The Greatest gifts we can bequesth our children and descendants

It will take some time.

To change our culture, to bring empathy back to the core as the fundamental quality of our culture.

From the base, from how we frame ourselves as people, as parents and as children.

It WILL build as more people understand the importance of our earliest (and for most of us, forgotten) lived experiences.

The science and biology of empathy is now well established. The understand

ing of how human behaviour is mediated is likewise well established, though the mainstream still ignores it, as do most Power linked Religions.

Who can recall the DETAIL of their infancy - therein lies clues to our behaviours, our unconscious patterns and adaptations?

Vital information is there, about what we learned at the deepest pre-verbal visceral level, about Power, co-operation, empathy, sense of self.

Blaming parents for the ills of Society is a tactic that Institutional Society employs. To let itself off the hook.

That is not to say that abusive parents are to be let presented with excuses for behaviour that causes harm.

Rather it is a call to recognise that helping stressed parents understand their own infancy AND how the pressures imposed on them by work, economics, etc., increases the difficulties they face, is to recognise that helping parents to understand the natural emotional and psychic needs of their children and exploring how Institutional Society thwarts the meeting of those needs through war, indoctrination, poverty/concentration of wealth, media, marketing, coercive competitive schooling, hierarchical power will decrease the incidence of abuse for the majority of stressed parents.

Most parents do love their children, and many struggle with that love because the messages they received, that their grand parents and great grand parents and ancestors received about parenting were mediated by Institutional Society, and by Religion and by the adverse affects of unresolved trauma and there has never been a consistent effort to HELP parents resolve their own issues because those issues are often linked to how Institutional Power operates and thus affects so many lives.

Understanding that we all did not choose our families nor our society and have had to deal with any adverse affects by adapting, surviving, 'fitting in'. Understanding that intergenerational trauma patterns are a reality. Yet they are not written in stone.

We can break the cycle. We can recover our full humanity.

There is no greater gift to future generations.

There is no greater gift to oneself.

Kindest regards

Corneilius

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

Some Adverse Effects of Compulsory Schooling.

The real danger in 'schooling' is in how the child's mind is slowly altered such that schooling appears normal, and as parents these children will send their children to school as if it were natural, normal. Thus patterns of obedience, hierarchical acceptance, peer pressure and bullying endure over generations. These all destroy community. 

This normalisation is neurological and physiological as much as it is psychological. The child's neurology and physicality slowly 'adapts' to the environment of schooling (a natural enough process, it's part of growing and knowing the world through the body as a total sensory entity - yet the schooling environment lacks key experiential learnings related to embodied self knowledge, and this distorts all who pass through it to greater or lessor degree -)

In seeking to address this distortion, regaining a trust of embodied self knowledge and self empathy is vital. 

 That process cannot be predicted, medicalised, therapeuted. 

It cannot be packaged, sold nor can it become an ideological end. 

It can be supported, mostly by honesty, healthful diet, good friends, closeness with nature, and it is truly a process that is the natural base of healthy community - a community that knows itself.

There are many people who assert that humanity is threatened not least by a 'herd' mentality, a 'primitive instinct' that wants to follow, to 'fit in', which has no place in a superior individualistic world-view. 

Well, this is much less a matter of natural instinct, and much more a matter of conditioning. a matter of the distortion of our innate biological mandate towards empathic self awareness; and with that, empathy as a perceptive ability.

Trauma related behaviours such as poverty, war, schooling, marketing, religious indoctrination, ideological indoctrination are all exercised in the most part through the agency of Institutional Power....

The matter is too important to future generations, let alone those who live today, for it to be treated with any degree of flippancy, outside of using comedy to sweeten a rather bitter pill... the pill of truth.

'Herding'  as the term is used most often, is not a human 'instinct' - it is a LEARNED behaviour...it is pure scientific flippancy to assert otherwise.

It is also a a term when used too often is one that dehumanises people, and this inevitably leads to a dulling of any sense of empathy, which itself feeds the system of Power.

It's not surprising so many do feel this way, that there's a human 'instinct' that is problematic since it's what the Christian nations have been telling themselves for thousands of years..  "You must beat the devil out of the child to save the child for God."

It takes time for such a corrosive pathology to heal. It takes, above all, honesty. Scientific honesty. It's time that all 'schooling' be made subject to some Scientific Honesty.

Kindest regards

Corneilius

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

Nature is Nurturant, and in constant communication..

All of Nature is in communication,  all of what is alive is intelligent and in general all living organisms are engaged in nurturant behaviour, that is nurturing each other. We are aature, more than we are the illusion of ‘civilised’ which we are taught to believe in, which we internalise through the many ways of social conditioning of this culture.

This short video explores some of this concept - nurturant communication - in relation to trees, fungi and forests. There is plenty more evidence of this to be found across the globe, where scientists and others have been engaged in honest exploration.

Our human biology is mandated towards empathy - trust is the default mode of the social being - a form of empathy which is at core an ability to sense the content of the other, because we are experienced. We experience ourselves, and that informs how we respond to the other, in terms of meeting biological needs, in terms of appropriate nurturant behaviour.

This ability is founded on the experience of self empathy - the ability to sense one's own being at all levels and to accurately reflect this outwards = honesty, transparency, congruency. 

Of course this is a skill set learned by the healthy child in the loving embrace of healthy parents, in a health egalitarian mode society. It is not a genetically pre-programmed behavioural dynamic. We learn this.

In recognising the preciousness to me of my life, of my lived experience I recognise that in others, not merely as an intellectual exercise, but as a lived and felt visceral experiential. 

Thus hunting and eating animals, or eating plants can be understood to be part of the processes of life nurturing life for all life, and that these processes can be respected for what they are. Gratitude for the gift of sustenance informs the Natural Hunter, cruelty is generally avoided, and with that respect for the hunted and their particular community, as well as their place in the community of all life.

Hunting is not about dominance, it is not about hierarchy. To interpret natural hunting as such is to project the taught (and internalised) concepts of the 'civilised' onto nature.

The reason the 'civilised' teach this projection with such force is to underpin their error, to make their error seem otherwise and to remove from view any evidence that there is a way of life that emerges from Nature that is empathy based.

Empathy is the experience that Power fears the most, because it can bind people together as they seek to liberate themselves, it can inform people as to the humanity of those Power calls 'the enemy' and it can also inform people as to the psychology of those who hold Power, exposing their frailties and inadequacies in ways that those seeking liberation can utilise.

Kindest regards

Corneilius

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

NATURAL CHILD, NATURAL SOCIETY : A presentation

‎

NATURAL CHILD, NATURAL SOCIETY

A Talk given on May 23rd 20122 @ Inspiring Minds Forum,  Mango Landin', London

1. The Psychology of any emergent or given Society/Community/Family is both revealed, and perpetuated, in how that group treats it's children, and especially it's most vulnerable people... address that and you can change the whole society. Failure to address this where it is toxic ensures it's continuation.  Eg: Aboriginal Residential Schools were intentionally designed to alter Aboriginal Society forever. Compulsory Schooling has the same purpose.   John Taylor Gatto “Underground History of American Education” www.johntaylorgatto.com

2. Adolf Hitler, Saddam Hussein, Josef Stalin, Pol Pot, David Cameron, George Osborne, George Bush, Richard Nixon, Tony Blair etc  : What happened to these people when they were ‘in utero’, at birth, when they were babies, infants, toddlers, children, teenagers…. that they turned out like they have? This is a crucial question for each of us and for our culture. Alice Miller “For Your Own Good” http://www.nospank.net/fyog.htm

3. The disruption of the biologically mandated child-mother bonding process sets up a chain of events, leading to emergent violence. Attachment ‘theory’ research on primates.
   
   The flow is as follows: if the child is not related to in ways that nurture self-empathy, then the development of a loss of self-empathy occurs. With that loss comes a loss of empathy for others, a sense of disconnection is felt and with that comes more fear, compounding the fear the trauma generated.
   
   The compounded, layered fear leads directly to a perceived (often unconscious) need to control others and to control the environment.
   
   As all natural organisms are autonomous, self directing growing beings, so too they will resist, to one degree or another, efforts to control them. That resistance generates the use of violence or coercion to impose or retain that control.
   
   In human family or society, if this pattern starts, and is not resolved, then each successive generation will impose that control, and those who hold Power will seek to enhance it, learning as time passes, and the children will grow up in an environment that they will 'adapt' to, the situation demanding the internalisation of that psychological need to control. Anthropology – James Prescott - http://www.violence.de/prescott/bulletin/article.html
   
   
4. What baby/child/person would not be angry, confused or frightened at not experiencing the experientials our biology has mandated? Think of the child left to cry him/her self to sleep in a room away from his or her parents, to scream and cry until finally exhaustion brings sleep. Is this not a common practice in our culture? What of the resignation, the suppression of that rage, the loss of self empathy which ensues from that suppression which is a common outcome of such a practice? Adrenaline, Cortisol vs Oxytocin
   
   Thus the need to control then gets transmitted through the structure of that family or society and over time becomes codified, normalised, embedded, institutionalised. Empire, Hierarchically Violent Societies.

             SOME PERTINENT QUESTIONS

5.  Why has neither the general public nor the secular authorities not moved to confront the Vatican on it’s record of child abuse within it’s Organisation? Linkage of Hierarchical Power Systems.
6. What does this tell us about our Society? Psychological core or root.
7. Why has natural birthing been replaced with ever increasing utilisation of ‘ceasarian section’ as an elective procedure, as a matter of choice? http://www.birthpsychology.com
8. What does coercion of children speak of?   Insecurity, mistrust, fear.
9. Why is Society left out of the therapeutic process? http://www.davidsmail.info/talk01a.htm

Social-Behavioral Characteristics Of Affectionate/Nurturant And Non-Affectionate/Non-Nurturant Primitive Cultures by James W. Prescott

http://www.violence.de/prescott/letters/Social-Behavioral_Characteristics.pdf

James W. Prescott is a developmental neuropsychologist and a cross-cultural psychologist who received his doctorate in psychology from McGill University, Montreal, P.Q. Canada. He served as Assistant Head, Physiological Psychology Branch, Office of Naval Research (1963-1966); as Health Scientist Administrator, Developmental Behavioral Biology Program, National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, NIH (1966-1980); and President, Maryland Psychological Association (1970-1971). He was the recipient of the "Outstanding Contributions To Psychology Award, Maryland Psychological Association (1977); the CINE GOLDEN EAGLE AWARD for his contributions, as Scientific Director, to the award winning Time-Life film, "Rock A Bye Baby" (1971); and has given expert testimony on the origins of human violence, particularly domestic violence, before the Senate of Canada; the U.S. Congress; and many other legislative and professional organizations.

SOCIETAL CHARACTERISTICS

HIGH AFFECTIONATE/NURTURANT CULTURES

1. Martrilineal

2. Polygyny has low incidence

3. Women's status not inferior

4. Low avoidance of In-Laws

5. Low incidence of Mother-Child households

6. Small community size

7. Low societal complexity

8. Large extended family

9. Wives are not purchased

10. Slavery absent

11. Grand-parental authority over parents is absent

12. Subsistence is primarily by food gathering

13. Low class stratification

14. Political integration at community and family level

15. Metal working is absent

INFANT/CHILD CHARACTERISTICS

HIGH AFFECTIONATE/NURTURANT CULTURES

16. High infant physical affection

17. Low infant physical pain

18. High infant indulgence

19. High reduction of infant needs

20. Immediate reduction of infant needs

21. Low infant/child crying

22. Prolonged breast-feeding over 21/z years

23. Low child anxiety over performance of responsible behavior

24. Low child anxiety over performance of obedient behavior

25. High smiling, laughter, humor

26. Low anxiety over transition: infancy/childhood

27. High number of food taboos during pregnancy

28. Abortion permitted

29. Strength of desire for children is low

SEXUAL BEHAVIORAL CHARACTERISTICS

HIGH AFFECTIONATE/NURTURANT CULTURES

30. Premarital coitus permitted

31. Extramarital coitus permitted

32. Post-partum sex taboo less than one month

33. Sex disability absent

34. Castration anxiety is low

35. Low sex anxiety

36. Narcissicism is low

37. Low exhibitionistic dancing

SOCIETAL CHARACTERISTICS

LOW AFFECTIONATE/NURTURANT CULTURES

1. Patrilineal

2. Polygyny has high incidence

3. Women's status inferior

4. High avoidance of In-Laws

5. High incidence of Mother-Child households

6. High community size

7. High societal complexity

8. Small extended family

9. Wives are purchased

10. Slavery present

11. Grand-parental authority over parents is present

12. Subsistence is primarily by food production

13. High class stratification

14. Political integration at state level

15. Metal working is present

INFANT/CHILD CHARACTERISTICS

LOW AFFECTIONATE/NURTURANT CULTURES

16. Low infant physical affection

17. High infant physical pain

18. Low infant indulgence

19. Low reduction of infant needs

20. Delayed reduction of infant needs

21. High infant/child crying

22. Breast-feeding less than 21/a years

23. High child anxiety over performance of responsible behavior

24. High child anxiety over performance of obedient behavior

25. Low smiling, laughter, humor

26. High anxiety over transition: infancy/childhood

27. Low or no food taboos during pregnancy

28. Abortion highly punished

29. Strength of desire for children is high

SEXUAL BEHAVIORAL CHARACTERISTICS

LOW AFFECTIONATE/NURTURANT CULTURES

30. Premarital coitus punished

31. Extramarital coitus punished

32. Post-partum sex taboo greater than one month

33. Sex disability present

34. Castration anxiety is high

35. High sex anxiety

36. Narcissism is high

37. High exhibitionistic dancing

WAR/VIOLENCE/CRIME CHARACTERISTICS

HIGH AFFECTIONATE/NURTURANT CULTURES

38. Low adult physical violence

39. Low or no warfare

40. Low military glory

41. Bellicosity is low

42. Low or absent killing, torture, mutilation

43. Low personal crime

44. Incidence of theft is low

WAR/VIOLENCE/CRIME CHARACTERISTICS

LOW AFFECTIONATE/NURTURANT CULTURES

38. High adult physical violence

39. High warfare

40. Military glory emphasized

41. Bellicositiy is extreme

42. High killing, torture, mutilation

43. High personal crime

44. Incidence of theft is high

JUSTICE/RELIGIOUS/SUPERNATURAL CHARACTERISTICS

HIGH AFFECTIONATE/NURTURANT CULTURES

45. High God is mainly absent

46. Low or no religious activity

47. Superordinate justice absent

48. Supernatural are benevolent

49. Fear of humans rather than fear of supernatural

50. Belief in reincarnation absent

51. Low ascetecism in mourning

52. Witchcraft low or absent

53. Religious specialists are part-time

NOTE: The above social-behavioral characteristics of primitive cultures have been derived from: R.B. Textor (1967) A Cross-Cultural Summary, HRAF Press New Haven.

JUSTICE/RELIGIOUS/SUPERNATURAL CHARACTERISTICS

LOW AFFECTIONATE/NURTURANT CULTURES

45. High God is present

46. High religious activity

47. Superordinate justice present

48. Supernatural are aggressive

49. Fear of supernatural rather than fear of humans

50. Belief in reincarnation present

51. High ascetecism in mourning

52. Witchcraft highly present

53. Religious specialists are full time

Matrilineal cultures are those where inheritance follows the female line; Polygynous cultures are those where men have several wives and is a measure of sexual exploitation and control of women by men; High desire for children is a measure that reflects exploitation of children: high value of male and female fertility; and use of children as economic resource, thus, its linkage with abortion being punished. Presence of a Supernatural (High God) with high religious activity in low affectionate/nurturant cultures reflects the need for "divine love" when human love is absent or significantly diminished. Similarity, God is made unto the image and likeness of man — violent cultures have violent Gods; peaceful cultures have peaceful/benevolent Gods.

------------------------

BIOLOGY

WHAT ACTUALLY HAPPENS IN NATURE AS A WHOLE?

FALSE LOGIC OF THE ‘EXCEPTION’?

H.ORMONES - THE HEART AS  HORMONAL REGULATOR, OCYTOCIN, ADNERALINE, CORTISOL, DISRUPTION OF NATURAL STRESS MECHANISMS

THE HEART AS A COGNITIVE ORGAN OF PERCEPTION – HOW THIS WORKS, BIOLOGICAL EMPATHY.

ADAPTATION AS A LEARNING PROCESS:  NOT ‘HIT AND MISS’, NOT ‘RANDOM’, BUT EXTREMELY PRECISE.

NEUROPLASTICITY – WHAT DOES THAT TELL US ABOUT ‘ADAPTATION’?

BEHAVIOUR

TRAUMA CYCLES AND BEHAVIOURS – COPING AND RECOVERY.

SOCIETAL BEHAVIOUR PATTERNS – HOW THEY EVOLVE.

INTERGENERATIONAL TRAUMA PATTERNS – WHY THEY PERSIST.

INSTITUTIONALISATION – GLORIFICATION OF WAR, POWER, HATRED, PROPERTY.

ANTHROPOLOGY

BIOLOGICAL EMPATHY – PARENTING, MEMORY OF CHILDHOOD, EXPERIENCE OF CARING IN EMPATHIC ABORIGINAL SOCIETIES, BACTERIA, EMPATHY AS A BODY-SENSORY EXPERIENCE,

WHY ARE WE DIFFERENT? WHAT ARE WE DOING AND WHY ARE WE DOING IT?

CHILD ‘REARING’ – POISONOUS PEDAGOGY, ELITE PRACTICE.

TRADING ON PARENTS FEARS – WHAT ARE THOSE FEARS?

JAMES PRESCOTT’S WORK WITH JOHN BOLWBY,AND BEYOND …

RESURGENCE IN ABORIGINAL MOTHERING, LANGUAGE AND CULTURE.

SOLUTIONS

PARENTING – TRUST IN OUR BIOLOGICAL MANDATE.

IF PARENTS CAN UNDERSTAND THE SITUATION THEY ARE PLACED IN AND HOW IT CAN HARM THEIR CHILDREN, WILL THEY ACT ON WHAT THEY KNOW?

WILL THEY ACT CONSTRUCTIVELY OR DESTRUCTIVELY?

COMMUNITY – HOW NATURE FUNCTIONS.

UNDERSTANDING THE SITUATION WE ARE IN – AVOIDING THE COMFORT OF CONSPIRACY THEORIES, FANTASY OR IDEOLOGICAL SOLUTIONS, STICKING TO RELIABLE PROOFS.

EMPATHY AND SELF EMPATHY IN SELF GOVERNANCE.

RAISING CHILDREN WHO WILL RESPOND RATHER THAN REACT.

REALISM : START WITH SELF, EXTEND OUTWARDS LOCALLY.

TIME AND PROCESS, NATURE AS A CUE, AND AS A SOURCE OF CLUES.

CONFRONTING ‘RECEIVED WISDOM’ WITH DATA, EXPERIENCE, EMPATHY.

NOTE : Another component of the heart-brain communication system was provided by researchers studying the hormonal system. The heart was reclassified as an endocrine gland when, in 1983, a hormone produced and released by the heart called atrial natriuretic factor (ANF) was isolated.

This hormone exerts its effect on the blood vessels, on the kidneys, the adrenal glands, and on a large number of regulatory regions in the brain. It was also found that the heart contains a cell type known as 'intrinsic cardiac adrenergic'' (ICA) cells. Theses cells release noradrenaline and dopamine neurotransmitters, once thought to be produced only by neurons in the CNS.

More recently, it was discovered that the heart also secretes oxytocin, commonly referred to as the 'love' or bonding hormone. In addition to its functions in childbirth and lactation, recent evidence indicates that this hormone is also involved in cognition, tolerance, adaptation, complex sexual and maternal behaviours, learning social cues and the establishment of enduring pair bonds. Concentrations of oxytocin in the heart were found to be as high as those found in the brain.

Kindest regards

Corneilius

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

Mitt Romney : Cycles of abuse, Remorse or Denial, and Power

In The Rumpus, Steve Almond wrote a wonderfully clear piece about Mitt Romney, a Republican Presidential Candidate in the USA, concerning Romneys abusive behaviour (high school pranks) as a teenager. It is called THE WEEK IN GREED #6: To Behave Like the Fallen World

This piece is not so much about Romney as about the lack of empathy which we see all the time in those who assume or take power into their hands, be it national, international or at the local level or even within our own families, and the great difficulty the rest of us have when it comes to dealing with this, and the adverse outcomes for so many people of this dynamic.

Alice Miller wrote many books about how, if as  child, one is bullied or mistreated by parents, by Institutions, by society, or by circumstance and one is unable to resolve the situation, that suppression of one's true feelings becomes a mechanism of psychic survival, and this leaves the feelings anger, grief and sadness still alive, yet masked, buried, hidden from awareness.

These hidden, buried feelings then start to colour how one behaves towards oneself and others. The anger can be directed against oneself (shame, self loathing) or against the next generation, or against one's own children or against some 'other': the enemy 'created' by those in power as the receiver of these unresolved feelings, especially the anger and rage.

The problem is compounded by the fact that until these feelings are resolved, they remain alive within, and that even if a person acts out that anger, it will remain available for re-stimulation, again and again.

Alice Miller showed how this experience of mistreatment, abuse, trauma can become an intergenerational pattern, (the children of traumatised parents will grow up within that PTSD psychological environment, and whilst not all turn out with such adverse behaviours, many do, usually due to the lack of an ameliorating presence, what Miller calls an 'enlightened witness', certainly enough to populate systems of power and oppression, to fill the ranks of armies and paramilitary groups, often claiming 'it is for your own good') and others have written about Historical Trauma to show how any community that is traumatised can find itself traumatising it's own children, or each other, in a cycle of abuse and neglect.

This is akin to Lateral Violence, where violence erupts between those who have been subject to abuse from a more Powerful source which they cannot counter. Lateral Violence also occurs in hierarchical bureaucracies, in care systems.

Others have shown how Power can utilise that distressed behaviour to lay blame on those who show the signs of distress in addiction, obesity, psychological distress, inability to conform to 'standards' - people who are used as examples of how not to behave in conformity with 'a fallen world'.

And then there's the history of Power creating enemies to bind the people over whom Power has traction.

This is a very large part of what drives politics and power.

The writers own admission and remorse is the healing of all this, and is the kind of response required to lead towards ending the intergenerational re-traumatising cycles.

It is based on self-empathy.

For to feel the pain of another, beyond mere intellectual comprehension (compassion), is based on one's own sense of pain. And to feel remorse for hurt caused, is to understand that the others pain is real and visceral; it is a living sensation that pain has the same effect on the other as it does to oneself, and that one would not wish that upon any other any more than one would wish it upon oneself.

Expecting those who seek Power to have empathy is folly. Recognising this, it becomes essential to heal this dynamic in oneself as a personal praxis and study of power and oppression, and where it truly matters and where it can be extended is at the grass roots, in one's own life, one's own family and one's community.

If this can be done, then Power will find itself without the necessary accomplices, without which it cannot act.

From the comments on the piece (and elsewhere when such matters are raised), we can see that some people are yet willing to minimise what happened in Romney's case as being in the past, as being high school bullying, as being minor in comparison to the larger issues.

This is not the case. These events are linked in the lives of so many Power leaders, from the Kings of England, the Emperors of Rome, from Hitler to Stalin. And they are linked in the lives of the many people who populate bureaucracies of power.

The Vatican's 'response' to the testimony of courageous Survivors or clerical abuse is another example of this dynamic.

Kindest regards

Corneilius

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

Letter : We should be grateful to Survivors who have spoken out.

A Chara,

The recent arrests of three men accused of sexual abuse of children at Carrignavar Boarding School reveals what has been studiously avoided by so many, that abuse was just as prevalent in fee paying boarding schools as it was in Industrial Schools. I know, as I attended five 'elite' fee paying Catholic boarding schools for 12 years.

Perhaps the reasons for this avoidance are two fold.

There are some who went to those schools, who were abused, though not sexually, and who to this day would claim that the experience made them the men they are today.

The second reason might be that some of these alumni of the 'better sort of boarding school' have been or are still in positions of power and prestige, and their lack of self empathy might affect their willingness to face the truth of their own experience, let alone the truth of Survivors testimony.

Perhaps it also affected and still affects their decision making in other areas, especially with regard to Governance, in that a lack of self empathy runs concurrent with a lack of empathy for others.

It is clear to all and sundry that Irish Governance has demonstrated a clear lack of empathy for the people of Ireland for a long time.

Perhaps the courage of Survivors who have spoken out, even when others have refused to accept their testimony, might be seen as part of the healing of Irish society, leading us all towards greater empathy.

We should be grateful.

Kindest regards

Corneilius

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

How could I NOT love ALL the children equally

ANY ADULT WHO DOES NOT immediately ACT effectively and with force and clear intent to STOP AN ABUSER OF CHILDREN is the abusers friend, and the child's enemy. They are enemies of healthy community.

There is in the 'lynch mob' also those who wish to use the Church as a way of avoiding looking at how the State treats children, how Society misinforms parents as to their proper relationships towards children, especially towards ALL children, not just 'their own children' .. for example mothers letting their children enlist in the Military ...

I recall looking at my daughter and welling up with a fierce love for her, and having an insight which said "I love you, and loving you as I do, how could I NOT love ALL the children equally, and I still recognise and know the deep personal connection I have with my daughter is special, but not separate".

At that moment my entire world changed forever. In that moment I became truly adult.

Kindest regards

Corneilius

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

Catholic Church's 'scandal' is just a part of the issue.

David Quinn, in his comment piece for the Irish Independent, 4th May, ‘Abuse Cross Church must bear stems from decades ago’ wrote that a large scale study into child abuse, carried out in Holland, found that ‘the prevalence rate in Catholic-run Institutions was no higher than in other Institutions’ that were studied.

This is a fair comment. However, it does not mitigate the Church's behaviour in relation to the suppression of the truth and subsequent (avoidable) harms caused to so many children, over such a long time scale, one whit.

What he misses in his piece is that the abuse of children is a serious problem across our entire Society.

Whilst there is a huge focus on the abuse of children within Catholic-run Institutions, and rightly so, the issue of the sexual abuse, the mistreatment and brutalising of children is much larger than the Catholic Church.

Europeans often lay claim to the centrality of Christianity as a benign force in European development, as a central pillar of our Society. What kind of Society has this as a central pillar?

This is a matter of profound importance to Society at large. The fact that none of this (the 'scandal' of the Catholic Church) would be occurring without the courage of Survivors of abuse, who braved a prevailing societal unwillingness to accept the truth, is something David Quinn ought to have noted. It is something I reflect upon regularly. I am in awe of those who have shown such courage, well aware as I am of the shame, self-loathing, fear and confusion that are the outcomes for so many Survivors.

David Quinn's omission reduces his piece to a defensive polemic, on behalf of the Catholic Church, and does nothing for the children, be it those who have been abused, those who are being abused and those whose abuse might well be prevented, if the work of John Bowlby, (child mother bonding) James Prescott, (origins of violence) Alice Miller, (child abuse sanctioned by Society, intergenerational trauma) JosephChilton Pearce, (prenatal consciousness) John Holt (how children learn) and David Chamberlain, (child birth, infancy) and John Taylor Gatto, (the origins and intent of Compulsory Schooling) all of whom have examined in detail, and with courageous honesty, how we, as a society, treat our children, was not so studiously ignored by Government departments responsible for Education, Health and Child Welfare, so carefully avoided by the leading Psychiatric and Psychological Establishments, so rarely mentioned by leading media, in spite of  the verified and corroborated evidence that supports their collective contention, that the psychology of any given society is both revealed and perpetuated in how that Society relates to and treats the children.

The psychology of Power, (in simple terms, bullying), still dominates our Society and it is perhaps the single most important connective issue that we can, as adults, face in these tremulous times.

Suicide is the 3^rd leading cause of death amongst 10 – 24 year olds. A telling statistic indeed. Physical Health has been improved, yet psychological health is deteriorating.

War, Institutionalised Abuse (children, elders, prisoners, poverty) Ecological Destruction, the Competition of Power, be it secular, religious, economic or ideological are issues that cannot be avoided whilst at the same time the claim that we are a decent society is made.

The intergenerational trauma patterns associated with these issues will not diminish because we mitigate or ignore them. The work that has been done, mentioned above, and is being done is now more widely available, through the dissemination of information in this, the information age. Some of us, with access to that information, are genuinely better informed as a result.

It is surely time now for the organs of public discourse and the organs of Governance to fully engage with that information and that crucial work, to engage with what is known of this matter, in order to build a future that honours all our children, and with that all our peoples, for all of their lives.

Kindest regards

Corneilius

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

'Evolutionary' Origins of Religion: a trauma model

*the use of the tem 'evolutionary' is entirely satrical in the context of this essay. Religion and evolvution are two mutually exclusive dynamics..

My own view regarding Evolution and Religion (The Evolutionary Origins of Religion) emerges from my own life experience and from my readings of the work of John Bolwby, James Prescott , Alice Miller, Robert Sapolsky, Judith Herman, Allan Schore and many, many others who have explored the psychology of the biological mandate towards empathy,  (and the disruption of that biological mandate) which is based on the lived experience of self empathy from within the womb, through infancy and onwards throughout life.

 Joseph Chilton Pearce suggests in his research that self empathy, awareness of self, starts within the womb.

Self awareness and awareness of other exists in a pre-verbal reality that is experienced, in such manner that the material and social meaning of the experience is known to the experiencer: this is called direct or experiential cognition.

Others have described what is called  Liminal Consciousness a silent, non verbal full spectrum reality cognition that is shared within a group,  usually groups that are what we can call pre-conquest egalitarian cultures.

"When similar child nurture was later seen spawning similar consciousness in isolated enclaves elsewhere, it became clear that a type of mentality very different from world norms today existed widely in prehistory. Such mentality emerges from a sociosensual nurture common to such peoples but shunned in Westernized societies"

Prescott's  research has found an emergent pattern of Social Behaviour amongst Societies where the natural child-mother bonding processes are disrupted, of increased Religiosity, Hierarchy and Institutionalized Violence all of which exist in proportion to the levels of disruption to the child-mother bonding processes.

Furthermore he was able to link disruption of the adolescent exploration of sexuality to the emergence of these Societal traits.

All of these experientials are embodied lived experiences, that is to say they are experienced and known primarily through the body, the senses and are biologically mandated as vitally  important life learning processes.

This 'disruption' could be called the Trauma model of the Evolutionary Origins of Religion.

David Chamberlain has written :

"From the second month of pregnancy, experiments and observations reveal an active prenate with a rapidly developing sensory system permitting exquisite sensitivity and responsiveness. Long before the development of advanced brain structures, prenates are seen interacting with each other and learning from experience. They seem especially interested in the larger environment provided by mother and father, and react to individual voices, stories, music, and even simple interaction games with parents. The quality of the uterine environment is determined principally by parents.

The opportunities for parents to form a relationship with the baby in the womb are significant and remarkable. This contrasts sharply with the previous view that prenates did not have the capacity to interact, remember, learn, or put meaning to their experiences"

It is quite obvious that those with innate or natural self empathy intact know or can better better, at a visceral pre-verbal level, how to relate to others, to meet their own and others needs, because they sense the other in intimate ways associated with their own sense of self empathy. They are more perceptive and more responsive to information contained within the other because they can more fully sense themselves.

Conversely, those whose natural self empathy has been somehow damaged have greater difficulty in relating to others, and require a set of external guidelines to manage their relationships.

This is the thrust of the work of Heinz Kohut

The resolution of the issue of damaged self-empathy would lead towards a spiritual or personally rational 'inner' motivated outlook, rather than religious 'externally driven' or societally rationalised outlook on life. Prescott's research demonstrates that where these key experientials are not disrupted, a more egalitarian societal behaviour emerges.

In terms of evolution, and of well being, it is clear that empathy, founded on experienced self-empathy is a crucially vital socialising characteristic, because it enables a visceral understanding of the world within, and of the world in which a human being is living, an almost direct perception of the value and meaning of life, and a grasping of the value of others lives to those others, and in particular the lives of other organisms that are the food we eat. This is the basis for the oft quoted respect many Aboriginal societies afford the creatures and plants within their environments, upon which they are dependent for food, medicine and other materials.

James Prescott outlined in some detail the societal behavioural characteristics to be found within a spectrum or bandwidth of societies, ranging from empathic egalitarian through to totalitarian hierarchical societies, and traced the emergence of these characteristics to the disruption or nurturing of two crucial empathic experiential learning points in the life of a human being.

From an evolutionary viewpoint, Imposed Hierarchical Religion can be seen as an evolutionary mismatch.

That is to say that whilst spirituality of some form is probably innate, and that perhaps the natural wonder so many experience (especially small children)  when we allow ourselves to simply gaze at nature and allow nature into us, is an expression of this, and that this wonder tends towards assisting in the development of nurturing relationships.

Whereas Religiosity is learned, and tends towards exclusive yet low-urturant relationships primarily with those who share the same religious viewpoints, and at the same time, religiosity  tends towards aversion of the other and or fear of other viewpoints. The history of sectarianism within religions and ideologies is all too often bloody and brutal evidence of this.

In evolutionary terms this means the person or society who is subject to imposed religiosity, or indeed ideology, (which is almost always imposed through the agency of Institutionalised Power) will be less willing to co-operate with the 'other' or to recognise it's own interdependency with all of life, and this therefore increases the likelihood of sustained behaviours that damage the environment, which inevitably reduces it's long term survival possibilities. The evidence for this lies all around us.

I have traced a path way of disruption, based on my understanding of Trauma and PTSD, which leads to the excessive control and violence associated with Institutionalised Power Religions, with Lateral Violence, Abusive Family dynamics, and much else besides.


a basic outline : loss of  self empathy due to trauma -> loss of empathy for others -> sense of disconnection from what nurtures -> compounds fear associated with trauma -> leads to excessive desire for control of self, others, environment -> leads to violence to control self, others, environment

To survive a trauma event often requires that a person undergoing the trauma suppresses his or her feelings in order to survive. This would also apply to a community that is being traumatised. If, post trauma, that person or community is unable to resolve those suppressed feelings, the suppression remains, and children born to that person or community will grow up with that suppression as part of their psychology. Such suppression leads to a disruption of self-empathy, because it leads to shutting down certain feelings or groups of feelings.

The loss of self-empathy leads to a loss of empathy for others, which can also be described as a loss of empathy for all that nurtures one, or a sense of disconnection from all that nurtures one. This will generate fear, which compounds the fear associated with the trauma, and leads directly to a sensed need to control the people, environment or world around one in order to have certain perceived needs met.

When any autonomous organism is subjected to external control, it will resist, and this is where violence is utilised, to break that resistance. That violence can be physical or psychological. It can be immediate and final or long term and sustained.

Naturally enough, a community or family that has been traumatised, and has been unable to resolve the feelings suppressed, will pass that on to the next generation. As each successive generation 'evolves' evolves they will inject that psychology into the structures they create around their system, structures that will become core beliefs, attitudes and over time Institutionalised patterns of permitted behaviour.

If a child somehow retains some of his or her original natural autonomy, which is a core biological and evolutionary trait, then violence, both physical and psychological, will be permitted to be utilised against that child to break the child, to show the child who is master. This is the basis for what is called 'Poisonous Pedagogy' which has a long and well documented history in Europe.

Recent calls from UK Government Ministers and Teachers Unions for more Power to control children in schools reveals that this is still an active paradigm within the UK - the 21st Century is still Governed by Mediaeval and Victorian attitudes. David Cameron's call that children ought to 'stand up when an adult enters the class room' is very revealing, though he himself is totally unaware of what he is revealing.

Likewise the Catholic Pope's record on dealing with widespread child abuse within Catholicism, and the stance of so many Catholics in protecting both the Pope and the Institution of The Vatican.

Baroness Varsi, a UK 'Muslim' Peer, visited the Pope recently, and made no comment whatsoever on the issues facing the Vatican. Because those same issues are pertinent to ALL Governance as we know it today.




Evolution of life on Earth is more about interdependency, co-operation, mutualism, nurture than it is about competition, mere survival, hierarchical or linear growth. Religiosity is clearly of the latter stream, and is an evolutionary mismatch. The same can be said of ideology, nationalism, sexism, racism. That many people have been questioning these latter attitudes for so long, in a climate of almost constant oppression and denial, speaks to the innate power of our natural biological mandate towards self empathy and empathy for others.


Kindest regards

Corneilius

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

Intelligence, cleverness and stupidity...

Intelligent - Behaviour which nurtures the world around us.

Clever - the ability to manipulate the world around us.

Stupid - Using cleverness in ways that either cause harm or do not nurture the world around us.

Perhaps, if by realigning our comprehension of these words, we will see more of reality, and perhaps be confronted by aspects of our own behaviour which we can then alter, so that we are a more fully nurturant human community.

Is this not worth the effort?

It is SO possible.



Kindest regards

Corneilius

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