The problems with defences…

pictures from today's walk.

Spontaneously: A lot of thoughts (and emotions) on the walk I have just returned from. Eskil is still peeing blood… It is not fun mildly said. And maybe this is also triggering things… Experiences?

Addition in the evening: Chose the title to this posting very quickly... Maybe I should have chosen another? But there is so much in my head and mind now...

I also came to think of people denying their needs, thoughts triggered by a posting I did on my other blog this morning. Also a posting I have thought of writing a long time. Having everything in check and control, and maybe also looking down on other people, “weak”, dependent ones… There is a psychiatrist here David Eberhard whom has written a book “In the safety addictions-land”. He means that it can be too much safety and security! Till it becomes an addiction!

These denying their needs are often (but not all??) resonating in terms of:

“I can manage! (why can’t you then too?) What weakling are you!”

And this is plainly said contempt for weakness?? Contempt for the small child one was once?? See Bosch on the Primary Defence. And on the False Power Denial of Needs, False Power Anger – and False Power Hope…

Women often resort to False Power Hope Defence and adds it with False Power Denial of Needs Defence she means… They (we) think they (we) can change the state affairs and this can be added (and is often added) with denial of needs, we think the more we can deny our needs the better, the we will get love. The less needy they (we) are the more respected they (we) become – they (we) think at least!?? In general. But she underlines that this is a generalization and that there are (a lot of) exceptions.

And men generally combine Denial of Needs with False Power Anger, which gives them a (false) sense of strength, a strength they don’t need in the present situation (most often), but needed to defend themselves with as small boys to survive (and not experience how vulnerable and power and helpless they were then, denying this fact with a belief of, false, power, a power the small boy actually didn't have, but as he grown up man now most often have).

But denial of needs doesn’t mean one doesn’t have any needs and what's more important that the person doesn’t act on his/her needs? Trying to fill them in different ways, but maybe this is more or less hidden or visible/invisible both to themselves but also to others?

Unfulfilled needs which have become, what Stettbacher calls them, perverted?

And filling these perverted needs are always (more or less) harmful? And the ones that are denying them the most are causing most harm?? The less aware are causing most harm? The ones most in Denial causes most harm? Or the ones most in denial and with most power cause most denial? And maybe these persons also need power the most to defend themselves? And need exercising power most, need having power the most to hold the truth away?

Yes, psychohistorians are right about backward psychoclasses here?

And the ones admitting to their needs or who got their needs filled the most as children, or wo have been able or got help processing their early history the most and best, are causing less harm and don’t have to fill their needs through other people?

The worse is though when one tries to fill ones early unmet and denied needs through children (ones own or other people’s) and the ones under in power or less strong. Compared to filling them through other grown up people equal to oneself...

See earlier postings on authoritarianism.one of my favourites, picture taken 4 hours ago.

Needs and authoritarianism…

Max Weber and authority.

This morning I came to think of perverted, bottomless needs. Needs that never will get filled or satisfied, because they should have got filled then (in childhood).

How much money, power etc. you get they will never get filled, more than temporary. Money, power etc. can give temporary relief. But sooner or less you need new (or more) power, money…The original, justified needs have become perverted.

What has the hunger for power and money caused during history, and what does it continue to cause?

I thought of greediness, i.e. bottomless needs… What we see today in the world society. People think that the/this greediness isn’t entirely bad. That greed has driven people to achievements they wouldn’t otherwise show. I don’t really agree. Can’t there be drives of other kinds, that aren’t (at all) destructive or self-destructive?? I think there are, but maybe quite rare?

This is also, in a seemingly paradoxical way, denial of needs!!?? Denial of the early needs, while at the same permitting adults (perverted) needs. But it’s like this it has always been!!?? Allowing the adults needs and forbidding children’s. A phenomenon we are probably more or less blind to?? And more or less aware of. Maybe totally blind and unaware to in many cases, and some people are totally blind and unaware to it? And those are often the ones needing power and control, as much as possible??

Thought further: on Friday afternoon I had a long conversation about a lot of things, from this to that, with a person who is responsible for Rotary scholarships for young people. A young Swedish woman reflected over the difference between how Swedish children and adolescents are treated compared to how they were treated in the country she had visited on her year as holder of a Rotary scholarship. Things she had reacted at. Namely that parents (and teachers??) in the country she visited were quite authoritarian (mine, not her expression, she didn’t use this word I think). The parents simply said:

“You have to…!!” “You can’t do that!” etc.

And if the child/young person asked

“Why??” “Why not?”

The reply was simply

“Therefore!”

with no more explanations.

Obey and keep quite, don’t question anything!?? The parents’ words are the law?? And they are always right?? What about mutual respect and a real, genuine meeting/communication?

I thought further on this; about authoritarianism in a so called therapeutic circumstance (and also what Miller has written; that there are maybe as many ways to recovery as there are people in this world!! And the importance of maybe being aware of this and getting inspired by this too!). Just being given the message that your message (as subscriber to a list in this case) has been received, but not posted on the forum, because the moderator trusted her gut-feeling (??). And no explanation why… Isn’t it exactly the same as above? And maybe also a repetition of an early experience perhaps? I wonder how recovering this is?? And if it has harmed people??

Facades…

I bought a new parasol on Friday, had to use my creativity to keep it on place! :-) Let's see how I solve this? And I bought new cushions to my sun-chairs too. There was nothing to choose on though, but I had no patience to go to another shop so I bought these. But they are ok. :-) I have ONE pile of books on the balcony (my small, narrow,but nice balcony) and a lot of unread books in my book shelves. And I write a lot in my books (so I have to buy them, I can't borrow them at the library).

Loudly and spontaneously thinking a warm summer's day… Madeleine Åsbrink writes at page 20 in her book that many of us clench our teeth and put up a facade which isn’t true or genuine. The work this demands takes a lot of power and doesn’t lead to any (or minor) change(s).

Many are afraid of what they shall meet inside. And ask themselves if it isn’t better clenching their teeth, buying a new house, changing partner or traveling around the world. Maybe life is good enough as it is (my comment: denial of needs)?

And she writes at another place in her book that many maintain that they feel well thinking of others in their environment. I can hear an internalized parents’ voice saying this. This made me think: What is a sound, healthy egoism and what is an unsound, unhealthy (also came to think of politics again: neoliberals admiring Ayn Rand for instance, interpreting and using her ideas to fulfill needs that are perverted in fact, are they trying, insensitively and egoistically in a way that harm others; trying to fill childhood needs, to fill a hole or gap that is bottomless, they will never get enough, but probably more and more instead)?

A sound, healthy egoism (should one choose another word, less loaded) is one where you are capable of caring about yourself, feel where your boundaries are etc. An unsound, unhealthy is the one where other people (the society and environment) have to pay for what you do…

A sound, healthy is the one where you constructively protect yourself, where neither you yourself or anyone else gets harmed.

She writes about people feeling feelings of meaninglessness over the life they live. And these feelings have come after many years of struggles to achieve and live up to a lot of things? Of course feelings of emptiness catch us up if we aren’t living our own lives really?

The soul – and body – is screaming??

“Stop fighting and start to live!”

The symptoms can take different shapes, all from returning lumbagos to deep depression (and all from constant anxiety to panic disorders). The reactions are stronger and more severe the less one live ones own life. And how many actually live genuine, true lives? But some do more than others, and don’t get so severe problems?

Åsbrink thinks a thumb rule is that the earlier you acknowledge the problems the shorter rehabilitation time, the quicker the recovery.

And she also writes about forces taking over, when one is no longer I contact with ones own will and ones own inner voice. It’s “achievements, and doing”, the environment and an inner slave-driver that has taken the control. Many mix these forces with their own will she thinks and say things like:

“I think this is fun and should have continued as I did before if the body hadn’t said ‘no’!”

Another one says:

“I want more than my body manages.”

Came to think about what Jenson and Bosch writes about needs and denial of needs… And what they write about mixing childhood with adult needs. And what needs aren’t possible to fill any more, needs that should have become filled then and that we ought to feel the pain connected to this truth and the realization of it. And needs we could (and maybe also should) feel here and now.

They think we have a defence, the False Power Denial of Needs defence, which the child resorted to to protect itself towards the truth. Because if I as child denied needs that didn’t’ get filled I couldn’t be hurt either. Maybe the child could even deny what actually happened. This was necessary then, but today it causes problems. As adults we continue with using these defences and we do it automatically they mean. We continue to defend ourselves against things we don’t have to defend ourselves against any more. Things we should be able to survive the truth of (though probably very painful realizations).

Both men and women use this defence, denying their needs, giving them a false sense of power, a power they don’t need. But we need other sorts of power today as grown ups?

Hmmm, yes, this was really loud thinking...

PS. Another blogger wrote:

“But let’s start at another place, and who knows where this posting will end? Let’s see. That’s exactly what has become so nice with blogging; one start at one place and from time to time end at another place then you thought of [when you started writing].”

Yes, that’s exactly how it can be! Reading this was a comfort! :-)

But the story which followed wasn’t so nice or happy, rather sad…

You can - if only you decide you will!

photo S. Thomas.

Writing further, furiously: More from Wikströms' book (see earlier postings). In the popular self-development literature it is said that the human being just can’t blame her misfortunes on unfortunate circumstances (!!!), a sad and unfortunate childhood (!!!) or existential weariness (!!!). Who and what is she then to blame? (Herself? Her genes? Her unwillingness to do something or to change? Or what? This ought to be said out in plain words!? Shouldn't it?)

Talk about moralizing! What about what’s lying behind? Is anybody interested in that, in bringing this to light? Bringing both this and that to light! For instance how it is with many emperors' new clothes!?

The human being therefore has to “take hold of her life” and see so she is steering her soul’s bark [herself], realize (or as one says today “implement”) her innermost dreams of success. But what about the American dream?

And she shall do this “now,” live now, instead of just planning for to live, to not having to realize when she is old that she hasn’t really lived. And this is nothing wrong with actually I think. There are a lot of contradictions – and confusions here and there.

Wikström thinks the lust-principle has started to rule on a cultural level, not the postponed drive-satisfaction’s gloomy reality principle.

But what are those needs about, maybe those urgent needs, needs that have to become filled immediately? And what are those bottom and endless needs about, which can never become filled? Surrogates, substitutes? See Alice Miller here.

The lightness in the existence has disappeared for many in everyday life’s trivial treadmill, confused home situations, children’s demands (justified and/or “perverted” needs because of earlier unfulfilled needs), relations that aren’t straightened out. All those things together make one want to maximize the small zone that’s left for oneself. No wonder!

Moralizing or being ironic over life style literature and dismiss it as drivel is too simple. But I want to take a step further he writes. And ponder over what those dreams are an expression of.

For some this reading leads to a lot of improvements in those particular persons’ lives.

But despite many people are trying to think positively, take command over their lives or are striving for a conscious presence, they fail. And that the popular culture constantly reminds them about that it is only on themselves the whole existence (AND success) is lying, the feeling of lack of satisfaction and self contempt increases. As self blame and shame (convenient for the power and power abusers!?).

My addition: And also the shame over how incapable and incompetent you are. So the one in question stops questioning the state of affairs out of shame (keeping silent of shame), or as she is told: has no right to complain, she has all tools and options to succeed she is told (if she is legitimately complaining she can be called spoiled)?

Blaming the victim.

We are on the one hand treated like children and on the other we are demanded taking responsibility as grown up! Damn if you do and damn if you don’t. See Berit Ås on Master Suppression Techniques.

Addition in the evening: read Oscar Flowe in "The hitting stops here!".

Näring för själen…

from a bike-tour to work, a late summer's day.

Ledare av Göran Greider igår fick mig att börja fundera… Om behov... Finns inte på webben, men jag kanske skriver mer om vad som står i den senare...

Greider inledde den med orden:

"Jag häpnar alltid över hur litet det behövs för att plötsligt känna sig hoppfull. En förmiddag läser jag ett tunt urval av ny kinesisk poesi och tycker med ens att ett kikhål i den kinesiska muren öppnar sig."

Jag reagerade med en väldigt spontan och stark känsla:

"Ja, själen behöver också näring!!!"

Och detta gav upphov till en räcka med ytterligare tankar. Om behov, förnekande av behov. Om surrogat... Om det Stettbacher kallar perverterade behov. Om andra uttryck behov tar sig. Om icke fyllda behov. Om utnyttjande (av både människor och natur). Om att försöker man ändra sin terapeut eller (alla) andra terapeuter så är misslyckandet ofrånkomligt. Jag tror inte heller att det att ändra ett dysfunktionellt beteende till ett funktionellt heller helar. Att bara handlingen leder till befrielse, även om det kanske kan kännas väldigt skönt och befriande till en början...

”Jamen, nu vet du ju! Nu är det ju bara att bete sig på ett annat sätt, tänka på ett annat sätt osv.!!! (Vad, varför gör du inte et??? Varför går du inte ut i livet och gör det???).”

Jag tror inte på diverse tekniker, det där med manipulation, manipulativa koncept… Jo, de hyfsat intelligenta kan nog både det ena och det andra!!! Alla duktiga pojkar och flickor klarar nog det - en gång till och en gång till och kanske ytterligare en gång... Men vad har ändrats i slutänden? Och återigen jag att inte vi kan ändra en enda terapeut!!! Jo, skulle vilja skriva om detta med terapi, guruer, makt...

Och tänkte återigen på det där med att tysta röster… Om det där att

”...om du inte kliver upp där och uttrycker dig perfekt och mer än perfekt – fulländat… Inte förr får (bör) du upphäva din röst!!”

Du får inte börja upphäva den om du (ens) har små skavanker!!?? Använda den röst du har just här och nu, prova den röst du har, som du börjar utveckla och just genom övning erhålla färdighet!??? För när någonsin får manfärdighet? Finns den bara där helt plötsligt? Är den kanske medfödd? Så att du bara stiger upp där och kan??

För det är ju ganska genant om du inte gör det (tillräckligt) perfekt!? Något som i sanningens namn nog inte bara kommer från en själv utan också från (vissa) i omgivningen!??

Och hur många röster har därför aldrig höjts (hur många miljoner genom århundradena, ja, årtusendena?)?? Hur många har därför aldrig ansett sig värdiga att artikulera eller yttra sig?? Och, jo, är det inte så att vissa röster tystas (hur omedvetet det nu än sker)?? handlar det inte om översittar-, härskartendenser öäven på den allra lägsta nivån, även mellan dem som kanske egentligen har ganska liten makt och inflytande i samhället, håller inte även de på med detta (som någon slags kompensation, om än kanske omedveten)? Även av så kallat "upplysta"!!??

Det där att leva som man lär... Som nog är svårare än vi tror, ibland??

”Varför är så många människor besatta av den makt och kontroll över andra som rikedom (eller våld) kan ge? Varför finns det så mycket strider och hat i vår värld? Varför dödar medlemmarna av en viss religiös eller etnisk grupp medlemmar av andra grupper? Varför får så många människor diagnosen depression? Varför är det så stor efterfrågan på stämningshöjande medicin?

Det är uppenbart att vi inte är riktigt ’tillräkneliga’. Någonting djupt inom oss har inte blivit tillfredsställt. Jag tror att ’någonting’ är spädbarnets behov av kärlek. Det barn du var kan aldrig få den kärleken – igenting tillfredsställer detta djupa behov. Men sörjandet har kraft att läka oss – det kan göra oss hela igen och låta oss återerövra våra liv.” (Jean Jenson i ”Att återerövra sitt liv" s. 172-173).”

Men, nej, detta sker inte lätt... Det finns inga quick fixes, hur trevligt det än skulle vara...

---

Some silent thoughts after a bike-tour: on needs, surrogate needs, perverted needs. The expressions it take on different levels... A leader yesterday triggered a lot of thoughts...

Yesterday at work, after three meetings (awaking feelings, emotions, thoughts...) when I waited for my first pupil I threw some words down... What is worth living for?? What am I striving for? Saving the whole world, or what? Taking the risk that the whole world will collapse?? Let it happen!? “God’s will be done!?” Taking all and everything on my small, tiny shoulders?? Who should I rescue first??? And who can I rescue (and not least: who wants, and needs, to be rescued??? Honestly! And maybe; who needs to be rescued most?)?

What holes d we try to fill? What needs do we try to fill?

About silencing forces again... Who has been silenced? And who keep on raising their voices? Who did never speak up? Because they never thought they did it good enough for instance, their way of speaking up wasn't good enough?

Open, genuine, real communication... The longing for that... The search for that, the lack of it... Now some lunch here.

All earlier postings with the label Göran Greider (both in English and in Swedish).

Addition January 24: What is nourishment for the soul and what do we actually need?

Unconditional love…

Things that have struck me the last days of some reason: instilling shame is used as a method raising children. A very effective method. Shame that you feel and react as you do – and that you have needs (that you are needy and childish for instance).

But those needs were much justified, maybe later on perverted, and thus it became more and more difficult to understand their origins. And the needs became more and more "complex."

This method covers what actually happened, covered not only for the ones involved but also for the environment. Making all more or less incapable of seeing what happened/what is happening even.

Later used for the same purpose grown ups between, more or less consciously or deliberately.

Mirrored how? As someone disgusting, ugly, not really lovable…

Unless…

Unless what?

Unless you aren’t perfect; as a human being, in your achievements, how you look (if you are a beauty or not. Only beauties counts!). So the possibility you will be good enough doesn’t even exist. And thus also the possibility of being loved almost doesn’t exist! False hope to get what you miss, if only... Getting needs met that should have become met then, and can't be met afterwards. Continuing to give us problems later, especially in circumstances that are important for us, in relations that are (most) important for us.

A mother and father incapable of loving unconditionally. The child feeling that it isn’t good as it is. A feeling that follows the individual up in grown up age.

A colleague joked with me on a party yesterday evening. He and three more colleagues had entertained with playing on service flats for elderly people. One of those colleagues is retired since five or more years. They had been joking about what demands to have on service flats for their old ages; if the service flats had ranges of culture, for instance a good piano or Grand piano.

“Come and entertain us with your students!!”

my retired colleague ended a lengthy exposition about service flats and their particular entertainment on one here in town.

“Yes, you have to!”

a male colleague sitting next to me said to me.

“But we will land at that service flat at the same time!”

I replied, not really understanding what he meant.

“As we are (exactly) in the same age!!!”

I added, because he looked a little bewildered. As a question mark almost.

“Yes, I am born…”

I said the year (the same as this man, I think, or the year after).

“I thought you were younger [than him? Than I look? With a sigh. I don't have high opinions about how I look...]…”

He replied. He must have thought not so few years!!??

There’s really a lot working here… Not only because of this event, but because of a lot else…

Things I try to put words on…

But it was/is only the child that needs that unconditional love. I think Miller is right there. Grown up doesn’t need it, or shouldn’t need it, if the development had been sound (or what the appropriate word would be?).

But many of us didn’t get that upbringing, so many of us have problems with a lot of things not least when we get in love… Thinking loudly again.

A rotten system - or fortune…

videos with Paul Krugman.

What is fortune actually?

That money and ownership more and more lands in fewer and fewer hands is built into the economical system a person wrote in a Swedish paper today. What he wrote triggered this posting. And it was quite fun to add videos with Paul Krugman, whom I have read with lots of joy! :-) And I got quite happy he got the Nobel Prize!

A writer means that financial speculation is opposed to the market economy, which has to be built on real production of things people need (see about perverted needs, denial of needs).

Today 500 multinational groups of companies and their vice presidents are steering the world economy (the need for power? A need that never will become filled. This is about bottomless, unlimited needs). They decide over investments, patents, production, and distribution and so on. To a too high degree.

When companies become giants they become anonymous. Which makes space for individual directors or vice presidents to act unethically without (any) social responsibility. Thus the economical system leaves the field open for greediness and have-desires.

Fortune is lycka, levnadslott, förmögenhet in Swedish.

Avariciousness…

[Slightly edited October 1]. Quickly written after a long day at work: The Swedish leader-writer and priest Helle Klein writes in her blog that she thinks the economism gets both material and existential consequences.

She wonders how what’s now going on in the current financial crisis will end.

“The greediness digs its own grave – unfortunately many small-savers [??] are drawn with in this crisis.”

In a leader chronicle yesterday she writes about that “The Capitalism Destroys the Love.”

The Swedish debater and journalist Dan Josefsson said at the book-fair in Gothenburg recently that:

“Loneliness is a malignant tumour on our society.”

He and a psychotherapist have written a book together called something like “The Secrecy –from glance to lasting relation” (if we just "take ourselves in the collar" as we say here and become the clever girls and boys we will manage it!!! My interpretation from what I read about the book. Of course; all who haven't been so badly hurt will manage this, but those who were more badly treated... What about them?). Addition October 9: the home site for this book, see here.

In the book flood from this year’s fair (mass?) the need of help with relations appears. The human beings of today seem to have difficulties with the love –not with sex, kicks of happiness or enjoyment, but with lasting and deep relations.

Of 9 million people in Sweden 2, 5 million are living in one-person households. Over 1, 5 million of these have hardly any contact with their families. 200,000 say they don’t have any friends.

A lot of people call help-phones. All sorts of people are calling: young, old, people born in Sweden and abroad, men and women. Many carry a huge agony. The dismounting of the psychiatry is shown clearly. Other people are struggling with their addiction(s). Strikingly many women are drinking too much. But obviously many are merely alone. They have nobody to talk with. They are longing for connection beyond themselves.

Loneliness is the Western world’s big problem child. We have everything, but not. The affluence of things has to compensate for broken relations (but more and more people don’t have material things either, we are returning more and more to the class-society again).

However, all those offers of therapy, lifestyle coaching and self-realization say that we have to change ourselves, not the society * (the tendency to blame ourselves is strengthened! Very practical for the ones in power on all levels).

If one topic of conversation in our time is the loneliness, the other is the financial crisis. The bank system in USA is breaking down and the confidence for the societal economies is crashing.

The greediness, avariciousness has dug its own grave.

Maybe these two societal phenomena – the loneliness and the greediness - belong together?

“The capitalism is a condition in the world and in the soul”

Franz Kafka once claimed.

His provoking metaphor hold things together we use to hold apart – the economic and the existential aspects/things.

One of Klein’s teachers at the university, Per Frostin, once wrote an essay with the heading “The Capitalism Chokes the Love.”

He searched for the talk in society and church about the economism’s and consumism’s influence not only on the societal solidarity but also on our ability to maintain loving relations, enter into marriages and devote ourselves to family life.

This essay, published more than twenty years ago, feels more burning today than ever Klein thinks.

Our quarter-of-a-year-capitalism is not only a neoliberal economical system but also an ideology with a view on man which says: go in for, invest in yourself, and seek for the largest profit for your own sake.

Those ideals are the opposite of solidarity and love. The calculated egoism is breaking both the societal economies and human-between-relations down.

What has Alice Miller said about these things?? Is material things a substitute for other things? For instance love?

* In many circumstances quite moralistic - and not least unemphatic.

"I can - why can't you???"

Addition October 1: read this article too (in Swedish). And earlier posts on self-justification (the right to abuse?). And under the label moderators. See the blog Freakonomics on "In the Battle of the Sexes, Partians Outearn Peacemakers."

The American psychotherapist Jean Jenson writes that

"And the best is that the better our mental health becomes, the more we dissociate from power exercise and violence [in whatever form]."

And it was that with perverted needs and substitutes... Denial of needs "I don't need..." And as I don't have any needs I can't get hurt. And see the phenomenon divide and rule. Something we probably learned as children: siblings were played out against each other, more or less deliberately and/or consciously. A power-tool.

Read George Montbiot in "Congress Confronts its Contradictions."

How would we have reacted and resonated and how would the society and world have looked like if a sound development had occurred, i.e., if we had been truly and genuinely respectfully treated as very small kids and up? If more people had been? Because this kind of truly respectful (non-authoritarian) treatment is very rare?

A Swedish journalist said something about conservatism...

Arthur Silber wrote something interesting:

"When people say adults behave and think like children, what they more properly mean is that they behave and think like children who are profoundly damaged -- children who are already made emotionally numb by the typical kind of emotional abuse to which most children are subjected many times a day, children who have been forced to deny their own pain simply to survive, and who are therefore unable to grasp the pain of others. Most adults were once such children; one of the ways the damage reveals itself when they become adults is the denial described above... /.../

Many children believe that 'wishing will make it so,' just as they believe that there are no consequences for their actions that cannot be undone. But again, children who believe this are those children who are already damaged. Healthy children do not think in this manner. But most of us were greatly damaged as children, and most of us deny what ought to be unavoidable truths because we learned to do this in our earliest years of life./…/

…most Americans -- and our entire governing class and almost all commentators and bloggers -- refuse to grasp them. It is as if these ideas are written in a dead language. Certainly, the language is dead to them, for they have made themselves incapable of understanding it. To recognize a truth of this kind threatens the mechanism of denial that lies at the very center of their sense of themselves, at the very center of their identity. So the truth cannot be acknowledged.”

Voices in Sweden about the financial crisis and the state of affairs in the world…

the family Bonnier eating dinner.

[Slightly edited October 5, quite angrily written, so I wonder how my English was?]. Voices in Sweden about the financial crisis and the state of affairs in the world today: It has been about creating needs in a constantly, perpetually ascending spiral in societies all over the world. A have-mentality. But do we need to be slaves under consumption?

The bank bosses have gotten million bonuses and million parachutes.

The worst enemy to the finance and corporation world is contentedness.

Still the most important idea of business is to create needs and desires (or cravings) in a constantly ascending spiral. Nobody shall be satisfied.

Quite ironically: at the same time we are blamed for being too demanding!!! One of the contradictions and confusions again!?

It stood about the bourgeois’ scale of value and view on man. Are there people wanting to live outside their (the bourgeois’) conception of the world, in another world we think is possible a writer wonders?

Can the time come when having two cars will be seen as something embarrassing and not – as it is now – something enviable.

One writer writes that the modern “extortion”, with the help of media, advertisement, pr-consults, lifestyle-agents and trademarks, forces a lifestyle on people that has shown to be deeply destructive, but all this is (or could be, even if I think it is difficult, with all the pressure around) something one can do something about oneself, in contrast to the wage-slavery during the former turn of the century.

In the middle of this I saw that tonight (or tomorrow, I didn’t look properly) they are sending a new version of “Let’s dance”, this time the competitors are learning to dance on ice (with skates!!). Yes, this is what people are entertained with…

One can rebel against oneself and ones own have-desire, the desire you have been enticed into. You can start to grin at medias holding up the rich as models and idols (as even the newspaper ICA-kuriren here in Sweden started to a couple of years ago, and then I unsubscribed); the same medias who have been worshiping the finance-men and managers whom now have thrown the world into crisis. Haven’t they “forfeited their pound”?

No, they need to make even worse things?? But people lower on the status-scale failing aren't apologized, sometimes at all. Yes, people are treated differently, depending on their status, where on the scale they stand. What about people's equal value only seen to the fact that they are born to this world? Quite ironically. And others get ashamed for much smaller "crimes”!! That about proportions…

This obsession with the rich and successful, supplied by the media, doesn’t it all of a sudden feel incredibly out-of-date?

One person here writes about (not least) a moral fiasco for Bush, for a politics that has failed so much and in so many areas.

Does the free market actually function? Isn’t it ruled by a few actors actually?

One writer thinks it would be honorable if the ones analyzing the finance-capital as a positive, creative power in the economy some years ago (the written words are still there, and can be read even today), stating that the new global market with all its insurances and reinsurances is sound, could apologize for their analysis. Admit to what they wrote some years ago.

Or that they at least could search on the words “the economy’s ability to function” and get surprised over that they only a few years ago thought that a big welfare state and high taxes are checking for the (the economic, and overall) “growth.” Sweden and the Scandinavian countries are proofs that a big welfare state and quite high taxes aren't curbing for the economical growth? But our current government is now rapidly destroying this? (but the situation here hasn't made us lazy workers I think. We are, or have been, hard workers? And interested in other countries and phenomena in the world? Our society hasn't been a closed society, even if we have had social democratic, i.e., "left wing", government for long? But a government that has turned more and more to the right, yes!).

The most usual prevarication today is the statement that the problem is about “anonymous owners”, which means owners not steered by a steady “owner hand”, like the Wallenberg’s or Bonnier’s in Sweden.

People try to earn money on money, instead of investing them in our real lives.

The financial crisis isn’t an accident, but an element belonging to the capitalism.

It’s the taxpayers who have to pay for the speculators loans, instead of seeing their money going to school, care and nursing, or what it’s called in English. All those instances are forced aside by what the (many times well paid) speculators have done.

The ones winning on all this are the members in corporations’ managements, because the system makes so they get their bonuses and bizarre wages apart from the fact if the businesses goes well or not.

It’s a myth that the market is stable; the ones winning on these situations are those living on the differences in prizes, so what’s happening isn’t an accident.

How can one interpret our current finance minister saying that the world economy is influenced by “raw avariciousness”?

Can there be two comments to this?

1/ He is an eager supporter of market economy and this statement only reinforces the myth that this ought not to happen, that the crisis has nothing to do with the system itself.

2/ On top of it he individualizes the problem. He says that the speculators are greedy in the same manner as he says that the ones with no job are lazy!

What we see now is a saving-action for the capitalism. There is no movement which can take over. What’s so dangerous about our time is that there is no strong worker’s movement, and this increases the risk somebody else takes over, in the worst case the fascism.

See the American neurologist Jonathan Pincus on his findings, and further about perversion and perverted needs.

Texts I have used in this posting you find here.