I have been in personal turmoil recently and, even knowing the psychology of vulnerability, I did ask for help! My mum has been ill and, true to human nature, this has made me vulnerable to mental abuse. So what's new?
I should read my own blog!
This blog explores what happens when we become needy. What happens to us, and what happens when we ask for help from another person.
We have long explored why it is that people who have needs are easy victims: the sick, children, women, the mentally ill.
Okay, so if we ask someone close to us, someone trusted, there is less chance of being on the receiving end of power-play, but not always. Another safeguard is the fact that with people close to us there is a RELATIONSHIP, a mutuality. An emotional bond, a history of two-way kindness and respect is more likely to be present and this balances the potential power of both parties.
The problem arises when we ask people who would take advantage of our neediness, the sort of people who need or enjoy power over someone else. Of course this disposition may be unconscious, but folks who take advantage of others in this way will have a diminished sense of what they are doing. They need to have diminished conscience BECAUSE it enables them to behave in the way they do. So, look, if you approach someone you don't know, say in a church or in many cases a professional of some sort, the fact that they are immediately put in a position of power by the very fact of you needing them, will open the door to you being mentally abused.
So what is it that the giver wants from you? Givers, those offering kindness or good deeds, usually want something. Sounds odd? Well, it's true. Often these people have a need to offer kindness. It helps them in their lives. Makes them feel better and often counteracts something bad they have done or are doing to others. Okay, so there are SOME people who are genuinely nice people, but not all. If you ask for help from someone, look out for signs that they might be the sort that might abuse you. Think. Think about what they tell you and what their motivation might be. Are you going to be used to serve some purpose for THEM.
Like I said at the start of this blog, I have recently asked for help from someone. I felt overwhelmed and was searching for someone to turn to. I saw some signs..... The man was gender-bigoted from the outset. He had a desperate need to do good deeds. These good deeds he needed to be as big, egotistically big,as possible and he had ideas that were indicative of power and control. SO why did I proceed? I think, like all of us when we are needy, that my distress was bigger than my common sense.
I'm coming back soon to explore this further...
Showing posts with label group psychology. Show all posts
Showing posts with label group psychology. Show all posts
Friday, 24 June 2011
Saturday, 14 August 2010
Teachers who Bully (4)
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. "
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. "
Saturday, 12 June 2010
What on Earth has Happened to The Samaritans (4)?
The rigidity of the Samaritan relationship to a caller leads one to question,why? I want to look at this in this blog, along with my usual examination of group psychology.
OK., so we can see that Samaritan volunteers need some sort of training and that inevitably training will carry definite prescriptions. The problem is that for many years Sams have been taught to be strict with callers according to a one-track formula. Whilst the minority of Sams with a more person-centred approach apply training loosely and intelligently, the majority of Sams do not.
Unfortunately, for most people, training is something that has to be adhered to precisely, not wisely. This applies to us all in all walks of life. We are brought up in an educational system that requires conformity to succeed, a system that does not reward individuality or initiative. We are therefore frightened to break rules.
The Samaritan structure, like any group organism, coheres around the acceptance of a particular method, in other words, a belief system. All groups function around mind-sets that everyone is expected to conform to, those who do not will find their place in the group under threat, not least because their non-conformity represents a threat to the group itself. This is true of the Samaritans as of any other group. Here, a belief that callers must be directed and controlled in a parent-child style, that all callers want and need silence, or whatever the notion we care to example, leads to a cold, clinical, robotic mode of relation where, paradoxically, a caller is expected to talk about their feelings in an environment that is bereft of human warmth !!
But as we see in other situations where rigid control is upheld, the more control there is, the more control is needed. What I mean is, if we take the example of unwanted child behaviour and set the threshold too high, we end up having a constant battle to maintain our stance. We become more anxious about our self-made rules than we do about the child we seek to control ! Broadly, we feel more and more threatened the more we lose control over the person we are trying to control and this leads us to employ greater and greater measures to hold our position. This is what commonly happens between a Samaritan and his or her caller. The primary focus is not helping the caller, but rather applying training with a rule book that inhibits both the Samaritan and the caller.
With the Samaritan`s level of expectation upon a caller set so high, he puts himself in a position of a parent who must maintain discipline at all costs.Let me reiterate that: At all costs. And this is what happens, inevitably: a caller, unwittingly, has to measure up to a whole list of criteria (which are to do with the needs of the Samaritan), and like a child confronted with zero tolerance, is treading on a mine field.The Sam, like an insecure parent, uses all manner of discipline to prevent chat and, frankly, get their own way, with the ultimate penalty of absolute power, ending the call. (A reminder that we are talking about a genuine, non-offensive caller here.)
It`s all about what THEY want.
Let`s look at what the typical Samaritan wants from a caller: firstly, the Samaritan expects that the caller has to be happy with silence,then comes the need for the Samaritan to have a call from a "genuine caller" who exhibits a level of distress that the Sam can relate to. We then have the Sam needing to not be caught chatting (whatever that means!) and to ensure the fulfilment of this overwhelming rule the Sam decides that they must not make comments as the caller relays his plight. The result is, of course, a caller who is expected to talk about their feelings, yet no emotional support is forthcoming from the other end of the phone. In effect, the stricture of training has stripped the call of anything that would be called human, caring and supportive. I think that the Samaritan`s need not to chat....and to deliver silence for the caller to fill, causes them to be detached, non-involved with the call, and this created distance bleeds the call of humanity. In fact, a Samaritan in this functional mode has little or no manifest caring for the caller simply because they do not engage with them. With no two-way contact the Sam`s posture is perfunctory and compassionless.
We have to emphasise here that individual Sams are not to blame, they are merely doing what they are told do. They believe what they are told to believe. Where they are told that callers want silence in which to talk, they think that this is universally true. In order to become a Samaritan one has to believe what one is told and use it upon callers. Training also teaches the fear that NOT to follow the instructed method will be detrimental to callers and so there is a fear/guilt devise that makes Sams conform.
There has to be a better way.
So what would be a better model for helping callers? Well, I think for starters, the ethos would have to change, revert back to the humanity of Chad Varah. The Nanny State-ism would have to go, to be replaced by respect for the caller and HIS needs. I think that, too, the caller would have to be treated with a presumption of genuineness, along with adopting a truly non-judgmental stance that does not discriminate between callers upon grounds of the subjective measure of distress. I think that with a refocus on the callers needs a more humanistic approach would follow, where a Sam would engage in a human way with the caller.
But in all of this we must not forget our Samaritan`s wishes to help people.. We must not forget that Sams themselves are victim to a training regime that not only disrespects callers, but disrespects them, too. So I think that to train Sams to be responsive to the needs of callers, to be adaptable, to have confidence in their OWN ability to relate to people would empower THEM to do what it is that they volunteer to do, for it is not just that callers are under the thumb of an all powerful rule book, Samaritans are too. Both Samaritans and callers are treading on egg shells.
I hope to come back in a bit to round this up. It`ll be a shorter blog (!)
that looks at the benefits of a more humanistic approach..... Hope to see you soon !
Best advice: remember the Sams operate on the basis that YOU are there for THEM. In other words, you are there to comply with what the Sams want from you.
If you need to phone many times over a period of time, don`t phone the same part of the country and don`t use the same name each time you call. If you phone many times information may be gathered about you (from the calls) because the Sams decide that they want to restrict your access, for whatever reason they see fit. This info is passed around branches.N.B.You may be in genuine distress over a period of time, but this is irrelevant to the Sam's decision. They decide what is best for you, whether you agree or not... and there is nothing you can do about it.
N.B. If you complain about one Samaritan at one branch, there is a high chance that other Sams at that branch or in that area will be unkind to you and may bully you.(Information will have been gathered about you so that they all will be able to identify you when you call.) This is typical of group behaviour so it`s no surprise!
Further,if you are badly treated by more than one Sam (this is very common so don`t think that it`s you personally!)and feel you should make another complaint, please remember that several complaints will likely get you labled as a "complainer". If this happens, it demonstrates the groups need to shift their guilt onto YOU. It is, as we have discussed many times, a typical strategy to protect themselves by making you look like the problem.
OK., so we can see that Samaritan volunteers need some sort of training and that inevitably training will carry definite prescriptions. The problem is that for many years Sams have been taught to be strict with callers according to a one-track formula. Whilst the minority of Sams with a more person-centred approach apply training loosely and intelligently, the majority of Sams do not.
Unfortunately, for most people, training is something that has to be adhered to precisely, not wisely. This applies to us all in all walks of life. We are brought up in an educational system that requires conformity to succeed, a system that does not reward individuality or initiative. We are therefore frightened to break rules.
The Samaritan structure, like any group organism, coheres around the acceptance of a particular method, in other words, a belief system. All groups function around mind-sets that everyone is expected to conform to, those who do not will find their place in the group under threat, not least because their non-conformity represents a threat to the group itself. This is true of the Samaritans as of any other group. Here, a belief that callers must be directed and controlled in a parent-child style, that all callers want and need silence, or whatever the notion we care to example, leads to a cold, clinical, robotic mode of relation where, paradoxically, a caller is expected to talk about their feelings in an environment that is bereft of human warmth !!
But as we see in other situations where rigid control is upheld, the more control there is, the more control is needed. What I mean is, if we take the example of unwanted child behaviour and set the threshold too high, we end up having a constant battle to maintain our stance. We become more anxious about our self-made rules than we do about the child we seek to control ! Broadly, we feel more and more threatened the more we lose control over the person we are trying to control and this leads us to employ greater and greater measures to hold our position. This is what commonly happens between a Samaritan and his or her caller. The primary focus is not helping the caller, but rather applying training with a rule book that inhibits both the Samaritan and the caller.
With the Samaritan`s level of expectation upon a caller set so high, he puts himself in a position of a parent who must maintain discipline at all costs.Let me reiterate that: At all costs. And this is what happens, inevitably: a caller, unwittingly, has to measure up to a whole list of criteria (which are to do with the needs of the Samaritan), and like a child confronted with zero tolerance, is treading on a mine field.The Sam, like an insecure parent, uses all manner of discipline to prevent chat and, frankly, get their own way, with the ultimate penalty of absolute power, ending the call. (A reminder that we are talking about a genuine, non-offensive caller here.)
It`s all about what THEY want.
Let`s look at what the typical Samaritan wants from a caller: firstly, the Samaritan expects that the caller has to be happy with silence,then comes the need for the Samaritan to have a call from a "genuine caller" who exhibits a level of distress that the Sam can relate to. We then have the Sam needing to not be caught chatting (whatever that means!) and to ensure the fulfilment of this overwhelming rule the Sam decides that they must not make comments as the caller relays his plight. The result is, of course, a caller who is expected to talk about their feelings, yet no emotional support is forthcoming from the other end of the phone. In effect, the stricture of training has stripped the call of anything that would be called human, caring and supportive. I think that the Samaritan`s need not to chat....and to deliver silence for the caller to fill, causes them to be detached, non-involved with the call, and this created distance bleeds the call of humanity. In fact, a Samaritan in this functional mode has little or no manifest caring for the caller simply because they do not engage with them. With no two-way contact the Sam`s posture is perfunctory and compassionless.
We have to emphasise here that individual Sams are not to blame, they are merely doing what they are told do. They believe what they are told to believe. Where they are told that callers want silence in which to talk, they think that this is universally true. In order to become a Samaritan one has to believe what one is told and use it upon callers. Training also teaches the fear that NOT to follow the instructed method will be detrimental to callers and so there is a fear/guilt devise that makes Sams conform.
There has to be a better way.
So what would be a better model for helping callers? Well, I think for starters, the ethos would have to change, revert back to the humanity of Chad Varah. The Nanny State-ism would have to go, to be replaced by respect for the caller and HIS needs. I think that, too, the caller would have to be treated with a presumption of genuineness, along with adopting a truly non-judgmental stance that does not discriminate between callers upon grounds of the subjective measure of distress. I think that with a refocus on the callers needs a more humanistic approach would follow, where a Sam would engage in a human way with the caller.
But in all of this we must not forget our Samaritan`s wishes to help people.. We must not forget that Sams themselves are victim to a training regime that not only disrespects callers, but disrespects them, too. So I think that to train Sams to be responsive to the needs of callers, to be adaptable, to have confidence in their OWN ability to relate to people would empower THEM to do what it is that they volunteer to do, for it is not just that callers are under the thumb of an all powerful rule book, Samaritans are too. Both Samaritans and callers are treading on egg shells.
I hope to come back in a bit to round this up. It`ll be a shorter blog (!)
that looks at the benefits of a more humanistic approach..... Hope to see you soon !
Best advice: remember the Sams operate on the basis that YOU are there for THEM. In other words, you are there to comply with what the Sams want from you.
If you need to phone many times over a period of time, don`t phone the same part of the country and don`t use the same name each time you call. If you phone many times information may be gathered about you (from the calls) because the Sams decide that they want to restrict your access, for whatever reason they see fit. This info is passed around branches.N.B.You may be in genuine distress over a period of time, but this is irrelevant to the Sam's decision. They decide what is best for you, whether you agree or not... and there is nothing you can do about it.
N.B. If you complain about one Samaritan at one branch, there is a high chance that other Sams at that branch or in that area will be unkind to you and may bully you.(Information will have been gathered about you so that they all will be able to identify you when you call.) This is typical of group behaviour so it`s no surprise!
Further,if you are badly treated by more than one Sam (this is very common so don`t think that it`s you personally!)and feel you should make another complaint, please remember that several complaints will likely get you labled as a "complainer". If this happens, it demonstrates the groups need to shift their guilt onto YOU. It is, as we have discussed many times, a typical strategy to protect themselves by making you look like the problem.
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/
Monday, 8 February 2010
Socially Acceptable Forms of Abuse,2
In this blog I want to begin to think about what forms of cruelty to children are permissible, accepted by society, and which are not. Of course many acts of cruelty are not generally seen as "abuse", but this reflects the selective nature of designation and shows that this is not objective territory at all. So, there are inconsistencies in the way society perceives abuse according to culture, time and place, and many other factors, and I want to investigate why these disparities exist.
We have recently seen the verdict in the Edlington case where two boys tortured two younger boys......... There had clearly been domestic violence in the home of the convicted boys, along with drug abuse and violent and pornographic videos. Certainly the boys had learned violent behaviour from their home life and, whether as victims of it personally, or as carriers of this acquired behaviour, were impelled to inflict this upon other children.
Although all of these factors in the domestic life of these boys add up to unacceptable conditions for the raising of children, the signal for intervention is violence towards the children. Many families allow children to watch violent movies, many children see sexual material that is beyond their age, many witness domestic violence, there are innumerable families where a parent is taking drugs, yet these situations are generally not able to be policed.
Clearly physical violence towards children is an extreme abuse (as is serious neglect) and this is reflected in law.
The law though, follows societies confusion about what is abuse and what isn`t, as is exampled by issues around smacking: Smacking, so called, is permitted in law with a stipulation that the smack mustn`t leave a lasting mark. I find this unsatisfactory, not least because I think that hitting children is wrong in any circumstances, but unsatisfactory also because it is morally muddled. I think that with many people "smacking " their children the law would not find it easy to enforce a smacking ban and this, concomitant with the pretty vocal lobby that says smacking is needed to enforce discipline, means that government does not want to go against the masses. So it fudges things by allowing a bit of gentle smacking that attempts to pacify the folks who believe smacking to be violence against children, whilst also pandering to those who want to smack children to maintain discipline or give the child a counter-fear to stop them running into the road, or some such.
For me, the central issue in regard to smacking children is one of children having equal rights in this respect to any other person. That is, I feel that if it is not permissible to smack/hit adults, then children should not have lesser rights just because they have little social power. The other issue is one of teaching a child that relationships are based around power.
I think we need to think about the term "smack" for a moment: Firstly, it is a euphemism used to diminish the act, though in reality it is not possible to grade violent behaviour, or to euphemise violence to make it allowable towards certain sections of society, namely children, because when children are on the receiving end of a "smack" they cannot discern that it is technically a smack ..and therefore not a hit or an assault. They feel it as violence. The end result of smacking a child will produce psychological damage just as it`s more violent equivalent does (the amount of damage will vary according to all sorts of variables). Confirming this fact, children who have been smacked will often go on to smack their children, just as children raised in homes with a greater degree of violence will likely be violent in their future relationships.
But I think that the notion that violence should be used, or threatened, as a way of controlling behaviour is a twisted mind-set. To teach a child that one must comply in order to avoid violence is a barbaric lesson that shows disrespect towards children as people, and damages the child`s respect for the parent. Even from a loving parent, a smack communicates to the child that "this person who loves me will also hurt me". It is a mixed message indeed to love someone and to use violence against them.
Justifications for hitting a child compound this mixed message.. The old maxim `cruel to be kind` tells us that people know that it is wrong, deep down, and need a justification like this to offload their guilt: the compartmental conscience tries to help the parent who smacks by creating a category that upholds the idea that hitting a child is really a sign of love, since it teaches them right from wrong or what in their environment is dangerous. Nevertheless, whatever the justification, a child exposed to cruel- to- be- kind- violence, grows up experiencing that if you want someone to do something, the way to achieve that is with threats.
What is the difference between using physical violence to enforce the behaviour we desire, and using psychological violence? Well, in affect, certainly, none, both cause serious damage. There are reasons, however, that psychological violence does not have the same status or sympathy-value.
My point in examining corporal control has been to make a path to the consideration of whether violence that is visible...and therefore provable, has greater status than psychological violence that is more concealed and much harder to prove.
The law generally reflects this: A person can be gaoled for a physical attack which seriously wounds someone or kills, yet psychological torture which leads someone to ill health, mental or physical, or suicide, is not provable so therefore very hard to prosecute. In regard to children, serious violence is an obvious act, psychological violence is not. Where abuse of children is psychological, as the general case I explored in my previous blog, and where there are no external signs of abuse, the law does not wish to intervene. That is inspite of our present crusade against child abuse.
But there is another reason why psychological violence, through a range including emotional cruelty, is largely permissible: Looking at society as a general group, more people are emotionally abusive than people who are physically violent. There is a great deal of emotional cruelty inflicted upon children, often, or even from time to time, and the numbers involved are significant because one cannot make a law that outlaws something that is pursued by the masses. For example, we might consider adultery to be a crime, yet so many people are adulterous that we cannot prevent this by law. There are too many people involved, with manifoldly mitigating circumstances, to make such a thing practical.
The selection of types of abuse that we deem impermissible, therefore, is not based upon an absolute morality, but upon practicalities like the numbers of people involved, the scope of enforcement, group moral trends and issues of group psychology driven by people in positions of influence and power. For these reasons children subjected to psychological abuse have a burden, most often resulting in aberrant behaviour and educational and societal dysfunction, that neither legally nor attributively links to the perpetrator.
We have recently seen the verdict in the Edlington case where two boys tortured two younger boys......... There had clearly been domestic violence in the home of the convicted boys, along with drug abuse and violent and pornographic videos. Certainly the boys had learned violent behaviour from their home life and, whether as victims of it personally, or as carriers of this acquired behaviour, were impelled to inflict this upon other children.
Although all of these factors in the domestic life of these boys add up to unacceptable conditions for the raising of children, the signal for intervention is violence towards the children. Many families allow children to watch violent movies, many children see sexual material that is beyond their age, many witness domestic violence, there are innumerable families where a parent is taking drugs, yet these situations are generally not able to be policed.
Clearly physical violence towards children is an extreme abuse (as is serious neglect) and this is reflected in law.
The law though, follows societies confusion about what is abuse and what isn`t, as is exampled by issues around smacking: Smacking, so called, is permitted in law with a stipulation that the smack mustn`t leave a lasting mark. I find this unsatisfactory, not least because I think that hitting children is wrong in any circumstances, but unsatisfactory also because it is morally muddled. I think that with many people "smacking " their children the law would not find it easy to enforce a smacking ban and this, concomitant with the pretty vocal lobby that says smacking is needed to enforce discipline, means that government does not want to go against the masses. So it fudges things by allowing a bit of gentle smacking that attempts to pacify the folks who believe smacking to be violence against children, whilst also pandering to those who want to smack children to maintain discipline or give the child a counter-fear to stop them running into the road, or some such.
For me, the central issue in regard to smacking children is one of children having equal rights in this respect to any other person. That is, I feel that if it is not permissible to smack/hit adults, then children should not have lesser rights just because they have little social power. The other issue is one of teaching a child that relationships are based around power.
I think we need to think about the term "smack" for a moment: Firstly, it is a euphemism used to diminish the act, though in reality it is not possible to grade violent behaviour, or to euphemise violence to make it allowable towards certain sections of society, namely children, because when children are on the receiving end of a "smack" they cannot discern that it is technically a smack ..and therefore not a hit or an assault. They feel it as violence. The end result of smacking a child will produce psychological damage just as it`s more violent equivalent does (the amount of damage will vary according to all sorts of variables). Confirming this fact, children who have been smacked will often go on to smack their children, just as children raised in homes with a greater degree of violence will likely be violent in their future relationships.
But I think that the notion that violence should be used, or threatened, as a way of controlling behaviour is a twisted mind-set. To teach a child that one must comply in order to avoid violence is a barbaric lesson that shows disrespect towards children as people, and damages the child`s respect for the parent. Even from a loving parent, a smack communicates to the child that "this person who loves me will also hurt me". It is a mixed message indeed to love someone and to use violence against them.
Justifications for hitting a child compound this mixed message.. The old maxim `cruel to be kind` tells us that people know that it is wrong, deep down, and need a justification like this to offload their guilt: the compartmental conscience tries to help the parent who smacks by creating a category that upholds the idea that hitting a child is really a sign of love, since it teaches them right from wrong or what in their environment is dangerous. Nevertheless, whatever the justification, a child exposed to cruel- to- be- kind- violence, grows up experiencing that if you want someone to do something, the way to achieve that is with threats.
What is the difference between using physical violence to enforce the behaviour we desire, and using psychological violence? Well, in affect, certainly, none, both cause serious damage. There are reasons, however, that psychological violence does not have the same status or sympathy-value.
My point in examining corporal control has been to make a path to the consideration of whether violence that is visible...and therefore provable, has greater status than psychological violence that is more concealed and much harder to prove.
The law generally reflects this: A person can be gaoled for a physical attack which seriously wounds someone or kills, yet psychological torture which leads someone to ill health, mental or physical, or suicide, is not provable so therefore very hard to prosecute. In regard to children, serious violence is an obvious act, psychological violence is not. Where abuse of children is psychological, as the general case I explored in my previous blog, and where there are no external signs of abuse, the law does not wish to intervene. That is inspite of our present crusade against child abuse.
But there is another reason why psychological violence, through a range including emotional cruelty, is largely permissible: Looking at society as a general group, more people are emotionally abusive than people who are physically violent. There is a great deal of emotional cruelty inflicted upon children, often, or even from time to time, and the numbers involved are significant because one cannot make a law that outlaws something that is pursued by the masses. For example, we might consider adultery to be a crime, yet so many people are adulterous that we cannot prevent this by law. There are too many people involved, with manifoldly mitigating circumstances, to make such a thing practical.
The selection of types of abuse that we deem impermissible, therefore, is not based upon an absolute morality, but upon practicalities like the numbers of people involved, the scope of enforcement, group moral trends and issues of group psychology driven by people in positions of influence and power. For these reasons children subjected to psychological abuse have a burden, most often resulting in aberrant behaviour and educational and societal dysfunction, that neither legally nor attributively links to the perpetrator.
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, 24 January 2010
Does Society Need Victims?
We have talked about victimisation of individuals and now I want to meander a little into the bigger picture. I want to see if society as an animal group needs victims in order to advance it`s group needs and, if it does, whether there can be any wider explanations found for mass persecutory uptake.
We know that societies have hierarchies, underclasses, bullies and victims, successful people and failures. This may well be unavoidable even as a society, in the name of human rights or civilised behaviour, strives to drive out inequality. In my view, humanity doesn`t ever advance in terms of how we treat each other, it just applies itself to better conduct in some societies around the world at different times, whilst brutal behaviour dominates other societies. Things change only in as far as which nations are committing atrocities, or not, at certain points in history. But why does it happen? Is there something else at work here that we don`t see?
It is hard enough to take a look at our less honorable, half concealed and misunderstood impulses, and the mechanics of relationship in this regard that are all around us, let alone to try to fathom how we humans are motivated in terms of our animal selves in relation to the animal-pack. I find it easier to look at these phenomena interpersonally and within small groups, then to check out the psychology macrocosmically. The psychology invariably checks out!!!!!
Let`s look at how an element of interpersonal psychology transfers easily to the wider scheme of things: We have just examined why and how a compartmental conscience aids in disavailing someone of guilt and that within the compartmental conscience various strategies may be used to achieve this..the guilt-shift being one primary example. We know that the guilt-shift functions to demonise someone else in order to, firstly, disencumber the guilty party of responsibly and, secondly, to shift guilt overtly,publicly, from the guilty to the innocent so as to protect the guilt-laden.
So now, how does this microcosmic psychology transfer to society as a whole? We have seen how a group, such as our examples, protect their members and how they deflect the guilt of one of their fellows onto others. Of course, there is both a need and an advantage in doing so: If priests or doctors allow outsiders to know of their culpability the whole group becomes tarnished..and this affects everybody. For a professional group to be publicly discredited is a very big deal for all the players, they all potentially look guilty (as priests do to many people).
From our understanding of small-scale psychology and it`s relation to group psychology, we see that guilt-shifting is a very necessary off-load and certainly essential to group survival. In society in general though, I think that this need still fulfils, even, as in group psychology, if some, or many, or most people aren`t guilty at all.I believe that there is an unconscious drive in us as pack-animals to off-load guilt even if we personally have no guilt whatsoever.For example, it is our instinctive dislike of, or nervousness about, our societies weaker members that betrays our group guilt even if we don't personally victimise or abuse....
And what does this result in ultimately? This manifests in the demonisation and persecution we see emanating from the big cogs in our societies. An example from history would be the 17th century witch hunts, but societal guilt-shifting is alive and kicking today!
In my next blog I want to look at examples of this phenomenon. Hope you can tune in...
We know that societies have hierarchies, underclasses, bullies and victims, successful people and failures. This may well be unavoidable even as a society, in the name of human rights or civilised behaviour, strives to drive out inequality. In my view, humanity doesn`t ever advance in terms of how we treat each other, it just applies itself to better conduct in some societies around the world at different times, whilst brutal behaviour dominates other societies. Things change only in as far as which nations are committing atrocities, or not, at certain points in history. But why does it happen? Is there something else at work here that we don`t see?
It is hard enough to take a look at our less honorable, half concealed and misunderstood impulses, and the mechanics of relationship in this regard that are all around us, let alone to try to fathom how we humans are motivated in terms of our animal selves in relation to the animal-pack. I find it easier to look at these phenomena interpersonally and within small groups, then to check out the psychology macrocosmically. The psychology invariably checks out!!!!!
Let`s look at how an element of interpersonal psychology transfers easily to the wider scheme of things: We have just examined why and how a compartmental conscience aids in disavailing someone of guilt and that within the compartmental conscience various strategies may be used to achieve this..the guilt-shift being one primary example. We know that the guilt-shift functions to demonise someone else in order to, firstly, disencumber the guilty party of responsibly and, secondly, to shift guilt overtly,publicly, from the guilty to the innocent so as to protect the guilt-laden.
So now, how does this microcosmic psychology transfer to society as a whole? We have seen how a group, such as our examples, protect their members and how they deflect the guilt of one of their fellows onto others. Of course, there is both a need and an advantage in doing so: If priests or doctors allow outsiders to know of their culpability the whole group becomes tarnished..and this affects everybody. For a professional group to be publicly discredited is a very big deal for all the players, they all potentially look guilty (as priests do to many people).
From our understanding of small-scale psychology and it`s relation to group psychology, we see that guilt-shifting is a very necessary off-load and certainly essential to group survival. In society in general though, I think that this need still fulfils, even, as in group psychology, if some, or many, or most people aren`t guilty at all.I believe that there is an unconscious drive in us as pack-animals to off-load guilt even if we personally have no guilt whatsoever.For example, it is our instinctive dislike of, or nervousness about, our societies weaker members that betrays our group guilt even if we don't personally victimise or abuse....
And what does this result in ultimately? This manifests in the demonisation and persecution we see emanating from the big cogs in our societies. An example from history would be the 17th century witch hunts, but societal guilt-shifting is alive and kicking today!
In my next blog I want to look at examples of this phenomenon. Hope you can tune in...
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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