HYPOTHESIS: THE ORIGINS OF THE SJW MOVEMENT AND HOW IT GOT SO OUT OF CONTROL

Just some observations on how I think the SJW movement came about and what is still driving it. This is mostly speculation so if you have anything to add or if I've made any logical fallacies, please let me know.

ORIGINS

I'd wager that many SJWs (and frankly, most people) didn't grow up in stable, emotionally healthy households. Some were latch key kids with the TV as a babysitter because both parents worked. Some grew up with single mothers or fathers who also didn't have adequate time for them or the emotional resources to properly care for them because they were struggling to make ends meet and too stressed to cope with the chaos of raising a child. Some had abusive parents. Some had parents who gave them things instead of love - if they didn't have the time or the ability to be a proper parent, they thought they could buy their child's love and everything would be right.

[article.sciencepublishinggroup.com]

[ncbi.nlm.nih.gov]

Essentially, many people in the millennial generation in particular (but this was also the case with Gen X, to some extent) were not given the proper care a young child needs to develop healthy attachment patterns and emotional stability. They never felt like they belonged anywhere, not at home, not at school, etc. They were just a number, a name in a file no one had time to read. Crowded schools and daycare facilities and overwhelmed teachers and aides couldn't properly manage individuals with emotional problems either and so children were punished in ineffective ways or neglected in these environments as well.

[elle.com]

In order to combat this issue, children were told they were special and they received participation trophies. To maintain funding, grades were curved. The schools struggled to make up for what parents couldn't do for their children and they often failed.

[theatlantic.com]
[nea.org]

The therapy of the day mostly consisted of diagnosing children with ADHD and giving them Ritalin or other stimulants and/or antidepressants or antipsychotics. Psychiatrists, motivated at least partially by the profit-driven pharmaceutical industry, handed them out liberally.

[nytimes.com]

What may have been otherwise supportive parents rarely had or, for various reasons, made the time to actually sit with the child and figure out why they were having emotional problems and work to deal with them in a healthy way. The stress of both parents working often put a strain on marriages, and as a result, many already emotionally neglected children had to cope with turbulent divorces.

[psychologytoday.com]

FAST FORWARD TO TODAY

People who grew up in unstable households with a lack of adequate, healthy emotional support and development may go to political and protest events with the best of intentions, truly wanting to make a difference because they "know the struggle," they know what it feels like to be marginalized, excluded, neglected, and/or treated inhumanely (like a number), and then they (sometimes for the first time in their lives) feel like they've met people "on their level." They've met their "tribe" and formed their "squads" - something they likely never had before.

Put a large number of emotionally unstable people together and things can quickly spiral out of control. People begin exhibiting extreme behavior and levels of emotion, even violence, not just on an individual level but on a group level as well, because what else would happen? Group think gone out of control.

"The Lucifer Effect" by Philip Zimbardo - book
[www]. youtube.com/watch?v=9xpsVlY3QQc - lecture
(embedding this video totally screwed up the formatting so I had to break up the link)

Enter safe spaces - which quickly become echo chambers without adequately unbiased and properly trained professionals to help people deal with the emotional problems presenting in these safe spaces, and the problem continues to snowball.

[harvardpolitics.com]
[theguardian.com]
[web.mit.edu]

ENTER THE MEDIA (BOTH MASS AND SOCIAL)

The mainstream media, advertisers, and social media outlets, all profit-driven entities, find that stirring the pot generates a lot of revenue. The bread-and-circuses, modern equivalent of gladitorial fights between SJWs and their opponents draw huge crowds - and huge profits.

[psychologytoday.com]

People start to catch on, and through social media, people can now discuss how out of control, nonsensical, and irrational this has all become - but many of us are still baited by this "bloodlust" and the flame wars and violence continue, and those that aren't participating in the "war" are sitting with their popcorn enjoying the show or are afraid to speak out as they don't want to become another casualty in the social justice war due to fear that saying the wrong thing may destroy their reputation and ability to make ends meet.

The mass media, advertisers, and social media entities see people are starting to wake up, growing tired of cable TV and other traditional and more controlled media platforms, being told what do do and how to think and what to buy, etc., so what do they do? Bring down the ban hammer, demonetize, whatever it takes to desperately try to increase ad revenue and increase their profits. The advertisers need social media, and the mass and social media need the advertisers, so they work together to disallow certain types of "controversial" opinions, even if those opinions are sane and rational because, well, sane rationality doesn't bring in the dough. It's not sensational.

"If it bleeds, it leads."

So, social media outlets design their platforms to activate a dopamine response, to keep people hooked, to shorten attention spans, to make people emotionally reactive, and emotionally reactionary people with short attention spans have a hard time focusing long enough to read a book, fact-check, or have a thoughtful, civil discussion.

[sitn.hms.harvard.edu]

And things like this happen:
[forbes.com]

WHERE DO WE GO NEXT?

This is obviously an extremely complex issue. We're all using technology that we don't fully understand the psychological effects of and the social media giants have the edge on that research and are using it to manipulate us.

Advertisers know more about our brains than we do.

The problem is so pervasive that it has now affected nearly all aspects of our lives.

I think that it starts with us all doing our best to understand how our minds/brains work and helping to educate others in this regard. The more we know about how our minds work, and the more we know about how we are manipulated, the easier it will become for us to resist this manipulation, and we need to treat each other with adequate respect, even the people we don't agree with.

I'd think there is hope, even though this issue seems so insurmountably complex and deeply-rooted. This site and the IDW and its leaders and member give me hope, but we've got to keep our wits about us, because what we're going up against is, more than anything, ourselves, and facing ourselves honestly is probably the hardest thing we will ever do.

What are your thoughts on all this?