Tipping Point

Everybody has what I called a tipping point, the place where the the things that you don't like about your situation, relationship, job, church  outweigh the things that you do like, and like a seesaw where one kid is heavier than the other, the daily decision of "I'm going to continue with this" flips over to "Screw this...I'm outta here". This isn't to say that this is always a conscious decision or even a rational, logical one, but somewhere, buried deep inside, it's a decision nonetheless.Why do people do things that they don't want to do when there's no apparent coercion? Why do people do things that are bad for them? The most common examples are found in abusive relationships.

Why do people stay together when one of them is beating the other or verbally abusing them? There is no one answer for everyone because everyone is different. Those who have never been in an abusive relationship wonder why a woman would stay with a man who beats her, or yells at her, or treats her like dirt. In some situations the woman really believes what she has been told by her abuser, that she is worthless, ugly, stupid, could never find another man, etc. However, in most situations the fact that there are children involved, that the abused wife often has no marketable job skills and the husband has control of the finances makes leaving the jerk a choice not without risks and consequences. There is the risk that attempting to leave would trigger even more violence and there is the risk that successfully leaving would put the abused wife in a situation where she was worse off financially than she was with her violent husband. So when is the tipping point? How bad does it have to get before a woman leaves or in extreme circumstances, shoots the bastard? It cannot be decided from the outside, there is no objective standard for when 'enough is enough". It is the perceived point of no return that determines when action will be taken to change the situation. Outside factors such as family or community support, resources, job skills, the age of the children, or self-esteem all figure into how much weight needs to be on each side of the see-saw. 

Back in the late seventies the concept of a religious cult entered the common vocabulary with the People's Temple tragedy in Guyana. Forty years later there is still debate and disagreement over what constitutes a cult and just why they're a bad thing. One of the recurring themes of cult involvement and cult recovery is the concept of brainwashing. The term brainwashing originated during the Korean War where Chinese interrogators allegedly turned U.S. soldiers they had captured. Brainwashing, as it applies to so-called cults, refers to a person's religious beliefs changing so drastically that the person's free will must have been subverted somehow. Part of the reason that brainwashing is used as an explanation of not only why a person's beliefs suddenly do a U-turn, but also why abusive, controlling behavior is tolerated is that no one wants to admit that they willingly and voluntarily subjected themselves to treatment that no reasonable person would supposedly tolerate. Those who have no similar experience are sure that they themselves would never had "put up with that crap" and would have exited the situation quickly. Certainly from the vantage point of hindsight it appears that way. But what outsiders do not realize is that the "frog in the frying pan" effect is in operation. It is certain that the members of the People's Temple were not asked upon their first contact with Jim Jones to swallow poisoned Kool-Aid, but the dependency upon Jones was built step by step.

Any religion requires some cognitive dissonance, some denial of objective reality. You are asked to believe things that you can't see and interpret ordinary events in supernatural ways. Where cults differ as they they use this parallel reality to control people's lives to some extent, to exert power via faith, outside accepted societal norms. Most groups who are labeled cults base some of their appeal on differentiating themselves from mainstream religion in some fashion, whether it is purity of behavior or doctrinal uniqueness, they have to start off by convincing their potential followers that there is something wrong with contemporary society, which usually includes mainstream religion. Whether by unveiling "secret knowledge" or by helping converts overcome drug addiction, poverty or ill health, the cult leaders set themselves up as being more trustworthy than the neophyte's previous authority figures. Little by little the leader is made more dependable while religion and society are portrayed as less until the leader no longer has to demonstrate their worthiness, their rightness it is simply accepted as a given. Once that happens, the newbie is hooked. The "benefits", whether it be freedom from addictions, prosperity or access to hidden wisdom, are seen as valuable and worth keeping, losing these so-called benefits is something to be avoided at all costs. Drawbacks, whether they be intrusiveness and control, abusive behavior, or moving to Guyana are seen as a reasonable price to pay for the "benefits" derived from membership in the group. Even when the negatives become heavy-handed and overwhelming, giving up the benefits becomes scary and veteran cult members remain out of fear of the alternatives, just like an abused woman. It is only when that internal tipping point is reached that a cult member can freely walk away. 

Drug use is another area where those who have never done drugs cannot understand the appeal and see only the devastation that addiction wreaks. Why do people do drugs? Because it makes them feel good. It is difficult to convince someone that something bad will happen in the future, when something good is happening now. Especially when most people are very good at denying that bad things can happen to them. We're all immortal, right? In addition to the benefits versus drawbacks that you have in the other examples, with drugs you also have the aspect of the physical addiction, which adds some additional weight to not stopping. 

What ties into all of this is free will. Sure, we all have free will to walk out of a bad relationship, leave that abusive cult or quit that job that is requiring more and more and giving less and less, but how close to that tipping point are you? Your free will is somewhat constrained if leaving a bad situation puts you in a worse situation. Several years ago I had a part-time job that I really didn't like. It interfered with my sleep, restricted my flexibility at my main job, was hard on my vehicle and was an overall pain-in-the-butt! However, at the time I needed the extra income to make ends meet. As time went on the job got worse and worse, but since I still needed the income, I stayed on. Eventually a change in my financial situation took away my absolute need for that extra income, and with the weight on the two sides of the seesaw thus redistributed, I had now reached my tipping point and quit. I can envision a situation where the work environment got bad enough that I would have quit while still needing the income, or staying on even though I didn't need the money because things hadn't gotten bad, but I had reached that imbalance, that tipping point, where the negatives had finally outweighed the positives.

Do you know where your tipping point is?