Dissociation
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At its most heightened, dissociation can mean completely or near-completely disconnecting oneself from something that happened: something traumatic, perhaps, or something we’ve done that is jarringly dissonant with how we perceive ourselves to be.
People who commit murder or manslaughter, then, or people who experience war or a plane crash, might psychologically disconnect themselves from these experiences, not necessarily telling themselves it didn’t happen, but in some way severing the link that ties them to the experience which might otherwise cause them a great deal of mental anguish.
A more subtle version of dissociation is a lot more common, but also, because of that commonality, at times more impactful—in terms of aggregate consequences of the disconnect.
Most people who eat meat in the 21st century in wealthy economies, for instance, don’t directly associate the food product they consume with the animal from which it is derived.
If we had to kill, slaughter, and process a pig every time we wanted to have bacon, there’s a good chance that far fewer people would eat bacon—or not as much of it as we do.
Because of modern industrial practices, farming techniques, division of labor, and marketing tactics, though, most of us don’t have to make these choices. The process of producing meat is abstracted away, and the focus is put on the end-product, with vague, upbeat allusions toward all the positive attributes of how that end-product was made.
This isn’t a meat-specific type of detachment, though: this is something we do for all types of products and experiences we consume.
Many of us are aware that plastics are often quite horrible for the environment, in terms of production and in terms of what happens to them after they’re discarded. Yet, most of us also continue to buy products cocooned in plastic, delivered in plastic, carried home in single-use plastic bags—not because we’re horrible people, but because we tend to dissociate ourselves from such issues when addressing them would be inconvenient, cause a serious disruption to the way we live our lives, or make us feel bad about the things we do on a regular basis.
From the way we benefit from sweatshop labor, to the way we eat, despite knowing what we’re consuming isn’t good for us, to the habits we engage in, despite those habits furthering medical conditions with which we struggle or amplifying larger environmental issues: it’s far easier to happily walk a non-ideal path when we can psychologically separate ourselves from the consequences of what we do.
Dissociation is thought to be a mental coping mechanism that allows us to tolerate higher levels of stress and strain than would otherwise be feasible.
Some people seek out additional layers of dissociation, at times through the consumption of psychoactive substances, in other cases through distraction, social reassurance, or a focused recalibration of their beliefs and behaviors to enhance the decoupling effect or numb themselves to things they’ve done which don’t align with their personal sense of moral rightness.
Pathological dissociation disorders, where a person struggles to maintain a sense of continuity and self, are relatively uncommon. But dissociation affiliated with our behaviors and decisions, and which are socially reinforced for ideological or economic purposes, seem to be incredibly prevalent—almost unavoidable, in fact.
This is perhaps especially true during periods of increased uncertainty and difficulty, where more trade-offs seem necessary, more ideological flexibility is arguably warranted, and more of us struggle with the decisions we make more of the time; our ethical incongruities either leading to anxiety and trauma, or a certain amount of emotional detachment from what we do to cope, and how we do it.
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