Why People Complain: Complaining Is A Symbol of Powerlessness


People Complain When Agency To Make Their Own Decisions Has Been Taken Away From Them

Complaining may have a negative vibration to it (the nature of its energy current is negative in nature), because it is a dead-end practice, that is spontaneously selected when you don’t know what else to do about a conundrum or dilemma that stops you from achieving or getting something or going somewhere or to have your life look and be the way you want it to be.

Complaining is a mind process. As I explain, the mind is pre-equipped with every single false solutions, coping mechanisms, and overall types of responses it is capable of in the face of X life event. Your emotional reasoning, thus determines your responses ahead of time based on the type of events it will be confronted with.

One such mind process is complaining.

I will use myself as an example. Then a second, external exemple in the form of privacy communities/circles.

Whenever there was something physically unappealing or unpleasant about my environment, like the look of a place, or something uncomfortable, like a place being too warm, or too cold, anything I couldn’t really control, I used to complain from hell and back. That’s because I had the expectation that somebody was going to take care of that, because that’s the kind of expectation that was accidentally placed on me by my so-called caretakers.

This complaining without action is a symptom that there are no means to achieve what you want in physical reality. That you yourself don’t have the means, that the means to change your world and what it looks like aren’t in your hands.

I used to complain so hard because no one had taught me that I could actually do something about it, because my caretakers around me acted as if they were the ones supposed to do something about things. Needless to say they were not competent and did not do a good job (they did nothing would be more correct) if only because, among the lengthy list of reasons, I was the most competent as far as answering my own requests was concerned, and that, the idea that my caretakers were supposed to be the one to do enact changes was a misunderstanding on their end, a mistake, that cut down learning autonomy, something that I was already inherently good at if only I had had time to stretch out “my sea legs,” as it were.

The other reason was because, if you complain at someone for them to do something about it, it’s because they’re the only ones who can do something about it. It is not within your power or your own hands to do something about this because only the other person can bring about the change you want to see, create the atmosphere, thing, life, etc, that you want to experience.

The moment I set foot in an environment where I was responsible for myself, well, among other things, I made insane mistakes I’m still reeling from. But on the other hand, it placed me at the helm of my own ship—my life—and the natural instinct there was to brainstorm solutions.

Complaining was gone because I didn’t need to complain all I had to do was pick and choose something to do. It turned out that if something was unpleasant about my life I could fucking change it, thankfully, on my own, and didn’t need to wait upon:

  • Someone realising that the thing was wrong
  • Someone realising that the thing was inconveniencing me
  • Someone realising that they needed to do something about that thing

If I don’t like the look of my home, I can get up, buy a pot of paint, and start painting away. Which is exactly what I’ve done. This exemple is specific because that is a specific area that was out of place, misplaced out of its track, when I was a young child.

If I don’t like something, I can just go and do something about it if something annoys me.

If you complain, it’s because the power is not in your own hands but in the hands of someone else and you have been stripped of agency that is rightfully yours by design and must return to your hands if you’re to do something about this.


This is very similar to another example, internet circles housing privacy-focused communities of users. I am thinking, notably, of a particular user forum, hosted on a website called “reddit”.

We have to first discuss the climate of these privacy communities. As, what defines these spaces, is rampant hopelessness. 

That’s because privacy communities are a receptacle for frustration: it’s the place people go to because they feel there’s nowhere else to go with their complaints, and especially because they can’t do anything else to solve the situation. So at the very least, they can huddle together in the embrace of their decrying things, knowing they’re at least doing their best to deplore the worsening state of things. Since that’s all they can do.

The best they can do is decry, complain: the best they can do is mark their displeasure. Because that’s all that is within their power: make their displeasure known. 

That’s why complaining arises. To make one’s displeasure known, at the attention of whomever placed themselves in the role of the caregiver. Because one feels they don’t have the means to do something.

And in the case of children, people misunderstand that children are supposed to have as much freedom from the get-go, because autonomy is inherent to all human beings. Parents are not supposed to baby children, they are supposed to let them spread their wings, because all people, as it is natural of our physical nature, to be able to interact with the physical world to enact our will onto it.

In other words, people don’t understand that complaining is a subtle request for change. If people complain, it’s because they want that external force to change something, the something that’s being complained about.


➝ ultimately, complaining is an unconscious request for change directed at the people we perceive to be in control of the situation, and that arises when we have been made to feel powerless. When our agency has either not be cultivated by our environments (we haven’t been told that it’s there and to act from that place) or when it has been physically taken away, and there is no resort or physical action we can take or go to, complaining is the only, last thing that remains to us we can do: to make our displeasure known.

Complaining is an unconscious request for change, a way to make our displeasure known, and a sign that we haven’t been notified and let know that we can use our personal agency, or our agency has been replaced or taken away by the will of others. This process is a false process that takes the place of actively looking for solutions, or having the ability to (find, then) implement solutions.

Thoughts?

Any thoughts, questions or remarks?
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