Idolization in the Drama Triangle
Idolization in the Drama Triangle
If someone is seen as a "rescuer," then they are being idolized
What is an Idol?
I’ve used the term “idol” before and people attach some sort of religious belief to it. There’s no need to do that. A couple of definitions of the term are “A false conception” and “a form or appearance visible but without substance.” Non-religious people use the phrase “putting someone onto a pedestal.” It’s like that. It’s about viewing someone above you as if they are better at something than you are or what you could be. It’s about having a perception of them that is better than what they truly are in reality.
In the drama triangle picture, the “savior” or “rescuer” figure would be above the “victim” as the victim feels completely powerless. The “victim” believes their rescuer is better capable than they are to “save” them. The “rescuer” believes that too, and also believes the “persecutor” has equal or more power than them. You could probably argue, in some perverse way, that the '“savior” idolizes the “persecutor” as being greater than them. But, generally, when we say someone is an idol it means we look up to and like them.
Rescuers Think Their Perceived Persecutors Have More Power?
Why do I say the “rescuer” believes the “persecutor” has more power than they personally do? If the “rescuer” believed the “persecutor’s” power was equal to or less than theirs, they would have solved the problem by now. The drama triangle dynamic is one in which the players are codependent. The “rescuer” needs there to always be a problem (persecutor) or else there wouldn’t be any more drama. “Rescuers” want to look moral and righteous, and if they didn’t have problems to rescue people from, then they would be upset. In many cases, they use it as their narcissistic supply.
From my personal experiences, whenever you say to a “rescuer” that you are not a “victim” of something (so there is no persecutor) they will get mad at you. You would think a person would feel happy to hear there’s no need to “save” someone because that someone doesn’t feel victimized. But that’s not how “rescuers” react. They get upset that you’ve spoiled their game. But they won’t actually let you spoil it. They’ll just turn you into another “persecutor” which is why they get angry at you.
Who Has Idols?
But, as I said earlier, we usually say someone is idolizing another whom they like. It is usually a “victim” who idolizes a “rescuer” or “savior” type. Although fellow “rescuers” may idolize each other in different arenas. Certainly, social justice warriors all have a high view of each other.
Trust the Experts?
Today, people are idolizing academics, scientists, doctors, and nurses a lot more than ever before. Surely you’ve heard the phrase “trust the experts.” When someone cracks a joke about your Google searches not being as good as a medical degree, it’s because they’re idolizing the degree.
Certainly, a medical degree will come with much more knowledge than a Google search, however, it also seems to come with pride in too many cases. Pride, as in the sin of. Pride in connection with a medical degree can lead to a savior complex and can potentially blind them to seeing their own mistakes. That pride is what comes when someone thinks they are better than you. They look down on you as the ignorant or stupid “victim.”
People who make jokes like those have a belief that the doctor is a lot less fallible than the average citizen. They don’t have faith that the average person can find accurate information online, digest it, and come to good logical conclusions. They believe you need to be an expert in the field in order to understand these things and the average citizen will be misled by “fake news.” They don’t believe a doctor would be misled in the same way. They don’t believe a doctor could make the same mistakes that the general citizen could or would.
This is how you place doctors on a pedestal and idolize them. These types of people ignore that doctors are regular people who can make mistakes too, and they underestimate the average citizen’s ability to learn from a search and not be misled. They both over-estimate the doctor’s ability (lifting them up) and under-estimate the average citizen (pushing them down).
Underestimating Perceived “Victims”
When you underestimate the ability of someone you push them down beneath you and turn them into a “victim” who can be misled or mistreated in some way. This is what fact-checkers do as I discussed in the last substack. If you don’t believe someone can check facts themselves and you need to tell them what to think, then you’re seeing yourself as above those people. You think you’re more capable of detecting lies and “misinformation” than they are.
Most people who use the word “naïve” to describe someone fall into this category. They think they have some sort of knowledge or intellect that the naïve don’t. Rather than saying people are ignorant (meaning they just don’t have the factual knowledge yet), they use the word naïve to imply there is something deficient in them (such as being too trusting) that causes the ignorance. They view themselves as impervious to naïveté.
Concerning the idolization of doctors, people will underestimate regular citizens discussing medical studies. There are often jokes made at their expense, suggesting people who haven’t studied medicine are just not capable of reading and interpreting studies and data. However, there was a study into vaccine hesitancy that says this is not the case.
“I think we need to avoid the trap of thinking that information or knowledge is enough, because for a lot of the people, and when you look at hesitancy and parental vaccine hesitancy in the US, the group who is most likely to purposefully choose to not vaccinate are highly educated. In speaking with them, these are people who have read the primary literature themselves, and they’re correctly interpreting it, so it’s not a misunderstanding. They have other concerns that go beyond the traditional public health message of, ‘This is what you should be doing.’”
— Emily Brunson, MPH, Ph.D., Associate Professor of Anthropology at Texas State University
I wrote more about the study on Minds. You can download the guide on their website. Even if you try to tell someone that people are capable of correctly interpreting the data, they still don’t tend to believe you because they want to view themselves as better than the “others” whom they enjoy looking down on.
Overestimating Perceived “Rescuers”
And, on the flip side, people who idolize doctors or fact-checkers, journalists, educators, et al., are suggesting that those people are better than the general population at certain things.
They might believe that a fact-checker has more information on a subject than the regular population. But why is it that fact-checkers were suggesting medical doctors were incorrect on things when the fact-checkers didn’t have a medical degree? What is it about being a fact-checker that trumps the medical degree of doctors?
In this case, it’s not about medical doctors (who disagree with the narrative) being ignorant. They’re not ignorant if they have the actual degrees and education. Something else led people to trust the fact-checkers above actual medically-educated doctors.
Going back to the highly educated vaccine-hesitant adults disagreeing with doctors on the safety of vaccines, you can see that they are not ignorant. These adults are correctly interpreting the data. They just have different conclusions than the doctors based on the same data. Why is it that people trust doctors over highly informed adults who are correctly interpreting the same data? Though I would say some trust in doctors is good, overly trusting them is just foolish, especially when there are always dissenting doctors. If all doctors agree on something it’s likely worth trusting that, but when you see doctors disagreeing with each other, it’s likely the evidence is not as solid as some would want you to believe it. If there are dissenting opinions on something like that, it’s worth checking it out yourself and coming to your own conclusions.
The same goes with journalism and other areas where people idolize others. If there are at least 2 differing views of the same story, it’s worth looking into why and making your own conclusions after seeing more evidence.
Seeing Each Other As Capable Outside the Drama Triangle
I trust people to be able to look at data and evidence and come to their own conclusions and do what is right for them. But a “rescuer” type will not because they believe that their idols have some sort of special ability that the rest of us do not. Outside of the drama triangle, people view each other on the same ground, as capable as one another of research and coming to good logical conclusions.
You can believe you have more information than someone else without thinking you’re more capable of understanding it than they are. Furthermore, you can believe people, like doctors, have more information on things, without believing that they’re impervious to making mistakes. We all make mistakes. So remember “the experts” will make mistakes at times, that’s why it’s important to keep an open mind and question them.
The following video was taken from Twitter.
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