Here's a new reality show where contestants are challenged to avoid being defensive, and defensiveness is measured by their communicating in terms of relative, as opposed to absolute confidence. As soon as they utter anything that has elements of drama and ego, (defensiveness) they are eliminated. Who would even attempt to go on such a show? We see versions of this all the time, forced "interventions", etc. What is needed is a show that is upfront about it's "ambush" nature, Let's call it "Trauma or Drama?"

People could tell about their struggles. Documentation could also be permitted but with an awareness that documents can be falsified, mis-interpreted, etc. The judges would listen to the details of their experiences and question them, and if the contestants became at all defensive, then the judges would determine that instead of trauma their experiences were drama. Real trauma would be determined to have existed ONLY if the contestant communicated REAL SPONTANEOUS GRATITUDE for the trauma, even if it is in the form of an OBNOXIOUS communication, as opposed to ARTIFICIAL, ie FAKED or PHONY practiced, scripted "GRATITUDE"!

The judges would be specially selected for their ability to detect even the slightest ego and/or drama coming from the contestant by a special kind of "defensiveness sensitivity test". This would be similar to an expanded lie detection technique. The judges would be uniquely qualified by an ability to bring out defensiveness if it is in the contestant's spirit and/or soul at ALL.

GRATITUDE for trauma, namely awareness based on reflection and the communication of how the trauma has BENEFITED the contestant, would be the key to winning "Trauma or Drama". Such a show would champion the emergence of AUTHENTIC CHARACTER, AUTHENTIC PERSONALITY, maybe even absolute communication, i.e., absolute instead of RELATIVE, i.e., derived, self defeating communication, even humor.

Perhaps we need such a show for all of us to become aware of the difference between having drama and ego, how we all take life for granted, etc., instead of having gratitude for just being alive. Such a show would make people aware that the poor, and also the disabled (and the disabled poor most of all) have to deal with life or death survival issues. They are the ones who are confronted with the bullying of society and the bullying of culture and of law, because their poverty and/or disability makes them vulnerable and they are the brunt of symbolic and actual violence.

With such a show, the poor and the disabled and the vulnerable would become aware of their resiliency and their adaptive and creative strengths. It would help these individuals to see that their resiliency and their entrepreneurial creativity is valued and that their life experiences, have been and are what is being mimicked in novels, reality TV, commercial films, etc.

There's been vicarious identification with vulnerable individuals since recorded history, namely the WORK of the poor and the disabled that must be done to SURVIVE. However, instead of attributing their survival as being positive, their survival experiences have been constructed by society and culture to be shameful and relegated to our mostly denied "dark sides". These "dark sides" of all of us are exploited with impunity by the "powers that be".

Such a show would help us all to "get (an absolute instead of) a (relative) life" and an ABSOLUTE instead of a RELATIVE personality, and would help us all to become aware of how, too often, ego and drama take the place of really living.