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

childcare/school

Spoiling

Rhetoric

Redefinitions – 10. Rhetoric

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 word, 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:

New, May 26^th., 2022: there seems to be a cyclic aspect to the life of conflict described, we see societies forever moving towards authoritarianism and war, followed by a relative peace and the slow buildup of bad feelings again, as the chaos fades and the social control is re-established, and . . . grows, relentlessly, towards conflict again. AST makes the point that this is a positive feedback loop, that a violent environment gets more so, that the people make adaptations for it that make it all worse in the next year and the next generation.

This feedback loop is not occurring in the wild violence of the chimpanzee, of the past, which, as we all perceive, is still waning in the human world. This is a feedback loop of the violence we like and do on purpose. Back to the “human nature” myth, why would a static nature have feedback loops and cycles?

AST, “Rhetoric”

I’m up to Number Ten in the blog, I think, I’m jumping a few, I suppose I could renumber, but I have a few started already.

This one is mostly to say and demonstrate: you know all this already.

The existence and the common understanding about rhetoric proves the matter, doesn’t it? You know you have a default. You know about the things that are so deep and unquestioned that no-one even has to say them. You know that all we have to do is lay out a problem, mention a name or a type and the rest is understood.

All I’m saying is your defaults, what you “understand,” are not universal truths. There are real world reasons and causes for what you can and cannot understand. I know no-one puts these two memes together in the same place at the same time, for obvious reasons, the reasons being that if you think “mention a name and we’ll hurt/kill them,” doesn’t have a real world cause, then you think that is a created thing – and “our murderousnesss comes straight from God and creation,” well, that is a well worn trope – but science it ain’t. Your defaults are not God’s defaults, they are a matter of your genetics, what sort of creature you are, and your environment, and the interplay between them.

So you thinking that way, that violence is automatic and created, you having this default is indicative of your environment and the sort of creature you are: for this creature, at this moment, with this makeup, “problem,” + “identity” = violence, every time, often enough that the creature’s evolved language doesn’t require the words to be said. You see where I’m going. Genetics.

How is that OK?

How is this creature ever to crawl out of this muck?

I get it, this is the creature that has survived so far, with these genes, but really? “Survived this far?” Does that soundbite come from the same folks who think that hundreds of millions of years of dinosaur life – three times, no less! – was a “failure,” because they’re dead now? If we don’t make it through the coming years, we can count ourselves in mere thousands. “So far.” Bloody visionary, ain’t it?

I’m saying there’s a gene for that and we do have the option to feed that bad wolf a little less, part of which would be to see that simple equation as the “our problem,” it is and not accept this awful default as the way it is and the way it ought to be. That’s the opposite of evolution, where creatures see what they ought to be and become it.

Jeff

Oct. 23^rd.,2022

#WEAKTOGETHER

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

childcare/school

Redefinitions – 10. Resilience

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 word, 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:

New, May 26^th., 2022: there seems to be a cyclic aspect to the life of conflict described, we see societies forever moving towards authoritarianism and war, followed by a relative peace and the slow buildup of bad feelings again, as the chaos fades and the social control is re-established, and . . . grows, relentlessly, towards conflict again. AST makes the point that this is a positive feedback loop, that a violent environment gets more so, that the people make adaptations for it that make it all worse in the next year and the next generation.

This feedback loop is not occurring in the wild violence of the chimpanzee, of the past, which, as we all perceive, is still waning in the human world. This is a feedback loop of the violence we like and do on purpose. Back to the “human nature” myth, why would a static nature have feedback loops and cycles?

AST, “Resilience”

I spend a lot of ink on strength, and of course, “resilience,” isn’t so different, but I suppose the difference is only that resilience knows it’s lost at least one fight already? Ah – resilience acknowledges an objection we perhaps all have at some age, that there is always someone stronger and we are going to lose some. “Strength,” as in the infantile magical state of safety we likely first fell in love with loses power as we learn the world and also loses its critical necessity when we lose a battle or several and realize we still need to live and carry on afterwards. Then we are going to need the sort of strength that even losing cannot debunk – resilience.

Maybe you can be strong again.

If you read the preamble once, or have ever read me before, you know what that serves, what we want your strength for, whatever you can muster again, the war effort still needs you. If you can’t march, perhaps you can teach. If you can’t do that, can we use your image, then? If all else fails, your failure can terrorize someone. I know, like in Fear and Loathing: I go too far.

Mostly, resilience doesn’t mean back to battle, only back to work! When I did this before, I took this tack, I suppose it’s still the one I like, give the objection for you, and then try to answer that.

How can that be bad? Strength and resilience are bad? So you advocate for weakness?

Yes, yes, bloody Hell, yes, I advocate for “weakness,” because there’s a lot of people in that word, all of us at both ends of life and most of it in between. Resilience is what is called “victim burdening,” like, bare bones, context free, whatever it is, whatever your hurt was, it is on you to bounce back strong from it. There are no plans to slow whatever hurt you, you fix this problem by somehow overcoming it, or failing that, at least by making it harder to see.

Interestingly, the autism community (inasmuch as the first batch of random autistics I’ve started to follow on Twitter are a “community’) says this a lot, insisting this is the only path autistics understand and can work with regarding themselves, to address the causes, that we do not seem to respond with the desired strength, that only addressing the causes seems meaningful to them, I mean us. I wish to make the point to us, and to the neurotypical, that it’s not really “working,” for them either, that the world is not really working at all, rather, it is forever falling apart in violence.

Enough, I already know I’ll be repeating much of this function in forthcoming entries, particularly the ones dealing with those who would help us become more resilient, the good folks of psychology.

Jeff

June 19^th., 2022

#WEAKTOGETHER

May 26^th., 2022, making changes to the common section, the AST definition.

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

childcare/school

Redefinitions – 9. Strength

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 word, 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:

New, May 26^th., 2022: there seems to be a cyclic aspect to the life of conflict described, we see societies forever moving towards authoritarianism and war, followed by a relative peace and the slow buildup of bad feelings again, as the chaos fades and the social control is re-established, and . . . grows, relentlessly, towards conflict again. AST makes the point that this is a positive feedback loop, that a violent environment gets more so, that the people make adaptations for it that make it all worse in the next year and the next generation.

This feedback loop is not occurring in the wild violence of the chimpanzee, of the past, which, as we all perceive, is still waning in the human world. This is a feedback loop of the violence we like and do on purpose. Back to the “human nature” myth, why would a static nature have feedback loops and cycles?

AST, “Strength”

OK, I did a lot of this in the “Abuse” entry, mostly in individual terms. I suggested that a hurt baby sees the disparity of the adult’s strength and smartly processes that if they, the baby were stronger, they could have escaped it, fought back or defended. It was too brief, but I offered that a more worldly, older person who is aware of the social control, rules, etc., may not see personal strength as a workable solution on first thought, but that this seems logical to me for an infant. I have said elsewhere that I think perhaps we all make that assessment along with a more general one about Human Nature with our first spanking, again, a smart decision about how to move forward for an infant who has encountered roughness from the world straightaway, likely from its own parents.

As I have said elsewhere, it’s the baby’s smartest move – but it’s a forced play, these decisions are forced upon the infant. These are good, smart decisions to cope with an abusive environment – and all must make them. It’s a system of forced philosophies, a rough, unforgiving world, strength, evil human natures and such, because we create the environment. We force this early, mode-setting choice of opinion on our babies.

Strength, or the love of it, is inescapable, ubiquitous, in human society, a forever, never achieved goal. No awful thing exists that doesn’t have the awful “silver lining” of the resultant “strength,” someone is supposed to gain from it. It’s posited as a sort of progress amid literal setbacks.

This, I believe, has been our “successful” group conflict strategy for a very long time, I mean, the living consider it successful. The victims of conflict and war might argue, if they could, but the living seem to approve, sadly, even the most damaged of them. We traded in quality of life for this life of strength, and we are told to be happy we’re alive, and that the dead would trade us for our life under this threat – it’s shut up and be happy you have a life, just like shut up and be happy you have a job.

Economics. Shut up, you too profit from the war.

Keep controlling those kids so your leaders can more easily do so, and we shall be a strong nation, with an angry population no-one wants pointed at them. A strong nation, the sort that disturbs the other nations’ sleep and spurs them on also, to more and more strength, so worrying us, etc., ad infinitum. This Red Queen’s game of people trying to become stronger than, hold on, checking . . . people, this is madness when we look at it in long perspective, of course. But it is madness by Bobby Jones’ definition, because it is something we do repeatedly, hoping for different results some day, something we do all the time. The strength of nations is our moral ceiling. Yes, we’d all like peace, but let’s be realistic. I think “realistic,” in these conversations means “conforming with my infantile, forced upon me view of “reality.”

I’ll spell it out, I never remember, that is literally a writer’s entire job: strength is bad, strength is hurt, desensitization, and violence. Strength is the direct result of abuse, according to this train of thought I am on, antisocialization theory, strength is stored anger: treat a human unfairly, and give them no outlet, and watch healthy anger slowly ferment into social “strength,” read war and conflict, hate and strife. A society that openly creates more and more of it is up to something, it’s a terrible non-accident looking for a place to happen, and it’s a positive feedback loop as stated above, it goes until the “accident” happens.

Getting long, but I hate to miss a chance to say, I despise the “strong” hashtags, the stay strong message in general, when are people supposed to cry or mourn?

People ought to be horribly ashamed that every time they say it, they are condemning and denying every young, sick and old person on earth, turning their back on everyone who needs them, including themselves, both coming and going in and out of this life.

Jeff

June 13^th., 2022

#WEAKTOGETHER

May 26^th., 2022, making changes to the common section, the AST definition.

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

childcare/school

Redefinitions – 8. Evolution

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:

New, May 26^th., 2022: there seems to be a cyclic aspect to the life of conflict described, we see societies forever moving towards authoritarianism and war, followed by a relative peace and the slow buildup of bad feelings again, as the chaos fades and the social control is re-established, and . . . grows, relentlessly, towards conflict again. AST makes the point that this is a positive feedback loop, that a violent environment gets more so, that the people make adaptations for it that make it all worse in the next year and the next generation.

This feedback loop is not occurring in the wild violence of the chimpanzee, of the past, which, as we all perceive, is still waning in the human world. This is a feedback loop of the violence we like and do on purpose. Back to the “human nature” myth, why would a static nature have feedback loops and cycles?

AST, “Evolution”

Abuse among the in-group makes us “strong,” that is, ready for a fight, predisposed to the primate group conflict human lifestyle, this is AST. The human nature myth says no, you were born that way, and social abuse doesn’t, cannot, hurt you, right, I mean not some “normal” amount of it anyway? The negative human nature idea and antisocialization theory are opposites, myth vs science, static vs alive and evolving.

Between Augustine and Wallace/Darwin, it was Christian Original Sin, the sin was in you, this was the explanation (not easy leaving the irony quotation marks off of that), and since then for some, it’s your “genetic legacy” (sorry, impossible with that one) as a descendant of something like a chimpanzee. I have said repeatedly that if the trouble were a chimpanzee trait, then chimpanzees would have destroyed the Earth and we would have been redundant. It is not the chimpanzees that are doing so much wrong, is it.

To the negative human nature meme, evolution is something that happened in the Myth Time and has ceased today, not unlike creation. I suppose origin stories have always been myths, asking about our origins is asking for a myth?

The brain path for “origins” is in the fiction department of your brain?

Ha. The questions are all in the rhetorical section.

This is the effect of the human nature idea. It is authoritarian and it is not taking questions at this, or any time. Evolution and AST are answers to questions no-one was allowed to ask seriously in the first place, and people don’t seem to have anyplace to put a serious answer. Origins? – fiction department, rhetoric section, fourth aisle. Have a nice day.

Evolution doesn’t fit the existing brain path, and it gets pared down in the attempt, and the end result is basically a creation myth in new words. So, rather than any evolving to do, it’s, sorry, it’s our “genetic legacy,” read undeserving sinner. These apes aren’t ready for evolution. The myth of an evil Human Nature does not provide solutions. Period.

Evolution oughtn’t require “natures.” I’m embarrassed. That shouldn’t need to be said, but there it is, when creatures, when a species doesn’t exist, and then does, and then morphs off again into something else again – what is a “nature?” Creatures that cling to a past way of life are called fossils. I will go so far as to say that since we have begun living from the bad attitude about ourselves, since we became passive things in our own evolution by denying it and preferring the creation stories, it seems to have stopped, we seem to be holding ourselves back, and trending towards conformism rather than innovation.

Jeff June 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

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