Evidence, David Smail and the facts before us.

I have just completed my first reading of 'The Origins of Unhappiness : A New Understanding of Personal Unhappiness' written by David Smail.  It is an astounding work, and I must say, I now believe that it is essential reading for anyone interested in psychological distress, justice and economic equity.

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/27133657-the-origins-of-unhappiness

"It is the main argument of this book that emotional and psychological distress is often brought about through the operation of social-environmental powers which have their origin at a considerable distance from those ultimately subjected to them. 

On the whole, psychology has concerned itself very little with the field of power which stretches beyond our immediate relations with each other, and this has led to serious limitations on the explanatory power of the theories it has produced. 

To illustrate this, typical cases of patient distress in the 1980s are examined. The decade when the right-wing of politics proclaimed there was no such thing as society gave rise to psychological distress across social classes, as long-standing societal institutions were dismantled. 

This is as much a work of sociology, politics, and philosophy, as it is of psychology. Fundamentals of an environmental understanding of distress are outlined. A person is the interaction of a body with the environment."

What I got from this book : realism and honesty.

I live in England where poverty is deliberately maintained and the poor are dehumanised in media representations, where the symptoms of that distress are used as signs of a flawed nature in order to blame the impoverished for their impoverished state, which protects the Wealth Extraction systems, externalising the cost of low wages and inadequate social care provision. 

"We need to realise that, rather than the patient being a problem for the world, the world is a problem for the patient. We are embodied products of environment space-time. To make a difference in our lives we need to be able to exert what little influence we have on the environment, to make it, from our perspective, a little more benign. It is not we who need to change, but the world around us.Or, to put it another way, the extent to which we are able to change will always depend upon some material change in the environmental structures of power which envelope us (and insofar as these cannot be changed, for example because they are in the past, neither can we be wiped clean of their effects).

The difficulty with this is immediately apparent: how do we, relatively powerless creatures, bring effective influence to bear on the environment?"

David Smail (goes to wiki page on David Smail) wrote this :

"Hardly any of the 'symptoms' of psychological distress may correctly be seen as medical matters. The so-called psychiatric 'disorders' are nothing to do with faulty biology, nor indeed are they the outcome of individual moral weakness or other personal failing. They are the creation of the social world in which we live, and that world is structured by power.
    
Social power may be defined as the means of obtaining security or advantage, and it will be exercised within any given society in a variety of forms: coercive (force), economic (money power) and ideological (the control of meaning). Power is the dynamic which keeps the social world in motion. It may be used for good or for ill.
    
One cannot hope to understand the phenomena of psychological distress, nor begin to think what can be done about them, without an analysis of how power is distributed and exercised within society.

Such an understanding is the focus of this web-site. "


You can go to David Smail's Website here via wayback web archive.

I respectfully suggest this as a genuinely useful resource base, to find tools and insights that relate to how power operates and behaves in this culture.

The psychology of power hierarchies. The psychology of people adjusting to this unhealthy social institutional structure and culture. Some home truths. Radicalisation. Grooming. Social meaning. Our lives in all of this.

Evidence based.





Kindest regards

Corneilius

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

*If you like this post, if you found the themes resonant, if you agree in part, would you be kind enough to let others know about it? I would really appreciate that. You could drop a comment too, if you felt the urge. Or not. I will moderate contributions, and block any that are abusive. For obvious reasons. Thank you for reading.

2017 and the centrality of bullying in all our lives.

Donald Trump and Miss Universe, DAESH and Jimmy Savile and are indeed part of a wider problem within our Society, our world culture of Power and State.


They are not the problem, it must be said; their behaviour are symptoms of a problem.

The problem is bullying.

From within an Imperial culture still heavily invested in 'Christian Ideals' even as it lays claim to a secular grounding; from within a 2000 year old culture that has undermined egalitarian and empathic relationships in all areas of life in favour of the relationships demanded by hierarchies of Power who see themselves as involved in a struggle for 'survival' (that is to say, a struggle to preserve their power at any cost); in that paradigm a key dynamic is the ad-mixture of sexuality and power.

The poor are ugly. The rich are beautiful.

Christians are beautiful, Pagans are ugly.

Primitive Peoples vs Civilised Peoples.

Gods view on sexuality is Law.

The unspoken line is that one must use one's sexuality as a tool to get something, as proof of one's power and potency, as a marker of who one is, as a sign of loyalty and conformity.

Marriage as a political tool.

The dynastic model.

Fucking for power.

Fucking for security.

Fucking for money.

Pleasure and Power.

When our innate, emergent and natural sensing of self is assaulted by forces we are unable to confront, specifically those forces of power that indoctrinate a people's children, a force that defines who we should be, then a wounding occurs, a wound to the emergent sense of self, and in order to survive that wounding and 'get by' on the terms power has set out, (a thriving healthy peaceful egalitarian society at all levels is but a pipe dream) within that woundedness, we are forced to 'adjust' to the status quo.

It is not that sex sells, it is that the illusion of power that sells.

You can be more attractive. Buy this product, subscribe to this belief. Gain power.

Rape is about power above all else.

Strict gender roles emerge in societies that are hierarchically and institutionally violent. Adherence to these self limiting roles is demanded by power. Seeing oneself as merely a man or a woman as defined by power.

Such societies repaint Nature, and create Gods in their own image.

Hierarchical, vengeful, domineering - and they love us!  God loves us?

Our leaders and our Power Establishments love us.

They ‘serve’ us. It is an honour and a privilege, they acclaim.

And when our children are sacrificed, that too is an honour.

Yeah, right.

2017 onwards - can we end single issue political activism?

Or at the very least join the dots.

It's yet anoyther way the system has of dividing folk, of diluting and preventing a solid critical analysis of the situation, a way of undermining solidarity amongst our many strands of struggle. Fund and promote one above others. Create a climate of competition for funds and attention. Let the unresolved psyches of activists do the rest.

Homosexuality allowed openly within the Military is touted as ‘progress’.

"We will accept anyone who wants to enlist as a trained killer and help us bully other States!"

Gays for Trump! Fathers for Justice! Feminists for Clinton! Blacks for Obama?

How about Gay people for Heterosexual people against war and the bullying of women?

How about Climate Change activists against Bullying?

There is one issue.

It is called bullying. Power exerted over others.

Rape is bullying.

War is bullying.

Bribery is bullying.

Misogyny is bullying.

Sexism is Bullying.

Religious indoctrination is bullying.

Ideological indoctrination is bullying.

Usury is bullying.

Mortgages are a mass bullying device.

Debt is bullying.

Aspirational Marketing is bullying.

Mountain top removal is bullying.

Sex trafficking is bullying.

Uranium Mining is bullying.

Bullies always discount the costs others bear for their behaviour.

Fake News is bullying.

Every US President is a bully in Office.

Every Home Secretary is a bully in Office.

The Christian/Muslim/Jewish missionary is a bully.

And so it goes.

To cast any adverse judgement on a person's sense of their sexual self and their desire to live that sense openly where it does not involve any abuse of another is bullying.

It's not that people are homophobic, it's that they are bullies and they seek 'approved' targets, set by Higher Authorities, to vent their own frustration, pain and rage, again, and again (because their wounds remain unhealed) in the service of Power.

Bullying. Bullets. And Bombs.

They are the signal that something is out of balance and dis-eased.

I applaud everyone who engages in the work of confronting the issues within their own lives, I praise the disabled who campaign against cuts and discrimination, I delight in the peaceful who campaign against the weapons/war industry, I love the environmentally aware who campaign against environmental abuse, I admire and laud the Survivors who campaign to demand accountability from their abusers and the Institutions within which they are protected, I sing for the local folk who campaign against the imposition of fracking.

I understand the need for focused, evidence led campaigns, and I understand that they can be effective. I cannot dismiss these on any level. I can only praise these efforts.

It is the combinations of a one behaviour - bullying - across many areas of life that is the central issue.... the symptoms are not the central issue.

I hope more activists and others can make this connection as we move forwards with our struggles.

We need to see a focus on the central issue, Bullying, within and across all single issue campaigns.

We need to see that in our homes, schools, work places, Churches, Synagogues, Mosques and Temples, and across all areas of Civil Governance.

We need to see that in relation to imposed taxation.

The urge to Power.

An origin story. A paper I wrote on the origins of Hierarchically Violent Religions and Cultures as an unresolved trauma-behaviour pattern that has become institutionalised over time, and thus deeply embedded within the modern industrial cultural psyche.

A short video on one aspect of the origin of the behaviour patterning that leads to the urge to exert power over others so that they meet one’s perceived needs.

Empower.

It never strikes back.

Listen to the child.

Hear the Child.

Adults Don't Heed my Distress.

Kindest regards

Corneilius

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

*If you like this post, if you found the themes resonant, if you agree in part, would you be kind enough to let others know about it? I would really appreciate that. You could drop a comment too, if you felt the urge. Or not. I will moderate contributions, and block any that are abusive. For obvious reasons. Thank you for reading.