Fighting for a cause, for justice, against bad conditions - cooperating or not…

we are celebrating Walpurgis Night this evening.

People are reacting at conditions at their workplaces… How do they deal with them? How do different people solve such problems?

Some go out like heroes, trying to rescue all and everyone? Try to point to the bad conditions. But how many of those succeed to change the situation? Or what happens with them?

Whistle blowers use to get into real troubles.

The advice is to not trying to change things on your own, but try to get together with other people. And if there is nobody to get together with try to "live" with things in some way anyway or look for another job.

Can one cooperate without obliterating oneself? In good conditions you can I think. In worse or bad this can be difficult. And this is even more difficult if you have things in your backpack you haven’t gotten help or been able to deal with. Then it can really be difficult acting constructively.

What about caring about other people, caring about another person?

The ban on corporal punishment of children in Sweden celebrates 30 years this year...

happy (?) children bathing.

At Children’s ombudsman’s site you can read about this ban:

“The issue of child abuse and neglect is not only relevant to changes in legislation, but also to the changes in society that have occurred, during more than twenty years of existing legislation. There are groups of children who are deprived and in vulnerable situations and families where child abuse and neglect is more or less a constant element. These kinds of families will probably occur in any society regardless of corporal punishment bans.”

And that is really awful.

Join this facebook-group.

"Stake in yourself and damn about other people"...

From a review this morning on TV on Cormac McCarthy's book "No Country For Old Men."

Scenes from a marriage - Ingmar Bergman and love...

Käbi Laretei in a TV-programme last Monday on her new book about her marriage with Ingmar Bergman coming next month and the TV-series “Scenes from a marriage” from 1973.Also see here and here about this series.

The contracting parties were described as “the self-absorbed Johan and the self-effacing Marianne”.. Illustrated with a scene where Johan and Marianne met a therapist for the first time, and the therapist asked them to describe themselves. Johan started and expatiated himself about how fantastic he was, as a father, husband, employed, citizen etc, though with a a mix of slight self irony and seriousness. Marianne tried to intervene, lame and feeble:

“But...No... But listen...”

When it was Marianne's turn she had almost nothing to say about herself:

"Well... I am mariied to Johan... And we have two children... And... Well... I don't know what to say more..."

It was also established that the children don't exist in this series (from 1973), except from the beginning of it, compared to today when the children are at the center.

Something other people have established. Earlier (for those born 40-50 years ago or more) it was the dad who decided what the family should do: The mom helped realize and support this. Today the children decide, what to eat (parents make different dishes to the children and the parents), where to go on holidays etc.

Erland Josephson characterized the series with the words “being shut in” and “egocentricity”, not being seen by each other..

Käbi's new book has the title “Where did all this love disappear?”

When she had returned home after the funeral of Ingmar Bergman, almost two years ago now, she started to wonder “how it actually was” and recalled that she had almost 250 letters from Bergman lying somewhere, letters they wrote to each other from everywhere after their first meeting till they broke from their marriages and got married.

Bergman had visited a rehearsal in Malmö with Käbi playing the fourth piano-concerto by Beethoven, and he immediately fell in love, the start point for their relation.

Reading those letters made her surprised over the passion, a passion she had forgotten for the most part, and she got inspired writing a second book about her love relation and marriage with Bergman.

The reading of those old letters was also quite peculiar she said.

They met 1959 and broke up ten years later.

Käbi thought her pianist career was a main reason for this divorce. She couldn't think of giving her profession up and just be Bergman's wife. Not just support the genius.

The young male programme-leader also pointed out to Käbi and the audience that those letters are remarkable, that he and his generation-mates don't know how to write such paper-letters. It's quite different writing emails to each other...

I had Käbi as my piano-teacher for four years in all during my education and she awoke my "intellectual interests," and made me interested in Ingmar Bergman. She didn't only stimulate my piano-playing, but also other things...

I was struck by her continued admiration of him, an admiration that to a great part was mutual.

Their relation came to a fantastic friendship Käbi means, a friendship with both Ingmar and his last wife Ingrid.

Girlishness - a defence?

Painting rosy…

When I was searching in Jennifer Freyd’s book “Betrayal Trauma – The Logic of Forgetting Childhood abuse” for something I wanted to quote I read something that struck a chord.

I am an eager photographer and it looks as I almost only have beautiful views around me?

I thought of painting rosy pictures of the “happy family” (of origin). I think I have contributed to this. Maybe not so much any longer. Something that maybe can disappoint some people, wanting to believe in the picture they saw, and want to believe that the happy family exists?

Freyd writes at page 194:

“Sometimes we are so overwhelmed by the horror of our world that we are blind to its wonder; sometimes we are fortunate enough to be so overwhelmed by the wonder of the world that we are blind to its horror. When fragmented by betrayal blindness we sometimes see neither the horror nor the wonder. But whether we see them or not, both elements exist.”

Another thing that struck me is: developing abilities and skills demands training, sometimes a lot of training! Few people (children) can make things immediately. And the older you get the longer time you need for certain things. But experience can balance for the longer time it takes to learn new things and new skills. Especially if you are going to learn something you have never done before.

“Practice makes perfect”!

And you need to get time to learn and train (train and train even more)! And space learning. Sometimes even a lot of time. And maybe also patience and understanding from the environment!?

So long anybody’s life isn’t dependent on that you have certain skills immediately! And this seldom occurs for a lot of things. This is said quite ironical!

I was actually thinking on using a foreign language, talking and not least writing in it.

If you are allowed to train and train and train you’ll probably at last develop skills in your writing and communicating.

If people around you don’t have the patience with your imperfectness it’s probably their problem!

I can see an impatient parent here, not having maybe ANY patience with his/her child and that it isn’t (can’t possibly be) like an adult person when it comes to a lot of things: like using a good language immediately, with no flaws.

My dad had no patience when we should learn to cycle.

And there are parents with a lot of impatience even if they have very easily-taught children! Maybe some of those parents don’t even realize that their child(ren) are above average?

Leaders and child abuse…

people lived here 6000 years ago (stone age).

From Bob Scarf’s essay “Leaders”:

"This is consonant with the idea that ‘leadership’ is composed of the most backwards psychoclasses.

Question: Why is that? That is, why is ‘leadership’ composed of the most backwards psychoclasses? /…/

I have written elsewhere (and in previous posts) on the origins of political power [and why are some given power? Why does the people give certain people power, even the highest power in a society, whether formal or informal, on different levels? What do those have in their early history?].

In the gynarchy (female subculture) women restaged their abuse and warded off their annihilation anxiety by emulating their abusive mothers.

In the androcracy (male subculture) men, who did not become mothers, had to restage and combat their annihilation anxiety in other ways. One of the ways they did so was by developing politics and political power [or in anger]. So power is pathological. If you want to avoid using medical terms; power is a defense. It follows then that the people who are more defended (in certain ways) are more attracted to political power.

[and power in general in the society!? I think the ones that would become the best leaders, for instance on workplaces, don’t seek those jobs, because they realize the problems with being a leader. The researchers Christina Maslach and Michael P. Leiter thought the workplaces and companies were at risk of becoming drained on their best work labor, because either they would become burnout or try to leave and start their own businesses, with all the troubles connected to this and what this would cost for the companies, workplaces, the democracy the society, the societal economy. And so far I have had the incomes so I can buy and read a lot of books. More privileged than many in this world, even though I only have middle-incomes! Grew up and still belong to the middle class, maybe grew up in the somewhat upper middle class].”

See what Alice Miller writes in her book "The Body Never Lies" and what's written about its content (the second half of this posting) concerning child abuse and the society.

I thought further on my maternal grandparents and how they survived the pressure on them (in the working class. Addition: I think I belong to the “working” class too!).

We live in much more complicated societies than our first ancestors lived, in societies with the potential to really destroy everything on this earth; the nature, all human beings.

My great grandparents and their generation, and in the generations before them, didn’t really have those means.

I also came to think how does the history look when it comes power-mad? To money and property mad (having limitless needs, needs that can never become filled, the person never becomes satisfied, is about persons trying to fill needs they can never fill afterwards, because that time has passed, but what does this cause other people, if not the whole society, but the persons nearest to them)?

And societies with many disturbed because of the ways that were in fashion raising children (as for instance in Germany decades before WWII, and probably also occurring in societies in wars and lots of conflicts today too)?

That our grandparents (in my generation), being under and standing with their caps in their hands, bowing for their employers managed their lives (in greater poverty than almost all people today?) how did they? Were they stronger, or what? The illnesses came late in life for them. See about the ACE-study. I think Miller wonders if Hitler had needed his leader role (that much) if he had a lot of children, and been able to abreact the horrible abuse he endured during his childhood on them.

Did they because they could abreact their frustrations on their kids, it was your duty to educate your children, and the method was spanking them and making so they didn’t think they were anybody (by using emotional and verbal violence)?

Men abreacted on their wives and kids if they weren’t in a power position (then they probably mistreated the persons standing them nearest in different ways, more or less subtle), and women in turn on their kids (if they couldn’t react at their husbands, on whom they were dependent)?

Women abreacted the abuse they had endured during their childhood (and their under order in the whole society) and their fear of becoming annihilated by copying their mothers (and/or fathers). Men sought power in the society, and if this wasn’t possible they abreacted their early experiences and latter humiliation they experienced in the society, at work etc. too on their kids (and wives. But women have been abusive too at not only their kids!). As was the case when I grew up.

In this way they survived, didn’t become sick in the first place, and had a feeling of some sort of power and control (the therapists Ingeborg Bosch and Jean Jenson, maybe among others, think you get a feeling of power and control through anger and/or denial of needs) ?

Also came to think: Owe Wikström realized when his heart all of a sudden stopped and during the recovery after this, how totally being at the mercy and dependent he was on his caregivers, and the care and good will he got from them [my addition: that they didn't abuse his situation]. See what his reflections in his book “Sonias goodness”.

I also wondered: real equality, real freedom, (that all people have the same say, are equally worth, get the same respect as everybody else) in the society and the world is that the real prerequisites? How do we create this? The best and probably only method is changing childrearing methods even more than we have already done? There’s still quit a lot to do there I would say.

Interview with the author Henning Mankell.

The new, real heroes after the greediness's Lords - or remove the barons from office...

Le Commencement d'un monde de Jean Claude Guillebaud
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In a long interview with the French journalist Jean-Claude Guillebaud (writing about media in the French “Nouvel Observateur”):

”The medias today are lacking backbone. They don't have any goal any longer, more than earning money. In former times one looked upon the medias' freedom as an indication on how the democracy worked in a country.

But now the medias have become radioactive, they poison the democracy.”

Guillebaud has collected a lot of warnings for the coming financial crisis. Everything has been said, all the time, he means.

But the ones warning didn't get any space in media. Instead the medias tried to make us believe that this economical meltdown was entirely unpredictable. The medias tried to silence all contradicting voices.

Guillebaud thinks the medias was the greediness's Lords instruments.

And today it's the ones causing the crisis who are still given space in the medias to tell us how to solve it. The ones warning have no say not even now.

This is what happens daily in Sweden even in public service the Swedish journalist Maria-Pia Boëthius thinks in the article "Remove the barons from office."

On the question who the new heroes are, after the greediness's Lords, Guillebaud replies (in my maybe a little free translation from a Swedish text) :

“All the million people who try to perform an honest work, and who are the real foundation for our existence on this earth.”

“But you don't see them in the medias?”

the interviewer asks.

“Exactly”

Guillebaud replies. A lot of people are working hard to manage their lives and earn their living, and are working entirely in the shades! And they don't earn a lot of money, despite a lot of hard work.

And apropos media: everywhere there is a debate that the paper newspapers are dying out. Or at least the morning papers are dying. However, they want support from the people now. But they let the readers down. They are about committing suicide of fear for the death.

Imitating Internet and the evening papers instead of restoring the honest journalism. They are to blame themselves, but this doesn't impede our needs for honest daily papers.

Found something Alice Miller writes at page 87-88 in her book “The Body Never Lies – The Lingering Effects of Cruel Parenting” *:

“The playwright Henrik Ibsen used the phrase 'pillars of society' to refer to those people in positions of power who profit from the mendacity [lögnaktighet, osanning] of the society they live in. I hope that those people who have recognized their own story and freed themselves from the lies of conventional morality [the fourth commandment] will be the pillars of a future society built on conscious awareness.

Without the awareness of what happened to us at the outset of our lives, the entire fabric of our culture seems to me to be nothing other than a farce.”

* about this book: "Miller also discusses how institutionalized religion itself can contribute to the crushing guilt that prevents us from being healthy and conscious adults. She urges society to realize that the Fourth Commandment -'Honor thy father and thy mother'- offers immunity to abusive parents. Indeed, she argues, it is healthier not to extend forgiveness to parents whose tyrannical childrearing methods have resulted in unhappy, and often ruined, adult lives.

In a stirring rejection of the 'Poisonous Pedagogy' that pardons even the most brutal parenting, Miller examines the cyclical nature of violence and abuse. Parents and guardians who abuse their children, both physically and mentally, leave them embarrassed and hurt. The inability of most children to properly express such feelings causes them to perpetuate the cycle by lashing out at their family, friends, and, above al1, their own children, who will inevitably do the same.

Throughout The Body Never Lies, Miller offers a calm and encouraging voice. Indeed, The Body Never Lies, through its illuminating and provocative insight, affords us a unique understanding of the immense healing powers of the adult self and the body."

Betrayal, loneliness, distance…

Among a lot of other things I have been thinking on having nothing to say to a human being standing near. The feeling of loneliness this can create.

Struck me that Jennifer Freyd had said something on this theme I thought (about things you can’t talk about).

She writes in the chapter “Removing Blinders, Becoming Connected” at page 194 in her book “Betrayal Blindness – The Logic of Forgetting Childhood Abuse”:

“If you are blind to the evidence that your intimate partner is having an affair, you may manage to keep the relationship from ending. But what sort of relationship is it, and what purpose does it serve?”

Having nothing to say to each other, becoming distant because you exclude (or have to hide) important things…

This has nothing directly with me to do.

On earlier days' statare or agricultural laborer receiving allowance in kind - and the superclass then and now…

We don’t really believe in getting together to fight for things (together) in this society (we are solely individualists and not dependent on other people, neither on good nor on bad things other people do)?

At least we grassroots don't any more, we don't group as we did? Because we don't need it? Don't we?

But see about the power elites and the superclass below. They get together and group (but how? But that's another thread and discussion)!

Instead the individuals (some at least) try to make their voices heard entirely on their own. Individuals are screaming their voices hoarse? In an ocean of screaming voices are anybody really heard? Or whose and what voices are heard? Some have quite cynically given everything up. Or given up in a feeling of powerlessness (even if this feeing isn’t actual always).

And what about whistle blowers? Individuals daring to speak up (on their own) with no support and no backing?

Can individuals (genuinely autonomous, i.e. genuinely independent) exist in (a healthy) collective? Yes, I think that is possible. But in less healthy systems (group, political party, country etc.) there is an either/or, not a BOTH individual AND collective (and what is true, genuine individuality? Is individualism this? Can so called "individualism" be a disguised standardization? Practical for the power? Is individualism the same as being your true self, being personal, truly, genuinely unique?)?

Back 30-40 years many young people lived in collectives, some even with kids and families. But today those living in those collectives don’t believe in ANY collective solutions!? Yeah, maybe for very good reasons? Or?

Some say

“We have to trust people!”

At the same time people are not trusted! People are said to use the systems for instance. And thus we can’t trust anybody? And the people that are working hard are punished too for those misusing systems and things. A kind of collective punishment.

Think if one could move to an isolated island somewhere and get away from all this!?

Yes, some have said that you can trust too much AND too little.

Why can’t some people trust maybe at all?

And what about those trusting too much?

How was it in older days with people falling behind chairs? If a child lost both his/her parents and if it had no relatives? Who took care of those? Who saw so they got food and shelter? If a child was born disabled what did this mean? This child became a heavy burden to its parents a whole life?

If you couldn’t support yourself you had to rely on other peoples’ kindness and good will? Were all people in the society kind and good people helping the help needing? Were it the ones with most resources (in form of wealth, health, money) who helped those incapable of taking care of themselves because of low age, because they were disabled maybe already from they were born?

The one with less resources were they the ones that least of all cared?

Who cared less and contributed less is my silent wonder?

How often did infanticides occur because a child was born disabled because it would mean a too heavy burden for a family? How did one treat old people who were of no use anymore?

Who took care of people needing care (the truly, genuinely weak) of any kind? They could founder? And often foundered?

Children (especially to poor people) were auctioned off (for instance because one or both parents had died and they had no relatives who could take care of them) less than 100 years ago here, I think, to the ones taking them for less money. Like they were livestock. And they were also workers in the families where they landed, thus actual livestock (and child workers exist in this word today. And it existed during the 60's). Yes, they were workers at a very early age.

According to a now 29 year old woman the institutions she grew up in were better than (ELEVEN different) foster homes (in which she got abused, for instance sexually). So families paid for taking care of children aren't always so good today either! Institutions seem to be better according to this young woman. But institutions were bad here earlier too (and not so long ago).

Less than one hundred years ago (I think even to around 1940!!) we had agricultural laborer receiving allowance in kind. They had nothing else to sell than their workforce. And it wasn’t valued highly… They were tied to their employer, till they were of no use anymore. Totally in the hands of the good will of their master and the landowner (earlier days superclass, though those days "superclass" had limited power compared to the superclass today?).

Some women sold their bodies (women are doing this still), because they had nothing else to sell (they believed?) or nothing else to trade.

How did earlier societies take care of those needing care?

Also see about the truck system:

“A truck system is an arrangement in which employees are paid in commodities or scrip rather than with standard money. This limits their ability to choose how to spend their earnings—generally to the benefit of the employer. As an example, scrip might only be able to be used for the purchase of goods at a 'company store' where prices are set artificially high.

While this system had long existed in many parts of the world, it became widespread in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, as industrialization left many poor, unskilled workers without other means to support themselves and their families. The practice has been widely criticized as exploitative and similar in effect to slavery, and has been outlawed in many parts of the world. Variations of the truck system have existed world-wide, and are known by various names.”

The earliest coins were used already in old Greece.

Also came to think about the power elite(s), and the super class and oppression (the elites are getting together, grouping, while we grassroots are divided and ruled) and also about being obedient and keeping quiet ( and private egoism).

From an earlier posting (about the super class):

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 villains 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, he 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).

How do we deal with power abuse for instance? Do we deal with this individually?

Thoughts during a quite hectic morning April 23 (dentist and hairdresser): My maternal grandfather worked full time as chauffeur (car, truck and bus) and had one week off (vacation) each year, at most. And long workdays. They (he and my grandmother with four kids) also supported themselves with having cows, and sometimes a pig and hens I think. This meant that he had to get up early in the morning, start a fire so the house got warm, go out and feed the cow(s), milk it (them), and then go to work. When he came home he had to milk the cow again and give it food. In the summer he had to see so he had hay for he cow over the winter.

Today the pressure on people is different than it was then.

But people got exhausted then too, but it was called with other names?

Was he there for his kids? For his wife? For himself?

Is there a perfect system? With all harmed people in the world what is the less imperfect system? So most people can survive, and live decently.

And why are some people weak? Were they born this way? Do we have to take care of them? Or not or in what way? Can they founder?

I am on the weak peoples' side...

Addition April 25:
People lining up in South Africa to vote. All haven't been allowed, haven't had the right to vote and some had more votes than other people during history, and it looks as there exist compulsory voting too (you are not free to vote or NOT vote if you don't want to!! You HAVE to vote! Is that freedom or democracy?). How is it in the world today in those respects? My maternal grandmother was 27 when she got the right to vote on the same premises as men. My paternal grandmother was 35 then.

About religious beliefs, fundamentalism - and collective passivity…

Barbara Ehrenreich.

Ehrenreich said at the Meltdown Forum that “we” have believed that the market will take care of everything FOR us and all poor will eventually become wealthy, that everything eventually will become okay. Like a religious belief.

A belief on a higher power that will take care of everything, a power that’s fair, just and caring about us all. We shall just trust and rely on this invisible power.

She also spoke about a collective passivity in the footsteps of these beliefs (in the market and capitalism). A belief and "reliance" that we don’t have to concern ourselves with all injustices and human poverty we see around us, and following this the invisible hand will eventually come there and smooth everything out (after some of us have suffered a little bit, maybe not really died on the cross, but maybe not so far from, sacrificed for "the sin of man", again an invisible power?). Trusting that everything will eventually become fixed.

We can just lean back and trust that invisible power (and leave the responsibilities to this invisible power). Just like believing in a god (another invisible power) or a father, as small kids?

And see what Owe Wikström has written about the back-leaning indifference and indifference as hidden violence (an indifference that can result in cruelty).

Market and capitalist fundamentalists believe that the market will eventually fix everything for us.

Has this been the way of truly solving problems? Waiting for a higher power (a nature law, the nature in man?) or a (deputy) father to fix everything for us? And why hasn't this model worked so far? Because the imperfectness in man? Not because any imperfectness in this idea?

And this reliance, on a fair power (not God in this case, but capitalism and the market) excludes all true, real, flesh and blood actors? Nobody are sacrificed in the name of the market or capitalism? Or maybe who? The ones causing crisis's? Or the ones with less power and sometimes totally innocent to the crisis's? Who have done nothing but been working hard? Who are punished? And who are not punished? Is this a fair model?

Maybe there are no perfect models, but are there models that are a little more fair, to most people in the population.

How are those religious beliefs handled and by whom? In nobody’s interest? By nobody?

And they, the actors on the market, not least those with most power and money, what are they doing? Working for all our bests?

Are they almost like deputy priests for many of us? However, they aren’t named priests. And they aren’t standing in any pulpits in any churches preaching to people. Meaning that they don’t try to preach and influence us, the not questioning “congregation”? They are not making us join in the choir? And if we sing falsely, then what?

Their (our) “trust” in the market and capitalism as a power that will eventually fix everything, is that a back leaning indifference (even resulting in cruelty sometimes)? And are those relying on this power not active, but how?

Are they maybe saying that they are leaving everything to “the nature”?

And what is this “nature” actually? How is the “nature” of man? A genetic thing? A question of character?

No, I don’t think we are born evil. But there are certainly evil people in this world. And I don’t think we are born with drives for destruction, but destruction and self-destruction definitely exists…

Addition just before lunch: see the blogpostings "The Psychopath Machine" and "Crisis potential"... (both in Swedish).

Cooperation and teamwork…

The new time’s melody at our workplaces (since around 20 years) was teamwork. Did something happen in parallel with this “new trend”? I have to add that I think working together can improve what’s done a lot. It CAN, but it doesn’t necessarily do (but that’s another thread).

We shall “teamwork” at workplaces, but what about teamworking i.e. cooperating and getting together about really substantial things outside our workplaces?

You shall but you shall not!?

Came to think about a blogposting today: what about “devoting oneself” to self-damaging behavior? That’s nothing to talk about, because there are other more important and bigger questions. Such as for instance a president forbidding/banning (read: dictating - as a dictator) the further use and selling of a certain sort of light bulbs and a certain sort of fuel consuming car… More on light bulbs.

How tired I get…

We shall work for and only promote ourselves and not care about other people (unless they aren’t higher in the hierarchy than I am)?? Be independent islands all of us. Work in small separated cells, at least outside work. But at work we have to cooperate (AND compete at the same time). Survival of the fittest and the most “adaptable”!

To which people with self-damaging behavior don’t belong! They aren’t really capable of adapting to the society, or workplaces or anything, are they? (observe the irony).

And I can’t help wondering who are the most “adaptable” (how empathic is that)? Are many psychopaths the most “adaptable”?

The weakest and also the most compassionate and empathic can founder!? And many of them also do!?

The biggest bullies are the ones that survive best? Because they aren't called in question??? You tend to admire and look up to those instead?