From Fire to Sun: Who Taught You to Survive?

"Trauma responses are taught by respected teachers who believed they were passing on what's good. The drill sergeant, abusive parent, and training officer all possessed Level A wisdom about fire-contexts. Leaving means betraying not just your own expertise but the teachers who saved your life. Socrates knew that no one desires evil-they pursue what seems good, even when it's harmful."

"The police officer did the same. Years of real danger taught her brain: "People lie. Compliance can turn to violence instantly. Hesitation kills." She attained Level A mastery of threat assessment. It kept her alive through a decade of patrol. The abuse survivor learned to read micro-expressions, predict escalation patterns, and know exactly how to minimize damage when violence erupted. She developed a comprehensive theory of male behavior based on years of data. Her Level A sophistication was organized around survival."

Plato's divided line maps onto brain architecture, aligning higher abstraction with prefrontal processing and lower shadow-prediction with threat-driven systems. Trauma can produce Level A wisdom within dangerous environments, creating sophisticated, systematic threat models organized around a fire-principle: assume pervasive hostility and constant vigilance. Combat veterans, police officers, and abuse survivors develop refined threat assessment skills that accurately predict and mitigate danger in high-risk contexts. Those adaptations preserve survival but become mismatched in safe, sun-contexts, producing persistent vigilance, mistrust, and behavioral responses calibrated to past peril. Leaving dangerous environments triggers loyalty conflicts tied to teachers who taught survival strategies.

Read at Psychology Today