Childhood and psychopathy...

See here for more videos. Also see "Beyond Belief: Candles in the Dark."

Fatalism…

Michael Milburn and a water colour painting by him.

from this site (I got an e-postcard this morning from a friend).

Some morning reflections: I react a lot at our current government (a government I hope becomes short-lived and doesn't destroy too much in the society, but I fear they are going to destroy a lot more than they have already done). And this takes a lot of time and energy for me of some reason?

I wonder what is driving them (and what is driving me?). Probably a lot they aren’t aware of themselves? Or all their drives are probably not conscious (is this to exaggerate)? And why do people in general go on these politicians rhetoric? What is driving them? Do they know what is driving them?

With this not said I know myself so much better than people in general (with a tired smile).

And as the creatively working I am I think hardly any of all our politicians (neither here than anywhere else) show creative traits… And no interests in these things either!! At least hardly any genuine, deep, passionate interests. And I react too on a certain sort of snobbishness…

There are no access between the “right” and “left” brain? The Swedish physician Christina Doctare wrote in her book “Hjärnstress” (“Brain Stress”) that she thinks the future leaders need to have both IQ and EQ and jolly good/proper broad bands between those.

Alice Miller writes at page 188 in her book “The Truth Will Set You Free”:

“As a child I, too, had to learn to keep my mouth shut and stop asking ‘Why?’ of people whom I knew would give me an evasive [undvikande, kringgående] answer. Later I tried to answer those questions for myself and in so doing discovered the supreme commandments running through our upbringing and education: ‘Thou shalt not be mindful of the things done to you or the things you have done to others.’ I then realized that for thousand of years this commandment has prevented us from telling good from evil, identifying the wrongs done to us in childhood and sparing our own children the same fate./…/

If we deny the wounds inflicted on us, we will inflict those same wounds on the next generation. Unless, that is, we make a decision in favour of knowledge.”

But for doing this journey we probably need help? If we have to do it on our own it will take a lot of time, and we will probably inflict harm on others during it, but hopefully less big...

Our politicians are pretty authoritarian, and “knowing best”…

The American neurologist Jonathan Pincus writes about how abuse might lead you bigotry.

Miller also writes at page 189 -190 in “The Truth…”:

“Like Frank McCourt, many people today say, ‘My childhood was awful, but it had its moments, and the main thing is that I survived it all and can write about it. It’s the way of the world.’ I find such an attitude fatalistic and believe that we can rebel against this kind of childhood and do our bit to ensure that it will cease [upphöra, sluta upp med] to exist, or at least cease to be so common.

To a child, an unemployed father (like McCourt’s) spending his dole money [arbetslöshetsunderstöd?] on drink is an inescapable trick of fate: the child has no alternative but to come to terms with such realities. Children may in some vague way intuit that they are not really being perceived [sedda, varseblivna, uppfattade] by their parents for what they are, that the parents need them as scapegoats. But their minds cannot grasp the facts/…/

They take refuge in compassion for their parents, and the feeling of love will help them retain some modicum of dignity in spite of the mistreatment.

But children forced to overlook the cruelty born of irresponsibility and indifference on the part of their parents are in danger of blindly adopting this attitude themselves and staying bogged down [stående i ett träsk? Fatalismens träsk?] in the fatalistic ideology that declares evil to be the way of the world. As adults they will retain [hålla kvar] the perspective of the helpless child with no alternative but to come to terms with this fate. They will not know that, paradoxically, they can only grow out of this childlike attitude if they lose their fear of the wrath [vrede] of God (their parents) and are willing to inform themselves about the destructive consequences of repressed childhood traumas. But if they do become alive to this truth, they will regain [återfå, återvinna] their lost sensibility for the suffering of children and free themselves of their emotional blindness.”

Earlier postings under the label Christina Doctare and on empathy deficits here and here.

See Arthur Silber and his Alice Miller essays. Words that comes back in the titles to these essays are "obedience", "denial", "innocence" it feels... For instance Silber writes about the consequences of denial, see “THE ROOTS OF HORROR: The Consequences of Denial”:

“…the results of the mechanism of denial and obedience, a mechanism which requires that reality be obliterated [utplånad, förintad], so that the threat of unpleasant facts cannot come too close and so that authority will not be questioned -- even when those facts lead to the deaths of untold millions of people and a war that engulfs the entire world.

People ought to consider this warning from history -- before it becomes too late, once again. Unfortunately, if history itself is any guide, all such warnings will be disregarded [ignorerade, åsidosatta], and the nightmare [mardröm] may envelop [svepa in, inhölja] us still another time.”

Also read about "Pro-War Personality Disorder". There it stands for instance:

"Kurt Vonnegut, author of the anti-war novel Slaughterhouse Five, said in an online article that he believes many corporate executives and government leaders are afflicted with psychopathic personalities which match actual textbook definitions.

‘PPs [Psychopathic personalities?] are presentable, they know full well the suffering their actions may cause others, but they do not care... Unlike normal people, they are never filled with doubts, for the simple reason that they cannot care what happens next. Simply can't. Do this! Do that! Mobilize the reserves! Privatize the public schools! Attack Iraq! Cut health care! Tap everybody's telephone! Cut taxes on the rich...’

Why are political views more deeply divided in America than anywhere else in the free world? According to Michael Milburn, a psychologist at the University of Massachusetts [who seem to paint too!! Nice!], the difference is in the way individuals were raised, as he explained in a Newsweek magazine interview [another copy of the text]."

Consumerism...

Consuming Life by Zygmunt Bauman.

I got this tip from a friend about "The Canadian Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children – CSPCC". On the home-site it stands:

"What is Empathic Parenting?

Being willing and able to put yourself in your child's shoes in order to correctly identify his/her feelings, and

Being willing and able to behave toward your child in ways which take those feelings into account.

Empathic Parenting takes an enormous amount of time and energy and fully involves both parents in a co-operative, sharing way.

Credo of the CSPCC

Recognizing that the capacity to give and receive trust, affection and empathy is fundamental to being human, and...

Knowing that all of us suffer the consequences when children are raised in a way that makes them affectionless and violent, and...

Realizing that for the first time in History we have definite knowledge that these qualities are determined by the way the child is cared for in the very early years..."

And there was an article “Psychopathy and Consumerism: Two Illnesses That Need And Feed Each Other”, there one can read for instance:

"A psychopath or partial psychopath has an impaired capacity to form intimate, trusting mutually satisfying relationships with other human beings as a result of impaired attachment in the earliest years. Unable to find pleasure and satisfaction from others, the psychopath or partial psychopath must turn to things -- goods and services, toys and travel -- to fill the emptiness within.

The emptiness of the hollow man must be filled, and consumerism has learned how.

It is said that a culture creates the kind of people it needs. Maybe we're into frequent separations and changing, shared, paid caregivers in the first three years of the lives of our children so they will grow up with an insatiable need to shop till they drop.

If you're unable to obtain satisfaction from BEING, which is based on love and the pleasure of sharing, then the HAVING MODE, as Eric Fromm put it, is your only choice. 'The HAVING MODE, concentrates on material possession, acquisitiveness, power, and aggression and is the basis of such universal evils as greed, envy, and violence...'"

We fill our needs in other ways too? In destructiveness and self-destructiveness of different kinds… But, yes, many of us fill needs through buying things, to different degrees!??

Searched on shopping and found those two articles “I love shopping" and “Shopping you out of consumerism” (both in Swedish).

PS. About Zygmunt Bauman and his personal moral back when he was young in this article in the Guardian "Professor with a past".

PPS. Ingeborg Bosch has written about forcing a child to share at a too early age... The child will develop into a sharing individual on her/his own if one gives it that chance or opportunity? (not that anyone should be forced to share either?? Whether child or grown up?) I think I have written about this somewhere. Now I am going to pack the car and drive north though... It's plus degrees and cloudy... It's so nice with spring.

Addition in the evening: now I am at the country-side, something I really like. After lunch I took a nap (one whole hour I think) looks like I needed it!!! Need to relax really?? After a lot at work and a lot of emotions...

After the nap I took a walk with a cute dog in the wood here. It's still a lot of snow there. And when I drove here it snowed!!!

Eskil the dog has got a new toy, a sounding one, and when I came he showed it to me!! He wanted to play??? It's so fun that he still wants. He is after all 5 years!!

Rationality contra emotions...

picture taken on a walk November 11, 2006.

I want to translate the comments I got to this posting (very quickly done):

“The Norwegian professor in theology Svein Aage Christoffersen writes about animal-ethics in the article ‘Do we have a common basis of valuation for animals and is this shown in how animals are held today?’:

‘Empathy, the ability to enter into, and take into oneself, what other people are exposed to is an important side in what it is to be a human being. That’s true that many are on guard when it comes to feelings in relation to animals. Our treatment of animals shall be based on facts, not emotions. That is a fear I can’t understand. When it comes to relations human beings between we know that some in fact are lacking empathy, without ability to bond/attach to other human beings with emotional ties/bonds. These people are often called a little drastically for psychopaths.

I can’t understand why psychopaths shall be models for treatment of animals.

This of course doesn’t mean that we can manage only with emotions but without facts. Of course it isn’t like that human beings between either, even if we are tied up with emotional ties. But it means that we can’t manage with facts alone. If we are acting only from facts without feelings, then we are practically without ability to differ between evilness and goodness.’

In the book about ethics ‘Action and ability to judge’ he says that the emotions have a hermeneutic meaning. They make it possible for us in understanding what is going on around us. Through our feelings we are engaged and involved in the world we live in [we react on it, we can enjoy it, really be alive]. Our feelings/emotions give us access to the world and community/fellowship with other people. Without feelings/emotions we will be without/lack ability to apprehend/understand and perceive what a life together with other people brings with it and how other perceive and experience the situation we share with them [the one without this ability is emotionally disabled!!?? Maybe emotionally disabled to different degrees, more or less?].

A person aware of what responsibility is is a person with responsibility-FEELING!”

According to the commentator Zigmunt Bauman means in his book “Auschwitz and the modern society” (or is the title in English “Modernity and The Holocaust”? See also here about this book) that

“...the Holocaust was the result of a fundamentalist fixation on reason/common sense. A sort of fundamentalist rationality. Holocaust is according to him a too far driven rationalisation. Bauman means that these rational and bureaucratic methods are used even more than ever. With this he want to say that today’s society still has potential for creating an even more ghastly future annihilation than holocaust. Bauman means that instead of seeing the Holocaust as an abnormal occurrence we should apprehend it a ‘normal’ aspect of the formal rational modern society. This means that the Holocaust is a product of the modernity and not the result of an undermined modernity.

In accordance with the critical theory’s rhetoric this could be interpreted as the culmination/climax of the irrational rationality which is characteristic for the barbaric civilisation, but Bauman pleads for another view.”

In summary:

“...he sees the Holocaust stamped by the instrumental rationality’s first and foremost distinctive mark, i.e. effectiveness, ability to predict, quantification and inhuman technology. Thus the Holocaust wasn’t a result of irrationality or for-modern barbarism, but instead a logical product of the modern rational [no emotions here!] bureaucracy.

Bauman didn’t see the rationality as neutral, as it lacked moral and was driven only by strive for effectiveness. This means that the rationality isn’t only a tool but also a goal. Baumann saw this as something negative and alarming, because such a fundamentalist fixation to reason/commons sense gets fatal results in form of a self-inflicted annihilation of common sense. However this indicates, in contrast to Baumann’s comprehension, that Holocaust as a symbol for the instrumental rationality is characterized by an irrational rationality and dehumanisation.”

Addition: Made the translation above from I got the comments and till I should see a series on TV, which means I did it in a little more than one hour, so it was really a swift translation with all what that means!!

Konrad Stettbacher talked about feelings as "Watchers of Life" ("livets väktare" in Swedish) in his book, and that we ought to protect them in children [and in ourselves and probably develop them in ourselves!!??]

But as the commentator also wrote:

“In addition to feelings we also need common sense (virtues, principles, knowledge) to be able to ponder upon ethical choices /…/ We can’t say something is right or wrong (just) because ‘we feel it is like that’."

Thanks for the comments!!! I needed this right now! It is in communication things happens?? When we awake thoughts, emotions, reflections, reactions in each other?? And try to communicate this??