There are two, maybe three, books I would like every human to read. They are:
(1) Richard Dawkins' book "The Selfish Gene", which I especially recommend before having children – more so if one is strongly driven to have children;
(2) Danny Vendramini’s “Them and Us” (pub. Kardoorair Press, Glebe, 2009, ISBN 9780908244775 ), to be read especially by all would be alpha males/queen bees, but I would also recommend this for teenagers, law makers/enforcers and parents; and
(3) maybe Desmond Morris’ book “The Naked Ape” pub. 1967, hardback: ISBN 0070431744; reprint: ISBN 0-385-33430-3).
Why? Because these books help show us some of the biological imperatives which are built into our physical essences, the self same physical imperatives that we no longer "have" to follow – imperatives that, in fact, are possibly physically, socially, emotionally, ecologically and spiritually harmful to follow.
In much the same spirit as the comment I’ve come across in dietary books and articles that we have “stone age biologies in a modern world”, hence giving us urges to eat foods such as fats which once had survival value but in today’s largely sedentary (Western) world are dangerous, these books, whether right or wrong, urge us to examine urges and assumptions that we take as fundamental, basic and “given”.
That “given” is in the sense of “of course everyone marries and has children”, or “of course all boys fight”, or “of course children get bullied”, or “of course everyone is Christian”, or “of course all women belong at home” – and continue inserting any prejudice/social more you wish to. This form of “given” is a form of enforcing conformance – which can be done through a wide range of methods, including humour (see the paper "Masculinity and the culture of engineering" by Dr Sue Lewis and others [the closest I can find to a link for this is http://digital.library.adelaide.edu.au/dspace/handle/2440/764; the paper came, I think, out of work by Swinburne University of Technology's National Centre for Women, subsequently renamed the National Centre for Gender and Cultural Diversity, which I cannot find a website for), socialisation (a lot of the 70s “consciousness raising” and much feminist literature since is useful at exposing this type of influence – although some has significant flaws such as transphobia or lack of awareness of the soul), or various forms of overt and covert violence.
The issue of violence – particularly covert forms (i.e., subtle and not so subtle threats and attempted intimidation) for controlling others – is a personal button that has been pushed by reading Danny Vendramini’s intriguing book, and I'm going to digress here to explore that a little.
Now, a lot of the horrors I’ve been subjected to by others in this lifetime has been about them trying to establish control over me:
(a) beginning with the bullying I had from would be alpha males and would be queen bees at school; through the
(b) faux parental attitudes of an extraordinarily bigoted and small minded former boss (e.g., he claimed that only 2% of the population were same sex attracted, which was made in the context of a conversation where the estimate that 10% of the people with HIV/AIDS were gay [in line with the 10% generally considered gay] and hence the problem was predominantly a gay problem: 90% of people with HIV/AIDS are hetero, but that was somehow immaterial to this bigot [who I actually suspect – particularly from his reaction to the transition of a transgender person – was a deeply suppressed homosexual); and the
(c) bullshit reactions to women being lesbians along the lines of “what a shame” (and worse: I’ve just been into a country town near where we are holidaying as I start this article, and have received some very frosty stares to my visible tattoos [no doubt a transgression against the rules of being female according to those people] and – possibly – my labrys tattoo [i.e., the “lesbian symbol” and my atypical [compared to many women] deep voice, which is quite mild); to
(d) the bullying and attempted intimidation I’ve had from the son and son-in-law of a former partner (which I will come back to later); and
(e) all the rest.
ALL of it (even the tailgating of other drivers - which is attempted intimidation) has, in one way or another, been about them trying to force me to be cowed into subservience – into toeing their line (conformity).
Well, most of it didn’t work. It has left me with residual scars (dents on my psyche's bumper bar, perhaps?) and issues to deal with , and I’m going to continue working through those in this post, to some extent, but I am still here, still being as true as I can to my own truest essence. They failed. They also ended the relationship I alluded to, but that led to some major improvements in my life anyway – and some useful lessons (which I am still working on intergrating into my being, so that if I ever find myself in a similar situation in a future lifetime, I will react differently).
It is in the context of lessons, particularly those around self knowledge, that I am writing this post. Keep in mind the story about the famous Greek philosopher (I forget whether it was Aristotles or Socrates) who is supposed to have had his head “read” by a phrenologist, who commented that the philosopher’s skull was of someone who was dull, stupid and slow mentally. The philosopher congratulated the phrenologist on being correct, and explained that he had worked very hard (and successfully) at overcoming the shortcomings he had from birth to become what he wanted to be. None of has to be blind adherents to our unconscious urges, biases and foibles. We can do personal growth work, counselling or we can plan other ways to overcome predicted tendencies if we wish to (and I include ALL astrological and other forms of divination in this: Cancerians DON’T have to be moody – we [I am a Cancerian sun sign] can overcome that, or channel it into a constructive expression, just as I decided at age ten to channel my anger into a constructive form – to use it [e.g. by using it to motivate me to write letters about injustices, or to be assertive], rather than allow it to use me). If I look at the history of warfare, we have gone from a situation where there were no rules (thousands of years ago non-combatants were too often slaughtered), whereas now, we have the (imperfectly adhered to) Geneva Convention and (also imperfect) monitoring of what is happening in combat - we even have (imperfect) attempts at controlling the weapons of mass destruction which have been created in recent centuries. [See Note 6]
In the case of “Them and Us”, Danny Vendramini has re-examined archaeological and other scientific evidence to develop a theory about the evolution of humans (homo sapiens sapiens). My first reaction to this, and that of others I know, was along the lines of “rubbish”, but I have now read the technical paper Vendramini wrote, and the populist book, and consider his theory plausible – and at least worth thinking about.
There are going to be some interesting debates about this concept over the next few years – but, irrespective of that, I consider it a useful way of approaching certain aspects of human behaviour, just as astrology can be a useful tool for approaching classification of personality (even if it is to say “no I don’t fit that description of me”).
To excessively shorten the theory so that it fits into this post, it goes something like this:
(i) ancient humans, a basically cautious (“timid”) hunter-gatherer species, moved into the region most of us now know as the Middle East (Vendramini uses the old term “Levant”) about 110,000 years ago;
(ii) Neanderthals moved into the Levant about 100,000 years ago;
(iii) Neanderthals were predominantly meat eaters, probably the apex predator in Europe from around 300,000 years ago, and, when current anthropomorphism is removed from our view of those times, were probably also cannibalistic (incidentally, one of the draft posts I have been slowly working on is how we tend to get anthropomorphic about the energies we call deities, which can be a problematic blinker);
(iv) one of the prey of Neanderthals in the Levantine included ancient humans (Vendramini writes something to the effect of “it’s all just meat – it’s nothing personal”), which – via 50,000 years of predation - is the cause of a known population bottleneck (i.e., decline of population to a small number – almost reaching extinction);
(v) through various evolutionary selection mechanisms, this small number of survivors adapted to the ever present threat from Neanderthals through means such as hyper-aggression and courage in young males (who were seen as sexually desirable), language, organisation, etc (see the book or the websites http://www.themandus.org/ and http://www.thesecondevolution.com/ for more – this post isn’t a substitute for reading either!);
(vi) the adaptations included:
- genetic coding (of “junk DNA”), via what Vendramini theorises are “Trauma Encoded Emotional Memories” (TEEMs), into seeing anything even vaguely resembling a Neanderthal as a threat (and hence fears of bogeymen in the night etc [Vendramini theorises that Neanderthals were more like “Big Foot” or the “Yeti” in appearance, and were evolved to hunt at night])
- increased athleticism and a more robust central nervous system, capable of surviving the shock and trauma of being hunted for millennia (which, Vendramini posits, is why humans can survive torture and other abuse, when other species may succumb to shock when captured from the wild)
- keeping women and children close to home and in monogamous relationships (Vendramini posits that the evolution of “romantic love” was an adaptation aimed at reduced the sexual assaults of Neanderthals on fertile females – along with other developments such as private sex, modesty, personal hygiene and even the missionary position [see Note 1]), which gradually changed the behaviour of women so that aggression and violence was expressed in different ways (anyone who doubts the existence of female violence needs to read the book “Queen Bees and Wannabees”; also, Vendramini provides some references [in his list of almost 800 references] on this topic which I intend to try to follow up);
(vii) the adaptations led to genocidal warfare between early humans and Neanderthals, with the aggression of young males leading to expansion of the early human race (for whom Vendramini revives the term “Cro-Magnon”), the extinction of Neanderthals and other hominid species (except in Africa, where there was possibly some interbreeding) and infanticide against any baby which triggered the TEEMs created by Neanderthal Predation, hence giving us as a species unusually limited genetic variability;
(viii) after the extinction of other hominid species, the hyper-aggression of young males became a problem for families wishing to rear children, which led to the development of agriculture, cities and law giving (in other words, “civilisation”) as a means of ensuring safety against packs of marauding young males (and at this time, those same formerly sexually desirable young males were no longer sexually desirable: caring, sensitive, supportive partners were [see Note 2]).
Phew – quite a step from recent views on Neanderthals, and a view that I feel strangely sad about (I liked the friendly version of the Neanderthals), but it does pose some possible answers to questions about evolution. (Mind you, the thoughts I had of the similarity between this sequence and those of the US creating problems for itself later by supporting people such as Hussein [against the Iranians] and Bin Laden [against the Russians in Afghanistan] and the rise and fall of hyper-aggression aren’t in that category :P )
It also has, if correct, some very significant information about what is hard wired into our bodies – things like xenophobia, sexism, aggression, violence (the information Vendramini includes on the history of warfare, especially amongst tribal societies, is staggering), and even the missionary position and why men stereotypically allegedly don’t ask for directions.
Of course, none of this is to say we have to be this way. We can choose to be otherwise, both as individuals, and as a society. It is in the latter area that I consider this theory, if correct, may have some powerful effects, with changes to attitudes towards child rearing (such as a long overdue reduction in tolerance of violence and aggression, including female violence and aggression - in fact, the most aggressive person by far I have met since the former relationship I will be writing about ended is a young female), justice (possibly less naive views of the responses to measures aimed at curbing violent/aggressive tendencies), and possibly even education (possibly less naive views of the existence of various forms of bigotry, and the need to take active action to address the cause of such prejudices, rather than piecemeal trying to address these after they have developed).
There are some (scientifically/intellectually) interesting (but not necessarily pleasant to recount) behaviours recounted in this book, such as the violence of primates (mainly apes and chimpanzees), including cowing females into subservience, and the ubiquity of anthropomorphism (which particularly caught my attention as I am planning a post on how this also gets applied to deities).
As far as the hyper-aggressive behaviour of young males goes, I have had some personal experience of that with the son and son-in-law of an ex-partner of mine.
To digress (and this is where I'll give more detail on some of the triggers I referred to earlier), their belligerence, aggression and criminality was a large part of what made the experience of being in that relationship that of being in an abusive relationship, and both prevented me from becoming active in politics (because of their tendency towards petty crime, which – combined with things like my being lesbian – would have made me too much of a target to have much of a realistic chance [and would have subjected them to unreasonable scrutiny]) and ultimately was the trigger for me leaving (I was expected to “toe their line” about law breaking once too many times). Examples of the behaviour, both major and minor, that I was subjected to include:
- as mentioned, being expected to shut up about criminal activities (which I largely refused to comply with, I am pleased to be able to say; the exception was when the younger daughter took the can for her stupid de facto, who chose to go driving and have an accident while drunk and under a suspended sentence: the choice I had next day when I was told what they had done was send the bastard to jail and watch the daughter, who I cared about, lose her home, or go along with it);
- being subjected to regular extreme drunkenness, including being expected to pussy foot round one of the males who became even more aggressive when drunk (my observation of this is that it is a far too common behaviour in Australian society);
- being grabbed by the throat as part of a “conversation”/"demonstration" about the finer points of strangling someone (really!);
- sadism on the part of one of the males, who admitted taking pleasure in trying to wind me up and also absolutely gloated about having threatened and intimidated someone at work into tears (I have to admit that I would actually like to see his karmic return with regard to that incident);
- violence including drunken a rampage up the street where one of these males, who used to make a big deal out of the “wrongness” of violence against women, assaulted (punched) a middle aged woman (he some months later also hit his partner, which was almost enough to cause my ex to turn against him; the rampage was supposed to be a demonstration, somehow, of how much he loved some children of his from a previous relationship who he wasn’t allowed to have access to) [see Note 3];
- having people (including a male) walk in on me while in the shower; and
- extreme disrespect towards me, the most upsetting of which was deliberately turning a photo of my family face down on the table.
Of course, throughout almost all of this I had a complete lack of support from my then partner (which is very different now, in my cuirrent relationship). My take on this initially was that my former partner was trying to maintain some harmony. Ultimately, it became clear she effectively valued supporting criminal and other problematic behaviour ahead of me, which was when I started planning my escape. The others valued their little family unit ahead of all other humans – hence the contempt for laws, which are (with some serious exceptions) about social order. About my only win was that they never indulged their drug habits at my house (I can’t call it a home).
At this point, I will remind you that Danny Vendramini's theory proposes a possible basis for xenophobia, which is effectively what this disdain towards anyone who wasn't family effectively was. They had a choice about following their xenophobic urges, whether through junk DNA coding or other, and chose to follow them.
The obvious question is: why stay in this nightmare? Out of some sort of rescue complex? Guilt, or a need to punish oneself? Or feeling this was all I could get?
OK, keeping in mind that:
- there were good times (particularly in the first few years, where I was actively supported in other areas of my life),
- that my partner’s gradually deteriorating health (she wound up on a disability pension) was also a motivator for me to stay,
- that I gradually wound up with financial problems (my ex’s health forced her to stop work when we had taken out loans to, in large part, help her kids) that prevented me leaving my ex, and
- that I belive passionately in sticking to my word (we had had a commitment ceremony - it was immaterial to me that she had broken her vows: I would rather die than break mine willingly),
... the latter feeling from the previous paragraph was actually my main, initial motivation.
I had been single most of my adult life, and genuinely felt I could not get a better relationship (and did not particularly want to go back o being single). Later, I stayed out of concern for that ex’s younger daughter, who wanted a better life for herself and her children (my ex’s older daughter had had enough good sense to establish a life for herself away from, to use the term they would, “all the dickheads” [even to the extent of trying sending her daughter to an expensive private school for a while, until she realised that wasn’t as good as she had hoped]) and the step-grandchildren (I am still working psychically to help her and them), and also the whole complex of other reasons that women stay in abusive relationships (such as things like the basic idea of feeling I have to be in relationship).
Now, I am slowly working through the healing I need to do, with the support of a wonderful, very aware, very spiritual, very capable, very different to my previous, partner.
Part of that healing process also includes a post I have been working on about my struggle to forgive these two males, which includes the need for validation and a valid – to me – feeling of control/power as opposed to the powerlessness that at least one of those bastards was deliberately seeking to create. This all gets more complicated when I try to interact with my ex's daughters or the grandkids and one or more of the males are still on the scene, but if I don’t forgive or come to terms with what they did to me, I risk tying myself to them through my hate, and failing to recognise any changes they may make – and there were some small signs of change for the better in one of them towards the end of my time there ...) Then again, it is possible for me to get to a stage where I am neutral towards those aggressors, but if they ever ask for my forgiveness, I have conditions they must satisfy before they receive it.
I know full well that there is almost no chance that my forgiveness would be sought, so any resolution may have to wait until my next life (I've recently starting accepting that I will be nowhere near completing the taks, especially karmic, that I have to complete in this life when I die, so will probably have to come back), but the situation is similar to one where my (now deceased) birth family grandparents, who were instrumental in my being adopted, asked me for my forgiveness: my answer was that the person they had most hurt was my birth mother, and for me to forgive them they would have to make their peace with her first. I had worked through my problems, and found myself at a point where I could not forgive because to do so was to allow an injustice to be continued.
In the same way, I feel that it would be wrong of me to blindly forgive the aggressive males I am writing about, as that way they would have no barrier to continuing to behave in the same fashion. If they prove to me that they have changed, then I'll forgive them - but I am aiming to get to a stage where I don't hate them. I know that sounds like I've set myself up a bit as ajudge and jury, but I still consider from time to time whether I should have child services step in as far as the children of one of them is concerned, and I will continue to work to psychically protect, heal and nurture (from a distance) the grandkids and ex's daughters, and do that AND seek to promote maturity and awareness on the part of both my ex and the aggressive males concerned [Note 7]. They came into my life for a purpose (well ,several, actually), and these continuing actions by myself are part of it. It will all change after we have drunk the Waters of Lethe for our next incarnations, but I will continue to do what I can now, and hope that I will belive in myself more next time round.
It is ironic that Vendramini’s book comments on violence by step parents, as:
A) my (adoptive) parents were wonderful, loving, supportive people who I am proud to call parents (which I also feel about my birth parents – I don’t feel a need to limit who I credit with being a parent to me: I also count several foster parents, and do not see ANY of them as being the lesser for the others);
B) although I am NOT taking on a step parental role in my current primary relationship (well, only relationship, actually – the poly in me is only potential, not realised at the moment), I spend quite a bit of time, energy and effort supporting my partner in her role as a parent;
C) all other step parents I personally know do not fit into the horror mould – in fact, if there is a “horror mould” to be applied, it is, in my experience, more likely to be the step kids :P *
Going back to the context of Danny Vendramini’s theory, my ex and her son and son-in-law are, in my opinion, prime examples of the vestiges of hyper-aggressive behaviour that once was valuable, and now is actually actively harmful.
So ... in a generic sense, what do you do about such people?
Well, if it is only themselves, and they are not impacting on others (which is almost impossible to achieve – remember the drunken rampage up the street I referred to?), nothing. If adults are involved, such as myself, you help those adults to make the decision to change their circumstances – I did eventually. (However, as I mentioned earlier, I have not forgiven those three, and the struggles I am having with finding a way from being a victim to being able to forgive will be the essence of another post.)
When children are involved, the situation changes. The ideal would be to:
I) counter the harm done at home through the school system (which is NOT just a case of providing encouragement and support: I consider our current education system too “soft” in that aspect, and that it needs to cover how to accept valid criticism, but valid challenges to destructive home values such as excessive loyalty to family [e.g., ahead of the law] need to be made, as well as creating an awareness of how to break cycles of destructive relationships);
II) give the next generation effective parenting skills; and
III) remove the children to constructive situations (which unfortunately, cannot be guaranteed with our current, chronically overloaded system – which, believe me, I have considered).
Lobbying for better education and child care systems is something I have been doing for many years, now – as well as doing whatever I can spiritually and psychically to bring that about.
When considering that (particularly a better education system), keep in mind that we no longer have to blindly obey biological imperatives. Our world is radically different: in fact, we need, as a species, to stop breeding enough children to grow the species' population; we need to stop reacting against threats no longer existent (as outlined so well by Danny Vendramini’s book); we need to – as a species - stop prancing about like spoilt little brats. By being aware, we can make conscious choices – not necessarily easy, emotionally pleasant/comfortable or easily implemented choices, but choices that promote our overall wellbeing individually, as a species and as a part of this wonderful planet.
Being aware of the (biological) drive to eat crap gives a basis to resist that urge when one should. Throughout history, being aware of the spiritual element of life has given basis for rejecting crap values (as one person at the recent Parliament of the World’s Religions said, “go beyond conformity”; note: I do not include religions aimed at enforcing conformity as a form of spirituality).
This theory gives a basis for examining our urges towards violence and aggression, in its various forms (and I include female violence in that). The theory may not be correct, but the self examination should be.
One change I have made as a result of reading this book is my position on the urge of young people, mainly – but NOT exclusively – male to “test themselves out” with risk taking and competitive/violent behaviour. In the past I have advocated society trying to find a relatively benign way to cater for this (for instance, provide tracks where they can take cars and do burn outs, drag racing etc – even to the extent of having ambulances present – so this isn’t done in suburban streets or other public roads where other lives ar put at risk and the safety and sense of security of other people is not threatened). I am now inclined towards a view that, maybe, as this is possibly vestigial destructive programming, maybe a better way of addressing this is to provide education and means of these people managing their primitive urges.
I’ve long advocated the ancient “classical” approach to education (albeit to all genders, not just male): aim to produce well rounded, evolved people, through both parenting and public education (whether delivered through public or private schools), people who respect and incorporate physical, emotional, mental and – if they wish – spiritual development and maintenance of those aspects into their lives. People who are not blindly naive, who are not so insecure that they are judgemental (or, at the very least, are aware of when they are, and take steps to prevent them acting to control/otherwise harm others as a result), who are not helpless, unaware slaves to their DNA and other coding. Maybe this needs to be extended, and I need to be less tolerant of the foibles of those portion (it is not all of them by a long shot!) of young people who want to be belligerent.
In any case, I consider there needs to be far less tolerance of violence and aggression amongst small children – boys and girls – and less automatic acceptance of violent toys and games, etc. One of my ex’s (not the problem one, another one before her) would take toy guns and swords off her children when someone tried to overrule her rules about her own children: I have always admired her for that, and I particularly admired my current partner at a recent family gathering when she called a young nephew on his punching the shoulder of a brother-in-law of mine – behaviour which usually gets accepted as “boys playing games”, an acceptance which is an active promotion of the hyper-aggression of Cro-Magnons that Danny Vendramini theorises evolved as a species response to Neanderthal Predation, a response which has been outmoded and dangerous for thousands of years.
Going back a little in this missive, I mentioned a qualifier when considering vestigial hyper-aggressives: “they are not impacting on others”.
As I wrote at the time, that is almost completely impossible. There are laws and police forces to deal (albeit imperfectly) with those who physically assault others, and a slow acceptance of violence having other forms (e.g., emotional abuse and financial abuse – which I consider was part of the relationship with the ex I have been referring to [ironically, though I was financially abused, I had the higher income], although society is being slow to accept verbal violence as the active form of violence that it is). I’ve written elsewhere in this blog on the psychic interactions of such people, and won’t complicate matters by repeating that them in this post. The one aspect I would like to cover a little further here is dealing with meeting hyper-aggressive people when one is a more spiritual person.
In an ideal world, theoretically that wouldn’t happen. However, this isn’t, and isn’t likely to be, an ideal world: it is a physically beautiful world, often, but it is a place created for us to grow, and there will always be challenges. In much the same way I consider it fundamentally wrong for us to try to insulate ourselves from the vagaries of nature [see Note 4], I think we should not forget where we came from, and what lessons we have learned in the past: we just need to be able to effectively pick and choose from them - and scientists are not necessarily the best arbiter of that: despite his theory, Danny Vendramini is not, by his own admission, a scientist – in fact, his position as an outsider is what has helped him come up with this theory (as a professional engineer in my day job, I can also state that engineers are also not in a position to be such arbiters!).
Despite the mocking of scientists and the scientifically inclined of such things, I am firmly of the view that alien life does exist, and has and is actively interacting with this world. It is possible to conceive that, as we leave this planet we will come across races that are less evolved than we are at that time, and may still be dealing with issues such as their own hyper aggression pasts: what do we do then – fall in a heap?
One response would be to work at having something like an army or military force, with people given (unlike now) a less damaging psychological transition into and more healing psychological transition out of it. Personally, I consider our best response, both individually and as a society/species, to such possible traumas to be to build up our psychic strength [see Note 5], psychological knowledge and spiritual evolution to an extent where we are not naive, and are capable of identifying and dealing with such trauma. (My experience is that we should do this when we are not stressed – it is too late to try to develop such skills when you are under stress.)
I’ll keep thinking on this, just as I will also keep thinking on other aspects of the Neanderthal Predation and TEEM theories, and see how I can integrate that with other knowledge I have come across. I disagree with Vendramini’s use of NP to explain mythology – he is probably correct in some aspects, but in others I consider the witchcraft/Wiccan explanations I have been taught to be more credible. Also, as Vendramini’s TEEMs are “trauma encoded”, I wonder if profound personal change/growth work can change the code? Changing evolution through conscious effort is something I and others have been working on for decades ...
Also, one thing I have wondered about is the number of lifetimes each of us goes through. Allowing for parallels, it is quite a few: perhaps TEEMs means we also can effectively access lifetimes on our genetic history line in each lifetime as well, which opens up almost all of humanity’s experiences to us as we pass through a series of incarnations. Now, that is one thing in terms of the traumas, fears, etc Danny Vendramini theorises about, but “good” things have survival value as well. Matriarchs in a herd of elephants remember and pass on information about threats, but also about useful things like where to find water in droughts; shamanism and other psychically active forms of spirituality (I’m being very “loose” or broad in my definition of “spirituality” there!) allow a way for us to access the knowledge of ancestors: perhaps some of that is genetic, in much the same way that having more primitive bits of biology also allows us to “shamanistically” access early stages of life? Hmmm ... just a thought ...
One thing I won’t resile from: apart from the personal, the responses to this theory I am proposing are social engineering – just as the attitudes that “it didn’t hurt me”, or “X always Y”, and many of the other behaviours Vendramini describes as ways evolution is accomplished are ALSO social engineering (“the playing fields of Eton” are one of the most notorious such examples of - in my opinion - bad social engineering, social engineering that led to the racism, violence and brutality of the British Empire). My proposed social engineering is, in my opinion, essential for the continued survival of our planet and – of less importance – our species, and our continued evolution and development.
As Danny Vendramini says in his book: “There is no them and us. It’s all an illusion. There is only us.”
If you would like to see some alternative views on the extinction of Neanderthals, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neanderthal_interaction_with_Cro-Magnons
* “Joke, Joyce”
Note 1
I am working on a post about the problem of sex negativity in society generally, and the spiritual communities in particular. This theory adds a new dimension to that post.
Note 2
Something I have read of is how the human foetus appears to go through the stages of evolution in the womb. From memory, it is supposed to look like primitive fish, etc before looking like humans. Certainly we still carry primitive bits of biology around with us – such as the more primitive centres of the brain (e.g., the amygdala, which is accessed by shamanic rituals, some of which can take us back to awareness of dinosaur like creatures – we weren’t human at that time, but parts of biologies were still present then). I’ve also come across a view that we tend, after birth, to repeat – in a compressed form – our past history. That has some validity for me, as I can see some of my past life cycles in what I went through as a teenager. Perhaps the change in partner preference also shows up during this process, with an initial preference of some young women for “exciting”, physical partners, which is later supplanted by a “settling down” preference for a more mature, stable, sensitive life partner? ... Just speculatin’ :)
Note 3
One night the son and son-in-law turned against each other, and I had the unenviable job of having to take the son and his girlfriend to hospital. The son was thrashing round and ranting so much in the car that I actually got out of the car initially. Goddess none of that stuff was fun, and it is a miracle I lived through it.
Note 4
I am pleased with one aspect to the current long drought in the state of Victoria, Australia: we no longer water lawns, and hence are far more aware of natural cycles in our world. I also recall the words of a Koori elder at a ceremony after the devastating Black Saturday fires earlier this year about the bush regenerating after fire: that has started to happen in much of the burnt out lands – I saw it just a few days ago, as I saw it here in the Grampians a few years ago. (Mind you, some land around Kilmore is too damaged, and has not regenerated – the fires were worse than usual.)
Note 5
I wish to make it QUITE clear that stronger does NOT mean thicker skinned or tougher, in the BS sense of “get tougher”, “be a man”, and other such rubbish, which simply makes one less sensitive: no, I mean getting stronger in the sense of “feel the fear and do it anyway”.
Note 6
Just because an attempt to address a problem, such as warfare, isn't perfect does not necessarily mean it is bad: it may well be a step along the way. To say that the Geneva Convention and other well meaning attempts at acheiving these aims are useless because it hasn't eliminated warfare is naive - no, it is stupid. Getting rid of warfre is a big issue: it will need lots of steps, of varying impact, before it is finally truly gone. Such attempts can, in my opinion, ONLY be described as bad if they make things worse (the League of Nations may be one such example; I consider the United Nations, although heavily flawed, does actually do quite a bit of good development work [which I get to see and take part in because of my day job] so it isn't an example of a "bad" attempt - and the UN Declaration of Human Rights and other statements/documents/agreements have been useful to me in lobbying I've done).
Note 7
One of the things I consider many people miss is sending healing, guidance and nurturing to those who are helping problem people - i.e., the guides/guardians of people such as the aggressive males I've been writing about, or the local thugs at a pub, or world leaders who are doign great harm. All of them have people in spirit who are trying to help them evolve: how about helping the helpers?
Love, light, hugs and blessings
Gnwmythr
Tags: aggression, courage, evil, forgiveness, evolution, interpersonal interactions, judging others, not letting go, education
First published: Friday 8th January, 2010
Last edited: Friday 8th January, 2010
