Politics, Arguments, Debates and Institutionalised Emotional Blindness

Politics, arguments, debates and the abdication of responsibility.

The Power Inquiry Report 2006.

If you have not heard of it, then I suggest that you need to know more about it. We all need to read the report and understand it's full implications, not least because it emerged from the grass roots, rather than a think-tank. And it challenges a number of assumptions about the ability of grass roots folk to engage with shared responsibility, robust governance and detailed policy deliberation.

The Power inquiry, an independent investigation into the condition of democracy in Britain, was set up in 2004. The members of its commission (chaired by Helena Kennedy) hosted meetings around Britain and heard submissions from a wide variety of interest groups, professionals, and concerned citizens. The commission published its report on 27 February 2006.

"After eighteen months of investigation, the final report of Power is a devastating critique of the state of formal democracy in Britain. Many of us actively support campaigns such as Greenpeace or the Countryside Alliance. And millions more take part in charity or community work. But political parties and elections have been a growing turn-off for years.

The cause is not apathy. The problem is that we don't feel we have real influence over the decisions made in our name. The need for a solution is urgent. And that solution is radical. Nothing less than a major programme of reform to give power back to the people of Britain..."

Examine it.

D. Cameron, E. Milliband and Menzies Campbell paid lip service to the report and initiative at the time. Cameron said, in public, and it's on video, that The Power Inquiry was the 'most important initiative in Democracy in the UK' in a long, long time.

I was there. I heard them speak and mouth hearty support for the report, as they stood and spoke before the assembled crowd of more than 500 people. 

Less than a week after attending the launch of the report, at a conference in Queen Elizabeth Hall, Parliament Square, after praising it during that weekend conference, after saying how important it was, after speaking about it in glowing terms to the attendees, they dismissed it as 'impractical.'

'Impractical'? Well, yes. Ceding power to people is always 'impractical' to the Ruling Class.

Here's an outline of the recommendations:

http://www.lgcplus.com/give-citizens-power-to-make-laws-urges-inquiry/513437.article

Here's the full document, PDF download, very much worth a reading.

http://www.jrrt.org.uk/publications/power-people-independent-inquiry-britains-democracy-full-report

Power without accountability or shared responsibility is always going to be a serious problem, and open to abuse.

Quite a lot of the comments flying around about Russel Brand, UKIP, and politics in general are antagonistic 'debating' style, rather than mature deliberation or critical analysis. Trying to win or batter the other side down as opposed to learning enough to develop a win-win solution.

What's that phrase they use about the Court system?

Adversarial.

I find that appalling. An abdication of responsibility. Politically immature. Psychologically immature. An adversarial Parliament is immature, and unworthy, easily corrupted - a collegiate parliament would be mature and worthy and would repel corruption.

Because the issue of power and legislation is really about us, we, the people who form the community and how we work together (or not) to create a society that nurtures, that cares for the vulnerable.

The issue is about relationships based on kindness, rather than power.

Healthy discourse is about sharing, exploring and growing together.

Debate is about power, it's about who wins.

The Power Inquiry emerged out of the Community Voluntary Sector, which has decades of providing services at the local community level, dealing with amongst other things : finances, governance, research, best practices, transparency, service provision, understanding their 'clients' needs, overcoming institutional obstacles, overcoming Institutionalised Emotional Blindness, campaigning, fund raising, discourse on policy formulation and much else besides. These are real life skills.

It was these people that David Cameron's BIG SOCIETY was aimed at, as a direct institutional assault. And it was their clients, the vulnerable who suffer doubly as a result.

And it's working.

Speak to any disabled people currently being denied benefits on the false basis of 'austerity'?

Use your voice to nurture the active grass roots, as well as to chastise the powerful.

In another comment, elsewhere, I pointed out how appalled I was at the sniping that is so common.

Instituionalised Emotional Blindness. There's something here for everyone to consider.

The immaturity of the debating style of the discourse, as opposed to an effort to share, learn and grow in order to create a more nurturant society.

An abdication of responsibility. It's really quite ugly.

Kindest regards

Corneilius

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

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It's always worth studying leaders childhoods to see what patterns emerge.

artwork by Nikolai Kozin, London

It's fairly obvious to anyone who studies behavioural bullying the psychological projection and disassociation in David Cameron's public speeches about war, DAESH, Libya, and terrorism in general.

For example, on the kidnap and murder of three Israeli teens which became the pretext for the most recent Military assault on Gaza.

'This was an appalling and inexcusable act of terror perpetrated against young teenagers. Britain will stand with Israel as it seeks to bring to justice those responsible.'

But when have Obama or Cameron ever condemned the killing of Palestinian youths or children by Israelis in this vehement way? (from medialens.org)

There are parts of his psyche, formed from the experiences of his early infancy and Eton etc, that he has shut away within himself - the wounds accrued from fagging, the violence, the bullying, the hatred, the submission and affiliation with the more powerful 'inmates' and the cultured arrogance that he dare not admit to himself, let alone to the public, yet these experiences live within him, unresolved, unhealed and he projects them onto others so that he can 'manage' his own wounded feelings, his wounded sense of self.

He will say today that that experience was 'formative'. Many of his ilk do likewise. "It made me the man I am!"

To survive in this environment, the psyche of the child has to become deeply manipulative, and his behaviour, along with the behaviour of the established press, which is governed largely by ex-public school alumni, in the recent Scots referendum on Independence shows this quite clearly. When this psychology emerges in a Political leader with real material power to inflict harm, it becomes incredibly dangerous.

Likewise with regard to Obama and his early childhood. Adolf Hitler. Take your pick.

It's always worth studying leaders childhoods to see what patterns emerge.

This is not to offer any of those who exercise power and wage war an excuse - it is rather to attempt to gain an understanding of why they behave as they do, to outline a reliable grounded evidence based description of the cultural social psychological backdrop within which such a dysfunctional psychology emerges in statistically significant numbers.

It is to inform and to help parents at the grass roots of society and elsewhere to regain empathy for children, and not least for themselves as children growing up in such a culture, as a social movement that leads to the emergence of empathic power as a shared and caring sense of responsibility towards each other. As a basic marker of biological human biological health.

European culture has been on this trajectory of slowly recovering from this trauma cycle for some centuries, and it will take some more time to complete the process. This is scant comfort for those who are at the receiving end of powers brutalities, it does little to diminish the reality of the concrete experience of oppression perpetuated by Power.

It does however speak to the deepest nature of the human spirit, the reality of optimal human biological health as a fundamental and the need for action that is threaded into a long term perspective as well as dealing with the immediate concerns - these two go together.

Kindest regards

Corneilius

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

More notes on the trauma roots of the Dominant Culture...

More notes on the trauma roots of the Dominant Culture...

The following are some of the symptoms of PTSD.

    Difficulty regulating emotions and impulses

    Emotional numbing

    Anger and aggression

    Substance addictions

    Behavioural addictions

    Self-harming behaviours

    Dissociation

How many of these apply to cultural norms as evinced in the behaviour of those who rule, those who determine how 'Economics' operates, those who are scripture bound, to ideologies and/or Faiths, to criminal behaviour endorsed by the State and other Governing structures? 

"This intrinsic dynamic is observable in all religions. Religions were obviously created not by people respected in childhood but by adults starved of respect from childhood on and brought up to obey their parents unswervingly. They have learned to live with the compulsive self-deception forced on them in their earlier years. Many impressive rituals have been devised to make children ignore their true feelings and accept the cruelties of their parents without demur. They are forced to suppress their anger, their TRUE feelings and honor parents who do not deserve such reverential treatment, otherwise they will be doomed to intolerable feelings of guilt all their lives. Luckily, there are now individuals who are beginning to desist from such self-mutilation and to resist the attempt to instill guilt feelings into them. These people are standing up against a practice that its proponents have always considered ethical. In fact, however, it is profoundly unethical because it produces illness and hinders healing. It flies in the face of the laws of life. "

Alice Miller

The same applies to the Institutions of Governance, of Banking, of Corporate 'business'.... and the current UK Governing group, the 'coalition partners' and their so-called 'opposition' Labour are demonstrating this by their behaviour and justification of their policies.

The people who built these structures, and the vast majority of those who work within them form a large part of the cultural meme/behaviour that is replicated, generation after generation, BECAUSE there is almost no acknowledgement within Governance of the adverse realities these structures impose on those who have the least power; rather those who have the least power are chosen for castigation and punishment, in a vicarious desire of the power holders, at every level, from the executive to the front line, to ameliorate their own symptoms of distress, the existence of which they deny, yet which, at the unconscious level, drive their behaviours.

"I became aware of my patients’ deeply entrenched resistance to remembering these painful events: they were extremely reluctant to feel the tragic situation they had been in as children and to take it seriously. Some of them described acts of monstrous cruelty with a complete lack of emotion, as if they were something that was only to be expected. They believed their parents had loved them and that as children they had richly deserved severe punishment because they were so insufferable. The regularity with which true feelings were denied or split off made me realize that almost all of us tend to deny, or at least play down, the pain caused by the injuries we suffered in childhood. We do this because we still fear punishment at the hands of our parents, who could not bear to accept us as we truly were. These childhood fears live on in the adult. If they remain unconscious, that is if they are not identified as such, then they will retain their virulence to the end of our lives. Unfortunately, these fears also live on in those who advance theories that camouflage childhood reality and that concentrate instead on the nature of “psychical structures.” This approach began with Freud and was later taken over by C.G. Jung and others. Like present-day “spiritualist” interpretations, these theories all served one purpose: to allay the fears of the maltreated children these therapists still were. "

Alice Miller

The resolution of all this can only emerge AFTER full acknowledgement - until that occurs the past will drive the present behaviour, and will be 'justified' with whatever means is deemed culturally acceptable - full employment, democracy, etc etc..

Capitalism is an unresolved post Christian dynamic.

Power, guilt, shame and coercion are the fundamental memes of Capitalism.... as they were, and remain to this day, of Christianity

It's easy to ditch a false religion at the surface, much harder to address the unconscious scars that remain until they are fully acknowledged, and steps are taken to move into recovery and healing.

I know this from my own experience, when I tried for years to adopt Bhuddism, Paganism, Dao-ism and other -isms as a way to recover from my Christian indoctrination,  yet was unable to alleviate my symptoms of guilt, shame and fear. It wasn't until I started to acknowledge and address my experiences as a child, from the perspective of that child, in the presence of an 'enlightened witness' that I was able to start to recover..

As Judith Herman points out, the safety issue is crucial.

The key to healing from traumatic experiences in childhood is achieving these ‘stage-one’ goals of personal safety, genuine self-care, and healthy emotion-regulation capacities. Once these have become standard operating procedures, great progress and many new choices become possible. Importantly, the first stage of recovery and treatment is not about discussing or ‘processing’ memories of unwanted or abusive experiences, let alone ‘recovering’ them. As much as I describe and understand history, I need to feel safe to proceed.

The same applies to entire communities caught up in trauma cycles, for example Israel/Palestine... or Northern Ireland ..

Likewise with the dominant culture, especially where that culture is based on Power Relationships and Utilitarianism as opposed to Empathic Relationships and Conscious Awareness of Interdependence. Until we feel safe enough, we cannot begin to address the underlying issues in detail.

Which is what Christian based Counselling projects for Survivors of Clerical Abuse, for example, cannot achieve. Nor could 'Democracy' as touted by the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq between 2004 and 2012 achieve.... in these cases, it is obvious why the people who seek help do not feel safe, and therefore cannot proceed.

After centuries of War as States established themselves, and fought with each other, we now live with a culture that portrays war as 'good vs bad', with sacrifice, glory and bravery in combat as key 'positive' elements to be admired, is it the case that this culture has not yet resolved the issues related to mass trauma, that in fact that this culture is founded on unresolved PTSD issues? Just as the major Religions were?

If so, then the resolution of that culture's problems are a matter of concern for all of us because the issues are tractable - that is to say they can be dealt with, worked on towards healing and recovery. PTSD is no mystery. It is well understood. As is the resolution of PTSD.

If we don't, at the very least, attempt to resolve them then it will become our children's problem.

Is that the inheritance we wish for our children? Is that our gift to them?

Do we hold to our 'belief systems', our 'hatreds and fears' rather than address the matter with all our available energy?

What then is the meaning of our 'love', if we refuse this essential task?

Kindest regards

Corneilius

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

Proposal for a Curriculum and Assesment for Michael Gove.

It's a Long Question:

I don't want to be a 'leader' or a 'politician', yet I desire -  my very soul and body demands, craves, endures to experience - that the exercise of State Policy, that the operations and outcomes of State Policy - if there is to be a such an Institution as the State, (which remains a pertinent line of investigation at all times on matters like these and many others, as to it's validity) it must manifestly nurture all the people, and the environment within which we all live, which we share as biological equals, though vastly diverse. The evidence is real! It always is... painfully so.

In truth, I don't want anyone to be a 'politician', or a 'leader'.

I'd much rather support administrators who willingly, transparently, happily take on the various roles required and available within State Institutions, that they would exercise their chosen roles professionally, with joy, and if in stressful situations, behave calmly with a view to resolution, all guided by fluid and continuous policy and decision making directly from within the grass roots of Society, informed by expert advice as required as much as by common human empathy and kindness.

I'd be more than happy to support such a Nurturant structure. A Nurturant Society is my bag!

I see no impediment to such a happy state, other than the status quo, learned helplessness, and other stuff ... no need to list it all.

No impediment as such. because it is our biological mandate, it is a seriously ancient mandate,  a deeply biologically material basis, it is the expression of a proven biological asset, that lies at the roots of genuine democracy, which is nothing less than that more or less empathic, and therefore disciplined, mature, playful and adaptive self organizational processes of any given human society, family or community, or self motivated children playing and learning together, across all age groups, that lives the Biology of  Nurture Webs.

What we are getting is clearly not working. The History books are littered with much the same, just lower numbers... Their take, the official historians, on pre-history serves to distance us from our native ways through which we humans thrived prior to History... which is like .0001% or less of the time we have been around as human mammals.

So what do I do?

AHA!

Proposed Curriculum for Education Minister, Michael Gove...



A 6 month course.

Modular or Webbed/Networked.

No Further Ministerial work that changes anything or alters any Laws is to be carried out until course completed. Think of it as a Public Audition.

So openings and press briefings, speaking events, constituency work will all continue.... plus ceremonial duties... This keeps the study in context with the experience of many students who have to work ti supplement thier Education, which Gove's generation got for FREE! How nice for them!

All materials to support the students learning are to be freely provided, a reasonable concession and Student Gove may collaborate with other students, colleagues and any other relevant party.

Course Overview.

STUDY AND INTEGRATE THE CURRENT UNDERSTANDING IN THE SCIENCE OF LEARNING BY COMPLETING THE FOLLOWING TASKS.

- Work through the writings on Education, Children and Society of John Holt, Alice Miller, Paolo Friere, Ivan Illych, Colin Ward, : all about natural learning, the problems of the 'schooling' system that disrupts natural learning. Also demonstrates ways to recover and change. : TEST: a 10 minute video briefing on the over view of these writers, and their data.

- John Taylor Gatto, on The History of State Education : TEST : Create a large mural/wall chart of the History of State Education aas outlined by Gatto, as a mind map or along the lines of the RSA Animate projects, or in some other graphic manner.

- The Biology and Anthropology of Empathy - cutting edge Science: Write a 10,000 word essay on the current state of awareness and understanding and both academic and grass roots, the potential outcomes of the current state of awareness at the grass roots and in Governance, and examine what needs to be done to facilitate a widespread in-depth dissemination of that information such that it informs both the Public and Institutional Policy Making, and that it is seen as a key element that prioritizes according to the real needs of children as people, rather than workers in an 'economy'.  Include all references.

- Homeschooling, democratic schooling, anecdotal evidence, historical 'greats'.... : TEST: Conduct a Radio Interview with three leading exponents in each case, total length 30 minutes, including credits.

- Each TEST is a project. It will not be marked. There's no need. the candidates work will simply be left, archived as a public record of the candidates experience and outcomes.

It will be peer reviewed by the Nation, the Public....

A good result might get the guy a really, really decent job!

And a change in the outcomes for the current and future generations of children, and with that our entire Society.

I wish!



Kindest regards

Corneilius

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

Catholic Church's 'scandal' is just a part of the issue.

David Quinn, in his comment piece for the Irish Independent, 4th May, ‘Abuse Cross Church must bear stems from decades ago’ wrote that a large scale study into child abuse, carried out in Holland, found that ‘the prevalence rate in Catholic-run Institutions was no higher than in other Institutions’ that were studied.

This is a fair comment. However, it does not mitigate the Church's behaviour in relation to the suppression of the truth and subsequent (avoidable) harms caused to so many children, over such a long time scale, one whit.

What he misses in his piece is that the abuse of children is a serious problem across our entire Society.

Whilst there is a huge focus on the abuse of children within Catholic-run Institutions, and rightly so, the issue of the sexual abuse, the mistreatment and brutalising of children is much larger than the Catholic Church.

Europeans often lay claim to the centrality of Christianity as a benign force in European development, as a central pillar of our Society. What kind of Society has this as a central pillar?

This is a matter of profound importance to Society at large. The fact that none of this (the 'scandal' of the Catholic Church) would be occurring without the courage of Survivors of abuse, who braved a prevailing societal unwillingness to accept the truth, is something David Quinn ought to have noted. It is something I reflect upon regularly. I am in awe of those who have shown such courage, well aware as I am of the shame, self-loathing, fear and confusion that are the outcomes for so many Survivors.

David Quinn's omission reduces his piece to a defensive polemic, on behalf of the Catholic Church, and does nothing for the children, be it those who have been abused, those who are being abused and those whose abuse might well be prevented, if the work of John Bowlby, (child mother bonding) James Prescott, (origins of violence) Alice Miller, (child abuse sanctioned by Society, intergenerational trauma) JosephChilton Pearce, (prenatal consciousness) John Holt (how children learn) and David Chamberlain, (child birth, infancy) and John Taylor Gatto, (the origins and intent of Compulsory Schooling) all of whom have examined in detail, and with courageous honesty, how we, as a society, treat our children, was not so studiously ignored by Government departments responsible for Education, Health and Child Welfare, so carefully avoided by the leading Psychiatric and Psychological Establishments, so rarely mentioned by leading media, in spite of  the verified and corroborated evidence that supports their collective contention, that the psychology of any given society is both revealed and perpetuated in how that Society relates to and treats the children.

The psychology of Power, (in simple terms, bullying), still dominates our Society and it is perhaps the single most important connective issue that we can, as adults, face in these tremulous times.

Suicide is the 3^rd leading cause of death amongst 10 – 24 year olds. A telling statistic indeed. Physical Health has been improved, yet psychological health is deteriorating.

War, Institutionalised Abuse (children, elders, prisoners, poverty) Ecological Destruction, the Competition of Power, be it secular, religious, economic or ideological are issues that cannot be avoided whilst at the same time the claim that we are a decent society is made.

The intergenerational trauma patterns associated with these issues will not diminish because we mitigate or ignore them. The work that has been done, mentioned above, and is being done is now more widely available, through the dissemination of information in this, the information age. Some of us, with access to that information, are genuinely better informed as a result.

It is surely time now for the organs of public discourse and the organs of Governance to fully engage with that information and that crucial work, to engage with what is known of this matter, in order to build a future that honours all our children, and with that all our peoples, for all of their lives.

Kindest regards

Corneilius

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

'Evolutionary' Origins of Religion: a trauma model

*the use of the tem 'evolutionary' is entirely satrical in the context of this essay. Religion and evolvution are two mutually exclusive dynamics..

My own view regarding Evolution and Religion (The Evolutionary Origins of Religion) emerges from my own life experience and from my readings of the work of John Bolwby, James Prescott , Alice Miller, Robert Sapolsky, Judith Herman, Allan Schore and many, many others who have explored the psychology of the biological mandate towards empathy,  (and the disruption of that biological mandate) which is based on the lived experience of self empathy from within the womb, through infancy and onwards throughout life.

 Joseph Chilton Pearce suggests in his research that self empathy, awareness of self, starts within the womb.

Self awareness and awareness of other exists in a pre-verbal reality that is experienced, in such manner that the material and social meaning of the experience is known to the experiencer: this is called direct or experiential cognition.

Others have described what is called  Liminal Consciousness a silent, non verbal full spectrum reality cognition that is shared within a group,  usually groups that are what we can call pre-conquest egalitarian cultures.

"When similar child nurture was later seen spawning similar consciousness in isolated enclaves elsewhere, it became clear that a type of mentality very different from world norms today existed widely in prehistory. Such mentality emerges from a sociosensual nurture common to such peoples but shunned in Westernized societies"

Prescott's  research has found an emergent pattern of Social Behaviour amongst Societies where the natural child-mother bonding processes are disrupted, of increased Religiosity, Hierarchy and Institutionalized Violence all of which exist in proportion to the levels of disruption to the child-mother bonding processes.

Furthermore he was able to link disruption of the adolescent exploration of sexuality to the emergence of these Societal traits.

All of these experientials are embodied lived experiences, that is to say they are experienced and known primarily through the body, the senses and are biologically mandated as vitally  important life learning processes.

This 'disruption' could be called the Trauma model of the Evolutionary Origins of Religion.

David Chamberlain has written :

"From the second month of pregnancy, experiments and observations reveal an active prenate with a rapidly developing sensory system permitting exquisite sensitivity and responsiveness. Long before the development of advanced brain structures, prenates are seen interacting with each other and learning from experience. They seem especially interested in the larger environment provided by mother and father, and react to individual voices, stories, music, and even simple interaction games with parents. The quality of the uterine environment is determined principally by parents.

The opportunities for parents to form a relationship with the baby in the womb are significant and remarkable. This contrasts sharply with the previous view that prenates did not have the capacity to interact, remember, learn, or put meaning to their experiences"

It is quite obvious that those with innate or natural self empathy intact know or can better better, at a visceral pre-verbal level, how to relate to others, to meet their own and others needs, because they sense the other in intimate ways associated with their own sense of self empathy. They are more perceptive and more responsive to information contained within the other because they can more fully sense themselves.

Conversely, those whose natural self empathy has been somehow damaged have greater difficulty in relating to others, and require a set of external guidelines to manage their relationships.

This is the thrust of the work of Heinz Kohut

The resolution of the issue of damaged self-empathy would lead towards a spiritual or personally rational 'inner' motivated outlook, rather than religious 'externally driven' or societally rationalised outlook on life. Prescott's research demonstrates that where these key experientials are not disrupted, a more egalitarian societal behaviour emerges.

In terms of evolution, and of well being, it is clear that empathy, founded on experienced self-empathy is a crucially vital socialising characteristic, because it enables a visceral understanding of the world within, and of the world in which a human being is living, an almost direct perception of the value and meaning of life, and a grasping of the value of others lives to those others, and in particular the lives of other organisms that are the food we eat. This is the basis for the oft quoted respect many Aboriginal societies afford the creatures and plants within their environments, upon which they are dependent for food, medicine and other materials.

James Prescott outlined in some detail the societal behavioural characteristics to be found within a spectrum or bandwidth of societies, ranging from empathic egalitarian through to totalitarian hierarchical societies, and traced the emergence of these characteristics to the disruption or nurturing of two crucial empathic experiential learning points in the life of a human being.

From an evolutionary viewpoint, Imposed Hierarchical Religion can be seen as an evolutionary mismatch.

That is to say that whilst spirituality of some form is probably innate, and that perhaps the natural wonder so many experience (especially small children)  when we allow ourselves to simply gaze at nature and allow nature into us, is an expression of this, and that this wonder tends towards assisting in the development of nurturing relationships.

Whereas Religiosity is learned, and tends towards exclusive yet low-urturant relationships primarily with those who share the same religious viewpoints, and at the same time, religiosity  tends towards aversion of the other and or fear of other viewpoints. The history of sectarianism within religions and ideologies is all too often bloody and brutal evidence of this.

In evolutionary terms this means the person or society who is subject to imposed religiosity, or indeed ideology, (which is almost always imposed through the agency of Institutionalised Power) will be less willing to co-operate with the 'other' or to recognise it's own interdependency with all of life, and this therefore increases the likelihood of sustained behaviours that damage the environment, which inevitably reduces it's long term survival possibilities. The evidence for this lies all around us.

I have traced a path way of disruption, based on my understanding of Trauma and PTSD, which leads to the excessive control and violence associated with Institutionalised Power Religions, with Lateral Violence, Abusive Family dynamics, and much else besides.


a basic outline : loss of  self empathy due to trauma -> loss of empathy for others -> sense of disconnection from what nurtures -> compounds fear associated with trauma -> leads to excessive desire for control of self, others, environment -> leads to violence to control self, others, environment

To survive a trauma event often requires that a person undergoing the trauma suppresses his or her feelings in order to survive. This would also apply to a community that is being traumatised. If, post trauma, that person or community is unable to resolve those suppressed feelings, the suppression remains, and children born to that person or community will grow up with that suppression as part of their psychology. Such suppression leads to a disruption of self-empathy, because it leads to shutting down certain feelings or groups of feelings.

The loss of self-empathy leads to a loss of empathy for others, which can also be described as a loss of empathy for all that nurtures one, or a sense of disconnection from all that nurtures one. This will generate fear, which compounds the fear associated with the trauma, and leads directly to a sensed need to control the people, environment or world around one in order to have certain perceived needs met.

When any autonomous organism is subjected to external control, it will resist, and this is where violence is utilised, to break that resistance. That violence can be physical or psychological. It can be immediate and final or long term and sustained.

Naturally enough, a community or family that has been traumatised, and has been unable to resolve the feelings suppressed, will pass that on to the next generation. As each successive generation 'evolves' evolves they will inject that psychology into the structures they create around their system, structures that will become core beliefs, attitudes and over time Institutionalised patterns of permitted behaviour.

If a child somehow retains some of his or her original natural autonomy, which is a core biological and evolutionary trait, then violence, both physical and psychological, will be permitted to be utilised against that child to break the child, to show the child who is master. This is the basis for what is called 'Poisonous Pedagogy' which has a long and well documented history in Europe.

Recent calls from UK Government Ministers and Teachers Unions for more Power to control children in schools reveals that this is still an active paradigm within the UK - the 21st Century is still Governed by Mediaeval and Victorian attitudes. David Cameron's call that children ought to 'stand up when an adult enters the class room' is very revealing, though he himself is totally unaware of what he is revealing.

Likewise the Catholic Pope's record on dealing with widespread child abuse within Catholicism, and the stance of so many Catholics in protecting both the Pope and the Institution of The Vatican.

Baroness Varsi, a UK 'Muslim' Peer, visited the Pope recently, and made no comment whatsoever on the issues facing the Vatican. Because those same issues are pertinent to ALL Governance as we know it today.




Evolution of life on Earth is more about interdependency, co-operation, mutualism, nurture than it is about competition, mere survival, hierarchical or linear growth. Religiosity is clearly of the latter stream, and is an evolutionary mismatch. The same can be said of ideology, nationalism, sexism, racism. That many people have been questioning these latter attitudes for so long, in a climate of almost constant oppression and denial, speaks to the innate power of our natural biological mandate towards self empathy and empathy for others.


Kindest regards

Corneilius

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

Climate Change Denial-ism Put into Context.

There has been lots of writings about Climate Change denial-ism.

One of the more frequent claims is that this denial emerges from the unwillingness of those whose material comforts are so great in comparison to those of previous generations to even begin to think of forgoing those comforts. Be they 'everyday folk' or wealthy Power players.

In my view this is wholly inadequate as a explanation. It also has potential to become a means to demonise and de-humanise 'others', and be used as a means of oppression and social divisiveness that feeds Power. The blame game is not the same as asking that people take on social responsibility  based on understanding.

When it comes to 'denial-ism' we have many, many precedents and analogues. Here's a just a few to indicate the tenor of denial-ism.

The German people during the late 1920s and 1930s, as Hitler was elevated into Power, at a time when Eugenics was a respected 'scientific' ideology amongst many, many ruling elites and everyday people across the world. The German people could see what was happening, and yet so many simply turned a blind eye to the growing abuses perpetrated by the movement of which Hitler was a figurehead, and actually worked within that system as the managers, clerks and manual labourers necessary for such a system to function. What had they learned about abusive power in their childhoods that made them so compliant with so obviously abusive Governance?

The 'American' European People during the forced removal of the Aboriginal Peoples of North America and Canada, (and ever since), and the 'Australian' European People regarding the oppression of the Aboriginal peoples of Australia. Where did they get the idea that the Aboriginal people were sub-human and could be so cruelly treated?

The Western World in general with regard to the Aboriginal World - the portrayal of those cultures as 'savage' or 'primitive' as a whole, and therefore suitable for 'assimilation' or 'extirpation'. And the denial of that vast historical trauma, as well as the claim that it belongs to previous generations, to the past, while in reality it is still being practised.

The Irish of the 20th and 21st Century regarding the political realities of the Irish 'Famine's of the mid 19th Century. The incidence of potato blight was intentionally utilised to depopulate Ireland, and to populate the USA and Australia by mass immigration, in essence to provide cheap labour for the expansionism of the Empires of commerce. This reveals to those with eyes to see the pattern of intentional cruelty and manipulation that led directly to the partition of Ireland, the Civil War and belies the carefully crafted illusion of Ireland's entry into the modern world of statehood and a friendly relationship between the installed Powers in Ireland's State with those Powers that had so cruelly abused the indigenous Irish for so long. Forget about the truth, there is money to be made.

The long term intergenerational trauma of this experience had horrific consequences for hundreds of thousands of Irish children placed in the 'care' of Church and State Institutions. This is still a taboo subject in polite Irish Society. Why?

The Catholic world-wide congregation's response in the past 30 years as the 'scandal' of widespread, centuries long, child abuse unfolds and as the Catholic Hierarchy continues to refuse to address the matter honestly and honourably. How can so much be known about this horrific history and so little be done to address it, not least by the people outside of that Institution, whose own family members were victimised?

The Western World post "Silent Spring'... The 'green revolution' has surged forwards since then, unabated. Birdsong is ever rarer. Bee populations are falling. Monsanto is still pushing GMO crops and Supermarket giants and Pharmaceutical Corporations are determining agricultural practice, whilst the adverse health affects are costing National health Services more every year. How can such an insane and obviously damaging practice prevail for so long?

The Western World in the lead up to, and during the Afghan and Iraq Wars, during the bombing of Libya. There were no WMD in Iraq, there is no solid evidence that 9/11 was planned and executed from within Afghanistan, and the threat of massive civilian slaughter in Benghazi is proven to have been a fabrication. David Cameron sold Military technology and weapons the the Egyptian Military which has been used to oppress the Egyptian people since the 'fall' of Mubarak. Why do people buy these lies about 'bringing democracy' tot he Arab world?

The widespread denial of the wounds associated with Coercive Compulsory Schooling Systems. 'Our' schools are failing children, punishing them with target based achievement training designed to put the children under intense psychological pressure; bullying is rampant and schools unwilling to admit the scale of the problem, let alone address it's roots in peer pressure that is largely driven by consumer marketing and media propaganda. Ritalin is the tool of choice to control those children whose energy and vitality and frustration threatens the illusion that schools are educational institutions, as opposed to doctrinal training centres. How can so many parents be blind to the problems their own children are faced with every day?

To suggest that it is merely a question of 'comforts' that accrue to those who benefit in some way from the status quo is to avoid a deeper analysis, as to the psycho-dynamics of denial. It might be comforting to some who might claim, in their own minds, to be ready for a down grading of their own comforts, for the benefit of all,  which might also be yet another way of claiming the 'higher moral ground', of self aggrandisement. Ruthless self honesty is essential here.

Alice Miller was the first modern writer to look at Germany and to elucidate the psycho-dynamic that fed the situation in Germany, and to source it's roots in how children were treated, and how parents were instructed by societal power in their relationships with children. Her book "For Your Own Good : The roots of Violence in Child Rearing" is one of the most important books of the 20th Century. She showed that when an adult mistreats a child, telling the child repeatedly that "This is for your own good!" the child internalises the meaning and values associated with the mistreatment and adopts them as her or his own, and that makes it more likely that as an adult they too will mistreat their own children, and that this occurs as an intergenerational behaviour pattern that is oppressive.

The child's natural anger at such mistreatment is suppressed by the child, and emerges in the adult as a diffuse anger that is unresolved and that can and is used by Power to manipulate hatred and anger towards 'others' who are carefully demonised, thus giving permission to a whole generation to attack those defined as 'others' : jews, gays, communists in Hitler's era; protestors, muslims, immigrants and 'terrorists' today in Great Britian.

James Prescott and John Bowlby researched the impact of the disruption of the natural child-mother bonding processes and to link those disruptions to how societies behave, and provided clear evidence that the disruption of the natural child-mother bonding processes underpinned the emergence of Hierarchically Violent Societies 

Prescott's 1975 paper 'The Origins of Violence' revealed two streams of society: the Hierarchically Violent Society and the Empathic Egalitarian Society.

Here's a brief outline of the differences he observed.

That research is now corroborated to some degree, though there are some doubts and questions yet to be answered, by neuroscience, by pre-natal developmental science and birth psychology.

The adverse behaviour patterns that have been perpetuated, that lead to the problems of Habitat degradation - of which Climate Change is but one symptom - have their roots in this disruption of natural, biologically mandated environmental and experiential processes that disrupt our natural maturation and development of sense of self, and of connection to others.

The psychology of any given society is both revealed and perpetuated in how that society treats it's children and most vulnerable members.

Change this and we change everything.

Failure to change this, and we will only create new rules with which to oppress each other, thinking all the time that our rules are better justified.

We have many, many examples of this 'revolutionary' approach and the abuses it perpetuates, from the French revolution to Pol Pot.

Healing and Recovery cannot be coerced, they must be chosen. It is also true that healing and recovery benefit greatly from adequate empathic and practical support, and it is true that some few have been able to engage their healing and recovery without much support, often in the face of strong opposition.

Loss of self empathy and the urge to power - a short video. :

We, all of us, have much work to do, in many areas. And for our children's children's sake it must be, above all, honest.

That honesty is the cleaning up of our internal personal ecology as much as the external.

Kindest regards

Corneilius

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

 

Belgian Bishop claims abuse was 'a little game'

In an interview that aired Thursday last, Roger Vangheluwe, the former bishop of Bruges, spoke of his sexual abuse as "a little game," that involved fondling, but no "rough sex."

Huffington post and others reported on this.

These are my comments on the article, the dynamics of the sociopathic ex-Bishop and the current Belgian Bishop of  Tournai's comments to the press, and the dynmaics of Sociopathy in general.

Guaranteed, the former Bishop is lying. Attempting mitigation. He is also revelling in the attention. What it reveals is the sinister intent to manipulate, a sociopathic trait that makes people like him extremely dangerous. Indeed the world of celebrity politics is a world of sociopathy, charm, charisma, bluster, image.

However the comments made by the Bishop of Tournai reveal more of the Institutional Sociopathy of the Catholic Church.

Quote from the Huffington Post article : Guy Harpigny, the bishop of Tournai, said that, at a time when the church is reaching out to abuse victims, "along comes a former bishop who says it was only little games. This man is either sick, or it is a normal reaction from a pedophile." - 

This is another example of the sociopath at work. 

The Church is NOT reaching out to survivors and has in fact been engaged in a long term full scale offensive AGAINST survivors for many, many years, and has shown no signs of relenting. 

Pedohiles are not sick, they ARE nasty. Their actions are 100% Volitional. There is no reliable scientific evidence that supports they claim often made of the existance of some primary, uncontrollable urge.

Whilst it is important to understand the dynamics of abuse in that abuse is perpetuated through the generations by the denial of perpetrators, and by the lack of resolution of childhood trauma that is generalised throughout society, that dynamic is largely the result of the way in which Power is transmitted through Society, as Alice Miller and others such as David Smail, Carl Rogers, R D Laing and Noam Chomsky have pointed out, and it cannot ever be used in any way to mitigate the volitional reality of those actions that cause so much harm.

Thus the hint at 'sickness' is a deflection. An attempt to avoid responsibility. And as such, all attempts at avopiding responsibility for one's actions are immature, narccisstic and thus extremely dangerous.

It is how pedophiles react. It is how Tony Blair reacts to accusations that he is a murderer. It is how sociopaths react to being uncovered. I know this because, it is how I reacted, when as a parent I bullied my own children, slapped them, coerced them. And I had to face the full reality of my behaviour as being 100% volitional in order to deal with it. And deal with it I did.

Guy Harpigny's comments are designed to distance the Church from the comments made by Roger Vangheluwe, and to deflect attention from the Institutional Sociopathy which is well understood, well researched and absolutely at the core of this issue. Sociopaths will of course turn on each other of they cannot close ranks.

There are also degrees of Sociopathy.  The recent story of Irish Gardai joking about rape, and the actions of Dublin County Council Officials and others with regard to the avoidable and tragic death of Rachel Peavoy, and their behaviour and evidence given at the Coroners Inquest, are part of the generalised Sociopathy that Power Institutions and those who inhabit them rveal, time and time again. Likewise the refusal of the Irish DPP to prosecute a Priest who was accused by ten women in North Cork of serious sexual assault, which was only moved on after public pressure by a number of campaigners who made the matter public, and took it to the streets, in spite of legalistic threats by the DPP intended to deflect their efforts..

The willingness to avoid responsibility, to mitigate the adverse affects of their behaviours, to use manipulative mechanisms to deflect accountability ar all part of the Sociopathic mind-set.

This is something we all have to get to grips with.

And this report into Indigenous Residential/Boarding Schools systems looks how these systems were replicated all over the world, in many, many countries, for a long, long time.  The patterns of abuse of children show that there was awareness and a consistent policy of denil and cover-up, over such a long time, that suggest the abuse was intentional, was allowed as a process of destroying cultres by destroying their children. 

What is important to note is that these systems have not all been closed down, and where they have, we see a consistent pattern of increased Social Services 'interventions' targetting those populations that had previously been the targets of the Residential School Systems, with children being removed from their families and placed in care, into fostering or adoption programs, which turn out to be equally traumatic. This practice has been given a name. Psychopsema [psy•cho-pse-ma]


It's a clearly documented worldwide pattern : this is something we all have to get to grips with.

Kindest regards

Corneilius

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

11 Seconds that could transform our world.

A very short video, outlining the simplest of concepts, supported by research evidence and practice.

www.alicemiller.com 

www.whatbabieswant.com

Kindest regards

Corneilius

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

A Survivors Manifesto

An alarming number of adults in the so-called 'civilised' world have little or no empathy for themselves as infants and small children - most have no recall of those times, which is why that empathy seems rare.... and so this also explains why most parents are at a loss with babies and small infants and therefore tend to try to control them, because they have no empathy, they cannot sense the childs needs... and so controlling the baby feels safer and so they look for INSTRUCTIONS.... and are vulnerable to those who give instructions - yet the body knows and if trusted the adult can learn empathy again and recover....

As a child I was beaten, humiliated, punished, or neglected in one way or another, almost daily, and I HAD to believe that I was wrong and deserved the beating, just to maintain my psyche,  even if I did not understand WHY I was being beaten (or their reasons for it). 

I also had to believe the FAITH they hammered into me and that brought me great fear, for I feared I was sinful, nasty, ugly,

It took a long, long time to lose those beliefs about myself.... to find my true heart, my natural integrity.

I consider myself VERY lucky to have made that journey, and whilst it IS infuriating that so many of my brothers and sisters are still stuck in the beliefs and denial, my REAL anger is directed at all those who ensure that the conditioning continues; for the rest, patience and empathy.....

My story is not at all rare, and comparitively speaking, I was lucky..... the stories I read of other childrens lives make that very clear : my point here to make it clear that many, many people have been conditioned by circumstance and Society, rather than truly loved... and only those who are truly loved, not least by themselves, can resist that conditioning in meaningful ways....

I know what it is like to be conditioned and fearful.

I deeply appreciate all the love and support I have received and continue to receive...

I never urge survivors to speak out, in public, unless they themselves feel ready to do so.... just as I would never push a child to do anything. It's always be...st to wait until the child feels eady.

I do urge survivors to find someone they can confide in, to break the silence for themselves - and I do understand that finding that empathic person can be difficult even frightening.

I tell my story to encourage a deeper understanding of what it is to be a Survivor, for there are so many in this society.

Even though I detest war, and think soldeiry a fools game, I FEEL for those troops who return from active combat duty, the many thousands who can just about cope, the many thousands who don't and who 'fall through the cracks' because those around them do not understand what violent trauma does to a persons soul - the movies do not tell the truth about violence and it's effects, neither will the media -and neither wil the NHS, the Health Service nor Social Services....

So it has to be Survivors who do this, and it has to be those strong enough and in a position to do it, because ALL survivors need to be heard, we need to be held, to be allowed to cry, to scream, to vent for this is an essential part of the healing, no matter how uncomfortable it might be for others....

The wounded experience lies trapped beneath those unexpressed cries and wails, is walled in in an attempt to keep it alltogether, to 'fit in' and that keeps us permanently wounded, closed down, shuit off from the full vitality of life.

That is something that no-one deserves.

The stiff upper lip approach has it's merits in a traumatic situation, with limitations, yet beyond that it becomes a trap, a form of denial and assures that trauma patterns are repeated, in one form or another.

And then there are those who adapt to that societal trauma, whose abuse becomes thier identity, and who inflict abuse without conscience or remorse and become part of the System of Power that drives war, neglect, inequality, abuse.. who often 'succeed' and run banks, corporations and countries.... dangerous people, damaged people, charismatic people..... what of them?

Tony Blair, George Bush, Hosni Mubarak, Saddam Hussein, Myra Hindly, Ian Brady, Fred West, David Cameron, the various CEOs of Rapacious Corporations, The Pope, the Abuser Priests, Nuns, Men and Women, children even, the torturers, the bullies and beaters and killers amongst us ...... how are we to deal with these people and how are we to avoid the creation of such damaged people in the future?

How are we to deal with the Institutions that are founded in old patterns of abusive Power?

http://www.restorativejustice.org/

How can we build Institutions that are empathic, and responsive to the needs of us vulnerable human beings, that responds to the needs of the habitat and all that dwell therein?

For it is the case that such people are rarely born, they are the outcomes of Society and Institutional Power as it is.

These are the questions that I muse on, for my childrens sake, for their childrens sake, for yours and all.

I do not have to be perfect to engage thus. I do not have to wait until I have it all sorted out.

I certainly do not have all the answers and I am so glad that there are many good men and women working on these same problems, doing so honestly, with integrity and empathy, and with diligence, day in, day out for entire lifetimes.

I am encouraged that so much is now know and understood of the dyamics of abuse, of the biology of empathy, knowledge that is practical, that replaces belief with action that makes a difference.

What better legacy for our children could there possibly be, better than all the fine buildings, the great works of art, the exploration of space (where no-one human lives...)?

"Of all the preposterous assumptions of humanity over humanity, nothing exceeds most of the criticisms made on the habits of the poor by the well-housed, well-warmed, and well-fed". -Herman Melville, novelist and poet (1819-1891)

http://www.alicemiller.com

http://www.birthpsychology.com

http://www.violence.de/prescott/bulletin/article.html

Kindest regards

Corneilius

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

David Smail on Depression in 1989

Here's an insightful video, of David Smail, speaking of depression and the woundedness of those who have suffered from circumstances not of their own making.







I urge everyone to view this, to listen carefully to the fullness of what David says. His words are dense with meaning, with empathy and understanding.

Note especially that he says the most sensitive are often the most perceptive. The wounded see Society for what it really is. They are more wounded because of that perceptual ability.

This piece of video was made in 1989, during the height of the Thacherite years... and it has special resoance for these times of 'austerity' for the distressed and wounded, and bonuses for the wealthy....

This video outlines what Alice Miller has shown to be the dynmaics of abuse that are most common, that underpin much of the Dominant Cultures realities, the things that do harm, the kinds of adults those who have not faced their childhood woundings who later inflict those same woundings on others.







This is not to excuse those who cause serious harm, but to understand the dynamics of intergenerational abuse patterns.

Tony Blair can only get away with what he has done, David Cameron is getting away with what he is doing, because so many of us are wounded, blocked and in denial about the nature of our Society.


We must face these truths in order to change the patterns.

Remember what Judith Herman wrote:

"The ordinary response to atrocities is to banish them from consciousness. Certain violations of the social compact are too terrible to utter aloud: this is the meaning of the word unspeakable.

Atrocities, however, refuse to be buried. Equally as powerful as the desire to deny atrocities is the conviction that denial does not work. Folk wisdom is filled with ghosts who refuse to rest in their graves until their stories are told.

Remembering and telling the truth about terrible events are prerequisites both for the restoration of the social order and for the healing of individual victims.”

Kindest regards

Corneilius

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

The Pope, Society and Child Rearing Practices....

Colm O'Gorman, one of the first to pursue the Vatican through the courts over the abuse he suffered wrote in the Irish Independent a reply to the Popes recent letter to the Irish Congregation ... and in it he notes that Pope Pious V issued orders that any priest alleged to have perpetrated abuse upon children should be defrocked and handed over to the authorities......

http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/colm-ogorman-papal-letter-was-a-disgraceful-deceit-1925049.html

The order was issued in 1568. The abuse of children has a long history, and given the ways in which the Church and State have  been interlinked as Powers over people down through the ages, one has to ask : just how deep does this rabbit hole go?

The 'defence' of the indefensible goes on..... this putrid essay appeared in the New York Times recently....

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/28/opinion/28allen.html

It is of course all lies. The current Pope himself directly oversaw the official cover-up.... and most, if not all Governments have been extremely sluggish in coming to the aid of those who have suffered....

Alice Miller work warned of the dangers of the hidden abuse inherent in 'child rearing' practices commonplace across the Industrialised World, in her book, 'The Roots of Violence in Child Rearing : For Your Own Good' - she showed how the 'good german' of Nazi Germany, the adult that was the product of a stern ubpringing, of beatings and humiliations that were published as the standard child rearing texts of the time, was easily manipulated into a National Machine of abuse.... then the Jews, today the Muslim people...... the same patterns emerge..

Current practice in the west these days is to 'allow' infants to cry themselves to sleep, so that they get used to sleeping on their own; this for the benefit of the parents of course, who need their uninterrupted sleep so that they can return to their careers and keep the economy turning; but the FACT is that the child cries and cries until, practically exhausted, he or she gives up, resigns herself to the fact that her calls will be ignored... in the old days this was called 'breaking the wilful nature of the child' - breaking the spirit is apt...

Parents mostly love their children, but they are unwittingly enrolled in these child rearing ways, often in spite of their true feelings, often out of a fear that their child may not do well at school and in later life suffer as a result..... and mostly because they too have been through the intense conditioning processes inherent in 'child rearing' practices common in our Society.

That exhausted last cry and that moment of resignation is a very deep wound indeed, and unheeded, practically invisible, for who has the eyes and  ears to sense the child's resignation, it is the millions upon millions of 'little'  wounds like this that lead directly to the kinds of people who routinely IGNORE the costs others pay for their luxuries and comforts, all too easily rationalising it as 'progress' or 'more than my job is worth'....

The recent TV series SuperNanny showed a professional nanny 'advise' parents on management strategies to deploy with their children, and not once did she enquire about the Parents own childhood experiences....  a deliberate attempt to render child management as the proper way to go about relating to children, in particular 'disruptive children', who a generation before would have been beaten into submission, a beating that other children would have taken note of and would have modulated their behaviour accordingly...

These days overt manipulation is seen as an improvement. It is not. The damage is just the same. Just no visible blood. 2530,000 children are prescribed Ritalin in the UK, 6 million in the USA....

And yet Science, in particular Neuroscience, has in the past 15 years confirmed the damage Miller claimed was caused in 'child rearing practices'; and even still Governments keep this information away from their various Health and Education programs....

http://www.askdrsears.com/html/10/handout2.asp

There is a very deep rabbit hole in our Society, and we MUST absolutely visit it's darkest regions and bring to light the effects of 'child rearing' upon children, who become the adults that work and make the Society we live in. The kinds of adults who accept War as natural, who will routinely rationalise abusive practices such as the use of Ritalin to manage children who are showing signs of distress or the widespread use of toxic chemicals in food growing, who will readily accept the media led demonisation of 'others' as the 'enemy', who will all too easily accept the corrupt practices inherent in Governance such as Corporate Lobbying, the 'revolving door' policy of working for Corporations, then Government, then Corporations, who will 'protect' the Church, even when the evidence of abuse is widespread and clear, a matter of policy.

There is another way, a natural and known way; that of trusting, respecting and validating children as persons...

http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/freedom-learn/200907/play-makes-us-human-vi-hunter-gatherers-playful-parenting

When children are treated with respect, they become adults who are respectful. When children are treated as trustworthy, they become trustworthy adults. We do have a choice.

Kindest regards

Corneilius

Do what you love, it's your gift to universe