WHAT’S GOING ON ?

by Stanley

Freud wrote a paper called ‘Mourning and Melancholia’. (Melancholia is the old fashioned word for depression). He made the observation that mourning the loss of a loved one and melancholia have almost the same symptoms: a sense of loss and sadness, sleeplessness, lack of meaning and motivation in life. He said the similarity was because both cases were suffering from loss. In mourning the person is suffering the loss of another; in melancholia they are suffering from a loss of ‘self’ – the ego he called it.

To be in mourning you must have had some kind of relationship in the first place, otherwise there would be nothing to mourn; likewise, to suffer a loss of self you must have had a self to begin with. But there are some people who have suffered a loss of self so early in life that they have almost forgotten what it is like to have one. They have gotten over it – although they may suspect something is missing. They have, as they say, adjusted. One noticeable characteristic is they have no idea what is going on. I mean they have difficulty grasping life as an ongoing process. To lose ‘self’ is to be disconnected with the flow of life, the flow of life around you that’s going on all the time. You’re not ‘with it’, as they say.

Nouns are a problem here. They make us think in terms of discrete things. ‘Things’ do not flow well. Ideas of the Self or the Spirit tend to fixate the mind on the grand substances, thus missing the flow of what is going on.

Instead of thinking about The Unconscious or The Self or The Soul let’s think in terms of activities and processes – about what is going on. And what goes on for me is unlike what goes on for you.

This distinctiveness is not about our unique abilities, the things we do – like sport or art, music or love of nature. These are all understood as personal preferences. It’s about our specific ‘take’ on the close-in nuances of human interaction. For that sort of carry-on often the only outlet is ‘gossip’. The subtle interplay between familiars where we huddle in secret enclaves to make known our nitpicking loves and hates and to find out what’s going on between Freddy and Fredericka. It’s in these small matters where we can glimpse people’s reality, what’s going on for people and between people.

A mind that has lost the sense of flow is not good at picking up small disparities – being much more interested in static pictures, ideas and outcomes. It’s why women and gay men are better at recognising faces[1] and why they are better at gossip. No doubt this is also why women are better therapists too. It’s the love of detail and the curiosity about people. Of course, what I have just said is more like a piece of gossip itself, which is quite fitting!

This kind of talk between people is quite important. Gossip may seem superficial and judgemental. But it is very specific, delighting the in details. It’s not about me, it’s about other people; and it’s not about the PR stories, it’s a hunger to know what really goes on – or, just as important, what people think is going on, (never forgetting that this is what’s going on too).

Mature discussion is about more important things. But so far, no one has come to me and said: “Stanley, I need a session, I’m terribly worried about the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico”. People’s real concerns, here at least, aren’t about the oil spill, or global warming; people don’t have problems with their religion or their spiritual affinities. When they need help it’s with concerns that are much closer to home where it bites: people don’t wrestle with demons on the highway to enlightenment, but in the family lounge room while the television’s going.

“Half the time I think it shouldn’t matter. I should concentrate on seeing things in their proper perspective. If only I could get a more balanced outlook these trivialities wouldn’t seem so important.”

It is always a pain to me when I see people struggling to be better balanced. I mean, it’s OK to be balanced, whatever that means, but to try to be balanced !! For God’s sake, who’s balanced? Science is balanced, philosophy tries to be – but people are not. When I hear someone who has set that up as an ideal for themselves I worry.

High minded theories about the self are great for one’s sense of spiritual significance, but don’t overlook one’s little grumble about who left the food crumbs on the lounge carpet; or why some people leave all the lights on in the house !

Trivia?

No. Bubbling geothermals !

_____________________________

[1] See Interesting article on this in the Christchurch Press 29 June.

Headline - “Its official: men are worse at faces than women”

GENEROSITY.

by Stanley

Rules of conduct are necessary. Most are simply about how ordinary things should be done, agreements to keep life rolling along smoothly, like everyone driving on the left side of the road – or the right, as the case may be. Likewise, you should not steal, molest women or police officers; furthermore, thou shall not start an argument about religion at a birthday party. Simple guides make social life a little easier.

On the other hand, in the matter of intimate relationships, rules on how to succeed are almost ridiculous. Even guidelines are a laugh. There are no rules in the world can tell you whether it is wise, at this moment, to contradict your husband at the dinner table – especially since he has just been talking to his mother on the phone.

Walk into any job and the terms of engagement are fairly clear. But walk into a relationship and the job description is disturbingly fuzzy. What’s amazing is how much agonising goes into working out how to gracefully perform the pas de deux of a relationship. There are so many difficult steps where the twists and turns are not at all clear; and however careful, you will sometimes tread on your partner’s toes. What’s incredible is how much effort people make in trying to get it right. But right or wrong, such trying proves a certain good will – not counting self-interest – pointing to what we could call human altruism – our care about the welfare of others, especially those close to us, sometimes even to the point of self-sacrifice.

Within a certain familial radius we are biologically tuned to be ethical creatures that have the wellbeing of our kin at heart. This trait has been hard wired by evolution – as it has in most of the higher mammals. But in looking at what the biologists call ‘altruism’ let’s use a more recognisably human term. Let’s call it ‘generosity’, a generosity of heart. Broader than the usual restricted meaning of the word. I mean where the desire for another’s wellbeing comes as a genuine feeling. People with generous dispositions are immediately recognisable – you feel better after you have been in their company. You feel a recognition that you are living person to them – and so you feel better, no matter what’s been discussed.

Which brings us back to rules: it isn’t rules of conduct that create this marvellous human quality of generosity. Neither rules of ethics, nor the Bible, nor any number of commandments, ever made anyone good; if the quality of generosity isn’t already there, ethical rules simply make people obedient or just clever survivors who can play the game.

In training and selecting counsellors, therapists, nurses, support workers etc., a lot of effort goes into ensuring ethical behaviour: definitions of boundaries, proper communication with patients, supervision, professional development, codes of practice, careful interviews and staff selection. But the most important criterion that’s missing in all of this is ‘generosity’ in the sense we are meaning it. No one seems willing to state it clearly and define it. But the plain fact is, when it’s missing the effects can be disastrous.

I bet you could name a dozen people in the helping professions who obey all the rules, do everything absolutely to the book, but who are killers. However well trained they are, whatever their qualifications, they are also immediately recognisable – after being in their company for a short while you feel worse.

Same goes for husbands, wives, friends and colleagues. Those with a natural generosity of heart enhance life around them because they credit other people with their own being, they credit others with existence; for them, you are a living person with an interior, a subjectivity, actually alive with your own ideas, wants and feelings. You feel recognised. They know you are different, but equal to themselves – and they are likely to be curious to know who you are, I mean who you really are.

No matter what other virtues or vices they may have, that’s all it takes – and you feel better just being near them.

Through no fault of their own there are those who lack this quality of generosity, but who desperately try to compensate by being responsible. They take great care of you, they provide for the physical necessities, food, health, clothing, a roof over one’s head. A certain guilt induces an over-concern for your welfare. They are too responsible! They are trying to make up for the one vital thing they cannot give.

A word of caution: ‘helpfulness’ is not always a sign of generosity in the sense we mean. Always ask yourself after someone has been helpful: do I feel better or worse; does my actual existence feel more valid or less. That’s the test.

MUSIC

Hi Stanley,

Last week, I was going through a harsh emotional confusion when I seeked council. Fortunately for me I was relieved and also, given your website. To my joy, I found myself savouring each word you had written. Such relief I felt upon reading "Withdrawal or Engagement." I really like how you make the link between psychological self blame, with particular schools of thought. Such as, religion and the law of attraction. I find your thoughts on this matter very liberating. (Monkey off my back so to speak)I have a better feeling of control over my life than I did before, so thank you.
"Wholeheartedness" couldn't have come at a better time either and I am resisting the temptation of thinking... I digress, "dissociation from emotion" is another monkey that I am undergoing the slay, so thank you for simplifying emotions to a point that de-paradoxifies (is that even a word?) and encouraging readers to own "themselves" once and for all.
Please continue to share
Music

Thank you Music, whoever you are, I will do that.
Stanley

WHOLEHEARTEDNESS

by Stanley

When you’re angry the correct way to express yourself is to use ‘I statements’. You have to say ‘I am feeling angry with you’ rather than, ‘Don’t talk rubbish’. Saying that you are feeling angry is OK. Being angry is not. The problem with simply changing the language like this is that although it may provide an atmosphere of civilised politeness, it encourages a certain duplicity and incongruence. It is really a form of behaviour modification.

Changing the language here is supposed to help you take responsibility for your anger, rather than just blaming other people. But it can make you less responsible because blaming can now take place on a lower level while pretending otherwise. I’ve heard some flaming rows using ‘I statements’. It could be funny if it weren’t so agonising – two people in conflict whilst one of them tries to maintain this terribly grown-up façade. Sooner or later they will cry out: ‘I’m only telling you my feelings’, as though they were saying, ‘I’m not telling you about me, I’m telling you about my feelings’ – which is odd.

Whatever you do, you must be seen as calm and in control. Worse still, making sure you see yourself as calm and in control. My worry is that the philosophy of ‘witnessing’ oneself points us in the wrong direction.

There is no way you can get the depth and reality of your anger, sadness, sorrow, boredom or happiness unless you are wholehearted. In the grip of an ecstatic moment, to merely say, ‘I feel happy’ is not good enough. You haven’t really got it until the usual words sound totally inadequate. When you are rapturously ecstatic you never say calmly ‘I feel happy’. Rather, your words tumble over themselves; crazy language bursts out of you – or you’re just stunned into silence.

We have to grant that some emotions can be a terrible source of trouble. There’s no need to enumerate on that. But think how much trouble can be caused by being ‘unemotional’. The guards at Auschwitz were very unemotional.

It isn’t that feelings are one thing and you are something else. However emotionally neutral you think you are, the fact is you are always feeling something. As I said in my last newsletter: you can’t observe something from nowhere. You are always looking from somewhere; and every somewhere has an emotional tone. OK, so a moment ago you were angry; then you are looking at your anger and feeling sorry. Now you are looking at all that and thinking, ‘I can’t be bothered’. Each moment you are in a different somewhere. The spiritually inclined are always telling us that we are not our thoughts, we are not our feelings, promoting a kind of emotional anaemia. The statement that the person is not their feelings is misleading. There is no such thing as a neutral observer, a witness without an attitude. Trying to be neutral dissociates you; you never really get where you’re at.

I have a theory that you can be emotional without actually getting that you are emotional. Sounds crazy, but think of it. When you are used to being in control, when it has been your habitual way of being, the sudden rising of emotion overtakes you without your actually being it. So you don’t actually get it. Even as you are angry you feel like you’re being reasonable – being reasonable and at the same time dramatising like mad. This is dissociation. You could truthfully say ‘I am not angry’. In fact, people will very often do this. Whilst their face is purple with rage they will deny that they are angry. Of course, there are all degrees of being or not-being an emotion; it’s when you are being removed and neutral that emotion is more likely to overwhelm you. When it hits it’s almost like the emotion doesn’t belong to you.

Wise council in focusing tells us to be careful of getting swallowed up by emotion. From what I see – admittedly a limited field – it seems the greater danger is dissociation, being swallowed up by nowhere. The standard defence against feeling is feeling nothing. This is far more lethal. We suffer from over-control rather than over-emotion. Control of emotion can be such a priority that our problem becomes nonchalance, a chronic lack of caring, so that anything goes. For us, in our emotionally immature culture, the problem is pre-maturity, the adolescent ideal of having life under control, independent and free from any interference. Naturally, when powerful emotions surface, unbidden from the depths, they overwhelm the fragile fantasy of immunity.

When a person’s priority is control they tend to go unconscious when emotion does hit. This is what is called ‘acting out’. I’m going to suggest that a key element in acting out is that feelings and emotions are not self-conscious. We should speak of ‘conscious emotions’ and ‘unconscious emotions’. But unconscious emotion does not mean it is not exhibited. Such emotions can produce a powerful impact on everyone, but still be relatively unconscious. A person who is unreflectively thrashing around in a rage is not fully conscious, or only dimly so.

‘What nonsense’, someone will say. ‘When I’m angry, of course I know what I’m feeling. I am fully aware of my feeling’. But wait a minute. If the word ‘angry’ seems adequate, then you haven’t got it. If you think you’re ‘just angry’ and that’s all there is to it, the feeling has no depth. It’s stunted. It goes nowhere. It’s a dead feeling, if there is such a thing. In fact, it’s hardly more than a label. When a feeling is living, when you are being the feeling, it furthers itself, it explicates. As your life flows, it flows with it, mutating into all kinds of associations and connections. Conscious feeling is alive, always changing, always gathering more than you can say.

Feelings themselves, before they are conscious, are an inchoate jumble, what we have called in focusing ‘the felt-sense’, or the ‘murkiness in the body’. Then, as you pause on it, something begins to take shape. More accurately: as the feeling reflects on itself it becomes clearer. It begins to articulate itself. It begins to recognise itself. In that moment I also acknowledge who I am. I am what is consciously being felt. If we drop the artificial distinction between me and my feelings, we allow wholeheartedness and congruence. I am the feeling I am being.

The crucial factor is recognising an emotion or feeling. But not something else recognising it. More accurately: an emotional recognition takes place; and this is the same as recognising myself.

There are times when I need to be wholeheartedly generous or mean, just as there are times when I need to be wholeheartedly sad, or joyous or angry. But a modern tendency in psychology would encourage us always to step aside, to overview and observe, to witness ourselves.

It’s has almost become de jure to be half-hearted. Instead of saying, ’I’m confused’, you have to say: ‘part of me wants this and part of me doesn’t’. But then you miss the essence of the conflict which is, ‘I want this AND I don’t want it’.

We don’t need to postulate a different ‘part of me’ that is witnessing what another parts of me wants. That’s leads to an infinite regression: (and who is witnessing that part). We get lost in such a maze there is nowhere to stand. The buck has to stop somewhere. You may as well stop it at the beginning: a feeling is aware of itself. Feeling and the self-awareness of ‘I am’ are not different things. You know what you feel and you feel what you are; they’re the same thing. A present feeling is the sense of myself.

Are there inarticulate feelings? Well, yes, but you can only say that when an inchoate ‘something’ is beginning to articulate itself. That’s the beginning of a recognisable feeling and of your own becoming.

A person is being their emotion in so far as they are emotionally self-aware – or put another way, in so far as feelings become aware of themselves. I often pause to really get what something feels like. Getting it is being it. You need no second entity that’s conscious of it. You know the inside of a feeling like no one else can. The feeling is the inside of you. You can’t know anything better than being it. A feeling is existentially who you are, and from where you can speak authentically.

You see, I am refusing to make a split between me and my emotional life, pretending that I am some kind of pure spiritual being, an uninvolved witness to the uproar of my days. That’s a godlike delusion. At every moment I am fully engaged in the rough and tumble of my existence.

The view I am advocating does not suggest that one always be emotionally full-on. I am simply making a plea not to encourage dissociation from emotion as a method of therapy or as a good way of doing life.

WITHDRAWAL OR ENGAGEMENT

by Stanley

I’ve often wondered about the difference between spiritual meditation and person-centred therapy. Are they complimentary or are they going in different directions? Do they help or hinder each other. Maybe we can work out some distinctions and differences of purpose. We need to do this because in recent times there has been a tendency to conflate the two.

It isn’t easy to generalise about meditation because there are so many different styles, but I think certain generalisations can be made. Many popular modes of meditation emphasise relaxation of the body and of ‘getting out of the mind’. This usually means to ‘witness’ what is going on in the body, to observe the flow of thoughts in the mind, but to not identify with any of them; that is to say, be aware, but distance oneself from them so that one remains neutral or equanimous. The general idea being that I am none of them. I am not my body or my mind, not my sensations or my thoughts. The passing states of oneself and the world are an illusion. This is the ideal practice, not just for meditation, but for living. The good life is achieving this non-attachment as an ongoing state, a way of being in the world.

And it is just here that we run into difficulties. Being in the world forces me to make choices. Each morning I either go to work or I don’t. At the party I either have another drink or I don’t – I have to identify with one or the other. I cannot do both. I either stay in my marriage or I leave. Some would say I could sit on the fence. But I am either indecisive in the marriage or I am indecisive out of the marriage. I am forced to choose. I ask myself: what is best for all? What is it I want? Even if I say I want nothing, that itself is a form of commitment. I identify myself as wanting nothing. I can’t escape from being either this or that.

So it’s understandable why meditation works best when one is isolated from worldly activities, in a ashram or a ten day course, where one meditates and speaks with no one. Worldly choices are at an absolute minimum. After an intense course of meditation people will report a wonderful spiritual transformation, a state of wholeness and peace. In coming back to the world, however, they cross over into their normal selves. The old problems are there waiting for them just as they left them. When you are in the world it won’t let you be a detached onlooker. It pulls you in. You have to take a position, you have to engage. It’s impossible to be only a witness, a detached onlooker.

Today the meditation mode is having quite an influence on our psychological practices. There are some benefits in this and some distinct disadvantages. Both in popular psychology and in serious therapy it has become customary to talk in terms of ‘parts of myself’. You know what I mean: ‘ part of me feels this and part of me feels that’. Indeed, there are some respected therapists who appear to base therapy entirely on this recipe. It is an attempt at non-attachment. It is useful, they say, because acknowledging the different parts of yourself integrates them – more than this, these different parts may have some important things to say. We should be a witness to all the parts of the psyche; but to do this we have to be in some sense detached, present but not involved.

In a therapy session, if you start with meditation or relaxation you will find that people do not move from this into their current problem area. If you start with observing a body sensation or pain the person will not move from that into the problem that generates it. In other words the mediative mode tends to cut off the route to the world; so does relaxation. By ‘world’ I mean all your worldly memories, desires and aversions; I mean all that’s going on for you in your life. Detaching from all that is OK if that’s what you want, but it also cuts you off from the therapeutic process; it cuts you off from being a person in the world – and all that this requires of you.

It’s interesting to note that standard focusing procedure starts with ‘what problem would you like to work on?’ It starts with your worldly mind, with something that engages you, with a consciously felt concern. This is done to start things moving at the place where they need to move.

Every movement in a focusing session is an engagement, a movement into this or that, into a feeling about that problem or a position about this concern. Each movement is a thorough going engagement. First, the problem seems to be this; then it seems to be that. New positions emerge. The process is one where you keep changing your mind. Things do actually change, but each change is one you believe in – you have to because that’s where you’re at. In each of these moments you are not sitting on the fence, not witnessing, but involved. You identify with each moment. True, the next moment there will be a movement to something else, to another position; but that itself is another engagement, another concrete position. What we call ‘experiential shifts’ in therapy are a series of movements as you work through your engagements with the world, your connections that need to be dealt with. The therapeutic process, in other words, moves through identifications, through one engagement after another. Each time, for the moment you are in it, you are not detached, but identified. These are not positions you assume, but viewpoints you successively find yourself in. At any given moment you cannot not be in some position or other. The whole idea of a neutral witness is an oxymoron. You cannot observe something from nowhere. Trying to impedes the process.

Take the proposition that ‘the internal critic is part of me’. This can be merely an idea I have learned and am rather fond of. But if I am stirred into really looking – yes, the critic is part of me. But, no, that’s not quite right. It feels more like a bunch of demons chattering away in the back of my head. They nag me and I’m sick of it.

At that vital moment I grasp how it really is for me. Not from some detached overview. I’ve really got it. They nag me and I’m sick of it…. I mean it: I’m sick of it. Not ‘part of me’ is sick of it – I am sick of it. In that moment I am passionately myself. The demons that nag me are now not the issue. Something else has taken centre stage. Not that I have thrown the inner critic out, or ignored it, or befriended it or integrated it. No clever psychological tricks. I have moved on to something else that is now more real and, at this moment, more important: they nag me I am sick of it !

I have arrived at a new place.

I am at one with my impatience.

At that moment there is no split - I discover how I am.

DYING AIN’T YOUR FAULT or Why you don’t need an attitude transplant

by Stanley

In the end you will die, not because you had a negative outlook, but because it is a biological inevitability. And there are a many other misfortunes in life that are not your fault either.

In the New Spiritual Religion (it goes under many names) there is something they call the ‘Law of Attraction’ by which your ‘attitude’ is supposed to ‘manifest’ events in the real world. The idea is that if you think negative thoughts, negative events will manifest; if you think positive thoughts, positive things will come to you.

If you Google ‘Manifesting Happiness’ you will get nearly two million hits. That means there are two million websites involved in or trying to sell you the New Spiritual Religion – for a fee. They will all tell you, in one form or another, that ‘The Secret Law of Attraction’ is the key to manifesting abundance, money, love, success and happiness. Obtain the life of your dreams’, they will tell you, ‘using the Universal Law of attraction!’ Apart from its appeal to people who are just greedy, this doctrine has a bad effect on needy people, like most of us, who have a critical super-ego.

The implication is that if you haven’t got all those wonderful things, it’s your fault: you don’t have the right attitude. My main gripe with all this spiritual hard sell is that it preys on people who are already inclined to self-blame, who too easily fall into a sort of hyper-responsibility, who can never stop questioning whether something is their fault. Moreover, it locks them into an impossible struggle to improve themselves.

These spiritual con-artists will convince you that if you invested in Lombard Finance & Investments Limited and lost your savings, the error lies in you. Not with former Justice Ministers Sir Douglas Graham and Bill Jeffries, now facing criminal charges for their role in Lombard Finance's collapse. Your loss is not their fault, but yours for being ‘negatively attracted’ to such people.

If your marriage collapsed it may well be because you were naïve enough, young enough, trusting enough, to marry someone who was sick, thinking love could triumph. But no, it has to be because your thoughts were sick and you ‘attract’ bad partners.

Now, we all know that there are those who marry people with the same kind of flaw over and over: women who can’t resist marrying drunkards; men who, again and again, get attached to bossy women. There are all kinds of intricate reasons for this, but attributing it to a ‘cosmic law of attraction’ is way over the top and far too generalised. In any case, trying to do an attitude transplant, trying to have positive thoughts does not get down to the specifics of what is going on in such repetitive behaviour. Without the specifics, smiling and being cheerful will get you nowhere. Correction: it will get you somewhere – you will become a smiling face disconnected from a body that is likely to get more and more depressed – ‘smiling depression’ they call it !

A more general criticism of the so-called Law of Attraction is that it is infantile and narcissistic. The very idea that my thoughts radiate out and actually create the world I live in is solipsistic, inferring that no one else really exists. Do you mean no one else’s thoughts do that? Only my thoughts control the environment, and everyone in it.

Now, you can do a spiritual one-upmanship on this by saying that the Law of Attraction is about non-specific love; that if you are open to all the love in the universe it will manifest. So OK, how do you do that? Do you pray? Do you simply keep affirming that it is so? Perhaps it’s a question of faith. In religion faith is always the bottom line. If you can’t do faith – too bad.

There is definitely an attraction, however, between the New Spiritual Religion and Pentecostal and Charismatic Christianity. They have joined forces in what has become known as ‘Prosperity Theology’ which proclaims that we have a right to wealth, health and riches and that God Himself wants us to have them. Another infantile wish. Unfortunately, He can only do so for believers through their positive affirmations of faith. He would like to do it for everyone, but somehow his hands are tied. The blessing of wealth – big houses, yachts, BMWs and perfect love matches can only be granted to believers.

Prosperity theology, with their televised megachurch services, is very widespread, not only in the US, but increasingly in the less prosperous parts of the world. The most recent Time Magazine carries an article called ‘Salvation Armies’ in which it says, ‘In poorer regions of Asia, as well as in many Chinese ethnic communities, converts are lured by the so-called prosperity gospel, an American theology, linked to Charismatic Christianity that promises riches to those who follow the moral path.’ In Indonesia, too, a growing and increasingly militant Christianity is beefing up Islamic fundamentalism into violent opposition.

I’m not an expert on the further reaches of spirituality and I am sure I have much to learn about how the Laws of Attraction fit in so well with the Bible. I do admit that I am at a disadvantage here because I find it all puts a great strain on my credulity.

HOW IS IT POSSIBLE TO LOSE YOURSELF ?

by Stanley

‘I am trying to find out who I am’. When I hear someone say this I believe it’s not just a figure of speech. It means something quite real and taking it seriously says something of profound importance: it is possible to lose yourself. Let me tell you a story of how it can happen.

I came into this world naked - not just physically naked, but my needs were naked too. They were raw and totally unmediated by any sense of proper behaviour – they were undiluted, with no notion or care about the style of the family game or its problems.

The baby, you can say, is totally itself, driven to assert instincts that have evolved to serve its needs. Hopefully, its mother is driven by complimentary instincts too.

But growing up, as we know, is to become socialised. This means adapting to whatever style of family you find yourself in. Adaptation means, to some extent, giving up that instinctive, naked drive with which you were born. This can be painful. I can remember vividly the terrible dread and darkness whenever I was a bad boy – and this as a very small child. I know how it is to adjust myself and avoid the black hole of disapproval.

Very early, if something goes terribly wrong, the first thing the child concludes is: ‘there’s something wrong with me. I’m bad.’

This is how you begin to lose yourself. It depends on just how much and what kind of adaptation you have to do as you become increasingly aware of expectations.

There are certain equations I still have in my childlike mind: being Good = adaptated. Being Bad = being myself. Let’s stick with these simplistic equations because somewhere deep in my mind this is how I understand life works. Being Good is doing it right: being the way I’m expected to be – the reward is approval and love; the price is loss of self assertion. Being Bad is doing it wrong, deviating or being different – the reward is being true to myself; the price is disapproval, abandonment and guilt. I hide as much as I can, but if they find out who I really am they certainly won’t want me. Deep down I still believe this.

Granted, this is a naive scenario, but my child mind is like this, seeing everything in black and white.

Having successfully adapted myself and put away my childish tantrums and frustrations I become a reasonably good child – not all of the time, but most of the time. Things settle down after my initial training. That is, until adolescence when biology again kicks in with an avalanche of sex hormones; nature once again forcing a self assertion that wakes up all the old conflicts between being how I am expected to be and how I actually find myself.

Well, I get over that and things settle down again. My youth is a great time of doing what I please, joining with my peers, all of us trying hard not to be how we were taught to be, all of us similarly revolting, all of us wearing the same kind of hat and digging the same kind of revolting music. I’m OK except that I smoke and drink too much; and I’m not quite sure how to handle my freedom.

If I am a woman and get married the problem of too much freedom disappears. Suddenly I find myself confronted with the old choice: adapt or lose the person who means everything to me. It’s the same old situation. Again I become increasingly aware of expectations. I find myself anxiously trying to meet them; always understanding and doing everything to be helpful. I’m a good girl, adapting to the whims and vicissitudes of his character – giving him all he needs. But the old price has to be paid: the gradual loss of myself. Without my being aware of it, he is probably doing exactly the same. But the time will come when I will utter the words that will upset him so much: “I need some space – I think we should separate for a while”.

I do this not because I want to, but to save my life. It began to seem as though I was drowning in the relationship, which is how people will often describe it. You see, in this latest version of the drama I am not just dealing with the present situation. The original one I first went through as a child is there in full force, but entirely projected onto the marriage relationship; but I have no grasp of this. The problem seems entirely in the now. If it were only about now it would all be reasonable and solvable. But it isn’t like that. My overwhelming emotions run deep, deeper than I can comprehend; and they are so conflicted that it seems as though I don’t know what I want. As the saying goes, ‘I can’t live with him and I can’t live without him. To be with him is to drown and lose myself. To be without him is to face life on my own.

Emotions and feelings are temporal, always echoing and powered by the past. The temptation is always to give up myself in order to have someone. This is hardest thing is to grasp and most of therapy can be a gradual realisation of it.

I know this too: in spite of all the battles and heartache, I really did love my Mum and Dad so long ago – so much that I would give myself away, give them what they want of me, to make them happy. Then we could all live.

CULTURE AND HUMAN NATURE

by Stanley

It is possible to educate people in ways that are harmful to them. Some cultural traditions are fundamentally pathological: an education in religious fundamentalism is an extreme example.

We can think of such cultural ideas as ‘memes’ or viruses that infect the human mind. We can say that although such cultural memes are successful at replicating themselves, passing from one mind to another, they do so at the expense of their hosts. Many harmful religious doctrines are of this kind. This phenomenon is not unusual in the story of evolution. An example is the aids virus which uses a host, a living human cell, to replicate itself in order to infect other cells. You are also host to millions of bacteria in your body. Some are benign and actually assist certain necessary functions of your body. Some are pathological and harmful.

Ideas behave in the same way. You are host to many that are damaging to human wellbeing. They are transmitted from one host to another, not as organisms, but as packets of information we call ‘memes’. Their sole purpose is replication. A successful religion is an example successful memetic replication. Many religious practices (memes) are unquestionably harmful. For example, the idea of going to hell for your sins - no one today, except those infected with the meme, can possibly pretend that this idea is in any way helpful.

Let’s take the vivid example of Muslim women who wear the burka. A burka is a head to toe costume worn by some traditionally devout Muslim women designed to conceal every part of their bodies, except for the eyes.

In looking at this cultural practice, we can do a post-modernist move by saying that all cultural values are relative. We can say that when a Muslim woman says she is quite happy being enclosed in a burka we should take this at face value. Who are we to say that she is wrong? In saying this we are also agreeing that there is no basic human nature that this practice offends. A human beings, so the post-modernist doctrine goes, is a blank slate upon which anything can be written; human beings are infinitely malleable and there are no objective values by which we can judge. This is a very late western view in which we deny there is anything like a universal human nature. Every human being is nothing more than the product of their society. Any judgement we make is simply the one-sided product of our own culture and therefore without any universal justification.

However, biological science is showing us what we already know from common sense observation: that there is such a thing as human nature and that we are indeed born with predispositions, some are universal to all humanity. Not only this, but each individual is born with slight but important variations – a fact obvious to any mother. We do not come into the world as a blank slate upon which any whacky idea can run the show without fear of harm.

What we call our human nature can adequately be accounted for by our biological makeup. Cultural memes are a different class of events. Harmful cultural memes use our natural biological makeup as hosts for their own purposes, just as other parasitic organisms can.

It is impossible to imagine that a child who has not been infected with the burka meme, that is to say educated as a devoted Muslim girl, would freely choose to wear a burka. There is nothing in our biological make up that would instinctively incline a child toward that kind of choice.

Of course, once infected, the meme virus induces a certain kind of typical behaviour and reinforces it with instructions from a, in this case, divine source. The idea is that a woman will be happier and safer protected from the lascivious gaze of men. This meme is supported by the whole information package of the Islamic religion. So of course, in wearing a burka the woman may well feel happy and contented. But this fact does not make it any the less an offence against her nature than it would if she felt she deserved to be murdered by her father as punishment for being raped by a stranger – another Islamic meme.

‘The moment we admit that there is anything to know about human wellbeing, we must admit that certain individuals or cultures might not know it.’ [1] Some cultural practices and ideas are obviously inimical to human nature; there are universal truths about what conditions are bad for human wellbeing. Would anyone like to argue that celibacy for catholic priests is good for them or for the sexually abused children under their institutional care?

The moment we reject the post-modern idea of the relativity of what is good for people the whole ground of our discourse is changed. We realise that people can be hypnotised into believing that they are happy or that adverse circumstances are good for them. A principle survival mechanism of a successful meme is the hypnotic instruction that you are happier and better off, or will be, for willingly embracing its instructions, (e.g. sacrificing yourself as a suicide bomber or giving yourself to Jesus).

The desire to be happy is part of our genetic makeup and the meme mobilises this for its own use; just as the aids virus mobilises the ribosomes, enzymes and cellular reproductive machinery of the cell to reproduce itself and spread itself to other hosts.

There is a level, then, at which we have to say that people can lose their sense of what is good for them. People hypnotised into a religion, for example, are obviously not responsible for their judgements. It is well known how notoriously difficult it is to debrief someone who has been infected by a cult-church. We should not submissively tolerate this kind of human abuse in the name of cultural and religious tolerance.

The view expressed here may seem dangerous in that it looks as though it runs counter to human rights and our belief in democracy and self-determination. But it is a primary requisite for judgements that are consistent with the needs of human nature that there is a genuine freedom of choice. Once we admit this we throw into doubt many questionable practices that have gained immunity to debate.

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[1] Harris, Sam. Moral Confusion in the Name of Science: http://www.project-reason.org/newsfeed/item/moral_confusion_in_the_name_of_science3/

Also: http://www.ted.com/talks/sam_harris_science_can_show_what_s_right.html