'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.


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

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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The Corruption of The Curriculum.

I read this rather clear and yet short piece, on the 'corruption of the curriculum' and it's a damning indictment of Educational policy and tinkering with teaching practice, learning 'styles' and course content.

It states the following :

 "The school curriculum has been corrupted by political interference, according to a new report from independent think-tank Civitas. The traditional subject areas have been hi-jacked to promote fashionable causes such as gender awareness, the environment and anti-racism, while teachers are expected to help to achieve the government's social goals instead of imparting a body of academic knowledge to their students."

The article then outlines in concise language some of the 'corruptions' and their adverse effects.

The describe 'educational apartheid' (subjects excluded for some students based on income and class), 'history without dates' (without a coherent narrative), a policy of behavioural change that reduces

It's well worth a read, and I would like to put it in context, "join-the-dots" so to speak. To go further. To clarify.

After all, it was issued by Civitas, who are pretty much a right wing think tank, and why would I be impressed by what ever spewed forth from such an establishment. So I gotta put that right. I am not at all impressed, because the article itself is tinkering, and while it makes a critique that has some substance, it fails (as intended) to set things in context.

Has anyone mentioned to you that it is known, and proven, that State Education was initially instigated by intensive and long-term lobbying from business? 

"
Perhaps the greatest of school's illusions is that the institution was launched by a group of kindly men and women who wanted to help the children of ordinary families—to level the playing field, so to speak."

It was of course,  presented as philanthropy,  the trojan horse of modern social engineering effected by the use of wealth, by stealth. And yes some people really did believe they were genuine seeking to help others and to help 'mankind'.

In fact there was close to a century of lobbying at  local, national and international levels of Industrial Society, and a huge, vast amount of money was spent over that time in this project to introduce Compulsion Schooling for all children.


"The real makers of modern schooling were leaders of the new American industrialist class, men like:

Andrew Carnegie, the steel baron...
John D. Rockefeller, the duke of oil...
Henry Ford, master of the assembly line which compounded steel and oil into a vehicular dynasty...
and J.P. Morgan, the king of capitalist finance...


The primary driver was of this project was the power and control of business, mostly the coal business, which with coal being the first fossil fuel, has a certain resonance with corporate power play within Governance by the
petroleum industry. that we know today ... the coal and steel business was or became the central power in 'Civilisation' and one of the most aggressive in terms of 'expansion' (globalisation) and in terms of infiltrating Governance. The project to compel all children into education started in the 1750s.

And what has happened is that for a while it worked, as all training does, then some people started to see through the system, and found ways to use it as the basis for real learning outside the system, and began to resist the indoctrination and worse, actively self organise.

Power cannot allow that. For two reasons.

!. To many power players is dangerous if they are all equals.  There has to be manageable limits.

2. "If some 'poor' people learn to do what we are doing, we are out of business. So let us 'educate' them such that they cannot really learn, but can remember what they have been told, and they'll confuse memorising for learning. And we will set the psychological limit within the education SYSTEM, the systemic process does the work, not merely the curriculum."

The curriculum can be tinkered with, both by Power and by those Power allows, within limits and under their watchful eyes.

The article I quoted is complaining about the tinkering, and not the system. It prefers the 'traditional tinkering'. That's as far as it goes.

Not impressive.

The SYSTEM must  remain, even as it's façade is ever changing as either genuine empathic understanding emerges (they can't fool all the people all of the time) which Power will always seek to co-opt, by systematising whatever emerges organically, thus neutering any potential threat to Power it might represent.

Any right winger knows this. Well,the ones who dictate policy. Who ever they are..

This is partly why John Taylor Gatto says we must disestablish the SYSTEM, retaining the infrastructure and applying and modifying those infrastructure so that they can be used as places of self motivated learning, where the full person is allowed to grow, as such to truly meet the needs of the children, and indeed of all of us, as natural learners.

"
After a long life, and thirty years in the public school trenches, I've concluded that genius is as common as dirt. We suppress our genius only because we haven't yet figured out how to manage a population of educated men and women. The solution, I think, is simple and glorious. Let them manage themselves."

Self motivated, self organised.
Self Governing. Common Sense. Biologically mandated.

The article is a brief overview of a book, by Frank Furedi...

'The Corruption of the Curriculum' by Frank Furedi, Shirley Lawes, Michele Ledda, Chris McGovern, Simon Patterson, David Perks and Alex Standish is published by Civitas, 77 Great Peter Street, London SW1P 2EZ

Kindest regards

Corneilius

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

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Syria, oh Syria!

All I can say of Syria is this. I know nothing of life in Syria, and I don't trust one word of what the mainstream media is uttering on it.

I DO KNOW that there are people, lovely, warm, vulnerable, open active, and that there are children and elders too, all of them so human. And that irrespective of 'politics' they will be the ones who are hurt the most of all of this. Again. It's nauseating now to me to talk of 'Libya', Syria', "Iraq', 'Afghanistan' and any other place that is labelled by some few in Power as a 'failed' or 'dictator' or 'axis of evil' or 'banana republic' State as objects, rather than places filled with real people, to talk of Britain or America (the 'bad" ruler states) and include all those people born there through no choice of their own as part of that same object, with responsibility for what that entity, The State, did? 

People we can so easily call the 'enemy'. People like you. People like me. Like our children. Our parents. Our grand-parents. Whole streets, estates, villages, towns, cities....

And I know too that their trauma, pain, loss and hurt is not a price worth paying to sustain the current dominant cultural paradigms. A price they did not choose for themselves. Who would?

It never was worth paying, ever. That 'sacrifice' is another false myth.

 
Kindest regards

Corneilius

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





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More thoughts...

The egg that YOU started out as, was alive in your grandmothers womb, in your mother as she lay growing and being nurtured there. Your cells are still live in your mother as long as she lives, along with all your siblings. This is the basis for the matri-lineal reality. Nature's cycles are incremental, not repetitive. Each cycle brings new growth, new wisdom or in the case of unresolved trauma, deeper woundings, some of which are so subtle as to be almost invisible. These are the dynmaics with which we are working with, as we act to change our world.
It is not a question MORE intelligence, but of naturally intelligent behaviour that nurtures life for all life. The illusion of MORE is crafted to segregate human from nature.
Thus, the womb is intelligent. The baby within, is intelligent. Birth is intelligence. Empathy is intelligence. Self-empathy is intelligence.
The existence of poverty is proof that the current Dominant Culture is a failure of the imagination and lacks true natural intelligence. The fact that rich people pay rich people to convince middle class people to blame the poor, the wounded, the damaged for being poor, wounded or damaged and that this strategy works illustrates that fact.
A truly intelligent Society would naturally nurture all life for all life.  
What kind of community do you wish to form, to live in, to bequeath to the next generation and beyond? This is a question for each of us to consider, for we have a responsibility towards our children, all of them. Even if we consider ourselves to not be parents.
The difference between anti-authoritarian and autonomous is that the latter does not define itself in relation to authority, but in relation to self as part of the whole, based on the psychology of biological empathy.
With regard to recent repeated reports suggesting that benefit fraud is a serious problem, estimate to 'cost' the taxpayer £1 billion annually - whereas Tax Avoidance by wealthy corporations who can afford to lobby Government (paid by the taxpayer) costs £15 billion pounds annually, it is worth noting that the bulk of the so-called benefit fraudulently acquired goes back into the ecomony in rent, food, etc etc and that the bulk of the £15 billion in 'avoided' taxes goes into swiss bank accounts or is otherwise hoarded, enriching a few already wealthy people...
In a similar vein, we could say that racism is evidence of conditioning, more than it is evidence of wickedness innate in people...

"We live in a sick, or closer to the truth, a wounded society. It is based on Power, and Power is based upon fear.

It flows thus: repeated trauma can cause a loss of self awareness, as one pushes the feelings that need to be resolved AWAY if one is unable to resolve those feelings, this leads to a lack of self empathy; self empathy is the basis for true empathy with others (human or any other natural organism) which deepens the sense of disconnectedness, from all that nurtures; this creates another layer of fear and with that a need to control others. ANYTHING that is natural will resist being controlled, and this is where violence emerges, to enforce control. Violence can be physical, psychological or emotional.

A communtiy that has been traumatised and is unable, for whatever reason, to resolve this dynamic, will become ever more controlling and violent.

This is the root of the hierarchically violent society.

The psychology of any given society is both revealed and perpetuated in how that society treats the children. Change that and we can change everything. Omit that and we will repeat the patterns of violence and control."

For the majority, and for sure the hard core Establishment of Mental Health Professionals, their primary task is to 'correct' behaviour so that it conforms to Societal prescriptions, rather than to help the person to become more fully human by understanding themselves, understanding the ways in which Society distorts the natural self, because to do that would be to blow the lid on the constant oppression of the natural variety of our psyches upon which all Power is founded.

Those who, for whatever reason, resist, are labelled 'incurable'... and they are blamed for their resistance to the 'help' offered, to mask the guilt and shame that is inherent in such offerings.

"Forgive them, Lord, for they know not what they do" - yet they do know, even if that knowledge is buried deep under layers of academic and societal conditioning.
An insightful talk given by David Smail, on the realities of schooling as an oppressive experience.

http://www.davidsmail.info/school.htm    The Experience of School,  www.davidsmail.info
[In G. Alred & M. Fleming (eds). Priorities in Education. Fieldhouse Press, University of Durham School of Education, 1996]



Kindest regards

Corneilius

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


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Some recent thoughts.....


"We live in a sick, or closer to the truth, a wounded society. It is based on Power, and Power is based upon fear.

It flows thus: repeated trauma can cause a loss of self awareness, as one pushes the feelings that need to be resolved AWAY if one is unable to resolve those feelings, this leads to a lack of self empathy; self empathy is the basis for true empathy with others (human or any other natural organism) which deepens the sense of disconnectedness, from all that nurtures; this creates another layer of fear and with that a need to control others. ANYTHING that is natural will resist being controlled, and this is where violence emerges, to enforce control. Violence can be physical, psychological or emotional.

A communtiy that has been traumatised and is unable, for whatever reason, to resolve this dynamic, will become ever more controlling and violent.

This is the root of the hierarchically violent society.

The psychology of any given society is both revealed and perpetuated in how that society treats the children. Change that and we can change everything. Omit that and we will repeat the patterns of violence and control."
"Those who glorify war; those who go through it, to mask their woundedness; those who send men to war, to mask their guilt; those who know nothing of war, to mask their ignorance."
"In an empathic based community there are not so much 'bith defects' as different circumstances, different outcomes, which with empathy can be resolved. 'Defects' may just be a way of a conformist society avoiding the issue of how to deal with sych differences. A nurturant community cares for the most vulnerable, and intergrates vulnerability as a source of wisdom, among many."
If one is not one's parents best friend,then both have lost out. And our communities have lost more than can be measured."



Kindest regards

Corneilius

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





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Dianne Abbots Tweet..... reveals more than one realises!

Had Diane Abbot tweeted "Power loves to divide and rule" she would have siad something that is truthful. Power is the issue, not race.... she might even have stimulated a decent discourse....

Race has always been utilised by Power to divide people..... 

But, being part of the Power Structure, Abbot is either incapable of , or unwilling to engage in profound critical analysis.

That's not to say that there aren't people who hold deluded views on race, (currrent Iran phobia?) and on difference, (Native Americans are 'savages', San Bushmen are 'primitives) and that there aren't those who hold such views are prone to violence. 

Such people exist - yet they were not born with those attitudes, they learned them... how did they learn them, and who benefits from such learning?

They are merely the product of a dishonest Institutionalsied Society, one which launches mass war against innocent people with what are KNOWN to be falsehoods and urges the people to carry on shopping, and so many of we, the people, do....
So, cui Bono? Eh?

Who benefits if we demonise the 'racists' whilst power tramples over EVERYONE?

Diane Abbot, and the Editors of The Guardiuan and other Newspapers, (and their readerships) would do well to read Paolo Friere's "Pedagogy of the Oppressed' and actually take some of it in. Though they'd very quickly find themselves unemployed if they did so and acted on what Friere wrote, which is truth and beauty, REAL power.... the power to become fully human.

I am appalled at the craven nature of this discourse.


Kindest regards

Corneilius

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





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Change is not only possible, it is natural.

Natural Expectations : a definition

Natural expectations are sets of inherent, intrinsic design implications that emerge from within living organisms.

Another way to express this would be to say that a three legged stool has obvious immediate design implications, as would a mug, or a palm leaf woven basket. The stool is a seat or a table, the mug, an open container with a handle, is for drinking or scooping, the basket is for carrying, or holding objects within it, and it’s strap arrangement, if it has one, might indicate how it is to be carried. It’s an analogy because the stool, the mug nor the basket, are all non ‘living’ ‘things’ and are used by living beings. The materials that comprise those objects may in time be returned to nature, yet they as objects do not live, nor do they grow.

What I am writing about are the natural expectations’ of living processes.

Plants are an expectation of sunlight within certain frequency ranges, varying from plant to plant. Some utilise more direct sunlight than others. Each one has its place.

In the forest habitat Perma-culturists and Forest Gardeners describe 7 layers of light variation, from the ground to the topmost leaves, and have observed that a myriad of different plants work on all those varying levels of light, collectively and individually. Put any one of those plants in a layer it’s not normally naturally part of and it will struggle, and its natural growth cycles will be disrupted. The plants natural expectations are not being met.

Each plant in the web of life provides materials and more often than not often living space for many, many organisms, all of whom are part of the essential optimum health picture. In a forest with many hundreds and thousands of species those relationships will be incredibly interwoven in a non-linear fashion. The entire web is an expression of many, many specific natural expectations being fulfilled. All inter-related! That inter dependence is also part of the natural expectations, or design implications of living processes.

Eyes are an expectation of sunlight within a certain frequency range. We human beings cannot see ultra-violet or infra-red light with our eyes. Yet there are many animals that do use those frequencies. It is interesting to note that civilisation has developed technology to extend our sensory range, to ‘see’ those UV or IR frequencies, primarily as military/security tools and as such mostly for ill.

Ears are an expectation of sound waves. Again there is a limit, a certain frequency range outside of which nothing is sensed by that particular organ or organism or collective of cells operating as they do. Nature has determined this limit. It is no accident. Irrespective of whatever determines such processes, these naturally determined expectations are absolutely meaningful, and of vital importance to all living processes.

Plants need water. Some more than others. The local availability, source and quality of water determines what plants will thrive, and of course those plants will live there and will thrive. Salt Marshes and Bog Marshes are quite differing habitats. A few plants can handle both, most are specific to the precise habitat and it’s variations.

Another way to sense this would be to say that what we see in natural living processes is that those intrinsic, that is to say, essentially innate and natural expectations determine the parameters for the optimum health of any living process. Meeting those natural expectations ensures optimum health.

There is one other natural expectation that inheres to all living processes; that is that there is no such ‘thing’ or ‘concept’ as ‘thrash’, ‘rubbish’ or waste.

Nature does not create any waste. Ever. In natural living processes ALL materials utilised by living processes are returned to the nutrient cycles in forms that other organisms or living processes can metabolise. That return processes is pee-ing, poo-ing, leaf shedding, skin shedding, and of course dieing.

Decaying. Bio-degrading … though I don’t much like that term.

Bio-returning would be a better description, less judgemental.

This constant return of metabolised materials increases the over-all fecundity of the natural habitat. That too is a natural expectation of the entire biota or habitat.

Another way of saying this is that this very simple no-waste principle ensures the continued optimum health and growth of the habitat.

What it means, for me at least, is that EVERYTHING that lives on Earth, and everything done by those living organisms is inter-related, profoundly connected in a vast food web that feeds all life – all waste is food for life - so that life grows ever more abundant on Earth. And each and every living organism is embodied with a set of natural expectations.

However being an intelligent system, there is another dynamic that works with these sets of natural expectations that ensures that they are not rigid or brittle..... and that is the ability to take in information and to change or 'adapt' behaviour to meet new circumstances.

It follows that even the slightest input of ‘new’ or ‘alien’ materials will have consequences and those consequences cannot be easily predicted, especially where nature has not determined a bio-logical metabolic living process to handle that material, to utilise it and or return it to the nutrient cycle. The ‘new’ or ‘alien’ material can become toxic if it ‘accidentally’ interferes with natural bio-logical processes; though hind sight does of course reveal the extent and depth of those consequences, even as this is strangely ignored by so many in this modern dominant culture.

To recap, ALL natural living processes have specific and precise natural expectations that are intrinsic and that determine the parameters for the optimum health of each living process; and that the constant meeting those expectations at the individual and community levels increases the overall health of the entire species, and those many species living at optimum health, by metabolising materials created by each other they collectively ensure the optimum health of the entire habitat.

And that all organisms, living in a constantly changing environment have the ability to learn, that is to say that they can receive information from the environment, and use that information to make changes in their behaviour, in such manner as to maintain the overall balance of life. Thus there is no ‘waste’ in natural processes, because all materials are left in a state that specifically enables them to be metabolised by other living processes. Life feeds life.

Change is possible, even for a rigid Institutional Society such as the Dominant Culture which is undermining natural processes and causing great harm. The question therefore is will 'it' or it's constituents make those choices based on learning and on a desire to maintian the vitality of natural processes. That's you and I, my friends and all other human beings. Even David Cameron retains that possibility. Even the Pope.

If they chose not to make those choices, then they have to be held accountable for the adverse affects of their behaviour.

Kindest regards

Corneilius

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





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Climate Change Denial-ism Put into Context.

There has been lots of writings about Climate Change denial-ism.

One of the more frequent claims is that this denial emerges from the unwillingness of those whose material comforts are so great in comparison to those of previous generations to even begin to think of forgoing those comforts. Be they 'everyday folk' or wealthy Power players.

In my view this is wholly inadequate as a explanation. It also has potential to become a means to demonise and de-humanise 'others', and be used as a means of oppression and social divisiveness that feeds Power. The blame game is not the same as asking that people take on social responsibility  based on understanding.

When it comes to 'denial-ism' we have many, many precedents and analogues. Here's a just a few to indicate the tenor of denial-ism.

The German people during the late 1920s and 1930s, as Hitler was elevated into Power, at a time when Eugenics was a respected 'scientific' ideology amongst many, many ruling elites and everyday people across the world. The German people could see what was happening, and yet so many simply turned a blind eye to the growing abuses perpetrated by the movement of which Hitler was a figurehead, and actually worked within that system as the managers, clerks and manual labourers necessary for such a system to function. What had they learned about abusive power in their childhoods that made them so compliant with so obviously abusive Governance?

The 'American' European People during the forced removal of the Aboriginal Peoples of North America and Canada, (and ever since), and the 'Australian' European People regarding the oppression of the Aboriginal peoples of Australia. Where did they get the idea that the Aboriginal people were sub-human and could be so cruelly treated?

The Western World in general with regard to the Aboriginal World - the portrayal of those cultures as 'savage' or 'primitive' as a whole, and therefore suitable for 'assimilation' or 'extirpation'. And the denial of that vast historical trauma, as well as the claim that it belongs to previous generations, to the past, while in reality it is still being practised.

The Irish of the 20th and 21st Century regarding the political realities of the Irish 'Famine's of the mid 19th Century. The incidence of potato blight was intentionally utilised to depopulate Ireland, and to populate the USA and Australia by mass immigration, in essence to provide cheap labour for the expansionism of the Empires of commerce. This reveals to those with eyes to see the pattern of intentional cruelty and manipulation that led directly to the partition of Ireland, the Civil War and belies the carefully crafted illusion of Ireland's entry into the modern world of statehood and a friendly relationship between the installed Powers in Ireland's State with those Powers that had so cruelly abused the indigenous Irish for so long. Forget about the truth, there is money to be made.

The long term intergenerational trauma of this experience had horrific consequences for hundreds of thousands of Irish children placed in the 'care' of Church and State Institutions. This is still a taboo subject in polite Irish Society. Why?

The Catholic world-wide congregation's response in the past 30 years as the 'scandal' of widespread, centuries long, child abuse unfolds and as the Catholic Hierarchy continues to refuse to address the matter honestly and honourably. How can so much be known about this horrific history and so little be done to address it, not least by the people outside of that Institution, whose own family members were victimised?

The Western World post "Silent Spring'... The 'green revolution' has surged forwards since then, unabated. Birdsong is ever rarer. Bee populations are falling. Monsanto is still pushing GMO crops and Supermarket giants and Pharmaceutical Corporations are determining agricultural practice, whilst the adverse health affects are costing National health Services more every year. How can such an insane and obviously damaging practice prevail for so long?

The Western World in the lead up to, and during the Afghan and Iraq Wars, during the bombing of Libya. There were no WMD in Iraq, there is no solid evidence that 9/11 was planned and executed from within Afghanistan, and the threat of massive civilian slaughter in Benghazi is proven to have been a fabrication. David Cameron sold Military technology and weapons the the Egyptian Military which has been used to oppress the Egyptian people since the 'fall' of Mubarak. Why do people buy these lies about 'bringing democracy' tot he Arab world?

The widespread denial of the wounds associated with Coercive Compulsory Schooling Systems. 'Our' schools are failing children, punishing them with target based achievement training designed to put the children under intense psychological pressure; bullying is rampant and schools unwilling to admit the scale of the problem, let alone address it's roots in peer pressure that is largely driven by consumer marketing and media propaganda. Ritalin is the tool of choice to control those children whose energy and vitality and frustration threatens the illusion that schools are educational institutions, as opposed to doctrinal training centres. How can so many parents be blind to the problems their own children are faced with every day?

To suggest that it is merely a question of 'comforts' that accrue to those who benefit in some way from the status quo is to avoid a deeper analysis, as to the psycho-dynamics of denial. It might be comforting to some who might claim, in their own minds, to be ready for a down grading of their own comforts, for the benefit of all,  which might also be yet another way of claiming the 'higher moral ground', of self aggrandisement. Ruthless self honesty is essential here.

Alice Miller was the first modern writer to look at Germany and to elucidate the psycho-dynamic that fed the situation in Germany, and to source it's roots in how children were treated, and how parents were instructed by societal power in their relationships with children. Her book "For Your Own Good : The roots of Violence in Child Rearing" is one of the most important books of the 20th Century. She showed that when an adult mistreats a child, telling the child repeatedly that "This is for your own good!" the child internalises the meaning and values associated with the mistreatment and adopts them as her or his own, and that makes it more likely that as an adult they too will mistreat their own children, and that this occurs as an intergenerational behaviour pattern that is oppressive.

The child's natural anger at such mistreatment is suppressed by the child, and emerges in the adult as a diffuse anger that is unresolved and that can and is used by Power to manipulate hatred and anger towards 'others' who are carefully demonised, thus giving permission to a whole generation to attack those defined as 'others' : jews, gays, communists in Hitler's era; protestors, muslims, immigrants and 'terrorists' today in Great Britian.

James Prescott and John Bowlby researched the impact of the disruption of the natural child-mother bonding processes and to link those disruptions to how societies behave, and provided clear evidence that the disruption of the natural child-mother bonding processes underpinned the emergence of Hierarchically Violent Societies 

Prescott's 1975 paper 'The Origins of Violence' revealed two streams of society: the Hierarchically Violent Society and the Empathic Egalitarian Society.

Here's a brief outline of the differences he observed.

That research is now corroborated to some degree, though there are some doubts and questions yet to be answered, by neuroscience, by pre-natal developmental science and birth psychology.

The adverse behaviour patterns that have been perpetuated, that lead to the problems of Habitat degradation - of which Climate Change is but one symptom - have their roots in this disruption of natural, biologically mandated environmental and experiential processes that disrupt our natural maturation and development of sense of self, and of connection to others.

The psychology of any given society is both revealed and perpetuated in how that society treats it's children and most vulnerable members.

Change this and we change everything.

Failure to change this, and we will only create new rules with which to oppress each other, thinking all the time that our rules are better justified.

We have many, many examples of this 'revolutionary' approach and the abuses it perpetuates, from the French revolution to Pol Pot.

Healing and Recovery cannot be coerced, they must be chosen. It is also true that healing and recovery benefit greatly from adequate empathic and practical support, and it is true that some few have been able to engage their healing and recovery without much support, often in the face of strong opposition.

Loss of self empathy and the urge to power - a short video. :

We, all of us, have much work to do, in many areas. And for our children's children's sake it must be, above all, honest.

That honesty is the cleaning up of our internal personal ecology as much as the external.


Kindest regards

Corneilius

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

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The Generation Gap. Mind the Gap. It's a bridge back to nature.

Adults!

Are you tired of dealing with surly, uncooperative, sarcastic young people whose attitude has everything to do with not being accepted as seen, as valid, as complete and whole, unless they conform to the values of others, whose example and behaviour is not necessarily seen as being worthy of much respect, through they might love the person, the parent, they cannot mask what they see.

And it has to do with a masked and subconscious parental jealousy of the emerged young adults potential for freedom, a freedom many parents mortgaged, a freedom which voting and working atrophied, a wound not of their own making, for it is intergenerational. 

If it is not really talked about, the hurt is great indeed.

Generation after generation..... the trickle down effect.

They were told it was the 'right' thing to do. So they did it, in good faith, and the system betrayed them.Most unfortunately do not realise what they have been put through. Their identification with the system had penetrated too deep, and self empathy is replaced with fear or certainty.

Generation after generation..... the trickle down effect.

I have learned to accept it all, not fatalistically, but in order to observe, and to see then what happens, and perhaps sense how the resolution might be nurtured, within myself. This has taken some time. I was listening to me as I was, when others were not, and remembering. And connecting that to the fact that my life experience certainly left me wounded, and lacking self empathy and so it must be for so many others, just as intensely as I experienced it, and for many much worse indeed.

The least measure of a life of all measures, is the intensity of self loathing, (which is really the introjected loathing of society for the natural child, and the degree one has internalised that so deeply determines to some degree the intensity of it's external expression). Yet it is crucial in all power relationships.

We need to listen to our children, we need to get used to living lighter, on less cash, and understand the immense benefit of the experience of being present, with much more time to be, and to be with the children, more than at work. To be with life, more than with the 'economy'.

Parents and children need more free time together, and we need it across the generations, to help recover from this intergenerational re-traumatisation, be it from the adverse affects of hierarchical power structures behaviour, or laterally,  amongst us as people ..... we must see the setting into which we were born and have now to deal with.

Power Relationships vs Empathic Relationships?



this




has been


for decades, elsewhere .........

Of course, it has to be said, this applies across all generations .... the same dynamic occurs when a gap is perceived and 'us' and 'them' becomes the sense of the generations, rather than it being perceived and felt as a continuum - a healthy functioning empathic family, community or group.




Kindest regards

Corneilius

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

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Self empathy is the source of Wisdom.

Self empathy is the source of any 'wisdom' .... because from there genuine empathy flows, and it is a genuine empathy that is not an absorption of others feelings and content, but an accurate felt, sensed perception of these from a place of knowing oneself, where one is.

Genuine empathy accurately perceives both nurturant and non-nurturant realities, and responds as needed. The prey flees, not merely out of blind fear, but out of knowledge. It's what legs, eyes, ears, the sense of smell are all for.

And it takes psychological control over people to ensure that people remain attached to a system, to hierarchically imposed values and judgements, when we could have run, or walked, or said "NO!". That psychological control is engineered through the internalisation of the values of the system, such that we become judgemental, moralistic rather than empathic perceptual. This engineering is done by indoctrination, by marketing, by abuse and by trauma.

So all 'teachers' ought to lead us back to ourselves, and do so with a deep trust that from there we will know where to go.

There is no religion or spirituality that is for all: each person is their own way of spirituality.

There is no ideology in Nature.

There is one ethic of life, and that is to nurture life for all life. That's what nature does and we have emerged from Nature.

That's how I see it.....

Kindest regards

Corneilius

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







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The Bail Outs, Banking Fraud, Gambling and unelected Governments

With all that is happening, and happening fast - the Governments of Italy and Greece are now effectively an unelected, imposed Government, and populated by people who have been executives of Goldman Sachs, by 'economists' and technocrats whose conflict on interest is clearly weighted in favour of the banking system.

Whereas in Iceland this has been avoided by the determined action of the people ..... who put so much pressure on their Government that their demands were met...

The current Government in the UK is also effectively unelected, as the coalition was NOT voted for, but arranged behind closed doors, at a crucial time.

Here's a documentary that explores how the recent 'crash' was the natural outcome of policies of deregulation by Governments populated by people closely aligned to the 'Investment' Banking sector and the privatised Central Banking systems, fraud and unfettered greed.

The story of New York Governor and former Attorney General Elliot Spitzer's downfall is instructive, and well documented by the BBC Storyville Documentary "Elliot Spitzer : The Sheriff of Wall Street".










This documentary is clear, it is not overburdened with exotic detail, and it shows exactly HOW the current crash and bailout was engineered ..... worthy of a couple of viewings....



on Vimeo

Kindest regards

Corneilius

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











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The Roots of Participative Democracy : Children

We cannot have an effective and efficient democracy unless the children experience the reality of mutual responsibility and accountability.

Democracy goes wrong when people are trained by schooling to not have a direct participation on the decisions that are made that most affect their lives....... schooling is a 12 year conditioning process that instrumentalises the child's mind and body to obedience, to a dependency on the approval of others, to negating his or her unique insights, and innate right to pursue those insights, to such degree that it becomes a hard wired neurological and physiological response...

A response that they later defend in a visceral and almost feral manner....

That said the intentional process of 'compulsory' schooling is not 'perfect' : some do escape, intact, many more partially intact.. - hence the constant faux 'reforms' imposed by Central Government.... and their denial of the benefits of a truly libertarian education where children are self directing inner motivated learners facilitated by supportive and empathic adults.
It's also the case for me at least, that as I began to honestly appraise my OWN abusive and manipulative behaviour, I began to UNDERSTAND that of those who abuse.. and gain insight into political behaviours of all kinds.... the key is not just in 'being good' but also in understanding, empathically, the behaviour of those who are oppressive...
Which is another reason for activists to REALLY go deep within themselves and find that understanding all the better to help make the wider societal changes, and to provide pathways for others to free themselves of their need to oppress.

This is what Paolo Freire wrote about in Pedagogy of The Oppressed...


And what Alice Miller wrote about in "For your Own Good: The roots of violence in child rearing"


Kindest regards

Corneilius

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



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Letter to President Michael D. Higgins

Dear President Elect,

I urge you, as President of Ireland, to be a constant and energetic voice for the Survivors, and for all the children, past, present and future, to bring empathy and clarity to bear on Irish Governance, to be fearless in this, to use your privileged position to help Irish Society to undergo changes that are healthy, that are geared towards the long term, that are nurturant of life and that make the abuse of Power a thing of the past.

You used the term 'Historical Trauma' in one of your speeches. You must now bring this phrase and it's meaning to the fore, because it is this that has driven the dysfunctional behaviour of so many, inside of politics and outside for centuries.

Greed is a learned behaviour. Abuse is a learned behaviour.

The psychology of any given Society is both revealed and perpetuated in how that Society treats it's children. To change the Society, we MUST change how we relate to and treat all our children, for they are the future..

Kindest regards

Corneilius Crowley


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





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