Stop Powerlessness – Boycott

What an articulate and highly educated post. This does not sound like conspiracy theory at all. I am just reading ‘the Childs changing consciousness and Waldorf education’ Steiner talks about the ideologies of a society and how the brandings of status and power are very quickly assimilated by children in unhealthy ways. He also explains that for children, abstract ideas and complex issues need to be tailored to suit their mental age and physical abilities.. but in modern society our children are constantly exposed to complex symbolic concepts through advertising, TV, magazine etc... It is argued that they do not have any intellectual or cognitive capacity to handle this subterfuge of media bombardment. Children are simply not capable of contextualising and assimilating this information in ways that lead them to make healthy choices about their own lives. As adults we have some tools (though some do not) to manage our feelings and manage our understanding of the world. Children take things at sheer face value and this type of way of seeing the world can enlightening and wonderful in the right contexts. In terms of modern living it may be very damaging; especially if the child’s environment is filled with millions of ‘synthetic counterfeit concepts and impressions’ of what life is of what humanity and human nature is.. Children should be studying nature, enjoying playing and enjoying life not being groomed for a life of consumption and preoccupations with ‘self’. Huge bill boards with overt sexual overtones. How do you stop your four year old seeing that and contextualising that in a negative way? You wrote about rap music which I agree is in many ways the same as the sexualised and exploitative lyrics of most general main stream pop music. Just to redeem rap music, there are more and more conscious hip hop musicians coming out and its worth ‘youtubeing’ conscious hip hop to see the evidence. I guess like all genres there are going to be elements of good and bad. But going back to education I think your absolutely right. The part about parents working 60 hour week resonated with me.. And then these loving parents are too tired to interact with their kids and then the whole family sit in front of flashing box, images refreshing over 60 frames a second. It’s just a very deep and real form of hypnosis . The human brain syncopates into Alpha waves which I am told is the frequency we enter when sleeping. It’s pretty scary really. I Steiner educate my son and I have many critics who say that it doesn’t gear him up for the real world. Poppy cock!!! I chose to take my chances. Apparently I should be worried that he won’t be able to navigate the complexities of the social relationships of living in the real world. While I cannot totally guarantee that he won’t have to face off with bullying and social clichés. I do know that he won’t be beaten up because he doesn’t have the right trainers (Steiner schools do not insist of uniform but do insist of plain clothing) and he will learn the value of the seasons, of nature, of singing, of sharing toys and food, of meaningful relationships. The children have the same teacher throughout the stages and they are not in classes over 25. The children are given individual programmes of care and the parents are expected to play a large part in school life with cake making, decorating, outdoor pursuits, school fares, candle and lantern walks in winter, harvest celebrations and summer festivals etc etc. The school is thereby not ‘left to parent the child’, it is the parents job to educate the child and the school are the facilitators in that stable and secure process. It’s very positive. I have also read ‘dumbing us down by John Taylor Ghatto’. He suggests that main stream education is not the place to foster critically aware young people. Critically thinking young people who lead to new waves of political revolutions. The western Government only wants people to become ‘cogs it the industrial machine’. The work ethic of wage labour system is drilled over and over and we subject out children to negative renditions and untruths of history and geography. Maths, reading and writing is drilled at age 4 and onwards which compromises free-play and imaginative human development. Such symbolic concepts again are not necessary at this age. There is much evidence (in Scandinavian countries where this is the norm) to prove that children who learn complex symbolic concepts such as maths who start at age 7 are not worse off than those children who were forced into heavily loaded curriculum and SAT testing at an earlier ages. You also mentioned the gurus, child rearing gurus. Ahh.. The ‘baby training’ age... It frankly scares me.., I am training to be breast feeding counsellor. I wrote a paper on the dynamics and mechanics of ‘suppressing babies natural rhythms and impulses’. Not long after birth children have sucking reflexes, the introduction of just one bottle can upset that delicate reflex and the child can be rendered incapable of ‘suckling’ this kind of thing is happening all the way down trhough the child rearing spectrum. I wrote about the ‘crying it out’ technique.. the ‘Gina Fords’ of our day will hate this but this is one of the singly most damaging techniques we can decide to use to help or baba’s sleep through the night. Beside the fact the humans are mammals and are therefore ‘night feeders’ (do you see animals putting their babies in the next room?)(human milk is also most abundant and nutritious at night) human milk also has the lowest protein content of all mammals, (which means humans need to feed little and often on a 24 hour basis) so crying out techniques it’s totally destabilising to the child in terms of brain development both mental and physical. AND beside the trauma of not sleeping near mommy, the child quickly learns that its ‘needs’ (wet nappy, hunger, sore belly or just need for a loving hug) will not be met no matter what it does. It can NOT speak words or inscribe itself on the mother without crying. When this, it’s only way of communicating with the mother is disabled, what other tools does the small infant have to communicate it needs. These children as toddlers are often sullen, depressed and non communicative. Often these children are carrying unmet needs into their adult lives and as a result it can swing one of two ways. People who cannot make their needs known to others effectively or people who do not read others needs effectively. Scary prospect for a nation of consumers captivated by the baby training gurus of the 21st century... I don’t blame these woman necessarily either. More and more woman are in busy careers and god knows we all need sleep when we have to work and be mothers at the same time it’s a fix.. but is this the answer, I don’t think so.. Another important element of human development is developing empathy. (so inextricably linked to narcissism) Empathy is a very crucial developmental device in human nature. It is one of the main building blocks of human social skills. The mother (or father in fact) passes this learning down to the infant from day one after birth. The human breast is situated under the mothers head and face at the exact dimensions required for which a child has the visual ability to see. This ensures that the mother is making facial gestures and giving her infant the ‘loving’ signs and supportive signals that will enable the infant to make meaningful connections to these visual ‘cues as key social markers’. This enables the infants future learning and understanding of reading others needs and others emotions by visual facial cues. This DOES NOT MEAN if you do not breast fed that you are destroying your child’s ability to be empathic. It is about the relationship and the dynamic of making the connection with your baby. It’s about engaging in a practise of sharing and kinesetically knowing how your child is feeling and vice versa. Even men can do this when embracing their children. But as the system become stronger to force all people in to the wage labour system, so we all have to live in it. So we hire child minders and we go back out to work and think we are doing our bit but who suffers most. Out children who are left to the mercy of the unscrupulous marketing companies. We know that pacifiers deform our childrens teeth and mouths and yet they are still on the market and many woman swear by them. I guess after a hard day at work, if a child will settle with a piece of plastic in the mouth because the mother cant breast feed because she is too shattered to even think, it seems like a good quick fix, but later on when you have spent all your wages on orthodontist bills it might be the ‘wake up’ call you weren’t looking for. So yea, your right, Narcissim is at the very heart of the system we all ‘slave’ for and I am not horrified that you use that word. It’s not hunkam bunkam conspiracy theory and believe me, I have had my fair share of that nonsense... It’s just pure reason. It’s pure deep reason. ‘Individualism’ has fast become the case in point for this society to live by. Each for their own and the system seeks to incorporate every man woman and child into this ‘sanitary collective individual state’. if the marketing companies and the banks and the government can paint the picture of milk and honey for those who want it then they have us. All of us want to have the house, the car, the career, the money for holidays.. for washing machines and dishwashers and other mod cons.. And all this is why our poverty rates sore and the gap between the poorest communities and richest communities widens. You mentioned the suffragette movement. I think this is interesting. We thought and still think that these woman did us a favour. We can earn along with men, we can vote too and have our say.. HA HA... (though look at the wealth distribution of the big dinosaur companies, woman are still not paid as much as men) And as the need for money increases so does the need for woman to work as well as child rear. I know some woman want to work and some woman will fight me on this (though you should know I am a career orientate mother myself ) but I believe that all it did was not just take ‘one’ loving parent out of the home and away from the children, but two. I saw a great documentary about the Victorian father recently . He was always portrayed in classic books by Dickens and other such like authors, as a tyrannical soul, full of vengeance and wrath, but true accounts of the Victorian father show that this was simply not true. Men were forced to work long arduous hours in mines and factories. They were given dangerous jobs and given little pay. The children of this age recounted their memories of their fathers being required to work longer and longer days and the sadness that ensued as the father was drawn further and further away until eventually he was signed up for war. The mother had to keep the family together and manage the damaged moral of loosing one of the significant care givers. These children often recounted memories of bath time and meal times with the father playing a significant roll and how these children cried bitterly as the kind and loving fathers were required to leave. So here we are in the 21st century. The mother is required to work and has to work to make ends meet, that a one working parent family just cannot sustain. AS the cost of living rises so does the need for both parents to be employed. And then who looks after the children??? HA of course the state.. And the state does such a great job of raising our young.... Yea right!!!!!! Schools are racked with drugs and violence, bullying and crime. Gang ideology slips in and these worrying perceptions of who is more attractive or cooler become the case in point for this discussion. 5 year olds with anorexia, teenagers who slit their wrists because they believe they are not physically attractive enough, young men and small boys filled with angst and anger, picked up from parents neglect, and thus tv and video games, they do not properly understand or know how to vent it healthily and this is where the dysfunction out society manages take hold. It’s great to read your post Michele 115. I have mentioned this stuff before but sometimes I think we are too hooked into the fight with certain persons or our personal situations, that in that micro environment we are too absorbed to see the massively dangerous ongoing global impactions of the macro environment of narcissism. The multinational corporations and the fat cats at the top of the pyramid are using the same abusive techniques on a massive level. SO the same brainwashing, the same gas lighting, the same, tortuous arduous back and forth modus operandi, of manipulation, isolation and fear.. and that breaks us down and leave us incapacitated. Often woman here talk of the paralysis of the sexual, physical and mental abuse, the way we are left numb unable to move, (like the frozen frog analogy) well I hate to say it but that is the state we are all in while we allow narcissism a foot hold in our civilised world. Its more subtle maybe and perhaps it’s not as ‘pressing’ as the difficult personal events we experience in our lives but never the less it is there seeping into everything we do and see, feel and hear, everything out children do and see and feel and hear.. and your right Michele 115, we probably would benefit from some type of revolution. It’s a real trick you know to learn how to shield yourself form it. How many of us here have suffered from eating disorders or body dismorphic tendencies because we mark ourselves against an impossible ideal of perfection and beauty? How do we try to prevent this happening over and over, how do we prevent our children from being submerged in a selfish individualistic society? I think it would take strength, bravery and courage to stand up to it, the kind of insurgent energy that comes from a deep fiery need to change it.. So that is why the systems encourages us work 60 hour weeks and makes our children learn inaccurate and archaic ‘doctored’ information at school, it why food so expensive and house prices are totally out of this world.. ... (don’t get me started on the cost of living) so we might just sit in front of ‘Americas got talent’ and eat cheap un-nutritous food with 'chemicals' in and just say ‘ah well, this is how it is’ I hope that after enough time of being oppressed, controlled and brain washed the anger will come.... I mean when the government in Spain gives announces the cuts in government spending the Spanish people are infuriated into anger and flood on to the streets to riot. In England we accept the dues and get on with it.. I don’t know why that is??? I know that after the fear and instability in narcissistic relationships subsides, then comes the anger... so I pray that eventually that anger feeds the fire that causes positive change for our future and our fight against narcissism.

Amen, sister. I could say a whole lot more but it would be a whole lot more. I'm just glad to see there are people out there who have not been so dumbed down by it all, they can still see. I'm not sure what pissed me off the worst a year or so ago, the girls having acid thrown in their faces for having the audacity to want to go to school or the the girls who were stoned to death, along with anyone that dared to help them, for saying that they would like to marry a man that they chose. They were nonfatally shot first and then buried under stones. I was so outraged by all of this that I decided it was time that we women all came together again, being 51% of the population, so I began to work on a nonprofit company, Wisewomen. On the drawing table still are several images, but one intended to be the 'peace' sign for united women all over the world. What happened to the womens movement in this country? From what I can tell it was taken over by a lesbian agenda and disenfranchised the majority. The good news, in an interview I saw with Bill Clintion who heads a global fix the world conglomerate, sorry I can't remember exactly as it has been a while, they have actually determined that when the woman are supported in a village the village actually has an amazing success rate. So it is economically feasible to support women now. This, sadly enough, is a huge breakthrough. And, damn, who knew. Finally, women are financially feasible to support. As far as narcissism, it was the Greeks that coined the term, narcissus, so I assume it was an ancient thing. This world has always been about good vs. evil, it just seems that evil is winning. I hope that you are of the generation to pick up this fire you have. My generation is that of the flower children of the 60's and our demise began with the Reagan era, as far as I can tell. I do not feel that I have it in me to save the world anymore, but I do have a huge file of illustrations that were meant to be the new emblem around the world to rally women together again to demand at least the basics of humanity. This is a fight I still have in me. almostlydia

I am going to throw in another perspective here because i love looking at the whole picture of what is really going on. I agree with all the posts and wish to digress a bit but with the same reasoning in mind. History is written by the Victors. When the good guys win, then I guess it is good? When the bad guys win, then it will still be good, right. So not to just examine the last 100 years or so, perhaps we should wander back a bit further, to 2000 years and beyond. What if we turn the whole lot upside down, shake out the box, sift through the ashes and see what the hell falls out,(and hell certainly does fall out) all with this pathology in mind. When we start seeing how history has largely been hijacked by one Narcissistic tyrant after another, what is really going on here. When we look at how Hollywood and popular fiction portray evil, it is always supernatural, must have fangs, scales, shape shift etc etc. The first thing we really learn as survivors is this quote that sums it all up for me. Evil is unspectacular and always human, And shares our bed and eats at our own table. W. H. Auden US (English-born) critic & poet (1907 - 1973) So, with this in mind, let us go again and study our religions, and see what those sages and wise people were trying to tell us all along. Lets take out the dogma and doctrine that were embedded during the middle ages as a weapon for controlling the masses through fear (Narc behavior anyone?) and reread and reinterpret what was really being said. I don't believe religion got lost in the translation, it got lost in the interpretation. So...lets look at the very FIRST Narc story. WHY did Lucifer fall from Heaven? It was the sin of PRIDE. God created MAN and he gave them free will. He also gave them the capacity to LOVE. Old Lucifer, who was the light bearer, was a tinsy bit jealous of this thing called love and why God could love these puny pathetic humans. So Lucifer did what?? He tries to become GOD. Hmmmm sounding pretty familiar huh? So lots of the Angels thought this Lucifer Angel was on the right track hence the war in heaven. At the end of all this a third of the Angels fell from Heaven. Good triumphs over Evil. Ok, not to get too carried away with this part of it, there are many stories in many different religions that describe the war between good and evil. So what is our part in all this? So... none of this is set in stone in my mind, I am just rolling lots of it around so bear with me. Anybody read much on myths and legends? A little research brings up a few correlations all over the world on what the BEAST looks like. One of the common things it is always a ten headed beast, or in the case of the bible, it has seven heads and ten horns. At present we have 10 personality disorders, all of them potentially deadly. They can be called evil, and in researching evil, they certainly fit the bill. Who do they destroy...why the ones that hold the light. They have none of their own so they seek US out. So to not take you completely off to lalaland with this, this is my belief. Every time one of us gets smashed, in order to survive and heal, we first face ourselves and heal from within. Is there a religion that does not say this? (excuse the Narc hijacked ones) When we heal we bring some light back into the world, and this board is testament that we reach out and help those who are coming through that dark place. This has to make US the bringers of light. Every time another person comes through, the light grows brighter. So in summary, the Narcs tried to put our lights out...we are turning them back on, and awareness and a freaking revolution may just be in the making here. When I first ever started researching Narcissism, there was very little info out there. In the last 12 months there has been a huge explosion of info available. Its moving ladies...and we are here to see that it continues.

I am trying to discuss this topic with my kids, so thank you!

Well said - good for you. I agree society has been desensitized and hypnotized - smokescreens and mirrors everywhere as we are led like compliant lambs to the slaughter - into further debt,tied up in knots and entrapped and dependent on the very lifestyles we wish we could escape from. Many are tired and drained, tuning in to celebrity doings and fashions and mindless reality tv has become a way of switching off and feeding the false belief that there really is 'a dream' out there - something so f'ing empty to aspire to - what bs we continue to be fed, while the real stuff goes on right in front of our eyes & noses without attention being drawn to it. We have been groomed to become like sheep. Narcissism is evil - this is what the devil looks like imo and it is gaining ground and becoming more and more socially acceptable every day - amongst women too and sadly even our children - bullying is rife in our schools and offices and still largely overlooked. I enjoy the articles of a Jungian writer called Paul Levy - he coined a term for this global narcissism - Malignant Egophrenia, that sum's it up pretty well I think. Personally I think it has gone too far, this planet is over populated, polluted and depleted - that goes for the minds and bodies of most of the people on it. We have been encouraged to eat genetically modified food and cancer rates have risen exponentially in recent years. We are on the verge of global economic collapse. Civil war is rife and there are nuclear weapons in most countries and nuclear reactors all over the world. The Hadron Collider in Switzerland has a radius of 17 miles and has the potential to create mini black holes when protons are sent at high speeds to smash into each other. Will this machine get turned on next week? - of course it will! Our glaciers are retreating, volcanic eruptions are more regular, there are also increasing earthquakes & super storms, apparently the potential solar storms coming our way could knock out our electrical and technological grids - the sun itself appears to be going psycho. Who needs to even go near the woo woo topics of aliens & 2012 prophecies etc when the realities on our planet really are that bad already. I may sound like a conspiracy theorist but i'm afraid it's all out there happening (and more) all while we have been diverted and led a merry dance by the gatekeepers as Michelle so aptly calls them - but I believe the biggest narcs of all remain hidden behind the scenes, pulling the gatekeepers' strings. The battle of good and evil is going on right here right now but awakening, healing and positive self change is a very personal and individual process. Ladies (and gentlemen) I believe the best we can do at this time is to clean up our own acts as best we can i.e. heal our traumas, reclaim our voices and our spirits, clear our consciences, speak our truths, guide and protect our children as best we can, lead simpler more self sustainable, ecologially friendlier lives, eat as pure a diet as possible (no GM foods/chemical products), grow our own organic crops and generally strive to be examples of the changes we wish to see in our world (quote Ghandi). Ultimately we need to prepare ourselves spiritually for the tough times that lie ahead of us. Briesis is right - change can happen one person at a time, but individually we need to take self responsibility and do the work - thankfully with good authentic support forums and information resources, I believe positive change is speeding up too. More and more folk are turning to internet support forums because therapy is a luxury for most budgets. So using our voices like Michelle suggested is very important. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ "The deeper that sadness carves into your being, the more joy you can contain." ~ Kahlil Gibran "That which we do not confront in ourselves we meet as fate" ~ Carl Jung http://www.storyofmylife.com/KLARITY4

I wholeheartedly agree with 99% of what you said. I leave out that 1% because you probably did not cover EVERYTHING you were thinking and wanting to say, so that 1% is yet to be determined, not disagreement at all :D Change also occurs one person at a time. Change can come down from on high or up from below. I look at my mother's generation (born in the 40's). A woman's job was to marry and make babies and a home. My grandparent's didn't even ASK her if she wanted to go to college, they just sent her younger brother and never said a word to her about it, it's just the "way it was back then". If you married a jerk, you'd better make the best of it. Divorce was a shame, a failure, and probably the woman's fault anyway. Besides, with no college education, the best Mom could have done was work at the school cafeteria (she did) for 5 dollars an hour. Jump ahead to my generation, who came of age in the 80's. Legal abortion, equal rights, cultural diversity, free sex and lots of drugs, AIDS, women in the workplace. I look back on Mom's generation and think WOW. My daughter's generation (if they don't kill themselves driving while texting) are even further removed. My kids went to school with every color of human being and even had openly gay classmates. Women's liberation to them? WHaaahhh? Of course women are equal. If you end up preggers, you can get that taken care of or prevent it easily enough. Women are no longer in bondage to their biology, except when it comes to lifting heavy things lol. Things ARE changing. Just very very slowly. It's organic, and a ton of effort is made for every inch of progress. I wish it would move faster. I used to believe I couldn't live MY life as I saw fit because the rest of my culture and world were interfering with it. I don't see it that way anymore. A billion men could say that women with Bushmasters between their legs are ugly and not sexy and I wouldn't bat an eyelash. I feel that "disgust", that I am over here definitely not a participant in the narcissistic delusions our culture shoves down our throats. I have had it thrown in my face, "Don't you CARE????? (that your car is dirty, your house is only a rental, your ass it too fat, you're letting your grey show, you don't have snow white caps gleaming oh so fakely between your lips, you don't have a MAN). I could care LESS. I'd rather have a tame emu (thanks, Shortway, now I'm wondering what part of what animal pen I could put one in). This not giving a shit makes me not a very political person, but I do very much care what happens to women all over the world. I chide myself because I have dropped out, don't watch TV, listen to space opera audiobooks and give my animals Facebook accounts. I wonder if I should be fighting back more than I do. Maybe I am just more of a "one person at a time" agent of change. If you get me started, it's hard to shut me up (as is obvious). I guess I am here :) But you got me thinking, Michelle. Thanks for that, and your passion and your brains. Maybe you've found YOUR passion?

Don't know how that happened...Sorry