What is “trauma”?
Really, what is this emotional catastrophe forcing college students to hide in safe places, hug therapy dogs, and sit outdoors in the middle of a campus holding hands for group cry-ins?
Frankly, this kind of “trauma” is how our educational leaders have co-opted real human tragedies into what amounts to self-serving sniveling. It’s now a tool to intimidate and dismiss an opposing opinion. It’s disgusting. Later I will explain how it’s done.
HOWEVER, Real trauma exists.
It exists in the universe of human tragedy, in the world of real life that somehow institutions of higher learning have managed to insulate themselves from. Real emotional trauma can happen, for example, if:
You lose your legs to a roadside bomb.
You watch your friends slaughtered by gunmen in a French nightclub.
You are beaten or raped multiple times or maybe just once.
Your home is demolished in a tornado.
Your spouse and daughter are run over by a semi truck plowing through a crowd celebrating the new year.
The causes of real trauma include abuse, neglect, loss, domestic violence, witnessing domestic violence, terrorism, disasters. People experience injury, death, loss, destruction, and emotional devastation.
Some people do not have the resilience to recover from real trauma, and as a result display what is known as the “Cognitive Triad of Trauma.” Here is what a traumatized person feels:
- The world is unsafe. Harm can come from any place. People cannot be trusted. Nothing is predictable.
- I am incompetent. I make bad decisions. My reactions are always wrong. Life is too much to handle.
- The future is hopeless. Things will never be the same. What’s the point of life?
Survivors of real trauma often feel ashamed of their stress reactions, which further hampers their ability to predict it or to protect their own safety and that of others.
This is why survivors of real trauma benefit from safe spaces and therapy.
Horribly, left-leaning institutions have appropriated trauma interventions for students merely confronted with opposing points of view. Opposition points of view have been conflated to acts of physical violence. This is no fluke. It shows how far the advance against open exchange of ideas has has come.
Consider this appropriation of “trauma” like a chess move in a high-stakes game of opinion control. The move is typical of people attempting to manipulate others. And it plays out like this:
We hate bullies because bullies hurt people, so let’s end bullying. People can say hurtful things, and hurting people is bullying. So let’s stop people from saying hurtful things because they are bullies.
If you say something I disagree with, I feel frustrated and that causes me stress. It hurts. Therefore, you are bully and I am the victim of your violence.
Since the frustration I feel with your disagreement hurts me and stresses me, it is the same as physical violence. So your opinion is bullying and violence and must be stopped.
And finally, we may need to pass some laws to stop you from your violence. Society needs to be protected against your bullying.
Times have changed. We have to think of the greater good, and of those who might be offended and hurt by the violence of your opinion. We are not so sure about the appropriateness of that first amendment thing.
Checkmate.
With the “traumatizing” of college students, educational leaders of the left have revealed they are not scholars, but rabid ideologues intent on creating every obstacles possible to the open exchange of ideas and freedom of debate.
These ideologues have further revealed that American higher education is in desperate need of a great Renaissance.