Mass Psychosis Hashtag Trend - where the psychosis originates, who it afflicts, whom it harms and what steps might be taken to prevent it.

#Masspsychosis is trending on Twitter.

Back in February, the English Libertarian 'think tank' The Academy of Ideas produced a video exploring this idea.  
The Academy of Ideas is an offshoot of The Institute of Ideas, led by Claire Fox, which itself was an off shoot of Living Marxism the magazine of the Revolutionary Communist Party, which folded in 1981. The staff of Living Marxism created Spiked Magazine, which is funded by The Adam Smith Institute, a creation of  Right Wing Billionaires the Koch brothers. Academy of Ideas is funded by a number of global Corporations notably Pfizer and Novartis, and others similarly inclined.

source: https://www.theguardian.cm/commentisfree/2018/dec/07/us-billionaires-hard-right-britain-spiked-magazine-charles-david-koch-foundation

In a rare public statement, in an essay published in 1978, Charles Koch explained his objective. 
“Our movement must destroy the prevalent statist paradigm. Our goal is not to reallocate the burden of government; our goal is to roll back government. We should consistently work to reduce all taxes, our own and those of others.

Defund the State and all social care programs under the guise of creating freedom for the Free Market. Pre-empt regulation of the Wealth Extractor class. Survival of the fittest, economic eugenics for billionaires who believe they are superior to all others. The weak and vulnerable must be allowed to fall.

Mass Psychosis.

The Academy of Ideas produced this video on the question of mass psychosis in the context of The Pandemic, and I think they were seeking to undermine the obvious need for collective action, supported by populations and their Governments, working as a co-operative to take preventative public health measures to protect everyone's health.
They do so by claiming that various governments existing strategies are driving an irrational tide of mass fear which is leading to an insanity that threatens 'our freedoms'. They accuse people of action driven by fear, when it is driven by concern, care and empathy.

Anti-masking is based on the idea of freedom, not the evidence of efficacy.

The NeoLiberal Anti-Statist

The - the Kochs, Rineharts, Rees-Moggs, Murdochs, Sunaks, Trumps et al liken support for preventative public health measures, (which the English and American Government cast as 'restrictions' - a deliberate trigger) to tyranny, while carefully ignoring the obvious insanity, cruelty and adverse outcomes of the English and US Governments repetitively failing strategies on limiting the harms of the spread of the SARSCOV2 virus.

1.3 million horrific Covid deaths across USUK/EU compared to China, with a similar population and 5k Covid deaths. China stopped the spread, USUK/EU enabled more spread.

Just the same as they ignore the obvious cruelty of allowing climate change to run, maintaining poverty and warfare, and doing little to prevent pollution. None of their wealth is invested into fixing the problems - it is directed to profit from the problems. COP26 was a failure. COP has always been a failure because it is adversarial - the people who show concern and empathy in an uneven struggle with the people who wish to retain power, and continue to extract wealth from the population.

One of their tactics is citing the harms of bad policy to argue for even worse policy options - an old trick.

The Academy of ideas video opens with the following :

“All one’s neighbours are in the grip of some uncontrolled and uncontrollable fear. . . In lunatic asylums it is a well-known fact that patients are far more dangerous when suffering from fear than when moved by rage or hatred.”

Carl Jung, Psychology and Religion

Similar to the old accusation of Hysteria as a uniquely female disorder, rather than understandable symptoms of trauma. When it comes to the Pandemic the vast majority of people in every country are showing more genuine concern than fear, we are demonstrating a desire to care for one another.

That is what wearing a good mask is about - preventing oneself becoming a vector of transmission.

Anti-masking is selfish and stupid but it must be noted it's only happening where well funded misinformation is allowed to circulate. And it's only occurring in people who have been mislead, persuaded , groomed through their biases, fears, insecurities - the groomed are being victimised. The people who organise the grooming are the real problem.

Equating people's genuine concern to Fear is gaslighting.

The narrator continues...

"According to the psychologist Carl Jung the greatest threat to civilization lies not with the forces of nature, nor with any physical disease, but with our inability to deal with the forces of our own psyche. We are our own worst enemies or as the Latin proverb puts it “Man is wolf to man”. 
In Civilization in Transition Jung states that this proverb “is a sad yet eternal truism” and our wolf-like tendencies come most prominently into play at those times of history when mental illness becomes the norm, rather than the exception in a society, a situation which Jung termed a psychic epidemic. "

They cited the following as part of their hypothesis:

"When it is understood that a flood of negative emotions, in conjunction with a weak and insecure sense of self, can trigger a descent into madness it becomes clear how a mass psychosis can occur. A population first needs to be induced into a state of intense fear or anxiety by threats real, imagined, or fabricated and once in a state of panic the door is open for either the positive or negative reaction to unfold. If a society is composed of self-reliant, resilient and inwardly strong individuals a positive reaction can take place, but if it is composed of mainly weak, insecure and helpless individuals a descent into the delusions of a mass psychosis becomes a real possibility. Great stress, in other words, can bring out the best in an individual or society at large, but it can also bring out the worst, or as the psychologist Anthony Storr writes about the potential for a mass psychosis: 
“. . .it is only if we accept the existence of a latent paranoid potential lurking in the recesses of the normal mind that we can explain the mass delusions which led to the persecution of witches and the Nazi slaughter of Jews. Vast numbers of ordinary men and women held beliefs about witches and Jews which, if they had been expressed by one or two individuals instead of by whole communities, would have been dismissed as paranoid delusions. There are extremely primitive, irrational mental forces at work in the minds of all of us which are usually overlaid and controlled by reason, but which find overt expression in the behaviour of those whom we call mentally ill, and which also manifest themselves in the behaviour of normal people when under threat or other forms of stress.”

Storr's book is about the need for solitude as a resource for creatives... the tone is one of individualism rather than one of creatives as part of a healthy community. That said Storr's view of humanity at large is rather negative. 

"it is only if we accept the existence of a latent paranoid potential lurking in the recesses of the normal mind that we can explain the mass delusions which led to the persecution of witches and the Nazi slaughter of Jews,"

This is a deeply negative view of our species in general. And it is utterly incorrect. Behaviour, good or bad, is learned. Very little is innate. Which is why the diversity of culture exists..

Culture and Behaviour

Alice Miller wrote in "The Roots of Violence" that the culture of parenting handed down by 'authorities' can, if it is adult centered, punitive and set to meet adult needs above children's needs, afflict a population, generation after generation.

She shows in her book, and in interviews, how a culture of authoritarian parenting promoted by State and Church, and tinged with intergenerational trauma, leads to varying degrees of harmful behaviour as a normal across a community.  Misogyny, Racism, Class and Caste ideologies are fed by this unhappiness.
She described some of the psycho-dynamics of Nazi Germany and the cult of Hitler (and others) as outcomes of a culture of child abuse. 
At that time corporal punishment of children was the norm across Europe, and was supported by the various authorities, state, educational and religious. 
A nation that bullies most children can indeed lead to the emergence of widespread bullying among adults, layered into the social hierarchy. Hurt children can become adults who hurt others. Authoritarian parenting can also lead to leaders emerging who have deep issues, presenting as irrational hatreds rationalised, veiled by claims to be seeking freedom and justice.

It's not everyone.

However it is not the case that all Germans bought the lies of anti-Semitism and Nazism. There was a resistance to that. Those who resisted were persecuted, publicly. Others who disagreed remained more or less quiet, in order to survive and protect their families and communities.

Storr and many others lay the blame on the ordinary people who are ruled over, citing their 'weakness' without making the effort to understand the nuances and variations to be found in a population being ruled over in such an oppressive manner. Blaming the victim.

It is a world view held by Ruling Classes who assume they are superior to the ordinary folk, and thus entitled to Rule.

If a society is composed of self-reliant, resilient and inwardly strong individuals a positive reaction can take place, but if it is composed of mainly weak, insecure and helpless individuals a descent into the delusions of a mass psychosis becomes a real possibility. "

This text suggests that there is an innate quality of us human beings that reflects the validity of a classification of superior and inferior,  that the inferior are weak and prone to stupidity, ignorance, delusion, insanity and mass hysteria.  
The poor are blamed for their impoverishment. 
The subtext, given the date of publication, is that support for preventative public health measures such as suppressing community transmission, to better manage the Pandemic, are a form of tyranny. A mass psychosis.
Scapegoating?

I would say the psychosis is in fact resident in the Hierarchies of Wealth Extraction and Violence that intentionally dominate entire countries, afflicting their populations. 

The Academy of Ideas rejects this, and harnesses the Jungian view of people as possessed by 'demons' to pull the cart of the Libertarian ideology that the Sovereign Individual should take precedence over collective good governance.

By claiming that existing (all) Governments are inherently oppressive and that ordinary people are generally weak, and prone to psychosis, therefore 'tyrannical' Governments must be restrained so as to protect the people (cover story).

The actual objective is to enhance the Liberty of the Free Marketeers to engage in wealth 'creation', by which they mean wealth extraction which relies upon externalised costs, a process that causes so much harm because externalising refuses to pay to prevent the harms and refuses to make good what has been harmed.

The Neo-Libertarians making the case that small weakened State government is needed in order for Civilisation to progress.

What they really mean is democratic regulation of Wealth Extraction must be pre-empted as we all face the challenges of Climate Change, Pollution, Poverty and War Fare. Obviously they cannot say that openly. That is a psychopathic stance. 

Too close to the bone.

In Nuremberg the Allies brought to trial a small number of active Nazi's and did not  put the German population on trial. They did impose forms of collective punishment during the war and in the aftermath.

The pursuit of Nazi's who fled Germany did not include those adopted by the US for their 'research' under Operation Paperclip.

The Allies also rejected putting Japan's Ruling Class on trial, in the same manner as they did at Nuremburg, because to do so would have exposed the realities of colonialism as a crime given that the practice followed by Japan had indeed been followed by Britain for centuries.

"Justice Radhabinod Pal argued that the exclusion of Western colonialism and the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the exclusion of the fire bombings of German cities from the list of crimes and the lack of judges from the vanquished nations on the bench signified the "failure of the Tribunal to provide anything other than the opportunity for the victors to retaliate".  

In this he was not alone among Indian jurists, with one prominent Calcutta barrister writing that the Tribunal was little more than "a sword in a [judge's] wig."

Justice Röling stated, "[o]f course, in Japan we were all aware of the bombings and the burnings of Tokyo and Yokohama and other big cities. It was horrible that we went there for the purpose of vindicating the laws of war, and yet saw every day how the Allies had violated them dreadfully."

Source : Wikipedia

So we see that a significant difference between Japan and Germany in WWII was that whilst the Nazi project was not an overtly Colonial project, and the prosecutions of German war leaders were for War Crimes, the Japanese project was definitively a colonial project and given that the British Empire project was still extant, active and globally powerful as an economic hierarchy of wealth extraction that was oppressing and exploiting hundreds of millions of people the focus on Japan's War as a Colonial War would have drawn attention to the British and their crimes, not least from those countries still under the thumb of Britain.

Lesson to learn - the Ruling Class will always defend their interests, and bend every tool to that task.

#MassPsychosis - has been trending on Twitter and I saw this post, and responded to it. That response initiated this blog article.

"Twitter Thread : As #MassPsychosis trends. It seems timely to highlight the following: that most, if not all, governments suffer a recurring problem. That power & the quest for it, attracts pathological personalities. It’s not simply that power corrupts, but that it’s magnetic to the corruptible."
-- source: https://twitter.com/OxfordDiplomat/status/1477659141388832769?s=20 
my response: 
https://twitter.com/coreluminous/status/1477711001005006849?s=20
For this piece I have expanded from the thread I wrote on twitter, to add some more detail and a few relevant references (not exhaustive...).

I think that the hash tag #masspsychosis' is in part a distraction, a scapegoating trend that could be used to scapegoat the people most afflicted by the malign behaviour of powerful institutions that influence Governments.

I think we have to be very careful with this.

I also think that there is a form of psychosis that is inherent to Ruling Class behavioural dynamics within a Hierarchy of Wealth and Violence system. Monarchy is the original knife crime syndicate, and  as far from the claims of 'nobility' as any other claim ruling class entitlement makes.

I think that the effects of that psychosis is institutionalised and that the institutionalised power of those who Rule (rather than Govern healthfully) generates further psychological distress as a symptom within the population afflicted by the dominance systems of any Wealth Extraction system that is protected by violence.
What follows is the expanded text, working from my response to the tweet.
1. I think that the issue is Power Disparity and lack of Accountability. Distal Power is a term that describes the greater the distance between those who have power and those who are disempowered, the greater the disempowerment, and the greater the distress endured by the disempowered due to actions of the powerful. It's one thing to be stressed, it's another thing to be chronically stressed with few social material means to alleviate the stress, let alone prevent it.
2. The first power disparity we all experience is as infants relating to parents. The bio-logical default is to nurture our children in ways that allow them to become high functioning adults by meeting all their needs, in a timely fashion.
3. The degree to which parents use their power to nurture the child or to use their power to get the child to meet the parents perceived needs determines much of adult behaviour. The roots of adult behaviour are often established in the first four years of their lives.
4. Self regulation of Affective State (the ability to regulate one's emotional content) is biologically mandated to complete by 18 months after birth.  External chronic stressors  undermine the ability of many parents to provide the kind of caring relationship that establishes healthy self regulation.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lY7XOu0yi-E - Allan Schore on the biology of affective state self regulation. I hour long, quite detailed and superbly laid out. It is a video I return to frequently, and his other work on this is, I think, essential study for anyone concerned with these matters.
5. In any culture predicated upon Rule or Domination by Extreme Wealth Extraction from a population and their shared environment,  or any system of dominance and extraction protected by violence, then we see that warfare and poverty are defining characteristics, they are maintained as active and intentional counterparts to the extraction and concentration of wealth.

Low wages, cheap labour costs, externalised environmental costs are the basis of Wealth Extraction and these impose intense chronic stress upon any population so afflicted. Inequity harms populations. Equity and Justice nurtures populations.
The book 'The Spirit Level' written in 2009, examines this in great detail, looking at the evidence from countries and their economic systems and prevalence of distress.
https://equalitytrust.org.uk/resources/the-spirit-level

"The Spirit Level: Why More Equal Societies Almost Always Do Better was published in 2009. Written by Kate Pickett and Richard Wilkinson, the book highlights the "pernicious effects that inequality has on societies: eroding trust, increasing anxiety and illness, (and) encouraging excessive consumption". It shows that for each of eleven different health and social problems: physical health, mental health, drug abuse, education, imprisonment, obesity, social mobility, trust and community life, violence, teenage pregnancies, and child well-being, outcomes are significantly worse in more unequal rich countries."
6. Any human culture, where it breaks with well observed and understood biological mandates, must induce chronic stress - it cannot do otherwise. 

Climate Change is one of many examples of this. Many older cultures have understood this and have adopted stewardship behavioural dynamics. sustained over many thousands of years. Those cultures tended to be egalitarian, generating a diversity of organisational systems and ways of living attuned to their shared environment.

7. Rulers  - those who dominate a population - pay close attention to the behaviour of those they dominate, in the same way those who groom vulnerable people do.

Ruling systems have always studied carefully how people either react or respond, and have devised many strategies and tactics to maintain disunity (Left vs Right, promoting ideologies of Adversarial Politics to counter Co-operative Governance) by triggering the reactive, exacerbating and heightening fears and insecurities and knowledge gaps in order to 'nudge' the behaviour of the majority in favour of the Ruling Class. Ruling systems must groom the population they dominate to accept the status quo as natural. Deference must be inculcated, 'your Majesty'.
8. Thus we see clearly in the Cambridge Analytica 'scandal' that a core component of the exercise of Rule as opposed to healthy government is to be able to target insecurities within the population, heighten those insecurities,  and then use those to drive behavioural dynamics that can be exploited.

Destitution and Poverty are essential to maintenance of a cheap labour workforce, which is the basis of Wealth Extraction from 'human resources'.
9. Lack of self-reflection is not a barrier to this capability. If anything it enhances that capability due to the fact that a lack of conscience releases the actor from any sense of responsibility for harmful outcomes others are forced to endure, as long as power is retained over the population targeted.
10. Rulers cannot rest from their task to manipulate/habituate those they dominate because, in spite of all of the above, most people are decent, kind and loving and most people do the best they can do, in terms of genuine caring for family/community, in spite of the systemic barbarism of Rulers. 
Left to our own devices, most of us would veer towards egalitarian modes of behaviour, co-operative organisation, profit sharing.
11. This is good news. Our default setting as a social species is very robust. Rutger Bregman's "Human Kind" explores this in some detail looking at examples of massive trauma events and how people tend to look after each other more often than not.
https://www.waterstones.com/book/humankind/rutger-bregman/9781408898956
“This is a book about a radical idea. An idea that’s long been known to make rulers nervous. An idea denied by religions and ideologies, ignored by the news media and erased from the annals of world history. At the same time, it’s an idea that’s legitimised by virtually every branch of science. One that’s corroborated by evolution and confirmed by everyday life.”

and

"“In the very same years that Rousseau was writing his books, Franklin admitted that ‘No European who has tasted Savage Life can afterwards bear to live in our societies.’47 He described how ‘civilised’ white men and women who were captured and subsequently released by Indians invariably would ‘take the first good Opportunity of escaping again into the Woods’.

Colonists fled into the wilderness by the hundreds, whereas the reverse rarely happened.48 And who could blame them? Living as Indians, they enjoyed more freedoms than they did as farmers and taxpayers. For women, the appeal was even greater. ‘We could work as leisurely as we pleased,’ said a colonial woman who hid from countrymen sent to ‘rescue’ her.49 ‘Here, I have no master,’ another told a French diplomat. ‘I shall marry if I wish and be unmarried again when I wish. Is there a single woman as independent as I in your cities?”

'Do we have to be this screwed up?' written by Suki Price looks at this too, from an anthropological angle.

"Modern life is full of problems - in individuals and in society too. Increasingly we see damaged and disturbed children, mental health problems, addictions of many kinds, antisocial behavior, and crime, violence and war. So it seems sensible to ask: does life have to be this way? Was it always like this for human beings? We ve been around for maybe as much as two million years: surely we didn t evolve to live such difficult and dysfunctional lives? Do We Need To Be So Screwed-Up?! sets out to discover the answer to this question and finds plentiful evidence to show that, on the contrary, human beings evolved to be naturally egalitarian, cooperative, and peaceful. Indeed, for over 95% of our history until about 10,000 years ago - that is how we were: kind, cheerful and happy! This is a paradigm-busting re-evaluation of human nature and our potential for happiness."
source : https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/17048084-do-we-need-to-be-so-screwed-up

I wrote two pertinent articles on this. (well, I think they are pertinent...)
a)  https://dwylcorneilius.blogspot.com/2010/10/two-poles-of-society-everything-in.html - on the emergence of hierarchically violent cultures and why the dynamic of domination rides roughshod over co-operative cultures.
b) https://dwylcorneilius.blogspot.com/2020/01/the-human-species-is-fine-its-culture.html - the species is not the problem, the culture is the problem. A message of hope and potential.
12. That said, chronic stress and unresolved trauma are trickle down behaviour changing dynamics of being Ruled over by  Wealth Extraction and Violence. It is clear that this is the case.
"Mental illness is now recognised as one of the biggest causes of individual distress and misery in our societies and cities, comparable to poverty and unemployment. One in four adults in the UK today has been diagnosed with a mental illness, and four million people take antidepressants every year. ‘What greater indictment of a system could there be,’ George Monbiot has asked, ‘than an epidemic of mental illness?’
The shocking extent of this ‘epidemic’ is made all the more disturbing by the knowledge that so much of it is preventable. This is due to the significant correlation between social and environmental conditions and the prevalence of mental disorders. Richard Bentall, professor of clinical psychology at the University of Liverpool, and Peter Kinderman, president of the British Psychological Society, have written compellingly about this connection in recent years, drawing powerful attention to ‘the social determinants of our psychological wellbeing’. ‘The evidence is overwhelming,’ notes Kinderman, ‘it’s not just that there exist social determinants, they are overwhelmingly important.’"
source : https://www.redpepper.org.uk/a-mad-world-capitalism-and-the-rise-of-mental-illness/
A sick society or a traumatised cult enduring a traumatising cult is not the same as a 'dysfunctional species'.  Indeed the concept of a dysfunctional species is nonsense, biologically inept and a negative, adversarial ideological stance.
13. There's a series of layered problems inherent to the current Hierarchically Violent Power and Wealth system. The matter is complex, because we are diverse but it is made complicated because the urge to power prevents resolution in order to avoid relinquishing Power.
- the System itself, it's behavioural dynamics as a cult. Admitting this with some degree of empathy and a desire to correct rather than extract retributive punishment is a big ask.
- the adverse effects of chronic stressors such as destitution, poverty, warfare, marginalisation, class/caste beliefs and other dynamic features of being dominated. The need for this understanding to be integrated into education in general is clear.
- the 'need' of The System to cow populations, and to habituate or condition the majority to acceptance of The System as the 'natural state of affairs'. Herbert Spencer's misappropriation of the work of Darwin and Wallace is a case in point. Racism is another example of a falsified claim of 'natural' state of affairs and the Human Condition.
- as long as the resistors remain a minority, Power retains it's grip. 
https://wagingnonviolence.org/2012/01/how-swedes-and-norwegians-broke-the-power-of-the-1-percent/

"it’s worthwhile to consider other countries where masses of people succeeded in nonviolently bringing about a high degree of democracy and economic justice. Sweden and Norway, for example, both experienced a major power shift in the 1930s after prolonged nonviolent struggle. They “fired” the top 1 percent of people who set the direction for society and created the basis for something different.

Both countries had a history of horrendous poverty. When the 1 percent was in charge, hundreds of thousands of people emigrated to avoid starvation. Under the leadership of the working class, however, both countries built robust and successful economies that nearly eliminated poverty, expanded free university education, abolished slums, provided excellent health care available to all as a matter of right and created a system of full employment. Unlike the Norwegians, the Swedes didn’t find oil, but that didn’t stop them from building what the latest CIA World Factbook calls “an enviable standard of living.”

When resistance is well informed, and is widely supported by the population, then the power dynamics can be altered towards less malignity.

- resisters that are reactive can be manipulated. Political, Ideological and Religious Grooming all operate on this basis. 
https://dwylcorneilius.blogspot.com/2021/06/grooming-how-it-operates-why-it-works.html
My article, an exploration of why grooming works, how it was engineered citing Brexit as a case study, how to disarm it with awareness and a suggestion on how to prevent it being deployed across media platforms by making defining grooming as serious intentional psychological abuse and as a criminal offence.
- responsive resistors are much more difficult to handle. Structures are built to offer hope, and thwart it. We see repeated efforts to undermine emerging movements, and their leaderships and to prevent them from accessing the legislative power necessary to regulate the Wealth Extractor dynamic. Corbyn, Sanders and others knocked back, time and time again.
- until the grass roots understands this psycho-dynamic, I think we are facing a steeper uphill struggle than we would if that understanding was common across the grass roots. Trade Unions in a very short time frame, between the 1840s and the 1960s demonstrated the utility of grass roots solidarity and political organisation grounded in well understood evidence.
- Political Grooming Operations are designed in part to prevent that understanding emerging, Establishment News Media have the same function.
https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/ourbeeb/general-strike-to-corbyn-90-years-of-bbc-establishment-bias/
A good article on how this works, using the BBC as a case study.
- Political Grooming Operations are also designed to obscure honest appraisal of problems, they are deployed to generate adversarial dynamics across the population (divide and conquer by diluting grass roots solidarity though triggering arguments and beefs) and they are also used to recruit un-witting operatives who can be exploited by the system.
14. Psychology, as a Science, and as a social health institution must confront this - Psychology must eschew its allegiance to the Establishment, align with the humanity of us humans, as an egalitarian social species.
15. Equity oriented political organisation must become trauma informed, understand the effects of unresolved trauma, chronic stress, poverty and other factors external to the individual that impact each persons living situation.
https://www.gov.scot/publications/trauma-informed-practice-toolkit-scotland/pages/3/
An example from the Scottish Government of how this might be implemented.
16. Without these concerns correctly addressed, it is very unlikely this culture will turn away from the current destructive trajectories.
17. Systemic Power without love or accountability is similar to the Abusive Parent or Partner or Sibling within a family, without love, who is causing harm, maintaining dominance. 
Institutionalised and at scale.
https://dwylcorneilius.blogspot.com/2020/07/this-is-abuse-relationship-dynamic.html
An article I wrote to suggest this model, using the English Ruling Class as a case study, in 2020.



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Corneilius

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Trauma informed, trauma altered, and healing...

Here's a few thoughts on healing.

Primarily that healing and recovery is as much a collective response, as an individual response: the whole matters. There is much about trauma is relayed through the ways in which power is mediated across this culture. "I argued then that the study of psychological trauma is an inherently political enterprise because it calls attention to the experience of oppressed people. I predicted that our field would continue to be beset by controversy, no matter how solid its empirical foundation, because the same historical forces that in the past have consigned major discoveries to oblivion continue to operate in the world. I argued, finally, that only an ongoing connection with a global political movement for human rights could ultimately sustain our ability to speak about unspeakable things." ~ Judith Herman in Trauma and Recovery

So looking again at healing and recovery, we can start with the individual and look at mindful body work, that is to say working with the body, understanding the mind-body emotional biology, the workings in the relationship between experience, feeling, thought, understanding body chemistry and adaptive experience, with the intent to support healing through understanding what happened, what happens and through rebuilding healthy, stable neurology and endocrine balance through direct experience, exercise, dance, movement, massage, herbs etc.... Just accurate understanding, and caring support. If the choice to use pharmacological tools is made, then at least let it be honest, informed consented and evidence based rather than as a management tool - it is useful to use such medicines as short term management, and worth finding ways to avoid usage that tends to become long term, to move from management of presenting symptoms towards healing and recovery, as much as possible. Paying close attention to mindful body work processes so that they are more responsive to each unique case, and so that they can hand the power, share the responsibility to heal to he individual, building the trust that self healing, as much as professional expertise, can work together... Using thought and action, movement, breathing, diet and other modes to rewrite traumatised neural networks, to allow old hyper alert routes to fall into non-use: aware that this is best completed within a safe environment, and assuring that other material support is made available as a proven route towards recovery. Dealing with what's happened, and what is, and looking to the future, at the same time

It is critically important that as part of our shared future that we also deal with societal power dynamics that induce chronic stress - ordinary folk to not initiate war, poverty, famine, corruption, abuse of power. The power of institutions, and ruling networks are a source of much harm. This is what happens when nurture is removed from the centre of human affairs. Power and it's maintenance undermine nurturant psychologies.

A culture that listens to children, that hears and engages with the heart of the child, that affirms the child's experience of self as her or his own, distinct and yet bonded, in what we call healthy attachment.

That has to be at the centre of treatment and social policy...

The inter-generational situational epi-genetic thread of trauma altered behaviour across entire populations is real.

A child can relax into true self, when she or he feels understood, received and cared for.

A child who is 'acting out' is not being heard, nor understood.

If that becomes a pattern, if the child's experience with adults maintains that trajectory, if it is also part of a cultural trauma behaviour pattern that becomes institutionalised, then of course, in that social environment it is clear that some will become bullies, kings, and others will break, many will survive, some will thrive, some will try to hack the system to create personal and familial security, others to give bullies the finger, and then there's the artist.... most will do their very best to live as decently as possible within those constraints.

So I look again at populations, and patterns, and I see that compassion informed by science - close observation, honesty - is merely common sense...

Judith Herman wrote that there were two things about the study of trauma that struck her, because they are so infrequently mentioned in mainstream discourse.

The first was that more study must be done of the vast numbers of people who have lived through trauma, and who have recovered, independent of any professional or institutional assistance. A missing statisitc, and a really critical database.

Natural healing needs to be understood, forensically.

The second was that the study of trauma is necessarily a political enterprise, in that it brings one's attention to the experience of the oppressed.....

I think she was correct, and it may be some time before that insight informs the grass roots - the status quo will seek to co-opt both these areas with whatever tools it has.... Standard practice.

That said the process of healing through understanding the roots of a given problem is underway, has always been and always will - I remember every day that I am really an aboriginal human being, and that my ancestors lived peaceably, and thrived for hundreds of thousands of years... we were a healthy species, and we have been subjected to an unhealthy culture of bullying, and it will pass, and we will return to healthy social behaviour.

When I say 'we' I do not expect myself to see this materialise, and I am happy to work towards it in my own small way, as a participant in the work.

There has to be reliable ways to record and analyse mass anecdotal evidence of those who recover, even as it remains silent to the professional and institutional world.

The suggestion of the inaccuracy of self reporting is not enough on it's own to avoid the problem of how to 'measure' or assess that unspoken experience....

There are layers to how trauma 'informs' our biology, to how chronic stress alters our biochemistry and behaviour : the phrase 'trauma informed' reflects greater understanding in this area emerging into the clinical and practice level, and we need to see that understanding disseminated across the grass roots, at pace. Power.

The 19th Century Ruling class, the persistent descendants of the Normans, and their modern acolytes and rivals are also trauma mis-informed, in that they represent a mass retraumatising institutional pattern that is deliberate, mediated and intentional.

We are trying to heal within the environment dominated by that mass traumatisation, and that suggests to me that the issue of healing society is a valid exercise, a confrontation with the honest and most truthful history and I think that this is necessary to advocate for, the healing of the individual is not enough - we must heal the culture, we must end the culture of abuse.

It blows political struggles for power out of the water in terms of being a truly valid human exercise. Those who 'seek Power to do good' all too often become protectors of Power at the expense of people.

Only accurate information that can truly counter the ability of the mainstream to trigger reactions in known vulnerabilities as part of the manipulation of 'opinion' and 'public perception' - when across the grass roots we do understand the wound-trigger-reaction process, the conspiracy theorists, extremists, fundamentalists will all fade into obscurity....

Kindest regards

Corneilius

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

Brian Cox, Celebrities, AGW and the basics of biology

I think we need a whole generation of people who do not know ANY celebrities. But who do understand the world they are dealing with and are energised to resolve and heal what needs to be resolved and healed.

 

Brian Cox.......?

Do I trust a personality celebrity whose sappy puerile music made his fortune by manipulating vulnerable young minds, and was readily used to usher in the wonders of Tony Blair et al?

No!

Is he a well respected, peer reviewed physicist within the Science community, who has published lots of papers?

Yes!

However, his area is esoteric, and probably of most use to the Military Industrial Complex, in areas of particle physics and weaponry. I have no idea who funds his research, or to what use it has been or can be put. So many known unknowns.

That said,  for me, and for my purposes, in the context related to the entire Climate Change discourse and all that accretes to that, he is a minor scientist, with a minor Phd. degree, and a slew of arcane papers in a specialist area that has little relevance to the very real problems we face, and is also a professional celebrity.

He is no Einstein, who was both scientist and philosopher and brutally, fearlessly honest. He is no Carl Rogers who altered the course of psychotherapy, for the better, way beyond the vision of either Freud or Jung. He is no Howard Zinn, he is not a Joseph Chilton Pearce. He is no Bill Mollison, nor is he a Masanobu Fukuoka.

And yet he feels he can use his rather large public profile, his celebrity status, to wade in to the 'climate change' discourse and bully those who challenge the mainstream narrative which he fully supports.

Celebrity.

We 'respect' certain celebrities because we have fallen for their promo campaigns.

We know nothing of their real positions, attitudes, motivations or behaviour.

Its PR.

Marketing.

Jimmy Savile. Richard Branson. Barak Obama. The Enron boys. Milton Friedman. Ronald Reagan. Kanye West.

"I used to respect ....." (insert any celebrity) always means 'I bought the lie because that was easier than critical thinking...."

And we buy those lies every day.

And again, and again, and again, again, and again, and again, ad nauseam.

Sickening. 

To rub salt into the wound, we constantly pay for the privilege of being bamboozled, groomed.

Where does their wealth come from?

It comes from us. We fund celebrity.

We have to admit that, and then forgive ourselves for being manipulated or bullied into submission through a deliberate and mediated faux peer pressure, engineered to make celebrity matter, as part of a psycho-social conditioning/indoctrination system..

Biology.

So, let's go back to basics. Biology.

Biology does not do celebrity. That's a given.

Brian Cox is adamant about a scientific consensus on Anthropogenic Global Climate Change.

What consensus?

Human activity is altering the entire planets climate systems!

Duh!

It would be more scientifically accurate to say certain kinds of human activity, (most of which are associated with Industrial Civilisation and are central to the maintenance of abusive Hierarchies of Power that rule vast swathes of Humanity) are causing massive damage to the habitat because those activities are not nurturing the habitat, and are in fact degrading biological systems and introducing a mountain of toxins that biology has yet to find a way to metabolise.

The dominant culture is thus imposing chronic stress on the biological  environment.

Chronic stress always leads towards degenerative disease states.

Which includes, as a possibility, climatic changes.....

That much is rather obvious.

That can be said to be a view that has consensus, even if it is not widely articulated.

Those that can see it, and the biological environment, both agree on it.

The CO2 story is one part of the whole.

Plastic bags and light bulbs are another part of the whole.

And certain centres of Power would rather we avoided a critical analysis of the whole.

They have too much to lose, apparently.

The IPCC has offered very little by way of a critical analysis of the behaviour, actions and outcomes of the mainstream social systems manufacturing processes, and the powers that depend upon the vast wealth those systems generate.

Some pertinent facts.

The most obvious appropriate response to climatic and environmental change is Permaculture.

Biology knows how to do this.

Biology knows how to do permaculture.

Biology is the master.

Biology uses 'the force'.

Biology has been doing this for a very, very long time indeed.

We humans have emerged from that work of Biology.

We can work with that if we choose. We can learn.

We also need to see a deep, deep change in the way industry and manufacturing operate - rather than imposed taxes to 'nudge' behaviour, or energy saving light bulbs, or wars for oil and other 'resources'.

That too has been explored.

It even has a catchy name: Cradle to Cradle.

Does Brian Cox speak about the wars, the bullying that defines Governments and Corporations? No!

Do these have an impact on environment and climate? Yes.

Does Brian Cox speak about permaculture? No!

Does Brian Cox speak about Cradle to Cradle?

Nope.... not a word.

Zip.

And yet...

Biology has been responding to climatic change for billions of years.

It can respond really rapidly.

It KNOWS how to do this. It's worth repeating. I am repeating it.

Because it is so rarely mentioned. Biology KNOWS how to evolve within a dynamically changing environment, and knows how to do that whilst maintaining nurturant cyclical processes that feed more life.

The evidence is all around us, and some of us are eating that evidence, working with it.

Permaculture works with that knowledge base, by working with the plants, the animals, the bugs, the microbes, the CLIMATE, the soil.

However, it cannot be patented, nor can it be industrialised.

Permaculture requires intimate labour to be put into practice, it also requires autonomy, critical thinking, scientific observation and deliberate responsiveness in those who undertake it. It requires people who get to know their patch of land and the plants they are working with. Intimately. Locally. Specifically.

Massive employment opportunities. Huge. Really.

Cradle to Cradle design is a process approach that has the ability to ensure that every manufacturing process returns nutrients to the environment rather than 'waste' or toxins, and then builds fecundity into the habitat.

Does Brian Cox talk about these?

Do the IPCC talk about these?

No and no!

Why?

Well, I will leave that to your imagination and intuition to work out.


Let's call it getting back to basics.


And another thing...

Any system, any name. Capitalism, Fascism, Religionism, Patriarchy, Matriarchy, Democracy, whatever... 

The basic reality is that every large scale governing system devised over the past few thousand years has turned into psycho-social bullying that is fully institutionalized.

So I think we need sometimes to forget the name, look at the behaviour and outcomes, and call it what it is, if we are serious about dealing with things.

Putting it another way....

'Climate Change' as a direct result of human activity is not established fact, it is theoretical.

Yes, there is lots of data to suggest the theory, but it is nowhere near conclusive.

We know that the Sun, Moon, tectonics, etc are all massive influences and we do not know how much they contribute to the current situation.

The modelling capabilities of computers are nowhere near the reality of biology, tectonics, the Suns influence, etc...

Climate change is a constant. It has always changed.

What we DO KNOW is what I have laid out in more detail throughout my blog - the basic behaviour of this culture that is dominant is non-nurturant, it creates toxicity and degradation, and it is based on bullying.

What we need most of all is to deal with the bullying aspect of Power, political, corporate, criminal, ideological or religious - THAT is the core problem, the rest are all symptoms...

Treating the symptoms without addressing the root causes is futile. It maintains the problem.

It is the job of EVERYONE who is an adult to look after the Earth in the best interests of all future generations - compartmentalising aspects as the IPCC and the leading bully systems of power suggest is inept at best, callous disregard for the future at worst.

Putting it another way....

All the damage being done is symptomatic of a culture predicated on hierarchies of violence, coercion, concentration of power and a sense of entitlement amongst the powerful to mediate that degree of abuse to preserve their system, their position.

No matter what symptom we discuss, unless we honestly and fearlessly appraise the core issue - Power and abuse of Power - it will remain.

The psychological climate of the majority of human beings is dominated by the bully system.

That is nowhere near the biological optimal.

Our endocrine systems do not lie.

Clarity

Let me make it clear.

Every adult has an inherent biological responsibility or response ability to care for the habitat so that our children inherit a healthy habitat within which they will live lives of optimal human biological health in all areas, barring volcanoes, tidal waves, storms, asteroids etc...

I do not see that anywhere in the CC discourse, as it stands at the moment, or anywhere else within Governance, Politics, Commerce or Religion as we know it.

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.