I mowed the lawn yesterday, which is a great time to think. As much as I hate the waste of gasoline, and the enforced conformance to neighbor's expectations, mindless walking in circles is almost hypnotic and meditative. Plus being outside adds to the experience. I was thinking about bipolar disorder and the tendency of such disorders to run in families. I was thinking about similar physiologies and allergies and sensitivities and the influence of vitamin and mineral deficiencies..............
You said Mom says she doesn't remember much. That is worrisome. I have never heard her say that, but to me forgotten memories scream mental block of trauma. I think lovingly inviting her to share, and expressing interest in who she is, is perfect. My feeling is that she will respond positively. She gets lost in grief and shame and regret and avoidance, but she does love us and she wants to be part of us.
I harp frequently on humane and inhumane, and how abuse destroys innate humanity, creating monsters. Something that came to mind while I was mowing yesterday was that a healthy human being protects our young. We defend our own offspring, but there is something magnificently altruistic, something so loving and accepting in humans that we will protect any young. We protect baby turtles and baby squirrels. We protect young humans. It is simply a human/humane way to behave.
But if we are abused, if we become a thing, an object to someone, our humanity is compromised. Some of us retreat into pain, and never live a full life. Others fight back by denying the humanity of anyone else. And so a child is just an object for pleasure. When one has no humanity, one can recognize no humanity. And the more children they use, the more and more children grow up seeing young children as fodder for their lust and the abuse multiplies exponentially. More and more people need to escape from the pain of their own lost humanity. But, understanding and compassion aside, they need to be stopped. I believe in transparency. If people who abuse, molest, rape children are outed, their actions made public, I think it would reignite our innate passions of being human. People would react.
Another facet of what I think comes from reading and thinking about Dave Grossman's book, On Killing: The Psychological Cost of Learning to Kill in War and Society. Historians researched war and found a small percentage of soldiers did most of the killing. In general, a human will not kill our own kind. The government found this information, and needed to create soldiers who would kill. They created a series of psychological trainings that basically tricked men into killing. It was first put into use in Vietnam. This is why those vets are so lost, their souls are in such terrible pain. They were betrayed. Unfortunately, the same techniques are now part of most films and video games. We are inadvertently brainwashing our kids at earlier and earlier ages. This new way of identifying characters and reacting, casts other people as things. We need this to survive. Otherwise how could we stand the pain of knowing how many children we have bombed, how many have horrific birth defects because we use depleted uranium. But as Madelaine Albright so humanely put it - we don't count collateral damage. They don't matter.
The same is true for sex. Movies, video games, culture teach us that sex is just gratification. There is no more understanding of how sex can be used to create deep connection between two people. Threesomes, voyeurism, sex toys are common, we think because we are daring and experimental. But it's really because we want others to see us as daring, and more importantly - because we want to avoid the intimacy of one on one intimacy and absolute vulnerability. And colliding with this we have the conflicting message we are taught in every movie - two people have sex and now they live happily ever after. That's how we know it is true love - we had sex. That really clashes with the continued male stereotype of Alpha male screwing and impregnating as many women as possible, because he can. Women don't know they're just a conquest, men don't know they have lost their humanity. Everyone just wants that momentary escape from the pain we all live in. And now we are in a culture that does not like children, does not respect mothering or parenting. I read an article once that showed that when children are treated like children, dressed differently than adults, then childhood was valued. When children are dressed like miniature adults, they are not valued as children. We have Toddlers and Tiaras. Parents are making their children into sex symbols at age 2. There is something desperately wrong with us. We forget that a pedophile believes that children want to be sexual. They asked for it because they were being sexy. This was the line fed to my friend as a young teen - she's 12, 13, 14 and sexy and so she wants it. She's only sexy in the eyes of an adult who is afraid of a true relationship between equals, an egalitarian relationship requiring vulnerability and openness. It's easier to declare a preteen a woman and shred her soul, destroy her life and protect ones self from the pain.
When I raged at my children, I was blindly reacting to the pain inside of me, blindly recreating what was done in our family. We can't stop and think about it. We can't use will ourselves to stop the pain. We have to recognize the pain and walk back through it. And that is scary. Most of us fear that more than living in the half dead states we (barely) survive in.
I like your Quaker vision. I think we need that - the idea of what the world could be like. We can see where we are supposed to go. The really hard part is figuring out how to get there from here. I know the answer is baby steps, but what is the first step, and how do we assess if we are heading in the right direction?
Personal point - I had a flashback this weekend of someone holding my (?) shoulders, shaking my head around violently. I couldn't tell if it happened to me or if I did it to someone. I almost felt like I was going to pass out.
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