> I often see that people who I otherwise respect and recognize as allies and kindred spirits are participating in these rituals of humiliation, harassment, and voyeurism. I don’t think it’s right to gossip over or sensationalize the mental health crises faced by members of our communities.

This paragraph tickles me. Superficially, someone who I respect but for the humiliation, harassment and voyeurism is maybe not someone I would consider myself a kindred spirit with. Particularly once the word harassment starts becoming appropriate. Respecting them or making them an ally of convenience, perhaps.

But communities have a minimum standard of behaviour. People who fall below that standard need to be ostracised, people who meet the standard have to be tolerated. The dynamic requires people with mental health problems to be ostracised with some regularity otherwise the community would collapse. There isn't much of an alternative. Before they are ostracised they need to be subjected to humiliation rituals and a certain level of voyeurism as the community affirms where the social boundaries are. If there are bad actors (which there inevitably are) it may be necessary to harass them.

So I suppose I'm more comfortable with the paragraph than a superficial read of it would suggest, but it contains a delicate sentiment. Especially harassment, which is one of those socially nuclear options that should be used in truly rare and exceptional cases with appropriate concern for the second order effects on behaviour. It is better to just not associate with people who use it with enthusiasm.

> This is a difficult topic to write about. By writing about these specific examples, am I sensationalizing them? Disrespecting the privacy of the people I’m writing about? Participating in the circus myself?

Yeah, absolutely. It is part of the urge to help set the community standard of what behaviour is and isn't acceptable and to decide when various defence mechanisms to protect the community should be used. That impulse is at its core exactly where the voyeurism is coming from. How else will the community come to understand what the otherwise vague boundaries are? People are intensely interested in what the mob will do to them when angered and what the exact boundary line is to trigger that response.

The way to actually fight the circus is to have clear boundaries established beforehand. It isn't ever going to completely tamp down on the phenomenon, but there isn't much spectacle if there is a predictable response to a predictable action. English common law does an excellent job in this regard (not perfect, but as far as I know best of class). Notably it strives to avoid harassment and humiliation as tactics with frequent success.

Fantastic comment, thanks.

In my opinion this is a much greater variable than lions for our fight, flight, fawn response that is used to explain stress.

The explanation is that we are evolved to stress about lions, but there are no lions (in most of our lives) so the stress is irrational and should be ignored or sidestepped.

My theory is that we are more stressed and struggle more with mental health because we, in our modern societies, are part of many more groups. And the rules for inclusion are stricter since every group has to define themselves against all the other groups.

So what really happens is that our bodies react as intended to the available stimulus of all the groups we instinctively want to be part of.

There are just too many groups.

I don't have any solutions, just a theory that helps me navigate my life.