George Frankl’s proof: human nature is fundamentally good, all babies are born good and loving.
We remind ourselves of this truth to avoid arguments on the subject ‘what is truth?’. Frankl himself tried to contradict his proof, but could not.
Frankl’s proof is the firm ground, the unassailable premise on which we build.
Frankl’s proof is revolutionary. It supplies hope where there was doubt, a pervasive sense of guilt and apparently inevitable doom. It completely changes our thinking. We can no longer say gloomily after some atrocity, ‘that’s human nature,’ because we now have the proof that human nature is fundamentally good.
We can no longer possibly accept the dangerous dogma of ‘original sin’, because we now know that all babies are born good and loving; we have the proof.
We learn that our view of nature ‘red in tooth and claw’ is a projection of our own fear of the forces of nature and our fear of our own angry response to traumatising natural disasters. We project our distresses on to the natural world and make a world which reflects our own internal species-image. The monsters we have surrounded ourselves with are projections of our terrible fears. Those fears came on our species when our ancestors were in the infancy of human evolution; those fears are infantile. But we cannot simply dismiss them as being babyish; infants experience great depth of feeling, great love which when denied becomes great fear and great anger; we cannot say to ourselves as if to a frightened infant, ‘don’t be so silly! There’s nothing there.’ The fears which haunt us became part of our human experience, and to banish the fears we must face them.
Please bear in mind that we are haunted by great fears first encountered when our species was in its infancy; our ancestors responded as infants respond to terrors; it is an infant terror which still grips us; these great fears have never yet been recognised, faced and overcome; and therefore our responses to that terror are very often still infant responses.
When we look at and face the horrors, we may begin to see them for what they are. Look at the atom bomb, for instance: the atomic explosion clearly suggests a great orgasm; and because it is toxic, it also clearly suggests a massive fart. In this over-powering weapon we may begin to recognise that our ‘enemy’ is nature itself. When we examine our behaviour towards the natural world, we must recognise that for generations we have been openly at war with nature, a war which continues with our use of pesticides and herbicides to kill that in nature of which we do not approve; the devastation caused by our use of fossil fuels; the motor cars and aeroplanes which destroy the oxygen that took billions of years to develop; the relentless testing of nuclear weapons - and I would be very interested to know what damage those tests have caused to the natural world - and so on and so on and so on.
And we have been at war with nature within ourselves: the endless rules with which we seek to govern our behaviour; the endless rules of engagement between the genders; the sheer nastiness of FGM - and so on and so on in the war we wage against nature, externally and internally, outside in the world and within our own selves.
By developing and using atomic weaponry, human beings feel that they have overcome the sexual restrictions born of our fear of nature: with the bomb we feel that we can have the great orgasm, despite those sexual restrictions*; we show our contempt for our great ‘enemy’ and fart in the face of nature; we defy nature which - as we see it - punished us so severely. It is not a conscious understanding, and indeed we are, or many of us are, horrified by what we have done. There is the unconscious understanding that we have beaten nature at its own game. At the same time, fortunately, we recognise that we seriously endanger ourselves.
*Please bear in mind that those restrictions were self-imposed beginning in the infancy of our species, though our ancestors blamed nature and we continue, unconsciously, to blame nature for restricting us.
And then there’s money.
And On 2
Why is our economic system so complicated and unjust?
I’ve been dreading this, but in one way it’s really very simple. In the first place, our economic system is so faulty because it is a human construct. It seems that the only human product which is perfect in nature is the baby; everything else we make is faulty.
However, let us look a little deeper and we begin to see what is the trouble with money specifically.
In The Unknown Self George Frankl points out that our relationship with gold, money, is ambiguous. He writes, “In popular dream interpretation faeces always means wealth, and all the metaphors of all languages contain allusions to the equations: excrement - money, dirt - treasure.”
I have come to recognise that fear is the dominant factor in our relationship with money, as it is with so much else.
There is a known link between our anal product and money. Psychological trauma is linked to digestive difficulties. A succession of unresolved phylogenic psychological traumas has played havoc with the human digestive system. At each traumatic event the species regresses; there is repression of the memory of the event, and taboo against remembering the event; the species attempts recovery with those taboos in place; then there is another traumatising event, and so it goes round, an increasing number of taboos, an attempt to recover undermined by those taboos, and on and on and on.
An early attempt to recover from trauma, was the invention of the lie. By using the lie, we try to change the truth; we also try to hide the truth.
Each time of trauma plunges our species into emotional and intellectual regression. Each trauma causes great fear, terror, guilt and shame, followed by anger. Each traumatic event disturbs the the gut function. Each trauma is surrounded by additional taboos (though nothing is ever actually forgotten - what happened did happen).
At some point, perhaps during the last ice age, as Frankl says, our ancestors discovered gold, and saw in gold the perfect faeces. Our ancestors saw gold as the answer to their difficulties. We may recognise that they worshipped gold. We may understand that our ancestors projected their digestive difficulties onto the perfect faeces that gold represented to them; they projected their fears and anger onto gold, as well as their hopes for liberation from their distresses. Projecting our fears and hopes onto gold, it is almost inevitable that our economic systems will be disastrously flawed. Gold is a metal, not a divinity.
Trauma plunges the sufferer into a state of confused infantilism, and we would be foolish to expect rational thinking in someone who is effectively a distressed two year old. I can empathise, feel what the distressed two year old is feeling, but it is somewhat difficult to express that distressed feeling in words.
Nature, the mother, Mother Nature, the goddess, the female principle is all powerful. When she is angry, she is terrifying. The infant believes that the mother can read his or her mind, and by using the capacity to tell lies, the infant hopes to gain some freedom from the power of the mother.
A lie is an attempt to change the truth, and a lie is an attempt to hide. Overwhelmed by fear, we hide. But, in the infant mind, we are not sure that it is possible for us to hide from the female principle. The all powerful angry female principle must not see us or she will destroy us. She will destroy what we love. She can do anything. She can stop us having babies - maturation delay.
The baby loves its faeces. As Frankl tells us, the infant gives its faeces to the mother as a lovely present; if the mother is anxious about the faeces, the baby will feel anxious about it, too. We may recognise that the baby feels threatened: ‘if my beautiful product is not acceptable to the mother, then perhaps I am unacceptable to the mother; if she rejects my product, then she rejects me.’
Then hide the faeces! Hide what you love. Hide what you value, hide from the vengeful female principle.
In a state of terrorised trauma, the muscles of the gut stiffen, are clenched: defecation becomes difficult. When in a state of fear, the bowel retreats.
Why do so many women find it so difficult to give birth?
Humanity is gripped in a state of inherited, phylogenic trauma. We may understand that many women, of course unconsciously, fear giving birth, fear the possible vengeance of the goddess. But there is the added factor of the internal female genitalia, and we may recognise that the restriction of the bowels also restrict the internal female genitals; in the woman, the bowels and the genitals are pulled up into the body.
I once told Frankl that the cervix moves, it comes down and it goes up inside the body. Frankl denied this. It is interesting that I was more ready to accept his word than to believe myself - he was a great man, and so much depended on him, and he never lied. But actually he wasn’t always right!
He told me once that as a boy he’d asked his father what girls have instead of a penis; and his father told him that girls have inside what boys have outside, which I think is a good answer.
The cervix is active, capable of activity. Indeed, it seems likely to me that the cervix goes looking for union with the penis. Die hard patriarchy would have it that a woman is merely a receptacle for the sperm, a baby making machine. But the female anatomy is, by nature, active.
Nature does not hate humanity. Nature has not singled out our species for special punishment. All the other species have endured the same traumatic events, but they do not seem to resent nature as we do. And God knows where we got the idea that we can fight nature, hide from nature. And change the truth!
Oh, yes, and money. It is probably useless to suppose that we can do without money at least for the time being. But we can certainly make our economies more equitable. It is, for instance, monstrous for one individual to hoard billions of units of currency while so many other people are in want. It seems to me to be undemocratic for one man to have great power over others merely because he is good at making money.
And On 3
Why do so many parents neglect and abuse their children?
We may recognise that, up to a point, the motive is protective: to protect the child is instinctive; the mother wants to protect her child from the terrors of being human, by preventing it from being born, as gut difficulties are caused by fear of exposing one’s product to the terrible ‘goddess’; and, phylogenically traumatised, the mother wants to protect the baby from herself - the mother is afraid that her love will contaminate or endanger the baby; she dares not love the baby; she is rough and angry with the baby, and tries to prevent the baby from loving her.
It is perverse and irrational behaviour, of course, but we may recognise that it has its origin in the instinct to protect the baby. Is it possible that the mother of Baby Peter tortured her infant son to death because she wanted to protect him? That cannot be so.
Viewing the present, we see the past; we see the past in the present. Nature provides the baby with love for and obedience to the mother. Nature provides overwhelming love in the mother for the baby. Obedience to the mother is an extremely strong instinct. The baby must obey the mother. The mother must obey her own mother. The man must obey his mother and the mother of his children. Love and obedience to love must rule.
Family ties are very strong, but in many families these ties of love and loyalty are stretched very thin. When love is undermined by fear and overthrown by anger, obedience becomes dangerous.
It is some 12,000 ago that the last ice age dissolved into the great thaw; the memory of that time is repressed, but the memory is not lost; it lives in the unconscious. The thaw was a time of great distress. We have, in this work, discussed the horrors of the late matriarchy, the time of the great thaw at the end of the last ice age. We have speculated on the increasingly irrational behaviour of the senior matriarchs, priestesses of the ‘goddess’, as they tried to appease their deity and bring an end to their difficulties. We may speculate that these priestesses eventually demanded the sacrifice of infants to appease the fury of their goddess.
In this light, we may recognise that the mother of Baby Peter, and others who behave in the same way, tortured and murdered in obedience to the dictates of the matriarchs.
We may recognise that antiSemitism has its roots in the disobedience of the wife of Noah, who refused to sacrifice her babies to the matriarchs, and escaped with her family.
We are witnessing now a rise in antiSemitism, and we may recognise this is a regression to the time of the late matriarchy. ‘Obey! Obey!’ but the wife of Noah will not obey the demand to sacrifice her sons. She is a revolutionary figure. I have often heard young mothers say, ‘I didn’t understand my mother until I had my own baby. Now I understand.’ The daughters revolt against their mothers until they become mothers themselves, and then again they find that they must obey! But the wife of Noah refused to obey what she knew was wrong; she defied the power of the matriarchs and left. She was a loving and intelligent woman.
The young women revolt against their mothers, and seduce - either literally or figuratively - the men into revolt with them. The fathers and brothers joined with the daughters into revolt against the crazed power of the matriarchs. The male must obey the female. But, in the late matriarchy the men began to develop a split in their perceptions of the women: a woman is both beautiful and ugly; loving and terrifying; good and bad; sanctified virgin mother and evil temptress.
When we discuss mothers and daughters in the modern economic context, we may understand that the relative ages of the players is insignificant: the wealthy and powerful woman is in the role of mother, the poor and powerless woman is in the role of daughter, no matter what their respective ages are. Politically, in this context, we see that the disadvantaged women unite behind the man and against the rich woman. The poor women do not trust the rich woman, perhaps especially if she is old, to look after their interests. It would be very helpful to progress if powerful women understood this.
It would be very helpful if men and women both understood Frankl’s proof that human nature is fundamentally good, all babies are born good and loving. The male does and must naturally obey the female, but the behaviour of the senior women in the late matriarchy almost completely undermined that natural order. We must recognise that the natural order is loving, is rooted in love and in loving behaviour; when the natural, loving order is overthrown, perverse behaviour becomes standard. Angry feminism antagonises many, and we see the backlash, as the daughters, that is the young or junior women, unite with the strong male against the angry mothers, the demanding senior females. The crazed behaviour of the matriarchs at the time of the great thaw was terrifying then, and still lives in the collective unconscious of humanity. We must recognise and accept this.
Frankl often talked of the need to overcome the power of the mothers, but he did not recognise the extent and nature of the power of the mothers until shortly before he died. He didn’t have the time to write his findings, and the job is left to us.
Frankl was also confused in his thinking about the power of the mothers: he believed that all women feel overwhelming love for their babies, as he had experienced as a baby with his own mother, and this belief blinded him to the experiences of many people whose mothers did not feel overwhelming love, or sometimes any love for their babies, and though many of his patients told him, he failed to understand. On the one hand he saw the power of the mothers as naturally beneficial; but he also believed that the female intellect was poor compared to the male intellect - he once said, ‘If women ruled the world, we’d be living in mud huts!’ - and in this he did recognise that the power of the mothers was regressive, but I am not sure that until shortly before he died, he saw the power of the mothers could be so devastatingly repressive.
If I had not been so much in awe of his great genius, I might have argued with him; but I don’t think it would have done any good until he recognised for himself the difficulties between women. Until he saw it for himself, he simply thought there were no serious difficulties between women. He was, of course, a man of his time.
By the standard of Frankl’s intellectual capacity, we may recognise that everyone was less gifted than he was, but we also are aware that every baby inherits half its genes from the mother and half from the father, and that there is no reason to suppose that women are inherently less intelligent than men are. There is, however, a tendency among some women to try and subvert the intellectually giften male.
Very much of our human distress is caused directly by the conflict between the horrors of the late matriarchy and the natural urge to obey the mother. The ancient matriarchs live on in our unconscious, and still have the power to direct our behaviours. The buried image of the high priestess in her gloomy cell, old, wizened, naked, straggling grey hair, her great tragic dark eyes glinting in her chalk white face as she orders the death or mutilation of sons to appease the goddess; or she may be seen as obese, greasy, lazy and brutal, but what ever she looks like, she’s still there, buried deep in the unconscious, and she must be obeyed. She is the mother and she must be obeyed.
Those of us who are well brought up, financially secure, privileged, educated and with loving parents, who have faced only the common phylogenic traumas, might doubt the image described above, and doubt the influence of long-dead old women. But many human beings have suffered ontogenic traumas of abuse, poverty and neglect, or have suffered death in the family, or war, or similar corrosive difficulties. For those of us who have suffered such painful experiences the buried image of the ancient matriarchs, the ghastly horrors of the thaw, all of that threatens to breakthrough into consciousness. Such people are generally not intellectually equipped, are uneducated, are vulnerable to terrible fears; and indeed, many individuals of all classes experience apparently irrational terrors, when the outward calm of civilisation is ripped away, and they feel psychologically naked in the storm of terror. The mother of Baby Peter and her appalling lover killed the baby, to appease the goddess, obeyed the ancient matriarchal voices.
I speculate that female genital mutilation started later as a backlash against the power of the terrible matriarchs of the thaw. I do see why atheists argue against a deity, but it would be helpful if the atheists might learn to recognise the difference between an idea and the practice; to recognise the possibility that it is not God who has betrayed the people, but people who have betrayed the idea of God.
If we are to recover from the devastation of the late matriarchy intelligent men and women must unite, must understand Frankl’s proof, and must use their gifts together for the benefit of our species and of the entire planet.
And On 4
It’s wrong to say that I was in awe of George Frankl, as I did say above; I wasn’t in awe of him.
It’s as if we were all cast in a play: the moral man, good and a genius, kindly, and somewhat naive; ‘God’s wife’ and the angry publisher; my beloved sisters, especially Mrs Bennett and Ms Milton; the women longing for validation as human beings; not always clear of the difference between right and wrong, not all of them exactly able to tell a truth from a lie; not bad, of course, not bad, but morally confused, not entirely clear what truth is, and anxious to get their point across, their truth, the facts of their experiences as women. Perhaps they felt the need to tell him where he was wrong, but they couldn’t do that, perhaps partly because he was so sure that he was right! And they wanted him to be right, felt that he must be right. And they were afraid of him, and were certainly not able to argue with him, not able to argue against his certainty. And nor could I, until he told me that I must.
These women, and others, have been very determined that I should see their point of view. Sometimes it has been a bit rough, but they have taught me a lot, which I couldn’t have learnt alone.
It seems very clear to me now that the late matriarchy became in effect the first totalitarian state. Olorgesailie, that half million years when our ancestors were set to work making innumerable stone axe heads, was repressive; it corresponds to what we now call the latency period in children between the ages of 7 and 13, a long drawn out maturation delay; and perhaps the later matriarchs built on that; I have noted a tendency among young lads of around 12 years old, pre-pubescent, to act like policemen, but whether they are policing the old women - matriarchs - or keeping an eye out for rebellion among the headstrong young, I cannot say. But though Olorgesailie was a time of repression, it cannot have been as horrible as the late matriarchy, especially during the thaw. Modern tyrants add their own horrors, but modern totalitarianism is a breakthrough of the repressed memories of the late matriarchy; the modern dictator is acting out the horrors of that past in late human evolution.
Why is giving birth so difficult? Why is our economic system so complicated and unjust? Why do so many parents neglect and abuse their children? I’ve done my best to answer those three questions.
There are very many more questions, but now I’ve had enough. And so have you, probably!
And On 5
It’s been pointed out to me that the chapter on The Gut Brain has gone from the website. Normally I keep a back up of what I publish, but not in this case, not entirely. Well, so it goes, and this loss gives me the opportunity to write now what seems a very important aspect of the brain in the gut.
First, though, to mention that research shows there are brain cells in the gut; and that George Frankl told me that the gut is the first brain, the earliest brain, certainly much earlier than the development of the prefrontal cortex.
And this is very important: the gut functions without reason. We may try to analyse the gut, bring our capacity for reason to understanding the gut; but the gut itself functions without the use of reason. The gut is part of our animal, pre-human selves.
And it seems to me that the active cervix is similar in that it functions without reason.
Conscious knowledge of, acceptance of the presence of the active cervix gives women what is called ‘agency’, that is to say that women may have confidence and clearly recognise they are naturally sexually equal with men. Women are not merely receptive, though being receptive is of course important; women have internally a part of their genitalia which is active, which when it comes forward down into the vaginal canal it actively seeks love, gratification, pleasure and fulfilment.
As I dozed last night, I had a mental image of the female principle, depressed, repressed, trapped in a net of barbed wire; and as I watched, the barbed wire began to loosen and to fall away from her, so that I saw she was becoming free.
The image began to change, and through her eyes I saw the world as it really is. It is impossible for me to describe; so alive, so varied, so exciting, so peaceful. So real in its vivid contrasts, broad brush strokes and delicate workings; depth and immediacy; complex and simple. So beautiful, and she is part of it, knows it intimately and belongs within it. It is the real world of which humanity is part.
And On 6
When I was a lonely and frightened small child, I longed to have a robot friend, which could walk and talk and would be on my side. An infantile fantasy, which I grew out of when I began to make real, human friends.
There are legends: King Arthur and his knights sleeping in a mountain, who will waken and emerge to fight for England; there is the Golem, the man of clay who is brought to life to protect his people; and the comic book heroes, who fight against injustice. There is God. There was God, but the prevalent scientific and philosophical line accepts only what can be seen or measured, and God cannot be seen or measured. The scientific and philosophical line rejects the idea of God, the idea of the mind, and the idea of free will. When we must believe only in what can be seen and measured, everything else falls into a kind of black hole, a monstrous nothingness.
We are a lonely and frightened species: we need heroes; we need champions who will fight for us. We need God. We may recognise that the designers and programmers of intelligent machines hope to give us that champion, that friendly, strong hero who will defend us and be on our side.
It won’t work, of course. Human beings are deeply flawed, and whatever we make, however intelligent we are, will be as deeply flawed as we are. An intelligent machine will reflect and replay the flaws of its makers.
We may also recognise that the makers of AI perhaps see themselves as some kind of godly beings. All or almost all men and women can make a child; but a child is in many ways an unsatisfactory creation: a child, however perfect at its birth, will grow into a flawed adult; a child, however young, has a will of its own; a child will almost certainly defy its parents at some stage; a child might become ill and might in many different ways disappoint the parent. But, in the fantasy of the dreaming inventors, a machine, an intelligent machine, will not defy its makers, it will be capable of great physical and intellectual strength; the machine will certainly be a genius, if it is so programmed. The machine, in that fuzzy, unconscious dream, will never disappoint. And, of course, the makers probably sincerely hope to benefit humanity, (and incidentally make the makers a lot of money).
We may further recognise that the AI machine will itself become a god, an inhuman god, to be worshipped and feared, and placated with sacrifice.
We don’t need AI. We need to understand ourselves.
And On 7
Let us consider free will. We do have free will within instinct, and it important that we recognise this. Our natural pleasures are instinctive.
There is a trend among some thinkers to deny the existence of free will. It is claimed that Benjamin Libet pretty conclusively demonstrated that we do not have free will. Professor Susan Blackmore gave a lecture broadcast a few years ago in which she said that she was sorry to say that free will does not exist. I have some confusion over this, because she dyes her hair in many colours, and I find it difficult to understand how it is that she has multicoloured hair but no free will. Professor Yuval Noah Harari and others suggest that belief in free will is dangerous.
We are a fearful species. We are frightened of our instincts. We are frightened of so much: of ourselves; of other human beings; of other animals. We are frightened of nature. We make God frightening. We make pleasure frightening. And out of our numbing fear, we have made this a frightening world.
We have free will within instinct, but of course in our fear we repress our instincts, as if our instincts were dangerous.
But George Frankl proved that human nature is fundamentally good, all babies are born good and loving. Our instincts are naturally good. And our instincts are a naturally good system. We made ourselves from the materials provided; we evolved, making a series of decisions, reaching out to achieve our form; and our instincts are a form provided from the fundamental goodness of life. Within that form, within instinct our behaviour is and must be good.
With this in mind, we may judge whether a human behaviour is instinctive: a man who goes to a school to shoot children is not behaving instinctively; successive governments who have failed to act to prevent such tragedies are not behaving instinctively. The human - and animal instinct generally - is to protect the young of the species.
We know that there are phylogenic difficulties which confront our infants and older children, and then it is necessary for the parents and other adults to gently guide our children through these difficulties. The break from instinct began all those millennia ago with the invention of lying; and it is tragic that we have continued to run away from instinct since then, until we have squeezed ourselves into terrible contortions, morally and perhaps physically, certainly with some awful physiological consequences. Animals, birds, insects have rituals, instinctive behaviours by which they live, apparently happily. Our human rituals are imposed outside instinct, rituals which repress instinct and are oppressive.
Living within instinct is like being in love - or no, living within instinct is being part of love. To experience life within instinct is knowing that one is part of the world, that one belongs in and to the planet; that one is part of nature. And it is a very pleasant experience, one is lighthearted and joyful.
One clue that we do have free will is the frustration and sometimes rage we experience when our free will is denied: if we did not have free will we would not mind when tyrants deny us the expression of our free will.
It is our purpose here to free the libido. Let us then choose to lighten our burden of self-imposed repressions.
And On 8
Human nature is fundamentally good; all babies are born good and loving. George Frankl’s proof is revolutionary; it changes our way of thinking, changes our way of looking at the world and of being in the world.
Life itself lived within instinct is pleasant. There are, of course, difficulties: storms and drought, floods, earthquakes, volcanic eruption, but life goes on its merry way. Individual creatures experience periods of fear and hardship, but have a certainty of instinct, a sure sense of belonging. Life is good.
As he neared the end of his life, Frankl said, ‘The energy released seeks form.’ That is to say, that the energy in each of us is released at death and that energy seeks another or other forms.
My understanding is that when a human being dies, all the specifically human difficulties, all the unrealities and nonsenses of being human, fall away, and that the energy is then free to take up another or other forms.
Human beings, like other creatures, have consciousness of self. We humans are afraid of being dead; we fear losing that consciousness of self. A healthy animal will resist death; the antelope fights against the lion; but I do not know that an old animal fights against the inevitability of the end of its natural span. Alas for poor humans, we rage against the end of our natural span, we are so afraid of losing that consciousness of self.
But ‘The energy released seeks form,’ and it seems likely to me that all energy has consciousness.
George Frankl was a wonderful man and I am so grateful to him.
And On 9
George Frankl wanted to free the human libido. The release of energy at death does free the libido. It is interesting that religions and science know this, though they describe it in different ways. It may be comforting to know that dying frees the libido, but we want to be free while we are living human beings. And that is what Frankl wanted.
A reiteration of the psychological background: When our ancestors developed the capacity to tell lies, they were trying to change the world; they played a game of make believe, of let’s pretend in which they pretended that what had happened, ie the maturation delay, had not happened. In this make believe pretence, they were refusing to accept what nature had imposed, and refusing to accept nature’s imposition was a break from instinct. Unable to have babies made them feel lonely and unsatisfied, and breaking from instinct made them feel isolated.
When we see our infants at three years old dancing and gleeful, unable to sit still, we may infer that at the equivalent period during evolution, our ancestors experienced liberation from restriction and celebrated. And when our infants at three and a half years old begin screaming in rage and terror, we recognise that there was another and devastating event which terrorised them. They were no longer ‘on top of the world’, but were once again subject to nature.
At the equivalent of two years old, they began to break from nature and to build a make believe world; at the equivalent of three years old, they felt triumphant and that they had succeeded; at the equivalent of three and a half years old they were plunged into terror, their make believe world crashed down, and they were powerless against the forces of nature, and they felt powerless.
We must recognise that humanity is still terrified of death. It is interesting that adult human beings collectively and frequently re-enact those early traumatic events. We very much fear death, yet it is estimated that more than 100 millions of people were killed in war during the 20th century, that is to say that more than 100 millions were murdered during the last century. We fear death, yet we rush towards it, re-playing those ancient traumas, as traumatised people commonly do.
We may say that since our species was the equivalent of two year old infants now, humanity has built and lived in a make believe world, and we continue to live in our make believe world now, with disastrous consequences. The human libido is still trapped.
It is necessary to discard from our minds the disasters of phylogeny and ontogeny. In this work we have tried to understand the effects of the phylogenic traumas on our species. As we have recognised, examined and understood those traumas, dragged them into the light, we have begun to ease the burden of our difficult phylogeny.
One of the effects of those phylogenic traumas is, of course, that they are passed on down the generations. The phylogenic traumas then become ontogenic, personal traumas. In a large and unhappy family, such as my own, the burden is great - my mother, and all her daughters struggling for breath (and my poor father quite confused). It helped me a lot to discard from my own mind my own family, just to let them go from my mind, without fear, guilt or anger. The effect doesn’t last long, but is very liberating while it does last. It becomes necessary for me to learn how to let them go completely from my mind, so that I have lasting liberation from the effects of familial unhappiness! There are it seems two difficulties: one is that I love my family, and the other is that human beings hang on to the pain, which is, of course, one of the effects of psychological trauma.
For a child living in a tyrannical family, or for anyone living under a tyrannical regime, it is more difficult to gain freedom. The tyrants whether in the family or the state are old-fashioned, they are upholding the old ways of repression and oppression; we may recognise that the tyrants believe that they are doing what is right, even when they must know that what they are doing is wrong. We may understand that it as difficult for the tyrants to liberate themselves from the effects of trauma, phylogenic and ontogenic, as it is for the rest of us.
I will not insult the oppressed by saying that freedom is in the mind. But I will say what Frankl said, ‘Thoughts are free.’
And On 10
A couple of years ago, I mentioned to a friend that I thought there should be only one child in each family; one child, one mother, one father to make a family. She loathes her younger sister, and was very pleased to hear my view.
Recently I saw her again; she has now a group of first born friends around her, a club for first borns. They all seemed much more relaxed, but also smirking, as if they believed they had defeated their monstrous younger siblings! It isn’t retrospective: we, the loathed younger siblings, are all still here; we are a fact; we are human. Ishmael must not kill Isaac.
Humanity is so badly traumatised that it is painful for any child to share his or her parents with a new baby.
All babies are born good and loving. The first born child projects distresses onto the new baby, who is entirely innocent, naturally good and loving. Parents will best protect their child from this fierce unhappiness, by limiting themselves to one child only.
Abraham and his wives and sons are long gone. All the vivid characters in Genesis are gone. Some say they never existed. The Bible writers tell us of archetypes; and as far as I can remember off hand, all those archetypical stories are of deep miseries between siblings, and between wives. The lesson I draw from Genesis is, ‘limit yourselves to one child’.