A Survivors Manifesto

An alarming number of adults in the so-called 'civilised' world have little or no empathy for themselves as infants and small children - most have no recall of those times, which is why that empathy seems rare.... and so this also explains why most parents are at a loss with babies and small infants and therefore tend to try to control them, because they have no empathy, they cannot sense the childs needs... and so controlling the baby feels safer and so they look for INSTRUCTIONS.... and are vulnerable to those who give instructions - yet the body knows and if trusted the adult can learn empathy again and recover....

As a child I was beaten, humiliated, punished, or neglected in one way or another, almost daily, and I HAD to believe that I was wrong and deserved the beating, just to maintain my psyche,  even if I did not understand WHY I was being beaten (or their reasons for it). 

I also had to believe the FAITH they hammered into me and that brought me great fear, for I feared I was sinful, nasty, ugly,

It took a long, long time to lose those beliefs about myself.... to find my true heart, my natural integrity.

I consider myself VERY lucky to have made that journey, and whilst it IS infuriating that so many of my brothers and sisters are still stuck in the beliefs and denial, my REAL anger is directed at all those who ensure that the conditioning continues; for the rest, patience and empathy.....

My story is not at all rare, and comparitively speaking, I was lucky..... the stories I read of other childrens lives make that very clear : my point here to make it clear that many, many people have been conditioned by circumstance and Society, rather than truly loved... and only those who are truly loved, not least by themselves, can resist that conditioning in meaningful ways....

I know what it is like to be conditioned and fearful.

I deeply appreciate all the love and support I have received and continue to receive...

I never urge survivors to speak out, in public, unless they themselves feel ready to do so.... just as I would never push a child to do anything. It's always be...st to wait until the child feels eady.

I do urge survivors to find someone they can confide in, to break the silence for themselves - and I do understand that finding that empathic person can be difficult even frightening.

I tell my story to encourage a deeper understanding of what it is to be a Survivor, for there are so many in this society.

Even though I detest war, and think soldeiry a fools game, I FEEL for those troops who return from active combat duty, the many thousands who can just about cope, the many thousands who don't and who 'fall through the cracks' because those around them do not understand what violent trauma does to a persons soul - the movies do not tell the truth about violence and it's effects, neither will the media -and neither wil the NHS, the Health Service nor Social Services....

So it has to be Survivors who do this, and it has to be those strong enough and in a position to do it, because ALL survivors need to be heard, we need to be held, to be allowed to cry, to scream, to vent for this is an essential part of the healing, no matter how uncomfortable it might be for others....

The wounded experience lies trapped beneath those unexpressed cries and wails, is walled in in an attempt to keep it alltogether, to 'fit in' and that keeps us permanently wounded, closed down, shuit off from the full vitality of life.

That is something that no-one deserves.

The stiff upper lip approach has it's merits in a traumatic situation, with limitations, yet beyond that it becomes a trap, a form of denial and assures that trauma patterns are repeated, in one form or another.

And then there are those who adapt to that societal trauma, whose abuse becomes thier identity, and who inflict abuse without conscience or remorse and become part of the System of Power that drives war, neglect, inequality, abuse.. who often 'succeed' and run banks, corporations and countries.... dangerous people, damaged people, charismatic people..... what of them?

Tony Blair, George Bush, Hosni Mubarak, Saddam Hussein, Myra Hindly, Ian Brady, Fred West, David Cameron, the various CEOs of Rapacious Corporations, The Pope, the Abuser Priests, Nuns, Men and Women, children even, the torturers, the bullies and beaters and killers amongst us ...... how are we to deal with these people and how are we to avoid the creation of such damaged people in the future?

How are we to deal with the Institutions that are founded in old patterns of abusive Power?

http://www.restorativejustice.org/

How can we build Institutions that are empathic, and responsive to the needs of us vulnerable human beings, that responds to the needs of the habitat and all that dwell therein?

For it is the case that such people are rarely born, they are the outcomes of Society and Institutional Power as it is.

These are the questions that I muse on, for my childrens sake, for their childrens sake, for yours and all.

I do not have to be perfect to engage thus. I do not have to wait until I have it all sorted out.

I certainly do not have all the answers and I am so glad that there are many good men and women working on these same problems, doing so honestly, with integrity and empathy, and with diligence, day in, day out for entire lifetimes.

I am encouraged that so much is now know and understood of the dyamics of abuse, of the biology of empathy, knowledge that is practical, that replaces belief with action that makes a difference.

What better legacy for our children could there possibly be, better than all the fine buildings, the great works of art, the exploration of space (where no-one human lives...)?

"Of all the preposterous assumptions of humanity over humanity, nothing exceeds most of the criticisms made on the habits of the poor by the well-housed, well-warmed, and well-fed". -Herman Melville, novelist and poet (1819-1891)

http://www.alicemiller.com

http://www.birthpsychology.com

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

Kindest regards

Corneilius

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

Power Relationships, Fear, Truthers and Consumers.

In a Society that is predicated upon Power Relationships - where one party to the relationship exercises power over the other, to meet the preceived needs of the power holder, it is imperative to condition those upon whom Power is exercised... to accept those Power Relationships as 'natural'.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Niccol%C3%B2_Machiavelli#The_Prince

What is happening now is that due to the internet, both accurate and inaacurate information is made more easily available to those with access to the internet.

We KNOW more about the struggles of Tribal Societies now than we did 20 years ago. They have always KNOWN that our Governments are not to be trusted. Their blood has been spilled, their way sof life attacked. They KNOW.

www.hiddenfromhistory.org

http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/first-australians/

We KNOW more about the psychology and neurobiology of natural parenting than we did 20 years ago. That is because those who have been researching this area have been able to share their learnings outside the academic world, and those learnings have been applied successfully by many hundreds of thousands of people world wide. The data has been tested.

www.birthpsychology.com

We KNOW more about the criminality of Governance than we did 20 years ago. That is because information, such as WIKI LEAKS, has been shared, has been peer reviewed, and has been used to some effect - though there is a way to go yet - as evidenced by the work of people such as Kevin Annett, Colm O'Gorman and many other whistle blowers.

http://colmogorman.com/?page_id=16

The Power has absolutely encouraged the FEAR mongering dissemination of information as a tool to slow down this process.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Original_sin - a form of psycho-terrorism

9/11 Truth is also part of that process, designed to slow down the pace of real awakening.

Here's how it works.

By diverting attention from the War Crimes, for which Prima Facie evidence is in abundance, to the questions concerning 9/11 which cannot be answered. Eyes off the ball.

Under 3000 people died in New York on 9/11. That was truly dreadful. A horror. And there are manu unanswered questions about 9/11.

More than 1.3 million died between 2003 and 2006 in Iraq. Hundreds of thousands of people died in Afghanistan between 2001 and 2006. All due to the violence brought upon those countries by US/UK 'Coalition of the willing'. The only unanswered question is WHY is it that the war criminals are not already on trial? We have the evidence.

Unless those in Power who have engaged in War Crimes are brought to trial, which will only happen when the people make the decisions on the issues that affect their lives, and enforce them not by voting for preselected options, but by generating those options themselves, using accurate information.

www.powerinquiry.org

Alex Jones, Tsarion, David Icke and others like them are also part of this process. They absoultely ignore the learnings regarding natural parenting. They absolutely ignore the work being done on Participative Democracy. They FEED THE FEAR.

The New Age 'movement' is part of this process. (especially in the way it has co-opted Indigenous Spirituality and turned it into a mega billion dollar world wide industry designed to inculcate individualism, rather than community cohesion and empathic relationships).

It is time for civilisation's peoples to refuse BEING RULED, and to take on the mature responsibility of self governance as the mechanism for administering the needs of Society, rather than the be driven for the perceived needs of the 'economy'.

The basis for self governance is empathy, not Power.

Consumerism is THE ELITE disease.... it's what Hierarchical Elites have always done... They consume the world for their own narccisstic desires.

My studies have shown that for examlpe, the practice of seperating mother from child is one fo the oldest elite practices there is. And it's aboslutely at the heart of generating the lack of empathy that emegres through any society where this practice is widespread; what's even more interesting is that where that practice of disruption is not present, AND there is disruption to the natural emergent sexuality of the puberty, the same lack of empathy will be found.

The two drives to bond are sensory or pleasure related, are biologically driven and require some form of external power to cause a disruption. They are both empathic drives at heart. The connection to another with full perception. These are the basis for making that same connection with ALL life, from which the sense of one-ness emerges as a sensory feeling, rather than an intellectual conceit.

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One of the things at the core of 'civilisation' as we know it is the lack of empathy ...

ALL civilisation that have hierarchies also disrupt the child-motherbonding processes and/or disrupt naturalpost pubrttal sexuality.

This requires Power over those whose natural processes are disrupted BECAUSE these are so fundamental and because they are to do with deveoping experiential empathy, a neccessary trait in a healthy human society.

http://www.violence.de/prescott/bulletin/article.html - 1975 Paper published in The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists.... detailing this

www.birthpsychology.com - details the natural brain development through empathic parenting, citing neuroscience, development, psychology and anthropology....

This is at the the core - the rest follows as symptoms of that core lack of empathy, the development of the sociopath....

What's interesting is the Hierarchical elites in EVERY culture of Hierarchy remove the chld from the mother in their own families.. it's as though they understand the effect.

Once the printing press came into being it was possible for them to 'share' this understanding (which was written in to JudaeoChristian texts, hindi texts and much else besides) amongst the up an coming merchant classes, and from them over time iut becomes codified in Institutional Care and Education.

This all leads directly to a culture of Power Relationships.

95% of all known tribal societies are egalitarian - there are 170 million people living as tribal land based societies, and further 120 million living arounf or nearly assimilated into western civilisation ( the colonised...) - and then there's the vast first contact data - which the jesuits and other missionaries have archived... together these show a pictue of mostly egalitarian empathic relationships.

IF civilisation was empathic, our technologies woould be greener and geared to natural nurturant processes; war would be unlikely...

Unfortunatly it's not, for the above reasons...

Part of the picture is in abuse dynmaics, how people deal with truama and whether or not they can resolve it or not, and adopt controlling behaviours as a consequence, which become codified over time...

The REAL problem is this lack of empathy and how Societal Powers mediate how parenting/education is functioning is part of finding ways to break ithe cycles...

Judith Herman writes about the relationships that energe in abuse dynmaics.... the abuser (power) the apologist (middle classes) the scapegoat (the poor, some criminals, addictc) the victims (the indigneous,. the habitat), the rebel (the angry poor, some criminals) the soother (charitible people) the deniers (those who are either next in line for abuse of they slip up, or those who are comfortable or identify with the abuser/system ...) etc etc....

All the best

Corneilius

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

ps. I am writing a book, Natural Child, Natural Society...

I hope this makes sense to you, as it makes eminent sense to me.

Conditioning, the plastic brain and effective change.....

For many years I have watched, initially within myself, then with others, how the conditioning we experience blurs our abilities to co-operate, to seek truthfully and honestly for understanding; I have watched as we 'debate' and exclude rather than share and explore; I have watched as we repeat the basic thoughts we have been most deeply conditioned to think with - such as the man/woman divide based on difference, the misunderstanding of the very nature and depth of Power Relationships because we have adapted to those Power Relationships in early early childhood....

I have watched and seen within myself how fear based rigid thinking undermines my accurate sensing of the world.

I am watching that now in others. I see how it is used in marketing, propaganda and I say this - it works, and it works because those who have not been able to see the fullness of conditioning, of their own conditioning, react in predictible ways that are written deep into their neurology, their physiology by that conditioning.

Informing each other is crucial...

1. Genetics is proven to have very little to do with psychology or character - it's all about how the child is treated - unless we know this and understand it we will repeat it, again and again, and again.....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5bi6x-4aNmM

2. There are no genetic female/male psychologies - it's all down to conditioning, and how we learn to relate... the brains of baby boys and baby girls are more or less identical...

http://www.thestar.com/atkinsonseries/atkinson2009/article/720004--part-4-newborn-brains-are-similar-so-nurture-makes-the-difference

3. Adverse childhood experiences are absolutely linked to emergent health issues in later life, linked to the emergence of addiction (from shopping to self-medicating), linked to obesity across all Society - most illnesses are pathologies that are the symptoms of abuse, trauma and adverse conditioning and are the results of the imposition of the systems or conditions we are taught or forced to accept and live within...

http://www.cdc.gov/ace/outcomes.htm

5. Neurology is NOT SET IN STONE - our brains, indeed our very nature, is responsive, plastic - but we are conditioned by fear to become reactive, rigid....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FugrcVhi2tg

http://www.eheart.com/cesarean/babies.html - the facts as to the awareness of babies, in utero and at birth and early infancy... and how they are affected by the mothers environment.

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Collapse can to be seen in these terms - the collapse of the mind-set and psychology we have been infected with,not the collapse of Society or basic structures that support life.

As we free ourselves from our conditioning by Power (and that requires 100% ruthless self honesty, as much as honesty with others - we must know our own experience in some detail) Power has less access to our psyches....

As we refuse to replace one set of conditioning with another, we free ourelves - Jones, Icke, and all the other fear makers, those who  promote fear as the way of change or reason for change are part of that conditioning, whether they are aware of it or not.

Long term planning was the key to the success of the hunter gatherer societies...... daily action was taken with the long term in mind... remember that the hunter gatherer society was the most successful mode of human existence in terms of stability, health and psychological well being... what are the qualities of that way of life that made it so?

What are the keys for such effective long term planning? 

My take is that the key that matters most is empathy, biological empathy, that is to say the ability to 'read' the signals that come from the environment accurately and to be able to utilise that information appropriately.

I and many others are making the connections between conditioning and the kind of behaviour which is the outcome of conditioning which reveals the roots of evil and the with that the understanding that human nature is not evil, (live backwards) that in fact our ...biology tends towards empathy as the basis for long term sustainablity of a society living within the natural habitat.

It is the disruption of the natural child-mother bonding processes (which build the neorology of empathy) that is absolutely key ....... hierarchy, power relationships, rigid gender roles all emerge from that lack of empathy because that resultant lack of empathy cuts one off from the ability to FEEL the world, to 'read' the signals of the environment in ways that lead to appropriate life nurturant behaviour, and that is a form of isolation and of course generates fear, and that fear then conditions the next generation.

The fear generates the perceived need to control others..

One can observe this procees by tracing the child-rearing practices of Civilisation and comparing them to the child nurturing practices of the natural societies. 

Kindest regards

Corneilius

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

There is a world of difference between Religiosity and Spirituality.

The roots of that divide are to be found in the ways in which natural child-mother bonding processes, which are biologically determined, are either nurtured or not.

The research of James Prescott, Phd back in the 70s into primate mother-child bonding and the emergence of violence indicated to some degree the dynamics of this.

However, the research he carried out on primates was not possible for human beings - separating a child from his or her mother and providing a surrogate for 'experimental' purposes was correctly seen as 'unethical' - though Social Services and Hospital Protocol dictate that this separation does indeed occur, and with alarming frequency... how else is a circumcision to be carried out (60% of males born in the US are circumcised....)

So Prescott decided he'd do the next best thing and started a cross cultural survey of all known Aboriginal Societies to see if there was any patterns that could be observed that would suggest that his learnings with primates applied to human beings.

Bingo.

Absolute proof, statistically solid, that the ways in which the child-mother bond are nurtured or not are an rock solid indicator of the emergence of violence, hierarchy, sexual repression, rigid gender roles, territorialism and religiosity.

The facts are that when the needs of the natural child for healthy development are not met, when natural empathic nurturance is not fully functioning, abuse flows as a direct result.

"David  Smail correctly points out, in his book The Nature of Unhappiness, that psychological theories rarely move beyond the power exerted within the family - where by the oedipal child or the tyrannical parent - and generally fail to see the importance of wider social structures. He widens the ‘power horizon’ to include the effects of politics, culture and class on personal relations, and the impact of ideology on family life and education.

If emotional and psychological distress is brought about by social and environmental powers which originate at some distance from those ultimately subjected to them, then it follows that the best therapy comes in the form of political, ethical and ideological change. We need to move beyond the microenvironment of the therapeutic space, and through our interaction with patients provide three essential things: comfort, through proximal solidarity; clarification, to undo the mystifications of power, by helping patients to remember, see and say; and encouragement to physically and materially alter their position in the world."

 from a review by Christopher Dowrick, Professor of Primary Medical Care, University of Liverpool,

Furthermore, the research carried out by David Chamberlain, Joseph Chilton Pearce and many others into developmental neuroscience with regard to peri-natal experience, birth experience and the first years of a childs life absolutely support Prescotts insights.

Religion wears the mask of empathy, yet demonstrates time and time again a complete lack of empathy.The same applies to much of Social Services and Governance.

It's  BELIEF that is imposed externally, whereas true empathy emerges from within.

It is indoctrination that typifies Schooling and much of University 'Education'. Whereas true learning emerges from unfettered and honest exploration of the world we live in.

We need no more Religion, no more belief.

We need, we are desperately crying out for EMPATHY.

Kindest regards

Corneilius

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

The Natural Child - an understanding of how The Dominant Culture has emerged and why it is so controlling.

The basics of my thesis are as follows :

In Utero the natural child lives in near perfect empathy with the mother .... this is easily understood given the sheer physicality of their connection. Ask a few mothers about this.

In Utero learning is now reasonably well understood and documented. The foetus is learning all the time. The psychological and phsysiological state of the mother is part of that learning. As is the Society into which the child will be born into, as that will inform the mothers psychology..

It is now well understood that birth is a conscious experience for the baby, and that near perfect recall of all the events of a birth is possible and with empathetic parents very likely...

Thus the birthing experience is a conscious one for the baby....

Now, in utero the baby is learning all the time, writing or creating neural pathways for life...

This learning is experiential.

Thus learning is occuring during birth...

At birth the baby has twice as many neurons as an adult, with far fewer neural pathways - suggesting that the baby is ready to learn huge amounts very rapidly.

The first learnings are to do with safety and re-connection with the mother... with that which nurtures the baby.

The baby 'lands' on the mothers left side and lays his or her head against the mothers body, and hears the heart beat of the mother, a heart beat they have lived with for all of their life, a heart beat they know very, very well.

The baby hears and recognises that particular heartbeat and feels safe, as he or she did in the womb. This experience writes neural pathways that go deep, deep... these learning’s at the earliest stage are to do with learning empathy as a separate body….

Empathy is a biological imperative, it is the ability to read the world accurately. The baby has lived with empathy in utero and now needs to have the experiences that help crafty the neural networks for empathy as a separate body..

Then the baby will look towards the mother and make that empathetic connection visually and it is then that the baby goes for the nipple, for sustenance...

Thus the sense of safety, of being held and nurtured goes deep. And is the basis for the following movements....

Any untoward intervention or un-natural event during the birthing will have a profound effect. Remember this is a learning experience that is ultra intense!

This continues to apply throughout the first 6 years of the child's development and pertains though-out life. 

Trauma, especially repeated trauma (think Gitmo, abusive family setting, extreme poverty, war etc etc) will craft neural pathways and physiology in dysfunctional ways, and if unresolved and widespread in any community will lead to structures that reflect that dysfunction and fear, and be expressed as a need to control the environment.

If this is unresolved, then it will write or cause a new genetic to emerge over time....

DNA is written by the environment, and responds to the environmental experience... DNA is all about form and the environment drives behaviour..... which is learned.

The Dominant Culture is one that exercises extreme control, to the point of lethality, to the point of threatening the very basis of life, of nurturance in much the same way an addict may drive towards self destruction.

Work with addiction shows that it takes some form of self control to break the habit and exert yet more control to stay on the straight and narrow or it takes a full realisation of the elements in ones childhood or forgotten trauma learning’s and with that understanding comes empathy for oneself as a child, and an understanding of the elements that led to the trauma…

We also know that children do repair damage to their brains and even transfer functions from one part of the brain to another part as they recover..... if they have the appropriate nurturing environment around them. So we have some hope that this dynamic can be halted and that we can recover from it.

Spread this dynamic across an entire community, and it is easy to understand how a community that is traumatised will engage in various control patterns, some of which are structural, some of which are destabilising, to manage the unresolved feelings associated with the trauma.

This is what Prescott’s research bears out.

When reviewing what was known about indigenous peoples, he was able to delineate two strands of society. One was violent, hierarchical, religious, rule bound. The other was egalitarian, spiritual, non-violent and devoid of rules. The former were the in the minority. That is to say, most of the known gatherer hunter societies were egalitarian, empathetic and nurtured the child mother bond. However the majority were vulnerable to the less empathetic societies. For obvious reasons…

He was able to predict the emergence of violence based only on what happens between the mother and child and found one other indicator - the suppression of adolescent sexuality. Both of these biological imperatives are very powerful and it takes power to thwart them, power that is exercised by a few over the many.

And The Dominant Culture is an expression of this dynamic. Power is suppressing the natural at every turn and creating toxic mimics of the natural, quite often consciously (PR, Marketing, Propaganda, Indoctrination) as an attempt to hoard wealth and protect it, and to undermine any possibility of those people caught in this dynamic from breaking from it...

The cure?

Meeting the natural empathetic learning requirements of children........ and all that that entails. It's a long term cure, and parenting is at the very heart of it. Informed parents are a vital part of the process of recovery.

There are some very good writings on Indigenous Mothering that show some of the possible pathways for this recovery.

Revolution as a reaction to the dominance dynamic will always fail, because it contains within it the very same psychological dynamic...

Here's a neat one page presentation of the social behavioural characteristics found in both streams of society - the high nurturant and low nurturant.

http://www.violence.de/prescott/letters/Social-Behavioral_Characteristics.pdf

my song 'The Expectations of Every Child"

http://www.reverbnation.com/play_now/song_1466786

Kindest regards

Corneilius

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

Christ, Empathy and Society

The Christ, from what few references we have, appeared to be a deeply empathic person. Those qualities are not his alone, but the qualities of a naturally empathic human being, the kind that lived for many hundreds of thousands of years, if not millions of years in a sustainable and relatively stable condition. 

Whilst Christ can be suggested as a role model in this, (though it must be said that to do this would necessitate the omission of, or critical analysis of, the entire old testament, which is essentially a document on Monolithic Power and how to manage Power Relationships to retain Power, violently and otherwise, and contains a specified torture manual to boot! ...and most of the new testament, apart from those few stories concerning the Christ's actions, being as actions speak louder than words - think of the trees saved by this one simple shift in paradigm!)  he can not be held as the SOURCE of Empathy.

It is absolutely clear, to both Science and Mothers, that appropriate child-mother bonding and environmental conditions (such as being part of a day to day community, with full access to nature as a place of exploration and learning, optimum nutrition, intimacy, trust, respect and so on) are ESSENTIAL for the development of the empathetic neurology and natural sensitivity of the new born.

Any deprivation of any of these essentials leads directly to stressed physiology, an altered neurology and a consequent psychological dysfunction as an emergent quality of any given society, and when codified, becomes Institutionalised as we see throughout the Dominant Culture.

Thus, with regards our biologically determined empathy, when the appropriate nurturant environment in place, there is no need for an historical role model, or an external role model, for the parents and community will assuredly provide that confirmation of the internal, intrinsic empathy emerging from within the child, naturally.

This is extremely important.

For example, the lack of empathy inherent in The Missionary Position; to look upon another human being as being inferior to the point of being sub-human and to offer to ‘convert’ that person with the caveat that if conversion is not possible, then extermination is inevitable and justified by Biblical Dictat is so utterly devoid of empathy that it’s a feat of deep, almost supernatural denial that stretches the concept of Charity completely out of shape, and creates a monstrosity steeped in blood and misery.

The lack of empathy inherent in the religious induction of infants into a faith and binding those children to a psychological and spiritual contract they cannot possibly consent to, with the caveat that the child is already a sinner, already condemned, and that this is communicated at the earliest possible moment, consistently re-enforced by what are, in effect and intent, behaviour modification techniques of a Pavlovian Skinnerist perspective. Though it has to be said that the practices of Pavlov and Skinner were long extent by the time those two fools existed. Indeed they are prime examples of the lack of empathy in action.

The lack of empathy inherent in Dominance and Empire; the Dominance of the Christian/Judeo/Muslim Human Being over the Earth and all that dwell within her; the Empire of God open only to those who qualify, Eternal Torture for those who fail.

The lack of empathy that blames the poor for being poor by categorising them as being in Gods disfavour, and them treating them as a charity case, and doing NOTHING to alter the fundamental inequities of the distribution of the materials that nurture life of which Poverty is a symptom.

The lack of empathy inherent in the Vatican’s response to the unveiling of massive abuse of children in Institutions operated by Clergy, often on behalf of the State, dating back centuries and ongoing even as I

write.

The lack of empathy demonstrated by so many adherents of Faith, that amounts to a declaration of war against all who do not share that Faith. The so-called battle or struggle between Good and Evil.

Let it be said here too, that a lack of empathy is not merely an issue for religion, but for our entire Society.

It permeates Economics, Psychiatry, Commerce, Education, Health Care, Food production and much else besides.

I submit, for your perusal, a useful document that outlines the characteristics that emerge in variant societies, where nurturing is either present or absent.

http://www.violence.de/prescott/letters/Social-Behavioral_Characteristics.pdf

Take a good look at these characteristics and again at the Society you were born into, that you had to adapt to.....

Kindest regards

Corneilius

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

Parenting tips for the 21st Century...

A few tips on Parenting in the 21st Century….

It’s irrelevant to Healthy Parenting which Century it is…… Natural Parenting is timeless, as it is determined by non linear biological, natural living processes. It is ever present. It is innate. Intrinsic.

It’s important to realise that in these times that all parents are under un-natural stresses brought on by the way of life, that is to say the Societally Mandated practices regarding work, debt, access to shelter, food and land, and power relationships as expressed throughout and promoted by the Dominant Culture. Two jobbing parents. Single Parents out of work? Is that not an oxymoron? Parenting IS work, and is absolutely vital work, and it is also more than work, much more.

 It’s pertinent to Societally Mandated Child Rearing Practices which Century it is… whilst there has been some improvement within the context of civilisations, for all indigenous gatherer hunter communities it would appear that any extended contact with western practices they experienced results in a fundamental undermining of their natural traditions. Thus whilst the west slowly makes progress, it is destroying the existing base of natural parenting  that is held in those communities

http://www.libraryindex.com/pages/1360/Child-Abuse-History-OVERVIEW.html

 It’s a valid exercise, as a parent or parent to be, to review child rearing practices, as a matter of historical interest, to help contextualise where one has entered into that history at birth. 

http://uk.ask.com/wiki/Poisonous_pedagogy

What one has forgotten that one may have learned as a child regards the rules, written and unwritten, and the mores of life held by those who cared for  or ‘reared’ us, we will automatically teach our children, coercively, or most often by manipulation  

Every child has a unique growth path that is biologically determined towards optimum health; spiritually, psychologically, physically and emotionally.

http://www.holtgws.com/learningalltheti.html

Few children in the Dominant Culture ever have their natural biologically determined needs met in full.

http://www.selfishcapitalist.com/affluenza.html

http://uk.ask.com/wiki/Nature_deficit_disorder

Most children in Gatherer-hunter Societies did have their natural biologically determined needs met in full. As nature intends.

http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/freedom-learn/200907/play-makes-us-human-vi-hunter-gatherers-playful-parenting

Recent research has absolutely proven the case that the natural child needs empathetic parenting for every baseline health measurement known.

http://www.violence.de/flyers/10principles_flyer.pdf

The child’s present is a separate reality to the adults past.

Often the adults past (his or her childhood history) unresolved experiences are directing parts of the adult’s response to the present real time interaction with or of a child in his or her care. This past driven reaction dynamic can be interrupted once one is aware of the possibility of such unconscious reactions generated by past experiences intervening in the present situation and thus colouring it, if not absolutely distorting it.

For example, quite often a parent will experience irrational irritation, or even anger, at a young child over insignificant issues, such as knocking a drink over, or making a mess at a table; the adult might become angry and may ‘decide’ to ‘punish’ or ‘chastise’ the infant (a pointless exercise in that the child will learn nothing other than to fear the parent).


http://aruhea.wordpress.com/2008/02/08/the-emotional-plague-stops-here - this article clear outlines these dynamics 


"To illustrate, a typical process of scripted emotional response may be as follows: stimulus (A innocently switches light on early in the morning, believing B to be awake); B’s reaction (fear; surprise); state of alert; realization that reaction was inappropriate to stimulus; recollection of (or rather subconscious association with) a pattern of similar events in the past, especially in early childhood, which were a source of emotional reactions designed to ward off annoying/malicious intent on the part of a parent, sibling etc.; subliminal transference of such assumed intent onto A; production of the associated emotional reaction; association on the part of A, in turn, of B’s reaction with similar prior events (unfair unpunishment in the absence of intent to harm); emotional counterreaction (anger, outrage, sense of injustice, sense of betrayal); defensive or hostile reaction by B to what is now perceived as or associated with a threat (fight, flight, freezing); situation spirals out of control…"

One of the factors behind the apparent common occurrence of these kinds of behaviours is that as the adult meets his or her own child growing through a phase that the adult had not grown through healthfully, the adult will try to suppress his or her own sense of loss and pain at that missing part, by blocking the child’s development at that precise stage… and by projecting his or her unwanted feelings onto the child  (it might manifest also at an opposite extreme by over reacting in ‘rebellion’ to their own unresolved past with a loss of boundaries, which again can be toxic to the child’s well being, as it sends confused messages to the child)

Children can sense that change towards irritation in the adult far earlier than the adult, and they begin very early to read the adults moods, to focus on the adults moods rather than on them selves, from within, as their centre.  This is the beginning of co-dependency. It is also the basis for later manipulation by State Institutions, towards a person who is less self-directed, more externally driven.

However this ability of children to read the moods of the parent can be used by the parent to help him or her develop interrupts to the older patterns. This I describe as actively LISTENING to the child in front of oneself, and of also having empathy for the child one once was. That child too read the moods of the adults who cared for him or her.

Once this is started it has to be practiced for a while before it becomes second nature, and then, later on un-necessary because empathetic relationships will emerge. It remains a life skill. It also requires that the children are enabled, or permitted to note the mood shifts and indicate when they sense the old patterns rising; at that moment the adult can simply stop, breathe a few deep breaths and begin again, after a gentle rebalancing chat with the child or children, to interact with mutual respect intact.

That respect quickly becomes mutual, supportive and empathetic. And it is that empathy that is crucial to healthy parenting. A parent with empathy for his or her self as a child and especially with regard to all that they lived through, good and bad, will always nurture their children towards their unique optimum state of health by observing who their children really are, and by avoiding projecting forgotten experiences or values or lessons onto their children, they break the old cycles of behaviour. The also liberate themselves from any learned self limiting or dysfunctional behaviour patterns. They therefore improve the habitat for all life.

A people who live by empathy will always avoid the use of power, coercion or intimidating tactics, and have no need for rules as such.

Here is an interesting essay and some good links to follow up on all of the above…. and more, so much more.. always remember that natural parenting that is empathetic is innate to our biology.

http://www.birthpsychology.com/lifebefore/early.html

Kindest regards 

 Corneilius 

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

Empathy and the failure of Ethics and Morality

A recent discussion held into the wee hours with a good friend brought out a few insights for both of us. We were chatting about parenting. And society.

We spoke of empathy and of ethics. We looked at why ethical committees of every kind routinely fail to stem the tide of abuse, corruption and other blatantly destructive behaviours.

The failure of ethics in western civilisation is perhaps definitive of western civilisation.

What are ethics?

Wikipedia describes Ethics as follows…

"Ethics (also known as moral philosophy) is a branch of philosophy that addresses questions about morality—that is, concepts such as good and bad, noble and ignoble, right and wrong, justice, and virtue.

Major branches of ethics include:

          meta-ethics, about the theoretical meaning and reference of moral propositions and how theirtruth-values (if any) may be determined;

          normative ethics, about the practical means of determining a moral course of action;

          applied ethics, about how moral outcomes can be achieved in specific situations;

          moral psychology, about how moral capacity or moral agency develops and what its nature is; and

          descriptive ethics, about what moral values people actually abide by.

Within each of these branches are many different schools of thought and still further sub-fields of study."

The key in this description is the issue of MORALS.

Wikipedia describes MORALS as follows …

"Morality (from the Latin moralities "manner, character, proper behavior") is a system of conduct and ethics that is virtuous. Morality has three principal meanings.

In its "descriptive" sense, morality refers to personal or cultural values, codes of conduct or social mores that distinguish between right and wrong in the human society. Describing morality in this way is not making a claim about what is objectively right or wrong, but only referring to what is considered right or wrong by people. For the most part right and wrong acts are classified as such because they are thought to cause benefit or harm, but it is possible that many moral beliefs are based on prejudice, ignorance or even hatred. This sense of term is also addressed by descriptive ethics."

That last line is crucial. Moral beliefs are based on prejudice, ignorance or even hatred … they leave out fear (which drives all three of those definitions) and of course what they are really talking about are BELIEF systems.

I have long made a profound distinction between 'beliefs' and 'knowledge'; the former is mental, the latter experiential; an easy analogy is thus : living in the wild, a belief about where or what is food can get you killed, knowledge will ALWAYS feed you.

Likewise we all KNOW when a 'wrong' has been committed, as any infant will quickly inform you. The truth of it is felt first, then thought about. Or not.

Natural Creatures live in knowledge and they thrive. It is obvious that the natural world KNOWS what it is doing, though that knowing is perhaps quite different from the current definition of knowledge made by ‘civilisation’. The Acorn KNOWS how to become the Oak Tree. The rain forest knows many things, from how to create rain, to how to build topsoil, filter water and share ‘resources’ so that all benefit. And it’s obvious that none of this could possibly be the outcome of a series of mechanistic ‘programmes’. The levels of precision that pertain to natural living process are far too intense for mere mechanics.

What is absolutely certain is that vast parts of the human species, mostly those who live in or around what is known as ‘civilisation’ currently live in belief, and that civilisation accepts only one form of knowledge as being valid – the reduced knowledge of science, and that part of the human species, while many, (24% of all adults uses anti-depressants at one time or another) do not thrive, but merely survive in an atmosphere of fear, be they wealthy or impoverished. Faith is common place. Empathy is rare.

Experiential knowledge is routinely ignored. Tony Blair and George Bush, and many, many hundreds of thousands of people worked together to launch the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, in full knowledge of the possible consequences for the people who live in those countries. The imposition of IMF policies around the world is another example. The BP Oil spill currently destroying the Gulf of Mexico is another… Empathy has no place in these activities.

That civilisations and hierarchies tend towards morality as a system, an externally imposed set of rules is the norm, the base. Indeed all civilised religious belief systems outline in some detail a range of restrictions that are supposed to be guides in moral behaviour, and while certain commonalities exist, such as ‘thou shalt not kill’ and ‘honour thy mother and thy father’, there are massive variations, which fall under the cloak of ‘cultural differences’ and which while they are protected by the concept of ‘multi-culturalism’ or ‘free speech’ or ‘religious freedom’ actually work to divide people along cultural lines – what is accepted in one culture is maligned in another.

Likewise Secular Law is divided into what is called ‘common law’ and ‘statuary law’, or ‘civil law’ and ‘criminal law’ and there’s a further division under the guise of ‘contract law’. And there are hundreds of thousands of pages of detailed definitive law concerning how citizens in any state are to be controlled, managed and the affairs of local and national governance conducted.

Nowhere in any of these is the word empathy used. Thus ethics in business, law and religion are most often devoid a discussion of the fundamental quality of empathy, a quality that emerges from within the very biology of life. I have written of this before, so there is little to add other than empathy is a bio-logical imperative. Well actually, there is. It can’t be stated often enough that empathy is, amongst many things, not least the ability to feel ‘into’ the world in ways that enable a thorough comprehension of what it is that is being felt into – a form of observation of reality that pertains to every cell, a reading of the habitat and all that is in it.

To fully sense the ‘other’ in human terms, to feel what the other might be feeling, not merely to ‘understand’ it as an intellectual exercise and to be able to respond appropriately is the core of mother-child bond.

The baby in the womb lives in an empathetically direct connection with his or her mother, and this is a two way communication that operates at the biological level as much as the conscious level. For that link to be conscious, the mother herself has to be aware of that link and attuned to it. For that link to survive birth, the child-mother bond must absolutely not be broken, and must be retained throughout infancy… mere ‘care’ does not suffice, for the infant feels the fact of the missing empathy, and the developing neural pathways of empathy do not grow.

Another way to look at this is to understand that an empathetic parent cannot strike a child not because she or he knows it is worn, but because he or she ‘feels’ the impact of the blow upon the child even as the thought arises, as though they themselves were being hit. And chooses then to engage with the child, as one would with another person of equal standing…

When an a baby or infant is left to cry, he or she is learning that their gurgling communications will not be understood or empathetically felt and therefore not responded to, and so learns to cry to alert the parent to his or her need as the only means left. The same applies to all dysfunctional childhood behaviours – they are the learning’s that arise from un-empathetic parenting.

Parents whose own childhood experience they have forgotten, who have themselves been left to cry (as has been, and remains, common in many civilised and religious communities) find this crying distressing, not because of what their children are experiencing, but because the wounding’s they have forgotten are being stimulated again. And so they seek to control the child to protect themselves. This is a dynamic that pertains to society, to governance and to all controlling behaviours. This dynamic is of course rationalised as being ‘for your own good’.

Many people will attest that the beatings they received as children did them no real lasting harm.

The truth is that within civilisation and most of not all organised religions that link is broken, damaged, avoided and lost. Someone somewhere intended that break, that loss. Someone somewhere sees some personal benefit in ensuring that that loss is near permanent.

And that is the loss of empathy, a lost that ethics alone cannot counter. This is why ethics fails to deliver.

This is all carefully masked by the way people, as infants and children, and then as adults are forced to ‘adapt’ to this dysfunctional state, by the rationalisations of Organised Religions, Civilisations Institutions, Economics and Science and by the need to ‘survive’ in a coercive world, where food, shelter and the basics of life are denied all those who for whatever reason do not work for the ‘economy’.

Adapt or die out is the message to all the indigenous peoples who live on, within the land. The history is clear on this, and the practice exists today, and is in full flow.  Adapt or die is the message to the natural child. That is what Ritalin says to children who resist the imposed hypocrisy of their parents and the State Schooling system. Ritalin and SATS replace violence as a means of behaviour modification.

The result is the same either way. Damaged children. Some, who show the symptoms, and are ‘diagnosed’, and the others who mask the symptoms and successfully conform. And work for the ‘economy’.

That lack of empathy inhere’s in much of what even avowedly ‘good’ people are led believe – for many religions, those outside of their particular belief system are condemned, and thus even good honest people will routinely act in destructive ways. Even good people support the troops. Some of the troops are good people too. But that should in no way be used to excuse them from the consequences, the truth of what they are engaged in.

We must begin to return to empathy as a primary source of information about HOW to live together, with each other as people and with all of nature as equally living beings if we are to thread a path towards a sustainable human existence on Earth.

Kindest regards Corneilius 

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