Posted by bbob on July 3, 2000, at 17:12:15
In reply to Saving?? the Forest and the Trees » bbob, posted by shar on July 2, 2000, at 23:18:15
(this is way long, but on-topic for some of us)
As long as we are all getting along, yet disagreeing about some things, I will venture to hang in a bit longer with this thread, which I almost avoided, for perhaps obvious reasons.
I am replying to shar but don't mean to imply I wholesale agree or disagree with anyone else here. CIM and Krishnamurti don't really bake my cookies, and I could say why, but I try not to bash spiritual paths unless they become authoritarian and hurtful.
and I really don't mean to dishoner anything you wrote, shar... we might have marched somewhere together if your are the marching kind.
So, that said, in response exchange to below, I want to say the psychological damages of war (you might agree, shar) are hardly limited to Vietnam. As dj posted from the CBC comments of a Canadian general veteran of recent "peacekeeping" operations, even the most recent wars are having their impact. US forces learned, from the vietnam experience, how to mask some of the impacts, by bringing units home together as a unit and allowing them time to recover before reintegrating into community situations. But masked symptoms might be more insidious in the long run than overt symptoms such as were recognized after vietnam. McViegh is the best case I know of post-Iraq symptomology. I know some others, though.On the other hand, to be fair to those who serve, among the ranks veterans of most wars, perhaps even the majority of their ranks, are some of the most disciplined, duty minded, civic minded people in our communities. World War II veterans, especially combat veterans of some of the most gruesome battles, consistently involved themselves in charitable activities for the rest of their lives. The same is true for Vietnam veterans. Even in the peace movement, it was veterans who returned from battle to oppose the war that gave the movement some of its direction and most effective edge. At pow-wows, one of the first songs sung at every event is a veterans song. We do well to honor those who are willing to suffer and die for a cause.
Realizing that perspective, perhaps one can understand how I would afford some consideration to the message of Kazinski, of McViegh, of the Crips or the Black Guerilla Family or of the New Black Panthers, the PLO and other unmentionable bad guys.
______________ __ _______________
> > Bbob wrote:
> > According to the articles, and studies cited there-in, the psychological damage of war often lasts for generations.
>
shar: > Yes, too true. You yourself may have experienced life with a Vietnam vet. Certainly, the vets from that war, who have high rates of alcoholism and drug abuse, are passing that right along to the next generation.
>
> The Vet to whom I was married came back from Nam after being a Medic. He had lost most of his ability to control his rage, and was very violent, engaged in significant risk-taking behavior, had physical symptomology from what the VA denies could hurt anyone, and generally was on alert at all times. Multiple perimeter checks through the night. He also used about any drug he could find.
>
> We (society) have at least one and maybe two generations who will probably grow up under the direct influence of the men and women who survived Vietnam. Most of the vets I know struggle with demons that are so beyond the understanding of the 30 year old therapist, it's hard to take therapy seriously. I've seen more catharsis during a vet's group barbecue, where they can (and do) laugh and cry and wonder what will become of them. It is a serious business.
___________________ ____ ____________________Re: in the below, it was actually another writer (at the Edge site) to whom shar is responding, but in reply to that, my stance is that marketing is a compliance activity. To an activist, resigning ourselves to a take-it-or-leave-it position regarding marketing is not sufficient. Many of us feel that, if people are persuaded by external influences such as marketing, we need to engage in counter-persuasive activities - anti-marketing - such as that taught at adbusters.
People ARE persuaded by marketing, and many people DONT think past the repeated promises made by marketers. If advertising was not effective, merchants would not spend millions of dollars on it. My position is that marketing is an extension of the military/industrial complex, it is a insidious act of psychological warfare and part of the spectrum of psychological injury that results from a war-based economy. We are facing a time when world leaders are discussing demilitarization (go to the congress Web site and read the language of recent military spending bills...) We will do well to discuss how to carry demilitarization deeper into our culture, and to facilitate the standing-down of some of the more destructive competitive behaviours we have developed during these centuries of continued warfare.
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bbob: > ...those of us who are environmentally oriented is the part that says:
(from EDGE.ORG:)> >"Popular culture is dominated by advertisements that offer the following promise:
> buy ... and your subjective well-being will increase. The happiness research demonstrates that
> most such promises are empty.
>
> I believe this is just known as marketing. I think we have the capacity to learn over time that, by and large, the things we buy don't make us happy (but some do). Whether everyone has the interest or capacity to take that further as introspection or worthy of analysis, is the individual's responsibility. Some people will just keep buying, and feeling empty. Others won't.
________________ ____ ___________________And then, in reference to:
_______________ ___ _________________
bbob: > Regarding McVeigh, Kazinski and the insanity of all that...
> >
> > Kazinski's trial when he was wrestling...with a court ordered mental examination, he **not wanting to make a insanity defense that would weaken the message of his acts.**
>
shar: > Emphasis mine (asterisks mine). I find that a breathtaking remark. It assumes there was a strong message to be weakened, and the acts (murders) sent this strong message (from my reading).
____________ ----- ___________________Kazinski's message was coherent enough to be published in two national publications. Though we might not agree with the message, or the means of delivery, it is difficult to rationally argue that his written language did not convey a message. As for the ice storm, either it was a coincidence, as DSM-IV requires us to beleive, or the maker of weather (whoever or whatever that might be) had something to say that day. The U.S. Constitution protects my right to believe the maker of weather might become involved in our trivial human affairs.
The use of violence to emphasise a message is obviously not limited to Kazinski. In Vietnam, Pres. Johnson's Rolling Thunder bombing strategy was publiclly represented as intending to send a message, rather than to destroy an enemies military capacity. The difference is a fine distinction to those not versed in military strategy. The practice of terror bombing exploded in the late 20th century after an errant Nazi pilot accidentally dropped a load of bombs on London. He was reportedly disciplined and never flew again, but Britian retaliated by begining the bombing of civilian areas in Berlin, night after night. Before that, both sides had used a doctrine of military targeting only. Well, Germany then responded by bombing London at will and when the U.S. entered the war, we practiced terror bombing of civilian areas at will, up through Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Most recently, targeting in Yugoslovia included destruction of civilian facilities, and the same practice was used in Iraq. Bush talked about the "exploitation phase" when he ordered the bloodbath on the highway to Bahrain that seems to have so badly impressed McViegh.
I don't mean to single out U.S. forces for their use of terror bombing, but those are the ones we U.S. psychobabblers are closest too.
_______________________ --- _________________
shar: > Suffice it to say that there must be many interpretations of "the message of his acts." The message I got was that he chose to kill/maime innocent people in order to make a point. Whether or not one agrees with the point, it seems rare to me that a mere mortal would have an idea or set of ideas worth the surreptitious killing of innocent people.
_______________ ---- _________________I can't say I don't sympathize with you, but, as the civil-rights, social-justice-oriented folk group Sweet Honey in the Rock asks, are our hands clean?
50,000 people die in cars and countless more are injured and maimed each year, most of which are totally preventable deaths or injuries. (as the Green Party presidential candidate so well articulates)
The Department of Justice has rarely prosecuted employers for deaths of workers on the job, and acts of environmental crime that result in death by cancer, emphesema, etc. are seldom if ever prosecuted as crimes, though they are recognized as such by law. Only one or two individuals have been jailed in the federal system for environmental crimes or workplace crimes agains employees in the past three decades, though the death toll is in the tens of thousands, if not higher. The same can be said, perhaps to a lesser degree, about the medical community.
Compared to the scope of harm caused by industrial and military aggression, Kazinski's occassional low-grade letter bombings were so inconsequential as to be irrelevant, except they were exagerated in the media, and were clearly violations of law and of our sacrosanct idea of the promised land in America. Millions of poor folks live in urban situations and face greater risks every day, but Kazinski threatened classes who felt they had bought there way out of the fray. I will say, among the literature (yes there is some) on methods of terrorism, letter bombs are considered on the low end of the ethical scale, along with poisoning food supplies.
I am not taking a position regarding Kazinski's acts - I would prefer the use of force to be regulated by a representative democracy, if I had a choice, but I am trying to share how in my mind Kazinski and others appear to act in a context of that tolerates greater acts and other, very similar acts of violence.
____________________ -__- _____________________bbob: > > Regarding McVeigh, he was trained to kill>
> > we end up with a confused, war-scarred, well-trained killer .... his participation in a conspiracy to bomb.
>
> > I just want to suggest...the evident erosion of boundaries that was not entirely self-inflicted and that seems to have arose from his desire to serve his country.
>
shar: > No doubt his war experience eroded his boundaries, exposed him to horror, shocked his sensibilities, and left him with unearthly memories and ideas. And, he may have held strong beliefs, going in, that he wanted to serve his country. He is not alone, I am sure there are thousands and thousands like him in the U.S. I'm glad they aren't blowing up buildings, killing children, men and women, who were also serving their country (government work, you know). Certainly the survivors of his acts have a life that will never be the same, and probably share some of the same shell-shocked reaction that Tim had.
_______________- ---- ----- - _____________Yep. most disturbing is that many of us are pretty well aware there were others involved, and have a fair idea who they are. We live with it. This is all kind-of close to home for me.
_________________- _ - ____________
bbob:> My thinking, from a social psychology perspective, is that *people like this* tend to express what we as a society repress.
>
shar:> (Asterisks mine) People like this meaning those who choose to "send a message" by harming innocent people? I am thinking those people are terrorists. If terrorists express what we as a society repress, I don't recall a concomitant "feel-good" cathartic response from society in general after Ted and Tim did their business. That is what one would expect if societal repression had been expressed (set free, if you will) and thus society is relieved (at the moment).
>
___________________--__--_________________I was not talking about a feel-good catharis. I was talking about a change - more like the way different trees grow after a forest fire.
____________________-_-___________________
bbob> >We understand the severity of some contradictions in our collective unconcious, but are unable to articulate the entrenched contradiction sufficiently to act decisively. Individual, small groups, or secretly instigated acts such as these named acts of terror might let us, as a society, vent the conflict and form new positions before the repressed conflict erupts into an even greater conflagration.
>
shar: > I don't really understand the point here. There seem to be some oxymorons (understanding the severity of contradictions in our collective unconscious). I think the Jungians believe that it is unconscious, not in our heads to be understood, but I may be wrong.
____________--__--____________________I was not really addressing Jungian notions of collective unconsciousness. We, as a population and as individuals, tend to hold mutually contradictory beliefs. War is Peace, Love is Hate. I am suggesting these acts of violence arise from our writhing with the cognitive dissonace that results from building our society on these deeply contradictory notions. In this context, I am not really recognizing any clear boundary between unconscious and conscious, or between individual and society.
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bbob: > However the thinking that violence observed vents the conflict and brings some form of relief or regrouping goes against the social psychological work that has for years studied violence on TV and the resultant behavior of children. They don't get calmer, or more centered, they become more violent.
>
> I do believe riots (also violent acts) are that way too. After the Rodney King verdict, you could watch people being drawn into the ever-growing crowd; some people were interviewed and said they had never intended to participate--they went to see what was going on, and got caught up in it.
_____________ ____ __________________I probably erred in representing this as a social psychology principle. Violence does seem, in the social millieu, to feed further violence. I tend to agree with your idea that TV violence promotes acts of violence, but that is not the doctrine of the industry. The industry believes as I represented, that observed violence preempts the need to act out violence.
I was really coming from a spiritist perspective, and one that probably can't be debated in terms of language and words. I, and others, see one spectra of an infinate spectrum, and trying to explain this point of view is like trying to explain a color to a color-blind person. I was looking for words to explain a spiritual economy I can't really explain. The idea I was trying to get out is that we as a society act out to bring conflicts from our collective unconsciounsess into a more public understanding.
In political science, we can recognize the effect of provocatuers. Some say the OKC bomb was an orchestrated act of provocation intended to dampen the rise of anti-federal organizations. In that regard it seems to have worked. What the anti-federal organizations who advance that idea fail to understand is that their very existance seems to be a product of nationalist, pro-military provocation. Sorry I don't lay out evidence here, but it is something I have studied quite a lot.
Also from a poli-sci perspective, in The Report From Iron Mountian, an alleged product of a late '60s industrial/military summit, the theory was spelled out that society needs violence. The Wall Street Journal has at times treated the Report as a legitimate document.
This is not to say things need to be or should be this way. This is to say that some leaders plafor it to be this way. Sec. of State James Baker talked about the increasing need to represent power in raw terms, not for any particular effect, but simply to impress the people and the world that our flag and our system reigns supreme.
Noam Chomski and a few other's talk of a social contract, but my understanding is that most other academic social theorists recognize the foundation of our society as being the use of force.
I don't really know who beleives that and who doesn't but I know from casual interviews a lot, if not most, of people do. I consider it important to recognize this as a prevailing philosphy because effecte presuasion involves speaking in terms the target audience undertands, and then moving them toward a new way of understanding.
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bbob: > > My point is that war is a mental health issue. We are injured when we perpetrate war and we are injured if wars are fought around us. Improving mental health conditions...will involve finding ways to resolve conflict without creating a spiral of mental injury.
>
shar: > I agree totally. One aspect of war is how it damages people. There are other aspects as well. I agree that finding ways to resolve conflict without mental injury is a worthy goal. If we take personal responsibility for our own ways of resolving conflict in the here and now, that is a start.
>
> And, if we teach our children to do that, we've influenced another generation. Mental health is present in every possible configuration of our lives. Going to war, going to work, killing the guy in the car who is going too slow, insulting the waitress who may not speak English very well (in front of the children)--all of these will shape our mental health.
>
> I can't change "war" but I can do something about my own comportment, and actions I take to let others know what is important to me (ie, the ones in power), and become active in groups who want to create change and where I won't have to kill anyone. Especially a child.
>
> It starts with me, one person. And then you, one more. And then one more...IMHO
> >
bbob: > > Consumer society, environmental degradation, militarism and mental health are intricately interwoven issues that need to be collectively addressed as social/cultural issues.
> >
shar: > Could not agree more!
____________ -_-____________So there, we are pretty much on the same page...
I might be able to stand closer than you to some really mean people and still understand what they are trying to say, but we all have our role in life. Maybe you are better able to look them in the eye and tell them their meanness is really out of place in our community.
Thanks, shar for thinking about this with us.
yours truly,
the creator of bbob, who DOES NOT post as Cass, dj, claire7, oddzilla and who is definately not Theodore Rozack
poster:bbob
thread:37688
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20000630/msgs/39197.html