Avariciousness…

[Slightly edited October 1]. Quickly written after a long day at work: The Swedish leader-writer and priest Helle Klein writes in her blog that she thinks the economism gets both material and existential consequences.

She wonders how what’s now going on in the current financial crisis will end.

“The greediness digs its own grave – unfortunately many small-savers [??] are drawn with in this crisis.”

In a leader chronicle yesterday she writes about that “The Capitalism Destroys the Love.”

The Swedish debater and journalist Dan Josefsson said at the book-fair in Gothenburg recently that:

“Loneliness is a malignant tumour on our society.”

He and a psychotherapist have written a book together called something like “The Secrecy –from glance to lasting relation” (if we just "take ourselves in the collar" as we say here and become the clever girls and boys we will manage it!!! My interpretation from what I read about the book. Of course; all who haven't been so badly hurt will manage this, but those who were more badly treated... What about them?). Addition October 9: the home site for this book, see here.

In the book flood from this year’s fair (mass?) the need of help with relations appears. The human beings of today seem to have difficulties with the love –not with sex, kicks of happiness or enjoyment, but with lasting and deep relations.

Of 9 million people in Sweden 2, 5 million are living in one-person households. Over 1, 5 million of these have hardly any contact with their families. 200,000 say they don’t have any friends.

A lot of people call help-phones. All sorts of people are calling: young, old, people born in Sweden and abroad, men and women. Many carry a huge agony. The dismounting of the psychiatry is shown clearly. Other people are struggling with their addiction(s). Strikingly many women are drinking too much. But obviously many are merely alone. They have nobody to talk with. They are longing for connection beyond themselves.

Loneliness is the Western world’s big problem child. We have everything, but not. The affluence of things has to compensate for broken relations (but more and more people don’t have material things either, we are returning more and more to the class-society again).

However, all those offers of therapy, lifestyle coaching and self-realization say that we have to change ourselves, not the society * (the tendency to blame ourselves is strengthened! Very practical for the ones in power on all levels).

If one topic of conversation in our time is the loneliness, the other is the financial crisis. The bank system in USA is breaking down and the confidence for the societal economies is crashing.

The greediness, avariciousness has dug its own grave.

Maybe these two societal phenomena – the loneliness and the greediness - belong together?

“The capitalism is a condition in the world and in the soul”

Franz Kafka once claimed.

His provoking metaphor hold things together we use to hold apart – the economic and the existential aspects/things.

One of Klein’s teachers at the university, Per Frostin, once wrote an essay with the heading “The Capitalism Chokes the Love.”

He searched for the talk in society and church about the economism’s and consumism’s influence not only on the societal solidarity but also on our ability to maintain loving relations, enter into marriages and devote ourselves to family life.

This essay, published more than twenty years ago, feels more burning today than ever Klein thinks.

Our quarter-of-a-year-capitalism is not only a neoliberal economical system but also an ideology with a view on man which says: go in for, invest in yourself, and seek for the largest profit for your own sake.

Those ideals are the opposite of solidarity and love. The calculated egoism is breaking both the societal economies and human-between-relations down.

What has Alice Miller said about these things?? Is material things a substitute for other things? For instance love?

* In many circumstances quite moralistic - and not least unemphatic.

"I can - why can't you???"

Addition October 1: read this article too (in Swedish). And earlier posts on self-justification (the right to abuse?). And under the label moderators. See the blog Freakonomics on "In the Battle of the Sexes, Partians Outearn Peacemakers."

The American psychotherapist Jean Jenson writes that

"And the best is that the better our mental health becomes, the more we dissociate from power exercise and violence [in whatever form]."

And it was that with perverted needs and substitutes... Denial of needs "I don't need..." And as I don't have any needs I can't get hurt. And see the phenomenon divide and rule. Something we probably learned as children: siblings were played out against each other, more or less deliberately and/or consciously. A power-tool.

Read George Montbiot in "Congress Confronts its Contradictions."

How would we have reacted and resonated and how would the society and world have looked like if a sound development had occurred, i.e., if we had been truly and genuinely respectfully treated as very small kids and up? If more people had been? Because this kind of truly respectful (non-authoritarian) treatment is very rare?

A Swedish journalist said something about conservatism...

Arthur Silber wrote something interesting:

"When people say adults behave and think like children, what they more properly mean is that they behave and think like children who are profoundly damaged -- children who are already made emotionally numb by the typical kind of emotional abuse to which most children are subjected many times a day, children who have been forced to deny their own pain simply to survive, and who are therefore unable to grasp the pain of others. Most adults were once such children; one of the ways the damage reveals itself when they become adults is the denial described above... /.../

Many children believe that 'wishing will make it so,' just as they believe that there are no consequences for their actions that cannot be undone. But again, children who believe this are those children who are already damaged. Healthy children do not think in this manner. But most of us were greatly damaged as children, and most of us deny what ought to be unavoidable truths because we learned to do this in our earliest years of life./…/

…most Americans -- and our entire governing class and almost all commentators and bloggers -- refuse to grasp them. It is as if these ideas are written in a dead language. Certainly, the language is dead to them, for they have made themselves incapable of understanding it. To recognize a truth of this kind threatens the mechanism of denial that lies at the very center of their sense of themselves, at the very center of their identity. So the truth cannot be acknowledged.”

Blaming the victim it’s all about power…

Yes, so it is, from the lowest level to the highest! A blogvisitor had searched on this and it made me very interested so I searched on it too.

See the following articles: “The global financial mess: blaming the victims” by Ann Pettifor, “Blaming the Victim: Domestic and Codependency model” by Greg Dear, “The Shame of Blaming the Victims – In a desperate attempt to protect the president, the right wing has resorted to blaming the victims” by Amanda Marcotte, “Victims are never to blame for coercive, abusive ‘relationships’ – in this guest post, Cara Grayling tackles our victim-blaming culture.” And “Male nurse ‘abused 23 patients.”

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Further thoughts: Yes, if you are in a power-position of any kind you have to be careful!? So you don't misuse your position... By claiming the person under you is the one in fault and to blame. But you probably don't have to swallow everything either... But this is tricky, knowing what is what. If the critic is justified or not, and/or to what to degree.

I am thinking of a moderator on a list for people abused in childhood (a list that was authorized by Alice Miller) to be more concrete. How the (female) moderator behaved. Something that perhaps wasn't shown or noticed, because it occurred off-list. And people who maybe became abused on the list by the moderator had nowhere to turn!

And I wonder how this might have harmed people. And maybe badly. Because people turned to this list for help and in the name of Alice Miller...

I think people also experienced that they became/were surrounded by silence, because nobody replied to their postings. But three years ago it wasn't possible to speak about this and the connected feelings. The experience of the Wall of Silence as Miller has written about!! Whether this feeling was right or not. People becoming silenced in a subtle, but maybe very intentional, way. Maybe this sound paranoiac, and it would be easy to dismiss as just paranoia!!! And thus refuse to listen to the critics and the questioning of state of affairs??

If there was nothing to hide there would be no problem to communicate these things? But of course only to a certain level (with all that follows with this: knowing where the limit goes). With all respect for the difficulties involved here. But I see no reason to be very understanding here. I think people are entitled to have (very) high demands on a list in the name of Alice Miller.

My feeling, which can be wrong, is that the list in question was a healthier place before the female moderator took over it.

And you weren't allowed to use a lot of question or exclamation marks. Then you became questioned. One solution to this would have been to skip these as the probably clever girl you had always been. Adjusting and adapting. What about emphatically understand this overuse (if it was an overuse?)? And/or wonder why the person in question used those expressions instead of other expressions? What was lying underneath?

People becoming unsubscribed: how abusive had they been before they became unsubscribed? On what terms did they become unsubscribed? Did they get to know this? And why not? What reasons? The moderator had no duties telling the one she unsubscribed? Was the one becoming unsubscribed impossible? Or were there oher reasons behind? Of a more personal nature? Was the subscriber a threat of some reason? Quite ironical!

Do (did) subscribers have to praise the moderator and not question her and his actions, what she/he wrote, in maybe any way?

Spankings, blaming co-victim, power abuse…

Some loud thinking, after a really hectic month:

Struck me about blaming the big sister (or big brother) for things that have gone wrong, for needs that haven’t been fulfilled… Is this exactly as it has always been: the big sister (brother) has had to take what should have been directed towards the parents???

And if the big sister or brother has done something she/he is maybe to blame. But shouldn’t the parents have protected the younger child, or been one to hear about abuse from and between siblings and been able of dealing with this??

And is it always the older sibling that is abusing younger?? Maybe older siblings need protection too!??? And I think Miller is right: if you blame scapegoats you won't recover. Only when you are capable of blaming the true perpetrators you will gradually recover. The unjustified anger is endless she writes (if I remember right). And I think that's true.

I thought further, on grown ups, in this case in a forum dealing with childhood issues. In a forum that seems to have the ambitions being a sort of replacement for therapy it seems today (and in the name of a well-known authority). Where the moderator only writes “Post was received” when she (he??) didn’t post a posting. No explanation whatsoever.

Isn’t this quite authoritarian (and totalitarian, as the moderator is the one in power)?

Of course if the subscriber had been repeatedly abusive and got this pointed out, and really being listened to and had gotten all opportunities to explain what she/he meant but continued being abusive, then I can understand that a moderator doesn’t think it’s any idea to explain anything.

But if the subscriber hasn’t been really met or listened to, and not been abusive till that point, I think such treatment from a moderator, especially on a list dealing with such things, is ABUSIVE! And can be very harmful!

What about talking as grown up to grown up?

Needs and authoritarianism…

Max Weber and authority.

This morning I came to think of perverted, bottomless needs. Needs that never will get filled or satisfied, because they should have got filled then (in childhood).

How much money, power etc. you get they will never get filled, more than temporary. Money, power etc. can give temporary relief. But sooner or less you need new (or more) power, money…The original, justified needs have become perverted.

What has the hunger for power and money caused during history, and what does it continue to cause?

I thought of greediness, i.e. bottomless needs… What we see today in the world society. People think that the/this greediness isn’t entirely bad. That greed has driven people to achievements they wouldn’t otherwise show. I don’t really agree. Can’t there be drives of other kinds, that aren’t (at all) destructive or self-destructive?? I think there are, but maybe quite rare?

This is also, in a seemingly paradoxical way, denial of needs!!?? Denial of the early needs, while at the same permitting adults (perverted) needs. But it’s like this it has always been!!?? Allowing the adults needs and forbidding children’s. A phenomenon we are probably more or less blind to?? And more or less aware of. Maybe totally blind and unaware to in many cases, and some people are totally blind and unaware to it? And those are often the ones needing power and control, as much as possible??

Thought further: on Friday afternoon I had a long conversation about a lot of things, from this to that, with a person who is responsible for Rotary scholarships for young people. A young Swedish woman reflected over the difference between how Swedish children and adolescents are treated compared to how they were treated in the country she had visited on her year as holder of a Rotary scholarship. Things she had reacted at. Namely that parents (and teachers??) in the country she visited were quite authoritarian (mine, not her expression, she didn’t use this word I think). The parents simply said:

“You have to…!!” “You can’t do that!” etc.

And if the child/young person asked

“Why??” “Why not?”

The reply was simply

“Therefore!”

with no more explanations.

Obey and keep quite, don’t question anything!?? The parents’ words are the law?? And they are always right?? What about mutual respect and a real, genuine meeting/communication?

I thought further on this; about authoritarianism in a so called therapeutic circumstance (and also what Miller has written; that there are maybe as many ways to recovery as there are people in this world!! And the importance of maybe being aware of this and getting inspired by this too!). Just being given the message that your message (as subscriber to a list in this case) has been received, but not posted on the forum, because the moderator trusted her gut-feeling (??). And no explanation why… Isn’t it exactly the same as above? And maybe also a repetition of an early experience perhaps? I wonder how recovering this is?? And if it has harmed people??

Being forced to adjust...

from Poland trip one week ago.

Some reflections yesterday (when I was about to walk down the stairs at home with a lot of things for a visit to work and for going north after I quited work I fell and hit my forehead and the blood gushed, had to be sewed at the hospital):

After 31 years in this work with the conditions we have had all these years I am a bit tired! We have to compete with other people about the rooms out on the schools. And we have between 50- 67 students on a full time employment; on top we carry the material with us (heavy note books in my case, instruments and recorders for other colleagues)…

My strained patience? Even more stretched!!?? And I am taught not being a nuisance to the parents, a lesson too well learned? Creating troubles with later: either understanding too much or too little?? How many aren’t taught from very early in life (both being encouraged and having role-models resonating like this):

“Oh, it doesn’t matter!”

Maybe having a mom resonating in this way:

“It doesn’t matter; one can…!”

It feels this is on the same theme as I started reflecting upon during our trip to Poland; about adjusting to all and everyone, and what it can lead to. Either that you later on adjust too much, and give up yourself, make yourself invisible, or that you can’t compromise at all?? If the small child hadn't been forced learning those lessons I think it would have been capable handling these things much better later in life. I think Bosch is right about being forced to share early in life, i.e. not being selfish. This is what makes you selfish, and not unselfish. OR too unselfish, unselfish in a way that can harm you sooner or less. Many tend to think that they are glad they learned not being selfish, thinking of others. Is that the phenomenon that it was done "for my own good"?

If you have adjusted too much, and/or said: It doesn’t matter. Then you maybe get an explosion in the end??

We have spoken almost all my work-life about the problems with our rooms out on the schools, but our bosses have all minimized and belittled the problem… So this probably also triggers my relation to my parents (bosses) and tendencies to belittle and minimize things in my life from very early!!??

Being loved...

an expression of true individuality (from Poland-trip last week)?

The inability of really trusting and believing people saying they appreciate, like or even love you where does it come from? From a mom and dad who couldn't show true, genuine, unconditional love from deepest in their hearts? A love the very small child needed, but a love the adult shouldn't have to need.

Whose problem is that? Shouldn't they question their inabilities?

If they can't or won't do this work whose responsibility is this?

Many questions, but I think I know what I feel...

I would want to write about being forced to adjust, and to take too much responsibility too early, and the different results of that, later... Something I started to reflect upon when we walked there in a group in Poland last week...

Roots of violence video...

Read Alice Miller's new article "The Roots of Violence are NOT Unknown. (The misled brain and the banned emotions)" here.

The superclass and oppression…

We had thralls or trälar (slaves) too here in Scandinavia, for instance during the Viking-era. And later people were held as thralls, but in another sense. They weren't literally in villenage, but still villeins in many senses.

Apropos the book ”Superclass; The Global Power Elite and the World They Are Making” by David Rothkopf a commentator on a blog wrote about oppression, here my a little free translation and additions:

“One can scream oneself blue and it doesn’t matter or make any difference. But remember that the power, the oppression is dependent on psychology to a large degree. It’s dependent on that there are enough stupid people. Not unintelligent, of course, but self-righteous and dumb (foolish, stupid).”

The blog-owner replied:

“Of course you are right, and do you know this is also what David Rothkopf points out, who means that it’s ‘smooth’ for the superclass to govern so long as the voters in the democracies don’t take their responsibility and inform themselves so they can vote rationally.”

Yes, the power has interests in that the people under them don’t!?

For instance, we should all be interested that all people got enlightened! That all had good schools for instance, and had the same chances getting good education, with well-educated teachers (in all respects). I.e., that we all pay taxes for this or contribute.

But it isn’t only a question of money; that we for instance pay for other people’s children (even if we don’t have any own kids), but not least that we don’t want competition on equal terms!!?? I don't have own kids unfortunately and I come from a well-educated family... From the middle-class and maybe not the lowest either. Something you maybe don't see (self-irony)??

And by the way, it feels to me as people use the systems how high or low taxes they even pay. I even get the impression that people use it more (and even much more) in those countries where the taxes are lower… I don’t know if it has with a “national character” to do. :-) I think people are alike all over the world from the beginning though.

However, in some countries people seem to be more loyal to the system - still? But the power has interests that people stop being loyal to it??? They use the method divide and rule more or less consciously. People are played out against each other. And they let the (invisible) power play them out against other people!?

I draw this even further to how it probably was in the family, what many of us all over the world, in all countries and cultures, have in our backpacks (things many had to suppress ad deny and pass to oblivion, and it’s the ones in most denial who needs the power the most!? Once again I think the psycho-historians are right about that the most defended tend to lead, and that power exists as a defence); parents playing out their kids against each other to keep being in power, being the “authority”… As if they should need this??? Can’t they earn it in other ways? More naturally so to say or how one would express this.

And siblings who aren’t exposed join their parents to avoid becoming exposed to the parents’ treatment. Something the therapists Jean Jenson and Ingeborg Bosch have met with clients in therapy. Who painfully and with difficulties have discovered exactly those things; how siblings joined the scorning of them for instance. It’s the same, or the similar, phenomena in the adult world, for instance in politics?? We re-enact things there whether we are aware or want it or not. Where for instance media join the power so they get the feeling that… I don’t know…

There is no true indignation or fury from people in the media for instance. Or those who show indignation or fury are very few, so we hardly notice them, and they don’t get as much space in media as other people get. I wish there were more courageous people in the world. Yes, people with more civil courageous!? I.e. people with more “heart”!

See more about divide and rule, in English and in Swedish, about backward psychoclasses.

Life...

What I ought to practice now, see the videos above (piano and orchestra parts on piano)... On top of having over 50 students. Can I manage this? The first and third movements in the concerto by Pergolesi demands most! I wish I had an own cottage or house so I could play whenever I wanted, and COULD practice without disturbing any neighbors...

So much on my mind I would want to write about on top of everything... And near, dear people with whom the contact is important...

The prerequisites for what I do... So I don't have unlimited time for writing. On the contrary. And it has been like this the whole time I have been blogging too. And the blogging hasn't been the only writing exercises either.

The Swedish percussion ensemble Kroumata...

The first video is a parody over the Swedish percussion ensemble Kroumata...The name Kroumata comes from old Greek and is a "collection-name" for percussion instruments.

What are, or can, playing percussion instruments be about? (getting anger out, temporarily though?). It looks so fun when my colleague teaching percussion instruments play with his percussion ensembles on our concerts! I would want to join the ensemble! :-) Or start to dance, or both! I can't sit still almost! But I AM very well mannered, so I do!! Sit sill I mean! Unfortunately!?

At last weekend after some hectic weeks with starting a new school-year, being on course... Hopefully with time for my own home now.

Pancakes (on whole grain spelt, which gives the pancake a "richer" taste, though more expensive than ordinary wheat!), homemade jam (on berries I have picked in the woods in Hälsingland) and a a piece of cabbage for supper - and a glass of milk to it. The weather changes rapidly, from sun to rain! It's a bit strange! I almost thought of lighting candles when I ate. Now it's already dark, how fast it goes.

Tip from other blog...

Tip from the blog "Do Nothing Day."