In a discussion on elderly care in Sweden last night a professor in Social Gerontology Mats Thorslund said that the question “What care without dignity is” wasn’t interesting in the commission of inquiry concerning what care with dignity is. He had tried to raise this question with no response (whatsoever?) from the others in the committee (except from one person?).
Someone also spoke about that by redefining the needs (in this case the needs of elderly people) the politicians can get around the laws.
Is the solution to go back to old time’s class differences? Should we rethink everything in the society? Is this with elderly care a symptom on something in the society and the whole world?
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.
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?
“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.”
“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?
In a letter to the press a person wrote that the society has become anarithmetical problem. People are crouching by everything they read in the newspapers (the financial crisis) wondering how everything shall end.
It seems as people with a need for a work, public welfare or service are the only ones that are costing money in these days. Old people are costing, children are costing, and workers are costing and so on.
Machines, managing directors, board of director pros, EU bureaucrats/politicians and bank palaces are on the contrary necessities and are seen as investments for the future. No, such things and those people with fantasy earning aren’t seen as costs! Isn’t that strange? But the grassroots are seen as costs.
People are mostly a nuisance - and think how expensive they have become. Can the society, if we follow the logic of today, really afford ordinary inform, weak people?
I mean, the writer writes, can one see the man as an asset or are we book valued only as costs in those eras of accountants, where humanism and humanity only have become a question for the private familiar sphere.
Earlier one had an ambition to anchor political decisions in the citizens. This was seen as natural in a representative democracy. Things are decided above our heads. By people who knows better (they think). What’s the opposite of democracy? Dictatorship?
Is this also neo authoritarianism?
Today the decisions are a process between political representatives and different special interests (lobbyists), above all on the private financial side.
About the global elite of the Homo sapiens entrenching themselves behind security gates and walls. Security firms are keeping them away from the congregation. Rage is boiling in the ones kept on distance. Our era’s real power elites enrich each other and are fighting for its right to have their hundred of millions in pensions. The moral question is never posed because they don’ understand the meaning of it or understand the word.
To be ethical and decent doesn’t give profits neither on wage or pension accounts in the strict hierarchical private trade and industry life’s Casino bar.
Blogging in a hurry. One commentator to this video on youtube:
“This really reminds me how PRIMITIVE human beings are. What beasts we really are. Groups of people still trying to control groups of other people. Human beings are still on that 'Dominate the people and land' mindset; perhaps more now than ever before in human history. What a disgrace humans really are. It's fucking disgusting.”
Another commentator:
”yes and all over the world, it's called the New World (dis)Order...and they view us ALL as slaves, and expendable...doesn't matter what religion, color, country, you are. there's lots more of us than them, they just use divide and conquer to further their evil agenda at the expense of the human race; their love of money and control at the expense of the true values of honesty, and morality will doom us if we don't stop being the sheeple ..wake up and take back OUR power, the power of the PEOPLE.”
”profits are privatized and the losses are socialized”!!!
Yes, that seems to be quite true!?
And at last also see the site Change.gov Barack Obama and his coworkers have created. There you can read for instance:
”Today we begin in earnest the work of making sure that the world we leave our children is just a little bit better than the one we inhabit today” – President-Elect Barack Obama.
My amateur translation to Swedish:
“Idag börjar vi det målmedvetna/enträgna arbetet att säkra att den värld vi lämnar till våra barn är en liten bit bättre än den vi bor på idag.”
Yes, are we going to see a new leader style? And can Obama manage this in this world?
Here another person in great power (and I don't think we are born evil, but made that way, very early in life):
"Make the lie big, make it simple, keep saying it, and eventually they will believe it." -Adolph Hitler
Or:
"In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends." -Martin Luther King Jr.
It struck me after watching a TV-programme about the financial crisis, that when one says that one has learned something from the crisis after 1929, one means in first hand that one now has rescued the economical elite.
After the crash 1929 the politicians tried to apply a liberal economic policy, not saving any banks but letting them go bankrupt, cutting taxes and saving on public expenses. This was the method then.
This caused a super depression. Instead one started to apply Keynes ideas and in USA the New Deal was introduced which was about paying money to unemployed and poor, through investing in public activities and infrastructure which created jobs for all those unemployed. The result was a recovery in the economy. After this the war (WWII) of course came.
This time (today) one obviously try to guarantee the bank customers’ depositions and the banks' continued existence, so one can escape from redistributing any resources in the societies and escape investing in the public sector. (You so to say buy the middle class!!?? And sacrifice the poorest in the societies!? Because this the power elite can handle!?).
The democracy can manage a 2/3 society, without that the economical elites will have to give up or fear anything, but a 1/3 society becomes a serious threat.
This the governments can't risk?? So if the power can calm those people (the middle class?) down they don’t have to fear anything?? How utterly cynical???
There is a problem with the whole discussion about the financial collapse and the political decisions which has been taken to save the banks from the collapse. A view on the state as an independent neutral actor, whose achievements shall be seen as something “on top of” the economy. The state interlocks “because it’s best for all.”
This is a special view existing to the left, one discuss the state as something politically radical and this is maybe not so strange because the bourgeoisie puts all its energy on slandering and painting the state black, the state it at the same time is governing and dependent on.
The state is namely used of those who are in power in a society.
It’s an instrument among others to defend a bourgeois society’s continued existence; it’s actively or passively depending on what’s most profitable to the powers that govern a society.
This we can all see today. The state governed by the bourgeoisie engages in saving banks and financial systems. It does this through nationalizing it all, i.e., the state guarantees the loans and affairs of the banks, yes, in fact it guarantees affairs that haven’t yet been done.
But when it does it doesn’t “usurp” the power over the banks.
The truth is that the only stable in all this is that the state – which means all of us – are guarantors for the banks businesses nowadays.
The only which makes the system survive is that we all promise to pay if it doesn’t function.
There is nothing in political proposals that changes the banks or finance businesses. Not really.
What we see is a bourgeois state saving its own members.
Europe’s and the American states have now acted to save the finance-system, a system that didn’t manage its job (and when we ordinary people don't manage our jobs, how are we treated?). A system that instead of creating stability, created insecurity through hiding loans so nobody in the end knew who was responsible for what. The holy business-secret made so the finance businesses were capable of cheating everybody, including themselves.
Of course it’s necessary that a state has money and credits, otherwise a depression is created. But support from the state is about politics, it isn’t neutral. Let’s discuss WHAT sort of politics! Ehrenberg suggests.
The state could just as much guarantee the borrowers, one could guarantee the rate-gap, one could prohibit giving loans for speculations (which means refuse to approve of shares and other similar sorts of papers as security), take the business secrets away around the companies and one could take over the ownerships for the banks.
This would also save the financial system, without making wage earners and citizens paying the bill.
No, the state isn’t automatically on your side. It supports the bourgeois power that governs our economy and our companies.
Which – when the bank system slowly starts to get moving again – is important to remember the next time they say that “there is no money” for public investments or leveling out.
“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”!
In this blog I want to explore the effects of childhood experiences on individual lives, the health (not only the emotional/psychological, but also, and not least, the bodily/somatic), the society, why people seek themselves to power positions, the effect of childhood on politics.
With the ideas that imbue Alice Miller's work and writing.
And sometimes just share things I have read and come across and I agree with and couldn't have said better myself.
I work full time with young people since many years, as teacher in music (piano pedagogue), and am interested in these things, both privately/personally and professionally.
But my time is limited to write and blog, even if it probably doesn't look so.
I will devote myself to loud thinking a lot here I think. And this blog is also a way for me to collect texts, facts, links, sites I want to save for further use maybe.
Makt avslöjar en persons grundläggande moral …
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Crisis
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I suppose some people might wonder why I'm not completely hysterical. Why
would I be hysterical? The building where I've lived for 22 years is
scheduled fo...
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Pharmaceutical marketing expert witness [image: screen2largeMM]
Dr. Peter Rost is a former Pfizer Marketing Vice President providing
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Påskuppropet mot sjukförsäkringar
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Idag var det manifestation. Mycket bra. Jag var där. Mycket bra.
Men någonting gnagde mig på vägen hem. För stämningen var mer uppgiven än
arg, och det ä...
Arbeidet med ny side er i gang!
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Nå har arbeidet med domeneregistrering og nytt design startet og jeg gleder
meg til jeg kan vise dere resultatet! Det skal bli bra å få Psykiskbloggen
over...
Click on the picture to go to Astrid Lindgren site.
Books I am referring to on this blog:
Bosch, Ingeborg: "Rediscovering the True Self"
Freyd, Jennifer J.: "Betrayal Trauma - The Logic of Forgetting Childhood Abuse" ISBN 0-647-06806-8
Jenson, Jean: "Reclaiming Your Life" ISBN 91-46-17409-5
Kirkengen, Anna Luise: "Hvordan krenkede barn blir syke voksne" ISBN 82-15-00713-9 ("How Abused Children Become Unhealthy Adults")
Kirkengen, Anna Luise: "Inscribed bodies - Health Impact of Childhood Sexual Abuse" ISBN 0-7923-7019-8
Lewis Herman, Judith: "Trauma and Recovery - From Domestic Violence to Political Terror" ISBN 086358430-6 (svensk översättning finns: ”Trauma och tillfrisknande” ISBN10: 9197263133, ISBN13: 9789197263139, Förlag: Göteborgs Psykoterapi Institut)
Miller, Alice: "Den dolda nyckeln" ISBN 91-46-15747-6 (The Untouched Key)
Miller, Alice: "Det självutplånande barnet och sökandet efter en äkta identitet" ISBN 91-7643-559-8 (The Drama of the Gifted Child)
Miller, Alice: "Du skall icke märka - variationer över paradistemat" ISBN 91-46-14374-2 (Thou Shalt Not Be Aware)
Miller, Alice: "Riv tigandets mur - sanning byggd på fakta" ISBN 91-46-16022-1 (Breaking Down the Wall of Silence)
Miller, Alice: "The Body Never Lies - The Lingering Effects of Cruel Parenting" ISBN 0-393-06065-9
Miller, Alice: "The Truth Will Set You Free - Overcoming Emotional Blindness and Finding Your True Adult Self" ISBN 0-465-04585-5
Miller, Alice: "Vägar i livet - sju berättelser" ISBN 91-46-17414-1 (Paths of Life - Seven Scenarios)
Pincus, Jonathan H.: "Base Instincts - What Makes Killers Kill?" ISBN 0-393-32323-4
Children baking...
Look, the joy in the children?? Enjoying what they are doing? (illustration from one of the books by Astrid Lindgren, click on the picture to go to her site).
"...of all the many forms of child abuse, emotional abuse may be the cruelest and longest-lasting of all.” "Emotional abuse is the systematic diminishment of another. It may be intentional or subconscious (or both), but it is always a course of conduct, not a single event. It is designed to reduce a child's self-concept to the point where the victim considers himself unworthy—unworthy of respect, unworthy of friendship, unworthy of the natural birthright of all children: love and protection." (Andrew Vachss)
"A long habit of not thinking a thing wrong, gives it a superficial appearance of being right, and raises at first a formidable outcry in defense of custom." -- "Common Sense", Thomas Paine, January 10, 1776
"Modern education is competitive, nationalistic and separative. It has trained the child to regard material values as of major importance, to believe that his nation is also of major importance and superior to other nations and peoples. The general level of world information is high but usually biased, influenced by national prejudices, serving to make us citizens of our nation but not of the world." (Albert Einstein)
"Normal men have killed perhaps 100,000,000 of their fellow men in the last fifty years... Given these and other conditions of contemporary civilization, how can one claim that the ‘normal’ man is sane?" (R.D. Laing, 1967)
"Organizations take on characteristics of the people running them./.../ There's always pressure within groups to conform, anyway. The top monkey exerts the most pressure." (Steve Thomas)
"Yet many psychiatrists and psychologists refuse to entertain the idea that society as a whole may be lacking in sanity. They hold that the problem of mental health in a society is only that of the number of 'unadjusted' individuals, and not of a possible unadjustment of the culture itself." (Erich Fromm in The Sane Society, 1955)
When a big kid hits a little kid, we call it bullying. When an adult hits another adult, we call it assault. When the adults in a family hit each other we call it battering or domestic violence. When an adult hits a child we call it discipline..
“Blindness and lack of connectedness whether truly needed or not, are ultimately tragic solutions to life. These adaptations keep us from knowing ourselves and others fully. We end up fragmented both internally and externally – impoverished spiritually and socially /…/ it seriously constrains our human potential /…/ Survivors of childhood sexual abuse and betrayal blindness have learned to cope by being disconnected internally so as to manage a minimal kind of external connection. But with adult freedom and responsibility come the potential to break silence, to use voice and language to promote internal integration, deeper external connection, and a social transformation, Through communication – integration within ourselves and connection between individuals – we can become whole; embodied, aware, vital, powerful”(Jennifer Freyd in the chapter “Removing Blinders, Becoming Connected” in her book “Betrayal Trauma…”).
“If you are very strong you have to be very kind” (Pippi Longstocking)
“In psychiatry, too, what a person says and writes can’t be divorced from who he is and how he lives.” (Thomas Szasz).
“The method of Marshall Rosenberg is very nice and may be helpful to people who have not be[been??] severely mistreated in childhood. The latter ones however must find their pent up, LEGITIMATE rage and free themselves from the lies of our moral system. As long as they don't do this, their body will continue to scream for the truth with the help of symptoms" (Alice Miller)
“To desire and strive to be of some service to the world, to aim at doing something which shall really increase the happiness and welfare and virtue of mankind - this is a choice which is possible for all of us; and surely it is a good haven to sail for" (Henry van Dyke)
“‘I have never met a man,’ said Grandma Georgina, ‘who talks so much absolute nonsense!’ ‘A little nonsense now and then, is relished by the wisest men,’ Mr Wonka said.” (Roald Dahl)
Look at his facial expression! Angrily carving… The stubborn, disobedient child... Or? How does he feel there in his joiner's workshop? (click on the picture to go to Astrid Lindgren site).
About the ACE-study:
"It's not just water under the bridge."
ACEs are surprisingly common among people of all social strata, and have far-reaching consequences. For many people, it's not possible to "just get over it".
What's an ACE (Adverse Childhood Experience i.e. "skadlig barndomserfarenhet")? Adverse Childhood Experience is growing up experiencing any of the following conditions in the household prior to age 18:
1. Recurrent physical abuse
2. Recurrent emotional abuse
3. Contact sexual abuse
4. An alcohol and/or drug abuser in the household
5. An incarcerated household member
6. Someone who is chronically depressed, mentally ill, institutionalized, or suicidal
I don't like being photographed, and don't have many photos of myself but here are some, though fairly old! Click on the picture to see two more pictures.
I was born in Umeå in Västerbotten, Sweden, and moved during childhood stepwise to Skåne in the south, and at last back to just below the middle of Sweden where I still live.
I am educated both as piano-pedagogue and church-musician and have a full time employment as piano-pedagogue. Church-music is side work.
I am interested in a lot of things and will blog about things I read, psychology, society, history, nature, my work too hopefully, and my everyday life… And both in Swedish and English.
This is a blog, with my (sometimes very) personal - and loud reflections on what I read, see, hear, react on, feel for - and not feel for and want to explore. I don't work in this field at all, but I have my reflections and thoughts nevertheless and have read fairly a lot I think, and here I reflect upon all this. I am searching myself forward. I link sites for information, if one want to know more about what I am talking/writing about and what is mentioned in the texts I am citing and referring to. And I link sites not least for my own sake. So it isn’t sure I agree with all that is linked on this blog, that's not why I link sites. I can agree with parts of what is linked, bigger or smaller, from almost everything to almost nothing.
I hope those who perhaps find my blog are reading everything here critically - including what stands in what I link.
And when it comes to therapy and all (self)help-concepts I think one shall be very careful. Maybe as a friend said it:
“Meaningful critical thinking.
Psychotherapists have been claiming that they have invented better treatment methods since Sigmund Freud in 1897. The amount of psychological distress in the world hasn’t become less. There’s money to be made from attracting more clients, whether the therapy works or not.
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