EMPATHY AND COST EFFECTIVENESS

LIMBO

PTSD nade Invisible

To find out that you from ´societie´s  perspective are no longer cost effective is offensive to most of us. When you finally are starting to "get it", to understand the nature of your mistakes and strategies,  and with an authentic respect for your next disregarding if your ideas of existence disagree,  when you by experience know what battles to pick and you are able to "read" people better than ever, you will have put up with that your services are no longer needed.

My colleagues andI have been working principally with victims of torture and warfare, nationally and internationally. We have  ardously strived to learn and keep me updated with regards to Post Traumatic Stress Disorders (PTSD), a journey with many set backs for all of us who have tried to assist the destitute victims. When finally effective techniques have moved us towards the light in the tunnel, you are promptly told that, due to the financial recession, PTSD is no longer a prioritized rehabilitation sector, the victims and the counselors are literally made invisible and a life-long suffering for the patients is a perfectly reasonable evil to tolerate according to the decisionmakers.

So here we are: with a considerably expanded capacity to treat our clients and patients but dismissed by the public and medical sector to implement our improved insights.

I find myself in free fall or in a limbo, stripped of all power to influence and to, together with my colleaques, find increasingly durable solutions, social and healthwise, to the expanding target group of PTSD victims, because finally PTSD has been accepted, not only with regards to victims of torture or oganized violence, but also victims of domestic violence, aggression, rape and even mobbing while the financial resources are being cut.

Needless to say, I turn away from this world as much as possible, except for my comfort in flora and fauna. I have left the barricades and the front line with no intention to return. And with deep regret I accept that people like us are regarded as an inconvenience. Well, at least being a nuisance gives me some pleasure....

Just a thought

Douglas Modig

2014

ADVENT: A PRAYER

 

A PRAYER IN ADVENT

'Come,' Thou dost say to Angels,

To blessed Spirits, 'Come':

'Come,' to the lambs of Thine own flock,

Thy little ones, 'Come home.'

'Come,' from the many-mansioned house

The gracious word is sent;

'Come,' from the ivory palaces

Unto the Penitent.

O Lord, restore us deaf and blind,

Unclose our lips though dumb:

Then say to us, 'I will come with speed,'

And we will answer, 'Come.'

12 December 1851

Christina Georgina Rossetti

RATIONALISM OCH RELATIVISM

RATIONALISM OCH RELATIVISM

Ratio eller roten, d v s föreställningen om ett oantastligt förnuft vars slutledningar genom olika tankeprocesser representerar den materiella och den icke-materiella världen precist är lika påverkad av de ekonomiska faktorer som styr den samtid den anses råda över. Den anser sig stå över "hönan eller ägget" men kan inte ge en rationell förklaring till hur problemet kan förstås. Följaktligen ignorerar den enkla filosofiska frågor vars lösning inte matematikens ekvationer finner en lösning på.

Andlighet och metafysik är en större utmaning för rationalismen är Dawkins "själviska gen" som en påhittig förklaring till varför den ortodoxa utvecklingsläran slirar in på "medmänskliga och kärleksfulla" beteenden som på något sätt måste rationaliserars in i den enda godtagbara utvecklingsteorin om "survival of the fittest" som, enkelt uttryckt, endast premierar den starkaste och mest aggressiva.

Att fira jul och minnas kristendomen väcker stort obehag medan vi omsorgsfullt tränas i att förstå islamiskt tankegods och traditioner i humanismens namn. Denna humanism omfattar inte kristendomen som avfärdas som vidskepelse även bland samtidens största tänkare. Detta visar på hur diskursen styrs av en relativism som styrs av andra faktorer än rent oförvitligt och självständigt tankegods..

Så märkligt. Varför är den milde snickaren från Nazareth så hotande? Varför är tanken på ett medvetande efter döden så fasansfullt upprörande för intelligentsian? Trehundra år efter upplysningstidens tankegods? Varför är Gudstanken i alla dess variationer utdömd som svagtänkta fantasier?

Inför julen kanske vi inte ska stirra oss blinda på det kristna prästerskapets göranden under århundraden och hoppa över Paulus. Vad är det i Jesus lära som är så förkastligt och obegåvat?

Njut av advent och Guds födelse. Så fasanfullt upprörande är inte tanken..

Bara en fundering...

Douglas

A NEW WORLD ORDER?? The Runners Up Are Already Running Down....

A NEW WORLD ORDER?

The runner ups are already running down...

  

In the late seventies the social anthropologists focused on the rise and falls of civilizations by using a  dialectical model: the centralistic powers of highly stratified societies repeatedly collapsed and the power of dominance shifted. By studying significant downfalls of power centres we turned to the constant collapses of coastal indigenous superpowers such as the Valdivia, Chimur and Nazca in favour of altiplano (highland) empires such as Huari and, much, much later, the Incas in the pre-Columbian era, the rise ad fall of the “Mexican” Tolteca, Azteca and Olmeca empires in addition to the Indus Valley early citystate and the Harapa civilization as well as the Asian constantly altering Chinese, Thai, Vietnamese and Cambodian Empires. The patterns of the dynamics of rise in power and the collpases could be understood by applying the Hegelian model.

The pattern of dominance versus and submission in symbiosis and disolution was addressed and scientifically expressed in the theory of Centrum versus Peripheries. When a regional superpower gradually became heavily bureaucratized and depending totally on the supplies for reproduction from the enslaved peripheries or satelites, the latter formed alliences, rebelled and the non-productive centre collapsed for obvious reasons. Are we more sophisticated today? Not at all. The finacial superpowers is drowning in beuracracy and administration. The nations export their own industries to low wage countries believing the equation is solved, although mass unemployment and dramatically reduced consumism paralyse the domestic market.

This raised the question of how long Europe and North America could rely on the underdeveloped nations export of natural resources and the western sophisticated production industry of consumer´s goods. The issue of how to impose and maintain a durable system keeping peripheral or satellite regions in poverty and submission without any efforts to change the exploitative interdependency was alarming on all levels.

By exporting know how and technology to the less developed nations we could see no reason why the exploited nations, once they learned to use the tools of sophisticated production, would willingly remain submissive. The core of the issue was of a moral and ethical character: should we keep our knowledge to ourselves and thus permanent the inequality in order to remain in financial growth and prosperity? There is no obvious answer.

In the nineties this issue became acute when the  liberal market economy policies had come to a point when the surplus became fictional and the obvious intentions of the suppliers of natural resources began woke up to their own potential to manufacture on their own to lesser costs and to satisfy their internal markets growing demands for consumer´s goods. Anything else would have been utterly stupid. To each his own…

Insipid efforts:

In desperation the Occident created the dogma of a Global Village to manipulate our thoughts that we were all involved in a benevolent togetherness, alarmed by the rapidly growing economies in Asia. The ideology par excellence focused on energy production and the global ecological waste and pollution´and with good reasons.

To the Occidental market economy it became essential that the Chinese or the Indian households should lessen their demands and willingly abstain from a car or a refrigerator since this would be disastrous for the ecology on a global scale. They are so many…Simultaneously a profitable commerce with waste quotas developed without any ethical scruples. It is not a nice scenario.

Man acts, scientifically seen, by means of a biological selfish gene in order to survive and reproduce and the urge to accumulate, primarily by necessity and at the other end of the chain, by greed and unlimited accumulation, has been evident since the birth of the Homo Sapiens as socially organized groups. ( The MaximizationTheory, Fredrick Barth).

Insipid solutions

China, seemingly wisely, invested in Africa and can take a great credit for the rapidly growing economies in Ethiopia, Mocambique and Nigeria.  Once, however, the production and the know how was exported to Africa, because of very low salary levels at a stunningly cheap production costs, Chinese employees were fired on a massive scale and the Chinese rise to a finacial superpower is already jeopardized with a serious primarily growing middle class generated social unrest. India´s promising financial growth has halted. The middle class, because of it´s unimaginable size, virtually has emptied the nest. Nobody wants to work for a mediocre salary, the middle class is highly educated and will not regress to rural patterns of survival. India faces enormous problems. The Asian financial miracle and the new world order is already yesterday news. The stampeding economies of Laos, Burma and Cambodia cannot save the Asian financial lead. They are rapidly becoming hostile to Chinese investments in their countries. The State of the Art knowhow had already been exported. China turned to Africa. Now it finds itself in competition with the pauper nations they invested in...

The Nano technique, which obviously is the crucial invention of this century and vital to the development in almost every field of production, relies totally on a special phosphuros ingredient. China possesses 90% of the resources of this particular phosphor and has already started to reduce the export to the west.

The nightmare of a Chinese upper hand to hold the rest of the world hostage however will wane. As the Chinese economy decreases on a massive scale, China will be forced to become a nation of natural resources export, a step or two back in financial development, and to sell the phosphuros to whoever have the financial resources.

We are rapidly facing a situation when, as so many times before in a historic perspective, the dominance of centers such as contemporary North America and Europe are collapsing. It has, however, seldom happened that two major financial centers are going downhill simultaneously. We have know historic sources to learn from. It simply hasen´t happened before on such an elephantine scale. With a scenario with the Occident and the previously fast growing economies in Asia on the verge of collapsing we will face a New World Order. But, honestly, we have no idea of what it will look like. Only that the going is getting very rough

 In summery:

I have little doubt, from a social anthropologist´s standpoint, that history will repeat itself. The peripheries unite and the centre collapses and, if everything had turned out as so many times before, a rapid rise to domination will occur in India, China and South East Asia, until, which already is a fact, they make the same mistake as all dominant civilizations have done before them. Europe will fall back into deep regression with demographialc, ethnialc and geographical fragmentazation, maybe into semi feudal unities and serious social unrest as has happened before.

It is not a question of a dramatical changes in the future. It is happening now. Are we sophisticated enough to cope with this situation? The level of sophistication can be seen in the Obama / Republican conflict. Need I say more?

References:

Maurice Godelier: Rationalité et Irrationalité en Economie 1969

Fredrick Bart: Maximization

DIE YOUNG & LIVE FOREVER: The Dynamics of Creating Legends

DYING YOUNG

 Live Forever

The Dynamics of Becoming Legendary

Man´s fascination with untimely death, often in combination with spectacular achievements, beauty and to an extent, innocence is a global phenomenon.

Youth, the unveiled awakening, the mesmerizing expectations for what life may bring stopped short generate a collective grief nursed by the middleaged and the old, the jaded, blasé and disillusioned and remind us of our own mortality. A life wasted or void of social and emotional show stoppers may even potentiate the rational or irrational wish for passing on and to be remembered for the potentials we may once have transcended. A ticket to the Parnassus of the Unforgettables.

  

The loss of Antinous drove the Emperor Hadrianus to madness, as did the death of the young hero Hyacinthus to the god Appolon. The history books tell us of the losses of the young and beloved from ancient China and Persia to the Bard´s devastatingly emotional ”Romeo and Juliet” and the untimely death of the English Rose, Princess Diana.

Tut´An Chamon has received so much more attention by doing nothing except for dying young than his uncle, Ac´Naton (Echnaton), who literally transformed Egypt by ordering the death of the timless Amon cult, destroying the god´s temples and statues, possibly the most violent religious reformer in history. At his death his achievements were disregarded and the old religion restored within a decade. Ac´Naton had the audacity to become reasonably old and he never became a legend except for the Egyptologists until only recently.

To commit suicide when young and unvarnished is tolerated and lamented. To do the same in ripe old age is regarded as an act of selfishness, a maladie and a social failure. It may still be regarded as a criminal act and an unsuccessful attempt may be severly punished depending on creed and the current legal system.

The death of the young, celebrities or nobodys in particular, nurtures our universal dream of eternal youth, forever young, a tabola rasa with almost unlimited possibilities unless you live in conditions where dying young is a constant companion.

The endless row of celebrities such as James Dean, Jean Harlow, Montegomery Clift, Marilyn Monroe, Pier Angeli, Francoise Dorleac (sister of Catherine Deneuve, considered more beautiful and talented), Gerard Phillipe, Jimmy Hendricks, Jim Morrison, Janis Joplin, Kurt Cobain and so many more is in a cruel way entertainment at it´s best. They die, we are still alive. We will die but we may, God willing, probably outlive them with many years. Even when depressed we hope for the Knight in Shining Armour to rescue us and change our lives for ever.

Christ died young. Would all the young people passing on have become the legends they are? James Dean with an Obstructive Pulmanory Disease and a walking chair? Marilyn Monroe with artritis and incontinence? Alexander the Great as a tyrant an ad grumpy old man in a declining empire?

None of us wish to hear a story of Juliet becoming a lazy, bored and overweight matron and Romeo a balding lewd and dirty old man. We cherish the thought that this was not meant to be and we cry over ourselves and what never happened.

During the two last years many of the fix stars of my childhood and teens have passed on. You become reminded that you are no longer a hope for the future or promising. You will have to do with what you are with flaws or commonplace virtues or what you may have fallen victim to. Without mercy.

Escapism is an integral part of our being, no matter how rational you consider yourself. Your rationality may be an escape from what you do not understand or wish to avoid. Schopenhauer governs your mind that what you cannot experience with your senses does not exist...So much for the celebrated String Theory or The Selfish Gene...It´s not look they used to hang on the wall for us to see.. And yet, they existed.

Beauty may be in the eyes of the beholder and the ideal differs depending on the sociocultural context. In youth oriented cultures old age far too often is reppelent, seen as a decay of the body. In others, wisdom that comes with age and character written in facial wrinkles are regarded as beautiful. Fat or thin. The body ideal differs from a poverty stricken country or an overly affluent one. Dying young, however, is universally observed and lamented and creates a dramaturgy as to the why´s and the exploring of a possible Divine intervention or fate.

The fifty plus stars and other publically known people dying is void of glamour. Grace Kelly is one of the very few who became an everlasting star iun spite of being a fully grown woman at her death. The lament over Catherine the Great or Marlene Dietrich was either politically correct or nostalgia. We may even avoid to celebrate their memory to escape that fact that it may be our turn next week...

Douglas

AFTERMATH

AFTERMATH

When Turmoil Should Come To a Rest

Long for me as I for you, forgetting, what will be inevitable, the long black aftermath of pain.
 Malcolm Lowry

”After Great Pain a Formal Feeling Comes”. Emily Dickinson put into words the numbness after the grief and sorrow following upon the death of her beloved father. Autumn is the aftermath of the explosive and vigorous spring, the vibrant summer, a time to come to rest as nature allows herself a pause, an intermission in the soil, the soft darkness, before she starts her ardous labor to defy and survive winter. The aftermath is the God given time to let go, to come to a closure, to be still and mindful and vacate the inner self of the strains of the industrious previous seasons. Splendor and beauty can ultimately be blinding and intrusive, the flora, the fauna and the humans need a repose to make room for the coming challenges and impressions which have to be faced anew.

In rural times, this, after the harvesting, was a time to withdraw, to slow down, to come to terms with life´s tribulations and to, temporarily, sink into a state of sweet oblivion and nothingness before the seeds of life embark on the strenuous journey to sprout and grow in the circle of life which is governing everything alive..

Some will not wake up from the merciful haze, some will not want to wake up, while others start eagerly and impatiently to embrace existence as soon as our nature and individual disposition allow us.

The aftermath of a tumultous year, a year with dramatical changes in a hurried speed with the embryo of a new world order growing into a fetus destined to face environmental, political, financial, social, emotional and spiritual challenges stampeeding and seemingly unavoidable, has never been as unruly and hesitant.

Life has always been a struggle for everything alive. The difference is that we have never had to cope with the quantity of impressions that has moved into our reclosure or retreat by means of a medial dictatorshp which is virtually impossible to keep at bay. The havoc, the catastrophies, the destruction of our environment which garantuees our survival, the fratricides and excessive consumism which never have seen so plentyful have envaded our aftermath, our freezone and necessary space of rest. 

Growing old and entering the aftermath of life, the bittersweet phase where we often eventually have grown wiser, more mellow, patient and less restless, may be meant to be the sanctuary where we accept ourselves as we are, not as we have wished to be perceived, to accept the inevitable without the drama, the exhaustive aspirations, the failures or the intoxicating heights of success.

Looking back I am aware that I was put on this earth in a epoque and in a social context, spared of famines, disasters, wars and may have had the privelege of living in circumstances no other generation ever have had through history. I could choose to passively ignore the major tribulations in the surrounding world, but then I didn´t. I still could withdraw from challeging experiences abroad, leave a warzone or the devastating misery of the refugee camps when I needed to, or choose another profession at home in a country almost unaffected by war and social unrest for over two hundred years.

I could, however, not escape the personal losses of my loved ones like all living beings and in the aftermath I feel gratitude and yet a sorrow of what is gone, never to return.

The aftermath is no longer a ”natural” part of modern living but an exclusiveness afforded by few and hardly hailed by a culture which is intent to be alert, proactive and productive around the clock whether it be for the common good or for mass destruction. Keep going until you drop. The implicit or explicit demands of our culture take little notice of the biological and emotional clock, the wheels are spinning faster and faster and to be a cost in effective non-productive elderly person is not a merit. I am not there yet but it is, as always, a matter of time..

When the sparkling last leaves against the pale autumn sky decide to fall in a soft and mellow aftermath it is time to reflect, to take some urgent decisions and then close the shop. Our minds cannot be on sale but should be allowed to be stored in a secure and and comfortable place, the place that is you, when you have the time to recognise yourself...

Douglas Modig