Harsh Truth and The BIg Question

I survived 5 Elite Irish Boarding Schools, 12 years in all.

It destroyed me. To the extent that it wasn't until I was 28 that I realised that there was something really wrong with what had happened - I thought it was because there was something 'wrong' and 'evil' and 'dirty' in me.....

I have studied the history of child-rearing in many, many cultures.

For 25 years. I have also studied the subject of Power Relationships and Politics.

I am a parent.

Christianity's concept of Original Sin lies at the roots of the abuse I and so many others endured.

To promote and enforce such a doctrine is an expression of an  adverse and deadly Authoritarianism.

It's a doctrine that is an expression of a profound hatred and fear of The Natural Child.

It is a psychological device that sets the parent against the child, and the child against herself or himself. It is devoid of empathy.

It is also a lie.

The concept of Hell ties in with the concept of Original Sin, as it creates a fear for what occurs AFTER death, a FEAR that permeates life for those who are taught it.

That fearof Hell and and stain of Original Sin conditions the child to such ad eep sense of a basic unworthyness, and is resolutely kept in place by the RULES the Church invented, or lifted from The Old Testament, rules which The Christ never, ever  spoke of..

"suffer the little children..........."

The vast majority of indigenous native societies were, and are,  empathic, non-hierarchical and had no  use for Power Relationships, only mutual relationships. This is the natural state. Most people in the West have no idea as to the nature of those Societies. We have been sold lies and romance, and not the reality.

The vast bulk of first contact data going back to the 1400s reveals the truth.

There are 350 million Indigenous Native people alive to day.

The current Anthropological data gathered from extant indigneous Societies confirms the first contact observations, and runs counter to how those observations were interperted by the colonial masters. We all know how the Brehon system protected women and children in the main.

And we all know how that culture was interpreted by the Christian and Norman Invaders, and later the British Empire.


Rape, Child Abuse, Hierachy, Rigid Gender Roles are rare in these communities until they come into contact with Western cultures, and then they emerge out of the dynmaic of intergenerational trauma  that afflicts those communities as the Western Culture drives them off their lands, and forces them to 'assimilate'.

Where they do show up in Indigenous Native Societies, we also see a disruption to the natural child-mother bonding process. This natural process builds the neurology of empathy at the earliest stages, and if those stages are missed (as they are in ALL hierarchical violent societies, none excluded) then a lack of empathy emerges as a trait that permeates the hierachical societies.

Even to this day. There are Christian Missionaries running Residential Schools in Africa, South America, Asia to 'assimilate' and 'save souls'. Some are connected to the Catholic Church. Others to other Churches.

The Vatican is and always has been an Institution of  Temporal Power as much as it claims Spiritual Authority..

These are the hard truths. It was only by facing the harsh truth of my own experience, and my own dysfunctional behaviour which was the result of that trauma, which was the symptom of the trauma, that I was able to overcome it and survive, and now thrive as a natural, loving human being, one who limps. Some wounds do not heal.

The is NO LOVE, NOR EMPATHY in The Vatican. None.

There is NO LOVE, NOR EMPATHY in the Irish State Istitutions and Government.

Without Love or Empathy there is no understanding.

Without understanding there is no effective accounting, no effective justice ... and for the hundreds of thousands of children who were abused, or witnessed abuse (which can be just as traumatic if the witness is sensitive) who did not survive, who have already died, there is nothing. No justice for them. No accounting for the lives they lived in agony and fear and shame and confusion and insanity.

And even today, for most survivors there is neither justice nor understanding, nor support for their recovery.

This is the harsh truth.

If survivors had not spoken out, in spite of strong resistance even from their own families, this crime would still be totally covered up.

The Irish Government and The Vatican made a back-room deal to 'manage' this crime, to dojust enough to make it look like something was being done, so that neither would be broght to the courts, by Civil Litigation or by Criminal Prosecution.

The 'pressure' on either side is merely a publicity tactic. A cover.

This is the cute hoor-ism we all know and love : Charlie Haughy typified it. Aherne, Cowen and Lenihan typify it. And many, many others in Power in Ireland.

Power Relationships poison Society.

I am not going to tell you what you ought to be doing about this.

Ask yourself that question.

From  Henry Porter in the Guardian commenting upon the WIKI LEAKS situation.

 "It is all about power and who has access to information. Nothing more. When those who want society to operate on the basis of the parent-child relationship because it is obviously easier to manage, shut the door and say "not in front of the children", they are usually looking after their interests, not ours."

He is correct.

The greatest Power disparity in a healthy society is between the adult parent and the infant child. It is never used, for nurturance is their way, their norm...

In an unhealthy Society that Power is used adversely. The State takes the role of parent, the vulnerable and the people are it's children.

Ireland, The Vatican and The Residential Schools system. 80 years.

Canada, The Vatican, The Anglican Churches and The Indian Residential Schools System. 110 years.

America, The Vatican and The Indian Residential Schools System. 110 years

Australia and The Aboriginal Residential Schools System. 100 years.

America, the coalition of the 'willing'  and Iraq. 20 years

America, the coalition of the 'willing'  and Afghanistan. 9 years

Thailand, Christian Church groups Residential Schools and The Akha People

China and the Peasants.

The UK and privatised Elderly Care.

The UK and Social Services care-homes.

The UK Coalition Government, the Banking System and the Vulnerable.

The Irish Government, the Banking System and the Vulnerable.

The Metropolitian Police Force TSG, The Coaltion Government, The Banking System and Students.

Industry and the habitat.

You get the drift.

This cannot stand. It has to be addressed, and with some speed.

Power relationships as they are practiced poison life.


Kindest regards

Corneilius

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





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Open Letter to The Irish People from a Survivor, regarding the IMF deal.

 
Just as the Irish Government indemnified The Vatican against ruinous litigation that threatens it as a result of it’s officers endemic abuse and betrayal of children for over 80 years, a crime so large and so lengthy that it defies comprehension, so to they are indemnifying the Irish Banking Sector, the European Central Bank and it’s investors (who hold assets worth 20 trillion euro, which is 5000 times the Irish DGP) for what is reckless behaviour, and as we see, abusive in character.

The victims are being punished for the crimes of their abusers.

Ireland’s people, you must awaken to the facts; there is pattern here, you have been abused in one way or another for many hundreds of years. Abusers always justify their abuse, and always post facto rationalise their decisions.

They have their apologists, of course. Those whose livelihoods are entwined with the abusers will resist being made to face the reality of their relationship with power. Media, Banking, Civil Service Mandarins and others who ‘lobby’ for their own personal gain – Unions who limit their protest to the issue of wages are an example, as are the mainstream charities who refuse to confront the abuses of Government face on.

People of Ireland, You cannot avoid facing this truth. You MUST not. To do so is to place your own children in jeopardy.

You must confront the abuser and stop any further abuses from taking place.

This means that you must also inform yourselves as to the means, methods and manipulations of the abuser, you must understand in detail how you have been abused, and how you have ‘adapted’ to that abusive status quo – for they who represent Power and The Status Quo will not let go voluntarily, and will not hand themselves in for indictment. Remorse is rare in their circles. And those who simply push them aside will repeat the same patterns, for such is the nature of centralised Power.

Evidence for this is everywhere, not least in The Vatican or the HQ of AIB.

To do all this will entail effort on your part, and perhaps some discomfort, and it will be an effort that will be necessary to sustain for some time. Such is the role of any parent.

You must separate yourselves completely from the abuser, and render the abuser to the Criminal Justice System for indictment, trial and conviction where the evidence supports it.

And by doing this you will re-assert your right to DECIDE at the grass roots the future path of Ireland as a PEOPLE. You cannot leave it to merely voting for people over whom you have no Power once they are in Office as in days of old.

Participative Democracy is perhaps the best way forward, and is technically easy to achieve with a well educated and diverse population. It means that Power resides at the grass roots, and that the National and local Government and Civil Service sectors obey the grass roots and facilitate the needs of the grass roots. It means that lobby ends, that the party whip, which is fundamentally anti-democratic is abolished. It means that every adult gets involved, and that the voices and lived of the most vulnerable, be they child or adult is also taken into consideration and informs decision making.

I wish for Governance by the most vulnerable, to set the tone of a future Ireland, where children are not abused by priests, where people are not abused by deprivation, where greed is treated as the ugliness that it is, where Society and Community and Environment are truly peaceful, empathic and sustainable.

It can be done; it doesn’t have to be the way it has been.


Kindest regards

Corneilius

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


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Ireland needs the IMF .................

By way of introduction, here's a really simple over view.  Irish banks were given 'easy credit' during the 90as and into the 21st Century by the European Central Bank (this is quite different from the funds given to the Irish Government by the EEC as grants etc etc). Interest rates were low, and there was an almost endless supply of credit. The Irish Banks then lent that money to property developers, corporations, mortgage holders. Many of these loans were suspect from the start. They also bought Derivatives as an 'investment'. In fact the vast bulk of the money the Irish Banks borrowed was gambled on derviatives.

This 'new' lending business made the shares of these Irish banks rise to such an extent that they were overvalued, that is to say the banks did not have the REALISABLE assets to back those share prices.

When this became apparant, the share prices tumbled, and then the 'economic crisis' hit.... and now they are technically insolvent. If they were any other business, they'd be placed into administration and creditors would be paid of with what ever resources available. Being that these banks are High Street Banks the first to get paid off HAVE TO BE THE HIGH STREET CUSTOMERS., the desposit accounts, the cash that is realisable.... the rest get what's left....

Instead what is happening is this : the Irish Government is borrowing more money (at interest) to give to the Irish banks (as loans, or by buying shares, thus nationalising the banks) to strat to pay off the European Central Bank debts of the Banks (close to 500 billion in total!).

The first 100 Billion Euros will cost an extra 6.5 Billion Euros annually in interest alone...

And so the Irish people are being FORCED to underwrite these transactions. And pay yet more interest. They are being FORCED to pay for debts they did not incur.

Letting the banks collapse would cost about 3-4 billion if the Irish Goivernment guaranteed all the Oridnary Irish Account holders....


1. This article reveals who the Irish Government are borrowing money for to pay - and it has nothing to do with Irish peoples pension funds, nor any real threat to the banking sector...


"on one side we have Ireland whose bond holders, its people, have between them a total GDP wealth of 0.207 trillion euros.  Who are being FORCED, against their will, to pay Anglo Irish bank's debts to its bond holders, who between them hold 20.8 Trillion euros."


2. READ 'THE SHOCK DOCTRINE' a book BY NAOMI KLIEN.. 

"With a bold and brilliantly conceived thesis, skillfully and cogently threaded through more than 500 pages of trenchant writing, Klein may well have revealed the master narrative of our time. And because the pattern she exposes could govern our future as well, The Shock Doctrine could turn out to be among the most important books of the decade."
- William S. Kowinski, San Francisco Chronicle"

"In THE SHOCK DOCTRINE, Naomi Klein explodes the myth that the global free market triumphed democratically. Exposing the thinking, the money trail and the puppet strings behind the world-changing crises and wars of the last four decades, The Shock Doctrine is the gripping story of how America’s “free market” policies have come to dominate the world-- through the exploitation of disaster-shocked people and countries.

At the most chaotic juncture in Iraq’s civil war, a new law is unveiled that would allow Shell and BP to claim the country’s vast oil reserves…. Immediately following September 11, the Bush Administration quietly out-sources the running of the “War on Terror” to Halliburton and Blackwater…. After a tsunami wipes out the coasts of Southeast Asia, the pristine beaches are auctioned off to tourist resorts.... New Orleans’s residents, scattered from Hurricane Katrina, discover that their public housing, hospitals and schools will never be reopened…. These events are examples of “the shock doctrine”:"

Here's a documentary on her book. The book itself  is way better, 'thoroughly well researched and referenced (so ya can check the facts for yerself!) .... cos ya gotta know the detail and the scope to REALLY get it... 

3. And here's my song : Ireland needs the IMF like Anne Frank needed a Drumkit, like the Children need The Vatican, Like Ghandi needed a haircut!







..... and here's hoping that Anne frank would take this in pretty much the same way, were she alive to day. Her spirit is.

Sing along and ENJOY it! The Chorus is built for harmonies!

Resist. Learn. Grow strong!

Kindest regards

Corneilius

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






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The environment in which a child grows has a huge impact on their developing physiology.

A baby in utero who is exposed to stress develops his or her hind brain/amygdala more than his or her fore-brain. The fore-brain is the neo-cortex which appears to be active with regard to intelligence, perception and creativity, whereas the hind brain deals with physicality, defence and stress situations. Thus the stressed baby emerges prepared for a stressed (violent) environment and the relaxed baby emerges ready for a relaxed (empathetic) environment.

These factors are compounded by life learning; thus adverse conditioning or adverse childhood experience(s) can increase the tendency towards violent and controlling behaviours, which are often the symptoms of brain damage caused by those experiences; and empathetic nurturing increases the tendency towards peaceful egalitarian non-controlling behaviours, as the child’s brain is nurtured according to it’s nature.

Babies in utero develop touch and volitional movement by 7 weeks, light sensitivity at 10 weeks, (even though the eyes are not fully developed until 26 weeks), sensitivity to pain at 12 weeks, taste at 14 weeks, hearing at 16 weeks (even though the ear is not fully developed until 24 weeks), and spend more time in dream state at 30 weeks than in awake state, awareness and response to the language of the mother is evident at 25 weeks.

* Consciousness at birth: The range of empirical evidence (1983/1987). In Thomas Verny (Ed.), Pre- & perinatal psychology: An introduction (pp. 69-90). New York: Human Sciences Press.

Evidence of birth memories indicate full cognitive abilities at birth, equivalent to an adults abilities...

What is also known and well understood is that the environmental conditions act so as to switch gene expression on or off and indeed 'writes' new genetics, which may then be passed on….another way to say this is that genes are responsive, though it's the RNA which initiates the 'writing' of or 'alteration' new genes. There is an interplay between the structural instruction sets and the environment, and they affect each other.


The tendency towards obesity evident in the current epidemic of obesity arose first out of a generation of people who ate fast foods, processed foods, were exposed to toxic chemicals and who have experienced various societal stressors such as trans-generational trauma which is directly correlated to symptoms of distress (“it’s my wall of protection” or “life is shorter” given as felt explanations of their obesity by obese people) and we now see obesity emerging in very young children. 


Whilst there are genes that are 'related' to the incidence of obesity, it is the environmental experiential conditions that cause their expression in the first place. And those environmental conditions are man-made pure and simple. 

Not by humanity as whole, but by the decisions of those in Power and  within Hierarchical Power Structures  and Institutions which have a massive impact on the lived experience of peoples lives, and for which those people affected have, as yet, no means to counter effectively..

Seeking or promoting a ‘cure’ with first dealing with the environmental issues is a way of protecting the creators of those environmental conditions and of blaming those who become obese, addicted, distressed as a result of those conditions. The 'cure' is aimed at the symptoms of the person distress, not at the conditions that give rise to that person’s distress in the first place.

And it is the lack of prevention, implicit in the marketing of those toxic processed sweets and 'foods' precisely directed at those communities that experience most deprivation, and thus distress, that brings that tendency or genetic environmental response into material reality.

Essentially, a massive act of control-freakery. Industrial civilisation tends towards the more violent controlling behaviours common to, if not essential to, Power Relationships.

To change the trajectory of the dominant civilisation, we have to treat ourselves and our children with far more empathy, detailed empathy, from conception onwards... to create the conditions that will support an emerging Empathic Society we have to examine Power Relationships carefully and make changes. And then we must continue, day by day, to build in the genetics of that natural empathy, in the path towards natural sustainability for all life on Earth.

Here's a classic example of the environmental factors being downgraded in importance, compared to genetic factors. They barely mention the fact that economic deprivation, cultural deprivation are often INTENSE as environmental operators, or signals capable of affecting the genes themselves, as much as the day to day behaviour - and they omit the knowledge that brain damage caused by trauma, adverse childhood experiences, toxic chemicals; thus slanting the focus on the genes.


Much of the info regarding a babies consciousness comes from the research of David Chamberlain :





Kindest regards

Corneilius

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



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Millbank, Students, the call of the future, our childrens future

"This is scary but not as scary as what's happening to our future." Student outside Millbank..... says it all, really. (the quote refers not only to his immediate future, as a student, but to a feeling emerging from ALL youth, that that adults are unwilling to act as needed).

http://www.newstatesman.com/blogs/laurie-penny/2010/11/young-scary-future-riot-crowd

This article/blog for the New Statesman Laurie Penny investigates what happened in the foyer of Millbank, the Conservative Headquarters, in London. She was there.

She describes, with great sensitivity, the feelings of the college and university students, mothers, fathers, school children, unemployed, teachers, lecturers and many others who come from a diverse range of backgrounds that went on that march. It's well worth the read.

 They KNOW that their Government is failing them. They are well informed, better than most previous generations, partly because of the way the internet enables people to share their experience and reflect on it and gain insight.

Self organised learning.

http://www.ted.com/talks/sugata_mitra_the_child_driven_education.html

They ARE angry at the hypocrisy and more importantly the sense that, as things are done, they are rendered powerless to affect change, and that those in Governance have no intention of making the changes the children and youth know must be made. 

Laurie places the much publicised 'fire extinguisher' incident into context. 99.99% of the people there thought the thrower was an idiot.... (there was about 2000 people at the event) ... which is about right. Everyone has a 'mate'. Even idiots. Tony Blair.

And there is also the well worn methodology of Agent Provocateurs and as we know, that cannot

The frustration of dealing with the intractable manner of that rendering of power is part of the source of the anger. The other source is at the blatant injustice, the actual bodily harm done to so many people - by the wars, the poverty, the damage to the habitat, the children on Ritalin, the widespread Institutionalised abuse.

And they have started to break free from the chains of behaviour that bound them; deference to power, politeness, hope and ultimately conditioning, They are thinking and feeling for themselves.

The youth do not see violence as a mechanism of change - expect to see a lot more activity to generate the power to make those changes emerging from the grass roots, and equally a reaction from Power.

My bets are on the youth and the adults with them.

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

I left this comment:

The empathy if the author is the essence of this piece.

Power exists to reinforce itself, irrespective of the costs to those upon whom Power is exercised.

Children and young people understand this, and understand that it is their futures and the futures of those who follow them are at stake.

The moral imperative of life is to live a life that detracts not at all from the lives available to those who will follow us into this world.

The current modes of Governance, without exception, fail in this regard.

These kids KNOW THIS. Their sense of injustice is deeper than Laws which protect War Criminals (Tony Blair) - they WILL break what is called 'the peace' in order to prevent a far greater crime. We, the adults, ought to support them in EVERY way we can.

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

Ted Talk by Sugata Mitra  SELF ORGANISED LEARNING This video is well worth the time 17 minutes spent viewing it, to get an insight into the efficacy of self organised learning... and to begin to get a sense of what our children and youth are truly capable of.

Enjoy!

Mothering in The Dominant Culture and Social Services

Reading "Until our Hearts are on the Ground" a study of Aboriginal mothering, and the oppression Aboriginal Mothers and Families have endured at the hands of The State, in Residential Schools, in Australia, Canada, North America and Africa, and susbequently through the action of 'Social Services' aas those progams were shut down over the past 20 years, I noticed that the 'Social Services' approach to the Aboriginal Mothers (most of whose parents were survivors of the Residential Schools)  AFTER the Residential Schools were shut down mirrored the approach of 'Social Services' inthe UK, Ireland, Australia, and Europe as they operate amongst the poorest sectors of Society, and various Minorities, such as Roma, Gypsey, Traveller and others like them.The sense that certain classes of people are 'targetted'.

http://www.demeterpress.org/untilourhearts.html

http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2011/01/24/national-post-editorial-board-divorce-granted-justice-denied/ - newspaper article on how Aboriginal Mothers are discriminated against by Social Services and mostly Male Band Leaders (many of whom are 'appointed' or legitimised by the State)

I was struck by the clarity of that mirroring. I realised that 'Social Services' operates as a form of Societal Oppression, blaming those the Instutuion seeks to help, effectively masking those Power influences on peoples lives that do cause distress, deprivation, poverty and that do lead to the emergence of further dysfunctional behaviour.

Social Services as an Institution NEVER effectively confronts the System of Power with regard to deprivation and it's intergenerational effects - why would they, the system pays their wage.

Ther ARE many good Social Workers in the system, yet those who see the truth find it very dificult to organise a movement within the Institutional setting to bring about that confrontation. None of what I am writing about here is to be taken as judgement; this is an assessment of the facts.

In any Institutional setting it takes immense courage and strength to confront the Institution with the truth. And it puts one's carreer at risk.

As Bradly Manning is discovering right now, as he sits in a US Military Jail, having been shopped to the Military by a 'colleague'.

http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2010/06/conscience/

That masking, even it if turned out to be an accidental outcome of the work Social Serivces Policy and Practice as determined by Govrnment and think tanks, rather than personal failures of the Social Workers themselves (which in 99% of cases it isn't)  protects the Middle Classes who also happen to make up the bulk of 'Social  Services' trained professional staff and management and the Powers that influence peoples lives across society.

Those Powers that originate at some distance (distal) from those people most adversely affected by the exercise of that power refuse, of course, to accept any responsibility for the distress they cause.

Tony Blair on Iraq. "I did what I believed was the right thing to do at the time, knowing what I knew then." Chilcott Enquiry February 2010

It's VERY easy to judge others by what we read in the media because it is portrayed in a manner to serve that masking. I do not want to my words to be taken as if I am being judgemental in any way. The matter is far to serious for that.

You rarely hear about the childhood background and lived experiences of those mothers, nor the history of their parents, all of which form part of the whole picture. You certainly will not hear the stories of deprivation, generation after generation, that much of what 'Social Services' handles...

You do not hear about the ACE study, or the roots of deprivation, trauma or the true histories of the Aboriginal and the poor and how Society relates to these groups.

None of  this is to give any abusive parent an excuse or get-out clause. It is to point out that the responsibility is partly, largely down to the way Power is transmitted throughout our society. Both the individual AND Society share responsibility. A parent CAN accept responsibility and change that much easier if Society handles it's responsibilities in the matter. If ALL those responsibilities are laid at the Parents feet, then that change is far less likely.

And the hypocrisy of doing, of laying ALL the blame onthe Parent, that ought to be obvious to anyone with a rational mind and honest heart reading this material.

If, instead of pillorying or demonising the mothers who are reported as abusive in headlines, (often the MOST extreme cases are used, and then held as typical of a certain class or minority) the media and the general public were prepared to ask the questions and engage with the answers, the data that would outline where responsibility lies, and if those parents who are under stress were practically and materially supported in learning more empathic parenting practices (which would go a long way towards helping them recover) then progress would be made in reducing abusive parenting.

That is clearly NOT happening. Why?

And furthermore, in a Society that wards off the wisdom of Mothering, that ensures that Mothering wisdom does not enter into the discourse of Boardroom or Parliament and instead ensures that Mothering remains unpaid, minimally supported (more money is spent on early child care by the state than on maternity leave - the state pays for poor Mothers to work rather than support the Mother as a Mother) and to a large degree defined not by mothers, but by Society (Power), as an overbearing and limited frame of reference (Nurturing is for the home and early years, if at all; nurturing is deemed successful if the child becoems a worker, a consumer) women are under extreme pressure.

A double bind exists - join the corporate world and get a career, and if you become pregant, become a surrogate Mother by virtue of the committment one has to make to 'succeed', and all this to gain access to Power on the same basis as men, using Power in pretty much the same way.

It's extremely clever, and extremely unjust. And absolutely stupid.

Usefull resource on Social Services reform, from people whsoe research proves that supporting the whole family, parents and children, leads to much better lonr-term health outcomes for the families and the chidlren AND saves huge amounts of tax payers money at the same time!

National Coalition for Child Protection Reform

www.nccpr.info


Kindest regards

Corneilius

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



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Two Poles of Society, everything in between, and how we got here..... and where next?

There are, in this brief outline, two poles, two ends of a spectrum of the kinds of societies of human beings that have emerged, with a wide spectrum of variation between the two.


For the purpose of this article, I will describe the poles as Egalitarian and Hierarchically Violent.

These are trends, characteristics rather specifics. History is littered with the specifics, and standing back from the present to look at the whole allows one to observe the patterns that emerge.

I am trying to get under the social institutional reality-as-it-is-ness, face value assumptions, to peer into its inner core, the bio-psycho-social mind of culture, if you will.

These two pages that follow are of a survey of behavioural characteristics of different modes of society - egalitarian at one end, hierarchically violent at the other. The rest of this essay is an exploration of what I think these comparisons reveal.






source : www.violence.de

These Societal variations are to a very large degree confirmed by evidence and research emerging from the sciences of Anthropology, Neurology, Neuro-Chemistry, Biology, History, Developmental Psychology and Trauma Studies.

To be more precise : there exists a spectrum of societal behavioural characteristics, from Egalitarian to Hierarchically Violent, expressed by different societies, in different times, locations and times, all over our Earth.

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  the recorded observations.

What has been found is that there was a wide range of social and organisational activity such that 'hunter gatherer' is no long considered a viable generic descriptive term for egalitarian societies.

There is evidence of formal and informal agricultural activity, as much as there is evidence of nomads, traders, season followers, herd/swarm/food followers, mixtures of all these and more, organised from small bands to large sedentary living groups.

The picture emerges of a diversity of language identity based social groups who thrived, and exchanged goods and words, who intermarried at the edges, and who were stable for millennia.

This not a picture of a struggle for survival.

That said, the first contacts also met a few openly hostile and some profoundly violent societies as well. It's not all a Garden of Eden out there. The European Conquest Civilisations met others similar, though less technologically developed. The ones with the 'better warfare tech and training' tended to prevail.

The egalitarian society is the biological normal, the healthy normal for the  majority of our existence as a species.

The healthy society nurtures the whole, together. Healthy behaviour is a basic biological mandate for all species. Unhealthy behaviour is not something any species are evolved for.


The Healthy Society tends towards co-operation. These societies do not tell their children what to think or do, they do not use reward/punishment as a way to 'teach' children, and they tend towards less religiosity, more often expressing a sense of alive-ness in everything we the civilised always mistake for Spirituality, a sensitivity that is individually experienced.

These societies seem to understand or sense deeply, in a pre-verbal and in verbalised manner, that the lived experience of each person, each being, is unique and each child is already a person to be trusted, and that a culture that trusts the innate natural intelligence and sense of justice  of very young children results in those children becoming adults who craft societies that are stable, happy and sustainable.

There are fewer rules required when innate empathy is functioning.

The healthy cultures tend towards loving bonded lifelong attachment parenting as the most natural and nurturing care of children. This is critical in developing the core biology of self regulation, awareness and mastery of one's emotions. 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, fathering, sibling and relative care aka shared parenting by the community at large is the healthy natural background for hominid species and 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.

"All is born of woman, no harm shall come to the children."

When they are faced with anger, frustration, misunderstanding etc within their own communities the egalitarian culture tend towards conflict resolution. Healthy cultures tend to ritualise violence when the feelings run very high, as and when any issues arise, as a way to de-escalate and defuse.

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 and do not naturally invest in the technology and training required for warfare.

Of course it's all too easy for critics to claim it's simply 'noble savage' romanticism. It's not that at all.

We estimate that a total of 1 billion Australian Aboriginal people lived and died in the 60,000 years of their continued sustained healthy society. That's a lot of happiness.

At present there are about 350 million people of these pre-industrial 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, clan groups, language groups,  whose stories are now being heard, and understood, perhaps for the first time, in the wider Euro-American conquest culture, and whose truth telling is blowing apart old comforts such as un-examined assumptions, false premises, historical lies, propaganda about savage and primitive societies and people....

Across the Euro-American conquest culture the stories of abuse of native children, as part of a deliberate colonial cultural destruction project, emerging from within the Conquest State, under the operational control of the Catholic and Protestant Churches, is part of that story too. This is also seen in most large scale religious institutional political cultures.

Survivors are a potent voice, and must be listened to, and it is a critical part of our learning that they too to be felt to have been heard and understood as part of a greater integration of the meaning of the lived experience.

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, Hierarchically Violent.

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  coping mechanism, a survival strategy that becomes institutionalised over time.

Just the same dynamic can happen for a person, a family, an extended family....

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 inter-generational trauma patterning.

Rapid Climate Change

There is evidence that correlates the emergence of hierarchy cultures around the timing of rapid climate shifts in different parts of Earth's habitats, and at different times.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_periods_and_events_in_climate_history#Holocene

This list of such events is of interest. Other trauma events could be Volcanoes, Earth Quakes, Floods and infectious diseases that harm entire groups.

What is also of equal interest to me is that we know that the Australian people's thrived for 66,000 years as egalitarian cultures, with 250 or more distinct language groups existing when the first Europeans arrived as an invasive culture. We know, from the genetic record, that they lived through at least two major rapid climate shifts without a major loss of population or a reduction in genetic diversity. What was it about them that enabled them to thrive through such shifts, and does that experience reveal any behavioural dynamics that might inform current situation as regards climate disruption and environmental degradation becoming potential existential threats?

Indeed as the European conquest spread out across Earth's continents in the 1400s onwards, they met mostly egalitarian cultures which all suffered terribly from that contact. Pre-conquest cultures being largely peaceful, were and remain vulnerable, and it is not just down to technical prowess of weapons - it is more due to the willingness to deploy weapons against an entire people, often justified by Religious or Ideological bias, the pursuit of Wealth and Resources and conquest cultures discrimination against 'others'.

Parents are not the problem.

Most certainly, 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 acquired in a moment of trauma remain, the body systems remain in fight or flight reactive mode.

We see this in era's after WWI and WWII - returning combat veterans trauma is inflicted upon their home life.

Thus the feelings of threat and need for security are passed on, because their children will have only that psychology of their parents to work with, which they internalise and the parents are in truth not the problem - the social setting that blocks recovery is the larger problem.

Internalisation is a key dynamic - a healthy organism or  culture internalises it's habitat, as a mind map of everything around them, making navigation of it's dynamics more fluid, enabling a build up of lived experience knowledge, creativity and co-operation. 

The healthy child will explore this new world, develop skill sets to become more adept and learn to express him or herself, to communicate the complexity of his or her interior.  The natural desire to learn, which is in part driven by the impulse to be  a contributory part of the family and community that loves the child ensures that.

If the parents attention is distracted, if the child's needs are not met, due to external stress, then that can set up insecurity in the child.

With the limited power at their disposal, a child can develop attention gaining behaviours, where the power disparity between adult and child is so great, the relationship can become a hard battle of wills. The Power of the adult vs the power of the child. Not every child responds or reacts exactly the same way. This is how unhappy children learn about life the hard way, beneath cognition. Some find ways to heal, others do not recover. Day by day habituation.

Thus, at some stage, some time, somewhere it has happened that changing conditions affect the natural parenting processes within that culture or community such that the natural child mother/carer  bonding process begins to break down.

This is the driver; a lack of empathy that will turn a community or society ever more hierarchical, rigid, rule based, punitive, and ultimately violent over generations.

A healthy society is traumatised, and unable to resolve the trauma, and enters into a collective cPTSD mode of survival. That is easy enough to understand because we can observe it, and it is written into history, if one cares to look between the lines of narrative.

In time that leads to hierarchy of power relationships normalised.

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 neediness of insecurity being unconscious, expressed in physiology as  learned neuro-pathways of behaviour, it would always want to expand. Control has no end in sight.

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, and in turn they will seek to control or dominate their children so as to 'form' them in their own image as extensions of themselves.

Children in hierarchy of power and violence are seen as extensions of the adults, and are often treated as possessions. 

Religious indoctrination is part of this process, often consciously imposed by the hierarchy. 'Give me the child, and I will make the man.'

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 monumental 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 or sensitivity to injustice 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 continuation expressed in child 'rearing' practices within a given Society.

As such there are neither good nor evil forces, but rather the outcomes of unresolved trauma as it might play out. And there are some very evil people. They must be confronted. By all those who are not. Egalitarian practice is for the whole community to confront nasty individuals, a community acting together to de-escalate if that is possible, or to exclude or otherwise impede the nasty ones. This piece by Peter gray looks at how egalitarian cultures manage conflicts.

https://www.madinamerica.com/2021/10/hunter-gatherers-maintained-egalitarian-ways/

A website that looks at developments in our understanding of the psychology of birthing, from in utero, through birth and infancy.


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, with care and support,  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 might well occur across society, silently, as we as people learn to understand the trauma-society dynamic in ways we can test, verify and articulate.

As we step away from Power Relationships, we will inhibit the psychology of power relationships at home. We will decolonise in our hearts and minds, our bodies, our streets, amongst our neighbours, long before we permeate the power structures of the Dominant Culture. We have to. 

We have to, because we must be clear that we cannot allow any co-opting influence succeed.

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.

Please do some research, some study, reading and critical thinking check what I cite as evidence, and check that my take on that evidence and it's meaning is accurate, or an error, and do so for yourselves...


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.

https://patreon.com/corneilius - donations gratefully received





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ACE Study : health outcomes and child abuse

The Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE) Study is a major research study that compares current adult health status to childhood experiences decades earlier.

It is one of the largest studies of it's kind, and it has brought new startling evidence to the table, with regard to a number of inter-related issues. 

This is the core of the fire underneath a large smoke cloud. This is about root causes.

The study reveals, as it is ongoing, that there is a direct linkage between the number of incidences of adverse early childhood experiences and the development of health related issues, risk behaviours and pathologies that emerge over 50 years later. The data is so clear, as to be able to show that much risk behaviour (smoking, addiction, obesity, self-harm, suicide) could be described as a form of self-medication, albeit ones with serious risks in the future, that seeks to manage unresolved the feelings associated with adverse childhood experiences.

"A striking finding was that adverse childhood experiences are vastly more common than recognized or acknowledged. Of equal importance was our observation that they had a powerful correlation to adult health a half-century later. It is this combination that makes them so important."

The study found that within middle class society, fromwhich it drew it's first data from, the incidence of child abuse is at least one in four. The study demonstrates that the more abuse is encountered in a childs life, the more the risks of disease and risk behaviour will manifest, and that there is a perfect curve in all the comparisons that described this relationship  throughout.

 
Figure1. Graph shows relation between Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE) Score and smoking status.


The ACE score is based on zero adverse childhood experiences, 1 adverse childhood experiences,2 etc etc... Thus the relationship between the levels of ACE's and health outcome are clear.

 
Figure 3. Graph shows relation between ACE Score and illicit use of injected drugs.

This has very serious implications, for Health Services, Social Services and Society in general.

"Intravenous drug use is a major public health problem. In spite of massive efforts to curtail it, little progress has been made. We found that IV drug use may properly be viewed as a personal solution to problems that are well concealed by social niceties and convention. For example, a male child with an ACE score of 6 has a 4600% increase in the likelihood of later using intravenous drugs. This relation to adverse childhood experiences is powerful and is graded at every step; it provides a perfect dose-response curve; and epidemiologically, these outcomes are nearly unique in magnitude."

and

"Beyond these few illustrations, we found many other measures of adult health to have a strong, graded relation to what happened in childhood: hepatitis, heart disease, fractures, diabetes, obesity, alcoholism, occupational health, and job performance. These findings are detailed in the original and subsequent articles and will further be reported in publications of the yet-to-be-analyzed prospective arm of the ACE Study. " 

and

"The findings ........ provide remarkable insight into how we become what we are as individuals and as a nation. The ACE Study reveals a powerful relation between our emotional experiences as children and our adult emotional health, physical health, and major causes of mortality in the United States. Moreover, the time factors in the study make it clear that time does not heal some of the adverse experiences we found so common in the childhoods of a large population of middle-aged, middle-class Americans. One doesn't 'just get over' some things."

The ACE Study shows clearly that a number of key issues must be addressed.

1. The current paradigm set out for Health Care needs to undergo a rapid transformation, in that it must address the roots of disease, and not merely the emergent symptoms. All those working within Health Care must actively enhage within Society as a powerful lobby for that change, and not wait for instructions on the matter, advice from 'think-tanks' or any other consultative 'Authority'. Get on with it!

2. Social Services and Politcans, Media and others with voices in Society must address their current overtly judgemental and hopelessly aggressive approach to 'management' of risk behaviours that emerge from within any given population or community. It's not the individuals fault. And it's not that there is something intrinsically wrong with the distressed indivdual. There are issues with the Society itself, with regard to illegitimate power of many operators to influence the situation of peoples lives at a distance, and adversely, and they must be dealt with.

3. Society must address the incidence, that is to say, the frequency of Adverse Childhood Experiences across the entire Society, and identify all those social factors that give rise to intergenerational trauma patterning such as deprivation, poverty, institutional racism, war and so on.

4. Survivors must be respected, and given the space to talk about their experiences. It is the silence, and the discomfort of those who find it 'difficult' to face the truths, that traps survivors, far more than their own discomfort at their own lived experiences. This respect must be visible throughout Society. 

5. Survivors, by telling their stories, release themselves from the binds of silence, and are free to grow again - though that said, it has to be recognised that 'getting over it' is about the practicality of living or of being cared for as best one can by Society, Community, Family. And it's not always easy.

"This is not a comfortable diagnostic formulation; it points out that our attention is comfortably focused on tertiary consequences far downstream. The diagnosis shows that the primary issues are well protected by social convention and taboo and points out that we have limited ourselves to the smallest part of the problem: the part where we are comfortable as mere prescribers of medication. Which diagnostic choice shall we make? Who shall make it? And if not now, when?" 

That taboo must be utterly broken.  The matter must be addressed in public, and in private, where appropriate, at all levels. 



Kindest regards

Corneilius

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


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