Two Poles of Society, and everything in between. Egalitarian culture and Hierarchies of Wealth, Power and Violence
There are, in this brief outline two poles, two kinds of societies of human beings, with the understand that there exists in practice, throughout 'history' a wide spectrum of variation between the two.
For the purpose of this article, I will describe the poles. It will be quite generalised, for the purpose of the article. These are trends, characteristics not specifics. I am trying to get under the reality, into its inner core, the psychological spine if you will.
These Societal variations are to a very large degree confirmed by evidence and research emerging from the sciences of Anthropology, Neuro-Physiology, Neurochemistry, Biology, History, Psychology, Evolutionary Psychology and Developmental Sciences studying the natural child.
I will speak in present tense because the data emerging from known Aboriginal cultures still with us, c.350 million peoples in all, confirms much of what the vast bulk of first contact data consistently described in their meetings; societies that were apparently power balanced, non-hierarchical, peaceful peoples in the majority of observations. That said, they met a few openly hostile, and some profoundly violent, societies as well. It's not all a Garden of Eden.
There are then the majority; the peaceful, that is to say, that most of the aboriginal societies were and are those that trust the innate intelligence of their children, their innate desire to learn and grow and to be part of the community of life; these societies are typified by their empathy, lack of domination or coercion and by their ability to work with nature.
These societies tend towards co-operation. These societies do not tell their children WHAT to think or do, and they tend towards less religiosity, and a spirituality that is individually experienced.
These societies seem to understand that the lived experience of each person, each being, is unique and that trust of the innate natural intelligence of children results in adults who craft societies that are stable, happy and sustainable. There are fewer rules required when innate empathy is functioning. They tend towards attachment parenting as the most natural and nurturing care of children. They are able to deal with a wide variation of behaviours, for they give space to the diversity inherent in those variations. They tend towards non hierarchical communities.
Mothering is natural, and permeates the society, informing its wisdom and practices at every level, without being authoritarian, and yet holding authority. It is generally considered that being the birthers of the society, mothers, and their sisters, have a certain sense of nurturance that brings balance to their society, and that this is well understood. That is to say it is also a rational choice.
When they are faced with anger, frustration, misunderstanding etc within their own communities they tend towards conflict resolution. They tend to ritualise violence when the feelings run very high, as and when any issues arise.
However these kinds of societies are vulnerable. They have great difficulty in dealing with the other variation of society, (see below) because they are innately non-violent.
Of course it's all too easy for critics to claim it's simply 'noble savage' romanticism. It's not.
At present there are about 350 million people of these societies alive, and much is being learned about their cultures from their point of view.
Among them are whole survivor nations, comprising many hundred of thousands of individuals, in families, clans groups, whose stories are being heard, perhaps for the first time, in the wider euramerican culture, and whose truth telling is blowing apart old comforts such as unexamined assumptions, false premises, historical lies, propaganda.
Within our own euramerican culture the stories of abuse emerging from with in the Catholic Church is part of that story too. Survivors are a potent voice, and must be listened to, and to be felt to have been heard and understood.
And those peaceful cultures, they embody a lived natural logic, one that is purely crafted from the biology, the natural world with the human organism as one of its many expressions. It has to be recognised, not to be marketed. It's a question of heart. Empathy is the innate ability of any biological organism to 'read' or sense the elements within its habitat, the environment with some degree of accuracy.
The other pole....
When any Society endures a trauma, and is for whatever reason, unable to resolve or metabolise (process) the experience and their feelings about what took place, there is a strong tendency to engage in controlling behaviours which emerges, unconsciously, as a survival strategy, so as to maintain 'composure' to deal with the aftermath.
This is one of the many learning’s that has emerged out of the survivor’s stories, their lived experience.
If unresolved, those behaviours will be passed on, through intergenerational trauma patterning. It's not that the parents are malignant, it's that this is what can happen when a person, or a community, is traumatised; the controlling behaviour patterns required in a moment of trauma remain, and are passed on, as their children have only that psychology to work with, and if it works against the Childs natural drives, then resistance will emerge.
The child will attempt to defend him or herself. With their limited power at their disposal, where the power disparity between adult and child is so great, it can become a hard battle of wills. Not every child responds or reacts exactly the same way.
Thus, at some stage, some time, somewhere these conditions affect the natural parenting processes within that culture or community such that the natural child mother bonding process begins to break down. This is the driver; an emergent lack of empathy that will turn a community or society ever more hierarchical, rigid, rule based, punitive, and ultimately violent over generations.
Being insecure, and building the repetition of that insecurity into the child rearing will lead to for example, the development of tools to enhance control, driven not by 'innovation' but by the 'need to control'. If it was the latter, that need being unconscious learned neuro-pathways, it would always want to expand.
To put it simply, a tool making animal that feels insecure will make tools to create a sense of security. That's the Nuclear bomb in a nutshell. It's also the basis for the current economic system.
There are those societies that do not trust the innate intelligence of children, and the adults, who themselves were dominated as children and therefore 'adjusted' to that society, seek to control or dominate their children so as to 'form' them in their own image as extensions of themselves.
Children are seen as extensions of the adults, and are often treated as possessions. These kinds of societies are typified by a lack of empathy, a justification for coercion and violence and a generalised emotional blindness. They tend towards rigid structured hierarchies. They tend towards religiosity. They tend towards competition.
They tend towards hoarding great wealth and building huge structures to reflect their sense of power. They tend to fear nature, and seek to dominate nature. They actively suppress any children whose innate intelligence resists that domination. These societies are trauma based, in that they are unable to metabolise their trauma and thus the PTSD is transmitted from generation to generation. This is the unresolved trauma society. This kind of society is the current dominant society, because they have been willing to cause harm to build and expand.
What is happening now, and has been brewing for a long, long time (well over due and absolutely critical NOW!) and what this piece is a small part of, is a recognition that these two streams or variants (and of course there's a wide spectrum between both these stereotypical descriptions) of human society have their roots in child 'rearing' practices within a given Society.
As such there are neither good nor evil forces, but rather the outcomes of unresolved trauma. And there are some very evil people. They must be confronted. By all those who are not.
We can choose, firstly as individuals, then as communities, and beyond, to work through the trauma, to metabolise those experiences, and, by locating attachment parenting at the centre of societies response abilities, by having the natural wisdom of mothering inform society, as one of it's pillars, to build a future for all children, one that is a co-operative effort, engaged in without the need for excessive control, or we can choose to ignore the unresolved trauma and continue as we are, with more wars, more harm to the environment, and more excessive control being exercised over people and habitat and all that dwell there. And those who are vulnerable will go to the wall. That is inevitable.
Those who choose the later path will manipulate everything and anything the can to stay on that path.
It has to be understood that Nature is absolutely founded on co-operation, that the twin concepts of 'survival of the fittest' and 'competition for resources' are projections of the Dominant Culture's psychology and perspective, the viewpoint of society gazing upon Nature, which is easily carried off as we can see that all living beings eat; plants eat sunlight and raw materials and metabolise them into new materials that other living beings also eat, and many animals eat other animals; yet nor single 'predator' eats the entirety of the 'prey species; in fact most species live full lives, into maturity. Predators function in ways that work to ensure the continuation of their prey species in thriving numbers.
There are natural boundaries in all natural relationships. They are best observed.
In nature the core biological function, in terms of effects, that is to say, the actualised material results of natural living processes, of all living beings, is to improve the habitat for all life, each by being their natural selves. Sometimes that means changing, learning, evolving. Those societies who trust their children's innate nature are closest to the biological function I have described. The return of nutrient to the habitat as a fundamental material reality. They nurture their nature.
Everything I have written is factual, supported by Scientific Evidence across a range of disciplines. Not to mention experience and feeling, which Scientists and Ideologues all too often refuse to admit as data.
It is also crucial to understand that the damage to the developing brain of a human being, the natural child, that occurs in dysfunctional child rearing practices, be they subtle or gross, can be very long lasting as they can hard wire that brain for 'survival' in an near permanent anxious state, the state a child so treated grows into.
This damage can in most cases be attenuated. There are known pathways towards recovery for survivors. Obviously, it's a better option to avoid causing the damage in the first place. But we're not there, we're here. That leads me to identify two tasks.
Stop the abuse, Help the Survivor to honestly metabolise the experience.
The first will occur across society as people learn to understand the trauma society picture in ways they can test and articulate. As people step away from Power Relationships, we will stop the psychology of abuse at home, in our hearts and minds, in our bodies, in our streets, amongst our neighbours, long before we permeate the power structures of the Dominant Culture. We have to.
Much of the learning is coming from survivors, and whole survivor communities, survivor societies (of these many generations) and from many the independent academic researchers in a wide range of the sciences.
Survivors speak up, not out of a desire for revenge, but to see that the abuse does not continue; we know it continues because of the missing information; what lay behind our silence for so many years is now being told, now that our chains of shame, fear , confusion, loathing are disintegrating.
We know this: it will take whatever it takes.
Warning: DO some research and check my facts for yourselves...
Kindest regards
Corneilius
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