Nonsense and rubbish – more about language and to silence people...

From the book whose title would be something in the style “To the appraisal of nonsense talk” by Viveka Adelswärd.

A relative of mine (younger than I am) once said:

“What is that to talk about?”

when I had written a letter to my aunt and her husband about what I had done when I came back from a trip to them (where I for instance wrote that I had been washing my car). That this relative actually is quite good at talking is beside the point, and much better than I am I think!? :)

In a forum of therapeutic character a new moderator made new rules, where chatting became forbidden.

Both those things made me react and think.

How natural can or will the conversation become if you hear this and there are such rules, at least all of a sudden, with no real explanations on top why those new rules have become introduced?

Can this be (is it) to silence people? And does this support recovery in the end? Of course there are people who never get to the point, so in a way I can understand that you have to intervene as responsible...

I work with people too, and have to deal with these things too. And no, it isn't easy.

Adelswärd writes in my maybe a little free amateur translation from Swedish:

“Think if we only should talk with each other when we had guaranteed important information to come with. The world would be very silent and gloomy then./.../

There are also those who adopt a moral aspect on the 'nonsense talk'. It's considered to steal too much time from more substantial ways of talking and from valuable thinking./.../

It's much we can do with the help of language. Many think that one of the most important functions (if not the most important) is to help the human being to think.

The language helps us to inform, persuade, convince, amuse, influence, affect, describe and awaken feelings and thoughts in other people./.../

A little harmless/inoffensive nonsense can work as bonding agent between human beings.

Some people think that if you don't have anything important to say you can as well stay silent. But we don't always have so many wise things to say. Sometimes it's enough just to strengthen the social community and resort to a little nonsense (page 10).”

And research has found that our apprehension (perception) of how much different persons are talking depends on what sex you belong to too! So that we experience a woman's talk as taking much more space than a man's.

Teachers in a classroom (and all the students) apprehend that when a girl raise her voice she is talking a lot. But researchers have proven that this isn't true, by measuring the speaking time and compared it with how we apprehend boys talking. Even the researchers were surprised over their apprehensions.

I guess this has something with very early experiences to do, where parents treated girls and boys differently because they in turn had been treated differently.

“And sometimes it isn't easy to separate ordinary nonsense talk and important conversations. It can be important to talk nonsense for a while to stumble upon the important./.../

We are talking to get opinions, viewpoints and facts, not just to deliver, supply or provide already ready-thought truths./.../

Opinions and arguments are not always lying there ready-thought and ready-worded in our heads, but are often something we get ourselves through talk.

Through 'nonsense-talking' for a while we can test-drive new models of opinions. We drive on for a while to hear how it sounds, listen to how it's adopted and make changes and improvements together.

Test-drivings sometimes crashes. But they can also lead onto new roads and show us that we in fact are making it gallantly and splendidly on those new roads.

It's [sometimes] not until we have spoken nonsense for a while we suddenly realize what we think, consider, feel.

A little nonsense-talk and chatting can be important to see how the land lies and to 'let the mouth go' till the brain has caught up (page 11).”

“But I am not that naive that I am unaware that there is nonsense-talk that is pure rubbish, things that strengthens prejudices and stupidities or that constitutes malevolent gossip and pompous utterances without substance.

Babbling has a downside too./.../ But first and foremost I want to show that our usual talks around the kitchen-table, in the cash desk or with the dog can be both more important and funnier than we realize./.../ I want to show that exciting things can happen when we simply let our mouths go (page 12).

One of the human being's fundamental traits is the ability to create relations. The newborn baby seeks contact and the life as human being starts when the contact-trials succeeds./.../

The voice's tone or timbre and the rhythmical quality is the emotion's language./.../

...an important ability in a human being to create emotional bonds to other people can be through talking nonsense.

During the last years we have understood that animals can have stronger emotional lives than we have had feelings or presentiments about. Animals can mourn, animals can become disappointed. And they can have their own ways of chatting (page 14)./.../

...glimpses from the monkeys lives. We can see then how they with kind faces devote themselves to picking and taking on each other for hours. This trimming or cleaning behavior is not only to keep each other clean; but it is also a way of acquainting and strengthening relations.

The trimming or cleaning behavior is a sort of social language that gives the monkey society's members a happy solidarity-feeling; it namely stimulates the production of the morphine like endorphines. But the trimming doesn't occur randomly. One preferably and for the longest time trims ones friends./.../

... [However] there's a decisive difference [between monkeys and human beings]. The monkeys can't talk. The question when and why we started to use language has been posed during all times.

The English psychologist and anthropologist Robin Dunbar has come with the hypothesis that the language developed through our ancestors trimming behavior. Through encouraging calls and greeting signals, through chatting and gossip – oral trimming – the primitive man could tie emotional bonds with more and more individuals./.../

When we started to keep together in larger groups it was easier to defend ourselves against enemies. This was one of the factors that laid the foundation for our species spreading [and 'success' in this world].

Dunbar means that it is the language's social function, it's task to help us keep together, that is the primary (page 15). The monkeys maintain their contact with each other and tie social bonds through trimming each other. This can be done if the group isn't too big.

When human beings started to live in larger groups they needed a new way of tying the life important social bonds. Therefore the language arose (page 16).

That the language's social function should be the primary is of course a theory among others. One of the language's important functions is that it helps human beings to imagine/visualize and talk about what's going to happen. The language makes it possible to imagine the next day.

Many of the researchers who has been thinking on the origin of language has earlier thought that the language's most important role is to transmit knowledge.

The human being didn't became unconquerable until language made it possible to coordinate the life important hunting.

Chatting and gossip are probably as original occupations as planning of hunting and strategy talks. Nonsense talk has ancient roots.

The thesis that the language was needed for discussing removal plans and hunting – i.e., planning and coordination – has a manly lopsidedness.

But Dunbar is also interested in the females. They are important for the group's continued existence because it is above all the females whom are keeping the flock together in monkey societies.

...females' friendship and the language as social cement or putty plays a big role for the development of the human being (page 16)./.../

[Many] apprehend nonsense and chatting as unnecessary. I think this apprehension is resting on an usual and as I think, erroneous image on how we human beings function.

The image wants to mediate the idea that we are walking around with a lot of facts, knowledge and opinions in the head which we distinctly and easily can put words on when we are talking with other people./.../

All don't manage sitting and thinking elevated, noble and out of the ordinary thoughts in loneliness. Many, maybe most of us, need other people as sounding boards to get the thoughts going. Chatting can be a way into something important: it doesn't always have to be an expression for that we are idling (page 18).”

See “To create common views – the role of the language in the human beings development.” And a reader's letter to Alice Miller on talking.

“It’s just TOO much!” - more on responsibilities - or on making certain solutions suspicious (in the interest of who?)…

Zygmunt Bauman.

In what sort of environment does Sisyphus Junior live today (compared to the environment in which Sisyphus the older lived in)? Two conditions go hand in hand: the idealization of the individualism on one hand and the throwing of suspicion on common solutions on the other. The decreased interest for shared concerns is supported by a society that wants to throw the earlier common obligations in private hands.

My addition: And on individuals (with in some cases no powers or possibilities dealing with them).

At the same time this shows a growing inability posing boundaries for egoism/selfishness, for creating justice (between people) and for soothing the uncertainty which undermine people’s self-esteem. In this way a larger and larger gap between the small life and the big life, between the private and the public, is created.

My addition: Never the two meet!? And those two understand each other less and less, and this makes the gap even bigger. Till they never meet and in the worst cases can’t respect each other?

Gradually the art of translating private problems to public political conditions decreases and the reverse.

My addition: They never meet? And the man on the street doesn’t feel involved or included, instead of the opposite, and the loyalty to the society (and to other people) and the common decreases even more? Who looses most on this? Are anybody gaining on this either actually?

This means that the responsibility that earlier was considered the common now more and more is moved or shifted to the individual. How often haven’t we heard:

“Everything is up to you!”

“You can if only you want”

or

“You are your own life’s project-leader!”

Addition: so if you fail it’s only and entirely your own fault (how practical!!). Nobody else and least of all the society have anything with this to do!?

The consequences of the individualism is self-evident; the existential questions of vital importance that Sisyphus the older were struggling with is forced more and more out of the field of vision.

“I don’t have time thinking on the meaning of life, and other introvert questions, how can you believe such a thing? I have enough with making my life go round (caring about my old mom, getting day nursery for my kid, not stress myself to death).”

My addition: how practical for the power if the individuals stop questioning different state of affairs!

Striving for a better tomorrow for many –something that demands community and cooperation – has become replaced by a feverish chasing after a different NOW for the individual.

But even when the professionally responsible for the society, according to Zygmunt Bauman, are dumping their differences and conflicts at the feet of the individual with the “well-meaning” exhortation to judge about all of this critically from their own apprehensions, is it strange that Sisyphus the younger feels tormented?

Paradoxically enough the exhortation that we shall take the life in our own hands

“Nobody but you yourself can save you!”

leads to a feeling in many, many that they have less and less control over life (if we don’t deny this entirely?).

The so called freedom has become unfreeness. Freedom of choice has become coercion. And many people don’t manage neither the one nor the other.

Watch this movie by Avi Lewis and Naomi Klein.

The role of an enlightened witness...

[A little edited March 19]. In the leader ”The little we can do” about the Austrian man who held one of his daughters as prisoner for 24 years, raped her and made her pregnant six times the leader writer wrote:

“{The crime was committed in] The country of the Wiener waltzes and the all embracing courtesy’s land – but where a great part of the population welcomed the Nazis and where musty forms of Catholicism and patriarchal tradition in a holy alliance have maintained all sorts of old power structures. Maybe it’s something special with Austria, but still: of course you can’t impose guilt on a whole nation.

Is it Fritzl’s upbringing we shall blame? In the talks he has had with his psychologist it has come up that he had an extraordinary horrible upbringing, fatherless and at the same time he became tormented by his mother. Disturbed for life, full of contempt for women and an unhealthy need for control./…/

But there are many people with a horrible upbringing whom for that reason wouldn't commit any bestial deeds.”

I think Alice Miller is right when she writes that the reason to why all abused children don’t commit horrible crimes is because they have had an enlightened or at least knowing witness during their childhood and/or youth, and that’s why they have been capable of, to certain parts and degrees, condemn what they were exposed to.

Addition March 19: Even if they don't become criminals or commit crimes of different sorts (destructiveness) they can suffer from sickness and addictions or other self-destructive behaviors of different kinds. See the ACE-study and what Miller has written in for instance "The Body Never Lies".

And a horrible upbringing is no excuse for what you commit (if you abuse a child, commit crimes or even murders, initiate homicides etc.), only an explanation.

The need for control, super egos, responsibility, independency, dependency…

[Slightly updated December 18. Brief addition December 19]

A blogger writes: Now we are going to become controlled down to the last detail, everything we do on the net shall become stored. Orwell’s society is here, twenty years later, but nevertheless. However more veiled.

Today we have the war against terrorism, a war we can never win. And this serves as argument for detailed control of every citizen.

The ones in power are playing on peoples’ tendencies to paranoia; in a similar manner as for instance Hitler once did to justify the Second World War?

Not so healthy leaders are playing on human being’s less healthy sides!?

Are the ones ruling today better in this respect (in not controlling people) than the former who were accused for a Big Brother Society this blogger wonders? (and are they less fundamentalistic or as much, and in some cases more?) And of course you can wonder with all right?

What about the freedom the ones ruling now spoke about before they came to the power? Was this freedom only for the economical elites’; their freedom doing as they like, to not have to contribute to all people’s welfare (including their own), while the people should become held down, in all respects, and become controlled in all ways you can think of?

Yes, I think an economist here is right who said (in my interpretation) that if the resources are distributed more equally this gains the whole societal economy, i.e. us all. And it creates a better society, than a one where we are played out against each other. Something the Scandinavian countries have shown? So far at least. But today... And in the future...

Where does the selfishness come from?

I read an article on Friday “The more we are together. When the crisis advances the ego has to back.”

There you could read that you don’t have to “sharpen your elbows” any longer. Not show your paces either. The ones used to focus on her/himself has maybe not seen this earlier/yet, but the individualism’s time has passed. The most sound would be if individuals could exists in the collective!?

For those individuals it felt right to say: I take responsibility for my own life. I trust myself. But a winner can loose the self-confidence too, when you realize that it wasn’t so easy with the self-realization. When it was shown that it wasn’t enough taking the matter into one's own hands.

A 60 hours week is always a 60 hours week. Even if you chose it yourself. How much individualist you even are, it isn’t enough, you become exhausted/burnout nevertheless.

Child psychologists tell us that our kids have been forced to develop their egos so much so they can’t function in a group at day care centers. The article writer writes that the superego is lying on lit de parade.

Disillusioned people are calling programs at the radio here to talk about old-fashioned things like “societal planning, the community and solidarity.”

However, some are feeling relief over this, among those thinking the “I” has gotten too much space.

What would a healthy “I” be? What is our true self? What needs are we striving to fulfill?

Some even admit that they are a bit malicious. One of those is the Swedish leader writer Göran Greider. In a TV-programme he seemed to have been talking about “the own responsibility.” Another Swedish writer also wrote about responsibility. Who are accused for not taking responsibility for themselves, their lives etc. And are there other people you don't demand responsibility from? The ones governing are talking quite moralistic about responsibility. But are the ruling classes taking responsibility? Are they demanded to take responsibility? Or do they cover it up as if they are taking responsibility "for people's own good"? Things that are really huring are done for our own good!? And they truly believe it is for our own good!

Greider meant that certain amount of selfishness is needed to push the development further, but the results of this selfishness ought to become distributed better to more people. I am not sure... What sort of selfishness should we have? One where we protect ourselves constructively and against real threats?

He means that the society needs solidarity values, so we dare (and can) trust (on) each other, even in the economy.

Alone is not strong, we need each other and are dependent on other people, what other people do and don’t do. What too many govening do is dividing and ruling? Getting power through diving and ruling.

The writers means that the big “I” doesn’t make us happy, not secure or rich either. Is it time for more collective solutions now?

Why are young people today so selfish or egoistic? They haven’t become brought under control enough? They have to learn to be more humble? From where does evilness come? Are we born this way? Do we have innate drives for destruction? I don't think so. I think this is something we have learned very early in life...

That many don’t seem to be why is that? Where have they learned this? What sort of role models have they had? And what society have they grown up in?

I.e. how should we raise young people, small children?

See this reader's letter to Alice Miller on obedience and being a living dead.

Addition December 19: and rebelling... If you are less harmed you rebel in a more constructive way? In a sounder and healthier way? And maybe in a more effective way? With fewer or in the best case no victims?

Freedom for the big corporations in US – the freedom’s place of origin on the earth…

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.”

The video is taken from here. The website of the owner of this video-channel, see here. And see ”Confessions of an Economic Hit Man” by John Perkins. And about John Perkins here.

The blogger here writes that the

”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.

Language and talents…

More loud thinking (quite ironical): emotional language is put lower than intellectual. Emotions are put lower than intelligence. The intellectual (and not least intelligent) is put higher than the emotional! Many musicians though have the language too, to a high degree and a lot of other talents. But many of us don’t really have the words; use the music-language instead to express things. And artistic expressions is needed, and have always been through history even back to ancient times, to express things we don’t have words for really? Especially emotional things?

And once again see the phenomenon alexithymia, a phenomenon researchers think is increasing in this world. And one can wonder: why is that? Why do more and more people lack emotional language? Is it only a question of that we become more and more people in the world? Or what is it about? An inherent trait/gene? (I don't think so though! I think this is something we have been taught early in life effectively. But it is possible doing something about. Probably with a lot of struggles and efforts though, which wouldn't have been needed if we had been allowed to express our feelings/emotions from the first beginning).

I came to think that this means that "children’s and women’s language" is put lower? Because in general they use a more emotional language? But there are exceptions of course!!! In both directions.

Is this a question of being taken seriously (i.e., being met with real, genuine respect)… Something that isn’t given to everybody.

You shall have your feelings, emotions under control, or at least have these under control to a certain degree? You shall express yourself in a balanced way, and preferably with the best language possible! Otherwise you can keep quiet or you get corrected or not even listened to or read!

And you know the grammar syntax, vocabulary are important! You don’t get a second chance to explain yourself better, by being asked what you really mean!!

Isn’t there a contempt involved here? A contempt for children (or the child)? A contempt for weakness in fact?

“Don’t be so childish!!”

People get embarrassed on behalf of you!? This we (I) have to avoid!!!

And these things aren’t only expressed in spoken words, but by other means: silence (the wall of silence), you aren’t taken any notice of, disregarded etc.

You can withdraw in a lot of manners, not only emotionally but also physically. But a grown up has choices here, choices a child didn’t have! A grown up can deal with this, if she/he isn’t so (too) paralysed by her/his passed.

We have had to repress HOW painful these things were, many of us can’t even slightly recall HOW painful? We are made insensitive to different degrees to these things. Which is no excuse but only an explanation.

Once again I noticed the phenomenon “talking above ones head” I think… But it didn’t bother me so much as it did. I hope! I just noticed it with a slight smile, a bit ironical smile… Talking in riddles here? Never mind. I allow myself that.

I have been taught that men are better (in general), because they have their emotions in check and don’t get carried away with their emotions (as they are born like this)! Thus they are more reliable. At the same time I am learned/taught to being sensitive, caring, thinking on.

Or they (not least mom I guess) have at least tried to teach me!!! I don’t think she consider her trials there especially successful!! I will never become that sensitive or caring or thinking on never ever! Not in her eyes at least. I will remain that selfish, egoistic, only thinking on myself. In contrast to maybe ALL my siblings?? To be honest.

This with sensitivity is one of probably many contradictions! On one occasion being insensitive is acknowledged and praised, in another NOT. Depending on who is insensitive/sensitive?? Depending on the glasses you see through? (how they are colored).

And that about getting carried away with uncontrolled emotions: on other occasions this isn’t/wasn’t even noticed!! Namely when the father (and later brothers) came home from work and poured all his (their) frustrations out on the family, and not least the kids (relatives; siblings, and not least sisters). But it was worse for the wife; because she was more sensitive than the kids, who were less sensitive?? And the kids was spared compared to the wife!!! (observe the irony!!!)

To be continued… I am going to take a shower now. Have a lot more on my mind (wrote a lot down in my note-book this morning before I sat down at the computer).

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!

More about the need for power and control – and the ruling classes paranoia…

Marianne Mikko.

It stood on the Swedish Radio site that registration of bloggers is on its way in Europe – The European Union wants to control bloggers.

The parliament is voting about a draft law this fall that EU shall register and control bloggers on the net.

The Estonian European parliamentarian Marianne Mikko (belonging to the socialist group!??) the initiative taker to the law, says that if we see name and picture on the one writing this promotes the freedom of speech. She thinks the anonymity on the net is a problem. And wants that bloggers legal status shall be clarified and categorized from their opinion and agenda.

This new law has been lively discussed among bloggers on the net the last days and many are upset. One of them are Emma Marie Andersson *who blogs about politics and integrity questions.

“For most bloggers I should in fact think that anonymity is a prerequisite, because all employers for example don’t think it’s so good if one sits and writes and has opinions.”

Marianne Mikko means that the possibility replying in charge to a blogposting has to be strengthened for the sake of democracy!! One needs to be able to reply in the same manner as to articles in for example newspapers she says!! She says:

“I don’t believe in one-way-communication!”

But Emma Marie Andersson thinks the blogs rather are more open than traditional media. And now in the aftermaths of the FRA-law politicians need to really think over what one can and shall regulate she thinks. So true.

“Precisely this, with replying, is extremely strange, for this only proves that she has obviously never visited a blog./…/ The fact is that you as blogger and person discussed on a blog has more opportunities answering in a blog than in a newspaper actually.

Now people have got the taste for airing their opinions and therefore more and more people are interested in how things like these turn out. So it’s in all people’s interest trying to become friend with the Internet and realize that Internet isn’t a thing lying somewhere far away, but Internet is actually a part of the society, and it’s we, the people, who find ourselves there.”

Yes, it was this with the need for power and control… And the ruling classes paranoia??

A female Swedish blogger I appreciate a lot also writes about this new law. She writes that everything is obviously going to become controlled! Where does the boundary go? If one want to stop a blogger there are already possibilities. And now comes extra controls or demands the bloggers shall display their photos and names. Postings are already possible to report and stop. And that's fully enough. She also wonders how one shall be able to control if people use their own names or photos, and not others...

"By the way - photo??"

she writes.

"Maybe one has to be both beautiful and photogenic to be allowed to blog? And soon we have the entire control-society."

Another female Swedish blogger writes that "Perhaps it's time for the European Union to register our private diaries too..." She thinks one of the worst things is that politicians prove they don't know what they are talking about or what Internet is! And thinks this is like the pure Soviet-state! And we have a right government in Sweden!!! And it's a right wind in Europe!!! Many have written about a big-brother society!

And here an article "The Economics for Nice People" concerning incitements for people, that they are all and only economic? And selfish?? I.e. that we never do anything without expecting something in return...

* "Vissa lagar som syftar till att bekämpa kriminaliteten är ännu mera kriminella " — Friedrich Engels

“The poorest man may in his cottage bid defiance to all the force of the Crown. It may be frail, its roof may shake, the wind may blow through it; the storms may enter, the rain may enter - but the King of England cannot enter; all his forces dare not cross the threshold of the ruined tenement.” — William Pitt

Addictions in parents and other grown up authorities…

summer-view from the middle of Sweden.

[slightly edited and updated June 26]. In the news today they say that many children are worried over parent’s internet dependency (or Internet addiction).

Many children have called Bris, Children’s Rights in Society’s worried over their parents’ Internet habits. A study from 2007 shows what influence Internet has for children’s ill-health.

“They are often filled with shame, anger and sorrow, but also questions about what they shall do.”

Mothers who are caught in Internet-playing many hours a day or fathers porn-surfing (even child porn!!!) and sex-chatting. When children get to know this they get worried and don’t know how to handle it. And Bris-Children’s Right in Society has noticed this. Last year they noticed a striking increase in the number of calls and emails from (exactly) children, not knowing how they shall solve their parent’s problems. According to an investigator at Bris this discovery can be compared with when children discover that their parent’s abuse alcohol, drugs etc. because the set of problems are the same.

“It is as shameful as addiction, and they have to handle it in the same way as other forms of addictions.”

In first hand it is parent’s visits to porn-sites children are reacting most strongly at. Most of the children calling have seen their parent’s visiting porn - and even child porn Internet-sites.

They write in the article that parent’s (and other grown ups, if they are authorities of any kind for young people my addition) ought to wonder what sort of models they are to their children or other children they are authorities for. True I think... We are or can be models in many different respects...

Addition (quickly translated and written): I searched under the label addictions and there was one on “Parasiten – the Parasite…” A swift translation of parts of that blogposting:

This year a book came in Swedish written by a man Fredrik Ljung just above 30. A book about "a drug-addicted in suit", a man newly examined from school of economics and business administration (the most prestigious in Sweden in this case), with a

“well-paid job in the finance-branch, dressed in expensive suits.”

As the author once was.

He and his companion mean they could work high pressuredly and at the same time abuse drugs without anybody noticing it.

They mean that alcohol-problems are still more common in working-life, but drug-problems are increasing (earlier drug-addictions were less common, people used alcohol instead?). These two men are now treating other people with the same problems as they had.

10 % of the employees in average on a work-place have problems with alcohol and drugs they think, and those coming to them are young, just above 30 and they have an already established pill and drug-addiction. Most of them are men, but they think women are much cleverer in hiding their problems (so THAT problem, with drug abuse, is partly hidden).

Alcohol and drug problems are overrepresented in high achieving professions and in circumstances where kick-seeking people search themselves to. Pressure achieving and a feelings of insufficiency make many seeking help in alcohol and tablets, and maybe later also drugs, to handle their live (things that drove them into these works in the first place, and on wrong premises?). Most common are marijuana and amphetamine, but cocaine is also increasing.

Silently (feeling so sad and horrified again rereading this): Hiding ones problems by using drugs of all kinds… Keeping silent of shame? And if you can’t manage things you are no real man (or woman)??? The hypocrisy! Showing a façade. And that about being “a real man" again… Does women want that sort of “real men”??? Or what sort of women want such a man?

The author thinks it is important focusing on the request (demand) for drugs, and to watch so people feel better and don’t have to resort to drug use to make their lives endurable. And this should actually have started early in life, where children ought to feel they are worthy, lovable just as they are etc. Silently: how nice is a life being drugged all the time or a lot of the time actually? Being blunt (avtrubbad) most of or the whole time? Oh, this is so sad.

What is lying at the bottom? From where comes the mania being clever and achieving? The feeling one isn’t good enough if one doesn’t achieve and even achieve enormously? The feeling one has to control oneself, or rather not being weak, but showing a (false) façade of strength?

The author said he had never had any problems getting the tablet-store renewed!! No physicians refused to prescribe new, or more, tablets (he visited 20 doctors and there were never any great problems)! This also made me think… It has been a lot (or at least some) talk about being observant towards this phenomenon, i.e. that people goes to many different physicians to get medicine, especially when it comes to calming medicine, sleeping pills (But thre hasn't been any straight talk about narcotics)… But they have found in research that women and men are treated differently by doctors, and employees at for instance the Social Insurance in Sweden etc. Treated differently because of their gender - AND thus their status in society (quite ironical)?? Women with problems are treated with more contempt and less respect!?

Ljung says he succeeded keeping himself “floating,” as he says, for eight years. He started abusing alcohol systematically when he was 19 years. During these years he changed his whole acquaintance-circle, only associated with criminals (in suits??), he was heavily in debt, had two broken relations behind him and hardly any contact with his parents. In short his life was in a real mess.

Suddenly he realized the truth; he wasn’t the successful and enviable person he had struggled so hard to become.

It stands:

“Henrik is filled with contempt, both against the society and against people in his environment and this permeates [genomsyrar] his strivings in reaching the top, which is a well paid, status-filled job on a bank in London or New York.”

Oh, how fun! And really something to strive for!! Observe the irony! The principal figure in the book is ironical, arrogant, show contempt for weakness, is floating above… The reviewer of the book earlier this year characterized the principal figure with the expressions "hubris" and "self-contempt. "

Yes, what does Miller write about irony for instance? And about addiction?

This really made me think once again…

Addition June 26: Struck me about Jane Fonda's bulimia. Also see "Starving for Attention." She thought that she was so occupied with her eating that she lived like in a glass-bubble, cut off from the environment and not really their for her children (Vanessa and Troy?). And she could slightly imagine how this for them. If I remember right. Sidetrack: but it feels as she is still in denial to a high degree, and have been "taught" forgiveness by therapists...

And I recently also read about Britt Ekland (actually Eklund!!), the Swedish actress, who has problems with osteoporosis, and it struck me this can (must) be because of constant concern about the weight. And she must have done plastic surgery (the lips??) which hasn't been really successful... I have done plastic surgery too, a (really) big (and tough) operation. I was offered another one, but at that time I had accepted how I look and didn't make a second operation... And before this operation the female doctor said she didn't think this operation was necessary, but if I wanted to make it they should make it... Oh, this is a long story...

"What good fortune for those in power that people do not think"...

"What good fortune for those in power that people do not think"

- Adolf Hitler, as quoted by Joachim Fest.
Read Alice Miller's “Adolf Hitler: How Could a Monster Succeed in Blinding a Nation?”

Miller wonders if it is still possible to believe that without the mistreatment of the child, without the form of child-rearing based on violence to inculcate (inpränta) blind obedience, there wouldn't have been any Hitler and his followers?

How could he create this death machinery and get millions of helpers to set it in motion? Because the children weren't too hard held? Not enough disciplined?

The belief in the need of discipline, from what view on mankind (and on children) does it come? Discipline of what actually?

And what does the grown believe about him/herself there I can't help wonder ironically (but the parent hided that, not least to his/her child, and tried to hide it to her/himself)? That he/she is complete? Or was it the contrary, and the grown up couldn't really stand this, and needed an outlet for the factual low thoughts he/she had on him/herself? But this is no excuse for what he/she did or what a parent ever does! Ever in the future!

Our innate sinfulness? Very ironically. How convenient to play on that!

I am reacting very strongly against our current school-minister, who is preaching harder and tougher grips in school. He, born 1962 (and thus younger than I am and younger than my fifth sibling!), thinks children have been held too loose!!! This is really scary! And even more scary that he gets so much acclamation! So it must have been (and be?) something wrong in child-rearing, but not due to to loose grips!!

He takes a lot of responsibility on him for what he will succeed to carry through. As all those supporting him and is ideas. I dislike this from deep, deep in my heart!! He is called "cane (or rattan) major" by many here.

Preventive measures should be taken as early as possible! But other sorts of preventive measures! In form of information to parents to be for instance. Information on what's actually harmful; to bat and spank or even take hard in a child (Bosch and Jenson has found in therapy actually!), sexual abuse and all forms of it (even inappropriate touching for instance), and one can emotionally abuse a child too!!! One can humiliate a child!

And this is grown ups responsibility!

What would a sound, healthy self-confidence be about? Where you don't harm neither other people nor yourself!picture from friend on our fantastic nature.

Conspiracy, sexual emancipation and a little about medication…

Lars Ohly.

Romano Prodi.

George W. Bush.

[Updated June 9 in the end!] Two news-items side by side in the local newspaper today made me think. The leader for the left party in Sweden Lars Ohly said during the congress now that he sees conspiracy behind demands on aircraft security (terrorism in Europe). I searched on the net for this and got some hits there, so people have noticed it.

He said during the congress that once when he was out flying his shaving cream was confiscated. He says that he of course congratulates the European Union for the enormous success in the fight against terrorism which this confiscation marks.

In a speech he said that:

“These rules are an expression for a panic that is created and fills a political purpose. The rulers (the ones in power) want us to believe that the law and order and democracy only can become defended through becoming restricted.”

After the speech he confessed that he believes in a conspiracy.

“Yes, I seriously mean that one does this to create a ground for other changes."

What he means is the increased security leading to a climate where people experience that security is so threatened, that it is justifiable with restrictions in the democratic freedoms and rights (privileges or civil rights).

They asked Ohly whom he thought was lying behind this conspiracy, and he said that George W. Bush after September 11 sent a letter to the European commission’s Romano Prodi with a list on 47 points which USA wanted Europe to introduce.

The other news-item was that many teenage girls have sex against their will. In research the psychologist Gisela Priebe has established that one of seven girls in the upper teens have had sexual intercourse against their own will. Among the boys in the same age one of seventeen have had difficulties saying no.

The press living up to the ideal of sexual emancipation has made it difficult saying no.

This conclusion is made by the psychologist Gisela Priebe who has made research on adolescents being exposed to sexual abuse. This winter her dissertation comes at the University of Lund.

More than 4,000 (4,139) young people in gymnasium-age have answered questions. As many as 65 percent of the girls say that they have been exposed to some form of unwanted sexual action which can be everything from tampering or pawing (tafsande) to sexual intercourse.

Priebe means that the research so far has focused on incest and paedophilia, but abuse between young people in the same age is in fact more common. The girls had been in age 14 in average when they were abused in some form the first time. Eleven percent of the girls had such experiences at 10 or even younger at the first occasion.

Priebe says that it isn’t always a question of physical violence, sexual abuse isn’t always connected to physical violence or force. It’s common with persuasion or that someone uses his/her position. And she thinks there is a widespread picture among young people that one shall be emancipated and sexually accessible. This can make it difficult for many young people feeling they have the right to say no.

Yes, I think Ohly can be right about conspiracies from people in power, giving the power right to control us. And I wondered to what degree this is conscious. From a person like George W. Bush for instance. I reread some pages from “Base Instincts - What Makes Killers Kill?” by the American neurologist Jonathan H. Pincus. He writes about the possible roots for terrorism and about societal approval and also that (page 191):

“The unrestrained approval of violence in certain political parties and gangs may make such groups attractive to the abused. Although we have very little information about the family dynamics of the members of terrorist organizations, I believe that the history of physical and sexual abuse, and even mental illness [also due to abuse] paranoia, and brain damage is prevalent among them.”

I also skimmed the chapter on prevention and treatment and my impression is that medication isn’t always a secure method… But I have to read this chapter better to say he means this. But our current government want to medicate people with means of coercion (medicate all “dissidents” I wonder quite ironically. Another thing this government does which isn’t properly supported by science?). Addition in the evening: see the last posting today "Can a pill make a murderer safe?"

See Pincus on Hitler and Hatred, the essay "George W. Bush's projection and dislocation of self", and here and here are the links to all earlier postings with the label “J. Pincus” and to postings with the label the “ruling classes’ paranoia” here and here.

And that about sexual abuse: why haven’t young people learned to say “no”? I also wonder (ironically) if they have learned to trust their senses and feelings, and been allowed to respect them, by their parents already.

See the article “Childhood Sexual Abuse – Women’s Mental and Social Health Before and After Group Therapy.”

A common denominator to the topics in this posting is "integrity violations" and their effects?? Which all this above is about?

PS. In his youth Lars Ohly belonged to the Liberal Party!!! (I don't vote on them though, and will probably never do).

Addition June 9: Watch this video-clip about chasing terrorists in Indiana, USA, "War on Terre Haute." :-) And read about Terre Haute here. I didn't know it was a city! :-)