Portal:Universal Institutional Betrayal

Universal Institutional Betrayal is a broadening of the concept of "Institutional Betrayal", a term coined by Jennifer Freyd, PhD, at the University of Oregon.

''Institutional betrayal refers to wrongdoings perpetrated by an institution upon individuals dependent on that institution, including failure to prevent or respond supportively to wrongdoings by individuals (e.g. sexual assault) committed within the context of the institution. Institutional betrayal harms in at least two distinct ways: pragmatic and psychological. For instance, damage to citizens from avoidable government failure in managing covid19 is both pragmatic (illness, deaths, increased inequality, economic ruin) and psychological (leading to emotional and physical distress and thus more pragmatic harm).''

-Jennifer Freyd

Eric carries Jennifer's concept further by discussing "Universal Institutional Betrayal", for example:

''Jennifer Freyd, a psychologist at the University of Oregon has an amazing theory called Institutional Betrayal. The idea being that when an institution is charged with caring for us, and it betrays us, we experienced a type of trauma that we do not see elsewhere. Betrayal by those charged with caring for those who cannot care for themselves directly, like a surgeon in an operating room, causes something terrible to happen. And I've only slightly improved it, which is the concept of Universal Institutional Betrayal. No one has a concept of that. And that's the whole idea behind the Embedded Growth Obligations. I don't want to have to explain why T.J.Maxx and Yale are having the same problems. In general, what's going on is that we have this concept of an Embedded Growth Obligation, everything has to grow, or it goes crazy because it becomes a Ponzi scheme. And so we were used to this, we didn't have a Plan B. And now we've got Universal Institutional Betrayal, because every institution has to be headed by somebody who's comfortable with the idea that they're going to be running a Ponzi scheme, if they can't make growth happen. There very few institutions that are continuing to grow endogenously and organically at a real at a real level.''

-Eric Weinstein on The Realignment #134 ~11:45

Eric frequently discusses this concept (for example, during The Portal Ep 1 with Peter Thiel), and credits Dr. Freyd for her original concept here