Ever wondered why it's so tough to break behaviour patterns?

Have you ever wondered why it's so tough to break behaviour patterns?



Rollwright Stones, England

As the brain is growing and forming in the young child, with each new experience a new neural pathway is created, and as those experiences are repeated that pathway or sets of pathways get used repeatedly. Thus certain pathways will become ‘worn’ or ‘hardened’.

The following article and video presentation help demonstrate how this operates in some detail. 

Bear this in mind as you read through the piece...

Leaving children to cry themselves to sleep damages the developing brain : 


Neuroscientist Joan Stiles explains the process of Brain Development, showing clearly that development is driven by experience and environment, not by genetics (genetics drives form and structure, not behaviour)


This hard wiring of the brain by experience is a biological imperative, it is necessary for any natural creature because they are born into a habitat that is constantly changing in subtle ways, and is how, for example, learning to ride a bike gets to a point where one does not need to think about it. The thinking during repeated training has formed enough of a pathway series to carry out all the various task required to maintain balance, note direction, read the ground and so on.

In this way the child learns and stores vital skills, such as control of her/his limbs, balance, co-ordination. We know that it takes about 10,000 hours of training to become fluent in say a musical instrument so that one is a virtuoso, or indeed any particular skill/talent that is then viewed, in our culture, as ‘pretty damn good’

This applies to physical action as much as thought processes. In esence one can become hard wired for any psychological or physical set-up, and there are those who create the set-up, who'd rather their works remained hidden and unseen. Think of the effect of ten thousand hours of school room politics....

McLean Researchers Document Brain Damage Linked to Child Abuse and Neglect 


We know that children learn much quicker when their learning is self-directed, and that the enthusiasm of the child is a major factor in driving what they will learn. We know that when an infant experiences discovery and understanding that their brains release dopamine and serotonin, and that this is part of learning, part of what drives learning from within the learner.

We know that infants and very young children learn at rapid rate, way beyond what is learned in later life, at university and as ones ‘career’ develops. That rapidity is essential and of course it stands to reason that the biological body is designed to enhance that ability

It stands to reason that this learning ability is a biological imperative. The child in nature has much to learn, much that is essential for self-reliance and thus survival or as I like to say ‘thrivial’. and not a huge amount of time to do it in.

Typically indigenous peoples children are fully competent by age 6. That is to say they are no longer utterly dependent and are considered an asset to their community. It is common for older children to care for the younger children, and there is much learning that is passed from child to child, rather than from adult to child. That comes later, as the child approaches young adulthood.

To give you an idea of just how much a typical indigenous person will learn, (through direct experience and communication) I have seen estimates of a comparison of botanical knowledge of a rain forest dweller compared to a European university trained botanist. The estimate suggests that the indigenous forest dweller contains the equivalent of 35 botanists with 15 years experience each!

That goes way beyond anything we in the West now consider an ‘expert’ or’ virtuoso’.

So given this amazing ability and capacity of the natural human being, what are the implications for a western child in a typical western school environment?

First off, how much time does a child spend in a school environment as opposed to the real world (which is where the natural child’s learning is based)?

What does the loss of that real-world learning mean for the western child?

Given the general tendency within indigenous peoples to respect the unique personal entity, to embrace diversity and independence along side interdependence, what does the teaching of ‘belief systems’ imply for the western child?

The Ancient and Recent Roots of Modern Compulsory State Education

To answer these questions, in the context of a western styled education, one has to go to the roots of that system and seek out the inspiration for it. John Taylor Gatto has done that in his phenomenal work, “The Underground History of American Education”. I will give a brief description here, culled from his book.

The initial inspiration for Western Mass Schooling, or Compulsory State Education, came from observations by the British in India of the Hindi Rote System of education devised for the lower classes within the Hindi system that the British met in the 1600s onwards. The HIndi system was an Empire... 

It was an Anglican Military Chaplain who first observed and understood how this system worked. His name was Andrew Bell.

What Andrew Bell saw and understood was that by gathering the children into large groups, where they had to learn drills by rote, where corporal punishment was widely used, where there was a number of powerful external imperatives to show that one had learned, (could repeat the scriptures, perform the rituals, read the texts,) the Hindi Caste system had created a solid state and class structure that had endured for thousands of years, and had resisted the British in spite of the British technological superiority in sea faring and in warfare.

Indeed there was meeting of minds in that the elites of both cultures recognised each other, and thus the British Raj, an accommodation of equals, both ruling their respective masses. The older was to refine the younger. And this was driven largely by commercial interests.

The Hindi Class System 

The Hindi Caste system looked a bit like this :

Top 5% of three groups :

in Order of Power :

Brahmin’s (priests and the professions),

Warriors and Administrators,

Merchants and Land Cultivators

Lower 95% of two groups :

Menials, and

Untouchables. (still a legal status in India today)

The Brahmin’s ensured that the warriors, administrators and the bulk of the leaderships received a diluted insight into the drivers of this system, so that they alone retained overall control.

The lower 95% received the mass schooling, administered by teachers, who drilled student leaders, who then drilled hundreds of students, in groups of ten or so, all of this in large single rooms. The entire operation of each school was directed by a single Brahmin.

And because the belief systems were so entrenched by the time the child was 11 or so, ‘hardwired’ if you will, the overall system of the Hindi centralised power was secure.

“The entire purpose of the Hindu Schooling was to preserve the class system.”

At the time there was no formalised education in the British Empire, apart from the few elite schools and colleges. The peasant yeomanry were to a large degree self educated. Home schooled. The recent move from yeomanry to factory and mine worker had transformed the British Empire, though there was stiff resistance to this move, as the yeomanry/peasant came from a background of self-sufficiency, laced with a sense of liberty and dignity.

The Luddites were literate and clearly understood what the coming factory system implied for their communities and for societal control. The loss of their lands via The Enclosure Acts was a coercive move, designed to drive them into factories. Read E E Thompson’s fine work “The Making of The English Working Class” for a detailed look at who, who and why this process developed.

The concept of a proletariat had yet to be thought of, a concept that was required for maximum efficiency in a mass production economy. Modernising the plebeians of the Roman Empire.

The first expression of this kind of schooling arose from a complete mis-understanding , and can be found in the Lancaster Schools of England. Lancaster, a Quaker, was inspired by an account written by Bell in 1797 of the Hindi system. Bell had made it clear that such a system was an effective impediment to learning, and created in it’s subjects a docility perfectly suited to mass production labour. Lancaster missed this, and concluded that it would be cheap way to awaken intellect in the lower classes. A classic case of a genuine do-gooder who missed the point completely.

Sparta : The Legend of the 300

The rest as they say is (Military) History… I would add here that the inspiration for Western Military Training came from the legendary Spartan Culture, and within that the concept of the militarisation of an entire culture was perfected. This was what drove the tiny Prussian State from near collapse, to become one of Europe’s most feared fighting machines and thus a mighty Empire. That was where the first ‘kindergartens’ were crafted. The logic was impeccable. And it was the Prussian system that refined Compulsory State Education as we know it. It was American, French, German and English Coal and Steel Barons, and their paid Educators who were most inspired by the Prussian Military success at Waterloo.

I highly recommend J T Gatto’s work. It reveals much about the world wide state sponsored system of compulsory education, as it has ever since defined the nature of our society and it’s ills, and Gattos work will both shock and reward the reader many, many times.

Implications

So now that we have looked to the core inspiration, we can ask what are the implications for a natural child in a typical western school environment? Lets take a look at what happens to that child.

1. They are cut off from the real world experience, from the wider community and segregated from their parents.

2. They are forced into un-natural groupings, according to age and ‘ability’ to conform.

3. They are required to ‘learn’ what they are told to learn, which really means to memorise texts provided by the teachers, who have been given these texts by other unseen administrators of the system.

4. Failure to 'learn' leads to punishment, humiliation, threats of low income for life.

Early schooling is about learning to respond appropriately to authority. Obedience is inculcated in the first three years of primary school. (These days the State wants your children even earlier!)

Thus the child learns that his or her own interests do not matter unless they get approval from the teachers..

They will therefore choose an interest within the scope of what is offered, this in order for the psyche to survive, and become dependent upon external approval.

They will have to become devious, self-limiting and external cue driven because they are expected to NOT MAKE MISTAKES, (such is the nature of rote learning) and making a mistake, observing it and correcting it, (an internal feedback loop) is an essential part of the natural learning process. Once that is disabled, then self motivated learning is all but impossible. University offers a mime of this, as the context and texts are limited to what is required for the student top pass his or her exam.

Further Educational and Academic success are dependent upon 'fitting' into the system.

Conditioning and Control

All of this conditions the child in ways that make them ‘ideal’ for working in factories and bureaucracy’s and renders them more susceptible to propaganda and marketing.

Their teachers and their parents have all been through and accepted this system, and this isolates the child, for there is no-one to talk to who understands what is happening.

Those that ‘do not fit in’ are then channelled towards unskilled labour or the military and police. And then finally there’s those who rebel, who become severely damaged by this system and become ‘drop-outs’ , whose chances of getting a ‘good job’ are diminished … they are demonised, and held up as a frightening example to the others.

Officers and Political Leaders are drawn from the better schools and colleges, or from a carefully screened few who work their way up the ranks.

For a more in depth understanding of this whole subject, the works of John Taylor Gatto, John Holt and Paolo Freire are among the best resources you can find. Alice Miller and Carl Rogers have done some of the best work on the psychological nature of this process and how that leads inevitable towards distress and dis-empowerment. Both point to ways in which this can be healed and undone. All these writers are all but ignored by the Educational Elites, and you will be hard push to find a student of Education or Psychology who has been given access to these learning’s within the confines of established academia.

Control of Meaning

In essence this is all about the control of meaning, of replacing inner meaning with received meaning and shutting the gate on the possibility of inner meaning arising as a threat to the established meaning. What this means is that the children develop belief systems about their abilities, about their place in society and indeed about their society itself (these beliefs are embedded in the texts of the subjects they are taught/forced to learn in school) by constant repetition. These beliefs become hard wired, neural pathways, and become a sort of ersatz identity, one that is defensive and quite resistant to alteration – held in place by fear. Belief is the opposite of knowledge. Ignorance is ignoring what one knows.

And that is the nature of belief systems, state and commercial control, in a nut shell.

That is why 20 million taxpaying adults will allow a Government to rip them off, time and time again, to send their sons and daughters to war, to manufacture and then drop bombs on other peoples who have been demonised, all this in spite of a nagging sense that somehow it’s not right!

This is why some people will read one newspaper and others another, and they will sit in a pub, or on a TV panel, or in a Legislative Assembly and debate the issues, repeating what they have read, thinking all the time that their debates are genuinely based upon their own unique understandings and particular viewpoints, rather than share experienced knowledge culled from the wider world and information they have gleaned for themselves so as to enlighten each other. In debates, the winner takes all!

This is why the ‘new age’ leads to ideologues, fantasists and sectarian divides, because of this mode of reading and repeating what one has read. Original thinking is all but obliterated, and where it exists, it is limited to ‘invention’, ‘fashion’, ‘art’ and literature and corralled into a world that is carefully structured by this whole process. Thus the majority of people become mere repositories of belief.

TV and Advertising work because of this very fact.

Processed and less than optimum foods don’t help matters either.

A Violent System

What has to be understood is that this system was imposed and is inherently violent – as is the nature of the city state and industrialism. The natural child is robbed of his or her innate sensory acuity, and is practically blinded by this process, made emotionally blind because the child has to suppress his or her natural anger at this imposition in order to survive. The indigenous are deprived of their direct relationship to their food, water and shelter. They have to move to cities to avoid starvation.

On top of this, parenting practices handed down over the years, from the elites, have made violence an acceptable mode of training. As Alice Miller points out a child who has been beaten or humiliated all the while being told by those they are dependent upon, those whose love they require for their own psychic development, that 'this is for your own good’ must believe that admonishment, and will in turn do the same to their own children.

It was in 1988 that corporal punishment was finally outlawed all UK State Schools, and 1998 for all English Independent Schools. At the same time, to counter that 'loss of a an educational tool', increased testing was introduced, along side the use of Ritalin and other  drug based 'treatments' – at least 253,000 school children are using Ritalin today - and we know that this increased testing has not led to an increased intellectual ability in our children. Schools were driven to meet targets in order to secure funding, and so the teachers role become that of a trainer for testing, rather than an educator. The system is designed so that tinkering with it appears to bring novel change, yet the core underlying dynamics remain in place and the power structures retain their over arching power.

If all this seems a bit too much or unlikely, than don’t take my word for it. Explore the issues I have highlighted, do your own research, check in with your own experiences and inner sensing, and decide for yourself.

Two Poles of Society : Violent Coercive and Mutual Co-operative

http://www.violence.de/prescott/bulletin/article.html

This research, corroborated by first contact writings dating back many centuries, such as Cortez's naming of those cultures he encountered as 'In Dios' (People of God) the roots of the new world term Indians - which had nothing to do with his search of India as school text books today suggest.

Typically the non-violent societies allow the full natural child mother bonding process, and violent societies intervene in that process.

Culture Shapes the Developing Brain for Peace or Violence

Prescott’s research, amongst others,  documents the following principles:

”Pain and pleasure experienced early in life shapes the developing brain for peace or violence.

Complex neural networks are produced by sensory stimulation; impoverished neural networks by sensory deprivation.

These two sensory processes shape two different brains: the neuro-dissociative or neuro-integrative brain.

Neural networks formed early in life influence the neural networks in the later developing neocortical brain, the brain system for the formation of the social and moral values of culture.

Children reared under conditions of pleasure (affectional bonding) are placed on a life path of affection, peace, harmony and egalitarianism.

Most children reared under conditions of pain and suffering (affectional deprivation) are placed on a life path of depression, violence, authoritarianism and suicide.

Violent cultures impair development resulting in the neuro-dissociative brain. The behaviours associated with this impaired brain prevents the development of the neuro-integrative brain and its peaceful behaviours.


Cultures throughout the world must recognize the full equality of the feminine with the masculine if affectionate and sexually non-violent relationships are to prevail."

From : 
 http://ttfuture.org/bonding/dvd_archive/overview

In conclusion, if we wish to avoid the violence common to our Society, we must allow the natural mechanisms discussed above their full expression. If we wish to help those who have been damaged, we must allow them to fully express their stories, to be heard and felt for that in and of itself prepares the ground for new healthy neural pathways to build out of the recognition of the damaging processes, and for therapeutic processes to be evolved that assist in breaking down the damaged pathways and rebuilding healthy ones.


Kindest regards

Corneilius

Thank you for reading this blog.

"Do what you love, it is your gift to universe."

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Kevin Annett at the Canadian Embassy in London, April 12th 2010

Kevin Annett at the Canadian Embassy in London, April 12th 2010






A group of good hearted people gathered outside the Canadian Embassy, Trafalgar Square, at around midday to hold a vigil for those Indigenous First Nation children who were forcibly removed from their homes, and placed in Residential Schools for their ‘Education’ by the Nuns, Priests and Officials of the Canadian Anglican Church and The Catholic Church aided by the Government of Canada and it’s officials, between 1889 and 1996, of whom at least 50,000 died in those Schools, and many more who died in the aftermath of the trauma they endured.

These enforced removals were ‘legal’ under The Indian Act. The abuses were not legalised, but went unopposed by the Canadian State and the leadership of the United Church of Canada and The Roman Catholic Church and all others involved.




The False Advert outside the Canadian Embassy pretending to include the wisdom and active participation of the Canadian First Peoples in the Olympics and in Canadian State policy with regards to 'sustainability'.

The agenda was not so much to benefit the children, but to break the living spirit of the communities from which these children came, as a means to appropriating the lands of those communities for the use of the State and Commerce. To extirpate the living wisdom of a people, to destroy their cultural roots and to supplant that with a tourist attraction version of those cultural heritages, that was and remains, in essence, a genocide.


Some background



Kevin Annett, who as a young United Church of Canada Priest (see comments below concerning the correction by 'raspberry'), discovered these crimes in his conversations with First Peoples in his parish in the early 90s, and sought to bring to light the nature, extent and brutality of the Residential School system so as to facilitate a healing and a recognition and a move towards reparation and reconciliation, has written two books on the subject, littered with stories and documented evidence that is incontrovertible.


Kevin Annett paid a heavy price for his heart based work, losing his post as a Priest, his family and enduring intimidation, violence and obstruction as he sought to give voice to the voiceless. Nonetheless Kevin has pursued this path diligently and with profound courage and compassion. Seeking only resolution, avoiding any sense of revenge, he has been ostracised within Canadian Society. So it goes.

He was in London for a few days, as he is engaged in a journey around Europe to work with others who are aware of the ubiquity of this issue, across many nations. He has been to Rome, will visit Ireland and Germany before returning to Canada.

Kevin has also made an award winning documentary ‘Unrepentant’ on the issue in Canada.



The Prelude to the Ceremony


I was one of a group of people who had been following Kevin’s work, and we had gathered together from all parts of London at midday outside the Public Entrance to The Canadian Embassy on Pall Mall, the road leading to the North West of Trafalgar Square. We were attended by a couple of Police Men and some nervous looking Security Guards. As we gathered we discussed how best to proceed with the ceremony.

We were waiting on the arrival or a camera team to record the proceedings when it became clear that some of our number were unaware of the legality of holding such a vigil under wide ranging restrictions imposed by the SOCPA Act 2005. With that in mind we moved into Trafalgar Square to consider our position. Once there we noted 5 Heritage Security personnel were observing our group. 

After some deliberation we decided to congregate in Trafalgar Square, at the West Side, in  front of the Canadian Embassy, as that would proved an appropriate back drop to our ceremony.

Within minutes two Heritage Security Guards approached us, making enquiries about our purpose in Trafalgar Square, and started to explain the bye-laws governing Trafalgar Square. 

They spoke with Kevin Annett who explained who he was, what he was doing. 

One of our group was a well versed Freeman of The Land, and he explained to the Heritage Guard, what we were doing, why we were doing it and our position under Common Law. He explained that we were not subject to Statuary Law, were not consenting to Statuary Law and were seeking to proceed peaceful and with respect in our Ceremony.

The Heritage Guards were at all time polite and reasonable, as were our spokespersons.

Two more Heritage Guards arrived, and some of us spoke to them. We discovered that they were in fact Nepalse Ghurka’s and we had a lovely chat about Joanna Lumley, whom they suggest would make a fine Prime Minister.

While that conversation was happening, the discourse with the first two Heritage Guards had reached an impasse, and two PCSO’s arrived on the scene. Further discussions were held, and eventually a Police Officer arrived. Layers of Authority and Lines of Communication…

Again the Freeman position under common Law was explained in detail, and the young Constable, as he had now been identified, spoke to his supervisors on the radio.


Closing the discussions with Heritage staff and Constables regarding our Ceremony..


The Ceremony

Eventually we were informed that we could indeed proceed with our Ceremony and Vigil, though not within the confines of Trafalgar Square plaza. We were given ‘permission’ to hold our vigil close to the North Western Plinth. This gave us a good view of the Canadian Embassy, and also a certain amount of public exposure, consistent with our desire to inform others as to the facts of the Canadian Residential Schools system, and how that relates to other such Institutional abuses perpetrated in many, many countries around the Earth.


We formed a circle, and unfurled a banner made by the survivors of the Residential Schools in Canada, which had hand prints of the survivors all over it, representing them in spirit, noting their presence in our hearts and minds as we carried out the vigil. A banner was unfurled. Sage was burned, and all were smudged.

Kevin introduced the Ceremony, and drums and guitar music accompanied him.

Kevin spoke of his work, of the need for acknowledgement, accountability and reparation, the need for healing and for an ending to all such abusive practices perpetrated by States and Churches and others against First Nation Peoples and Children. 

He invited others to speak in the tradition of the First Nations, offering the Feather he had brought with him, to signify his role as a spokesman for those Peoples…



My words to the Canadian Authorities

For my part, I spoke as I was holding the Feather in my right hand, and burning sage in my left hand, and I called on the spirit of life itself to be with me and turning towards the Canadian Embassy, I then called on all those within that building, all those who work for The Canadian State, for the Churches, Anglican and Catholic to recognise the crimes and abuses that have taken place, to accept responsibility for the past roles, the present cover-ups and to accept that these actions were all and are all acts of choice, and that from all choices consequences must and indeed do flow, and that those who so choose are responsible for their choices, and for those consequences.


I spoke for myself, for my own experience as an abused child held in Irish Boarding Schools and Residential Institutions, and offered my trauma, my pain, my learning’s, my very being to the resolution of all abuse behaviours, and called on Nature, the mother of all life, to help and assist those within the Canadian Embassy to recognise the Mother within their hearts, to open to the empathy that is innate to all life, to find the courage to blow the whistles, to unmask the wrongs done, to account for the wrongs done, to comfort the wounded survivors, to act so that no further abuses be perpetrated against anyone. And I called again that they recognise that these are choices, and that from their choices consequences flow.

I called on them to remember that many times before, great buildings and civilisations that were built upon abuse such as theirs have fallen, and have been overgrown by Mother Nature, and have been metabolised and returned as nutrients for more abundant life, and that this flow is inevitable, that their resistance is futile. Thus consequences flow from choices made.

I reaffirmed that we, the survivors and their advocates mean no harm any child or person.






Conclusion

Others spoke but I did not hear the fullness of their expressions as I was holding the banner. All of this was recorded by camera and will be made available very soon.


We continued the vigil, with music and drumming, singing and dancing and ended in a celebratory tone, noting that notwithstanding the abuse, trauma and woundings, the tears, fears and sadness, we stood as an affirmation of life, as life dancing and singing and growing and nurturing in spite of those who perpetrate horrors upon their brothers and sisters, sons and daughters, uncles and aunts, grand fathers and grand mothers, fathers and mothers.

This is my best recollection of these events, and is of course incomplete. Others will add their experiences in time to tell the whole story.

The Ceremony ended as it began, in circle, as in the old ways of wisdom and empathy.




The weasel words of the Canadian Governments Spun Propaganda, Aboriginal Participation, Sustainable Legacies...... utter lies.


Kindest regards

Corneilius

Do what you love, it's your gift to universe

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