Dealing with Hard and Weak from Gentle and Strong

December 21, 2022 Cognitive Insights No Comments

Strong-gentle people may be extra challenged by hard-weak ones. It’s good to understand causes and consequences beforehand.

Misinterpretations may make the dealing pretty challenging.

A hard-weak person is defensive by nature. His whole environment and worldview are tainted in a hard-weak fashion ― therefore, very anxiety-provoking in many ways.

Since he projects hardness-weakness, he gets hardness-weakness in return, and becomes more so in a self-perpetuating pattern. Moreover, he may seek out hard-weak acquaintances who, for instance, see enemies in the same directions ― or even create their enemies.

This leads to much anxiety and aggression, frequently outside of conscious awareness. Does this look challenging? Indeed, it does, and it is.

Being afraid of the ‘weakness’

A hard-weak person can easily misunderstand gentleness for weakness and be very scared of this so-interpreted weakness as dangerous, especially in situations where some ‘enemy’ is at bay. For instance, a virus, another part of the world, or even ‘an acquaintance who will not understand.’

Because the strong-gentle person isn’t afraid to show gentleness, he may offer much of it. This gets interpreted by the hard-weak person as a hazardous amount of weakness in the face of the enemy.

Being hurt by the ‘hardness’

A hard-weak person interprets any showing of strength as hardness, to which he gets into defense.

Because the strong-gentle person isn’t weary of showing strength, he may quickly appear aggressive to the hard-weak person who responds with counter-aggression.

An example: responsibility versus guilt

Sadly, this is a frequent and ubiquitous example.

Guilt (or its parallel in shame) is mainly hard-weak. Without the proper insight into responsibility, guilt may also be necessary to keep society going.

However, with an exemplary implementation of responsibility, guilt may be much less necessary, if at all. This will certainly not work without a clear choice for a strong-gentle attitude ― pretty challenging and with immense implications. Presently, we can only dream about making small steps in this direction.

Sadly, as said, but even small steps can be put on the path toward an excellent future.

Keeping a straight line

Due to hard-weak assaults, a strong-gentle person might succumb to becoming less so or even to growing some hardness-weakness. Of course, that would be a pity.

It’s preferable to keep a straight line in strongness-gentleness, even when this becomes increasingly challenging. One may see the challenge as an opportunity to learn and grow.

I/we dream of strong-gentle people meeting each other and helping each other in their mutual growth.

I hope someday you’ll join us.