Stigmatic Sigma

 

Stigmatic Sigma

A Reflection on Predation, Perception, and Power

Recently, I was accused of being “a possible predator.”

Not by someone who truly believes it, I suspect, but by someone who sees me as a threat to a dynamic they wish to control. Someone who has not yet noticed the quiet, manipulative narcissism of the person they’re trying to protect. Someone who’s bought into a story that conveniently casts me as a danger.

It’s ironic. In trying to make others afraid of me, they’ve succeeded only in unnerving themselves.

She, the original source of this narrative, knows exactly what she’s doing. I’ve exposed her before by documenting behaviour that could comfortably sit in the realm of criminal-level antisocial conduct. Rather than face accountability, she’s rallied others around her fiction. And now, he’s become an accomplice to that fiction. Whether knowingly or not, I don’t know. What I do know is this: together, they’ve constructed a fragile mythology, and I am its appointed monster.

So be it.

Let’s talk about predators.

Human beings are, by design, predatory. Eyes at the front of the skull. Built for forward motion. Strategic. Capable of silent approach, measured action, and technological extension of instinct. We evolved not simply to chase but to stalk. To think. To choose our moments.

That’s biology. And it’s psychology, too.

Does this make me dangerous? The same way it makes you dangerous. The same way it makes everyone dangerous. We are all potential predators. And just as surely, we are all potential prey.

The real question is not whether someone is a predator, but whether they are actively predatory. And if so, toward whom? For what purpose?

I won’t answer that. A true predator doesn’t disclose their movements. They don’t explain their restraint. They simply act when they must and only when they must.

But if you must imagine me as a predator, then understand what that means.

Imagine you’ve walked up to a lion and punched it in the face.

Not because the lion roared, or pounced. But because someone told you the lion might be thinking about it.

Now the lion is staring at you.

What happens next?

That’s the tension you now live with. Not because I threaten you.

But because you chose this interaction. You brought your aggression into a space that had none. You cast the first shadow.

I am not obsessed with her. I am not stalking her. What I have done is provide evidence. Evidence of sustained, targeted behaviour against me. That evidence was inconvenient. So the narrative had to flip. The one exposing abuse becomes the abuser.

That’s how it always goes.

But let’s circle back.

I’ve studied disciplines where power is never flaunted, only refined. Martial arts, Budo philosophy, Zen-Taoism. Not buzzwords, but ways of life. Ways of seeing the self clearly, and restraining the animal within. Restraint is not weakness. It is the true mark of control. And in this case, I have shown mine.

You wanted to make me afraid.

Instead, I’ve made you uncertain.

Because your tactic failed.

The question you should be asking is not whether I am a predator.

You should be asking whether I am your predator.

And I will never answer that.

Because a good hunter never tells the prey it’s being hunted.

And a good philosopher knows that most of us are never hunting at all.