Dear Darcia, my heart hurts becoming aware of all this. ... and it starts to heal ....
... and it burns for contributing to share the awareness and the healing path.
I remember a time in my life when I was still believing in "good and bad": the struggle among these two poles, made up by human imagination and errors on the quest for understanding the world ...
It led to an unfortunate choice of rather being a victim than a perpetrator, as long as I am not strong enough to save the world: which would never be possible as I am not "Superwoman".
In the meantime, thanks to my wise and wonderful spiritual and psychological teachers I have understood:
We meet the projections of our misunderstanding of the world being divided in "good and evil" in endless variations of the theme: in stories about outer and inner fights.
Fights of different parts within ourselves who have good intentions but sometimes disfunctional strategies: to protect ourselves and our loved ones ...
Whenever one part is beaten by the other, we are hurting ourselves.
Whenever we beat each other, we hurt ourselves and each other.
Religions based on believing in good and evil and believing that humans are rather evil than good, are the opposite of true spirituality, where violent actions are not accepted but seen as expressions of overwhelm, lack of understanding, dysfunctional, not working attempts of problem-solving and/or the traces of these aspects, rooted in individual and transgenerational collective trauma.
Psychology sticking to such believes is a projection of the same illusion about separation and unsolvable conflicts and winners and losers. Healing can start when we stop the fight and compasssionate mutual understanding begins.
The only "winners" in the fight between "good and evil" are those who want us weak and sick and violent, serving their purposes of “power over” us for their own profit. A profit that is an illusion as well because it only serves their own trauma-projections which will never lead towards healing, a happy life and true power, which can only be found in love, respect, freedom, gratitude and generosity in harmony with the miracles and beauty of the creation.
I am happy to be on this path now with you and many others who have begun to understand and leave trauma, illusions and projections and their violent, destructive expressions behind.
I experience restful moments of inner peace as a result - sometimes - there, where good and bad begin to disssolve in a field of love and understanding.
Dr. Prescott's talk at one of your seminars from 15 years ago (was he introduced by Jaak Panksepp?), I downloaded from the UND website, along with all the others that were available, in that all too short window when the web was all about sharing wisdom. I enjoyed his talk, and the sweet ways during Q&A sessions he kept mildly annoying others by raising the ways we humans think about sex as having alot to do with what lousy parents we are in this disturbed social order we're still stuck in (which, as I heard recently on some NPR show, the babblers of the airwaves are still having ongoing idiotic arguments over what's the best way for we USians to raise children inside our post-nuclear technoaddict families...).
Meanwhile ~ your tale of this wretched movie is one of the reasons I have stopped altogether having anything to do with the products of Hollyweird, TeeVeelands, prosports planet, and popstarista ice cream parlors. The only celebrities I want to know are local folk who are kind and giving of their time, and thinking and working folk from all over, who are trying to figure out how the heck are we going to get our fellow primates to start practicing local living and degrowth at the same time, while raising the minimum amount of beloved kids to keep the love for life going through the hellish next five hundred years or so of Planet Earth recovery time.
As always, thank you for sharing your kind thoughts!
I'm with you. I had introduced Dr. Prescott at that 2010 conference because he, like many other invitees at the conference (e.g., Panksepp, Schore, Meaney), were inspirational mentors for my discovery of the evolved nest. He was the first I encountered, astounding me and opening my perception.
Thanks for your efforts in helping with the great turning back to wellness!
Darcia, thank you for this analysis. I am in full agreement. Long before I was involved in the child development field, I wrote my Dance History final in college about the effects of Puritanism on dance in America. The main theme was the same as yours here: The Calvinist position is that bodies are not to be loved and honored but shamed, denied and disciplined.
I agree that the present American system perpetuates a dreadful mind/body dissociation. Your point that the deep touch of actual violence or vicarious violence as entertainment can cut through the deadness. If parents are allowed to be with and adore their babies and fully express their tender feelings…you might not need to prescribe a number of hours to hold them. It will be a beautiful dance of being together and being apart.
Thank you, Ruth Anne, for your confirmation. Fearful control of bodies/Nature/women/babies is a patriarchal obsession in the last 1% of human existence by some humans.
I'd love to see your Dance paper. Dance is so healing and is deeply part of our species' sociosensual preconquest culture.
I think there were a number of factors for Dr. Spock's book(s) popularity, including what you mention. A few more: Over the course of the 20th century, raising babies was gradually taken away from mothers and taken over by 'men of science' who moved birthing into hospitals, invented formulas for babies, etc. The waves of immigrants were also a factor from the late 1800s onward where young people would come without their wise elders. Inexperienced first time parents are notoriously poor and need the supports of our evolved nest. Instead, medical fields moved in and people read magazines and books to learn how to raise a baby/child.
It's good to raise consciousness about all this, including scientism which has a hold on may people. The reaction against science I think is partly about how scientism tells everyone they are ignorant unless there is a randomly controlled experiment to tell them. Enough of that. Our ancestral wisdom regarding raising children evolved over millions of years. We don't need experiments to know whether evolved nest experiences are best for baby and all of us. We just have to be attentive.
Dear Darcia, my heart hurts becoming aware of all this. ... and it starts to heal ....
... and it burns for contributing to share the awareness and the healing path.
I remember a time in my life when I was still believing in "good and bad": the struggle among these two poles, made up by human imagination and errors on the quest for understanding the world ...
It led to an unfortunate choice of rather being a victim than a perpetrator, as long as I am not strong enough to save the world: which would never be possible as I am not "Superwoman".
In the meantime, thanks to my wise and wonderful spiritual and psychological teachers I have understood:
We meet the projections of our misunderstanding of the world being divided in "good and evil" in endless variations of the theme: in stories about outer and inner fights.
Fights of different parts within ourselves who have good intentions but sometimes disfunctional strategies: to protect ourselves and our loved ones ...
Whenever one part is beaten by the other, we are hurting ourselves.
Whenever we beat each other, we hurt ourselves and each other.
Religions based on believing in good and evil and believing that humans are rather evil than good, are the opposite of true spirituality, where violent actions are not accepted but seen as expressions of overwhelm, lack of understanding, dysfunctional, not working attempts of problem-solving and/or the traces of these aspects, rooted in individual and transgenerational collective trauma.
Psychology sticking to such believes is a projection of the same illusion about separation and unsolvable conflicts and winners and losers. Healing can start when we stop the fight and compasssionate mutual understanding begins.
The only "winners" in the fight between "good and evil" are those who want us weak and sick and violent, serving their purposes of “power over” us for their own profit. A profit that is an illusion as well because it only serves their own trauma-projections which will never lead towards healing, a happy life and true power, which can only be found in love, respect, freedom, gratitude and generosity in harmony with the miracles and beauty of the creation.
I am happy to be on this path now with you and many others who have begun to understand and leave trauma, illusions and projections and their violent, destructive expressions behind.
I experience restful moments of inner peace as a result - sometimes - there, where good and bad begin to disssolve in a field of love and understanding.
Dr. Prescott's talk at one of your seminars from 15 years ago (was he introduced by Jaak Panksepp?), I downloaded from the UND website, along with all the others that were available, in that all too short window when the web was all about sharing wisdom. I enjoyed his talk, and the sweet ways during Q&A sessions he kept mildly annoying others by raising the ways we humans think about sex as having alot to do with what lousy parents we are in this disturbed social order we're still stuck in (which, as I heard recently on some NPR show, the babblers of the airwaves are still having ongoing idiotic arguments over what's the best way for we USians to raise children inside our post-nuclear technoaddict families...).
Meanwhile ~ your tale of this wretched movie is one of the reasons I have stopped altogether having anything to do with the products of Hollyweird, TeeVeelands, prosports planet, and popstarista ice cream parlors. The only celebrities I want to know are local folk who are kind and giving of their time, and thinking and working folk from all over, who are trying to figure out how the heck are we going to get our fellow primates to start practicing local living and degrowth at the same time, while raising the minimum amount of beloved kids to keep the love for life going through the hellish next five hundred years or so of Planet Earth recovery time.
As always, thank you for sharing your kind thoughts!
I'm with you. I had introduced Dr. Prescott at that 2010 conference because he, like many other invitees at the conference (e.g., Panksepp, Schore, Meaney), were inspirational mentors for my discovery of the evolved nest. He was the first I encountered, astounding me and opening my perception.
Thanks for your efforts in helping with the great turning back to wellness!
Darcia, thank you for this analysis. I am in full agreement. Long before I was involved in the child development field, I wrote my Dance History final in college about the effects of Puritanism on dance in America. The main theme was the same as yours here: The Calvinist position is that bodies are not to be loved and honored but shamed, denied and disciplined.
I agree that the present American system perpetuates a dreadful mind/body dissociation. Your point that the deep touch of actual violence or vicarious violence as entertainment can cut through the deadness. If parents are allowed to be with and adore their babies and fully express their tender feelings…you might not need to prescribe a number of hours to hold them. It will be a beautiful dance of being together and being apart.
Thank you, Ruth Anne, for your confirmation. Fearful control of bodies/Nature/women/babies is a patriarchal obsession in the last 1% of human existence by some humans.
I'd love to see your Dance paper. Dance is so healing and is deeply part of our species' sociosensual preconquest culture.
I will scan it. You must keep in mind that I was only 20ish when I wrote it!
Thanks for watching so don’t have to!
I’d heard good things about this movie, but I’m getting more and more intolerant of violence.
Darcia, when Dr Benjamin Spock's book about 'raising baby' was published
1947, it 'sold over 500,000 copies in around six months'..
I'm curious about why a book about such a topic should be so eagerly bought.
(I believe USA population was around 160 million at the time)...
Could it have been due to:
'''
a) World War Two disrupted the 'generational' conveyor belt for passing on such
knowledge (Women had entered the workforce in droves during WW2. The Admen
in Maddison Avenue went into overdrive, post WW2, to 'encourage' women back
into The Home, so the book was published during that campaign)...
...
b) The book sounded sciencey. Those who bought it wanted to raise baby in a
'scientific' way, thus advantaging their career paths ?(Scientism is the one
ideological expression that's, not only embraced by all political persuasions
and the masses, but is so ubiquitous very few are even aware of it)...
...
c) ?
During the Vietnam Moratorium years Dr Spock was, on local tv news, portrayed
as a figure of ridicule. That ridicule was effective on me, as only in recent years
have i realized how dismissive of was of Dr Spock - without ever having read any
of his writings.
I think there were a number of factors for Dr. Spock's book(s) popularity, including what you mention. A few more: Over the course of the 20th century, raising babies was gradually taken away from mothers and taken over by 'men of science' who moved birthing into hospitals, invented formulas for babies, etc. The waves of immigrants were also a factor from the late 1800s onward where young people would come without their wise elders. Inexperienced first time parents are notoriously poor and need the supports of our evolved nest. Instead, medical fields moved in and people read magazines and books to learn how to raise a baby/child.
It's good to raise consciousness about all this, including scientism which has a hold on may people. The reaction against science I think is partly about how scientism tells everyone they are ignorant unless there is a randomly controlled experiment to tell them. Enough of that. Our ancestral wisdom regarding raising children evolved over millions of years. We don't need experiments to know whether evolved nest experiences are best for baby and all of us. We just have to be attentive.
Thanks and keep up the good thinking!