Category: politics

The Myth of Normal

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The Myth of Normal: Trauma, Illness & Healing in a Toxic Culture

by Gabor Maté, Daniel Maté

Physician Gabor Maté has written, with his son Daniel, a very readable and challenging book, based on his own clinical experience. It challenges the very basis of our societies and politics. Consider this quote:

“I have come to believe that behind the entire epidemic of chronic afflictions, mental and physical, that beset our current moment, something is amiss in our culture itself, generating both the rash of ailments we are suffering and, crucially, the ideological blind spots that keep us from seeing our predicament clearly, the better to do something about it. These blind spots—prevalent throughout the culture but endemic to a tragic extent in my own profession—keep us ignorant of the connections that bind our health to our social-emotional lives… our culture’s skewed idea of normality is the single biggest impediment to fostering a healthier world.”

Trauma

Much of the discussion is concerned with trauma, which he suggests “is a foundational layer of experience in modern life, but one largely ignored or misapprehended.” It is our trauma, or woundedness, that dictates much of our behaviour, shapes our social habits, informs our ways of thinking and affects our ‘presence’ in the world. For many, trauma is inflicted at an age before our brain is capable of formulating any kind of narrative or response, to the extent that trauma pervades our culture. Unresolved trauma is a constriction of the self, which keeps us stuck in the past, leading to fixed habitual responses, stress, fear-based responses, loss of self-compassion and often chronic suffering or disease, notably heart ailments and inflammation.

Two counter-intuitive facts are notiable:

  • this ‘self-estrangement’ can show up later in life in the form of an apparent strength, such as a workaholic ability to perform at a high level when hungry or stressed or fatigued.
  • it is often the “nice” people, who repressed their negative emotions and always put other’s expectations and needs ahead of their own, who showed up with chronic illness in his medical practice.

Trauma and stress are a significant factor in disease, which is a psychological, spiritual, emotional condition rather than simple biology. They are also caused by cultural factors, such as manipulation of children’s emotional needs by corporations to generate profit, education for job needs rather than healthy personal development. Addictions are a natural response to try to soothe the stresses in childhood and adulthood.

We also know that chronic stress puts the nervous system on edge, distorts the hormonal apparatus, impairs immunity, promotes inflammation, and undermines physical and mental well-being. The burgeoning of chronic mental and physical health conditions across many countries in the past decades, from depression to diabetes, can be no coincidence.

The system fosters trauma

Stress is spread across the world by globalization, with ruinous policies dictated to so-called developing countries by bodies like the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank—such as cutting back social supports, suppressing workers’ rights, and encouraging privatization—has also spread to the industrialized nations. Similarly, American corporate capitalism fosters and encourages a set of values based on self-interest, a strong desire for financial success, high levels of consumption, and interpersonal styles based on competition, causing inequality, pollution, unemployment, and the degradation of values.

Maté suggests that “the closer I look at the political landscape, the more I see the wounded electing the wounded,the traumatized leading the traumatized and, inexorably, implementing policies that entrench traumatizing social conditions.”

“A select few—especially those with the sorts of early coping mechanisms that prime them to deny reality, block out empathy, fear vulnerability, mute their own sense of right and wrong, and abjure looking at themselves too closely—are elevated to power. There they govern over a majority who so crave comfort and stability, who are so ground down by cynicism and alienation, that they will trade authentic instincts and collective self assertion for the pseudo-attachment of false promises and soothing charisma. Completing the cycle, our wounded leaders with their blinkered priorities enact social policies that keep conditions how they were, or worse.”

Healing and authenticity

True healing simply means opening ourselves to the truth of our lives, past and present, as plainly and objectively as we can. The kind of truth that heals is known by its felt sense, not only by how much “sense” it makes. Through healing we become more our authentic selves.

Lack of authenticity makes itself known through tension or anxiety, irritability or regret, depression or fatigue. When any of these disturbances surface, we can inquire of ourselves: Is there an inner guidance I am defying, resisting, ignoring, or avoiding? Are there truths I’m withholding from expression or even contemplation, out of fear of losing security or belonging? In a recent encounter with others, is there some way I abandoned myself, my needs, my values? What fears, rationalizations, or familiar narratives kept me from being myself? Do I even know what my own values are?

That some attachments may not survive the choice for authenticity is one of the most agonizing realizations one can come to; and yet, in that pain, there is freedom.

The aim of healing work is not to shed the personality entirely but to free ourselves from its automatic programming, granting us access to what’s underneath, to reconnect with what’s essential about us.

Compassionate Inquiry

Compassionate Inquiry is a systematic approach to self reflection devised by Maté for use both in professional training and in the practice of individual self-reflection, We strike a powerful blow for authentic autonomy when we notice where the self-deceptions reside and bring fresh perception to them.

Mindfulness practices have also proved helpful, and have well documented benefits such as reducing inflammation, reprogramming epigenetic functioning, promoting the repair of telomeres, reducing stress hormone levels, and encouraging the development of healthier brain circuitry.

Unmaking the Myth of Normal

What will it take to unmake the myth of normal? How can we disassemble the vast agglomeration of culturally manufactured misperceptions, prejudices, blind spots, and health-killing fictions—especially when they serve the interests of a world order intent on its own continuance, even unto self destruction?

The only way is a multi-fronted attack by people who understand the prognosis and the need. They all derive from the core principles of this book: biopsychosocial medicine, disease as teacher, the primacy of both attachment and authenticity, and fearless self-inquiry, here on a social scale. None of these shifts is sufficient itself. They will not fully come to pass without significant social-political transformation, but they are easy to grasp, and it is well within our power to work toward them.

“It all starts with waking up: waking up to what is real and authentic in and around us and what isn’t; waking up to who we are and who we’re not; waking up to what our bodies are expressing and what our minds are suppressing; waking up to our wounds and our gifts; waking up to what we have believed and what we actually value; waking up to what we will no longer tolerate and what we can now accept; waking up to the myths that bind us and the interconnections that define us; waking up to the past as it has been, the present as it is, and the future as it may yet be; waking up, most especially, to the gap between what our essence calls for and what “normal” has demanded of us.”

Amen to that

Maté’s book is very readable and presents us with a story of a world gone awry, but vitally gives us a positive and constructive way forward to making a better world, a new renaissance.

Many with vested interests will not agree with his diagnosis. But the progressive human need is always to transcend the limitations of the status quo. Let’s get to it!

Re trauma, see also post The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel van der Kolk.

The person and the world

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How does the person work, and how does he/she fit into the political world and how that works? The first of these concerns the psychology of the individual human being, the second concerns the high politics of world leaders. I had two books on my kindle, one related to each of these subjects:

  • The Myth of Normal by Gabor Maté
  • The Devil’s Chessboard by David Talbot

It was intriguing to read them in parallel, alternating chapters, and reflect on the links. The exercise proved interesting in giving entirely different perspectives on the modern predicament.

The Myth of Normal – Gabor Maté

Psychotherapist Gabor Maté gives an enlightening perspective on the current understanding of psychology and particularly the role played by trauma in human development.

Essentially, we now understand just how disfigured many people are from the traumas incurred in their lives, particularly the first 6 years of  childhood  when the child is unable to consciously process traumatic experiences.

And we understand how this can lead to damaged people who lack normal human empathy, and how such people are often driven to leading positions in society’s money/power structures.

And we understand how such people engineer society itself to reinforce the control of such people, particularly through competitive economic systems, vast inequality, inadequate education systems, ‘othering’ of segments of society by gender, race, nationality, and vast penal systems. They belittle more humane and liberal approaches by whatever simplistic slogans come to hand – commies, scroungers, racial slurs, mysogyny, populism, nationalism etc etc.

Basically Gabor Maté shows that there is a better way, if we focus on the growth of the individual human being through psychogical understanding. This will give us truly free people, amongst whom democracy can flourish.

The Devil’s Chessboard – David Talbot

On the other hand, David Talbot gives a perspective on the particular world-dominant society of the USA from the end of WW2, when the Central Intelligence Agency created by President Truman and run by Allen Dulles became an actor in world affairs that was effectively out of control of the President, or of the formal government system.

The deep state of the rich, orchestrated by Allen Dulles and his brother John Foster Dulles, who was Secretary of State for President Eisenhower, eliminated progressive leaders around the globe, in favour of those the CIA saw as friends. ‘Our’ dictator was better than a democratic leader, in Congo, Cuba, Iran, and on and on.

The conspiracy even went so far as to enable, maybe even orchestrate, the killing of a progressive US president Kennedy, and subsequently his bereaved brother Robert, who each tried to liberalise US relationships with other countries. Yes it is pretty convincing that there was a conspiracy, which was made clear by subsequent investigations – which is to the credit of the US system.

This is all dramatic stuff to those of us who lived through those times and witnessed those events through news media.

Observations

I suggest that this evil was the ultimate and extreme result of a society that did not have the psychological understanding presented by Gabor Maté. The status quo and US dominance after the war was regarded as more important than any individual or even whole peoples. Characters such as the Dulles’s, McCarthy, Nixon generated and capitalised on people’s fears and traumas, rather than giving them hope. The Cold War was the inevitable result of their manipulations, as the USSR reflected the same attitudes back onto the US.

It is not much of a stretch to suggest that the same effect was operating in relation to the disastrous US invasion of Iraq and continues to this day in events in the Middle East and Eastern Europe.

The thing is, we can only address the situation when we see its reality. Gabor Maté gives us the framework and understanding of the human being, to help ourselves to face the situation clearly. If enough people gain psychological understanding and act on the process that is their own lives… If enough people change to enable collectively facing today’s challenges… Try a vision of self-realising individuals acting together to create a democratic and de-traumatised future. This was the dream of those killed in action, including: Mahatma Gandhi, Patrice Lumumba, John Kennedy, Robert Kennedy, Martin Luther King, Mohammed Mossadegh and so many more – including those usurped and murdered during the Dulles era.

I will maybe come back to Maté’s important book in a future post.

The Age of Bullshit and AI

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This article by Ethan Zuckerman in Prospect magazine set me thinking about bullshit: Tech has an innate problem with bullshitters. But we don’t need to let them win.

During my tech career in the 1980s and 1990s I was very familiar with the concept of bullshit, and was staggered by the amount of bullshit generated by senior managers in my organisation. We even had a ‘bullshitter of the year’ award.

The Prospect article suggests that the term was made popular in the 1980s by philosopher Harry G Frankfurt in a short book, On Bullshit. For Frankfurt, bullshit is more complex than falsehood. The liar knows the things he is saying are untrue, while the bullshitter, bluffing persuasively, “does not care whether the things he says describe reality correctly. He just picks them out, or makes them up, to suit his purpose.” Sounds like a few politicians and entrepreneurs you may be aware of? Try Trump, Johnson, Musk…

Now, it has struck me that the emerging AI chatbots are potentially going to massively increase the amount of bullshit around, in this case not deliberately, but simply because of how they operate hoovering up information from the web. So I though I’d ask the OpenAI tool Chatgpt to help me along. Here’s our conversation.

Conversation with Chatgpt on Bullshit

Me: How do you define bullshit?

Chatgpt: Bullshit” refers to statements, claims, or information that are untrue, misleading, or insincere. It’s often used to describe information that is deliberately intended to deceive or manipulate people.

Bullshit can take many forms, such as false advertising, propaganda, spin, or exaggeration. It can also refer to nonsensical or meaningless statements that lack any real substance or value.

In general, bullshit is information that is not based on evidence, reason, or fact and is not intended to inform or educate, but rather to mislead or manipulate people. It’s important to be able to recognize and distinguish between bullshit and trustworthy information in order to make informed decisions and avoid being misled.

Me: How can I detect bullshit?

Chatgpt: There are several strategies you can use to help detect bullshit:

  1. Verify the source: Check if the information is coming from a credible source.
  2. Fact-check: Use reliable sources such as fact-checking websites, government agencies, and academic journals to verify the information.
  3. Look for evidence: Does the information have solid evidence to support it, or is it based on opinions or conjecture?
  4. Consider the motive: What is the motive behind the information being shared? Is it to inform, entertain, or deceive?
  5. Seek other perspectives: Look for information from a variety of sources to get a well-rounded understanding of the issue.
  6. Use your critical thinking skills: Evaluate the information objectively and don’t accept everything at face value.

Remember, just because information is widely shared or appears on a reputable website does not mean it is true. By using these strategies, you can help reduce your exposure to bullshit and make more informed decisions.

Me: Is there a correlation between level of management and amount of bullshit spoken?

Chatgpt: There is no definitive answer to this question as it can vary depending on the individual and the organization. Some research suggests that there may be a correlation between the level of management and the amount of bullshit spoken, as higher level managers may be more likely to engage in spin or manipulation in order to protect their interests or present a positive image of their organization.

However, it is important to note that not all managers engage in this behavior and that it is not exclusive to higher-level positions. In some cases, lower-level employees may also engage in bullshit in order to advance their own careers or protect their own interests.

Ultimately, the amount of bullshit spoken by an individual or in an organization is influenced by a complex interplay of factors, including personal values, organizational culture, and power dynamics. It’s up to each individual to use their critical thinking skills and assess the information they receive based on evidence, reason, and fact.

Me: Can chatgpt be used to create bullshit?

Chatgpt: As an AI language model, OpenAI’s ChatGPT can be used to generate a wide variety of text, including potentially misleading or false information. However, it is important to note that the AI does not have personal beliefs or motivations, and generates text based solely on patterns it has learned from the data it was trained on.

It is up to the user to evaluate the information generated by the model and determine its credibility. Just like with any other source of information, it’s important to use critical thinking and fact-checking to verify the accuracy of the information and distinguish between trustworthy information and potential bullshit.

It’s also important to remember that while OpenAI’s language model is trained on a large corpus of text, it is not a source of truth or a substitute for human judgement and expertise. It is up to individuals to use their own judgement and discretion when evaluating the information generated by the model.

Thoughts

The answers are scarily plausible, all generated within a few seconds. Chatgpt is impressive, if a bit verbose!

Basically it’s saying, never believe what you read/hear unless it’s credible from other sources and your own judgement/intuition.

Yes, these tools will be generating a load more bullshit, but not intentionally.

It also occurs to me that these tools can be used to generate blog posts, there could even be AI bloggers, ‘who’ emit quite plausible posts. Wow. A strange world we’re moving into!

Featured image was created with Inkscape by Anynobody, composing work: Mabdul ., CC BY-SA 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

The Chalice and the Blade

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This Christmas I got lucky, as on my list of possible presents was the book by Riane Eisler The Chalice and the Blade: Our History, Our Future. I’d seen references to this memorable title and author name in many other works. First published in 1987, this has been a hugely influential book. So what was all the fuss about?

I soon got stuck in and became entranced by a story of human development. It begins in Old Europe maybe 10000 years ago, a land of peace and plenty, well organised, with advanced technologies of the day. All people were equal, creativity and arts flourished, and peace reigned. The feminine was ‘worshipped’ as the source of new life. There was plenty for all. It was a veritable Garden of Eden, the source of the myth in the bible.

The residents were what we might call pastoralists, but around the edges of Old Europe were the nomads who move around from place to place. In hard times, perhaps climate change, they could not resist invading the land of peace. These people were shaped by hardship and became increasingly masculine and warlike. Women were secondary. When they took over an area with violence these people eventualy settled and were influenced themselves to adopt more peaceful ways.

Successive waves of invaders led, over the years to periods of war and hardship, followed by periods of peace and creativity as the invaders were absorbed. In the warlike years the masculine dominated; in the peaceful years the pendulum swang the other way and culture flourished. But the ‘equal’ civilisation of Old Europe effectively died out when Minoan Crete (‘Atlantis’) was destroyed by natural disaster (the flood) around 1400BC.

The undercurrent of the feminine always remained, underneath the masculine domination. Jesus Christ himself, and other prophets before him, came in warlike times and preached the other way. In the end, the mighty Roman Empire adopted Christianity and masculinised the religion, treating the true texts of old, such as the gnostic gospels, as heresies.

If you travel through Europe today, you see visual evidence of this process. So many towns, villages, bastides, fortresses, castles build on high land that can more easily be defended from invaders.

This lens represented by the symbols of the chalice and the blade helps us to understand our history and these two aspects of humanity. Throughout her book, Riane Eisler refers us to all the latest archeological research (at that time), giving convincing evidence.

The story is compelling, and we find ourselves still in masculine-dominated times, where the established order uses ‘culture wars’ to try to maintain this dominance, while invaders from the East again threaten a Europe that has been at peace since the last great war.

How the story will play out is anybody’s guess. But the essential challenge to each of us individually is clear – to reinstate the chalice on a par with the blade in our own lives.

The current paperback includes an epilogue where Eisler comments on developments over the last 30 years since the original publication. Eisler uses the example of the demise of the Soviet Union under Mikhael Gorbachov and the subsequent reinstatement of the old regime under Vladimir Putin to illustrate the struggle that is going on in the world. A key insight is that the various fundamentalisms at work today, both religious and political, and the related populisms, are all evidence of the dominant ‘masculine dominated’ ideology trying to maintain its control. Our desperate need today is to move from this ‘dominator’ mindset to one of ‘partnership’. If we cannot achieve this the dominator mindset appears to be impelling us to destruction.

The consonance of Eisler’s ideas with Iain McGilchrist’s much later Left Brain/Right Brain analysis in The Matter With Things is notable. The right brain of oneness and partnership has been usurped by the dominant left brain of rationality.

The Chalice and the Blade remains an important contribution to understanding where we are today. Do read it.

Featured image is of Ardagh Chalice in the National Museum of Ireland, via Wikimedia Commons

Fens 3 Wisbech

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We continue our Fens exploration after Fens 2.

Next morning, we drive north, past the pretty market town of March, following the River Nene up to Wisbech. The river here is straight and channelled, part of the great works that ensure continued drainage of the surrounding farmland. Coming into Wisbech there’s a pleasing arrangement of Edwardian-style buildings along by the river. 

River Nene at Wisbech

In the 18C, Wisbech was a prosperous Edwardian town, but now we get the impression of a struggling economy. There is evidently a large population of non-indigenous people, and some just hang around on benches smoking or drinking. Apparently 70% of the town voted for Brexit. This trip is not about Brexit, but this experience gives us a feel for why they might have done so.

A visit to the Wisbech and Fenland Museum gives us more insights into the history of life in the Fens over nearly 2000 years. The layout of the museum is just like the museums of my childhood 70 years ago, with a huge miscellany of historic items. We browsed for quite a while. Remarkably, this Museum claims to be the second oldest in the country.

Wisbech & Fenland Museum

Here was a real example of a 19C ‘punt gun’ – an obscenely large shotgun carried stealthily on a punt until it was close to a group of birds, before firing and killing up to 50 birds – a frighteningly efficient way of exploiting what must have seemed nature’s inexhaustible bounty.

There was also evidence of the heavy use of opium and laudanum in the 19C fens, reminding me of a story in my great grandfather’s diaries, where a child had accidentally died from laudanum poisoning. It seems that this was a common occurrence, the bottles being easiy confused with a popular childhood remedy.

Returning to our campsite via March, I recall cycling down that very road nearly 60 years ago, transistor radio dangling from the handlebars, on the way from Lincoln to Cambridge. The Beatles’ She Loves You had just come out. The headwind that day was seriously strong, it was hard work.

Back at base, we see an odd couple of a greylag with a Canada goose, with just a single chick.

The odd couple

There is a small group of modern windmills near the campsite. However, considering the reliability of wind in the Fens we saw surprisingly few such windmills. I suspect that the vested interests that control much of this land are the sort who don’t want windmills disfiguring their landscape!

To finish, yet another spectacular sky!

Marcus Aurelius on today’s affairs

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On impulse this morning, I reread parts of Marcus Aurelius’ wonderful classic book Meditations, which has sat on my shelves for many years. Marcus was of course one of the few ‘good’ Roman Emperors, but also at the same time a philosopher.

He actually has lots to say about matters that disturb us today. Fortunately, Goodreads has made an excellent selection of quotes from the book, so I was able to choose from these.

Consider our distress at the apparent downturn in world events (across many countries) and our circumstances:

“If you are distressed by anything external, the pain is not due to the thing itself, but to your estimate of it; and this you have the power to revoke at any moment.”

“Never let the future disturb you. You will meet it, if you have to, with the same weapons of reason which today arm you against the present.”

And what about our countries that appear to be descending into populism, lying politicians out on the make, even fascism.

“The object of life is not to be on the side of the majority, but to escape finding oneself in the ranks of the insane.”

“Very little is needed to make a happy life; it is all within yourself in your way of thinking.”

Yes we need to witness what is going on, act where we can to mitigate against disturbing trends, but at the end of the day:

“The first rule is to keep an untroubled spirit. The second is to look things in the face and know them for what they are.”

Featured image is young Marcus Aurelius from the Musei Capitolini.

Challenging times

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A recent post by Gail Tverberg explains what many of us suspect, that the world economic/resource/technology/political ‘system’ is running into the buffers. She suggests that this is a problem of the physics of the system, and not something that is easily addressed. Her conclusion makes sobering reading:

“We are dealing with a situation that economists, politicians and central banks are ill-equipped to handle. Raising interest rates may squeeze out a huge share of the economy. The economy was already ‘at the edge.’ We can’t know for certain.

Virtually no one looks at the economy from a physics point of view. For one thing, the result is too distressing to explain to citizens. For another, it is fashionable for scientists of all types to produce papers and have them peer reviewed by others within their own ivory towers. Economists, politicians and central bankers don’t care about the physics of the situation. Even those basing their analysis on Energy Return on Energy Invested (EROEI) tend to focus on only a narrow portion of what I explained in [this post]. Once researchers have invested a huge amount of time and effort in one direction, they cannot consider the possibility that their approach may be seriously incomplete.

Unfortunately, the physics-based approach I am using indicates that the world’s economy is likely to change dramatically for the worse in the months and years ahead. Economies, in general, cannot last forever. Populations outgrow their resource bases; resources become too depleted. In physics terms, economies are dissipative structures, not unlike ecosystems, plants and animals. They can only exist for a limited time before they die or end their operation. They tend to be replaced by new, similar dissipative structures.

While the current world economy cannot last indefinitely, humans have continued to exist through many bottlenecks in the past, including ice ages. It is likely that some humans, perhaps in mutated form, will make it through the current bottleneck. These humans will likely create a new economy that is better adapted to the Earth as it changes.”

We in the West have had the opportunity, since WW2, to live through the best of times, driven by plentiful energy and resources. Now we approach the times of reducing energy and resources, of climate breakdown, of conflict such as we already see today in Ukraine. Our mindsets need to change, and we need a whole new approach to organising the affairs of humankind on earth and its parts, one that is more aligned with the natural world.

The end of civilisations and empires is always a turbulent time, but also one replete with opportunity for renewal. The challenge to all countries and individuals is to ride the waves and emerge in a better place the other side…

But dare any politician say such a thing and get elected?

Featured image of storm clouds by FotoSleuth, via Wikimedia Commons

1965 Berlin

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On our chess tour of Czechoslovakia and Russia we crossed the iron curtain between West and East Germany. On the way out there was minor drama, when the easy-going West German border guards had taken the original of a key document listing the 24 members of our party, leaving only a photocopy for the dour  East German guards. They were not happy, but ultimately let us through. It was all a bit of a drama for me, as a totally inexperienced tour leader. Fortunately, we were subsequently in the safe hands of the Eastern student organisation that was running the trip for us.

On the return journey, we went through then-divided Berlin. After a long rail journey across Poland, we arrived in Berlin early evening, and hastily dismounted onto the platform. We soon realised that something was wrong. The station was deserted. A couple of us went seeking help, and found ourselves emerging into totally darkened streets. The light dawned – we were in East Berlin and the train had gone! Back in the deserted station, we saw that there was another train due to go to West Berlin in a few minutes time. We embarked onto this one and soon arrived in West Berlin, without further trouble, other than checking of documents. Was it really that easy to cross the curtain?

West Berlin was a huge contrast – lively, brightly lit, people going about their business as in other European cities – a graphic illustration of the difference between lives on the two sides of the curtain. Of course, many in the East wished to escape to the West. As we saw the next day, the Berlin Wall was massive and surmounted with barbed wire, before the no man’s land where would-be escapees were regularly shot.

The Berlin Wall fell in 1989, manifestation of the thawing of the hearts of men and women. Thank God for that, and what joy was in our hearts at that time. This makes it all the more tragic that Vladimir Putin now appears intent on dragging us back to those days of European division.

Featured image:  Berlin Wall from Potsdamer Platz 1965.
For the rest of the trip, see 1965 Prague, 1965 Kiev, 1965 Odessa, 1965 Moscow.

1965 Prague

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The first match of our chess tour of Czechoslovakia and Russia was actually in Prague. I was struck by the similarities of Prague with Vienna, which I had had the good fortune to visit on a school trip a few years earlier. The spirit of the people seemed similar, yet more depressed. Many of the magnificent buildings bequeathed by history were in much need of repair. Prague was not thriving at this time.

During our time off we explored some of the great historic sights – the powder tower, cathedral, astronomical clock, but my main memory is of doing all this sightseeing while playing blindfold chess with friend Brian Kerr. Maybe we did not adequately attend to the magnificence around us.

Astronomical clock
Powder tower

Little did we know at that time, but the spirit rising that we sensed was soon to be inflamed by the Prague Spring led by Alexander Dubček‘s reforming government and then crushed by the Russian invasion in August 1968. We later learned in horror and admiration that in January 1969 Jan Palach set himself on fire in protest, in the very same Wenceslas Square we had wandered through.

The parallels with the current invasion of Ukraine are all too apparent. Russia seeks to rule by fear and compel compliance, and punishes those who will not submit.

There is an echo of an earlier religious reformer, Jan Hus, who died by burning at the stake for heresy, by order of the Catholic Church in 1415, memorialised in this statue before the Tyn church.

The cycles of history go on and on.

Featured image is from cathedral door at Prague.

1965 Moscow

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The final stop of our 1965 chess tour of Czechoslovakia and Russia was Moscow, then capital of world chess. Of course, we lost the matches, as we were each playing against significantly stronger players. But what stays in memory is the impressions of the then-capital of a mighty empire – the USSR.

1965 GUM

The people seemed drab and depressed, compared to Western Europe, and compared to Ukraine (see previous posts 1965 Kiev and 1965 Odessa). The GUM department store had queues and empty shelves; the system did not appear to be working well for people here at the centre.

This suggested to me that the USSR was not a great success for its own peoples. It had clearly not recovered from WW2 as well as the West, and the people had not correspondingly benefited. Why would Russians wish to go back to those supposedly glorious days through the current ventures in Ukraine and other parts of the Russian border?

Paradoxically, there was also evidence of good organisation, modern technology and buildings suggesting a glorious history.

Church of 12 apostles
Clean modern metro
Fraternal fountain
Space monument
Worker and collective farmer

All this intermingled with drab buildings and worthy statues to the glory of the working man, rather strange to Western eyes. This was, after all, supposedly a communist state.

So I have very mixed impressions of Moscow at that time, a period when nuclear war between USA and USSR was only narrowly averted – times of peril that the Putin regime seems determined to go back to.

Tsar bell

My only other photograph from that visit was this one of the huge Tsar Bell, considered to be the largest bell in the world. The bell was cast in the 1700s but never struck for real, because a fire caused a bit to split off before it could be hoisted into position to ring. That somehow seems to sum up Russia.

Fleeing Ukrainians – why does it never stop?

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Jane Fritz gives insight into the history behind Ukraine’s current suffering, with some superb Chagall paintings included.

Robby Robin's Journey

When we think of paintings by the famous French painter Mark Chagall (actually Russian-French), we typically think of his dreamlike themes and brilliant use of colour.  Always imaginative.  Often free-floating.

But he also painted powerful paintings that didn’t dance and weren’t dreamlike.  Powerful, yes, but free-floating, no.  One such powerful painting has been posted many times on social media recently, and appropriately so.  It’s entitled La Famille Ukrainienne.  The Ukrainian Family.

UkrainianFamily

Only, of course, Chagall didn’t paint this work of art in the past 6 weeks, since the Russians invaded Ukraine and started unleashing such devastation, brutality, and death.  He painted it sometime between 1940 and 1943, when Ukrainians were fleeing the war and destruction brought about by another Russian, Stalin’s “Great Terror”.  It is uncanny – and heartbreaking – to realize that this scene could just as easily be depicting what is going on right now, 80 years…

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Psychological disorders, power and the future of humanity

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Steve Taylor has written a great post in Psychology Today on The Danger of Dark Triad Leaders: The link between psychological disorders and power. So what are dark triad leaders? Steve explains:

While some psychologists like to think in terms of specific disorders like psychopathy and narcissistic personality disorder, I prefer — like many psychologists nowadays — to think in terms of a “dark triad” of three personality traits that appear together: psychopathy, narcissism and Machiavellianism. This makes sense because these traits almost always overlap and are difficult to distinguish from one another.

Dark triad personalities crave power and find powerful positions easy to attain, because of their ruthlessness and manipulative skills. Since they lack empathy and conscience, they have no qualms against deceiving and exploiting other people in their rise to the top. Since they are often charismatic and charming, they often gain the support of ordinary people, who are impressed by their apparent confidence and decisiveness.

Sounds familiar? This psychological abnormality attracts to itself others of similar mindset, forming a pathocracy:

Of course, such leaders don’t work alone. Once dark triad leaders gain power, moral and responsible people rapidly fall away, and other dark triad personalities collect around them. The government quickly becomes what the Polish psychologist Andrew Lobaczewski referred to as a “pathocracy” — a government made of individuals with personality disorders.

The history of the last 200 years shows too many examples of such pathocracies across the world; there are many today, with Putin’s Russia currently the most evident. There is an urgent need for the world to work out how to manage human affairs without such individuals and pathocracies gaining further hold. They bring out the worst in humanity, such as what is now happening in Ukraine. There will be little prospect for humanity for many thousands of years if one of these dysfunctonal cabals unleashes nuclear or biological terror across the world.

Photo of Himmler, Hitler et al: Newsweek

1965 Odessa

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Another tragic atrocity is apparently beginning with Putin’s recent first shelling of Odesa, third city of Ukraine. I spent a couple of days there during our chess tour of Czechoslovakia and Russia in 1965, when the Russian name Odessa was used.

At the time this Black Sea resort was a playground for the upper echelons of then-communist Russian society. I’d never seen so many overfed people before we went on that beach.

The harbour at Odessa is linked to the city by the Potempkin Steps, created in 1841 and made famous in Sergei Eisenstein’s 1925 silent film Battleship Potemkin.

Potempkin steps

Look down the steps at the port, and you can see why this city might be regarded as strategically important.

I recall that this was an attractive city to walk around, all now at risk to Putin’s cowardly cruise missiles.

Opera House

These four photographs are the only ones I have from that trip. Such insanity that one man and his cabal could apparently be on track to destroy all this. For what? Some illusion of Russian greatness, a phantasm of Putin’s imagination? There is nothing great about destroying the work and life of millions.

Reflections on Knutsford Heath

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The heavy rains of recent week gave the opportunity for unusual photographs on Knutsford Heath. Normally it’s just green grass.

In the background to the right, behind the woman in red, is the Longview Hotel, now closed down. It was in this hotel that the white-suited journalist Martin Bell initially stayed during the election campaign of 1997. Running on an anti-corruption campaign with cross-party (and my) support, Bell displaced the previous sitting MP Neil Hamilton. Hamilton famously confronted Bell on the heath at the time, in what became known as the Battle of Knutsford Heath (see video). It’s difficult to believe that was now 25 years ago.

Also relevant to the theme of this blog, the Longview was where, in 1993, we hosted Lord David Ennals, once UK Secretary of State for Social Services, when he came to give the first of the Knutsford Lecture series of ‘Visions of a New Renaissance’, under his title ‘Practical Non-violence’. The gracious elder statesman gave us insight into the the resolution of then-world conflicts, including those in former Yugoslavia and Georgia. Le plus ça change…

Megalomaniac and lost soul?

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One could argue that my posts about Iain McGilchrist’s books (see eg The Matter With Things) and the problem of today’s left brain dominance are of mere academic interest, or to do with the long term environmental threat. Yet suddenly it is upon us, threatening the world we know, live and love, in the form of Vladimir Putin. Putin is one of many leaders who exhibit a pathologically extreme form of left brain domination, where left brain rationality and abstract ideas override any consideration of the people and environment involved, whether in Russia, in Ukraine, or in the rest of the world. There is a lack of connection with reality – the death, destruction and psychological trauma being inflicted on millions of people. Only a person who has lost touch with the real lived world and their own moral sense could do such a thing. Putin has literally decided that the map is more important than the territory.

I’m not sure if this recognition helps us much in dealing with the inhuman threat represented by Putin, but it is useful to see where this person is coming from. There is only abstract rationality without compassion or recognition of common humanity, let alone community with nature. It is evident from clips in the media that he rules by fear, also evident from his threats to the rest of the world.

Can we have compassion for a lost soul, when he threatens us all?

1965 Kiev

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Today’s Russian assault on Ukraine and its capital Kyiv brings to mind my one experience of visiting that city, in 1965. The city was then behind the Iron Curtain, part of the USSR, and had its Russian name, Kiev. The featured image is the one photograph I took at that time in Kiev, showing the River Dnieper flowing through the city – the fourth largest river in Europe.

This visit was part of a combined Oxford/Cambridge Universities chess tour, venturing behind the Iron Curtain, because that was where the strongest chess players then were.

After interesting encounters with friendly West German and dour East German border guards, we began our tour in Prague, Czechoslovakia, and were quite surprised to find that city reasonably free and spirited, a bit like a rather subdued Vienna.

We then moved on to Ukraine, its capital Kiev and the Black Sea resort of Odessa. Differences from Western Europe were more marked. We were still clearly in Eastern Europe, but the lively spirit was a bit more subdued, and material conditions much worse. I was pursued half way across the city in an attempt to persuade me to sell my pursuer a ballpoint pen!

Finally, we arrived in Moscow, where the best chessplayers were. This no longer seemed like Europe. The people seemed drab and depressed, and there were empty shelves and queues in the shops. Despite some beautiful buildings, this seemed a more fearful place, the capital of an unhappy empire.

Just 3 years later, 1968, I was delighted to see the emergence of the Prague Spring, when Alexander Dubcek led in establishing more liberal reforms. This seemed to correspond with that feeling I’d had in Prague in 1965 – its seemed natural for Prague to be more aligned with its sister Vienna. Then I recall the Soviet tanks rolling in to Prague to crush the reform movement. How terrible to see that beautiful city of spirit crushed by the Soviets. After that, Czechoslovakia remained controlled by the Soviet Union until 1989, when the Velvet Revolution peacefully ended the communist regime, around the time of the fall of the Berlin Wall – a time when anything seemed possible.

Although a founding member of the USSR in 1922, Ukraine regained its independence in 1991 following the dissolution of the USSR. In 1995 Kyiv became an authorised spelling of the capital’s name, and was strongly adopted recently because of the associations of ‘Kiev’ with Russia. Now, it seems, that Ukraine is suffering a similar event to that crushing of the Prague Spring in 1968, 54 years later. For reasons unclear to us in the West, Mr Putin seems to have decided that he will not allow Ukraine to continue its path of alignment with the more liberal Western Europe – it must again be forced under Russian control, in an apparent attempt to restore the supposed glories of that USSR.

We weep for them, and the unnecessary and untold miseries that will ensue.

Trauma and the body

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In the early 1980s I read the then-popular book Bodymind by Ken Dychtwald, on how the psychological/emotional effect of events in our lives are reflected in the body, and increasing body awareness can help in addressing the residue of these. It all made sense.

Science, and particularly neuroscience, has move a long way since those days, so it was interesting to come back to this scene with Bessel van der Kolk’s book The Body Keeps the Score – the title says it all. The subtitle gives the particular focus of the book: Mind, brain and body in the transformation of trauma.

Over the years I’ve been involved in various ways with counselling and had an interest in the talking therapies, but it has been evident that there are problems that these simply cannot reach, trauma being a major one of these. Psychiatrist Bessel van der Kolk has specialised in helping people with trauma over a long career, and it is fascinating to see his perspective on it, and how the professional view has evolved over that time.

I do recall from my own experiences growing up, that various uncles who had served in World War II never talked about their experiences – whether in Burma, or as a prisoner of war in Germany, or in active combat. It was in the box of their past, and they just did not want to open up that box. I suspect that each had his own trauma that was just too difficult to resolve in any conscious way.

It was the traumas of war that were first recognised in USA in 1980, in the aftermath of the Vietnam war. PTSD was then first described as a condition in the third edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-III) of the American Psychiatric Association. Van der Kolk gives insight into the fight there has been since then to introduce into the DSM more general traumas that come out of lived experience due to domestic/child abuse, physical circumstances such as poverty, neglect, working conditions, hunger, racism, oppression by unfair policing and so on. This has proved very difficult. Might one suggest that those in power might not wish it to be recognised that the conditions they were imposing on members of society are actually causing traumatic injury to those in their ‘care’.

Even so, there has been great progress in the understanding and treatment of trauma, and the book outlines many approaches that have proved helpful, and the underpinning advances in neuroscience. It is impossible to summarise the wise words and stories emerging in these pages – engaging psyche, emotions and the body with techniques, therapies bodywork etc. Of course, drugs may help, but they are not the ultimate answer.

Van der Kolk is a great storyteller, so the material is fully engaging. We can all learn a lot, even in dealing with the minor ‘traumas’ of everyday life. Even more, we can see how the generation of trauma is built in to some of our governmental and social systems. He ends the book with this statement:

Trauma is now our most urgent public health issue, and we have the knowledge necessary to respond effectively. The choice is ours to act on what we know.

Well worth reading.

Fundamentalism

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My post Modes of knowing highlighted that we have two modes of knowing: rationality, corresponding to left brain function; and intuition, corresponding to right brain function. The human being operates at best when these two modes of knowing operate in tandem, and there is great danger when the rational/left brain function takes over and ignores or denies the right brain/intuition. This is the root cause of fundamentalism.

Fundamentalism appears in many guises in the modern world.

  • Religious fundamentalism. We all know about that. The word in the holy books is taken as a statement of fact, rather than as metaphor. We see these fundamentalists all over the world – Islamic Christian, Hindhu, Buddhist… The effect is to deny the basic truths that were initially espoused by the founding spiritual teachers – Jesus, Mohammed, Buddha…
  • Political fundamentalism. The dedication to a particular ideology, which is often the cover for a privileged class, even an individual, to stay in control of society.
  • Economic fundamentalism. The dedication to particular ideas about how an economy is run, such as that private is always good, public spending is always bad, of many modern right wingers – or indeed the very opposite from many modern left wingers.
  • Scientific materialist fundamentalism. The belief that objective science and the materialist paradigm can explain everything, and that subjective life – religion/spirituality, morality, values etc – are somehow unimportant as without foundation.

I’m sure you could add further examples. Yes, fundamentalism abounds wherever there is human thought and endeavour – particularly, I would suggest, in these days of significant left-brain domination. The task of human development is, as ever, to tread the path between the extremes that lead to fundamentalism, to respond to life with the full subjectivity of those very subjective values that fundamentalism is inherently unable to take into consideration. To be human beings, not the machines that various fundamentalisms would seek to turn us into.

Inspired by Iain McGilchrist’s The Matter with Things.
Featured image by Stiller Beobachter from Ansbach, Germany, via Wikimedia Commons

That was 2021 on this blog

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My favourite photos from posts of 2021

Towards Tywyn
Sun going down at West Kirby
Sunset at Barmouth
Chinon
Black pine canopy
Common gallinule
Click to enlarge

These were the individual posts, if you’re interested: Towards Tywyn, Sun going down at West Kirby, Sunset at Barmouth, Chinon, Black pine canopy, Common gallinule

My favourite wordy posts of 2021

Most viewed (2021)

As ever, the most viewed probably depends on the vagaries of search engines and my choice of keywords. The top two were the same as in 2020!

Most liked (5 years)

At least the top entry suggests that this exercise is worthwhile.

A happy new year to you all!

A systems problem

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Global warming and climate change are symptoms of a systems problem in the organisation human affairs. At a gross level we could characterise the system as having four key elements: sovereign nation states, a fairly ineffectual United Nations, the global capitalist system, and the mass body of modern science and technology.

The scale of system change required is massive and fundamental. It is unlikely to be achieved top-down. It requires change in all these areas.

COP26 set some directions and targets, but not really adequate to address the need. But well done to those involved. What is clear is that the current rich and powerful form a huge brake that resists and will resist the changes needed.

So hang on to your seats. It’s going to be a bumpy ride. But the thing about nature is (and we are part of nature) it does evolve, in an intelligent manner, at all levels, from the smallest components of life. Some form of humanity will emerge in some form of synergistic relationship with nature.

What we don’t know is just how bumpy the ride might get, and just how long it might take. It’ll always be true that for each of us it’s the living right here, right now, that matters, and doing the right thing.

Featured image of hurricane from free photo library.