Timeline: a rough estimate, which would be much better as a graph but the technology defeats me.
It is estimated that chimpanzees, our closest relatives, split from our human ancestors about 6 million years ago.
Then: We may perhaps estimate that around 2-3 million years ago, our ancestors suffered a maturation delay Now: At two years old, our infants start yelling, suddenly recognise what a lie is, and develop the capacity to tell lies
Then: The maturation delay ended Now: At three years old, our infants become very exuberant and cannot keep still. This is known as the Dionysian stage of development
Then: We may speculate that a terrible natural catastrophe occurred Now: At 3 1/2 years old, our infants suddenly start screaming in rage and terror
Then: The settlement at Olorgesaille started about 900,000 years ago and finished about 500,000 years ago. However, a quick check on the net gives the dates as 200,000 to 100,000 years ago, so it is very difficult to be sure. Olorgesaille may be seen as an extended maturation delay and is very important in the phylogeny of our species. At the site in Olorgesaille our ancestors made a huge number of stone axe heads, far too many to use, and often very badly made. The society was a matriarchy, as it had been throughout our evolution. Now: Our children go through what is known as the Latency Period from the ages of 6 or 7 until puberty. Those ages are accepted in Continental Europe, but in England the estimate for the start of the Latency Period has sometimes been estimated at a year or two earlier. During this Latency Period, boys and girls often are less likely to associate with each other; at around 9 or 10 years old, some children seem to regress, or become wild with the frustration of constantly being told what to do, by people whom the child feels does not have the moral right to dictate. Also, and not necessarily connected with these ‘temper tantrums’, some fathers who have been tolerant and kindly, quite suddenly start hitting the child, apparently for no reason. We may speculate that all these actions have their origins in events during Olorgesaille. School life, and for many adults work life, often involves a terrible repetition. For adults in factories or clerks and typists in an office, we may easily recognise that such routine tasks are an exact mirror of the dreary labour of making stone axe heads day after day, year after year. It has been recognised that some women of the age of about 27 years show great determination in the matter of being right. Whether they are in fact right or wrong is beside the point. And it’s no good arguing. We may recognise that this tendency is associated with the end of the settlement at Olorgesaille. The settlement ended when puberty was reached at around 13 years of age. In those times, a young female would mate as soon as sexual maturity was reached, and give birth to her first child by the time she was 14 years old; her mother would then become a grandmother, at the age of around 27 years old. The new grandmother would become a Matriarch; she would be in charge. And naturally she must be right. Why else would anyone obey her?*
Then: The extinction of the megafauna occurred about 640,000 to 130,000 years ago
Then: At the moment the figures on the net for the last ice age are that it started about 100,000 years ago and ended about 25,000 years ago, which is a change from the last time I checked when the figures were, I think, starting about 40,000 years ago and ending 12,000 to 10,000 years ago. All these changes are unsettling. Our cousins, the Neanderthals died out about 40,000 years ago. The end of the last ice age saw the end of the rule of the matriarchs. Now: Our phylogeny has been troubled. It seems very clear to me that as a species we are suffering from post traumatic stress disorder, and we must make every effort to overcome all these distresses, and re-establish our fundamentally good human nature.
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* It is possible that at the age of 27 I exhibited such behaviour. I really don’t remember. But I do know that from a much younger age I was intellectually confident; however, I did always try to make sure that I had my facts right, very necessary in my family. So perhaps I became obnoxious at the age of 27, or perhaps was always obnoxious in this regard. Who knows?
Timeline 2
Thinking is the most enjoyable activity. For me. When isolated. Daydreaming at school, those blissful jaunts, unconscious. Yes. And now, doing this work, it is the thinking I enjoy, those moments of sudden enlightenment, or times when puzzles begin gradually to resolve. Of course, I must remain conscious, know where I’ve been because I have to write it out, but thinking is enjoyable.
The era spent at Olorgesailie has been hugely influential on our species. We may recognise that, in the aftermath of the great catastrophe, our traumatised ancestors endured an age in a psychological and physiological wilderness (as indicated in our own time by the childhood illnesses such as measles, chickenpox etc, which cause physical illness and the mental distresses of feverish delirium).
Eventually the matriarchs caused the settlement at Olorgesailie, providing a calm and secure environment. We see the good motive of the matriarchs. Olorgesailie was a very extended maturation delay. The common occupation of the people was making stone axe heads, and we may easily understand that there came a build up of frustrations in the community (in our own time, a significant number of 10 year old children seem to regress, become ‘difficult’ and have ‘tantrums’, which are obvious signs of frustration. A 10 year old child now is about halfway through the latency period, mirroring the period when our ancestors were about halfway through the time spent at Olorgesailie).
We may recognise that the matriarchs repressed any outbreaks of frustration among their people (in our own time we see that, in a significant number of cases, some usually kindly fathers suddenly lash out at their sons and daughters of about 10 years old for no apparent cause).
We see that the matriarchs used the males to discipline unruly elements in the society. My own personal experience: when I was ten years old, my father suddenly whopped me round the face, with no warning and really for no cause; he hit me so hard that I fell down; but I didn’t resent it; of course, I didn’t like it, but I could see that he didn’t want to hit me, but that something impelled him to. For some time, as an adult, I wondered whether my mother had told him to hit me or had somehow manipulated him into doing so. But no. Not directly, though the female parent is implicated, if only by her gender. This phenomenon comes from Olorgesailie, and suddenly breaks through into our present lives; a reminder of events in an ancient time.
The matriarchs had a good cause to settle at Olorgesailie. But the frustrations built up among the people, and the matriarchs used physical force to punish or forestal rebellion. We see here an early example of tyranny, perhaps the origins of tyranny. We may see that the matriarchs were determined to cling to their original good cause, even by perverting that good cause, and turning it bad. It is fascinating. Somewhat demoralising, yes, but fascinating.
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People tell me things, and this present investigation into Olorgesailie began with puzzlement about the demonisation of the youngest child in the family by the penultimate child. Since I was about 40 years old, a surprisingly large number of people who have one younger sibling have told me how horrible this younger child is, how monstrously bad their behaviour is. There might be only two children in the family, or any greater number, the children might be male or female, the gap between the two youngest might be one year or ten years, it makes no difference: the rule seems to be that the penultimate child must demonise the youngest child. It seemed remarkable, very odd.
The stats: Penultimate child: female 60% male 40% elder of two 20% middle of three 60% fourth of five, fifth of six etc 20%
Youngest child: female 40% male 60%
(The sample includes twins.)
In all these cases, I was made aware that the behaviour of the mother of the family had a somewhat negative impact on her children while they were growing up
This is not a scientific survey, the numbers are too small, apart from anything else. And there must be families in which the children actually like each other and support each other. But in a significant number of less happy families the youngest child is monstered, and always primarily by the next up in age, though the older siblings may accept the judgement of the penultimate child. Otherwise attractive, intelligent, creative people, artists, business men and women, scholars and so on, tell horror stories about their ‘own flesh and blood’, and I simply don’t believe them. It’s slander. But why? And do the slanderers believe themselves? And the listening gossips, do they believe these dreadful lies?
And then I saw that it is a ritual and that belief doesn’t matter, credibility is irrelevant. It is the ritual which is important. And where does this ritual come from, when in our phylogeny did it start? What is it based in?
I have witnessed horrible vicious and violent behaviour among pre-school age siblings, fortunately very rarely, where the elder of the child attacked the younger, and in the presence of the mother who did not interfere, or pretended not to notice. Once, in a supermarket when the mother was out of sight, I told a stout child to stop kicking his little sister, he said, ‘She’s stupid and my mummy says I can,’ and when I told him it was wrong he rushed off, to find his mother I suppose. But in these examples, we may see that the bullying child’s behaviour is a direct result of the mother’s indifference, depression, anger or whatever.
The ritual of the monstering does not involve violence, slander is more sophisticated. It seems very possible to me that the ritual dates back to Olorgesailie, around the middle of that period when there was the threat of rebellion and the matriarchs were determined to maintain discipline.
The monstered child is a scapegoat (‘it weren’t me, the baby done it’). And perhaps at Olorgesailie, a sacrifice, perhaps even literally. And it may be that the penultimate child had the job of providing the scapegoat (or sacrifice).
It sounds fantastical, but so much of human behaviour is fantastical.
————--
When we look at the tyrants, we may recognise that initially they have a good motive for their actions; or if they do not have a good motive, we see that they invent a ‘good’ motive, because it is important to tyrants that they seem to be good.
We see that the tyrant initially has great popular support. It is important to the tyrant to have the people with him. We see that the tyrant will not tolerate opposition, rebellion is crushed, scapegoats are produced, and sacrificed. We may recognise that the tyrant wants to escape the rule of the matriarchs, he wants to be free and to free his people, perhaps; but he uses the methods of the matriarchs, and therefore he cannot be free.
So many times we’ve seen this, in history and in our own time. Now. But it starts somewhere. Though I cannot be certain when it starts, it is clear to me that this pattern of behaviour is consolidated, set, in the middle of the age of Olorgesailie, when the people became frustrated and rebellious and the matriarchs became tyrannical. Tyranny, scapegoating, monstering and sacrifice, bullying of all kinds are not natural human behaviours.
Human nature is fundamentally good, all babies are born good and loving. But we are bedevilled by our phylogeny, trapped in a cycle of behaviours that constantly harm us. We see the harm we do and suffer, but have not known what motivates us, and feel powerless to help ourselves. Now we are learning to understand, and we do have the capacity to help ourselves. So be it.
Timeline 3
It comes back to obedience. Naturally the child obeys the mother, and that is the law. The family bullies obey the mother, the family scapegoats obey the mother. We are trapped by the natural law of obedience. Defiance is immensely difficult.
As a species, we obey the perverse laws laid down by the matriarchs. There was a good motive in setting up Olorgesailie; but the benefits were lost as the frustrations of the people grew. A kind of superstition took hold of the matriarchs; they may not have remembered exactly what the good intention was, but they believed their regime was necessary, vital, and they clung to that belief. They became tyrannical to preserve what they felt was a vital necessity, for the good of the people.
The tyrants are obedient to the matriarchs. And we see how immensely difficult it is to defy these tyrannies.
Why is it so difficult to defy the perverse demands in the family? It is surely morally right to defy perversity; we are fundamentally good and loving, and it is therefore natural to defy perversity. But we are loving, we naturally love the mother above all, so it is painful and it feels wrong, perverse, to defy the mother, even when she herself defies the law of love; which is the first and greatest law.
And on the big stage, among the tyrants, defiance is very difficult. The tyrants make it very difficult to defy them. The tyrants, unconsciously, obey those old matriarchs; it is as if they draw on the strength of the matriarchs. The tyrants follow the path laid down by the matriarchs, clamp down on any dissent, any hint of dissent - for the good of the people, of course. And the people obey. Out of fear? Because they want a quiet life? Don’t want to upset the apple cart, don’t want to draw attention to themselves? The people obey out of fear, and very few have the strength to defy the tyrants. Safer to obey the tyrant, love the tyrant. Love Big Brother.
Remember The Glorious Loyalty Oath Crusade in Catch-22 ? Marvellous book. Wouldn’t get published now, might not get written, writers are self-censoring, publishers are afraid of causing offence, safer to obey the illiberal loud squawking new puritan bullies.
But it isn’t safer to obey perversity. It is not safer to obey tyranny. It is not safe at all; it is very dangerous. Look at where we are now, look where obedience to perversity has brought us. We have obeyed perversity since the cultural infancy of our species; since the early traumas, we have been afraid and have obeyed perversity because we are a fearful species.
The Glorious Loyalty Oath Crusade was ended by Major —— de Coverley, ‘Gimme eat! Give everybody eat!’ But that was a book.
Out here in the human sphere it is the mothers, as always, who have the power and the responsibility to bring humanity back to the reality of love.
Timeline 4
Some way above in this document I wrote that a female chimpanzee is mature at 4 or 5, has her first offspring a year later, and has another child only when the first is mature, continuing this cycle throughout her life. Checking this I see that it is not so; the female is mature at 14 or 15, and she gives birth every 3 to 4 years. I was careless and apologise. But I am human, and human beings are careless, and we have the hutzpah to call ourselves ‘wise’.
I don’t know about chimpanzees, but human society seems to depend on scapegoats.
It’s creepy. Mean girls in their 70s and 80s cackling in covens; with a male cat’s-paw or a female side kick, eager to assist the bullying; men and women easy to manipulate when they are also the penultimate child with one younger sibling whom they demonise. And they don’t give up, these mean girls and boys, they don’t let it go; their targets, the scapegoats may remove themselves, get away, but the bullies can’t seem to leave it be. The bullies are obeying the mother, in their own individual ways, and apparently must continue to do so. It is infantile behaviour; the bullying behaviour is infantile, and the scapegoats’ response to the bullying is infantile (which makes resistance to the bullying very difficult). These behaviours go back much further than Olorgesailie, having roots in the natural obedience to the mother.
We must obey the mother, it’s very deep within the psyche; obedience to the mother goes back right to the start of our species, even before the cultural infancy of humanity.
Naturally, the mother is loving and obedience to her is part of the joy of life. But where the mother is distinctly unloving, and even when we can clearly see that the mother’s behaviour is perverse, we find it very difficult to defy her will, because obedience to her is natural. And the legacy of all those early phylogenic traumas, ensures that the mother’s behaviour is often perverse. Human behaviour is frankly usually perverse.
We see that the wider society has scapegoats, the poor, the working class, this or that racial or religious minority, children, the old, the young, women, men. It varies. It seems that our civilisation depends on the class of the scapegoat. We see it in the family, throughout our societies, we see it in war, everywhere we see this infantile behaviour. The scapegoating is everywhere.
The Christians have their Holy Scapegoat, and they worship his suffering. Christians are told that Jesus died for our sins so that we will be free. There are, according to the net, 2.38 billion Christians in the world, which is getting on for a third of the human population. And they worship the crucified Christ because they believe with suffering him on that cross they will not be scapegoated. Does it work? Has it stopped human suffering? Has it stopped Christians suffering?
I thought that the scapegoating was comparatively trivial, something to be endured, if possible, by the scapegoats alone. But it isn’t trivial, it’s very widespread, and everyone suffers, the scapegoats who are bullied and the mean girls and boys who bully them. Scapegoating is a clear sign of distress in humanity, of human perversity.
And the mothers have it in their power to stop all this suffering, all this bullying and scapegoating. Not overnight, for sure, but over a generation or two, which is practically a blink of an eye in evolutionary terms.
.
Timeline 5
It would be interesting to know the statistics in terms of position in the family: how many suicides are the youngest child in the family hierarchy, for instance, and the same with cancers and other serious physical illnesses, and mental conditions, alcohol and drug dependency; life expectancy and so on. It would be interesting.
In the wider society, we know that the wealthy live longer than the poor, and it seems that scapegoating can be and often is lethal.
And it is clear that the bullies depend on the scapegoats. In the family, the baby arrives with love; everyone wants to be loved, and the elder child enjoys the love and admiration of the younger child; but the arrival of the new baby traumatises the elder child, who loses that capacity for loving; she sees the baby’s love and wants to regain that capacity for love, but cannot. It is not jealousy, but perhaps envy and anger. She wants to show the new baby her own sense of loss; she wants to show the new baby how bad its arrival makes her feel. So, she wants the baby’s love, loathes the baby for being born, fears the baby who has produced this uncomfortable mix of emotions, and uses the baby as a whipping boy.
In the wider society, the bosses depend on the workers; the wealthy depend on the poor; the doctors depend on the sick, and so on through the system.
The tyrant depends on rent-a-crowd to show him how loved he is. The warmonger depends on a weaker neighbour to ‘prove’ to the world how strong and brave he is. And so on.
And it all goes back to the cultural infancy of our species. There are strict rules laid down in ancient times, and the scapegoat, it seems, cannot escape the role thrust on him or her: we must obey, for that is the natural law, and it seems that the bullies exploit that natural law of obedience.
And it is wrong. A civilisation that depends on making scapegoats of children, and within their own families, is wrong. Unimaginable wrong.
This bullying behaviour comes out of deep fear. Some people call it ‘existential fear’ but life itself is not fearful. This depth of fear which sacrifices children is humanity’s fear in response to those ancient phylogenic traumas.
Two cases known to me of scapegoating in the family:
In the first case, the parents were doctors, GPs; they had four children, and after each birth the mother went straight back to work; the eldest child was a girl, and as the eldest in the absence of the mother, she naturally felt that she was in charge; the next two were boys, who resented her authority and rebelled against her; this continued throughout her life, and she died horribly in her fifties of cancer.
In the second case the parents were working class; the had two sons and the mother left when the younger child was about 18 months old; the father then joined up with a widow who had a daughter and the two families lived together; the children were all under four years old; the step sister and the elder brother became very close and excluded the younger brother; the younger brother was left with no one of his own, he’d lost his mother, the father worked, the new mother had her own daughter and the elder boy, who was devoted to the step sister, and they rejected him. The elder brother tells me often and very solemnly how horrible his younger brother is and always was, still after nearly seventy years.
The first case is unusual because it is the eldest child who is scapegoated, and in the second case the family circumstances are unusual, but I could give you very many other examples of scapegoating in more ‘usual’ families; most commonly it is the youngest child who is the scapegoat, and the outcomes for the scapegoat are very often very bad.
George Frankl told me that I must speak for the children. So speaking for the children I say, ‘Do not have us if you do not want us.’
And for each individual child not yet even conceived, I say, ‘Don’t make me if you don’t want me. If you give birth to me be sure that I will love you, and that is all you can be sure of. You take a chance when you give birth to me. You can help me to reach my potential; you can accept my love, nurture, guide and protect me, but you cannot dictate who I am. You cannot know who I am.’
Timeline 6
Is there anything more ridiculous in the universe than humanity? In the multiverse? Ever?
Well, well.
The shock of the arrival of the new baby in the family can be very great, and affects behaviour throughout life. Being a child in any family can be, and often is, very difficult. I beg you, before you condemn anyone out of hand for their apparently bad behaviour please look carefully at their sibling relationships, their place among their siblings within the family. It’s very important.
Thank you.
Timeline 7
A few weeks ago I wondered what Saltikov-Shchedrin would say, and the idea popped into my head that he might say, ‘That man has Botoxed his brain,’ which it seemed reasonable to think under the circumstances.
And then, you see, it occurred to me that maybe it’s common, that a lot of these Great Leaders have Botoxed their brains: taking their countries into war: bullying other countries; persecuting minorities, committing acts of genocide and crimes against humanity ay home: murdering women who don’t wear exactly the right clothes in exactly the right way: re-criminalising abortion, and so on, the usual behaviours of Great Leaders.
And then I was more than usually grateful that I live in this country, where our head of state is a constitutional monarch who has no power to damage us even if he wanted to which I know he doesn’t, and where our politicians are more or less trustworthy.
And then, here, we got Truss and trussonomics which nearly destroyed our economy in just a few days. The Botoxed brains, ie rigid thinking, is everywhere. Nowhere is safe.
But then I remembered that this Truss was brought into power by the votes of people, about 21,000 Conservative Party members, not the whole electorate and not the politicians in parliament who didn’t want her. And I almost panicked. Ordinary men and women? Voted for, wanted their new Prime Minister to be Truss? So it seems that this rigid thinking is very widespread.
But then looking at Truss you can see that she didn’t intend to destroy the country, she didn’t mean do harm. There’s the cheery light in her eyes of certainty that she’s doing the right thing, following her dream, and she’s completely sure that her vision is good. And extend that thought and it becomes possible to see that all these Great Leaders believe that their appalling acts are right and good.
And then we can see that the people generally who get caught up: conspiracy theories; waves of fascism; dark fads and fancies of all kinds, also believe that they are right and good.
Sometimes, I’m not entirely optimistic about humanity.
Of course, women should be in charge. As with other mammals, we are naturally matriarchal: the mothers rule. But. As we know, women are just as vulnerable to rigid thinking as men are, getting ideas and sticking to them whatever.
And we see that is much of our difficulty as a species: we have built our civilisations on fantasy. Since we learnt to lie, to say the thing that is not, we have played ‘let’s pretend’ all down the ages, until we believe our fantasies and cannot see reality. As a species, we do tend to get hysterical, clinging to our various fantasies because we don’t want to see reality. We are frightened of reality. By going to war and all the rest of the perversities, we (think we) protect ourselves from reality; whereas, of course, we are skipping into disaster with our wild fantasies, generation after generation. It’s a dangerous habit.
I strongly suggest that the cause of these difficulties comes from the split in the generations of women.
Let us briefly recap by looking at the four major phylogenic traumas we have identified: the early maturation delay, when we learnt to lie; the Great Catastrophe; Olorgesaille and the extended maturation delay; the collapse of the matriarchy during the thaw at the end of the last ice age.
Our early ancestors, in their cultural infancy, felt that the matriarchs were to blame for the first two traumas, but we know that the matriarchs were not possibly responsible for these events.
During the extended maturation delay. at Olorgesaille the matriarchs imposed a rigid discipline on the people who spent many tens of thousands of years making stone axe heads, which must have been a torment for them. We do not know what caused the maturation delay, but we may well recognise that the matriarchs were responsible for social conditions at this period.
The matriarchs were certainly responsible for social conditions during the last ice age, and for their behaviours at this period. We may however understand that the matriarchs during that time especially during the thaw, were driven to - shall we say? - psychological extremes and were therefore not entirely in their right minds, and didn’t know what they were doing. If they were brought to a modern court of law, their defence might probably be diminished responsibility.
And so we come to the patriarchy, which causes difficulties for modern feminists. There has been a lot of talk about the evils of patriarchy, but perhaps the first rule of patriarchy is that the daughters rejected the mothers in favour of the fathers. And this is ingrained in the human psyche: very often a daughter still does consciously reject her mother in favour of her father.
More than that, we inherit half our genes from the mother and half from the father; naturally women are as intelligent as men are. Patriarchy, the world of men, is a lot more interesting to women than the restrictions of the home. Women like men even though feminism has blamed men; and women want what men have in the world. With respect, I do think Freud was mistaken in his theory of penis envy, women naturally want to be included in the wider world.
But there is still this difficulty, this tension between mothers and daughters. You may well say, ‘But my mother has always encouraged me, always been helpful and loving,’ and I am pleased for you. But this tension between the generations of women is not personal, it is there in the psyche, embedded since the trauma of the thaw and the breakdown of the matriarchy; daughters are, consciously or unconsciously, still distrustful of the generation of mothers (and many men perhaps middle aged or older men will without any hesitation or thought rush to the defence of a young woman whom they feel has been unkindly used by an older woman).
It’s there in the patriarchy. And it’s an ongoing problem; the young woman will become an old woman and, perhaps overtly perhaps subtly, she will find herself on the wrong side, as it were.
But the main difficulty is that when the daughter rejects the mother, to some extent the daughter rejects herself. It is not healthy.
We must recognise the humanity of those ancient matriarchs, who didn’t know they were doing anything wrong.
Timeline 8
Mean girls, tyrants, we might analyse The Bully until the cows come home, but it won’t help us much. We might analyse the citizens who flock to absorb malicious gossip, and those who follow ranting demagogues into hell, but that won’t shed light.
Something else is going on in our human civilisation; something we know so well that we’ve perhaps forgotten we know it.
There are natural laws which govern life on earth, laws of love, of instinct.
And there are human made laws which to a great extent govern us. We know those human made laws intimately well. We do not question them. Those human made laws are the effect of our ancient phylogenic fear, and we are still too afraid to challenge them. They are embedded deep in our human psyche, very well known to us but blocked from consciousness by fear. For a very long time we humans have believed that obedience to these laws of fear is inevitable.
These laws of fear, of course, are not written, or spoken of, and it may be that our ancestors did not have word language when the laws of fear were first brought in.
The laws of fear, so deep in us, have it that we must obey the bully; we must sacrifice the scapegoat; we must fight and destroy as the bully tells us. If these were natural laws, then there would be nothing we could to free ourselves, we would accept the natural law.
But the laws of fear are precisely not natural law. They are unnatural laws, which demand that we turn against our own good, loving human nature. And we cannot accept that though we do try to repeatedly.
We must challenge these laws of fear. We are creatures of this earth; obedience is natural to us; we owe obedience only to love, to our own good, loving human nature.
Of all the sub sets of people on this planet, I find the cynics the most deplorable.
We must challenge the bullying laws of fear.
Timeline 9
Being three years old is an exciting time for a child. You’re very much alive then, firing on all cylinders; and what happens to a child then might colour the child’s view of life, for life. Events then, at three years old might be seen as the truth of life: a very good experience will show the child that life is good, and that will become the truth; a very bad experience might show the child that life itself is bad, and that will become reality for the child.
For example, a three year old boy; his father is ineffectual and weak, morally and physically, and very likely embittered and angry; the mother is sentimental cruel; very ambitious for her son, she is determined the child will be exceptionally good; she is strict, sentimental and cruel; she restricts the child, denies him his natural freedoms, grooms him for saintliness. The three year old breaks out, full of excitement and joy, strutting around, laughing, masturbating. And he is punished for being bad. And at some point around that time, he experiences a horror within himself, not of death, but of visceral terror. And that moment of terror becomes the reality of life for the boy. And, when he grows up, he dedicates his life to showing the world his perception of reality.
It’s a strange and dreadful thing, that terror. I have experienced it myself about 15 years ago, so very much an adult. I think a lot of people do experience it. Perhaps it is there in all of us. And it seems to me that only love keeps us free of that terror; which is, perhaps, why nature provides overwhelming love in the mother for the child. And when the mother really cannot or simply does not love her child, and when the father is also incapable of love, the child is very vulnerable. We know the child loves, but stripped of that love within himself or herself, experiencing that visceral terror, reality would seem very dreadful to the child.
Bullies do want to show the world their perception of reality as harsh and cruel. That seems to be their function: to keep us always mindful of those phylogenic traumas; to remind us always that we can never be free of terror; to obey the ancient human made laws.
But the bullies are wrong in their view of reality. We humans have built our civilisations on fear. The fear arising out of psychological trauma is real, whether the trauma is phylogenic or ontogenic. But our civilisations are made of fearful fantasies. Our civilisations, including wars and other horrors, are facts, but have very little to do with reality.
Life on earth is built on love. And that’s official, as George would say.
Timeline 10
People around here do keep publishing books about how suffering in childhood is a good thing; it’s character building, apparently. The effects of physical disability, accident or disease will be lessened by loving parents; but the psychological suffering caused by unloving, neglectful, self obsessed or cruel parents, physical or sexual abuse in childhood, and so on, is extremely difficult to overcome. Middle class individuals who enjoyed the benefits of being born to kindly and protective parents simple do not know what they’re writing about. And I wish they’d stop doing it. Humanity and the rest of creation would be far better off, there would be many more geniuses, a much more stable, intelligent and happy population without all the ontogenic psychological distresses so many children suffer.
Look at this man throwing his bombs around. At one stage in his childhood, there was a moment when he literally didn’t know what to do with himself, physically, emotionally, intellectually, no way out of the straightjacket his mother had trapped him in. And now he’s using all that he learnt then to punish others.
He had a horrible childhood. And it didn’t do him any good, and what he experienced as a child is causing a very great deal of suffering to a very great number of other people, as well as to the other creatures he bombs and the land itself. Character building? Bah. Humbug. Psychological suffering in childhood is character forming, and it can form characters warped and dangerous.
And he is wrong. Moral relativity is dead in the water since George Frankl published his Proof: human nature is fundamentally good, all babies are born good and loving. Therefore any behaviour which is perverse, unloving, against our fundamentally good nature is wrong. Which means, of course, that much of human behaviour is wrong.
Life is glorious. That glory of life doesn’t depend on us. Life itself simply is glorious. Psychological suffering in the infancy of our species caused us to shun the glory of life. We can have that glory whenever we want, whenever we have the courage. The glory is there, here all around us, and in us if we knew it, if we dared to know it.
I don’t know what the response to military aggression could be, apart from military reaction. I do know that psychological suffering in childhood is a bad thing, and sometimes a very bad thing.
Timeline 11
We hide to keep it safe. A lot of people, perhaps most people hide themselves one way or another, keep their light under a bushel, are brusque with their children afraid to show the extent of their love and so on. It’s a consequence of all those phylogenic traumas. The bullies remind us to keep safely hidden, and are very effective in their chosen work.
What kind of a man rapes a four year old girl? What kind of a man encourages his soldiers to rape as an act of war? We recognise that he is afraid and angry; we understand that there is cause for his fear and rage; but there is no justification for his behaviour. A horrible childhood does not provide justification for invasion, bombing, murder and rape, and all the other crimes we see perpetrated.
But however horrible the things people do are, however horrible the bullies make things, there’s one thing the bullies can’t harm: the reality of life itself. None of us can harm the reality of life itself.
We humans are afraid of the reality of life - another consequence of the phylogenic traumas. And in our fear we cling to the bullies. Collectively, traditionally, we cling to the old ways of hiding and bullying. We understand the old ways, and without being conscious of it, we accept and feel perversely comfortable with the old ways, the sense of it being something like ‘better the devil you know’. We are so afraid, and somewhat cowardly.
But life is wonderful. What we humans do is very often very nasty. But life itself is wonderful. Life is exciting, pleasurable; life itself is almost like being in love, that slightly dizzy, ditsy feeling, light hearted, light headed, laughing, joyous feeling, where everything is fine, just simply naturally fine.
For sure, sometimes things in life are difficult, there are shocks, sometimes it does rain on the parade, and sometimes there are earthquakes, meteorite strikes, floods, cats do kill mice, but all that is nature and none of our business. We don’t have to imitate the harshness of the natural world. Nature does it all very well and doesn’t need our help in that regard.
Everything we need is provided for us. Nature provides nourishment and shelter. Everything else we need is in us, naturally; we’re born with everything we need. If we were less perverse - when we become less perverse - we will far happier and much healthier mentally and physically.
George Frankl wanted to free the libido; and a day or two after he had died, as I walked in Englands Lane to a meeting about his funeral, he burst through me, a great wave of energy, so strong I had to lean against a shop front. He had told me, ‘The energy released seeks form,’ and in that moment as I walked he demonstrated, validated the statement. Freed from his human form, and all the nonsense of being human, he was even more alive and energetic than he had been before he ‘died’, before he stopped being human.
What he showed me then was the reality of life. And I understood that his energy was free, that the libido in him was freed.
Frankl wanted to free the libido of the human species while we are still human, here as we walk the world on our human feet. He wanted it and it is possible.
Timeline 12
George Frankl didn’t use the word ‘mad’. I never heard him say it. He didn’t like labels such as mad to describe people; it’s unkind, dismissive and of course intellectually lazy. He used the word ‘perverse’ and worked to understand why people behave perversely.
In the old days, we were superstitious, we believed our human perversity came from the ‘fact’ that human nature is bad, we were born bad, came from a bad place and would return to a bad place. Frankl’s Proof changes all that. The nightmare is over.
All the perversity, the wars, murder, rape, arms dealing, drug dealing, the money mania, all the bullying is redundant now. There is no place for it any more, no possible justification.
Frankl’s Proof: Human nature is fundamentally good, all babies are born good and loving. We come from a good place, will return to a good place, this is a good place. Let us let it be.
The love, that natural love we’re born with, deepens as we age, becomes more rounded, more mature. The young flibbertigibbets and hobbledehoys, bemused by childhood, stumble after love. As they mature the natural love naturally glows within them.
We may all now mature in the warm generous light of Frankl’s Proof.
Timeline 13
Humanity is debased. In the old days at a time like this the people would dress themselves in sackcloth and ashes. I don’t recommend that now, with eight billion of us; there’s probably enough ashes, with all the volcanos and wars going on, but making enough sackcloth for everyone would use far too many natural resources.
Ewff. East West what’s the difference? Not much, though democracy is the best of a bad lot, as Churchill pointed out, and I am grateful to live where I do. But Russia with its sordid, brutal, savage war against Ukraine; huge China squaring up to little Taiwan; Afghanistan oppressing its womenfolk; Iran murdering young women and young men; the Supreme Court Judges of the USA oppressing woman and children by overturning Roe v Wade. Bloody cowards, such cowards all of them. Terrible corruption in the EU. Desperate cowardice and money corruption rampant.
Life is glorious. Life is glorious. It is delightful. The air sings. The Energy dances. Life is a festival of joy. Life itself is glorious.
This week fourteen years ago I started writing Mothers and Daughters. And during that time, when things have been difficult, I have remembered that the energy released seeks form, and I know that then I shall be free. The thought feels me with delight, happiness, simple pleasure.
We should be free as human beings, and could be free here and now if we had the courage. If all of our leaders had the courage. When all of our leaders have the courage, humanity will be free.
Well, well.
Timeline 14
How many unwanted babies are born each year?
How many adults are there now who were not wanted from birth?
There are categories, from ‘I don’t want this baby,’ to ‘We must have another son in case the first one doesn’t work out,’ to ‘I must have a baby,’ to ‘We must have a lot of children to look after us when we are old,’ and so on across the world.
The first category is straightforward: the baby simply isn’t wanted. Other categories are less simple: the parents want a baby but apparently have very little interest in the personality of the child they get; the child who is born may not match up to the expectations of the parents, and so the individual child who is born is unwanted; the baby is created to fulfil the needs or ambitions of the parents, the actual child is unwanted - any child, more or less, will do.
This is a shame for the unwanted child, a terrible shame, who will sooner or later realise his or her status. It leads to acute doubt, to self questioning; the natural law of obedience comes into play; one realises one is not wanted and therefore should not be. But one is, and this leads to conflict between the law of obedience and a natural law of living. It is very difficult. One is faced with the knowledge that being within the family is against the wishes of the family.
‘The family doesn’t want me,’ or ‘The family doesn’t want me,’ do you see? It is difficult. Where one is unwanted, one begins to recognise that one shouldn’t be.
One wants to say, ‘Life is glorious, I am here and it is my birthright to enjoy this glorious life,’ but one is unwanted and therefore it is quite likely one has no right to enjoy life, that somehow to enjoy life is disobedient.
The leaders of our hierarchical human society find uses for the unwanted: the warmonger needs soldiers to die for his cause; the factory owner needs a workforce to make and to buy his products; the betting shop owner needs punters to lose their money and make her horribly rich, and so on.
But all this is very old fashioned. Nowadays it is not necessary to have so many children, and if we had fewer in the world we adults might respect them more, we humans might respect life more, and enjoy life more.
Life really is glorious, and it is not necessary to be human to experience the glories of life.
Timeline 15
It really is like being in love, with the difference that it doesn’t need an object of love, a specific object. It is what it is, complete in itself, a natural sense. Natural, a given in nature, and it seems right, the way life itself does feel.
It is not a heightened sense, not ecstatic; it is pleasant and calm, relaxed, interesting and exciting, real. It seems to be the way life is, the way living things are, naturally.
All the ghosties and ghoulies and long leggety beasties we’ve invented are gone, all the angry gods are gone; superstitious fears are gone, there is no place for any such in reality.
Bad things might happen, of course; a living creature might be frightened by events; floods, earthquakes, droughts might make life difficult; but in reality that instinctive, underlying, pervasive sense of love persists.
And that is where we humans really belong, in that state of love.
Timeline 16
So it is somewhat demoralising to look around and see where we are in fact, so far removed from reality.
We don’t need so many people; all the fighting, the bullying, hurting each other, making each other feel guilty, and that’s in families; all the wars between nations, the - oh, enough.
I like myself, I’d go so far as to say that I love myself, but if I hadn’t been born, I’d still be, the energy of me would still be in the world, and used to better purpose than as a human being. ‘Tje energy released seeks form.’ The planet doesn’t need so many squabbling, fighting, fearful, angry human beings, dangerous creatures that we are. The earth needs a rest from us. Nature needs us to stop producing so many squalling humans, so that the energy can flow freely through the planet, bringing life instead of what we do.
Men used to say that we need wars to keep the population numbers down; but research shows that after a disaster such as war, the population increases.
The simplest and kindest way to reduce the human population numbers is to stop making so many of us. You know it makes sense.
Timeline 17
George Frankl wasn’t afraid of the taboos. He knew that I would be, which is why he said, ‘It’s alright to be afraid but … you must have courage.’
A year or so earlier he said, ‘The energy released seeks form,’ and it has given me courage to know that after the difficulties of being human one will be free. It gives us the assurance of a kind of heaven, an interesting and exciting heaven where the creative libidinous intelligent energy moves freely, to seek and create form, is free to be. And that is something to look forward to.
Frankl was very ambitious for humanity: he wanted us to be free now, while we are in human form. But we are clearly not free, our creative libidinous energy is still repressed, blocked by the effect of the phylogenic traumas.
There are three major effects of psychological trauma: fear, anger and guilt. We have discussed fear and anger. We must now examine the guilt. I would rather not do this. I would like to shirk it, but I have a responsibility to George and to the children of humanity.
The guilt is very unpleasant, and very powerful. It holds us, grips us, and is difficult to counter. It is very widespread among us, it is likely that all of us, from a young age, are affected, as we are all human and all suffering the effects of phylogenic psychological trauma. All the major religions have devised ways of dealing with individual guilt, but perhaps not very effectively. The guilt lurks.
And it is interesting. We do something bad, unkind, cruel and, most of us, then feel bad, feel guilty. So the guilt has a useful moral purpose. But we wouldn’t do bad if we weren’t, as humans, phylogenically traumatised, damaged. So we naturally resent the guilt, though we may recognise that we must have its moral force. There is a conflict.
The guilt is, or seems, inescapable. It is in us, part of us since those ancient traumas. (Is guilt what Freud called the Super Ego?) And it torments us, it stops us being free. It drags us back, holds us down. The guilt itself is part of the taboo surrounding the ancient traumas.
The major religions agree that the individual must first acknowledge that he or she has done bad. And this is very wise. Beyond that first step it is good to understand why one has done the unkind act, and, because we are human, we will find the root cause of our cruelty lies in those ancient traumas. They do seem inescapable, but do not be dragged back. Acknowledge the bad act, accept individual responsibility, apologise, make reparation, don’t do it again. And move on.
We move on to our collective responsibility for the damage we have caused our fellow creatures and our planet. And though it is a collective responsibility we are each individually responsible for the harms we do. May I suggest that we first acknowledge these harms, recognise that the root cause of these harms is in those ancient traumas, accept our individual responsibility, make good if we can, stop doing it and don’t do it again. May I also suggest that we act quickly? Governments please take note. There is urgency, and the climate protestors are right, fully justified in their actions.
Timeline 18
So far so good. But then there are the people who make others feel guilty, so it’s not straightforward. Ha. We’re talking about the human psyche, we should expect straightforward?
In the family, in my personal experience, it’s the mother and older sisters who want to make others feel guilty; the mother, with her great dark eyes, in that chalk white face, saying with tragically, ‘If you do that / don’t do that you will make me unhappy,’ this is known as emotional blackmail; the big sister breaks a plate, burns the toast, whatever, rounds on the younger with fury and snaps, ‘Look what you made me do. I hope you’re happy now,’ this is simply weird; the abusive husband who beats his wife and says, ‘See what you’ve made me do,’ this is victim blaming, and is recognised as part of coercive control, very nasty. In these example guilt is used to bully. And the more I think about it, the less I understand it. Why? Why make people feel guilty?
And it’s the same throughout society, in the school, the workplace, everywhere. It’s endemic, seems to be in every institution, this apparent need to stir up guilt and pass it on.
It’s a toxic mix that we humans are poisoned by, the effects of those ancient traumas: terror, rage and guilt. The guilt and guilt spreading seems to mask the rage, to keep a lid on the fury. So, guilt spreading acts as a safety valve.
In my family, my sister had to lash out at me, there was no one else she dared to vent her frustrations on, so I can see that trying to make me feel guilty was a safety valve for her. With my mother’s emotional blackmail, I’m not so sure. It was surely a way of behaving she’d learnt in her own childhood, and she thought, or felt, such behaviour was what mothers do. Looking back at their faces, I see they enjoyed spreading the guilt, it gave them satisfaction; but I am sure none of the women of my family was consciously trying to make others feel guilty. Do I feel guilty talking about my mother and sisters in the way I do here? Society would perhaps expect me to feel guilty saying ‘bad’ things about my mother, but I don’t. My sisters? My best beloved sister? Yes and no. But I shan’t torture myself. This work is trying to understand the perversities in human behaviour, and my family provides a lot of material for study which is too valuable to waste.
And the reason I don’t feel guilty for writing about my mother here is that when she had her violent miscarriage I saw that she got herself into a fury and screamed herself, literally screamed herself into a miscarriage, so I knew at the time of the event that I hadn’t done this terrible thing to her. But it’s interesting that I was conscious of this question, that it was important to me as a small child to know that I hadn’t caused it. So I never felt guilty. About that. But it is well known that often, or perhaps usually, traumatised children do believe that they have caused the terrible event. And this consciousness of their ‘guilt’ adds to the pain and distress of the trauma.
But. in some cases, there is another aspect to this: the bad thing happens and the child believes he or she has caused the event and feels guilty; but also feels very powerful. The child feels, ‘I have caused this terrible thing. I don’t know how, but I know I did it,’ and the child is amazed by this apparently magical power.
The case of LG: she is two years old, lives with her mummy and daddy, and auntie who is ill; mummy is going to have a baby; mummy goes away for the night, leaving LG ‘in charge’; auntie dies during that night while LG is in charge; LG then believes that she has a great power: somehow, magically, she caused auntie to die. She didn’t, of course: the aunt was very ill; but even now in old age, somewhere in her psyche, LG still believes in her magical and dark power, which is a sad look out for her younger sibling.
In this case and in the other similar cases I know of, LG did not suffer personal physical harm. In traumas where the child suffers sexual abuse or other physical abuse, I cannot believe that the child feels he or she has any power over the events: they feel the guilt, believe they have caused the trauma, but do not feel powerful. Then let us look at our ancestors, in the cultural infancy of our species: the terrible catastrophe happens; the survivors feel the terror, anger and guilt, they believe, know that they have caused the event; and some of them believe, know that they have an extraordinary, magical power. Terror, rage, guilt, magical power added to the capacity to tell lies, yes, it is a toxic mix.
Timeline 19
Then there’s the loneliness, the terrible sense of isolation, the feeling that we’re alone in the universe, as a species, and alone as human individuals.
The short story The Machine Stops by EM Forster describes a global civilisation dominated by the Machine, which provides everything for the people; almost everyone lives inside the Machine, underground in individual rooms, where they have everything they need; they avoid meeting each other in person, in the flesh, and communicate through the Machine. The Machine is everything and they worship it, until it breaks down; and the people realise that real life is lived on the surface of the earth.
Plato’s Simile of the Cave, written 2,500 years earlier, describes the same conditions, of a people imprisoned, and a protagonist who escapes into the real world. There are summaries of both these works on Wikipedia.
The loneliness, the dictatorship of conformity. What else? That’s enough.
We are not alone either as a species or individually. Our species belongs on this planet, and we are part of the cycle of life here; this glorious cycle of life, where everything has evolved through the ages, is connected and necessary, everything is important, everything interconnected. Everything is part of everything else, even us, though in our human perversity we feel and are so isolated from reality.
And each one of us is naturally different, unique, and we belong together and to this planet as we naturally are in reality.
We have isolated ourselves as a species. Dear God, let us come back to the reality of life.
Timeline 20
It’s defiance, arising out of fear. ‘We hide it to keep it safe’, whatever it is we’re frightened of losing. And when the money’s threatened, people get afraid and then defiant. It’s not conscious, the fear or the defiance, but it’s there, they are there and more dangerous because the feelings are unconscious, hidden and not available to examine and understand.
It’s important to understand what is going on in the unconscious; to understand, to recognise the feelings is the only way we can begin to resolve these psychological difficulties afflicting our species, and the rest of the planet.
Of course, we know that money is not real, but it is important to us; not simply because we depend on money to get food and shelter, the basics of day to day living, but more importantly because we believe deeply that money is the measure of what we are; we have substituted money for the reality of our natural goodness. We see this very clearly in Hinduism, which teaches that the rich man is rich because he is good; Hindus believe in re-incarnation of the individual, that a human being will be reborn and according to how he has been, how good or bad he has been in the previous life; therefore if a man is born into a wealthy family, he must have been good in his previous life: if he’s rich he is good.
And in the West it’s much the same: I knew a very aristocratic, very wealthy woman from an ancient German family, a thousand years old - the family, not her - she was very high born and had exquisite manners, but in conversation it became clear that her wealth and position in society came down from a dreadful robber baron or common thief - well, she did have the grace to blush slightly, but only because she thought I might condemn her, and not because she was remotely embarrassed by her origins. I liked her, and thought she liked me, but actually she couldn’t believe that I wasn’t embarrassed by being poor.
And I’m not - well, I’m not poor now - but I was never embarrassed by poverty; yes, it is difficult when the gas company or the landlord want their money and you have to struggle to pay them, but that’s all money is. Money isn’t real. It is not a measure of how good or not a person is. Money is what we humans have put in place of our natural goodness, the fundamental goodness we’re all born with.
And we’ve put money in the place of our goodness because we are afraid. We hide our goodness to keep it safe. And we invent money and use it as a measure of how good we are. (And then we hide our money in the bank to keep it safe because money now stands for how good we are.) And it’s crazy.
You’re not bad if you’re poor. Maybe you’re not good at making money, but being poor doesn’t make a person bad. And being rich doesn’t make a person good, as we can all see. Money is a made up nonsense which for the time being we must keep until we work out something better; we depend on money to keep a roof over our heads and food in our bellies, but it is not a measure of a person’s goodness. And that’s official.
Don’t fall into the pit of fear. You, me, we’re all fundamentally good and loving, remember that. Compassion, eh, Mr Satirist? Compassion and good humour, and maybe we’ll get through this.
Oh, and you’re allowed to read this. It’s on the internet and freely available for everyone to read. Ab-sol-utely.
Timeline 21
This is how it seems to me:
Imagine our planet when every child born is wanted by its parents; and imagine that every parent is grateful for the baby they have; that the parents help their beautiful child to fulfil his or her own potential, to be his or her own self.
It seems to me that with the first of these factors the human population would begin to reach the numbers nature intended; and that with these two factors there would begin to be far less disease among the humans; that the major insanities, such as war, exploitation, destruction of the environment and so on would melt away.
The people would have space on earth to develop naturally, to move and breathe freely, to fulfil the potential of the human species; and they would each one have the confidence to grow and explore. And the earth would have time to mend.
And imagine all the life energy which has been trapped in unwanted babies, who grow into confused, disaffected adults, and the rest of the sorry story; imagine all that intelligent life energy is free to fill the planet; is free to be forests and grasslands; water ways, rivers and oceans; creatures, which themselves are freed of gross human interference; weather systems and phenomena, all kinds of wonders.
Such a rich, vibrant planet.
Timeline 22
People do say that their pet dog shows guilt when it does something naughty, but it seems likely that the animal is showing apprehension, is alarmed by the owner’s angry expression or tone of voice. It seems very likely to me that what the owner sees as guilt in the dog is this apprehension, misread by the owner who expects the animal to feel guilty, just as the human would if he or she had done something bad. It seems to me unlikely that animals in their natural life feel guilt at all and certainly not as we humans do.
Human beings are animals. Human nature is fundamentally good, all babies are born good and loving. Babies are good and loving little animals and it is surely most unlikely that the baby has any knowledge or understanding of guilt as adults do.
We know that small children who suffer psychological trauma do experience what we call guilt, that bad feeling of being to blame for what has happened to them. It is surely relevant that as a small child who had just witnessed a horrible event, I needed to know that I had not caused what had happened; even then, very shortly after the event, I needed to know that I was not to blame. By the age of 3 1/2 I knew the feeling of guilt, had the capacity to feel blamed for terrible events and was very anxious to avoid that feeling.
At what age does a child develop the capacity to feel what we call guilt? I speculate that the capacity to feel guilt develops alongside or in consequence of the capacity to tell lies at 2 years old. That would mean that our ancestors at the equivalent time in evolution must have known the difference between the truth, the actuality of circumstances, and their fantasies or lies about the circumstances; and were disturbed by their lies and fantasies: they did know what they were doing when they ‘changed the world’ with their lies.
It is very interesting. But much more work is needed in this important area.
————--
Traditionally the world is run by the first born. It is not the meek who inherit the earth but the eldest of the family. Traditionally. It would be interesting to know what proportion of our leading men and women are the first born of their families. This is relevant because in a large family the eldest child or children will have very little knowledge or understanding of what is actually going on among the younger ones.
Timeline 23
Human nature is fundamentally good, all babies are born good and loving. Therefore we know we come from somewhere good.
Before George Frankl published his proof (in the year 2000) it was believed that human nature was bad: the Christian dogma of Original Sin; Darwin’s description of the violence of the natural world; Sigmund Freud’s characterisation of the Id as wild and bad; the commonly made statement ‘human nature being what it is’ to account for war, murder and all bad behaviour by human beings.
But why? We know it’s not true. Children know. Children feel and resent the injustice of being called bad simply because they are human.
We hide it to keep it safe; what we especially value we hide to protect it. But we also hide it to punish the bad mother.
Right from the first, from that early maturation delay when our ancestors yelled, developed the capacity to tell lies and the capacity to feel what we call guilt, they were protecting themselves from the pain of loss of fertility, and they were punishing the mothers; because at that stage of psychological development they would feel and believe their distress was caused by the actual mother; they would not blame Mother Nature nor the Goddess; they blamed their actual mothers, the all-powerful maternal parent. As I think we still do; humanity unconsciously still blames the mothers for this ancient distress. And hence the guilt: we feel guilty for blaming the mothers. It is an inheritance of guilt and confusion.
It is a tangle indeed.
Timeline 24
Our two year old children don’t mind yelling, it doesn’t bother them. To them it’s just a thing that it happens they do. Of course, there might be other factors; the grown ups might resent it and get angry, for instance. But the yelling itself doesn’t make the child unhappy.
The child doesn’t mind learning to lie. It is up to the adults to tell the child, kindly, the difference between a lie and a truth. It is very important that the child is taught the difference.
Learning to feel the guilt as noted earlier must be difficult for the child. Some clever children do very quickly learn that they can pass on the unpleasant feeling to a child who has not yet learnt to lie - ‘It weren’t me, the baby done it.’
But for our early ancestors who first experienced it this whole process was very difficult and painful, they were in a bad way.
The genius of Sigmund Freud recognised that turmoil, and called the psyche at this stage of any individual’s life the Id. Unfortunately Freud assumed the Id was the state of the psyche when we are born.
The genius of George Frankl proved that human nature is fundamentally good, all babies are born good and loving. And we may recognise that the children enter the Id state of the psyche at two years old.
At 3 years old there is the Dionysian stage of joyous exuberance, which we may understand marks the lifting of the early maturation delay.
And then at 3 1/2 years old our infants now scream in terror and rage, and they are very distressed. This, of course, is the breakthrough of the repressed memory of the ancient catastrophe.
This pattern keeps being repeated, among adult, in civilisations. Our species has never yet managed to free itself of the effects of those ancient events. As a species, we keep doing the same things over and over again, and indeed creating the same conditions as were in ancients times. And we always say, ‘It’s happening again,’ as if it had nothing to do with our actions.
Great Leaders rise up: Ozymandias King of Kings; Alexander; Caesar; Napoleon; Hitler and all the rest of them. Nations forge ahead. Empires are built.
And then these empires crumble. It seems as if the Great Nations lose conviction, lose self belief and sense of purpose, become, not tired, but lose their impetus. It is as if the Great Nations begin the realise the complete futility of what they are doing, and see that they actually don’t know what it is they are looking for, but recognise that they haven’t found it. It is as if they wake up and come to their senses.
But as one empire crumbles another Great Leader forces his way onto the scene. And on it goes.
We have never understood this pattern of behaviour and have assumed that it is natural. Frankl’s Proof shows us that it is not natural. Naturally it would be impossible for us to behave in the awful ways that we do. Naturally there would be no Great Leaders taking us into war, no soldiers to obey; no obscene wealth alongside desperate poverty. Naturally it would be impossible to cause such terrible harms to the planet that we do.
We have learnt to lie, to fantasise and make things up. We cannot unlearn it. We’ve built our civilisation on weird lies and fantasies, made up a structure which is very unpleasant for very many people, and increasingly unpleasant for the rest of the living things on the planet.
Let us now make up a new realm based on reality.
First Frankl’s Proof: human nature is fundamentally good, all babies are born good and loving. We are good, that is the first thing to recognise.
Then recognise the mistake our early ancestors made: the mothers did not cause their distresses; their distresses were caused by natural events and not by the mothers. And infant believes that the mother is all-powerful, and our ancestors at that time were, psychologically, infants. We know that the mother is not all-powerful and that nature sometimes causes disasters which mothers cannot cause or prevent.
Life is good. We, the other creatures and life forms on this planet are all part of life and are all good, even humans. Let us learn to embrace the natural world: the children, all children; the creatures and plants; the land, the oceans and waterways; and each other across borders, which a truly great leader will work towards.
Timeline 25
A toddler who suffers psychological trauma will experience fear and anger; if the child believes it has caused the event, the child will assume it has an amazing magical power, and will feel ‘the guilt’.
Fear, anger, belief in having a great and magical power and guilt, this is the toxic mix we have inherited from our early ancestors’ experiences of psychological trauma. As with a young child now, taboos were built up around the events, and a Dominant Ego was developed to ‘protect’ the species from remembering the events. Every individual is born with a natural ego, a sense of self. The Dominant Ego does not protect us, of course: it is destroying us.
We may perhaps see a parallel between the crumbling of Empires, and the collapse into senility which some individuals suffer: an individual lives as well as possible, is a good girl or good boy, has achieved more or less success, or done very little, but has done the best he or she can, within our society, within the bounds of the Dominant Ego. And then one day it isn’t enough. This person is old and has waited a long time, and wants to be free, to express The Myself, but cannot do so: The Myself, the natural ego and sense of self has been crushed and badly damaged, weakened by the Dominant Ego, by the demands of our highly disturbed civilisation, and the individual cannot break free.
We do each have a natural ego, we are each born with a sense of self. It is good now that we that we find out what the natural ego wants and needs.
The loving breast and good milk; good nourishment The warmth of loving acceptance The recognition of one’s natural goodness Freedom of movement Freedom of enquiry Kind guidance Freedom of thought Freedom of choice
These are needs and wants of the natural ego throughout life, cradle to grave. It’s very simple.
(It is not clear that in childhood the natural ego wants discipline, but may sometimes need discipline; and the natural ego of the mother may want and need to discipline the child. Discipline must always be kindly.)
Timeline 26
One day, when she was about 12 and I was 7ish, my best beloved sister came to tell me that her sewing teacher had said, ‘Long thread, lazy girl.’ My sister’s eyes were shining, her face lit up with joy, and I didn’t understand why. But I do now.
Our mother was vile to all her children, each of us in a different way, and to that sister my mother always said, ‘Bad girl. Bad wicked girl,’ whatever the child did. She was a lovely child, a good girl, obedient, desperate to please but nothing she did earned her mother’s approval. (I shudder when I think of our childhood, even now.) So when the teacher mildly told her off for using a long thread, and told her why it was wrong, of course my sister was happy: for once she was told clearly what she was doing wrong and why it was wrong, and wasn’t slapped as our mother would have slapped her.
Apart from the major and obvious psychological traumas we encountered during our upbringing, this continual abuse was an additional burden, a long trauma.
In the first place, it was a lie: all babies are born good and loving, children are not bad and wicked, but the child believes the mother; secondly, my sister was always told off whatever she did, and so had no firm moral ground to stand on and no guidance: the child must obey the mother but my sister was never sure what our mother wanted. My sister as a child was unhappy, morally very confused and her self confidence was badly undermined. Fantasy became, and perhaps still is, her refuge and her pleasure. (That is a report of events.)
Now let us consider a boy, who throughout his childhood was told by his mother, ‘Bad boy. God is watching. God sees everything. God will punish you,’ very likely she threatened him with hell fire and damnation. She wanted him to be exceptionally good but she put him in a cage of lies, tormented him with repression and severe restrictions on any natural behaviour. Twisted him in a long trauma and he became exceptionally bad. (An imaginative reconstruction, but essentially fact.) And he grows up angry and defiant, defying her, defying God, believing he has a magical power, lying, lying, fabricating a story which he maintains allows him to do whatever he chooses - and it’s too horrible to go on.
It is the way children have traditionally been brought up, though one hopes with more kindness. It’s been a long trauma for humanity since our ancestors learnt to tell lies. And the question arises: why did humanity of all the creatures develop this capacity, to lie, to fantasise and to act on the fantasies? Why do we destroy the beautiful natural world to build our crazed - oh, but that’s too horrible as well.
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George Frankl published Exploring the Unconscious in 1994, six years before he published his Proof. Rereading it was a joy, so clear and straightforward, so generous, so kindly and so very intelligent. One thing particularly struck me: he said that the patient must work to overcome his or her difficulties.
Humanity is the patient, and we must work to overcome our collective difficulties. We must first acknowledge the wrongs we have committed against the natural world, and we must make reparations. We must do this now, each one of us. And governments must lead. Otherwise - but that’s too horrible to think about.
Timeline 27
In his clinical practise George Frankl would ask his patients, ‘What do you want to do [in your life] ?’ He wouldn’t ever tell a patient what to do, that wasn’s his style at all. He would never dictate or impose his will, and would always encourage people to fulfil themselves as they chose for themselves.
Frankl very much wanted people to think for themselves.
One could write plays about it all.
Timeline 28
It is inevitable that I write from my own perspective and using my own experience, though I have always made sure that others have had the same or very similar experience before I write about it - if I were the only one to have had the experience, it would not necessarily be relevant to this work, but if it is a common experience it is obviously very relevant.
It is inevitable that I have missed certain important factors in human evolution - everyone is different, everyone experiences differently, everyone has a different ontogeny, and there is a wide range of phylogenic inheritance, perhaps subtle but relevant.
After re-reading George Frankl’s Exploring the Unconscious recently I have began to understand what I could not see before, and it has become obvious to me that our human difficulties are firmly based in the phylogenic trauma which caused our early ancestors to learn to lie.
Our infants now at two years old learn to lie. Figures show that many infants of this age suffering constipation. There is research which shows that some infants experience guilt when they lie; there are infants and even some grown men and women who believe that if they tell a lie they have changed the truth - and do not know that is impossible; most, perhaps all adults expect and hope their lies will be believed, but some adults become very angry when their lies are not accepted or are even questioned - all of which comes down to us straight from our ancestors who first began to lie.
Those ancestors were suffering a maturation delay. Until that point they were naturally good and loving living in a naturally good and loving world; they might be frightened by a thunderstorm, but they knew it came from outside themselves. They were like the other creatures: they had free will within instinct and what they did was naturally good. But with the maturation delay their certainty was gone. Their world did not work as it had, and their place in the world was insecure. Until that point, our ancestors had free will within instinct and were self-governing, now they could not do what they naturally should do and they felt bad. They were traumatised and we may speculate that these ancestors felt that they had somehow caused their own distress, though they could not understand how.
They felt bad, they could not digest the change in their circumstances which made it impossible to reproduce at the stage of life they knew, and their natural goodness was in question. They felt frightened and angry, even embittered and resentful; adult emotions which are re-experienced by some of our two year infants now, most usually those infants who have already experienced some psychological trauma.
I do not believe that our ancestors at this time felt guilty, if we define guilt as the feeling we have when we know we have done something wrong. They felt bad and were very confused, and that feeling of badness, anger, bitterness and confusion becomes the horrid and creepy feeling that some two year old infants re-experience now, (and that some infants and children experience when they suffer psychological trauma,) the feeling that they have caused the trauma, and which we have labelled guilt, though it is apparently a very different feeling from the guilt felt when one knows one has done wrong.
Our ancestors at this time of confusion learnt to lie. The confused sense that they had caused the trauma may be seen as the first lie: it certainly wasn’t true, yet they explored it, and the ability to lie and fantasise gave them a sense of some power in their uncertainty, a secret magic power which gave them a sense of control over their lives. We may understand that they believed they could change the truth when they lied, and there was no kindly adult to tell them it is impossible to change the truth. They were the adults.
It was a terrible experience for them, a time of fracture and brokenness, and mourning the babies they could not have in a timely way as they always had.
And from that time comes bitterness, malice, slander and so much more, so many ways of behaving which we condemn in our civilisation, though so much of our civilisation is based on lies and fantasies. Lying is not a secret magic power. We may say now categorically for certain that there is no secret magic power.
When I was three years old I was introduced to the idea of the magnificent creator God. It was wonderful and a huge pleasure. I felt that great power, felt embraced by it. included in it and that I participated in it. I never for a moment felt that the power came from me. At that time I knew it was God’s power. Now I might say it is the power of the Life Force, the power of life itself. The power of the energy of life. That power is real, it’s all around us and in us when we let ourselves know it, and it is where we all belong.
Timeline 28a
My apologies. I forgot to include an important point:
Our ancestors were prevented from reproducing, and sexual intercourse as naturally the two activities were combined, and put their frustrated creative energy into lying and fantasising.
(And it’s just occurred to me that they couldn’t digest the change in their circumstance, they were constipated, it gave them belly ache and that is probably why they yelled.)