This is meant to be a complement to the piece on feedback. An interpersonal side to the sociopolitical and macro side.
One thing I've noticed - at least provincially, though the state of national discourse does seem to confirm parts of this observation - is that there is a growing resistance in the avenues of communication. Or, as a medium, the field of communication has become less conductive in places; communicative signals - or feedback - are less likely to pass through, and communication discharge increases where it can pass.
Part of this is due to cycles of fear and trauma. The anticipation of hostility or pain leads to avoidance, procrastination, aggression, delayed communication, and even severed communication.
Of course the energy has to go somewhere, so it builds up, and discharges more violently where it is finally freed. That loss in feedback quality leads to both an increase in discharge and force from the outgoing, and an insulation and direction of force inward for the ingoing, and both of these dynamics mutually reinforce each other.
The outgoing are more anxious to assert themselves due to the loss of signals, and the ingoing are inclined to withdraw due to a basic distrust of signals and signaling.
As fear and hostility becomes a more regular occurrence, one is more likely to anticipate such interactions and act on those anticipations, revising one's global protocols for dealing with others, which results in all sorts of false positives and negatives.
In the public sphere, constant suspicious glances from behind veils becomes a regular currency. There is an atmosphere of distrust and contrivance. There is a background ambiance of paranoia. Futher, there is a sort of hoarding of thought, an "I can do it"attitude in which one's private thoughts take on an ever-greater significance as harbingers of objective truth.
The healing process consists of a mixture of clear communication, restoration of trust, which is often based on faith, a willingness to absorb and redirect bad energy, a drive to suppress fear and address trauma inwards, and a redirection of the drives away from the self and outward.
