I’m thinking about betrayal these days. Like I could start many journal entries or imaginary facebook posts with : On being betrayed. On observing one who betrays, has betrayed, will betray. Or an imaginary essay entitled: The experience of betrayal: A phenemonology
It feels like these need to be large detailed, fleshy posts filled with deep and impassioned inquiries, as well as dry and detailed analysis. It feels like it could be endless.
I have been betrayed. And I want to do more than survive it. I want to truly understand it. Get in there and really take it apart. Not the act, but the thing itself – what made it what it is. It is Winter. And it is dark. And it feels the right time to ruminate, reflect. To see the way the shadows form shapes.
I have so many questions. Yes, how and why DO people betray others? What constitutes betrayal actually? What are the best ways to handle it? Am I capable of betraying others? When? Why? How does the culture we live in support or reinforce certain acts of betrayal? What is the opposite of betrayal?
I also find that reactions from others to the acts of betrayal tend to generate even more questions for me.
Some people say, ‘you gotta forget and move on’. Like the Republicans said to the Democrats when they insisted that the Gore Vs. Bush election decision was a fraud and a travesty of justice.
Is there a difference that matters between an individual act of betrayal between two individuals and a crime that we require people to report? A violation of policy that we ask politicians to sanction? A corporate malfeasance that we demand consequences for?
Is there really such a thing as an individual act of betrayal? Or, by its nature, do acts of betrayal require the complicity of others? What if an act of betrayal is actually both? A violation of an individual person’s trust? And a complicit act of betrayal with an institution?
If I seek ‘justice’ for an act of betrayal, am I a vindictive embittered person? Or am I a ‘whistle-blower’? What is justice anyway? Why should we expect betrayals not to happen to us?
I want to work through these questions by documenting a kind of phenemonology of betrayal – because I believe indeed that understanding the experience of betrayal and all of its permutations will help me ‘move on’. But I also believe it just might help in general.
I sense that part of the significant pain experienced in betrayal has to do with the experience of ripping or tearing apart a fabric of faith and trust in human beings.
Perhaps the experience of this rip generates a doubly-magnified concern for truth and for what is right. For what is the opposite of betrayal.
And maybe writing about this struggle is an effort to re-weave a fabric of truth that restores some kind of faith.
