Name Calling: The Incantation Of Radical Views

Remember when you were a kid? Name calling was a big deal. Whether it happened for five minutes or five years, anyone who was bullied recalls the panic when children zeroed in on some insecurity or difference. I’m not safe. I’m alone. There’s something wrong with me. This is scary.

It doesn’t end after childhood. They might be more low-key about it, but adults constantly pepper each other with weaponized verbiage. There are a lot of strong, reactive terms floating around. Just ask the wokeflakes and alt-right nazis. Or those pinned with more descriptive labels like racist, fascist, white supremacist, Neo-Marxist or anti-vaxxer.

When are labels helpful and when are they slanderous shortcuts to win arguments? Is this entirely different from playground name calling? Do the people receiving labels get a say? Who gets to decide where the line is? Is this too many questions to ask in one paragraph?

As with all my articles, I am encouraging you to look inward while taking ownership over your own thoughts, feelings and actions. I propose that a lot of answers come from inside rather than attempts at controlling the outer world.

First though, let’s look at how the brain orchestrates the ancient incantation of name calling.

The Symbolic Left-Brain: The Name Caller

So far, my long form Joe Rogan/Sadhguru analysis and very long form guide to psychedelic healing both discuss how left-brain biased western culture is. We are thinkey judgey creatures who feel the need to put things into boxes, lest we get swept away in the chaos of the cosmos.

We react quickly to situations and make strong, persistent assumptions. We confuse the dialogue and images in our head for the real world, despite the fact that thinking evolved as a tool to enhance our relationship to reality, not to be reality itself.

It’s good that we can symbolize reality. It lets us work, to communicate precisely and to build societies. It is the building block of verbal language. The level to which we symbolize is a uniquely human superpower (apologies for being speciesist to any extra-dimensional beings tuning in).

…Yet when we unconsciously ‘choose’ one way of seeing reality, we exclude limitless other possibilities. This problem of reality is observed literarily by post-modernists, spiritually by Hindus and Buddhists and even hard-scientifically by theoretical physicists. A simple social example: If your brain unconsciously perceives the man in sunglasses near a playground as a predator, the myriad other identities he may have disappear. Your primal circuitry collaborates with the meaning making cortex and he is a predator. It’s real now.

With little awareness that our symbolic brains co-create reality, it’s easy to live in our castles of I-am-right and forget that others have written quite different world-maps. This is too bad, since the world symbolized by our thoughts is a dead one: A snapshot of a movie that is already five scenes past when the photo was taken.

…And we are aren't even taught we are symbolizing in the first place. No kindergarten teacher has an informed consent process that says, “Just a heads up children, the further you master language the further away you will move from the effortless, meditative presence of the moment. You will learn to worship the symbols of reality, amplified even more so by technology, losing the alive feeling of summers that seem to last for years.”

That’s for the best. That is not at all how five years olds talk and that teacher might want to search around for other jobs.

Even if they were in the wrong field, that teacher was right. As Wordsworth said, the "Shades of the prison around the growing boy..." separate us from the ecstatic presence of beauty and nature. Life becomes a greyscale series of rules with a stangle-hold on our existential freedom. At its best, life loses its vibrancy.

At its worst, we fight about whose symbols are better than others. We even remember on some level how childish name calling had a deeper secret: Word can be used as weapons of unimaginable power.

Name Calling Proper: The Limbic System

Let’s revisit some of the names from earlier. Beforehand, take a breath and drop into your body a bit. Become aware of your breathing and heartbeat, as well as any sensations or emotions you feel physically.

Wokester, neo-nazi, blue hair, transphobe, feminazi, alt-right troll

For those with a dog in the culture fight, you felt something. These are not just words, they are powerful incantations. For many, the fight-flight system mobilizes to deal with an enemy. The amygdala, whose function is to determine when we are not safe, lights up in the same fashion as if had you seen a predator. We are using our symbolic superpower to light fires.

In doing so, some problems occur that short-change us of an honest relationship with self and other. I wrote this article in March when I was still big on making lists, so here are five consequences of taking name calling for granted:

Name calling activates our very fast and feeling-oriented primal brain

Labelling someone is a magic spell—one that has more neurological power than we realize. In calling someone a vile name we invoke the powers of our primal limbic brain—ancient brain circuits that evolved to make life or death decisions. By warning the species that Harold is a white supremacist or that Uma is a TURF you activate the threat detection circuits of others.

The ventral-vagal branch of their nervous system—the branch responsible for safe tend and befriend socialization—goes offline. The sophisticated prefrontal brain circuitry that can see humans as they are—good natured and tragically flawed, nuanced so that they’re neither good nor evil—reduces its activity. Their sympathetic nervous system and midbrain activate, sending signals of danger.

They don't see a human anymore. They see something less than human that can be explained easily. A one-dimensionality takes over the nuance of someone. This is the force of unconscious bias. Indulging this without examination fuels the belief that we can overcome society-wide prejudicial bias by throwing more generalizations and judgments into the mix.

I come from the Okanagan Valley that deals with excessive Summer wildfires. I can tell you that fighting fire with fire is not a helpful strategy.

Name calling creates a false sense that there are ‘black and white’ truths

A contribution of the cognitive therapists was generating a list of errors in how we conceptualize the world, perhaps my favourite of which being black and white thinking. The symbolic brain mistakenly views a situation or person as ALL good or ALL bad. We direct these constantly at ourselves through perfectionism or overemphasis on the negative.

When this error of left-hemispheric arrogance is applied to judging others we are in dangerous territory. No longer burdened by the reality that humans exist on a fluctuating continuum of light and darkness, a person is viewed as all bad. Beyond redemption, object of contempt, save your apologies.

Nevermind the fact that perfect good and perfect evil are not realities, but are in fact religious ideals. These ideal can perhaps be experienced directly but only through the purity of consciousness that requires meditation, spiritual practice, deep emotional work and perhaps psychedelics.

If you think you have accurately judged someone as you construe them as all bad, you need to weigh that against your own feelings. Do they remind you of anyone from your past?

Speaking of which…

Name calling tends to come from our emotionally unfinished business

“Yesterday I was clever, so I wanted to change the world. Today, I am wise so I am changing myself.” -Rumi

We all want to be our best self. The egoic idea that I am a good person crafts the social mask we wear, termed the persona by Carl Jung. Our thirst to be affirmed as ‘good’ by others has a lot to do with childhood development. Missed, abused or neglected needs often result in an insatiably perfectionistic inner-critic, robbing someone of their human right to be messy with the rest of us. I must be good. It is unacceptable to be bad. I don’t even question this anxiety, I just know I must do everything to avoid it.

The problem is, the bigger the persona the larger the shadow it casts. If your father was angry and abusive, you may outright reject your own anger. This often means losing the full range of human experience, cloistered instead to the ever-likeable social mask. I am a good person. I hold the door for everyone. I’m fine to put others first.

Disowning our own potential for evil does not protect us from it. In fact, it's the opposite. Dark psychic energy must be expressed elsewhere and one of the ways it does is through splitting and projecting. If I must be good, I’ll detach from the concept of being bad entirely and experience it by projecting onto someone else:

That politician is the devil incarnate. It is because of [immigrants, feminists, truckers, activists] that I am unhappy. All [members of whatever cultural group] are bad. I understand what is best for the world but those [liberals/conservatives] have it completely wrong. The world would be better if we did things how I know we are supposed to.

Shadow work means wading into the cesspool of disowned characteristics. It means accessing counselling, talking with friends, vision question or using psychedelics to stare into the darkness that we fear and realize that it was us all along (and it needs love, not rejection).

This is not to say that there aren’t terribly dangerous people (and indeed politicians), but just that without sorting out our internal painpoints, we are throwing darts with a blindfold on. Our amygdala lights up and we attack without question. We have no idea who is actually good or evil because we can’t see past the mirror reflecting back everything we haven’t healed from.

You can sense unfinished business if you experience a heightened emotional reaction that comes on lightning fast and is hard to come down from. Heart rate increases, sweating, ears ring, dizziness or numbness sets in. When this happens you are no longer interacting with the real world. You are interacting with your own ghosts.

There is virtually no chance you are about to make the world a better place by reacting while in this state. This is a time for grounding and safety—justice can come later.

Name calling is merely an invention of the intellect

What determines if someone is alt right? How many white supremacist meetings do they need to attend? How many opinions must be expressed, and to what intensity before someone is branded as a woke liberal? Who decides where the lines are and who defines these terms?

Who in all earnestness has mastered being human to such a degree they can say that their judgments are the correct ones?

Descriptive terms are called constructs because they are constructed by the symbolic brain. They are invented, not discovered. Just in the same way that you will never encounter 'integrity' or the literal ‘number four' in nature, weaponized terms are simply attempts to take a photo of the moving picture of reality. Worse than ‘number four’ however, terms like nazi (in its current use, that is) lack a cohesive definition and so you might as well scream about how someone is a big-booger face (and he may well be!)

Think before slandering. People generally cannot distinguish the emotional ferocity of their limbic systems from reality, so if they feel there is a nazi in their midst, they’ll react as if there is one. Think of the angst of anyone incarcerated with an incorrect guilty verdict, but realize this is happening now with social ostracism.

Is the care of other humans enough to help us sloooow down and examine the power of our words?

Name calling helps you avoid work that complex relationships require

It is hard work to be in a conscious relationship with others, truly respecting and understanding their otherness through curiosity and humility. It requires dismantling yourself and taking the risk that you are wrong (and you probably are). It takes a journey inwards to understand how specters of people who hurt you are still alive in your intolerance towards others. Naturally, it will feel much easier to see black and white categories in which you can maintain how you see things and stay the same.

But aren’t you curious what might be possible beyond the familiar? Don’t you wonder what lay beyond your insecurities?

Lost parts of you are buried there, and with them the chance to know your greater purpose. Perhaps most important, true intimacy with others can only occur when you let you edges of your ego soften.

Emotional immaturity is arrogant in how it clings to its truths, melting down when others don’t validate its insistence of how things are. It is possessive and childish. It takes no accountability for its own unfinished business, instead preferring to blame others.

Emotional (and spiritual) growth implies comfort with the paradox and contradiction that is inseparable from existence. It involves letting go of ‘right’ and embracing the discomfort (and eventual relief) that there isn’t a static truth so much as a fluid and ever-shifting process.

After achieving true intimacy with others, we may even flirt with spiritual awakening: At this stage we learn that even our biographical identity (I’m Carson! …aren’t I?) is a construct. Our actually identity is the entire process of consciousness experiencing itself as different parts, places and people. This is our hintergedakan that we all remember somewhere deep—a home that feels even more real than ‘ordinary’ daily life.

But that’s for another day.

Curiosity, Complexity and Coda

Name calling simplifies how we understand reality and other humans. It artificially limits complexity so we can see in the convenience of black and white. It protects us from doing our own inner work, holds people and groups in symbolic separation from truth. Slanderous labelling can even destroy others’ livelihoods from a place of false virtue.

I argue that if we are able to recognize and respect name calling as a powerful incantation, we may use it more sparingly and with greater respect. Further to that, we may even consider curiosity towards others instead of assumption and reaction.

What was your intention when you said that? Can you describe your position more? Is this what you mean? Can I check my perception, it seemed like you were saying […..], do I have that right?

It is hard work to bridge the gap of symbolic communication and become truly closer with others (it’s easier with dogs). It can be excruciating discovering that without the simplicity of ‘good’ and ‘bad’ people we need to wade through the nuance of a strange and mysterious universe.

Either way, eventually we all need to look inward. As we polish our own mirrors, we can discern the world more clearly. Why not take that wager? Engage an inner healing practice and (a) you’ll discover parts of yourself that needed some love and feel better for it or (b) you can prove me wrong and it turned out Elon Musk was indeed the reason for your seasonal depression.

It sounds win-win to me.

---

Carson Kivari directs Thrive Downtown Counselling Centre—the most frequented destination in Western North America for psychedelic integration therapy. He gets ideas for articles that start as simple quick reads but end up as long form essays.