Showing posts with label biodiversity. Show all posts
Showing posts with label biodiversity. Show all posts

'Evolutionary' Origins of Religion: a trauma model


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

David Chamberlain has written :
"From the second month of pregnancy, experiments and observations reveal an active prenate with a rapidly developing sensory system permitting exquisite sensitivity and responsiveness. Long before the development of advanced brain structures, prenates are seen interacting with each other and learning from experience. They seem especially interested in the larger environment provided by mother and father, and react to individual voices, stories, music, and even simple interaction games with parents. The quality of the uterine environment is determined principally by parents.
The opportunities for parents to form a relationship with the baby in the womb are significant and remarkable. This contrasts sharply with the previous view that prenates did not have the capacity to interact, remember, learn, or put meaning to their experiences"
It is quite obvious that those with innate or natural self empathy intact know or can better better, at a visceral pre-verbal level, how to relate to others, to meet their own and others needs, because they sense the other in intimate ways associated with their own sense of self empathy. They are more perceptive and more responsive to information contained within the other because they can more fully sense themselves.

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

This is the thrust of the work of Heinz Kohut

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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




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


Kindest regards

Corneilius

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














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Nurture, Nature and the Joy of Sense.

Nurture, Nature and the Joy of Sensory Acuity.

The core biological function of the adult human being is to nurture the true inherent nature of the natural child so that the natural child lives as a natural expression of life itself, of Earths emergent biology. 

Another way to say this is that the core biological function is to improve and or maintain the natural life sustaining habitat of the natural child, and of all natures children.

Reproduction arises not as a means of passing on, but as the companion of death, the companion of those processes that metabolise materials from one form to another, releasing them so that those materials can be utilised by natural living processes to enhance the fecundity of Earths biology. 

To effectively increase fecundity, earth materials have to be gathered, energy has to be expended, so that metabolic processes can act on those materials. This is what plants do, using the freely available energy of the sun to drive photosynthesis. 

Animals consume some of those materials, as do bacteria, and metabolise those materials as an intrinsic part of their living processes. Animals and bacteria also excrete metabolised materials, as well as providing them on their death and decomposition – a process I refer to as bio-returning.

This process increases the available materials for life for all life.

Trees and squirrels, which we can see, need each other. All need bacteria, who remain invisible to us, to do a huge amount of the work required to metabolise materials from one form to another.

All the senses of the human being are emergent properties, crafted by biology, to enable a high degree of functioning within the paradigm I am describing. 

These senses can be seen to operate at both the cellular level, the organ or organism level and the macro level of the habitat. They are all physical interpretations of electromagnetic frequencies that inhere to the fundamental atomic level.

Photosynthesis is a response to photons, to light and is therefore the primary precursor to the human eye, which also responds to light.

The concept of passing on DNA, of the selfish gene, of inheritance itself, is a concept that emerges from within a society that typically expresses power relationships as opposed to egalitarian relationships. 

It is an expression of Empire. For it is the case that all Emperors wish to pass on what they have ‘achieved’ to others whom they are certain will continue that achievement as a form of narcissistic ‘immortality’….. a form of vanity if you will… 

Empire tends to mould the habitat to meets its own perceived needs above the needs of all others – recognition, the placating of hubris, the placating of an irrational fear of nature, all are processes that leads directly to the desire to dominate nature. And with that to dominate ALL people.

And what is truly insane about this desire to dominate is that it negates the ability to truly sense the Earth and the habitat, and each other, with the awesome sensory abilities that inhere to our biological forms, which are freely and unconditionally given and are indeed of such stunning beauty and exquisite pleasure that they define bliss itself.

Empire has come to the party and missed the point completely and is in the process of ruining the party. 

For ALL concerned. Doh!



Kindest regards 

 Corneilius 

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


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We are the only creatures...

....that turn our poo into toxic sludge, and we are the only creatures that claim superiority over all life forms on earth......... ha ha ha ha!

How utterly crass! How rude is that!?!

We deprive the habitat of nutrients that we cannot use (only 20% max of food is metabolised, the rest passes through, and in nature is re-used by other life forms to create more abundance, more food).....

The phrase "dealing with your shit" comes to mind....

http://www.weblife.org/humanure/

Learn about yer poo and it's potential, and deal with it, if you can or if you are wise enough to do so.

Good poo inspired essay!

http://thisisawar.com/InspirationDavid.htm

Enjoy!

Kindest regards

Corneilius

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



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Nature Works!

And this we know to be one of the fundamental truths of our very lives.




Nature works beautifully, and in doing so provides every living thing within nature the resources to meet those beings needs so that each can grow towards full potential, from microbes to the largest whales!

Nature does this by sharing those resources, through the growth of each living being and through constant recycling, thus creating no waste.

We would do well to mimic natures observed proceeses and innate values - in general resources are not witheld from those that need them, and there is ample evidence of widespread altruism in nature too!

Nature is not a series of mechanical processes that science of old held, there is a sentience and intelligence at work here. Just because we do not speak the lingo, does not mean the inhabitants are stupid..

Western Civilisations idea that the human being is the most intelligent creature here, or that humanity is to dominate nature and exploit nature are blatantly untrue. We are differnet, yes, and so are all living beings.

It follows that there must be something within all living beings that allows them to get information and to respond appropriately to that information so as to thrive.

Current research into the heart suggest that the heart is also a sensing organ, and that the heart can transmit and receive electromagnetic signals. The heart emits an electromagnetic pulse that is 5000 times greater than that of the brain.

Find out more about this incredible research and what it implies.............

www.heartmath.org


Note too that in school the heart is sentimentalised, through literature and a false evelevation and portrayal of science, and thus the conditioned brain is favoured as an information processor.

Without access to that part of us that connects to, is integrated with therefore accurately and reads nature, it is no surprise that so much of what we, in the westernised post-idustrialised world do that does not work, and is in fact destroying the vary basis for healty life, for all life.

Kindest regards

Corneilius

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