I have been thinking, reading, writing about hierarchically violent social and cultural behavioural characteristics for 30 years, dipping into the best work I could find, work done in the past, work being done today by serious, hardworking scientists, clinicians, practitioners and by trauma survivor populations. This study is as much a study of myself and my lived experience in this culture I was born into. There are personal elements to this pursuit as well as global concerns. Being a survivor informs my study. These are my biases.
What I have learned is this:
When we pay attention to the the discovery that our human digestion is dependent upon 1000 species of bacteria for it's efficacy, we see co-operation as a core element of how our bodies function. Even our moods are dependent upon the activity and health of bacteria in our gut.
Fungi and Forests mutual aid community. Ants, Trees and Bacteria working together.
The default mode of healthy human species social behaviour is emotional trust, which is initiated in utero, developed through birth, infancy and toddler-hood, maintained into childhood, youth and adulthood through loving, bonded relationships where power disparity is rarely, if ever, abused, where empathy, compassion and insight prevail.
Co-operative culture is probably the default behavioural setting for the human species.
Such cultures - Egalitarian or Co-operative cultures - do not appear to have any generation gap, they do not bully children, they do not go to war, they do not rape or steal, they do not create and maintain power hierarchies, and as the study of endocrinology and neurology reveals, our bodies are superbly adapted to that healthy state as our normative state.
When we study the evolution of the human neuro-endocrine system and how it functions, how it relates to our emotional state, our mental and physical health we discover something. It is 'designed' or 'evolved' through natural selection for optimal health. Being a bully or being bullied is not optimal health on any possible measure.
Egalitarian life was/is generally peaceful, humanely beautiful, physically healthy, grounded in solid emotional attachment and matured healthy affective state self regulation which reduces incidence of lost tempers and general violence because egalitarian culture nurtures the default setting of trust which is the basis of co-operation.
“The mutual-aid tendency in man has so remote an origin, and is so deeply interwoven with all the past evolution of the human race, that is has been maintained by mankind up to the present time, notwithstanding all vicissitudes of history."
Pytor Kropotkin was correct.
.
This will upset quite a few people within this culture where self regulation is so dysregulated more often than not, where bullying is deemed as a normal if unsavoury behaviour, where hierarchy of power and wealth is assumed to be natural to the human condition, where competition and war fare is accepted as natural behaviour.
They are not. They are entirely cultural dynamics.
The roots of life.
When we look to cellular life, we see the origins of complex life in the union of two different entities, for their mutual benefit, in the process known as endosymbiosis.
They are not. They are entirely cultural dynamics.
The roots of life.
When we look to cellular life, we see the origins of complex life in the union of two different entities, for their mutual benefit, in the process known as endosymbiosis.
When we pay attention to the the discovery that our human digestion is dependent upon 1000 species of bacteria for it's efficacy, we see co-operation as a core element of how our bodies function. Even our moods are dependent upon the activity and health of bacteria in our gut.
Fungi and Forests mutual aid community. Ants, Trees and Bacteria working together.
In a fascinating article in The Slate - What if Competition Isn’t As “Natural” As We Think?
"Scientists are slowly understanding collaboration’s role in biology, which might just help liberate our collective imagination in time to better address the climate crisis.
Darwin’s legacy aside, though, one critical takeaway from all this is that we must learn to recognize the impulse to naturalize a given human behavior as a political maneuver. Competition is not natural, or at least not more so than collaboration.
This insight could hardly come at a more opportune time. With our climate crisis mounting, we dearly need new ways to think about our relationships to the diverse entities that share our planet.
Far too many environmentalists assume that people, driven by innate self-interest, are bound to harm ecology, that we will inevitably clear-cut, extract, consume, so long as it gives us an advantage over the next guy.
This leaves us deeply disempowered, with few solutions to climate change outside limiting humanity’s impact through some kind of population control.
When competitive self-interest is revealed to be a mutable behavior, the causes of climate change come into greater clarity: not human nature, but an economic system that demands competition, that distributes resources such that a tiny elite can live tremendously carbon-intensive lifestyles while the rest of us struggle for a pittance.
Leaving competition behind, we can also imagine richer solutions: climate policies that problematize the tremendous wealth of the few, that build economies concerned with collective well-being and sustainability"
The default mode of healthy human species specific social behaviour is trust.
Unhealthy behaviour is not a biological norm.
Unhealthy behaviour is not a biological norm.
The default mode of healthy human species social behaviour is emotional trust, which is initiated in utero, developed through birth, infancy and toddler-hood, maintained into childhood, youth and adulthood through loving, bonded relationships where power disparity is rarely, if ever, abused, where empathy, compassion and insight prevail.
Co-operative culture is probably the default behavioural setting for the human species.
Such cultures - Egalitarian or Co-operative cultures - do not appear to have any generation gap, they do not bully children, they do not go to war, they do not rape or steal, they do not create and maintain power hierarchies, and as the study of endocrinology and neurology reveals, our bodies are superbly adapted to that healthy state as our normative state.
That said, the study of such cultures shows that conflict resolution is standard practice, after all we are human and we can be moody, we can wake up feeling out of sorts, we can become insecure, angry, jealous or envious and those feelings can and do lead to misunderstandings which can then become a point of conflict.
If conflicts cannot be resolved, then trouble brews, and the longer it brews, the deeper it's impact on our bodies and minds. Chronic stress is a dis-ease vector and a killer.
The Bully is not a bio-logical behavioural default.
https://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/article?id=10.1371/journal.pbio.0020106
This paper outlines a cultural shift observed in a wild population of Forest Baboons. It indicates the element of culture as a learned, brain to brain transmitted behavioural dynamic or milieu that can be passed from generation to generation, learned from infancy (possibly prepared in utero by the conditions of the mothers lived condition) through direct experience and liminal absorbtion.
"Reports exist of transmission of culture in nonhuman primates. We examine this in a troop of savanna baboons studied since 1978. During the mid-1980s, half of the males died from tuberculosis; because of circumstances of the outbreak, it was more aggressive males who died, leaving a cohort of atypically unaggressive survivors.
If conflicts cannot be resolved, then trouble brews, and the longer it brews, the deeper it's impact on our bodies and minds. Chronic stress is a dis-ease vector and a killer.
The Bully is not a bio-logical behavioural default.
https://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/article?id=10.1371/journal.pbio.0020106
This paper outlines a cultural shift observed in a wild population of Forest Baboons. It indicates the element of culture as a learned, brain to brain transmitted behavioural dynamic or milieu that can be passed from generation to generation, learned from infancy (possibly prepared in utero by the conditions of the mothers lived condition) through direct experience and liminal absorbtion.
"Reports exist of transmission of culture in nonhuman primates. We examine this in a troop of savanna baboons studied since 1978. During the mid-1980s, half of the males died from tuberculosis; because of circumstances of the outbreak, it was more aggressive males who died, leaving a cohort of atypically unaggressive survivors.
A decade later, these behavioral patterns persisted. Males leave their natal troops at adolescence; by the mid-1990s, no males remained who had resided in the troop a decade before. Thus, critically, the troop's unique culture was being adopted by new males joining the troop.
We describe (a) features of this culture in the behavior of males, including high rates of grooming and affiliation with females and a “relaxed” dominance hierarchy; (b) physiological measures suggesting less stress among low-ranking males; (c) models explaining transmission of this culture; and (d) data testing these models, centered around treatment of transfer males by resident females."
Here we see a clear example of a culture shift, a change in behaviour that emerges across an entire population of primates.
What this suggests to me is that the concept of the Violent Alpha Male as a biological archetype is more likely a projection of the hierarchically conditioned mind, a bully culture, rather than an inevitable, biological default or archetype.
Wolves in captivity are not wolves in the wild.
What this suggests to me is that the concept of the Violent Alpha Male as a biological archetype is more likely a projection of the hierarchically conditioned mind, a bully culture, rather than an inevitable, biological default or archetype.
Wolves in captivity are not wolves in the wild.
The term Alpha Male was coined to describe 'what happens in wolf packs'. However that 'observation' was crafted from within a prison, and blown apart as a theory in the wild. It originated from a study of male wolves in a zoo enclosure, an entirely un-natural set-up. Wolf packs are families, with Mom and Pop and their litter. Wolves do not hang out in all single male groups ever. That never happens in the wild. One way to look at the study claiming Alpha Male wolves as an archetype is to think of a bunch of males in a prison. What kind of culture exists there?
When the same researchers went into the wild, they tried again, but did not spend much time observing in detail or taking blood samples, stool samples etc and stuck to the Alpha Male theory. Then some years later they returned to the wild, and this time spent a lot more time, gathering a lot more detail, until they finally understood that wolf packs were families, and in place of an Alpha Male they had Father Wolf, Mother Wolf and the family, and the children all had different characters, different skill sets and abilities and they all worked as a team using those differences to maximise their success.
When the same researchers went into the wild, they tried again, but did not spend much time observing in detail or taking blood samples, stool samples etc and stuck to the Alpha Male theory. Then some years later they returned to the wild, and this time spent a lot more time, gathering a lot more detail, until they finally understood that wolf packs were families, and in place of an Alpha Male they had Father Wolf, Mother Wolf and the family, and the children all had different characters, different skill sets and abilities and they all worked as a team using those differences to maximise their success.
Culture is, as it turns out. a mammalian dynamic, and co-operation prevails.
Co-operation is normative to all and often between species.
The concept of a 'Struggle for Survival' biological competition as the archetype of biology is a dystopian fairy tale, the projection myth of an insecure bully culture. No such thing exists. It's a way of looking at the world, rather than an observation.
The way our endocrine system functions proves this beyond all reasonable doubt. We get stressed when we get bullied, and when it becomes chronic that stress causes a wide range of physiological distortions and breakdowns. We are not 'designed' for chronic stress. It happens, yes, and it hurts and harms us long term.
Occasional stress is normal to all biology because the habitat is a dynamic environment, where changes occur, accidents happen and things can go wrong. If follows that being able to cope with the stress and return to homeostasis or balance is essential - and we see this all the time. Recovery and healing happens.
This is confirmed knowledge, tested profoundly. This is not belief.
We do not need to hang on to our negative beliefs about 'Humanity' or the 'Human Condition'- they are just beliefs, and they confer no accuracy of perception.
The Biology Never Lies.
Biology does information rather than belief.
Evidence matters.
Me matters. The Personal matters.
I think that for me, it started out with the evidence of my own subjective experience. Learning to be less subjective required that I step away a little from myself so that I could see the subjective rather than be overwhelmed by it all. I did not realise I was reeling from the trauma of my childhood, and when I did, in my late 30s, I started to very slowly develop more empathy for the child I was in the situation I was in. Very slowly.
Part of my 'learning' is the lived experience, examined in hind sight, often with less than 20/20 vision.
The lived experience of surviving long term abuse as a child, and dealing with the invisible affects as they emerged, whilst living in a bully society. I am not alone in this, not at all unique.
Part of my 'learning' has been muddling through, barely coping with depression, heartache, shame, self loathing, bullying, confusion, loss, despair. Part of my 'learning' has been resilience, dogged persistence, withdrawal and the creation of an inner fortress, a form of denial in that I understood I had grown up traumatised yet I pretended it did not afflict me as much as it had, because I could not remember much, because I was not ready to deal with it. Millions of people endure this learning across the bully culture. It's all quite sad, and it's painful.
Part of my 'learning' has been reading, studying and learning from what others had to present, by way of evidence and insight. Part of my 'learning' has been through counselling and the heartfelt advice and support of close friends. Millions of people are going through this every day.
Crucially when I began to see the Social Material realities of where I was born into for what they were - as a culture so much larger than I - I began to realise that I was, we all are, living in a bully social system. Millions of people are grappling with this realisation emerging in our lives.
I began to understand more of why I had been made to live through all of that, how everyone is living through all of that.
This awareness among the population is growing : the Hierarchy of Power culture is inherently toxic, and it has no natural mandate.
It is sustaining a traumatising chronic stress dis-ease dynamic.
I will repeat my basic theme. The Human Species is perfectly evolved for healthy attachment, bonding, co-operation, creative intelligence as part of 'natural' behavioural dynamics of a species living in and on Earths surface. I am perfectly evolved for the co-operative culture but have been conditioned by the lived experience of growing up in this dominator culture.
As a neo-nate my brain was ready for the egalitarian lived experience yet it met the hierarchy of wealth and power experience and that changed the trajectory.
In my case, I was born a month premature, as a Rhesus baby endured a full blood transfusion without anaesthetic and started life in an incubator for two months. A whole range of biologically mandated expectations, needs that are core to the building of behavioural and neurological pathways were never met even as the doctors and nurses fought to save my life. The NHS saved my life. I am ever grateful for that State funded co-operative movement.
That was just the start.
This hour long video presentation of a lecture by Allan Schore examines what we call attachment theory, informed by advances in scientific ability to observe detailed processes within our brains, our endocrine systems and our bodies as we grow.
The defining indicator, a predictor if all other data is unavailable, of a bully culture is how the institutions, the social structures and the adults relate to and treat the children. Authoritarian control, punishment/reward dynamics to assure compliance, children as projections of parents desires and perceived needs.
The defining indicator of a egalitarian culture's character is how they relate to and treat the children. Autonomy and loving, shared responsibility.
It really is a matter of existing and imposed power disparity, and who uses or abuses it under what conditions.
It has nothing to do with 'species' and everything to do with culture.
Humanity is not the problem, it is the solution.
Healing is possible, to a large degree.
Healing and recovery are biological mandates.
We live in a traumatising and traumatised culture.
The Trauma transmission is layered - Violent Hierarchies study the effects of poverty and violence on a population, to know how to exploit people's pain to maintain loyalty to the system, and to be able to continue to wage war. That is deliberate. They cause trauma deliberately.
The lived experience - ordinary folk whose lives are afflicted by the actions and behaviour of Power, ordinary folk who are caught in the crossfire of war, economic sanctions, impoverishment, who have to flee on foot, who are offered no genuine support (veterans, refugees, the no income, low income poor for example)
People are mostly are just doing the best they can to keep a lid on that chronic stress burden, so that they can look after themselves and their children.
Nonetheless there will be varying degrees of trauma behavioural transmission, and epi-genetic changes that disrupt development and behaviour, that are NOT the fault of those people, there is no malice there, and it must be understood that dynamic will impact every person affected in profound and long term ways.
The malice emerges as powerful States refuse to acknowledge this, because they are engaged in a competitive power struggle dominated by the most powerful military states, who seek dominance, globally. Obama 'twisting arms'.
I know of Indigenous groups who protected their native lands by defending with spears and arrows, guile and forest skills, who faced down Loggers, Miners, Farmers, Oil drillers and others who had guns, and no problem with using them to kill.
Decades passed and people were murdered on both sides.
Then, eventually when the defence of their lands and cultures ceased being 'operational', when they had manage to slow down the intrusions and find external international and national support for legislation to protect their lands, they withdrew and they deliberately went through a slow multi-generational healing process, so that they do not carry the wounds forwards... they did not want to become like the invaders, numbed through their own wounds.
They chose, as a community of adults, to heal. That is a fine example of biological conscious awareness and courage. That is highly evolved healthy human behaviour.
Those same groups are still facing invasion, assimilation and violence : they are stressed to the limit, because their shared habitats are under still threat, and yet they offer insight, they offer wisdom rather than seeking revenge.
The Human Species is fine, it's the culture that is the problem.
You are NOT your culture.
I am not the culture.
Therefore I will not let it be a trap that robs me of my sensitivity and humanity.
I will not let it undermine my determination to nurture the world around me, to nurture all people, our shared habitat, the common environment. Determination goes where hope falters.
Co-operation is what allowed our human species to thrive, more than any other single factor - and the evolved level of cooperation is based on healthy attachment bonding as a core element of psychological and social arrangement.
The natural society is grounded in the natural child's needs being met in full.
Bullying disrupts that and is the at the root of much harmful behaviour.
Dominator cultures are wiping out Egalitarian cultures.
If we want a future as a species, it has to be Egalitarian.
The work then is to confront the bully cult, disarm it, recover healthy relationships across all our cultures. This is doable
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
The concept of a 'Struggle for Survival' biological competition as the archetype of biology is a dystopian fairy tale, the projection myth of an insecure bully culture. No such thing exists. It's a way of looking at the world, rather than an observation.
The way our endocrine system functions proves this beyond all reasonable doubt. We get stressed when we get bullied, and when it becomes chronic that stress causes a wide range of physiological distortions and breakdowns. We are not 'designed' for chronic stress. It happens, yes, and it hurts and harms us long term.
Occasional stress is normal to all biology because the habitat is a dynamic environment, where changes occur, accidents happen and things can go wrong. If follows that being able to cope with the stress and return to homeostasis or balance is essential - and we see this all the time. Recovery and healing happens.
This is confirmed knowledge, tested profoundly. This is not belief.
We do not need to hang on to our negative beliefs about 'Humanity' or the 'Human Condition'- they are just beliefs, and they confer no accuracy of perception.
The Biology Never Lies.
Biology does information rather than belief.
Evidence matters.
Me matters. The Personal matters.
I think that for me, it started out with the evidence of my own subjective experience. Learning to be less subjective required that I step away a little from myself so that I could see the subjective rather than be overwhelmed by it all. I did not realise I was reeling from the trauma of my childhood, and when I did, in my late 30s, I started to very slowly develop more empathy for the child I was in the situation I was in. Very slowly.
Part of my 'learning' is the lived experience, examined in hind sight, often with less than 20/20 vision.
The lived experience of surviving long term abuse as a child, and dealing with the invisible affects as they emerged, whilst living in a bully society. I am not alone in this, not at all unique.
Part of my 'learning' has been muddling through, barely coping with depression, heartache, shame, self loathing, bullying, confusion, loss, despair. Part of my 'learning' has been resilience, dogged persistence, withdrawal and the creation of an inner fortress, a form of denial in that I understood I had grown up traumatised yet I pretended it did not afflict me as much as it had, because I could not remember much, because I was not ready to deal with it. Millions of people endure this learning across the bully culture. It's all quite sad, and it's painful.
Part of my 'learning' has been reading, studying and learning from what others had to present, by way of evidence and insight. Part of my 'learning' has been through counselling and the heartfelt advice and support of close friends. Millions of people are going through this every day.
Crucially when I began to see the Social Material realities of where I was born into for what they were - as a culture so much larger than I - I began to realise that I was, we all are, living in a bully social system. Millions of people are grappling with this realisation emerging in our lives.
I began to understand more of why I had been made to live through all of that, how everyone is living through all of that.
This awareness among the population is growing : the Hierarchy of Power culture is inherently toxic, and it has no natural mandate.
It is sustaining a traumatising chronic stress dis-ease dynamic.
I will repeat my basic theme. The Human Species is perfectly evolved for healthy attachment, bonding, co-operation, creative intelligence as part of 'natural' behavioural dynamics of a species living in and on Earths surface. I am perfectly evolved for the co-operative culture but have been conditioned by the lived experience of growing up in this dominator culture.
As a neo-nate my brain was ready for the egalitarian lived experience yet it met the hierarchy of wealth and power experience and that changed the trajectory.
In my case, I was born a month premature, as a Rhesus baby endured a full blood transfusion without anaesthetic and started life in an incubator for two months. A whole range of biologically mandated expectations, needs that are core to the building of behavioural and neurological pathways were never met even as the doctors and nurses fought to save my life. The NHS saved my life. I am ever grateful for that State funded co-operative movement.
That was just the start.
This hour long video presentation of a lecture by Allan Schore examines what we call attachment theory, informed by advances in scientific ability to observe detailed processes within our brains, our endocrine systems and our bodies as we grow.
What Schore calls the brain-to-brain relationship is revealed in some detail and lends itself to the understanding of brain development and affective state self regulation in utero and in infancy that is the world of carer and child, mother and infant in those earliest, most intimate relating to one another experiences, so much without words, so deeply limbic and yet absolutely crucial to the future emotional condition of the adult to be.
It is important to understand that even though we do not remember the detail of our experiences as neo-nates and infants. all of that experience is written into our bodies. That means much of what determines our adult emotional state is hidden from our awareness, is 'sub-conscious'. Cultures roots lie in the mists of vague memory.
Allan Schore gives a presentation on aspects of emotional development, in terms of the brain-to-brain dynamics and neurobiology of the interaction between carer, most often the mother, and the cared for infant.
Whatever the situation, the behavioural dynamic of healthy egalitarian culture has to be learned, by experience and exposure, each generation learning from the previous. Trauma and chronic stress and oppression tend to distort this learning, Violent cultures intervene in the learning - we call it 'education' set within an authoritarian hierarchy system called school - to assure the concepts of authority and it's right to exercise violence for the preservation of social order is habituated to. Sparta being the classic example.
More is being understood about this, by more and more people, as research into the biology of behaviour has made huge progress in the past 30 years.
Learning all the time.
This work that is being undertaken, diligently and seriously by many brilliant and committed people, away from the spotlights, the stages, the accolades of celebrity, work that is seeking to understand, contextualise and heal social violence, oppression, hierarchy and abuse of power is beyond any single life time; it was there before, and will be there after I or any of my readers have been long forgotten, because it is a historical process of recovery.
Allan Schore gives a presentation on aspects of emotional development, in terms of the brain-to-brain dynamics and neurobiology of the interaction between carer, most often the mother, and the cared for infant.
Whatever the situation, the behavioural dynamic of healthy egalitarian culture has to be learned, by experience and exposure, each generation learning from the previous. Trauma and chronic stress and oppression tend to distort this learning, Violent cultures intervene in the learning - we call it 'education' set within an authoritarian hierarchy system called school - to assure the concepts of authority and it's right to exercise violence for the preservation of social order is habituated to. Sparta being the classic example.
More is being understood about this, by more and more people, as research into the biology of behaviour has made huge progress in the past 30 years.
Learning all the time.
This work that is being undertaken, diligently and seriously by many brilliant and committed people, away from the spotlights, the stages, the accolades of celebrity, work that is seeking to understand, contextualise and heal social violence, oppression, hierarchy and abuse of power is beyond any single life time; it was there before, and will be there after I or any of my readers have been long forgotten, because it is a historical process of recovery.
As is often the case the leaders of the Dominator culture have dismissed the profoundly healthy humane realities of the older egalitarian cultures - which they call primitive or barbarian - cultures which form the bulk of human lived experience.
They dismissed the default biologically mandated modality for co-operative human culture because it poses a threat to the Dominator culture. We can see this today in the prevalence of what is known as Free Market Fundamentalism. A culture that pretends that human society does not really exist, that meritocracy is the natural state and that those who are wealthy are innately superior to those who are poor, whilst they ignore the fact that their wealth is precisely what generates poverty for so many others. A bully cult.
Evidence of a community grounded in healthy attachment relationships where affective state self regulation is matured by the time each reaches toddlerhood - presenting as healthy cultures that experienced no generation gaps, no organised mass warfare, no widespread sexual abuse of children or adults, cultures that thrived through healthy relationships with one another and with their habitat, for many, many tens of thousands of years, and in significant numbers
They dismissed the default biologically mandated modality for co-operative human culture because it poses a threat to the Dominator culture. We can see this today in the prevalence of what is known as Free Market Fundamentalism. A culture that pretends that human society does not really exist, that meritocracy is the natural state and that those who are wealthy are innately superior to those who are poor, whilst they ignore the fact that their wealth is precisely what generates poverty for so many others. A bully cult.
Evidence of a community grounded in healthy attachment relationships where affective state self regulation is matured by the time each reaches toddlerhood - presenting as healthy cultures that experienced no generation gaps, no organised mass warfare, no widespread sexual abuse of children or adults, cultures that thrived through healthy relationships with one another and with their habitat, for many, many tens of thousands of years, and in significant numbers
I mark my life by the quality of the relationships within which I am embedded - are they nurturant or are they destructive?
I ask the question - why not a nurturant culture? What is impeding the development of such a culture?
This work is not an evolution, and it is certainly not a revolutionary process, it is a process of recovery of healthy relationships. The evolution of the co-operative species and our culture has already been long complete. The linear model of 'progress' is in adequate to this task which all of us face going forward in our lives.
Dominance is the language of the bully.
Dominance is the language of the bully.
Coping is the language of the bullied, who cannot escape.
Revolution is the language of the status quo. Exchanging one Power for another.
Healing is the language of healthy human behaviour.
Reducing Power disparity abuse is a prerequisite for healing and recovery from trauma.
Revolution is the language of the status quo. Exchanging one Power for another.
Healing is the language of healthy human behaviour.
Reducing Power disparity abuse is a prerequisite for healing and recovery from trauma.
The defining indicator, a predictor if all other data is unavailable, of a bully culture is how the institutions, the social structures and the adults relate to and treat the children. Authoritarian control, punishment/reward dynamics to assure compliance, children as projections of parents desires and perceived needs.
The defining indicator of a egalitarian culture's character is how they relate to and treat the children. Autonomy and loving, shared responsibility.
It really is a matter of existing and imposed power disparity, and who uses or abuses it under what conditions.
It has nothing to do with 'species' and everything to do with culture.
Humanity is not the problem, it is the solution.
Healing is possible, to a large degree.
Healing and recovery are biological mandates.
We live in a traumatising and traumatised culture.
The Trauma transmission is layered - Violent Hierarchies study the effects of poverty and violence on a population, to know how to exploit people's pain to maintain loyalty to the system, and to be able to continue to wage war. That is deliberate. They cause trauma deliberately.
The lived experience - ordinary folk whose lives are afflicted by the actions and behaviour of Power, ordinary folk who are caught in the crossfire of war, economic sanctions, impoverishment, who have to flee on foot, who are offered no genuine support (veterans, refugees, the no income, low income poor for example)
People are mostly are just doing the best they can to keep a lid on that chronic stress burden, so that they can look after themselves and their children.
Nonetheless there will be varying degrees of trauma behavioural transmission, and epi-genetic changes that disrupt development and behaviour, that are NOT the fault of those people, there is no malice there, and it must be understood that dynamic will impact every person affected in profound and long term ways.
The malice emerges as powerful States refuse to acknowledge this, because they are engaged in a competitive power struggle dominated by the most powerful military states, who seek dominance, globally. Obama 'twisting arms'.
I know of Indigenous groups who protected their native lands by defending with spears and arrows, guile and forest skills, who faced down Loggers, Miners, Farmers, Oil drillers and others who had guns, and no problem with using them to kill.
Decades passed and people were murdered on both sides.
Then, eventually when the defence of their lands and cultures ceased being 'operational', when they had manage to slow down the intrusions and find external international and national support for legislation to protect their lands, they withdrew and they deliberately went through a slow multi-generational healing process, so that they do not carry the wounds forwards... they did not want to become like the invaders, numbed through their own wounds.
They chose, as a community of adults, to heal. That is a fine example of biological conscious awareness and courage. That is highly evolved healthy human behaviour.
Those same groups are still facing invasion, assimilation and violence : they are stressed to the limit, because their shared habitats are under still threat, and yet they offer insight, they offer wisdom rather than seeking revenge.
The Human Species is fine, it's the culture that is the problem.
You are NOT your culture.
I am not the culture.
Therefore I will not let it be a trap that robs me of my sensitivity and humanity.
I will not let it undermine my determination to nurture the world around me, to nurture all people, our shared habitat, the common environment. Determination goes where hope falters.
Co-operation is what allowed our human species to thrive, more than any other single factor - and the evolved level of cooperation is based on healthy attachment bonding as a core element of psychological and social arrangement.
The natural society is grounded in the natural child's needs being met in full.
Bullying disrupts that and is the at the root of much harmful behaviour.
Dominator cultures are wiping out Egalitarian cultures.
If we want a future as a species, it has to be Egalitarian.
The work then is to confront the bully cult, disarm it, recover healthy relationships across all our cultures. This is doable
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
2 comments:
Being of broadly human origin [LOL] the questions you address here are of the most profound interest to me. I don't doubt for a moment that you have done extensive research to back up your conclusions, but some quotations or references to particular studies would be appreciated, as an aid to further reading.
I tend to agree that we are not born bad, the concept of original sin is without doubt a toxic ideology, a perverse, self-fulfilling philosophy that is clearly utterly at odds with what little one can deduce about the philosophy of Jesus Christ from the handful of fragmentary afterthoughts that pass for a record of his teachings [all that really stands out in the gospels as uniquely belonging to the philosophy supposedly espoused by Jesus Christ is his extreme commitment to pacifism and opposition to materialism, as practised by the Roman Catholic Church and American far-right LOL]
We receive a vastly larger proportion of our programming post-natally than other species. Add to that our unparalled ability to transmit sophisticated cultural memes across generations - keeping these factors in mind its easy to see how our particular vulnerability to passing on complex, destructive ideologies and values from one generation to another manifests. You seem to repudiate this in your peace, but ultimately I think our genes are shaped by success, by survival - what checks our ideas, our memes? Our ideas and cultural norms are shaped mainly by their own success, their virulence - hence the combative subroutines often consciously deeply embedded in many belief systems, intended to wipe out competing ideas and ensure the survival of a particular religion or weltenschaung at the expense of others, even when the core values of the cultural paradigm theoretically being promulgated clearly include tolerance, love and non-judgement.
I notice that I keep bringing this back to Christianity - this is not because I am personally particularly enamoured or influenced by Christian ideology, but rather, I suppose, because I am drawn into a constant dialogue with Christian theology by my beloved's aspirations to act as an officially sanctioned representative for the Anglican denomination. The Abrahamic traditions do have a lot to answer for in terms of their contribution to the poisonous nature of the dominant global ethos, so perhaps neither apology nor explanation is really called for here.
We're born completely helpless and completely self-centred, and (theoretically) learn empathy and love through our mammalian upbringing. It doesn't seem inevitable at all, even in smaller tribal communities, that humans will transcend the innocant brutality of nature, as exemplified by the relative brutality of chimp culture when compared with the more easy-going bonobos. So while I definitely feel that we aren't born bad, neither are we born good, not exactly - to me our perfection lies in being positioned right between the two - making us uniquely able to make meaningful choices between the apparent binary poles of good and evil, the knowledge of which only we have (this may reflect a core teaching of the Abrahamic faiths, but it is clearly a truism - when black holes swallow galaxies we should not imagine them as evil, nor when a panther rips it's prey's throat and devours it. The actions of celestial bodies and the animal's instinctive behaviours - we rightly regard both as mechanical. In our sublime arrogance we exclude ourselves from the mechanical processes of the universe - perhaps rightly ? - to include ourselves in the Divine could be a return to Eden, as Good nd Evil would no longer have any meaning, everything would fall into the category of cause and effect)
I meant this to be a brief comment & really must go now, my reflections here are partial and distorted, excuse me for thinking out loud
<3
Fair comment.
Allan Schores work on the biology of what happens brain to brain, during the first two years of life demonstrates the default setting of trust and which if met leads to maturation of affective state self regulation.
Thus by 18 months post birth, the toddler is already in control of her or his inner emotional state. This makes a lot of sense as the child is now mobile and can explore the new world, and the last thing an explorer needs is a short fuse.
You are correct that culture impacts us all and informs our behaviour. Bully cults like ours do not ‘succeed’ and they don’t last long either. So the selection by survival idea you pose lacks weight.
Australian Aborigines 66,000 years tells us a lot more about the long term success of cooperative cultures.
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