Healthy and Unhealthy Disgust in the Path to Liberation

Disgust is a very unpleasant state.  And it is often the precursor to “in-group/out-group” categories, bigotry, emotional and physical violence, and even war.  Healthy disgust is and indeed has been necessary for the survival of the species and even in emotional healing.  Unhealthy or out of control disgust, however, is very dangerous and brutal.

Well, first what is disgust?

“Disgust (Middle French: desgouster, from Latin gustus, "taste") is an emotional response of rejection or revulsion to something potentially contagious or something considered offensive, distasteful, or unpleasant.” – Google

Why do we need it? 

The primary evolutional use of disgust is an avoidance response to infectious diseases and rotting food.

“…disgust is seen as a motivational system that evolved to help us avoid dangers such as pathogens or toxins. Seen this way, the human body’s visceral disgust response—which includes symptoms like nausea or a reduced appetite—makes a lot of sense. Through such a reflex, the human body attempts to rid itself of dangerous substances or materials, or prevent itself from coming into contact with them.” – Nafisa Syed (from a Nova article on disgust.)

Disgust also has a very strong social component.  Which, historically, especially in small tribal groups, may have lent itself directly to a higher survival rate (i.e. – mistrust of strangers may have avoided ambushes by hostile tribes, etc.)  It is now the cause of much division and violence and, is no longer in line with the survival needs of the species as a whole as it slowly becomes a global tribe.

“…Val Curtis at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine found that there might be different categories of disgust, one of which is atypical appearance. It may be this aspect of disgust that drives repulsion from people we see as different from ourselves. According to social neuroscientist Susan Fiske, ‘Disgust toward social outcasts avoids perceived moral and infectious contamination.’ We may implicitly believe that there is something dangerous about someone that looks different from ourselves.  Psychologists at St. Andrews University demonstrated how disgust relates to social groups by asking students to smell sweaty t-shirts. Students were faster to sanitize their hands after smelling shirts with a rival university’s logo than they were after smelling one with their own university’s logo.” – Nafisa Syed (from a Nova article on disgust.)

So, should we wag our fingers at the social disgust response and say it’s universally wrong?  Well, it is also quite important as a transitory phase when coming out of abusive situations.

When we are convinced that someone “has our best interest” or even more powerfully that we love them because they are a parent or someone we have had a strong romantic response to (like the first phase of romantic relationships where the reward chemicals can be as strong as “crack” cocaine) and they are abusive to us, disgust is an important intermediary response in breaking our attachment to them and gaining healthy boundaries.  I wrote about this briefly in an essay called “Whipped Dogs Bite and So they Should” but I will be more specific here.

When we have a strong attachment our physiology rewards us with chemicals when that person or object is near or, most powerfully, in humans when we see their face.  It’s an actual addiction and the brain creates it to bond us with another as a means of survival.  We are social creatures and we survive better with multiple pairs of eyes to spot predators.  Attachment is the way we create those “trustworthy” groups that have in the past directly lead to our survival.

When we finally see that someone or something is abusive or dangerous or toxic, disgust is the way the brain begins to break that addiction and free us from the dangerous situation.  It is an important intermediary phase and the beginning of healing and healthy boundaries.

However, if unchecked, or turned into an identity or survival strategy this disgust can ultimately turn into violence and bigotry.   It can, if allowed to fester unchanged and unhealed, even lead to entire nations having disgust responses to other nations JUST BECAUSE THOSE PEOPLE ARE A PART OF THAT NATION.  Individuality is gone.  Human-ness and sameness are gone.  In fact, in those out-groups, no amount of violence, emotional or physical, is too much or “inhuman.”  And this has been the beginning of countless wars and acts of mass violence in human history.

And in its worst form, it turns into authoritarianism.

au·thor·i·tar·i·an·ism/ôˌTHäriˈterēənizəm/noun

1.       The enforcement or advocacy of strict obedience to authority at the expense of personal freedom. 

2.       Lack of concern for the wishes or opinions of others.

Authoritarian behavior was best described by John Cleese as told to him by London Psychiatrist Robin Skynner who said: 

“[Skynner] said, ‘If people can’t control their own emotions, then they have to start trying to control other people’s behavior.’

And this means that after one has created an identity based on these social disgust responses and corresponding stories to justify the stories like “they treat people in down power roles unfairly” or some often even relatively “true” statement, one has the right to ENFORCE behavior even resorting to violence both emotionally and physically.

Why?

Because as Eckhart Tolle so often points out they have become “the alien other” or if you prefer the sociology/psychology term the “out-group” and have lost their humanity.

And this is the cause of horrific historical violence seen most graphically in incidents like the Holocaust  and if anyone is not aware of the specifics of it here is the opening Wikipedia page:

“The Holocaust, also known as the Shoah,[c] was the genocide of the European Jews during World War II. Between 1941 and 1945, across German-occupied Europe, Nazi Germany and its collaborators systematically murdered some six million Jews, around two-thirds of Europe's Jewish population.  The murders were carried out in pogroms and mass shootings; by a policy of extermination through work in concentration camps; and in gas chambers and gas vans in German extermination camps, chiefly Auschwitz,  Bełżec,  Chełmno,  Majdanek,  Sobibór, and Treblinka in occupied Poland.”

Politically self-identified people will say “oh that’s right-wingers” however Joseph Stalin the head of a “leftist” regime was also a horribly violent authoritarian leader who accounted for millions of deaths:

“Estimates of the number of deaths attributable to the Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin vary widely. ... Prior to the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the archival revelations, some historians estimated that the numbers killed by Stalin's regime were 20 million or higher.” – Google

We can also find similar violence in other authoritarian regimes of both “left and right” political ideologies that have authoritarianism as its driving force.

So, what is the contributing factor in all this violence and death?

Out of control (or to quote Eckhart Tolle “unconscious”) disgust responses that were turned into “beliefs” and “stories” and “identities” which were unchecked and unexamined and then used to justify authoritarian violence against “alien others.”  And, in the worst-case scenarios, that unconsciousness lead to the violent and horrific deaths of millions.

It is important that we examine our thoughts and emotions.  It is vitally important if there is ANY chance that this species survives that we ultimately master our disgust responses and, while using them when it is necessary as in rotting food or when coming out of emotionally unhealthy attachments, we see when they have festered into identities and “in-group/out-group” survival strategies that ultimately keep us feeling separate and incite acts of emotional or physical violence.

This is why the most freeing spiritual practice is the end of the separate self and “ego” however, we can’t simply hide in that, we have to allow our body/mind to keep itself safe with healthy boundaries.

This dance between form and formless is the central expression of healthy and whole liberation.

And the disgust response is right at the cross roads of liberation and complete unconscious egoic confinement.

It’s VERY important to master this response and see it clearly.

Out of control, it’s a horrible cage, and can lead to just as horrible acts of emotional and physical violence, let’s not forget that we can also have horrible “self disgust” which leads to those acts of violence against ourselves.

Awake, aware, and objective interactions with our disgust response is mandatory in the path to liberation and to the survival of our species as a whole.