The Not So Benign Phenomena of Red Flag Escapism

 

"Todd has so many Red Flags that I don't know what to do. He's a nice guy, but he doesn't enjoy the shows I like or sharing his fries with me!"

It's the modern world ( In whatever capacity you want to take that term.) And in this ecosystem of the West more specifically, we are under the hypnosis of certain perverse etymological terms that permeate the membrane of our culture. Mostly surrounding the younger generations. The term "Red Flag" comes up. You may hear it in modern dating scenarios or simple relationships between people in business and casual settings. 

On the surface the Red Flag term seems to make sense, but has now been appropriated to service a type of ideological constrain where the term not only loses the depth of its meaning, but poisons the well of how we see other people. Red Flags are obviously describing and uneasy or bad quality we see in others. Sometimes and (most of the time quite frankly) we have our own issues that would improve us more as individuals if we corrected them or were made more aware of. The normalization of this "red flag" terminology seemed to have influenced the minds of people who will walk away from anything they see as a potential warning sign for a potential partner or future professional or friendly relationship. 

In order to make a Trending Construct successful, it must be repeated over and over again. Nothing like word of mouths echoing in a canyon of shallow commodities. 

Now we can all agree that there are some morally problematic factors that would cause us alarm. Those are good and fine, but most of the time this doesn't require a Red Flag label. There are insecure, unaware and manipulative people all over the place. We can condemn their behavior and offer them help without seeing them as a commodified construct that doesn't fit how we would like to see them based upon our semi-tyrannical preferences. 

We have created a social economy based around banal labels, vapid platitudes and conceptual tools to compartmentalize our insecurities and unconscious desires and ego deflectors. Reaction to discomfort and inconvenience is a useful albeit surface currency. 

Red Flag constructs have permeated into little performative projections for minor inconveniences and icky things we don't agree with people. This Red Flag culture has allowed people to unconsciously or semi-consciously compartmentalize what they think are not good for THEM moving forward. Once you start seeing these so called red flags then you are off to the races in labeling every little annoyance and flaw in a person that could very well be a potential long term partner of asset in their life. It appears as if all these Red Flag encoded labels can act as escape hatches from anything we might require a little patience, understanding or elbow grease. One can then move on to the "next one" and repeat the process. Do you see how cyclical this can turn out? 

Mindless labeling or tactical programming? Or both?

This whole red flag mentality can very well be a type of coping strategy. We think we know what we want and we invent all these symbolistic markers in response to external stimuli. It's not a bad thing. It's necessary for survival, but when we are labeling something we tend to limit it to some capacity. In a certain sense when we label a red flag we should turn it back on ourselves. Like a mirror, we can look at what we are doing and why are doing that in the moment. Really just let it be and digest. Why do we call it a red flag? It is mostly about us and our own perception or is it something more "objective" that other people would share? Well, that certainly opens up a discussion. Instead of labeling and running we can really invest some time to investigate internally without judgement, condemnation or refusal. 

So the big question centers around why we are even using the Red Flag term in the first place. Were we merely just repeating a term thrown around like a frisbee in a park? Did we just adopt this view from what other people have been saying without question? Well that certainly is a GOOD question. There's a distinct possibility that we added this grouping of words to our lexicon of vocabulary with good intention and rationality, but there is also a good chance that we just caught on to the reductionist binary of a Red Flag mentality. Hell I get it. It's easy to label things as good or bad or things that don't support the way we want to see the world. But does it really help? Does it really expand the way we see the world and help us improve the way we are living with less suffering even if it may be temporary uncomfortable? 

Use it? Lose it? Or abuse it?

DG