Hot take: Stop Saying "Gaslighting" 🕯️
Oct 20, 2022
Despite positive intentions, I am not a fan of the way our culture uses the idea of “gaslighting”; a term which basically means intentionally undermining someone’s grip on reality over time. Here's why:
(1) Some people are genuinely malicious, but the vast majority of the ways we hurt each other are accidental, calling for love.
(2) We need to let trusted people question our assumptions, seek objective truths, and see the limits of our personal points of view. How else will we spot our self-hiding? How else will we relate? Grow?
(3) We don’t need to make others wrong to find more self-trust or hold boundaries!
(4) Let’s save the use of this term for criminal cases of abuse.
We have the right to be wrong. But if we confuse this right with being right, at best we end up in a (green) pluralism and at worst in a (red) world of my way or the highway.
With love, Jordan
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