Child Abuse is a cultural marker across all known hierarchy or dominator cultures- Qanon is a political cultural weapon, and does nothing to protect children.

There are abusers - people who intentionally and deliberately exploit, abuse and cause harm to other people - in every political party, in every office, in every military unit, in every school, every temple.

Bullying is a standard behavioural dynamic in hierarchical situations.

Bullies in the office, predators in the Church or the Swim Club, manipulators among the family, domestic violence, abuse of power disparity, corruption and warfare are all part of the same behavioural dynamic.

And so, if we are honest then when it comes to child abuse we all know that there are abusers in many, many family homes, just as there are abusers in many institutional settings, be they left, right, centrist, secular, religious or apolitical.

So here's the honest evidence - The vast majority of child abuse is perpetrated against children by people they know, often trusted people within their family network or their community. 

Stranger attack is relatively rare by comparison, and, yes it is still a genuine threat, something to be aware of  - it does happen. Child Sexual Abuse most often involves the infiltration of a circle of trust, the grooming of target and bystanders alike a standard behaviour. That uncle you all trusted, the political conman who was trusted....

Using the issue of child abuse as a partisan political weapon does not help confront the truth of abuse in general and child abuse in particular as it stands within this culture.  That is problematic.

So I choose to name the culture - Hierarchical Industrialised Militarised Competing Powers  (HIMCOP) - and I see it as a series of behaviour patterns, behavioural dynamics that become institutionalised around the need to gain and maintain power over others. I do not see it as 'natural healthy human behaviour'.

I think using CSA as a political weapon inhibits a full confrontation with the social material situation.

I have found this to be the case, from decades of confronting the abuse I endured, turning abuse in to a partisan political weapon does nothing to reduce abuse, nothing to mitigate the harm or resolve the pain.

The system of power understands that when people stop arguing, and begin to listen to one another, in order to build bridges, to deepen understanding, to learn from each others experience, then the system of power is in trouble. So they do their level best to see that we ordinary folk are set o  arguing against each other.

“If we accept that there will always be sides, it’s a nontrivial to-do list item to always be on the side of angels. Distrust essentialism. 

Keep in mind that what seems like rationality is often just rationalization, playing catch-up with subterranean forces that we never suspect.

Focus on the larger, shared goals. Practice perspective taking. Individuate, individuate, individuate. Recall the historical lessons of how often the truly malignant Thems keep themselves hidden and make third parties the fall guy.

And in the meantime, give the right-of-way to people driving cars with the “Mean people suck” bumper sticker, and remind everyone that we’re all in it together against Lord Voldemort and the House Slytherin.”

― Robert M. Sapolsky, Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst

So lets look at some of the data, the evidence to discern some of the truth here.

An Epidemiological Overview of Child Sexual Abuse - 2014

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4311357/ 

 "The WHO in 2002 estimated that 73 million boys and 150 million girls under the age of 18 years had experienced various forms of sexual violence.[1] 

The Center's for Disease Control and the US Department of Justice conducted a study in the US and reported prevalence of being forced to have sex at some point of time in their lives as 11% and 4% of the high-school girls and boys, respectively.[7] 

 A meta-analysis conducted in the year 2009 analyzed 65 studies in 22 countries and estimated an “overall international figure.” 

 The main findings of the study were:[7] An estimated 7.9% of males and 19.7% of females universally faced sexual abuse before the age of 18 years[7] 

The highest prevalence rate of CSA was seen in Africa (34.4%)[7,8] 

Europe, America, and Asia had prevalence rate of 9.2%, 10.1%, and 23.9%, respectively[7] 

With regards to females, seven countries reported prevalence rates as being more than one fifth i.e., 37.8% in Australia, 32.2% in Costa Rica, 31% in Tanzania, 30.7% in Israel, 28.1% in Sweden, 25.3% in the US, and 24.2% in Switzerland[7] 

The lowest rate observed for males may be imprecise to some extent because of under reporting.[7] 

The study concluded that CSA is an extensive problem and even the lowest prevalence includes a huge number of victims who still need to be considered.[7]" 

The reader can read the paper, and check each of the references for him or herself.

Egalitarian cultures do not abuse children. 

Hierarchy cultures do. 

Dominator cultures do.

Traumatised cultures do.

source : www.violence.de

It is that simple.

Only honesty and transparency can resolve this matter.

Honesty is evidence led, transparency is evidence available in the open, without bias. Everyone can see it all.

I think that using child abuse as a partisan political weapon is being dishonest - political weaponisation of CSA/CSE  is small minded and abusive - small minded in that it does not look to the whole society level situation, and abusive in that it is exploiting suffering to make a point. - Without really thinking it through, those who fall for that false gambit end up dumping all over the work of survivors and their advocates, the people who go to court, who pursue justice diligently.

Those who use CSE/CSA as a political weapon are also dumping all over the people who work with survivors to help them 'recover' and regain some semblance of safety and balance, and and dumping over the many health professionals and care workers, trainers, mid wives and others who work to prevent child abuse. 

Those who use CSA/CSE as a political weapon are exploiting the survivors, the harm caused becomes a weapon and they are inhibiting accurate and honest discourse on this subject.

Dealing with proven abusers.

Everyone who is proven be an abuser needs to be sentenced, and imprisoned, just as everyone who makes and spreads images of child abuse needs to be incarcerated, not as punishment, but as a fundamental societal  health and safety protocol.

Punishment does not prevent abuse. It's already too late by the stage of courts and convictions. It is true that incarcerated abusers are no longer able to abuse children freely. That is a  useful gain in the overall picture. But it is not grass roots prevention. It is important to consider what is needed to prevent child abuse.

 People who abuse children and exploit them are not safe for society. Period. 

 So too with War Criminals.  They are not safe for society.

Tony Blair and George Bush are personally responsible for the murder of at least 250,000 children in Iraq in 2003 -2006, and they are personally responsible for the orphaning of 4 million Iraqi children. 

How does that harm compare with the quantity of harms caused by Epstein or Savile, or any other case of celebrity abusers?   It is certain that in each case of abuse or harm, each harmed child sees little difference, the lived experience of that and it's impacts are utterly, utterly awful.

However at the societal level there is a vast difference. This is not to suggest the Saviles and Epsteins get a free pass by comparison. Comparison is needless when we remove punishment and install humane lonfg term incarceration for social safety.

If, as the allegations suggest, Epstein's operation was about entrapment and exploitation of powerful people as a political weapon, as a political whip, then it is ironic that Qanon et al use the abuse of small, defenceless children, as a political weapon. Both would be doing the same thing. 

Where is Child Sexual Abuse more common? How many more ordinary, non celebrity people rape children, most often their own, or their relatives or friends children, and are never exposed?

Neither of these questions are posed to afford celebrity abusers any excuse or mitigation. Again it's not a comparison. Those who are famous who are also proven abusers must always be exposed and safety restored by their removal and incarceration. Just as any one else.

Left/Right makes no difference: the abuse can and does happen in any political grouping or affiliation, any religious group or affiliation. 

Honesty and transparency do make a difference. 

 Accurate data and verifiable evidence do make a difference. 

Understanding the issues, the context and the evidence as a whole does make a difference.

Using the issue of abuse as a partisan political weapon does not help confront the truth of abuse as it stands within THIS culture. 

Here's a few resources on this subject.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3485398/ - The relationship between egalitarianism, dominance, and violence in intimate relationships

https://sweden.se/society/smacking-banned-since-1979/ - Sweden Bans smacking children

https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/gender-egalitarianism-made-us-human-patriarchy-was-too-little-too-late/ - a study of  our egalitarian past

https://www.alice-miller.com/en/sexual-abuse-and-memory/- A letter to Alice Miller from a Survivor. Alice Miller studied child abuse from a cultural historical perspective.

https://www.globalcitizen.org/en/connect/crypower/episode8/ - Colm O'Gorman — the Executive Director of Amnesty International Ireland — about his own experiences of sexual assault, the world-changing power of individual action, and the extraordinary story of how he sued the Pope.

https://www.oneinfour.org.uk/about-oneinfour/ - One in Four specializes in supporting survivors of sexual violence and abuse, and particularly survivors of child sexual abuse and trauma.

https://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/26542319-the-body-keeps-the-score-brain-mind-and-body-in-the-healing-of-trauma - The Body Keeps The Score - A pioneering researcher and one of the world’s foremost experts on traumatic stress offers a bold new paradigm for healing.

www.violence.de - The origins of peace and violence, this site looks at the work of James W Prescott, who with John Bowlby developed the first Attachment Theory back in teh 1960s.

https://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/44171.Judith_Lewis_Herman - Trauma and Recovery: The Aftermath of Violence-From Domestic Abuse to Political Terror

https://www.d2l.org/the-issue/statistics/- The statistics and facts below can help you understand what child sexual abuse is, the risk factors and consequences for survivors, and how to identify and report suspected abuse

 Kindest regards 

 Corneilius 

 "Do what you love, it is your gift to universe."

Bullies, Power and the child-mother bonding attachment.

When we study the evolution of the human neuro-endocrine system and how it functions we discover something.

Egalitarian life was generally peaceful,  beautiful, healthy, grounded in solid attachment and mature affective state self regulation which reduced incidence of lost tempers and general violence

.

This will trigger some people within a culture where self regulation is dysregulated more often than not.

Social Behavioural Characteristics of different cultures.

 

source : www.violence.de

Societal Social Behavioural Characteristics.

Different modes of society exist, ranging from egalitarian collectives to hierarchies of power. 

Egalitarian behaviour is healthy. 

Hierarchy behaviour is unhealthy.

People bully because they learn to bully

People demonstrate love because they learn to love.

Unhealthy behaviour is not a biological norm.

Healthy behaviour is a biological norm.

That is why egalitarian cultures exist, and have always existed.  

Biology would not create a species designed to be unhealthy.

Healthy peoeple do not abuse their power disparity over others, especially not over their own children, family, partners... they will use that power disparity to nurture, care for and protect, to demonstrate healthy bonding and love as a lived experneice.

Bullies always seek as much control over the bullied as possible, to the point that it is unhealthy for both bully and the bullied.

In cultures where socio-econimic status is thing, wealth gives a person more material power to than other persons who have no wealth.  A man with a sword and a man with a stick.

Vast wealth creates a much larger power disparity. A president commands an Army, and a civilian living in the pathway of the war that army is prosecuting is utterly powerless, and must flee.

This is not healthy behaviour.

Great Wealth as an institutional agency controls populations.

States, Dictators, Kings and Queens, Presidents and Prime Ministers have access to material power - through the institutions they dominate and through alliances with Oligarchy. It is access to those that allows them to transmit and project their 'power', without them they are ordinary folk, impotent in the face of immense power.

The ordinary citizen is rendered utterly powerless by the structure.

The power disparity is close to that of parent and infant.

All of this control is to remain in a powerful position, to maitain the power disparity - it's a fractal of existential insecurity.

If I do let go it will all fall to pieces, and they will eat me alive.

The person or Institution is unwilling, unable to let go of that material capability to exercise power to retain power. Thus they resist all attempts at healing, they resist all attempts to confront their abuses, they cover up, mask, deflect, distract...

Unhealthy behaviour is not a biological norm.

Or put it the other way.

Healthy behaviour is the biological norm.

That is not to say that disease does not exist.

Which begs the question.

Why do or how do some people learn to become bullies?

Before we go on i want to place two scientifically proven understandings before you, that are uncontested, incontrovertible data.

- disrupted child-mother bonding is more common in communities that are traumatised or subjected to chronic stress, and in cultures that are violent hierarchies than it is in healthy egalitarian communities.

- example - Trump, his infancy and childhood, plus the culture of his fathers corrupt businessm within the culture of U.S. which is a hierarchy of power and violence. He is someone who is unable to regulate his emotional outbursts.

- example - The vast majority of people in prison for violent crime have experienced childhood trauma, abuse that was never resolved.

These are people whose ability or willingness to control their emotional states is profoundly damaged.

Angry, violent, abusive, manipualtive, traumatised people.

And there are many more who are not in prison, whose damage goes 'un-noticed' and yet it is the object and subject of humour in sit-coms, rom-coms, heroic war movies and there is enough of low level loss of self regulation to generate a psychotherapy industrial complex that deals with the results of the psycho-marketing industrial complex that manipulates that loss of self regulation.

Self Regulation of Emotional State.

Living in the real world, a human organism has to be able to master his or her emotional states - for example, climbing a tree to access something entails taking the risk of the climb. That risk is something to be feared, yet one needs to control the fear to do the climb safely. It's not fearlessnes, it's the ability to self regulate the emotional state in order to get things done, to avoid falling.

Allan N. Schore is an American psychologist and researcher in the field of neuropsychology. His research has focused on affective neuroscience, neuropsychiatry, trauma theory, developmental psychology, attachment theory, pediatrics, infant mental health, psychoanalysis, psychotherapy, and behavioral biology

What he is presenting in the video below is an over view of the scientific learning and clinical experience of the past 40 years, in this field, which is  telling us more about how human neonates and babies and infants and toddlers develop emotional self regulation, sense of self and other social keys in the first 1000 days of life, starting at conception.

In the language of neurobiology, enodcrinology, epigenetics, nurtition, physiological and psychological development as it relates to mother-child

So yes, starting from conception.

What happens at the biological level?
 
We see now that the human brain is designed to be organised by how the person (a developing foetus is a person) experiences being alive. 

Environment and experience plays a major role in brain development, more so than genetics alone.

“The brain is heavily influenced by genes. But from birth through young adulthood, the part of the human brain that most defines us (frontal cortex) is less a product of the genes with which you started life than of what life has thrown at you. Because it is the least constrained by genes and most sculpted by experience. This must be so, to be the supremely complex social species that we are. Ironically, it seems that the genetic program of human brain development has evolved to, as much as possible, free the frontal cortext from genes.” 

― Robert M. Sapolsky, Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst
 
The epigenetics  (the way that portions of the parents genes are switched on or off or disrupted by their lived experience) of the parents lived experience is passed through to the child, through genetic transmission. So even without any direct experience, the child carries markers of the changed genetic coding of their parents lived experience prior to conception.

At the same time, the lived experience of the mother is the ennvironment within which the foetus and the new brain develops, given those conditions which of course vary from mother to mother, from culture to culture.  Both develop within a cultural environment, that affects both child and parent.

Thus we see that brain development being elastic, that fluidity gives the developing human brain the widest scope for learning. There is very little in behaviour that is 'programmed', most of our behaviour is learned. We write the pathways of experience as we go. Experience programs us, yet not all is hard wired, it can be modulated, attenuated.
 
Because the human brain never stops learning or growing.

Think of it as a small brain growing inside the mother, relating to the mothers brain. Learning all the time. Developing all the time. Everyday in the womb becoming ready for the next stage, which is not a from scratch state. Hearing starts at 18 weeks, which means that listening starts soon after. That is to say paying attention to the sound, with a focus.

The sounds of the mothers body, the sounds of life close by, a washing machine, a waterfall, thunder, laughter, crying... someone inside is listening, a little person is learning, developing, reacting and responding.

A baby in the womb can be soothed, as much as the baby can be disturbed. The baby can respond to the mother. A biological conversation, in the language of hormone cascades, neurological pathways plays between both mother and child.

The new-born babies recognises the mothers voice, and those of close family members, the new born feels everything any adult would feel, yet has no language. Communication is by empathy, connectedness, skin to skin.

The caring of the mother initiates further emotional development  of the child as a separate autonomous being, and her care sustains that development for as long as it takes the child to mature, healthfully. This is the bioligical mandate for healthy development.

There are key experiential inter-relational dynamics between mother and baby, and later on between any care giver and child, that are essential to nurture the development of the child's emotional maturity, at the earliest stage possible.

Biologically this makes sense. As a thought experiment, try to imagine a group living on an ice flow, or in a desert, or a rain forest having to move about with a few children throwing tantrums, screaming in rage, running off in all directions, refusing to co-operate?

It doesn't happen in healthy communities.

So here is Allan Schore, and he puts it so much clearer than I could...

Alice Miller

In 1986, Alice Miller published "For your own good :The Roots of Violence in Child Rearing"

In this work she traced the childhood of Hitler, and the childhoods of other well known 'cases' - a serial killer (Jurgen Bartsch) and a heroin addict (Christiane F) and looked at the cultural background in Europe at that time, and the history of child punishment.

She examined the early childhoods of these three subjects, and drew correlations and causative lines from those, put into the wider social material context of Christian Europe as a war like culture, where traditional parenting was authoritarian, and adult to child sanction or punishment was the norm.

Miller looked at the history of Parenting as transmitted in books, from old and ancient manuscripts to the printed press and traced a line of instruction, from Sparta (spare the rod, spoil the child)  to Vienna (Frued, and the Oedipus Complex) in 1880s, to middle class parenting books in the 1930s.

The traditional view was based around the concept of breaking the wilfulness of the child - that child willfulness was seen as the gate through which the Devil or Evil or Badness could enter and corrupt the child, and it was the parents Christian responsibility to make sure that never happened because such people could disrupt the established order. Society demanded that the parent dominate the child's will, and 'rear' the child, 'raise' the child to be a good citizen.

This is a culture where Christianity is ubiquitous, and the vast majority truly believe and are influenced by the Christian psyche.

Thus for them, to fail to 'raise' the child to be a good Christian would put the entire social order out of balance.

Freud's betrayal.

Freud, for what ever reasons, placed the dangerous element within what he assumed was the child's innate lust or competition for the opposite sex parent. It was a quality of the child. A biological norm.

He made that up, obviously. He had no science or meaningfully observed and measured data, it was merely his plagiarism of Greek Mythology projected onto a crime no one was willing to acknowledge, not even he himself, in spite of the little evidence that he did have. That crime was upper middle class  fathers sexually exploiting their own daughters.

His client base was the daughters of upper middle class families, who came to his psycho-therapy sessions and told their stories. They told him what they had experienced.

When Freud presented a paper on this, his contemporaries rejected it, and him, outright.

Freud retreated, and wrote a new  paper, which is known as The Aetiology of Hysteria, in which he put the 'blame' on the child...

Freud was doing what his culture told him to do. Loyalty, fit in, do not disturb the established order.

He followed orders. Creatively.

Alice Miller argued that the way a culture treats the children feeds into the willingness across a population to 'follow' Authoritarian leaders, not least because the unresolved anger, pain and dispair of lived experience that remains unresolved generates a pressure that is intense albeit largely unconscious, and bullies, those who seek to exercise power over others know how to tap into that to manipulate a significant part of the population, enough to control the majority...

Within this the vast majority peaople remain basically decent, albeit prone to being manipulated by demagogues.

Then a significant percentage will become bullies, at what ever

Brexit, and the age divide, the parenting divide reflects this dynamic in part.

A generation raised in War and traditional Christian values vs a generation raised in relative peace and secular values grounded in Human Rights.

It's a part of the dynamic, not it's whole.

Blaming the victim is a core aspect of the division to conquer dynamic.

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.

Childhood Maltreatment, Institutional Society and the Biology of The Brain

WE ARE NOT DESIGNED FOR CHRONIC STRESS - NO ORGANISM AND NO LIVING SYSTEM IS.

"The exquisite vulnerability of the hippocampus to the ravages of stress is one of the key neuroscience discoveries of the 20th century.

Sapolsky et al. provided early clues when they found that elevating corticosterone stress hormone levels into the high physiological range for an extended period reduced the number of hippocampal neurons in rats.

Further studies showed that the deleterious effects of glucocorticoids could occur in other regions but that the hippocampus was the primary target.

The outcomes of excessive exposure to glucocorticoids range from the reversible atrophy of dendritic processes and suppression of neurogenesis with acute exposure to frank neuronal death with chronic high-level exposure 

The sensitivity of hippocampal neurons to stress and glucocorticoids has been confirmed in a host of other species, including nonhuman primates."

This was, and remains a really important mainstream article.

Seven years old... pre-Brexit.

http://healthland.time.com/2012/02/15/how-child-abuse-primes-the-brain-for-future-mental-illness/

"Child maltreatment has been called the tobacco industry of mental health. Much the way smoking directly causes or triggers predispositions for physical disease, early abuse may contribute to virtually all types of mental illness.

  

Now, in the largest study yet to use brain scans to show the effects of child abuse, researchers have found specific changes in key regions in and around the hippocampus in the brains of young adults who were maltreated or neglected in childhood.

These changes may leave victimised children more vulnerable to depression, addiction and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) as adults, the study suggests."

here is the study - https://www.pnas.org/content/109/9/E563

----

I understood over three decades ago that my experience was written into my neurology as I  developed, that my brain was and is always, always growing, and that it is growing in response to and in reaction to my social and material environment and my lived experience within those environments...

Any new practice creates a new neural network.

This is happening all the time.

Music as my practice teaches me this.

Gardening teaches me this.

Just as a state of contentment fosters healthy development, chronic stress distorts and inhibits development.

Chronic Stress.

Repeated stress creates distortions in a developing child's neural networks, and excess chronic cortisol, and other stress hormones, can kill or inhibit the growth of neural cells. 

My childhood taught me this. 
 
Our brains and indeed our bodies and minds need a generally contented background state in order to healthfully develop all our various functional skill sets - learning to walk, learning how to talk, poop in the right place at the appropriate time (becoming aware of our own bodies), moving hand and eye co-ordination, sensing and feeling others emotions and states of being, communicating, listening and hearing, to explore, investigating, understanding and relating to people and events in our lives.

There are body systems designed to deal with occasional stress, because being vulnerable in a dynamic environment, where there are dangers, is to say that unexpected accidents can happen, events can occur that demand rapid reactions, and the body has systems for such occasions.

Extended or chronic distortions of that happy state such as long term abuse, neglect, trauma, chronic stress, bullying etc at any stage from conception through to birth and infancy, and indeed at any time in life, will seriously damage the many systems within in the brain and throughout the body that are designed for short term stress management. We are designed to bounce back from the occasional stress situation.

The more incidents, the more the damage. Because we tend not to remember much of our childhoods, and because the damage is internal, as in neurological and hormonal and other physiological changes occur within the body itself, beyond our vision., a lot of the damage is invisible, in physiological terms, and it may take years, decades for symptoms of that distortion to emerge as disease states.

And because each person is of such unique nature, the outcomes will vary across a population, a family, a community...

That said we would be able to see patterns of behaviour associated with trauma and chronic stresses that are normalised emerge as characteristic of a given group, family, society, traits that would be symptomatic of  the invisible distortions,  expressed as attitudes and reactions that would be woven into their traditions, their biases, their fears and prejudices.*

(*for example, cultures that practice circumcision or female genital mutilation,  people who are taught that war brings glory, that nationalist history justifies the wars that were won because they are a form of 'progress', and those parents who are happy for their children to enlist in military combat groups - all of these characteristics can be said to be cultural, rather than personal).

The biological basis of these realities would be invisible to parents who did not know this. There are time parents do not understand their child's behaviour, and it may have causation outside their awareness.

These dynamics would be invisible to the people about their own behaviour, which they would normalise - cultures where beating and slapping children  is permitted, and is passed from generation to generation, and the adults will say 'Well, i was a bit wild, and I need that to show me to calm down!" is an example.

There are dynamics that ordinary people have no control over. Parents cannot be blamed for the stresses of poverty, war, abuse in their own lives, and in truth and all humility,  most parents are decent, loving people who want to do the best, and they often are stymied by the burden of social stressors.

Cycles of learned behaviour and chronic stress.

Behaviours emerging as a result of that socially mediated damage would be misread as the child's bad character, leading to a further compounding of the issues for both parent and child.

The very concept of Oppositional Defiance Disorder, as a diagnosis,is an obvious deliberate error in that regard, an act of unimaginable cruelty.

History

This has been happening to children in this hierarchically violent culture for thousands of years, and we have not 'adapted' to it, to that stressed situation, traumatised environment.

We are all just coping with it - adaptation to a pathology such as depression, or the desire to rape, murder, wield vast power is impossible. and utterly illogical in bio-logic terms...
Every war causes massive brain damage across the population who endure it, and that damage, being unresolved, perpetuates a stream of behavioural pathology that will inevitably feed back into the background of violence in that society. This is how the psychology of a hierarchically violent system develops.

So, the state of constant stress not a natural optimal physiological health state, it's certainly not psychologically healthy.

That children and the distressed are held responsible by society, that it is they who have something wrong with them which needs to be fixed is a huge issue.

And this is where the Religious, the Ideological and the Authoritarian exerts so much force that adversely impacts the lives of children - there is no escape ( 'no child left behind') and this, of course, causes even more damage.

Blame the child who is stabbing another on the street.

Punish this damaged child. Demand he or she 'fits in'. Do not ask what happened to this child that his or her behaviour has become so distorted.

Label the difficult child.

Provide no recognition of the child's lived experience and the kind of social setting he or she was born into, and how that afflicted the child.

An example from recent history.

The Conservative and Unionist Party and the Liberal Democrats started to close down "Kids Company", an organisation that pioneered 'trauma informed care' in front line support for seriously at risk children, for over 13 years, with 6,000 active cases of at risk children on their books at the time of closure.

Let me clarify, Kids Company reached out to the most at risk children, on the edge of total breakdown, children with no place left to go, abandoned, left to their own devices.

These are the kinds of children who are targeted by criminals for grooming into their networks, and to counter this, to offer hope they developed a trauma informed approach rather than a regulatory, sanction based approach. In providing an emotionally, non judgemental safe space as the starting point for building a relationship, Kids Company helped thousands of children that Council and State provided services could not or would not deal with.

They were funded by Government funding, a total of £48 million of 13 years.  They were funded to reach the most disturbed, wounded children who were clearly not accessing standard services State and Council Services.

They supported many thousands of children who would have been ignored until they became casualties, addicts, prostitutes, petty dealers, petty thieves or committed suicide, or just coped in psychological agony for the rest of their lives.

Kids Company was funded almost entirely by Government grant.

They tended to spend every penny, and had very little 'reserves'.

They had a staff of 650, ran 11 full time centres across London and had centres in Bristol and other cities. Kids Company spent everything on ensuring the children's immediate needs were being met, without being judgemental or using sanction reward dynamics.

It was because these 'reserves' were not maintained in sufficient value that they drew attention from Government auditors post 2010, when the Conservative and Lib Dem Coalition took office.

There was a considerable campaign of media allegations of abuse, misuse of cash, failures in duty of care and accusations that they just fed money to criminal children, allegations which have never been substantiated.

In November 2015, the Public Accounts Committee described the organisation as a failed "13 year experiment" and criticised both the Labour and Conservative governments for continuing to give public money to a private charity against civil service advice.

In 2019, 5 years later we see knife crime, youth gangsters behaviour escalating. We see other front line services becoming underfunded, understaffed with complementary services being much more difficult to access and co-ordinate, all the time whilst being privatised - 'low wages leads to better economic efficiency.'

Is there a connection?

The 'standing army' of youth offenders under 'care' runs to about 100,000 children, on average, over the past 50 years.

That tells me that the institutional denial of violence in our society is impacting children's lives within this society and that this is driving much of peoples material distress - this is a very stressful and harsh society.

I can easily extrapolate and imagine the lived experience of this  dynamic across an entire population over time leading to very, very cruel traditions.

Good news -

1. We can help people to recover, because we know that the brain is plastic, it's elastic, it's a constantly growing organ. Optimal healing requires the person who is suffering feels psychologically and materially safe.

One cannot recover when one is insecure, frightened, impoverished, and it is obvious that healing and recovery is less likely where any chronic stress is induced by external demands.

The cure for homelessness is to give the person a clean home, and to support them rebuilding relationships in their lives..

People in distress need kindness, they need material and emotional support more than they need prescribed diagnostic treatment protocols, mote than they need sanctions, regulatory systems and judgemental judicial approaches.

If we  to do the job correctly, as the biology  indicates, then we can help most people.

And for those who are unable to recover, those who are, for whatever reason too broken, then with a trauma informed approach we can care for them with greater compassion and understanding.

2. We can prevent this from happening in the first place, by giving all parents the time and support to chill with and bond/attach to their children in the biologically optimal manner. Supporting parenting more completely, especially during the first four years, will have a huge impact on life long health.

This will have a grounded healthful impact on society, and will save significant amounts of state resources into the future, and it will revolutionise Health Care Systems and Education systems

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.

Dave and Alice, TWAT or Peace? Through the looking glass.

 

It matters that this conversation is happening. ~

It's not an easy conversation.

It has to be evidence based, or it will go badly.

This is the core discipline required.

Opinion now, in this conversation, is truly dangerous.

Look it as a genuine health and safety issue, along with belief, faith, hope or ideology - none of these can be allowed to trump the evidence (no topical pun intended...) in seeking to resolve this situation.

It will not be resolved overnight.

It can be resolved.

It is not the Sun.

It is us.

David Smail.

David Smails take on ‘reality’ is closest to what I feel :

“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.”

His website…

http://www.davidsmail.info/introfra.htm

Alice Miller.

Alice Miller wrote about how the institutional violence of the adult world afflicts all our children.

She traced the psychology of power through society, into human relationships, and how the influence of violent political power permeates society. Miller looked at the history of education in Europe, leading up to World War II, and examines the industrial powers influence on it to prepare each generation of children for participation in that violence, as workers or as fighters, as if it were something normal.

Something Patriotic.

Heroic.

Fighting for a Cause.

See where this is going?

FOR YOU OWN GOOD : The Roots of Violence in Child-Rearing.

Dip in.

https://www.alice-miller.com/…/the-roots-of-violence-are-n…/

She is not talking about individual parenting, (a common misconception of her intent) she looks at cultural parenting, which is often subject to belief, faith, religion, ideology or mere opinion rather than the evidence about, and of children themselves.

She explores how repeated war trauma fosters socialised violence when entire populations are subjected to violence, over time, to the extent that that history is seen as glorious.

Internalisation. Very much part of radicalisation.

A very strong book, a disciplined read required.

That said....

Some Steps Towards an End to TWAT And a Start to Peace. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

*This is of course an incomplete list, with only the briefest of pitches, and very little supporting, referenced documentation to substantiate the points raised.

It’s more to a thought smorgsabord on the issue of TWAT And Peace.

Here goes :

Actions that Western and all Governments can take that might lend towards a long term peace.

-caveat : there's more that I don't know than I do about all of this. A lot more. This analysis is not to be relied upon. In any way, shape or form. It is a list to things I think could alter the situation in useful ways......

1. Acknowledge the War Crime of Iraq and Afghanistan which is the responsibility of the US /UK Coalition of States that invaded and occupied both countries.

2. Arrest the War Criminals.

3. Full public accounting. Convictions.

4. Formal economic, political and cultural sanctions regime against Saudi Arabia, and it’s Wahhabist intervention in Government.

5. Cease all support for Saudi military, including ban on weapons sales. A total ban.

6. Cease all military operations against the Syrian Government. Immediately.

6.a Destroy all DAESH supply lines. No exception. Ensure no funding, arms, munitions, food, oil, petrol, diesel, medicine gets through to their fighting units. If States are involved, then they must be dealt with. International effort in good faith and honour.

7. Allow the Syrian State and people to confront DAESH in Syria, and with respect to language groups and ethnicities, enable autonomy for those as part of the political resolution of other matters. Allow the Syrian State to invite chosen allies to assist with this operation.

8. Abandon the US-UK-Russia-China competing powers behaviour which is the active dynamic in international relations. That behaviour is toxic, irrational and utterly cruel.

9. Excise all incitements to violence from all recognised Religious Texts. These are in breach of Human Rights, and cannot be countenanced.

10. Total separation of Religion and Government, and Legislation. World wide. Governance MUST be evidence based, rather than belief, faith, sectional interest or mere opinion

11. Close down Saudi funded Wahhabist Maddrassa systems, total removal. World wide. Such systems are institutionalised child abuse. No negotiation. Full records of all students to be provided.

12. Demand Saudi excise all incitement to or justification of violence from Wahhabist Texts and Teachings, and remove corporal punishment from the Saudi penal code, as an olive branch, or a carrot, a way to avoid actions 4., 5,

13. Ban Saudi Oil. Last resort.

14. Stand down all international military alliances in favour of a United Nations based resource, resourced from those competing military alliances. The UN treaties provide for a military force that maintains peace, enforces sanctions as a policing action, supporting a diplomatic, political, economic and cultural conflict resolution drive, which must, of course, be equally well resourced.

15. Detain all known participants in militia in their home countries. Process these the weed out those who are reliably dangerous, prosecute those for crimes committed and incarcerate them for Health and Safety reasons.

16. Tear apart the media cabal, and liberate the press, to articulate solid critical analysis of matters of Governance, based on evidence rather than alignments with belief, faith, ideology, bias, opinion.

17. Arrest Murdoch. Close down all media that spin, that present opinion as information, that are aligned with any political party, that are lobby tools for power interests.

18. Public Parenting information must be based on evidence rather than alignments with belief, faith, ideology, bias, opinion. Parents must be legally made to comply with the child’s Human Rights in full. Parents do not have any right to tell their child what to think. Ever.

19. Rebuilding, reparations. We must devote the resources we have to help rebuild what has been destroyed, and restore people and society to a healthy sustainable state.

20. We must also build Systems of Deliberative Democracy, rather than representative Democracy, which is obviously a failed experiment. Power as a shared responsibility.

21. Rekindle old language groups and environmental ethnicity’s, the thriving variation of healthy human culture.

22. In all, evidence based action must be the standard. All evidence must be appraised, no piece omitted, neglected, dismissed, mitigated or denied.

23. End Competing States/Warring States as an accepted political dynamic.

24, Decriminalise mind altering plants and their usage as sacred tools, and medicine.

25. Pay close attention to the Australian Aboriginals people, for they have a well of lived experience for which there is no other comparable population, listen to them and hear their message. 

They are the polar opposites of the Jidhadist/Competing Industrial Powers insanity.

They truly know how to live on Earth as fully human beings in sustainable cultures. : TWAT = The War Against Terror.

They have survived an attempted Genocide, and are here today, offering wisdom, love, nurture and peace to the culture that tried to wipe them out.

It doesn't get any tougher, in terms of diplomacy and negotiation than that. If they can, anyone can.

Yes, it's not going to be easy.

Just a reminder, Alice Miller, The Roots of Violence in Child-Rearing.

Get hold of a copy..

A Peace activists must-read.

Again and again.

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.

Abuse : Origins, root causes, recovery and re-alingment with optimal human biological health

 

 

The resolution of the issue of abuse as a common behavioural dynamic lies not in punishment, rather it rests in altering the way our society as a whole relates to and treats children. And indeed, how it relates parenting, and how it supports healthy parenting. It is intrinsically linked to how power is mediated in social and material terms across our economic and political and judicial systems. It is inherently a matter of governance.

Of course, known serial abusers, those who cause intentional harm who operate without remorse in any sphere of human activity must be segregated, isolated from society at large, because they cannot be trusted to act otherwise. That goes without saying. It is a health and safety matter of extreme importance. Punishment is not really effective as a way to deal with this problem. Punishment does not prevent harm, because it always arrives after the harm has been caused. Punishment is always too late.

"The psychology of any given family, community or society is both revealed and perpetuated in how that family, community or society relates to and treats the children".

Chronic stress degrades all known biological systems, and leads to disease. Unresolved trauma leads directly to chronic stress, as does war, poverty and all forms of abuse.

These are not inevitables, nor are they unknowns.

They are all the result of choices made by adults.

Here is a detailed chart outlining the social behavioural characteristics of various societies, which was collated in the 70s.

http://www.violence.de/prescott/letters/Profiles_Peaceful_v_Violent.pdf

Research since then into endocrine systems, autonomous systems, in utero development and psychology, trauma studies, inter-generational trauma behaviour patterning, history, anthropology, neuroscience, biochemistry, child development and psychopathology confirm the insights of this survey.

Researcher/writers such as Alice Miller, Judith Herman, David Chamberlain, Oliver James, Joseph Chilton Pearce, Carl Rogers, Derrick Jensen, Gabor Mate, Kitty Jones, Robert Zapolsky, David Smail and many, many others are great resources in this.

I URGE you to access the data, the evidence, and go through the works of the writers listed above if you are genuinely concerned about child abuse....

I say this because I want to help you, and all of us, to understand this dynamic so that we can work together to apprehend abusers, to prevent further abuse emerging as it does in such massive numbers and realign our social systems with optimal human biological health.

I am a Survivor of long term intentional child abuse.

I speak and write with some knowledge of this subject.

Both in terms of addressing my own abusive and destructive learned behaviors and my recovery from the trauma I endured for the best part of 20 years.

This blog is where I join the dots on all of this research by people who literally have saved my life and enabled me to return to a degree of optimal biological health.

At some time it will become a book, a website, an interactive mind map and a documentary.

I do this for myself, I do it for you and I do it for my great grand children and all their contemporaries.

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.

Pedophlia, Hierarchically Violent Societies and Political Attack memes.

Pedophilia is a part of a set of behaviours associated with dysfunctional Power Relationships within Hierarchically Violent Societies.

20th Century Indian Residential School in Canada - hierarchical, and violent 'child care'

 Child Abuse cannot be examined in isolation from the culture within which it takes place, or on it's own as some separate human flaw, with any degree of accuracy.

Paedophilia  should never, ever be used  as a meme or leverage point to attack the current status quo of power, as a political lever.

Instead we must work to understand it as a dynamic trait, as expressing the essence of intentional abuse of a power disparity, expressed through sexualised violence.

To use CSA as a political attack meme targeting one group among many, as we see deployed with online conspiracy narratives. undermines the work of Survivors, their advocates and their communities  everywhere.

Demand accountability, everywhere, equally. Demand prevention, at it's very roots.

Pedophilia cannot be understood without examining the psycho-social context within which it happens.

The problem of abuse of Power pollutes human relationships across all sectors and levels of any and every Hierarchically Violent Society.

From the organised rape of children to local extortion, from War as a tool of State Policy to Pimping, from FGM and MGM to Guantanamo Bay Detention, from Bhopal to Fracking, from Domestic Abuse to Ad Hominem attacks within discourse, the central issue is the same..

A psychology of Power that ignores the costs born by those who are most adversely affected by the exercise of Power over others. A psychology of Power that uses distraction to avoid the truth. A psychology of Power that claims an exclusive right to use violence. A psychology of Power that determines that indoctrination is an essential component of maintaining that power.

The issue is coming forwards in part because there is a growing understanding of this situation, not least as an outcome of Survivors testimony, brought before the public domain with great courage and determination from Survivors of organised sexual exploitation of children, to Survivors of State torture, from Survivors of colonisation and invasion to survivors of domestic abuse,  and many more besides.

And also because the best research in Anthropology, Neuro-biology, Neuro-Chemistry, Child Development, Optimal Human Biological Health, Permaculture, Psychology, Endocrinology, Honest History and Survivors insights all point in this direction.

When the natural bio-logically mandated processes of nurture are disrupted, pathology ensues.

This applies equally to the individual and to the society within which the individual lives.

It cannot be used to excuse or mitigate abusive behaviour, rather it must be integrated into the understanding of the situation as part of the process of an accurate recognition and description of the problem and in time, the resolution of that problem.

This is, in effect, the unspoken central plank of all single issue activism. The one understanding that must underpin all activism that seeks to be both effective and meaningful. Without this, healthy activism is lost in the rough and stormy seas of ideology and 'debate' with people taking sides and 'arguing' for their side rather than attempting to openly and honestly get to the truth of the matter in order to plan approaches that prevent further abuses, that mediate the harms caused, and that lead directly to much more healthy, functional and nurturing social organisation.

___________

A chart of social behavioural characteristics of different kinds of aboriginal cultures...

https://www.violence.de/prescott/letters/Profiles_Peaceful_v_Violent.pdf

This chart outlines some of the results of a survey of 49 different societies carried out by James Prescott, Phd in the 1970s and notes a correlation between Hierarchical Violence as a social 'norm' and incidents of abuse and the degrees to which child-mother bonding and other empathy learning experientials mandated by our biology are disrupted. The greater the disruption, the more violence and abuse is seen in any given society.

Further research in Anthropology and in a number of other scientific disciplines as mentioned above, and referenced throughout this blog (and there is so much more than the limited amount that I have referenced) corroborates Prescott's insights.

The way in which Power Institutions have sought to 'manage' the revelations of Survivors of child abuse within areas under direct control of those Institutions demonstrates both a lack of caring empathy and a wilful mendaciousness that most people at the grass roots of Society, and many activists, find difficult to grasp or truly understand.

In very simple terms, if one grows up in an environment where low level bullying is seen as being within normal ranges of behaviour, it's that much more difficult to see the behaviour for what it really is - a dysfunctional pathology that has a root cause that, even as it is socially masked, is tractable, that is to say it is an problem that can be resolved.

There is a lot of anger as a reaction and response to inequity, to abuse and violence, of course there is, and most of it is understandable and justifiable, yet we need much more than anger to address the issues we are faced with; we need an accurate understanding of how such behaviour emerges, what kinds of social conditions underpin such behaviour, how it can be stopped where it is discovered and what kinds of social relations will serve to break the cycles of this kind of behaviour, which has to be the ultimate aim of all activism : prevention of further abuses, nurturing healthy human relations in all areas of concern.
 
We also need to understand how Power, by triggering anger and rage in the grass roots, through media reporting, conspiracy theories, the 'blame game' and suppression of Survivors who come forwards to testify as to their experience,  is deliberately influencing what we are attempting to do as activists in order to co-opt and undermine the emergence of solidarity across the grass roots of Society.

Kindest regards

Corneilius

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