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.”

A control-society...

more pictures here.

In a chronicle a journalist wrote that “Big brother decides if you have nothing to hide” or as we say “if you have clean flour in your bag”(om du har rent mjöl i påsen).

She writes about the routine screening for Phenylketonuria (PKU) since 1975 on newborn babies, under the excuse that it saves 35,000 people from the disease Phenylketonuria (in Sweden). The tests are then saved with the promise they are going to be used for research only. But the police got access to this register to capture the murderer of the Swedish politician Anna Lindh.

These tests are so far voluntary, but the author of the article felt a pressure saying yes to it last year when her daughter was born, but managed saying no to it. When her son was born 1996 she didn’t oppose. How is this test for a small child?

She writes that when the purpose sounds good we don’t protest, but who protest when the purpose is dubious?

She means that the control-society is carried out with the help of fear, consolation and disinformation. Yes, see Naomi Klein and shock-therapy. Such as:

“Your child can get a deadly disease! You can get burst or broken into pieces. Assaulted in the subway! Leave the supervision in the hands of the state for your own good. Practical and simple!”

And right and liberal government aren’t less prone than left in this respect it looks??

She means that a control-state neither deter, prevent not protect from crime. A spiral of fear and an arms race is rather built. Something happens with the soul when one builds a prison of self-censoring.

The human factor always leads to misuse she thinks. Those who have a passion for the FRA-law for example, she writes, mean that it won’t affect any average Swede having nothing to hide, only terrorists with full beard. Always this “we and them” she thinks

The one knowing his Kafka knows that it’s never you yourself who decide, but always the one in power judging how much you have to hide or how clean your flour is.

I want to write about poisonous pedagogy and politicians/politics too later… Or very soon.

Wanted to add some passionate music-pieces... Played by fantastic pianists. Want to share this.

Addition in the evening:
A female Norwegian blogger wrote:

“But the control mania of the citizens’ private-life as we see nowadays seems quite simply morbid. If individual citizens had been as paranoiac as the politicians are, they had been locked up long ago.”

Yes, I think this was quite well said!

Manipulation...

taken yesterday at work.

Some thoughts thrown down just before work, when I moved between work-places now before lunch. In my excellent and fantastic English (I wonder if you ought to be quiet, k!!?? You ought to realize your limitations!? To be honest!? Quite ironic).

A method to punish a child is to surround it by silence, meet it with silence. And I think this is more horrible than we can imagine… A grown up needing to demonstrate his/her power in this manner… Grown ups can be met with this too!?

You can act old things out in different manners, aggressiveness in destructive or self-destructive behaviors. Some people (or all more or less) use both methods to different degrees?

And abuse is more than spanking. But does spanking result in another sort of suppressed anger? That takes its expression in aggression and brutality? Together with self-destructiveness of different kinds (for instance more successful suicide-attempts?). While other forms of abuse more result in self-destruction, self-harm of different degrees, but not as much in aggression and brutality?

On my way to the first school (on bike, icy roads):

You can manipulate in other ways too, not only with silence (ignoring the child till it changes) if “necessary”!? By instilling shame in children, for their natural needs, for their imperfection (they should realize their utter, enormous imperfection!!?? Taken out of the delusion that they are perfect!? Realize their utter limitations?), their reactions, thoughts, behaviors, way of expressing themselves, in all: their ways of being, how they are!?

All this is done in different manners, more or less subtle, some of these measures are aware and some aren’t aware? Both consciously and unconsciously done?

You can do this to other grown ups too!? Of shame on behalf (!!!) of them try to change them, or not even reply to what they say? You react to how they say it, not actually WHAT they are saying in some cases). What is this shame about?? What does it awoke? Honestly I don’t think I want to understand THEM (the ones feeling shame and needing to change one), but to understand the mechanisms and roots.

Is this for instance about feeling superior? Maybe even powerful, knowing, capable!??? And maybe this is entirely unconscious? But does this mean that you aren’t responsible for what it can cause??

And the one exposed to this sort of (conscious or unconscious) power game

Need to be very self-aware!? But how many are?

Yes, shame for others what is that actually about?

And why does a child behave in the way he behaves? What would a “natural” behavior be if the child wasn’t abused at all, or hardly at all??

And why does a grown up behave as he/she does? And if that person isn’t harming anyone… What’s the problem? Or does this person harm just by her/his way of being?? By instilling shame in its poor environment??

Where has Miller written about her experiences with the Wall of Silence?? I would like to come back to that, but now I don’t have time to look for that book. I believe it is in “Breaking Down Walls of Silence” (“Riv tigandets mur”)!? But the forum ourchildhood.int doesn’t live up to this? Miller approves of how people are treated there? People are me with silence, they have to figure out on their own why contributions are rejected, and in first hand also why they are rejected, when they are rejected. People aren’t informed about why they are rejected, and don’t get any opportunity to defend themselves… Miller also writes about our wish for an open, genuine communication…

Don't anyone wonder why people maybe are objecting and reacting? If there may lie something behind?

So who is manipulative?

And what is actually manipulative?

Jenson and Bosch on shame (and guilt). About the different expressions of Walls of Silence, or the theme Walls of Silence, see earlier postings here and here.

The text above was very swiftly written in a pause in work...Franz Kafka.

Addition in the evening: I found the text I thought of, where Miller writes that she experienced the Wall of Silence already in her childhood. Her mother used to meet her with silence for days in a row to demonstrate her absolute power over the small girl and force her to obedience. The small girls' needs, questions and suggestions were taken aback against this wall without forcing her mother to defend herself for this sadism, at all. The mother saw this attitude as a fair and well-earned punishment for offenses the small girl had done, as her duty to give the child a lesson. "For her own good!!"

As in Franz Kafka's "penal colony" the small child wasn't informed about her punishable offense(s). In this omission there was a message; if the child didn't even understand for what she earned this punishment she had no conscience!! Oh, horrible!! If she didn't understand then she had proved her badness!!

The child was pushed away, had to seek, do her utmost till her conscience (hopefully?? with a lot of iron) told her what guilt she had drawn upon her. Not until then she could TRY to apologize and dependent on the mood in the one in power, if she was lucky, maybe be excused!!

The child then couldn't realize that this was actually a (extremely) cruel and even sadistic behavior/treatment. She couldn't realize this on her own, no. She needed a grown up who could help her to see, at all see, even if she didn't get the help to question it and see it as unfair. She couldn't take the truth in with her feelings on her own for what her mother actually had showed (lack of love), instead she questioned her own feelings and natural (and adequate) reactions, than questioned her mother and her behavior, that what she did was wrong and unfair (to what extent it was wrong and unfair), that she in fact showed despise and contempt for the small child.

The child was left in "the/a prison of confusion" as Miller writes!!

Bosch is talking about a defense she calls the Primary defense (det första eller ursprungliga försvaret), in which the child blames herself...

See also Arthur Silbers Miller-essays where he often mentions not only Denial but also obedience (that the child is learned to obey from earliest in life) here and there in these essays (in my feelings) and what it results in later, in life and in the society!!

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Miller skriver på sidorna 23 och framåt i sin bok "Riv tigandets mur" i kapitlet "Ur förvirringens fängelse":

"Tigandets mur [The Wall(s) of Silence] upplevde jag redan i min barndom. Min mor brukade möta mig med tystnad hela dagar i sträck för att på så sätt demonstrera sin absoluta makt för [och över!!??] mig och tvinga fram min lydnad. /.../ Den lilla flickans behov, frågor och förslag studsade tillbaka mot denna mur utan att min mor behövde försvara sig för denna sadism. Hon betecknade sin attityd som ett rättvist och välförtjänt straff för förseelser jag begått, som sin plikt att ge mig en 'läxa'. /.../

Liksom i Kafkas 'I straffkolonin' blev nämligen den lilla anklagade aldrig upplyst om sin straffbara förseelse I denna underlåtenhet låg ett budskap: 'Om du inte ens vet vad du har förtjänat detta straff för har du ju inget samvete. Sök, forska, ansträng dig tills ditt samvete säger dig vad det är för skuld du ådragit dig. Först då kan du försöka urskulda dig och beroende på makthaverskans humör kan du, om du har tur, kanske få förlåtelse."