Thursday, August 27, 2009

The Return of Quetzalcoatl: Chapter 3

César Tort returns with Chapter 3 of The Return of Quetzalcoatl. Links to the Preface and Chapters 1 and 2 are at the bottom of this post.

Sentences between squared brackets do not appear in the original Spanish version of the manuscript.


The Return of Quetzalcoatl: Chapter 3
by César Tort


Periodization of Parental-filial Relations

In recent decades several historians without any link to the deMausean school have written about thirty books on histories of childhood. I will mention only a couple of those published in 2005: When Children Became People by Odd Magne Bakke and Growing Up: The History of Childhood in a Global Context by Peter Stearns. DeMause has iteratively complained that books of this sort are presented to history students as if childrearing in the past had been as benign as Western childrearing in our times. Stearns for example is author and editor of more than forty books, but he does not cite a single of the fifty or so psychohistorians. I have encountered this attitude only in some scholarly books by parapsychologists who ignore, en bloc, the texts of skeptical criticism of the paranormal hypothesis. In his book Stearns attempts to absolve the parents by claiming that, as some encyclopedias do, infanticide has had an economic motivation; when it is well documented that in some periods infanticide was more common in well-off families. In a similar vein, at the end of his book Stearns claims that modern childhood is more prone to mental disorders than in traditional cultures: the diametrically opposed to what the facts tell us, as we will see in the next chapters.

DeMause graph

The main stages of Western childrearing according to deMause.
Only half of the graph is valid, as explained on page 509.


Psychogenesis is the process of the evolution of empathy, and, therefore, of childrearing forms in an innovative group of human beings. In a particular individual it is an evolution of the architecture of his or her mentality, including the cognition of how the world is perceived. Psychogenesis depends on the parents’ breaking away from the abusive memes in which they were educated: a phenomenon that deMause has occasionally observed in the historical migrations of people that left behind some of their childrearing methods. Referring to biological evolution, Julian Huxley said that evolution has been “an enormous number of blind alleys, with a very occasional path of progress”. With the exception of the most advanced culture, something similar can be said of the cultures of the world (cf., for example, how Islam has stayed for centuries in a psychogenic blind alley in its treatment of women and, consequently, of children).

The above graph does not represent biological evolution from worm to man, but psychogenic evolution: specifically, the seven psychoclasses identified in psychohistory.
- - - - - - - - -
Although only six modes appear in the graph, deMause divides the mode depicted as a horizontal bar in two periods, as shown below. Had the first period of the infanticidal stage appeared in the graph, it would have been an extremely long prolongation of the bar into the left because, in addition to Antiquity, it would have comprised the Neolithic and even the Paleolithic. For practical purposes, the graph starts approximately from the year 200 CE (Common Era) and, although it illustrates psychogenic modes in the West, it does not show Greece at its peak. For deMause, the farther it is rummaged into the past, the more abusive the parental-filial relations. Henceforth the graph is always ascendant (precisely his mistake, as we will see in the third section). With the exception of the helping mode of childrearing that barely started in some Western families of the twentieth century, the rest of the stages have been, from greater to lesser degree, abusive. In the next paragraphs I will rephrase diverse deMausean texts of how the seven psychoclasses evolved, and at the same time will include some ideas of my own.

Early infanticidal childrearing

Infanticidal, incestuous and abusive behavior has been observed among primates. For psychohistory there exists apparently only a slight evolutionary leap forward of childrearing from our primate forefathers to the family forms in the most primitive nomadic tribes. DeMause calls it early infanticidal childrearing. Most of this stage covers the period in which paleontologists and archeologists have found vestiges of ritual killings of very young humans and pre-humans: from the Paleolithic to the dawning of the Neolithic. In savage tribes this form has persisted till our times, like the headhunters of Mundurukú in Brazil or the aboriginals of some Oceania islands.

In Western societies of the twenty-first century a type of family persists that, it could be said, roughly equals this psychoclass: the families that schizophrenicize their children, or turn them into serial killers or violent criminals (see Alice Miller’s study on the child Hitler, or this biography on a criminologist who discovered what transforms an ordinary person into a violent criminal).

Late infanticidal childrearing

When the treatment of children became less brutal in a group of innovative parents, confidence among adult individuals grew to the degree that social links, solid enough to allow the creation of the first villages and city- states, could be established: a milestone in the ascent of man. But infanticide continued. All societies of the Ancient World invented sacrifices in which infants were killed in honor to the deities. However, after the Babylonian captivity some Hebrews abandoned the sacrificial practice. Other peoples, including the Greeks, abandoned the ritual sacrifice of children and introduced a less savage form of getting rid of them: unsheltered exposure. Since the psychological after-effects of a surviving sibling who grows up knowing that his parents ritually sacrificed a little sister is different from the abandonment of the newborn he never met — in addition to comparatively better child care in the Greek and Roman world — this evolutionary leap explains the explosion of arts and sciences in the classical world.

As can be appreciated in the graph, psychoclasses live together in our times. In the graph the most common forms of childrearing stand out, occupying most of the graph space. This is why the horizontal bar of infanticide, which segment can be seen in red on page 509, appears since the first centuries of our era and continues through the Middle Ages up to our age. [The page number refers to the printed manuscript; in Gates of Vienna it will appear in the fourth discursion.] Abundant testimonies exist of infanticide in the Middle Ages, and complaints were even heard from the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries. The form of late infanticide by exposure continued in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries in underdeveloped countries. Compared to the West, in the Third World many parents are stagnated in more archaic forms of childrearing. As already noted, paper notes are common about mothers who kill their newborns in India. More advanced psychogenic sectors within that nation and in other backward countries have started to emerge to abolish the custom.

Abandoning

Church authorities initiated a persistent struggle against infanticide (a struggle that continues in present times in the form of opposition to abortion: a subject that psychohistorians ignore). According to deMause’s analytic interpretation, Christians saw in their children their seriously injured inner self, and consequently the child still was the object of great fear. Instead of liberating the fear by exposing their babies, deMause’s theory goes, in the early Middle Ages some families started to practice oblation: abandoning their children to the monasteries. It was a less brutal form to elude the dangers of their projections. In the West children were not only abandoned in the monasteries; sending them to wet nurses or delivering them to adoptive parents or to other homes for years was a generalized practice in Europe’s middle and upper social classes.

Ambivalent

The beginnings of the twelfth century mark the end of child abandonment in monasteries. Nevertheless, the baby continues to be a creature full of adult projections and had to be castigated. The child is swaddled with long-spun bands until he or she looks like a log, completely immobilized and deprived from the use of its limbs: a torment if we think of the liberties that, with recent technology, can be observed on the free movements that unborn babies enjoy in the womb. Swaddling the infant was a common practice in former psychoclasses, who swaddled their offspring for periods of several months to one year. For deMause this practice was universal and it goes back to the second millennium BCE (Before Common Era).

However, by reducing even more infanticide and child abandonment, the members of the new and more advanced psychoclass, less dissociated than the medieval man, eventually produced the Reformation and the Renaissance.

Intrusive

At the beginning of the sixteenth century the level of psychic integration of a small group of innovative parents accomplished one more step forward in the unfolding of empathy, and the child appeared less dangerous. As the parental projections were further reduced, mothers started to un-swaddle the infant. In the intrusive mode, however, the frequency of the beatings continued. DeMause writes: “Of the seventy children prior to the eighteenth century whose lives I have found, all were beaten except one: Montaigne’s daughter.” Since human tendency is to attach to the perpetrator [cf. the first chapter] and to recreate in the next generation the educational memes, beaten children beat their offspring, as had been done in the ambivalent mode, too.

Nevertheless, since the intrusive mode was even more empathic and less abusive than the previous mode, the new psychoclass was responsible for the scientific and technological advances of the seventeenth century that eventually led to the Industrial Revolution.

Socializing

This is the psychoclass that less explanation requires: it is the form of childrearing in which most Westerners have been raised.

By the nineteenth century some parents did not believe it necessary to terrorize or batter their children. Instead, they resorted to psychological forms of manipulation. Socialized children were granted far more respect and liberty than any other child of the previous childrearing stages. Although the socialized child rarely calls into question the status quo, the socialized generation, and here we might also include the families of the most Westernized Eastern and Latin American nations, is emotionally more robust than our coetaneous from other psychoclasses.

Helping

DeMause is a radical liberal who believes that all wars are the work of dissociated minds. His psycho-reductionist vision of the world is a reaction as to how he was abused as a child (occasionally, in his diverse writings deMause confesses the abuses he suffered as a boy). In the above paragraph on late infanticide I took the liberty of talking of Greece and Rome in more luminous terms than the rather sinister vision in deMausean texts, which means that as early as this chapter I have started a slight revision of psychohistory. However, given the fact that what deMause understands for “helping mode” differs enormously of what I understand by it, and not only in the evaluation of war, in this paragraph I will abstain from summarizing deMause’s posture on the apex of psychogenic development, barely visible in the graph.

Even though deMause rejects homosexuality, he seems to support the feminist revolution in sexual matters. Conversely, I believe this entails the catastrophic demographic crisis for that psychoclass, as we will see in the third section, where I disclose my views of what the helping mode of childrearing ought to be. Suffice it to say in this chapter that the old platitude, “No hay que confundir la libertad con el libertinaje” (“Liberty should not be confused with licentiousness”), that I heard so many times as a teen and that by then I felt it antiquated, has surprisingly come to life again in the face of today’s demographic and migratory crisis in the West (once more, subjects for the third section).

It is important to reiterate that all of these family forms of childrearing coexist in the twenty-first century, and that the most primitive psychoclasses have coexisted with the most advanced ones. Apparently incomprehensible conduct, like the immolation of Islamic terrorists or the caste system in India, ultimately has its roots in differences in childrearing. Even in the most advanced countries there are families that belong to the most primitive psychoclass: which explains the existence from psychoses to serial killing. And in these advanced societies barbaric actions, analogous to trepanations in the Ancient World, are still perpetrated. We should never forget what I wrote in the second book about lobotomist Walter Freeman, who, traveling from state to state, performed thousands of leucotomies on children upon their parents’ request. (If I would be given a choice of either being sacrificed in the Tezcoco lake in Aztec times or being leucotomized in twentieth-century America, I would chose that fate of the ancient Nahua child.) Conversely, in backward countries there may exist some far less abusive families than the most regressive Western families. The notion of psychoclass, therefore, has to be understood in percentages: in the majorities of a given population, and proportions.

Nonetheless, there is by and large an obvious superiority in the West. It is the most advanced sector psychogenically. How was then that my mother treated me in a far more regressive way than the average mother of our social strata [the subject of my first book]? Precisely for the reason discussed above: the coexistence of all psychoclasses in the same nation. My mother not only tried to “socialize” the individualist I was through a medieval school, but behaved “ambivalently” and “intrusively” as well. There even was an “infanticidal” dose in her behavior taking into account that some children, whose parents forced psychiatric drugs on them, have died as a result of the licit drug. [I refer to the millions of sane children who are being medicated with Ritalin and other drugs for their dislike of traditional schooling — cf. my web page.] In my very particular case, as a result of my long mourn about what my parents inflicted upon me I do not suffer from psychiatric disorders. However, the majority of children that have had parents like my own did not run with the same luck.

The following table shows how a particular kind of childrearing is related to a specific mental disorder. My intention in copying the entire table, with deMause’s permission (slightly modified: the original table can be seen here ) is to show the bones of his model: bones onto which I will be adding the flesh in the following chapters.

The seven historical personalities

Childrearing
 
 Personality Ideal Mother/God Sacrifice
Tribal:
Early infanticide
 Schizoid Shaman Devours, seduces abandons child To animal spirits (alter egos)
 
Antiquity:
Late infanticide
 Narcissist King/hero Punishes the child To anthropomorphic alter gods
 
Christian world:
Abandoning
 Masochist Martyr Abandons the loving child Self-torture
 
Middle Ages:
Ambivalent
 Borderline Vassal Dominates and beats the child Subservient clinging
 
Renaissance:
Intrusive
 Depressive Holy warrior Disciplines the obedient child Obeying
 
Modern:
Socializing
 Neurotic Patriot Manipulates the child Incomplete separation
 
Post-Modern:
Helping
 Individuated Activist Trusts, loves child No sacrifice of the real self

A more detailed exposition of the diverse childrearing modes appears in the articles of History of Childhood.* It is worth a reminder that the point of view of these more conventional historians is not always in agreement with the radical model of deMause.


*Notes:

1. “The Evolution of Childhood” (Lloyd deMause)
2. “Barbarism and Religion: Late Roman and Early Medieval Childhood” (Richard B. Lyman, Jr.)
3. “Survivors and Surrogates: Children and Parents from the Ninth to the Thirteenth Centuries” (Mary Martin McLaughlin)
4. “The Middle-Class Child in Urban Italy, Fourteenth to Early Sixteenth Century” (James Bruce Ross)
5. “The Child as Beginning and End: Fifteenth and Sixteenth Century English Childhood” (M. J. Tucker)
6. “Nature versus Nature: Patterns and Trends in Seventeenth-Century French Child-Rearing” (Elizabeth Wirth Marvick)
7. “Child-Rearing in Seventeenth-Century England and America” (Joseph E. Illick)
8. “A Period of Ambivalence: Eighteenth-Century American Childhood” (John F. Walzer)
9. “‘That Enemy Is the Baby’: Childhood in Imperial Russia” (Patrick P. Dunn), and
10. “Home as a Nest: Middle Class Childhood in Nineteenth-Century Europe” (Priscilla Robertson).

The Return of Quetzalcoatl


Forthcoming chapter:

  • Julian Jaynes and the Bicameral Mind

©2008 César Tort

15 comments:

Chechar said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Chechar said...

Thanks Baron and Dymphna for publishing this chapter.

The whole table can be seen by selecting the text on the screen. Alternatively, as stated above, an almost identical table can be seen in this section of deMause’s book The Emotional Life of Nations.

Some GoV-ers might still wonder why on Earth I take such pains to translate my stuff and explain an apparently bizarre model to an audience mainly concerned with Islamic matters. While at least one GoV commenter has fully grasped the potential value that child studies might have in understanding the suicidal psyche of Jihadists, I must confess that what moves me is trying to understand our suicide. Radical Islamists are so primitive that a single article, such as Robert Godwin’s article that I have linked so many times in these threads, is enough to have a fairly good idea of what is happening inside their screwed-up heads. But Westerners, however suicidal, are a little more sophisticated: and not even Godwin, to the best of my knowledge, has attempted to explain the whys of the current tragedy.

In another GoV thread Fjordman quoted Euripides: “Whom the gods would destroy, they first make mad” He added: “Well, the West is currently stark, raving mad, and sometimes actively hates itself. I’m scratching my head trying to find out where this self-loathing comes from. Maybe we feel guilty because we are so successful and rich and accomplished that we just can’t take it anymore. But where do such ideas about guilt originate from?”

The whole purpose of publishing this book in GoV is to answer the most pertinent question in the counter-jihad movement. In medicine it is said that no serious science is achieved until the etiology of an illness is clearly understood: which is why bio-psychiatry, which aims to understand mental disorders through the medical model, is handicapped with its “unknown etiology” mantra regarding most DSM-IV disorders (that is, bio-psychiatry has not reached the scientific status of, say, neurology). Something similar could be said of all those sociological studies of the West’ suicide.

My prediction is that anti-jihadists will continue scratching their heads in their efforts to find out where all of this self-loathing comes from until they start to look in the abysses of human pain.

And believe me: This hurts…

In Hoc Signo Vinces† said...

The self-loathing is not directed literally at the self it is aimed at the same self - indigenous european judge lothes indigenous european criminal not because of criminality but because of sameness.

Accused p.o.v. "there but for the grace of God, go I"

Judge p.o.v. "there but for the advantage of privilege, go I"

Anonymous said...
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Baron Bodissey said...

Rollory --

That is an unacceptable gratuitous blanket insult of a whole class of people, many of whom (especially clinical psychologists) are as much scientists as biologists.

I know several fine practitioners of the discipline. You are out of line.

Watchful said...

Regarding the self-loathing of the west: I think that this results from a confustion of levels, between the conflation of the spiritual level with the cultural/psychological level. It results from a conflation of the Marxist idea of an earthly utopia, Judeo-Christian guilt, and the Judeo-Christian idea (and experience) of the dignity and worth of each individual as well as the Judeo-Christian idea (and experience) of the essential oneness of humanity.

People then assume that this means that all cultures have equal worth and that all individuals are inherently equal and therefore must have equal amounts of goods, money, etc.

(Of course, utopian ideals are not invariably Marxist in origin.)

However, although I may realize (in whatever way I can) that a Jihidi is a child of God, his culture, ideology, psychology, actions, etc.,etc. may be inimical to me and mine and will be lethal unless we take steps to counteract him--whatever these steps may be. To paraphrase, spirituality is not a suicide pact.

Regarding the graph of psychogenic modes: it appears to be the "Helpful" mode of child-rearing that is associated with the politically-correct multiculturalism that is destroying the West. Where does that leave us?

Watchful said...

Of course I meant "confusion" of levels. We humans exist as biological, cultural/psychological and as (most would agree) spiritual beings. We exist on all these levels. It's not a good idea to confuse one level with another. I think that that is the fallacy underlying politically correct multiculturalism.

laine said...

If Lefties truly cared about the equality of man instead of using it as just another hammer to bash the West, then they would be pursuing the countries with the worst human rights records on the planet instead of demanding that those with the best records be super-humanly perfect. (The same goes for their fake concern for the environment etc.)

It's obvious the Left could improve the lot of millions, even billions by devoting all their media and PR energies to obtaining equal rights in all Muslim countries, North Korea, Zimbabwe etc. but they make no move in that direction, betraying their true soullessness.

Instead, they squawk about a mere handful of sham "victims" in Western countries, mostly common criminals and terrorists.

It's very obvious the Left does not give a flying leap about humanity as the parts of humanity they can't use to browbeat Western conservative leaders are consigned to oblivion. Those losers can die in the hundreds of thousands (Rwanda, Sudan, Chechnya) and not receive a fraction of the hand-wringing attention that a few hundred Palestinians get.

The Left actually hates people, except as a power base to be manipulated.

Their attitude is perfectly represented by Eric Hogsbawm, a respected western academic no less who opined that a hundred million dead of communism was a small price to pay for world utopia for what was then 5 billion. Since he knew full well that communism's rivers of blood grew nothing of worth to human life, decode his weasel words and substitute the true leftist's belief "a hundred million dead was a small price to pay for leftists to gain power".

That's their true orgasmic desire. They want to be pretend humanitarians the way Kim Jong-Li is: everyone except the glorious leader class reduced to penury and under mind crumbling control while hailing their controllers as "saviors".

You want proof? It's rampant. The liberals are proud of their handiwork the "War on Poverty" that destroyed the black family in a way slavery had not and helped create a permanent urban black underclass dependent on government handouts and voting for the Democrat pushers of their Welfare addiction. Liberals have achieved a population who supports them for the policies that destroyed them. In fact, they've gone Jong-Il one better. American blacks kow tow to their destroyers voluntarily, not under state coercion.

Proof #2. Leftists are still high-fiving each other for causing the pull out from Vietnam. The predicted bloodbath of millions by the communists bothered the hippies not a whit, didn't stop their victory dance. Cronkite and Ted Kennedy died lionized instead of buried under the opprobrium they deserved, true disciples of Hogsbawm. "What's a few million lives..."

Proof #3. The junk science about DDT killed millions of Africans of malaria needlessly, mostly children. Lefties still revere Rachel Carson like an earth goddess, goddess of death that is.

Proof #4. The abortion holocaust of 50 million in the USA alone.

You will not get anyone more coldly brutal than a leftist in pursuit of his goal of domination of as large an area as he can, preferably the entire world.

How they managed to get themselves the mantle of humanitarians is the best propaganda job of all recorded time.

Leftist policies kill people.

Chechar said...

Hi laine:

I agree with you that hatred against mankind is a factor among many leftists. You know, in recent long threads Con Swede made the point that what moves leftists is not hate but the drive of a neo-Christian, deranged altruism: the culmination of Enlightenment ideals. I am starting to believe that Con Swede is partially right. The drive is twofold: stupid people like Obama may believe they are doing good. Others are driven by unconscious hate. I will probably merge the twofold analysis of what is going on in the minds of multiculturalists, liberals and leftists in the GoV epilogue of this book.

The “brief shining moment” you talked about in another thread is what in this short chapter, the “bones” of psychohistory, we call the borderline of the socializing mode of childrearing with the helping mode. I’m talking of the 1950s. (By the way, I would say that while childrearing in Islam is certainly above the savage infanticidal stage, it’s about three or four stages below the best of the West.)

Watchful:

I would like to comment about your analysis of self-loathing in the West at the top of your first post. Your accepted wisdom may explain deranged altruism, but not the most serious cases of self-loathing such as people in the Sweden and Holland governments saying that they are ready to accommodate sharia in their countries, or that we have to behave nicely with Muslims so that they may behave nicely with them… once they reach numerical majority!

Such grotesque, overtly seditious public pronouncements go way beyond a post-modern incarnation of Judeo-Christian guilt; way beyond the culmination of the Enlightenment worldview. These pronouncements reflect a deeper hate, such as the one that laine describes above. When self-hatred reaches a level that virtually sells the fate of one’s own grandchildren to a much more barbarous psychoclass, we have to look for a psychohistorical model. Marxist, Judeo-Christian guilt and the post-modern culmination of the Enlightenment ideals simply cannot explain this level of self-hatred and treason.

As to your question of my disagreement with deMause of what the “helping mode” of childrearing should consist of, I like to think of it as a sort of what the New Testament calls “the narrow door”. The road from the socializing to the helping mode goes through a rather narrow door in which we must not confuse liberty with licentiousness.

In Europe it is easier to find people from Eastern countries that are coming through the narrow door than people living in the more occidental countries (presently I am living in the farthest occidental spot of Europe). I agree with Robert Bork that legislation in the few last decades has turned America into Gomorrah. We have only to listen to pop music or to turn on the TV (accidentally, I have watched pornography in a non-paid Spanish channel!) to know that something horribly wrong has happened to the western psyche.

Gomorrah is not the “helping mode” for our children.

Watchful said...

Chechar and Laine:

We're on the same side. I live in the San Francisco Bay Area in a community which is solidly liberal. Like you, I would like to understand what underlies what some people call the "liberal trance." Most of them appear to be deranged altruists. Laine, your arguments make great sense and are very rational, but no one has ever accused these people of rationality. I have railed against their lunacy with the very few people who will listen to me and not immediately brand me as a "racist," a "xenophobe,", etc., etc.

I remember reading a book years ago edited by Arthur Koestler entitlted, "The God That Failed" in which a number of formerly active, former communists gave their accounts of how they left the communist fold. The title is telling. Communism, as an ideology, played the same part in their psyches as the most fervently-held religion in the psyches of others. Communism was their religion to which they were fanatically wedded. They were willing to deny, overlook or rationalize the most egregious communist crimes because they were so passionately attached to this ideology. Did they think that--ultimately--they were working toward the best interests of mankind? As difficult as this is to believe, apparently they did.

I suppose that PC multiculturalism is the heir of communism. Someone recently wrote on GoV that when the lumpen proletariat were not interested in Marxism (having become too prosperous in the West), communists moved on to gather other grievance groups, e.g., blacks, feminists, gays, any ethnic or minority group to which they could appeal.

PC Multiculturalism is even less coherent than Marxism which may make it even more insidious in a way, in that people may be less likely to have to face up to the underlying craziness of these ideologies.

Chechar, I would be interested in hearing more about the "narrow door" in deMause's helping mode of childrearing.

Chechar said...

@ Like you, I would like to understand what underlies what some people call the "liberal trance." Most of them appear to be deranged altruists. —Watchful

Just read this huge entry in my blog about Conservative Swede’s Weltanschauung and you will get half of the picture!

@ Chechar, I would be interested in hearing more about the "narrow door" in deMause's helping mode of childrearing.

Actually it’s not deMause’s idea. It’s mine. The whole point is that extreme liberties such as the rock and drug fads of the 1960’s along with the radical feminists movement and gay marriage and easy sex has wreaked havoc in our culture, and deMause and the psycho-historians don’t seem to be the least bit conscious about it. It is a pity that deMause has sided the extreme left. Had he published for the right-wing audience I would not have had to re-write psychohistory to present it to the right people, as I am doing now. But what else could we expect from a man who did graduate work at Columbia?

@ They were willing to deny, overlook or rationalize the most egregious communist crimes because they were so passionately attached to this ideology. Did they think that—ultimately—they were working toward the best interests of mankind? As difficult as this is to believe, apparently they did. 


Just as reading the slim “book” Con Swede’s Weltanschauung linked above is must reading to understand the current liberal Zeitgeist, I also recommend an abridged version of The Gulag Archipelago to understand the crazy ideologues. There’s a chapter, “The loyalists”, that you will find fascinating: Solzhenitsyn recounts that some Russian commies didn’t give up their Marxist ideas even when they were rotting, as prisoners, in the Gulag camps! Of course, Solzhenitsyn does not answer the whys of such an extraordinary phenomenon. But he certainly states the facts straight so that future psychologists can ponder into such a cognitive and moral aberration, just as the one we suffer today (e.g., I used to be friend of a New Yorker psychotherapist that blames the US for the 9/11 attacks on NY).

@ Chechar and Laing: we’re on the same side. I live in the San Francisco Bay Area in a community which is solidly liberal.

Oh how I miss Marin County! (never liked San Fran that much). In the late 1980’s I lived two and a half years in San Rafael. I should’ve stayed there. They say it has changed a lot since then…

In Hoc Signo Vinces† said...

Does this science work when you apply the psychology of the individual to a group or society I would imagine that different dynamics are at work, maybe more concrete than subjective.

Having witnessed how rapidly U.K. society has been indoctrinated, I can only assume that it can be reversed at the same rate rather than being something deep seated maybe they are psychotic whims or act like psycological wildfires.

Watchful said...

4Symbols:
You make an interesting point I think. But the PC MC indoctrination, as with any other indoctrination, is surely more effective with the young, and so I would expect that older people in the UK would be more free from this lunacy. Do you find this to be the case?

Related to this, Chechar, although I'm sure The Gulag Archipelago is an interesting book, The God that Failed may be more useful for us in that individuals who have broken free from this pernicious ideology, including Arthur Koestler himself, may be able to shed some light on the process. I will re-read it as soon as I have time. I'll also read Conservative Swede's slim book in a few weeks when I have the time.

"Does this science work when you apply the psychology of the individual to a group or society I would imagine that different dynamics are at work, maybe more concrete than subjective."

Psychology and culture are intimately related, of course, and I'm sure we all know that disserations can (and have been) be written about his. For example, I have read that Arab Muslims have some strange and disgusting child-rearing practices
which surely affect both the psychology of the individual and the larger culture. Perhaps Chechar would like to comment about this.

Chechar:
I live across the Bay in the People's Republic--in the belly of the beast. I do remember a time in the late 70s when Marin residents felt a mild pity for anyone who did not have the good fortune to live in the county. The atmosphere was palpably more relaxed than San Francisco. Still is. The movers and shakers discourage development; there's a "not in my back yard" attitude.

In Hoc Signo Vinces† said...

Hello Watchful:

My opinion is that this has been a decades long process of indoctrination in the U.K. in the eighties it was possible to still decipher attitudes based on age. Now in general that same exercise would end in convolution. Social stratum is maybe more relevant in the U.K. small signs of opposition in the young white (no apologies)underclass are detectable. Political indoctrination in the schools is rife under the banner of "diversity", but there are signs that young people are becoming less susceptible, an innate immunity to overt indoctrination or accepting self-loathing and suicide as norms. I think the eventual reaction is going to be violent.

My point would be that the self-loathing and the want for suicide is not theirs it belongs to different generation and race.

Chechar said...

Dear GoV-ers,

As some of you already know, presently I’m living near the coast of Africa. My plan is to escape from this place as soon as possible (“escape” is the right word ☺). This means that I won’t be able to continue to translate my book until I get back my personal library (in the following chapters of The Return of Quetzalcoatl there are quotations in English that I need to quote from the original source). How long this takes, I don’t know.

Also, this is my fourth, and therefore last, post in this thread: which means that I won’t be able to answer further questions (except the ones I answer below). However, you can still ask questions about the content of this chapter in this entry of my blog The West’s darkest Hour. You can also contact me through my blog’s email.

Nonetheless, since due to my moving plans I will forfeit payment of my internet services, I’m not even sure if I’ll be able to answer your questions in my blog or email. Hopefully, I won’t be disconnected this September, but I’m not sure of that.

Anyway, my plan is to come back to GoV as soon as the external conditions allow me to do so.

@ For example, I have read that Arab Muslims have some strange and disgusting child-rearing practices which surely affect both the psychology of the individual and the larger culture. Perhaps Chechar would like to comment about this. —Watchful

Yes, they have disgusting childrearing practices. Read this blog’s entry, which I’ve already linked many times.

@ Related to this, Chechar, although I'm sure The Gulag Archipelago is an interesting book, The God that Failed may be more useful… —Watchful

Actually, no: Solzhenitsyn is the profoundest 20th century soul-surfing writer on the mental illness known as communism. Read this collection of the 4th chapter that I added for Wikiquote.

@ Does this science work when you apply the psychology of the individual to a group or society. —4Symbols

Psychohistory deals with groups or societies; psycho-biographies, with individuals.