#8 - Who's at fault when you fall through the floor?

Where do we point the finger when our collective fantasy turns into a nightmare?

Hey again 👋🏼

If you’re new here, this is part of a larger project exploring disconnection, care, community and crisis under capitalism. If you want to understand what I mean by Unthethered, feel free to go back into the archives here.

I write this newsletter because I love this stuff, and it gives me hope in the midst of a pretty tricky parenting situation. This week has been brutal on the “managing violence between a kid with a disability and his traumatised brother” front, so please forgive typos and grammar — I just wanted to get this out while I could.

Glad you’re here!

“And above all, do not trust.
To trust is to risk being let down,
or turned away.
To trust is to risk forgetting that in the end,
you are responsible for yourself.

Because ultimately, you are an individual.
You are alone.
Responsible for your success,
alone with your failure.
Surrounded by others who may admire,
who may care, who may even be close.

But when push comes to shove,
they don’t owe you anything,
because they are individuals too.

You are alone.
This is the truest thing about you.”

-from Congratulations!

Connections.

While I have grown to have great affection for it, my brain is generally very annoying. If it’s not trying to fix problems that it’s absolutely not responsible for (how would I build a mechanical pencil?), it’s constantly seeking out random connections — like which actor’s mannerisms that person I just met reminds me of (let’s really nut this out as they talk, rather than actually listening to what their name is…).

Most of the time, I’d much rather it use that energy to remember where my keys are or why exactly I’m standing in the spare room staring at the ceiling carrying a pair of pliers and a single slipper. But hey, apparently it’s the boss.

Any ideas?

As I’ve been writing about capitalism over the last few years, I keep on seeing parallels to another destructive system with which I’ve spent a good chunk of my life renegotiating my relationship — a very particular form of Christian spirituality.

Given my complicated relationship with it and the fact that I work in the least religious suburb in Australia, I don’t usually tell people I work for a church until they know me well enough to trust I’m not dickhead or a televangelist.¹

If a new acquaintance does happen to enquire, I find myself breathlessly explaining that it’s a queer-affirming, trauma-informed, non-coercive, community-driven, collaboratively led, discussion-based community that gives people a voice… and then realise I’ve no doubt frightened and confused them and probably ruined their child’s 4th birthday party, because they were actually just making small talk and had hoped I was something fun like a pastry chef or something considerably less awkward.

But it matters to me because, as someone who has spent years working with people who have experienced abuse and coercive control in faith communities, I’m all too aware of the damage too many churches have done.² Even if I understand the good they can do and the vital place they hold in many people’s lives. So, if you’re new here, bear with me.

The Script.

I was raised in a form of Christianity that held an intoxicatingly simple story about how the world worked. Let’s call it “The Script”. It made sense of a frightening world and offered safety, belonging, security and prosperity. It went something like this: God’s on your side, Jesus is the answer, the church is your home, the world is bad, the gays have agendas and the Bible is a very clear instruction manual for life.³ It’s all very straightforward: If you follow the Script and do the right thing, you’ll be rewarded with a good life both now and in eternity. Just follow the rules, and it’s guaranteed that everything will all work out.⁴

You’ll be #blessed with a job, a family, happiness, and, to top it all off, an eternity of untold joy when you die. I heard countless testimonies of people who have played the game right and hit the jackpot — which had absolutely nothing to do with other forms of privilege (which are under no circumstances to be mentioned lest we rob God of a little glory.)⁵

Looking back, the crucial ingredient to making this story work is that The Script must remain untouchable. Our experiences cannot be allowed to challenge The Script; The Script can only be used to challenge our experience. Because this narrative is rock solid truth, if there are any issues, it must be down to user error.

You’ve been shown what to do, and the formula has been proven successful. Bottom line: If your life hasn’t worked out, that’s on you. It’s your fault. You must have messed something up. (Which, given the core text centres on a messianic figure crying aloud, “My God, why have you forsaken me?” as he is executed by the State, might lead some to ask whether promises of endless prosperity might be skimming a few bits.)

credit: David Hayward

The integrity of The Script must be protected at all costs because it is, in effect, a social contract. A place of belonging in the faith community relies on trusting it with unwavering certainty — it cannot be wrong because we all depend on it to hold our whole world together. To challenge it, to doubt it, threatens to unravel everything we’ve built our world on. A corporate sunk-cost-fallacy.

So when the lives of the faithful fall apart, their first thought is not “Has The Script failed me?” but “What have I done wrong?”

I have sat with countless people as they narrate the dreams they had for life and now process the shock of it all crumbling in their hands. With the devastated parents of wayward kids, convinced they mustn’t have been firm enough. With men on the verge of bankruptcy, convinced they mustn’t have tithed enough. With women in troubled marriages believing they mustn’t have prayed enough. With people facing terminal illness chastising themselves for their lack of faith.

For people who share my spiritual heritage, the knee-jerk impulse is to search for where they failed their demanding god. It’s a treadmill where the only way off is to double down by cranking up the speed and trying to outrun it. And it makes me rage.

It cannot be that sometimes life is just mercilessly unfair in ways no one can prevent. Or that God may not be in total control. Or that their fragile soul ultimately had no control over the violence of their husband, or the choices of their children, or the vagaries of the economy.

It must be them.

I am all for personal responsibility in life — our actions can have serious consequences, we are all learning as we go, and some people really do need to just grow up — but this form of spirituality has fostered a mystical expectation that fidelity can ward off tragedy.

In my experience, it’s those who have really bought the story and faithfully followed The Script who are the most vulnerable to being exploited by it. If they begin to suspect The Script isn’t bullet-proof, they become far harder to control. The whole sweater might unravel.

Wait. I’ve heard this story before…

As I spent my 20s deconstructing my spirituality and my 30s exploring the effects of capitalism, it was impossible to miss the parallels. I’ve found myself seeing patterns between the way fundamentalism and capitalism function. Both are predicated on a promise that is declared foolproof, and attributes any failure to the actions of the individual.

Modern capitalism is following a well-worn path, utilising a primal formula: 

1. Narrate a difficult but achievable story of the world, with a grandiose reward for those who follow it.

2. Declare it self-evident and foolproof for the faithful.

3. Place the responsibility on individuals to make it work.

4. Praise those who it serves. Shame those who it fails.

The story goes, capitalism is on your side as long you’re willing to do your bit. Be productive so that your hard work will result in financial security and create a more prosperous world. The capitalist system is guaranteed to reward you if you just follow the rules.

Capitalism has mirrored the magic trick by promising the world and turning the blame on the individual if it isn’t working out. If you are falling behind, can’t make it work, or find yourself out of paid employment, then who must be to blame?

You.
Idiot.

Do better. Head down. Work harder. Crank that dial on the treadmill and run until you reach the top and can harness the energy of others to power you ahead. If you had kids, that was your choice — stop complaining about missing work to care for them. If you’re burned out, you should have managed your time better. If you get sick, get hardier, push through. If you got overlooked for advancement, just stay later. Give more. Really prove yourself.

Investment, Lottery, or Pyramid Scheme?

The irony is that both of these Scripts are sold as investment plans that will eventually guarantee dividends. But both are actually far closer to lotteries and pyramid schemes. Sure, you can increase your odds by following the instructions, but you still have to have an immense amount of luck, dodge a load of potholes and avoid being struck by lightning to come out looking anything like the picture on the box.

People say religion destroys and divides, which it too often does. But trust me, we don’t need a bearded sky daddy to create conditions that set us against each other. We just need a narrative that tells us we’re alone; we should be afraid, that our neighbour would just as likely trample us as pick us up if we fall, and that there’s no shame in creating a business that destroys thousands of lives if it enriches us personally and increases shareholder value.

Cartoon by Denis Lushch

Why do we find it so hard to reach out when we need help? Because not only has our collective life withered as care has been marginalised and replaced with productivity, but we have bought the story that if we find ourselves overwhelmed by needs (our own or others), we only have ourselves to blame. For reasons we’ll unpack in the coming months, the implications of this are both significant and multilayered.

When the system works for you, it works. But when it stops working, don’t expect for a second that it will grind to a halt to make sure you’re ok.

One thing is clear to me: if you fall by the wayside and cannot contribute economically, this system will burn you. Not once (economically), but twice (with the shame of it). It will then leave you scrambling to activate communal resources that you’ve consistently been discouraged from fostering.

It will leave you trying to attract help in the marketplace of relationships without seeming so desperate that you come across as a liability. It’ll burn you a third time by making you wonder why you’re so incompetent that you couldn’t manage to foster a network of care while you spent every last brain cell producing, consuming and side-hustling.

But who could possibly have something to gain by us turning against ourselves and each other?

More than anything, it will distract you from the fact that this system is failing a vast swathe of people by keeping your focus on your inability to make it work. If you’re left to unequivocally believe that this is the way the world works — “we’re all competitors, hard work is always rewarded, we’re self made” — then imagining that the problem might be with the Script is near impossible. And any other way of the world operating is unimaginable.

“Because I said so.”

Congratulations!

You have been born into a world of opportunity.
No matter where you begin, you can make it big.
Haven’t you heard of that one who started with nothing,
and made themselves into something?
If they can do it, why can’t you?
(But really, why can’t you?)

-from Congratulations!

The Blame Game.

I’m not the only one who’s noticed this. Trust me, I’m not that smart. As I was first forming these ideas, I stumbled on the work of therapist Bruce Rogers-Vaughn, whose observations have stuck with me ever since:

I have conducted approximately 30,000 counselling sessions. Sustaining such intimate acquaintance with people over time has permitted me to observe bewildering changes that have been occurring between and within human beings in my part of the world during these 30 years. The average individual I encounter in the clinical situation today is not the same as the person who sat with me 30 years ago. Sometimes the changes are subtle. Often they are obvious. But they are pervasive and apparently widespread. There has been a marked increase in self-blame among those seeking my care, as well as an amorphous but potent dread that they are somehow teetering on the edge of a precipice.

But even those who saw the roots of their psychic pain in their identities or in trauma still believed only they could do anything about their problems. If they had suffered so long and still were not making headway, they mused, perhaps they were doing something wrong; or, even worse, something was wrong with them. So in the end, they felt just as responsible as my other, ostensibly more fortunate clients.

Dr Bruce Rogers-Vaughn, Caring for Souls in a Neoliberal Age

Rogers-Vaughn has called this phenomenon “third order suffering”.

We have slowly been Untethered from mutual obligation and collectivism; the question we face is whether we can Untether from the narratives of autonomous individualism and self-interested capitalism to a more connected future. More on that next time!

Take care,

Shane

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1. Why not both?

2. A couple of years back I pitched and consulted on a doco to Mark Fennell/SBS about burnout and coercive control in megachurches. If you’re in Australia, you can check out The Kingdom here.

3. Now that I am in a queer-affirming church, I can officially reveal that the gays do indeed have agendas! Disappointingly, it turns out it is significantly less diabolical than I had feared —mandatory sequined rainbow hotpants for all men over 18 — and has a lot more to do with hoping the world was a kinder place and wanting to be left alone by terrified morons so they can get on with living life as fabulously or mundanely as they choose.

4. This rendition of Christianity is so hegemonic in our culture that many are shocked when they discover that, like so many Wisdom traditions, Christianity contains other more grounded, thoughtful, beautiful, complex, kind and hopeful possibilities than the pop-culture version.

5. In case you were wondering, this is not a religion-bashing exercise. I actually believe that there are far better versions of this faith tradition. I’ve written about some possibilities over on Webworm for my friend David Farrier, you can check it out here. I’ve also spent a bunch of time chatting about faith reconstruction with my friend Frosty on his podcast In the Shift.