Deep Phobic Memory

Deep Phobic Memory

From time to time I will hear someone complain that this or that group reacts today in response to things that happened decades ago. My difficulty with this attitude is that I simply don't know, and have never known, human beings who do not do this as individuals, or groups.

Yesterday's discussion of the period, a million and a half years ago, when humans almost died out dealt partially with my own suspicion that the meme "reproduce! Reproduce! There is no practical limit to the number of human beings the planet can hold!" relates to this.

I see almost no problem that currently threatens humanity that would not be eased by fewer people. Pollution and energy needs, along with overcrowding are creating a massive resource crunch, and conflict between peoples separated by thousands of miles.

Of the people who are NOT worried about our current population levels, I don't hear any of them say: "X is the actual limit for human beings on this planet. At that point, I would admit there was a problem." They tend to be quite vague about that upper limit, or in many cases actually state that we will always find to work it out...as if they think that we could support ten trillion people. They don't believe that. They CAN'T believe that. What I suspect is that the actual motivation for their believe is perfectly logical from the perspective of "we must survive! We almost died!" but seemingly illogical from the perspective of what we currently understand, or think we understand, about the environment.

Rather interestingly, to me, is the fact that I've found this attitude far more often in people of faith, of whatever religion, than I do in people who consider themselves atheists. "Faith" that we'll work it out might explain this (a person with faith in one thing finds it easiest to have faith in another) but I suspect that most religious traditions have encoded within them instructions for their followers to reproduce, to "be fruitful and multiply" at least partially because all organizations encode instructions within their principles that ensure their own survival. Makes sense.

This isn't about the question of whether the planet can safely handle twice its current population, or whatever. I think that would be a really bad bet, and have some emotion invested in that position, so I cannot be a fair arbiter of this question.

But I want you guys to consider the possibility that old programming: culturally or individually, influences current behavior and perceptual filters. The rules we learn as individuals in childhood are hella difficult to root out in adulthood.

Nations celebrate times of trial in their histories, have times of remembrance and laud their heroes. Events thousands of years old are discussed and storied, we have holidays related to the deaths of ancient heroes or in memory of times of struggle. And the memories affect current political and personal decisions.

Oft times, a group in power, comfortable and oblivious to the amount of cultural mortar that relates to ancient fears, will criticize smaller or weaker groups for referencing things that happened in the past. This of course pushes my buttons when I hear ignorant people wonder why blacks "still complain about something that happened 150 years ago" as if Jim Crow, Segregation, or the Civil Rights movement never happened. I love to ask them when, exactly, they believe the playing field leveled. Maybe...just maybe it leveled a generation or so ago, in the mid-70's. Hardly 150 years.

But for goodness sake: take that same massive majority and splinter it into its component parts, and they complain, accuse, feel threatened, and bleet like wounded sheep just like any "minority" group. And since EVERYONE will, at one time or another in their lives, be a member of a pressured group, this means that I've simply never met a human being who doesn't express fear that has nothing to do with their actual current existence. Gay? Fat? Poor? Rich? Conservative? Liberal? American? Non-American? White? Black? Hispanic? Democrat? Republican?

Female? Male?

In literally every case I've heard fear responses as if depictions in media, dispersal of public funds, economic statistics, or legal status is a matter of absolute life and death. As if extinction was a genuine possibility. And in every case, the groups who don't have that particular label sneer and act as if they, too, don't do the exact same thing.

Recently I had a coaching session with a client in which she was searching for a partner, and was disgusted that people judge others for their bodies, and not their behaviors. This is blindness on a massive level--I asked her to be honest: didn't she judge men on the basis of their behaviors? Weren't there men who simply didn't match her standards? Man, the silence on the phone was deafening. Of COURSE she did that.

But like the rest of us human critters, we want people to ignore OUR wounds, as we dust off our magnifying glasses to judge those of others. I've known only two or three people who didn't do this, to one extent or another.

And what does this mean? Formulating public policy that doesn't take into account that people react to old, ancient pain and remain conveniently in denial about it is insane. We're just people. In my own life, one way this manifests is an automatic rejection of almost ANYONE who believes that their side of an argument contains the only truth. That means anyone who uses the "Those (liberals, conservatives, Republicans, Democrats, whites, blacks) are X, while we are Y." I don't care if an individual argument might sound reasonable--I know they will delete information that conflicts with their position. They have to. It fits right into the pattern of dealing with fear and pain that affects every level of human society from individuals to nations to the species as a whole, and apparently doesn't matter whether it happened yesterday or a million and a half years ago.

In other words, you know that someone is asleep if they don't grasp that they do this, or are strongly on "one side" of such political positions, and accuse the "other" side of having no positions or ideas of value (oh, yeah...nail someone with this, and they'll come up with some small, weak example of an idea they don't hate on the "other side"--damning with faint praise. That's like people who believe in differential racial intelligence claiming they are just dealing with little differences in human populations, not vicious racism, because they can admit blacks play better basketball--something that would never be on their list of positive human traits)

Easy. And what if their point is actually good? Frankly, I'll wait until I hear it from someone awake and/or honest. On Facebook, an old friend suggested I should listen to a certain political Shock Jock, and not damn the message because of the messenger. Impossible. I'm simply not going to fact-check everything someone says once they prove to me that they are either asleep or dishonest.

I know that I carry wounds from my childhood, some of which make it, for instance, impossible for me to enjoy movies like "Book of Eli." I would never suggest that the movie is not good (I haven't seen it) merely that the fact that I could predict Denzel wouldn't get laid disgusts me. That's my stuff, and I can't control all of my old wiring. In my mind, the exact same social pressures that create the pattern of black eunuchs also creates differentials in legal sentencing, education, political representation, and violent death statistics. I just can't "enjoy" entertainments that are symptomatic of a lethal problem.

But there simply isn't a group whose individuals, as individuals, cannot point to disadvantages, hurts, horrible histories, near-extinctions, violence, or whatever. And there isn't a group whose members cannot be accused of having perpetrated such outrages, in terms of their memberships in one group or another. I remember a feminist who got in my face once, accusing me of being an oppressor and murderer of women because I was a man. I calmly asked her if she would care to be judged on the negative behaviors of her racial group, and her eyes crossed.

That's the way we are. In my awake moments, I see all of this stuff quite clearly. But then I blink, and fall asleep again. Ah well...I spend more and more of my time awake. Not sure that I can expect more than that of myself. One step at a time.

And try not to wake up the sleeping children. Unless of course, they wish to be awakened.