What is "eternal love" anyway? I think it`s all about sensitivity. Perhaps we can see that sensitivity IS eternal love, carrying as it does a fine atunement to the things around us, carrying a sensitivity from one generation to another, carrying caring to people and things alike. Of course, we acquire sensitivity as a learned behaviour. It`s more likely that sensitive parents will produce sensitive children, just as with any other attribute. This we pass on in turn to our children. A thoughtfulness, considerateness, a quality of empathy and respect we engender in others and they become the eternal chain.
What happens generally, though, in the cut and thrust of life, is that we select those people or things to care about most and ignore most of those folks around us who are needy: we shut them out if they aren`t directly part of lives. We compartmentalise those we care about and those we don`t. We tell ourselves that there is only so much we can cope with and we can`t include the old lady next door because we are already overloaded.
The reason why we make a hierarchy of people we care about and people we dismiss, is that we feel obliged to those with whom we have an emotional exchange, a connection. We ourselves benefit from the exchange, mutual support, a unity, a belonging, and for these reasons we do a deal of reciprocity.
It is much more difficult to jettison someone who levers our guilt, someone with whom we have some kind of bond, than it is to shut out someone who has no power to come back at us. With people who can pull on our guilt for things they need from us, we are hooked into them emotionally. I was saying way back in my blog "Socially Acceptable Forms of Abuse", that parents with diminished levels of guilt can treat their children however they want to because children have a lesser power to hold parents responsible for their actions.Okay, so kids can try to pull the guilt-strings, but they cannot by means of relationship restrain parents morally....they just have a bit more of a chance than dead people!
However, generally speaking, the more sensitivity, engendering guilt, a person has, the more they can be prevailed upon to act in a way that bends to the needs of others. It is a higher state indeed when someone is sensitive to the needs of others regardless of whether the other party has leverage or not. The more we are able to do things selflessly, the higher is our attainment. Attending to our loved ones who have passed away is a high and noble act because they have no recourse to us for our inadequacies in not looking after their burial place. Dead people have no fight-back. Because they haven`t, our attendance demands our highest sensitivity and awareness, more so than the old lady next door. We have to be super-sensitive and selfless when we decide to hear and fulfil a call to honour our deceased and this tunes us up to the highest awareness that impacts on our lives in other areas.
Dead people have no fight-back. It`s true. They are more defenceless than the elderly or the mentally ill, and that`s really saying something. I note how as status diminishes.... one`s ability to speak up for oneself, one`s social position..... the less rights we have.This tells us that our rights are subject to our ability as animals to compete with the other animals around us. The elderly find that they lose their rights as they become more infirm, the mentally ill lose theirs when they are considered insane. How much more so, then, if you cannot speak at all because you are dead! This sounds silly, I expect, but I actually make a profound point here: why should burial sites be abused and neglected just because there is no one with the rightfulness to stick up for something (or somebody) so defenceless.
So, anyway, what do we get from looking after our family graves? Well, we get the knock-on benefits that any positive action brings us. It doesn`t matter that this particular action is not directed at the living, it still has the same affect. We raise up the quality of our output into the world and enhance our ability to care about ourselves, our nearest and dearest and our living world. Does this sound a bit "preachy"?.......... Let me show you what happened in my case: I went to a graveyard, sparked my concern for these past, and some very very past, relatives and found several of our lost family. Because of my actions these people have been gifted love and family and belonging and in their turn have raised their own energy. I am sure that I am a much happier and fulfilled and positive person, a million fold, than before I began my quest. And this is what I mean, you always get back blessing by the bucket load when you output like this ! Why don`t you try it!
Thursday, 30 September 2010
Friday, 24 September 2010
Gift From the Dead 2
Hello ! Nice to see you!
So, where was I? Went off on a rant for a while there! ..........Ah, yes, I was wanting to tell you about what happened when I was making enquiries at the first church about the whereabouts of my great grandfather`s grave.............. "Don`t you have relatives in the village?", she said. I said that we hadn`t had relatives there for donkeys years. But she told me the names of the people and I immediately knew who they were, long since thought to be dead!! I felt... and still do, very upset and like I'd had a miracle at the same time. We had found living people directly from these enquiries about dead people! "Back from the past!" I feel I want to say "never was a visit to a graveyard so propitious!" We have since found, spurred on by this one momentous find, another long-lost close relative and I find myself wondering whether it is not just a coincidence that this has happened.......Not quite on the divine intention level, but somehow intrinsic to caring, the ubiquitous reward for positive output.
Graveyards are thought of as places of closure, not places of openings, yet it was a simple desire to honour my deceased relatives that brought me rich fruits in my life. I have a philosophy that "output", positive output, of course, brings us good things. It`s not just a single action, it`s to do with quantity and consistency and quality. If you go on doing doing doing some of these things will produce good things for you. These good things don`t always come back directly, but somehow, maybe it`s just positive energy, the more output we propel the more potential we give ourselves. The quality of the output is important, I think, the more well-intentioned, happy, confident, the better "results". When we reap life`s bonuses the religiously ingrained amongst us might think "God made me lucky", but whatever you believe, certainly output opens the gates to good fortune.
It is a tragic paradox that when we are depressed we do not have the ability to output the energy that will make changes in our lives and give us the return energy we so much need. On a very cynical note, I am driven to say that it is strange that "God" gives less to folks who are depressed than he does to those who thrive.... I wonder why this could be? Animal hierachy? People who are "down" deserve less? At least, one would have to say that if you can`t muster yourself to emit a positive energy, you block off God`s nature to help you! Reminds me of the old body-blow, "God helps those who help themselves" !!!!!!! And yet, hmmmmmmm, if we thought of our image of God, not as the religious construction that he is, but as light and positivity, good-energy and higher emotions, the fact that we snooker ourselves when we are depressed makes a lot of sense.
Anyhow, so let`s get back on track.....So caring about those at rest in the earth is at the top end of quality output? Why? We don`t know if they know we are doing it, we don`t know if they are grateful or have pleasure in heaven from seeing us bring our love to them, so why would I equate visiting a graveyard with taking your neighbour a bowl of fruit or giving someone a lift to Sainsbury`s? Hmmmmmmm...., it`s a profoundly sticky question. Is it something to do with eternal love?
I am continuing with this very soooooooooon. Hope to see you here!
Oh, and I`ll let you into a little secret ! After this blog the topic is
"Murder of God: is it moral?" Humanism wants God finished off. I want to talk about it. Will you help me out?
So, where was I? Went off on a rant for a while there! ..........Ah, yes, I was wanting to tell you about what happened when I was making enquiries at the first church about the whereabouts of my great grandfather`s grave.............. "Don`t you have relatives in the village?", she said. I said that we hadn`t had relatives there for donkeys years. But she told me the names of the people and I immediately knew who they were, long since thought to be dead!! I felt... and still do, very upset and like I'd had a miracle at the same time. We had found living people directly from these enquiries about dead people! "Back from the past!" I feel I want to say "never was a visit to a graveyard so propitious!" We have since found, spurred on by this one momentous find, another long-lost close relative and I find myself wondering whether it is not just a coincidence that this has happened.......Not quite on the divine intention level, but somehow intrinsic to caring, the ubiquitous reward for positive output.
Graveyards are thought of as places of closure, not places of openings, yet it was a simple desire to honour my deceased relatives that brought me rich fruits in my life. I have a philosophy that "output", positive output, of course, brings us good things. It`s not just a single action, it`s to do with quantity and consistency and quality. If you go on doing doing doing some of these things will produce good things for you. These good things don`t always come back directly, but somehow, maybe it`s just positive energy, the more output we propel the more potential we give ourselves. The quality of the output is important, I think, the more well-intentioned, happy, confident, the better "results". When we reap life`s bonuses the religiously ingrained amongst us might think "God made me lucky", but whatever you believe, certainly output opens the gates to good fortune.
It is a tragic paradox that when we are depressed we do not have the ability to output the energy that will make changes in our lives and give us the return energy we so much need. On a very cynical note, I am driven to say that it is strange that "God" gives less to folks who are depressed than he does to those who thrive.... I wonder why this could be? Animal hierachy? People who are "down" deserve less? At least, one would have to say that if you can`t muster yourself to emit a positive energy, you block off God`s nature to help you! Reminds me of the old body-blow, "God helps those who help themselves" !!!!!!! And yet, hmmmmmmm, if we thought of our image of God, not as the religious construction that he is, but as light and positivity, good-energy and higher emotions, the fact that we snooker ourselves when we are depressed makes a lot of sense.
Anyhow, so let`s get back on track.....So caring about those at rest in the earth is at the top end of quality output? Why? We don`t know if they know we are doing it, we don`t know if they are grateful or have pleasure in heaven from seeing us bring our love to them, so why would I equate visiting a graveyard with taking your neighbour a bowl of fruit or giving someone a lift to Sainsbury`s? Hmmmmmmm...., it`s a profoundly sticky question. Is it something to do with eternal love?
I am continuing with this very soooooooooon. Hope to see you here!
Oh, and I`ll let you into a little secret ! After this blog the topic is
"Murder of God: is it moral?" Humanism wants God finished off. I want to talk about it. Will you help me out?
Saturday, 18 September 2010
A Gift from the Dead.
Hello ! I`m glad you`re here !
I am starting this blog not knowing where my thoughts will lead me. I have an idea to talk about graves and graveyards and to think about why we should honour our deceased loved ones. Let`s see where we get to................
A cousin of mine recently was doing some work on the family tree. This stirred up a lot of things and I ended up going to a churchyard to put flowers on the grave of my great grandfather and great grandmother. There was no headstone and so I tried to ascertain the exact location of the grave from the Church Warden. Sadly there were only incomplete records: those with headstones were recorded, those without were not.
I found this very upsetting, not least that a church would have such little respect or caring for our loved ones that they would not keep proper records, yet more upsetting still that graves would have status if those who were buried had position or money enough to afford a headstone.
I immediately thought about hierarchy in the church, G`d and clergy, landed gentry and peasants, all assuming their place within the social scheme of things.. and, of course, the most lowly having unmarked graves. I thought how significant it is that the church reflects social division and has supported it through the centuries, whatever its religious posture might be. Even whether one`s burial spot is recorded, boils down to hierarchy !
When I question whether this is typical of the Church of England throughout the country, I am told that it is.
I was minded to try to put flowers on the grave of my great greats as well....(It`s funny how our actions so readily expose the wrongs around us!) My grandmother talked of them such a lot and they had been long-since neglected. So I approached a second church to try to see a grave plan here as well !(Glutton for punishment!) My second attempt was worse, this time even devoid of kindness, for I encountered at this church an, how shall I put it?..... an indifference that was plain obstructive. Yes, they had many of my ancestors buried on this plot of land and they didn`t give a TOSS about them or me or the churches` responsibilities.Not a toss. We might have been talking about carcasses from an abattoir for all the value my enquiry had! (Please see my blog "Animals, Why Should we Care?" for more examination of how we compartmentalise our consciences.)
I find this quite extraordinary, don`t you? Perhaps you`ll even say, typical of the church, I don`t know. Vicars in the past lived with these people, baptised them, married them, and in the end buried them.. and dumped them in the ground without a care for the recording of their resting place. Do I hear a, "perhaps the records have been lost?" OK., let`s be kind, they forgot to write down where the poor people are buried or they accidentally lost all these records all over England.... and now they say "sorry", like the Pope and everybody else these days. Does this wash with you? Well, it doesn`t with me. There is just something revealing about a church that is comfortable with operating on the basis of hierarchy, isn`t there?
How could they EVER have lived with people and cared so little? Could it be that the church was something for THEM, yet pretended to be "for the people"? Personally, I have a very low opinion of the church for just this reason: it`s all about them.
But why isn`t this all over the headlines? I suppose when immediate family have departed this life no-one much cares anymore. No-one fights for them; they are too busy fighting for their own lives, families, jobs, money. What does it say about us, though, that we bury our dead with flowing tears and then cease to care so many years down the line? And what does it do to us as human beings to leave our loved ones behind in a churchyard where there is no-one to protect their resting place or their memory? I`d really like to think next time about what we gain by honouring our dead and why I think we should care with an energy we`d usually apply to our lives and the living.
This thrilling blog continues next time when I reveal, wow this is so much like Hollywood movies, I reveal what I gained from a graveyard... Tune in next time!
I am starting this blog not knowing where my thoughts will lead me. I have an idea to talk about graves and graveyards and to think about why we should honour our deceased loved ones. Let`s see where we get to................
A cousin of mine recently was doing some work on the family tree. This stirred up a lot of things and I ended up going to a churchyard to put flowers on the grave of my great grandfather and great grandmother. There was no headstone and so I tried to ascertain the exact location of the grave from the Church Warden. Sadly there were only incomplete records: those with headstones were recorded, those without were not.
I found this very upsetting, not least that a church would have such little respect or caring for our loved ones that they would not keep proper records, yet more upsetting still that graves would have status if those who were buried had position or money enough to afford a headstone.
I immediately thought about hierarchy in the church, G`d and clergy, landed gentry and peasants, all assuming their place within the social scheme of things.. and, of course, the most lowly having unmarked graves. I thought how significant it is that the church reflects social division and has supported it through the centuries, whatever its religious posture might be. Even whether one`s burial spot is recorded, boils down to hierarchy !
When I question whether this is typical of the Church of England throughout the country, I am told that it is.
I was minded to try to put flowers on the grave of my great greats as well....(It`s funny how our actions so readily expose the wrongs around us!) My grandmother talked of them such a lot and they had been long-since neglected. So I approached a second church to try to see a grave plan here as well !(Glutton for punishment!) My second attempt was worse, this time even devoid of kindness, for I encountered at this church an, how shall I put it?..... an indifference that was plain obstructive. Yes, they had many of my ancestors buried on this plot of land and they didn`t give a TOSS about them or me or the churches` responsibilities.Not a toss. We might have been talking about carcasses from an abattoir for all the value my enquiry had! (Please see my blog "Animals, Why Should we Care?" for more examination of how we compartmentalise our consciences.)
I find this quite extraordinary, don`t you? Perhaps you`ll even say, typical of the church, I don`t know. Vicars in the past lived with these people, baptised them, married them, and in the end buried them.. and dumped them in the ground without a care for the recording of their resting place. Do I hear a, "perhaps the records have been lost?" OK., let`s be kind, they forgot to write down where the poor people are buried or they accidentally lost all these records all over England.... and now they say "sorry", like the Pope and everybody else these days. Does this wash with you? Well, it doesn`t with me. There is just something revealing about a church that is comfortable with operating on the basis of hierarchy, isn`t there?
How could they EVER have lived with people and cared so little? Could it be that the church was something for THEM, yet pretended to be "for the people"? Personally, I have a very low opinion of the church for just this reason: it`s all about them.
But why isn`t this all over the headlines? I suppose when immediate family have departed this life no-one much cares anymore. No-one fights for them; they are too busy fighting for their own lives, families, jobs, money. What does it say about us, though, that we bury our dead with flowing tears and then cease to care so many years down the line? And what does it do to us as human beings to leave our loved ones behind in a churchyard where there is no-one to protect their resting place or their memory? I`d really like to think next time about what we gain by honouring our dead and why I think we should care with an energy we`d usually apply to our lives and the living.
This thrilling blog continues next time when I reveal, wow this is so much like Hollywood movies, I reveal what I gained from a graveyard... Tune in next time!
Wednesday, 18 August 2010
Psychiatry in Medical Damage.
Hello Everyone !
Hope you are feeling great !
I want to begin to talk about antibiotic damage in this blog. It`s a huge subject, but let`s make a start with the help of W.D.D.T.Y., What Doctors Don`t Tell You. And, please, if you HAVE to take an antibiotic, always take a probiotic at the same time, optimally at a time that is furthest away from when you take your antibiotic, during your course, and for a few weeks after you finish. www.wddty.com/
My mother has just had to take an antibiotic for a localised infection and on top of my concerns about her taking an antibiotic, let alone a broad spectrum antibiotic, I knew that her already having a candida overgrowth puts her at greater risk.
The medical profession wont test what sort of infection you have in order to treat it, they use a generalised hit or miss approach and usually a "broad spectrum" antibiotic.(A friend of mine was subjected to this mindless pot-shot-with-different-antibiotics strategy even in Harley Street !) The problem with broad spectrums is that they knock out your healthy gut flora at the same time. It is absolutely imperative, therefore, that you top up your gut flora to prevent your gut being taken over by bad flora when you come off the antibiotic. It is tragic indeed that doctors STILL do not tell patients to do this. One wonders just how many cases of M.E./ Chronic Fatigue Syndrome would have been averted had doctors given this very simple advise. As we all know, so many cases of M.E. begin after taking an antibiotic... and with research desperately trying to steer everyone away from attributing antibiotic gut damage to the cause of a huge number of cases, we must try to spread the word in order to TRY to protect people.
I want, also, in this blog to take a preliminary look at the role of psychiatry in covering up medical damage. I was reminded of its role in such cases last week when my mother told me that my grandfather had been given an antibiotic in the late 1960s which caused hallucinations. I had been completely unaware of this episode in our lives as I had been a young child at the time. My grandfather was hospitalised in a psychiatric hospital for a few weeks and was given Phenobarbitone as a remedy. Interesting, so a psychiatric drug was used to clean up the mess! Well, what a big surprise !!
I think, though, that the close connexion between psychiatry and medical damage is more systemic than we imagine... Certainly, I think that the history of M.E. as a illness, carrying as it does attributions of "psychological causes", only confirms my belief that M.E. is largely an iatrogenic condition. Even today when there has been some presented "proof" that M.E. is a physical illness, psychiatry still has a foot in the door, indeed many "treatments" for ME are based upon the idea that this is a psychological illness. Many people with ME, especially women, are still abused by doctors who have a distinct and psychologically transparent need to hurt their patients by blaming THEM for being ill....(and, yes, women are still being given psychiatric labels in the 21st century for physical illness).
Now, using only very basic psychological understanding, we know that when someone in this kind of situation, here a doctor, tries to blame the victim it is because they know they are guilty (I have discussed in other blogs that this is not necessarily conscious, and indeed, why it is not). Guilt-shifting behaviour.......and pushing people into psychiatry is part of that..... TELLS us that doctors know that they have something to hide. It is in fact the very involvement of psychiatry that signals to us that something very dubious is afoot.Patients with illnesses where doctors don`t have guilt knocking at their conscience, will not generally be sent to a psychiatrist or be accused of being lazy!
Of course, conditions such as A.D.H.D. also have the classic hallmark of guilt-shifting. A physical illness that manifests after vaccination, that demonstrates clearly as a gut disorder, yet is an illness that is the province of psychiatry, tells us that guilt avoidance is at work on a very large scale.
It is strange indeed that despite research showing, too, that depression is widely a gut disorder, doctors are hell-bent upon treating it as a psychiatric condition. One doesn`t have to ask why this would be, actually, because it is clear that if other causes were acknowledged for so called "mental illness", psychiatry and all its drugs would lose billions. Incentive enough to perpetuate the myth of mental illness? I think so. It is in this way, where vested interest, guilt avoidance and financial concerns, can be seen to underlie the very diagnoses we take for granted. We assume that ALL diagnoses are underpinned with scientific research that is real and objective and altruistic, don`t we? I certainly did in my healthy and naive younger days.... But just this little dip into the subject shows us that scientific research is propelled by vested interest and that attributed causes of illness can be subjective. I have said many times that there is in research such a thing as "unwanted results", data that is unacceptable. Maybe you can`t believe that this could be true? Well, simply ask yourself if research that proved that allergies, from asthma to food intolerance, were caused by vaccinations, would this research be permitted?
The truth about antibiotics is slowly coming out, drip by drip, and not in the far distant future the whole truth will out.
If you have allergies, your kids have A.D.H.D. or A.S.D., if you have depression or any mental illness, please check this out, below:
www.gaps.me/?page_id=20
community.wddty.com/blogs/adverse_reactions/ - Cached
Please also take a look at the group S.C.D.UK on Yahoo http://groups.yahoo.com/group/SCDUK S.C.D. is a diet used to heal the gut. It has helped many, many people with M.E./F.M.S., depression, and specific gut illness such as Crohns.
www.breakingtheviciouscycle.info/
Gut and Psychology Syndrome is THE primary resource. It explains the how, what, where and why the gut is behind many illnesses. Please do take a look:
www.gutandpsychologysyndrome.com
Hope you are feeling great !
I want to begin to talk about antibiotic damage in this blog. It`s a huge subject, but let`s make a start with the help of W.D.D.T.Y., What Doctors Don`t Tell You. And, please, if you HAVE to take an antibiotic, always take a probiotic at the same time, optimally at a time that is furthest away from when you take your antibiotic, during your course, and for a few weeks after you finish. www.wddty.com/
My mother has just had to take an antibiotic for a localised infection and on top of my concerns about her taking an antibiotic, let alone a broad spectrum antibiotic, I knew that her already having a candida overgrowth puts her at greater risk.
The medical profession wont test what sort of infection you have in order to treat it, they use a generalised hit or miss approach and usually a "broad spectrum" antibiotic.(A friend of mine was subjected to this mindless pot-shot-with-different-antibiotics strategy even in Harley Street !) The problem with broad spectrums is that they knock out your healthy gut flora at the same time. It is absolutely imperative, therefore, that you top up your gut flora to prevent your gut being taken over by bad flora when you come off the antibiotic. It is tragic indeed that doctors STILL do not tell patients to do this. One wonders just how many cases of M.E./ Chronic Fatigue Syndrome would have been averted had doctors given this very simple advise. As we all know, so many cases of M.E. begin after taking an antibiotic... and with research desperately trying to steer everyone away from attributing antibiotic gut damage to the cause of a huge number of cases, we must try to spread the word in order to TRY to protect people.
I want, also, in this blog to take a preliminary look at the role of psychiatry in covering up medical damage. I was reminded of its role in such cases last week when my mother told me that my grandfather had been given an antibiotic in the late 1960s which caused hallucinations. I had been completely unaware of this episode in our lives as I had been a young child at the time. My grandfather was hospitalised in a psychiatric hospital for a few weeks and was given Phenobarbitone as a remedy. Interesting, so a psychiatric drug was used to clean up the mess! Well, what a big surprise !!
I think, though, that the close connexion between psychiatry and medical damage is more systemic than we imagine... Certainly, I think that the history of M.E. as a illness, carrying as it does attributions of "psychological causes", only confirms my belief that M.E. is largely an iatrogenic condition. Even today when there has been some presented "proof" that M.E. is a physical illness, psychiatry still has a foot in the door, indeed many "treatments" for ME are based upon the idea that this is a psychological illness. Many people with ME, especially women, are still abused by doctors who have a distinct and psychologically transparent need to hurt their patients by blaming THEM for being ill....(and, yes, women are still being given psychiatric labels in the 21st century for physical illness).
Now, using only very basic psychological understanding, we know that when someone in this kind of situation, here a doctor, tries to blame the victim it is because they know they are guilty (I have discussed in other blogs that this is not necessarily conscious, and indeed, why it is not). Guilt-shifting behaviour.......and pushing people into psychiatry is part of that..... TELLS us that doctors know that they have something to hide. It is in fact the very involvement of psychiatry that signals to us that something very dubious is afoot.Patients with illnesses where doctors don`t have guilt knocking at their conscience, will not generally be sent to a psychiatrist or be accused of being lazy!
Of course, conditions such as A.D.H.D. also have the classic hallmark of guilt-shifting. A physical illness that manifests after vaccination, that demonstrates clearly as a gut disorder, yet is an illness that is the province of psychiatry, tells us that guilt avoidance is at work on a very large scale.
It is strange indeed that despite research showing, too, that depression is widely a gut disorder, doctors are hell-bent upon treating it as a psychiatric condition. One doesn`t have to ask why this would be, actually, because it is clear that if other causes were acknowledged for so called "mental illness", psychiatry and all its drugs would lose billions. Incentive enough to perpetuate the myth of mental illness? I think so. It is in this way, where vested interest, guilt avoidance and financial concerns, can be seen to underlie the very diagnoses we take for granted. We assume that ALL diagnoses are underpinned with scientific research that is real and objective and altruistic, don`t we? I certainly did in my healthy and naive younger days.... But just this little dip into the subject shows us that scientific research is propelled by vested interest and that attributed causes of illness can be subjective. I have said many times that there is in research such a thing as "unwanted results", data that is unacceptable. Maybe you can`t believe that this could be true? Well, simply ask yourself if research that proved that allergies, from asthma to food intolerance, were caused by vaccinations, would this research be permitted?
The truth about antibiotics is slowly coming out, drip by drip, and not in the far distant future the whole truth will out.
If you have allergies, your kids have A.D.H.D. or A.S.D., if you have depression or any mental illness, please check this out, below:
www.gaps.me/?page_id=20
community.wddty.com/blogs/adverse_reactions/ - Cached
Please also take a look at the group S.C.D.UK on Yahoo http://groups.yahoo.com/group/SCDUK S.C.D. is a diet used to heal the gut. It has helped many, many people with M.E./F.M.S., depression, and specific gut illness such as Crohns.
www.breakingtheviciouscycle.info/
Gut and Psychology Syndrome is THE primary resource. It explains the how, what, where and why the gut is behind many illnesses. Please do take a look:
www.gutandpsychologysyndrome.com
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. "
Tuesday, 27 July 2010
Teachers who Bully (3)
In contrast to, me my sister was a whiz at maths. Not sure why, but she seemed to "get" all the little bits that defeated my sense of logic ! Maybe she just picked up little subtleties that escaped me or maybe she just accepted the rules as presented and didn't question them, I don`t know.
There were several children from middle class homes who were in the top half dozen in all subjects in this class a few years below me. All through my sister`s primary education things went well, usually with her vying for top spot in the class against the odds determined by favouritism.
Then something very strange happened: the Headmaster marked her way down for maths in her last report. When she arrived in secondary school she was in a C.S.E. set. Not only was this deeply upsetting to her to be down-graded and split from her friends, it was also a serious injustice because her maths was always more than excellent. Of course, no one questioned or challenged teachers in those days so nothing was done. My sister had to go through Secondary School in this set and received a CSE in maths. Since she wanted to be an architect or a surveyor this caused massive problems later on.
This example is a classic in the annals of animal behaviour. My sister was deliberately disadvantaged by a man who clearly did not like us and who, as a bully, was able to hurt children in any way he wanted to off the bat of his paranoia. Of course other children were very badly disadvantaged by his displeasure at them too; me included ! The reason for exploring this though, is to demonstrate just how the jockeying of our animal drives plays out in a group environment like a Primary School.
Whether a child wins or loses in school has little to do with their intelligence. When I arrived in Secondary School, a refugee from teacher bullying, a child made to fail, I would obviously fail in an even tougher animal environment. There would be no one to pick up the pieces, no one to restore my pride, self-esteem or love of learning. I absolutely loved history, music, reading, nature studies, well everything, actually, at the start of my learning, and left Primary School stupid and utterly defeated. The greater tragedy is that this is the sob story for a huge percentage of young children.
But I promised to talk in this blog about why, in the face of my biggest scoff at class teaching and its population of non-specialist teachers, I am a supporter of Home Education. Surely, you might be thinking, the same problem would apply? Parents are non-specialists in many, if not most, of the subjects required in home learning.. so why should I accept this at home if I don`t accept it in schools?
I think the simple explanation is that in a classroom a teacher cannot attend to detail, even if they wanted to. "Rote" is the hammer of necessity. At home, even if a parent is not the most understanding of maths, he/she can search-out why a child does not understand and learn more himself to enable greater understanding. The learning together process is the enabler. Further, a parent does not want his child to fail. This seems obvious doesn`t it, so why state it? Well, as we have said in this blog, a class teacher has inbuilt animal motivations,usually not conscious, let`s be a bit kinder and say that they show "expressions of their own psychological makeup" which impacts in different ways upon the children they teach.(For example,the willingness of teachers to see children with so called A.D.H.D.as needing medication is a conformity to the larger animal pack`s need to label and "runtify"*,as I call it, children who are a problem to the healthy and successful larger social picture.Teachers accommodate and support doctors' needs to push these children onto medication because they instinctively want to support the medical profession. Please see my later blog, "Psychiatry in Medical Damage".) They disable and disadvantage some, teachers-pet-ify and feed success to others. If your child, in a classroom environment, is the child the class teacher does not like or maybe your child doesn`t "get it" in the way I didn`t, he/she may be seriously disabled by the teacher. Parents who home educate their children are wanting to make learning enjoyable and to furnish all its joys and success. In a class situation it is not possible to give this to every child, both because of the numbers of children involved and group dynamics.
Please join me again later.
Some of my readers may have had experiences like these and I hope you will tell me about them......If you have been educationally damaged, please always remember that the class system is a master of imposed failure! Just because you have been made to fail does not mean that you are unintelligent. It is very hard to escape being made to be stupid, I know. That kind of imprinting is hard to shift. Maybe some of you have reached a point where you know that you are intelligent after all, maybe some have not realised this yet, but I think that knowing how classrooms function and why will help us to support ourselves.
* Runtify: this is my pejorative term for "natural selection".
There were several children from middle class homes who were in the top half dozen in all subjects in this class a few years below me. All through my sister`s primary education things went well, usually with her vying for top spot in the class against the odds determined by favouritism.
Then something very strange happened: the Headmaster marked her way down for maths in her last report. When she arrived in secondary school she was in a C.S.E. set. Not only was this deeply upsetting to her to be down-graded and split from her friends, it was also a serious injustice because her maths was always more than excellent. Of course, no one questioned or challenged teachers in those days so nothing was done. My sister had to go through Secondary School in this set and received a CSE in maths. Since she wanted to be an architect or a surveyor this caused massive problems later on.
This example is a classic in the annals of animal behaviour. My sister was deliberately disadvantaged by a man who clearly did not like us and who, as a bully, was able to hurt children in any way he wanted to off the bat of his paranoia. Of course other children were very badly disadvantaged by his displeasure at them too; me included ! The reason for exploring this though, is to demonstrate just how the jockeying of our animal drives plays out in a group environment like a Primary School.
Whether a child wins or loses in school has little to do with their intelligence. When I arrived in Secondary School, a refugee from teacher bullying, a child made to fail, I would obviously fail in an even tougher animal environment. There would be no one to pick up the pieces, no one to restore my pride, self-esteem or love of learning. I absolutely loved history, music, reading, nature studies, well everything, actually, at the start of my learning, and left Primary School stupid and utterly defeated. The greater tragedy is that this is the sob story for a huge percentage of young children.
But I promised to talk in this blog about why, in the face of my biggest scoff at class teaching and its population of non-specialist teachers, I am a supporter of Home Education. Surely, you might be thinking, the same problem would apply? Parents are non-specialists in many, if not most, of the subjects required in home learning.. so why should I accept this at home if I don`t accept it in schools?
I think the simple explanation is that in a classroom a teacher cannot attend to detail, even if they wanted to. "Rote" is the hammer of necessity. At home, even if a parent is not the most understanding of maths, he/she can search-out why a child does not understand and learn more himself to enable greater understanding. The learning together process is the enabler. Further, a parent does not want his child to fail. This seems obvious doesn`t it, so why state it? Well, as we have said in this blog, a class teacher has inbuilt animal motivations,usually not conscious, let`s be a bit kinder and say that they show "expressions of their own psychological makeup" which impacts in different ways upon the children they teach.(For example,the willingness of teachers to see children with so called A.D.H.D.as needing medication is a conformity to the larger animal pack`s need to label and "runtify"*,as I call it, children who are a problem to the healthy and successful larger social picture.Teachers accommodate and support doctors' needs to push these children onto medication because they instinctively want to support the medical profession. Please see my later blog, "Psychiatry in Medical Damage".) They disable and disadvantage some, teachers-pet-ify and feed success to others. If your child, in a classroom environment, is the child the class teacher does not like or maybe your child doesn`t "get it" in the way I didn`t, he/she may be seriously disabled by the teacher. Parents who home educate their children are wanting to make learning enjoyable and to furnish all its joys and success. In a class situation it is not possible to give this to every child, both because of the numbers of children involved and group dynamics.
Please join me again later.
Some of my readers may have had experiences like these and I hope you will tell me about them......If you have been educationally damaged, please always remember that the class system is a master of imposed failure! Just because you have been made to fail does not mean that you are unintelligent. It is very hard to escape being made to be stupid, I know. That kind of imprinting is hard to shift. Maybe some of you have reached a point where you know that you are intelligent after all, maybe some have not realised this yet, but I think that knowing how classrooms function and why will help us to support ourselves.
* Runtify: this is my pejorative term for "natural selection".
Saturday, 24 July 2010
Teachers Who Bully (2)
So, my Primary School Headmaster was a big bully. This took many forms on different levels. He overtly bullied lower class children, sometimes he was bullying concerning their education too, as he was with me.
I`ll outline what happened to me personally to enable some thought on this.. Well, I did not "get" sums at all. I tried very hard to arrive at the answers he wanted, yet failed even when I thought I had cracked how to do it. Failing led to ridicule, name calling and his vicious temper. I remember one day being kept behind after school because I could not understand fractions; he went on and on about cutting various slices of cake. I was too frightened to listen. I felt ashamed and humiliated and very disturbed by the implication of guilt levelled at me by being detained.
But there is not just a random, temperamental need to bully in a person like this: a child like me unwittingly probed his deepest feelings of inadequacy and loss of control. Of course, someone who is not a specialist maths teacher will fatally flounder when they attempt to teach even primary school children in a class environment:they don`t understand the subject. I triggered the vulnerability of his mathematical stupidity and he saw me, little frightened me, as a threat. Indeed, he attributed my inabilities as defiance, a personal affront to him ! The compartmental conscience kicked in and he therefore "saw" me as the guilty party and himself as the "abused".
A classic example was in class one day when I was giving the wrong answers to some basic sums to do with adding up apples, oranges, bananas,etc., pictures of which were up on the board... With mounting anger he was trying to force me to add up some apples and oranges. I sat there terrified and befuddled. How can you add up apples and oranges ? I thought. He was foaming again, "Answer meeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee", he yelled. "Surely you can add up three oranges and two apples. What is the answer?" Thumping heart. Terrified. He wants the wrong answer, I thought. I can`t give the wrong answer because it`s wrong, so I`ll give the right answer. "Fruit juice", I said. Rage, white foam on his lips, shouting. I sat rigid. Somehow the ridiculous man didn`t know that he had asked me to define these items as "fruit" before I could add them up !!! Of course, as an adult, I knew this problem to be one of the "class paradox", but as a child I just knew that I could not do the sum.... Well, there were numerous examples of his having learned maths rote, with no understanding whatsoever......
He would teach something as an unbreakable rule, like adding together and subtracting zero: 4 + 9 - 0 = 13. He would then be incredulous at a child`s stupidity when they did what they were told them to do in another situation: the unbreakable rule !!!!!! Thus, doing my best to do what he told me to do,as exampled in 4+9-0=13, I was certain that 0 x 4 = 0 and 4 x 0 = 4. If you have zero and you times it by four,I thought, you still have zero, because you had nothing in the first place, and if you have four apples and times them by zero, you still have four apples! It is THAT obvious he must be mad to tell me otherwise ! If you say that 4 x 0 = 0, what happened to the four apples you had ? Anyhow, so you get the idea :)
I was frightened of maths forever because of him and switched off. Mind you, he made these absolute assertions in other areas, too ! One classic was, "there`s no such word as can`t " !!! Now, this was something I knew to be untrue ! I had seen "can`t" in lots of books and I now knew this man was stupid and a liar!
This both illustrates how a teacher can damage someones learning potential with bullying, but also shows just how non-specialist teachers do incalculable damage to children in Primary School. Fact: unless you understand a subject fully, which this man patently did not, you cannot teach it to children except to the level of your own ignorance. It is a myth that children, being at such a low level of learning, don`t need specialist teachers. The contrary is true: if you don`t get teaching right at this early age, you can destroy a child's learning potential in this subject forever.
In later years I saw just how true this is. In my direct experience as a specialist recorder teacher, I saw how the teaching of this instrument in class by teachers who are no more than dabblers, damaged the potential of so many children to play the instrument,advance as musicians, and to fulfil themselves. Why? Because incorrect articulation, breathing, hand positions were taught on a huge scale. And what is worse, this was thought to be OK, simply because they were little children and it didn't matter. I remember taking over at a Prep School and receiving more than 30 boys to teach individually. All had been disastrously taught and the mess had to be undone.....somehow!
Well, it is as true for maths as it is for recorders.
In general terms, though, damaging kids learning, setting them up to fail, making sure they go into the bottom set.... This is how groups reward the kids they want to be winners and make fail the others. It is not a mistake. It is all part of societies animal structure and is carried out as part of our natural instincts. My Primary Head liked parents who were "well to do", who flattered him, people more like him, he hated those who were lower class, whose children didn`t wear a uniform or were problematic.(He wanted the children he LIKED to do well.) So how did he make sure certain kids failed? Well, it`s simple, you are unkind to them, you shout, make them wrong, all the things you can to make them fail at their learning. Little of this is conscious, of course, we work on basic instincts, group animal motivations, and these behaviours we learn when we are children and grow up largely unaware of our motives. People of more awareness and sensitivity will be less likely to behave like this, many, though, are functioning, sadly, at a much lower level.
So there is actively making kids fail with bullying and less directly with disapproval and criticism and not SHOWING them how things are done.
So, why am I so passionate about Home Education if I so much disdain dilettantism in teaching?
Please join me shortly.....
I`ll outline what happened to me personally to enable some thought on this.. Well, I did not "get" sums at all. I tried very hard to arrive at the answers he wanted, yet failed even when I thought I had cracked how to do it. Failing led to ridicule, name calling and his vicious temper. I remember one day being kept behind after school because I could not understand fractions; he went on and on about cutting various slices of cake. I was too frightened to listen. I felt ashamed and humiliated and very disturbed by the implication of guilt levelled at me by being detained.
But there is not just a random, temperamental need to bully in a person like this: a child like me unwittingly probed his deepest feelings of inadequacy and loss of control. Of course, someone who is not a specialist maths teacher will fatally flounder when they attempt to teach even primary school children in a class environment:they don`t understand the subject. I triggered the vulnerability of his mathematical stupidity and he saw me, little frightened me, as a threat. Indeed, he attributed my inabilities as defiance, a personal affront to him ! The compartmental conscience kicked in and he therefore "saw" me as the guilty party and himself as the "abused".
A classic example was in class one day when I was giving the wrong answers to some basic sums to do with adding up apples, oranges, bananas,etc., pictures of which were up on the board... With mounting anger he was trying to force me to add up some apples and oranges. I sat there terrified and befuddled. How can you add up apples and oranges ? I thought. He was foaming again, "Answer meeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee", he yelled. "Surely you can add up three oranges and two apples. What is the answer?" Thumping heart. Terrified. He wants the wrong answer, I thought. I can`t give the wrong answer because it`s wrong, so I`ll give the right answer. "Fruit juice", I said. Rage, white foam on his lips, shouting. I sat rigid. Somehow the ridiculous man didn`t know that he had asked me to define these items as "fruit" before I could add them up !!! Of course, as an adult, I knew this problem to be one of the "class paradox", but as a child I just knew that I could not do the sum.... Well, there were numerous examples of his having learned maths rote, with no understanding whatsoever......
He would teach something as an unbreakable rule, like adding together and subtracting zero: 4 + 9 - 0 = 13. He would then be incredulous at a child`s stupidity when they did what they were told them to do in another situation: the unbreakable rule !!!!!! Thus, doing my best to do what he told me to do,as exampled in 4+9-0=13, I was certain that 0 x 4 = 0 and 4 x 0 = 4. If you have zero and you times it by four,I thought, you still have zero, because you had nothing in the first place, and if you have four apples and times them by zero, you still have four apples! It is THAT obvious he must be mad to tell me otherwise ! If you say that 4 x 0 = 0, what happened to the four apples you had ? Anyhow, so you get the idea :)
I was frightened of maths forever because of him and switched off. Mind you, he made these absolute assertions in other areas, too ! One classic was, "there`s no such word as can`t " !!! Now, this was something I knew to be untrue ! I had seen "can`t" in lots of books and I now knew this man was stupid and a liar!
This both illustrates how a teacher can damage someones learning potential with bullying, but also shows just how non-specialist teachers do incalculable damage to children in Primary School. Fact: unless you understand a subject fully, which this man patently did not, you cannot teach it to children except to the level of your own ignorance. It is a myth that children, being at such a low level of learning, don`t need specialist teachers. The contrary is true: if you don`t get teaching right at this early age, you can destroy a child's learning potential in this subject forever.
In later years I saw just how true this is. In my direct experience as a specialist recorder teacher, I saw how the teaching of this instrument in class by teachers who are no more than dabblers, damaged the potential of so many children to play the instrument,advance as musicians, and to fulfil themselves. Why? Because incorrect articulation, breathing, hand positions were taught on a huge scale. And what is worse, this was thought to be OK, simply because they were little children and it didn't matter. I remember taking over at a Prep School and receiving more than 30 boys to teach individually. All had been disastrously taught and the mess had to be undone.....somehow!
Well, it is as true for maths as it is for recorders.
In general terms, though, damaging kids learning, setting them up to fail, making sure they go into the bottom set.... This is how groups reward the kids they want to be winners and make fail the others. It is not a mistake. It is all part of societies animal structure and is carried out as part of our natural instincts. My Primary Head liked parents who were "well to do", who flattered him, people more like him, he hated those who were lower class, whose children didn`t wear a uniform or were problematic.(He wanted the children he LIKED to do well.) So how did he make sure certain kids failed? Well, it`s simple, you are unkind to them, you shout, make them wrong, all the things you can to make them fail at their learning. Little of this is conscious, of course, we work on basic instincts, group animal motivations, and these behaviours we learn when we are children and grow up largely unaware of our motives. People of more awareness and sensitivity will be less likely to behave like this, many, though, are functioning, sadly, at a much lower level.
So there is actively making kids fail with bullying and less directly with disapproval and criticism and not SHOWING them how things are done.
So, why am I so passionate about Home Education if I so much disdain dilettantism in teaching?
Please join me shortly.....
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