Societies which heap trauma and pain upon their infants and children, and which subsequently repress the emotional expressiveness and sexual interests of their adolescents, invariably exhibit a spectrum of neurotic, self-destructive, and violent behaviors. Contrawise, societies which treat infants and children with great physical affection and gentle tenderness, and which view emotional expressiveness and adolescent sexuality in a positive light, are by contrast psychically healthy and nonviolent. Indeed, cross-cultural research has demonstrated the difficulty, perhaps the impossibility, of locating any disturbed, violent society which does not also traumatize its young and/or sexually repress them.


            The other day I gave a link to http://www.orgonelab.org/saharasia.htm which I had received from vajranatha I took time over breakfast today to read the whole thing thru. I am very impressed. It is often difficult to decipher what are the causes of which bizarre human behavior, what are causes & what are effects, what grew out of where, and what are simply coincindental strange behaviors.

            I stongly susspect that the author, James DeMeo, Ph.D., is not without his axe to grind here & therefore most probably has preconceived notions which can color research, but it all makes sense to me & fits in with my perceptions that while patriarchal religions are, indeed, poison, they are not the poison which causes much of humanity's current problems, but are but a logical result of the root problem. In Genesis, the autor speaks of humans being expelled from the Garden of Eden. This coincides nicesy with the advance of the desert across North Africa & the rise of patrism according to DeMeo.

            I have long perceived a link between genital mutilation of children (circumcision, in my case), the denial of pleasure, etc as being tied to warlike behavior of a culture -- but DeMeo fills in my speculation with historical records to demonstrate the correlation & what appears to be a (if not the) cause.

            Like any dangerous human epedemic, knowing the cause does not neccessarily mean one knows the cure. But it seems to me that instead of making war upon the Moslem fundamentalists, we should build desalination plants to give them mega tonnes of fresh water, and make their nations bloom with eatible plants, grasslands, and meat animals. And, even more important, the twisted human behaviors which is our our legacy from the same arid conditions which spawned the Moslem fundies, needs to be rooted out of this culture as well. For now, I suppose we need a few sick twisted people as warriors until the race can make the transcendence to a more peaceful way of being -- albeit held on a very tight leash. But I strongly feel that our entire civilain leadership should be purged of all individuals who buy into violent mythologies of sky gads who must be obeyed, world domination, etc. We need to purge our leadership (both governmental and commercial) of those people who were maltreated as children, sexually repressed, sexually mutilated, etc.

            I am going to put a few snippets from the http://www.orgonelab.org/saharasia.htm after the LJ-cut, but I strongly recommend reading the whole webpage & ignore my snippets.


ABSTRACT

Global geographical patterns of repressive, painful, traumatic, and violent, armored, patrist behaviors and social institutions, which thwart maternal-infant and male-female bonds, were correlated and developed through a systematic analysis of anthropological data on 1170 subsistence-level cultures. When the behavior data were mapped, the hyperarid desert belt encompassing North Africa, the Near East, and Central Asia, which I call Saharasia, was found to possess the greatest areal extent of the most extreme patrist behaviors and social institutions on Earth. Regions farthest removed from Saharasia, in Oceania and the New World, were found to possess the most gentle, unarmored, matrist behaviors, which support and protect maternal-infant and male-female bonds. A systematic review of archaeological and historical materials suggests that patrism first developed in Saharasia after c.4000 BCE, the time of a major ecological transition from relatively wet grassland- forest conditions to arid desert conditions. Settlement and migration patterns of patrist peoples were traced, from their earliest homelands in Saharasia, to explain the later appearance of patrism in regions outside of Saharasia. Prior to the onset of dry conditions in Saharasia, evidence for matrism is widespread, but evidence for patrism is generally nonexistent. It is argued that matrism constitutes the earliest, original, and innate form of human behavior and social organization, while patrism, perpetuated by trauma-inducing social institutions, first developed among Homo Sapiens in Saharasia, under the pressures of severe desertification, famine, and forced migrations. The psychological insights of Wilhelm Reich provide an understanding of the mechanism by which patrist (armored, violent) behaviors become established and continue long after the initial trauma has passed.



The Roots of Violence in Childhood Trauma and Sex-Repression

My research was initially aimed at developing a global geographical analysis of social factors related to early childhood trauma and sexual repression, as a test of the sex-economic theory of Wilhelm Reich (1935, 1942, 1945, 1947, 1949, 1953, 1967, 1983). Reich's theory, which developed and diverged from psychoanalysis, labeled the destructive aggression and sadistic violence of Homo sapiens a completely abnormal condition, resultant from the traumatically-induced chronic inhibition of respiration, emotional expression, and pleasure-directed impulses. According to this viewpoint, inhibition is made chronic within the individual by virtue of specific painful and pleasure-censoring rituals and social institutions, which consciously or unconsciously interfere with maternal-infant and male-female bonds. These rituals and institutions exist among both subsistence-level "primitives" and technologically developed "civilized" societies. Some examples are: unconscious or rationalized infliction of pain upon newborn infants and children through various means; separation and isolation of the infant from its mother; indifference towards the crying, upset infant; immobilizing, round-the-clock swaddling; denial of the breast to, and premature weaning of the infant; cutting of the child's flesh, usually the genitals; traumatic toilet training; and demands to be quiet, uncurious, and obedient, enforced by physical punishment or threats. Other social institutions aim to control or crush the child's budding sexual interests, such as the female virginity taboo, demanded by every culture worshiping a patriarchal high god, and the punishment- and guilt-enforced arranged or compulsive marriage. Most of these ritual punishments and restraints fall more painfully upon the female, though males are also greatly affected. Demands for pain endurance, emotion- suppression, and uncritical obedience to elder (usually male) authority figures regarding basic life decisions are integral aspects of such social institutions, which extend to control adult behavior as well. These repressive institutions are supported and defended by the average individual within a given society, irrespective of their painful, pleasure-reducing, or life-threatening consequences, and are uncritically viewed as being "good", "character building" experiences, a part of "tradition". Nevertheless, from such a complex of painful and repressive social institutions, it is argued, comes the neurotic, psychotic, self-destructive and sadistic components of human behavior, which are expressed in a plethora of either disguised and unconscious, or blatantly clear and obvious ways.

According to Reich's sex-economic viewpoint, a chronic characterological and muscular armor is set up in the growing human according to the type and severity of painful trauma it experiences. The biophysical processes which normally lead to full and complete respiration, emotional expression, and sexual discharge during orgasm are chronically blocked by the armor, to a greater or lesser extent, leading to the accumulation of pent-up, undischarged emotional and sexual (bioenergetic) tension. The dammed-up reservoir of internal tension drives the organism to behave in a generally unconscious, distorted, self-destructive, and/or sadistic manner (Reich 1942, 1949). The above processes occur whenever, and only whenever, attempts are made to irrationally deflect or mold human primary biological needs or urges according to the demands of "culture". The denial of the breast to an infant, the beating of a child for defecation or sexual expression, or the forced marriage of young girls to old men ("child betrothal", "bride price"), are examples.

Pain-inflicting and pleasure-censoring rituals and social institutions have been present in most, but by no means all, historical and contemporary cultures. There are, for instance, some cultures (a minority, to be sure) which neither inflict pain upon infants and children, consciously or otherwise, nor repress the sexual interests of children or adults. Of great interest is the fact that these are also nonviolent societies, with stable monogamous family bonds, and congenial, friendly social relations.

Many aspects of patrism interfere with the biology of the infant and child in a manner generally unseen elsewhere in the animal world, and some clearly increase infant and maternal mortality and morbidity. Besides the painful or pleasure-reducing rites given in Table 1, it is important to note that most patrist societies possessed, at some time in their recent or distant past, severe psychopathological social disorders designed for the socially-approved, organized discharge of murderous rage towards children and women (ie., ritual murder of children, widows, "witches", "prostitutes", &c.), with a complement deification of the most aggressive and sadistically cruel males (totalitarianism, divine kingship). A few contemporary cultures express such conditions in a fully-blown form, or exhibit residues of such conditions, and these are facts which have distinct geographical implications.

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