Friday, December 07, 2007

History, Herstory, and the Babystory (11.16.10)

Back in the womb from which I came, I had no God and was merely myself. --Meister Eckhart

Is the human species "maturing" -- which is to say, evolving -- with time? To answer the question, one must only consider the Muslim world, for it is either more or less mature than the West as a whole. As Dr. Sanity writes, millions of Muslims suffer from "Teddy Bear Syndrome" (coined by Victor Davis Hanson), which is

"the tendency of many Muslims to judge Westerners and those who do not adhere to Islam as 'blasphemous' when they exercise freedom of speech, freedom of thought, freedom of choice, and freedom of religion; and to react in an intolerant, inappropriate and violent rage, demanding death or some other extreme punishment for the accused."

Yes, Teddy Bear Syndrome shares many similarities to left wing political correctness, so it must be a potential that is present in everyone, a primitive impulse that must be "outgrown" -- like throwing a temper tantrum when you don't get your way, or suing to overturn the 2000 presidential election. It is the reason why there is no place in the West more intellectually immature than an elite university campus. But fortunately, most people are not left wing university professors. Yet.

Regarding the etiology of Teddy Bear Syndrome, Dr. Sanity writes that part of the problem results from the failure of Islam "to evolve from its medieval and primitive origins" (emphasis mine). But on any traditionalist view -- including traditional Christianity -- religion does not evolve. Rather, the whole point is that it is fixed and final. However, just like everything else, scripture looks very different to a developmentally mature mind than it does to an immature one.

The psychological immaturity of Islam is generally mirrored by a pseudomature response by the "liberal" West. As Hanson writes, "the reaction to this madness is now stereotyped. Often apologies -- not condemnation -- follow from contrite Westerners. To prevent a recurrence, Western writers, filmmakers, teachers and religious figures quietly edit their work and restrict their speech -- but only when Islam is involved."

When this happens, it is analogous to allowing the baby to run the household. Children naturally try to manipulate parents, but a good parent knows how to set boundaries and to be consistent. However, over the past 40-50 years, especially with the Baby Boomer generation, these psychological boundaries have been discarded, which has resulted in a blending of the sexes and generations. One of the reasons for this is that the Baby Boom generation was the first to prevail in the perennial battle between adults and children, thus providing no check on the tendency toward omnipotence.

Yes, some positive things obviously came out of the 1960s, but one of the most baleful ones was the Genderless Adolescent. This is a person who by definition can never be mature, but only give the appearance of being so. It is much more difficult to be a Genderless Adolescent on the right, whereas it is more or less normative on the left. Anyone who reads left wing blogs knows this is so. As for myself, being primarily a vertically oriented person, I think of politics as more or less of a distraction from reality.

It's not that I believe any kind of salvation lies with conservative political success. Rather, it's just that the left is so incredibly dangerous and destructive on every level -- intellectual, economic, psychological, and spiritual -- that it must be combatted. In fact, most conservatives would prefer to ignore politics and be left alone to enjoy their lives, but this would be irresponsible so long as the left pursues its antihuman agenda with such religious fervor.

Although I haven't thought about it for awhile, one of the books that had the greatest influence on my thinking was Foundations of Psychohistory by Lloyd deMause. His thesis -- which he supports with abundant documentation -- is that "The history of childhood is a nightmare from which we have only recently begun to awaken. The further back in history one goes, the lower level of child care, and the more likely children are to be killed, abandoned, beaten, terrorized, and sexually abused." One of the reasons historians have failed to notice this is that "serious history has long been considered a record of public and not private events." It has generally focused on wars, discoveries, political movements and the like, as opposed to what went on in homes and in the minds of children.

Historians are generally hostile to deMause's approach, and I can understand why. Although his evidence may be sound, I think he pushes it way too far into a historical determinism in which the evolution of parenting is the overriding genesis of all historical change. Nevertheless, I think it would be an error to throw out all of his basic research just because his conclusions may be beyond the fringe.

deMause essentially turns history upside-down and looks at it through an extreme "micro" lens. There's nothing wrong with this -- in fact, it is vital -- but I think it must be balanced with the macro view. It's not an either-or situation, nor should psychohistory be a mere afterthought or subspecialty grafted onto history. Rather, it should form the basis of a stereoscopic view of history, through which we simultaneously look at the macro and micro, interior and exterior, rational and irrational, conscious and unconscious, adult and child, culture and individual, etc.

The problem with most history, even to this day, is that it is too sweeping and general, and ignores the reality of the unconscious and the insights of developmental psychology. It makes it difficult to comprehend something as fundamentally irrational as Islamism. The left, for example, treats Islamism as a rational response to something we have done, which seems like "empathy" or sensitivity but is actually the very opposite, a kind of self-congratulatory indulgence of an enraged child.

In One Cosmos I quoted John Bowlby, one of the early pioneers of attachment theory, who wrote that "The truth is that the least-studied phase of human development remains the phase during which a child is acquiring all that makes him most human. Here is still a continent to conquer." Similarly, Tolstoy wrote that "From the child of five to myself is but a step. But from the newborn baby to the child of five is an appalling distance." Or the anthropologist Norbert Elias: "It seems as if grown-up people, in thinking about their origins, involuntarily lose sight of the fact that they themselves and all adults came into the world as little children. Over and over again, in the scientific myths of origin no less than the religious ones, they feel impelled to imagine: In the beginning was a single human being, who was an adult."

But in reality, In the beginning is a neurologically incomplete, helpless little baby, utterly dependent upon caretakers who may or may not be up to the task of raising him, and who themselves bear the unconscious scars of their own childhood trauma. Thus, it is not so much that "in the beginning is the baby" as "in the beginning is the dynamic relationship between an unformed nervous system that will develop (or fail to develop) its potential in rapport with its caretakers."

Take the myth of Genesis, for example. This can be misleading, since it begins with the creation of a male adult, followed by a female adult (who comes out of the male), and lastly, a couple of children. But in reality, the reverse is true: first there is a baby, out of which comes the mother, who then bifurcates into a mother and father. In other words, the baby cannot possibly imagine that the mother gave birth to him, as doing so would require language, boundaries, a conception of linear time, the differentiation between inside and outside, etc.

Rather, as Winnicott observed, there isn't actually such a thing as a baby (at least as far as the baby is concerned). Instead, there is a true union of mother and infant, a (hopefully) harmonious psychological matrix (matrix being etymologically linked to womb) through which the baby will eventually "discover" the M-other -- and only later her consort, who is Fa(r)ther away in developmental time).

Fascinatingly, Genesis is psychospiritually "spacious" enough to be supplemented with the infant's view of the cosmos. This was an idea developed by James Grotstein, but it is also implicit in the interpretations of some mishnaevious rabbis who consider Genesis a paradoxable about man's movement from psychological infancy and dependence to maturity and dependence. As Kass writes, "Eating from the tree certainly produces a death of innocence. Through judgmental self-consciousness, human beings become self-separated; the primordial childlike, unself-divided, and peaceful state of the soul 'dies.' Thanks to reason and freedom, protoman becomes a different being -- the old one dies. This death, repeated in every human life, we have all experienced for ourselves; the contented and carefree life that we knew as innocent children is in fact permanently lost to us, the inevitable result of our rise to self-conscious knowledge of good and bad."

It is not at all uncommon for great rabbis to turn scripture inside out or upside down in order to squeeze out a little additional wisdom. Don't worry, scripture is resilient. It can handle rough play. In Grotstein's case, he begins with the psychological fact of infantile omnipotence. One can argue whether or not God is omnipotent, but infants certainly are, for how could they know otherwise? Thus, the omnipotent baby is quite obviously the creator of the cosmos, including its mother and father. Clearly, a brand new cosmos comes into being with the birth of every child, does it not? There is no cosmos at all in the absence of consciousness, so it is simply a fact that cosmogenesis is repeated afresh with every newborn baby: cosmogony recapitulates psychogeny, so to speak. Here is another apt quote from the book, this one from David Darling, author of Equations of Eternity:

"[W]e may reasonably view an infant's dawning of awareness on two levels: as a consciousness arising in the individual and, simultaneously, in the universe as a whole.... we can watch an incredibly condensed version of the growth of awareness on this planet, and in the cosmos, in each developing child."

But only if you are a sensitive parent. Isn't this a big part of the joy of parenting, re-participating in the birth of a fresh new cosmos, as your child -- and his world -- changes from day to day? Jesus made so may sensitive comments about children and about the relationship between a child's consciousness and spiritual awareness, that it's a little surprising that people fail to make the explicit connection. In fact, as deMause demonstrates -- and I'll get into some of his fascinating research in a later post -- most parents end up depriving children of this magical and creative mode of consciousness in favor of projecting their own narrow and constricted psychological grid onto them. And nowhere to my knowledge is this more prevalent than in the Islamic world, where Teddy Bear Syndrome can only be the adult expression of a traumatized child who never got to enjoy his godlike omnipotence, and is therefore resentfully living it out as an adult, toward the guilty "parents" of the West.

Ever wonder why Allah is so merciless and wrathful? You'd be too if you were wrongfully denied your birthright, and were therefore plagued by the idea that the world is fundamentally corrupt and unfair.

Yes, just like the angry leftist who never mastered self-control, so he replaces it with other-control.

God is the newest thing there is; the youngest thing there is. God is the beginning, and if we are united to him we become new again.... My soul is as young as the day it was created. Yes, and much younger! --Meister Eckhart

47 comments:

Anonymous said...

eh, the vast majority of muslims - if you bothered to ask - would condemn these sudanese weirdos themselves. just ask!

Anonymous said...

Yes, there are Muslim demonstrations all over the world condemning terrorism, anti-Semitism, jihad, and Teddy Bear Syndrome.

Anonymous said...

"I think of politics as more or less of a distraction from reality."

Yet you somehow manage to tie them into everything, but at least your understanding of politics reflects your interest.

Anonymous said...

Oh good, a live demonstration of infantile psychopathology. This will be instructive.

Ephrem Antony Gray said...

eh, the vast majority of muslims - if you bothered to ask - would condemn these sudanese weirdos themselves. just ask!

Er, I've been told that Cockroaches are not dirty, just their poop. Which is the whole point.

That's to say, there are no doubt good Muslims, but they don't seem as such capable of eliminating the poop, which is systematically generated. The poop obviously in this case being a metaphor for the radicals.

Most of us bugs have figured out places to put our poop so that is either disposed of, contained, or purified over time...

These days it's called the 'ivory tower' - which seems to sound a lot like a porcelain throne.

Anonymous said...

I'm sure Muslims all over the UK will protest this barbaric but all too common occurrence.

James said...

Bob,

Awesome post. Thank you.

Anonymous said...

but the media is biased right? it has a well known liberal bias - so surely the information you are getting on muslims is also biased.

debass said...

"Yes, some positive things obviously came out of the 1960s".

Can you name one?

Anonymous said...

Dilys said:

Not to interrupt the other anonymous' larky bear-baiting efforts...

For the laboratory in which pseudo-mature response is being generated, absent a sense of tragedy or humor, see this long article by David Brooks in the Atlantic Magazine. This will be the sea of assumptions in which FL, anywhere but home, is likely to swim.

debass said...

"but the media is biased right? it has a well known liberal bias - so surely the information you are getting on muslims is also biased.."

I use more reliable sources.

Van Harvey said...

debass said...
"Yes, some positive things obviously came out of the 1960s".
Can you name one?"

ummm... the Fender P-Bass?

robinstarfish said...

Mo' Profit
fess parker headgear
effective antidote to
teddy bear syndrome

veri: barfnfec!

debass said...

Van,

You got me, although I have a '65 jazz bass. Bought it in 1970. I finally got a new strap last month. It was about time.

NoMo said...

“Take the myth of Genesis, for example.” NoMo hits the brakes – no surprise.

Forget everyone else in the New Testament who quoted from “the myth of Genesis” (and nearly every other book in the OT) as if it might be something more than mythological, Jesus Himself did so repeatedly. For example, in Matt 19:4 and 5 (Gen 1:27 and Gen 2:24), Mark 10:6 (Gen 5:2), etc.

Food for thought. OK, more reading to do...

Gagdad Bob said...

Nomo: I don't doubt that the male and female archetypes reflect the Divine Mind, but do you really believe that God literally made a woman out of a man's rib 6,000 years ago?

Gagdad Bob said...

My point is that -- at least for me -- the purpose of scripture is understanding, not empirical knowledge of biology.

Ephrem Antony Gray said...

I always conceived it as a foreshadowing of the X and Y Chromosomes. Or maybe it's just another reflection of God's cosmic sense of humor...

NoMo said...

I would no way commit to a time frame, but I always have to wonder just how approachable or understandable does God intend for revelation to be? Shouldn't all the simple minds like me have ready access if they seek it? The Truth can't be reserved for only the brilliant few, can it?

Its all about FAITH. Not blind faith, but faith that is born and matures from repeated exposure to the Truth. I'm always fascinated at how the various writers of the books in the Bible repeatedly reference each other while separated by space and time. It's evidence of their common faith in the same God. I'm sure many of the astounding results of great faith (words and deeds) were subject to questioning, if not outright ridicule by others around them. It's that kind of faith I seek.

Anyway, I'm not here to argue, just to expand my understanding - but always hopefully in the context of orthodoxy.

Ephrem Antony Gray said...

Well, it would be like God to tell us plainly what happened and us to find it completely incomprehensible...

NoMo said...

River - or foolishness. Count me in.

Van Harvey said...

Nomo,

Can you imagine a Preacher or Priest getting up in front of his church and launching into a sermon on the structure of DNA, cell division or the part played by Genes in inheriting traits?

My guess is that God couldn't either. I'm also thinking that such things weren't the concern of the the other players in the Old or New Testament either.

IMHO, those things are not what Genesis is concerned with talking about, and such things are irrelevant to the Truth Genesis is concerned with.

But maybe that's just me.

Bill Gnade said...

Dear Gagdad Bob,

I found my way here today through a Google search for the word, "ontonoetic." How could I have predicted that I would land here, in a country that strikes me as very new and strange, and yet utterly familiar? On the one hand I want to run away; on the other, I feel like I've come home.

Thank you for this piece. Brilliant. I am stunned. Thank you for sharing yourself this way. I am blessed and inspired. (And you are right: Islam is the angry brother denied his birthright -- and he still fights like a child.)

I will be back.

Peace and mirth,

Bill Gnade

Gagdad Bob said...

Say, those wouldn't have been ontonoetic Thanksgiving limericks, would they?

/little inside joke.

Welcome, and feel free to check out the knowa's arkive -- only 812 posts, but more to come....

Magnus Itland said...

An unfortunate language drift has made "myth" a synonym for "lie", or close to it. We need to clear up that mythunderstanding for Genesis or even the Gospels to do their work on us as intended.

We are very much called to live mythic lives. (But few are chosen?)

Stephen Macdonald said...

Amy is hanging on -- barely. A passle of grammy nominations (main competition is utterly inferior Canadian cipher "Feist"). Cancelled all her upcoming shows, including one I had tickets for while the malodorous husband cools his heels in gaol.

Few singers today would sit in front of a raw microphone and do this. For that matter, few singers could do that, ever. Amy Winehouse is most definitely being played by Something. The immensity of the talent is a bit disconcerting at first -- we're so used to hearing everything through dozens of layers of post-processing (even live singers all use pitch correctors now) that something like this at first sounds sort of bizarre. Obviously there is something much grander at work here than what can be dreamt up by a poor confused little druggie like Amy.

She's clearly strung out, yet that superbly contoured emotional payload just keeps blooming forward -- everything just hangs together uncannily well through the twitches and the tics, the fear and the sadness.

Some day she'll make a good raccoon.

Gagdad Bob said...

Smoov:

Have you ever heard Stay With Me, by Lorraine Ellison? I think it must be the most desperate, wounded, and emotionally naked soul performance I've ever heard. It never fails to give me chills, especially at 2:45.... Here it is on You Tube -- just the song, with no video. It would be cool to hear Amy tackle it....

NoMo said...

Smoov - Janis might have made a good raccoon someday too.

Gagdad Bob said...

I don't want to start an argument clinic -- maybe I do... there's nothing else going on at the moment -- but Joplin's appeal has always escaped me. I always considered her more of a screamer than singer, the prototype of all the screamers who have followed.

Wait, there is something else going on at the moment -- big storm coming, and I need to clear the gutters...

walt said...

Before Van does it!

Magnus Itland said...

OK, I seriously dislike that kind of music, but I agree that plainly this Amy person partakes in something other than mere workmanship. It is not something most people could handle and be unhurt, I'm afraid. Whether it is good or bad or something else, I am too removed from that tradition to guess. But it is definitely... mythic, somehow.

Anonymous said...

As Edward T. Oakes parenthetically notes in his article Original Sin: A Disputation "Soren Kierkegaard is correct in asserting that the story of Adam and Eve signifies that each man is at once himself and the whole human race, in such a way that the whole race has part in the individual and the individual has part in the whole race."

Anonymous said...

From Jamie Glazov:

ALL SERIAL KILLERS, almost without exception, are severely sexually abused as children. The kind of people who hijack a plane with innocent people and drive it into a building with thousands of other innocent people are related to this phenomenon.
When sociopaths rape and kill, they do not see their victims as human beings, but only as objects. This is because the sociopaths were themselves, at one time, used as objects - as their bodily integrity was repeatedly violated. The rage that results from sexual abuse is one thing, but when combined with living in a dysfunctional culture of sexual repression and misogyny, where love is reduced to violent domination, it is quite another.

Throughout the Islamic Middle East, men and women are taught to be vehemently opposed to pleasure, especially of the sexual variety. Men are raised not only forbidden to touch women, but to even look at them. Sex before marriage is not just a sin -- but a criminal offence. It is punishable by a severe beating at best, and an execution at worst.

The sexual privileges that are allowed in Islamic cultures are permitted to men. Women's sexuality and social independence represent major threats to male supremacy and are tightly controlled. Thus, as the Moroccan feminist Fitna Sabbah reveals in her book Woman in the Muslim Unconscious, there is a disturbing conflict in the Middle East between sexual libido and repression. A deep-seated fear of, and hostility to, individuality prevails, and its main expression exists in misogyny.

Socially segregated from women, Arab men succumb to homosexual behavior. But, interestingly enough, there is no word for "homosexual" in their culture in the modern Western sense. That is because having sex with boys, or with effeminate men, is seen as a social norm. Males serve as available substitutes for unavailable women. The male who does the penetrating, meanwhile, is not emasculated any more than if he had sex with a wife. The male who is penetrated is emasculated. The boy, however, is not, since it is rationalized that he is not yet a man.

In this culture, males sexually penetrating males becomes a manifestation of male power, conferring a status of hyper-masculinity. It is considered to have nothing to do with homosexuality. An unmarried man who has sex with boys is simply doing what men do. As the scholar Bruce Dunne has demonstrated, sex in Islamic societies is not about mutuality between partners, but about the adult male's achievement of pleasure through violent domination.

There is silence around this issue. It is the silence that legitimizes sexual violence against women, such as honor crimes and female circumcision. It is also the silence that forces victimized Arab boys into invisibility. Even though the society does not see their sexual exploitation as being humiliating, the psychological and emotional scars that result from their subordination, powerlessness and humiliation is a given. Traumatized by the violation of their dignity and manliness, they spend the rest of their lives trying to get it back.

The problem is that trying to recover from sexual abuse, and to recapture one's own shattered masculinity, is quite an ordeal in a culture where women are hated and love is interpreted as hegemonic control.

With women out of touch - and out of sight -- until marriage, males experience pre-marital sex only in the confines of being with other males. Their sexual outlet mostly includes victimizing younger males - just the way they were victimized.

In all of these circumstances, the idea of love is removed from men's understanding of sexuality. Like the essence of Arab masculinity, it is reduced to hurting others by violence. A gigantic rupture develops between men and women, where no harmony, affection or equality is allowed to exist. In relationships between men, meanwhile, affection, solidarity and empathy are left out of the picture. They threaten the hyper-masculine order.

It is excruciating to imagine the sexual confusion, humiliation, and repression that evolve in the mindsets of males in this culture. But it is no surprise that many of these males find their only avenue for gratification in the act of humiliating the foreign "enemy," whose masculinity must be violated at all costs - as theirs once was.

Violating the masculinity of the enemy necessitates the dishing out of severe violence against him. In the recent terrorist strikes, therefore, violence against Americans served as a much-needed release of the terrorists' bottled-up sexual rage. Moreover, it served as a desperate and pathological testament of the re-masculinization of their emasculated selves.

Gagdad Bob said...

Yes, that would represent the Ortholographidoxical Raccoon view. Oakes' book on Balthasar is excellent, by the way.

NoMo said...

Janis - Ahhh, when she did scream, she could scream so good. Here's a nice little tribute sans screaming...much.

Gagdad Bob said...

And amen to the sexual pathology of the Islamic world. I hope to get to that next week, as the same sorts of problems used to pervade the West. It's like our perverts are their norm.

Anonymous said...

and it all started with Mohammad who was undoubtedly sexually abused and who today would be considered a sexual addict and pedophile...

Gagdad Bob said...

Here's something Lloyd deMause wrote on The Childhood Origins of Islamic Terror,

walt said...

I once heard an interview with a former commander of troops that were among the first to go into Iraq in 2003. As they fought their way toward Baghdad, they found Iraqi troops "dug into" fortifications, and though only barely reported in the Western Press, he said the fighting was intense.

One technique they used to get the Iraqis out of the fortifications was to broadcast insults at them over loudspeakers, making fun of Iraqi genitalia and their sexual prowess as men. He said it worked every time: the Iraqis would swarm out of their positions, running toward the Americans, firing wildly and enraged, i.e. "easy targets." He said that technique played a major role in the swift advance on Baghdad.

Anonymous said...

and this...

http://kenlydell.typepad.com/islamic_evil/muslim_sexual_perversion/index.html

Dustin said...

Darn, I missed out on a good opportunity to create some descent, uh, Nomo. Oh, well. Maybe next time. :)


About this:

"Kierkegaard is correct in asserting that the story of Adam and Eve signifies that each man is at once himself and the whole human race"

I looked in the mirror once and literally saw Adam, for a split second. That's why every bit of suffering that I undergo towards truth is nothing compared to the reward that I've seen, even if it doesn't happen "this time around."
In fact, I didn't know that any dogma concerning the experience--that of New Adam--existed before the experience. It's more of a curse than a blessing right now though. OC's here to help me "sail through this though." Thank God.


"only 812 posts, but more to come"

If your so inclined. By the way, I would have bought a friend of mine "One Cosmos" as a sort of introduction to the spiritual side of things, but I've got to say, Satprem's "Adventure" has got to be the best introduction--because it procedes by example of his life, and that's powerful--to the beginner. Hopefully I can work him up to Oc.

julie said...

I have news about Ben! I found his daughter's MySpace page through Patti's, and she was kind enough to reply, so here it is in full:


Hello Julie,

This is Crystal. I am going to send this to your myspace and prodigy.net address so I know that you received the message.

My Dad and Mom are both fine. They had gotten rescued before the floods came; it came quick on them. My dad called me two days ago (Wednesday) to let me know that they were ok and what was going on. They were very fortunate because the water never made it into the house; it was either 1 1/2 inches or 1/2 an inch from going into the house. They were defiantly watched after that’s for sure :D The only unfortunate thing that happened to them was the car went under so they will be without a vehicle for a while. But they are both back at the house safe and sound. He told me that the electricity is back on but the phone isn't working.

I haven't talked to my Dad since that day. But he told me that when he could he'd call me again. I am assuming that the internet will be down for a while as the company was one of many that was flooded down.

If I hear from again I will let you know. I will also let my Dad know (or Mom if she calls instead) that you all are thinking of them and were worried about them. I don't know if they need any help with anything yet. From the way my Dad talked; everything was alright except for the car. But I will be sure to ask him (or her).

Thanks to you all for Caring enough about them to contact me. I am really Thankful that he has friends like you who care :D Truly Awesome!!

Well, I should let you go. I will let you know more when I find out more unless he beats me to ya;) It should be only a matter of time before they get the internet back on.

Sincerely,
Crystal

Van Harvey said...

Yes!!!

walt said...

Standing OVATION for Julie!

She wins the Best Post of the Day AWARD, hands down!

julie said...

I'm just glad Patti set up her MySpace page a couple weeks ago.
Time for a happy dance :)

NoMo said...

Thanks, Julie. Most excellent.

Anonymous said...

Well Done Julie

Raccoons Rule!

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