Why do we hear so much ranting and raving over the airways? Why is it so easy for us to get all hot and bothered by what someone else is doing? How come we just can't get off of certain subjects?It's pretty simply, really. We dwell on what others are doing so we don't have time to think about what we're doing ourselves.
It's called projection, in psychological terms, and it happens all the time. It starts with denial, and ends in blame. We take some part of ourselves we don't like--or are ashamed of, or don't want to think about, or can't bring ourselves to deal with--and project it out onto another person, where we can see it. Imagine a movie projector. You would be the projector whirring in that little room up in the back of the theater, and the other person would be the big screen down in front. You're creating the image, the image is actually coming from you, but the other person is the only place where you can see the image. Thus we can develop a rich and satisfying hatred for the other person while remaining steadfastly in love with ourselves and not having to change a thing personally. "I don't have a bad temper. What are you talking about, you asshole? You have a terrible temper!!"
This cycle, denial--projection--blame, is a basic psychological mechanism. It's a description of what went on at your dinner table last night. It's a description of what we each do all day long every day unless we're making a sincere effort not to do so, and probably a good 78.87% of the time even then.
There's no getting around the fact that humans are now using their intelligence to project whatever they don't like about themselves onto other people, rather than using their intelligence to correct whatever it is about themselves they don't like. Shoot--we're taught to project whatever we don't like about ourselves onto others. Children hear their parents and teachers and leaders do it every day. Hang out in any schoolyard, anywhere in the world, for one whole recess period, and count how many times one kid blames another kid for what he or she just did.
Where do they learn that?
