Bears, Women and Men : internalisation of cultural values, development of affective state self-regulation.

A Bear in the Woods.....

Image by Erik Mandre via Shutterstock

Historically, for the major part of the existence of Homo sapiens, the people who lived in forests and woodlands were largely formed of egalitarian cultures.

The peoples that lived in forests knew and understood bears because they had lived together for many tens of thousands of years. The bears knew them. They knew each other well.

In egalitarian cultures rapes are rarer than bear attacks. And bear attacks are exceedingly rare. When they do happen, it is usually due to an accident rather than a deliberate intentional common action, a standard behavioural pattern.

So the issue raised by the bear question is a cultural issue.

No baby is born with a bigotry already in place.

There are no misogyny genes, there are no warrior genes, there are no racism genes, there are no xenophobia genes.

Our behaviour, is this regard, is learned within a cultural context. Hierarchically violent cultures curate bigotries.

We learn to walk, we learn to talk. We are taught to speak. Language is learned. Take an infant born to a mother in one language, and place that infant within another language group, and the child will learn the language of the secondary language group. There is no gene for any specific language.

Our learning of behaviour as we grow up occurs in and is influenced by the culture within which we live.

We internalise the values of the culture in such manner as to feel them as part of our core sense of self, our very identity. 

The invisible brain?

I have posted a link to an interesting (quite dense) lecture by Allan Schore on the neurobiology and neuroendocrinology of the development of emotional or affective state self regulation, with regards to the potential impacts of living conditions, environment, cultural practice upon these processes.

What goes one in our brains has been invisible, and is now being revealed as technology improves in examining brain development with empirical science tool kits.

There is the matter too of sex brain development, much of which occurs early in gestation, which is highly vulnerable to environmental influences, coming from and through the mother. we now know that brain sex dimorphism is much more complex with a greater range of variables and outcomes which indicate that the trans experience - of sensing oneself as being of the other biological sex - is indeed a natural part of human variability. For now, though, we are addressing the meaning and implications of The Bear Question.

The Bear Question.

The issue then, with regards the Bear Question, for women, is that within the dominant cultural setting on Earth is it stands today 'our lived experience is that many, many men are dangerous to us, and we cannot reliably predict when meeting men which ones are dangerous and which ones are not, in that the majority of men do seem to operate with a sense of entitlement to our bodies as sexual objects to be used, owned, possessed, exploited and discarded as a medium of the Mens Power in this culture and that there is no way to tell in advance as to which adult males are safe and which are not, and the tension of living with that is intolerable, not to mention the actual harms caused....."

And the only people who can change that are the men who call themselves allies of women.

Specifically the genuinely safe men MUST take a stance of confronting the unsafe attitudes that unsafe men hold, within this culture, and that means confronting them directly, robustly and without equivocation. All the time. Until the problem is no longer a problem. It also means confronting every structure of social power that extolls the values of the hierarchy of power, wealth and phenotype.

It is a problem with and of Men who internalise the patriarchal hierarchy cultural values in ways that are a life threatening and life altering problem for Women. Women are correct to point it out.

As a man, I understand the problem is a cultural problem, and I am part of that culture, to the extent that I have and carry any internalisation of the dominant cultural values and then express them in my thinking and my behaviour.

I have a responsibility to confront that culture. To myself, to all women, to all children. Just by being alive and aware of the problem.

It is not about 'me' and I cannot take it personally, even if my confrontation with other men on this is personal, as in one to one. 

It is about us, all of us. 

Men, women and children.

I was sexually assaulted, brutalised, psychologically abused and mistreated as a child, on a daily basis, and that abuse was mostly perpetrated by adult men. That is my lived experience.

Nuance required.

All our sons: The neurobiology and neuroendocrinology of boys at risk.

Allan Schore gives a detailed lecture on what was known in 2017 about the neurobiology and neuroendocrinology of boys at risk. 
His work on the development of emotional self regulation, on the development of the systems within the brain that handle emotional state self directed management helps us understand that there are dynamics that start in utero, and that continue throughout life, that mediate the ways in which we process and handle our emotional states healthfully or otherwise. The developing brain is extremely sensitive to the environmental condition of the mother.
The nuance here is that each child grows up within a cultural setting, a socio-economic condition, a familial environment where many variables come in to play in the formation of formerly invisible neurobiological processes that underpin our behaviour. When we are looking at behaviour, it is important to take this new information into consideration. This helps avoid stereotyping, categorisation and other dehumanising attitudes so often embedded in discussions of adverse behaviour patterns. We are all human, we were all innocent babies. 
In this lecture Allan Schore explores what happens for boys at risk, that is to say boys who for reasons outside their control or responsibility are exposed to trauma, neglect, maternal distress, familial distress in regards the maturation of biological systems undermining emotional development and learned behaviour.
This does not form a basis for absolving adults of accountability for harm causation, and it does offer a way to respond that is more concerned with prevention, health and safety than punishment. 
For my purposes I have included this here as an indicator of preventative measures that can be taken, informed by current and developing knowledge of neurobiology and neuroendocrinology, to reduce the incidence of male distress, male psychopathology and male violence as part of the overall work to meet the challenges of the bear question.
A friend responds.
I asked a friend of mine to read over this, and she made these comments, which I publish here with her permission.

“some excellent points and thoughts there.

Reading it reminded me of my other experience yesterday in a charity shop…..found a beautiful Italian leather evening style handbag in a stunning shade of turquoise…

was checking out its suitability for my needs in terms of pockets etc. it looked like it had never been used….I felt something in a pocket and thought it might be a lighter but couldn’t find which pocket it was in and the shape was a bit different so I excitedly thought it might be a small roll of cash

NOPE it was a penknife

I then took it up to the ladies at the till who were shocked and apologetic, I made a comment along the lines of whoever previously owned the bag was like me because that’s the sort of thing I’d feel the need to carry on a night out - the shop assistants and other shoppers then had a open conversation about women having such items in their bags for protection…..age range was about 20-75 years old - we all admitted to having done this, we all also agreed knife crime and carrying knives was bad.”

This anecdote, as I wrote previously was provided by a good friend of mine, a woman I respect and admire every much as a friend and fellow humane being, who describes herself as a “handbag granny :  as I am a fine example of how strong and determined women become after a life time of having to be tough….yeah it would be lovely to have become old and still be floating around without a care in the world having experienced no trauma or hardship but reality isn’t like that and life makes women tough”.

She also wrote this : “I’d say between the ages of 18 and about 45 I’d regularly carry something in my bag that could easily double up as a weapon if needed when I was going somewhere that I didn’t know was 100% safe, so 99% of the time I had a weapon in my bag and at times that would be in my hand if I was walking somewhere dark etc even if that was just a rolled up umbrella or a large set of keys. For women I think this is just instincts now, it’s not even something we think about - we just do it. Even a heavy overloaded handbag swung in the right way can knock a man off his feet, I think a granny recently took out a jewellery store thief in this way… 

She posted this link... https://youtu.be/ySBxMMidbEg?si=6czEfjh5Xd9A4FM_

Culture

Have you ever looked back on a moment and wondered if you made the right choice? Professor Robert Sapolsky has, but he believes that there was no actual choice at that moment. 

Professor Sapolsky has staked out an extreme stance in the field: we are nothing more than the sum of our biology, over which we had no control, and its interactions with the environment, over which we also had no control. Explore what it looks like to reject the notion of free will and how doing so can be liberating rather than paralyzing and despairing.

However , he points out that the kind of culture into which we are born, and the kind of culture our mothers were born into, which sets the conditions of their lived experience, has profound impacts upon us in utero, impacts that remain largely invisible yet present as behavioural patterns and dynamics. Because culture is the setting that is created by human interaction, there is room for the possibility of change. And that is exactly what this blog is all about.

Kindest regards

Corneilius

Thank you for reading this blog.

"Do what you love, it is your gift to universe."

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Externalised Costs - The Effluent in the Room is not an Elephant.

All industrial production systems currently operating or envisaged rely upon externalised costs at every stage from extraction of raw materials through production, consumption and on to end of life disposal, as the primary source of their profitability. This means that toxic outputs from industrial processes are not mitigated, let alone prevented. They are accepted, normalised, hidden away until they impress upon us by presenting as problems, and they are integral to the profitability of the Industrial Competing Powers system.

Ordinary people, especially the low income workers, are the people who do the work that makes most of the real wealth in this system, largely through daily toil, and the wealth workers generate is extracted and accumulated, and withheld, often by force and structures of Power. We have direct evidence of this in recent times from an 1982 Cabinet Discussion Paper written post Falklands War, when the establishment was feeling particularly confident.

The poor are a permanent (deliberately so) externalised cost of Wealth Extraction. Poverty and homelessness are both externalised costs of the Wealth Extraction. Resources are deliberately withheld from those who genuinely need them, as part of driving people into low paid work (to maximise profit taking) and destitution is maintained as a cultural whip..

The destruction of indigenous pre-conquest culture was an externalised cost of conquest. Conquest is always a business proposition, in that it requires massive investment and a demand for returns greater than the investment, in blood and treasure.

Chronic stress of industrial extraction and business working practices  -  mining, deforestation, repetitive assembly work, boring work,low waged shop and hospitality staff, military service - is an externalised cost of the imposed work ethics that demand 'productivity'.

What does 'externalised' mean? It means that somebody else or some other organism outside the transactional economics of the extraction, manufacturing, production, sales, consumption and disposal dynamic pays the price, often with a degraded quality of their lives, or even often with their lives, in order that the maximal profits are generated, and hoarded.

⁠
All the harms we see are - pollution, environmental degradation, air toxicity, climate change, habitat loss, species extinction, poverty, war fare, racism, misogyny, xenophobia, homophobia, social and national divisions and hatreds - are the accumulated externalised costs of the existing Industrial Militarised Hierarchy of Competing Powers, a cult system and its behavioural dynamics.

It is a cult. It is a toxic delusion to call it 'civilised'.

It certainly does not have to be this way. This activity and this cult does not define the Human species. It is a cult, an aberration, an abomination. It is not natural, optimally healthy human species behaviour by any measure.

What ever your stance, unless you are willing to engage with this simple fact, and actively seek ways to resolve that problem, by understanding precisely what those externalised costs are, and how they impact us all, and what we must do to prevent those costs arising or at least pay for them to be resolved, in full, our work on these issues is futile.



Kindest regards

Corneilius

Thank you for reading this blog.

"Do what you love, it is your gift to universe."

This blog, like all my other content creation work is not monetised via advertising. If you like what I present, consider sharing my content. If you can afford the price of a cup of coffee or a pint of beer/ale/cider for a few months, please donate via my Patreon account.

https://patreon.com/corneilius

https://www.reverbnation.com/corneilius

https://www.corneilius.net

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Optimal Human Health and Power's disruption of same.

In biology, in the ‘natural world’, all organisms are mandated towards optimal health for the individual as part of optimal health for the species, in the habitat that they inhabit.

This mandate is fundamental to all biology, and has both intrinsic and extrinsic qualities.

This applies to human beings as individuals, as localised communities and as a species.

This mandate towards optimal human health has persisted throughout the entire existence of the species.

The long term existence and thriving of human beings as a species is founded on this mandate towards optimal human health being met.

In terms of that long term existence, that long term thrivival of human societies, certain qualities are associated with optimal human health.

Self empathy as part of a healthy sense of self, empathy for others, robust physical health and well being, responsive intelligence, autonomy and the desire and ability to effectively co-operate with others to meet both individual and collective needs.

These are all markers of optimal human health, in as much as collectively and individually they lend themselves to long term sustained living cultures capable of meeting the challenges and the constant changes in habitat and environment, through learning and growing by experience and by reflection.

Sense of self is an emergent quality. It is based on inner experience meeting external recognition.

The externalisations of the baby, the infant, the child that is to say the inner experience which is articulated by movement, facial expression and sound, when recognised and understood by caring adults, and therefore responded to accurately, helps the infant or child to develop a healthy sense of self - the recognition by the caring adult allows the infant to become more secure that his or her inner experience and articulation of same as being valid.

“I am in discomfort, I need winding” articulated by cries and face squirming is met by “You are in discomfort and need winding.” followed by action by the caring adult to adjust the babies position, rub his or her back etc… leading to ease for the child…  this tells the child that his or her self perception is accurate. There is a mutual feedback loop between baby and carer, which both inform each other, and verify each other...

This experience leads towards healthy self empathy, self understanding, which is the basis for empathy for others.  This process can also be disrupted. If it is disrupted over lengthy periods, then the emergence of healthy self empathy will likewise be disrupted, and may lead towards a pathology, a dysfunctional 'persona'.

Infants will also internalise aspects of the external world as part of their healthy growth – so they will  internalise the love and care with which they are treated, they internalise aspects of the habitat they grow into which allows them to navigate it’s complexities, they internalise aspects of the various age groups they experience within their community so that they have an accurate life time picture from cradle to grave so to speak, and these deepen their capabilities in terms of sustained health, as parents to be and as members of a diverse community.

This internalisation is biologically as well as socially mandated, the child needs to internalise aspects of the world into which she or he is growing as well as develop a healthy sense of self through experience… so that he or she is capable of operating in a concrete reality with accuracy and healthy affect, and all these are essential qualities in terms of long term survival and thriving.

All of these are markers of optimal human health.

There is a problem, though.

All of these markers are now under chronic stress in the modern Dominant Society, and in the UK, where I live..

The State, an artifice of Power,  demands that children internalise and thus identify with the externals of Nationalism, The Flag, The Motherland, "British Values".

Organised and centralised religions demand a similar internalisation of their values.

Football clubs set up players as role models.

Media portrays men and women in an idealised fashion and most often the dysfunctional is portrayed as normal. No one I know could live with the ‘heroic’ people in movies as their roles are played, or actors, footballers, models, politicians … let alone the ‘ordinary’ people, the b-listers, as portrayed in movies…

Thus healthy self empathy is undermined, because it is constantly being challenged, put under pressure and ultimately replaced corrosively with another external identity, which serves Power rather than the individual or the community, and from that much else flows that is damaging to optimal human health.

One can also speak of massive trauma such as occasional natural events or disasters, and the more frequent trauma of intentional war prosecuted by States and other actors, the ubiquity of inter-generational trauma as a result of unresolved inter state conflict, commercially driven social conditioning, social dysfunction etc all of which remaining unresolved will affect the development of optimal human health in individuals and communities, for successive generations, across diverse populations.

For most people it is relatively easy to understand some few aspects of these dynamics in terms of an abusive family dynamic – we all know of families whose lives are blighted by addiction, bullying, child abuse, domestic violence and so on.

However there is a distinct lack of initiative to resolve these dynamics that is all too common, and yet it need not be that way.

And when it comes to the culture as a whole, and to power and politics in particular, there is in most people's perspective a dreamscape, an illusion, is what persists in the 'mainstream' rather than a well articulated and accurate description of concrete reality as it is and as it affects peoples lives.

It is absolutely critical to the future generations that we, in this information age, do all that we can to address this disruption of self empathy that leads to such inaccurate and dysfunctional perceptions upon which Power now sits enthroned.

Reading yourself

Read yourself with self empathy and you will discover more of value..

The 'ego' theory in psychology is derived from Freud's drive theories (which were his way of avoiding certain truths about how adults behaved towards children in his day)... It is also a copy or repetition of the Christian concept of the 'devil within'. Both are massive errors and very damaging, because they lead adults to over control children, often by threats, intimidation and withdrawal of love. They perpetuate chronic stress on children.

We are biologically mandated towards optimal human health, and that includes a healthy sense of self, and if that mandate is disrupted, with regard to how we develop our healthy sense of self, and there is no way to address the situation while we are growing up, then we may develop a wounded sense of self, or an unrealistic sense of self, or a damaged sense of self.

Healing that is a matter of developing self empathy, and empathy for the child we were in the situation we were in, and not a matter of controlling the 'ego' or regarding the wounded ego in a negative light.

Religion?
All Religions are equal in this analysis, yet not all parents are - there ARE parents within those traditions who do not bully, intimidate etc or indoctrinate their children. Just as there are parents who are 'secular' and at the same time cruel towards their children. One has to bear this in mind at all times. One has to be careful with generalisations and be prepared to always drill into each particular case, as required.

That said, the statistical significance and social outcomes of institutionally approved controlling behaviours, be they stimulated, permitted or inspired by Ideology, Religiosity, or as a result of trauma and other disruptions are such that we cannot afford to ignore them, and the Religions and States that permit them must be challenged on all indoctrination processes, and on all threat/intimidation based pedagogies.

I refuse to allow my work to be bent to one agenda or another

It's vital for my work to remain clear, unambiguous and focused -the issue is how we adults relate to THE NATURAL CHILD and how we adults NURTURE the natural child within the context of a Nurturant Society.,as an expression of optimal human biological health.

Meeting the mandate of optimal biological health.

This means for me, at least, the ending of war and of all hierarchical violence, and being in the best possible position to deal with the impacts of poverty, climate changes,  habitat changes etc etc.

This unites all issues without becoming an ideology - it is designed to resist being co-opted, and as such it ought to stand as a direct challenge and alternative pathway to all Hierarchically Violent Power Structures and dysfunctional Social Systems.

Kindest regards

Corneilius

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

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

Internalised Values.

I was born in 1959, in Catholic Ireland, a system of Religious and Political control rooted in unresolved trauma.

A PTSD Culture. Intergenerational Trauma describes how children born to traumatised parents grow into that PTSD psychology, because children must as the environment presents.

The 'phrase' : "One must sometimes be cruel to be kind" ..... as opposed to "it is cool to be kind".
 
Having internalised the values of the system into which I was born, (as is 'normal' ) I adjusted to shame, I became guilt ridden, fearful, grasping, envious, angry, spiteful; I behaved like a bully and tried to exercise control over those 'close to me' on a minute by minute basis to meet my unresolved need, the need for self empathy, a need I did not understand.

Thus it was a need I could not meet. 

I tried to 'fit in'. I wanted to 'survive'.

The concept of 'thriving' was unknown to me.
 
Because in internalising those values I became less human, less humane. I learned to mimic love whilst feeling only fear, whilst burying the fear..... 
I carried off the illusion by 'being nice', by conforming, even though I had a ferocious temper, an irrational spark that ignited from time to time.

I became firstly religious, then ideological.. Then I became a technocrat, and even an 'atheist'.

All the while I rejected any exposure of this internalisation, accidental or intentional, as an attack on my very psyche.

I ran from love because I could not love myself. I could not love myself because those who had 'reared' me could not provide a living example of what they themselves did not know. Self empathy.

What love I thought I felt was in reality an insecure attachment to a projected image, a fantasy I nurtured within which was mirrored in the fantasies, stories and mythology of the system into which I was born. I adapted and adjusted.

I bought the products, I read the novels, I watched the movies. These reinforced the internalisations of the system. I thought I was safe.

Then I broke down. I did not understand why I broke down and thus was frightened, terrorised by my own need to grow more human, more humane.

I broke down a number of times before I was able to start finding myself, through understanding what had happened to me as a child, and how I had reacted to that, how I 'adapted' unconsciously to 'survive', to 'fit in'.

It took a long time, with many pitfalls and many tears, many nightmares and many dead ends, to examine what I had internalised and to let those internalisations fall away, to die to the system, to compost my trauma, to begin to nurture my own present, and my children's present, my own future and the futures of my children and their children in turn.

I did not do this by challenging the system, by protesting, though these are indeed necessary actions. Quite often my protest was incoherent, my challenges based on 'morality' rather than insight.

Fracking is inhumane.

Fracking is a symptom of a disease state.

Fracking is all about profit and power as substitutes and toxic mimes for being truly human, being truly alive; a toxic mime of natural self mastery.

'Progress' is a toxic mime of nurturing life. Civilisation is a toxic mime of the fecundity of the natural world.

The frackers are dehumanised people. To end fracking they must be exposed, somehow, to a humanising experience, largely of their own choosing. An aware choice is the only means to break free from the dehumanising situation they are in.

Protesting is a first step in that direction, it is an invitation to become more human. It is a gift.

The toxic mime of self mastery that is 'progress' involves mastering others through coercion. This is what war is all about. This is what teachers are taught as teaching. Policemen as policing. Politicians as Governance. Priests as Spirituality. Coercion can be psychological as much as physical.

The pathological will always ignore the costs others pay for the pathological behaviour in order to protect themselves from full awareness of themselves, to preserve the illusion they live within. I did. For a long time.

The system will not change voluntarily because it IS a system, an unconsciously built construct, a box, a thing which has no real life, that is not truly living for it cannot nurture the world which it fears, and tries to control. It will not respond to protest other than to broker a deal for it's own survival, and it's reactions are lethal.

Iraq, Libya, Egypt. All in the name of 'democracy'. The War on Terror, the War on Drugs. All in the name of protecting the people. Lies. Santa Claus.

The necessary lies of those who have internalised the values of the system. The Daily Mail. The Vatican. Myself.

When I lied to myself I was trapped. When I let the truth in, my escape was made more likely, though not inevitable.

Kindest regards

Corneilius

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