Showing posts with label Jimmy Saville. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Jimmy Saville. Show all posts

Inside the Mind of Jimmy Savile : a response

In an article in the Guardian, Oliver James asks that we try to see into the mind of Jimmy Savile as part of our effort to prevent more predatroy behaviour emerging across Society as a whole.

There is of course the usual range of comments, including those that treat the emergence of someone like Jimmy Savile as a genetic disorder, as an inhumane  monster or another reason to 'lock them up' or execute them.... as well as a few well reasoned comments, and stories from survivors of childhood mistreatment, abuse about their minds and experiences.

I quote from one reasoned commentator, rogergdavidson as the starting point for this article:

"If all the people at the BBC who saw what Savile was doing had been able to discern that he was a sociopath and compulsive sex abuser - that he clearly had serious personality problems - they might have realized the potential scale of what he was doing, and also the harm it would cause, and someone would hopefully have been more likely to take action."

What this means in reality is that in a societal culture that tends to avoid examining and understanding the nature of emergent and predatory pathologies, such as Savile, Blair, Bush, Henry the 8th, Nillsen, Bundy, the banksters, gansters, terrorists, et al, demonstrate, is in part because these people are part of a wider pathology of Power (and the issue of childhood trauma, abuse and deprivation or mistreatment is fundamentally linked to the issue of WHY some people seek power over others, both in terms of it's genesis and outcomes) and in part because there is a cultural revulsion and an emotional response (both anger and fear) which avoids looking atrocities in the face.

"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."
Quoted from : The opening lines of Trauma and Recovery : the aftermath of violence - from domestic abuse to political terror, by Judith Herman

1. The BBC is an hierarchical power structure in itself, and it is part of a larger hierarchical power structure - the establishment.

People within the BBC are subject to two distinct and connected threads of Power.

The immediate thread is observed when employees expose adverse behaviour in someone higher up, in that it will often have an impact on their careers, and their lives, that the higher up has allies and power he or she can bring to bear on the whistleblowers.

The wider thread is the BBC's place in the UK Power structure, which it has occupied since it's inception, as an arm of State propaganda.

This can be seen, for example, in the manner that the BBC refused to present the case against Pope Benedict in any substantial detail, in spite of massive evidence, and calls from thousands of Survivors, and from Geoffery Robinson no less, during his State Visit in 2010. It enables Tony Blair to articulate his insane perspective without any decent challenge. These are but two examples, and there are many, many more...

2. This speaks of a societal culture of Power that has a profound impact on the lives of all those who live within it's influence. The emergence of such hierarchically violent societies is directly related to childhood mistreatment (which is often seen as 'normal' ), and to post traumatic inter-generational patterns
In the anthropological research there is a constant and reliable predictor of hierarchical violence in any Society : the degree to which the biologically mandated child-mother bonding process is disrupted , The two are profoundly connected. They feed into each other.

Over the past 40 years, this initial research has been consistently corroborated and confirmed by newer research and understandings about child development and trauma (we now consider trauma to be any event or sequence of events that have an affect on a child's development from 'in utero' through birth, infancy, toddlership, childhood)... some of this understanding comes from Survivors, some form the detailed research into endocrinology, neuro-biology, neuro-chemistry, pre-natal and ante-natal studies, how children learn, indergenerational trauma patterning and much else besides.

To put it in simple terms:

When a person is traumatised, and cannot resolve the issues related to the trauma, they adapt a 'coping mechanism' to survive: the coping mechanism is often a necessary attempt to maintain some form of control over events and people in order to feel safe.

When a community, a family or indeed a Society, is traumatised, and cannot resolve the issues related to the trauma, they may each in turn adapt a 'coping mechanism' to survive: the coping mechanism is often a necessary attempt to maintain some form of control over events and people in order to feel safe. It may be driven by the unconscious, and it may well have conscious elements.

In either case, if that group of people, or Society build Institutions, or social structures, those entities will have within them the psychology of the unresolved trauma issues. And in their attempt to create safety, they may well cause harm to those the perceive as a threat.

None of this is to suggest an 'excuse' for any adult who perpetrates, predates, causes harm, abuses or manipulates other people to meet perceived needs.

Adults are volitional, we do choose our actions, and we are ALL accountable for those actions....
However, in order to PREVENT more repeating cycles of trauma and abuse we have to understand them, and we have to be 100% honest about what has happened, Survivors must be listened to and understood, and perpetrators must be put in positions where they cannot cause any more harm.

Punishment as 'revenge' is futile: it has NEVER prevented further abuse in meaningful and societal terms.
Nuremberg was an utter failure. Bullying is rife in our schools. Ridding Iraq of Saddam has blatantly made life for most Iraqis worse. The war or Drugs has increased the trafficking, and the incarceration rates of recreational and addict 'users' is growing year on year.

I understand the reactive responses of people, and institutions, who refuse to engage with this most important subject matter. Power and trauma. For some it's a matter of their own conditioning, for Institutions it's a question of their desire to maintain and expand their power, for others the sheer horror of what we are seeing across the world is beyond words, and terrifying.

However, that said, unless we - the adults - get to grips with what Savile is telling us, with that trauma and power is telling us, then we are in for a bumpy ride, and worse than that, far worse, we are committing all our children, and their children to come, to even more turbulence.

That is unconscionable.

That, in my opinion, would be the most egregious failure of responsibility of all.

______________

A note of clarification:

"In a child's life (as in any other) there are things that ought to happen, that don't, and things that ought not happen, that do"  Gabor Mate

These can range from, for example, a pregnancy where the mother is under chronic stress from external or personal effectors (where the mothers endocrine flows impact the development of the foetus) to a birth trauma (where damage to healthy tissue goes unresolved), to emotional coldness and to a sense of abandonment (leaving the child to cry it out..), to the loss of one or both parents or living an inadequate caring environment, to outright abuse by parents, siblings, in school, amongst peers.... to intense religious or ideological indoctrination....

Some predispositions emerge from stress in the in utero situation. Some may well be genetic. yet the child is not born to be the monster.

All of these, and more, can happen in a child's life, and the signs of distress can be missed, or diagnosed as 'problems' : and not all children will react or respond in the same way.

Statistically, we can say with some degree of certainty, that there will emerge from a population of children who are mistreated, abused, traumatised those who become part of the continuing pattern of predation, and that if their distress symptoms are missed, or the children are treated as 'problems' : bad, shamed, loathed, and punished, then more damaged and predatory adults will emerge, It doesn't take many to cause havoc in a community.

We can also say with a degree of certainty that many who do not become predators will show signs of that stress in terms of health outcomes in later life. The Adverse Childhood Study by the CDC in the USA, amongst many others, shows this to be the case for addiction, obesity, heart disease, diabetes etc.
If the signs, the symptoms of distress, are understood and the adult worlds response is empathic, concerned, caring and well informed, that the patterns can be broken before they become too ingrained.

We can prevent much of the repeated abuse cycles, and we can prevent the emergence of serious health issuers if we understand their roots, and act responsibly and responsively ....

This is a cultural response ability we desperately need to create.



Kindest regards

Corneilius

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

Wrong Word : "Oi Paedo!"


Paedophile : is a technical term, and piece of misleading use of language.

More correct would be 'manipulative or violent (child/minor) focused sex attacker': irrespective of who is being attacked, the choice to attack, to manipulate, to predate upon the other, is always, always equally evil.

This choice is made  possible only when the other, the person is transformed into an object, is de-humanised.

‘OI!  PEADO!” - the unsubstantiated internet.gossip allegations being promoted with some vigour ....

This is human evil….. and the beginnings of yet more human evil, ‘oi peado!’, followed by an assault, based on what evidence?

"..... don't like the look of that individual!"? "I heard that...."? "It's on the internet!"

(as opposed to "I found direct links to proven evidence that stands up on the internet, and then I checked them....")

One might comment that those people that enjoy or seek pleasure in violence, manipulation or predation are more evil than those who perhaps behaving thus because they ‘are doing a job’.  Soldiers?  Vigilantes? Prison Officers? Police?

The Stanford Prison Experiment - The Power of the Situation to de-humanise ...

Is the line between either of these definitions really real? Does the person on the receiving end care more which side of the line their attacker is on?

Dehumanisation can also find expression in the way an agenda driven analysis might attribute negative qualities to chosen opponents, perceived ‘enemies’, as a way of undermining how others perceive them..

I don't think this is something we can leave to just one sector of Society.

This 'issue' affects us ALL! In real terms, in the lived experience.

The issue, as I see it, is not just one set of actions, by one particular group of people, but an entire spectrum of behaviours that are almost Institutionalised in full, in the social structures that have emerged from the current Dominant Statist Culture.

They might appear to be many individual states, yet there are only states, no 'nations' in the distinct sense of an aboriginal 'nation'. There is a trans national myth of social organisation that seeks infinite expansion in a finite world.

All of these sets of relationships, personal and Institutional, have been adversely  influenced by the Power, (which David Smail calls 'distal power' - power beyond the average person’s ability to affect) so that a majority of living relationships end up becoming Power Relationships.

Assault and sexual exploitation of children, or the murder of civilians, including children, by military, the willingness to really heavily harm another, or to kill to get one's perceived needs met,  as acted out by individuals or groups or Institutions.... these are extremes of that spectrum .....  of power relationships – as opposed to empathic relationships, a spectrum that ranges from close intimacy to the collective interactions that are expressed in healthy psychologically social, cultural, and organisational behaviours.


The other end of the spectrum of Power Relationships is, for me at this time, describable in a speculative manner, as a kind of starting point description:

So here goes: behaviour that may be the expression of social and experiential distress, and that has an adverse affect on others only because it appears or presents as petty bickering, jealousy, sullen-ness, sulk, mind-games, sexism, thoughtlessness and whole host of other variations on psychological distress languaging.  The person is unhappy. And needs support and help, appropriate attention.

In between we have a range of permitted behaviour that is expressed all too clearly in our history texts, our newspapers, our entertainments, notably, war, invasion, infinite growth empire/economies, militarised police FORCE, and 'non-permitted' yet fairly widespread organised violent crime (which in some cases is linked to wars pursued by Institutions of State), gang wars, organised group violence of any kind, domestic abuse, bullying.... it's all linked. Some is ‘good’ Some is ‘bad’.

IT’S ALL HARMFUL. EXTREMELY HARMFUL!

I think that to address one serious area of this harming dynamic one has to commit to  addressing the holistic image, the whole picture of a Dominant Culture in psychological distress  - to also see how this 'fits in' in a cultural sense.

This means to me that when I can fully humanise the victimiser, to fully humanise the survivor, not to excuse anything, certainly not to mitigate the trauma and what followed, and humanise what that MEANT to the survivor, the person who was victimised,  and to fully understand these events and what may have lead to them, in order to securely find a societal pathway to prevent further victimisation. This is not a single issue.

 Wherever it occurs. Starting with myself.

Let me address the behaviour, and see the human being as human, through broken, damaged and dangerous; part of my family.

One I must stop from any further damaging behaviour.

Can I see the 'enemy' as a human being, and not a monster. It makes it easier, I think, to look at the behaviour, to look at the experiences of people and assess what one finds, honestly.

It doesn't diminish the horror, the revulsion, the sheer visceral anger and shock we all naturally feel, up close to such behaviour - until we are de-humanised : that is what military training tries to do, certainly in terms of the 'enemy'. Veterans appear to 'get over it', mostly.

It doesn't mean not being angry, not feeling the rage, suppression. for me, it means choosing not to cause harm whilst feeling the anger, the rage, the frustration.

Fully conscious. Fully aware, Alive.

For me, this is all about the David Icke, Rense, Jones stable of publishing that hypes the horror, insinuates and alleges, and present no credible attributable sourced EVIDENCE for their claims,and worse, they rarely speak of the world of child development, trauma studies, intergenerational behaviour patterning, the study of the development of empathy and it's biological functioning, which it appears is our natural optimal.

Why?

Surely if there's proven evidence, then the two go together: if one is committed to resolving the issue.

The Institutionalisation of Power Relationships across Society, from violent abusers in 'care homes', 'prisons', 'schools', the office  bully, to warring states, the disruption of the child mother bonding essential to the development of empathy, as a socio-cultural structures is a crucial matter.

Address that and the rest will flow from there.
This is not to be taken to mean mitigating the needs of those being victimised or of Survivors. The two go hand in hand.
The latter being the more immediate need.

There is time then to deal with the former matter in depth, over time.



Kindest regards

Corneilius

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



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An open letter to the media, the BBC and all others concerned with the issue of child abuse, and in particular concerning the reportage of the Jimmy Saville case….



An open letter to the media, the BBC and all others concerned with the issue of child abuse, and in particular concerning the reportage of the Jimmy Saville case….

To whom it may concern,

The most frequent word being used to describe those who have been abused, harmed or assaulted by Jimmy Saville is ‘victims’, rather than the term ‘Survivors’ which we Survivors ourselves prefer to use.

There is a qualitative difference between the two words – one implies weakness, the other strength.

The etymology of the word ‘victim’ and its link to the word ‘victor’ is interesting, and worth reflecting upon. The victor tends to justify any abuses they perpetrate, or harm they cause, and thus they minimise the meaning of the lived experience of those amongst the ‘defeated’.

Yes, Saddam was a monster – yet did the Iraqi people deserve what was visited upon them by the International Community in the name of removing this monster?

Madelaine Albright’s infamous comment on the sanctions that preceded the removal of Saddam, was that “the price was worth paying – we think the price was worth paying.”  A price paid not by her, not by the US Government, or any other, not even by Saddam, but by the Iraqi people and their children.

There is also the use of the phrase “victim consciousness” which is often used to denigrate those communities and cultures who have been subject to massive and long term trauma and who come forward and seek acknowledgement of their stories as human beings, (rather than the simple and cold historical facts and statistics), from the inheritors of the Powers that traumatised them.

They are asked to ‘get over it’ – ‘ old history, not our ‘fault’, ‘things are different now’, ‘can we please move on’ etc etc….

These phrases are used to deflect honest reflection upon what has happened, and what the long term and present adverse affects are in meaning, and in the lived experience.

Vulnerability is not the same as weakness. One cannot describe the boys and girls assaulted by Jummy Saville as being weak, and ascribe that value of weakness to them as a quality they expressed that led to their abuse. One cannot in all fairness ascribe the value of weakness to those who suffer from the adverse affects of intergenerational trauma. Vulnerability is closer to the truth.

To Survive trauma and abuse most often means to live past the events themselves, scarred and wounded, and to slowly and painfully try to re-assemble oneself so as to continue to live as best one can.

Often this has to be done without adequate support or understanding from those closest to the Survivor, let alone the wider community and Society. This takes a formidable  unacknowledged strength.

Not all Survivors make it, and it’s not through weakness that this happens. It’s through vulnerability, and through that heart breaking sense of abandonment that comes with denial, that comes with the all too common reflexive unwillingness of Society to accept that a pillar of Society could behave in such manner, a refusal to believe the Survivor because it threatens the projected image and self image of what are held to be central tenets or solid Institutions of Society.

”How could someone who did SO MUCH GOOD do so much evil?”

A Survivor would never ask that question in the way the media has framed the reporting of that question. A Survivor would never ask it in that tone of bewilderment.
 The Survivors of Jimmy Saville's abuses are not concerned with the reputation of the BBC, as much as they are concerned with truth, recovery and restorative justice and the protection of present and future children.

So I am calling on all media, and anyone else concerned with these matters, to cease using the word ‘victim’ to describe those who were abused, and to use instead the word Survivor.To attribute strength to those who come forwards, and to those who are unable to come forwards, just for their willingness to continue living and coping with what they have been through.

I would also add that using the word ‘victimisation’ to describe the abusers actions towards the vulnerable is more reliable and accurate. The victimiser alters the reality of the abused. The victimisers is the culprit.

Finally, I note that in all of the reporting, the stories and histories of Survivors appears to be being screened out. This is a grave omission. It cannot, and must not stand if truth, justice and genuine resolution is the intent of those who are writing and acting on this matter. Kindest regards

Corneilius Crowley



Kindest regards

Corneilius

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



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