This works but don't try too hard.

Browsing though snippets of my experience (scroll down) may prompt something in your own memory that needs sorting. By reflecting on it you may find more empathy than you knew was wrapped up in what was happening.

But a difficult situation may be blighted with hypoempatica, a palpable lack of empathy and sooner or later this spells trouble So don't try too hard to make it come right. Do remember that you can't make a silk purse out of a sows ear.

Talking it through with a real friend, someone worthy of your love and writing it up may well bring you a new understanding of what was bothering you..

Ghosts, things that go bang in the night.

We can only resolve our anxieties as we look at whatever's still bugging us, those past senses of outrage and feelings of inadequacy, those old experiences of stupidity and getting it wrong, of never getting it right.

There are times when we may act 'out of character' but in fact we're acting out long forgotten or barely remembered experience. But what happened in that time and place where our primary care givers were remote or hostile and where our desires fears and hopes were seen as irrelavant did happen and affect us still.

Fifty years ago mi amiga failed her 11+. She learned from her larger than life father always to get it right; she took it further to check and recheck each answer; but having only completed half the test questions failed the exam. Even now she is haunted by whatever it is that insists on her getting it right and that as it were for its own sake. So the ghost of that real man in her mind in that exam room lives on.

And in turn mi amiga has turned that affect into what can be understood as a core value; it's almost an identity so that she is known as, and knows herself as a diligent woman who tries too hard and tends to take on too much; to suggest otherwise just won't do. Yet this blog suggests those old values have served their time and are wearing thin.

Some time ago I came across research into emotional labour. Read http://www.becoming-human.com/chapter01.html There I woke up to the horror of the ideal nurse and the self inflicted injury of obedience to other ghosts. The ideal nurse is a prime example but all too easily we sense the ideal parent, child, lover and in Britain the monarch.

One ghost is enough but most of us have a selection waiting their turn to remind us of past senses of outrage and feelings of inadequacy, those old experiences of stupidity and getting it wrong, of never getting it right.

We can let our sleeping guard dogs lie and deny it ever was. Or with new friends who are worthy of our love we can risk it to know we are loveable but finding that empathy towards ourselves can be a long slow job.

We in turn are other people's ghosts of years long gone. We can only hope that those we haunt will find friends who are worthy of their love and come to know they are loveable but finding that empathy can be a long slow job.

Friday, 18 January 2008

You in your small corner


Hearing of Margaret Mead's work in a history cum anthropological seminar at Sussex brought me into a world I've been waiting to explore. She suggested, amongst so much else, that the British class system evolved from aristocratic family life in which the nurse cared for and then presented the child to her own parents at what was considered an appropriate time.

Similarly in the military, as I remember from my two years service but had never seen it in this light, the senior non commissioned officer having himself ensured we were fit for purpose invited the commissioned officer to inspect us befor marching us off to the next experience. All that shouting and saluting was to equip us to know our place and as Tennyson put it 'not to make reply ..not to reason why ..but to do and die'

Similarly a friend who is a civil servant employed in local government is being schooled even now for a forthcoming inspection which will result in her employing authority being being awarded one two three or even four stars. Such drama, such bullshit is supposed to impress those higher up the chain and as such but it's really designed to maintain a hierarchy.


But I am apparently an individual who will eventually stand alone to be inspected and judged by he from whom no secrets are hid! Similarly anxious and pushy parents can monitor on line their child's behaviour or progess or whatever at school. For such fugitives there is no hiding place.

Margaret Mead's insight into the ways of the primitive British got me going. This morning I woke with a ditty I learned as a child 'Jesus wants me as a sunbeam ......you in your small corner and I in mine'. This stuff of individualism was soon reinforced by the notion that Jesus died for all the children, all the children of the world. A current aristocracy has Tony Blair ingests the body and blood of Christ whilst born again George Bush is confident that he, with others like him, is saved. This leaves them free in their crusade against bad people whilst denying in Gaza the democratically elected Hamas.
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Let's stay with hymns. As tenant farmers with the lord of the manor in his private pew we sang of the rich man in his castle, the poor man at his gate and God ordered that estate. Whilst in the military I was so stuck with my non conformist affiliation I stood in Esher Baptist Church (with near by Sandown Park as the Welsh Guards training ground) to sing no 653 which might have been in army regulations 'Direct control suggest each day, all I design or do or say, that all my powers with all my might, to thy sole glory may unite'.

And paradoxically we live with all this bullshit whilst discovering that we are social animals and all that entails. As such we are equipped with a Theory of Mind making us empathetic to what the other is thinking feeling and believing; and what each has in mind makes all the difference. Such empathy is in effect a social skill and the basis for relating in every sphere of life.
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Almost as a postcript: having now seen through the paucity of the British class system I realise why Latin Americans have been so powerful in my coming out as human. Manfred Max-Neef showed me that the potential of my fundamental needs can be realised. Carlos Casoni brought me into touch with my passionate self and Luigi Menchini gave me the notion of amicus, that a friend is someone I see worthy of my love and that my enemy is an other who treats me as a friend would not.
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