A conflicted Society – Cognitive Specialization

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Cognitive Specialization

A search of my blog for the character strings “cognitive damage”, “and cognitive “, or just “cognitive” will produce results pretty consistently. It’s a central tenet of mine, of course:

“The cognitive damage associated with abuse and corporal punishment is a result more of the repetitive nature of a very limited number of punishments that are provided as effects for a world of different possible causes, the true effects of which, while possibly painful at times, are all things that human beings need to learn, and the earlier the better. The cognitive damage is the direct effect of these missed learning opportunities at early ages, blah, blah, blah . . . “

I’ve said that many, many times, but it wasn’t until recently, within the last year when I started to allow the reverse side of that concept to creep into my thoughts. I thought of this post and forgot it again several times over the last year; thank goodness I happened to be home sick, sitting at the computer when I thought of it this time. Personally, I think I’m afraid to pursue it because I’m afraid it may be the bane of my entire edifice. I can’t wait to see how far I may have to stretch myself to cover this additional bit of information.

But you know, here goes. Of course I don’t have to publish. Ha.

If all those chances to learn real things about the real world are being missed – aren’t we still learning something, even if it isn’t how hot the stove really is, or why you shouldn’t punch your friends? Of course there are more conventional answers to that, even ones I like and agree with – but also these:

  • We learn our first versions of ‘might is right’
  • We learn a list of our parents’ likes and dislikes
  • We learn the basic principles of punishment, which are, we’re supposed to bring some sort of pain or deprivation to people who behave in ways we do not like, and that pain and deprivation are good for us, that we deserve them
  • We learn that it is standard practice for the large and powerful to bring pain and deprivation to the small and weak
  • We learn that pain and deprivations are the preferred tools for manipulation, for getting people to do what we want

That’s all somewhere in the realm of the normal, I’d say, but that last entry, is that not slightly more nasty and objectionable? We learn manipulation? And is that some generic-sounding code so that I can say ‘manipulative,’ a much more loaded and powerful word, without actually saying it? It’s a fair cop. I was hoping to make an argument to get us from the one to the other.

So before I get into other things, what sort of result would you imagine, what sort of person might we expect that education might get us if it takes, if that is the sort of lesson we get possibly far more often than we get a chance to learn something about the real world? Well, yes, the aforementioned cognitive damage of course, the life of missed learning opportunities, but what about all the time, all the focus, the opportunities to learn in depth about our families’ quirks and psychoses, and the fine arts of manipulation, and Pavlovian conditioning? Surely those sorts of hours pay off. Surely we are all specialists. Like the Reindeer people know their animals, like the Sherpa know the wrath of the mountain – that’s how we all know this world of the human social animal, with its complex hierarchies and its sometimes random mix of rules, deterrents and punishments. All of us are Subject Matter Experts – both in support of the system, dealing out our own share of the discipline, as well as in avoiding the penalties we deserve if our own disciplined subjects deserved theirs. Degrees all around, generally confirmed about the time our first child turns three, but sometimes, thank goodness, some of us argue with the professors and the department heads because we think we know better – and wind up tenure-less. Early retirement, which in this case can mean irrelevance.

Seriously, navigating our modern world – a social group of millions, even billions in some senses, interacting with any number of different authority structures and agencies at once, at least three levels of government and all three with a suite of bureaucracies. After that, international law, the hierarchies at work, church, and any clubs or associations . . . and all that arrayed against us in adulthood. In childhood, it’s pretty much every adult on earth that we must navigate. As an example of the general level of expertise, we can perhaps note that navigating our teen years, the time between child and adulthood, the period that we finish as adults, this time during which even most of the most sheltered do most our growing up – this, generally must be accomplished on the sly. Practicing to be a grownup, love, sex, relationships, learning about adult temptations like alcohol, drugs, crime, and gambling – all this is supposed to happen on the other side of ‘the law’ so to speak, teens are not encouraged to ‘grow up’ in this way. We are, however, expected to know all about it all by the time we’re adults. What I’m saying about our expertise, about how much of our plastic and modular brain is allocated for this sort of thing, is, somehow we all still manage to get through it, on our own, in the black market where we’re not supposed to be. That’s kind of impressive, considering that we aren’t all perhaps running on all eight cylinders upstairs.

So this is maybe our scenario, that we are to some degree denied a lot of learning at an early age when we are able to absorb it the best, but that we are all a species of savant as regards living our lives among an endless bunch of social structures some of which are downright hostile to us, and even half of the friendly ones of which would punish us, hurt us to keep the social order. And still we somehow live our lives, because we were raised in this system, we’re street-smart. Hardened. So, continuing with the analogy, then.

If we are all lettered, then what may become of the top of the class, the best and brightest? If we are all steeped in the system, dyed in the wool, then who are the standouts, the pound-for-pound best in this field where everyone has been at it their whole life? I don’t have to name names, of course, but suffice it to say that there are some big jobs for those who are able to manipulate a population of lifelong manipulators, great, unreportable rewards for the con who cons the cons. So yes, we’re talking about our leaders, the super-rich, our politicians and the spin doctors, the PR kingmakers and all of the types who rise to the top of a society built on manipulation and force. This is not an aberration that these manipulative psychopaths are our leaders; that is the system and they are the best. As long as this is our system, they are our rightful champions.

Nothing is going to change for us by simply rotating through different faces and names, when sociopathy is in the job’s list of prerequisites.

It explains a lot, looking at things this way, which of course is the test of a hypothesis, a theory: does it explain more, can it account for previously unexplained phenomena. It explains the power of advertising, and it explains an important piece of the whole Equality Bias and Confirmation Bias phenomenon for starters. It seems to make some sense that if I am invested with an idea of my own rugged, western individualism and independence then maybe I wonder at the advertising industry and that the dollars spent on it seem to always bring returns, when I am not swayed by it. Ignoring that some clever somebodies sold this person the American Dream at some point in his life, this person may theorize about some two kinds of people, the impressionable and the not so, but we may find that our wonder over the effectiveness of advertising and media is lessened if we consider that manipulation is what we do, that it is perhaps the most highly developed discipline that we have.

Similarly, regarding Equality and Confirmation Bias, I personally found the ideas counter-intuitive and I wasn’t sure I believed them, but again: if I think my social group is not bright and/or undirected in their social pressure to think like they do, then yes, it seems unlikely. If, however, I recall that even my relatively uneducated social group have a lifetime’s knowledge and experience in the manipulative world of the most manipulative species’ most ubiquitously manipulative time and place . . . well. It’s not so strange after all.

Plus, it explains even more.

My thesis here, that we are real-world stupid, that our connection to the real world was not made during our early years, and that we are conversely, social and manipulative geniuses may explain how so many clever people can focus on elections and high-powered corporate careers with incredible acumen and success, and yet fail to worry about what their social and political successes may wreak in the real world. Veritable virtuosos in the field of the human mind, social networking and politics – but unable to make the connection we need with the real world.

This is how ‘the economy’ always trumps the Earth and the environment. That social and political construct we can understand, we have evolved a massive organ to deal with it – but our brains’ ‘real-world’ lobe, that is going undeveloped, ignored in early childhood and stunted through life and it is atrophying, becoming vestigial.

We need to broaden our minds beyond ourselves, and start worrying more about the real world. In a real way, dedicating so much of our brain’s real estate to one another and to social concerns at the expense of our resources to process real-world things is analogous to an individual being in arrested development, trapped in the dynamic of their nuclear family and dysfunctional outside of it; the concerns of the social group have grown beyond their proportions. The real, physical world needs some time in our thoughts too, or it may become increasingly inaccessible and therefore even more at risk.

First we need to grow up.

Then we need to clean up our room.

Stressed Out, All My Life

Jeff/neighsayer6 Comments

Stressed Out, All My Life

You know, I’m a little scrambled, I can’t remember these days which summer vacation it was, 2009, 2010, or 2012, the year the four of us went to either Costa Rica or the even bigger, once in a lifetime trip, Fiji – but for some reason that summer when my vacation arrived and I was off work . . .

First we stayed at a place, a fairly local beach and it was the first day, worked Friday, set up at the beach on Saturday, and I relaxed. I felt the absence of a tension, I went completely limp and calm for nearly the entire three weeks. I think by the time I was back to work I was . . . normal again. That was once. The second time in my life that I actually relaxed was maybe six weeks ago, and that was, uh, let’s say better living through chemistry.

It’s getting these days that if you want the heathen devil-weed you can get a prescription if you’re sick, but at least around here, in BC, it’s getting where you can just walk into another store, swear you’re hurting, sign, and shop. I guess they’re getting ahead of the legal curve a little, getting jump on it before it’s full on legal and Phillip Morris jumps in. I didn’t believe it, I didn’t. I mean, I was a pothead for a long time, I know it helps with pain and the worry and stress of pain. But I didn’t realize they were actually being serious about the medicine, like identifying different traits for different troubles. I didn’t think the ‘feels’ could be as different as they are and now I think they may have a breed, a particular mix of different cannabinoids, etc., just right for each and everybody, because it was this Purple Heaven that reminded me what calmness felt like again, and I’ve had – there’s no better way to put it – the American Beauty experience. Zero paranoia.

And in that state, that I too would have described until recently as ‘clinically wasted,’ I was calm, and performing better at everything for it, making fewer mistakes, forgetting fewer things. The relaxed mind works better, apparently. Is this how other people feel? Calm, and a lot of the time? Really?

That particular breed hasn’t been available since. Well, it is just plain terrific, besides being magic for me in particular, it’s stats are insane. Maybe this stuff just feels that good for everybody, I don’t know. I’ve been smoking again since a death in our family three months back, all manner of cannabis, other breeds of bud, keef, hashish, oils . . . I’m trying to finish my last bit tonight and not go back, at least for some months. If I’m gonna smoke, it’ll be like the Phoenix character: “This is all I ever smoke.” Plus I’ll invest in a vapourizer, try to make it a little healthier, stop this cherry oil smoked off of a cigarette business. I’ve never even smoked cigarettes, they’re disgusting, especially in this country. But enough of this dope talk, you don’t want that, nor do I.

The point of all that was that although the first time was nice, the first time in my fifty years I really relaxed, it didn’t seem important then, and I pretty much forgot it until the second time, my week long trip to Purple Heaven. Now, however, after my American Beauty epiphany, but more importantly, after realizing that I have been stressed out, unable to calm myself long enough to swing a golf club either forever, or at least as long as I can remember, I want that. I’m worried about my health at nearly fifty-five, and it just plain feels nice, but more. I’m starting to see how being constantly stressed has caused many, many of the mistakes and embarrassments in my life, how it has limited my effective intelligence in applying myself in this life. If I were a TV show, meaning if anyone has been watching my life, I almost want to apologize. It must have been so sad, to see my tensed up little self, with a stiff and brittle connection to life, trying so hard and undeserving of a moment in decades for a few deep breaths. I mean, this despite a life with more than its share of sloth.

I was a pothead for years and years, and I spend a lot of time on here, or in front of the TV – but all that dope never put a dent in my stress, and neither does ‘staying real still until that feeling goes away.’ Of course back then it was really illegal, and I was hiding it from the kids – I’d tell them, but I wouldn’t show them – it was a bad thing then, an addiction, which of course only causes stress in your life in the long term. There’s something there to write about, but I’ll only mention it today: by legalizing it, lives may be transformed, addicts may become patients, treating themselves and having relief from stress rather than the reverse. A prohibition pushes lives to the dark side, not all of which may have been there already. Like I said, twice in my life, within memory, I really relaxed. This goes to psychology, of course.

Perhaps I am feeling the stress of the Mask, the suit of body, mind and heart armour that so many of us wear in order to fit into our families and society, the front we present that fits the shape of the place that other people’s perceptions and delusions have left for us to inhabit. The mask, if I understand it, is our avatar in the game of Surface Life, our userid here in Maya, the World of Illusion.

The Mask is not my symbol. I think has been around for some time, but there is a blogger here who has made it their own. Here’s his ‘About’ page:

http://takingthemaskoff.com/about/

And here’s a few examples of his ideas. I advise you get to the end of at least one of them, it’s so worth the trip:

http://takingthemaskoff.com/2015/03/21/wanted-superhero-for-my-children/

http://takingthemaskoff.com/2015/03/11/a-tale-of-two-physicians-the-best-of-times-the-worst-of-times/

Cortland here has an incredible way of laying it all out, creating a story that makes issues of mental illness stand out clear as day whereas everywhere else we encounter the subject or the illnesses, confusion normally rules and hope evaporates. The ideas in the takingthemaskoff blogs have the potential to make straightforward what was  . . . esoteric, extremely difficult to nail down. Cortland is shining a light for us.

Inherently stressful, is life behind the Mask, maybe it’s as simple as that, or not. The Mask is a ceramic suit of compromises we make with our environment – other people, that is the environment for humans and other social animals – and it sets up, hardens over time while our true selves are locked away and ignored. For myself, I’m sure I haven’t yet identified who I am, which parts of me are me and which parts are part of the Mask, but I’m going to start trying to figure it out. I don’t yet see where this issue of my lifelong stress-state fits into the metaphor of the Mask, but I’m intuiting that it’s all of one thing, and that this is where the key to it will be found.

It’s a rough world out there, maybe that’s enough to explain why my entire life has been spent in a spasm of a species of desperate, bracing for the blow fear that has made any kind of peace a pipe dream for me (apologies!), and maybe other folks like me as well. That peace, having glimpsed it, that is something I need now. The way I’ve been? That has been some only pretending to live type bullshit.

My Battle

Jeff/neighsayer3 Comments

My Battle

(That properly dead and gone swine can’t own those two words forever, can he? 10,000,000 lives AND an important pair of words taken out of circulation forever? No. Hell, no. We can’t get the lives back, but we can damned sure reclaim the words. I’m not famous or anything, I’ll do it first. You’re welcome.)

The point of this post will be to define my argument with the world, to try to establish my position (in opposition to any sort of punishment, especially of children) and to glean the position of those I might hope to convince. Suffice to say, I hear the objections a fair amount, yet I still can’t credit where the supporters of punishment are coming from as a considered position, it seems rather an un-focused one. That position is occupied by most of the world, though, so I guess it’s always going to be a moving target for me, no slight on anyone.

But I am getting a little desperate here.

In order for me to win this debate, there needs to be one. If the world of normal parents can’t see fit to choose a champion, block off some time and sit down with me to work through this, then, strange and counterintuitive as it may be, I guess I’ll have to help you, make your points for you, if necessary. Maybe if I misrepresent the POV, someone will be motivated to jump in and correct me.

It’s me against the world, of course it is. Even among the No Punishment folks, the few out there, there isn’t a lot of common ground. (The only other person I found with that search, ‘No Punishment,’ seemed to have no interest in my offered support for his position and only reacted to me as though I were either one of his students who needed correction, or maybe as though I were some sort of threat, as though I were his competition. Funny thing was, after his rebuff, I wanted to be. I got over it, though. Maybe he was just being a good critic. My first attempt at a book on this topic – being anti-punishment – which I sent him really was crap. He reacted as a prof., marked my book (a fail) and rejected my emotional support for his cause. It hurt me that my support for what I know to be a very unpopular POV meant nothing to him, he didn’t need or want it. It still rankles.) Maybe we get so used to hostility, opposition, and a lack of will to even try to see our stance that we end up so invested in our own status as outliers that agreement becomes a threat to our perceived uniqueness.* That is definitely part of the deal for me, so maybe not only me. Try as I may to assure myself and you all that it’s all about the content for me, all about the ideas themselves, I know I must always be aware that my personal need  for a unique identity is there, and makes for a conflict of interest.

Of course, these sorts of personal, internal conflicts of interest are everywhere. If you’re with me on this, then you may applaud my due diligence, the full disclosure. If you’re against me, then I guess to put it in fighting terms, I just gave you my back. That’s either a bad decision I’m making after taking a few hard shots, or it’s supreme confidence, make your own interpretation. I may be dumb enough to offer my back, but I don’t plan to give away the whole game plan! It’s a little of both, of course. Plus, the haters gonna hate anyway; he who has ears to hear, let him hear. That’s a lot of metaphor, but this isn’t math and rocket science, either.

So maybe it’s me against the world. Maybe it’s personal, as I said somewhere else, ‘the rantings of a developmentally arrested person,’ I mean, of course there is some component of that, but maybe that’s mostly what it is. That, however, may or may not matter; it depends on whether the ideas produced from this dysfunction stand on their own, doesn’t it? Many ideas we have, many good ones have likely evolved through error, but when the evolved idea works for us, who cares? If the idea has merit, the source isn’t important. If the idea is bad, the source may also not matter – we’re dancing around the logical fallacy of Appeal to Authority here. Just as a bad idea is a bad idea and selling it on the basis of its author’s good reputation is fallacious that way, so too is dismissing a good idea from an unknown source. So here’s my developed idea, which may or may not have come largely from my narcissism, as well as the opposing social idea, whose origin may also not be derived from either a divine or provable hard-scientific process:

MINE: (as well as a small percentage of people’s here in the US and Canada, I can’t speak to elsewhere. It seems, un-alienated aboriginal peoples the world over don’t beat their children as much as developed people, and besides Scandinavia’s improvement on our numbers, there may be other places in the world where the aboriginal attitude has survived better than among those of us from Europe and the middle East. I understand Hinduism and Buddhism to be a sort of evolution of aboriginal religion, still somewhat connected to natural systems. I don’t say most people practice it, but I think those religions haven’t ensconced corporal punishment of children into Holy Law at least.) Sorry – again:

MINE:

Punishment is a source of psychological and social damage because it causes harm, by definition. The harms caused to people when we hurt one another are not limited to illegal, proscribed practices. When we harm one another for what perceive to be good reasons and for good purposes, we are still harming each other, and this harm stays with all of us. This is not only regrettable, I think it isn’t inevitable. I think we can get around it. If we did, I think we’d be amazed at what human beings with far less damage can do.

SOCIETY’S: (for lack of a better term. I’m going to bundle up what may be a large variety of attitudes not all of which will apply to everyone. The only criteria is that they don’t involve the complete abolition of punishing in 99% of its forms, as I do. I’ll try to control myself, but maybe you should expect to be insulted. Apologies in advance. Here’s the bias: I’m not going to try to make sense of it; this is not my side of the argument, I couldn’t do it justice, and why would anyone ever believe I did, or tried? I’m going to do the sad, cynical thing, present my side in as good a paragraph as I can muster at the moment, tied up with a positive  ribbon and bow – and present my strawman opponent’s view in a list of unconnected talking points. It’s not a dirty trick if I point it out, right, full disclosure? Fair again, or fair enough? Anyone who wishes to take up this side of the debate is invited to make the sense of it that they can, in as artful a way as they wish. Please do: if you believe it, you owe it to yourselves and your cause. Personally, I feel someone owes it to me! On the one hand, my opponent in this debate is so big he doesn’t even know I’m here, but on the other hand, I’m battling a phantom, an idea expressed so vaguely that it can’t be held in one place long enough to beat it.) Sorry again – again:

SOCIETY’S:

  • Punishment is an important and useful tool for:
    • Controlling bad behaviour and crime
    • Encouraging good behaviour and morality
    • Protecting ourselves from violence and crime
    • Promoting the society’s values
  • Punishment, when administrated properly doesn’t cause permanent harm
  • Children need to learn about consequences
  • Children need to learn right from wrong
  • Children need to learn to listen, so that they will in an emergency, to keep them from a road, a cliff, or a river
  • Punishment “works” where nothing else does
  • Punishment is “natural;” other animals use punishment
  • A program of punishment is required to “civilize” human beings, otherwise they will behave badly
  • Not all punishment is physical
  • Non-corporal punishment is not harmful
  • Punishment and abuse are different things, qualitatively, the difference is not simply a matter of degree
  • Not Punishing is negligent – there is a moral, social and/or religious obligation to respond to misbehaviour with unpleasantness
  • Punishments reinforce deterrents, stopping crime and misbehaviour before it happens

Wow. That wasn’t too bad for a guy who’s not down with this side of the conversation. I still wouldn’t count on me, I can be very devious. Trust, as some powerful swine once said – but verify. Still, a fuller and less abrasive list than I expected myself. Having said all that, beware, no waiting: here’s the trap.

I have arguments for everything on the ‘society’s’ list, except that I’ll allow one and one-half bullets from the very first thing on the list. Don’t get me wrong, that list looks great, and if half of the things on it were true, ah. What a wonderful world that would be. The thing is, if those things were true, someone out there, some Defender of Normal Parents Everywhere should be able to deconstruct them for me, show me why they’re true, how they work. Because I have done my own deconstructions of these scenarios, and I can’t see any way all that stuff could ever possibly work.

(Except, as I say, for some caveats contained in the very first point of the list:

  • Punishment is an important and useful tool for:
    • Controlling bad behaviour and crime
    • Encouraging good behaviour and morality
    • Protecting ourselves from violence and crime
  • The confinement part of the criminal justice system undeniably makes us safe from a particular convict for a particular time, true. That is not the same as saying the prison system makes for a safer society in general.
    • Promoting the society’s values
  • This also is certainly true, punishment can indeed be used to promote and even enforce a given society’s values and morals. That, while true, would be true of any society, some of which we may not approve.

So even those two aren’t as true or as powerful as my hypothetical proponents of punishment may have hoped.)**

For the rest? Pick one, somebody, please, and let’s break it down, see how it works. Or maybe, I’ll make a series of this, one point at a time? I’ll do it, you know. Don’t think I won’t.

So, thanks for reading, and please, share and retweet . . .

Jeff

* Anyone know ‘Little Britain?’

** 725 of 1860 words between parentheses! Like, 40%ish. That must be a new record for me.

“Rebuilding Trust” – a Rant. If You’re Going to Lie, Lie Big – **UPDATED**

Jeff/neighsayer6 Comments

“Rebuilding Trust” – a Rant. If You’re Going to Lie, Lie Big

 

       Who announced the Diane Rehm show this week? I missed your name. I’ll tweet this at Diane, hope it reaches you.

On the show on Friday, May 22nd., I heard the phrase ‘rebuilding trust’ referring to the dysfunctional relationship between America’s urban police forces and the poverty-stricken black citizens living in those cities. Continue reading →

Don’t Believe Me! “Abuse” VS “abuse”

Jeff/neighsayer1 Comment

Don’t Believe Me! “Abuse” VS “abuse”

Seriously.
First of all, WhoTF am I?
Actually, when you’re nobody – like me – of course you’re staunchly opposed to the logical fallacy we call ‘appeal to authority.’ Clearly, if authority is a prerequisite for correctness, and someone like me carries none of it, then I’d have to just be wr . . . wro . . . I’d just be wr-r-r-o . . . oh, , forget it. It’s too heinous to consider, let alone say. Of course, in the case of my favourite subject, it’s authority that’s wrong, definitively.
Appeal to authority, while never a guarantee of correctness, is always beside the point. Right is right and wrong is wrong, and it’s on all of us to understand why something is or isn’t correct. It almost doesn’t matter that a thing is right if we ourselves can’t say why. “Because X said so” is even less satisfying to us (to me, at least) in our adult years than “Because I said so” was in our childhood ones – plus in the adult world, it’s even scarier.
Second, this idea isn’t one that requires a great deal of memorization. Once you get the principle in your head, it all just flows.

Definitions of abuse
Punishment can be pretty well defined as abuse (in the generic sense, bad treatment) with a purpose. When the deterrent alone fails and the penalty is to be dealt, we hope that the reality of the penalty will increase the power of the deterrent going forward. So the abuse – the beating, hiding, whipping, whooping, spanking, curfew, grounding, withdrawal of: love, privileges, loved objects. Angry shouting, threats, and insults – the abuse in the generic sense, meaning treatment we don’t enjoy, the abuse is all part of the deterrent, which of course, the deterrent is supposed to avoid all the bad stuff, both the crime and the punishment. I expect you’re way ahead of me, right?
The punishments are acceptable because they add to the deterrent which we hope will lessen future punishments, so punishments make for fewer punishments, apparently in some sort of magical feedback loop (which, if said loop actually functioned, misbehaviour and crime would be cured at an early age. If this feedback was a functioning, important part of our lives, the world would be upside-down from what we see, the well-behaved and unpunished would never be improved, and the most punished people of the world would be the best behaved! Need I say it? Study after reputable study show that the world’s most punished people are the most damaged ones in nearly every way imaginable). But that is going too far too soon.

Most of the people I interact with on this topic have a go-to, first definition for abuse (Abuse, capitalized) which is the one that means damaging, illicit, and immoral and is offered as mutually exclusive with legitimate punishments. This is the most popular definition today, I think, so fair enough, we do indeed require a term for illicit, immoral abuse. It’s just that I’m not ready to lose the older, more generic definition of abuse, meaning anything directed at us because it is something we wouldn’t like. I know it’s too late to stop the above definition from taking over the world, and I wouldn’t anyway: “Abuse” is a terrific term and covers so many forms of abuse, making many small causes part of a larger one, that is an important function.
But to the extent that it has become a Label, it has become something of a hindrance to clear thought around punishment, corporal punishment, and the consequences of forms of abuse (lower case) that have not yet found their way into the upper case territory of Abuse. In the world of social science and human behaviour, functions like abuse and its damages have their existence in a continuum, a gradient from none to all, with some randomness. My challenges in the discussions I have with some who may be too dependent upon the Label are all around this black and whiteness, ‘this is Abuse,’ ‘that is not.’ It begins to appear that at the first point in the gradient that a person defines an act to be Abuse, say the 51% mark, it is Abuse, insupportable, damaging, and to be deplored, but at 49%, we’ve not met the criteria, and the act in question therefore somehow defaults to being supportable.
Most importantly, viewing a gradient scale like this as a binary one allows any damage we suffer and cause to ourselves and each other that is born from abuse suffered under our hypothetical 51% threshold to go undetected, unaddressed, untreated and unmitigated.
It seems that Abuse qualifies for a lot of attention, abuse not so much – a problem, I believe. Although they are perhaps different stalks of a vine, they are very closely entangled. My concern is that we cannot kill the upper case one without that we are also willing to kill the lower. My fear is that the present situation – that we suffer the Abuse to live because we love the abuse – will never end.
Can we agree on this? That the punishments we use are a form of abuse, in the generic sense? As opposed to any legal sense, or any definition that is intended to differentiate the acceptable from unacceptable. Generically, if I call you an asshole in traffic, that is me abusing you, verbally, yes of course. And perhaps mine was abuse in a sort of moral or legal sense, whereby no good would be deemed to come of it. Perhaps though, the act of drivers cursing at one another is often harmless, so if no violence occurs, no harm, no foul, and as such, is lower case abuse
Now if I were to yell at my kid, tell her she’s a bad kid, in order to motivate her to not do whatever it was, that is me abusing her, in the generic sense at least, certainly, but with a good purpose, an admonishment to set her straight in life. That is what I mean by abuse with a purpose.
(With my blog name – abusewithanexcuse.com – I have made a harsh judgment, renaming the purpose as the excuse, and therefore defining abuse less generically and more toward the immoral or illegal. It’s a little provocative; the present exploration here may cause me to re-think it.)
This example may be a good one, perhaps yelling at a child and telling them that they’re bad is Abuse in many peoples’ minds, and not bad enough for the label in others’. Then, this being my point, it is certainly abuse in the other sense, something the child is not likely to enjoy, certainly an act somewhere along the spectrum and therefore carrying some gradient danger of damage. For those who define it as Abuse, it’s to be decried and stopped; for those who wouldn’t capitalize it – I am apparently free to carry on with my yelling and efforts to make my child’s “badness” one of her core beliefs. That, just in case I didn’t make it clear how I would define it: if I had to choose, it would be Abuse.
But I don’t have to choose, and neither should anyone. It’s a false choice, Abuse or abuse – “abuse” is bad enough.
If we take that attitude, we may actually make some headway in our efforts to battle bullying and Abuse, for this reason: the cycles of violence and abuse are not only driven by Abuse, but by abuse generally, the legal kind as well. Not only is the choice a false one, Abuse or abuse, but the enemy in our battle against violence and Abuse is a false one, a straw man. The psychological and social functions that we can observe, the cycles of violence, the cognitive and other types of damage associated with corporal punishments and Abuse, these dynamic forces are not composed of or driven by our distinctions. They are made of and driven by real things. Things that we don’t like, things that harm us or decrease the joy in our lives, these things, to the degree that they are experienced, are what drive the negative social forces. It doesn’t matter whether the negative stimulus is beyond our hypothetical 51% for Abuse status. It all carries its share of risk, at every percentage along the scale. “Abuse” is a legal sort of definition. No such distinction exists in nature.
In reality, it’s “abuse” that is the operating force.

A Natural Force, like Gravity
Perhaps an analogy, something to help clarify the difference between how we are so much more able to think critically around hard science, but not so much around other things. Think of abuse as a natural force, like gravity. We know gravity is a natural force, and we know that it exists in proportion to the mass of the object, usually only considered for celestial bodies, planets, and if we go hopping from planet to planet, we know we’ll encounter varying degrees of gravitational force. Perhaps the clever lads and lasses at NASA even have a fairly good idea of at what level of gravitational force things get too dangerous for humans, the amount of gravity that would cause dangerous collapses, would simply grind down human joints at an accelerated pace, or make it too difficult for the heart to raise blood to the brain– a quantity they might capitalize, Gravity.
Does that help?
All gravity has a quantifiable measurement and all gravity factors in life. Normal gravity wears joints out, and weak hearts can’t always raise blood to the brain even here on Earth. Falls and collapses have their risks here too. Of course, there are other things, but just for that little bit of our illustration – if we could lessen the gravity on ourselves, even if it’s not Gravity, our joints would last longer and feel better. At half of Earth’s gravity, I bet our knees would last right through to retirement.
So this is the heart of the matter of Abuse, my friends: it’s abuse that is the natural force, like gravity, and as such, abuse that, due to its ubiquity, has its effects on our lives. “Abuse,” meaning as opposed to ‘legal’ punishment or discipline, is a straw man, a mirage despite being a real life scourge, and it is the supporters of the lesser “abuse” that give oxygen to Abuse. “Illicit harm,” this is not a core concept. “Harm” is the core concept. I’ll say ‘keep our eye on the prize’ after we can get our eye on the right prize in the first place.

Thanks for reading, and please, retweet, reblog, get it out there, it’s free. Tryin’ to save the world here.
If anyone knows a PhD who can run with this, terrific.

Jeff

Soma Vacation

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I’ve been on a bit of a dry spell, I’ve kind of said it all and I’m frustrated. My cause will never be won, not even a little. It’s tiring. We’ve had a death in my wife’s family and there’s a lot of stress around wills and probate and Oedipal crap going on. I’m dealing with it all by smoking a lot of dope.
But this is a temporary thing, a sort of narco-vacation, I’m gearing up for a treatment to give me some relief from the psoriasis, and it’s best not to be a smoker when your immune system is being suppressed. I don’t want to write a bunch of crap high. I am having a few ideas, though, in the voice memo app on the phone, maybe two ideas for a fiction project, but four or five for blogs. When I come back to y’all and to RL, I’ll have a few ready.
I’ve already been in this state and not writing for two months already, and it is strange and really encouraging to see I’m still somehow collecting a few views! I don’t know how it happens, but I can fantasize, I guess. Who’s my reader in Brazil?
Whoever’s reading, thank you, it means a lot. If any of you believe me, if someone out there can see the reversal of logic that the study of psychology and abuse shows the ‘theory of punishment’ to be, that is wonderful (I mean any punishment at all). I think, at least where I live, Canada, we’re a fairly small group. It’s nice to think someone might see it my way. Please don’t correct me if you know no-one does. That’s my baseline anyway.
Anyway, thank you all, I’ll see you pretty soon.
My tolerance was back to my old days after about one day. I can’t afford this shit.

Punishment Hurts in Non-Physical Ways

Jeff/neighsayer16 Comments

First, here’s a few posts of mine on why all punishment is dependent on physical means:

https://abusewithanexcuse.com/2014/09/18/corporal-punishment-is-not-the-whole-story/

https://abusewithanexcuse.com/2015/03/04/all-punishments-are-physical/

The second one was written too quickly, but the concepts are there, and this is an online forum; I’m happy to debate them, clarify anything I said in my sloppy shorthand. But this is the other part of the same conversation: it doesn’t need to be physical to be damaging anyway.

I’ve been on this train of thought for a long time, and this idea didn’t develop during the first decade of the journey . . . it’s here now though, and in full force: why should our focus be solely on corporal punishment?

I mean, I’m sorry to kill any buzzes, but, does that mean there’s another kind, one we like better? Perhaps something more powerful, and therefore more efficient, like the mental kind. Whip a kid, he limps for a few days and then back to normal (so there’s all this maintenance), but mentally torture him once and you can fuck him up for years – is that the sort of bang we want for our buck? Of course not.

The thing is, when we opted for the term – Corporal Punishment – defining what wasn’t corporal punishment wasn’t the task, or the problem. It was more a matter of defining what it is, and that is basically the administration of physical pain as a deterrent and a penalty for misbehaviour. Perhaps it overlaps with ‘retribution’ to a great degree, in that they both mean pain, for the sake of pain, to balance the pain of the victims. Point is, we weren’t thinking about having defined Corporal Punishment that we would then have to determine what other sorts there are.

It’s time now, though. The best time is always ten years ago, but now is good too. So there’s your first homework assignment: define “non-Corporal Punishment.” Perhaps that job will morph into naming all the sorts of punishment that there are, for example, what sort of punishment is it when my mom gave me the “wait ‘till your father gets home” treatment? Mental, that it would cause anxiety for the rest of the day, until Dad got home, or probably more emotional, that I would suffer stress and fear for several hours? I guess on those times when all that was promised was given, it all just goes under Corporal, but on the days when Mom or Dad didn’t follow through, the promise was certainly a price to pay, certainly was a punishment in itself, and then should be classifiable. And the much talked about ‘Timeout?’ The solitary confinement must surely be an emotional punishment also, the temporary loss of the primary caregiver and their love?

I have asked rhetorically a few times over the last few years, and I will again – who will stand up and advocate for this form of non-corporal punishment, Emotional Punishment? Of course, no-one will. It is my dream that as other sorts of punishment are identified they are immediately moved to the list of cruel, banned practices, because if we do end up identifying the other sorts of punishment besides the Corporal variety, they are sure to include Mental Punishment, Emotional Punishment, Psychological Punishment and others – the ramifications, one, that the functions identified in the previous studies re: corporal punishment will apply and have always applied to all sorts of punishment, and two,  that now authors, educators and social workers will be in the unenviable position of identifying  some type of punishment off of the list as Approved For Use in the home – are pretty big. The ramifications of what we think and what we do as regards punishment in child-rearing in general have always been huge.

I, for one, am not convinced that all the study that went into the CRC and the anti-Corporal Punishment movement generally says anything like ONLY corporal punishment is damaging. The CRC and the rest list many sorts of damage and trauma beyond the purely physical damage in its condemnation of corporal punishment. Clearly any of these experts would admit at least some measure of the causes of other traumas – mental, cognitive, emotional, psychological traumas – to causes of the same names, mental, sexual, emotional, etc., punishments. Though it would be overly subjective to try to quantify exactly which aspects may produce exactly which or what amount of damage, I think it must be that both these vectors have some effect at some rate. Punishment genres tend to get mixed up in these dramas, often several varieties being dished out in one writhing mass, difficult to categorize.

Meaning, that in theory, emotional, mental sorts of punishments can also bring emotional and/or mental damage – meaning in turn that decrying and banning only “corporal punishment” isn’t going to be enough to stop the damage. So while selling the anti-Corporal Punishment message with this research is fair play, or fair enough, it certainly can’t be the only thing this important research supports. It also lays much of the groundwork to get us from anti-Corporal Punishment to anti-Punishment, meaning again, where all of the non-Corporal kind, like mental, emotional, cognitive, and psychological punishments are understood in our minds to be damaging and counterproductive as well. I know we all know that all those forms of abuse exist, but I think maybe we don’t like to appreciate that those forms of punishment also exist. Perhaps we’re also not appreciating how our acceptance of what we consider to be ‘legitimate’ forms and degrees of punishments tend to give oxygen to the illegitimate kind. We don’t know when we see a kid being dressed down and humiliated at the mall whether this is the worst episode of that family’s life, or the best moment of that kid’s day, much of which may not be spent in public.

When that sort of ambiguity can exist around whether a child is suffering physical punishment or abuse, imagine the additional difficulty of identifying these invisible types, mental, emotional forms of punishment and abuse. We need to do all we can to make abuse more visible, and the second and second best thing we should do is stop approving of all these things that look the same and provide camouflage for abuse. Of course the first thing we should do is realize that the downside of a culture of punishing has a major effect, possibly as big or bigger than the positive effect we always hope for when we’re punishing.

Equality Bias

Jeff/neighsayer5 Comments

“Equality Bias”

Here’s an interesting article that suggests why people tend to give equal weight to two sides of an argument that have very different levels of quality, different levels of expertise:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/2015/03/10/the-science-of-protecting-peoples-feelings-why-we-pretend-all-opinions-are-equal/?tid=sm_tw

–     The science of protecting people’s feelings: why we pretend all opinions are equal

By Chris Mooney March 10

It’s both the coolest — and also in some ways the most depressing —psychology study ever.

Indeed, it’s so cool (and so depressing) that the name of its chief finding — the Dunning-Kruger effect — has at least halfway filtered into public consciousness. In the classic 1999 paper, Cornell researchers David Dunning and Justin Kruger found that the less competent people were in three domains — humor, logic, and grammar — the less likely they were to be able to recognize that. Or as the researchers put it:

We propose that those with limited knowledge in a domain suffer from a dual burden: Not only do they reach mistaken conclusions and make regrettable errors, but their incompetence robs them of the ability to realize it.

Dunning and Kruger didn’t directly apply this insight to our debates about science. But I would argue that the effect named after them certainly helps to explain phenomena like vaccine denial, in which medical authorities have voiced a very strong opinion, but some parents just keep on thinking that, somehow, they’re in a position to challenge or ignore this view.

So why do I bring this classic study up now?

The reason is that an important successor to the Dunning-Kruger paper has just been come out — and it, too, is pretty depressing (at least for those of us who believe that domain expertise is a thing to be respected and, indeed, treasured). This time around, psychologists have not uncovered an endless spiral of incompetence and the inability to perceive it. Rather, they’ve shown that people have an “equality bias” when it comes to competence or expertise, such that even when it’s very clear that one person in a group is more skilled, expert, or competent (and the other less), they are nonetheless inclined to seek out a middle ground in determining how correct different viewpoints are.

Yes, that’s right — we’re all right, nobody’s wrong, and nobody gets hurt feelings.

The new study, just published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, is by Ali Mahmoodi of the University of Tehran and a long list of colleagues from universities in the UK, Germany, China, Denmark, and the United States. And no wonder: The research was transnational, and the same experiment — with the same basic results — was carried out across cultures in China, Denmark, and Iran.

In the experiment (described in further detail in this previous paper), two separate people view two successive images, which are almost exactly the same, but not quite. In one of the images, there is an “oddball target” that looks slightly different. The images flash by very fast, and the two individuals have to decide which one, the first or the second, contained the target.

Sounds simple enough — but the two individuals didn’t merely have to identify the target. They also had to agree. Each member of the pair — the scientists wonkily call it a “dyad” — separately indicated which of the images contained the target, and how confident they were about that. Then, if there was a disagreement, one individual was chosen at random to decide what the right answer was – and thus, who was right and who was wrong. And then, both individuals learned the truth about whether their group decision had been the correct one or not.

This went on for 256 intervals, so the two individuals got to know each other quite well — and to know one another’s accuracy and skill quite well. Thus, if one member of the group was better than the other, both would pretty clearly notice. And a rational decision, you might think, would be for the less accurate group member to begin to favor the views of the more accurate one — and for the accurate one to favor his or her own assessments.

But that’s not what happened. Instead, report the study authors, “the worse members of each dyad underweighted their partner’s opinion (i.e., assigned less weight to their partner’s opinion than recommended by the optimal model), whereas the better members of each dyad overweighted their partner’s opinion.” Or to put it more bluntly, individuals tended to act “as if they were as good or as bad as their partner” — even when they quite obviously weren’t.

The researchers tried several variations on the experiment, and this “equality bias” didn’t go away. In one case, a “running score” reminded both members of the pair who was faring better (and who worse) at identifying the target — just in case it wasn’t obvious enough already. In another case, the task became much more difficult for one group member than the other, leading to a bigger gap in scores — accentuating differences in performance. And finally, in a third variant, actual money was offered for getting it right.

None of this did away with the “equality bias.”

So why do we do this? The authors, not surprisingly, point to the incredible power of human groups, and our dependence upon being good standing members of them:

By confirming themselves more often than they should have, the inferior member of each dyad may have tried to stay relevant and socially included. Conversely, the better performing member may have been trying to avoid ignoring their partner.

Great instincts in general — except, of course, when facts and reality are at stake.

Nobody’s saying we ought to be mean to people, or put them down when they’re wrong — or even that experts always get it right. They don’t.

Still, I think it’s pretty obvious that human groups (especially in the United States) err much more in the direction of giving everybody a say than in the direction of deferring too much to experts. And that’s quite obviously harmful on any number of issues, especially in science, where what experts know really matters and lives or the world depend on it — like vaccinations or climate change.

The new research underscores this conclusion — that we need to recognize experts more, respect them, and listen to them. But it also shows how our evolution in social groups binds us powerfully together and enforces collective norms, but can go haywire when it comes to recognizing and accepting inconvenient truths.

Chris Mooney reports on science and the environment.

______________________________________________________________________

The upshot, it appears, is that social concerns can often trump real world concerns, that if our social group has one belief and some few academics, experts, or professionals have another, that we have evolved in such a way that the social group has been more important – meaning, I imagine, that for much of our history and pre-history, being on the outs with our social group has had the more immediate and dire consequences. Opting to be ‘sheeple’ has been a matter of survival.

This – what would you call it, principle? Function, tendency? – this useful-for-a-social-animal adaptation would appear to have the negative effect that, when the whole group is wrong about something, then wrong the group shall be, and for a long time. It takes something big to effect a change in a group mindset, like perhaps when some smallish, tribal group is absorbed into a larger group like a modern nation and now the smaller group’s erroneous belief is rendered an outlying one in the new, larger group – of course, this only if they really do join the new nation, if the culture is absorbed, either by choice or by force. This doesn’t change their minds if they remain obstinate and insular, which, then the conversation goes to motivation. Many and varied are the reasons for a group to close ranks and remain as a distinct group, perhaps the maintenance of such beliefs being a big one. Or, maybe the group’s erroneous belief gets proved false in a catastrophic way, a way that is undeniable and the group must face the reality to survive. Perhaps the volcano erupts and burns our whole island down despite all the virgins we sacrificed to it, something like that.

Some might think that this is what is required to change the mind of the groups mentioned in the article, the global warming deniers and the anti-vaccination people. Let’s hope not, of course. Sometimes we’d rather have been wrong.

Something the article only grazes with its mention of global warming, would be a slightly larger issue, that of the economy VS the environment. I would think that one definition of the expression, ‘the economy’ could be simply and expansively, ‘the human system of living.’ Perhaps this adaptation of group thinking applies here, and that may explain why protecting the environment and the Earth’s resources is somehow so often viewed as beside the point, like it’s only a concern after the primary concern that we all have jobs, and that the economy continues to roll on. David Suzuki is fond of pointing out that indigenous peoples find our separation of these two things to be impossible for them to understand. ‘What is the economy if the world cannot support the people in it,’ is their question. How can the living Earth somehow not be relevant?

I think what is missing from the aboriginal person’s understanding of the modern, industrialized person’s POV is this: that urbanism, industry and agriculture have allowed people to become the dominant environment. The physical world and nature are a few steps away. For modern, industrialized people, people are the environment, the only things we have to interact with to survive, and the only things that we will not survive if we choose to disdain them. Tigers and lightning are not the modern person’s biggest threats – Republicans are.

(That’s a joke, sort of.)

That from the geo-political side of things, to be sure, but for those few who’ve read anything from me before, you know I see the world as a fractal sort of thing, the macro matching the microcosm, with the family as the model for society and the world. So, a sharp turn here. For all of us, when we are young, at our most vulnerable and impressionable, the environment that we need to survive most immediately is the family. This is where this useful-for-a-social-animal adaptation happens. It is in the home, in our nuclear families where we must make this adaptation first, and so we do. This is where we learn all the things that become the larger conversations later in life: we must work, everyone needs a job, thou shalt and thou shalt not, we are here to do God’s Will, which is this and this . . . while the real world consequences of so many of these sorts of concepts are still far beyond our grasp, we learn that what our parents and caregivers tell us we had better learn, or else. The real world consequences of these things may be far away, but the immediate social consequences of not learning what our parents teach are right there in front of us (or behind us, as the case may be, on our backsides).

To bring this very interesting article in the link above home, and to put it in a less academic, more brutal context, let’s view it this way. We don’t listen to the experts, not because we’ve weighed their theses and found them lacking – but because the experts aren’t likely to hurt us if we don’t. Which gives their views a whole lot less weight than our internalized parents who are the real leaders of our social groups.

All Punishments are Physical

Jeff/neighsayer1 Comment

All Punishments are Physical

Punishments are not voluntary. Punishments are unpleasantnesses that are forced upon a person by an authorized person, in order to convince him to change his behaviour; if an action is not all of these things, it’s not a punishment.
– If it’s not unpleasant for the recipient, it’s not a punishment. It’s either neutral, or it’s a reward.
– If the punisher isn’t a proper, legal authority, it’s somewhere between unauthorized punishment and abuse.
– If it’s not intended to change the recipient’s behaviour, it doesn’t count as punishment, only as retribution.
– That leaves me with force:
People tell me, a lot, that they don’t have to force punishments on their kids, that the kid seems willing enough to take their timeouts, their groundings, the restrictions on their favourite activities – all in everyone’s list of non-physical punishments – in stride. That seems, uh, counterintuitive to me. I mean, I can see that there are many instances of a person taking his punishment with no apparent force. There are certainly cases of prisoners walking to the electric chair under their own power – but to assume that this display means the condemned man has a choice in the matter is assuming too much. He’s going to the chair, and he has plenty of able-bodied men there to help him if his natural instinct to run gets the better of him. The stoic Dead Man’s Walk is only about decorum, appearances. He gets to look like a tough guy, willing to pay the price, and we get to watch a scene somewhat less horrifying than if we had to carry him in there kicking and screaming. I believe that any instance of a person willingly taking his penalty is a similar thing: the person knows there is no choice, and they know that if they fight the designated penalty, it only gets worse for them.
The punished person knows it, the condemned know it, our children know it . . . it would seem to be only the parents that don’t. Modern, deluded parents.
In some ways, the old-fashioned ways of parenting and punishing are preferable, I mean, at least an unapologetic parent who deals out spankings and slaps is honest about it, at least he knows he’s being physical, and more importantly, his kids know it. In a certain sense, his kids have a better chance at understanding what happened to them, they can have some clarity. But the kids whose parents “don’t believe in physical punishing methods,” the kids who suffered their timeouts, their groundings, having their favourite things confiscated and their ‘screen times’ curtailed, the kids who were subject to these sorts of deprivations but have to go through life trying to support the idea that their parents didn’t abuse them, didn’t physically punish them . . . there isn’t likely to be any clarity for these kids. They can’t know that their rights were infringed upon, because their parents don’t realize it either. There will be no resolution for many of these kids.
But I ask you: are these penalties optional? If the kid doesn’t feel like taking the timeout, or living without his new toy, what then? Are we not holding him in the timeout chair, or holding the door closed, which are physical things? Is playing ‘keepaway’ with his new toy not physical? Do we suggest that the toddler take a timeout, and then wait for him to agree and do it himself? Do we ask him to put his new toy down and stay away from it for a specified period and wait for him to do it? Or, as I say at the start of this, and per the dictionary definition, is punishment forced, which means physically – unless someone can do these things with the power of only their mind?
Now I’m not saying that there is some way to have things all our way as parents without punishing, there definitely isn’t. I’m just saying that if you, as a parent, made it to all your appointments on time, if you are never late for work, if you can have expensive things around your house and keep them intact, you have probably been punishing, and that’s not something you can do without getting physical about it. Everybody does it, there’s no shame in admitting it. It’s the system, and there is almost no other way, again, no shame in it.
It’s just that I think there may be more glory in finding another way, if at all possible. And prerequisite to that would be, we need a baseline, an honest one that says, whether we call it ‘corporal punishment’ or not, punishment is a forced thing. If we say we’re not forcing the timeouts, the groundings, etc., that only protects ourselves from the perception of it, it doesn’t change the reality, the reality being the damages associated with corporal punishment, because all punishments require physical means. Remember, if you like it, if you volunteer for it, it’s not a punishment. Punishments are unpleasant. They’re supposed to be, right? So of course we have to force them, that is obvious, that is, it is when we’re talking about them like they’re a good thing. Somehow, though, when we’re in a discussion of what is bad about punishing, that obvious truth becomes, uh, invisible. What I seem to hear is something that boils down to “of course, you have to – but I don’t do that!”
Yes, you do that. No shame in it, it’s the system, the only one, pretty much, so you do that, just admit it. You have to, and you do. Simple. Was that so difficult? Maybe it was, and would you like to know why?
It’s because of all these parenting books, the parenting gurus, all the parenting literature that has been published since Dr. Spock, maybe since B.F. Skinner, it’s all lies, that’s why. None of it says “let the kids win,” it all presupposes that the parents must win every time, and most of it is selling you a system that lets you win every time, with the added bonus that you can do it without getting physical. These are lies, horrible lies. How many of us thought that if we did what some parenting guru says, we wouldn’t have to spank, and been let down when our kid doesn’t feel like it? How many of us learned the hard way that there really is only one way to win an argument with a one, two, or three year-old? And then how many of us stopped listening to these liars? So now we do what we have to do and we just shut up about it, maybe we even think we’re alone, like we’re the only ones who failed at raising our kids by non-physical means, so we can’t even be open about it.
Be open about it. You are not alone.
Most parenting books are crap. They give you positive-sounding ideas, like ‘don’t hit them right away. Try this first, try that, distraction, rewards,’ but they go silent about what to do when it all fails. At the most cynical level, maybe some of these teachers know what we’ll end up doing, but they can’t say it any more. When nothing “works,” when nothing convinces your toddler, you’re on your own – but remember, you’re the parent, you decide what gets done. Kids need ‘structure.’ You know what to do.
And we do, and so we do the hard thing, we bring the unpleasantness, because, as we all know, it’s the only game in town. Just admit it, at least to yourself, your kids, and to me. I’m looking behind the curtain. I’m not going to believe you when you tell me you didn’t or you don’t, not 99% of you anyways. Because really, how could you not?

A conflicted Society – Psychology VS Punishment

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A conflicted Society – Psychology VS Punishment

A swat is good for a kid, teaches ‘em right from wrong. This has been accepted wisdom for many, many folks for a very long period of time: punishments teach.
Abuse damages people – this has probably been accepted by fewer people, and also for fewer centuries.
Can we think both these things? That is to say, is there a place in our minds for both of these . . . functions? Is there room in our society for these opposing apparent effects we see as resulting from what are perhaps closely related causes?
Psychology and the naming of the ravages of abuse have the potential to change the world in unimaginable ways. The symptoms and unrealized potentials that so often follow in the lives of the abused are a scourge the vastness of which cannot be overstated. The only measures of it that approach the truth are our wonder and appreciation of those who somehow manage to overcome, as well as our appreciation of those who refuse to repeat their abuse upon the next generation and to imagine a world without abuse is to imagine nothing less than heaven on Earth. Unrealized it may be, but only the fields of knowledge in and around psychology and sociology have the potential to bring this dream into the realms of possibility. Unrealized, to repeat. I admit that.
The reasons for the unfulfilled potential of the study of human interactions are many, and not all within the scope of what I’m trying to say here. Conversely, the unfulfilled promise of the other idea – that is sort of my specialty. The other idea, of course, being that children need discipline – read “punishments” – to become responsible, well-behaved, law-abiding adults.
The social – I hesitate to say ‘sciences,’ so the social ‘fields of inquiry’ – haven’t really been tested yet, in terms of their potential to cure some of society’s ills. Despite so much good information coming out in the last few generations about the damages of corporal punishment, spankings and other corporal punishments remain the rule rather than the exception. Despite the consciousness on the part of the psychological and psychiatric communities of the harm caused by punishments, over-punishments and abuse, these professions seem to spend their time selling fixes for the harmed people after the fact rather than focussing on prevention (I mean, to be fair, that is more properly the province of social workers and educators, plus it’s so vastly worse than just pointless and thankless – it’s no wonder no-one gets paid to do it). It seems the patients possibly believe in psychology, and are willing to use what psychology offers – but it appears their parents and caregivers do not. Therapy is looked upon as a very personal thing. When a person’s damage is so bad that it robs them of their quality of life, then they may look at the source of their pain; when we are tacitly accused of being the source of the younger generation’s pain we are less likely to participate in that examination.
Punishing, the belief in punishing, sets the scene for abuse in many ways. I know it’s a normal part of the narrative around parenting and abuse to say that proper ‘discipline’ and abuse are opposites, to say that the parent seeks to mold and direct their kids while the abuser seeks only to harm and humiliate. However to believe this, one must ignore all the gradients between those poles.
One must refuse to see that near the worst end of this bridge, that there is some remnant of the parent, and that near the best end, that there is some small component of the abuser. This would be a truth even if the two things were opposites – but psychology has shown us that as much as they are, they also are not. The truth is that, even as within the popular narrative’s apparent opposition all punishing has a component of abuse, the darker, psychological story of unconscious mechanisms show the abuse component to always be present in fairly constant measure. I’ll make a sharp left turn here.
I’m guessing that paragraph separated the believers of psychology from the believers of punishment (‘discipline,’ if you prefer)? Did anyone just make a choice, or learn that they had already made a choice somewhere in the past? Because that is the point I’m heading for here. No-one seems to take psychology or childhood trauma seriously, not until we run out of choices, or until our choices take a deadly turn, not until we’ve lost everything first. This is my point, the answer to the questions posed at the start of this little rant. If there is room in our minds for both of these concepts, then our minds are split, our selves are severed in two. We need to understand that a choice is necessary. Of course there is only one choice to make.
A modern person who has no concern for abuse, no concern for the consequences of the pain we create, that person is a monster, a villain. That person has been destroyed, he’s either a rare, birth-defected organic monster or has suffered some kind of ultimate abuse himself (or some combination, the possessor of an activated ‘warrior gene’ perhaps). That person has not made a conscious choice, and that isn’t a choice that it is possible to make consciously.
In the middle ground is where humanity lives, nearly all of us. Unaware of the choice, or unaware that one must be made, we treat the lessons of psychology like art, an amusing intellectual exercise, humouring the work and the visionaries who have shown us the way as though they were children and their life’s works were finger paintings.
“Sure,” We say. “Betrayal of love. Childhood emotional and mental trauma, being trained to look at hurt and deprivations as being good for us, demonstrating Might is Right, modeling bullying and the use of force – that’s bad, I mean, I guess . . . but what are you gonna do?” (Shades of ‘Strawberry Fields Forever’ . . . )
“Like, sure, psychology. But seriously . . .”
This, while in our real lives, we punish, wielding pain, withdrawal of love, and selective deprivations of all kinds ostensibly to produce ‘better’ people – because we think the lessons of psychology and the understanding of abuse, unlike hard science’s laws like gravity, only apply to some few of us, to extreme cases, to other people, to other parents, to other parents’ children.
There is a choice, one conscious choice to be made, because not to make it leaves us in the middle ground. That choice is to buy into the basic premise of psychology and the understanding of abuse, which, at its simplest is: hurt hurts. To deny the social forms of philosophy this way, to believe in punishing is to say hurt heals. That’s the simple logic of it, peeled down to the essence. But beyond that, because we don’t really believe in the sciences of human behaviour and so this logical truth can’t reach us, this:
Punishing, being what we have believed for millennia, has us still living in a world of abuse, war, hatred, bigotry, and a crumbling environment. If you think it hasn’t caused it, I ask you this: has it fixed it? Do we think it’s going to fix things any time soon, is that our fantasy? Will anyone say that if we treat our children, our criminals and our enemies with more harshness and less forgiveness that that is the way to peace, tolerance and a better future? Five, six, maybe ten millennia of ‘discipline,’ and this is our world. It’s not all bad, but it’s got a lot of bad still. Is this supposed to be the generation where our ideas of bringing pain and with-holding love will finally solve our problems?
No? So that isn’t a choice, then? What about the status quo?
Would no change in the level of pain and deprivations we use to make things better be a viable choice? Should we be just exactly this harsh and retributive then, and if we do, can we expect improvement in our problems? Should we make sure not to decrease the amount of unpleasantness we visit upon each other?
No again? Of course we want to lessen abuse and pain in the world, but we think we can get there while supporting a concept like punishment, a concept that means hurt heals, a blatant reversal of what is obvious and true.
Or is it yes?
Yes, we really do think the knowledge of abuse and its damages isn’t real, or somehow not important? We really do believe that a great deal of hurt is bad, but some hurt is good, so we need to make sure everyone gets hurt in some perfect measure, we really do think that if we don’t hurt each other, if we don’t hurt our children in some way that they won’t learn and the world will become a worse place?
The knowledge of abuse and its harms are the future of the pursuit of human happiness, and the belief that using pain and the loss of love to make better people of our children is the dark, unconscious past, that is what I’m saying. Let’s get on the right side of history with this. We’ll need to take psychology and human science out of the universities and into our homes, into real life. Most importantly, into our families, our parenting. This is it.
Hurt hurts, or hurt heals.
If hurt heals, then what is abuse?
If hurt hurts, then what is punishment?
Anyone who thinks the world is getting worse (it’s not) because of our gradual increase in humanity (a slow but constant upswing), is suffering from Good Old Days Syndrome; they are not making an accurate assessment of our long violent history. As bad as things look now, they used to be worse, and it is humanistic ideas, the fulfillment of which could well be our modern understanding of abuse and its effects, that are making the difference. The modern lives with no humanism, gang life, lives of never-ending war and strife, they are the lives with the most violence and crime, not lives lived in liberalism and molly-coddling.
That’s the choice before us. Humanism, psychology, these are the real deal, let’s let them change us. Let them save our children, our world. We’ve tried the other idea, over and over, hoping for different results, and we know what that is. But of course, mental illness is one of the documented symptoms.