Power Disparity - a general overview, David Smail, Sarah Blatter Hrdy

An adult human is naturally enough more powerful than a human infant, a toddler or a child.

egalitarian cultures typically trust their children, they do not bully them

A healthy adult never exploits that power disparity to force the child to meet the perceived needs of the adult. A healthy adult uses that power disparity to care for the child, careful to meet the child's need, cognisant of the fact that the child's capacity for taking responsibility and taking action is a changing dynamic, one that is to be trusted and nurtured so that the child matures into a healthy adult.
A healthy adult would never leverage power over another in order to meet his or her perceived needs.
A healthy adult would never bully a child.
What kind of culture would generate adults who would bully a child?

Indian Residential Schools in Canada and America, a regime from the 1840s to the 1990s


Cultures that generate Power Hierarchies where superiority/inferiority values are normalised tend to be inequitable and violent.
Such cultures are innately exploitative. Such cultures generate a lot of trauma that is never resolved or healed.  Healthy parenting is made much more difficult within such cultures.
We have ample evidence that the way a hierarchy of power culture relates to a treats the children is symptomatic and traumatising, and that this intergenerational retraumatising is a leading factor in maintaining the hierarchy of power as a cult(are). The values of Power over others are internalised bye direct experience.
It is clear that these cultures are not expressions of optimal biological health for the human species.
Alloparenting.
A major behavioural separation between Primates and Hominims is that within Hominims the practice Alloparenting is widespread. 
Alloparenting is where the whole community shares in the care of the children, and other vulnerable members. Alloparenting means 'Other Parents'. Cultures where a child will have many Mothers, Fathers, Aunties and Uncles and older siblings and their friends who all share in the care of the child. Care is a lifelong practice.
'Mothers and Others' is a book positing the hypothesis that alloparenting is the dividing behavioural point between Primates and Hominins, or Monkeys, Apes and Humans. Well worth a read.
That behavioural difference is associated with or close correlates with the development of the much larger forebrain of the Hominims.
The natural healthy development of Emotional State Self Regulation is a staple of healthy relationships (and is not the same a suppression of emotions) requires activation of the fore brain - thoughtful, reflective, considered action oriented - to calm the emotional brain - because the emotional part of the brain, the amygdala and hippocampus part is reactive, sudden action oriented. This capacity is best learned in infancy, through an experiential dynamic of being cared for, all needs being met in a timely fashion.
The healthy person's emotional state is self regulated, which is key to healthy working relationships across a community of people who care for one another. 
We are human, after all, and we have moods, we can feel discomfort, pain, confusion, irritation because we are sensitive and we live within a dynamically changing environment. Accidents can happen, we can wake up out of sorts, we feel....  and being able to deal with those feelings, being able to respond rather than blindly react, is a sign of maturity. We call it emotional intelligence.
Emotional intelligence seeks to neutralise power disparities. Emotional blindness seeks to exploit power disparities.

David Smail writes about Power Disparity as a factor in human psychological distress. 
His website is off-line, however way back machine has archived it, and I found it very useful indeed, in bringing workable insight to the problems we are facing today with regards Power, Hierarchy, Psychological Distress and Human Unhappiness.
I have a number of his books in my small library.

David Smail - Biographical Note

Born 23.4.38 at Putney, London, David Smail studied philosophy and psychology at University College London, and was awarded a PhD in psychology there in 1965. 

He entered the National Health Service as a clinical psychologist in 1961, and in 1964 joined Tom Caine's psychology department at Claybury Hospital in Essex, which was at that time pioneering the 'therapeutic community' approach to the treatment of mental disorder. There followed a fruitful period of collaboration with Dr Caine, resulting in a number of research publications supporting therapeutic community methods. 

David Smail moved to Nottingham in 1968, where he remained as head of clinical psychology services until 1993. He retired fully from the NHS in 1998. He held the honorary post of Special Professor in Clinical Psychology at the University of Nottingham from 1979 until 2000. 

David died on 3 August 2014. The Guardian published an obituary available athttp://www.theguardian.com/science/2014/aug/17/david-smail 

David Small interview on Youtube.

Listen as Davis Smail explains some of his doubts about psychotherapy - short MP3, will pay on your devices player.

There is a War being Waged by Wealth as Power against all of us, irrespective of our amateur political leanings.

https://dwylcorneilius.blogspot.com/2022/01/why-oligarchy-are-at-war-against.html

The Fossil Fuel and Mining Oligarchy knew about Climate Disruption 50 years ago. Their own Scientists confirmed it. The Shareholders decided to deny the Science. They wanted to keep drilling, producing, maintain and increase consumption in order  to amass ever more Wealth as Power.

That makes them culpable for the avoidable harms they chose not to avoid.

That culpability also makes them liable for the costs of the harms caused, and other ancillary costs associated with all of this.

They KNOW this.

They understand that if ANY Democratic Legislature upholds, enforces or passes Laws to hold them accountable that they will lose their Wealth and more importantly, they will lose the Political Power as a Ruling Class Lobby.

This they have chosen to not cede.

They are therefore waging an all out war against Democratic Accountability.

Most ordinary people do not understand this because we are still fixated on the idea of Greed for Money rather than the matter of Wealth as Power, Wealth as a Ruling Lobby that dictates how society is to be run.

This war is a war against all of us, irrespective of our political leanings.

Solidarity is the only power we can exert. This they know and that is why they spend so much energy on dividing us......

When we build a rational solidarity, their Rule is over.

Kindest regards

Corneilius

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The Green Party Ad with the Bullying Children.

The Green Party Ad with the Bullying Children.

I found that video really disturbing.

Children as bullies and monsters.....  in the context of 'traditional parenting' and the mistreatment of children who show signs of non-compliance, who do not 'fit in', who are reacted to rather than responded to. a pattern which is a very, very strong behavioural pattern in the UK.

Many adults are dismissive of children who 'act out' and the mainstream attitude is to punish the child to avoid confronting the parent or the social setting within which children learn to become bullies. 45% of UK School secondary school children report being bullied. The response these children who are bullies need is not more punishment and sanction. They need help. Which often means their parents need help. After all where does a child learn his or her emotional behaviours?

The comparison is impossible.

Comparing wounded children to the adult sociopaths who wield power and abuse it intentionally whilst manipulating almost everybody they interact with and covering up the more nasty side of their abuses with the intent to maintain their position is like comparing a boot to a hole in the ground saying they are the same because one can put ones foot into it.

Being dismissive of or pretending an air of 'superiority' over the adult sociopaths who abuse institutional and political power is futile. They have to be challenged and confronted with evidence, head on. That is hard and serious work, and not to be taken lightly.

The video is also a mirror of how the adult world views wounded, who 'act out' children.

It's appallingly bad taste.

There's an element of the derogatory spleen to it, that is more often seen in mainstream media and comment threads.

It's trolling..

It is profoundly inaccurate, divisive and pretty much delusional. Its off topic.

To a pediatrician or child development scientist or counsellor it's a horrific indictment of the Green Party's unwillingness to speak TRUTH to power, not least amongst themselves.

That was a VERY expensive add to make. A waste of our funds.

I can see why some see the humour in the add. Nonetheless ...... it is a grave PR error.

Had they focused on the mistreatment of the disabled, the loss of the NHS as a publicly owned institution and the reality of off shore tax avoidance and money laundering and off shore tax evasion, which was already a big story we all know about.... they'd have hit gold...... with the release of the Panama Papers it would have struck home BIG TIME.

Hindsight, eh?

How about a bit more foresight, depth to their campaigning? For starters!

There is no benefit in dumbing down or caricature in the serious business of political lobbying, which is what we are involved in, here. There is no benefit it stooping to the methods of the DM, Sun and others.

Corbyn refuses to engage at that level. He does not attack the other side, with personalized trolling, he confronts and challenges the false premises upon which they stand.

None.

It's demeaning.

The add is obviously designed as a taunt, an insult. That is how it will be taken.

And that will harden the resolve of people on the fringes of  support for the right wing and the left wing who still believe in the bird,.

When they see this kind of stereotyping and insult mixed, which is so banal, and which we rightly deride in the Daily Mail and Sun et al they will react rather than respond.

It’s a rather futile attempt in terms of addressing the world of Governance and power.

I wonder what ad agency convinced them that that would be a good idea?

Was it a set up to see how much depth there is to the Green Party’s strategic and tactical understanding?

If so, they know now.

Power thinks about these kinds of things and has way more practice in such matters than any of us ever would..... by a long shot.

Kindest regards

Corneilius

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