We may recognise that babies have consciousness, but that at four years old the child begins to make independent decisions - always, of course, with the mother’s teachings in his or her mind.
It has been said that bullies do not know what they are doing; and I did think this. However, close observation has shown me that bullies are perfectly aware of what they are doing.
I have also found that:
bullies enjoy bullying; bullies blame the victim; bullies lie, they are deceitful; bullies protect themselves by refusing to acknowledge consciously that they are bullies; it seems that adult bullies cannot - or certainly do not - learn from example how to behave pleasantly; when challenged, bullies strongly deny that they are bullying, and try to turn it round by accusing their accusers of bullying; and when trapped by inescapable evidence of their bullying, some bullies present a special facial expression which shows that they feel falsely accused, that they feel that they are being victimised, that, in fact, the bully feels that he or she is being unjustly bullied.
These observations are right across the range, from the nasty familial bullying, to international and murderous bullying; although there are surely categories of bullying of which I have no personal experience, and which have not been reported to me by others - except the solemn sadistic ‘this hurts me more than it hurts you.’
Within many families, including my own family, I recognise that it is the mother who teaches her children the ways of bullying. We may understand that the two boys violently abusing younger siblings, mentioned above, were expressing the frustrations and anger of their mothers, and indeed, one of these boys said that his mother allowed him to kick his little sister.
We may strongly speculate that with murderous regimes, there is an ancient allegiance to the angry ‘mother goddess’; and that the tyrant hopes to turn her anger away from himself, and his people, and to gain her love and patronage by his brutality - and though the tyrant certainly knows, is conscious of his vicious behaviour, the tyrant is not conscious of this ancient allegiance.
Bullies 2
I wonder when men will be able to see women, to recognise and understand that women too are human.
But God doesn’t understand women. A man may be rational and loving, intelligent and kindly, but still be blind when he looks at women.
God is the God of love and of reason. He is a late-comer in human life; and replaced the angry mother goddess, when the behaviour of the matriarchs became intolerable. God is patriarchal, a male God. He brushed away the unreason and unlove of the maddened, terrorised matriarchs at the time of the great Thaw. The male God brought reason and law, and men and women sought, and still seek, to live by God’s rational laws - though many refuse to ‘believe’ in God, still we try to live by God’s reason and laws.
But God doesn’t understand women. He brushed away the angry mother goddess, but didn’t examine properly her distresses. So that the new God masks all those distresses. The succession of phylogenic traumas still undermine human civilisation, and will always undermine us until we recognise the traumas and their continuing consequences, until we understand what happened to our ancestors, and the effects of those events.
God masks the distresses of the angry mother goddess. Our language of words masks the very ancient language of signs and signals. The ancient non-verbal language is masked by words, but it is not replaced. We still use the ancient non-verbal language and it is very powerful.
In the chapter The Children we have discussed the pointed finger which signals danger in the ancient non-verbal language; there is facial expression; body language; tone of voice. And the eyes: a loving look; a look of scorn or contempt; a look of triumph and so on. And often the truth of what is expressed by the eyes is masked by deceitful words: ‘But I didn’t say anything!’ but the expression in the eyes carries more weight than the words.
And there is the interpretation or misinterpretation of the signs and signals. There is much confusion, which cannot simply be brushed aside.
Bullying involves regression. I was bullied by my siblings from the earliest days of my life, before I could discuss the difficulty with them; now when I one of my older sisters bullies me, I regress to earliest infancy and frustratingly cannot discuss with them what is going on. And my sisters also regress to young childhood. It is quite extraordinary to be bullied - at my age - by someone behaving like a little girl, and to be unable to talk to her about it! Recently I have managed to talk to one of them; she is very apologetic, but amazed that she has been bullying me, and I am confused. She knows she is being cruel and malicious; she smirks, she uses words that are unkind and that undermine me; yet I must believe her when she says that she doesn’t know that her behaviour is bullying; and must believe that she does know and does not know that she is bullying. I recognise that she and our other siblings learnt bullying from our mother, who was cruel, malicious and gleeful; and that when they behave as their mother taught them, they are being obedient and perhaps hope to gain her favour - although our mother has been dead for seven years - so we see that what they learnt when they were babies is strong within them, is real and true to them, and is difficult for them to recognise. They learnt their behaviour from their mother
Now here’s an extraordinary thing: while our mother tormented her children with her unloving behaviour, she had devoted friends who loved her and described her at her funeral as a most generous and loving woman; and some of them wept. And she had hidden her love from us, though she was very protective in other ways. And I have seen this carried on in the family tradition: my sisters bully their children in exactly the same ways, and are yet very protective of their children.
It seems that men are easier to understand, perhaps partly because we are so used to seeing the world from the male view. We look at Harvey Weinstein, for instance, and we note that he regressed to a monstrous fat babylike creature, intent on slobbering over young and beautiful women in allegedly sexual assault and even alleged rape; we can see it clearly. But the behaviour of the mother of Baby Peter Connolly it is more difficult to recognise. In the chapter The Children we have discussed that this woman used - misused - the ancient distraction method of protection: she distracted the attention of the doctors who examined her tortured baby, so that they looked at her, and failed to see the condition of the poor child. Or perhaps it is something even deeper than that.
To some extent, men and women see all women as mothers; we may recognise in Weinstein’s infantilised behaviour, a man whose targets are to him idealised mothers, young beautiful and desirable, and now that he is grown they are in his power; they cannot deny him, he is too big, too powerful and he takes what he wants. He dominates the mother, ignores her resistance, overcomes her powerful dominance of him, and becomes dominant and powerful. If anyone cared to analyse it, Weinstein’s behaviour tells us a lot about his relationship with his actual mother.
To my sisters, to the doctors examining Baby Peter, the mother is all powerful. To all of us, especially in the early years of life, the mother is all powerful. In those first few years the child is incapable of questioning the mother’s absolute power. A man who has a good relationship with his mother, whose mother was loving and kindly to him when he was a baby, will find great difficulty in recognising that some mothers are not loving and kindly to their children. A man who loves and reveres his mother will find it very difficult to understand that other mothers are not good and kindly to their children. And this is true of women, too: my school friends thought that my mother was lovely, and I thought their mothers were lovely, though my girl friends complained of their mother’s behaviour towards them.
It seems to me that human beings are the only species who behave so badly to their babies. Even crocodiles are tender with their young; even spiders! Yet so many human beings are cruel to their babies. Human nature is fundamentally good, all babies are born good and loving. The behaviour of the mother is never the baby’s fault. But we must not blame the mothers, either. Something terrible happened during human evolution, some terrible natural catastrophe from which we humans have not yet recovered. The same traumatising event affected all species, but other creatures did not stop caring for their young.
We humans have something peculiar in our psyche, or perhaps we have been ‘too clever for our own good’. At some time in our evolution, our ancestors decided that to love was dangerous; and that to protect the baby we must be unloving, the mother must be unloving and must be seen to be unloving; the mother must protect her beloved baby by not loving it. This terrible perversity still dominates.
Some mothers do feel overwhelming love for their baby; many mothers, let us hope that most mothers are kindly and affectionate to their babies. But the phylogenic inheritance of unlove still dominates many women. It is not their fault, it is an inheritance, an effect of the peculiar human response to ancient natural disaster. And it has little to do with class, or race, or wealth. It seems that any mother may be overwhelmed by love for her baby, and any woman may find it impossible to love her baby.
We made a mistake, our ancient ancestors made a mistake, but we refuse to admit that we have been wrong and continue to support that mistake. As a species we are arrogant; we have convinced ourselves that we are right; that we have the right to dominate and bully the natural world, and each other. We are destroying the planet with our behaviours, and with the sheer number of human beings. Seven and a half billion of us, great lumbering, greedy, bullying human beings, destroying the world, and we protest that we are in the right.
Bullies 3
Poets and novelists know about the expressive power of the eyes. We all do, you and I, all of us. But officially it’s different. For instance, the police rightly require evidence, and I am not sure that ‘she looked at me’ is an acceptable defence in a murder trial. Things are changing: in the UK there is now legislation designed to protect people, mainly women, from psychological abuse; and there is debate over whether Muslim defendants should be allowed to wear the niqab - full face veil - in court, which is an acknowledgement that juries need to see the face, including the eyes, of the defendant.
If Looks could Kill … and it’s usually the looker who gets into trouble
George Frankl knew that he didn’t fully understand women, so he decided that one of his women friends would be his guide to female behaviour, a women to be ‘God’s wife’. He didn’t tell me he had done so - it was a secret between them - though he had mentioned the idea to me, and I had expressed my alarm.
I got into terrible trouble with ‘God’s wife’ the first time I met her. I looked at her and saw a perfectly ordinary English woman, I was relieved and delighted to see that she was less intelligent than I am, and my eyes expressed my pleasure. I was young, I needed reassurance when meeting women, I didn’t care about looks, only about intelligence, and where intelligence was concerned I would probably be competitive - where necessary. I was delighted to see that it wasn’t necessary with this woman, and my eyes expressed my pleasure. ‘God’s wife’ saw the look in my eyes, and somewhat misinterpreted it, mistook my look as a challenge, and the answering expression in her eyes was something like, ‘well, we’ll see about that’, though it is possible that I misinterpreted her expression! And the terrible trouble was that for the next twenty years she bullied me, because I refused to acknowledge her authority and continued to go my ‘own sweet way’ as she put it. But I didn’t even know she was ‘God’s wife’ and if I had I certainly wouldn’t have accepted that she had any authority over me.
The British army acknowledges the expressive power of the eyes, with something called ‘dumb insolence’: ‘Dumb insolence is an offence against military discipline in which a subordinate displays an attitude of defiance towards a superior without open disagreement.’ (Wikipedia) A private soldier, as we’ve seen in many movies, who looks at his sergeant major or any senior officer will be punished.
We may recognise that where an individual feels that he or she is being bullied or about to be bullied, who feels endangered, will comfort himself or herself with the recognition of his or her own value, and will express this in the eyes. And if there is some danger, then he or she is likely to get into trouble with the authorities, whoever they may be.
The expression in the eyes may well be open to misinterpretation. I have lied with my eyes to avoid trouble, and backed up the lying eyes with words. Open the eyes wide, look slightly puzzled and say, ‘no, I didn’t do that.’ I must say that I used to lie only to avoid being bullied, or to prevent a friend from being bullied. I don’t bother to lie now, and if authority tries to bully me in my old age, I show my contempt and invite them to do their worst. I must also add that I do know the difference between what is true and what is a lie; many adults apparently do not know the difference.
Another example of misinterpretation of the expression of the eyes: a young women, filled with joie de vivre, the joy of life, smiling and radiant, glances at a man, who instantly believes that she loves him, wants him, sees her smile as an invitation; causing puzzlement to her and disappointment to him.
But take a walk down the high street, where the cars are parked half way over the pavement, perhaps, so that there isn’t much room for pedestrians, and observe that the man walking towards you is thinking who shall give way, just as you are thinking the same, looking around for somewhere, a doorway, perhaps, to stand in and allow him to pass, and see that he is thinking the same. And it’s all in the eyes, and the body language. And when you pass each other, a murmured word of thanks, a small smile. You have both negotiated a slight difficulty and been successful. And there’s been no misinterpretation.
The language of the eyes is subtle but obvious to all of us. But there is misinterpretation, or misunderstanding of intent.
There are cultural considerations, especially in a large modern city. For example, an Englishwoman looks at and smiles at the male shopkeeper; if the shopkeeper is also English, he’ll smile back (or not if he’s in a bad mood); if the shopkeeper is a Muslim, he may be offended because a woman has smiled at him, or because she has looked at him. So going for groceries in the local shop becomes problematic. To be a good neighbour, the woman must learn the cultural habits of her new neighbours, and act, not as she would naturally, but in accordance with their cultural requirements.
I have had my eye almost put out on a bus by a young mother, who was not English, because I did not smile at her little son. She was being friendly and wanted me to acknowledge her son, her pride and joy. But maybe I had a migraine, or maybe I was deep in thought and I didn’t smile as I should have done, as she expected me to. Perhaps she thought that I look malevolently at him. The woman became very angry and lashed out with her long red fingernails to within a centimetre of my eye. I must, therefore, remember always to look appreciatively at the sons of young women on the bus. But there are other people at whom I must not look.
If that young mother had been English, she would perhaps have been hurt by my neglect of her son, but would she have been violently angry? Maybe she would. In the city I have occasionally been looked at with loathing and contempt, even hatred by many differing people.
In the modern city there are so many groups, with so many different cultural requirements and so many opportunities to cause offence - with the eyes alone - that I begin to see the advantages of wearing the niqab, remove all risk of offence by hiding your eyes. But, then, of course, I would attract the displeasure or even anger of other groups, who for example, may not like to be reminded of an ‘education’ by nuns! The niqab would not acceptable to me in any case; it is far better to encourage openness and friendliness. (And remember to always smile at babies when invited to do so.)
I was going to say that the look of love is a dependable sign of good will. But then I remember that my most beloved sister always (and only) looks at me lovingly when she is stealing from me. The first occasion that I remember was when I was five and she was ten. We had tea in the cafe with cakes, and my cake had a cherry on the top which I was saving; my sister distracted my attention, and when I turned back to my cake the cherry had gone; and she was smiling at me with a fond and loving gaze, so that I was confused, and the family laughed. And if she had stopped there, well it would have been a little incident from childhood. But she carried on doing it into old age, always that loving gaze while she steals from me. And there are many people who have been conned by a gently smiling fraudster.
So I will say that the the look of love which babies give is a certain and dependable sign of good will. Human nature is fundamentally good, all babies are born good and loving. It is impossible for anyone under two years of age to lie, to be deceitful.
Bullies 4
It is difficult to challenge the bullies because we and they regress. We regress to an age of phylogenic trauma; a terrible catastrophe. Bullying is a regressive behaviour.
And bullying is perverse. Human nature is fundamentally good, all babies are born good and loving. To bully defies our loving nature. Individual bullies within a family like mine, are obeying the mother; it is the mother who taught the child to defy his or her fundamental goodness; the child loves the mother and is obeying the mother; obeying the mother, the child therefore feels secure that bullying is good and loving behaviour.
But what of the tyrant? Did Hitler’s mother teach him to be a warmonger, a mass murderer and a genocide? We note that Hitler thought of himself as a visionary, and may understand that he pursued his vision, which dominated his thinking and his life.
John the Divine imagined that his Revelations concerned the future, but we may recognise that he actually described events from the distant past of human evolution: that catastrophic event which so badly traumatised our early ancestors.
We have never yet resolved that trauma, and are still dominated by the repressed memory of that event, and it’s effects. Unresolved, the trauma haunts us and dominates our behaviours. As human beings, we continually repeat the events of that trauma, and will continue to repeat the events until we manage to bring into consciousness what happened, to see, recognise, understand and so overcome our distresses.
London in the 1980s and 1990s was a difficult place to live, as various new immigrant groups sought to find their feet, a stable place in their adopted country. Mass immigration into the UK did bring discontent among some indigenous individuals and groups, but the majority of English men and women were very tolerant, and praiseworthy. Often it was clear that the ‘prejudice’ arose from some immigrants who felt unwanted, rather than were unwanted. I was proud of my English neighbours so many of whom were so kindly and tolerant.
After 9/11 life became calmer in London; one was less likely to be accused of racism if, for instance, one didn’t like jazz.
Immigrants from the former colonies were acceptable to the English as being UK citizens. But the increase of immigrants from the EU was often less welcome. Please bear in mind that it is the ordinary people who must make room, literally, physically, for incomers. It is the ordinary working people who find life increasingly difficult under such pressures. We have often been told that fear of immigration is irrational; but the people who say such things, are not the people who must make room.
Standing back and observing life for the ordinary people in the UK and continental Europe, we may recognise that our politicians and others in power are creating the conditions for a repeat of the ancient catastrophe. We must recognise what is being done before we are overwhelmed by events which human beings have created, in imitation of the ancient events.
We are all aware of an increase in right wing populism in Europe. Here in England we have a left wing political group headed by Jeremy Corbyn and the Momentum group. Mr Corbyn is leader of the Opposition in Parliament and is thus a powerful political figure. But though he is left wing, many are concerned by his behaviour towards the Jewish people. Traditionally, the British Labour party is the political home for the Jewish people, but it is seen that Mr Corbyn has strong links to groups who wish to destroy the state of Israel. Mr Corbyn denies that he is anti Semitic, either that or he is a simple minded fool.
One of the great values of freedom of speech is that we may freely debate any issue. One may say something offensive, which is then discussed, and difficulties may then be resolved. A senior politician must listen to offensive speech and challenge it. If he does not challenge offensive speech, then he is seen to be in agreement with the offence.
We see that right wing and left wing politicians and other powerful figures, all seem to be creating conditions for a repeat of the ancient catastrophe, the unresolved trauma.
Bullies 5
A while back, I experienced the world as round. Standing on the sea shore, I could see the gentle curve of the horizon, but for the first time I saw, or experienced, that the small waves were coming in on a curve towards the land. Of course, I knew that Magellan on his voyage, had proved the earth is a globe - or more accurately, an ellipse - but for the first time I knew the fact from that experience of looking at the horizon and the sea.
People talk of unity with nature, but I have rarely felt such unity. Last year, in my new and first ever garden, I decided to grow vegetables; but they all failed dismally. So instead I planted native bulbs, English and Welsh daffodils, snake’s head fritillary, native bluebells, ramsons, wild tulips, and other things. And I cut back hard the fuschia all of which had got some leaf disease, and let the garden go as it will. The garden is narrow but long, heath land originally, I think. There’s a primrose path, about two yards or metres. The grasses grow very long later in the year, but for now they are short and studded with golden dandelions, like bright stars in the green; where the fuschias were patches of violets have appeared, and what we call weeds are flourishing and beautiful. The colours fit the season and the land, white, yellows, soft pink, the serenely vibrant bluebells, the indefinable purplish of the fritillaries. A fox visits and has been digging an earth, and crapping, marking the territory as its own, and I feel privileged. There are birds and visiting cats; I’ve seen a grass snake, and there are flying, buzzing and creeping insects. And last week, as I stood in the garden, I felt the rightness of it all, and that I belonged.
I do understand that scientists are afraid of what they call irrationality: superstition is deadly. And maybe one day, science will be able to explain everything, answer all our questions. But I know that we already know everything, that we have an innate understanding of this planet and everything in and on it, and of the universe beyond; we know, but we have forgotten in the terrors of phylogenic traumas. We have become mistrustful of nature and are afraid.
I know that my gut brain at times undermines my conscious will, but though biologists have been investigating the idea of the gut brain, they talk in terms of microbiology, in scientific ‘rational’ terms. I know that my conscious will is often questioned by the unconscious. I know that my mind directs my brain. But scientists are reluctant to accept the idea of the mind, which cannot be seen, or measured, which cannot be proven scientifically to exist, so it is perhaps foolish to suggest that scientists be open minded. But I wish that they would.
Bullies 6
We have seen that bullying is regressive behaviour; and that the target in family bullying also often regresses: one who has been bullied since infancy, for example, is brought to a state of pre-verbal development and without armour, as in infancy, and finds it difficult to challenge the bullies even as an adult.
Having so far understood the difficulties, I did recently manage to talk about it one of my sisters. I did not want her to feel guilty, or to feel that she was being bullied by me; therefore was I not confrontational, and tried to be rational and loving. My sister was surprised that I found her behaviour towards me distressing and unacceptable. She said that she hadn’t meant to upset me, and apologised. It does seem that it is possible to overcome the difficulties of bullying, at least within my family, and at least with one of my sisters.
We note that active and conscious bullying begins at four years old; the adult bully regresses to that four year old stage of development. We may understand that our early ancestors felt that they were being bullied by natural events which traumatised them when they were the equivalent of two years old and especially of 3 1/2 years old. Our early ancestors physically survived the terrible events, and then began to hit back at nature, to bully nature, as we still do. We are a bullying species. And our behaviours are infantile.
My sister seemed to think that her behaviour towards me was normal, natural, and simply the way older siblings behave towards younger family members. Does this sense that bullying behaviour is normal and natural also apply in the wider world? I think we may say that it does. We need only look at our attitude towards other creatures and the natural world to see that bullying behaviour certainly is usual in humanity. But it is not natural. Bullying is not natural: human nature is fundamentally good; and we should naturally behave well towards each other and the rest of the world.
I am more distressed than I can adequately say by the behaviour of Mr Corbyn. The leader of the Labour Party in the UK should not allow anti Semitism to flourish in his party; as a socialist, he should challenge anti Semitism everywhere and especially within his party. Mr Corbyn was born in England shortly after the Second World War, his parents were peace campaigners, he must have learnt that anti Semitism is immoral, he must have known the dangers of anti Semitism. But he apparently has not understood, and it would seem that he has a poor understanding of morality. Does Mr Corbyn even understand Socialism, does he understand that Socialism is inclusive?
We may understand that anti Semitism has its roots in the great Thaw at the end of the last ice age. We may understand that in terrible conditions, the matriarchs became increasingly maddened, and demanded increasingly perverse behaviour, including perhaps sacrifices of men, women and children. We may recognise that the Biblical story of Noah describes a group of people who rightly and righteously defied the perversity of the ruling matriarchs and left. We may understand that the matriarchs were infuriated by what they saw as treason, and that this ‘treachery’ was never forgiven.
We must recognise that at the time of Thaw, there was not a Jewish race; but we may speculate that Noah, his wife and their group became the founders of a people separate and different from the society they had left.
All the Jewish people that I have met have been intelligent, generous and good natured, though of course, some are more intelligent than others. And I find it very difficult to understand that so many gentiles are anti Semitic. Very many gentiles swallow the slanders against the Jewish people without question; and very many gentiles, including it seems Mr Corbyn, seem to think that anti Semitism is normal and natural behaviour. It is not natural, bullying is not natural.
We may speculate that anti Semitism …
I am so afraid as I sit here writing this, though there is nothing to be afraid of. This is England, after all, a quiet country, and I’m in a quiet corner of the land. My neighbours will not hurt me, the State will not hurt me, the Law will protect me, and yet I am afraid. Interestingly, it is my body which displays this state of fear, as my mind tries to rise above and escape the fear. But this fear will not be ignored; it presents itself in physical symptoms; and I must face the fact of this apparently irrational fear.
Until recently, there was a general opinion that Neanderthals were a stupid race. We now know that the Neanderthals were intelligent, and that homo sapiens and the neanderthals co-existed peacefully and interbred. It is understood that neanderthals became extinct about 40,000 years ago; a period which may coincide with a severe glaciation. It is speculated that homo sapiens destroyed the neanderthals. We may speculate that home sapiens became fearful at the change in climate, and struck out against their neanderthal neighbours; that home sapiens blamed the neanderthals for causing the weather event, and destroyed the ‘enemy’.
We know from observation that groups of human beings under stress turn against their neighbours: Rwanda, Bosnia, Burma. And the on-going persecution of the Jews.
We may see that there are cultures with destructive rituals. Across a wide swathe of Africa and in some countries of the middle east, female genital mutilation is horribly common. We may speculate that this practice began during the later stages of the last great glaciation; and we may speculate that the mutilation of the genitals of girls and women was demanded by the matriarchs, who were trying to appease the fury of the goddess, by destroying pleasure in women. Although we note that FGM is commonly practiced by Muslims, we may understand that FGM is far more ancient than Islam.
We may speculate that the method of christening new born and very young babies is also destructive: throwing cold water - three times - on the prefrontal lobes of babies may inhibit the healthy intellectual and moral development of Christians.
We may understand that FGM and the method of christening are both used in the hope of averting danger; but we see that these practices are dangerous.
We human beings have an established pattern of behaviour: we become afraid, we lash out, we destroy. The fear itself is real, but we do not recognise its origins, and we do not resolve the fear by destruction. The fear is accompanies by guilt: we feel guilty; we lash out against the ‘enemy’, which is another group or tribe whom we blame for our misfortune; we destroy. We do not resolve the fear and the guilt by destruction.
We go round and round in a pattern of fear, guilt and destruction, because we refuse to acknowledge our original innocence. In our pattern of fear, guilt and destruction we make ourselves guilty.
Human nature is fundamentally good, all babies are born good and loving. Our ancient ancestors did not cause the natural disasters which traumatised them; our ancient ancestors could not have caused the natural disasters. They were innocent. We must acknowledge our fundamental goodness; we must recognise the origins of our fear. We must acknowledge the fear, face the fear, and so overcome the fear. When we have done so, then we can move on.