Beware the kindness warrior
We reveal a lot about ourselves via social media, and not all of it is from a conscious place. Our likes and dislikes, our political leanings, our joys and sorrows.
We call ourselves a lot of things, often rushing to label ourselves in ways that are easily understood by our broader culture. They’re shortcuts that attempt to convey our complexities, yet usually fail at this task.
Read between the lines and there’s usually a lot more going on.
Psychologically, self-descriptors are usually aspirational at best and, in keeping with Jung’s basic concept of the Shadow, usually reflect to some degree a denial of aspects of ourselves that we may find uncomfortable (racist, lustful, or envious thoughts, for example).
An individual who describes themselves as a “kindness warrior”, for instance, is really only describing how they would wish to be seen, despite overt evidence to the contrary usually found elsewhere in their timeline.
There is irony here, as is sometimes the case when the shadow is projected.
A desire to announce one’s attributes in this way is, in modern parlance, “virtue signalling”.
This dynamic - unconscious, but endlessly active - usually reveals an unaddressed fear of being excluded from an ostensibly powerful authority: a group, movement, or individual.
We’ve witnessed many examples of this in recent years: “black lives matter”, “the Great Replacement”, “trans women are women”, “make America great again”, “I’ve been vaccinated”.
All of these affectations exist at the anxious fringes of our culture, their proclamations supposedly serving as an inoculation against the risk of being shunned or shamed.
Ironically, in censoring our more nuanced thoughts in this way, we deny ourselves a coherent, individualistic voice.
The shadow will often look like the very thing the individual is attempting to fight, but the individual will not recognise this.
So, naturally, any inevitable hypocrisy that presents in the individual’s behaviour is not consciously considered as valid by the individual.
Their posts may look like religious zeal because they are - a common dynamic in any extremist or polarised thinking, regardless of political angle.
Any slogan or simplistic “solution” proposed to a problem signalled on social media is usually based solely on an over-identification with what is in reality a deeply complex issue.
In revealing ourselves this way, we also reveal a pronounced anxiety around truly comprehending the issue, and an unconscious fear of being regarded as “not worthy” if we fail in this task.
We want others to know we “get it”, and therefore fit in. Life, to those who post such things, is black and white, power and weakness, oppression and freedom, triumph and adversity. An existence replete with false binaries. It is therefore a foreclosure of common sense, or of any cogent appreciation of nuance.
It is also constitutes a loud signal of our own intellectual shortcomings. A well-positioned hashtag is never a substitute for rigorous self-work. This includes owning our “bad bits”.
I liken it to a 10-year-old barking orders in the playground: a somewhat narcissistic desperation to be seen as “in control” and “masterful”. This ultimately means we’re getting in her own way and, at the risk of sounding trite, not seeing the wood for the trees.
So, be careful when dealing with “kindness warriors”, or even self-described “activists”.
Our actions determine our identity, not our words, and those who wish to be seen as something specific are usually clumsily attempting to compensate for a deep, troubling sense that they are anything but.