IF THE EVIL LEFT US, HOW WE’D CREATE A NEW ONE

Vladimir Goussakovski, PTSTA

There is a popular story that ones upon a time God wanted to reward one of his devoted men. God told this man: “I’ll give you everything you’d ask for. But at the same I’ll give twice as much to your neighbour. If you ask for a cow, I’ll give two cows to your neighbour as well. If you ask for a house, I’ll give two houses to him.” The man replied: “My God, take one of my eyes out!”

It sounds that very often people’s sense of OK-ness depends not of the level of their well-being but rather in contrast with over people around them. Old people in Russia remember clearly Soviet times when they actually lived extremely poor, endured many hardships, but felt quite OK, because everyone around lived at the same conditions. Just the main thing for the government was to ensure that people couldn’t travel abroad to have nothing to compare. And now the same people living in a fact in better conditions feel miserable, angry, and envious while seeing how wealthy people called “New Russians” live.

I propose to explore the idea that in a closed group or society the total amount of people’s OK-ness is somehow fixed. So, if someone starts to feel better, others could feel worse. And vice versa. The metaphor for it could be a farmer’s pond with definite amount of water. If the farmer starts to deepen this pond from one side or take water for his plants, water from other side of the pond goes away and his fields there will be drained. There is well-known concept of Stroke economy in TA. By analogy I would propose to name the described phenomenon the OK-economy.

There are many evidences that the concept of OK-economy describes real phenomena for individuals, families, social groups, countries, nations, religions, etc. It is known in physiology that a human organism in difficult physical conditions might mobilize its inner resources and some organic deceases could disappear.

Speaking about intra-psychic phenomena I can mention TA concepts of injunctions and counter-injunctions. They often restrict natural needs of the Free Child which are considered to be not OK. Especially in early TA there was a clear tendency to claim ego-states containing injunctions and counter-injunctions as being not OK. Just enough to remind the names for these ego-states: Witch Mother, Ogre Father, and Pig Parent.

In the area of interpersonal relations there is a tendency in TA to oppose intimacy to playing Games. Berne wrote about 6 advantages of Games. At the same time it seems that the whole area of Game analysis in TA psychotherapy aimed to make this kind of human interactions not OK for people to stop this behaviour. Sometimes they come to the opposite result and people don’t stop playing games, but continue to play them with feeling of shame. “I still play these games, sorry!” (“Why it’s always happens to me.”) Or “Do you still play this game?” (“… you, son of bitch!”).

One of general ideas in classical conflictology is that group cohesion increases, if the group find an inner or outer enemy. The same phenomenon is described in TA terms by Alan Jacobs in his investigation of autocratic power. Sometimes leaders can artificially create enemies to manipulate people. Old people in Russia still keep memory of Stalin regime. From international politics it’s worth to remember that former USSR and other socialist countries were kept together by confrontation of two world systems. When confrontation has gone these countries fell apart. Nowadays the threat of terrorism makes former enemies to find cooperation. It’s hard to imagine how would the modern world looks like without this threat!

In a wider perspective we shell think it over, if we really increase people’s OK-ness while practicing TA or just redistribute it in the society? It’s an open philosophical question, if we can reduce an amount of evil in the world by our actions? This question actually exceeds boundaries of contemporary TA and the whole psychology and come to the area of religion and spirituality.