This author sounds as if she might have a book a few of you might find interesting and helpful. Here is an excerpt:
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One of the reasons moral injuries are so personal is that they denigrate the moral standing of the victim while simultaneously elevating the moral standing of the perpetrator. We don’t just suffer but we have to witness the elevation of the person who hurt us because they hurt us. When Beth’s friend shamed her, her friend not only excluded her from a social activity; she did it (consciously or not) to demonstrate her moral superiority, her solidarity with the pure and inviolate.
Think of all the ways we have denigrated each other over the last three years, how in big and little ways we diminished each other in order to aggrandize ourselves: by failing to listen, by shunning and shaming, by blaming and casting out, by calling a loved one “crazy,” “fringe” or “conspiratorial.”
At the end of her story, Beth elaborates on the hurt she felt that is a sign of her moral injury:
It wasn’t the loss of a job, it was that our colleagues turned their backs. It wasn’t my son being excluded from soccer, it was my sister insisting it was justified, and the familiar face who demanded medical information at the door of the local sports centre. It wasn’t a lone politician calling names, it was our institutions and neighbours parroting the same, dehumanizing segments of the population. And, quite frankly, it was the people that support and continue to support those who would strip us of our humanity in divisive rhetoric. It was Christmas, weddings, family members, classmates, and communities. The things closest to our humanity. These things are still raw, the things we mourn to this day–the knowledge that when the cards were down, our institutions, our colleagues, and our friends would abandon reason and principle and the heart of human connection and cast us aside directly.
https://brownstone.org/articles/hope-and-moral-repair/
Thank you for your link to the Brownstone article. The excerpts from Julie Ponesse’s book on hope and moral repair made me tear up in a couple of places. After all this time, I’d have told anyone who asked that I’m not suffering any long-term effects from the covid abuses/excesses we were subjected to by our governments, family, friends, bosses, co-workers, shop clerks, and complete strangers. My reaction to the Brownstone article says otherwise. I’m coming around to the realization that we never really get over the damage caused by being dehumanized, even temporarily. I didn’t process it until now, but the last 5 years have changed me in some of the same ways that were described in the Brownstone article. I’m sure I’m not alone here.
“These things are still raw, the things we mourn to this day–the knowledge that when the cards were down, our institutions, our colleagues, and our friends would abandon reason and principle and the heart of human connection and cast us aside directly.”
Lump in throat. How do you ever feel the same about them after that?
You will always be waiting for them to do it again — and protecting yourself a little.
{{sigh}}
Sin stinks. It just does.
Think of all the ways we have denigrated each other over the last three years, how in big and little ways we diminished each other in order to aggrandize ourselves: by failing to listen, by shunning and shaming, by blaming and casting out, by calling a loved one “crazy,” “fringe” or “conspiratorial.”