Nature, Nurture and the problem of Power Civilisation

The way I see it is as follows:

Nature or Biology is always geared towards optimal health.

Optimal health includes as a necessity the nurturing of the environment, which also includes a nurturing environment as a given.

That different kinds of organisms can find optimal health in almost every known habitat suggests this is the case.

There are also flows of nutrients from one habitat to another, such that they do not exist in isolation - there IS a whole.

We humans have emerged out of this biological whole, and the bulk of our history (mostly pre written history) we have lived as part of that whole - the development or emergence of the qualities I write about such as caring empathy, connection, sensitivity, responsiveness are part of this, as is the ability to deal with threatening or difficult situations (these are rarely chronic in nature - they are chronic only when the basic balance of optimal health is disrupted over a long period of time)...

The sense of deep connection we feel for our children, our partners,our families, our locale is part of that optimal biological health and we nurture all of this by our behaviour in the most natural state...

You and I, we have been born into a disrupted state, a system of Power that chronically abuses people and we are doing our best to recover from the wounds it has inflicted upon us, whilst living in it without much chance of altering how Power operates - until we at the grass roots re-gain enough of what our innate nature is, and then we will be able to thwart Power, and possibly help those who are stuck in that unhealthy state to recover - that is the intent in my work.

I would say too that the optimal biological health state is the natural norm, the base line of true reality, and that the Power state is the 'ideal' being imposed on the healthy reality.

Nature is realism, Power Civilisation is idealism, ideology etc.

And there IS evidence for all that I have written, solid scientific evidence as well as anecdotal and personal experience

Kindest regards

Corneilius

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

Entertainment, Mainstream Narratives, Elections and subtle body conditioning.

We need not so much a system, as a series or a web of mature, functional and nurturing relationships across families, communities and societies. Instead what we have is bullying and entertainment.

Entertainment.

Entertainment! It's ONLY entertainment!

How often have I heard this term applied to mainstream 'moving images, noise and verbiage' offered up for the fatigued consumer to relax to, to enjoy, to be 'moved' by thrilling images, to be enthralled by amazing CGI effects!

Apocalypse Now! "It's ONLY entertainment!"

Avatar! "It's ONLY entertainment!"

The Lord of The Rings! "It's ONLY entertainment!"

And even then some people will read more into these media than the authors intended. I know this from my own song-writing, and am often amazed at what audience members will read into or take out of a song, how rich that content is that I did not intend.

Apocalypse Now! "It exposes the brutality of war!"

Avatar! "It's a parable for our times!"

The Lord of The Rings! "It's about the power of the little guy!"

No, it's not. Just about that. That's the seduction, the nectar. And the point of the flower is the pollen......

Yes, what you know as entertainment has elements of that ... enjoyment... in it, though that is not the point of it all - it has to make some profit, that's a given, so it has to entertain to do that and yet it also has a function within the Power system we are living in. And that function is the point of it all...

If you read what is offered as mainstream popular entertainment the way I do (and I agree that we all have different ways to read the media and narratives we consume) they are a subtle way of saying Violence for Good is OK and the System we live is as good as it gets, barring incremental cosmetic improvements. 

Take a GOOD look at That all too common sequence of boy meets girl in the midst of some violent narrative of good vs evil, with a love scene in the middle of the extreme violence... a psychopathic switch on/off, a sweet turn-on that actually is also a turn-on for GOOD violence.. it's as nasty as it is obvious to me, and of course when this is pointed out most people do get it, though in my experience most also reject it to the extent they wish to hang on to their hit, their entertainment - what they don't get is the way in which the unobserved visceral cascades of hormones are conditioning the consumer into the psychopathic socially and Institutionally approved stand point.

And that conditioning is the KEY message, because it also underpins the States monopoly on organised violence, because the State is always benign. Or so we are told to believe, even if the evidence is patchy. God is good. Onward Christian Soldiers! etc etc etc...

For me, simply being, simply breathing and sensing my own body is pure entertainment.

Taking a dump and feeling the fullness of how my body works, that's entertaining. Watching a genuinely proficient musician/dancer/skate boarder - that's entertainment. Working my garden is very much entertaining. Seeing my children make mistakes and grow, that's entertaining.

Playing music and watching a good musician, that's entertainment...

I also understand that adage, "different strokes for different folks", and cannot deny that some people are entertained by what is offered up as mainstream consumer entertainment.

However, whilst watching movies such as THE HUNGER GAMES and LORD OF THE RINGS and JAMES BOND and BATMAN and THE MATRIX etc and observing how the body reacts to the sequential violence in these movies, I have noticed the hormone cascades, the muscular tensions, the non-thought patterns alongside the obvious and subliminal messages. These are quite different in tone and character to the cascades I experience when I am truly entertained.

I do not call this latter experience  'entertainment'....

It's entrainment rather than entertainment.

The primary narrative within mainstream movies, fiction and News Media is towards a socialised normalisation by vicarious exposure, through the use of a powerful experiential medium, to the prevailing adverse pathological psychology of force and power.

It's required for that subtle indoctrination into the various falsified justifications for POWER over others to be used AGAINST others for 'good'. It's a sop for unresolved rage and anger that so many people grow up with a result of being bullied at School, in Churches, Synagogues and Mosques, at University and at Work. It's a dead end that leads nowhere nurturing.

So yes, if we want and deserve a world where violence is accepted as long as it is for the 'good', where slapping and spanking children is a parents 'right', where the death penalty is a States 'right', where poverty is considered a problem of the 'poor' rather than a logical outcome of the hoarding of resources, where the sequestering of wealth is considered a 'good thing' for the Economy, let's call the subtle conditionings of Institutional Power Society entertainment.

Noam Chomksy, in an interview with Shira Hadad in 2005 points out that a similar dynamic applies to elections in the USA, the UK and in practically ALL States that hold elections.

"Because elections are carefully contrived so that they are like selling toothpaste. In fact, they’re run by the same people who sell toothpaste.

I mean when you turn on an ad on television, you don’t expect to get any information. You expect deception. That’s the point.

Only economists talk about markets. Business can’t tolerate markets. They don’t want markets in which informed consumers make rational choices.

What they want is deluded consumers who will make irrational choices. That’s what hundreds of billions of dollars in advertising are spent on. You don’t get any information about the product.

But what happens when the same industry sells candidates?

Exactly the same thing. I mean, about 10 percent of the crop of voters knew what the stand of the candidates was on issues.

What they knew is the delusionary imagery that was created.

So Bush is created to be an ordinary guy with his sleeves rolled up and you could have a drink with him in a bar.

My guess is he’s taught to make those mispronunciations and grammatical errors; I doubt that he talked like that at Yale.

He’s probably taught that way so that ‘them liberal intellectuals’ would make fun of him and then they can say, oh yeah, he’s an ordinary guy just like you, going off to his ranch. That makes him about as realistic as the next ad you could see on television for a lifestyle report."

The narrative exists to sell an image, and becoming acculturated to that image is essential in maintaining one's compliance with the System of Power and it's directions and instructions.

It's also true that as this becomes clear to more and more people that less and less people vote, not out of apathy.... not voting is a form of direct action, of civil disobedience as people refuse to participate in the charade. Not voting exposes the charade, and that is why Power hates the non-voter.

Imagine if no-one voted bar the membership of the parties?

And with every 'spring', every televised 'revolution', every mass movement outside the given political show, we see too that the pattern of the insertion of professional violence has become a standard counter revolutionary tactic of destabilisation. Once the violence starts, the discussions cease and we all have to run for cover.

Snipers paid to murder protesters and police in the Ukraine. Mujahadeen funded by USA and Saudi regime, in Afghanistan in the 80s. The insertion of the IRA into the Civil Rights portest movement in Northern Ireland,in spite of being rejected by Civil Rights Movement leaderships. Agent Provocateurs and undercover policemen and women inserted into grass roots Climate Change protest groups.

Anyone who has genuine grounds for protest and a well qualified argument to support it, is seen as a direct threat to Power, and must be undermined. Even if the aims of the protest would bring benefits to Society as a whole it mus be undermined; we are allowed to protest, and we are actively barred from changing the status quo.

Which is basically immature, dysfunctional and nasty, nasty behaviour. Dishonesty with petty cash is immature. Fleecing expenses is immature. It's amoral to be an adult and to refuse maturity.

Like I wrote above : "We need not so much a system, as a series or a web of mature, functional and nurturing relationships across families, communities and societies. Instead what we have is bullying and entertainment."







Kindest regards

Corneilius

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

Rape, Power and Activism

Rape is one of many abuses that are effectively cultural markers, made so by their prevalence in certain societies and the absence in others...

Industrial Society rapes the soil (pharming), the ground (mining), the sea (over fishing) abuses workers (low wages), other cultures (Aboriginals, Indigenous peoples) and the rapist rapes the victim, the child rapist rapes the child and it is NEVER just about the action of  mining, digging, fishing, the sexual assault.

In many ways these are the medium through which that kind of Power is expressed. And whilst the experience of each kind of assault is horrific, and for those who suffer it, a serious and debilitating trauma from which the action and the motivation are extremely difficult to distingish, those who seek to help the suffering in the long term, those who are concerned with activism in these areas must always keep in mind that the issue is very much about Power.

It is also about the POWER to avoid the truth of the outcomes for what is acted upon, what is abused, who is victimised that is the real issue.... that avoidance allows the abuser to retain Power, and is in essence the immaturity of a consciousness that refuses to address the outcomes of it's behaviour, which always leads to more abuse and creates lots of traumatised organisms in it's wake, which is NOT a biological mandate.

And it's a behavioural issue, so it is tractable which is to say it is a matter of choice,  there is this element of volition and thus the behaviour open to being resolved, changed.

However it requires a clear and unprejudiced observation of the behaviour and outcomes, a kind of fearlessness and determination textured with a degree of empathy and psycho-cultural understanding applied as behaviour, processes, policies and ethics for those changes to occur. This is critical.

This is about data, evidence and the insights of Survivors of rape, and other abuses, an insight that is all to often ignored or masked by the rage of the bystander community.

1. Abusive Behaviour emerges when populations or individuals (animal or human) are stressed, traumatised and exposed in particular to chronic stress and are unable to resolve it, resolve the situation within which they find themselves, and this occurs most often in hierarchical systems:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A4UMyTnlaMY

2. Studies of older cultures reveal that there IS a spectrum of behaviour from abusive to empathic, and that the primary predictor of abuse emerging in any given culture is the degree to which the natural child mother bonding processes are disrupted, stressed...

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

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

3. These studies of pre-conquest peoples reveal part of the reason for that empathic state is partly sensory experience : towhit the existence of a sensory acuity or liminal awareness / liminal consciousness as a key element of an operational experiential reality in interactions between people within a healthy optimally functioning societal social system.

http://rewild.info/anthropik/vault/sorenson-preconquest/

4. Recent studies on the consciousness of babies reveals a similar potential, and recognises that it requires appropriate nurturing behaviour from it’s caring community to fully deveop,

http://www.eheart.com/cesarean/babies.html

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn23401-emerging-consciousness-glimpsed-in-babies.html#.UpTQ4ydoJAk



5. Recent research over the past 40 years into child development, including brain development, bio-chemistry of hormones, how the immune system works or no, all point to a biological mandate towards empathy, connection, intelligent co-operation as expressions of optimum biological health.

www.birthpsychology.com - resource center for these kinds of studies...

I urge you to review these materials, and it WILL take some time, it is time well spent....

Kindest regards

Corneilius

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

Adverse Childhood Experiences present in both immediate behaviur, and long term illness later in life. Punishment does not work.;

Rather a long title, I know.

It's just that this has been rattling 'round my heart recently when I saw a brief article suggesting it's time to make emotional abuse a criminal offence, and the article avoided the subject of how to help parents break cycles of behaviour that are effectively institutionalised in our Society. Including coercive schooling.

And at the same time, I have to look at my own health, and observe the changing health of those older than I, as well as my peers, as it is emerging now I am in my 50s. For sure some of my behaviour - I smoke - is causing me some damage. There are also a number of visible behavioural issues, such as unreasonable anger I might find difficult to control at times, intense political rants at in appropriate moments,  shyness, telling dreadful jokes. 

There's a damaged knee from a fall long, long ago that was never diagnosed, my changing eyesight. 

These and other symptoms are all visible. My friends probably see them clearer than I do.

Q. Are there processes within my body that have been disrupted as a consequence of my earliest experiences such as caesarian birth, incubator baby etc etc.... events that I cannot recall?

This is a question that has been of interest to me for some time, and I have taken steps to explore and to a small degree deal with some of this. There's always more I could do.

As much as I might have expressed my pain, grief, anger and resolution at the time, I certainly have suppressed some of each in turn, buried it, stored it in my body somewhere.

We experience our lives, and if the earliest years are adverse, or there is trauma at any time, that experience is written into our bodies, our minds, our hearts and souls. So too the good stuff. Our response to those experiences can be external or internal. Resolution or just coping. Or enjoying.

It terms of 'just coping' here are two modes of presenting outcomes of a situation where the natural mandated experience are disrupted, over time.

Externalisation : the expression of distress outwards, presenting as anti-social behaviour, aggressiveness, non-compliant children, etc.... visually observable

Internalisation : the holding of that distress within the body, the distress goes inwards, as in one's boo-chemsitry is thrown out of balance as a result of adverse traumatising events, and coping means resolution does not happen, so the feelings of pain, fear, grief remain, stressing the body's systems, eventually presenting as as physical symptoms or a disease state that emerged over time ....usually invisible until the symptoms become noticeable, or cause pain, discomfort or organ failure.

Externalisation : punishment for 'bad behaviour, blame and sanctions.

Internalisation : medication, surgical intervention, suppression of symptoms, make the pain go away, complications and death due to some inherent weakness of patient not any inadequacy of treatment.

Object : to avoid discussing the source of the distress, which if carried out honestly, scientifically and logically would demand that certain Institutional Influences/Powers would have to abdicate, step aside, take the gold watch, retire or just go. Or accept the information and change accordingly, as a mature and psychologically healthy adult no doubt would do.

 1. In truth, ALL adults are parents, for parenting was never meant by biology to be a couple based process, let alone a working couple based process.

2. So we are where we are.....

3. I am looking at two sets of symptoms of distress or trauma, one's that emerge at the time and are visible, and as such, provide a useful starting point for a resolution of the distress or trauma.

3.a Others, less visible, emerge many years later, often as disease states, some of them life threatening, all life debilitating to some degree.

4. A little empathy towards children would go a long, long way to reducing the NHS annual budget on a wide range of conditions.

4.a The use of punishment to control the child, which Institutional Society accepts as necessary. and standard parenting jealously guards as a 'right'. Indeed as corporal punishment was outlawed in public schooling, it was replaced with psychological behavioural modification punishment through highly structured, target based educational processes which stress both teacher and child.

4.b The widespread practice of medication to suppress disease or ill-health symptoms are both qualified with 'it's for your own good'. They are linked.

4.c Psychology, dysfunctional or functional always seeks congruence throughout.

5. The science : The Adverse Childhood Experience Life Survey http://www.cdc.gov/ace/year.htm in brief... there is much, much more solid science on all this, and it all points towards a biological mandate towards empathy, and self empathy as an expression of optimal human health.

6. A good doctor is always trying to ensure he is not needed. Prevention ought be the primary concern of any public health system, the primary drive of any decent physician.

7. I have heard that there is some political movement towards criminalising emotional abuse expressed towards children by parents, and other primary carers. It sounds like punishment..... which we know does not work.

In this, prevention is surely the most important aspect to be concerned with, by a long margin.

Most parents follow the parenting 'style' that Institutional Society suggests, the ideal of the 'normal parent', and most parents will also, as a basic biological process repeat with their own children aspects of their earliest learnings and experiences, much of it unconsciously, because in the biology, the child grows into the psychological state of the parents, and of their world, which in our case is very largely defined by Institutional Power, through Governance, Wars, Economics, Ideology and Religion, and the defenceless child must adapt to that psychology as best he or she can, and some adaptations, or survival strategies the emerge in that situation become 'dysfunctional' psychological and behavioural patterns, many of which are damaging in the long term if they are maintained.

The child cannot be held responsible, and the adult must be held accountable; though within each adult is a child. wounded, fearful, surviving. So the psychology that determined that child's environmental habitat is also linked to the Institutional structure's psychology, and it's behaviours as much as it is linked to the individual parents.

Both share responsibility. Punishment is often a means to an end: one party can avoid it's responsibility in the matter.

That an adult CAN see the harm they could be or are causing, ought to be enough for that adult to choose to stop harming action. That choice is always there, no matter what the person might say.....  no matter who they are, whether they stride across the corridors of power or walk the streets.

So there's this element of choice or will, and of past psychological conditioning, stressful situations predicated by the way Power expresses itself throughout Society, resulting in presenting behaviour that is harmful, and both past and present must be understood and worked with, including incarceration as containment (not as punishment) where the danger to any other person or child is real, and with the clearest intent and mandate to resolve each case, and to prevent future occurrences, through honest education, and practical support, aiming to reduce the incidences across society over time.

Clearly, current punishment paradigms, current consumerist ideology, current understanding of what Governance means in practice, is all working against this potential pathway.

That does not diminish the value of this approach. It enhances it.

Kindest regards

Corneilius

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

Bill Hicks, Maggie Thatcher and a decent funeral.

"All members of society deserve decent burial." wrote a good friend.

I agree.

 
Just as all members of society deserve a happy birth, a nurturing and playful early childhood, joyous exploratory late childhood to teen, in effect a healthy environment within which to learn as they grow in to mature adults who function as an empathic community, and so on.

Notwithstanding accident, illness or freak events.... in context of reality, here.

Without the grief and weight of a culturally imposed behavioural relational 'generation' gap, a psychic and physical misunderstanding which now exists, as state and corporate and ideological policy which makes understanding, even of shared experiences, less likely between people within families.
For example, John Holt explained how state educational protocols and practices harms children in How Children Fail , which is probably one of the best books on the subject, ever!

In 'How Children Fail' Holt explores the adverse outcomes of compulsory state education are made more understandable, and therefore more preventable, from the child's point of view. Written by an empathic adult.

This experience is so far from the biological 'norm' - optimal health - of our aboriginal ancestral experience even to the present, where such societies are still living. And that experience is replicated at every level of the dominant hierarchical system, affecting all who live within it. 'no child left behind'.....

Most Statist style mothers and their children, as well as between grandparents and grand children, teachers and pupils, experience on a daily basis aspects of this lack of empathy, of understanding.

I call it Unconscious Statatism Experience.

It's most certainly not the human biological mandate.

 

"All members of society deserve decent burial." wrote a good friend. Once they are dead.

I agree.

All members of society also deserve clean, nurturing food, and a place to rest. The needs of life well met. As a shared ethic. Just the basics.

Oh, there's also this innate expectation that peace reigns: ALL babies have it more or less, it's an emerging sense, an understanding or an intuition that peace is more, much more than the merely the absence of war. 

Quite a lot more.

Including, as we noted before, a decent burial on event of Death.  Not before, That would be most indecent.

The feeder of life.

 
Life being the icing on this particular cake, death being part of the the base of it all.

We get one living chance as who we are, and to use it to nurture is biology winning. 

Some do. Some don't. You know who you are.

Perhaps more will do, in time. We can nurture more.

It's likely in as much as it's a biological mandate, optimum health.

Bury the dead. Take the piss out of Power while thwarting it's adverse behaviours.

Always.

It is appropriate to note any particularly adverse Official, or other persons or entities wielding power over people in ways that are harmful, at any level of society, community  or family, by taking the piss out of those people and entities, be they alive or dead, exposing their behaviour for what it is, or was and at the same time ensuring the performance generates a show that is side hurtingly funny. Even timeless.

Partly in the hope, on my part at least, that such accolades for IMPORTANT INSTITUTIONS AND PEOPLE SERIOUSLY FUCK THINGS UP would reflect a growing, broader, wider, well informed diverse and active dissent.

It might reflect the presence of an active people ethic capable of organising as a single societal actor, like a crowd source wave, an ethical flash mob if you will, consisting of an informed electorate and an honest judiciary, acting together, which might in time be so common, and thus thwart or deter to some greater degree behaviour by Power of a similar nature in the future.

Things ARE hard for so many people.

And it's not 'life' - it's the outcome of the hierarchical power relationship dynamic of people who live within what we call Society, where those with Power harm those without power, and then conveniently blame the powerless for their powerlessness.

Life is mostly nurture.

Decent Life, Decent burial.

Whatever the state of the economy.

Brian Blessed on 'Have I Got News For You' or BBC offered to help the economy, (always a solid conservative policy), by putting in a bid to make the coffin, for Margaret Thatcher's funeral. For £25.

The Blessed One told the audience that had once he worked making coffins, when he was quite young, and that he had made a few hundred in his time.

The whole first half of the show takes the piss out of the news of Margaret Thatchers passing (the news of it, the 'reporting' not the actuality of it) with some degree of spot-on-ity and I found it rather funny.

The show reminded me of the late Bill Hicks, whose hatred of the outcome's of Power never diminished his comprehension of the humanity, warped as it may be, that lies at the heart of all our lives. Even the lives of tyrants.

That grace enables the humour, and in good satire it does not dissuade dissent. It encourages it, feeds it non biased inspiration. It's a love thing, really.

Bill Hick's. Rest in Peace, bro!

"Life is but a ride.......... shut him up!"

Kindest regards

Corneilius

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

Hugo Chavez and Caring Empathy.

Caring Empathy is a biological mandate.

It's an expression of optimum biological health in a human being.

As such it predates any concepts of 'spirit', or 'ideology' or 'morality' as it exists within the womb, in every womb, just waiting for the correct NURTURING environment for it's fullest expression. This is what Science tells us.

In truth it is also one of the best long term thrivival strategies of all, for it enables co-operation, working WITH natural processes and our habitat. It is also the primary mode of human living for the majority of human beings over the past 250,000 years and before.

However if the child does not receive that nurturing, the adult he or she becomes will build a societal structure lacking in caring empathy, which will generate a cycle of breaking with the nurturant modality of human living.

Which is where we are today. We CAN break that cycle, and we CAN return to our basic biological mandate, without 'going back to caves' or even 'living in mud huts'.

It's a question of choice, of accurate information and ultimately of resistance to abusive power conditioning.

The choice is ours.

Hugo Chavez (RIP) clearley cared about the poorest people in Venuzuela, and understood their lives. He had to deal with a very, very difficult situation, he saw the pointlessness of violence (as in overthrowing by violence) by his own personal experience and worked for many years to build a base amongst the poorest people. By helping them to help themselves.

Unlike western politicians who have built a base amongst the very richest and the indebted middle classes (those with a mortgage).

Voting % amongst the poor have been falling year on year, all over Europe and the USA for that reason - that is a meaningful vote of no confidence. It is not apathy.

Kindest regards

Corneilius

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

Is/was George Osborne Bush The Third Evil?

I was asked this question.

"Is George Bush Evil?"

Not really. And this does not let him off the hook. Not a bit of it.

I think there's enough evidence to suggest that Institutions, which are rigidly hierarchical, and violent, and are populated by people, whose actions according to the Instituition's rules, using powers accrued to the Institution, have an adverse affect on many other people, then all those people become to some degree Institutionalised, or conditioned, more or less 'adapted' to a sick society.

And that this can lead to individual. group and mass culturally accepted adverse behavioural issues, related to fear, power and control, which become 'normalised' in the eyes of those growing up into it. What his or her parents, siblings and extended family and community do, how they behave, is the model the child observes, which the biology has mandated as fundamentally empathic in nature.. It's common sense.

Due to historical influences beyond our parents ability to avoid, we were born where we were born. No plan.

And in that situation this could happen to anyone.

Where we are born in this life is an accident of birth.

Fate, not that I subscribe to the idea, could not be so cruel to so many, for so long.

Our long gatherer-hunting-gardener history goes back 1.5 millions years minimum, probably way longer back in time... we don't really know.

As it happens, that history stands as a testimony to Homo Empathicus as a biologically sound organism.

Biologically speaking, not one of us was, at birth, expecting this Society - based on our biology, as in what our biology tells us we ought to be expecting for optimal health. Which is nature's way, after all.

Yet in a traumatising environment, and I see the Dominant Civilisation as a traumatising situation, one that is set in course and maintained by Power and Influence, where are the tools to prevent this cycle from being repeated? ..... for the benefit of all concerned?

It's not rocket science.

Judgements as to 'evil' I find to be self limiting. For me the criteria is 'does this action nourish the world in which it occurs?' Nature says 'does this work, in the present and in the future?' It's that kind of criteria ......

Without mitigating the human emotional realities of the trauma, this thought helps me to find for myself a balance. I understand the shock, rage, horror, revulsion .. the healthy feelings of a sensitive human being facing such adverse behaviour and outcomes. It hurts. It sears the psyche. Pain IS physical.

And yet I sense too that under the very personal as well as the Legal Institutional desire to punish, there is grief.

The ubiquitous urge for revenge, the hyper outrage, the almost religious judge-mentalism of peer pressure, where group identity is hardened, and which is fundamental to political strategy, all of these repeated patterns creates a protective skin, neural pathways habituated to that state, the need to control certain feelings (which contain key information which that person needs) masks amongst other things, a deep grief, loss, scars and fears ... and the urge to push it all away has to be strong, such is the pain of the grief. 

Making myths concrete serves to maintain this control.

That's not to say that the use of violence is not Institutionalised in Hierarchical Societies like ours in a quite conscious and intentional manner. Which is quite an 'evil' action to undertake....

It's all quite sad.

Especially with so much testimony to the natural intelligence and beauty of human birth, infancy and early development, so we KNOW what the natural happiness bench-mark is.

All the more reason, as a conscious adult, a mature human being to engage in looking for practical pathways through this life (a gift of nature) and through observing the lives of others, finding those actions and behaviours and other material realities that nurture that empathic nature our biology mandates.

That's a long game.With regard to people who engage in extremes of abuse through which they harm other people, children, communities, etc... there are aspects of the range of learned manipulative behaviours which are well developed in such harming people, as survival tools are generally, and in the case of abusive people, manipulation is the key tool to maintain control and mask the outcomes of the behaviour, with an inner coldness, outer charm/warmth and many more subtle characteristics. 

ALL these qualities are so at odds with the human biological mandate - homo empathicus - as to be biologically dysfunctional. What baby is born, with this in mind? None!

And the results when harming people like that organise, or build a structure, that structure will reflect their psychology, and if it is institutionalised, it makes the illusion that psychology as being the 'best' psychology more 'concrete', set in stone, so to speak.

Some folk call it '"The way it is.'" and they sigh. It does seem immense. Of course it does. It is.

The larger the organisation, empire the more people whose lives are affected in ways that disrupt the natural development of the natural human biological mandate - homo empathicus - . The more real it's self created myths, the wars they fight for peace, the stronger it's grip on the psyche of those who have no choice but to try to live through it.

The myths aren't real, of course. The myths are lies, and so the 'proof' is manufactured, war is intentional, business like and the cycles of violence continue. Institutionalised. Institutionalising all who come under it's sway.

Institutionalisation is a process that is, in and of itself, dehumanising. It's the de-humani-fication of interpersonal relationships, where everything is a matter of 'form'. Not so much formalities, as life limited by objectification, the key ingredient in Corporate Ideology.

An object is a 'thing', which can be manipulated, as cheaply as possible, so as to generate an outcome that profits the manipulator's boss. His or her owner. An object can also be discarded, Expendable. Fodder. 

Statistics and registers  can be used to turn people into 'things', separate objects, which are then manipulated and used by different factions to make spurious, and often opposing generalisations about how best to organise 'things', (without reference to the pathways the 'things' themselves might self organise, naturally .....). 

And whenever a faction is in Power, they impose their psychology on the people.

It's insane!

It can be VERY cruel and harmful.

Until someone says "Does it really have to be this way?"

And tries to answer it, through diligent yet not too onerous study, honesty and with an open mind and heart, and a healthy respect for scepticism.

Kindest regards

Corneilius

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

Power or the children's best interests?

If mothering was truly respected in our Society or Culture, and recognised as the central crucible of the psychology of the adult world, which it is, then the concept of a 'working mother' would not exist : mothering (and all parenting) would be seen and valued and understood as a primary, not a secondary activity, at the very centre of our Society..... or in other words, the children's welfare would be our primary Scoietal concern, in both the short term and long term.

The phrase 'the working mother' would be seen and be understood as an oxymoron.

The various Government initiatives to 'get mothers back to work' are not designed for the best interests of the children, the parents or our society : they are designed for the best intersts of 'the economy'. This always means the best interests of profit, power and great wealth.

Irrespective of peoples lack of knowledge, the degrees of social conditioning we all endure and the all too common reflexive, reactive objections to the central point I am raising, which others such as Sue Gerhardt and Oliver James and James Prescott have examined in great detail in their work, the fact remains that the psychology of the adult world is both revealed and perpetuated in how the adults relate to and treat children.

Adults whose natural needs as children have not been fully met will express that loss in many ways, not least in repeating aspects of the behaviour that lead to their own loss when they too become responsible for children, either as parents, or teachers or celebrities... and punishing them or 'correcting' them or nudging them is not the way forward.

Recent events demonstrate quite clearly that The BBC and The Vatican quite obviously do not hold the welfare of children at the centre of their deliberations, as is the case for many of the 'great institutions' of our Society...

It is the way Institutional Power is mediated to protect it's power and self image that most needs to change. David Smail pointed this out in a cogent essay, "there's no such thing as Society". Well worth reading.

I say this because the messages Institutional Power(s) transmit to parents are a huge determining factor in how parents organise their lives, and to date no Institutional Power has supported Natural Parenting to the degree our innate biological psychology demands, as to do so would lead to the demise of the POWER of the Institution. This is clear to any who examine their own lives, let alone the lives of the Powerful, with any degree of honesty and empathy.

It is the Power that is protected, time and time again. And that is a psychological immaturity. To see Power as more important than function is deeply dysfunctional.

Kindest regards

Corneilius

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

Charity, Power, truth and Jimmy Saville

I appreciate the genuine desire of so many people to 'help others' through the agency of Charity.

And yet, to offer such temporary and often distal help rather than directly and with energy move to confront the actual causes of poverty, (and all the various other areas of need labelled as 'good causes' - note the use of the word cause in this which avoids the actual cause.... how ironic!), to chose  to avoid a head on collision with the truth, in order to look and feel good, rather than to resolve the issues to the greatest degree possible when we as a community and society are very much capable of doing this, (we can send a robot to Mars, design nano-computers that can be ingested, build massive international events such as The Olympics, etc), to avoid that defining human and essentially humane task, out of fear of changing the status quo, losing a job, or for any other 'reason', feels, in my heart of hearts, like a betrayal.

Charity is, to a much larger degree than most will openly acknowledge,  the guilt sop of the middle classes, and the propaganda of the ruling classes. For the lower income classes, charity always begins at home.

The Jimmy Saville story illustrates this quite well, amongst other things.
 

He was famous, feted by Power and Royalty, a TV star to millions of middle class folk, and when allegations were made during his tenure in that elevated position, they were played down, ignored or rejected because of his fame, because of his utility as a charitable agent, and his public profile as a man of good works. His 'oddness' was always besides the point.

At present, the media discussion is about the perpetrator, his accomplices, 'others', the 'enablers', and the restoration of the reputation of the BBC rather than the stories of the Survivors, and how such trauma has affected their lived experience throughout their lives, including how it has affected their families and relationships, and how those adverse affects play out in our communities.

People appear bewildered that "someone who did so much good, could be so evil."

To tell the story of what it really means to be a Survivor in this Society would be to begin to explore from a much deeper base the development of a truly profound critical analysis of our Society.

There is an unwillingness to look honestly at the many ways by which natural human empathy (not sympathy, a totally different thing) has been sidelined and effectively repressed across all sectors of Governance, Commerce and Religion, locally, nationally and internationally, as evidenced by the consistent disbelief of Survivors stories.

What kind of Society would ignore a child's plea for help? What kind of Society would protect it's image of itself in ways that permit harm to children?

Can one really be alive and fully human in a Society such as ours, working on the basis of 'this is the best of a bad lot' whilst refusing to confront and change what is harmful within it, when we know this is possible?

What kind of family would behave thus?

The blood, sweat, guts and tears of those who are oppressed, harmed or abused are hurriedly airbrushed out of the Politicians (and others) calls for change. They will not spend time reflecting on these uncomfortable realities; to FEEL THE FULL IMPACT of which would undermine that image of the status quo. That is utterly selfish, mean and cruel - even if it is not always entirely intentional.

Someone posed this statement/question : "We will also not confront the difficulty of Saville as a victim.... and what caused him to perpetuate such harm....What has happened to people for them to be so? Where have we as a Society gone wrong?"

This is the central question in the Jimmy Saville case, and is mirrored in countless ways by the actions of State leaders who engage in war, and how their actions are 'justified' by media and Offices of State, is mirrored by The Vatican (Worldwide Clerical Abuse, The Inquisition, )and Anglican Churches (Indian Boarding Schools in Canada and USA) and beyond.
 
This is crucial: for unless we examine the genesis of abuse, we will not prevent it.....

Of course, we must hold the adult who harms others 100% accountable, and yet at the same time we need to look to see how the child became such an adult, and seek to ensure that we fully understand that and then alter all of that within our Society that breeds such psychopathy. Resolution is the only long term path worth taking.

The mistreated infant most often loses touch with his or her true self - suppressing the truth of his or her felt experience - in order to adapt to the mistreating situation, and this leads to a loss of empathy for others.

This then lends itself to the creation a sense of disconnection from others, from those who ought to be nurturing the child, and from all of that which nurtures us in life, and this sense of disconnection has a fear associated with it which compounds the fear and trauma of the original mistreatment and leads to a strengthening desire to control others (or oneself) to get perceived needs met. Perceived needs are often distorted, A natural organism will resist such control, and it is here that violence is 'utilised', to enforce the control. Abusers are violent because they feel the power of enforcement by violence is effective.

When a group of people with this psycho-dynamic operate, when they work together, they will inevitably insert their psychology and behaviour into that structure.

This explains the emergence of Institutions of Power that are cruel and violent, even if in name they are social institutions swith roles in Education, Religion, Governance or Commerce, whose stated intent is 'to improve life' for humanity.

This briefly explains how an entire society - or large swathes of a Society, enough to make a difference - can be rallied under the false flags of people like Hitler, Blair, The Pope, Abu Hamza and Bush.

We need, all of us to engage in this matter and to do so for a multitude of reasons - the many billions of Survivors of abuse - be it the Iraqi people, the Syrian people, the Palestinian people, the children in 'care home' and similar Institutions, the many aboriginal peoples whose lands are being invaded by commerce for profit, and not least for the benefit of all our own children and their children's futures.

Kindest regards

Corneilius

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

Jimmy Saville, The Pope, and the 'coalition of the unwilling....'

The issue is no longer one of individual abusers. It is about a ‘culture of abuse’. And that includes, of course, how that ‘culture’ protects itself.

The Jimmy Saville story is all the more revealing because of the commentary on the story. The ‘comments’ sections, where attitudes are nakedly expressed, reveal that many of the arguments offered tend to be a mixture of considered opinion, knowledge, data, unexamined assumptions, bile, wilful ignorance and bigotry.

A cross section of our Society?

Including the trolls, of course...

What is clear is that there is a large constituency who are unable to look at the facts, the objective realities of Survivor testimony, of documentation of incidents and of cover-ups, across a vast range of settings where adults have power and access to children and a cover story. Very much akin to settings where politicians and corporate executives have power, access to cash and a cover story. There is a pattern here.Links to some of what we know....

http://www.express.co.uk/features/view/349976/The-disgusted-captain-who-threw-Jimmy-Savile-off-a-cruise-ship - anecdotal evidence from 45 years ago ....

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2213636/Uncle-Jimmy-took-sick-parties-Nephew-tells-childhood-stolen-13.html#ixzz28V6p6JTy - nephew alleges Jimmy Saville took him to 'parties' where other children, men but no women "participated" until 3 or 4 am. Well past the watershed so beloved of the BBC!

http://timesopinion.tumblr.com/post/32804536645/jimmy-saviles-affections-laid-bare-by-jimmy-savile - Jimmy Saville describes an incident that suggests officials were turning a blind eye or that there may have been collusion by way of permitting the assaults, which continued.

http://www.express.co.uk/posts/view/349975/BBC-aware-of-Jimmy-Saville-rumours-and-fears-in-1973 - BBC Top Management were aware of the 'rumours'.. well aware.

Catholic Jimmy Saville page removed from Christian site! - OOOOS! http://offerimustibidomine.blogspot.co.uk/2011/11/sir-jimmy-savile-and-his-catholic-faith.html

It is on the record, part of our collective history. Standard practice.

Keep what ever it is, not matter how nasty, anything that might damage our image , keep it tightly under wraps, irrespective the gravity of the crime or the depth of consequence for those adversely affected or the number of people affected. KEEP A LID ON IT!

This I know also from my own experience .... many people have experienced that moment when I refused to accept what I knew about myself that I must change to be more fully human,only because I clung to an image of who I believed myself to be over knowing me. So Society at large clings to it's self image.Well folks, it's time to let go. Relax, make it easy. We can grow through this, collectively.Or is it this?

Don’t rock the boat, or threaten your income/job. This is partly how some of us, as employees who see some of the evidence,are ‘managed’.  Jobsworths. Fear.Whistle blowers are hounded. Bradley Manning. Julian Assange. Within any bureaucracy, within the party structures associated with Power and the exercise of Power, there is a threat implicit in what is called ‘team playing’: “he’s on our team, so we must protect him to protect the team.” That and job security. Workers have families. Mouths to feed. Old age to fear. More masked threats. Don't risk your job.

That unwillingness, that fear, that dependency helps the abuser culture survive. And thrive. By abuser culture I mean ALL abuse. It's a spectrum of behaviour from what some might 'mild' to extreme and lethal. It IS connected at the sociological psyche level. This quietness, this unwillingness,this sense of POWERLESSNESS? does not inspire confidence in Survivors, and I think it is a symptom of the disease with which we have been afflicted : the result of being coerced by situational circumstance into fitting into a diseased, pathological Institutional Power Structure, one that dominates our lives, and has proven that it will protect itself with violence even if in the legal and moral wrong. That twists us all, one way or another.

Power is not easily dislodged by power, as new power most often replaces the old power, and refines its messages so as to mask itself anew. Power can be dislodged when it is ignored, when it’s instructions no longer have any effect. When it’s wisdoms are seen as merely the controlling thoughts that are permitted for a position of relative comfort within the framework of the system, for those who are the ‘ruled’, as long as one is in passive participation with the pathological instructions. For the most part, those who are ruled over in Democracies are passive participants in Power.

When Survivors come forward to tell their stories, and we find that the evidence supports them, those Survivors are first and foremost refusing to participate with the pathological instructions. This takes immense courage. All Survivors experience a deep fear, an existential dread, for the earlier experience of powerlessness they lived through will have scarred them deeply, so deep it is oft written into their bodies at the neurological and cellular level. This is no easy wound to heal. It is one of the most debilitating wounds of all. Thus their recovery to the extent they report the crimes is already a massive achievement .... and it is only the beginning....

We all know that resignation/acceptance is the moment when one says “well, that’s the way it is, and always will be. I can do nothing to alter the situation.” That can be a relief for a survivor or a dysfunctional survival mechanism for anyone born into a pathological Institutional Power System (IPS).

The attitudes expounded in the public commentary reveal that dysfunctional survival is widely spread. This is part of the problem too.

An advocate for Survivors who were in care at Casa Pisa, in Lisbon, Portugal, whose abusers finally went to trial after many years, and the abuser was convicted, said this:

“I hope this day will allow us to show the country that the boys have told the truth from the start.”

That he felt the boys were doubted by so many is clear. That does not make reporting and pursuing justice easy at all. If anything it weights in favour of abusers, whose abuse is often made quite easy by others fearful or wilful ignorance.

Almost 1,000 witnesses were called during the trial, which critics say has exposed the sluggishness and inefficiency of the Portuguese justice system and shaken public trust in the country’s institutions.

The Survivors were not lying nor were they fabricating their stories.

This pattern of witnesses being disbelieved, obstructed, intimidated, ignored, turned away from and otherwise suppressed is being repeated in almost every State on the planet. This is a Societal matter to be reflected upon.Let MORE evidence emerge, and let those who protect and those who abuse and destroy children, condemn adults be revealed. Let's deal with them and at the same time, we can deal deal with our own issues about POWERLESSNESS and human empathy, about children as who they really, naturally are,  as individuals, families, communities, regions, states. I know this can be done, it is so much in the realm of practical material reality.

Kindest regards

Corneilius

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