A FRIEND recently introduced me to a new term for a disorder that seems to be spreading in many places these days. At first I thought it was just a jargon coined by some people to describe a highly isolated problem.
But then I bumped into it in some of the articles that I have been reading lately, and so I googled it in the internet to know more about it. And, voila!, I discovered it is now a well-documented phenomenon occurring in many organizations, not only corporations, but also religious groups and dioceses.
It can affect not only the ordinary, common people in the street, but also, and with even a greater vulnerability due to a dangerous type of sensitiveness, the highly educated, the artistically endowed, and even the clergy.
This is not anymore about simple cases of disobedience, often selective and isolated, but a more or less permanent and pervasive attitude that affects people and organizations gravely. It can poison people’s minds and hearts, and the worst cut is that they would not seem to be aware of it.
It’s about the passive-aggressive disorder. This is how some web pages describe or define it:
- “It’s a long-term condition in which a person seems to actively comply with the desires and needs of others, but actually passively resists them. In the process, the person becomes increasingly hostile and angry.”
In other words, people with this disorder just don’t resist the orders or suggestions given to them. They can come to the point of attacking the person or the name of those giving these orders and suggestions, by going into gossiping, detraction and crude slander, hate campaigns, treacheries, etc.
The web pages continue:
- “It can manifest itself as learned helplessness, procrastination, stubbornness, resentment, sullenness, or deliberate failure to accomplish requested tasks for which one is responsible. It’s a defense mechanism and more often than not only partly conscious.”
- “Some common symptoms are: acting sullen, avoiding responsibility by claiming forgetfulness, being inefficient on purpose, blaming others, complaining, feeling resentment, having fear of authority, having unexpressed anger or hostility, procrastinating, resisting other people’s suggestions, etc.”
More things were said, but for now these are enough. I’ve actually seen or at least heard of these cases on different occasions. It’s a real problem that needs to be attended to. There can be a strong psychological aspect in this disorder, and I leave the experts and pertinent professionals to handle it.
But definitely there is also a clear spiritual and moral basis for it. And this is what we should tackle first, before anything else. At first glance, we can see that it must be caused by lack of faith and trust in God with the corresponding suffocating self-absorption that makes one prone to this disorder.
We need to reiterate, in season and out of season, by means both gentle and strong, soft and hard, that it is only when we get fully and stably engaged with God that we avoid this stupid anomaly that’s afflicting many people now.
When we are not anchored on God, we just float and drift anywhere, and very much at the mercy of both our internal weaknesses and deficiencies and the many external factors—the tricks and traps in our public life—that just lead us nowhere but to confusion.
When we don’t pray, when we don’t manage to see the designs of God for us and for the world, then obviously we are prone to make our own fantastic reality, quite detached from the objective one God has meant for us.
When we don’t train our heart to be attached to God, when we just allow our senses to wander about, unguided by faith, hope and charity, and pretty much left to their own devices, what can we expect?
The real problem is that many people nowadays are almost completely bereft of spiritual energies—that is, they are so dominated by the material, carnal and earthly forces of our life—that they find it almost impossible to pray, to do spiritual exercises and get a glimpse of a another richer and supernatural world.
We need to develop certain practices and habits that would keep us within the orbit proper to us. Regular prayer is one of them. Another would be a set of practices that build and sustain our spirit of sacrifice, so necessary in this life.
Then a continuing plan of formation, integral and universal…
No comments:
Post a Comment