Medial dictatorship or societal approval – the spirit of the time as a devastating weapon, shit tastes well…

one of the participants in the Swedish version of Big Brother.

A female Swedish journalist Maria-Pia Boëthius wrote in a chronicle yesterday about humiliation and mobbing programmes on TV, programmes that are very popular today. These programmes (or their critics?) had been up in a debate programme on Swedish TV recently.

The basic idea and conclusion from the programme leader, Janne Josefsson, was that people criticizing those programmes also allege that people watching them are stupid. These programmes have many viewers and all people can't be wrong.

In a way Josefsson puts himself in a loyalty situation with the ones who watch those programmes and what he did was stirring people up against the snobbish critics she thinks.

Boëthius writes that she has seen those programmes at least once, but has had to tie herself up to her TV-sofa, and the watching was a prolonged torture. I agree with her, I have felt tormented when I have been forced to see them, when I for instance have been visitor in other peoples’ houses and they have watched them.

She quotes a Spanish author who said something in the style:

“Maybe you aren’t only guilty to what you are doing, but also to what you are listening to, what you see and read.”

But maybe one needs to see to be able to judge and condemn?

Exactly so, Boëthius writes, we live in a viewership’s dictatorship; each programme with a lot of watchers is per definition “good”, just because it gets a lot of viewers. In what way, one can’t help wondering? she writes. Yes, they are good because they get a lot of viewers.

But this logic doesn’t hold, she thinks, and comes to think of the device

“Hundred millions flies can’t be wrong. Shit tastes well!”

I am perfectly convinced that a lot of intelligent people are watching idiotic programmes and that it’s not possible drawing equal signs between “watching shit-programmes” and being “unintelligent” she writes.

The spirit of the time allows those programmes, so people are watching programmes where people in the purpose of entertainment are humiliating themselves and/or bullying each other.

Similar spirit of times have occurred during history, where millions of people watched and enjoyed things we regard as horrible and worth condemning: public executions, the Nazi mass meetings, lynching etc.

Were all those spectators, who let themselves be drawn with and entertained, stupid?

Are the Swedes watching those programmes some day going to regret that they “made themselves guilty of” watching humiliation-TV? Maybe they will realize that those programmes are a sort of propaganda for a loathsome outlook on man?

In those times civil courage is demanded, from for example people like Josefsson, she thinks. Either you can put yourself on the side of the viewers by exhibiting the critics of the misery as “snobs”, by this legitimizing even more programmes of this type, or by standing up and saying that this is humiliating and dangerous for us all; producers as well as viewers.

I am totally sure that if one decided to send an American execution with poison directly on TV one would get more viewers than any previous programme before she writes. Does this mean that this is a “good” programme?

According to the logic of Josefsson the answer is “yes”. Because a billion people or something like that would choose watching, the ones criticizing the programme are despisers of man, according to the Josefsson vocabulary.

The spirit of the time is a devastating weapon.

How big the numbers of watchers even are the programme can be totally objectionable she means. She can hear the objections: you can’t compare those!

Yes, I can, she asserts. Consenting to letting oneself be entertained with humiliation, bullying and expelling, is to humiliate oneself, and maybe that’s the meaning as a matter of fact?

“We are all assholes!”

the producers are chuckling.

But we aren’t she maintains. Thinking independently, walking against the spirit of the time is one of the greatest gifts we have gotten.

It’s a question of daring to take possession of this gift and ability she concludes.

See earlier posting on reality-TV.

Astrid Lindgren about becoming spanked as a child…

Astrid Lindgren 16 years.

[Updated August 31, and slightly edited in the first part]. I have been on a course in the parts of Sweden where Astrid Lindgren was born, and found a book containing Astrid’s description of her childhood home, and thus also childhood, written to her nieces.

Astrid and her one year older brother Gunnar (dead already 1974 only 68 years) bought their childhood home together, and 1987 Astrid gave her part to her brother’s daughters Gunvor, Barbro and Eivor (of whom Barbro is mother to the author Karin Alvtegen, her home site).

Astrid and Gunnar also had two younger sisters, all siblings were married, but one sister never got any children I think. So Astrid had one heir and one heiress (a son and a daughter) but gave her part of the childhood home to her nieces nevertheless, of some reason.

I will try to translate what Lindgren writes later, so this posting will become updated this weekend hopefully.

I just want to remind eventual readers about Lindgren’s speech 1978 “Never violence.”

Earlier postings under the label “Astrid Lindgren.”

Addition August 31: In the book referred to above Astrid described how her childhood home at Näs looked like, and how it was furnished and she also describes some scenes from back then.

In the second part of the book she comes to the sofa in the living-room (what we called “sal”), a sofa which stands at the same place as it did when she was a child. On this sofa she and her brother got spanked the first time she writes.

The reason for this spanking was that she and her brother Gunnar had gone to “the murmuring ditch” (porlande dike) where Gunnar quickly climbed the stones, and Astrid of course followed him, with the result that she fell down between two stones in it. Gunnar ran home and told their maid Signe who went to the parsonage (prästård), where their mother was, something Astrid always thought was very stupid. Because their mother came fetching her two kids.

First she spanked Gunnar with the birch (riset), which Astrid thought was very funny to watch she writes, and then Astrid, something she didn’t think was fun at all,

“…when I for the first time in my life got spanked”

as she writes.

She didn’t become spanked again until she turned five or six when she had decided to move to the loo, from home (so at the first occasion described above she must have been smaller!!), because she had been unfairly treated of some reason (for what and how she had forgotten by then? She only rememered that she had been unfairly treated).

She was convinced that all should come running asking her to move home for God’s sake, but, no, they didn’t.

She bore being at the loo for five minutes, she thinks, and during this time her mom had taken the opportunity to offer sweets to the other people or kids. This was more than Astrid could stand, so when her mom came passing Astrid kicked with her foot, of course so she didn’t kick her mom, she only kicked at her mom as a sort of demonstration. But she shouldn’t have done that, because then she got spanked for the second time in her life as she writes.

The third and last time was when she and her younger sister Stina had been invited to a Mia (cousin?) in a nearby village. They had gone there on foot. Mom had said that they should be home by 7 that evening.

However, it was “unnaturally fun” at Mia’s. And Astrid had albuminuria (äggvita) and felt that she hadn’t the strength walking home. Their aunt Hardine (mother's younger sister) then said:

“I think you can stay, I take that on me!”

She took the responsibility on her. At this time there was no phone in this village, and they trusted aunt Hardine and stayed. But at 9 o’clock in the evening "their Pelle" (the farm-hand?) came and fetched them, and when they came home their mother met them at the yard saying:

“Is it seven o’clock?”

and walked further and fetched a birch with which Stina and Astrid got spanked, not on the sofa, but on their room one stair up. Astrid recalls this because

“…the birch laid frayed (trasigt) on the fireplace the next morning, where it was discovered by Signe (the maid) who said: ‘I think you are too big to get spanked!’”

The girls thought so too as Astrid writes. Astrid continues that

“That spanking I apprehend as abuse, although it probably was scarcely perceptible [wasn’t it??] because the birch was of such a bad quality that it got broken immediately [did it actually?? Or was the spanking so severe? So Astrid had to deny what she had been exposed to, including how extremely humiliating it had been?].”

So how rosy was this childhood actually? But Astrid and her siblings had witnesses around them? And the strictness wasn’t total?

Creativity…

In the car home from work I had a lot of thoughts… We discussed a “new” form of cooperation at work. Initiated by us piano teachers originally. The discussion didn’t become especially “hot”, people looked or felt moderately interested.

We (the piano teachers and colleagues from other instrument groups) think people are working in many different, separate music schools. We would want to work more over the borders, for our own and our pupils' sake. At the same time we (on the whole workplace) have spoken about creating we-feeling.

It started to boil inside when nobody seemed to be interested, all sat there quiet. I felt very provoked. Of course you can wonder why I felt provoked, but this is another question and post I think.

I thought a lot for myself sitting there. This “we-feeling” we try to create by quite superficial means, as having parties and “funny” games. The rebellion in me was awoken?? Forced fun isn’t fun; funny games aren’t funny if they are forced on you! And this forced fun can become humiliating for some too?

And in the car I thought further… Are many of us so stressed and tired? And this stress and tiredness makes us less creative? We get stuck in certain thought-patterns and are incapable of thinking in other and/or new? And at the same time many maybe also feel they OUGHT to be creative, much more creative. Which rather add to the stress instead of lessens it! People can land in a viscous circle.

And I also came to think about the topic stimulation: neither over nor under stimulation are good. None of them are good in long term. Maybe short term stimulation (in form of stress for instance) can make you create big things, but you don’t if the stress and press continues year after year. And who knows what happens during this time either? If your life and relations are stable you can manage a longer time, but what makes sure nothing will happen?

Under stimulation is bad too! People also need to use their powers…

And on top comes the tricky things with balance… And we have to be allowed making mistakes!

I got an email this morning from a friend, about manipulation... Would want to write a separate posting about this, a brief one. But now I think I am going to take a bike ride first. Then home for some supper and maybe some more writing.

The cold glance of the bureaucrat…

Maximilian Carl Emil Weber (21 April 1864 – 14 June 1920) was a German political economist and sociologist who was considered one of the founders of the modern study of sociology and public administration.

[Updated May 25 in the end]. The Swedish leader-writer Göran Greider wrote a leader today with the title ”Byråkratens kyliga blick” or “The cold glance of the bureaucrat.”

During the week it seems as there has been a row of programmes on radio about disabled people and their lives and life-experiences. Radio commentators have followed disabled people in the society, young disabled women have told about sexual abuse and mobbing and subtle actions of violence from the environment.

To Greider this comes as no surprise. During the former decade he worked with different disability organizations. Then, fifteen years ago, the old charity thoughts started to come back: instead of social rights – once again it was more and more about relying on idealistic forces and relatives. The last forty years many disability organizations have managed to cast off a lot of the yoke of charity. Now those achievements were about to get lost. And the problem went deeper than that: even the public welfare was – and is – in depth coined by inherited charity-thoughts he thinks, i.e., the view that the one receiving support shall feel grateful and preferably not be noisy when the gifts are falling over them. The core of the philanthropic thought was there and it is a very hard thought: those who need help have to do their full share and show their gratitude, if not they aren’t worth of help. Now the view on poor, unemployed and all sorts of exposed people is hardening. “The National Board of Health and Welfare” and “Social Insurance in Sweden” walk hand in hand with neoconservative social-politicians and those actors are more and more building an elite that is floating above the problems and seem to know best what sort of needs people have.

Greider thinks one can’t regulate what sort of help a disabled person needs on a bureaucratic level. The most banal things in everyday life can appear different dependent on if ones arms, eyes or ears doesn’t function.

He thinks that “Social Insurances in Sweden” doesn’t have to interpret the law as they are doing now – but the authorities choose to do that. Why? He wonders. However, he hardly thinks it’s out of evilness. It’s rather so that the obvious glance from above is what makes it difficult to see people as individuals. He thinks the directors of “Social Insurances in Sweden” have shown that they have become a part of the power-establishment who don’t understand the problems lower in the society then where they themselves are. They have lost contact with the grassroots. A sort of authoritarianism and totalitarianism? Beating their breasts?

The bureaucrat’s cold glance is directed towards the society. And Greider thinks we have to dare to meet it and not give way for it.

There was a letter to the editor in a local newspaper today where it stood:

“Sounds nasty.

The right alliance’s Reinfeldt [our current prime-minister] has difficulties winning peoples’ hearts.

Maybe the Swedish people need to do as Maud Olofsson [leader of one of the parties, centerpartiet, in the alliance leading Sweden now] said. Separate heart from brain. Ugh, that sounds nasty.”

Both the heart and brain is saying that what they are doing now is wrong – and VERY WRONG??

The Swedish physician Christina Doctare said in her book "Brain-stress" that the future's leaders need both IQ and EQ and jolly good broadband between those two, and spiritual dimension on top I think she added.

All sort of helpers (employees everywhere, psychiatrists, psychotherapists, psychologists, physicians, teachers too etc. etc. etc.) are walking in the leading-strings of the power? Run the power's errands!! See former posting on "John Read and Models of Madness..."

PS. Doctare actually writes (I looked in the book) something in the style:

“The future’s leadership, on all societal levels, will be about people with well integrated brain halves and jolly good broad-bands between them. Persons having IQ, EQ and a spiritual dimension. It says itself that a certain amount of maturity is required and a great amount of integrity and civil courage./…/

Leadership is about seeing both power and authorities as tools in obtaining goals formulated together, not as goals in themselves or as tools for ones own self-glorifying and nourishment for a stuck-up ego."

And also read the reader’s letter on Miller’s web “Interview with child advocate Andrew Vachss.”

See former posting with those videos. And former postings on backward psycho classes.

PPS. Miller summarizes it quite well when she says, apropos Oprah Winfrey in the talk with Andrew Vachss, where Vachss “confronts Oprah with her belief that anger resulting from an abusive childhood is a bad thing that one needs to overcome, and that the way to ‘healing’ is through forgiveness. And he thoroughly questions it" (as it stood in the reader’s letter). As we are learned so often in therapy; to feel but not to feel:

“Feeling and understanding the causes of our old pain does not mean that the pain and the anger will stay with us forever. Quite the opposite is true. The felt anger and pain disappear with time and enable us to love our children [therapists are afraid we shall get stuck in he old pain and anger. But if clients do - why? See below*]. It is the UNFELT, avoided and denied pain, stored up in our bodies, that drive us to repeat what have been done to [and which gives us all sorts of troubles, and it is help with feeling this pain we need?].

---

”Att känna och förstå orsakerna till vår gamla smärta betyder inte att smärtan och vreden kommer att stanna hos oss för evigt. Snarare tvärtom. Den kända vreden [den vrede vi medvetet upplevt] försvinner med tiden och gör oss förmögna att älska våra barn [och oss själva och andra vuxna. Men många terapeuter är rädda att vi ska fastna i detta!? Något som är absolut förbjudet? Och jag har ju mina tankar om varför en klient 'fastnar'...*]. Det är den INTE KÄNDA smärtan, den smärta vi undvikit och förnekat, som lagrats i våra kroppar, som driver oss att upprepa det som gjordes mot oss [och som ger oss allehanda problem].”

Addition May 25: Struck me on my bike to the grocery store before lunch: And the more power we have the more important feeling and understanding the causes of our pain are. The more important it is that we don’t have unfelt, avoided and denied pain stored up in our bodies, driving us to repeat what was done to us.

I am thinking of the power parents, leaders (the greater and higher up the more), therapists and all sort of helpers have. In these circumstances awareness about ones own self is more important than ever for all around and under. The more serious the effects of the past from the childhood of the one in power can become; what he has experienced and endured and not been able to process – something we have certainly seen through history and still continue seeing.

And there can be pains we don’t even are in contact with? Pain we have never consciously felt. Pain that is so denied.

*“If one uncritically cling to old methods' alleged infallibility and blames the client for failures, you inevitably land in the same fairways (waters) as the sect-guru, who also promises entire liberation. Such promises only produce self-destructive dependence which stands in the way for the individual’s liberation.” (Alice Miller in “Paths of Life” in my amateur translation from the Swedish edition of this book)."