How to avoid exclusion and the price of degradation, – future extremism, violence, murder, mass murder and terror
(OBS: if you have read the last post “What has happened to my America?, you can jump right down to where the flag survey ends) http://www.selvuniverset.com/2019/08/06/whats-happening-to-my-america/
“!Now it has happened again, and we hear about it almost every week! A man has gone crazy with semi-automatic rifle and killed at least 4 people. Often there are many more people killed. It’s called mass shootings. This time it was in El Paso, Texas, and in Dayton, Ohio. A total of 30 killed and many injured, even more mentally traumatized by near-death experiences in both places.
Mass killings and terror have many causes. Both familial, social, and societal. It may not be a coincidence that mass shootings have increased significantly since Trump became president. According to the Class Fight 6.8-2019, there has been an increase in racially motivated hate crime in the US by 18% from 2016 to 2017. Similarly, the increase in religiously motivated hate crime for the same time period has increased by 23%. There has been a 48% increase in anti-Semitic attacks at the same time. And when it comes to sexual orientation, gender identity, there has been an 18 percent increase in hate-related attacks
Especially frightening is that the increase in hate crime in counties where Trump had election campaign events in 2016, increased by 226%! (Uleberg and Shanmugaratnam, 6.8 2019)
Nearly 15,000 people were killed with firearms in the United States in 2018, a survey from the Gun Violence Archive shows. So far in 2019, the figure is just over 8,730. (Aug 6, 2019)
Mass shootings worldwide in 2019:
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Manifestos as driving wheels into hate crime.
The young El Paso gunman that recently killed 20 innocent people, – mostly young pupils buying school material, had beforehand been writing a kind of manifesto. Also Brenton Tarrant the Christchurch mass murderer had been inspired by a Manifesto from the Norwegian bomber and mass shooter Behring Breivik. It’s obvious that such publications spread on the internet, can tear down the last barries against such atrocities toward mankind.
Originally I wanted right away to write down an “Alternative Manifesto for Man”. This I wanted by asserting that not only right-wing extremists, ultra-Orthodox believers and political activists could claim monopoly on such ideological calls. But before trying to do anything like that, we need to look at what a so-called manifesto entails.
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights
Since United Nations Manifesto “The Universal Declaration of Human Rights”, mostly extremists seem to have written manifestos. Then it’s time to write a suggestion for “A Manifesto for Man”, to prove that it is not only the right extremists and political activists who can invoke the monopoly of such ideological calls.
What is a manifesto?
The term Manifesto means an investigation of the basis of an ideology, a view of society or a perception of reality. A Manifesto also contains what I would call a view of man, ie a perception of what characterizes a human being and it’s rights in the society and world. Here we have the positive humanistic manifestos of freedom, equality and brotherhood. Today however we are looking into the negative and dangerous manifestos and their function and effects.
1. Dehumanization
These negative and dangerous Manifestos, instead of uniting people and cultures they split them in good or bad groups. They divide humanity into different kinds of people – in the pure and the unclean, the believing and the disbelieving , or apostate Muslims or Christians, decent people or just beasts and cockroaches. They also divide us in friends and supporters, or so-called enemies of or threats to our society and the nation’s culture.
2. Legitimation of deadly attacks.
The authors who write down these ideologies always believe they eventually belong to the right group of people.They have the right religion, and with the desired and necessary action strategies needed to remove the threats from the wrong ones and the impure others. Thus, the most dangerous types of manifestations can incite their readers to commit horrific acts of violence: “The purpose of manifests can be to explain and legitimize terrorist acts, as well as to inspire others!” (check 3. below)This says Ingeborg Kjos. In 2013, she wrote a widely discussed master’s thesis in political science about the Norwegian mass murderer Anders Behring Breivik’s manifesto. (ref. Ertesvåg and Fjellanger VG 16.2, 2019)
3. Inspiring others in a community of outcasts.
Such manifestos have beside the mission of justifying the necessity of excluding, bullying, using violence against, killing or eradicating whole groups of people, another important purpose. To inspire others! To give the lonely outcasts a feeling of belonging to a group of like-minded persons. A sense of eventually belonging to some sort of group or community. The sinister background of this group affiliation is the over mentioned justification of atrocities, and not the least full blown conspiracy theories about people, cultures and certain types of religion.
4. Lethal effects
It was precisely the content of this manifesto that inspired the latest horrific terrorist action the world has seen. Last Friday, March 15, 2019, Brenton Tarrant took a machine gun with him and shoot 49 adults and children in Christchurch, New Zealand. In addition, he injures 44 people, both children and adults. 12 of them are critically injured. (NRK TV News, 16.02)
Then I ask myself: Wouldn’t it be possible to do the opposite; – write an inclusive and human-friendly manifesto based on facts, and not just delusions. That’s what I want to give a try now. At the same time, I am completely aware of that we must understand the dynamics and consequences of the human-hostile manifestos, and above all why they arise. We must not allow ourselves be naive here.
Before that, the terrorist has written a long manifesto about Muslims and non-Europeans as the sewage of the community. His main inspiration was, as said, the manifesto of the Norwegian mass murderer Anders Behring Breivik, who shot and killed 69 teens from the Labour Party Youth organization, and injured 66, on their summer camp on Utøya in Norway. An hour earlier, this young man had broken the government building with the prime minister’s office and killed 8 people in or on the way out of the building.
We are Nature’s most advanced creatures!
We are born neither good nor evil. How we turn out to be, depends of how we are welcomed to the earth and how we are treated here.
We are born neither good nor evil, but with an inborn drive to survive, no matter under what conditions.
Human beings are as far as we know, nature’s most advanced creatures. We are born neither good nor evil, but formed in both emotions, thoughts and actions by our surroundings. Concepts such as kind or naughty, good or evil do not belong here at the beginning. But we are accustomed to putting labels on each other, even our children, even though it’s a very risky business to put negative labels on children’s behaviors. We need to know that behavior and acts are a response to the child’s immediate bodily conditions, and its overall living conditions, both inside and outside the family.
The short Manifesto of 2019
We adapt and try to fit in.
As humans, we are born with a unique ability to adapt to our surroundings, whether good or bad, or both, or something in between. Infant parents probably experience the first time that instead they are the ones who need to adapt to the child. This is of course the case with newborns. But from the very first breath, the child is also prepared to interact with the environment. It seeks out for eye contact with the mother, when it’s attentively awake. And It seeks her breast for nutrition. Admittedly, the child’s action repertoire is simple. Deep sleep, light sleep, crying, wakefulness, and alertness are the most central states of mind.
Survival and self-preservation
We humans are also born with a unique ability for survival and self-preservation. In the beginning, this happens in relation to the surroundings that our parents have created around us. It happens through the child’s simple feelings and associated expressions of desire or pain, pleasure or discomfort. The ability to respond with crying, stiffness, turning away, or reaching out for mother or father, are important signals to the child’s closest caregivers.
Bodily reactions and primary emotions.
The reactions that result from the child’s primary emotions are there to ensure that the child receives an appropriate response to the condition under which he or she is living:
Gradually, we develop a whole emotional register like that of happiness vs. sorrow, anger vs. joy, surprise, fear and anxiety, as well as guilt and shame, that are some of our most important emotional indicators. At the same time, these experiences give equally important messages to our surroundings. If our parents do not respond to them with attention and care, it’s regular neglect.
The child sees itself in the mirror of it’s parents
The child adapts to the way it’s parents mirror her or him. Parents and adults interprets the child’s behavior and reactions and give them names. The way you and I become mirrored is absolutely crucial for whether we feel good enough, feel that we are loved, have value for others, and have the experience of being positively incorporated into the community.
If we are mirrored negatively as children, or experience little interest from self-absorbed parents, we can lose self-respect, feel lonely, unwanted and worthless.
Falling outside the group.
Neglect and negative mirroring are certain forms violation of our person, of our selves! Then we are also in danger of falling outside.
Expulsion from the group of friend breeds anger and rage.
Exclusion, isolation and beeing bullied, can easily lead to anger outbursts, where the underlying purpose is to restore self-respect and dignity. In class and by peers, and in unacceptable family cultures, this may make the ejection and stamping even worse. As we become teens, bullying and exclusion can continue at highschool, increasing our minds from constructive self-assertion to destructive rage.
Religion and violence
An irreconcilable image of God extremism often linked.
The question of godly faith and religious beliefs is relevant to everyone, whether they are believers or non-believers – whether they be Christians, Muslims, Buddhists, Hinduists or Jews, etc. We have seen that religion plays a significant role in terror linked to Western right extremism, and orthodox and radical Islamism. It is important to remember that everyone in the course of self-development forms an image of God, whether they believe in God, or do not believe in God.
In the book “Psychology and Religion”, Rizutto claims that our relationship with God is formed in the meeting points between A: our inner image of God, B: Our relationships with our parents and our associated inner image of them, and C: Our relationship with ourselves and our self-image.
How to understand why Belief in God can vary from all embracing love to fear and hate.
Argentine psychologist Anna Maria Rizutto (1994) shares our relationship with God in three main categories. 1: How we perceive this phenomenon when we are mature enough to reflect and think consciously. 2: What unconscious experiences and images that are hidden under our more reflective relationship with the concept of God. 3. How the unconscious notions are formed in the subconscious. It is this last phenomenon that is particularly interesting in understanding religious violence and terror:
A person’s realtion to God, most often mirrors the individual’s relation to parents.
Therefore, a person’s idea of an all-encompassing loving God may be in strong contrast to, and in sharp conflict with an unconscious, strictly punishing, implacable deity. Which seems to be a reminiscent of our relationship with a violent and strict father figure, and our underlying guilt and shame for who we are. Both too strict and overly elusive and loose upbringing create frustration and anger in the child.
We are born social and need to belong to a group
People are like the horses, -we need the group to feel safe and sound. We need to feel included and appreciated in the pack. Being recognized and accepted in the group or the herd is at the heart healthy state of mind. The opposite is the origin of loneliness, contempt for the herd, underlying rage and mental imbalance. It can also lead to a search for explanations as to why I am so.
The price of being excluded from the group
Here the road is open to conspiracy theories. This is where a single man can go crazy with a rifle and shoot wildly around him. It is here that such beliefs as that of a particular religion or group of people with certain similarities, are the origin of my misfortune. This is where I can find interest in fellowship with many others who feel banned, abandoned and excluded from society. It is also here online that I find others like me, who carry a rage that is just waiting to get an address and a targeted but often deadly expression. Here we can stir each other up as meaningful in a new herd, where we finally feel valued and included.
Our tasks as parents and adults are:
1. As parents, we should know that our presence towards the child or our children is crucial to their destiny later in life. The quality of the way we meet the child can determine whether we get a socially safe, happy, and loving youth, with a lot of positive life energy, or a socially insecure, outrageous, anxious, and secluded, even unloving, youth.
2. In general, we must try to be attentive to all children we come into contact with. Even deal with families where we suspect their child is severely afflicted or showing signs of being abused. This can also involve sending concern messages to child welfare and police if the condition seems very serious.
3. As kindergarten employees and teachers at all school levels, we must take action if we see that children are teased and bullied. That is our responsibility. Systematic bullying leads to major psychological injuries, and extensive personal and social costs. Remember that many children do not tell the adults at home that they are having a pain at school. Because they are ashamed and feel there must be something wrong with them since they have been notch chickens.
4. It is important to set limits for children, but in a respectful manner. We must accept and acknowledge the child’s urge to unfold, including where this occurs at the expense of others. But we have to cut down on the act of injury, not the child itself. Keep in mind that children test out limits, far up to adulthood, to what is accepted and lawful and what is not.
5. Basic recognition and respect for the human child is essential for the child’s self-esteem and self-confidence and for the child to be able to recognize and respect others as well.
6. As adults, we must read the child’s signals, interpret them and communicate back to the child that we are trying to understand what is happening. We also need to teach the child to know their feelings, name them, and talk to them adults. In children, reactions in the abdominal region, ie murring or stomach ache, are often a bodily reaction to something threatening. Then it’s important that we put our child on our lap, and start wondering about what might have caused him or her stomach pain this very day.
7. Right from infancy and until well into puberty, body contact is important. The skin is the infant’s very first boundary to the outside world and the body’s self-centered core. In the early days outside mother’s womb, skin contact is fundamental to the infant’s safety and well-being. Evn infants will report if the body contact, against presumption is too tight or overwhelming. Then the child usually leans forward or turns away making sounds that most of all reminds you of crying.
8. As the child gets older, it is important that it learns to contribute to the community at home. That it gets simple tasks it can handle and master, as it gets extra good self-esteem and the sense of belonging to contribute.
9. As adults, we must avoid talking derogatory about other groups and cultures. Keep in mind that your child takes on your values and attitudes as an adult it looks up to. You are the child’s wizard into the world.
10. If you feel that this is too difficult for you to do, because you have not been treated like children yourself, seek help and counseling if you absolutely want children. Having one who listens to your own childhood experiences of openness, and recognition, can make the difference between becoming a poor and dissatisfied parent, and on the other hand, a pretty happy parent who feels good enough.
NB: Remember we are never perfect in this game of parenting, and children are different in temperament and intensity. But as much as you are a wizard for your child, your child also shows the way you need to go to reach the child’s heart.
Finally, a reminder rule:
“What we do to our children today, makes the world of tomorrow.”
Therefore : Always Treat children with great respect and care.
Don’t you ever say, – that’s none of my business, – because it is! And deep in your mind and heart you know!
“Let everyone bow in respect of God’s or Nature’s amazing creation.
No gun or bomb should ever threaten the child’s birthplace and family.
The human child is every other child’s brother or sister, every other man or woman’s own child.
The baby and child is every commander in chief, general and warrior’s own son and daughter.
Give him or her your full recognition. And support the parents to give their best into loving and caring for this child of the Universe.
Secure the child’s economy and education until it can provide for itself!
As humans, we are all, of the same flesh and blood. (janeriwaa 2016)