Still having problems finding a way into AST for folks, this will be attempt number I don’t know any more, another series, I suppose. The plan is to keep them short and manageable, hope to make the point with a barrage from many angles. I’ll start with the definition for AST – here’s the first, it means Antisocialization Theory – and then how it alters the narrative of a number of topics.

AST redefines everything, but we’ll try to show how, specifically, for this list of ideas:

human nature

social life

punishment

abuse

anger

empathy

relatedness theory

evolution

strength

resilience

etc. Oh, forgot some (and this will be a feature):

racism

trauma and healing, psychology

Redefinitions – 7. Relatedness

AST, a definition:

AST is the theory of our hurt, the human science of not deterrent and socialization, but of abuse, punitive and otherwise, and our antisocialization, which long word means exactly what it sounds like it means: to have been made antisocial. It is about the dark side of our social control, the stuff we supposedly don’t want to happen, beyond that the person maybe did what they were bloody well told.

The AST Theory of conflict states that the failures and ostensibly unintended consequences of our rough control are deeply and vastly consequential in human life, and its author can get very expansive, imagining it to be the post powerful and destructive force driving us.

The central idea is that structures and ways of being within the human social group – laws and punishments, ordeals, etc., –  add up to pain and trauma for the individual, while laws prohibit simple reactive violence and simple revenge, and so the individual is “charged” with bad feelings, antisocialized and looking for a fight they are allowed to have. The group’s leadership – administrators of the law – can then exploit this reservoir of anger, point it at someone and allow the citizens the “freedom,” not an accident and not irony, we are always seeing this, to deflect and unload their frustrations.

AST asks you to note, that our own people frustrate us, and exploit our frustrations at will in this system, using us to abuse some Other, some human group in a war or a pogrom, or an apartheid. That is what I call the AST theory of conflict, weaponized by our own, to be discharged in some group conflict.

Hmm. Not sure if that will be the one I use every time, but I like it for our first few entries:

AST, “relatedness”

One thing about this theory is that it appears to contradict relatedness theory, social relatedness theory, maybe even the selfish gene. I don’t hide anything, even when I should, I naively believe in truth and science and if there is something going to hurt AST from the past, we’ll deal with it right now. The authors of those theories don’t agree or appreciate AST, at least not yet. Please, don’t ask me about the circumstances, but I said, “Human child discipline is to make soldiers,” and I suppose it just sounded nuts to them. Their very own and also biology’s general theory now, relatedness, says we treat our own people well and others poorly – I seem to have the whole bloody kit and kaboodle upside down and backwards, don’t I.

Of course, that theory basically only counts one thing as mistreatment, the discontinuance of the gene, to wit, early death. It really doesn’t have anything to say about non-lethal abuse; if you survive to breed, you were “unaffected,” protected by your selfish genes. I’ll refer you back to the ‘Abuse’ entry: this is the early disappearance of three quarters of our pain in biological theory, and the severed joint where psychology should attach to it. I know: nitpicker.

I don’t believe relatedness theory addresses abuse at all, and so it does not explain abuse or damage – let alone explain the even worse treatment we withhold for the Other. I believe relatedness theory depends upon the myth of an evil human nature in that it is assumed that we will naturally abuse and kill the Other by default, in fact, it is obvious that it doesn’t think it needs a reason, in fact – it is self evident in that its authors clearly think any good treatment within the group is what requires explanation.

That’s what they “explained.”

The authors of relatedness theory expect violent chaos, except, look, the selfish gene wants to live! I think the last time I mentioned them, I was guessing that they were one of the few that didn’t predicate upon an evil Nature – but I have corrected myself here. It really doesn’t work at all without it, I mean without the evil human nature or a better theory of abuse, relatedness theory lacks a villain – and again, its authors clearly thought kindness was what required an explanation. They don’t think it needs a villain; the villain is “understood.”

I look forward to a world where villains are a little less understood, where the villains are required to be explained instead. For the record, AST explains the lot of it. It’s not hard, there’s three quarters of the world’s data is sitting right there, free, nobody’s using it.

Jeff

May 13^th., 2022

Still having problems finding a way into AST for folks, this will be attempt number I don’t know any more, another series, I suppose. The plan is to keep them short and manageable, hope to make the point with a barrage from many angles. I’ll start with the definition for AST – here’s the first, it means Antisocialization Theory – and then how it alters the narrative of a number of topics.

AST redefines everything, but we’ll try to show how, specifically, for this list of ideas:

human nature

social life

punishment

abuse

anger

empathy

relatedness theory

evolution

strength

resilience

etc. Oh, forgot some (and this will be a feature):

racism

trauma and healing, psychology

attention

culture, tradition

control

bullying

Redefinitions – 12. Bullying

AST, a definition:

AST is the theory of our hurt, the human science of not deterrent and socialization, but of abuse, punitive and otherwise, and our antisocialization, which long word means exactly what it sounds like it means: to have been made antisocial. It is about the dark side of our social control, the stuff we supposedly don’t want to happen, beyond that the person maybe did what they were bloody well told.

The AST Theory of conflict states that the failures and ostensibly unintended consequences of our rough control are deeply and vastly consequential in human life, and its author can get very expansive, imagining it to be the post powerful and destructive force driving us.

The central idea is that structures and ways of being within the human social group – laws and punishments, ordeals, etc., –  add up to pain and trauma for the individual, while laws prohibit simple reactive violence and simple revenge, and so the individual is “charged” with bad feelings, antisocialized and looking for a fight they are allowed to have. The group’s leadership – administrators of the law – can then exploit this reservoir of anger, point it at someone and allow the citizens the “freedom,” not an accident and not irony, we are always seeing this, to deflect and unload their frustrations.

AST asks you to note, that our own people frustrate us, and exploit our frustrations at will in this system, using us to abuse some Other, some human group in a war or a pogrom, or an apartheid. That is what I call the AST theory of conflict, weaponized by our own, to be discharged in some group conflict.

Hmm. Not sure if that will be the one I use every time, but I like it for our first few entries:

AST, “Bullying”

The above definitions sort of glosses over the main thing, I added “ordeals,” and “etc.,” in a less than honest way, really, I think of it as the first law, the first punishment, and that is the ordeal; it’s spanking, in a word, that begins the entire process and the rest may not happen without it. That’s what I really think. I was just trying to soft-soap you.

“Spanking” is the term for authorized abuse of children, the word for hurting children with the justification of punishment and authority, and I think we’re mostly all subject to it, and we are mostly all carrying this social default level of abuse.

AST defines “spanking,” a few ways, one different one being that it is abuse applied before . . . wait, before “epigenetic maturity?” Is this a thing yet? – before the genetic options have all been set, is what I’m after.

AST defines spanking as abuse during childhood, as epigenetically functional abuse. I think AST – as sort of our dark side personified – has hacked the genesuite, and is setting an option, the fighting option of our genes, by providing a dependably abusive environment at the time when the options are being set, childhood.

AST sees bullying as functionally identical, same as in the ‘Abuse’ entry, the innocent and the guilty are all engaged in the same enterprise. Biology doesn’t read your stupid laws.

When we are abused, we are abused and science would not divide your abusers into “innocent abusers,” and “guilty abusers,” would it, not science that cares about you and the abuse. But society labels bullies, vilifies bullies, for mirroring the exact behaviour exercised on all of us, for the exact behaviour they were taught, and not only taught generally, but taught with pain, with trauma.

Never mind criticism, never mind anger at the gaslighting – it’s just never going to bloody work, is it? Punishing and “fighting bullying?”

At the same time?

Never.

Never, never, never. Ever.

Jeff

May 10^th., 2022

Still having problems finding a way into AST for folks, this will be attempt number I don’t know any more, another series, I suppose. The plan is to keep them short and manageable, hope to make the point with a barrage from many angles. I’ll start with the definition for AST – here’s the first, it means Antisocialization Theory – and then how it alters the narrative of a number of topics.

AST redefines everything, but we’ll try to show how, specifically, for this list of ideas:

human nature

social life

punishment

abuse

anger

empathy

relatedness theory

evolution

strength

resilience

etc. Oh, forgot some (and this will be a feature):

racism

trauma and healing, psychology

attention

culture, tradition

control

bullying

Redefinitions – 6. Empathy

AST, a definition:

AST is the theory of our hurt, the human science of not deterrent and socialization, but of abuse, punitive and otherwise, and our antisocialization, which long word means exactly what it sounds like it means: to have been made antisocial. It is about the dark side of our social control, the stuff we supposedly don’t want to happen, beyond that the person maybe did what they were bloody well told.

The AST Theory of conflict states that the failures and ostensibly unintended consequences of our rough control are deeply and vastly consequential in human life, and its author can get very expansive, imagining it to be the post powerful and destructive force driving us.

The central idea is that structures and ways of being within the human social group – laws and punishments, ordeals, etc., –  add up to pain and trauma for the individual, while laws prohibit simple reactive violence and simple revenge, and so the individual is “charged” with bad feelings, antisocialized and looking for a fight they are allowed to have. The group’s leadership – administrators of the law – can then exploit this reservoir of anger, point it at someone and allow the citizens the “freedom,” not an accident and not irony, we are always seeing this, to deflect and unload their frustrations.

AST asks you to note, that our own people frustrate us, and exploit our frustrations at will in this system, using us to abuse some Other, some human group in a war or a pogrom, or an apartheid. That is what I call the AST theory of conflict, weaponized by our own, to be discharged in some group conflict.

Hmm. Not sure if that will be the one I use every time, but I like it for our first few entries:

AST, “Empathy”

We’ll go with the same format again, the Psychology Tobay definition first: empathy is an emotion we experience when we see suffering; we get it, we know how it feels, we feel it some ourselves. It is love in practice, an empathic person feels your pain, it is one of the positive things in life, and with more of it, the world would be a better place.

LOL.

I mean, I’ve heard the reverse, some famous mouthpiece called a very famous person an “empathic bully,” a few years ago, like he feels you and so he knows exactly how to hurt you and push you. (Ah, one for the list, another entry: “bullying,” adding now.) Mostly, though, empathy is good, we say, most folks don’t want to use it against you.

I’ll start my critique from the same place as last time too, pragmatism: you don’t think the bad guys empathize with each other? You don’t think racism is a bunch of people “getting it,” about each other, “supporting,” other people who share the same feelings? I think the hate groups are empathy gone wild.

AST thinks empathy is the bad thing.

I think it’s the “free with,” version, the automatic version, the “I don’t have to think and it doesn’t really do anything good” version. Empathy is when you share the feeling because you share the life and fully understand the circumstances. Empathy is when you feel bad when something bad you’re familiar with happens to someone like you. I’m sorry, it is.

Sympathy is the one you want.

Look at the big picture. You have empathy now and look at the world. We talk about it like it’s going to save the world, like we just invented it yesterday. The monkey’s empathy isn’t working, Woody!

Sympathy is the active thing. We are not changing the world by only understanding what we understand without even having to try. The application of sympathy indicates a positive motive and effort, of caring first and then seeking to understand, in order to care effectively.

I’m sorry, but empathy is none of that, it’s rather empty in comparison. A shared feeling for a shared circumstance is sort of the opposite of trying to stop whatever is causing the pain. Most folks aren’t going to tear down the shared lifestyle to fix the shared pain – it’s just the infamous thoughts and prayers, much of the time. With sympathy, perhaps the problem isn’t in-group, perhaps the system causing the pain is not your system to protect and you really can work for a real change.

The difference, caring first, sans understanding, this is the difference between sympathy and empathy, and it’s also the very difference between AST and the status quo of our warrior society, which punishes first and understands second, if ever.

Hmmm. Doesn’t feel comprehensive, but that was the idea.

Jeff May 10^th., 2022

Update:

Ah.

“AST thinks,” isn’t the point, is it? I’ve left AST out of the logic, this isn’t a proper part of the series, you wouldn’t need AST to put empathy in better perspective is all I’ve shown here!

But this is another AST hack on ourselves, this, this morality we have that ends at the border, this business that we love our own and only make constant war on some Other and this is morality, basically if you love anyone, the few hundred in your village but not the nearly eight billion outside, you have reached the peak of human kindness. It is part of AST that we are embittered, violent and dangerous, but talk about our empathy, part of our antisocialization that we focus on the positive and turn a blind eye to the rest.

Oh. I think I know which one I want to write next.

Jeff May 12^th., 2022

Still having problems finding a way into AST for folks, this will be attempt number I don’t know any more, another series, I suppose. The plan is to keep them short and manageable, hope to make the point with a barrage from many angles. I’ll start with the definition for AST – here’s the first, it means Antisocialization Theory – and then how it alters the narrative of a number of topics.

AST redefines everything, but we’ll try to show how, specifically, for this list of ideas:

human nature

social life

punishment

abuse

anger

empathy

relatedness theory

evolution

strength

resilience

etc. Oh, forgot some (and this will be a feature):

racism

trauma and healing, psychology

attention

culture, tradition

control

Redefinitions – 5. Anger

AST, a definition:

AST is the theory of our hurt, the human science of not deterrent and socialization, but of abuse, punitive and otherwise, and our antisocialization, which long word means exactly what it sounds like it means: to have been made antisocial. It is about the dark side of our social control, the stuff we supposedly don’t want to happen, beyond that the person maybe did what they were bloody well told.

The AST Theory of conflict states that the failures and ostensibly unintended consequences of our rough control are deeply and vastly consequential in human life, and its author can get very expansive, imagining it to be the post powerful and destructive force driving us.

The central idea is that structures and ways of being within the human social group – laws and punishments, ordeals, etc., –  add up to pain and trauma for the individual, while laws prohibit simple reactive violence and simple revenge, and so the individual is “charged” with bad feelings, antisocialized and looking for a fight they are allowed to have. The group’s leadership – administrators of the law – can then exploit this reservoir of anger, point it at someone and allow the citizens the “freedom,” not an accident and not irony, we are always seeing this, to deflect and unload their frustrations.

AST asks you to note, that our own people frustrate us, and exploit our frustrations at will in this system, using us to abuse some Other, some human group in a war or a pogrom, or an apartheid. That is what I call the AST theory of conflict, weaponized by our own, to be discharged in some group conflict.

Hmm. Not sure if that will be the one I use every time, but I like it for our first few entries:

AST, “Anger”

OK, the first several have been long, I fell into trying to do too much at once as always. The idea wasn’t to present several long ideas in lieu of one, it was supposed to be brief, alternate definitions to counter the social narratives around a word or an idea, or to counter the Psycholoby Today sort of psychological or scientific definitions. Some may perhaps be good and proper definitions and I simply wish to add a qualifier.

So, anger is defined many ways, lately as an emotion, and as such involuntary, and a theory has evolved about anger’s usefulness, anger is our unfairness detector, it is an evolved response that gets us out of bad situations with some adrenalin and a suspension of peace and perhaps reason. If they fear our anger, we get respect.

This one would fall under the latter category, I at first thought, I pretty much agreed. Quite logical. So my only critique was – how’s that working out for you?

How is using your good and natural anger improving your life?

My answer is that some good and natural things have been hacked against us (sure, by ourselves) and that anger is one such, and rarely saves anyone under the human system, perhaps “anymore.” Generally speaking, we don’t really get the chance to use it to escape our circumstances. The law and order nuts  will  lock you up if you try, mostly. You will become unemployed, mostly.

Right?

So, I will project what I see to be the rest of the social narrative now: “Anger is a good and evolved emotion for our safety and interests, but we don’t approve anymore, it’s an unfortunate legacy of the past that we are trying to move beyond, blah, blah, blah . . . “

You know what? Species don’t grow out of emotions, so no.

Self defense doesn’t require anger. Good fighters know they are more effective cool and thinking straight, don’t they? – I’m sorry, don’t ask me about how to fight, I shouldn’t speak – but is an animal “angry” to fight you for food? This theory, “unfairness detector, for use to get us out of trouble,” I’m sorry, again, reasonable as can be . . . but it’s the opposite of antisocialization theory, which is not suspended just because it’s us feeling the feelings. It can’t be true, I’m sorry.

It’s the exact opposite of the actual, boots on the ground truth.

It has been a very long time indeed since your personal anger solved your life, we have had rulers and bosses for quite a while already. Your personal anger has another use, it isn’t created and tolerated and everywhere because it serves you. It was never meant to be turned on your oppressors, it comes from your oppressors to be used against their enemies. That is AST, as stated at the top of each of these.

And the social narrative about how it’s a “good” emotion, well, yes it is, to our leaders, to the powers that be, to them, your anger is very good indeed, while they remain cool and thinking straight.

Jeff

May 8^th., 2022

Still having problems finding a way into AST for folks, this will be attempt number I don’t know any more, another series, I suppose. The plan is to keep them short and manageable, hope to make the point with a barrage from many angles. I’ll start with the definition for AST – here’s the first, it means Antisocialization Theory – and then how it alters the narrative of a number of topics.

AST redefines everything, but we’ll try to show how, specifically, for this list of ideas:

human nature

social life

punishment

abuse

anger

empathy

relatedness theory

evolution

strength

resilience

etc. Oh, forgot some (and this will be a feature):

racism

trauma and healing, psychology

attention

culture, tradition

control

Redefinitions – 4. Abuse

AST, a definition:

AST is the theory of our hurt, the human science of not deterrent and socialization, but of abuse, punitive and otherwise, and our antisocialization, which long word means exactly what it sounds like it means: to have been made antisocial. It is about the dark side of our social control, the stuff we supposedly don’t want to happen, beyond that the person maybe did what they were bloody well told.

The AST Theory of conflict states that the failures and ostensibly unintended consequences of our rough control are deeply and vastly consequential in human life, and its author can get very expansive, imagining it to be the post powerful and destructive force driving us.

The central idea is that structures and ways of being within the human social group – laws and punishments, ordeals, etc., –  add up to pain and trauma for the individual, while laws prohibit simple reactive violence and simple revenge, and so the individual is “charged” with bad feelings, antisocialized and looking for a fight they are allowed to have. The group’s leadership – administrators of the law – can then exploit this reservoir of anger, point it at someone and allow the citizens the “freedom,” not an accident and not irony, we are always seeing this, to deflect and unload their frustrations.

AST asks you to note, that our own people frustrate us, and exploit our frustrations at will in this system, using us to abuse some Other, some human group in a war or a pogrom, or an apartheid. That is what I call the AST theory of conflict, weaponized by our own, to be discharged in some group conflict.

Hmm. Not sure if that will be the one I use every time, but I like it for our first few entries:

AST, “Abuse”

Thinking that if you’re new to the series, at least I hope you read the immediately previous one, “punishment,” they’re really one idea. Thank you.

I try to make the point that the two things, “normal” punishment and outright abuse are the same function, that they both use the same currency, and our designations of what is good and what is bad in it don’t mean anything to the basic science, to the currency, which is pain, and our rather annoying but unavoidable way of letting it change us. The “we all agree” victims, they get some clarity that they were changed, but the rest of us, we are the damaged three quarters people, hurting, but still talking about “deterrents.”

Our parents, the teachers, the preacher, everyone would have us think we have been “deterred,” but not altered, and of course this is only supportable if they never had to “prove” the deterrent to us even once, and only believable in a world that has zero interest in three quarters of the downstream consequences and either likes them or cannot see them.

For the record, it’s sort of half and half, we “don’t like” war, but we worship our warlike “strength.” I am trying to break that down for us.

It’s abuse victims that suffered for a lack of “strength,” and likely fixated upon it as  an answer, a solution to their situation at a very young age; it doesn’t seem like something that would look so magical to an older person who already knows about society and police and life and wouldn’t maybe jump to a personal “strength” to solve their real life problems. It’s an abused child’s “go to,” is what it is.

It’s also what Bad Cop Parent already admitted he was doing to us behind the woodshed: here’s your solution kid, personal strength – knowing you will likely grow out of it regarding him, and probably also that he successfully programmed you for life, with a speech that he made that added up to your consent for the whole thing. You sign the form, when you are the parent and start making the same speech.

Call it a spectrum, if you must. A spectrum with the most extreme abuse at one end and nothing but love and food and healthcare at the other and all of life between, but then know that the abuse begins immediately off of the love terminus and increases steadily to the terrible end, where it is all of it and from there the love starts from nothing and increases in the other direction.

But that the power is on the dark side.

That the love on this graphic is a weak thing, the far less powerfully causative thing. I was thinking of the proportions of dark matter, I liked the metaphor and the symmetry, which is what, 85% to 15 % bright matter? – but a trained psychologist told me their rule of thumb, they mentioned an author, I forget, is five to one. Wait, that’s pretty close isn’t it? LOL I was thinking 80/20, I wrote it before I looked at it and saw that is four to one, ha. Hey! Was that Jim Morrison’s Five to One? Probably, huh. Whups. Sorry, back to Bullet, already in progress.

OMG, The old get old and the young get stronger! Stop it!

Where were we. Right.

That it is mostly a graph with one thing on it, abuse, and where there is less of it – this seems to be the secret – even far less, it is nonetheless the causative thing, that the opposing force is . . . nothing. Sort of.

This is why I keep saying “science, damnit!,” because in science, many things exist in a simple gradient, a molecule of abuse won’t make the change, let’s say kill you, but a teaspoon makes you sick and half a litre kills you – hey, this might work.

We talk like Big Tobacco or Big Oil about ourselves, sure it’s toxic at half a litre, but a teaspoon doesn’t hurt! No. We’re sick, and that teaspoonful is the only thing that happened to us. Then we invent creationism, God and Human Nature to explain the effect of the teaspoonful and get rich selling the stuff. We really do, we sound just like that, no wonder the swine get away with it, they’re using our own stupid defense on us. We are Big Abuse, and we are too big to fail.

Proof, you want something new, OK. I tweeted it the other day, but recent and me, still new enough: corrupt, evil, often racist judges rarely face justice, someone said, and I hadn’t gone quite this far before, I mean, I say “spanking is not about teaching, it’s about antisocialization,” a lot, but I guess . . . I guess it means AST calls “justice,” a lie.

If it weren’t, I think we would all imagine some strict code among judges to police one another or something, but instead they remain and exist as bad judges the court staff all know about until retirement or death, and so to the system, clearly, “justice” isn’t the point, the point is how I and AST see it: abuse and punishment are the same in their true, little considered effects of terrorizing and so “strengthening” the population. The innocent and guilty all antisocialize the same.

They are all going to get angry and strong, the innocent and guilty alike.

To the deeper function, antisocialization, humanity driving itself to more and more aggression, it really doesn’t matter if they’re innocent. Half the laws are made up anyway, right? Bill Murray, Meatballs, say it with me: It just doesn’t matter! It just doesn’t matter! I’m sorry, it doesn’t. To suggest it does is to suggest hurting the guilty ones is good for all of us, good for society, and I’m sorry, that particular Elvis has left the building.

That is buying into the excuse, the justification for a world of abuse.

AST says all that is nonsense. Harming the guilty harms us all as much as harming the innocent does, AST finds violence and harm to be bad things, crimes in themselves, unlike regular old bro science, which seems to say, “if they call it a deterrent, it doesn’t count.”

I feel for abuse victims, I’m one, we all are, I just feel for the ones that don’t seem to know they are, and I am trying to solve the problem for the no-one can know how many are to come, born into this system where abuse is normal and legal, and downright bloody mandatory. Don’t read me backwards, I minimize nothing, I am not trying to normalize extreme abuse, I am trying to do the opposite, to re-weird all abuse, spanking and police, because the “normal” bad stuff carries the worst along with it.

To my mind, fighting the worst and ignoring “spanking,” is fighting myself, pulling in both directions, missing the principle. If we accept any abuse, we’ve accepted the false premise and we’re asking for it all, and it’s not really an accident. It’s predictable, with decent science.

Jeff

Cinco de Mayo, 2022

Still having problems finding a way into AST for folks, this will be attempt number I don’t know any more, another series, I suppose. The plan is to keep them short and manageable, hope to make the point with a barrage from many angles. I’ll start with the definition for AST – here’s the first, it means Antisocialization Theory – and then how it alters the narrative of a number of topics.

AST redefines everything, but we’ll try to show how, specifically, for this list of ideas:

human nature

social life

punishment

abuse

anger

empathy

relatedness theory

evolution

strength

resilience

etc. Oh, forgot some (and this will be a feature):

racism

trauma and healing, psychology

Redefinitions – 3. Punishment

AST, a definition:

AST is the theory of our hurt, the human science of not deterrent and socialization, but of abuse, punitive and otherwise, and our antisocialization, which long word means exactly what it sounds like it means: to have been made antisocial. It is about the dark side of our social control, the stuff we supposedly don’t want to happen, beyond that the person maybe did what they were bloody well told.

The AST Theory of conflict states that the failures and ostensibly unintended consequences of our rough control are deeply and vastly consequential in human life, and its author can get very expansive, imagining it to be the post powerful and destructive force driving us.

The central idea is that structures and ways of being within the human social group – laws and punishments, ordeals, etc., –  add up to pain and trauma for the individual, while laws prohibit simple reactive violence and simple revenge, and so the individual is “charged” with bad feelings, antisocialized and looking for a fight they are allowed to have. The group’s leadership – administrators of the law – can then exploit this reservoir of anger, point it at someone and allow the citizens the “freedom,” not an accident and not irony, this word, we are always seeing this, to deflect and unload their frustrations.

AST asks you to note, that our own people frustrate us, and exploit our frustrations at will in this system, using us to abuse some Other, some human group in a war or a pogrom, or an apartheid. That is what I call the AST theory of conflict, weaponized by our own, to be discharged in some group conflict.

Hmm. Not sure if that will be the one I use every time, but I like it for our first few entries:

AST, “Punishment”

OK, “ostensibly unintended consequences of our rough control are deeply and vastly consequential in human life,” I said, didn’t I. Of course the biggest failures are easy to see, we all agree it’s the case for people whose abuse went beyond all idea of control or teaching. Outright, illicit abuse we all see as abuse, we count the downsides of that, at least within the lives of the people and those around them, and intergenerationally, within families, even in whole communities we can see the effects quite often.

Regularly, an abuser will have called it punishment or some such, but over a certain line, we all know it’s abuse and we know it has downstream consequences that go on and on. People need therapy and such, a lot of extra love to find their way back to life, and still, effects escape into the stream of time and affect the next generation. We know about the bad feelings, the powerlessness, the anger, the ideations, the need to deflect, all bad things, no-one should be left to feel these awful things, feelings are involuntary and it is abuse to create the crime that induces them.

We know this.

However, I noticed and so AST speaks about the missing cause, the missing feelings, the perhaps less intense bad feelings we all get from the abuse that doesn’t cross our “line.” I intuit that this is a quarter at least of all causality in human affairs that is simply missing, but you know what, I’ve never actually tried to draw it, let’s try a truth table of sorts:

Ha – did I say one quarter, not three?

There are two sides to life, too, the personal and the public.

It seems to me that in human life, as I said, personal abuse stories are told, personal causes and effects are hashed out, but social life is rarely invoked as a cause, we do not talk about society causing abuse, it’s all personal. When it comes to abuse, we are on our own, no-one is planning to restructure society for that.

It’s a “personal journey,” donchaknow. How much of psychology.

So we count one of two sets of effects for outright, illegal abuse, the personal one. Public effects of extreme abuse? Is that a thing?

I’ll have you note, we count neither side of the second thing, no personal remedy is coming for your “normal” punishments, and we certainly don’t talk about negative effects on society from law. So there it is: we ignore three quarters of the information and causation for our self-analysis. And so, Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of Man? We don’t! And we clearly don’t want to know.

Three quarters.

No wonder I avoided drawing it out for so long. Ouch.

There is interplay, extreme abuse easily hides among “normal” abuse, as I said, when I was young, a screaming child brought no curious saviours, it was normal to spank and normal to hear a child screaming. We were surely only hearing lessons, not beating or more. But . . . rationally, scientifically. You can’t use a “deterrent” and then declare it harmless! If it’s harmless, prithee, where is the deterrent?

Punishment makes us quite stupid. It’s not harmless, simple. See? Saved you from that very stupid trap right there.

The harm, the fact of the actual implementation of the supposed “deterrents,” that is half of our possible knowledge regarding ourselves, much of our bad feelings and much of our anger and aggression, this is what AST cannot seem to get through humanity’s thick skull. Calling most of it “legal,” or “normal,” doesn’t stop the cause and effect, you poor, stupid, abused apes!

Meant with love, harsh truth for my fam, I mean unless you happen to be rich. Then adjust the list accordingly.

Calling most of it “legal,” or “normal,” doesn’t stop the cause and effect, Mom! That isn’t better, is it. Harsh truths are harsh, no way around it. Teacher? No, don’t go after Mom, don’t go after teachers . . . cops are an extreme, obvious case. I’m looking for something a little less ham-handed, but really, it’s all of us, in most of our roles, isn’t it. AST tries very hard not to engage in Us and Them stuff. It’s pretty much all of us. The exceptions aren’t affecting the world much, at least not right now.

I’ve talked about this word too long, I have completely forgotten how this conversation is supposed to begin, but punishment is abuse, with a social waiver, “good” abuse, we say, and we only count its downsides in the most extreme failures, while the downsides are, well, I’ll get expansive again. The downsides are we look so bad, anyone would believe some god made us awful on purpose, among other things.

The downsides are pain, propagated endlessly, a huge, repressed and ignored reservoir of anger and pain we all carry that, as I say in the Conflict Theory, drives us forever to hatred and war.

OK. Breaking the “short” rule a little, we’ll stop.

Really, this one and the next one, “abuse,” are one idea, I hope if you don’t read the whole series, at least you don’t read this one without seeing the next one, the other half of this thought. Thanks.

Jeff

May 3^rd., 2022

Still having problems finding a way into AST for folks, this will be attempt number I don’t know any more, another series, I suppose. The plan is to keep them short and manageable, hope to make the point with a barrage from many angles. I’ll start with the definition for AST – here’s the first, it means Antisocialization Theory – and then how it alters the narrative of a number of topics.

AST redefines everything, but we’ll try to show how, specifically, for this list of ideas:

human nature

social life

punishment

abuse

anger

empathy

relatedness theory

evolution

strength

resilience

Oh, forgot some (and this will be a feature):

racism

trauma and healing, psychology

attention

culture, tradition

control

Redefinitions – 11. Racism

AST, a definition:

AST is the theory of our hurt, the human science of not deterrent and socialization, but of abuse, punitive and otherwise, and our antisocialization, which long word means exactly what it sounds like it means: to have been made antisocial. It is about the dark side of our social control, the stuff we supposedly don’t want to happen, beyond that the person maybe did what they were bloody well told.

The AST Theory of conflict states that the failures and ostensibly unintended consequences of our rough control are deeply and vastly consequential in human life, and its author can get very expansive, imagining it to be the post powerful and destructive force driving us.

The central idea is that structures and ways of being within the human social group – laws and punishments, ordeals, etc., –  add up to pain and trauma for the individual, while laws prohibit simple reactive violence and simple revenge, and so the individual is “charged” with bad feelings, antisocialized and looking for a fight they are allowed to have. The group’s leadership – administrators of the law – can then exploit this reservoir of anger, point it at someone and allow the citizens the “freedom,” not an accident and not irony, we are always seeing this, to deflect and unload their frustrations.

AST asks you to note, that our own people frustrate us, and exploit our frustrations at will in this system, using us to abuse some Other, some human group in a war or a pogrom, or an apartheid. That is what I call the AST theory of conflict, weaponized by our own, to be discharged in some group conflict.

Hmm. Not sure if that will be the one I use every time, but I like it for our first few entries:

AST, “Racism”

Honestly, see the above.

I see Critical Race Theory as a subset of Antisocialization Theory, I see racial violence and inequity as antisocialized people seeking an outlet among an out-group, and although there has been some peace and multiculturalism here and then, it has mostly been a fairly safe bet to take it out on an obvious, visible Other.

Racism is AST, it is earning a load of bad feelings among “our own” people, family, work, social structures and burdens, and designating some visible Other as a legitimate target upon which to unload them. This dynamic is real, rather biological in that it is driven by pain, and it doesn’t matter as much as we hope it does if a somewhat tortured person is educated; they still need an outlet when put under pressure. Why would an education help that?

It’s not education that makes people racist either, people put upon and abused don’t need to be told, they will actively seek a legitimate target. The liberals think the parents teach it, they may, but they don’t have to, all they have to do is abuse, and racism is sort of automatic. Violence becomes automatic, and race signals “other” to an angry mind.

Of course, in the way that CRT is anathema to racists, so too is AST to everyone.

In the good cop/bad cop analogy, the good cop (Mom, to the cis?) spanks the kids to teach you manners and to not break things and such and the bad cop (Dad, to the cis) may admit violence doesn’t teach etiquette but tells you the secret: it makes you strong. I agree: strong enough to start patrolling your borders, looking for trouble. Strong enough to hold a charge. If you’re too “strong,” though, if you can’t hold it in until the next war, there are always wars at home, crimes to do, racism to perpetrate. Many of the strongest spend time in prison.

When you’re just right, the Goldilocks effect, you wait for the war. When you’re just right, perfectly antisocial, your deflective violence happens in broad daylight and your peers love you. You’re a stand up guy, for the criminal gang that is “your people.” You “support the troops.” And the cops. That’s AST.

 If AST is what drives us to war, then CRT is the always war at home. I assume the racists have it harder at home, they can’t hold it in and their war never ends. CRT is mostly that there are ways for racists to deflect on both sides of the law, some go to prison, some run the prisons, overly antisocialized, pushed too far, and melting down in public, to cheers for their antisocial policies. Isn’t he strong.

There’s a war on, don’t you feel.

Jeff

May 1^st., 2022

Still having problems finding a way into AST for folks, this will be attempt number I don’t know any more, another series, I suppose. The plan is to keep them short and manageable, hope to make the point with a barrage from many angles. I’ll start with the definition for AST – here’s the first, it means Antisocialization Theory – and then how it alters the narrative of a number of topics.

AST redefines everything, but we’ll try to show how, specifically, for this list of ideas:

human nature

social life

punishment

abuse

anger

empathy

relatedness theory

evolution

strength

resilience

Oh, forgot some (and this will be a feature):

racism

trauma and healing, psychology

attention

culture, tradition

control

Redefinitions – 2. Social Life

AST, a definition:

AST is the theory of our hurt, the human science of not deterrent and socialization, but of abuse, punitive and otherwise, and our antisocialization, which long word means exactly what it sounds like it means: to have been made antisocial. It is about the dark side of our social control, the stuff we supposedly don’t want to happen, beyond that the person maybe did what they were bloody well told.

The AST Theory of Conflict states that the failures and ostensibly unintended consequences of our rough control are deeply and vastly consequential in human life, and its author can get very expansive, imagining it to be the post powerful and destructive force driving us.

The central idea is that structures and ways of being within the human social group – laws and punishments, ordeals, etc., –  add up to pain and trauma for the individual, while laws prohibit simple reactive violence and simple revenge, and so the individual is “charged” with bad feelings, antisocialized and looking for a fight they are allowed to have. The group’s leadership – administrators of the law – can then exploit this reservoir of anger, point it at someone and allow the citizens the “freedom,” not an accident and not irony, we are always seeing this, to deflect and unload their frustrations.

AST asks you to note, that our own people frustrate us, and exploit our frustrations at will in this system, using us to abuse some Other, some human group in a war or a pogrom, or an apartheid. That is what I call the AST theory of Conflict, weaponized by our own, to be discharged in some group conflict.

Hmm. Not sure if that will be the one I use every time, but I like it for our first few entries:

AST “Social Life”

On the one hand, I am a contrarian and everything rings wrong to me, and no-one will say the thing I try to debunk, things unsaid are more difficult to disprove. In this light, knowing it’s weak at this stage of our lessons, I say: we think “social,” means the positive thing, perhaps “prosocial.” It’s the generic word, it encompasses all things, prosocial things, antisocial things, and neutral things, I suppose, asocial stuff, but you might not pick that up in casual conversation.

Antisocial is a problem, prosocial is rarely spoken, we use “social,” for that, social, in it’s street level, social sort of use and meaning, means positive interaction, our social world is our community, friends and family, like that. Being social is interchangeable with being sociable, generally. Again, it is always my sense, my interpretation of a social meme that I am forever trying to critique, and I lose everyone right there, I think, no-one will take the responsibility for a conflation like this, not enough to defend it, and certainly no-one can promise to change such a vague thing.

Will you allow it, may I continue, making my case against “we think “social” is all good?”

LOL – it’s the court of the internet, silence indicates assent and I’m not listening, Princess Bride meme.

But there’s the dark side to being social, we are prosocial to our friends and antisocial to enemies and probably strangers. To “be social” is to draw the line and arrange people on one side of it or the other. It is to choose, to . . . loaded word, discriminate, meant literally and technically, generically, not the specific meaning today in our current conversations about racism and hate. The sorting function. I mean, it’s the thing, the same thing, the very thing, and if we could stop it all, we’d stop that too.

There is another conflation, a smaller one I need to mention, about the term, “social creature,” and variants. I think when we talk about the wildebeest or a herd animal, it means the positive thing, “social creature” for herds seems to mean they all get along, except you know, for the rut and whatnot. For us, it’s all of it, we are more properly a “group social” creature, perhaps, get along with some, in conflict with others. For the group social animal, “social,” means all of it, the good, the bad, and the ugly. Cool?

We are having trouble separating things, our social life is structured with the group problems, structured around the situation, the conflict, and our lifestyle now requires the out-group, the enemy, and our best prosocial morality is predicated on an evil, antisocial Other. The movie trope is true: lacking a real enemy, like after Cyrus’ foes were all assimilated, not sure he did this, but we do – we create them, out of thin air. Every moral lesson needs a bad guy.

In this sense, it is AST’s position that our rough controls, the rules (threats) and punishments make us more antisocial, better adapted for a life of conflict. AST is ironic, or rather life without it is, in that the deterrents we apply to make us “good,” are weak, virtual things, while the threat and abuse of actual punishments make us “bad,” all day long, antisocial. I think the social consensus no-one has to defend is that yes, this is what we do, to be strong, to defend from other nations, yes, this means life and that is our foundation for our morality.

I get it.

But they tell the same story. Yours is a one-group morality and has zero control on war. Causes them all, in point of fact. Look how in its extreme versions, it shows up as a death cult instead.

There’s a genetic component, environmental control of genes that help in the event of an abusive environment, so called fighting genes or something similar. AST’s position is that we have hacked these genes, providing the environment to control the genetic choice – through discipline, through the ritualized abuse we call spanking.

This looks like a positive feedback loop to me, select a gene, activate it, select it again . . . which I worry is also the AST Theory of Conflict, that this feedback loop goes to thermal runaway in the world every ninety years or so. Ouch. Sorry.

Jeff

April 29^th., 2022

Still having problems finding a way into AST for folks, this will be attempt number I don’t know any more, another series, I suppose. The plan is to keep them short and manageable, hope to make the point with a barrage from many angles. I’ll start with the definition for AST – here’s the first, it means Antisocialization Theory – and then how it alters the narrative of a number of topics.

AST redefines everything, but we’ll try to show how, specifically, for this list of ideas:

human nature

social life

punishment

abuse

anger

empathy

relatedness theory

evolution

strength

resilience

etc.

Oh, forgot some (and this will be a feature):

racism

trauma and healing, psychology

attention

culture, tradition

control

Redefinitions – 1. Human Nature

AST, a Definition

AST is the theory of our hurt, the human science of not deterrent and socialization, but of abuse, punitive and otherwise, and our antisocialization, which long word means exactly what it sounds like it means: to have been made antisocial. It is about the dark side of our social control, the stuff we supposedly don’t want to happen, beyond that the person maybe did what they were bloody well told.

The AST Theory of Conflict states that the failures and ostensibly unintended consequences of our rough control are deeply and vastly consequential in human life, and its author can get very expansive, imagining it to be the post powerful and destructive force driving us.

The central idea is that structures and ways of being within the human social group – laws and punishments, ordeals, etc., –  add up to pain and trauma for the individual, while laws prohibit simple reactive violence and simple revenge, and so the individual is “charged” with bad feelings, antisocialized and looking for a fight they are allowed to have. The group’s leadership – administrators of the law – can then exploit this reservoir of anger, point it at someone and allow the citizens the “freedom,” – not an accident and not irony, this word choice, we are always seeing this – to deflect and unload their frustrations.

AST asks you to note, that our own people frustrate us, and exploit our frustrations at will in this system, using us to abuse some Other, some human group in a war or a pogrom, or an apartheid. That is what I call the AST theory of Conflict, weaponized by our own, to be discharged in some group conflict.

Hmm. Not sure if that will be the one I use every time, but I like it for our first entry:

AST and “Human Nature”

First – fooled ya, there’s no such thing, AST doesn’t have that. AST needs a reason that humans do bad things, while “human nature” would seem to state that no matter what horrors we perpetrate, no explanation is required: of course genocides. Whaddayamean, “why?” “Human Nature!”

“Natures,” – “essences,” aren’t a thing, not a meaningful actual thing. It’s a made up premise from thousands of years ago. I mean, sure it’s the foundation of all human society and law, but that doesn’t make it true, that’s just the twin fallacies of consensus and tradition. I have a speech about language and neural pathways, that your neural pathways don’t change every time you learn a new word, that mostly new words only re-label old paths – and “genetically determined” or “genetic legacy,” is the new label for “human nature,” which perhaps is a new label for Original Sin.

This function makes it hard to change. We know about things that grow and change, so we surely have a circuit to understand evolution, but I guess it’s not yet the superhighway the “human nature” one is? It’s hard to change, our thoughts want to use the main road or something.

“Genetic legacy,” is antithetical to evolution, it’s used where “human nature” would be used, when it’s time to say “that’s just the way it is,” – when evolution is supposed to mean nothing “is” the way it is for long, everything is becoming something and stopping being something else, ‘natures,’ and ‘determinations,’ are exactly not the point. An evolving creature doesn’t make excuses about what it “is,” it actively adapts, it reaches for the next thing to be. That’s what happens when a real creature adapts to actual reality.

It’s not so clear that’s us, I admit. But the false binary, formerly “human nature,” vs the blank slate is now presented as “genetics” vs the blank slate, and they have their proof, it’s not a blank slate, I get it, there are specific genetics in place – my answer is, yes, not blank, yes, an operating system – still not a “nature,” still not a static thing, still not an excuse! And there is environmental control of genetic options! Even if the genesuite was static (it’s not), are every one of its options “just the way it is?”

The language is not bad, but the thought isn’t up to it.

AST doesn’t need to bust the “natures” myth, Darwin did that, or he tried, we’re still trying. Like I say, change is hard. The problem is, it’s never busted, no-one loses it, “human nature” is our last idea, still there, underneath all of our education, the last stop as our minds trail off, faced with evil we cannot otherwise explain, “bah, human nature.” AST doesn’t stop at rhetorical roadblocks, AST has a rule, no “human nature.” You must explain the behaviour, with science, here on earth, no matter that it’s evil, of course, especially because it’s evil.

AST hates to make threats, but “human nature” seems to keep producing global violent meltdowns and insists there’s nothing for it, don’t even try. That myth is just going to let us kill everything, ourselves not least. You need AST. OK, that’s not enough to get anything, but that, I’m afraid that really is “just the way it is,” LOL.

More to come.

Jeff

April 28^th., 2022