With this virus we are sharing what we feel. I do not mean this Covid 19 only; I speculate that with all viruses of disease we share our - negative - feelings.
It seems clear that with Covid 19 we are sharing our fear; we are communicating to each other the ancient fear, which has been with us from our cultural infancy. We may speculate that with many viruses we share this fear.
We share something that ‘goes viral’ on social media, we share a video or clip which we have enjoyed and hope our friends will enjoy, and we do this sharing consciously. With the virus of disease, we share our feelings unconsciously. We may speculate that we share almost instinctively, almost as animals might.
Since the catastrophic trauma of our cultural infancy, we have been afraid. We have surrounded the events with strong taboos, which have prevented us from remembering, facing and understanding what did happen; but from time to time, the repressed memory breaks through in various ways, including in such viruses as Covid 19.
We are informed that the general symptoms of the virus are cough, elevated temperature, and breathing difficulties. We are informed that at the moment figures suggest that few individuals will contract the virus, and very few will die from having the virus, most of those who do die will have certain underlying health conditions.
It is extraordinary and wonderful that governments across the world are trying to protect their people from the virus, to keep us safe.
This global and united effort shows us that we are beginning to face the unresolved traumas of human evolution. We do not yet talk of such conditions as Covid 19 in terms of unresolved traumas of human evolution, which is to say that we are not yet recognising those trauma entirely consciously.
Virus 2
As George Frankl said, ‘It is alright to be afraid, but you must be very brave, you must have courage.’
We must do what we can to prevent the spread of this horrible virus, and I’m grateful to be safe while the world goes into lockdown.
With this virus we are sharing our ancient fear. We may recognise that we are also reminding ourselves of what happened to produce that fear originally.
Let us look again at the sequence of events in human cultural infancy, of which we are each reminded again when we are two years old, three years old, and three and a half years old:
the maturation delay - 2 years old; followed by the joyous release - the Dionysian phase at 3 years old; then the catastrophic event - 3 1/2 years old, when our infants suddenly scream in rage and terror.
Our ancestors had endured some hard times, and had made their difficulties easier by inventing stories, developing the capacity to tell lies; when their difficulties were ended, they were overjoyed, they celebrated very enthusiastically, they felt triumphant, they were confident and made plans as to what they would do, and it is very likely that our ancestors believed they themselves had caused their triumph over their earlier hardships.
And then catastrophe struck. Our ancestors were very deeply shocked. They suffered physically and suffered all the effects of psychological trauma; they lost everything, every certainty, and believed, were sure that they had caused the terrible event. And our species has never recovered from the psychological effects of that trauma.
Even today, parents with over-excited children say, ‘There’ll be tears before bedtime!’ We continue to warn ourselves of the terrible consequences of ‘what we did’, even though, of course, our ancestors did not and could not have caused the catastrophic event.
We now are not children. We are not as our ancestors were, in the cultural infancy of our species. We have progressed. And the greatest progress of our species is Frankl’s proof: human nature is fundamentally good, all babies are born good and loving.
Frankl’s proof was first published in Foundations of Morality, in 2000. Sometimes after the publication, he would hear on the news or other programme someone speaking of human nature as being bad, and he would get quite cross and say, ‘If I hear one more person say that human nature is bad, I’ll scream!’ But now, twenty years later the message seems to have sunk in, and these days people don’t say human nature is bad; if you mention that it has been proved that human nature is fundamentally good, all babies are born good and loving, the person you are talking to will say, ‘Of course!’ as if there had never been any doubt of it.
Suffering from that trauma, our early ancestors believed that they had caused the event, and that they were therefore bad. But we must bear in mind that our ancestors in the cultural infancy of our species did not and could not have caused any catastrophic event. Since that early disaster, human beings have done some terrible things, and in this work I have tried to show that our appalling behaviours are the effects of unresolved psychological traumas. But we must recognise that our early ancestors did not cause any catastrophes.
Let us have the courage to face the reality of that terrible early trauma: it was a naturally occurring disaster.
Virus 3
There was an initial excitement that I noticed, which may be a common feature of disasters like this. Bertrand Russell observed at the declaration of the first world war that men and women danced in the streets of London. Excitement, exhilaration; it may be that panic buying is part of that feeling of excitement in the face of disaster (but toilet rolls?). But the excitement changes to a wall of sadness, or it has with me, which is demoralising. And it’s all puzzling. It is all interesting, but exhausting.
And while I thought of this, it began to dawn on me what my mind wanted to be doing, where I wanted my mind to be. And my mind wanted to be contemplating the stars in the skies of a clear summer night, far away from the awful light pollution; to be in the realisation that every snowflake is unique, every blade of grass, every thing, everything in nature. Everything.
There are some individuals who’s minds are free in this way. But how many? Not very many, though many surely start out dreaming of such freedoms. But look how we chain everything that we get our hands on. We don’t even let the grass grow, but must regulate it to three or four inches under the blades of those hideously noisy lawn mowers. We tabulate everything, name everything, though I am very sure that the dandelion doesn’t give a damn what we say its name is or even that it has a name, we measure, weigh, and hoard our facts, as we hoard everything, clutch it to us. We are unreal, and my mind longs for reality.
It may be that I am particularly demoralised by something I read in the newspaper today, a throw away line by a commentator who cheerfully predicted there would be a large population increase nine months from now. I suppose she is right: it has been shown that the population does increase following disaster. But don’t we have enough people? And will we ever learn?
Virus 4
What do you hope for after this emergency is over?
George Frankl was very eager that people should think. He once had us design a tee shirt with the slogan ‘let the people think’ which we were then to sell. I think few some were sold, though I couldn’t give them away. But maybe now, after this scare, and the exceptional and mature response of governments and citizens, people might be more ready to think.
Of course, it would be marvellous if all children in this country and across the world had a stable home, where they could live and grow up, without the threat of eviction. And, since we are so dependent on money, it would be similarly marvellous for all children and adults to have enough money to live on. This might become possible if governments put the welfare of all children first, before even the luxuries of the pathologically wealthy.
There are very few motor vehicles on the roads, the air quality is noticeably improved, and there is less noise, less pollution. This is also the case with the reduction in air traffic. It would be grand if this trend continued.
Let us, please, stop using plastic, and clean up our plastic mess. Let the planet, the animal and plant life recover from our human tyranny. A garden is a lovesome thing, indeed; allowed to grow as it will, it bursts with life and becomes sweetly fragrant.
Just before coronavirus pushed practically everything else out of the news, a UN report was published, and publicised with the startling headline: 90% of people don’t like women. Even I was somewhat shocked by this figure, though we have been discussing this subject here for over a decade now. It is still, it seems to me, the single most important subject in human life: many people, including many women, don’t like women very much. It would be beyond wonderful if women could be honest on this matter, face it, and so resolve the difficulty. I do believe that our difficulties would then be greatly minimised.
We may speculate that pandemics are expressions of our confusion as a species. We are not a happy species, although it seems we are required to pretend that we are. Let us take the time to think.
Virus 5
Might this virus be the start of the end of human tyranny? Not the end of human life, but the end of humanity’s cruel domination over the rest of life on the planet. That is to be devoutly wished for. The end of tyrants and dictatorships over human beings, and the end of human tyranny over the world. The freedom of the libido, as George Frankl wanted, and a new reign of freedom. It is the birthright of every human being, indeed of every living thing on the planet to live a pleasurable life. Of course, there are natural difficulties and challenges, but a fundamental right of life is to live in pleasure, to enjoy being alive.
But for some reason, perhaps a bad dream which I couldn’t recall when I woke up, I feel uneasy; that there may be yet another impediment to this natural freedom, another form of human tyranny. And what might that tyranny be?
AI. Artificial Intelligence. Why should that come to my mind as a threat to human life and all life?
I know that many intelligent and powerful men and women think that AI is beneficial, would be very helpful if applied. But I cannot agree.
AI is made by human beings, and human beings are so badly traumatised that even the best and most intelligent designers and programmers would be unable to produce beneficial AI. The moral flaws of the designers and programmers would be built into the machine. Almost everything we do causes disaster. I read recently that the man who invented plastic bags hoped to save the world by providing an alternative to paper bags, thus saving the trees. It never works, we never think things through well enough. We constantly make these giant leaps into the dark without knowing where we’re actually going.
AI would merely be another block to libidinous freedom, something new to fear, another god to worship, another factor dividing us from ourselves, dividing me from myself, and dividing you from yourself.
During the time I’ve been writing this work, I’ve had the sense that humanity is like a naughty little child who won’t come in when mummy calls. A naughty little child who, cross with traumatised mummy, wants to go off and live his or her own life without her restrictions.
George Frankl proved that human nature is fundamentally good, all babies are born good and loving. We may now recognise that ‘mummy’ to whom we must listen is our own fundamentally good nature.
Virus 6
We don’t know how wonderful we are.
It’s all there, all the fundamental goodness, the beauty and strength of mind and the innate intelligence. That is what we are really like.
Of course, it can be difficult to tell because so many people behave so badly; bad behaviour is almost routine. People in every country behaving badly. Whole countries behaving badly.
I don’t know how to say it. In my very small garden there were two decrepit sheds and a broken greenhouse, which had been there for years. I had them all removed, and in two years was a carpet of violets, and the next year primroses. Beautiful wild flowers which must have been there all along and when the ground was free again, they sprang up. Left to itself, the garden is a wonderland of beauty. And that’s what we’re like.
We are here, under all the nonsense we’ve tried to control ourselves with. We are here and we are wonderful.
Virus 7
‘You must speak for the children,’ ‘If you know something you must say it, you must write it down,’ George Frankl speaking to the author, autumn 2004
That is a very good place for me to start on this, because it is a difficult subject. Children do not want or like their siblings. I do not know if that is universally true, but it is true in very many cases.
We are a traumatised species; we have not recovered from the phylogenic traumas our ancestors suffered in the infancy of our species; we each carry the burden of unresolved phylogenic trauma; therefore we are to a very great extent a species of traumatised individuals.
As a species we have lost the confidence of love. We have lost the confidence which love naturally brings. It is this which distinguishes us from the other creatures. We re-inforce, repeat this loss of confidence generation after generation.
Every baby is born good and loving, with the full confidence of its love. The breakthroughs of the phylogenic, and any ontogenic difficulties, undermine that confidence. Perhaps the most common ontogenic difficulty is the arrival into the family of a younger sibling.
A two year old infant will be excited by the prospect of a new baby, will be pleased and proud that mummy is having a new baby, that there will be a little brother or sister to love, just as mummy says. A little girl will share in the idea of being a mummy; a little boy will share in the idea of being a daddy. But the actuality of the new baby will be a shock to the established child. The new baby will re-inforce, strengthen the power of the unresolved traumas. The new baby will further undermine the natural loving confidence of the established child.
The established child feels hurt and shocked by the actuality of the new baby; may regress, become more babylike; and will often feel pushed out of place. The established child questions its place within the family; will feel, ‘Am I not good enough?’, will feel rejected. This may not be the case in other primates, but it is very often the case in humanity. Human beings are traumatised; we spend a very long time reaching anything like maturity; we are dependent on our parents physically and emotionally for far longer than other primates depend on their parents. On the arrival of the new baby the established child suffers what is called narcissistic injury; I prefer to say that the established child suffers injury to The Myself, he or she is damaged in his or her sense of self.
Very often the established child may not, is not allowed to express any negative feelings to the new baby. Mummy says, ‘You love the baby,’ and it must be true. Mummy says, ‘You are a big girl, or big boy, and you must help mummy look after the new baby,’ and it must be so. Mummy says it, therefore it must be true and it must be so.
There are compensations for the older child, mummy’s big girl or boy. He or she may feel very proud, may enjoy helping to look after the new baby, and may very well enjoy a sense of seniority, of superiority.
The established child may well have, or feel, a responsibility to instruct the younger child. The older child may feel proud of this duty. The new baby will look on the older child as very clever. It does happen sometimes, that these roles continue throughout life; the elder sibling feels it has the right to teach, the younger sibling learns it must accept being taught; but also the younger in to some extent expects that the older will have the answers, will be able to help in difficult events. It may be that this aspect of the relationship becomes a burden to both siblings.
The baby loves. That is what baby’s do. The new baby naturally loves the older sibling, may be very impressed by all the clever things that the older child can do, be very admiring. Until the age of two years, the baby does not have any idea of deceit, has no idea that a person can say ‘the thing that is not’ and will naturally believe whatever he or she is told; if the older sibling says the baby is stupid, nasty, smelly, ugly, the baby will believe it, and this unkindness may leave a mark throughout life. The baby is naturally obedient, and the younger child obeys first the mother, then the father and the older sibling; the younger child has a burden of obedience.
On the other hand, the baby is not a pushover. He or she will protest if the older child is too rough, for instance, which will irk the older child especially if mummy gets cross. The mother very likely finds it difficult to bring up her babies, but her babies also have difficulties.
As the youngest in my family, I am aware of a slightly unsettling sense that my siblings are me but not me, like me but entirely unlike me. I cannot be certain, but it may be that the older child feels this same sense, and perhaps more strongly and more unsettlingly with regard to the new baby. Certainly, I know of many siblings where the elder is upset that the younger is different, has different ideas and interests; the older child is often frustrated and confused by this difference, and sometimes becomes angry. The older child sometimes gets angry when the younger is shown to be actually more intelligent or capable than the elder.
A physical actuality of the new baby is often a severe shock to the established child. And if the older child suffers injury to The Myself, then he or she will almost certainly make sure that the new baby also suffers such injury, particularly as the older child associates the pain of having a new sibling with the new sibling. Human beings pass on the lessons they have learnt. The older sibling feels pain, associates the pain with the new baby, and projects that pain outward onto the new baby. In some cases, the older child will project more or all of his or her pain onto the younger child, will ‘monster’ the younger child, will invent outrageous lies about the younger child, and may continue to do so throughout life into old age.
I have witnessed many examples of sad difficulties where there are two siblings. Recently, at a party: a man of about 30 years said quite openly in front of all the guests that his younger brother’s behaviour was ‘very difficult’; the mother agreed, although she had told me earlier that the younger boy adored his older brother; the younger son looked on hurt and saddened. Just a small incident, but the result was that the younger son soon after emigrated to the other side of the world.
A women I met a few years ago has a younger sister whom she is very angry with; the older wanted me to go and spy on her sister - which naturally I wouldn’t do - and continually tells awful stories about the horrible behaviour of her younger sibling. Again this seems like a small incident, but an older sibling has great authority, and as they live in a smallish community, the younger sibling is damned in the eyes of any of her neighbours who choose to accept what the older sister says.
I have observed a kind of complicity of bullying: that what the older sibling says about the younger is accepted by members of the community, who have perhaps also suffered the unpleasant shock of having a younger sibling. It’s all nonsense, but it is painful.
Where there are three or more siblings, life can be more unpleasant. If the youngest child is a girl, her older siblings commonly say with contempt, ‘She’s spoilt,’ (apparently they do not understand that the word means ‘damaged’ or ‘marred’, and it is the older child or children who are damaged by the arrival of the youngest - the older are projecting their unhappy feelings onto the youngest. When the youngest is a boy, the older sisters commonly say, with awful contempt, ‘He’s impossible,’ or ‘He’s useless,’. I have heard this so often. It seems small, petty, but it is hurtful and can be dangerous, even deadly.
I have observed that it is the second to youngest in a family who is the most angry and bullying. I have observed a number of cases where the youngest fails under the weight of the displeasure of the older siblings; the youngest suffers what is called ‘low self esteem’ caused by the bullying on the older siblings; the youngest may become vulnerable to drug misuse and other dangerous behaviours of self harm; and may eventually kill himself or herself. In such an event, the bullying older siblings then feel terribly guilty and blame the youngest for causing the family pain, when it is their own behaviour to their sibling which has caused the suicide.
Please remember that from birth the youngest, like all babies, loves, is obedient, and trusting. A lifetime of being bullied by those he or she naturally loves and trusts has its effect. In the end the youngest may see that to commit suicide is obedience to the wishes of the elder siblings.
Less often it is another child who suffers sibling bullying: an eldest sister with three younger brothers is one example I have noted. Where one child is the target of sibling bullying, he or she is vulnerable not only to the dangers of suicide, but also to very distressing illnesses.
But there is no need for me to continue to give examples from my own observation. The vivid and archetypical stories in Genesis provide several examples of difficulties between siblings. Although in the Bible most examples of sibling distresses are between brothers, there are many stories of dire competitiveness between wives, where the wife with the most babies ‘wins’.
There’s so much going on in the minds of children that adults are completely ignorant of.
I didn’t want to write about this, again. Partly because it is painful to me to remember and to observe, partly because it is so obvious to me that I wonder that everyone isn’t awake to these distresses. But apparently they are unaware, or perhaps unconscious. Only children, singletons, often feel that they have been deprived and grow up wanting to have a big family to compensate; this is sentimentality and ignorance. I also know of young women who ‘want to show mother how it should be done,’ who have several children because they believe they can breed a large and happy family, often with unfortunate consequences. There are people, like the Nazis, who encouraged women citizens to ‘make soldiers’ to fight for the state; or others who want to ensure that their race is not overwhelmed by the ‘others’; or people who believe that God wants them to make as many babies as possible. But surely God doesn’t want there to be so many human beings that the world he made collapses under their weight.
From my perspective, there are two clear reasons for limiting families to one child, and both are good for the planet: to ease the burden on the earth, and to improve the mental health of humanity.
We are in the middle of the Covid 19 pandemic. In this country, some politicians are eager that old people, who are the most vulnerable to the virus, should remain in lockdown for a longer time than younger people. I do understand that the Health Service would struggle with too many individuals getting very ill, and that self isolation does protect individuals and therefore the Health Service; and I do believe that generally older people should demand less of the Health Service. There are difficulties, principally that old age doesn’t come alone - old people often present with all kinds of illness; but the doctors often struggle to find out what exactly is wrong and can often do little to treat such individuals - most people within 20 years of my age are on tranquillisers or anti-depressants, though not me as I value my mind too much. As a country we might find it better to concentrate on children and younger people.
But the old will die soon enough, and the problems of human over population will not die with them until we stop making so many babies. We say that we value life, human life, and we do, but apparently we do not actually value the happiness of human beings or any other creatures here on earth, come to that.
Why should the older or oldest child in a family be responsible for the younger; why should the youngest be taught that he or she is of less value as a human being simple because of being younger? It is what happens very commonly, and I do not see that it will change until we give every child the very necessary emotional security of being the sole centre of the parents’ affection.
Virus 8
‘You must be the mother now,’ George Frankl speaking to the author, autumn 2004
Speaking as the mother I say to all women, ‘You are allowed to stop having so many children now.’ I say this to men, too, but first to women.
We assume that it is natural for women to produce so many children, but it is not natural, it is not a given in nature. Human beings are of the family of apes, and apes have an ordered, structured calendar of procreation. The human ability to have so many children is the result of a decision made by human beings, a decision made by our ancestors long ago in a time of great stress. It was not a conscious decision, but one taken unconsciously by our ancestors as a response to a very traumatic event.
Nature provides order; the very high rate of human reproduction has caused chaos, destruction, and much unhappiness. If we continue to produce so many children, we will be increasingly vulnerable to more viruses, and more deadly viruses.
It is time now for humanity to make another decision, a conscious decision, to bring order to our human system of procreation, to build a culture within which each child born is wanted, and every mother has time and space to bond with her child.
Virus 9
As far as I know, there is no one reading this work now; out of 8 billion people - 8 billion, terrifying number of humans - and not one reading what I have to say. And of course the advantage of that for me is that I can say what I like. (George didn’t say people had to read it, just that I must write it).
My favourite time of day is when I’m thinking. It’s lovely, ideas freely emerging, growing out of each other, like day dreaming in school, but conscious, which you’re not when day dreaming in class. Then I get all excited, and it’s time to write it down. But you have to edit and shape, and decide what’s important and what isn’t, and it gets trickier, and less fun - and, of course, this is a serious subject which people naturally take very seriously, so you can’t have much fun writing it, and also many people reading it don’t have English as their first language or it’s being translated, and jokes can be risky - and inevitably something important gets missed out, and at the end of it, you’re exhausted and have to lie down.
But now, I can say what I like and as I like, which is liberating. Indeed.
A picture of Carrie, lovely face shining, beautiful, bright eyes, coming out of the hospital after giving birth. And Boris with her - no picture of the baby, sadly. I love pictures of babies; I love babies - and Boris didn’t die of the virus, thank goodness. A lovely photo.
But what’s puzzling me is that we’re not taking very seriously this relentless rise in the human population and the increasingly urgent need for us to do something about it. And when I point out that being part of a large family can be very horrible, and that a horrible childhood makes it almost certain that one will grow up angry, miserable and more likely to be an actual menace to society, so that limiting the family to one child will remove at least one layer of danger to health and happiness, people switch off in droves. Well, hardly droves, but it does seem to be a very sensitive subject that we’re most reluctant to address. It’s almost as if we think it’s impossible to do anything about it.
Of course, my mistake is being an old woman. I don’t mind being old - I don’t like being ill - but I don’t mind being old, and I certainly don’t mind being a woman, I’ve always been a woman - or girl - and it seems perfectly natural to me, and in fact it is. But it is a mistake to be an old woman, especially if you want to talk about important things involving women, and if you aren’t the Queen of England. OMG! I’ve just implied that Her Britannic Majesty is - whisper it - old, and furthermore I’ve called her the Q of England. Yikes. Put me in the stocks.
Once, we’d had dinner and were all watching the TV news, which showed a celeb coming out of hospital looking skeletal with her new baby, and I said, ‘But she’s so thin!’ And George picked me up on it and said sharply, ‘Why shouldn’t she be thin?’ But I was thinking about the baby, and said so, because I think that a baby might prefer and perhaps do better with a naturally plump mother. But the point is, that George, who knew and liked me, didn’t stop to think but immediately rushed to protect the young mother from what he felt was my unkindness to her. I was about 50 at the time.
Now, naturally there’s nothing wrong with a man wanting to protect a young woman who might be his daughter. It’s a good thing. But George’s reaction surprised me, though there have been similar occasions since, and I’ve realised that a middle aged or old woman should not say anything about a young woman which a man might interpret as criticism of his ‘daughter’. And the men don’t think about it, but rush to defend. It is an unreasoned response. So it seems to me that it is a very old quirk of behaviour, going back certainly to the horrors of the late matriarchy and probably much further.
But the problem really is that between mothers and daughters. Can’t get away from it. The phylogeny ensures distrust between the generations of women. And look at the UN report: very many women don’t like women. It’s horrible and a sad look out for humanity, when we consider the difficulties we are all facing, especially the awful and continuing rise in human population. Young women turn their backs on their mothers and don’t learn from their mothers’ difficulties.
And it is outside reason, indicating again that it is a very ancient problem for humanity.
But the rise in the human population is backed by, I think, all the major religions; even in the Bible when God tells Noah to go forth and multiply, and there’s something about humans being as numerous as grains of sand, which we practically are now. And the Bible stories were told orally long before they were written down.
It would be excellent if the UN were to do a survey of attitudes between siblings; find out, if possible, how siblings really feel about each other. The results would be interesting.
Virus 10
But I’ve been discussing difficulties in ‘first world’ families. In other parts of the world, even among desperate women in the west, I guess, mothers sell their babies, toddlers and older children; sometimes coerced by sleazy middle men and women abetted by corrupted officials, but it seems among some groups of women to be almost a way of life, a way of making money, earning a living; have a baby, sell it, get money, sorted.
Life is wonderful; being human should be a most wonderful experience, but, what a nightmare. And what are governments doing about it? What are we doing? There are agencies, charities, non profit organisations, but I’m not sure what our governments are doing. I’m not even sure what they can do. And if the powers-that-be are reluctant to even discuss the emotional, social and planetary benefits of the one child family, how likely are they to tackle effectively the sensitive issue of the sale of babies and children?
It is terrible for the individual children; it is terrible for civilisation; and it is terrible for life on the planet.
We are in danger of so cheapening the lives of children that we cease to value them at all, except as economic units. Which, come to think of it, is how children and adults too are commonly perceived even the so-civilised west. By the vast numbers of us, we cheapen human life.
Almost the first thing Mr Johnson did after the birth of his new son was to promise renewed availability to IVF treatment for the childless. It’s understandable: he had survived a nasty bout of Covid 19 and now had a new baby so naturally he was in a jubilant mood, ready to help others. But there really are enough human beings on this planet.
We must have serious conversations about limiting the numbers of new babies born and ways of helping to provide a better life for all the children we have now.
And we must work to understand our extraordinary dependence on money, which isn’t at all a real factor of life. But as we seem entirely unable to exist without money, we must find a way to use it for the benefit of all; value human beings first. Or prove that I am wrong.
Virus 11
Everyone has noticed that during lockdown the air has been cleaner and there has been much less noise pollution, so we can all breathe easier and sleep sounder in the peace. We’ve seen the before and after pictures - all that pollution before lockdown, and those bright clear skies after. Beautiful. But now that lockdown has been lifted in China, they’ve reopened the factories and are busily pumping poisons into the atmosphere again. And probably every country will do the same.
We have a choice: life or money.
Virus 12
My mood is appalling. Yesterday there was a short piece in the paper by a young woman, alone in lockdown and very unhappy, because she has no physical contact with any other human being. It’s bad enough being old and alone, but this is too sad. And then I think of other young women who might be very glad to be alone; and the confusion becomes intolerable, ‘where every prospect pleases and only man is vile,’ in other circumstances I’d add ‘and woman’ but that would be inappropriate in this case. And in the end all I can think is let me out, please, let me out of this.
And we’re doing it. I don’t mean the lockdown, which may for all I know be a very sensible measure, but we have caused the virus. It is speculated that the virus spread from bats to humans, but what were humans doing messing with the bats in the first place? We outrage the creatures, who are terrorised and become ill, and we should not be surprised that their illness infects us - who caused the disease.
The symptoms of Covid 19 are firstly a dry cough and breathlessness. A dry cough has been suffered by many people for decades, including me and a lot people that I know. We might say that the cough is caused by pollution which irritates the throat, and that is reasonable. But there is another, less obvious irritation: the psychological irritation, which we might put into words as, ‘I know that I am being harmed but there is nothing I can do about it, even though I don’t drive or travel by air, I live among millions of people who do pollute the atmosphere, so I am helpless.’ We may recognise that it is the psychological irritation which produces the physical cough.
The breathlessness, again millions of people (over 5 million in the UK) suffer breathlessness which is called asthma. For the last five or so years, I’ve experienced breathlessness each day, which the doctor might diagnose as asthma if I went to see him or her about it, but of course I don’t. It seems to me that the breathlessness that I experience is something like the difficulty a young child has after weeping bitterly and then has trouble catching the breath again, plus a sense of outrage that one cannot take charge of ones own life; and these are psychological origins of the physical breathlessness which I experience.
Then in Covid 19 is the high temperature and possibly delirium. Delirium can be very nasty, as I found when I had measles and chicken pox as an infant. And I mention my own experiences because it might be useful. Most younger people have now been inoculated against the childhood diseases and there are fewer who have the experience of being ill and delirious. For me, it was a welcome calm, which grew and spread until it became menacing and threatened to overwhelm me, then a welcome movement which grew and grew until it became chaotic and threatened to overwhelm me, followed by a growing calm - over and over again. (Somehow my parents got me through that, so my mother can’t have been that bad.)
It is interesting that when the calm threatened me, my mind supplied movement to break it up, and when the movement became chaotic again my mind supplied the calm. It was I who was doing it. I did not want to be ill, of course; I did not choose to have measles, but having become infected, my own mind supplied what remedy it could. I take it that the infant diseases are phylogenic, breakthroughs from a distant era of wandering and confusion for out early ancestors.
We are doing it. We have made the circumstances of our own civilisations, we have formed the ways in which we live - (a letter in the paper: the writer suggests that Summer Time is kept all year to provide an extra hour of daylight all year - does the writer not realise that there isn’t an extra hour of daylight, just a different time of getting up and of going to bed?) - the human mind, diverted from reality, has formed these weird mirages in which we struggle.
There is a pond in my garden, which had growing in it something like a halloween fright wig in green; the fox started taking this stuff out; I was somewhat puzzled, until I looked and saw that the fright wig was destroying the beneficial oxygenating pond plants, which I put there to keep the water sweet for the creatures, including the foxes. The fox knew that the green wig was a menace. The fox, and presumably other ‘wild’ creatures, know their world and know what’s good and what isn’t, much better than we do. These animals aren’t ravening beasts eager to tear innocent human beings limb from limb, it’s the other way round. We’re the wild ones. We don’t need to tame them: we need to let them tame us.
Virus 13
And behind the symptoms is repressed excitement. It’s so simple, really.
I quote from the first edition of the hard copy book of Mothers and Daughters:
“Another time I saw a small boy striding confidently alone in the park. I looked around but couldn’t see his adult. There was a woman walking with a young teenage girl some way behind who may have been with him. I followed the boy to keep an eye on him. He left the park and went to the bus stop. I sat in the bus shelter and looked at him. The bus came and he went to get on it. I looked at him and shook my head. It is interesting that he obeyed me. He was quite angry. He wanted to get on the bus, but he had to obey me. Eventually the mother turned up. I talked to her and she told me that he was twenty-two months old. At this age he already knew his own mind and had made a decision. However, he was still at the stage of mental development where he had to obey signals from an adult. … He was too young to ask why he wasn’t allowed on the bus alone, too young to question my authority, but was clearly bound by a force which impelled him to obey me.”
There are several theses which could be written from this one small incident, but what particularly interests me now is that at 22 months old this splendid little boy already knew his own mind; he had made a decision; he had a plan and it is a pity that for his safety I had to prevent him carrying it out.
Under two years old, before the phylogenic breakthrough of the of the great traumas and their devastating effects, he was self-determining. Before the great traumas and their effects, our ancestors were self-determining, humanity was like that little boy: self confident; strong; intelligent and self-determining.
Under the weight of the effects of those unresolved trauma, humanity is in reality self-determining. To be self-determining is a fact of human life. But we limit ourselves, we crush ourselves; out of our traumatised fears, we have built a culture - almost world wide - which is too dangerous for a small child to inhabit.
We use a great deal of our energy crushing ourselves, repressing our natural desires and impulses. We repress our true good human nature and by this repression we become ill.
Virus 14
Frankl’s proof is in two parts:
the first part, human nature is fundamentally good
the second part, all babies are born good and loving.
And that is the argument to fascism and tyranny, the big bullies and the little bullies.
All babies are born good and loving. And in that we are all equal, we are all born equally good and loving.
God didn’t make the rich and poor, neither did nature.
God didn’t make a master race, and neither did nature. The days of empire are over.
Virus 15
For many thousands of years, we have believed that we are born bad. Sigmund Freud believed it, look at his description of the Id and his theory of the father murder; Charles Darwin believed everything in nature was wild and frightening, as many people still do; everyone believed we are a bad species (while at the same time, believing God had put us in charge of the planet).
Throughout history, some people, kings and pharaohs, and various kinds of despots, claim to have the answer, or genuinely feel that they have the answer, and put themselves in charge to rule everyone else. And the kings etc seem really to believe that they have a right, often a divine right to rule, and often in any way that they choose. Some are more or less lenient, others are incredibly nasty. And there is apparently a lot of hypocrisy: the Tsars of Russia called themselves Father of the People, while at the same time allowing a huge number of their countrymen and women to be enslaved, the serfs, who could be and were often extremely badly used by their ‘owners’.
The Russian satirist Saltykov-Schredin wrote The History of a Town, where the insane, vicious, brutal Town Governors ruled the Glupovites. The Town Governors were the Tsars, or their aristocratic agents, the Glupovites were, well, everyone else, really, but especially the serfs. Saltykov-Schredin couldn’t understand why the Glupovites allowed themselves to be so badly treated.
But, of course, people don’t allow themselves to be bullied: the bullies just do it without asking permission. To put it very simply, the bullies believe they have a right to bully, and the targets have had no argument to put forward to show the bullies that they do not have any right to bully. And, if we believe that we are fundamentally bad, what argument can we have?
George Frankl has proved that human nature is fundamentally good, all babies are born good and loving.
And by that proof, he has provided the argument against the behaviour of the bullies. And by that proof, he has provided the targets with the necessary courage.
The bullies can now relax and stop bullying, and the rest of us can breathe a great sigh of relief. Frankl allows human beings to feel good about ourselves. We can build on that.
Virus 16
It'll take them awhile to realise.
But what a troublesome species it is.
Virus 17
Frankl’s proof signals the end of the age of tyranny. It has been proved that human nature is fundamentally good and that all babies are born good and loving, and so the tyrants can no longer presume to take the moral high ground; the people now do not need to doubt their own innate goodness, and cannot now be blackmailed or pressured into believing that they are fundamentally bad.
One difficulty, of course, is that the tyrants and bullies do not yet recognise the meaning of Frankl’s proof.
Another difficulty is that bullies and tyrants do not recognise that they themselves are behaving badly. One dreadful bully of my acquaintance has recently told me that all of her family and friends have said that they don’t like her behaviour; and she told me that she has always believed that she has been kind, good and loving. There are politicians in this country who have been accused of bullying, and have denied it, apparently sincerely believing that they have behaved well and rationally. We could go through the present list, the sex offenders, the terrorists, all the way up to the national leaders who have intentions of world domination, and find that all will find justification for their awful behaviour.
We see another difficulty when the oppressed begin to break free, and start to bully the bullies.
And another difficulty is that we are a bullying species. We have got where we are today by bullying each other, the other life forms here and the planet itself, throughout our history. It seems that we need scapegoats to maintain the delicate psychological balance. It seems to me that one reason that we have so many of us is that as a species we are very afraid; and it seems to me that families of more that one child have a ready made scapegoat, usually the youngest, but sometimes one of the other children, or occasionally another relative.
We must work to understand our psyche as a species, and as individuals.
When Nelson Mandela died and everyone was praising him, one African woman on the radio said that she didn’t know what all the fuss was about because that is what African men are like, and Mandela was not unique in being good. I am sure that there are African rogues, but I met the South African actor Winston Ntshona; he was starring in Sizwe Banzi is Dead and The Island, I was running the coffee bar in the same theatre; he used sometimes to come and sit with me, and he was one of the very best people I have ever met. Winston was incapable of being mean. So I understood what that African woman was saying.
Afro Caribbeans are usually of mixed race, descended from African slaves and European slave traders. This is a very difficult legacy, as a friend told me, and as I have mentioned above. It is very necessary to bear in mind that all human beings are fundamentally good, all babies are born good and loving.
A black Black Lives Matter supporter, Patrick Hutchinson, rescued a white far right man from a severe beating by carrying him away in a fireman’s lift. Other BLM supporters walked with Hutchinson to safeguard him and the white racist. There’s a wonderful photo and an interview with Hutchinson on the net. Hutchinson is a hero.
Virus 18
Why are there so many of us? Why do we have so many children? And why is there such reluctance to reduce the number of children we bring into the world?
With fewer children we’d value them more, we would be nicer to them; poor people would have less struggle to provide for them; parents would be less stressed, especially mothers. The children themselves would be happier. The world would be a better place. In every way it makes sense, but the idea of fewer children is unacceptable, a falling birth rate causes panic. I don’t understand it.
What are the factors? It seems as if in very ancient times our ancestors make a compact, a decision to produce as many offspring as possible. It’s in the Bible, when God says to Noah after the trauma of the Flood, to go forth and multiply, something about you shall be as many as grains of sand on the sea shore; but that is the written version of a much more ancient impulse.
Research has shown that the human population increases following a traumatic event; which accords with ‘God telling Noah to go forth and multiply’ except now we can see that it is not God’s command, but the human response to traumatic event. May we then say that the huge human population is a response to fear? Indeed, yes.
All the awful things that we do and have done, are caused by fear arising out of the unresolved traumas of our early evolution; by fear and rage.
By choosing now to very much limit the number of children we bring into the world, we will be able to gently change our lives and the life of the planet for the better. To decrease the number of people on the planet gradually, in a measured way, will enable our species to become used to the change and to enjoy it; we will be able to adjust to the different and better circumstances. We will be much happier. We will save our species from further trauma and distress. We will save the species and the planet.
Virus 19
It is cruel to have more than one child. Human beings need more emotional security than the other animals, and with our fine knack of getting things exactly wrong we give our children less emotional security than the other animals give theirs. Apes, felines, canines, birds, even the crocodiles for goodness sake, devote themselves to their young; and when the young are grown, they are capable of looking after themselves, and then the parents can have more offspring. It’s different with us.
As the youngest in my family, I have a kind of assurance in my own identity which my older siblings lack because each one has had a new baby thrust upon them, casting doubt on his or her own established identity. In the newspaper, I read that Jill and Jack Smith have had a baby, called Jane, a sister for Jim, and my heart sinks. Jim will say he wants a new baby because he knows that is what mummy and daddy want him to say; he may even believe he does want a new baby, because mummy is happy and excited, but confronted with the reality, Jim will be confused. He may indeed show great affection towards the new baby, partly to be sure because he does have good feelings towards her, partly because that’s what his parents expect, but Jim’s feelings will be mixed, especially if mummy and/or daddy has mixed feelings towards the new child.
Over the long years of observation, I have noted that the younger or youngest child in the family is often characterised as ‘useless’, ‘impossible’, ‘spoilt’, said by the elder sibling or siblings with varying degrees of contempt, hostility and anger. It is very rude, and not actually true: it is a projection. The younger child is also said to be ‘very competitive’, especially if he or she is gifted in some way, and again this is a projection. The older sibling has a confusion of feelings, part love and part not love, and as the older child feels ‘bad’, he or she says it is the fault of the younger child, it is the younger child who is bad. And as for being competitive, the younger child naturally learns from the older, and may outstrip the older in skill or achievement, which will practically force the older child into being competitive with the younger, and, of course, the older will say it is the fault of the younger.
Furthermore, the new baby is entirely innocent: all babies are born good and loving, therefore the new baby naturally loves the older child or children, and any negative feelings come from the older child or children.
All these things, and more and worse, I have observed in very many families where there are two or more children. I cannot say it is universally true, but it is true very often in my observation, and I do not think it is worth the risk. A younger sibling is an unknown quantity, any child is an unknown quantity. Why demoralise your beloved child by foisting a younger sibling on him or her? And why cause untold, lifelong misery to your new baby? All the children doubt themselves. It is cruel.
The other people whom I have noticed have a more secure sense of self are the only children, the singletons.
Sometimes only children say that they were lonely in childhood. Well, they should try being the younger or youngest. And there is this wonderful alternative to siblings. It’s called friendship.
Virus 20
A world project, something we’ve all decided on: clean up the plastic, clean up all the poisons we’ve produced, treat the other animals and the other life forms here with respect and affection, treat the planet with respect and affection.
And first of all, agree to decide on the one child family. If you want to have a family, then have one child only. You are not obliged to have a child if you don’t want to, but if you do want to have a family, then keep to one child.
We have so many children because we suppose, unconsciously, that a large family will make us safe. In fact, having so many human beings on the earth does exactly the opposite and makes us more frightened of each other, of strangers, of the ‘enemy’, the ‘others’; this hysterical fear makes us far more likely to fight, to go to war. It’s ridiculous.
Human nature is fundamentally good, all babies are born good and loving. Give humanity a chance to be what it fundamentally is - good. And give the planet a chance to recover.
Virus 21
The realisation that many bullies do not know that they are bullies, don’t know that their behaviour is unpleasant and unacceptable, has knocked me sideways.
How does that work? Why don’t such people know that they are bullies? Perhaps it works something like this: human nature is fundamentally good, all babies are born good and loving, therefore each individual knows that he or she is basically good; therefore, perhaps, each one feels, or knows, that his or her own behaviour is good, even when everyone else experiences that behaviour as horrible.
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Athena was the goddess of wisdom in the ancient Greek pantheon of gods. Her father was Zeus; and in the myth she sprang fully grown and fully armed from his forehead, instead of being born in the usual way. We may say that Athena is an idea from the mind of her father, Zeus, who is himself an idea from the minds of human beings.
Athena instituted patriarchy: at the trial of Orestes she gives the casting vote which frees him; she says that men are more important than women, and that the woman is merely the field where the man sows his seed. This is myth, written into poetry by Homer, who understood the psychology of the origins of patriarchy, though perhaps not consciously.
Patriarchy is the union between the generation of daughters and their fathers. I am not talking about incest, but perhaps about politics, or expediency. At the time of the thaw, and later, the behaviour of the matriarchs was terrifying. For the young women, the daughters, the matriarchs provided a terrible and unacceptable model for life. The daughters did not want to behave as their mothers did, perhaps could not, and it is entirely natural that the daughters turned away from their mothers and towards their fathers for moral support and an acceptable role model.
We may recognise that it took the men at the time of the thaw a long time before they realised that the matriarchs were in great distress; we may speculate that the matriarchs began to sacrifice men and boys to appease the goddess, and that it was then that the men began to see the difficulties. And eventually an alliance grew between the fathers and daughters.
We may recognise that the men could not have have set up patriarchy on their own: men need the approval and permission of their mothers, or wives to act. We may understand that the daughters very willingly helped to set up the patriarchy, or even that the daughters instigated patriarchy, showed the men the way to this as a good alternative to the chaotic, corrupt and awful matriarchy.
However, as we know, there are deep flaws in patriarchy. A girl without a good image of motherliness will struggle to form her own positive female identity; a girl with the experience of an angry and chaotic mother may repress her own femaleness in the effort to distance herself from the mother’s behaviour; or when she has her own children, she is very likely to behave towards them as her own mother behaved towards her.
Even now, men still truly believe in the image of the warmth and love of the women in the caves described by George Frankl in The Social History of the Unconscious, and men still believe in the myth that all women feel overwhelming love for their babies. (Thus, in some cultures and at various times, a good man gives his wife as many babies as possible, and she will be, according to the myth must be, very happy and fulfilled.)
Consciously, or unconsciously, or preconsciously, the daughters accept the myths believed by the men, but the myths aren’t a true reflection of the way human beings live: it seems to me that distresses in the caves among the mothers and daughters began long before the events of the thaw; and though nature does provide mothers with overwhelming love for their offspring, that love has been repressed in many human mothers for ages.
Furthermore, the events of the late matriarchy were a trauma and were suppressed, buried in the unconscious; the trauma was not resolved. When the daughters of the emerging patriarchy became wives and mothers, the effects of that trauma and all the preceding unresolved traumas, resurfaced; the new patriarchal mothers behaved as their own mothers had behaved; the new order of patriarch was upset, undermined by those unresolved traumas. And the joyousness of human femaleness was repressed.
At her judgement in the trial of Orestes, Athena sent the angry goddesses underground, she appeased them by saying that men would always worship them. So we see that Homer recognised that the difficulty had not been resolved. The angry goddesses, the infuriated matriarchs in their traumatised state still exercise their awful power, even though they have been ‘sent underground’, men do still worship them, and their daughters worship them, too, and that worship is expressed in fear.
When I was a still a child, the Women’s Liberation movement came into being. What these women asked for seemed very reasonable to me, as I understood that they wanted sexual freedom and sexual equality with men: basically they wanted to enjoy themselves and their bodies. Very likely my understanding was limited. However, it seemed right to me, and the women seemed good humoured, and fulfillment of their aims seemed necessary to success of the sexual revolution.
But Women’s Lib was up against those deep, deeply repressed, unresolved traumas. It is very difficult. For instance, if a man loves his wife and enjoys having sex with her, he will take it absolutely for granted that she enjoys having sex with him. Even if he just enjoys the sex without much love, he will really believe that she likes it, too. If he gives her a baby, he will probably still believe that she feels overwhelming love for it, even if she is depressed and can’t feel love, for the two states of overwhelming love and post natal depression are mutually exclusive, you can’t feel both at the same time. And the wife will want to enjoy having sex with her husband, she will want him to believe that she enjoys it; she will want everyone to believe that she feels overwhelming love for her baby, because that is what she is meant to feel, that is how it is meant to be, and if she does not feel that great love, then she is a failure and somehow guilty or even despicable. We see here the unconscious workings of those old unresolved traumas.
We see the workings of those unresolved traumas in the angry excesses of the Feminism which replaced Women’s Lib. It was too difficult to resolve those traumas, too difficult to face them, they were buried too deep, were very Taboo. And without any understanding of what actually underlies our difficulties as a species, it was too easy to be angry and to blame men. And then it all became about money. I wonder, do the women who gained financial parity with their male counterparts, enjoy sex more now that they earn half a million pounds a year? Maybe they do. What do I know?
We have in this country, as in most other countries, I guess, a very few women who earn a lot of money, and very many women who earn very little money. The divide between rich and poor has increased greatly. I do not see that feminism has been successful in terms of its financial aims. Obviously, I do not know if more women enjoy their bodies than they did in the past. Actually, I think not: Aids in the 1980s, increasing financial worries for the young, owning a home or even being able to rent a decent flat, and now this pandemic, it doesn’t look good. I have an old friend and we are both grateful that we were young then and not now: we were very poor, but we were freer then.
One aspect which is encouraging is the behaviour of the MeToo women who stood up to Harvey Weinstein. His behaviour was horrific, and they behaved with great courage and dignity.