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.
Critique of a States violence is not a critique of religion, or ethnicity of its constituents, and should never be conflated with either. It is critique of State Violence.
Critique of violence is not a critique of religion, or ethnicity. It is critique of Violence.
We live within a hierarchy culture of wealth and power.
The Hierarchy culture is a dominator culture that deploys layers of violence protect Wealth and Power.
This is the most honest appraisal of our culture, and it's abhorrent militarism.
Here is a song I wrote, Expectations of Every Child, about the needs of all our children, needs which all too often go unmet within Dominator Cultures.
1. "The psychology of a given culture is both revealed and perpetuated in how they relate to and treat the children. Change that and we can change everything."
The choice is ours, collectively, to make.
Jeremy Corbyn speaks quite sensibly, to the need for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza, and beyond.
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In England, Suella Braverman is demoted, for her public description of homelessness as a 'lifestyle choice' and her public labelling of Ceasefire Marches as 'Hate Marches'. She was removed only because she was embarrassing the Westminster Government, who mostly share her views. She was fired to protect that Government, not to indicate any alteration in Government policy.
2. "The pathology of a given culture is both revealed and perpetuated in how they relate to and treat the children and the most vulnerable among them. Heal that and we can heal everything."
Angela Rayner, a mother herself, refuses to call, publicly, for a ceasefire, which she must know is essential to protect the lives of so many children, mothers and fathers and grand parents living in Gaza. She stands with Starmer. This does not hold her in the best light. She may well change her mind soon...
The Irish Government, a coalition of old civil war party oligarchs, Fianna Fail and Fianna Gael, with the Green Party responded to 'opposition' parties and independents call for a ceasefire in Gaza, which the Dail, the Irish Legislative Assembly, approved.
In recent days they have rejected a motion in the Dail to expel the Israeli Ambassador, who openly and publicly, whilst remaining in Ireland, supports and praises the commission of horrific War Crimes.
The Irish Government stance is to that to expel the Israeli Ambassador is to put Irish Citizens in Israel, Gaza and the West Bank at risk and to close the door to potential influence as a Government that has helped to bring about an end to militarised violence through negotiations.
There is some merit to their argument. Thatchers Government did have back channel discussions on ending the violence, even as they publicly claimed they did not negotiate with terrorists. Those back channels were part of the process of bringing peace, though the bulk of the work was done by women's movements in Northern Ireland.
However we now understand that there was collusion between British Security Forces and Unionist Paramilitaries which led to so much avoidable harm, which exacerbated the violence rather than quell it and that the British Government were well aware of this. Public face and private face.
That stance - of keeping the diplomatic doors open - was also the Irish Governments stance with regards the invasions of Afghanistan, Iraq, the War against Libya, the civil war in Donbas, and The Russian invasion of Ukraine. Unfortunately the Irish Government also supported the movement of weapons and combat troops into those war zones, effectively contributing to the prolonging of each war. Thus the merit of the argument against expelling the Israeli ambassador fails on account that it does not reduce the avoidable harm to the people who are being harmed. There is also the potential of using the UN as the go between - where rather than a case by case basis, the matter is dealt with on a collective front.
The culture of Power, the political and social Hierarchy of Wealth, has always and is still layered with violences, to maintain its dominance. We see this undermining the potential of the UN when Security Council Members veto decisions and proposals made by the collective.
We, as the Decent People, must take up the political task of ending all of those violences from within our own polities. It is a political task, and it requires that we organise accordingly, en masse, to elect legislators who will pass laws to end all those violence, develop policies to effect that and pursue them to their final goal.
Intersectionality is the term used to describe how all these violences are part of a whole, and cannot be set as isolated and separate cases, if we are, as we must, to confront and end those layers of violence.
In Ireland, another aspect of that dominator culture was exposed over the past 30 years, through 6 public inquiries into the mistreatment of children and vulnerable adults within residential care systems. The Churches made a ton of money during that period, the state absolved itself of its constitutional responsibilities, and both State and Church covered up the crimes, repeatedly, which led directly to more and more horrific abuse. Seven decades of horrific abuse.
There is a collective change of consciousness and awareness occurring in Irish Society.
The historical crimes of Church and State are being looked at, but even still Church and State are evasive, and are delaying a full and honest accountability and reparations process that would finally resolve the matter.
The Dominator culture does not come from the womb. The Dominator culture does not respect the womb.
"All is born of Woman, no harm shall come to the children"
In short, Hierarchies of violence are evidence of dysfunction in human relationships, they are not innate nor are they part of the normal range of healthy behaviours which biological health mandates.
The work to confront this is a collective work, even as part of it starts with personal change in almost every case. When the healed work together, then change is more likely.
Follow the links on this page to learn more about this. It really does matter in terms of developing grounded political and social movements to confront the many abuses of Power inherent to the prevailing political and economic systems, which is the first step towards building an egalitarian culture, our true natural healthy birthright.
Here's my performance of the song, Universal Soldier, written by Donovan, during the Vietnam War, taken from one of my recent live stream shows on Facebook.
Kindest regards
Corneilius
Thank you for reading this blog.
I sincerely hope it has added something of value to your reflections.
"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.
"The psychology of a culture is both revealed and sustained in how they relate to and treat the most vulnerable among them. Change that and we can change everything."
I grew up in 5 Boarding Schools, from age 6 to 17, during the 1960s and 1970s. I am a Survivor.
Close to a century of suppression (of the true scale of the problem of sexual abuse of children) maintained by both Church and State has caused unspeakable harm.
The Government set out a scoping inquiry to record the testimony of a small sample of Survivors, be presented to Government today, to help define the terms of reference and the powers of that Public Inquiry. The term used was ‘a survivor led process’.
The team collating that evidence have requested more time to analyse that evidence and draft a report that accurately reflects the meaning and importance of that evidence. They have been granted an extension to June 2024.
Today, as I write, we Survivors (and you must know there are living Survivors struggling with life within your own constituency) have no materialised support for our most immediate need let alone our long term end of life needs, as vulnerable as we are, as we approach the process of a Public Inquiry.
We humbly request that the State meets those needs now, before it’s too late.
Please lend your ear to our voices when we ask for our unmet needs to be met.
Support all survivors, in a meaningful material and determined fashion.
We deserve no less.
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.
David and Mark Ryan (Mark unexpectedly passed away in September 21st 2023, RIP)
This is an open letter to Irish politicians, Irish media and others regarding the matter of a Public Inquiry into the history of Sexual Abuse of Children in Irish Schools since the inception of the state, as a democratic republic. It is worth noting to readers that the first Government level report into the sexual abuse of children in Irish Schools was The Carrigan Report of 1931. Here is a 2004 article looking at this matter and the fact that this report was suppressed, for political reasons, for religious reasons and for social and economic reasons.
As regards the Government of Ireland current stance : Mark Vincent Healy is concerned that it is an ethically bankrupt process in that even as it asks Survivors to present their experience and evidence, it has not made adequate provision for the care and welfare Survivors need. The reality is the state financial, psychological and material support for previous Survivors groups, following the 6 Inquiries already done, is less than complete. It really should not be so.
I share his concern.
My letter is sent out to an email list Mark Vincent has generated as part of Survivors voicing our concerns. Mark Vincent has been active for at least 15 years in advocacy for his own case, and our cause.
I have such a deep respect for every Survivor who has ever spoken out, every Survivor that has made such efforts to have their stories told, heard and understood, in order to ensure Justice prevails.
The immensity of the task of any individual, or small group of individuals to confront the two most powerful institutions in Ireland is a Sisyphean demand. We deserve the full active support of the entire population, backing us up, all the time, until full justice is restored, and peace can abide in the land.
I would not be in the position I am today, I would not have had the access to help, the level of understanding I have of myself without the work of previous survivors and advocates, thousands of people who have done a huge amount of work on the issue of child abuse, trauma, recovery over many decades.
I truly stand on the shoulders of giants. I am so fortunate, and am well aware that so many were not so lucky as I, and that many still face insurmountable difficulties in their own personhood and their lives as a direct result of child abuse.
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Good Morning,
1. I am a Survivor, whose life has been adversely impacted by sexual assault, psychological and emotional abuse, physical abuse and neglect of my needs during 12 years spent in 5 Irish Boarding Schools, between 1965 and 1977. Thus I can speak to the culture within the entire system in that period. it was far from healthy and safe for children. All the adults knew this.
I have written you a number of times on this matter.
I attended the funeral of Mark Ryan, may he rest in peace, in London and the memorial held for him in Dublin.
I read the poem, 'We will Remember' on both occasions.
His sudden passing came as a deep shock, as he, I and others were looking forwards to continuing the task of informing a Public Inquiry, and completing the task of advocating for Justice for all survivors of depraved and extended abuse within the Boarding Schools and Day Schools of Ireland - we were innocents, whose needs as children went unmet, and today we are adults whose needs remain unmet.
The toll chronic childhood trauma takes imposes a burden that is now well understood, though not well met.
2. The Ministers eulogy was appropriately toned, and reflected the genuine compassion and kindness that Mark Ryan brought to this process.
3. Colm O' Gorman's eulogy expressed in the clearest terms the social and cultural and societal realities. Our plight and condition was known, and we were abandoned to a toxic legacy, not a matter of fate, so much as a matter of cover-ups. We were cast aside. The Church and State turned a blind eye, and lied. Irish society lied to itself.
"The psychology of any given family, community or culture is both revealed and perpetuated in how they relate to and treat the most vulnerable among them. Change that and you can change everything."
I suggest that we integrate it into our thinking and action on this matter.
3. We survivors are not 'Victims', we were victimised.
That is a statement of clarity.
Every time I read the word 'victim' as a descriptive of myself I recoil in anger and revulsion. I did nothing wrong and any passivity on my part was simply a matter of the vast power disparity between me and the adults who abused me. I was not predestined to be or had any predisposition to adopt the category of victim. I was victimised.
4. I see a change in Irish Society, wrought over the past three to four decades by Survivors from various residential care settings operated by the Church with oversight and funding from the State, advocated for Justice often opposed by Church and State, and others. Systems that were commercial operations, generating wealth for the Church and it's congregations.
I do not see that change coming from within the Church. The defensive, adversarial stance of the congregations involved remains toxic.
I do not see that change coming from the State - I do not see either entity putting up their hands, admitting the fullness of the crimes committed, offering to release all documentation required to write an honest history as part of a sturdy, robust process of Justice, Accountability, Reparation let alone 'healing'.
5. I read history from the perspective of examining the lived experience of the most vulnerable with regard to how their lives are affected and indeed afflicted by the decisions of the most powerful. You might consider what that means, in terms of honesty, empathy, accuracy.
6. Recent offers of a Restorative Justice appear to be manipulative rather than genuine efforts, even as Survivors and their friends best intentions and most fervent hopes were embedded in the process. That manipulative attitude has generated divisions within Survivor groups, divisions that on reflection meet the criteria of 'divide and rule'. There is no external review of this process that can assess it fairly.
7. The work of the Scoping Inquiry team, and in particular the Survivor Engagement process which gathered testimony from hundreds of Survivors, proceeds.
While it proceeds, Survivors needs remain unmet.
Mark Vincent Healy has been explicit on this. He speaks from long experience, supporting and advocating for vulnerable survivors for over a decade.
The offer of three counselling sessions, rather than open ended support of that kind for as long as each survivor requires, is clearly inadequate.
And there is the question of economic support for Survivors.
8. The Scoping Inquiry team employed to take submissions from Survivors understand that they are taking a small sample, a point repeatedly made by Mark Vincent Healy.
9. Nonetheless, given the depth of the information and insight the interview team have been given by Survivors, they have asked for more time to assess that material - to ensure an exacting and detailed analysis be carried out, by experts in the field, to present a report to Government to accurately inform the decision making that will determine the terms of reference and task of a future Public Inquiry.
10. Most Survivors I am in touch with understand that it must be a Judicial Level Inquiry that has real power to hold the Schools and their operators to account, has the power to request documents, call witnesses before it, under perjury notice. The whole truth, nothing but the truth.
11. Mark Ryan did not get the full support he deserved. None of us have. David Ryan, his brother is not getting the full support he deserves. None of the Survivors who attended his funeral and his memorial are getting the support they need and deserve. Thousands of others today and many tens of thousands of children who were routinely abused in the most depraved manner over the last 70 years never got the support and care they deserved.
That must be corrected. We know that the ACE study and others have provided ample scientific and medical evidence that repeated trauma, multiple adverse childhood experiences, is a leading cause of early death in Survivors.
12. As one Survivor put it, speaking from within a counselling group: "We should not be friends. Our bond as Survivors is there only because we were victimised, and that should never have happened."
Eulogies for the lost can be moving and comforting, yet they are inadequate to the current needs of living Survivors - we need and indeed we deserve so much more than words.
13. We need and demand concrete action to support us, we need and demand concrete action to record the true history of what was done to us, and how the adverse impacts of that flowed through our bodies, our hearts and minds, and how it percolated through Irish Society - it did not 'happen', it was done - to so many children, for so long.
"The psychology of any given family, community or culture is both revealed and perpetuated in how they relate to and treat the most vulnerable among them. Change that and you can change everything."
Make the changes we need, and do it with robust commitment. We will continue to advocate for our case, even as we face the very real possibility of early deaths that might preclude our being there when Justice is delivered in full.
Kindest Regards
Corneilius Crowley, 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.
These are some predawn reflections written in Dublin, the morning after Mark Ryans Memorial service. I also attended Mark's funeral and cremation in London, last week, as I live in London at present.
David (left), Mark (right) during their appearance and testimony on The Late Late Show November 2022.
Why should it be the Survivors task to be ‘courageous’, ‘brave’, ‘generous’?
I am among the number of still living Survivors of Irish Catholic and Protestant and Secular Boarding Schools. One of many. One of many thousands still living today. The dead number in tens of thousands, probably hundreds of thousands, if we start the count at the inception of the Irish State, when the De Valera Government that inherited a colonial Victorian ‘Christian’ social care, education and health care system handed it over to the Catholic Church, providing them with immense social power and solid flow of income, which they ably exploited. God needs our money, it would seem. And He needs laws as well.
The very first official report into abuse of children within those care systems was The Carrigan Report of 1931. The suppression of that report aligned with the view that Catholic morality should be the basis of the legal approach to morality. The Church was beyond reproach. This was official state policy.
And only now is the matter of the abuse of vulnerable children in Boarding Schools and Day Schools since the 1930s on the legal, political and social agenda in the public domain.
How did this come about?
In 2020/21, a group of past pupils of one fee paying boarding school, Blackrock College, Dublin, started an online group discussing how to get their College to issue a public apology to Survivors, as there had been over the last two decades or so a number of cases that had been through the courts, where perpetrators were held to account, but without a formal public apology being issued from the College itself.
A number of Survivors had been trying to get a decent response from The Spiritans for more than a decade, to no avail, in spite of strenuous effort, notably by Mark Vincent Healy, a powerhouse in this field, and others. It is a Sisyphean task, and needs many bodies to the wheel.
This most recent approach, where survivors and past pupils started conversing about this for the first time as an online group, opened a path for more Survivors to reveal their sad histories, and the realisation quickly grew that the numbers of children afflicted was way beyond anyones comprehension - an avalanche of allegations emerged, just from one short period, less than a decade, with 20% of children from one year saying how they had been afflicted, which led to Survivors making formal complaints to Irish Police forces.
It was at this point when it looked like the College was still stonewalling that David and Mark Ryan, having bumped into a radio documentary maker, almost by accident, determined that they were going to finally break the story to the Nation of Ireland which they did via the RTE Broadcast Radio documentary 'Blackrock Boys' and on TV, in November 2022 with an appearance on The Late Late Show, Irelands premier Saturday night chat show, a cultural institution much loved and respected across Ireland, and indeed across the Earth wherever Irish diaspora find themselves. That documentary has just this weekend won a major award in Europe for its makers.
Then there was 6 days of Joe Duffy, a radio talk show host, who ran 6 consecutive two hour shows on the matter, because there were that many Survivors coming forward with well corroborated allegations, which were quite horrific - the numbers of children and the brutality of their persecutors was finally being recognised, as was the cover ups. The College had always sought to protect its image, status and wealth above the needs of the children who were harmed in their care. They moved predators to other areas, where they continued to predate, creating a trail of tears that ran across continents. A pattern repeated almost everywhere Catholic clergy ran care systems of any kind,
The nation was appalled, and the Government was impelled by this publicity to acquiesce to forming a Public Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse within Irish Boarding and Day Schools, secular and religious alike.
The Ryan brothers were central to all of this. Their initial testimony provided the impetus for others to step forward into the light.
The Government has since then been running a Survivor Scoping Inquiry to gather information and insight from the Survivors who had come forwards, around 200 or so now elderly men, to feed into the future public inquiry. Mark, David and many, many others have been interviewed in depth about their experiences and what they want to see in a Public Inquiry. We all felt there was a great work to be done, and we were all prepared to do that work, whatever it might take.
And then Mark passed away, unexpectedly on September 21st 2023, and his obituary gives an indication of the importance of what he and his brother David did. Historic is the accurate term to use.
David and Marks close family and friends were not expecting this - indeed Mark was preparing for the long slog that a Public Inquiry entails. We all were. We were bereft when we got the news of his death. Mark was a warm, big hearted, kind gentle man. His aim was not revenge, it was justice - the justice that grounded love demands - for all Survivors, living and deceased.
Speaking to one of Marks survivor friends, he told me that Mark said to him : "We should never have become friends!" and what he meant was it was the shared injustice, the harm and trauma of being predated upon within a setting that gave the predators carte blanche and a protective veil to continue abusing children that had 'thrown us together'.
At the funeral and memorial, much was said of Marks courage, to take on the most powerful institutions in the way he was envisaging it. We all knew it was going to be a struggle, a fight, a matter that might well wear us down, again and again.
Yesterday I asked myself “Why do we have to fight for justice?”
Why fight? Why us? Why me? This is not self pity, it is a really good question.
Why must we - the harmed - take up a struggle against Institutions of great wealth and power to see to it that our stories are told and understood, to see to it that those who were culpable are held to account, to see to it that they make appropriate reparations, to see to it that we receive the support we need as we arrive at elderhood, (is that a word?), to see to it that this country creates a social care system that nurtures the most vulnerable among us, to see to it that we build a society that nurtures all of us, from in utero to the grave?
Why must we fight? Why is this a struggle? Why are we so often on our own?
Why is it that Adult Survivors of childhood abuse, survivors of violent rape, survivors of daily psychological torture, survivors of physical beatings, survivors of deliberate neglect of such degree and quantity that it can be fairly called an atrocity, are expected to be courageous, generous, or brave and take up that task outlined above?
Why is it that we old men, all of us ordinary people who were just small innocent children whose real needs went unmet, because we were groomed, bullied, beaten, broken, shattered, splattered, torn, raped and shredded and so grossly mistreated in such unspeakable manner within institutional ‘care’ systems, and schools, in ways that scarred and mashed our souls and warped our core sense of self out of all recognition, twisting our hearts and breaking our minds, our guts wrenched in pain and terror, our sleep punctuated by night sweats and terrors, our days polluted by rage and despair, living in fear of the next day, trauma reverberations distorting our lives forever, are expected to be courageous, generous, brave and why are we the ones who have to fight for justice?
Why are we alone, in Society? Are we not a significant demographic already?
Where are you? Where were you then and where are you now?
What is it then when so many of us are indeed kind, gentle men and also broken, broken, broken and holding that within ourselves, that we have to take up this gargantuan task, often on our own?
Colm O'Gorman was in that position decades ago, in 1998. He knows.
Colm O' Gorman Eulogy at the Memorial for Mark Ryan
(apologies for sound quality, my bad)
What kind of culture expected us to keep calm, and carry on?
Why is it that we cannot rail and scream and cry and be heard, recognised, validated and be protected?
Why is it that the Church and State, the institutions that operated, funded and exploited those care systems are not expected to be courageous, brave, generous let alone honest?
What is it, that you expect the Church and State to be defensive.
’It’s only to be expected.’ ‘
What else do you expect?’
Restorative Justice? Before any real or meaningful justice has been achieved?
Really?
Why has every cohort of children abused within institutional settings who survived into adulthood had to struggle with both Church and State, and the wider community, to gain public recognition of what was done?
Industrial Schools, Orphanages, Mothers and Babies Homes, Magdalene Launderies, Mental Asylums, Boarding Schools, Day Schools.
What does that say about Irish society, Irish culture and Irish history?
What does this say about you and I?
What is that?
What is that all about?
Why is it that both Church and State are expected to be defensive, dishonest and not expected to be humble, generous, courageous and kind?
Why must we fight for justice?
Why?
What happened did not happen - it was done to us.
What happens to a child when he is tormented by a depraved, violent nasty adult?
What happens to a child when he is repeatedly tormented by a depraved, violent nasty adult and no one listens, hears or understands, and that child has to carry that terror and pain in silence, unprotected, alone, as he lives on, day by day, fearing the next day, every day.
What happens when the detail of that child's experience is so unspeakable that the child himself cannot describe it and does not want to remember any of it - what happens for the child afterwards?
What happens to a child when he or she is tormented by a depraved, violent nasty adult and no one listens, hears or understands, when no one steps in to defend the child, to protect the child from the depraved and violent adult and it happens within a care system, and that child has to carry that terror in silence, alone, as he or she lives on, day by day?
Do you know what it is to live only because you find yourself alive, numbed to the core, unable to live for anything? That is not resilience.
What happens when the child tries to speak of what was done to him or her and no one wants to hear of it? What happens to the adult Survivor when he tries to speak and no one wants to hear of it?
What happens when this desperate thing is institutionalised, when this level of mistreatment is systemic across a country, within the governance of a State, paid for by taxes?
What happens when this is done for decades, afflicting generations of children?
An action is taken, a thing is done, harm is caused and no one intervenes and there are aftershocks, outcomes, reverberations - none of them good or healthy.
How many children endured this, how many attempted to live on only to die early, broken beyond coping - how many survivors did not survive long? They are invisible, vanished. The dead do not speak to the living. They cannot fight for justice. They will never receive justice.
The living cannot speak to the dead, only to each other, and still be heard.
What happens to a generation of children when a significant number of us are tormented by depraved, violently nasty adults and no one listens, hears or understands, when no one steps in to defend those children, to protect the children from known depraved, violent adults and it happens within a care system, repeatedly, and those children have to carry that terror and their interior wounded state in silence, often unknown to each other, alone in a crowded room, as they live on, day by day?
What happens to them when they in turn become parents, and find themselves struggling with their next generation of children, unable to respond naturally, openly, unable to meet their needs, having lived with their needs as children unmet.
Do you know what it is like to be that child, growing into a teen, becoming an adult, carrying that toxic load in silence, trying to live well, flailing and failing?
Who indeed needs to be brave, courageous and generous?
Who needs to put their hand up, and who should admit to what was done - not ‘what happened’ - but what was done to so many little children. What was done quite deliberately - who needs to put their hand up for that?
Church and State and people protected Church and State and people, and they all knew this was being done.
We are not victims. We were victimised.
Theres a crucial difference between the two statements.
I don’t want to fight for justice. I want justice. I’m tired, exhausted, breaking. We are tired, exhausted, breaking. Thousands upon thousands of us, our needs as children unmet, our needs as adult survivors unmet.
Why must we fight for justice?
Why do you, even still, forsake us so?
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.
The culture you and I were all born into is not a healthy human culture...
Study the lives of ordinary people as they are affected by the decisions of empires that pass over their land.
Examine how the lives of the most vulnerable are adversely impacted by the decisions of the most powerful is the real honest history.
Then you will see it’s less about the celebrated political leaders and states than it is about hierarchy of wealth and power cultures and the layers of violence they deploy, and that the populations traumatised are in reality a single, global historical and extant demographic.
The native peoples everywhere colonisation happens, the Jewish people in Europe and Russia, the Irish, the Koreans, the Vietnamese, the Chinese, the Armenians, the Aboriginal peoples, the Palestinians, the Royhingya, the Cambodians, the Africans, the native Americans north and south, and so many more, so many more, the impoverished everywhere and their children.
State and their wealthy rulers exploit people, they rarely nurture people.
We must change that, you and I, with our families, our neighbours, our communities in our polities - we must change all of this, for the bullies will not.
Egalitarian peoples of the Amazon Forest.
This culture into which I and you were born has is a systemic cultural hierarchy of wealth and power and layers of violence to maintain that power, through deliberately created structural Power disparities.
Be it kings or plutocrats, communism or capitalism, theocracy or warlords - it’s the same pattern.
It’s not normal healthy human behaviour. That much is clear.
We are not evolved to be bullied or to become bullies. If we were it would not cause us so much distress and ill health.
Bullying is learned. And the most interesting thing is that the vast majority of people are not prone to bullying, indeed we suffer terribly when we are bullied.
We all grow up somewhere and we all internalise many aspects of that somewhere- this is a natural process. Internalising the love of parents, siblings, community, language, immediate environment and habitat is a natural process.
People born into Christianity internalise its values, people burn into Judaism internalise its values.
People born into Capitalism internalise its values.
People born into a traumatised family internalise those values, even when there is no malicious intent in the parents or their community.
People born into egalitarian cultures internalise the values of their culture.
And so it goes.
One of the most toxic thought forms is that this current condition - hierarchy of power - defines ‘humanity’ as a species, when it’s really just a culture.
The violent hierarchy system aka The Dominator Culture is understood to be no more than 15,000 years old.
Prior to that we were mostly egalitarian, matrilineal and peaceable. Integrated into our environment, our shared spaces, shared with plants and animals, shared with deep insight, respect and gratitude.
The task before us is to reclaim our natural healthy relationships and behavioural dynamics - it’s not a question of ‘evolution’, as often suggested by New Age ideology and other ideologies associated with religions that hold ideas of Satan or any other supernatural Evil Force.
It is a question of healthy natural relationships, between adults and children, between systems of governance and peoples.
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Here's an excerpt from Robert Sapolsky's book 'Behave' which takes a deep, well informed look at human behaviour and the biology of our behaviour and makes note of what is known as 'lateral violence' - what happens when people of one strata feel under intense pressure and feel important to make appropriate effective changes aka disempowered. I highly recommend all my readers to get a copy of 'Behave', and read it many times, dipping in and out - it's an astounding work, covers a lot of ground, very readable, informative and Sapolsky's writing, like his lectures, is quite naturally entertaining, at ease with deep knowledge without hubris or arrogance, and I think it carries a profound message about human behaviour and human cultural variation that all of us would gain something from.
"STRATIFIED VERSUS EGALITARIAN CULTURES"
```'Another meaningful way to think about cross-cultural variation concerns how unequally resources (e.g., land, food, material goods, power, or prestige) are distributed.— Hunter-gatherer societies have typically been egalitarian, as we’ll soon see, throughout hominin history. Inequality emerged when “stuff”—things to possess and accumulate—was invented following animal domestication and the development of agriculture. The more stuff, reflecting surplus, job specialization, and technological sophistication, the greater the potential inequality. Moreover, inequality expands enormously when cultures invent inheritance within families. Once invented, inequality became pervasive. Among traditional pastoralist or small-scale agricultural societies, levels of wealth inequality match or exceed those in the most unequal industrialized societies.
Why have stratified cultures dominated the planet, generally replacing more egalitarian ones? For population biologist Peter Turchin, the answer is that stratified cultures are ideally suited to being conquerors—they come with chains of command.— Both empirical and theoretical work suggests that in addition, in unstable environments stratified societies are “better able to survive resource shortages [than egalitarian cultures] by sequestering mortality in the lower classes.” In other words, when times are tough, the unequal access to wealth becomes the unequal distribution of misery and death. Notably, though, stratification is not the only solution to such instability—this is where hunter-gatherers benefit from being able to pick up and move.
A score of millennia after the invention of inequality, Westernized societies at the extremes of the inequality continuum differ strikingly.
One difference concerns “social capital.” Economic capital is the collective quantity of goods, services, and financial resources. Social capital is the collective quantity of resources such as trust, reciprocity, and cooperation. You learn a ton about a community’s social capital with two simple questions.
First: “Can people usually be trusted?” A community in which most people answer yes is one with fewer locks, with people watching out for one another’s kids and intervening in situations where one could easily look away.
The second question is how many organizations someone participates in—from the purely recreational (e.g., a bowling league) to the vital (e.g., unions, tenant groups, co¬ op banks). A community with high levels of such participation is one where people feel efficacious, where institutions work transparently enough that people believe they can effect change. People who feel helpless don’t join organizations.
Put simply, cultures with more income inequality have less social capital.— Trust requires reciprocity, and reciprocity requires equality, whereas hierarchy is about domination and asymmetry. Moreover, a culture highly unequal in material resources is almost always also unequal in the ability to pull the strings of power, to have efficacy, to be visible. (For example, as income inequality grows, the percentage of people who bother voting generally declines.)
Almost by definition, you can’t have a society with both dramatic income inequality and plentiful social capital. Or translated from social science-ese, marked inequality makes people crummier to one another.
This can be shown in various ways, studied on the levels of Westernized countries, states, provinces, cities, and towns. The more income inequality, the less likely people are to help someone (in an experimental setting) and the less generous and cooperative they are in economic games. Early in the chapter, I discussed cross-cultural rates of bullying and of “antisocial punishment,” where people in economic games punish overly generous players more than they punish cheaters.* Studies of these phenomena show that high levels of inequality and/or low levels of social capital in a country predict high rates of bullying and of antisocial punishment.—
Chapter 11 examines the psychology with which we think about people of different socioeconomic status; no surprise, in unequal societies, people on top generate justifications for their status.— And the more inequality, the more the powerful adhere to myths about the hidden blessings of subordination—“They may be poor, but at least they’re happy/honest/loved.” In the words of the authors of one paper, “Unequal societies may need ambivalence for system stability: Income inequality compensates groups with partially positive social images.”
Thus unequal cultures make people less kind. Inequality also makes people less healthy. This helps explain a hugely important phenomenon in public health, namely the “socioeconomic status (SES)/health gradient”—as noted, in culture after culture, the poorer you are, the worse your health, the higher the incidence and impact of numerous diseases, and the shorter your life expectancy.—
Extensive research has examined the SES/health gradient. Four quick rule- outs:
(a) The gradient isn’t due to poor health driving down people’s SES. Instead low SES, beginning in childhood, predicts subsequent poor health in adulthood.
(b) It’s not that the poor have lousy health and everyone else is equally healthy. Instead, for every step down the SES ladder, starting from the top, average health worsens.
(c) The gradient isn’t due to less health-care access for the poor; it occurs in countries with universal health care, is unrelated to utilization of health-care systems, and occurs for diseases unrelated to health¬ care access (e.g., juvenile diabetes, where having five checkups a day wouldn’t change its incidence).
(d) Only about a third of the gradient is explained by lower SES equaling more health risk factors (e.g., lead in your water, nearby toxic waste dump, more smoking and drinking) and fewer protective factors (e.g., everything from better mattresses for overworked backs to health club memberships).
What then is the principal cause of the gradient? Key work by Nancy Adler at UCSF showed that it’s not so much being poor that predicts poor health. It’s feeling poor—someone’s subjective SES (e.g., the answer to “How do you feel you’re doing financially when you compare yourself with other people?”) is at least as good a predictor of health as is objective SES.
Crucial work by the social epidemiologist Richard Wilkinson of the University of Nottingham added to this picture: it’s not so much that poverty predicts poor health; it’s poverty amid plenty—income inequality. The surest way to make someone feel poor is to rub their nose in what they don’t have.
Why should high degrees of income inequality (independent of absolute levels of poverty) make the poor unhealthy? Two overlapping pathways:
A psychosocial explanation has been championed by Ichiro Kawachi of Harvard. When social capital decreases (thanks to inequality), up goes psychological stress. A mammoth amount of literature explores how such stress—lack of control, predictability, outlets for frustration, and social support—chronically activates the stress response, which, as we saw in chapter 4, corrodes health in numerous ways.
A neomaterialist explanation has been offered by Robert Evans of the University of British Columbia and George Kaplan of the University of Michigan. If you want to improve health and quality of life for the average person in a society, you spend money on public goods—better public transit, safer streets, cleaner water, better public schools, universal health care. But the more income inequality, the greater the financial distance between the wealthy and the average and thus the less direct benefit the wealthy feel from improving public goods.
Instead they benefit more from dodging taxes and spending on their private good—a chauffeur, a gated community, bottled water, private schools, private health insurance. As Evans writes, “The more unequal are incomes in a society, the more pronounced will be the disadvantages to its better-off members from public expenditure, and the more resources will those members have [available to them] to mount effective political opposition” (e.g., lobbying). Evans notes how this “secession of the wealthy” promotes “private affluence and public squalor.” Meaning worse health for the have-nots. –
The inequality/health link paves the way for understanding how inequality also makes for more crime and violence. I could copy and paste the previous stretch of writing, replacing “poor health” with “high crime,” and I’d be set. Poverty is not a predictor of crime as much as poverty amid plenty is. For example, extent of income inequality is a major predictor of rates of violent crime across American states and across industrialized nations.
Why does income inequality lead to more crime? Again, there’s the psychosocial angle—inequality means less social capital, less trust, cooperation, and people watching out for one another. And there’s the neomaterialist angle— inequality means more secession of the wealthy from contributing to the public good. Kaplan has shown, for example, that states with more income inequality spend proportionately less money on that key crime-fighting tool, education. As with inequality and health, the psychosocial and neomaterial routes synergize.
A final depressing point about inequality and violence. As we’ve seen, a rat being shocked activates a stress response. But a rat being shocked who can then bite the hell out of another rat has less of a stress response. Likewise with baboons—if you are low ranking, a reliable way to reduce glucocorticoid secretion is to displace aggression onto those even lower in the pecking order.
It’s something similar here—despite the conservative nightmare of class warfare, of the poor rising up to slaughter the wealthy, when inequality fuels violence, it is mostly the poor preying on the poor.
This point is made with a great metaphor for the consequences of societal inequality.— The frequency of “air rage”—a passenger majorly, disruptively, dangerously losing it over something on a flight—has been increasing. Turns out there’s a substantial predictor of it: if the plane has a first-class section, there’s almost a fourfold increase in the odds of a coach passenger having air rage.
Force coach passengers to walk through first class when boarding, and you more than double the chances further. Nothing like starting a flight by being reminded of where you fit into the class hierarchy. And completing the parallel with violent crime, when air rage is boosted in coach by reminders of inequality, the result is not a crazed coach passenger sprinting into first class to shout Marxist slogans. It’s the guy being awful to the old woman sitting next to him, or to the flight attendant."
Kindest regards
Corneilius
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