Please sign this petition to help a persecuted Home Ed. family:
http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/ukssleaveourkidsalone/
With the Government`s recent failure to clamp their iron-fist on home education, many home educators are re-realising their rights, their right to privacy and their autonomy. Yet this menace of government to invade our lives and take away our cherished liberties is merely put on hold. There is no real liberation, no change of conscience by government and certainly no evidence that their thinking could or would include insight into the dangers of their one-track-mind solutions to issues of child abuse.
I have talked about this subject in earlier blogs, but I really want to revisit it here because the message of home education is still not getting through. Most of the media have followed government propaganda on the issue, with only a few T.V. programs or articles representing a balanced picture.
Why is this? Clearly, as with the Government`s psychological tactic that whipped up paranoia about terrorism and Muslims, the witch hunt of home education is created. That is to say that it doesn`t just happen out of thin air, so to speak, someone, some department or agency has to propel a witch hunt. Now, we have spent considerable time in my blogs talking about the hows and whys of demonisation, but I want to gather together these ideas here so that we can see it at work right in front of our eyes.
In order to witch hunt someone, or some group, you have to use fear. Fear is the way to control the people you want to help you in the hunt: folks are more likely to respond if they are frightened by something. I think though, that fear begets fear and therefore we should look to the fear that the pursuer of a witch hunt feels himself, what has caused his fear, and track his actions from there.
We know that the Government, because of the failings of the Social Services in cases of child deaths in recent years, felt pressure to prevent further cases of child deaths so that it could diminish its guilt and protect its position in the eyes of the media and the public. Obviously, a government that does not prevent child deaths will be seen in a negative way and will fear for its political survival. Political shame or embarrassment, loss of votes and loss of power for politicians, causes huge fear!
Because of this need for political survival, the Government needed to show that it would do everything to prevent further child deaths. Where it was seen to be preventing child abuse or death, didn`t matter, just the visibility of its earnestness. There then took place a classic psychological tactic to recruit all and sundry to the mission of preventing child abuse: find someone or some group, a minority, and whip up a demonisation drive. Simple and classic, it`s been used in every society over millennia !! The great thing about it is that it works every time!
The group this time is home education!! Not Jews or Muslims or Gypsies,but home educators !!! Brilliant. So home education was to be the perfect way to bury the guilt of the Social Services and get rid of those nasty fears about losing political votes!
So let`s see what Graham Badman (assigned the task of conducting a Review into home education) did to create a universal fear of home ed. that would be swallowed whole by most of the media.....
The single most important factor in the Review was to manipulate the statistics so that home education would look like a den of child abuse. Rule number one, make sure you drum up fear by using untruths about the people you want to demonise and make the fear as big and powerful as you can !!! The other vital tactic is to trap your new recruits in your demonisation drive with a guilt manoeuvre !!!! What I mean is, your potential allies will join you if you make the fear big enough, certainly, but just incase some of them wont follow you on just fear alone, you make them guilty if they don`t !!! The message is, "if you don`t help me in targeting home education, you will be guilty if any child dies" !!! The combination of these two components makes for the most powerful group drive. We saw it in the Muslim demonisation drive, for example, and let`s also not forget that the very same group psychology resulted in the death of Jean Charles de Meneses.
So, in summary, the need to shift guilt onto home education was the reason why government locked into a relentless persecutory drive. The method for it was classic fear-guilt psychology. Where the media might have defended home educators in the same way that some spoke up against the creation of terrorist paranoia to justify the Iraq war or Guantanamo, the guilt component of the strategy largely prevented them from doing so. Few in the media will want to side with a tainted group where, they are made to believe, there may be child abuse, because this would bring accusations of collusion or complacency in child abuse.With the dual operation of fear and guilt the Government managed to manipulate most of the media, and with such a small voice, home education had little chance of getting mass-media support.
More on home ed. later.......
www.parentsagainstinjustice.org.uk/
www.aspergersupport.org.uk/news/a23.html
www.home-education.org.uk/family-rights.html">www.home-education.org.uk/family-rights.htm">www.home-education.org.uk/family-rights.html
www.gutandpsychologysyndrome.com/
www.gapsdiet.com
www.scduk.co.uk/find.htm
www.guardian.co.uk/uk/menezes
Showing posts with label civil liberties. Show all posts
Showing posts with label civil liberties. Show all posts
Sunday, 18 April 2010
Wednesday, 27 January 2010
Does Society Need Victims ? 2
In order to address the question of whether society needs victims, I want to look at what having victims/scapegoats, or whatever we want to call them, does for the group that creates them. In simple terms, what would be the gain?
Interpersonally,for example, if we look at why someone would want to victimise their marital partner, or something such, we find that they are enacting acquired behaviour towards the other person and that this, even in a perverse way, makes some gain for them. The gain is the transfer of guilt. We all feel a lot better if we either don`t have much guilt or we get rid of it !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
.
We saw previously that compartmentalising enables someone to single out another person into a separate mental box so that abuse can occur. This very "guiltification" is a "symptom" of abuse, the very act of guilt transfer is evidence of a compartmentalising of conscience taking place. So, I think that when we look for the mechanisms of witch hunting in our wider society, we have to be vigilant for guilt transfer. For this reason I see the growing phenomenon of the "presumption of guilt" in this society as being both a marker for the mechanism of witch hunting taking place, and as a signal that the larger group is finding it`s burden of guilt too big to handle.
A while back I was talking about home education and there being a big drive to have home educating families inspected. Originally ...before government needed to disguise their motivation.... home education was deemed to need to be inspected incase there should be child abuse in families where children didn`t go to school. Ostensibly, the concerns about children were paramount ahead of the almost sacred territory of "presumption of innocence". The imperative of whichever case we examine seems to render the presumption of innocence a mere barrier to the prevention of some possible or imagined crime. Whenever presumption of innocence is devalued in this way, we need to be deeply concerned because we know that an enthroned presumption of guilt tells us that a compartmentalising of conscience is taking place in order to justify actions that are really unjust, and, as we have seen before in compartmentalising, "justification" is the loophole that liberates guilt.
In order to convince a large number of people to persecute certain others, any group has to demonise them. Demonising them makes them "other than like us" and makes it possible to exert cruelty, discrimination, etc, without remorse.
If we look at history where there are mass drives to "guiltify", or down the slippery slope, demonise, certain sections of society, we find that the presumption of guilt enables demonisation and persecution to occur. It is a state of mind that takes hold in a group and feeds upon it`s own spiralling guilt-shift. That is, the more people who believe the particular attributions aimed at these certain people, the more they have to believe it in order to avoid their guilt: with this trap tightening in a large social group, demonisation will become more organised and greater justifications will be sought.
I think that is why there is always a serious danger of any demonisation getting out of hand. I am mindful of political moves in recent years to have people with certain mental illnesses categorised as "guilty of violence" before an act of violence has ever taken place: for example, where it was postured that people should be locked up based upon, what was in affect, a demonisation manoeuvre.... In Nazi Germany demonisation of Jews grew from one man`s personal paranoia about Jews, into a group intoxication where no one questioned the "guilt" of Jews.
Personal standards of rightfulness and established judicial practice, become the enemy of those who seek to do injustice to others. Indeed, frighteningly, those that subordinate such central tenets of a civilised state, convince themselves that it is the place of the new rightfulness to overthrow the very civil liberties that prevent their demonisation crusade from it`s mission ( example present day demonisation of muslims). I use the oxymoron "demonisation crusade " with particular attention because it must be emphasised that the fervour that propels a mass drive to hurt others by defaming them, is pursued with the same blind, self-righteous impulse as a religious crusade. Both are delusional.
A demonisation drive can though, as we were saying, grow out of societies need to get rid of guilt that it collectively holds. Over zealous crusades in the name of right can lead to innocent people being swept up with the guilty, as is already happening in the case of child abuse. The fact that innocent parents can have their children removed forever from them, is something that is the true cost of a group drive that demonises people before it considers whether people are innocent or not. Much of this.... in it`s essence a group intoxication to get rid of societies guilt onto anyone they can attach it to..... has much to do with group survival. Those in any group who are getting brownie points for seeking out the "witches", so to speak, in this case child abusers, have a feel-good factor themselves and this state of well being bonds and enhances their group.
So the essential thing that creating victims does for the larger group is that it divests collectively the dominant group of guilt and thereby helps it to thrive: Guilt is known to damage the immune system so a group guilt-shift makes for better health for group members. I also think that just as the compartmental conscience enables the individual to function, so does the group compartmental conscience, there is little difference really. I suppose that the group compartmental conscience creates a large-scale guilt-box for the ones impugned. The main difference is that the scale of the operation exculpates everybody, regardless of whether they are guilty or not, and bestows upon all those who conform to the group-need, approval and position and well being. It`s something that groups do for their members by instinct and, of course, conversely, the folks oppressed with the imposition of guilt would be "expected" (this is an unconscious intention) to do less well.
I want to come back to this topic soon.There are many examples of sections of society that are being demonised as part of a deliberate campaign.
Interpersonally,for example, if we look at why someone would want to victimise their marital partner, or something such, we find that they are enacting acquired behaviour towards the other person and that this, even in a perverse way, makes some gain for them. The gain is the transfer of guilt. We all feel a lot better if we either don`t have much guilt or we get rid of it !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
.
We saw previously that compartmentalising enables someone to single out another person into a separate mental box so that abuse can occur. This very "guiltification" is a "symptom" of abuse, the very act of guilt transfer is evidence of a compartmentalising of conscience taking place. So, I think that when we look for the mechanisms of witch hunting in our wider society, we have to be vigilant for guilt transfer. For this reason I see the growing phenomenon of the "presumption of guilt" in this society as being both a marker for the mechanism of witch hunting taking place, and as a signal that the larger group is finding it`s burden of guilt too big to handle.
A while back I was talking about home education and there being a big drive to have home educating families inspected. Originally ...before government needed to disguise their motivation.... home education was deemed to need to be inspected incase there should be child abuse in families where children didn`t go to school. Ostensibly, the concerns about children were paramount ahead of the almost sacred territory of "presumption of innocence". The imperative of whichever case we examine seems to render the presumption of innocence a mere barrier to the prevention of some possible or imagined crime. Whenever presumption of innocence is devalued in this way, we need to be deeply concerned because we know that an enthroned presumption of guilt tells us that a compartmentalising of conscience is taking place in order to justify actions that are really unjust, and, as we have seen before in compartmentalising, "justification" is the loophole that liberates guilt.
In order to convince a large number of people to persecute certain others, any group has to demonise them. Demonising them makes them "other than like us" and makes it possible to exert cruelty, discrimination, etc, without remorse.
If we look at history where there are mass drives to "guiltify", or down the slippery slope, demonise, certain sections of society, we find that the presumption of guilt enables demonisation and persecution to occur. It is a state of mind that takes hold in a group and feeds upon it`s own spiralling guilt-shift. That is, the more people who believe the particular attributions aimed at these certain people, the more they have to believe it in order to avoid their guilt: with this trap tightening in a large social group, demonisation will become more organised and greater justifications will be sought.
I think that is why there is always a serious danger of any demonisation getting out of hand. I am mindful of political moves in recent years to have people with certain mental illnesses categorised as "guilty of violence" before an act of violence has ever taken place: for example, where it was postured that people should be locked up based upon, what was in affect, a demonisation manoeuvre.... In Nazi Germany demonisation of Jews grew from one man`s personal paranoia about Jews, into a group intoxication where no one questioned the "guilt" of Jews.
Personal standards of rightfulness and established judicial practice, become the enemy of those who seek to do injustice to others. Indeed, frighteningly, those that subordinate such central tenets of a civilised state, convince themselves that it is the place of the new rightfulness to overthrow the very civil liberties that prevent their demonisation crusade from it`s mission ( example present day demonisation of muslims). I use the oxymoron "demonisation crusade " with particular attention because it must be emphasised that the fervour that propels a mass drive to hurt others by defaming them, is pursued with the same blind, self-righteous impulse as a religious crusade. Both are delusional.
A demonisation drive can though, as we were saying, grow out of societies need to get rid of guilt that it collectively holds. Over zealous crusades in the name of right can lead to innocent people being swept up with the guilty, as is already happening in the case of child abuse. The fact that innocent parents can have their children removed forever from them, is something that is the true cost of a group drive that demonises people before it considers whether people are innocent or not. Much of this.... in it`s essence a group intoxication to get rid of societies guilt onto anyone they can attach it to..... has much to do with group survival. Those in any group who are getting brownie points for seeking out the "witches", so to speak, in this case child abusers, have a feel-good factor themselves and this state of well being bonds and enhances their group.
So the essential thing that creating victims does for the larger group is that it divests collectively the dominant group of guilt and thereby helps it to thrive: Guilt is known to damage the immune system so a group guilt-shift makes for better health for group members. I also think that just as the compartmental conscience enables the individual to function, so does the group compartmental conscience, there is little difference really. I suppose that the group compartmental conscience creates a large-scale guilt-box for the ones impugned. The main difference is that the scale of the operation exculpates everybody, regardless of whether they are guilty or not, and bestows upon all those who conform to the group-need, approval and position and well being. It`s something that groups do for their members by instinct and, of course, conversely, the folks oppressed with the imposition of guilt would be "expected" (this is an unconscious intention) to do less well.
I want to come back to this topic soon.There are many examples of sections of society that are being demonised as part of a deliberate campaign.
Sunday, 20 December 2009
Your Kids Belong to the State.
The present government is hell-bent upon inspecting families where children are being home educated. This crusade gathered momentum after the failings of social workers led to mistakes where children who were being abused at home died. None of these children were home educated in fact, but out of a drive to be seen to make sure the system protectes all children, the government decided to aim their cosmetic rightfulness at home educating families. Later, way down the line, they shifted their professed aims by claiming that they wanted to inspect children educated at home to make sure that they were receiving a proper education.
So what? you might say. Why should this be of any concern to me? Many people who send their kids to school, state or private, have said that they are all in favour of children who don`t go to school being properly assessed and monitored. Somehow it looks okay doesn`t it? You know, government protecting children, concerns about child welfare and suitable education. Whatever could be wrong with that?
But parents who educate their kids at home have opted out of mainstream education for good reason.They have concerns about educational methods in schools and the ever-present culture of bullying.They are concerned that schools absolutely fail a huge number of children, not least because children are demotivated by a "sit down and learn what you are told to learn" mentality. Having opted to imbue their childrens lives with a nurturing educational ethos based upon harnessing a child`s natural instinct to learn,the government then decides that it doesn`t trust them to do this: It wants to inspect them, invade the family, direct what should be taught, how and when and for how many hours. The government wants CONTROL and it wants it`s eyes all over the private life of a family..just because the parents are opting out of a standard education for their kids.
Why?
Human rights alarm-bells ring out a cry of suppression as we become aware of very basic group psychology playing out it`s desire to punish people who do not conform to the wider group: in this case there is a larger group unease at some parents rejecting the school system. The fact is that with children being withdrawn in ever greater numbers from schools, the state has to try to protect itself by shifting the onus of suspicion away from a failing educational system onto the educational heretics, "home edors". People in home ed. who simply want to educate their children in a non-coercive way, inadvertently end up reflecting guilt back at the "powers that be" as they try to avoid looking in their own mirrors.
To avoid guilt/responsibility the state ...as is common practice in guilt avoidance... tries to shift guilt onto home ed. It wants to control it because it needs to deflect it`s own guilt away from itself. In the most simplistic terms the phenomenon of guilt-shifting is no better played out than by sending the authorities to the door of innocent people: it makes them LOOK guilty of something. The game-play of any authority casting suspicion, publicly, upon a person or group, has the affect of cohering the masses against a common "enemy". It is precisely the same process as all forms of bullying, racism, etc.
The reason why this should concern everyone is because the state is pushing it`s way into all of our private lives, we are all under suspicion, civil liberties are under assault. Home educating families have become part of a slippery slope that will, if the government get their way, invade us all.
If you look you can see the signs everywhere: The state thinks it has the right to dictate what you do in your own home and it`s moral high ground is getting bigger all that time. We have seen how fat people cannot adopt, black children must be adopted only by black families, etc. Parents who eat the wrong fatty food have more recently become in danger of having their kids taken away. The most recent imposition has been that everyone must be CRB checked if they are involved in looking after children. The drive against home educating families and the self-righteous invasion of their human rights is all part of the wider picture of a moralising state that damages its ordinary citizens in the name of protecting children!!
So let`s have a look at those instances I mentioned above, measures supposedly to protect children and look after their best interests:
1/ Fat people cannot adopt because they might die all the sooner due to being overweight, not to mention that they would be a bad example to any children they adopt!!! So who suffers most as a result of this policy? Children. Children in children's homes or children shunted from one foster family to another and who are desperate to be adopted.
2/Black children must be adopted into black families because it is deemed "better for them" to be brought up by their own people, so to speak. Who suffers? Black children who spend endless years in children's homes because there is no black family to adopt them.
3/Parents who eat the wrong kind of food and feed their children the wrong kind of food are guilty of a form of child abuse and should have their children taken away. And who would suffer if children were to be removed from their parents? Children yet again. Children who would be traumatised by the powerlessness and incomprehensible cruelty of being pulled away from their parents.
4/ And the CRB checking of adults who help out with looking after kids? The kids will suffer... because people do not want to be impugned by a CRB check and children will miss out on activities if adults do not volunteer their time.
Now you can see the pattern.... So when we get to the issue of forcing a misguided and backfiring morality on home educating parents by wanting them inspected and forcing them to follow the government`s narrow and regime-based educational models, we can clearly see exactly who is going to suffer. Children. Children in families where they are loved and nurtured, where education is not a regime but a joy, who will be forced to accept that the state has the right to override their parents, invade their family, dictate how their parents should educate them ... and the frightening lesson that the home is violable by the Local Authority.
With the government`s proposed violation of the home, the precedent has been set that children belong to the state, not to parents.
We will come back to these, and related issues, in later blogs.
So what? you might say. Why should this be of any concern to me? Many people who send their kids to school, state or private, have said that they are all in favour of children who don`t go to school being properly assessed and monitored. Somehow it looks okay doesn`t it? You know, government protecting children, concerns about child welfare and suitable education. Whatever could be wrong with that?
But parents who educate their kids at home have opted out of mainstream education for good reason.They have concerns about educational methods in schools and the ever-present culture of bullying.They are concerned that schools absolutely fail a huge number of children, not least because children are demotivated by a "sit down and learn what you are told to learn" mentality. Having opted to imbue their childrens lives with a nurturing educational ethos based upon harnessing a child`s natural instinct to learn,the government then decides that it doesn`t trust them to do this: It wants to inspect them, invade the family, direct what should be taught, how and when and for how many hours. The government wants CONTROL and it wants it`s eyes all over the private life of a family..just because the parents are opting out of a standard education for their kids.
Why?
Human rights alarm-bells ring out a cry of suppression as we become aware of very basic group psychology playing out it`s desire to punish people who do not conform to the wider group: in this case there is a larger group unease at some parents rejecting the school system. The fact is that with children being withdrawn in ever greater numbers from schools, the state has to try to protect itself by shifting the onus of suspicion away from a failing educational system onto the educational heretics, "home edors". People in home ed. who simply want to educate their children in a non-coercive way, inadvertently end up reflecting guilt back at the "powers that be" as they try to avoid looking in their own mirrors.
To avoid guilt/responsibility the state ...as is common practice in guilt avoidance... tries to shift guilt onto home ed. It wants to control it because it needs to deflect it`s own guilt away from itself. In the most simplistic terms the phenomenon of guilt-shifting is no better played out than by sending the authorities to the door of innocent people: it makes them LOOK guilty of something. The game-play of any authority casting suspicion, publicly, upon a person or group, has the affect of cohering the masses against a common "enemy". It is precisely the same process as all forms of bullying, racism, etc.
The reason why this should concern everyone is because the state is pushing it`s way into all of our private lives, we are all under suspicion, civil liberties are under assault. Home educating families have become part of a slippery slope that will, if the government get their way, invade us all.
If you look you can see the signs everywhere: The state thinks it has the right to dictate what you do in your own home and it`s moral high ground is getting bigger all that time. We have seen how fat people cannot adopt, black children must be adopted only by black families, etc. Parents who eat the wrong fatty food have more recently become in danger of having their kids taken away. The most recent imposition has been that everyone must be CRB checked if they are involved in looking after children. The drive against home educating families and the self-righteous invasion of their human rights is all part of the wider picture of a moralising state that damages its ordinary citizens in the name of protecting children!!
So let`s have a look at those instances I mentioned above, measures supposedly to protect children and look after their best interests:
1/ Fat people cannot adopt because they might die all the sooner due to being overweight, not to mention that they would be a bad example to any children they adopt!!! So who suffers most as a result of this policy? Children. Children in children's homes or children shunted from one foster family to another and who are desperate to be adopted.
2/Black children must be adopted into black families because it is deemed "better for them" to be brought up by their own people, so to speak. Who suffers? Black children who spend endless years in children's homes because there is no black family to adopt them.
3/Parents who eat the wrong kind of food and feed their children the wrong kind of food are guilty of a form of child abuse and should have their children taken away. And who would suffer if children were to be removed from their parents? Children yet again. Children who would be traumatised by the powerlessness and incomprehensible cruelty of being pulled away from their parents.
4/ And the CRB checking of adults who help out with looking after kids? The kids will suffer... because people do not want to be impugned by a CRB check and children will miss out on activities if adults do not volunteer their time.
Now you can see the pattern.... So when we get to the issue of forcing a misguided and backfiring morality on home educating parents by wanting them inspected and forcing them to follow the government`s narrow and regime-based educational models, we can clearly see exactly who is going to suffer. Children. Children in families where they are loved and nurtured, where education is not a regime but a joy, who will be forced to accept that the state has the right to override their parents, invade their family, dictate how their parents should educate them ... and the frightening lesson that the home is violable by the Local Authority.
With the government`s proposed violation of the home, the precedent has been set that children belong to the state, not to parents.
We will come back to these, and related issues, in later blogs.
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/
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
