'Evolutionary' Origins of Religion: a trauma model


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

David Chamberlain has written :
"From the second month of pregnancy, experiments and observations reveal an active prenate with a rapidly developing sensory system permitting exquisite sensitivity and responsiveness. Long before the development of advanced brain structures, prenates are seen interacting with each other and learning from experience. They seem especially interested in the larger environment provided by mother and father, and react to individual voices, stories, music, and even simple interaction games with parents. The quality of the uterine environment is determined principally by parents.
The opportunities for parents to form a relationship with the baby in the womb are significant and remarkable. This contrasts sharply with the previous view that prenates did not have the capacity to interact, remember, learn, or put meaning to their experiences"
It is quite obvious that those with innate or natural self empathy intact know or can better better, at a visceral pre-verbal level, how to relate to others, to meet their own and others needs, because they sense the other in intimate ways associated with their own sense of self empathy. They are more perceptive and more responsive to information contained within the other because they can more fully sense themselves.

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

This is the thrust of the work of Heinz Kohut

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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




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


Kindest regards

Corneilius

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














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Intelligence, cleverness and stupidity...

Intelligent - Behaviour which nurtures the world around us.

Clever - the ability to manipulate the world around us.

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

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

Is this not worth the effort?

It is SO possible.



Kindest regards

Corneilius

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


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On School History

A correspondent wrote to me saying that "The history taught at schools is designed to dumb US down is a ridiculous statement."

So here's a few salient exposes of the lies and misdirections of School History Texts......

EG: History in School tell us that the 1766 US Rebellion against the British - The American Revolution - was driven by "No taxation without representation" when in FACT it was driven by the desire of the powerful commercial groups in the America's to negate the 1763 Treaty signed by George III, King of England, as a Royal Proclamation, that recognised Aboriginal Title to Land in the America's as Valid, and regarded the Aboriginal Peoples and a Sovereign Polity, who could have equal standing as an Internationally Recognised Nation State amongst the Nation States at that time and sign Treaties that had full legal standing in International Law.

The European Powers had already by this time accorded such status to China and India, and other States. France had also accorded International Nation State Status to Aboriginal Polities in Canada, and elsewhere, recognising Land Title of those who lived on lands prior to invasion and colonisation. That all these Powers later reneged on these recognitions is also true. Just as the USA reneged on it's many, many Treaties with Aboriginal Peoples within the US Conquest.

Why this 1763 Treaty is important, from the Historical perspective, is that this set an international  legal precedent, which would have applied to all America, of recognising Aboriginal Culture as a distinct polity and that their Land Title , in the manner they were accustomed to hold land title, which was collectively, as Valid. To the powerful commercial interests in what was to become the USA, this meant that they would be unable to take the lands from the many 'Indian' tribes that populated America.

They based their 'claim' on the policy of 'terra nullis' which emanated from the Roman Catholic Emperors, who issued Papal Bulls declaring lands inhabited by non-Christians to be places where no-one lived, as non-Christians were in their eyes merely savages, non-people.

These Papal Bulls formed the legal basis for much of European conquest and colonisation. They were issued to Secular Powers to legalise their invasions and conquests as an aspect of the Christian Missionary project to Christianise the entire Earth, and granted the land to the invaders, and the souls of the savages to the Vatican, who decreed that if the 'savages' refused Christianity they could be slaughtered as they were not people, but animals.

This was underpinned with the concept that whilst Christianising 'savages' would liberate them from their 'savage' state, gaining them access to Heaven,if they refused, they were already condemned to Hell by their non-Christian status and could easily be slaughtered without Sin on the part of those conducting the slaughter.

The Power Elites in America, in conducting the propaganda war to gain support for a split from Britain, used 'taxation without representation' as one of a series of cover stories to convince the white lower class people of the USA to enlist to fight a war with Britain, so that they could ignore the validity of that 1776 Treaty (validated by the British Parliament) and therefore treat the Aboriginal Land Title as a 'domestic matter' subject to internal Laws, rather than dealing with the Aboriginal Peoples as Internationally recognised Polities.

The fact of the matter was that the vast majority of people within the US Polity after the Declaration of Independence were taxed without representation, as the vote excluded, women, labourers, blacks and native peoples. It applied only to land owners.

They wanted the land that was occupied by the American Aboriginals because if thay had the right to grant land title, they could make a huge profit by selling that land, the best of which they kept for themselves as vast estates, the rest was to be given to white settlers who would become the new market for the products of the emerging factory system.

In the process they carried out more than 200 years of genocide, which continues to this day, to appropriate the lands of the people who had been living there for well over 30,000 years.

This is well documented, in both private and public archives of those involved…. and it the mass trauma inflicted upon countless millions of Aboriginal lives, families, communities over 5 centuries...


For a fuller account of this, I suggest readers get a copy of "Earth into Property" by Anthony James Hall.


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Reflecting on your school history, ask yourself these questions....

Do you know who John Lilbourne was, and what he wrote about during the the English Civil Wars of the 1600s?

What did they teach you about that in school?

Do you know WHY the Enclosure Acts coincided with the emergence of the Factory system in England?

What did they teach you about that in school?

Do you know the purpose and inspiration for the Sunday School System that emerged within the factory system in the 1730s-50s? And how Methodism, which was until then a fringe sect of puritan Christianity, was introduced into the Factory system and WHY this was engineered by the Factory owners?

What did they teach you about that in school?

So you know full story of the origins of Compulsory State Schooling? How the powerful coal barons of North America, Britain, France and Germany spent huge fortunes lobbying for such a system worldwide and why they did this?

What did they teach you about that in school?

Questioning what we are taught is essential to anyone who wishes to understand the world Polity we live in and why it is the way it is, violent, destructive, angry rather than nurturant, creative, loving.

Furthermore the constant conditioning of schooling trains one to read and take in without subjecting the material to a critical analysis, or to a reflecting based on what one FEELS about what one is reading?

What kind of person has the child become when they can read of wars, of torture, of mass laughter and glorify it as 'part of our great history', and exciting tale.....?

And what kind of adult will that child become, and what will his or her role in the community be determined by, what outcomes for future generations will ensue?


Kindest regards

Corneilius

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

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Motherhood, Fatherhood and Nurturance.

I was asked the following question :

"
Why always the biological mother relationship?" and "Why is there no mention of the paternal role in your writings?"

This is a good question.

This is my answer:

My focus on the mother child link is really simple.

We are alive and conscious and forming/developing within the womb, our first world. Any culture that nurtures that first forming, that first world will nurture what follows. Any culture that understands and respects that first world will understand and respect what follows.

Thus we learn, as Fathers, within the womb, what it is to feel to be nurtured or not at the most profund levels. The base.

Furthermore, the egg that became me was alive in my mother, in my grandmothers womb, and within my mothers body, living cells of me lived for the duration of her life. There is a distinct matri-lineal biology that expresses itself in the experiential learning of nurturance.

Nurturance is the most fundamental of all human behaviours, in terms of healthy societies. It goes way beyond parental 'roles' and extends to all behaviours within any given family, community or society - in it's healthy expression or it's distorted expression.

I speak as a Father.

I also speak as one who is deconstructing those processes that are related to the emergence and continuation of Hierarchically Violent Societies. One has to get to the root of the problem no matter where it leads.
Kindest regards

Corneilius

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


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The Heart Brain and Biological Self Empathy.

The Human Heart is a organic biological wi-fi router, designed to help you 'get' the content of the world around you.

It generates a large Electro-magnetic field, which interacts with Electro-magnetic fields of all that is around oneself. It is connected by organic fibre optic to the Amygdala, at the core of the brain.

Signals from the heart arrive for processing in the brain even before signals that come via the eyes.

The brain, amongst other things, models what is perceived and helps in the articulation of this so that what is perceived can be expressed and worked with.

However if the flow of information is disrupted, such that it is reversed, and the mind, subject as it is in this society to conditioning and conformity, the essential information from the heart can be lost, distorted or otherwise missed.

Google 'heart-brain coherence' for more information on this that YOU can utilise to nurture yourself. Rather than direct you to a specific page, I urge you to follow your own learning path, and discover for yourself what is true about all this.



Kindest regards

Corneilius

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





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