So why did the female teachers in my Primary School stand by and do nothing?
We can example this to try to understand why people in all sorts of situations allow bullying. I think the fact that in this case they were women probably bears testimony to the era, yet still today are women disempowered in relation to men even though women have claimed respect in the intervening decades. But, in a sense, as we have discussed often in this blog, it is not so much "who", a woman or whomsoever, finds themselves subordinate in any given situation, it is simply the imbalance of power. I suppose it does a disservice to victims if I say that victims allow themselves to be bullied, but really in stark reality it is weakness that gives a green light to bullies. This is why children are in this position by default with adults, as are the elderly. But of course the fact that one is a timorous individual or non-confrontational, should not legitimise bullying behaviour, yet bullies, by their nature, are not going to restrain themselves on account of the virtues of others around them. Certainly not ! Bullies are parasitic upon weakness.
So, let`s go back to our two female teachers who egregiously let a sadist victimise two children of about 7 or 8 years old. ..... Well, to begin with, one of them was the man`s wife, so let`s take a look at her: as his wife she would have needs to try to maintain a good relationship with her husband. Her vested interest in her marriage would certainly take primacy over the protection of two children. How could she rail against him publicly? Undoubtedly his wrath would be vented upon her, either at that point, or in private. It may have caused a marriage breakup or at least strife for many days. Personally I would think, his wife being a mild little person, that she would be living her life with this man as someone she had to comply with,his being the Headmaster compounded this.
And of the other woman? Well, she had children in the school as well as having a good job near to home. I would imagine that to make a stand upon a matter such as this would have lead to her dismissal, personal upset and inconvenience. Given this, I would say that her intervention would be "impossible".
So these two individuals, in passive complicity with this bully, had more at stake personally than would rouse them to defend two small, terrified children. Doesn`t this perfectly explain how it is that we all can have such fears that we can become accomplices to the bullies around us? The pay-back is just too serious for us, so we let things go whilst knowing that what we see is immoral. I have certainly done this myself, though I`ll let myself off the hook in regard to not protesting at injustices in my school days !
"Good people stand by and do nothing." Well, of course this is not always the case, but it is often of personal risk to help a victim, and good people tend to have less courage because they are much less "in the animal" than the people they are up against. Often, good people have a more dominant sensitive side, are not so confrontational or aggressive, and find animal competitiveness unsavory.
What do we do then, when we know that we have turned a blind eye to something like this? I don`t know how these two women tried to square it with their consciences because I have never talked to them about it.(Suffice it to say that this incident, cited, was one of a catalogue of abuses...) I can only shrewdly surmise that the compartmental conscience would kick in with excuses such as "we were powerless to stop it", or maybe blaming the children,"if they had been honest and had confessed, this would not have happened", or a classic guilt avoidance would be to tell yourself that it wasn`t really as bad as you thought at the time ! Any or all of these things would enable these two teachers to continue their lives without conscience, the crime paling in their minds with every year that passed.
Of course, when people do make a stand, with any moral imperative, there has to be real courage. I am lucky (wow! what a thing to say!) that my father was a serious and sadistic bully and my mother a meek and well mannered person. Lucky?????? Am I mad, you might be thinking!!! No I am not mad, I can reassure you, it`s just that given that all of my childhood is unchangeable, I feel so privileged that I can analyse the crime scene (my home) of my father`s bullying, knowing all the background affecting the game-play. Just as I can understand as a witness the animal behaviours in my Primary School.
I`m coming back to this. Please chip in if you feel inclined !!! Let me know if you know of instances of bullying and where you have assessed the vested interest of people to not help the victim..."Protect those more powerful than you for your own sake" is the animal game.
Please see back to my other blogs titled: "Classrooms: Survival of the Fittest. "
Showing posts with label child abuse. Show all posts
Showing posts with label child abuse. Show all posts
Saturday, 14 August 2010
Saturday, 24 April 2010
Classrooms: Survival of the Fittest, 2.
Despite efforts to prevent bullying, to help all children keep up with the others, our biological selves can be pulling in the opposite direction. A classic example of this would be our desire to eradicate bullying, not insincere, of course, yet we struggle to prevent it at the same time as we use default strategies to enable it. Sounds strange, I know, but throughout society we do this. We endorse systems that create victims and punish our vulnerable, whilst trumpeting equal rights or humane treatment or protection for victims.
In the case of classroom teaching, all teachers know that a percentage of kids are falling off the pace in class. What happens is that they can`t help them catch up so they attend to the conforming majority and leave the runts behind. The word "runt" here shows us exactly what is happening: just as a weak animal will be abandoned in nature, maybe the runt will be unable to fight for it`s mothers milk, so this same natural selection process happens in class.
I call this a runting process. It`s a harsh and uncomfortable term, but one I want to use because it shines a wake-up light on the biological forces that are so destructive in our societies. The classroom, in general terms, is a classic runting process. The teacher likes the stronger kids, the ones who cooperate and make his life easy. He doesn` t like the less able ones who hold everyone back and disrupt things....even the imaginative,free-thinking, challenging child is often not wanted.
What happens, of course, in this runting process, is that the adaptable, let`s call them "conjunct" children, do better and better and the ones who have difficulty become more and more disjunct. The tragedy of this is for all to see: the kids who fall by the wayside, become more and more disabled as they fall, less and less "deserving" help and less receptive too. They are like our social misfits, tramps, alcoholics, beyond help, disillusioned and hopeless. Probably by this time too, the process has made them hate learning and hate themselves. ......Okay, so let`s just remember here that this didn`t just happen, no less so than a tsunami is a spontaneous act of God !!! It has been CREATED, just like the witch hunts that we were discussing in my previous blog, disaffected children are CREATED by us. The classroom does this to kids. (N.B. I intend to look at illness in regard to the need to runt people in our society, including A.D.H.D., at a later date.)
Isn`t this a terrible thing, you might say? Well, of course it is. The way we strive and thrive against others can have terrible consequences, but I think that if we can be aware of what we do,understanding might help us to make things better.
I want to just go back to bullying in schools before I leave this blog for today...We talked about "evidence" for the case of our cosmetic good intentions versus our underlying biological drives... I have just said that the level of failed children in our education system demonstrates how we profess to want education for all, yet use a system that we know will create failure on a large scale for some. This is a sign of contrary intentions and our mainstream blindness to it shows how we allow our other nature to override our intelligence, I think. So, let`s just look at the way we strive to deal with bullying and see whether there is a confusion of intention here too:
For many children who are bullied in school, there is not the "expected" outcome. The school doesn`t deal with the bullies, doesn`t uphold the bullied child, whilst on the surface they proclaim that they have a "robust anti-bullying policy" or that "no child is bullied in our school." Yet many parents pull their children out of school because of unresolved bullying. Curious! Many G.Ps will not support parents in protecting their child because they do not want to go against the school or the L.E.A., and there is often an outcome that sees the child having to have counselling or even medication to "treat" the psychological damage caused by bullying. So here is an example of how we think that we are on one side, yet are really on the other. Schools, despite a cosmetic stance against bullying, will often be more at ease with an outcome that sees a bullied child having to have counselling or take medication, rather than dealing with bullies. This is a "make the victim mad" strategy seen in the game-play of groups.
Why does this happen?
I am on the back-boiler until my next blog! Please tune in for the sequel !!!!!! Very Best Wishes to all !!!!
www.home-education.org.uk/family-rights.htm
www.parentsagainstinjustice.org.uk/
www.gutandpsychologysyndrome.com/
In the case of classroom teaching, all teachers know that a percentage of kids are falling off the pace in class. What happens is that they can`t help them catch up so they attend to the conforming majority and leave the runts behind. The word "runt" here shows us exactly what is happening: just as a weak animal will be abandoned in nature, maybe the runt will be unable to fight for it`s mothers milk, so this same natural selection process happens in class.
I call this a runting process. It`s a harsh and uncomfortable term, but one I want to use because it shines a wake-up light on the biological forces that are so destructive in our societies. The classroom, in general terms, is a classic runting process. The teacher likes the stronger kids, the ones who cooperate and make his life easy. He doesn` t like the less able ones who hold everyone back and disrupt things....even the imaginative,free-thinking, challenging child is often not wanted.
What happens, of course, in this runting process, is that the adaptable, let`s call them "conjunct" children, do better and better and the ones who have difficulty become more and more disjunct. The tragedy of this is for all to see: the kids who fall by the wayside, become more and more disabled as they fall, less and less "deserving" help and less receptive too. They are like our social misfits, tramps, alcoholics, beyond help, disillusioned and hopeless. Probably by this time too, the process has made them hate learning and hate themselves. ......Okay, so let`s just remember here that this didn`t just happen, no less so than a tsunami is a spontaneous act of God !!! It has been CREATED, just like the witch hunts that we were discussing in my previous blog, disaffected children are CREATED by us. The classroom does this to kids. (N.B. I intend to look at illness in regard to the need to runt people in our society, including A.D.H.D., at a later date.)
Isn`t this a terrible thing, you might say? Well, of course it is. The way we strive and thrive against others can have terrible consequences, but I think that if we can be aware of what we do,understanding might help us to make things better.
I want to just go back to bullying in schools before I leave this blog for today...We talked about "evidence" for the case of our cosmetic good intentions versus our underlying biological drives... I have just said that the level of failed children in our education system demonstrates how we profess to want education for all, yet use a system that we know will create failure on a large scale for some. This is a sign of contrary intentions and our mainstream blindness to it shows how we allow our other nature to override our intelligence, I think. So, let`s just look at the way we strive to deal with bullying and see whether there is a confusion of intention here too:
For many children who are bullied in school, there is not the "expected" outcome. The school doesn`t deal with the bullies, doesn`t uphold the bullied child, whilst on the surface they proclaim that they have a "robust anti-bullying policy" or that "no child is bullied in our school." Yet many parents pull their children out of school because of unresolved bullying. Curious! Many G.Ps will not support parents in protecting their child because they do not want to go against the school or the L.E.A., and there is often an outcome that sees the child having to have counselling or even medication to "treat" the psychological damage caused by bullying. So here is an example of how we think that we are on one side, yet are really on the other. Schools, despite a cosmetic stance against bullying, will often be more at ease with an outcome that sees a bullied child having to have counselling or take medication, rather than dealing with bullies. This is a "make the victim mad" strategy seen in the game-play of groups.
Why does this happen?
I am on the back-boiler until my next blog! Please tune in for the sequel !!!!!! Very Best Wishes to all !!!!
www.home-education.org.uk/family-rights.htm
www.parentsagainstinjustice.org.uk/
www.gutandpsychologysyndrome.com/
Thursday, 25 March 2010
Catholic Priests
With the Pope`s apology this week for the abuse of children by priests, I am going to attempt to delve into this issue.
I feel that the central issue to this problem is celibacy. That is not to say that I believe that celibacy in itself causes child abuse, it just attracts men with the kinds of problems that can result in child abuse and magnifies those problems. Take away celibacy and the numbers of child abuse cases would surely diminish to expected levels we see in other members of the clergy. Why does celibacy illicit abuse of children on the scale that is apparent in the Catholic church ? Let`s take a look:
I think that we should begin by looking at people, whatever gender, who want to enter any religion as a priest (or equivalent)... Most of us want approval, positive regard, we want to be acknowledged for our good actions, and those of us with significant need to feel good about ourselves and gain approval, may opt to become a priest. There`s nothing wrong in this, of course, with this motivation, it`s a "calling" to our better nature and our aspirational goodness. Of course, part of this has to do with our pack instinct to lead and to command, but within this, many gravitate to a religious profession for positive reasons.
In the case of some of us, however, our need to have power over others, to DISPLAY our goodness for all to see, makes religious position an attractive thing for all the wrong reasons. I have personally seen, in Judaism for example, that religious position is a tempting prospect for the power-driven and the egotistical. In any religion, though, there will be a full range of people, from the most humble and least self-interested and goodly, down to the devious and base characters, with a mix in between. But if there is one thing for sure, the highest caliber religious figures will be in a minority because the qualities that serve these spiritual heights are exceptional. Of those entering a religious profession as a priest or teacher, as well intentioned people seeking expansion of their spirituality and increased capacity in compassion and good deeds, most will remain ordinary and will not rise above this.
This is no less the case in the Catholic church, no less and no more, the only difference is that we have to factor-in the requirement of celibacy. Given that I have previously stated that only a few priests in any religion will reach the highest spiritual level, it becomes obvious that only a few Catholic priests will have the capacity to fulfil the vow of celibacy, such are its demands. There will be a sliding scale beneath this of priests who manage this moderately well, priests who fall from grace, but regain their position and, given the special difficulties with the celibacy issue, many who will not only fail to maintain their vows, but will be in an aggravated state due to their sexual abstentions, in other words, due to the very struggle with celibacy itself.
To elucidate this further: for a Catholic priest to struggle with a requirement that is not within his capacity to achieve, is a recipe for child abuse.
I think though, that this is not the entire picture: the romance, if I can call it that, of religious celibacy, is a seduction for men with existing sexual problems. For these men it offers a "cure", in the sense that if they already have sexual tendencies that they feel are guilt-laden, perhaps are deviant, seeking refuge in celibacy will seem like a possible solution, as a way of making them good people on a road to purity.
The plain fact is that the Catholic priesthood will be likely to magnetise men with sexual problems because most normal men would not entertain the idea of celibacy, and most would not achieve it, i.e.in terms of numbers, there will not be the numbers of men who have a normal sex-drive wanting to become priests, as those with sexual problems. But further, I believe that a man with preexisting sexual difficulties, whatever those may be...that is, even if they aren`t around homosexuality, will have his difficulties exacerbated, will be in a more suspect psychological state, and therefore more likely to find SOME kind of sexual outlet, when they strive to be celibate.
Coming soon, more, on the coverup !!!!!!!!!!!!
I feel that the central issue to this problem is celibacy. That is not to say that I believe that celibacy in itself causes child abuse, it just attracts men with the kinds of problems that can result in child abuse and magnifies those problems. Take away celibacy and the numbers of child abuse cases would surely diminish to expected levels we see in other members of the clergy. Why does celibacy illicit abuse of children on the scale that is apparent in the Catholic church ? Let`s take a look:
I think that we should begin by looking at people, whatever gender, who want to enter any religion as a priest (or equivalent)... Most of us want approval, positive regard, we want to be acknowledged for our good actions, and those of us with significant need to feel good about ourselves and gain approval, may opt to become a priest. There`s nothing wrong in this, of course, with this motivation, it`s a "calling" to our better nature and our aspirational goodness. Of course, part of this has to do with our pack instinct to lead and to command, but within this, many gravitate to a religious profession for positive reasons.
In the case of some of us, however, our need to have power over others, to DISPLAY our goodness for all to see, makes religious position an attractive thing for all the wrong reasons. I have personally seen, in Judaism for example, that religious position is a tempting prospect for the power-driven and the egotistical. In any religion, though, there will be a full range of people, from the most humble and least self-interested and goodly, down to the devious and base characters, with a mix in between. But if there is one thing for sure, the highest caliber religious figures will be in a minority because the qualities that serve these spiritual heights are exceptional. Of those entering a religious profession as a priest or teacher, as well intentioned people seeking expansion of their spirituality and increased capacity in compassion and good deeds, most will remain ordinary and will not rise above this.
This is no less the case in the Catholic church, no less and no more, the only difference is that we have to factor-in the requirement of celibacy. Given that I have previously stated that only a few priests in any religion will reach the highest spiritual level, it becomes obvious that only a few Catholic priests will have the capacity to fulfil the vow of celibacy, such are its demands. There will be a sliding scale beneath this of priests who manage this moderately well, priests who fall from grace, but regain their position and, given the special difficulties with the celibacy issue, many who will not only fail to maintain their vows, but will be in an aggravated state due to their sexual abstentions, in other words, due to the very struggle with celibacy itself.
To elucidate this further: for a Catholic priest to struggle with a requirement that is not within his capacity to achieve, is a recipe for child abuse.
I think though, that this is not the entire picture: the romance, if I can call it that, of religious celibacy, is a seduction for men with existing sexual problems. For these men it offers a "cure", in the sense that if they already have sexual tendencies that they feel are guilt-laden, perhaps are deviant, seeking refuge in celibacy will seem like a possible solution, as a way of making them good people on a road to purity.
The plain fact is that the Catholic priesthood will be likely to magnetise men with sexual problems because most normal men would not entertain the idea of celibacy, and most would not achieve it, i.e.in terms of numbers, there will not be the numbers of men who have a normal sex-drive wanting to become priests, as those with sexual problems. But further, I believe that a man with preexisting sexual difficulties, whatever those may be...that is, even if they aren`t around homosexuality, will have his difficulties exacerbated, will be in a more suspect psychological state, and therefore more likely to find SOME kind of sexual outlet, when they strive to be celibate.
Coming soon, more, on the coverup !!!!!!!!!!!!
Tuesday, 16 March 2010
Crime: Child Upon Child, 2
So what is this fixation with punishment for acts deemed guilty?
I think that the idea that "guilt" should be punished is one of humankind`s long-needed primitive ideas and it is around us all, in our relationships, our societies, attitudes, culture and religion.
The problem is that we all grow up with the notion that acts that we regard as unacceptable, in society, in the home, or wherever we may be, should be punished. That the only way to curb unwanted behaviour is to threaten and deliver retribution.. Children learn this from parents, teachers try to enforce this in schools and society wants anything that is "not acceptable", punished. We seem to be so riddled with punishment as the only solution to unwanted behaviour, that we have to convince ourselves, somehow, that what we are doing is right. It`s as though all the officiousness, the trappings of protocol, the wealth and power of law, feed us with the idea that our justice system must indeed be just, since it is so invested with such esteemable structure.
When we consider the case of Venables and Thompson we, both as individuals and within the legal system, are very confused about what guilt is and what mitigations should be offered to those accused, and I think that this is one reason why we have a very shaky justice system (I mean "shaky" in the sense of morally confused). I really feel that since guilt is not something that is a universal, our system of punishment flounders from the start. What I mean is, we are dealing with issues of crime or misdemeanor with a wish to punish and yet we are not sure whether mitigation should play a part or not, in what circumstances, or upon whichever factor compels sympathy-value at any given time !!! The plain fact is that in a society that disadvantages large sections of the population, exculpation of guilt could be applied on a massive scale.
In the case of Venables and Thompson, there may be various mitigations that would make the purpose, or consequence of punishment, both unfeasible and immoral... Their age may be considered pre-competent or they may have learned aggressive and destructive behaviour that gives them a psychological condition of mental incompetence. However, though we all feel the deepest horror at the way Jamie Bulger was murdered, somehow the humanity of mitigation did not seem to play its hand in this case.
The age of deemed competence is 10 years old, yet I feel that the emotive weight of the Bulger murder denied Venables and Thompson proper, humane treatment. In other words, "the mob", society, was so incensed about Jamie Bulger`s murder (and who wouldn't be?) that our sense of rightfulness was swayed by animal-driven lex talionis. (I am mindful that these instincts for retribution were the very justifications for the American treatment of detainees at Guantanamo.)
My final thought here is, I think that our prosecuting two children in an adult court will be seen in the future as an act of serious cruelty, matching the emotional need for revenge for Jamie Bulger. And, in fact, this example of even our (primitive) justice system at work, shows us we are both confused about what we are doing and that our attachment to punishment has roots in our animal nature.
I feel that the measure of us as a society, as human beings, is represented............. just as the American Government represented itself in its conduct around the world when they sought revenge for the Twin Towers......... in the extent of our compassion at times of our own greatest suffering.
I think that the idea that "guilt" should be punished is one of humankind`s long-needed primitive ideas and it is around us all, in our relationships, our societies, attitudes, culture and religion.
The problem is that we all grow up with the notion that acts that we regard as unacceptable, in society, in the home, or wherever we may be, should be punished. That the only way to curb unwanted behaviour is to threaten and deliver retribution.. Children learn this from parents, teachers try to enforce this in schools and society wants anything that is "not acceptable", punished. We seem to be so riddled with punishment as the only solution to unwanted behaviour, that we have to convince ourselves, somehow, that what we are doing is right. It`s as though all the officiousness, the trappings of protocol, the wealth and power of law, feed us with the idea that our justice system must indeed be just, since it is so invested with such esteemable structure.
When we consider the case of Venables and Thompson we, both as individuals and within the legal system, are very confused about what guilt is and what mitigations should be offered to those accused, and I think that this is one reason why we have a very shaky justice system (I mean "shaky" in the sense of morally confused). I really feel that since guilt is not something that is a universal, our system of punishment flounders from the start. What I mean is, we are dealing with issues of crime or misdemeanor with a wish to punish and yet we are not sure whether mitigation should play a part or not, in what circumstances, or upon whichever factor compels sympathy-value at any given time !!! The plain fact is that in a society that disadvantages large sections of the population, exculpation of guilt could be applied on a massive scale.
In the case of Venables and Thompson, there may be various mitigations that would make the purpose, or consequence of punishment, both unfeasible and immoral... Their age may be considered pre-competent or they may have learned aggressive and destructive behaviour that gives them a psychological condition of mental incompetence. However, though we all feel the deepest horror at the way Jamie Bulger was murdered, somehow the humanity of mitigation did not seem to play its hand in this case.
The age of deemed competence is 10 years old, yet I feel that the emotive weight of the Bulger murder denied Venables and Thompson proper, humane treatment. In other words, "the mob", society, was so incensed about Jamie Bulger`s murder (and who wouldn't be?) that our sense of rightfulness was swayed by animal-driven lex talionis. (I am mindful that these instincts for retribution were the very justifications for the American treatment of detainees at Guantanamo.)
My final thought here is, I think that our prosecuting two children in an adult court will be seen in the future as an act of serious cruelty, matching the emotional need for revenge for Jamie Bulger. And, in fact, this example of even our (primitive) justice system at work, shows us we are both confused about what we are doing and that our attachment to punishment has roots in our animal nature.
I feel that the measure of us as a society, as human beings, is represented............. just as the American Government represented itself in its conduct around the world when they sought revenge for the Twin Towers......... in the extent of our compassion at times of our own greatest suffering.
Crime: Child upon Child.
I am coming to this blog this week upon the news that Jon Venables has been taken back into custody. (You will know that Jon Venables and Robert Thompson were convicted of the Jamie Bulger murder.) There has been much ensuing speculation about the case around all the issues: Should Venables and Thompson have been tried at all, given their age? Should they have been released after so few years? Does rehabilitation really work?....and many more facets to this deeply problematic issue.
Because we are faced with such complexities here, I want to take a look at what we think criminal justice is and how it relates to our perception of what is just, if it does at all. I want to tease apart some of the elements of the very quality of being just and ask some penetrating questions about our purpose in seeking retribution. It`s so big a question though, that I may have to extend to two blogs !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Let`s look at the criminal justice system:
The justice system acts upon laws according to prescribed principles based upon what is accepted as criminal or just in any particular society. It metes out punishment deemed appropriate to a crime. Within this system of punishment, there may be a consideration of fairness, proportionality, and various mitigations, but essentially criminal justice is retribution exerted upon the guilty.
But what constitutes guilt and does its changeable nature cause us to confuse our purpose when we deal with it ? After all, a person is not intrinsically guilty, they are only guilty by the attribution of guilt leveled at them by the society or people around them, and the extent of their culpability is adjudged by the hands of subjective compassion.
Let`s look at guilt: Of course, guilt is man-made, it is something that changes from one culture to another, one circumstance to another, one era to another and even one jury to another. It is not something that is fixed universally and certainly is not dispensed fairly, however we might wish it to be. Guilt depends upon the perception of the observer, individually or collectively, and punishment is resultant upon the power that observers have over the person deemed to be guilty. The end result is a changeable subjectivity.
Of course, knowing that guilt has to do with power brings another dimension to our understanding. If the very attribution of guilt is about the power, status, social position, majority, group-think, of the accusers, it tells us that society makes laws according to animal/biological motives. This is quite a shock to us, I think, because we tend to think that it is about such noble ends as "right and wrong" and creating a civilised and safe society for us all, but when we look closely we see the curious fact that the law seems to penalise more of our disadvantaged classes than would make its purpose quite so altruistic.
Well, the law, demonstrably, doesn`t always encompass "right and wrong", it claims criminality over selective acts that are practicable to enforce and are of majority, or most powerful, opinion. This means that, for example, it is not a criminal act to commit adultery, it is not illegal to punish children, nor is it illegal to be homosexual, but if mass opinion should change, as fickle as fashion, these things could become punishable by law. When we consider if the law is about power over others... and not about right and wrong.... we see, with at least an uncomfortable suspicion, that the penal system is full of disadvantaged classes, men who have grown up without fathers, drug users, the mentally ill and women who are well used to being victims. Strange isn`t it?
I`d like to ask, are we really comfortable with punishing people for the crimes they commit, even if those crimes reflect their social background? Is someone really deserving of punishment if they come from a broken home, a drug ridden social environment or have been drawn into gang culture because gangs control their neighbourhood? And are we not responsible if we do little or nothing to make social change? With this thought, everyone has a mitigation when it comes down to it: a child has an incomplete comprehension of their position, someone from a deprived background has a rooted mindset that propels their actions, even someone well off financially who becomes a thief, is the victim of their own greed, insecurities or one-upmanship-drive. A persons psycho-social makeup causes them to commit criminal acts and this is all part of our insider/outsider, inclusivity/exclusivity, group structure. In plain language: we, as a society, create the victims around us and we punish them for it, to boot.
Continued in my next blog.......
Because we are faced with such complexities here, I want to take a look at what we think criminal justice is and how it relates to our perception of what is just, if it does at all. I want to tease apart some of the elements of the very quality of being just and ask some penetrating questions about our purpose in seeking retribution. It`s so big a question though, that I may have to extend to two blogs !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Let`s look at the criminal justice system:
The justice system acts upon laws according to prescribed principles based upon what is accepted as criminal or just in any particular society. It metes out punishment deemed appropriate to a crime. Within this system of punishment, there may be a consideration of fairness, proportionality, and various mitigations, but essentially criminal justice is retribution exerted upon the guilty.
But what constitutes guilt and does its changeable nature cause us to confuse our purpose when we deal with it ? After all, a person is not intrinsically guilty, they are only guilty by the attribution of guilt leveled at them by the society or people around them, and the extent of their culpability is adjudged by the hands of subjective compassion.
Let`s look at guilt: Of course, guilt is man-made, it is something that changes from one culture to another, one circumstance to another, one era to another and even one jury to another. It is not something that is fixed universally and certainly is not dispensed fairly, however we might wish it to be. Guilt depends upon the perception of the observer, individually or collectively, and punishment is resultant upon the power that observers have over the person deemed to be guilty. The end result is a changeable subjectivity.
Of course, knowing that guilt has to do with power brings another dimension to our understanding. If the very attribution of guilt is about the power, status, social position, majority, group-think, of the accusers, it tells us that society makes laws according to animal/biological motives. This is quite a shock to us, I think, because we tend to think that it is about such noble ends as "right and wrong" and creating a civilised and safe society for us all, but when we look closely we see the curious fact that the law seems to penalise more of our disadvantaged classes than would make its purpose quite so altruistic.
Well, the law, demonstrably, doesn`t always encompass "right and wrong", it claims criminality over selective acts that are practicable to enforce and are of majority, or most powerful, opinion. This means that, for example, it is not a criminal act to commit adultery, it is not illegal to punish children, nor is it illegal to be homosexual, but if mass opinion should change, as fickle as fashion, these things could become punishable by law. When we consider if the law is about power over others... and not about right and wrong.... we see, with at least an uncomfortable suspicion, that the penal system is full of disadvantaged classes, men who have grown up without fathers, drug users, the mentally ill and women who are well used to being victims. Strange isn`t it?
I`d like to ask, are we really comfortable with punishing people for the crimes they commit, even if those crimes reflect their social background? Is someone really deserving of punishment if they come from a broken home, a drug ridden social environment or have been drawn into gang culture because gangs control their neighbourhood? And are we not responsible if we do little or nothing to make social change? With this thought, everyone has a mitigation when it comes down to it: a child has an incomplete comprehension of their position, someone from a deprived background has a rooted mindset that propels their actions, even someone well off financially who becomes a thief, is the victim of their own greed, insecurities or one-upmanship-drive. A persons psycho-social makeup causes them to commit criminal acts and this is all part of our insider/outsider, inclusivity/exclusivity, group structure. In plain language: we, as a society, create the victims around us and we punish them for it, to boot.
Continued in my next blog.......
Friday, 5 February 2010
Socially Acceptable Forms of Child Abuse.
After talking to a friend about the way his teenage son is treated by his ex wife, I feel so strongly that I must set out some thoughts here...
Let`s extend this into a general case: A boy is failing in school, is tending towards unwanted behaviour and is evidently unhappy. He lives with his mother who grew up in an abusive family and we find that she exerts the same kind of behaviour upon her son,systematically, as was inflicted upon her when she was growing up.
The boy`s personal possessions, including a computer, have been taken away by his mother as a punishment. He then is anxious for his father to get him a sophisticated mobile phone. We surmise correctly that he wants this phone to raise his self worth materially, since he has been dispossessed of material parts of him by his mother.
How do we analyse this situation?
Well, firstly, it is typical that children who are abused in any way learn this behaviour and may inflict it on others when they grow up, particularly on their own children. As we talked about before, a mode of relationship is learned and then enacted. If children learn that relationships are about power and punishment they will certainly often do this to others, by instinct.
So why don`t adults think about the way they were treated, how it felt, their unhappiness, and steer their own behaviour away from the example of their parents? Well, of course many do, where they have the ability, intelligence or just sensitivity,to reflect and to delete these destructive behaviours. But not all adults have the facility to do this and they blindly go on just as their parents did, causing hurt and humiliation and permanent damage in their own children. What is more, they are so caught in this acquired behaviour that they do not realise that they are causing the very aberrant behaviour that they are punishing their child for. What is actually happening is that the parent, the mother in this case, is disrespecting her child so much that she is creating an unhappy, disaffected and depressed child who behaves badly out of a depressed sense of self protection. Moreover, not only does the child find it difficult to function against a wall of negativity, but actually being disruptive and failing academically becomes both a weapon of self defence and, perversely, a twisted gesture of "love" for the parent: the child is being the way the parent wants him to be. He loves his mother and, unconsciously, pleases her by taking this role.
Just a minute you might say, what are we saying? Well, it`s hard to believe, but the child, in a sense, fulfils the "wishes" of the parent in his need to fight back. What? "The wishes of the parent"? Surely we are not saying that a parent who is angry with a child for being a failure or for being naughty, actually wants the child to be this way? Well, yes, in an unconscious way they do. ... and this is why:
The parent grew up in a family where love was supplanted by bullying, so that the only "love" she knew was a bully- victim kind of love. We all experience "love" relative to what kind of treatment we received when we were small children. If it was nurturing and kind and accommodating, that is what we feel is love, if it was bullying and punishing and based upon a bully-victim polarity, then that is what we know as "love". We can then go on to replicate this precisely in our adult relationships.
In our general example, the mother, unwittingly enough, is reproducing the kind of relationship that is familiar to her from her early years...and in that sense is safe and comfortable with it..... She diminishes her son and creates a victim whom she can blame for bad behaviour, just as her parent/s performed a guilt-shift on her for precisely the same reasons. This time, however, she is the bully and HER child is the victim. And this is why this unconsciously manipulated drama is attractive to her: When she was a child, she was the victim, humiliated, powerless, with a screaming soul unable to find release, now HER release from her prison is her own child, who symbiotically enables her some peace by "allowing" her to switch roles.
When a parent humiliates a child, systematically, in this case by invading him and stripping away all his self worth and the precious territory of his personhood, this is psychological rape. It inflicts the same pain and humiliation as a physical rape and does the same kind of mental damage. Just as in rape as we know it, it is difficult for a person to recover from such violation, the damage of psychological rape is hard to heal, particularly since this kind of damage isn`t so apparent to observers.
Taking away these possessions, things that are extensions of, symbols of, a child's core being, is a power message to the child that says that every bit of them is owned and controlled by the parent. There is nowhere for them to go, not even in their own mental space. Just like in physical rape, the parent penetrates the child with sadistic vigour and relishes the power they have over them. The message is you cannot run, you have to submit, and if you fight me I will destroy you until I win; I will even destroy you with your own fight-back. This strategy is very sophisticated, so much so that the instinct of the mother puppets the child into behaving badly so that he even despises himself right into his inner being. As this scenario plays out, the child behaves more and more badly and the mother tightens her purpose. She "knows" that the child will take her negative regard for him into himself and will have an enemy within as well as without, just like has happened to her. Ultimately, the self-injury that is failure and bad behaviour may turn to more disturbed self harm. You see, the mother has a tendency to self harm.
This is unconscious psychological warfare, it is a subtle and deeply pathological game. Ultimately......and not all kids are going to be totally broken by this insidious game, I hasten to add, ultimately, the parent needs to murder the child from within. This is why degradation is so important and bad behaviour is elicited: As every agent of psychological torture knows, you must destroy the person on the outside with all manner of demeaning tactics, in order to destroy them on the inside. The unconscious aim is to turn the victim in upon himself so that even he feels himself to be a bad person. Then you have won.
As a digression, I just want to mention that I am mindful of a book I read that made a very deep impression upon me: "The Stolen Child" by Keith Donohue.......... The tragedy of the story is that hobgoblins who live in a forest, who were once abducted children, watch and wait and study children in our world until a time when they can substitute themselves for a child they abduct. Only when they can steal another child can they achieve the freedom to go back into the world themselves as real children in a normal family. The emotional pain for me in reading this book, was that one child`s pain could only be assuaged by inflicting the same pain upon another child. You get my point I am sure, the situation we are discussing in this blog is in part one person`s pain, the parent, being released by the infliction of pain upon another, the child.
Well, this is how bullying is inherited and why many adults need to bully in order help themselves. Instead of them as children being the victim, the guilty one, they make someone else guilty instead.
In my next blog I want to talk about this again and to address the question of what we do about the child in this terrible circumstance. How we look after him and try to prevent the mother creating a clone of her psychological make up and how we deal with socially permissible abuse.
Let`s extend this into a general case: A boy is failing in school, is tending towards unwanted behaviour and is evidently unhappy. He lives with his mother who grew up in an abusive family and we find that she exerts the same kind of behaviour upon her son,systematically, as was inflicted upon her when she was growing up.
The boy`s personal possessions, including a computer, have been taken away by his mother as a punishment. He then is anxious for his father to get him a sophisticated mobile phone. We surmise correctly that he wants this phone to raise his self worth materially, since he has been dispossessed of material parts of him by his mother.
How do we analyse this situation?
Well, firstly, it is typical that children who are abused in any way learn this behaviour and may inflict it on others when they grow up, particularly on their own children. As we talked about before, a mode of relationship is learned and then enacted. If children learn that relationships are about power and punishment they will certainly often do this to others, by instinct.
So why don`t adults think about the way they were treated, how it felt, their unhappiness, and steer their own behaviour away from the example of their parents? Well, of course many do, where they have the ability, intelligence or just sensitivity,to reflect and to delete these destructive behaviours. But not all adults have the facility to do this and they blindly go on just as their parents did, causing hurt and humiliation and permanent damage in their own children. What is more, they are so caught in this acquired behaviour that they do not realise that they are causing the very aberrant behaviour that they are punishing their child for. What is actually happening is that the parent, the mother in this case, is disrespecting her child so much that she is creating an unhappy, disaffected and depressed child who behaves badly out of a depressed sense of self protection. Moreover, not only does the child find it difficult to function against a wall of negativity, but actually being disruptive and failing academically becomes both a weapon of self defence and, perversely, a twisted gesture of "love" for the parent: the child is being the way the parent wants him to be. He loves his mother and, unconsciously, pleases her by taking this role.
Just a minute you might say, what are we saying? Well, it`s hard to believe, but the child, in a sense, fulfils the "wishes" of the parent in his need to fight back. What? "The wishes of the parent"? Surely we are not saying that a parent who is angry with a child for being a failure or for being naughty, actually wants the child to be this way? Well, yes, in an unconscious way they do. ... and this is why:
The parent grew up in a family where love was supplanted by bullying, so that the only "love" she knew was a bully- victim kind of love. We all experience "love" relative to what kind of treatment we received when we were small children. If it was nurturing and kind and accommodating, that is what we feel is love, if it was bullying and punishing and based upon a bully-victim polarity, then that is what we know as "love". We can then go on to replicate this precisely in our adult relationships.
In our general example, the mother, unwittingly enough, is reproducing the kind of relationship that is familiar to her from her early years...and in that sense is safe and comfortable with it..... She diminishes her son and creates a victim whom she can blame for bad behaviour, just as her parent/s performed a guilt-shift on her for precisely the same reasons. This time, however, she is the bully and HER child is the victim. And this is why this unconsciously manipulated drama is attractive to her: When she was a child, she was the victim, humiliated, powerless, with a screaming soul unable to find release, now HER release from her prison is her own child, who symbiotically enables her some peace by "allowing" her to switch roles.
When a parent humiliates a child, systematically, in this case by invading him and stripping away all his self worth and the precious territory of his personhood, this is psychological rape. It inflicts the same pain and humiliation as a physical rape and does the same kind of mental damage. Just as in rape as we know it, it is difficult for a person to recover from such violation, the damage of psychological rape is hard to heal, particularly since this kind of damage isn`t so apparent to observers.
Taking away these possessions, things that are extensions of, symbols of, a child's core being, is a power message to the child that says that every bit of them is owned and controlled by the parent. There is nowhere for them to go, not even in their own mental space. Just like in physical rape, the parent penetrates the child with sadistic vigour and relishes the power they have over them. The message is you cannot run, you have to submit, and if you fight me I will destroy you until I win; I will even destroy you with your own fight-back. This strategy is very sophisticated, so much so that the instinct of the mother puppets the child into behaving badly so that he even despises himself right into his inner being. As this scenario plays out, the child behaves more and more badly and the mother tightens her purpose. She "knows" that the child will take her negative regard for him into himself and will have an enemy within as well as without, just like has happened to her. Ultimately, the self-injury that is failure and bad behaviour may turn to more disturbed self harm. You see, the mother has a tendency to self harm.
This is unconscious psychological warfare, it is a subtle and deeply pathological game. Ultimately......and not all kids are going to be totally broken by this insidious game, I hasten to add, ultimately, the parent needs to murder the child from within. This is why degradation is so important and bad behaviour is elicited: As every agent of psychological torture knows, you must destroy the person on the outside with all manner of demeaning tactics, in order to destroy them on the inside. The unconscious aim is to turn the victim in upon himself so that even he feels himself to be a bad person. Then you have won.
As a digression, I just want to mention that I am mindful of a book I read that made a very deep impression upon me: "The Stolen Child" by Keith Donohue.......... The tragedy of the story is that hobgoblins who live in a forest, who were once abducted children, watch and wait and study children in our world until a time when they can substitute themselves for a child they abduct. Only when they can steal another child can they achieve the freedom to go back into the world themselves as real children in a normal family. The emotional pain for me in reading this book, was that one child`s pain could only be assuaged by inflicting the same pain upon another child. You get my point I am sure, the situation we are discussing in this blog is in part one person`s pain, the parent, being released by the infliction of pain upon another, the child.
Well, this is how bullying is inherited and why many adults need to bully in order help themselves. Instead of them as children being the victim, the guilty one, they make someone else guilty instead.
In my next blog I want to talk about this again and to address the question of what we do about the child in this terrible circumstance. How we look after him and try to prevent the mother creating a clone of her psychological make up and how we deal with socially permissible abuse.
Sunday, 29 November 2009
Errors of Perception.
We look out from our position of "self" and take what we see as concrete knowledge of our surroundings and our relationships. Indeed, without assumptions about our environment and the cues we receive from the people around us, it would be very difficult to function at all. We live by core perceptions that hold us together and we modify and change elements around these constants, as necessary.
But sometimes these perceptions are incorrect, we make mistakes, and there are consequences for us and for those around us.I am particularly interested in how and why we make assumptions in regard to the society we experience and our inter-personal relationships and how this impacts on our lives and on society too.
My blogs are an attempt to think about these issues and to try to understand the hidden forces at work in our everyday lives with an eye to fairness and right and justice.
We can understand why there is prejudice or injustice, violence or immorality, but these are not just the "dark side" of our better selves, they emanate from the same source,our human nature.I hope that trying to understand these elements of our functioning self will help us to mitigate the affects of destructive impulses in a constructive sense, but, if only to calm our frustrations and our feelings of defencelessness, thinking this through is eminently worthwhile. In common parlance this is termed "self help" !!!!!
Let`s take an example:
We have seen via the media that social workers have made mistakes when assessing
cases involving children. Some cases of child abuse have been missed, but conversely we know that some cases have been imagined where no abuse is present. How can this happen?
There are two main influences here, the personal, where our personal psychological baggage influences the things we think we perceive, and the group, the part we play in a group dynamic with the people around us.
Now, we might assume that professionals are trained to be objective and have certain criteria by which to ascertain whether there is child abuse or not. We can see here how we immediately follow our acquired assumption that "professionalism" is a safeguard towards correct, unbiased and non-subjective discernment. But the professional process is only dictated by the people who contrive these methods, and the processes and those people are subject to their own personal baggage and their own group position as well!
Let`s take a very ordinary experience: We walk down the street and as we go we assess, as part of an unconscious process, who is a threat and who is not. This assessment is almost instantaneous , we have little control over it and yet it informs us as if it were knowledge and not just a response to all our cues. We certainly do not feel we are hijacked by irrational baggage !!!
So what are these cues and where do they come from?
Well, we carry reflex responses old and new, autonomic fears coming from our development as a species, biological drives, inherited cues from our parents and family and of course cues arising from our own experiences. We also acquire new cues all the time, from people around us and from the media.
Personal Cues:
When a social worker goes to assess a family, they may be trained to be objective, but they are unaware of the part played by their own personal issues and the wider group drive. No amount of training can change this, mitigate it maybe, but not eliminate it. Why? Because, on a personal level, we are not always able to cognise our own cues: If I have been upset by a particular person with particular physical characteristics when I am four years old, I may not recall this, and yet if it is triggered when I interview a parent who happens to carry this characteristic, my objective judgement will be swayed, I will have a negative perception of them and my intellect will try to rationalise my feelings. What can happen here is that the observer, the social worker in this case, will align their subjectivity with their objectivity, that is, they will find a rational, observable reason to doubt the parent, not realising that they are doing this. This then can be passed to colleagues as observable according to their "possible child abuse" criteria, and will assume the power of "proof" against the parent. Thus, the idea that a particular parent is guilty begins upon a cue that is not conscious and takes on all the colours of objective truth as it grows from one professional to another.
This, of course, can work in reverse, a social worker may have a positive cue related to a certain characteristic in a person they are assessing, yet this person is abusing a child. The positive cue will mask the objective judgement and once again the intellect will justify this perception.
Group Dynamics:
In the U.K. there have been such huge mistakes in overlooking cases of child abuse, such that cases of mistaken abuse will inevitably rise as social workers desperately try to avert error. Many families have been victim to this and their children have been removed.
There is serious contradiction in pursuing child abuse if innocent parents and their children are persecuted, just as in the name of justice, it is not acceptable for innocent people to be jailed for crimes they did not commit. Yet social workers are making mistakes out of fear that they will overlook a case of abuse, a death will occur, and they will be held responsible for it. Individual social workers are trying to protect themselves by rigorously pursuing the group drive to find child abuse, and because they are afraid of the wider group, society,if they should not notice a real case of abuse, they can make mistakes.
So a social worker mindful of "not making a mistake" will view a family differently from a person observing without a personal fear; the fear they have directly plays upon what they "see". We can observe this mechanism too, if we consider the phenomenon of looking for abusers as part of a group need to outcast misfits,deviants and unacceptables in society: Good guys and bad guys. People who have a "crusade" to find deviants of any sort are not able to be rational at the outset. Here, they are part of a group with a crusade to stamp out child abuse and by their position cannot be balanced or objective. If we set out to find something negative in someone we are apt to perceive it, just like any paranoia-induced perception, still more so if we are in a group intoxication, a group with a mission, all of whose members are primed to seek out abuse. In such a group we can lose much of ourselves, we can abdicate perceptions that we would have if not directed by others, and we can ignore our better judgment in the pursuance of our group-induced personal needs..
But what is it about a group that implants ideas and propels group loyalties? Well, we get approval, protection, a comfortable familiarity from being in a group. We are persuaded by group ideas because we need as human beings to belong and feel accepted and needed; if we don`t conform, we lose this. Being an insider gives us a sense of well-being and fulfilment. Leaders within groups use strategies to make the group stick together, they promote ideas of "us and them", draw us in close and reward us when we gratify them. Being in a group with a mission to stamp out child abuse is a worthy position, but as such it necessarily creates delusions of superiority and grandeur and it is the very "we are saving children against abusers" that causes an inability to think about whether there is really child abuse or not. The group desires results.. and the workers in the group want to gain approval for finding it. Because we crave this approval we are seduced by it and this distorts our perceptions.
So with just a preliminary look at the forces at play behind the scenes in such a situation as requires professional judgement, we see just how unsafe our perceptions are. With influences from our own psychological makeup and the imposition of group demands, it is almost impossible to be professionally objective.
I do believe, however, that awareness can change things and achieve a better society for us all.
www.parentsagainstinjustice.org.uk/
But sometimes these perceptions are incorrect, we make mistakes, and there are consequences for us and for those around us.I am particularly interested in how and why we make assumptions in regard to the society we experience and our inter-personal relationships and how this impacts on our lives and on society too.
My blogs are an attempt to think about these issues and to try to understand the hidden forces at work in our everyday lives with an eye to fairness and right and justice.
We can understand why there is prejudice or injustice, violence or immorality, but these are not just the "dark side" of our better selves, they emanate from the same source,our human nature.I hope that trying to understand these elements of our functioning self will help us to mitigate the affects of destructive impulses in a constructive sense, but, if only to calm our frustrations and our feelings of defencelessness, thinking this through is eminently worthwhile. In common parlance this is termed "self help" !!!!!
Let`s take an example:
We have seen via the media that social workers have made mistakes when assessing
cases involving children. Some cases of child abuse have been missed, but conversely we know that some cases have been imagined where no abuse is present. How can this happen?
There are two main influences here, the personal, where our personal psychological baggage influences the things we think we perceive, and the group, the part we play in a group dynamic with the people around us.
Now, we might assume that professionals are trained to be objective and have certain criteria by which to ascertain whether there is child abuse or not. We can see here how we immediately follow our acquired assumption that "professionalism" is a safeguard towards correct, unbiased and non-subjective discernment. But the professional process is only dictated by the people who contrive these methods, and the processes and those people are subject to their own personal baggage and their own group position as well!
Let`s take a very ordinary experience: We walk down the street and as we go we assess, as part of an unconscious process, who is a threat and who is not. This assessment is almost instantaneous , we have little control over it and yet it informs us as if it were knowledge and not just a response to all our cues. We certainly do not feel we are hijacked by irrational baggage !!!
So what are these cues and where do they come from?
Well, we carry reflex responses old and new, autonomic fears coming from our development as a species, biological drives, inherited cues from our parents and family and of course cues arising from our own experiences. We also acquire new cues all the time, from people around us and from the media.
Personal Cues:
When a social worker goes to assess a family, they may be trained to be objective, but they are unaware of the part played by their own personal issues and the wider group drive. No amount of training can change this, mitigate it maybe, but not eliminate it. Why? Because, on a personal level, we are not always able to cognise our own cues: If I have been upset by a particular person with particular physical characteristics when I am four years old, I may not recall this, and yet if it is triggered when I interview a parent who happens to carry this characteristic, my objective judgement will be swayed, I will have a negative perception of them and my intellect will try to rationalise my feelings. What can happen here is that the observer, the social worker in this case, will align their subjectivity with their objectivity, that is, they will find a rational, observable reason to doubt the parent, not realising that they are doing this. This then can be passed to colleagues as observable according to their "possible child abuse" criteria, and will assume the power of "proof" against the parent. Thus, the idea that a particular parent is guilty begins upon a cue that is not conscious and takes on all the colours of objective truth as it grows from one professional to another.
This, of course, can work in reverse, a social worker may have a positive cue related to a certain characteristic in a person they are assessing, yet this person is abusing a child. The positive cue will mask the objective judgement and once again the intellect will justify this perception.
Group Dynamics:
In the U.K. there have been such huge mistakes in overlooking cases of child abuse, such that cases of mistaken abuse will inevitably rise as social workers desperately try to avert error. Many families have been victim to this and their children have been removed.
There is serious contradiction in pursuing child abuse if innocent parents and their children are persecuted, just as in the name of justice, it is not acceptable for innocent people to be jailed for crimes they did not commit. Yet social workers are making mistakes out of fear that they will overlook a case of abuse, a death will occur, and they will be held responsible for it. Individual social workers are trying to protect themselves by rigorously pursuing the group drive to find child abuse, and because they are afraid of the wider group, society,if they should not notice a real case of abuse, they can make mistakes.
So a social worker mindful of "not making a mistake" will view a family differently from a person observing without a personal fear; the fear they have directly plays upon what they "see". We can observe this mechanism too, if we consider the phenomenon of looking for abusers as part of a group need to outcast misfits,deviants and unacceptables in society: Good guys and bad guys. People who have a "crusade" to find deviants of any sort are not able to be rational at the outset. Here, they are part of a group with a crusade to stamp out child abuse and by their position cannot be balanced or objective. If we set out to find something negative in someone we are apt to perceive it, just like any paranoia-induced perception, still more so if we are in a group intoxication, a group with a mission, all of whose members are primed to seek out abuse. In such a group we can lose much of ourselves, we can abdicate perceptions that we would have if not directed by others, and we can ignore our better judgment in the pursuance of our group-induced personal needs..
But what is it about a group that implants ideas and propels group loyalties? Well, we get approval, protection, a comfortable familiarity from being in a group. We are persuaded by group ideas because we need as human beings to belong and feel accepted and needed; if we don`t conform, we lose this. Being an insider gives us a sense of well-being and fulfilment. Leaders within groups use strategies to make the group stick together, they promote ideas of "us and them", draw us in close and reward us when we gratify them. Being in a group with a mission to stamp out child abuse is a worthy position, but as such it necessarily creates delusions of superiority and grandeur and it is the very "we are saving children against abusers" that causes an inability to think about whether there is really child abuse or not. The group desires results.. and the workers in the group want to gain approval for finding it. Because we crave this approval we are seduced by it and this distorts our perceptions.
So with just a preliminary look at the forces at play behind the scenes in such a situation as requires professional judgement, we see just how unsafe our perceptions are. With influences from our own psychological makeup and the imposition of group demands, it is almost impossible to be professionally objective.
I do believe, however, that awareness can change things and achieve a better society for us all.
www.parentsagainstinjustice.org.uk/
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