Thinking about trauma, PTSD, that sort of thing (but of something lesser too, under the threshold of what’d qualify).
I’m thinking that ego-normal has about it much glad-it’s-not-me. They’re mechanisms in the mind, that have various expressions in every-day-life. Sometimes it’s very direct, something like ‘glad it’s not me’, or someone might say (of their lot in life) there’s always ‘someone worse off’. Then there are feelings of glad-it’s-not-me, variously muted, or dissembled.
Stories of misfortune and intrigues about abound, on the news, and local gossip.
Consideration of such things that buoy people is complex territory, very complex, and interesting in the way that it is very near to all. It’s a universal probably, across the species.
(i’ll leap a bit now)
This attribute of ego-normal is a part of social (or group) behavior controls/influences, there are repressive aspects about it that are an expression of the inhibitory aspects of minds.
(now i’ll leap further)
Consider at least some PTSD to be a failure of glad-it’s-not-me. A catastrophic or devastating exhaustion perhaps of the deflections ego-normal would typically provide.
Up a scale, glad-it’s-not-me probably features in ideology, part of behavioral influences in that larger territory.
Given that there appears to be in the background of (about) every-day behavior controls the capacity to deal casual traumas, I can’t imagine some truths about it seeing the light of day. I think many egos are built on the deflections ego-normal provides, variously reinforced.
I watched the 7:30 Report this evening, some of which was about returned soldiers.
I’m thinking the fuckers in Canberra ought loosen the purse strings a bit (and more) and start watching their (the soldiers) backs.