejected. The fear of being rejected becomes the fear of not being good enough. Eventually we become someone we are not. We become a copy of Momma's beliefs, Daddy's beliefs, society's beliefs, and religions beliefs."
Babies are like little turd nuggets with feet and hands. They don’t know anything. They don’t understand WHY they cry, they just do. Give them a little pinch and they will make a bucket of tears for hours. When they feel like they have to piss, shit, or puke they just do. There is no logical part of the brain that is communicating with the emotional part of the brain because neither are fully developed. They feel something, so they react. Babies don’t adhere to rules because they don’t even understand what the word means yet. So it is up to mom and dad to program the baby as it gets older into adolescence to tell it when it’s okay to cry, or where to piss, shit, and puke.
This critical stage of development in a childs’ lifetime will determine nearly every action, thought process, and relationship going into adulthood. It sets the blueprint for adulthood in a very impactful way. Don Miguel Ruiz calls this process, “the domestication of humans”. Kids who were spoiled and had an easy life will take many different difficulties and stresses as a major pitfall and freak out. Kids who were abused will often struggle with self worth, and seek relationships that are toxic in order to mimic the dynamic of mother and father to create a sense of similar attachment. Kids who were born without fathers often have abandonment issues, and openly turn to drugs and alcohol. How you were programmed as a child will project into your life without you ever really knowing it until you look inward and acknowledge it. This is arguably the hardest form of projection to stop from recurring, because it is something that most people have carried with them all their lives without ever knowing. Therefore creating a sense of comfortability in the familiar.
Rewriting Code
Think about yourself. Think about who you are. Think about the things you have done. Think about who you are dating right now. Think about what you value. Think about what you want to do tomorrow. Make a list and write it all down. Look at it. Put that shit up real close to your face and stare at it. Now rip it and throw it in the garbage. It’s useless. It’s useless because it is not really you. Everything that you have done so far, and everything you have believed, does not come from you. It came from mom and dad. You were told what to believe, how to react, how to think, and what you should value. But is that really you? Now I’m not saying it’s all bad or wrong, but some of it can be. Now this sounds all hippy dippy but there is some truth in it.
For example, I went to a Christian private school until around the 4th grade. My mother put me in there because she is a devout Christian and wanted me to be a man of God. Every morning I would wake up and put on my slacks, sweater vest, and dress shoes, and get in the car to go to school with all of my like-minded Christian good boy friends. When we moved, I had to go to a public school going into 5th grade. Naturally, I woke up, put on my slacks, sweater vest, and dress shoes and went to the bus stop. What I saw on that bus was an absolute freak show. Who the hell are these maniacs? Why is everyone dressed like an eminem music video? Are they fucking swearing right now? Sorry God. Why’s Timmy getting his teeth caved in at the back of the bus?
I was programmed to believe by my parents that my experience was normal, and everyone else is weird. When I got into highschool, naturally I tried to rebel against everything I was taught. I would smoke cigarettes, turn away from God, and drink my brains out because I thought I was hot shit. The thing is, I wasn’t finding myself through rebelling, even though I was going against what I was programmed to do, I was just doing the opposite of what I was told because I thought it was cool. I was just acclimating myself to new surroundings. Nothing about it was me, I was just projecting my feelings of not fitting in, and therefore everything I did and said was to make me feel like I was more a part of something.
"Projection of our own shadow makes the whole world a replica of our unknown face."
In order to truly build yourself and stop projecting your past or present, you need to figure out first what you value. What’s really important to YOU. Then you need to question to yourself what views you have are possibly wrong. This is really hard for a lot of people because let’s be honest, nobody likes to admit they are wrong. Growing up I was 100% convinced God was real, then I went to highschool and figured he’s probably not, now as an adult I have to make the decision if I choose to believe in that or not, and not because I was told he is, but because I as an individual choose where my faith lies.
People often subconsciously choose or leave their partners based on the parent of their own opposite sex. This can be a good thing to people who are raised by morally strong individuals, and an absolute curse to those who are raised by assholes. Their own relationships will begin to mimic that of the dynamic of their own mother and father, as a woman will choose someone who more closely represents their father, and inherited personality traits and mannerisms based on their mother. And men will do the same thing but mirrored. If your parents’ relationship dynamic is healthy and strong, it’s a beautiful thing, if not, it’s time to do some reprogramming.
Let’s look at Ashton Kutcher for example. His father was considerably younger than his mother. The relationship dynamic failed around the time Ashton was a young boy. They divorced and Ashton went on to marry his first wife Demi Moore. Demi was 15 years older than Ashton, and then yes, you guessed it, they divorced. Ashton most likely realized he should probably stray away from his usual type, and instead went on to marry Mila Kunis (damn you Ashton) and they have been happily married ever since.
Everyday Projection
One memory that sticks out to me a lot back when I was a dipshit punk, was when I was in highschool. Like I said before I had a tough time fitting in because the surroundings were so different to what I was used to. I often felt like the black sheep in my own friend group and felt the need to prove myself due to my own insecurities. One day this kid comes along and tries to buy cigarettes from my buddy. Problem is, he never paid for the cigarettes from LAST week. $10 was nothing to scoff at back then, that was a dime of weed, a cardinal sin to let that fly. I took this kids skateboard and slowly started dipping it in the lake next to us and started telling him to cough up the money. He pleaded with me and told me he didn’t have enough so I dropped it in the lake and told him to go fetch. I know, I was an angel.
Point is, I didn’t give a shit about my friend, or his $10. It had nothing to do with me, him, or this poor kid and his skateboard either. I only did it because I felt insecure in my own friend group. I wanted to fit in and feel valued. So I projected that and put it onto someone else in order to make me feel better, and make someone else feel like an outsider. This is a vicious chain of events now because it is more than likely that the kid went off and did the same to someone else because of that, and so on and so forth.
"And I don't care how scientific you think you are or how many letters you have after your name, you're one of us bucko. You're a crazy Feeling-Brain-piloted meat robot just like the rest of us."
People don’t think about WHY they feel the way they do, they just do. In a way we are all just little turd nuggets with feet and hands. In this day and age the world is run mostly by emotions, especially in young people. You feel angry so you scream at the first dude who gives you a reason. You feel depressed so you contemplate suicide. You feel happy so you give a good tip at the bar. Confident and secure people are not likely to shit on your shoes for being cheap. Instagram influencers are more likely to do that because their insecurity is never feeling good enough or validated enough, always needing more, and on a bad day, they will insult your appearance or confidence. If someone calls you fat it most likely is because they are either currently struggling, or have struggled with body image issues. This is why you should never take anything personally and instead ask, “are you okay?”, when confronted by an angry action or comment. Something deeper is always going on, and is just being projected onto you because most people are not mature enough to have a conversation with their emotional and logical part of their brain.
About a month ago I was at the bar watching a UFC fight. It was late and there were only around 3 other people in the bar because the fights were ass. Towards the end a man walked in and I can just feel the anger radiating off this dude. The waitress asked him what he wanted and he just looked at her and proceeded to slowly take off his jacket. This man was built like a brick house, and I knew there was about to be problems. For the next 30 minutes this man was yelling and hollering about how he can kick the asses of these professional fighters. Calling them pussies and this and that. I was getting so fed up with it I just wanted to walk out at that point and I started to collect my stuff. As I am nearly ready to leave I overhear a conversation with him and the waitress. She asked him if he was okay. He looked at her and said, “my whole family died in a fire. I ain’t no bitch”. I put my stuff back down and ordered another drink. I realized this man wasn’t an asshole, he was hurt. He was projecting his pain onto whatever he possibly could. Losing his family like that made him feel sad and weak, and therefore he had to rectify those feelings by validating his own confidence and self worth.
Take nothing personally. Understand the reasoning behind your actions before you open your mouth or do anything. Have that conversation with the logical and emotional parts of your brain. Do not say anything you don’t really mean, and do not do anything you do not mean to do. Follow this, and you will make fewer mistakes in your life.