Escalation Theory: Compliance, Violence, and Overachievement In Society | Conrad Bastable
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Escalation Theory: Compliance, Violence, and Overachievement In Society | Conrad Bastable
Philip Rieff’s The Triumph of the Therapeutic (1966) theorizes how modern societies undergo cultural transformation through moments of “engineered symbolic release”—structured breaks from normative social controls that absorb disruptive impulses rather than confront them. Every culture, Rieff argues, functions by organizing moral demands into... See more
Eileen Isagon Skyers • Eileen Isagon Skyers: From Speculation to Symbolic Release
Troublemakers are impulsive: they seize on sudden opportunities to steal or vandalize, and lash out at people who cross them, heedless of the long-term consequences.35 These temptations can be counteracted with therapies that teach strategies of self-control. Troublemakers also have narcissistic and sociopathic thought patterns, such as that they
... See moreSteven Pinker • Enlightenment Now
When people are raised in a community that they cannot easily escape, they do what our ancestors have done for millions of years: They learn how to manage relationships, and how to manage themselves and their emotions in order to keep those precious relationships going.