morality

We’re Only in Warrior Mode

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Warrior Mode

/                                  *                                 

Abuse                         Authority                              Social control          

 . . . OK, so I wanted to build a graphic, a visual, a tree or something, with a beginning and a flow and an end, but there’s no beginning, I’m sorry, ignore that silly chart, don’t listen to that, listen to this instead: it’s impossible to untangle, our troubles, it is a mode of existence, encompassing both the causes and the effects, let’s call it Warrior Mode, it’s a group conflict mode of life for human beings, and we have warrior life problems, mostly a lot of fighting. You take the rough with the smooth.

Antisocialization Theory tries to describe how life in this mode hangs about, how it is maintained and reinforced.

Origins, how it begins . . . does it matter? AST suggests that evolution has moved on, that we are not who we were when it began anymore and also that evolution is different than creation, things are not evolved into existence and then stuck with themselves forever that way as they are in creationism. In an evolved reality, if it exists today, it is because you are making it so today. I have fantasized about origins before, it seems a sure way to discredit oneself, wild guesses, tailored to fit the guesses of others before me regarding our origins generally: a sure way to be a fool and look like it. For now, let us be sure that begin it did, because here it is, up and flying.

It’s very difficult to talk about because a way of life asks certain questions and answers them a certain way, and a different way of life has different priorities, asks different questions. As I said, both the causes and the effects are different, what is to compare? The opposite, or alternative to it is rather an unknown thing, beyond the current epistemes, which can be thought of as the public imagination. “Mode of existence,” methodology of life, this is not small, it is sort of the whole world, all of the epistemes, all of the environment, almost. Language is not made for multiple worlds, or multiple neurotypes, or even more than a single human group, it’s as though the Us and Them aspect of human life was what language was created for, and maybe it was, I don’t suppose I’m the first to suggest that.

I still think this tack is worth a try,  I always think a puzzle of how to say a thing is doable, somehow, given unlimited commas, dashes, and colons: that it means both the causes and the effects, that a change of mode wouldn’t answer the same problems or questions. I even have an example.

Take the case of the terminology of the public conversation around childrearing, where the connection based people, they are quick to say that the question in childrearing for them is not, “what ‘works,’ to win the conflicts for the adults, to have the kids compliant, but what ‘works,’ to maintain trust and love in the relationship. It’s the same, and this example is exactly the point. The “connection-based” parent wants something different than the “regular” one does, or at least they are trying to, perhaps battling these two modes within themselves.

But it’s that big, really, a way of life, different goals altogether, despite that the public conversation always frames it as either no choice or rather a simple one. It’s a choice, but it’s a big, complicated one, and if we understood that going in, maybe a few more of us would succeed at actually making the change.

This example is framed from one side, you know I’m with the coddlers, the regular folks don’t say it’s to win fights against children, they have their own language, it’s ‘teaching wrong from right,’ or some such, we’re all more than familiar with it, they don’t frame their mode of life the way I do, and if I expressed it from their side their goal would be to maintain order and I would represent anarchy, threatening to take us back to the jungle.

I think they would agree that the difference is not small, an entire lifestyle.

In the warrior mode of life, really almost what they mean when they say, ‘the life,’ like the criminal life, life in the human jungle, there is always an Other, an enemy, a rival, always another group over the hill or across the ocean that poses a threat, as we do to them, and all in this mode of life are obliged to be ready at short notice – strong and angry, ready to fight.

All three of my second layer functions above serve this purpose, making us gain and hold some level of fear and anger. It is Antisocialization Theory that the rightmost one includes the leftmost, and that the centre one ensures the implementation and success of the others. Perhaps Social control belongs in the third layer, under Authority, but I’ll be scrapping it all soon enough, so for now it can stand. That much wouldn’t be so different.

Warrior mode involves planting a seed in childhood, a seed comprised of fear and pain and resentment that the group can harvest later, this is what I call the Antisocialization Theory of war, this bit of emotional agriculture, the creation, nurturing and storage of bad feelings that can be unleashed later as aggression.

The ‘beginning’ of the cycle, the cause that precedes the effects referred to above in a mode of human life is our first spanking, perhaps our first threat-bite a million years ago (and that’s as far as I want to go, not a cause, just the same scene), and the ‘end’ of it, the effect and the harvest comes when we kill in war, or perhaps when we have spanked our children, deferring the worst of the harvest to the next generation, when perhaps they are reaped for the next war.

I suspect it is fair to say that at that ‘beginning,’ in the timeline of a human life, that the introduction of a new child to the life of fighting/social control is an event thoroughly ensconced in both categories, abuse and social control, that what is transmitted is both emotional, anger and “strength,” read ‘antisocialization,’ and also the perhaps less emotionally loaded informational ‘socialization’ of cerebrally learning the rules, the environment.

Completionism asks that we mention the third possibility, prosocialization, but we are talking about violence in this case. More generally, do we do things to grow love in our children, or was it already there, these are important questions, and I touch upon them, I do think we are born “good,” and loving, my evidence being AST, the world of tech we have and use to turn it around and to dampen empathy tells me we must have been good to start, why spend all your time and money breaking a thing that is already broken?

This logic is solid for me, proof positive. I see the manufacture of our evil; I have no reason to suspect it pre-existed except the word of the manufacturers themselves.

Do we grow love nonetheless, of course we do, by giving it, with food and care – but our antisocializing tech I feel overwhelms it, we grow more hate than love, surely you see the news. So I’m a repairman, the love that is isn’t a problem, we will follow two streams, the pain and the knowledge. These are where the problems are.

So I guess my graphic needs two flows after that?

Oh, and the other thing. Kill your darlings. Ignore the previous graphic, and the upper left quarter of this one for now, I’m not there yet, it’s sure to change or disappear.

Warrior Mode

/                                             

Abuse                                                 Authority

/                                             

Healing                                              Social control

                                                                                    /

Social control

/                                             

Antisocialization                              Socialization

/                                             

I guess that will be two streams.

I have stated, perhaps overly leaning towards poetry and away from science, that the first bite, the first hit perhaps convinces our infant selves to make the ‘Human Nature,’ decision, to decide that people, even Mom, go in the Predator category, as Bad News. Again, it would seem unlikely that we could separate the emotional response from the decision, the informational change, and my word, ‘antisocialization,’ does mean both – again, this is modal, both sides of the incident: the infant’s problem, Mom apparently attacking, and the infant’s solution, don’t trust people, the cause and the effect.

Right?

But of course, the first bit of friendly fire isn’t the last; AST has it that your whole life of frustrations and pain are in your antisocial savings account, ready to be misappropriated and spent by the CEO at any time. And once you have it in your head, don’t trust people, people are on the Bad side of the ledger, it’s not hard to find a world of evidence to back it up. Every time we hear it, our infant selves’ binary judgement is confirmed, and that surely feels like truth, I mean survival is a good enough surrogate for truth, so that’s the dopamine mix it gives, that’s how it feels to us. Oh – there’s a group dynamic, I suppose: even the innocent mistakes of the out-group feel like confirmation, people are horrible, our group prejudices confirm our bad judgment that we learned at home? Everything does, I’m afraid – it’s a mode of life, pervasive.

And there’s no getting around it, it doesn’t much matter what that creature says, does it? . . . uh oh, starting to feel easy, I’m on my usual again, I fear. What was I supposed to be doing? Something about two causal streams?

I mean, it’s the boss’ to spend provided you’re not living as a complete raging beast, letting it out all the time to begin with! I don’t mean to be leaving anyone out. Even the boss, angry imp emoji.

Ah, there it is, the boss is letting off the same steam? So –

Warrior Mode

/         

Abuse             Social Control

/                                             

Antisocialization                              Socialization

/                                             

Fighting                                 Authority

/                                            /         

Social Control           Abuse

OK, I wonder what is the more circular, the reality, or just my logic?

Easy to see an endless cycle here, of social control and abuse leading to social control and abuse forever, except when we can change course, lose the control and go to war. That is not a very hopeful graphic, let’s all just take solace in that it is surely still wrong? Of course, I fear it is not wrong, but it’s a cycle, and our task is to find where it can be broken, if anywhere. It is all one thing, rather integrated, that isn’t simple – despite that the entire cycle and every block in the graphic is a human behaviour, it’s a system, again, the mode of living – so you can’t replace one leg of it, you have to do them all.

Again, what that looks like, the diagram for another mode of existence? How would I know? This surely is another guaranteed way to be a fool, I only know this life too, despite I’ve spent my life running from it rather than working in it, but I’ll give you my first childish guess, with the understanding that that is all it is:

I think we look like a zoo in another paradigm, where we assess each other’s needs and provide for them, while keeping us safe from one another somehow, managing our breeding, working for diversity and celebrating variety. That would be the opposite; this warrior life keeps throwing up obstacle courses and trials and bends towards a lethal conformism for everything it touches.

There’s my pithy ending, the moral of the human story, but this one has another.

I said, “impossible to untangle,” and I sort of meant it – but that’s not the end, if I was a determinist I wouldn’t write, why would you. It sort of is, it was my point that you can’t just pull the spanking thread out of it so easily as we imagine we might – but the point is that the knot is real and specific and has limits and weaknesses and is not some limitless ideological situation that we would have to fight God to escape. We can’t untangle it one thread at a time, maybe, but it will be doable.

Antisocialization Theory, it is a trap, a self-perpetuating system – -but is not existence itself as the creation meme has it, as the half-measures, half understood version of evolution and nature we often speak of that is only creation with a new name has it. It’s big, but it’s not mythology big – and it has a logic. It’s an intelligence test – can we chimpanzees work together, communicate well enough to pull all the strings, solve the puzzle, and get the bananas? Applications are being accepted.

Jeff

March 5th., 2023

Invisible Bullshit

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Artificial realities existed before electronics or even optics, right? They don’t have to show you anything. They can just bypass your senses altogether.

You know what I mean. Think about the ancestors, think about gods, or God. You only have to tell them it’s invisible, right?

Deterrents were my first one, the first time I saw this business of invisible causes, after a lifetime of arguing against spanking and punishment. I started where we all do, with, “it doesn’t work,” which seems to satisfy a for awhile regarding punishment, that it mostly fails at its ostensible function of eliminating bad behaviour, but I’m autistic and my mind keeps digging and has for decades. The next step was biology and evolution and things don’t exist and just “not work,” do they? – well, not only does it “not work,” it harms, and again, things don’t exist and “just harm,” either, so it went to – what if that is exactly what does “work?”

What if the “harm” was it “working?” That theory seemed to be far better supported; results appear far more consistent that way, kids seem to start out sweet and grow up mean more reliably than they grow up saintly – and then I went off into something like evolutionary biological theory about how this damage would be advantageous and selected for, but that isn’t necessary today: the damage is not a secret, and it’s not the invisible sort, we know this in every other context – except it must all disappear when the evil spirit named deterrents is invoked, apparently.

The point here is that it is a more consistent explanation, and when I look at the conflict in other terms, it seems so obvious now that it’s a debate over which is the true function, the harm that happens in the real, physical world, with bruises and decisions and cortisol and hard feelings, making us worse – or the deterrent which happens only in speech and metaphor, making us better? – it’s real world abuse versus abstract ideas – and we wonder which is the more effective.

Why, is the world virtual, abstract?

Also why, are we better?

But this is the public debate, has been for a long time. I have sociology ideas about what this function means, why the virtual is invoked, and it is to hide and so protect the real function and the damage hinted at above, but again, the point is, this is the public level of debate, real versus virtual, biological physical reality versus . . . people talking.

You know what I’m saying – people.

Talking.

Ha. Science let me down, let us down, I had to figure that obvious bit of flummery out for myself. Like I say, that was my first one. I was proud, as plain as it is on paper, that’s the social conversation, and I don’t know, I suppose it’s because the net is invisible, few seem to escape!

But then I had forgotten my disabled beginnings and I just thought I was a clever “normal” person. Now that I’m part of a persecuted minority, there’s no pride, it’s a common trait for us, this sort of outsider insight. Even if it’s clever, I will forget how to breathe or walk or something in a minute. Pride is not for our sort, I guess.

But I am seeing more of these virtual walls from here, of course.

Of course, autism comes with a full load of deterrents, punishments, and even ABA torture. We suffer the full power of the invisible demon named deterrents, even more than normal people. I have questions about whether my “true” function functions with us, whether the additional damage to us is the sort that is selected for, I sort of think it doesn’t “work,” for autistics in whatever real way the damage “works,” for regular folks – but again, not today’s talk. We suffer under the false rule of invisible, take my word for it deterrents, as do all, is the point.

It irks me when we argue against ABA as though it were a one-off event, as though the dominant culture only harms autistics and not pretty much everybody. We are all sacrificed to this demon. It’s not good for them either – and I think they wouldn’t do it to everyone if they didn’t do it to themselves first. And ABA is not the only nightmare that this invisible monster has spawned, even if it is among the worst of them.

__________________________________

But there are other magical, invisible demons, ones I may never have noticed from my unhatched state, namely, to make a start, empathy and intuition.

Will you marry me? Did he leave you any money? – answer the second question first. Once I start on the first one I may never stop, and the second one is easy, dare I say, we can dispense with formality? And respect?

Intuition? Seriously?

This is an NT trait, y’all standing there with your bare face hanging out, looking people in the eye and saying “whatsamatter, you don’t have ESP? Most people have ESP,” you are kidding, right? Are the hippies a legit source suddenly? Registered therapists and PhDs researchers and . . . intuition?

Fuuuuuck you. Say what you mean, one time. Validate your intuitions once, with any detail at all, so we can be sure. Fucking with people’s real lives with some generic “intuition” as a criteria? Are we researchers or aromatherapy moms? Apologies to any harmless aromatherapy moms who aren’t these sorts of activists. Astrologers . . . you know what I’m saying, these things may be real, but they are not part of science or law.

I’m not saying intuition doesn’t exist; I’m saying it’s fucking invisible so it’s whatever you say it is, and ‘conflict of interest’ isn’t big enough for that. I’m saying some folks are more intuitive than others and some very much so, but you can’t say the lack of it is a disability, FFS. I’m saying you shouldn’t take a person’s children on the basis of an ESP test. Controversial, I’m sure.

“For the purposes of autism research, we would like to put ESP into the science record, Your Honour,” yeah, no, it doesn’t fucking work like that, and no, I can’t stop swearing, WTF.

Next.

No, I need a cooling off period. LOL.

____________________________________

OK, new day, let’s have at empathy. This demon is a politician, comes on like your best friend, don’t they. Empathy is good, can’t argue with empathy!

Again, generic. There is plenty of good empathy to cite – so why just the general term? Sometimes our empathy is misdirected and misplaced, it isn’t all “good,” in the end, sometimes bad folks receive empathy and good ones do not. It can be stated that racists over-empathize with their own, even if their own do terrible things – so is this a deficit, if someone doesn’t have that? Of course it’s not an official autistic trait that we lack “racist empathy,” is it? We are to understand that we lack empathy for puppies – but they could have said that! I mean, if it were true.

The generic “no empathy,” wouldn’t serve their cause as well as “no empathy for puppies,” but that is not true and they can’t say that, and “no social, racist conformist empathy,” this is embarrassing, this isn’t supposed to be a social norm in the first place, but it pretty much is  – so it’s just plain, all inclusive, generic, content and reality free, “empathy” that we lack.

Vapid like that.

Information free.

We get the title, the heading, “empathy,” or “feelings of empathy,” we do not apparently need to know the details, what it’s about, the context – there it is, takes me so long: context. It’s context free.

Some people aren’t very good with the entire concept, with the box labelled “empathy,” never mind what’s in the box. This, always in the context that this argument is being made by the practitioners of ABA torture of children, talking about their victims’ dearth of empathy. Somehow, torture of children in these cases is not in the practitioner’s empathy box. Interestingly, or not depending if you grok this stuff or not, ABA, like conversion therapy, like all forms of abuse, like punishment generally, are empathy killing machines, they make you “strong,” not sensitive, or the army would treat the soldiers better and prison would soften people.

AST really has it that it’s an absolute reversal, that human life is about overcoming empathy (not an endorsement, just a sad, little known fact), and that ABA would surely kill your heart and soul and so that must be its purpose, to kill empathy. That they slander us about exactly empathy in order to apply their cure, killing our empathy, that is just cruel, adding irony and insult to literal injury. A riddle, wrapped in an enigma. When Dad said the abuse would make you strong, that was pretty near the truth – when the ABA doctors say abuse will cure a lack of empathy, this is Bizarro World, the worst sort of gaslighting reversal of all that is true and obvious in this one.

Keep it generic kids, it’s about “empathy,” not torture. One, we are to understand, has nothing to do with the other. Worst case scenario, their box is empty. Best case: contents are apparently optional.

Point is, it’s fucking invisible, the box, and the contents, and we’ll never know. Only the label is verifiable.

They have us fighting nothing, phantoms. Invisible, made up bullshit, not to put to fine a point on it. Empathy, in its simplest form is just pattern recognition, and autistics have that, “normal” folks, I don’t know, some do, I assume. Everyone has these actually basic functions, that some folks would suggest are some fancy, “high” functions that only perfect people possess. The real differences are going to be found in the specifics, in the details, and when someone pulls the generic language on you, they are, as we say, selling something. It’s not always torture – but often enough it is.

I worry, I worry that if we only defend ourselves, what are we saying? If we protest, if we object and argue the first thing, the simplest thing and say, “We do too have empathy, same as you,” that all we are doing is asking to be let into an evil club, if we have it “the same as them,” then are we OK with torture? And I know we don’t, the state of the conversation is, “We have our own, we have it too, like you, but different,” and that is better, but still – theirs isn’t OK, theirs isn’t empathy, not the good kind, and this sounds generic, context free, they’re all OK, whatever. I feel we’re not doing our job of correcting the species if we’re not fixing what’s broken, if we’re only both siding the world.

I know, it would be a real world improvement right now, that sort of “becoming white,” for autistics, the pressure is always there from the dominant group to do just that, conform and join, agree that the dominants have empathy, despite the real world argument of their dominance which requires that they do not so much – but we’re a different sort of out-group, specially positioned.

I mean it was fine for the Irish in America – kidding. An illustration, not a slander. Nothing is fine.

If we could do both at once, that would be fine, but I’m finding that difficult to say. I can’t make that deal. There’s always one, isn’t there?

Funny – I have volumes on empathy, I’ve railed about it many times, but today, it seems, I’m over it, a page and a half is plenty. This invisible nonsense isn’t worth it anymore. That’s . . . liberating. Progress of a sort.

___________________________________

Deterrents, intuition, empathy . . . honestly, this conversation goes right to the top. What could be more generic and information free and so invisible than “good,” and “bad?”

I mean, “morality?”

If we apply a what does it really mean process to morality, we have to see what specific things result, of course, all peoples with all moralities will say they work for “good,” but truth requires we know what form does this good take? I’ve said this many times, I’m afraid I’m with Sutherland’s character in JFK: the organizing principle for a society is war, and to extrapolate, morality is that which keeps us strong and keeps us from being wiped out in a war, and what they call it when they create it, is strength. So we apply our morality and it makes us strong. Right?

So “morality,” means strength and strength means “proficiency in war.”

I know, that’s not what it means, not what it means to us, it’s something better. I’ve always been a moralist, except not the regular, pushy sort. I don’t want it to mean good at war either, this is only an observation; I’m not happy about it. But in the real world, out of the clouds of invisible bullshit and headings in lieu of actual nouns, this is what it adds up to today, because we banter with words that are not real about it while we teach our children how to fight from the day they’re born with real, physical methods.

So morality is my word for “better,” too, but . . . but “morality” is everywhere and much is not better here in the real world, again, unless “battle ready,” is as good as it gets. What we do to “make people good,” isn’t “working,” except on paper, except in theory, except invisibly. Who you gonna believe, them, or your own eyes, kinda thing – and they’ve already gotten around your eyes, LOL.

Of course, I have a bad attitude, I’m giving it to you from the Dark Side, I am one of those annoying sorts who thinks the dysphemism needs equal time, and if you had to look it up, that makes my point. Equal and opposite is fair play. It’s called perspective. If I go too far, I’m trying to compensate for the fact that I’m the only one over here on the Dark Side talking.

They, Maya, the World of Illusion will say, yes, we run on invisible things, of course we do, principles, values – and if I’ve made my point you can laugh at that yourself now, from the Dark Side – good old “values!” Everybody loves values!

Any particular values in that box, though?

Worst case scenario, their box is empty. Best case: contents are optional, right?

________________________________________

I’d be finished now, if I could remember the point. I suppose it was just to give the autism moms a thorough debunking, try to put a dent in their myths about communication and empathy . . . I honestly, autistic style, simply cannot stand the unfairness of the power people wield based in this sort of empty bullshit. When they say the Devil is in the details, that means that’s where you have to fight him, and the people that would gloss over things and assail us with vapid, quasi-religious, detail free terms like “empathy,” and “non-verbal communication,” are always and forever working for him, hiding what is real and true, making everything worse.

We all know what is most likely, right?

Their “non-verbal, intuitive communication,” is just bullshit, and “non-verbal communication,” means no communication. They simply do not interact, do not communicate, at all. Best case, it’s a one way communication, and no link is required: orders, authority. If it’s plural, communications, then show us, once. Do some magic communication and then separately, tell us what was said.

Bloody nothing, I bet.

I don’t believe you anymore. If you had a real world example, you’d have led with it. All you got is empty boxes.

“Intuition.”

FFS.

Jeff

Feb. 26th., 2023

Redefinitions 18 – AST VS Popular Memes, Rhetoric

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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 26th., 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. 23rd.,2022

#WEAKTOGETHER

Redefinitions 10 – AST VS Popular Memes, Resilience

Jeff/neighsayerLeave a comment

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 26th., 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 19th., 2022

#WEAKTOGETHER

Redefinitions 9 – AST VS Popular Memes, Strength

Jeff/neighsayerLeave a comment

May 26th., 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 26th., 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 13th., 2022

#WEAKTOGETHER

Redefinitions 8 – AST vs Popular Memes, Evolution

Jeff/neighsayerLeave a comment

May 26th., 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 26th., 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 1st., 2022

Redefinitions 7 – AST vs Popular Memes, Relatedness

Jeff/neighsayerLeave a comment

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 13th., 2022

Redefinitions 12 – AST VS Popular Memes, Bullying

Jeff/neighsayerLeave a comment

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 10th., 2022

Redefinitions 6 – AST VS Popular Memes, Empathy

Jeff/neighsayerLeave a comment

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 10th., 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 12th., 2022

Redefinitions 5 – AST VS Popular Memes, Anger

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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 8th., 2022