Trauma, Trump, Brexit, Iraq and Recovery

 It's not a matter of Left vs Right, it is a question of  from Institutionalised to Humanised.
- it is not an adversarial process!

"The study of psychological trauma has a curious history - one of episodic amnesia. Periods of active investigation have alternated with periods of oblivion. Repeatedly in the last century, similar lines of inquiry have been taken up and abruptly abandoned, only to be rediscovered much later. Classic documents of 50 or 100 years ago often read like contemporary works. Though the field has in fact an abundant and rich tradition, it has been periodically forgotten and must be periodically reclaimed.

This intermittent amnesia is not the result of ordinary changes in fashion that affect any intellectual pursuit. The study of psychological trauma does not languish for lack of interest. Rather, the subject provokes such intense controversy that it periodically becomes anathema. The study of trauma has repeatedly led into the realms of the unthinkable and foundered on fundamental questions of belief.

To study psychological trauma is to come face to face with human vulnerability in the natural world and with the capacity for evil in human nature (behaviour). To study psychological trauma is to bearing witness to horrible events.

When events are natural disasters or 'acts of God' those who bear witness sympathise readily with the victim. But when traumatic events are of human design, those who bear witness are caught in the conflict between victim(ised) and perpetrator. It is morally impossible to remain neutral in this conflict. The bystander is forced to take sides.

It is very tempting to take the side of the perpetrator. All the perpetrator asks is that the bystander do nothing. The perpetrator appeals to the universal desire to see, hear and speak no evil. The victimised, on the contrary, asks the bystander to share the burden of pain. The victim(ised) demands action, engagement, remembering.

Leo Eitinger, a psychiatrist who has studied survivors of Nazi concentration camps, describes the cruel conflict of interest between victim(ised) and bystander: "War and victims are something the community wants to forget; a veil of oblivion is drawn of everything painful and unpleasant."

 In order to escape accountability for crimes,the perpetrators do everything in their power to promote forgetting. Secrecy and silence are the perpetrators first line of defence. If secrecy fails the perpetrator attacks the credibility of the victimised who speak out. If that fails, the perpetrator tries to make sure no one listens.

After every atrocity one can expect to hear the same predictable apologies; it never happened; the victim lies; the victim exaggerates; the victim brought it upon themselves; and in any case it is time to forget the past and move on."

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These are the opening pages of Trauma and Recovery by Judith Herman

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In the UK, with regards to the Invasion of Iraq these words ring out as a clarion call above and beyond the petty concerns of Brexit; they also ring out to remind us all that Austerity kills vulnerable people and that we bystanders, all of us taxpayers, each and everyone of us, without exception, have a role to play in confronting both of these atrocities - the murder of a nation, and the murder of a nations most vulnerable citizens, and many more and we have a role in preventing future atrocities.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Criminal_Court_Act_2001

We cannot compare the deaths of tens of thousands of vulnerable people induced by deliberate chronic economic distress with the destruction of an entire countries civil infrastructure and a war that killed a million people, maimed many more and orphaned 4 million children.

We can draw parallels, because the atrocious behaviour of powerful interests is in direct conflict with the needs of ordinary people and at the same time ordinary people, as bystanders are dis-empowered and urged to do nothing to undermine those powerful interests.

The British public are permitted and encouraged to to protest fracking, CO2 in the atmosphere yet totally inhibited when it comes to prosecutions of War Crimes (Iraq) and Crimes against Humanity (UN report on the rights of disabled people in the UK).

Racism, human progress vs evolution and adaptation.

Racism is always top down...

The origins of Cultural, Scientific Racism and Legal Racism are with the elites, the intellectual classes, the ruling oligarchy, who taught, promoted and legislated (legalised) racism reinforcing it through applied trauma and reward, thus normalising and institutionalising the practices of Racism.

Racism has never emerged from the grass roots.

Trump, and others like him who represent Power (and who is himself a traumatised child-adult) say things in public that encourages ordinary folk who are racists by social conditioning and learning (and who are powerless by comparison, and who feel that dis-empowerment and are frustrated by it) to 'come out', and they do, so that they too can feel powerful, superior... and can assuage the pain of their own powerlessness.

The majority of grass roots 'racists' are groomed into that way of thinking and feeling, precisely because they can be triggered to assault other grass roots people.

50 years ago, this week the US Government passed laws banning segregation.

However, they did not teach honest histories in school to show the people how the colonial British invented Race, using the Bible, the pulpit, pamphlets, broadsheets and then Institutionalised Racism as a means to ensure the working poor, the slaves and the native peoples would not rise to defeat their oppressors but would fight with each other for their place in the hierarchy...

Laws are never enough, they can easily be broken, therefore honesty in education is critical for prevention.

Hence, until parents demand honesty in education, Racist views will perpetuate to be used by power to divide the people

Australian Aboriginals legally described as Fauna until 1967 - do you understand what that actually means?

The Ruling class defining for everyone the status of the people who are the ancient inhabitants of Australia....

"Animals!"

"Cave Men", "Ug Ug".

These are terms I hear from 'well educated' people all the time....

They have been educated to describe ancient egalitarian peoples in that way as part of a trajectory of progress and evolution that leads to the current dominant culture of industrialised militarised power and technology as being the apex of evolutionary progress. with a bright future in the stars....

No. That is a lie.

I am a biological organism, and I am ancient design: to be co-operative, happy, loving, empathetic, robustly healthy as part of a social community that is fully part of the habitat..

There is no need for further 'evolution' or progress in this regard..

Does an Elephant herd need to 'evolve' further, to progress to become better Elephants?

Do Trees and Fungi need to 'improve' themselves?

No.

Evolution has nothing to do with 'progress' - evolution is about responding to a dynamic environment....

Industrial Culture is a disease state, a rape of life itself.

Which is why fighting for survival does not work, even though resistance is a natural response, it cannot win. The struggle for survival is not a biological reality, it is a social construct of all hierarchically violent cultures.

The Industrial Rapist will not stop, and it is only the Citizens of the Industrial Culture who could stop that culture from the act of raping the Earth's habitats - if we understood, if we have the courage, solidarity and empathy to live that understanding.

This is why I write.

Who will stop Bolsanaro and the Evangelical Movement tied into the Oligarchy?

Who will stop British Weapons makers from supplying Saudi War planes so that they can continue to bomb Yemeni civilians?

Who will stop the British and American States from funding violent militia?

Who will stop Boris Johnson spending £100 million of Tax payers funds on a marketing campaign - grooming that part of the electorate that are susceptible to being groomed via their vulnerabilities, triggering that part that can be enraged, just to divide and conquer?

Who?

The Healers.

Courage rather than fear.

Knowledge rather than belief.

Recovery rather than progress.

This is hard work, it is terrifying work, and yet what alternative is there?

For me, none.

For many others a whole host of reasons determine whether we act or not.

Kindest regards

Corneilius

"Do what you love, it's Your Gift to Universe"

Thank you for reading this blog. All we need to do is be really honest, responsive to the evidence we find,and ready to reassess when new evidence emerges. The rest is easy.