Meet "Admiral Perry", who is the one who said in the heat of battle, "Damn the torpedoes! FULL SPEED AHEAD!". These are the "cause-aholics" of the world, the ones who have THE ANSWER, and who intend to see to it that everyone conforms to the solution requirements. They are true believers who put all their eggs in one basket, and after becoming their own worst taskmaster, they try to ram their trip down everyone else's throat. Now this can range from the damned foolish to the damned effective, like Joan Baez and Jane Fonda, Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman. But the pattern is the same — trying to save the world with their "magic" formula.
HOW DID THEY GET THIS WAY?
The parents were heavily into principles as their primary mode of interface with the world. It all had to fit and make sense from the perspective of their principles or it was no go. At base, it was a security strategy along the lines of it's being safer to go by the book instead of striking out on your own in any given situation. After all, you might be wrong, and then what?!.
Also involved was a "Stomp out evil!" attack on projections of their own self-unacceptable inclinations in a "shadow-boxing" process where they attack and seek to eliminate that which lurks in their own shadow as a function of the distortion of various aspects of their personhood and soul that were not allowed in their family, and which got shoved into their shadow.
It was originally acquired in a home where they had to be able to justify everything in terms of an overriding set of principles or suffer catastrophic consequences. Their family was horrendously non-nurturing and extremely demanding and restrictive as a result. It was a "Papa knows best!" situation, Papa's word was LAW, and there was absolutely no deviation from it if you knew what was good for you.
The world feels safer when they are immersed in their own principles for three reasons: 1) it is simpler and cleaner, 2) it furthers the process of "eliminating evil", and 3) it avoids having to stick your neck out in given situations and taking the risk of catastrophic results arising from being wrong. So they lived out a "right and righteous" lifestyle.
And they passed it on to their child, the fellow "hobby horse", with only minor modifications of the more extremely dysfunctional and punitive aspects of their own upbringing. The child is thus subjected to a household in which there is one and only one way to do things "right", and it was Papa's way (or Mama's "Papa" in Mama's head, or both).
The effect was to make it crystal clear to the "hobby horse" that it's a big, bad, mean, unprincipled world out there, and it is crucial that one have one's principles to guide and protect you. It was also clear that there was no love forthcoming and there was much rejection and punishment to be had if they deviated in any way from the "tried and true" precepts, principles, procedures and purposes. So they traded their autonomy in for security and the avoidance of ostracism.
WHERE ARE THEY COMING FROM?
The resultant of this learning history is a "true believer", a basically dependent and fearful individual who puts all their eggs in the security blanket of this or that set of morally loaded principles. They are intensely anxious when not protected by their principles and when in the company of others who do not strictly adhere to those principles.
When they encounter people who are "violating the moral order" in terms of their principles, it generates a great deal of anger, and they combine their anxiety and anger into an assumed superiority and judgementalistic disdainful disparagement of other approaches to life or to the arenas involved in the "violated" principles.
They also become quite intense in their defense of and investment in their puristic principles, to which they are slavishly devoted, often at considerable cost in the way of personal freedom, autonomy, spontaneity and creativity. It is in their experience both their lifeline and the ONLY way to fly — according to "God the Father".
"Hobby horses" often get their zeal from their making their principles love-substitutes and narcissistic wound-assuaging. This arises from the early rejection, restriction and very conditional acceptance they experienced from the very beginning. Questioning their beliefs and principles is taken as an assault on their selfhood. Their belief system provides a sense of worth and well-being.
Their belief system and principles become their bottom line. Everything they experience is fit into and evaluated by and in terms of their ideals. They become voracious for information about and in support of their ideals, principles and beliefs. They are into compulsive observances of the rites, rituals and routines dictated by their principles.
They also tend to develop a pronounced "messiah complex" about their principles, and they feel that everyone else is a fool for not seeing the ANSWER. "I've got the key!" is their experience, and their ultimate goal is to convert everybody, and to reform the world to fit their dreams and delusions. It is all too often a triumph of principles over reality, and it has the effect of keeping them in the "rescue triangle drama" (victim-persecutor-rescuer).
At base, "hobby horses" are really childlike, concrete and authority-, system- and family-dependent. They're scared of the big, bad world, and they want protection and magic potions. They tend to think in dichotomous good/bad over-simplified terms because they develop mentally flatlined at around age three, at the beginning of the Oedipal/Elektra period. At this point in their life, "Papa knew best!". And they had better obey! They therefore didn't develop much of a self-referenced process of self-guidance, relying on externals like Papa and his principles instead. Unfortunately, this makes them rather poor at understanding people, situations, processes and ecological dynamic evolutionary systems (reality, that is).
They become fanatic about their beliefs and principles to prevent destruction of what self they have — their beliefs and principles are the only thing they trust. They think only within their presuppositions — "How can I fit this situation within the model?". Their experience is that their survival is dependent upon their total commitment to making the world fit their belief and principle system. They are in effect trying to fend off disasters and runaways due to their own runamok-anxiety arising from their shadow-urgings.
They are also attempting to use their overriding belief system as a "pole-vault" re-parenting process, trying to fill in the love and acceptance that was not there in their family. Part of the reason they try to shove their trip down other people's throats is so they can finally convert parent-stand in figures with their love and commitment, thereby getting the acceptance, validation and loving they never got as a child. It is, in effect, an attempt to get the "God House-keeping Seal of Approval".
They are also trying to convince everybody (themselves really) that they are RIGHT — or die. It is a deep-seated worth-anxiety issue coming from the extremely conditional acceptance they experienced, not to mention the punishment and ostracism that resulted when they deviated from or violated their family's principles. As a result, they require a group of fellow true believers to provide their needed sense of belongingness, to support their lifeline beliefs and principles, to validate their worth, and to get the caring they never got at home.
Bottom line, the whole thing is a responsibility-deflecting and thinking-avoidant strategy based on a sense of being overwhelmed by the complexity and imperativeness (urgently demanding notice or attention) of the pragmatic world, in conjunction with a profound commitment to parent-pleasing/appeasing. They were never taught how to think or decide for themselves — indeed, it wasn't allowed. Instead, they were systematically trained not to do so, and they now blindly follow principles, mercilessly apply them to themselves, and fervently try to get the whole world to do the same — so they can feel safe, worthy, accepted and loved.
HOW DO THEY FUNCTION?
"Hobby horses" always assume they are the "Right Hand of God" in a "holier than thou" manner, and when you challenge them, it makes you "the Devil incarnate". Facts and truths get immediately shoved aside for factitiousness (produced artificially rather than by a natural process) and pseudo-truths, moral accusations, and discrediting of your personality, ethics and essence. There is no possible way to win with them when this happens.
They are their own worst taskmaster in a puristically punitive manner, and they then apply their "recipe" to the world in a "Wizard of Ought" — "should/ought/must" manner. They "split" in their thinking into "It's either good or bad", and if you argue, you've proved yourself to be bad. They are therefore conformity-coercing as they try to make the world match their map. They are also "rescue triangle" players who operate out of a basic notion of scarcity in the world, against which their principles are protection.
They guilt-induce, coerce others to conform to their principles when possible, and in general make a nuisance out of themselves. In short, they are fanatic about whatever their particular cause or set of principles is at the moment. They are absolutely sure God is on their side and that they have all the answers and the RIGHT way to do absolutely everything.
When circumstances dictate a reality-based unavoidable change in their thinking and beliefs, they hold out, avoiding and protesting too much for as long as they possibly can in the "last roar of disapproval, until it is simply not possible to do so any more. Then they "rubber band-snap" in a sudden total fanatic plunge in to a new position and principle, with no real recall of their previous position. It's rather like the changes of colors in the "Wizard of Oz" — Blue is the in thing now, Blue! — "Now Red is the right hue, Red!".
The truth of the matter is that the fanatic, cause-aholic "hobby horse" is "hung up in principles" (HIP"), rather than being attuned to reality. And they are hung up in form rather than responding to substance. They take a piece of understanding and miscontext and unrealize it, and then they proceed to ram it down your throat. They get predictability, purpose, identification and prescription for virtually everything, and you get nothing from them but coercive pressure — they are horrendous withholders, just like their parents were before them.
HOW CAN THEY BE HELPED?
"Hobby horses" have a rigid, dogmatic, narrow, judgmental and fanatic framework that they will die for — for now. They are uncompromising and totally rejecting of ANY deviation from their way of seeing and doing things. They know no way to be compassionately comprehensively comprehending, and to work with the flow of the universe. They need to develop internal identity and self-guidance, and to evolve a larger framework with which to contain life and reality. They also have to separate their map from their survival and from their loveline and connectedness. Finally, they need training in self-acceptance, as well as acceptance for others in terms of their doing the best they can with what they've got.
As might be expected, intervention with them is quite difficult, as they deflect all "alien" inputs and experiences as the "workings of the Devil", so to speak. About the only way to modify the pattern is to seek to introduce new elements to their thinking capabilities and perceptions of things in non-critical areas that don't seem to relate to their belief and principle system, so they learn how to think for themselves and to make decisions in a non-principle-dominated manner.
One way to do this is to find their self-system core beliefs at present and then build alternatives to them that are more of the qualities described above. Then select a trivial "tiny target" in a very peripheral area in their life in which they will commit to a miniscule change in "goal attainment" terms like, "I will put my left shoe on instead of my right shoe first once this week". Since, however, this will be tapping into their whole way of thinking and being, they will be surprised to see how much massive resistance and circumstantial stuff will come up to prevent it, and for how many weeks. But because it is the truly right thing to do and their subconscious knows it, they will eventually take that first step. Then you move them more and more in the direction of their core issues at a more noticeable level. Eventually, they will take it from you and finish their transformation themselves, they will be so thrilled with the outcomes and processes.
Another process to do the same thing would be to train them to select a small piece of their world and examine it in such a manner as to preserve as much of their principle-determined choices as possible, while adding new elements where the principles seem to fall short and the new elements would minimally clash with their principles. In this manner, they can learn to decide for themselves how to run their life in a more flexible, tolerant and harmonious-realistic way.
Still a third, even more directly confrontative approach would be to lead them to undergo invalidating experiences for their principles in small ways, along with providing them training in discrimination, cause-effect analysis, choice-generating, and shifting their frame of reference from external authorities and principles to their own inner knowing.
In short, they need reality-coping training and graded introduction to non-belief-system framings so as to open options and to introduce self-determination. They can then begin to experience life as their own person and to work in cooperative co-creation with their intimates, the community, and the cosmos.
WHAT IS THEIR PURPOSE?
Their great gift is the capacity for discernment and judgement, as well as for clarifying and forcefully presenting the issues that must be faced. When they liberate themselves from the "shadow-boxing"-caused HIPness generated by their family, they are able to access these strengths and to operate in a truly cosmically principled manner, much like a highly conscious judge. They can then help us set super-ethical structures and to arrive at practical and cosmically correct decisions.
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