Stalking: The Abuse of Secrets and the Secrets of Abuse
Secrets, We all have them.
So, what is a secret anyway?
This is what was found on www.dictionary.com
adjective
1. done, made, or conducted without the knowledge of others:
secret negotiations.
2. kept from the knowledge of any but the initiated or privileged:
a secret password.
3. faithful or cautious in keeping confidential matters confidential; close-mouthed; reticent.
The obvious implication is keeping information from one or more people for whatever reason… because if they knew then we (meaning the people with the secrets, assuming they are the only one who know) would not be able to do what we are really intending to do… At least not secretly.
The fear… the unknown reaction of others if they knew.
There’s many shades of grey with ethics around secrets. Why is something is secret? There’s almost always a hidden motivation involved with secrets, even if it’s positive(and that can be argued as well, who is judging? Why and what is the context?).
Generally, to bring a secret out into the open, you don’t want it (meaning whatever the information, desired change, thing etc.) to have the stink of secret because then it means that people are being manipulated from the start and there is no sincerity in what is happening.
So, you either do want someone to know, what you want them to know, in a certain way or presented in a certain way or, you don’t want someone to know also for the same reasons. In any event sometimes the secret is very ordinary information when you pull back the shroud of secrecy… it’s regular stuff.
Chances are you going to know if you ever stumble across something that’s really unusual, important or a big secret.
So, when you find that colony of aliens in a field you’ll know it probably needs to be a secret.
From the point of everyday people with everyday lives secrets have more to do with being a means to an end then the end themselves.
In the case of stalking, a lot more becomes a secret specifically because of the motivations of the stalker to be able to be abusive secretly. Half of the thrill at least in the early phases of stalking is maintaining the pretense to make sure people don’t know what you’re really doing.
As time goes on and as the stalker learns they can get away with more then it is easier for them to do more.
But still there’s always going to be some things that they want to keep secret;
- their identity
- details of what they’re doing
- how they’re doing it specific processes (like magnets as a key bump tool)
- the technology they use and how they use it
So, with secrets we all have some. But the reason they may be a secret is the potential lack of understanding if they were exposed. No one can truly see 100% from another’s point of view. We do have to trust even a little that the experience of others is genuine.
Stalkers are not really doing that, at least not with their targets.
Understanding the Unspoken
I’ve mentioned the unspoken before and a few other articles when it comes to gossiping and the role of gossip, deconstructing relationships, and the role that the unspoken assumptions that we all have and we all need to get through the day.
When it comes to secrets the unspoken gets a little bit interesting.
Not only do you have all of the regular unspoken stuff at being able to assume an innuendo and figure things out and glean information from those communications, somewhere in there you get to have more serious secrets of crimes you’re committing or real intent or something more serious.
Maybe it’s just the intent maybe it’s just the intent to harm someone the real intent that you have behind doing the cumulative small choices that you chosen.
Co-opting the Unspoken for a Different Agenda
Only when you start to deal with manipulators at a certain level do you start to see the real badness involved… always with some room for plausible deniability because that is what this is all about right?
There’s a bit of numbing when it comes to dealing with manipulators because you have to let a lot of the little stuff go to survive, let alone make the bigger changes in your life to remove them.
The issue with co-opting the unspoken is diretly connected to the ‘getting away with it factor’. If manipulators get away with the small stuff they have no problem doing the big stuff.
An example of this in action is the transition from just stalking creeping around the outside of someone’s house on a regular basis to actually breaking and entering, stealing, damaging and vandalizing property.
Letting Others do the Work for You
Now this is another secret so to speak of the unspoken and more assumptive side of manipulations.
When you’re in the process of manipulating you can motivate people emotionally to do your work for you. It’s human nature to want to help and come forward, it’s very easy to feign the need for help just to get other people to do things for you.
Educating others to the true nature of your experiences and reality is hard work. Even with clear articulate explanations, your audience may not understand nor agree with or believe you.
Even so, this type of passive aggressive manipulation is a very special brand of emotional laziness.
Fighting the Ensuing Battles Resulting from the Misunderstandings
Yeah this is where the real manipulation often happens. This is also where most people are seen at their most human. This space is where everyone ends up being somewhat complicit on the collective level of permitting some people to be very manipulative and very negative, thinking it was either no big deal or that the behavior is something else altogether.
Everyone does this on some level or another.
While it’s impossible to know everything about everything all the time, especially when dealing with the people in front of you. Trust, whether we want to or not is a part of life. Therefore, being duped is also a part of life.
So, I know this tendency is out of lack of awareness but this is just enough to open the door for other, worse things to happen, at least until they are flushed out and seen for what they are instead of what they are masquerading as.
When things go wrong and they always will at some point when secrets are involved, it’s very easy for the person perpetuating the manipulations (or keeping the secrets) to disagree, pick a fight, walk out and take no responsibility. The communicative ambiguity allows for whatever the direct communications are to be a pretense for something else… still unspoken.
Since the stalker, or manipluator didn’t do any real work to start with through being genuine and honest in the communications and the relationship. It makes it easier to walk away or blow it up, since they were never truly honest about their intentions to start with.
If they happen to want to burn their Bridges a bit they can do that too. Whenever there’s a misunderstanding it’s that much easier to pick a fight since there was little to no truth there to start with.
Basically, there is always an ‘out’ an easy ‘exit’ strategy if life gets a bit too real… or the possibility of being exposed starts to get too close.
When it comes to stalking and secrets and you have some people putting on one face for some situations but yet doing things in other situations that are illegal and unethical or they just shouldn’t be doing.
As a bonus, you can count on misunderstandings being a part of the equation. Just how bad they are or what other unforeseen consequences come from those no one really knows until they happen.
