Cosmologies and the social material reality - a conflict of interest

On Cosmology in the context of these difficult times, all difficult times.

"The grooming (gaslighting) of human vulnerability is one of most vile things any human being can do to another."

The Garden Path

I hold the view that every person has the ability, and thus the natural right, to craft their own Cosmology. We are all imaginers even as we imagine entirely different things...

After all, that is a function of autonomy, as a living human being, as a person, within a family or community. One's own imagination is both tool and gift, and a pleasure - and yet if it is distorted, it can become a trap. cPTSD reveals to us some of the ways that the imagination can become distorted. 

Thus it follows that no person has the right to extend their cosmology to others, beyond themselves as an imposition. We can share our imaginings, explore their ways out of interest and variety and at the same time there is no  natural right to indoctrinate others, no right to demand resources or money for 'lessons' in any given cosmology, and certainly no right to create, maintain a following of believers.

All of that is manipulation, it is exploitative. These are all ways of accruing power over others.

I set that in the context of the shared space between us, the Common.

This is the ground upon which we walk, it includes the air we all breath, the water cycle pathways from which we drink, which water our foods,

The Commons is shared by and includes all creatures as neighbours, even the ones hunted for food.

And of course, the Commons includes the psycho-social material space between us as biologically aware intelligent social organisms and that requires an evidence based approach on all matters that affect that shared spaced. 

There's a fundamental balance in this. This is the space within which entire forests thrive. It is how complex ecosystems function - accurate information flowing through the commons. The Oceans are another commons.

In matters of the shared commons, I respectfully suggest that nothing less than all the evidence available can stand as the basis for action. 

Where we don't know, we must acknowledge that and then we study to know honestly, for only then can we answer those questions and take appropriate action. Which can include doing nothing at all. Leaving a forest to it's peoples is a way of doing something genuinely nurturing by doing nothing.

Therefore I suggest that belief and personal cosmology are inappropriate and unsafe a foundation in the domain of action within any  shared space, within the commons - a belief might pose a question:  even so, that can only be answered by direct evidence.  Until then, it remains an unknown.

I suggest then, that we keep our personal cosmologies as part of our art-imagination-play, a colourful hue, a filter if you will allow, within the white light of the whole - the family, community, culture, our shared environment.

That is the Egalitarian way. 

Personal Autonomy, Collective Evidence based action.

We now understand that a large part of the continuity of this balance is, in social bio-behavioural terms,  maintained primarily out of the conditions of parenting - from conception then birth through the first 18 -24 months of  life, where the fundamentals of emotional self regulation are formed and learned, in the brain to brain relationship between infant, toddler and primary care givers. 

Under what conditions, social and material, is early years care conducted?  Do they distort the default states that our biology clearly mandates for healthy behavioural learning and personal growth towards self mastery?

These are cultural behavioural markers, bench marks if you will of the prevailing relationship dynamics.

What are the cultural relationship dynamics and how do those reflect knowledge or belief - in essence, the question is do they conflict with biological defaults.?

The new brain meets a mature brain which nurtures and protects the new brain until that brain is ready for wider associations and participation. That is a default, a biologically mandated process.

We see the body, we do not see the internal organs, we do not see the inner workings of the clock. 

Allan Schore's work, following on from Prescott and Bowlby, with much improved scientific tools, and a vast body of work, describes the biology of emotional development, of self regulation and mastery of one's self - these are essential for autonomy and effective community 

He describes the carer brain to infant brain dynamics that we do not see :  what happens neurologically, what hormones, what cascades of proteins, what linkages are growing within both carer and cared for - all mediated by the security of the shared space between them.

Robert Sapolsky describes the wider unseen biology, beyond the carer to cared for, the world of truama, stress, hierarchy, 'human' behaviour and culture.

A baby that is set aside, crying itself to sleep, as a regular occurrence will develop and habituate a neurology and endocrine state as if that trauma state of feeling abandoned is normal - over a lifetime that distortion creates stresses on the body, that emerge as disease.

This is, of course, a simplification of the work of these intelligent, diligent Scientists and writers. Their work is, to a degree, a simplification of the carefully, honestly observed biological level complexity of how we develop into healthy mature organisms or not - they describe that level of biology in order that we see the evidence, that it informs us more accurately.

Knowledge is the base from which accurate intuition emerges. 

With all that in mind I wrote a short piece in 2017, when I was hoping for a shift in parliamentary power from the Oligarchs to the people via Momentum, Corbyn with what I believed the large sector of the electorate being decent human beings would want

What are the metrics of healthy Governance?

https://dwylcorneilius.blogspot.com/2017/05/a-metric-for-governance-uk-election-2017.html

In this piece I lay out some very simple principles, which are the requirement for an evidence based policy formulation by any group of people concerned with the shared commons, the spaces between us.

 

Kindest regards

Corneilius

"Do what you love, it is your gift to universe, in a Buckie sort of way....  you know what I mean."

Internalised Values or Externalised Experience, and Resistance.

"Resistance is not a question of intellect, it is a matter of access to the true self." Alice Miller ..

Understand the culture you were born into.

Understand the biology and the nature of the natural baby, infant, child, and the natural adult.

The baby, being natural, externalises his or her internal world, he or she communicates how they feel, what they want, what they fear, which are all internal experientials, and if this is met with empathy, if the mother and father and other carers, and siblings understand and respond appropriately, then the child grows in confidence that his or her inner world is understood, validated... it is this experience that writes in the neurology and physiology of self empathy, from which empathy for others emerges. Neuro-plasticity is the term that describes this quality of an alterable brain, a developing structure dependent not on programmed genetic but on experience for it's natural formation and development.

If, on the other hand, for whatever reason, the baby is met not with empathy but confusion, fear or anger or excessive control or projection, then this crucial learning cannot happen, and the baby learns to adapt to the external world and internalises the values of that world in experience, thus replacing her or his inner world with these externals, leading to self alienation. This is the basis of all neuroses.

ALL indoctrination processes, be they Religious or State Education, or Military Training etc deepen this process of internalisation of the external world, which leads to a state of fundamental neurosis as a normative.


Poisonous Pedagogy is the term applied to this entire phenomenon.

Power based social systems demand that all who are born into them undergo this process, because that is the deepest undermining of resistance... that it is not a perfected process speaks to the innate resilience and self healing of the human being as a natural organism. Power systems are continually refining their indoctrination processes to meet this emergent resistance. This is what 'reform' usually means in effect.

That said, the effects of such processes are statistically significant, and are enough to perpetuate such systems of power relationships as complete cultures...

Power systems can handle the few rebels, the few insightful writers and teachers, the few who are able to pierce the bubble. They can be portrayed as 'heroes' or as 'demons' depending upon the circumstances, yet hat portrayal will always separate them from the 'norm', which is it's intention - to turn such people into super humans, people one cannot hope or should not hope to emulate...

People are not to be blamed for being falling into the conditioned state - we are all of us vulnerable, and those who seek to help Society into recovery must bend their efforts to supporting that recovery by nurturing others, by developing humanising behaviours and processes which lead to that sense of self, of autonomy and connection that emerges from self empathy.

This explains the all too common phenomenon of people 'trying to find themselves.'

And of course, many cults and religions prey on this by providing an erstatz identity within a communal setting..... so too with nationalism, etc etc etc

"Resistance is not a question of intellect, it is a matter of access to the true self." Alice Miller ..

Kindest regards

Corneilius

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