A PLAGUE OF INCOMPETENT MALE politicians ruins our world. They lie, they pretend, they live in a make-believe reality with zero regard for the future. Why? What makes them tick? What are their underlying principles, if any? The sooner we find out, the safer we’ll all be. Put politics aside, join up the dots, and this is toddler-behaviour. Have a tantrum aged 2, and you stamp your foot on the floor – have one when you’re older, and people die. At least that’s how a young serial killer explained it to me, after I’d described it to him. It all adds up – though not before you take into account a fundamental human flaw. Thoughtless behaviour costs lives – so where does non-thinking come from? And why doesn’t it stop, when it so obviously doesn’t work? Why don’t “normal” constraints apply? Something freezes thought – and a medical brainscan from 25 years ago shows us, unequivocally, what that is – it’s trauma.
Put someone in a brainscan machine, and play them an audio tape. If this is benign, say of music, then all goes well. But if the tape is of the car crash, the gun shot, or whatever had traumatised that individual, then the frontal lobes and the speech centre cease functioning. It’s as if they’ve had a stroke. It’s speechless-terror. Trauma from the past, stops thinking and speaking, today. So when you see non-thinking in apparently adult people, there is only one possible explanation – they are still paralysed by what numbed their brains all those years ago. They simply cannot think or speak long enough to rid themselves of what traumatised them then. And once homo sapiens cannot think straight – extinction looms.
So why are men worse? Talk about childhoods as often as I have, and it becomes clear that infants are gender neutral – they don’t distinguish. What matters when you’re very small is – are you being looked after, fed, watered and comforted, or not? And it’s the “or not?”, which causes all the trouble. And how.
Toddler control poses a big challenge. If you’re a harassed parent and your unruly offspring is giving you grief, then labelling them “naughty” is a handy, if myopic, verbal stick to beat them with. But to misquote Shakespeare – we are none of us born naughty, but too many have naughtiness thrust upon us. If you want to know why the world keeps teetering on the brink, look to where we all began, our childhoods.
Being “naughty” is in the eye of the beholder – that is to say what you mean by being naughty depends on where you are, when you say or hear it. If you’re the one handing it out, then it might seem sensible enough. However, if you happen to be the recipient, then being naughty risks far worse – it could mean you’re unwanted. And an unwanted infant, isn’t long for this world.
Think about it – there you are in an exposed situation, your growing toddler is making a noise when you need quiet, or is not sitting still when you need calm, and everyone is looking – what do you do? You can’t “behave” for them, you can’t go to sleep for them, you can’t swallow their food for them – so frustration beckons. You are in charge, it’s your responsibility as to what happens next. You are in trouble if things go wrong – why can’t you control your child? Why not indeed?
However put the boot on the other foot. From a child’s point of view, you are messing about, trying to have fun, pushing the envelope to see what happens next – when suddenly, whammo – scowls. Noise. Crossness from your carer, without whom you’re lost. “Naughty” in this context means trouble is brewing – quite how bad, you’ve yet to discover, but it’s not looking good. You seem to have crossed an invisible line somewhere, and have opened up a chasm which could well be bottomless. How are you to know?
You think I exaggerate? Just imagine what life was like back then. We’ve all been there. You’re skipping along through life, looking here, poking there, and then, out of the blue – something goes “wrong”. How are you to know quite how “wrong”? You are only small – you can’t be expected to understand these things. You can’t get your next meal, or keep a roof over your head – at the age of two, these things are either done for you – or they are not done at all. Your “control” is severely limited – without adult assistance you have no future, and you know it, more deeply than is comfortable.
So look at a photo of a man and his son. It’s not pretty. It’s anything but sweetness and light. Now suppose there was something wrong with the son’s thinking apparatus, and he assumed from the example so clearly set by his father, that everybody else in the entire world echoed exactly this staunch disapproval. From his facial expression his father thinks he’s naughty. But that was ages ago, why doesn’t he grow out of it? You can only grow out of childish views, if you can think and speak clearly about them. You can rabbit on about everything else, as much as you wish – but deep inside, deeper than you care to go unaccompanied, and you “know” you’re “naughty”. And will always remain so. It’s your obsolete view of the world – true then, false now – but you need healthy frontals to update it – and trauma puts them, with precision, absolutely out of your reach, unaided.
H so how do I know there’s been trauma? Well, as mentioned, overdue toddler-thinking can only have one cause – trauma. Trauma is the only thing which stops thought in the most crucial area of them all – your perception of who you are. In effect it has stopped you “growing up”, stopped you keeping uptodate with the world around you. As with all life forms, when winter approaches, you shut down – you need sunlight and warmth to flourish, especially when we’re small. Without it, we’re stunted – how can we be anything else? Children, whatever else they may be, are impressionable, they learn what they’re taught, else they don’t survive. And if you teach them they’re naughty, the risk is they’ll stay that way forever. Look around you, see for yourself – we’ve voted toddlers in charge, and we’re suffering.
SO THAT’S THE STORY – too much naughtiness festers, because living organisms like ourselves, need supportive atmospheres in which to blossom, especially when young – without this, we’re blighted. Given our current social mores, naughty boys cause more damage than naughty girls, but that’s largely the way we currently do things. And the remedy? Because there is one. You use physiotherapy for ordinary strokes – so why not “Verbal Physiotherapy” for verbal ones? Take care to avoid yelling at these victims that they’re even more naughty than ever they thought they were. What’s needed is exactly the opposite – you need to convince them that naughtiness is from the long ago past. You can only do this by coaxing, trusting, socialising – never easy, but doable. If it worked in a maximum security prison wing, which it did, it’ll work anywhere.
1190 – words
Wednesday, 25 November 2020
FOOTNOTES –
Trauma brainscan described by Dr Bessel van der Kolk (1996). Traumatic stress: The effects of overwhelming experience on mind, body, and society. Guilford Press. See also video at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=53RX2ESIqsM
The photo is at https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/jul/08/donald-trump-mary-trump-book-family
Link to the ebook How Verbal Physiotherapy works. – https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/892956
Further reading at The Simple Science of Sanity, Certainty, & Peace-of-Mind—Empowering ‘Intent’ Detoxifies Psychosis Philosophy Study, September 2020, Vol. 10, No. 9, 558-576. By Dr Bob Johnson. http://www.davidpublisher.com/Public/uploads/Contribute/5f7fbbfa4e4ce.pdf
Dr Bob Johnson (retd)Consultant Psychiatrist,
Empowering intent detoxifies psychoses
How Verbal Physiotherapy works – https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/892956
so how do I know there’s been trauma? Well, as mentioned, overdue toddler-thinking can only have one cause – trauma. Trauma is the only thing which stops thought in the most crucial area of them all – your perception of who you are. In effect it has stopped you “growing up”, stopped you keeping uptodate with the world around you. As with all life forms, when winter approaches, you shut down – you need sunlight and warmth to flourish, especially when we’re small. Without it, we’re stunted – how can we be anything else? Children, whatever else they may be, are impressionable, they learn what they’re taught, else they don’t survive. And if you teach them they’re naughty, the risk is they’ll stay that way forever. Look around you, see for yourself – we’ve voted toddlers in charge, and we’re suffering.