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

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

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

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

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


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

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

David Smail - Biographical Note

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

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

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

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

David Small interview on Youtube.

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

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

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

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

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

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

They KNOW this.

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

This they have chosen to not cede.

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

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

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

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

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

Kindest regards

Corneilius

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 - donations gratefully received

https://www.reverbnation.com/corneilius - .mp3 songs

https://www.soundcloud.com/coreluminous - .wav Songs

https://www.corneilius.net - Archive

#folkmusic
#singersongwriter
#blogger
#music

Letter to News Media - Report of IICSA England and Wales ought to send shock waves through English Society

Of these two, which one would be more likely to respond robustly to the IICSA report?

To The Editor

Last week The Report of the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse in England and Wales was delivered.

"The protection of personal and institutional reputations above the protection of children was a frequent institutional reaction. Statutory agencies were not informed, perpetrators were ‘moved on’ and there were failures by those in authority to thoroughly investigate allegations. Records about child sexual abuse allegations were not kept."

This is a pattern familiar to all Irish, Australian, Canadian and American Survivors of Clerical Child Sexual Abuse, Magdalene Laundries, Mental Asylums, Boarding Schools, Day Schools, Adoption Services, Foster Homes, Care Homes and other institutional care settings. 

It is also a pattern familiar to Rape survivors, Domestic  Abuse Survivors and many others.  Indeed, Jeremy Corbyn might be familiar with this cultural reactionary pattern.

The protection of status, image and financial interests of institutions over rides meeting the needs of those who were harmed. That is the pattern.

The publishing of this critically important report was completely over cast by the Conservatives "election-election-election!" soap opera dominating the news cycles in England.

It is true that there is a lot to contend with given the many crises we are all currently enduring. 

Nonetheless, this report ought to send shock waves through English Society at large, just as similar Public Inquiries elsewhere have done.  We ought be appalled at it's conclusions and be evermore determined to change that pattern to one of open, transparent accountability and a robust program of prevention of harm to children, and others rendered vulnerable by power disparity of any kind.

It is therefore both a tragedy and an act of supreme negligence that Labour leader Starmer and others in UK Parliament and indeed the News Media that they are not on the ball on this. One might have hope that 'lessons learned' in other cases might be applied here, but the outlook is not positive. 

How can Irish society help our neighbours, across English society, to confront this cultural problem?

Kindest Regards

Corneilius Crowley

Harrow, London, 

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 - donations gratefully received

https://www.reverbnation.com/corneilius - .mp3 songs

https://www.soundcloud.com/coreluminous - .wav Songs

https://www.corneilius.net - Archive

#folkmusic
#singersongwriter
#blogger
#music

The Human Species is fine, it is the Culture that is the problem.

I have been thinking, reading, writing about hierarchically violent social and cultural behavioural characteristics for 30 years, dipping into the best work I could find, work done in the past, work being done today by serious, hardworking scientists, clinicians, practitioners and by trauma survivor populations.  This study is as much a study of myself and my lived experience in this culture I was born into. There are personal elements to this pursuit as well as global concerns. Being a survivor informs my study. These are my biases.

What I have learned is this:

When we study the evolution of the human neuro-endocrine system and how it functions, how it relates to our emotional state, our mental and physical health we discover something. It is 'designed' or 'evolved' through natural selection for optimal health. Being a bully or being bullied is not optimal health on any possible measure.

Egalitarian life was/is generally peaceful,  humanely beautiful, physically healthy, grounded in solid emotional attachment and matured healthy affective state self regulation which reduces incidence of lost tempers and general violence because egalitarian culture nurtures the default setting of trust which is the basis of co-operation. 

“The mutual-aid tendency in man has so remote an origin, and is so deeply interwoven with all the past evolution of the human race, that is has been maintained by mankind up to the present time, notwithstanding all vicissitudes of history."

Pytor Kropotkin was correct.

.

This will upset quite a few people within this culture where self regulation is so dysregulated more often than not, where bullying is deemed as a normal if unsavoury behaviour, where hierarchy of power and wealth is assumed to be natural to the human condition, where competition and war fare is accepted as natural behaviour.

They are not. They are entirely cultural dynamics.

The roots of life.

When we look to cellular life, we see the origins of complex life in the union of two different entities, for their mutual benefit, in the process known as endosymbiosis.

 
When we pay attention to the the discovery that our human digestion is dependent upon 1000 species of bacteria for it's efficacy, we see co-operation as a core element of how our bodies function.  Even our moods are dependent upon the activity and health of bacteria in our gut.

Fungi and Forests mutual aid community. Ants, Trees and Bacteria working together.

https://slate.com/technology/2020/01/darwin-competition-collaboration-evolutionary-biology-climate-change.amp

In a fascinating article in The Slate - What if Competition Isn’t As “Natural” As We Think?

"Scientists are slowly understanding collaboration’s role in biology, which might just help liberate our collective imagination in time to better address the climate crisis.

Darwin’s legacy aside, though, one critical takeaway from all this is that we must learn to recognize the impulse to naturalize a given human behavior as a political maneuver. Competition is not natural, or at least not more so than collaboration.

This insight could hardly come at a more opportune time. With our climate crisis mounting, we dearly need new ways to think about our relationships to the diverse entities that share our planet.

Far too many environmentalists assume that people, driven by innate self-interest, are bound to harm ecology, that we will inevitably clear-cut, extract, consume, so long as it gives us an advantage over the next guy.

This leaves us deeply disempowered, with few solutions to climate change outside limiting humanity’s impact through some kind of population control.

When competitive self-interest is revealed to be a mutable behavior, the causes of climate change come into greater clarity: not human nature, but an economic system that demands competition, that distributes resources such that a tiny elite can live tremendously carbon-intensive lifestyles while the rest of us struggle for a pittance.

Leaving competition behind, we can also imagine richer solutions: climate policies that problematize the tremendous wealth of the few, that build economies concerned with collective well-being and sustainability"

The default mode of healthy human species specific social behaviour is trust.
Unhealthy behaviour is not a biological norm.

The default mode of healthy human species social behaviour is emotional trust, which is initiated in utero, developed through birth, infancy and toddler-hood, maintained into childhood, youth and adulthood through loving, bonded relationships where power disparity is rarely, if ever, abused, where empathy, compassion and insight prevail. 

Co-operative culture is probably the default behavioural setting for the human species.

Such cultures - Egalitarian or Co-operative cultures - do not appear to have any generation gap, they do not bully children, they do not go to war, they do not rape or steal, they do not create and maintain power hierarchies, and as the study of endocrinology and neurology reveals, our bodies are superbly adapted to that healthy state as our normative state. 

That said, the study of such cultures shows that conflict resolution is standard practice, after all we are human and we can be moody, we can wake up feeling out of sorts, we can become insecure, angry, jealous or envious and those feelings can and do lead to misunderstandings which can then become a point of conflict. 

If conflicts cannot be resolved, then trouble brews, and the longer it brews, the deeper it's impact on our bodies and minds.  Chronic stress is a dis-ease vector and a killer.

The Bully is not a bio-logical behavioural default.

https://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/article?id=10.1371/journal.pbio.0020106

This paper outlines a cultural shift observed in a wild population of Forest Baboons. It indicates the element of culture as a learned, brain to brain transmitted behavioural dynamic or milieu that can be passed from generation to generation, learned from infancy (possibly prepared in utero by the conditions of the mothers lived condition) through direct experience and liminal absorbtion.

"Reports exist of transmission of culture in nonhuman primates. We examine this in a troop of savanna baboons studied since 1978. During the mid-1980s, half of the males died from tuberculosis; because of circumstances of the outbreak, it was more aggressive males who died, leaving a cohort of atypically unaggressive survivors. 

A decade later, these behavioral patterns persisted. Males leave their natal troops at adolescence; by the mid-1990s, no males remained who had resided in the troop a decade before. Thus, critically, the troop's unique culture was being adopted by new males joining the troop. 

We describe (a) features of this culture in the behavior of males, including high rates of grooming and affiliation with females and a “relaxed” dominance hierarchy; (b) physiological measures suggesting less stress among low-ranking males; (c) models explaining transmission of this culture; and (d) data testing these models, centered around treatment of transfer males by resident females."

Here we see a clear example of a culture shift, a change in behaviour that emerges across an entire population of primates.

What this suggests to me is that the concept of the Violent Alpha Male as a biological archetype is more likely a projection of the hierarchically conditioned mind, a bully culture, rather than an inevitable, biological default or archetype.

Wolves in captivity are not wolves in the wild.

The term Alpha Male was coined to describe 'what happens in wolf packs'. However that 'observation' was crafted from within a prison, and blown apart as a theory in the wild. It originated from a study of male wolves in a zoo enclosure, an entirely un-natural set-up. Wolf packs are families, with Mom and Pop and their litter.  Wolves do not hang out in all single male groups ever. That never happens in the wild. One way to look at the study claiming Alpha Male wolves as an archetype is to think of a bunch of males in a prison. What kind of culture exists there?

When the same researchers went into the wild, they tried again, but did not spend much time observing in detail or taking blood samples, stool samples etc and stuck to the Alpha Male theory. Then some years later they returned to the wild, and this time spent a lot more time, gathering a lot more detail, until they finally understood that wolf packs were families, and in place of an Alpha Male they had Father Wolf, Mother Wolf and the family, and the children all had different characters, different skill sets and abilities and they all worked as a team using those differences to maximise their success. 

Culture is, as it turns out. a mammalian dynamic, and co-operation prevails.

Co-operation is normative to all and often between species.

The concept of a 'Struggle for Survival' biological competition as the archetype of biology is a dystopian fairy tale, the  projection myth of an insecure bully culture. No such thing exists. It's a way of looking at the world, rather than an observation.

The way our endocrine system functions proves this beyond all reasonable doubt. We get stressed when we get bullied, and when it becomes chronic that stress causes a wide range of physiological distortions and breakdowns. We are not 'designed' for chronic stress. It happens, yes, and it hurts and harms us long term.

Occasional stress is normal to all biology because the habitat is a dynamic environment, where changes occur, accidents happen and things can go wrong. If follows that being able to cope with the stress and return to homeostasis or balance is essential - and we see this all the time. Recovery and healing happens.

This is confirmed knowledge, tested profoundly. This is not belief.

We do not need to hang on to our negative beliefs about 'Humanity'  or the 'Human Condition'- they are just beliefs, and they confer no accuracy of perception.

The Biology Never Lies.

Biology does information rather than belief. 

Evidence matters.

Me matters. The Personal matters.

I think that for me, it started out with the evidence of my own subjective experience. Learning to be less subjective required that I step away a little from myself so that I could see the subjective rather than be overwhelmed by it all. I did not realise I was reeling from the trauma of my childhood, and when I did, in my late 30s, I started to very slowly develop more empathy for the child I was in the situation I was in. Very slowly.

Part of my 'learning' is the lived experience, examined in hind sight, often with less than 20/20 vision. 

The lived experience of surviving long term abuse as a child, and dealing with the invisible affects as they emerged, whilst living in a bully society. I am not alone in this, not at all unique.

Part of my 'learning' has been muddling through, barely coping with depression, heartache, shame, self loathing, bullying, confusion, loss, despair. Part of my 'learning' has been resilience, dogged persistence, withdrawal and the creation of an inner fortress, a form of denial in that I understood I had grown up traumatised yet I pretended it did not afflict me as much as it had, because I could not remember much, because I was not ready to deal with it. Millions of people endure this learning across the bully culture. It's all quite sad, and it's painful.

Part of my 'learning' has been reading, studying and learning from what others had to present, by way of evidence and insight. Part of my 'learning' has been through counselling and the heartfelt advice and support of close friends. Millions of people are going through this every day.

Crucially when I began to see the Social Material realities of where I was born into for what they were  - as a culture so much larger than I - I began to realise that I was, we all are, living in a bully social system. Millions of people are grappling with this realisation emerging in our lives.

I began to understand more of why I had been made to live through all of that, how everyone is living through all of that.

This awareness among the population is  growing : the Hierarchy of Power culture is inherently toxic, and it has no natural mandate.

It is sustaining a traumatising chronic stress dis-ease dynamic.

I will repeat my basic theme. The Human Species is perfectly evolved for healthy attachment, bonding, co-operation, creative intelligence as part of 'natural' behavioural dynamics of a species living in and on Earths surface. I am perfectly evolved for the co-operative culture but have been conditioned by the lived experience of growing up in this dominator culture.

As a neo-nate my brain was ready for the egalitarian lived experience yet it met the hierarchy of wealth and power experience and that changed the trajectory.

In my case, I was born a month premature, as a Rhesus baby endured a full blood transfusion without anaesthetic and started life in an incubator for two months. A whole range of biologically mandated expectations, needs that are core to the building of behavioural and neurological pathways were never met even as the doctors and nurses fought to save my life. The NHS saved my life. I am ever grateful for that State funded co-operative movement.

That was just the start. 

This hour long video presentation of a lecture by Allan Schore examines what we call attachment theory, informed by advances in scientific ability to observe detailed processes within our brains, our endocrine systems and our bodies as we grow. 

What Schore calls the brain-to-brain relationship is revealed in some detail and lends itself to the understanding of brain development and affective state self regulation in utero and in infancy that is the world of carer and child, mother and infant in those earliest, most intimate relating to one another experiences, so much without words, so deeply limbic and yet absolutely crucial to the future emotional condition of the adult to be.  

It is important to understand that even though we do not remember the detail of our experiences as neo-nates and infants. all of that experience is written into our bodies. That means much of what determines our adult emotional state is hidden from our awareness, is 'sub-conscious'. Cultures roots lie in the mists of vague memory.

Allan Schore gives a presentation on aspects of emotional development, in terms of the brain-to-brain dynamics and neurobiology of the interaction between carer, most often the mother, and the cared for infant.



Whatever the situation, the behavioural dynamic of healthy egalitarian culture has to be learned, by experience and exposure, each generation learning from the previous. Trauma and chronic stress and oppression tend to distort this learning, Violent cultures intervene in the learning - we call it 'education' set within an authoritarian hierarchy system called school - to assure the concepts of authority and it's right to exercise violence for the preservation of social order is habituated to. Sparta being the classic example.

More is being understood about this, by more and more people, as research into the biology of behaviour has made huge progress in the past 30 years.

Learning all the time.

This work that is being undertaken, diligently and seriously by many brilliant and committed people, away from the spotlights, the stages, the accolades of celebrity, work that is seeking to understand, contextualise and heal social violence, oppression, hierarchy and abuse of power is beyond any single life time; it was there before, and will be there after I or any of my readers have been long forgotten, because it is a historical process of recovery.

As is often the case the leaders of the Dominator culture have dismissed the profoundly healthy humane realities of  the older egalitarian cultures - which they call primitive or barbarian -  cultures which form the bulk of human lived experience.

They dismissed the default biologically mandated modality for co-operative human culture because it poses a threat to the Dominator culture. We can see this today in the prevalence of what is known as Free Market Fundamentalism. A culture that pretends that human society does not really exist, that meritocracy is the natural state and that those who are wealthy are innately superior to those who are poor, whilst they ignore the fact that their wealth is precisely what generates poverty for so many others.  A bully cult.

Evidence of a community grounded in healthy attachment relationships where affective state self regulation is matured by the time each reaches toddlerhood - presenting as healthy cultures that experienced no generation gaps, no organised mass warfare, no widespread sexual abuse of children or adults, cultures that thrived through healthy relationships with one another and with their habitat, for many, many tens of thousands of years, and in significant numbers

I mark my life by the quality of the relationships within which I am embedded - are they nurturant or are they destructive?

I ask the question - why not a nurturant culture? What is impeding the development of such a culture?

This work is not an evolution, and it is certainly not a revolutionary process, it is a process of recovery of healthy relationships. The evolution of the co-operative species and our culture has already been long complete. The linear model of 'progress' is in adequate to this task which all of us face going forward in our lives.

Dominance is the language of the bully. 

Coping is the language of the bullied, who cannot escape.

Revolution is the language of the status quo.  Exchanging one Power for another.

Healing is the language of healthy human behaviour.

Reducing Power disparity abuse is a prerequisite for healing and recovery from trauma.

The defining indicator, a predictor if all other data is unavailable, of a bully culture is how the institutions, the social structures and the adults relate to and treat the children. Authoritarian control, punishment/reward dynamics to assure compliance, children as projections of parents desires and perceived needs.

The defining indicator of a egalitarian culture's character is how they relate to and treat the children. Autonomy and loving, shared responsibility.

It really is a matter of existing and imposed power disparity, and who uses or abuses it under what conditions.

It has nothing to do with 'species' and everything to do with culture.

Humanity is not the problem, it is the solution.

Healing is possible, to a large degree.

Healing and recovery are biological mandates.

We live in a traumatising and traumatised culture.

The Trauma transmission is layered - Violent Hierarchies study the effects of poverty and violence on a population, to know how to exploit people's pain to maintain loyalty to the system, and to be able to continue to wage war. That is deliberate. They cause trauma deliberately.

The lived experience - ordinary folk whose lives are afflicted by the actions and behaviour of Power, ordinary folk who are caught in the crossfire of war, economic sanctions, impoverishment, who have to flee on foot, who are offered no genuine support (veterans, refugees, the no income, low income poor for example)

People are mostly are just doing the best they can to keep a lid on that chronic stress burden, so that they can look after themselves and their children.

Nonetheless there will be varying degrees of trauma behavioural transmission, and epi-genetic changes that disrupt development and behaviour, that are NOT the fault of those people, there is no malice there, and it must be understood that dynamic will impact every person affected in profound and long term ways.

The malice emerges as powerful States refuse to acknowledge this, because they are engaged in a competitive power struggle dominated by the most powerful military states, who seek dominance, globally. Obama 'twisting arms'.

I know of Indigenous groups who protected their native lands by defending with spears and arrows, guile and forest skills, who faced down Loggers, Miners, Farmers, Oil drillers and others who had guns, and no problem with using them to kill.

Decades passed and people were murdered on both sides.

Then, eventually when the defence of their lands and cultures ceased being 'operational', when they had manage to slow down the intrusions and find external international and national support for legislation to protect their lands, they withdrew and they deliberately went through a slow multi-generational healing process, so that they do not carry the wounds forwards... they did not want to become like the invaders, numbed through their own wounds.

They chose, as a community of adults, to heal. That is a fine example of biological conscious awareness and courage. That is highly evolved healthy human behaviour.

Those same groups are still facing invasion, assimilation and violence : they are stressed to the limit, because their shared habitats are under still threat, and yet they offer insight, they offer wisdom rather than seeking revenge.

The Human Species is fine, it's the culture that is the problem.

You are NOT your culture.

I am not the culture.

Therefore I will not let it be a trap that robs me of my sensitivity and humanity.
I will not let it undermine my determination to nurture the world around me, to nurture all people, our shared habitat, the common environment. Determination goes where hope falters.

Co-operation is what allowed our human species to thrive, more than any other single factor - and the evolved level of cooperation is based on healthy attachment bonding as a core element of psychological and social arrangement.

The natural society is grounded in the natural child's needs being met in full.

Bullying disrupts that and is the at the root of much harmful behaviour.

Dominator cultures are wiping out Egalitarian cultures.

If we want a future as a species, it has to be Egalitarian.

The work then is to confront the bully cult, disarm it, recover healthy relationships across all our cultures. This is doable


Kindest regards


Corneilius


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


Thank you for reading this blog. All we need to do is be really honest, responsive to the evidence we find,and ready to reassess when new evidence emerges. The rest is easy

Cambridge Analytica: the central question, avoided like the plague.

"What kind of person uses knowledge of another's psychological insecurities to manipulate that person and thus alter their behaviour to meet the perceived needs of the manipulator, even if that causes harm to others?" "What kind of organisation uses uses knowledge of a community's psychological insecurities to manipulate that community and thus alter their behaviour to meet the perceived needs of the manipulator, even if that causes harm to others?"

This is the central question about Cambridge Analytica, media propaganda and how political and economic power functions throughout our society. "In what kind of social system is this normalised?" And we see that this applies equally to all hierarchically violent social systems: Capitalism, Communism, Theocracy, Socialism ..... have all presented dysfunctional behaviour patterning. Unless we answer these questions, honestly, led by the evidence, we are powerless to counter that behaviour.

Kindest regards

Corneilius

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

Thank you for reading this blog. All we need to do is be really honest, responsive to the evidence we find,and ready to reassess when new evidence emerges. The rest is easy.

Resolving the problem of School Shootings.

I am appalled at the slaughter of children by children.

It is utterly unspeakable.



War is utterly unspeakable.

What is clear is that the adult world is wholly responsible, in both cases.

Therefore the adult world must be made accountable for all that harm, trauma, blood and guts, maiming, terror. The adults must confront the nature of the power system, which is based on competing powers, and how that afflicts governance and people's lives.....

It has to stop.

It cannot stand as inevitable.

The children are innocent.

The only way to resolve the problem of school shootings is this.

You cannot solve a problem one has created, using the same consciousness that led to that problem in the first place. The radical goes to the verifiable evidence, is ruthlessly honest, and identifies the root of the problem.

Do with it what you will, it changes nothing in terms of the quality and accuracy of this observation of a social power dynamic.

This video articulates the truth. 'A voice in the wilderness', but really it is 'a voice of the wilderness, the natural child'





Kindest regards

Corneilius

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

Thank you for reading this blog. All we need to do is be really honest, responsive to the evidence we find, and ready to reassess when new evidence emerges. The rest is praxis.

Dave and Alice, TWAT or Peace? Through the looking glass.

 

It matters that this conversation is happening. ~

It's not an easy conversation.

It has to be evidence based, or it will go badly.

This is the core discipline required.

Opinion now, in this conversation, is truly dangerous.

Look it as a genuine health and safety issue, along with belief, faith, hope or ideology - none of these can be allowed to trump the evidence (no topical pun intended...) in seeking to resolve this situation.

It will not be resolved overnight.

It can be resolved.

It is not the Sun.

It is us.

David Smail.

David Smails take on ‘reality’ is closest to what I feel :

“Hardly any of the ‘symptoms’ of psychological distress may correctly be seen as medical matters.

The so-called psychiatric ‘disorders’ are nothing to do with faulty biology, nor indeed are they the outcome of individual moral weakness or other personal failing.

They are the creation of the social world in which we live, and that world is structured by power.
Social power may be defined as the means of obtaining security or advantage, and it will be exercised within any given society in a variety of forms: coercive (force), economic (money power) and ideological (the control of meaning).

Power is the dynamic which keeps the social world in motion.

It may be used for good or for ill.

One cannot hope to understand the phenomena of psychological distress, nor begin to think what can be done about them, without an analysis of how power is distributed and exercised within society.

Such an understanding is the focus of this web-site.”

His website…

http://www.davidsmail.info/introfra.htm

Alice Miller.

Alice Miller wrote about how the institutional violence of the adult world afflicts all our children.

She traced the psychology of power through society, into human relationships, and how the influence of violent political power permeates society. Miller looked at the history of education in Europe, leading up to World War II, and examines the industrial powers influence on it to prepare each generation of children for participation in that violence, as workers or as fighters, as if it were something normal.

Something Patriotic.

Heroic.

Fighting for a Cause.

See where this is going?

FOR YOU OWN GOOD : The Roots of Violence in Child-Rearing.

Dip in.

https://www.alice-miller.com/…/the-roots-of-violence-are-n…/

She is not talking about individual parenting, (a common misconception of her intent) she looks at cultural parenting, which is often subject to belief, faith, religion, ideology or mere opinion rather than the evidence about, and of children themselves.

She explores how repeated war trauma fosters socialised violence when entire populations are subjected to violence, over time, to the extent that that history is seen as glorious.

Internalisation. Very much part of radicalisation.

A very strong book, a disciplined read required.

That said....

Some Steps Towards an End to TWAT And a Start to Peace. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

*This is of course an incomplete list, with only the briefest of pitches, and very little supporting, referenced documentation to substantiate the points raised.

It’s more to a thought smorgsabord on the issue of TWAT And Peace.

Here goes :

Actions that Western and all Governments can take that might lend towards a long term peace.

-caveat : there's more that I don't know than I do about all of this. A lot more. This analysis is not to be relied upon. In any way, shape or form. It is a list to things I think could alter the situation in useful ways......

1. Acknowledge the War Crime of Iraq and Afghanistan which is the responsibility of the US /UK Coalition of States that invaded and occupied both countries.

2. Arrest the War Criminals.

3. Full public accounting. Convictions.

4. Formal economic, political and cultural sanctions regime against Saudi Arabia, and it’s Wahhabist intervention in Government.

5. Cease all support for Saudi military, including ban on weapons sales. A total ban.

6. Cease all military operations against the Syrian Government. Immediately.

6.a Destroy all DAESH supply lines. No exception. Ensure no funding, arms, munitions, food, oil, petrol, diesel, medicine gets through to their fighting units. If States are involved, then they must be dealt with. International effort in good faith and honour.

7. Allow the Syrian State and people to confront DAESH in Syria, and with respect to language groups and ethnicities, enable autonomy for those as part of the political resolution of other matters. Allow the Syrian State to invite chosen allies to assist with this operation.

8. Abandon the US-UK-Russia-China competing powers behaviour which is the active dynamic in international relations. That behaviour is toxic, irrational and utterly cruel.

9. Excise all incitements to violence from all recognised Religious Texts. These are in breach of Human Rights, and cannot be countenanced.

10. Total separation of Religion and Government, and Legislation. World wide. Governance MUST be evidence based, rather than belief, faith, sectional interest or mere opinion

11. Close down Saudi funded Wahhabist Maddrassa systems, total removal. World wide. Such systems are institutionalised child abuse. No negotiation. Full records of all students to be provided.

12. Demand Saudi excise all incitement to or justification of violence from Wahhabist Texts and Teachings, and remove corporal punishment from the Saudi penal code, as an olive branch, or a carrot, a way to avoid actions 4., 5,

13. Ban Saudi Oil. Last resort.

14. Stand down all international military alliances in favour of a United Nations based resource, resourced from those competing military alliances. The UN treaties provide for a military force that maintains peace, enforces sanctions as a policing action, supporting a diplomatic, political, economic and cultural conflict resolution drive, which must, of course, be equally well resourced.

15. Detain all known participants in militia in their home countries. Process these the weed out those who are reliably dangerous, prosecute those for crimes committed and incarcerate them for Health and Safety reasons.

16. Tear apart the media cabal, and liberate the press, to articulate solid critical analysis of matters of Governance, based on evidence rather than alignments with belief, faith, ideology, bias, opinion.

17. Arrest Murdoch. Close down all media that spin, that present opinion as information, that are aligned with any political party, that are lobby tools for power interests.

18. Public Parenting information must be based on evidence rather than alignments with belief, faith, ideology, bias, opinion. Parents must be legally made to comply with the child’s Human Rights in full. Parents do not have any right to tell their child what to think. Ever.

19. Rebuilding, reparations. We must devote the resources we have to help rebuild what has been destroyed, and restore people and society to a healthy sustainable state.

20. We must also build Systems of Deliberative Democracy, rather than representative Democracy, which is obviously a failed experiment. Power as a shared responsibility.

21. Rekindle old language groups and environmental ethnicity’s, the thriving variation of healthy human culture.

22. In all, evidence based action must be the standard. All evidence must be appraised, no piece omitted, neglected, dismissed, mitigated or denied.

23. End Competing States/Warring States as an accepted political dynamic.

24, Decriminalise mind altering plants and their usage as sacred tools, and medicine.

25. Pay close attention to the Australian Aboriginals people, for they have a well of lived experience for which there is no other comparable population, listen to them and hear their message. 

They are the polar opposites of the Jidhadist/Competing Industrial Powers insanity.

They truly know how to live on Earth as fully human beings in sustainable cultures. : TWAT = The War Against Terror.

They have survived an attempted Genocide, and are here today, offering wisdom, love, nurture and peace to the culture that tried to wipe them out.

It doesn't get any tougher, in terms of diplomacy and negotiation than that. If they can, anyone can.

Yes, it's not going to be easy.

Just a reminder, Alice Miller, The Roots of Violence in Child-Rearing.

Get hold of a copy..

A Peace activists must-read.

Again and again.

Kindest regards

Corneilius

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

*If you like this post, if you found the themes resonant, if you agree in part, would you be kind enough to let others know about it? I would really appreciate that. You could drop a comment too, if you felt the urge. Or not. I will moderate contributions, and block any that are abusive. For obvious reasons. Thank you for reading.

Abuse : Origins, root causes, recovery and re-alingment with optimal human biological health

 

 

The resolution of the issue of abuse as a common behavioural dynamic lies not in punishment, rather it rests in altering the way our society as a whole relates to and treats children. And indeed, how it relates parenting, and how it supports healthy parenting. It is intrinsically linked to how power is mediated in social and material terms across our economic and political and judicial systems. It is inherently a matter of governance.

Of course, known serial abusers, those who cause intentional harm who operate without remorse in any sphere of human activity must be segregated, isolated from society at large, because they cannot be trusted to act otherwise. That goes without saying. It is a health and safety matter of extreme importance. Punishment is not really effective as a way to deal with this problem. Punishment does not prevent harm, because it always arrives after the harm has been caused. Punishment is always too late.

"The psychology of any given family, community or society is both revealed and perpetuated in how that family, community or society relates to and treats the children".

Chronic stress degrades all known biological systems, and leads to disease. Unresolved trauma leads directly to chronic stress, as does war, poverty and all forms of abuse.

These are not inevitables, nor are they unknowns.

They are all the result of choices made by adults.

Here is a detailed chart outlining the social behavioural characteristics of various societies, which was collated in the 70s.

http://www.violence.de/prescott/letters/Profiles_Peaceful_v_Violent.pdf

Research since then into endocrine systems, autonomous systems, in utero development and psychology, trauma studies, inter-generational trauma behaviour patterning, history, anthropology, neuroscience, biochemistry, child development and psychopathology confirm the insights of this survey.

Researcher/writers such as Alice Miller, Judith Herman, David Chamberlain, Oliver James, Joseph Chilton Pearce, Carl Rogers, Derrick Jensen, Gabor Mate, Kitty Jones, Robert Zapolsky, David Smail and many, many others are great resources in this.

I URGE you to access the data, the evidence, and go through the works of the writers listed above if you are genuinely concerned about child abuse....

I say this because I want to help you, and all of us, to understand this dynamic so that we can work together to apprehend abusers, to prevent further abuse emerging as it does in such massive numbers and realign our social systems with optimal human biological health.

I am a Survivor of long term intentional child abuse.

I speak and write with some knowledge of this subject.

Both in terms of addressing my own abusive and destructive learned behaviors and my recovery from the trauma I endured for the best part of 20 years.

This blog is where I join the dots on all of this research by people who literally have saved my life and enabled me to return to a degree of optimal biological health.

At some time it will become a book, a website, an interactive mind map and a documentary.

I do this for myself, I do it for you and I do it for my great grand children and all their contemporaries.

Kindest regards

Corneilius

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

*If you like this post, if you found the themes resonant, if you agree in part, would you be kind enough to let others know about it? I would really appreciate that. You could drop a comment too, if you felt the urge. Or not. I will moderate contributions, and block any that are abusive. For obvious reasons. Thank you for reading.

The basics of our society are reflected in how we relate to and treat the children

The basics of our society are reflected in how we relate to and treat the children and the most vulnerable people within our society...

The natural expectations of every child,the biological mandate for healthy bonding that supports the child's growing awareness of self and the child's sense of autonomy as key elements in a healthy society....

This is my song about this:

The expectations of every child
To be held in love, all the time
To know safety with every touch
These are the ways we need, it's not so much...

These are the gifts,that life on earth is meant to bring

The expectations of every child,
Acceptance, gentle guidance with a smile,
Honest answers to their questions of life,
Space to grow, fully assured and bright.

The expectations of every child,
To find a safe place to learn in good time
So that the child knows and trusts the heart
Then grows the child in confidence, that is the art..

The expectation of every child,
To know the family, to feel the line
Of ancient stories, and harmonies
The child is born to know that she is free.

The expectation of every child,
To be respected all the time,
To be chosen with the highest love,
So honour the child you hold, that will be enough.....

These are the gifts that life on earth is meant to bring
Do you bring the gifts? Do we bring the gifts?

You can listen to it at this link, and it is available as a free download.

https://www.reverbnation.com/artist/song_details/1466786

I hope it strikes a chord with you all. For as adults we all share a responsibility to all the children.

Kindest regards

Corneilius

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