My spiritual exercises
utorak, 18.07.2017.
What is Shunning?
Many of you, especially those who came to my hometown to pay me a visit, wonder how can someone as val3 be at same time popular, interesting and charming blogger, and yet – nobody in his home town has ever heard of him. If you ask someone in the street, for instance, where I live (if you want to give him a present, or just see him and chat for a while), that’s exactly what they’d tell you. Why is it so? Answer is here. Read it carefully.
Shunning is the act of deliberately avoiding association with, and habitually keeping away from an individual or group. It is a sanction against association often associated with religious groups and other tightly-knit organisations and communities. Targets of shunning can include, but are not limited to apostates, whistleblowers, dissidents, persons classified as: "sinner" or "traitors" and other people who defy or who fail to comply with the standards established by the shunning group(s). [In my case they are local freemasons] Shunning has a long history as a means of organisational influence and control. Extreme forms of shunning and related practices have rendered the general practice controversial in some circles.
Purposes
Shunning can be broken down into behaviours and practices that seek to accomplish either or both of two primary goals.
1.To modify the behaviour of a member. This approach seeks to influence, encourage, or coerce normative behaviours from members. It may, conversely, seek to dissuade, provide disincentives for, or to compel avoidance of certain behaviours. In this context shunning may include disassociation from the member by other members of the community who are in good standing. It may also include more antagonistic psychological behaviours (described below). This approach may be seen as either corrective or punitive (or both) by the group membership or leadership, and may also be intended as a deterrent.
2.To remove or limit the influence of a member (or former member) over other members in a community. This approach may seek to isolate, to discredit, or otherwise dis-empower such a member, often in the context of actions or positions advocated by that member. For groups with clearly defined membership criteria, especially criteria based on key behaviours or ideological precepts, this approach may be seen as limiting damage to the community or its leadership. This is often paired with some form of excommunication.
Some less often practiced variants may seek to:
Remove a specific member from general external influence, so as to provide an ideological or psychological buffer against external views or behaviour. The extent can vary from severing ties to opponents of the group up to and including severing all non-group-affiliated intercourse.
Shunning is usually approved of (if sometimes with regret) by the group engaging in the shunning, and usually highly disapproved-of by the target of the shunning. This certainly results in a polarization of views. Those subject to the practice respond differently, usually depending both on the circumstances of the event, and the nature of the practices being applied. However, more extreme forms of shunning have caused substantial damage to individuals' psychological and relational health. As such, extreme responses to the practice have evolved, primarily around anti-shunning advocacy. Such advocates highlight the detrimental effects of many of the mentioned behaviours, and seek to limit their practice either through pressure or law. Such groups will often also operate supportive organizations or institutions, to help those subjected to shunning to recover from some of the worst effects. These groups will also, sometimes, attack the organizations practicing shunning directly, as a part of their advocacy.
In many civil societies, variants of shunning are practiced either de-facto or de-jure, to coerce or avert behaviours or associations deemed unhealthy. This can include:
• restraining orders or peace bonds (to avoid abusive relationships)
• court injunctions to sever associations (to avoid criminal association or temptation)
• medical or psychological instruction to avoid association (to avoid hazardous relations, i.e. alcoholics being instructed to avoid friendship with non-recovering alcoholics, or asthmatics being medically instructed to keep to smoke-free environs)
These effects are seen as positive by society, though often not by the affected parties.
Effects
Shunning is often used as a pejorative term to describe any organizationally mandated disassociation, and has acquired a connotation of abuse and relational aggression. This is due to the sometimes extreme damage caused by its disruption to normal relationships between individuals, such as friendships and family relations. Disruption of established relationships certainly causes pain, which is at least an unintended consequence of the practices described here, though it may also in many cases be an intended, coercive consequence. This pain, especially when seen as unjustly inflicted, can have secondary general psychological effects on self-worth and self-confidence, trust and trustworthiness, and can, as with other types of trauma, impair psychological function.
Shunning often involves implicit or explicit shame for a member who commits acts seen as wrong by the group or its leadership. Such shame may not be psychologically damaging if the membership is voluntary and the rules of behaviour clear before the person joined. However, if the rules are arbitrary, the group membership seen as essential for personal security, safety, or health, or if the application of the rules are inconsistent, such shame can be highly destructive. This can be especially damaging if perceptions are attacked or controlled, or various tools of psychological pressure applied. Extremes of this cross over the line into psychological torture and can be permanently scarring.
A key detrimental effect of some of the practices associated with shunning relate to their effect on relationships, especially family relationships. At its extremes, the practices may destroy marriages, break up families, and separate children and their parents. The effect of shunning can be very dramatic or even devastating on the shunnee, as it can damage or destroy the shunned member's closest familial, spousal, social, emotional, and economic bonds.
Shunning contains aspects of what is known as relational aggression in psychological literature. When used by church members and member-spouse parents against excommunicant parents it contains elements of what psychologists call parental alienation. Extreme shunning may cause traumas to the shunned (and to their dependents) similar to what is studied in the psychology of torture.
Civil rights implications
Some aspects of shunning may also be seen as being at odds with civil rights or human rights, especially those behaviours that coerce and attack. When a group seeks to have an effect, through such practices, outside its own membership — for instance when a group seeks to cause financial harm through isolation and disassociation — they can come at odds with their surrounding civil society, if such society enshrines rights such as freedom of association, conscience, or belief. Many civil societies, however, do not extend such protections to the internal operations of communities or organizations, so long as an ex-member has the same rights, prerogatives, and power as any other member of the civil society.
Conversely, in cases where a group or religion is state-sanctioned (e. g. in communist states), a key power, or in the majority (Singapore), a shunned former member may face especially severe social, political, and/or financial costs. Some, including researchers of mind control, brainwashing and menticide groups, identify the practice with "cult-like" or totalitarian behaviour.
