The Psychology of a culture is revealed and perpetuated in how they relate to and treat their children and in how they relate to and treat the most vulnerable people within their society. Heal that and we can heal everything.
A societal model where the adults working together, share power and responsibility in the care and nurture of all the children, and of their shared environment, where children's needs are met without question.
A sustainable, evolutionarily healthy model in which the understanding of the developing brain of the baby in utero and the infant and toddler is grounded in the knowledge that healthy self regulation of emotional state is learned by direct brain-body to brain-body experientials of care, safety, nurturing and meeting needs that are entirely natural expectations of the child.
Emotional intelligence is what grounds intellectual and creative intelligence.
This is in fact the oldest model of human social organisation of all models.
It does not make biological sense that any species would evolve to present unhealthy behaviour as a norm.
Hierarchies of Wealth and Power are proven to be seriously unhealthy for the human species.
The issue is not a technological issue, it is a relationship issue.
Technology always follows the kinds of relationships prevalent in any society, in that the tools are used according to the prevailing relationship patterns.
A knife can be used to murder someone to maintain a hierarchy or it can be used to strip fibres from a plant to make threads that can be woven into clothe that keeps a person warm.
Matrianarchy.
Where power is used collectively as a shared responsibility, to nurture the people and the shared environment.
It is also true that Wealth-as-Power will seek to claw back as much dominance as it can. Trade Unionism was diluted from the 1960s onwards, NeoLiberalism infiltrated
every aspect of Governance, Billionaires became ever more powerful, populations ever more disenfranchised.
Today we face a rise of overt Fascism and Warfare driven entirely by the fear that Wealth-as-Power senses as more and more people become better educated on how Power is mediated and the harms associated with Wealth-as-Power as a dominating political force.
No Utopia.
I am not proposing a pathway to a Utopia, so much as suggesting that we know enough about human psychology, sociology, anthropology, economics, environmental sciences, behavioural and and trauma science to be in a much better position to build the kind of solidarity that removes Wealth-as-Power from malignantly gaming our democracies and economies to extract wealth and amass ever more political power, which is then weaponised, to guarantee Wealth-as-Power immunity and impunity where it causes avoidable harms in the pursuit of more power, and wealth-as-power, well beyond mere greed.
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.
Why would anyone who is NOT an expert in the field be going through the E-Stain files?
Can they arrest any perpetrators? No.
Can they counsel Survivors? No.
Can they protect anyone? No.
It is a task for police, survivor advocates and other experts in the field.
What can you do?
1. THE BEST THING ANY ORDINARY INTERESTED PERSON CAN DO NOW IS TO GET FAMILIAR WITH THE MANY, MANY SURVIVORS WHO HAVE MADE DEPOSITIONS, UNDER OATH, UNDER PERJURY LAWS, GET TO KNOW THEIR STORIES, GET TO KNOW WHO THEY ARE AND SUPPORT THEM AND THEIR ADVOCATES THEIR EFFORTS TO ENSURE FULL ACCOUNTABILITY AND THE IMPLEMENTATION OF FULL JUSTICE UNDER THE LAW.
“This latest release of Jeffrey Epstein files is being sold as transparency, but what it actually does is expose survivors. Once again, survivors are having their names and identifying information exposed, while the men who abused us remain hidden and protected. That is outrageous. As survivors, we should never be the ones named, scrutinized, and retraumatized while Epstein’s enablers continue to benefit from secrecy. This is a betrayal of the very people this process is supposed to serve.
Virginia Roberts Giuffre alone reported many abusers connected to Epstein’s network, yet the public still does not have the full truth about who enabled him, who participated in his exploitation, and who has been shielded for years. Hundreds of women have come forward with additional reports like hers. The scale of this failure is staggering and indefensible.
}The Justice Department cannot claim it is finished releasing files until every legally required document is released and every abuser and enabler is fully exposed. We need to hear directly from Attorney General Pam Bondi when she appears before the House Judiciary Committee on February 11.
Survivors deserve answers, and the public deserves the truth.
This is not over. We will not stop until the truth is fully revealed and every perpetrator is finally held accountable. As we have always said, this is not about politics.
We hope Democrats and Republicans will stand with survivors in continuing to demand the full release of the Epstein files.
We look forward to hearing from Attorney General Pam Bondi on February 11.”
Annie Farmer
Anouska de Georgiou
Ashley Rubright
AW
Danielle Bensky
Jane Doe
Jane Doe
JD
Jess Michaels
Juliette Bryant
Lara Blume McGee
Liz Stein
Marijke Chartouni
Marina Lacerda
Rachel Benavidez
Sky & Amanda Roberts
Sharlene Rochard
Teresa J. Helm
Wendy Pesante
Well, Ms Bondi did take the stand as a witness to the Congressional Hearing and basically told the world to sod off, to paraphrase she told the hearing that "President Trump is the most transparent President in US history and the Best President in US History and the Stock Market is Booming, so shut up, you losers!"
2. TRY TO AVOID WEAPONISING THIS STUFF TO MAKE YOUR POLITICAL POINTS OR FOR DRAWING ROOM ARGUMENTS.
3. GET SERIOUS, EVIDENCE BASED, DITCH ANY BIAS OR RAGE, BE CALM AND SUPPORT SURVIVORS, INCLUDING THOSE AROUND YOU - YES, THERE ARE SURVIVORS ALL AROUND YOU.
AND DE-CONSTRUCT FROM PATRIARCHY.... THAT IS ESSENTIAL. (NOT EASY, YET TOTALLY NECESSARY)
The Risks
There is a massive risk that ordinary people examining that kind of material will be traumatised and/or so enraged as to do something silly that does not help Survivors. There is also a risk that part of the way the release is being managed and promoted is to drive behaviour that can be exploited, politically, by the Ruling Class. Certainly there is a cognitive warfare element to all of this.
There is also a certainty that many other predators will be going through the files to get a porn hit..... they like reading such materials.
When it comes to political action to hold the Ruling Class and Wealth accountable this is just one part of the whole and should not become the leading edge of the advocacy for accountability.
It's not like the Ruling Class of USA or UK is not already 100% guilty of Genocide, War Crimes, Environment Degradation, Climate Disruption, Inducing Poverty and fulsome engagement in Corruption of democratic governance.
Get a grip.
And note - there is no 'sexual attraction to minors' - what there is people who want to exercise abuse over children because children are physically weak, emotionally weaker, and psychologically pliable and they have to submit or die. Children have no escape route and the predators know this and this is why they choose children. They know they can get away with it.
Sexual Assault of Children is not an 'attraction'
It is not an orientation, the predators have zero interest in the person the child is.
Predators cannot be healed, they cannot be reformed and the only safety is to identify them and segregate them from the community.
The get an arousal from exercising power to cause harm with impunity and that is what makes them 'horny'.
The same applies to the political power that Wealth-as-Power is - Elton Musk made it 100% clear when he said 'The greatest weakness of western civilisation is Empathy.'
Accountability
During the Super Bowl performance of BadBunny had a billboardthat said 'What hate fears the most is Love' - that is incorrect.
What hate fears the mostis accountability.
Every person who seeks power over others, irrespective of where it is done, is devoid of empathy and is interested only in the exercise of Power and leveraging impunity, making sure they get away with it.
Accountability strips them of their power, makes them ordinary, separates them from those they would target and this they fear more than anything else.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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."
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.
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.
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
