More Notes on an Intergenerational PTSD thesis of Cultural History, Power and liberation.

I have determined, with 54 years of living experience, and with 25 years of research, that we Human Beings are biologically mandated to experience this Earth life, and to appreciate it fully and to nurture the biological world from which we have emerged. We are alike all other creatures in this.

This piece is a follow up from my previous piece on the evolution of PTSD cultures and Ideologies.

As a conscious human being, there emerges a combination of sensation, gratitude, wonder and love that is innate, it comes out of the lived experience of optimum biological health, and it feels to me that this 'spiritedness' can only be truly seen when it is articulated in behaviour, in relationships and in outcomes. It is not independent of human agency. This is a spirituality with no name, with only the experience, the behaviour and the outcomes to articulate it.

And so, when it comes to 'healing' and the Church's 'response' to Survivors, their Christianity is irrelevant. The Church's faith is irrelevant. Their beliefs and concepts are not the issue. The lived experience, and it's meaning are what matters.

Faith or belief is NOT material to the case of abuse, of cover-up, of intimidation, obstruction of the Law and it is most certainly NOT material to the healing process of ANY Survivor (even if a Survivor chooses to have Faith) in psychological, emotional, physical realities and and in our relationships - these abuses and harms Survivors speak of are matters of medicine, law, psychology and biology, not matters of faith.

These issues are frequently clouded, because that's partially the way unresolved PTSD based Cultural and Institutional Structures behave; they create masks and pretence, within and without, in it's denial state, as a bulwark against the truth, and it's implications with regard to their status in Power.

There are many cultural masks, some intentional, some emergent, some inherited as one culture subsumes another. It can seem complicated, yet it is simple.

The study of simplicity and complexity in biology has lead to discoveries which suggest that Civilisation is complicated, rather than complex.

This is because Civilisation as we know it is standing on a variety of constructions, crutches created in moments of crisis, in the attempt to shore up areas of action and behaviour where the natural biological mandate exposes, as it sometimes does, those actions and behaviours as being pathological, dysfunctional and damaging.

This crisis management or 'fire fighting' keeps happening because the problems remain unresolved and thus the 'organic structure' that is created becomes more and more complicated and less complex.

Behaviour and action tend, in these circumstances, to become increasingly homogenised. 

This desire for uniformity, this cultural insecurity, binds so much energy up, (energy that needs to flow freely so that nutrients are available to all biological systems, energy that human beings could use to make living together a nurturant experience) that ill-health and disease have become the norm, and the medical and ideological suppression of any visible symptoms of distress that might indicate the pathology the primary concern of Power.

That's the environmental problem described in a nutshell.

It's also our social problems described at base. In the most simple terms possible.

That the Religious Institutions are at all permitted to 'provide support services', which are ideologically driven by Christian Faith, to Survivors, is part of this necessary suppression and it is also irrational and it is certainly cruel. It's irrational because Christianity is not the issue here. It's cruel because that's an obvious distraction tactic. A tactic.

The adherents of Christian Ideology will of course deny this is the case, and quote their Faith's concepts and texts, and point to their charitable work, etc., by way of mitigation.

However the reality is that these Institutions have seen the outcomes for Survivors, and non-Survivors -those who died before they could speak out, those who died in situ.(of the abuse or neglect, wilful or otherwise). There is more than a few centuries of detailed authentic disclosures, historical data that is reliable, that show that this behaviour  occurred worldwide. They knew all along. They know.

And, knowing what they knew, having continued their Institutional behaviour, it appears that they have accepted those outcomes though they do not suffer them, and that this acceptance was deemed essential policy even it it was not fit and proper!

They are therefore participating, by inaction, by protective action and by the acceptance of those harms without seeking to prevent the harms, in the criminal offences as secondary to their status, and are liable.

What's their Faith got to do with it?

It's immaterial.

I am surprised it has taken me so long to fully and clearly articulate this ............We are human beings, and our experience of sensory sensitivity is intense, and if we are hurt, and repeatedly hurt, individually and collectively, we do feel it, and our behaviour does, of course alter, it does change, and so too would the outcomes of our behaviour. This sensitivity is biologically mandated not least because as biological organisms we emerge from within a dynamic living system, where change is constant, and that sensitivity is part of how we observe those changes and respond to them to maintain the nurturant behaviours that determine well being, optimum health. Some people call this 'creativity' - I call it common sense.

The changes in behaviour are outcomes emerging from experience and from how we humans - as animals - experience our environment, based on form, our embodied nature, and consciousness, the awareness, sensitivity, perception, language and decision making processes that can be articulated as the active mammalian we are, emerging as part of Earth's biology. This is a fundamental biological reality.

Think of new born babies, infants, children ... how sensitive!

What kind of Community would, understanding that this sensitivity is indeed a biological mandate, most ably nurture that sensitivity into maturity? What kind of Society would fulfil this biological mandate?

And what kind of Society would undermine this biological mandate?

Whatever Society it is, there will be a number of apparently interdependent causal factors that are themselves effects... and it is those interdependency cycles that we need most to be understood, if we are to return to Societal behaviours that reflect and respond appropriately to that biological mandate.

In short, we are born into an Institutional Culture whose underlying psychology is unresolved chronic PTSD. We have no choice as babies, infants, children and adults but to adjust our senses so that we can survive, let alone thrive, in this psycho-social setting.

The behaviour of Governance at it's very core is merely the behaviour of wounded, damaged and damaging children who have become adults without resolving key areas of their woundedness, who behave like someone in distress, affected with Chronic Intergenerational PTSD, in ways that are similar in dynamics, promoted and dressed up as a State, a Religion, a nationality or an ideology, or just a drunk and violent parent or partner.

Seen at that level it is tractable. It is a problem that can be resolved. Our biology mandates that there is a solution., And it's not mutating to grow metal hard scales, and talons and extra large incisor teeth, so that we become more biologically mandated to surviving in a state of constant conflict for survival. The 'struggle for survival' myth, so beloved of David Attenborough.
 
There is a solution.

I keep in mind, whilst I discuss these matters, all those centuries of war in Europe, with each generation traumatised, with every unresolved symptom integrated into the building of social infrastructure, each unresolved generation birthing a new generation with that PTSD as their background .....

It's not an 'evil conspiracy', though it does involve some seriously organised nasty, nasty behaviour, experience and horrific outcomes, on a wide, wide scale; words cannot suffice how nasty the truth about this is. It is natural enough to be fearful of looking directly into this horror.However it has to be said that Fear is also a teacher; on a personal level when one is looking at one's own fears, or on the wider level, when a community looks at societal fears.

Note how often fear is triggered by the stream of mainstream 'news', 'reports' and 'documentaries' and how little real information is provided. Is this fear a teacher? Or is it a bully?

The child that Survives adopts behaviours that help the child to make it through, yet which are unhealthy for an adult. One must respect that. One cannot 'push' someone out of their fear, and the same applies to whole Societies.

When the child or Survivor feels safe, that's the time for looking at the event or events, the experience and the real honest meaning of it, as a discipline of self healing. 

Those that do resolve their issues, who deal with their fears must also be respected.

And so how to help the child within to feel safe again?

Possibly by developing, through exploration, a personal process of first noticing that one can take care of oneself, the adult that is safe, in the present, and then offering that to the child within, as a support, not to do anything.... just to be a first witness, an adult who cares, who is present, who will listen and hear and understand.

And let the child's response emerge.....

Let the child tell his or her story...

So that it can be understood, so that the child can finally hear those words they needed to hear at the time,  so that learning how to prevent it in the future is enabled. Without that how can one feel safe again?

That's the basic process.

That's what needed to happen then, and needs to happen now. And if the actors in the past are not available, for whatever reason, then this is another potential route... the individual need not be trapped..

This process deserves widespread support, and the primary support is a cultural acknowledgement of it's biologically mandated basis.

It's not easy, it takes time. For many the trauma is deeply grown in over time....

At the same time, in political situations there is an inherent contradiction facing people seeking liberation from an oppressive situation - the oppressed, who are dehumanised by being oppressed, in seeking liberation are seeking to re-humanise themselves, and they will only succeed when they are also seeking to liberate the oppressors from their dehumanised state, in effect to humanise the situation between and around them. That, at least, must remain as central intent, and area of constant exploration and praxis and the preferred outcome.

This is notably absent in Syria, in Iraq, in Libya, in Chile in 1973, in Indonesia in the 1960s onwards and in most places where the oppressed have taken up arms in a struggle for liberation. The 'rebels' or 'insurgents' or 'saviours' (the USA/UK Governments that have supported 'rebels' invaded to 'bring democracy') irrespective of their ideological position, appear to be intent on destroying those who they say are the oppressors rather than reaching a position of negotiation by which the situation of oppression is resolved. For the most part they are hoping to replace one form or oppression with another.

This is what Paolo Friere discusses in Pedagogy of The Oppressed.

Natural Child, Natural Society: assuming that both are cause and effect at the same time.

Freedom to be empathic, safe to be empathic.... offer that to all children.

I think the way to accomplish this is everybodies business; it is a collective action, a collective need that must be met and it's crucial to state that there is also a personal respons-ability, and responsibility, associated with this, because we are biological organisms operating in a biological reality. Neither Institutions nor individuals can avoid this work and claim they are mature or nurturing.

We all live in a shared reality, not a yellow submarine. Science and common sense assert this on the basis of evidence.

We are embodied within a mutually interdependent reality. Science and common sense assert this on the basis of evidence.

A fundamental in biology is that there is no waste, and another is that all healthy biological process lead to nurturing the environment, nurturing more life, in the short, median and long-term.

All actions seed more life. That's the basic biology, most fundamental premise emerging from Biology Sciences....

That's my primary intellectual driver. Biology emerges as a dynamic, through the action of responsive organisms that are learning all the time.

This is a long work, over generations..... aspects of it must be contextualised, understood and options or actions must be tested in the present, and over that intergenerational timescale... because others not yet born will have to pick up the mess.

Given that particular fact, that others will have to clean up the mess we leave behind, how rude and immature it is to avoid that responsibility, once it has been clearly identified?

How dangerous? How toxic?

The evidence for punishment is that punishment tends to create the desire to avoid punishment more often than to behave a certain way, naturally enough. That's therefore only a partial and usually time limited success.

Harmful behaviour should not be avoided, it ought to be confronted head-on, especially where children's lives are adversely affected, directly or indirectly.

Preventing harmful behaviour cannot be achieved through punishment. It can only be achieved through honesty, through dealing with what actually happens, and through making changes in our fundamental psychology that reflect understanding, empathy and where necessary, remorse for actions taken that have caused harm ought to drive reparations.

All of which we do not see in The Catholic Church as an Institution, or amongst the Catholic Hierarchy of individuals... for example read the recent comments by a Catholic Archbishop who proclaimed that the floods across the globe were a judgement by God, on 'our' behaviour (not the Bishops behaviour) with regard to sexuality, marriage and so forth.

"The psychology of any given family, community or society is both revealed and perpetuated in how they relate to and treat the children AND the most vulnerable people in that family, community or society." 

This mus become clear as a matter of choice.

 

Kindest regards

Corneilius

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

PTSD Culture and change or Recovery and Healing.

This graphic from LIVE LEAK shows the patterns and movement of kingdoms and nation states in Europe over 1000 years.... there is a subtext, one of PTSD affected Culture, which needs to be understood if it is to be changed.

1000 years of trauma, in the name of the 'nation state', the King or a Religion, mostly perpetrated upon the poor, the peasants, the workers, the children - though the rulers were not averse to slaughtering each other, they often collaborated in the slaughter of the poor, the peasants, the workers, the children.

It goes without saying that the preceding 14,000 years of Empire across the world is part of that same phenomenon.

This coping-with-trauma or PTSD has become Institutionalised, Nationalised as a myth of creation and has not yet been resolved, healed. The European Culture is a PTSD culture in almost every aspect. Christianity is absolutely a PTSD based religion, with it's focus on the dreadful torture of Christ on the cross, which is justified as a 'sacrifice' for all our 'sins'....

In the past 50 years, much scientific, clinical and anecdotal or informal work has been done on Trauma, on understanding the dynamics of PTSD and there ARE healing/recovery pathways that ARE known, that are being practiced and are very well understood.

However, that understanding has yet to penetrate Governance, mainstream 'economics', State Education systems or the Religions, (as well as grass roots activism, and the 'internetz' weird theories market) largely because the utility of the myth is essential to Power as we know it, and because Power dictates what children experience in schooling, as well as how parents treat their children amongst many other things.

Power determines conditioning. David Smail writes well on the matter of the day to day reality of distal Power - of the affects of decisions made by people who hold power, who are beyond the reach of those affected most by those decisions - the people of Iraq, the Metis/Indigenous peasants in South America with regard to US State Policy, ie the 'war on drugs' or the workings of social services and welfare in neo-liberal economies, where the poor, the disabled, the vulnerable are subject to Government dictats on 'austerity' and Media coverage void of empathy.

Until the grass roots understands this, how the culture into which we are born is a PTSD culture, and until activists deal with their own PTSD - be it direct trauma related or simple conditioning within a PTSD dominated environment, we will not see change. I believe that this process is underway, and that it will take a few generations to complete itself. The human/biological drive towards health is innate; this is a biological fact.

One of the reasons the Military Industrial Complex and Power pushes so much violence is that they KNOW what trauma does to people, and that enough people become so traumatised that they will continue the cycles of violence (Mujahadeen, 'rebels' etc etc etc) even when it is 100% irrational.... because it guarantees the continuation of their 'markets', and the politics and psychology of Power Relationships over Empathic Relationships and it undermines the potential healing of entire social structures, a healing which Power perceives as a threat. Indeed healing IS a threat to Power as we know it, yet the deeper truth is that that perception is a pathological one and the healing will, in the end, extend to include those with such a pathological view.

Given all that is known about PTSD, is it too much to seek, to demand, to work together so that Empathy is placed at the core of Culture, of Governance, with the welfare of the children (which is also directly linked to the health of the environment)  as the primary gauge of how well a society is, in physical, emotional and psychological terms, in both the short and long term?
If so, then why?

These are pertinent questions, and honesty is the only means by which they can be answered.

Kindest regards

Corneilius

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

One's issues are a constant travelling companion, until they are dealt with!

I abhor war, not because I love peace, which is true; I do.

I abhor war because it causes hurt, harm and pain. All of these I understand in a visceral manner, a sensation, and in experience. I would not want to inflict such sensations and experiences on any other, any more than I’d wish to experience them myself.

My response to war is REAL - based on the lived experience - rather than a merely intellectual or moral objection.

It's rather sobering to think that there are so many 'good people' in the Governing Structures of Power who, for whatever reason, set this aside and implement Policy. It is also very, very sad. Tragic.

Because, war is always avoidable. After all Human Behaviour is learned, it is not set in stone.

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No war has ever happened on it's own. All occur in a context. The straight media twaddle and mythological school history - the extent of most peoples understanding of history, as an intentional and successful outcome of state education - ignores both the truth and the context and reject any observation of the pattern. Once the context is accepted, understood, then the justifications become obvious lies.

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The amount spent on State Education is huge, and it's a very large part of the standard state economy. The state has a huge interest in maintaining that economy, as a form of leverage, because if one's job (and mortgage or debt burden) is dependent on that income from that state education job, one is unlikely to challenge instruction sets handed down from Government. That's what keeps much of the system in place. More than my job's worth.

State Education is designed intentionally to undermine our innate independent critical thinking and questioning, - quite often, when an infant says why? they have already worked it out, and are merely checking in to see of the adult has also worked it out or genuinely seeking accurate information: this is natural behaviour - and this it does for the vast majority of people.

In other words, war would not be feasible (neither would Bank Bail outs, etc) without State Education as it is : a well informed, well educate, critical thinking population would NEVER vote for the kinds of people currently in Power, would NEVER accept the actions those in Power are taking, day in, day out, and would easily curtail their behaviour: General Strike. Tools Down. Game Over. Start again.

The people who have been so conditioned are not to be blamed for their being misinformed, lied to, or for being bored shitless by school, or worse demonised (ADHD, special needs, disruptive), and for giving up on sharing their exploration, insights and thinking.

They are to be helped. To be 'educated' again to think again for themselves, to lose their fear, to trust their insights, the loss of which was inculcated in so many little 'gradings' - fail, bad, poor, good, excellent, outstanding -throughout 12 years or so of schooling. Repetition, drip, drip, drip, drip ... a technique, a method: to break the spirit and reform the child into a suitable behaviourally modified citizen and voter. Calling these folk names will not help the work we are engaged in.

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Anything that 'disturbs' the balance of Power - the differential between those who hold power and those over whom power is held - is either co-opted (Cosmopolitan 'Feminism') (Bank Bail-outs) (United Nations) or demonised (Radical Feminism) (Austerity Programs demonise the poor) (Peace 'Protestors').

Just as the Vatican co-opts 'healing' of Survivors, by providing 'services based in Christianity' and demonises those Survivors who pursue Justice and Reparation and change.

This is because the holders of Power cannot afford honesty - it undermines their position, which they hold as being more important than other peoples lives. They are the Institutionalised individualists, the ME ME ME people, 'vote for ME' : the policies are merely a cover.

This is due to both their personal psychological dysfunction, and the Institutionalised and Bureaucratic nature of Power, which seeks to preserve itself above all else.

Enlightened Self-interest is also a make believe philosophy, an excuse, a mitigation of the realities of Power, a meme that disguises itself, not least to the person that holds such a perspective.

A genuinely enlightened human being retains their individuality AND their place in community as equal drives, each informing the other in a continuous feed back loop which allows for growth, exploration and learning.

Note I did not say 'the community' for the sense of community has to be inclusive of all human beings - and all biological communities - for it to be genuine, for it to reflect the biological realities.

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The healing of a dysfunctional family dynamic is dependent upon the people in the family recognising their dysfunction and choosing to do something about it.

The healing of a dysfunctional state is dependent upon the agents of the state recognising their dysfunction and choosing to do something about it.

As voters, the electorate are agents of the state.

As Tax-payers, we are all agents of the state.

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One's issues are a constant travelling companion, until they are dealt with!

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The State is a mirror of the psychology of the people who control and design it. Only when the State is designed and controlled by a well informed, rational and empathic people will the State become a structure that Nurtures life. This is our task. To render the State as Nature intended, in effect to make the State redundant. The same applies to all Hierarchical Social Structures that mediate Power.

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Kindest regards

Corneilius

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

I Abhor War.

I abhor war, not because I love peace, which is true; I do. That's a no-brainer.

I abhor war because it causes hurt, harm and pain. All of these I understand in a visceral manner, a sensation, and in experience. I would not want to inflict on any other.

A person whose natural empathy is intact has no need of rules or morals, for they FEEL the world and their behavior is guided by that feeling, a full multi-sensory perception.

I would rather my response to war was REAL - based on the lived experience - rather than merely tout an intellectual or moral objection.

It's rather sobering to think that there are so many 'good people' in the Governing Structures of Power who, for whatever reason, set this aside and implement Policy. It is also very, very sad. Tragic.

Because it is avoidable. After all Human Behaviour is learned, it is not set in stone

The State and The Dysfunctional Family are the same thing, the latter being the root of the former, which is institutionalized, that is to say it is bound up in self preseerving Social Structures (socially operational organisations and their infrastructure) designed to mediate control OVER people, often justified by un-questioned or un-examined parental-like aphorisms, such as "This is for your own good."

It too conditions the children to adhere to the 'norm'. Kings, War and Glory are it's central myths.

Outcomes that are harm causing that are the result of actions taken to 'protect' the State are either ignored or justified.

No real reform emerges because the core issue, that of adverse behaviour patterns inherent in intergenerational psychological dysfunction is not yet recognised as working part of the political dynamic. 

Which it is. 

Of course.

If we want to change any of this we have to start at home, with our own children, and as they grow up, at School and at our own workplaces, so that a generation emerges that has broken the cycle of trauma and conditioning.

A generation who could move into those positions associated with Governance, a generation whose empathy is intact, a generation who could work with the grass roots, the people and transform how Power is mediated.

This is long term work, with the welfare of our great grandchildren always at the center of our deliberations and actions.

In essence we are tasked with healing, from ourselves to our communities.

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

10 PREMISES

THESE ARE 10 BASIC PREMISES BASED ON EVIDENCE WHICH INFORMS MY WRITINGS.

1. THE PSYCHOLOGY OF ANY GIVEN SOCIETY, COMMUNITY OR FAMILY IS BOTH REVEALED AND PERPETUATED IN HOW THAT SOCIETY, COMMUNITY OR FAMILY RELATES TO AND TREATS THE CHILDREN. CHANGE THAT AND YOU CHANGE THE ENTIRE SOCIETY.

2. OUR BIOLOGY IS MANDATED TOWARDS EMPATHY, AUTONOMY, SENSITIVITY, CONNECTION, SELF MASTERY AND THE DEVELOPMENT OF NURTURING RELATIONSHIPS THROUGH OBSERVING, LEARNING AND EXPERIENCE, IN LINE WITH OPTIMUM BIOLOGICAL HEALTH OF THE HUMAN ORGANISM AND SPECIES, LIVING WITHIN THE ENVIRONMENT, AS PART OF THAT ENVIRONMENT.

3. BEHAVIOUR IS LARGELY DETERMINED BY EXPERIENCE AND ENVIRONMENT. BOTH HAVE THE POWER TO AFFECT DEVELOPMENT, TO TRIGGER EITHER OPTIMUM HEALTH OR PATHOLOGY. DNA OR GENETICS DOES NOT DETERMINE BEHAVIOUR AS MUCH AS ENVIRONMENT OR EXPERIENCE.

4. IF A CHILD IS PRESENTING SYMPTOMS OF CHRONIC DISTRESS THAT TELLS US THAT THE BIOLOGICAL MANDATE GOVERNING THE NATURAL DEVELOPMENT OF THAT CHILD IS BEING DISRUPTED.

5. RESOLUTION OF THE FACTORS CAUSING CHRONIC DISTRESS HAS TO BE THE TOP PRIORITY BECAUSE THAT LEADS TO PREVENTION AS WELL AS SYMPTOM ALLEVIATION. MOVING TOWARDS PREVENTION MUST ALWAYS BE THE GUIDING PRINCIPLE. EACH CASE IS UNIQUE, AND MUST BE RESPONDED TO UNIQUELY.

6. INSTITUTIONAL SOCIETY TELLS US TO MONITOR, LABEL, CONTROL AND SUPPRESS CHRONIC SYMPTOMS OF DISTRESS, AND IN SO DOING WE ARE INADVERTENTLY DIRECTED TO AVOID ADDRESSING THE CAUSES. THIS RESULTS IN CRUELTY. THIS IS WHOLLY AVOIDABLE.

7. INSTITUTIONAL SOCIETY PERMITS THIS CRUELTY (BY AVOIDING RECOGNISING IT AS CRUELTY) BECAUSE IT IS ESSENTIAL THAT THE CAUSES OF DISTRESS WHICH ARE TRACEABLE TO INSTITUTIONAL POLICIES AND ACTION REMAIN HIDDEN, IN ORDER TO PROTECT INSTITUTIONAL IMAGE, STATUS AND POWER.

eg: THE VATICAN. TONY BLAIR. JIMMY SAVILLE. ETC.,  - IN  OTHER WORDS, THIS CRUELTY IS DEEMED ACCEPTABLE BECAUSE IT PROTECTS THESE INSTITUTIONS.

8. GRASS ROOTS ACTION IN TAKING ON PARENTING WITH CURRENT AWARENESS AND UNDERSTANDING OF SCIENTIFIC AND COMMON-SENSE FACTS CONCERNING CHILDREN’S DEVELOPMENT WITH A VIEW TO PROVIDING THE NURTURING ENVIRONMENT OUR BIOLOGICAL MANDATES IS POSSIBLE.

9. GRASS ROOTS ACTION, BEHAVIOUR AND LOBBYING ON THIS ISSUE IS ALSO POSSIBLE. HOMESCHOOLERS HAVE PROVEN THEMSELVES TO BE EXTREMELY EFFICIENT AND EFFECTIVE LOBBYISTS, WHEN THEIR CULTURE WAS THREATENED WITH GOVERNMENT INTERVENTIONS WHICH WOULD HAVE UNDERMINED WHAT THEY ARE DOING AT THE GRASS ROOTS. THEIR ACTIVISM LED TO THE LARGEST NUMBER OF PETITIONS PRESENTED TO PARLIAMENT EVER RECORDED. ALL PARENTS AND THEIR CHILDREN CAN BECOME PART OF AN EFFECTIVE LOBBYING MOVEMENT WITHIN SOCIETY.

10. INSTITUTIONAL SOCIETY IS ITSELF AN EXPRESSION OF UNRESOLVED PTSD ISSUES. IT IS A SERIES OF CONSTRUCTS, IMAGINAL, SOCIAL AND MATERIAL, WHICH REFLECT AND PROJECT THE PSYCHOLOGY OF A SYMPTOMATIC TRAUMA SURVIVOR - AT SCALE - 

11. AND AS WE SEE THE INSITIUTIONAL POWER SYSTEM IS BARELY COPING WITH THE SITUATION: IT IS PRETENDING TO BE OK. IT IS OVER-CONTROLLING ALL THOSE WITHIN IT WHO ARE DRAWING ATTENTION TO THE SYMPTOMS. IT IS DENYING THE CAUSES. IT IS EXERCISING POWER TO SUPPRESS ANY SIGNS OF A DISCLOSURE OF THE PRETENCE. IT IS EXPLAINING AWAY THE UNDERLYING PAIN, FEAR AND GRIEF, WHICH THEREFORE REMAINS UNRESOLVED. 

Kindest regards

Corneilius

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

Roots of Empathy: Introduction ... an example of the resolution of loss of empathy

Roots of Empathy is an evidence-based classroom program that has shown significant effect in reducing levels of aggression among school children while raising social/emotional competence and increasing empathy.

http://www.rootsofempathy.org/

Kindest regards

Corneilius

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

The Taboo

I will present to you an example of what I describe as a clear articulation of where responsibility lies for changes regarding what I call a socially accepted unacceptable behaviour. Indoctrination.

This beautiful insight was written by David Smail, in his book "The Origins of Unhappiness - A New Understanding of Personal Distress"

I think this book ought to be required reading for every teenager, before they leave school.

This paragraph is about where the locus of a problem really lies.

It is not that some people make up a story and then claim that they feel gender in their own way, and that this is a problem to be solved - it is that some authority in society determines gender must be felt in a given way, as prescribed, as pre-written by the culture, which is external to the person and that the person must conform.

We  are conditioned, we are expected to internalise the external description and assumptions of the culture as if it came out from us. My true sense of being male or female emerges from within me. It is not what I am told being male or female should be by others. It is what I feel, and it is there before words are used to express it.

Racism is another example.

A blind person of any human skin tone, meeting other blind people of any other tone will notice no difference. Why do those who see, notice a difference? Because they have internalised an external definition. They are no long feeling who they are, they are feeling who they have been told to feel they are.

It's crucial to be very clear in this regard, because there are many distracting threads that lead away from this, that get bogged down in sectarianism, misapprehensions and disinformation.

Racism is an external definition created by one precise group of people who demand that others internalise that external definition, and then believe it to be truly coming from within themselves, as if it were natural.

White people who wish to confront Racism must speak to those white people who promote race as a distinction, and make it perfectly clear that the Racists are the ones who must make the change.

Racism is a problem of white ruling culture, and remaining unresolved, it is a problem for black people, or Romany people. Black or Romany people are not the ones who must resolve the problem.

When the crowds protesting and demonstrating are white majority crowds, demanding that education tells the truth, demanding that systemic racism be outed then the problem is being moved to where it can be resolved.

Here it is in another form.

“The problem of the girl in the city is a male problem.

If she is deprived of her fair share of environmental contact because she has household tasks which her brothers are able to evade, the answer is a more equitable sharing of these task within the family, especially since her mother, too, probably feels oppressed by the same assumptions.

If it is because of a patriarchal religious tradition, the patriarchs have to change.

If it’s for fear of sexual exploitation it is the exploiters rather than the girls who have to change their ways.

And if the liberation of girls brings in its train an explosion of female crime, it is the equation between bravery and anti-social acts that has to be broken.

The environmental liberation of girls, far from implying the girl in the city should become hard and tough in the way that the boy in the city aims to be, demands that the boy, too, should pride himself on those allegedly feminine qualities of care and tenderness.”

Written by Colin Ward, in The Child in The City, pp.136 chapter ‘the girl in the backgound’ 1978

This paragraph demonstrates the kind of clarity that is required when addressing a problem, it’s symptoms and it’s causes. It is that the causes that must be recognised, for only then can the appropriate responsibilities for resolution of the problem be determined and assigned. That last line is the finale. If the liberation of women is to be realised, then the tenderness and care in men must also be liberated from current alpha male dominance.

Compulsion Schooling.

I am concerned with the harms that are caused in Compulsion Schooling (and elsewhere in Society) - one cannot bat them off by pointing at the successes and then use that to minimise the meaning and value of the harms experienced, as people do, reflexively,  to protect the Institution and other 'sacred cows' from accurate and constructive criticism. That is irrational nonsense.

It’s not that we must change the children, it is that we must (because we can) change our behaviours as adults in how we relate to and treat the children; the adult world must change.

In school children are punished or sanctioned when they 'make mistakes', or 'give wrong answers' and so children learn to avoid making mistakes, children adopt a policy of playing safe, children learn very early on to manipulate the situation out of fear.

Twelve years of fear of punishment, fear of public humiliation, conditioned by witnessing the punishment of others, on a daily basis - the top of the class, the bottom of the class - with no let up as such, is quite a fierce conditioning. It has impact at neurological and hormonal body system levels that are invisible, yet no less affecting for that.

The utility of this conditioning to the system of Power, which dominates State Schooling, is that in this state of fear, children will have their brakes on. Rather than seeking their most alive and fullest expression, children seek approval.

That way the Authoritarians can keep up with children, otherwise the child would outrun and outwit them, the children would create better, more reliable and more sustainable outcomes, because that is our true human nature - to share and contribute at peak creativity - and all would share as much as one could, until exhaustion or satisfaction brings matters to rest.

Because it is so much fun, and so rewarding to be fully alive and creative, to contribute one's whole being. Who needs private profit within such a healthy dynamic, the dynamic of the healthy egalitarian?

This is what most terrified the early Industrialists and their inheritors, and still does to this day. What those early ‘entrepreneurs’, those ‘ barons of Industry’ who spent 100 years or more deploying vast resources to the project of bringing in worldwide Compulsory State Education wanted most of all was to ensure that no serious competition could emerge from the working, labouring classes of people.
Justice is portrayed as happy obedience, in a Utopian Industrial World.  The Utopia of undisturbed dominance.

Likewise the so-called 'great Religions'. They publicly declare to strive for the myth, the ideal and yet they justify the morbid reality - the poor will always be with us - as a natural dynamic, ordained by God and fate.

They do not give their money for concern for the welfare of the people of the world. They give charity to assuage our indignation at the very existence of poverty. Their status as paternalistic rulers is to be accepted at face value,  and must remain unquestioned, most often because that status is assumed to be God given.

The Violent Hierarchies gave their support to both these projects - Religion and Educational Indoctrination - which continues to this day, because they wanted to avoid the ‘wet’ business of Empire.

The blood-letting.

They previously found it necessary to deploy extreme violence, but it was also somewhat dangerous, people could and did fight back. It was distasteful to a larger population and very bad for their image, which they cultivated assiduously, through pomp, circumstance, monument and ‘charridee’. 

The Authorities wanted a psychological control to replace the brute force control.

They wanted Statism to become a Religion they could manage.

They sought to shape all the children of the Nation, rather than respond to who those children were.

They sought to shape the mind of the nation, as a homogeneous accepting whole, with permitted dissenters – who will always exist -  reduced to arguing amongst themselves, in a lateral exercise and  thus remaining ineffective. Left/right adversarial politics. What a useless dynamic in terms of generating rapid healthy change.

And it is this toxic relationship between adult and child, where the one with Power sees him or herself as the shaper of the one without Power and uses any and all means to effect that shaping, and discounts the adverse outcomes and costs to the child in favour of the ideal - a compliant citizen.

It is this toxic relationship that permeates racism, misogyny, xenophobia, homophobia, the disdain for disabled folk,  the dismissive disgust for the psychologically wounded..

That is the core of The Dominant Culture.

That is the taboo subject of this Culture.

Problems and causes

One of the many long term health outcomes of childhood mistreatment, of childhood's where the child experiences humiliation, neglect and abuse is obesity.

Another is diabetes. there are many health implications in later life for Survivors.

There are other factors too, of course.

And other outcomes. Addiction, heart disease, depression and a variety of chronic diseasee emerge from within a body and psyche that is placed under life long chronic stress.

These other factors cannot be used to mitigate the reality of this link, and it's implications regarding how we treat children and since this affects how our Society matures psychologically, it must be faced, square on.

And another thing.

All that propaganda about 'good food', 'exercise', 'diets' and Government programs to tackle obesity (like some giant rugby ball!) is designed avoid the issue of childhood trauma, and in effect it serves to it punish those who are already suffering.  And it is used to get folks to take their eyes off the ball (excuse the pun).

The shame, that same feeling noted above which arises in the child when children's mistakes are responded to with anger, shaming, derision, disapproval and so forth and so they remain unresolved, becoming internalised over time, the child begins to believe he or she is worth less than others.

All of this is avoidable, all these negative experiences are avoidable and it is the greatest tragedy of criminal negligence.

Kindest regards

Corneilius

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