Anxiety

I am here in the homes of others. I sit at their table. I am surrounded by their awards and honors. Their friends are all here. I sit in the corner of the room. I once sat at a table. My own table today is small and hidden. I was wounded before. I fear those who know me. Yet all those I meet are kind and caring. I think in  old  hierarchies. I am scanning for enemies. I am carrying hurt and shame. I have always felt an outsider even when I was not. I belong here and no one cares for me or cares not for me. People are thinking of themselves.

I am disturbed by my defensive negativity, the cynicism I wear on my shoulder. 

I am angry at my own criticism. I carry my criticism as a weapon and a shield. I am so prickly I would hurt myself if I hugged myself.

This is a nice house. It’s a pleasant room. I’m out of the weather. The people are well heeled and smell  nice. Some are coming in and others going out. I’m more yesterday than tomorrow but wouldn’t need to be. It has been my choice. I’ve devoted more time to my own little home.

Those who hurt me are still shouting loudly while I always walk on egg shells. I avoid so many and so much and feel safest in wilds and danger. I was stabbed in the back which is betrayal. The saddest aspect of this experience is betrayal is always by family and friends and even more frightening by ones self. 

I have the choice now between fear or love and gratitude. The critic always sees and seeks the negative. The grateful seek the positive. Expectations have been called pre formed resentments.

The reformer is the enemy of anyone who benefits from the status quo.

I feel perplexed and bemused here. I am going through the motions. I’m being of service supporting this good house but ask if I am best serving the needs of my little home 

I would like to be where I am my best. The best me, is it best served in others homes, or must I get my own home in order.

What really do I want? Who have I chosen as my audience? Who do I have looking on,sitting on my shoulder. Are they as useful today as they once were? Who would I impress tomorrow? Must I impress? 

The adolescent questions once answered satisfactorily to create a life must now be asked again to create a death.Friends are dying. War and rumors of war. Time is present. Am I ready? Is there oil stil in the lamp. Is the lamp lit. Am I light? Am I walking towards the light. Is the light chasing me?

To be light hearted and humorous among the hostile and afraid. Egg shells. Walking on egg shells. Serious, amidst giants. Feeling little and complete, Tiny houses. Tiny homes No mansions.. Reduced and minimalist. Moving. Releasing attachments. What can we take with us? But love.

Normative Sociology and War

All the norms of our social life are derived directly from Christianity.  The Christian social life was derived in turn from the Hebrew.  The Abraham social tradition gave rise to Judaism, Christianity and Islamic traditions.  All of these were essentially Patriarchal with heavy emphasis on family and child rearing because all these traditions grew in the times of farming and war where a large workforce was necessary either to make food or armies.
Jared Diamond eloquently describes the importance of food stuffs to the growth and success of armies.  The Abrahamic tradition began in Polygammy which persisted into Judaism and Moslem culture but was lost in Christianity.  Male dominated Monogamy or male dominated Polygammy were therefore the norms of family with women's role predominantly as bearer of children, educator, manager of home and farms, and adviser.
War has been the principle industry of all empires and nations.  The greatest trade commodity has always been advanced weapons technology.  Leonardo da Vinci, known today for his art, was known best in his day and paid greatest for his advances in castle defence.  Today rocket guidance system and stealth technology are simply stated major 'trade secrets'.  Trade has secondarily been of significant importance to nations.
Canada's genetic modification of wheat, shorter growing life, greater abundance, resulted in the ability of the world to feed itself and gave rise to Canada being called  "the breadbasket of the world." Today modern scientific farming methods and food production has achieved the means to feed one and half times the present and future populations, but the distribution of food remains limitted  by the "art of politics".  Starvation has long been a 'seige' technique of war fare.  Food is a commodity of war. The world as a whole has never known peace as much as the 'winners' celebrate it's sweet relief.  
Even fashion has been deeply influenced by war, with the present day men's suit a slight variation on the 19th century British officer suit.  Futurist writer, William Gibson, has written of the importance financially of competing camouflage fabrics when one considers the millions in uniform, especially in China and Korea.  It stands without reasoning that Armani would as soon have that contract as one on Wall Street.
The family was a rudimentary vestige from earliest hunting and gathering societies with the importance of 'blood' and 'kinship' lines establishing relational loyalties which gave rise to the power of  banking families like the Rothschilds.  Even today the lineage of the royals, i considered as 'breeding', is celebrated.  Genetic modifications, eugenics and breeding are all 'purposeful'. To what end, is usually defined by the principle world pasttime of war and dominance.
Marx and Engels felt that the family had to be destroyed and the communist model, even tried as the Kibbutz in Israel, was to remove children from their parents at the earliest possible age to propagandize the children while keeping the mothers directly employed in the production of the state, ideally weapons and their support industries. Today in the West women are allowed out of the workplace at best 6 months and the children's education by the State is ensured by age of 3 but latest by 5.  Home education is commonly discouraged, financially for sure, and often legislatively.  In the east the family and role of mother is even less supported by the State, which is always some variation on a War Machine model.
The collective payment of physicians is directly linked to their contribution to the war effort, surgeons being first paid more than other tradesman when their successes restored fighting men to the trenches of Europe, doubling, tripling and sometimes quadrupling the available cannon fodder.  The fame of nurse, Florence Nightingale, came from her halving the post operative battlefield mortality rates by use of the modern techniques of Listers's cleanliness.
Psychiatrists only collectively saw their pay increase when it was recognized that they could reduce the 30% rate of 'war psychosis' and 'shell shock' that most afflicted the 'unpopular' Vietnam warriors.  These 'successes' once established then develop an industry that surrounds and conceals the very roots of the contribution. Todays counsellors and psychologists predominate just as when the first 'priest' painted blue of wearing god awful feather and bone clothing exhorted the troops to success was celebrated, whole religions of beaurocrats followed the success of this one 'holy man'.  Religion thrives today as does psychological services financially because of that first holy man and that first psychiatrist who made these subsequents fields of 'material consequence' with increasing high pay.  Transportation and roads and ultimates planes and space stations all had principle material value as they contributed to the 'war effort'.  None of these people were 'paid' for 'peace'. Peace is cheap by comparison to war but peaceful interludes between wars are the commodity of successful wars.  The Germans in the 30's didn't 'enjoy peace' and were happy to return to 'war' whereas the the Frence and British winners of WWI were highly impressed with the peace of the 30's This was a great old time especially in the US.  Victors love peace.  It's not hypocricy or rocket science. Peace is not nearly as appealing in the long run to the 'losers'.

Today robots and machines have reduced the need for large families because wars can essentially be fought with very few numbers.  Overpopulation and Article 21 of the United Nations are directly associated with the new 'dehumanized social model'.  The 'mother' eulogized, romanticized and celebrated for generations, for her capacity to produce large families, and as importantly educate and 'breed' good citizen children, is no longer as important to the secular materialist vision as her role as 'worker' and 'entertainment device'.
Humans are simply less important and the fewer the better given the advances available to war brought with bioweapons, nuclear devices and strategic or cloaking technologies.  The importance of GPS and satellite systems and space exploration was that it gave intelligence dominance in matters of war.  Todays facial recognition software from satellites can identify terrorist or warrior leaders individually, so long as they don't wear the 'dreaded hoodies'.
Constantine made Christianity the official religion because the Christian armies, based on Christian families, were the most powerful war machine, given their loyalty, and devotion to cause.  The Christian family won against the pagan family of Nazi Germany.  It had been a near thing between the Anglican English and Catholic French and Lutheran German in WWI but by WWII, Hitler had returned the Germany dream to the 'pagan' roots in which polytheism, polygammy were intrinsic.  Not surprisingly 'polytheism' has been 'divisive'.
The atheist communist experiment of Russia and it's copy cats, finally leading to China, returned to the polygamous leadership model.  Communist patriarchy had, like traditional kings, multiple wives and mistresses.  Ghengis Khan before all other male leaders' 'bedded so many women, especially of conquered nations that 1% of all human genes can be traced directly to him.  The communists with little moral restraint have maintained their pleasure dachas and bedded women with all the gusto that secular materialist corporation leaders have in the west.  Indeed in all secular atheist or atheist communist social arrangements the woman is no longer valued most as 'mother' but rather as 'comfort companion' or frankly 'sexual object' and 'entertainment device.' Despite the popularity of Clinton his amorous dalliances as acceptable to Hillary as they were for the power of their combined success, were ultimately unacceptable still to the Monotheistic Monogamous "norm' of the Western model.
The communist attitude towards women in general has been seen primarily in their abortion of the feminist gene in China with only male children being saved from the scalpel. This has created the single male armies of the east available to conquer the west with the promise of available 'sexual entertainment devices. '  In China white woman pornography is the most popular.  Islam offers 'virgins' in heaven to their jihadists.  The Chinese communists soldiers aren't looking for virgins in the west.
Meanwhile in Canada, a mixed communist, democratic country the destruction of the family continues with the rise of polygamy covertly.  Women's primary role is no longer mother hood.  Feminism has been primarily 'imitation of men' with all that was historically 'female' debased. Indeed feminists call 'mother's , 'breeders' and the 'worker' is the model.  Women who have children are no longer given status as 'fully employed' as 'mothers' previously were, they must quickly return to the ranks of workers, work production being ultimately aimed at creating better competitive war machines. The most successful women in banking, design, leadership are indeed those who contribute most to the production and sale of weapons.  The greatest women leaders of the west took their countries to war, Thatcher, Ghandi etc.  Some feminists today even encourage their membership to get pregnant and abort to know the 'power of women'.  Woman as 'creator' is thereby subsumed by woman the 'destroyer'.  Seeing these modern dynamics one can't help but appreciate the ancient religions of old countries like India where the gods are creator, maintainer and destroyer and the female goddess Khalli has far more traits than the goddess Athena.
Hillary Clinton the foremost feminist leader, defined herself by her 'pant suits".  Indeed all women in western worlds are 'transvestic' in their dress with male dominance in fashion persisting as traditional military based garb, suits, cargo pants, etc.

The importance of homosexuals to the Christian war effort in WWII was noted with Turing and others.  The SS were  based on homosexual male bonding 'hyper testosterone' Greek warrior Spartan prototypes in contrast.  While  'police elite ' loyalty was achieved through that model , well documented in "Pink Swatika" it's effectiveness generally was highly limited.
The modern Christian world by contrast "delisted' homosexuality given it's contribution to the war effort.  EvenLawrence was thought bisexual at best with a penchant for self flogging.  As long as homosexuality didn't interfere with the production of 'cannon fodder' it was acceptable. Indeed lesbianism, a popular sideline of polygamous societies where the concubines had children but were denied men, like male prisoners, turned to each other for entertainment.  Lesbianism today is commonly acceptable as it doesn't interfere in the war machine which has dominated society for countless thousands of years.

There have never not been a 'war machine' though enclaves of society 'outside' of the mainstream, like monks of Nepal and the Christian monks of Meteora have been able to avoid through isolation participation in the principle human beaurocratic activity.

The question then today is whether the present day rise in secular materialist social constructs, none of which are related in any way to the priority of child production can compete with the traditional family based social models.  Today the principal atheist materialist societies of communism have failed to show the creativity of the Christian, Judaic or Moslem or  Hindu, Buddhist societies.  Buddhists continue to fight Buddhists with modern weapons over the ownership of different temples. The Indian Society, based on Polytheism Monogamous families succeeded in winning their war against the aetheistic polygamous communist society of China.  Chinese monogamy continues, not as a product of the ideology of communism, but rather as an as yet persisting 'cancer' of old society.
Dessert Storms Arms Bazaar showed the superiority of weapons built predominantly by American and European Christians and Jews.  The Moslems during the Crusades had indeed brought us arithmetic ballistics and the religious Chinese of their day developed gunpowder.  Issaac Newton, Einstein, were great theists.  Secular atheist "promissory"  materialism is indeed a recent 'hothouse plant' with great promises but no shelf life or demonstrated success.  Its ability to kill enemies 'externally' has been poor at best and their greatest killing success has always been the destruction of their own people and through 'betrayal'.  The ideas continue to proliferate with the hundreds of millions of their own people killed by atheists in their own countries.   No wonder, Christian evangelicals say, Satan, the greatest aetheist of all, was always a murderer and liar.  Commonly 'language' obscures the facts of war and competition, neurological theorists arguing that man's big brain developed solely for duplicity, his principal means of success in cave man days against the much for effective predator big cat.

But the fetal alcoholism in Russia and infant mortality in the USSR was directly associated with its failure as a competitive 'social norm' to the 'norms' offered by the theist societies to date. The division of the USSR hasn't been to some advanced 'aetheist' 'norms' but rather a rejection of 'aetheist polygammy' and a return to variations of 'theistic monogamy'.  Poland embraces the Catholic Monotheism and Monogamy and eastern formerly moslem parts of the old USSR are opting instead for Monotheistic Monogamous norms.  Aetheistic polygammous 'norms' fail competitively for the majority of people despite an appeal to the elite.  Queens and Kings have succeeded through the ages by overt monogamy and covert polygammy and at least paying lip service to the success of monotheism.  Kennedy might well have been more of a swordsman than Clinton but Kennedy's overt Catholicism and the discretion of the pre feminist females protected him. It helped that he was a war hero.

My own Celtic Christian Pagan forebears couldn't compete as a social empire, despite individual superiority and tribal superiority, to the English Christian Empire social model based more directly on biblical patriarchal monogamy. My Celtic forebears, the scots and Irish, were much less disciplined sexually and more prone to overt polygamy and homosexuality. The Celts celebrated women far more than the English and admired our mothers nearly as greatly as the Mexicans but our social structure couldn't compete with the Christian Roman Model that effectly created the present day empires.  All the empires previously built had not been able to manage the numbers or space or maintain the success that this monotheist monogamous model of social 'norm' to date has.

That said, Christianity in Canada is now only 70%. This is similar to other Western nations where a decline in monotheism has occurred.  Jews at most are 1 % of Western societies, mostly secular aetheist despite their ethnicity whereas Israel with it's military success to date has been dominated by zionists and monetheistic monogamous Hebrew of the Old Testament tradtions.  Monotheistic Polygammous Islamists are on the rise throughout the west .Secular atheists, especially communists, despite their lack of any sustained success and high suicidal and murderous rates persist. The Aztec were a similar religious killing machine but failed before the Christian Monotheistic Monogamous 'norm'.

I don't know who will win the next war.

Frankly.  I have little doubt that the Christian Monotheistic Monogamous normative model of the British WWII winners (technologicaly and on the battlefield) could win as has the Christian Monotheistic Monogamous normative model of America to date won against all other competing models.  The only real question is whether an 'attenuated strain' of this norm as is arising in Canada, Europe and the US can compete agains,t say the Islamic Monoteistic Polygamous norm.  In the Crusades the Christians beat the Moslems on all battlefields essentially but not by so great a margin.  The Chinese Korean atheist polygamous communist models have grown strong by incorporating the strengths of the Christian Monotheist Monogamous norms reintroducing 'god' as has Russia to the failed 'atheist' paradigm.  Russia's recent anti homosexuality stance has been seen to be a means of making itself attractive to the Muslims, Orthodox, and Catholics which have to date prevailed over the atheist communist model. Putin in this regard is seen as no different a 'general' than Constantine was who 'converted' when it was obvious that Christian military was greater than all other militaries of his day.  Aetheist militaries have to date failed against theist models and just as armies re tooled from horses calvary to tanks the communists the world over are 're thinking' God while the 'fat' west continues to 'play' with the very 'sexy idea' of aetheism especially given the aetheist model of woman as 'sexual entertainment device' or 'worker'.  
 In contrast the prevailing successful Monotheistic Monogamous West has introduced the very components of the failing competing normative model of communism, i.e. the denigration of the feminine, especially of the mother, destruction of religion, woman as 'entertainment device' , unisex, all normative of communism when it failed in all competitions to date with the west.
Given that the West is rejecting God as the East embraces it and Islam grows stronger by its adherence the question of which 'norm' will succeed in the next war remains to be seen.

In the West, the successor of war, the existing empire of war, the idea of war is furthest from the mind of the  slick and safe ideologically effete intellectual city light weights.  Their likes were well known to the Chamberlains of England and the Roman "thinkers' as the 'barbarians' were invading Rome.    To the rest of the world, those outside the winning zones of Europe and American,  war and revolution are the foremost thought. Losers want desperately what they perceive the winners have.  Revolutionaries by nature are theives and not creators.  Age old tribalisms have prevailed to today.  Mohommed's Koran is as much a warrior code as the Old Testament of the Bible or Mao Tse Tung's writings.  Marcus Aurelius, the Roman Empiror, wrote the pagan stoic model of his day,  but it was St. Paul who drafted the 'norm' for society that gave us the last 2000 years of successful Christian empire and relative 'peace'.   As the west devolves, the Roman empire too died from within, with the result that  the real competition might well be between the Monotheist Monogamous "Norm" of Islam versus the western modified Aetheist Polygammous "norm' of the Eastern Communism
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I simply don't know.

The greatest european 'peace' movement of the young occurred in the 1930's when nudism also was terrifically popular.  Here in Canada we are having a marvellous love affair with marijuana and a delusional adolescence of denial.  The world Big Daddy America is criticized for not allowing us to smoke up and drop out.  We forget that the Empire of China fought the west to free it's people from Opium in the famous opium wars.  We succeeded in fighting the Indians (natives) of North American by giving them booze and attacking them when they were hung over because their 'society' had not been able to 'control' or 'prohibit' alcohol.  The British Navy had long held 'alcohol prohibition' and control successfully to achieve it's goal of being the greatest war machine the world had ever known.

Personally I prefer nudism but know that the best money in the fashion industry is on cammo designs, epaulets and boots. Jewelry was originally a 'worldly crown' of 'conquest' or the 'conspicuous consumption of Veblem.  The best bling of all has been those given for 'heroism'.  While it was normative for men to let their girlfriends wear their 'football jackets', I don't think anytime soon we'll see women letting their boyfriends wear their 'purple hearts' gained in combat, even if they were shot and wounded by robot drones.

The "norms' have a way of being 'normal' because they 'worked'. The 'test' has always been 'war'.

Chopping off the heads of others

"Chopping off the heads of others, to make yourself look taller".

There's always been this sort of 'critic' around. They lack accomplishment themselves, commonly resting on the laurels of their family and community,  and suffer from extreme inferiority complexes. Yet they commonly are arrogant. Their developmental emotional delay, the point where they began to fail to mature, is usually somewhere in early adolescence if not before. They have a childlike quality which can appear as superficially charming. They are equally insinuating. Their principle mode of interaction is passive aggression because they never were a 'winner' and did poorly in sports because they 'didn't like the rules'. They're antiauthoritarian and are sure to criticize anyone who is a leader of men, so long as it is out of their hearing. They are deeply angry, almost fixated in a perpetual pout which they cover up with chamelon smiles. They lack empathy. They're fully involved in filling that God shaped hole inside themselves that Pascal described, with anything but God. They may even talk about God or have participated in religious activities when they were younger with their families but they commonly criticize religion because they are basically lazy and religion requires effort and deeper thinking than 'whatever!"  They are prone to all the addictions as a consquence and are commonly seen in bars, brothels, casinos.  Often they are shopaholics.  They are the hollow men of T.S. Elliott. They are the Puers Eternus or flying boys and girls of Carl Jung.

They are consumed with envy and jealousy. They gossip whenever the opportunity presents. They commonly criticize others defining their worlds with negativity and wonder why they so commonly suffer anxiety and depression. As soon as any conversation becomes difficult for them they flit away in escape with 'whatever' or 'I don't care'. They do care but can't follow 'big people' into the 'big world' so desparage anything they don't understand without effort or learning.  They are the dilletantes.  They have delusions of grandeur and suffer extreme grandiosity but do their best at concealing it to infiltrate social groups where they can use people for their own ends. They are takers and consumers. They consume people lacking the capacity for truly cooperative behaviour.  Unable to follow they can't lead.

Not uncommonly the men have a woman who mothers them, herself  incapable of adult love or staying in a loveless relationship for the sake of her children. Developmentally they have commonly been mother's boys but the women they choose eventually give up on having an adult relationship with them and if they themselves have children begin to simply see their spouse as another child. Women in contrast are the 'daddy's girls' of older men though these days there are equal numbers of 'boytoys' for the older ladies, couples who are desperate for acceptance.  Yet there's always a sense among adults at parties that somehow the 'child' in the room on some friends arm isn't being 'entertained' and the host or hostess wishes they'd arranged to bring rattles or something to keep this 'bodies' occupied.   Thankfully these 'boytoys' and 'girltoys' have cell phones to play with and occasionally adults can actually have a conversation without disturbing their bubble heads.

They don't develop depth like other family men who participate in church, charity clubs and community but rather "play" with their own children in a frenzied twisted way which eventually shows itself as the raging soccer dads and parents who 'need' their children to satisfy their unfulfilled longing for accomplishment.

They can't admit their own cowardice. They often have dropped out of school before college or early in college unable to complete the work or compete with others because they cannot face their own inadequacy lacking the character to stay through tough times.  They often don't keep jobs beyond how they serve them so that their presence in the long run is often a loss for the companies given the training and investment involved.  They are the same in intimate relationships commonly 'cheating' and rarely maintaining long term relationships unless to a long suffering parental type, older partner, or someone with wealth who they are feeding off.

They want everything to be easy and if it's not easy then they criticize and reject it. While they want anyone with lesser education to 'respect' them and 'admire' their high school or college certificate they are utterly disrespectful of those above them because they know they themseves failed to progress. What they can't have they destroy. Sayings like 'you know thermometers have degrees and you know where we stick them' is a source of much humor among these arrogant toffers. They are full of resentments and quickly become nasty with a person who they once said they liked. Their world is commonly black and white, those who they believe are allies and those who they believe are not, or simply those they can use and those they cannot.

If they have money it is not the product of intellectual or physical work but a gift or a 'win' or a product of an earlier time before they did drugs or became intoxicated with themselves.  They commonly have had many opportunities, often have come from superficially successful parents but got caught up in the party and expected someone always to rescue them.  They commonly are very bitter as their lives go on and others surpass them.

If there is someone in their workplace or community who is admired they will 'backstab' that person relentlessly. These people are the great 'critics' of the accomplishments of others. Whenever someone says something about a star, an athlete, the garage a neighbour built, the university degree a person achieved, the first man on the moon, they will be sure to offer a snide, belittling or distracting comment. When children want attention of the mother these are the fathers who compete. Women of this variety are the party girls and princesses who are concerned about 'whose in and whose out' and their 'social standing' long after high school or sororiety days are over. If any serious conversation occurs they will flaunt themselves sexually to bring the conversation down to their level and around to them. Men do the same in a different way, often flexing muscles and talking about sports.These women control conversation with their sex whereas the men control conversation with their 'short fuses' and 'threat'.

Thoreau described these sort as 'living lives of quiet desperation' because they exhude such cowardice afraid of learning, afraid of participating in the higher culture and the community goals, afraid of real progress and critical of everything, but wanting everyone to admire them and becoming very angry or resentful if anyone who is 'real' is present.

They lie and steal and cheat because they lack conscience and are terrified that anyone would know them for who they really are. Today they often mouth the words of pop psychology to appear 'sensitive' but their actions are all purely self serving. They lack any generosity. What they give to their family they expect back in old age. What they give to anyone is an 'investment'. They belittle charity and only see things in terms of how they serve themselves never as to how they can benefit their children, family or community. If they want something it is 'good' and if they don't want something it is 'bad'.

They are ignorant. They see anyone's taste in music or fashion or sports other than their own as ridiculous. If they like roast beef then pork eaters are inferior. Their 'measure' of all of those about them is based on their own stupidity. They lack a measuring stick beyond their own limitations. They are the people who laughed at Columbus and told everyone a man couldn't be flown to the moon. They are the perpetual party poopers. They burst the ballon of fantasy and creativity. If a woman makes a child a birthday cake and the child loves it they will come in and snicker and make fun of the cake or even criticize the mother for 'wasting' resources and time. Meanwhile their activities no matter how banal are always explained as somehow terribly important. They always have promises and grand schemes and are waiting for the 'deal' to end all deals.

E. E. Cummings called them 'thosepeople', as an irony above their capacity for understanding. They are parasitic and can't stand their own aloneness but must feed on others. Vampire movies are made about these people who 'suck the energy from rooms' while appearing 'energetic'. They are the 'soul suckers' and the 'heartless'.  Today we more often consider them 'sick' and hope that one day they will get the help they need and stop hurting others in their immaturity.

They are the critics whose criticism is always 'destructive' and not 'constructive' and given not as something useful but as a distraction to deceptively obtain the limelight,   They always endeavour to 'chop the heads off others, to make themselves look taller".





- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Compulsive Liars

I once worked with a compulsive liar. A female sociopath who was brought into my life by a female minister who promoted the compulsive liar, knowingly or unknowingly The damage she did eventually cost me more than $50,000 and left me feeling utterly violated. It turned out that the references she provided were from men who had previously had business with her but not the business she claimed. Given their claims on her behalf, regarding her character, not her physical skill, in retrospect I concluded that she must have threatened them as she threatened me, extortion being part of her repertoire, or being the business minded type of older men who liked adolescent women and had no character themselves. She stole but what was more extensive was the dishonesty, compulsive lying which verged on pathological lying.
In retrospect I couldn't sort out what she was other than mean, deceitful and despicable in the foulest of ways. Sadly her lies incorporated a dozen women of stirling character whose character was then doubted by a truly dubious female doctor whose capacity for gullibility bordered on the insane. She ignored the truth of a dozen upstanding women preferring the repeated lies of a crack and apparent sex addict who'd used a female minister for her nefarious ends.
The 'enabling' doctor was brought into the 'con' which all the while was devastating the community, hurting me and hundreds of others. The girl and her pimp like boyfriend were white and particularly racist and well as loathing of the rainbow community, The doctor was a conservative white lady known for her inferiority complex coupled with a superiority complex known for her fawning way or belittling of male specialists depending on how much the male doctors deferred to her outdated ideas. As one female specialist said she was a cow who found her calf and to this brilliant and beautiful psychiatrist that explained everything though it didn't particularly help me. She lived in an ivory tower protected by male and female doctors who themselves would have had the street smarts to smell a rat long before she could if she ever did.
In the end I swore I'd have nothing more to do with sociopaths and compulsive liars. My mother had died that year. Rather than focussing on mourning and remembering her for her great achievements, I was distracted by the sordid indecent drama of the pervert lying lady and her old lady doctor promoter. The female minister was by no means an Oswald Chambers, had beat a quick retreat from the disaster she had sewed preferring only the lush robes of office. She was no longer needed as the dubious doctor was the latest host for the parasite who lied for money and lied for lying. In contrast, my mother, a Baptist Christian lady of high character, had lived a life devoted to the truth.
Yet here once again a rat has got in my chicken coup. Jesus said sweep the house of demons and don't let one back in or they'll bring more with them. I can actually chart the part I played letting them scurry that first day into the bag of feed. When I had a chicken coup, that one rat I saw that day eating the chicken's grain didn't seem like much. Yet within days I was carrying two bags more of feed each week to the chicken coup, all profit lost as a result of the infiltration of rats, all joy gone, and my back aching from the effort to feed the chickens whose food was being stolen en mass by the rats. Rat poison, 12 guage shot gun shells galore, drowning and a number of cats never did get rid of the rats. In the end I moved. Life is too short for good people to live among rats if there are alternatives. I sometimes think Vancouver with it's bike lanes and multibillion dollar marijuana industry, housing prices inflated by heroin trade and crack industry, is particularly ratty. Yet others argue it's a product of the times and the decline in morality and rise in relative ethics. "It could be worse, Goldman Sacs could be your neighbour," my Vancouver loving friend argues.
Compulsive liars are often called rats. They and their lies proliferate. I'm dealing with a male one now. Despite all my experience and training and after that female Eva Brawn experience I thought I was over having them sneak under my radar. Yet they're superficially charming. Their lives are compartmentalized with no one knowing the full extent of their deception or how many people they hurt or are hurting until later. They commonly borrow money or steal from everyone and only later do people who know them meet up and go 'aha'.
Dr. Robert Hare has written extensively about sociopaths and psychopaths and documents how many people have rats in their lives, how the rats live, how they breed and where they like to leave their droppings and what lives they devour. When I beat myself up for letting this latest one in, I was reminded by a friend that even Jesus, had his Judas. I gather from that maybe 1 in 12 people isn't all human but more a rat like, Gollum, character who CS Lewis would say looks for the architect in the wall of the building. As I heard chanted in Indian, 'they love things more than people'. They like shiny things, like pieces of silver.
I haven't raised chickens since the rats came. I moved away from that town and took up other pursuits. The rats were real but also a metaphor. I'd had to deal with a liar whose eyebrows grew together and was glad I got out before the good people we knew there were destroyed by drug dealers and other sociopaths. Rats are parasites so if you remove the host the rats die or go elsewhere. Rats don't live long and aren't welcomed anywhere but in dumps.
All recommendations about Compulsive Liars start with the recognition that whatever they say is not true. Personally once I note that a person who I'm not being paid to work with, treating pathological liars is part of my business, I know that everything that follows is a lie. In terms of transactional analysis the compulsive liar 'wins', 'gets a reward' by gambling on you 'buying' their latest lie. Commonly the 'lie' is 'seeded' in a group of half truths and even an occasional truth. This person in my life right now owes me thousands of dollars and has caused me to drive hundreds of miles to be 'paid' and adjust my schedule on several occasions to 'meet' with them to be 'paid' only every time they "lie". They 'conveniently 'forget' and 'miss' appointments. Even now they want me to again accomodate my schedule and life to their chaos and deceit. The cost and pain of being 'played' by a sociopath amounts to far more than thousands of dollars of initial 'help'.
Books are written about them with titles like 'soul suckers' and 'emotional vampires'. That's part of the pattern of 'compulsive liars'. They play on the good nature of their hosts. They feed on food meant for others. They're takers and players. The pleasure for the liar is to 'manipulate' others around them and to 'control' others. They get everyone playing their game and are called 'king baby' because their games are so juvenile. Their behaviour, were it not for their age and wearing long pants, would be perfectly appropriate in a toddler, a terrible 2, or even tolerable in 13 year old. It's just painful when these compulsive liars are masquerading as adults hiding diapers under their stolen big people clothing.
Commonly these sociopaths are drug addicts as well and one doesn't know if the drug addiction has begat the compulsive lying or the compulsive lying is just a component of the immature character of the person. Pathological lying is commonly associated with alcohol and marijuana. Drug users commonly lie partly because of the brain damage (reversible or irreversible) and partly because of the grandiosity and arrogance that goes with addiction. Addicts live in a false reality where they preen before a magic mirror of their own making excluding any truth since truth might topple their fantasy world.
At work we get the 'cheques in the mail' lie too but we refuse to do business with such folk after the first lie. Countless businesses have died because of liars and many an idealist has become a cynic, thanks to one too many liars or sociopaths.
Compulsive liars want you to play their game of 'believe me' and 'trust me' so the can get close or stay close. Then they can throw a rock through your window. They say "trust me" and "I promise" but this is never a 'reliable' response because they lack the character to be able to be as good as their word. They and their word are wholly foul. The consequence then is that all who deal with compulsive liars must consider everything they say as untrue until they 'prove' by demonstration and action and repeated demonstration and action over at least a year that they have given up the addiction of compulsive lying. Prisoners in jails want out because they don't like being around compulsive liars and sociopaths. They're like a collection of virus who need hosts to infect. Rats aren't happy just to be among rats. They infest homes, towns and cities. If they'd stay in the dumps no one would care.
In addiction circles where compulsive liars are common the sayings which apply are 'don't tell me, show me,' and 'if you talk the talk, walk the walk.'
Personally I am feeling again so violated that I want to just leave and go anywhere that compulsive liars aren't enabled and supported. I am so tired of being hurt by these children, sick as they are.
Psychodynamics tells us that they are usually a product of equally sick parents where one at least of the parents, either themselves were a compulsive liar or addict or one that rewarded compulsive lying. The organizations Adult Children of Alcoholics shares their experience of being victimized by addicts who compulsively lied and routinely broke promises to their family while maintaining a fake personna in the community. Those in 12 step programs are in recovery and seeking treatment for the damage done often so they don't pass along the damage done to them to their children. Not uncommonly I treated three and sometimes 4 generations of compulsive liars and sociopaths, usually on welfare, sometimes running corrupt businesses, often criminal, and simply not knowing a life better than 'lying' and happy as bottom feeders living in the dark and afraid to walk in the light regardless of the lies they tell themselves.
Al anon, the sister organization of alcoholics anonymous, teaches their members to 'detach with love' when dealing with the alcoholic and their compulsive lying.
Still, while it's true they are sick individuals, like pedophiles are sick individuals, it remains that when one has slithered into your life or been brought in by well meaning people ,it's hard to think of them compassionately as they wreck so much damage and waste such valuable time that could be used elsewhere. Their 'king baby' 'drama queen' antics, thoroughly delighted with the smell of their own poopoo, they smear it all over their hand and reach out to shake yours again and again, laughing each time they catch you in another of their countless shitty little lies. It's then you relish the old language of seeing them as evil and demon possessed and want to stake them on the lawn to discourage their likes from coming around. I encouraged a patient to forgive a relative who is a pedophile and hurt his family, but know that it's incredibly hard to forgive when what one really wants to do is revenge.
I listened to the new Tenth Avenue North album, Struggle yesterday and enjoyed the young song writer talking about long ago using up his 70 times 70 minutes of his 'forgiveness plan' but then remembering Jesus on the cross saying 'Forgive them for they know not what they do."
As psychiatrists I raised this topic at my recent convention, sharing about my own openess and generosity making me prey to sociopaths, how "boundaries' were such a static pre global arty luddite term for a post internet, facebook, spy camera everywhere world, when as medical scientists we did need 'membranes' instead and we talked together of this mutually sharing our experiences.
I shared how the beaurocrats reminded me of the drunken irish lawyer who'd picked bar fights always winning because he was the lawyer for the Hell's Angels and the Angels stood behind him and his adversary always 'stayed down'. Boundaries was good for them because they lived in medieval ivory towers and ruled but it lost relevance in the real world where real doctors negotiated their influence and lived among people and didn't 'dictate' to them as 'administratives' types preferred. We shared how the police, judges and lawyers who so often work alot with these unwashed heathens make a strong point of having highly selective personal circles. My detective friends don't want just anyone around their families because frankly they need a 'break' from compulsive liars and sociopaths. There might well be described as a group who use 'moats' more than anything else.
As psychiatrists we weighed the pros and cons of very tight 'boundaries'. When I graduated we were told not to share any personal information with patients, women and men couldn't wear wedding rings, all of us had private phone numbers we didn't share and our addresses were sacrosanct. I spent years working like that, treating patients like they were somehow 'infectious' and wearing my doctor persona like a Hazmat Suit. The lawyer at the College wears just such a Hazmat suit and I always think she is afraid of being infected by 'doctors'. As psychiatrists we learned that the 'stigma' of mental illness extends to the caregivers as well. It's equally why so many people think of lawyers as 'liars' because they are 'stigmatised' with their so often criminal clientele.
Having been stalked, had my windows shot out, had my dog killed, and my life repeatedly threatened all related to work I fully appreciated the women psychiatrist who today wouldn't have anything but a very restricted artificial relationship with her patients . She admitted she was afraid of many of them and was glad to have a place where she could share her fear. Alot of my colleagues 'cherry pick' the 'worried well' or work in 'student mental health' or leave clinical medicine all together to become administrative doctors or doctors who police doctors because they are afraid too. I loved an old College Registrar who shared he was always delighted when I'd chat with him and share my trials and travails because he told me it made him thank his lucky stars he wasn't back in front lines faced with such awful decisions with so few resources. He said he'd got burnt out and looked for an escape and eventually ended where he was, an amazingly wife and compassionate gentleman whose contribution to medicine was truly admirable.
The psychiatrist working in the jail told us as well he couldn't even share that he had cancer because an inmate 'gloated' and used that as 'ammunition'. Sociopaths love to learn something about people and then use 'name calling', saying things like 'faggot' to put down those around them. They even use words like "Christian" or "doctor" or "worker" in a twisted way making a "positive" appear negative because that's really a reflection of their internal 'bizzaro' psyche. The jail psychiatrist would say that a sociopath could tone the word 'mother' or 'father' in such a way as to make those beautiful words sound like smegma. Sociopaths live to 'chop the heads off others to make themselves look taller'. None of the jail psychiatrists told their patients the names of their wives or children partly to protect them from physical harm but also to protect themselves.
Hearing them share this I reflected that I'd done a similiar thing when I worked in jails and asylums. I was reminded of this when a patient recently stole my personal laptop and I wondered if I wasn't too old for this work. All my life doctors have been pilloried in the media and by the government whereas drug dealers seem to be celebrated and rewarded in this part of the world. When I told Dr. Hildes years ago I wanted to be a missionary doctor he told me I didn't have to leave Canada. He got me working with the Northern Medical Unit at the time but I know now that as one of the wisest men I had the priviledge to train with his insights regarding health care weren't just limited to Circumpolar Health.
The private psychiatrists like myself however especially the older men who worked in addiction psychiatry, often had long standing relationships with patients where their personal lives were an open book. A number of the psychiatrists had written books with extensive autobiographical material which made it rather moot what they shared but they too could talk as I did about the days when we had our walls bare and answered every question with a question. I shared too that the woman doctor I'd mentioned who'd been thoroughly conned by the female sociopath had still been doing that when she retired.
When I was a small town country psychiatrist everyone knew everything about me and the country psychiatrists described the same experience of being on display today. I loved Scott Peck's book, "People of the Lie" better than "The Road Less Travelled". Over the years I've treated cleaning ladies of the rich and famous and learned all manner of details which I'm sure were 'priviledged'. My colleague said he liked the 'privacy' of his life in Burnaby compared to when he'd worked in Asia where every household had so many 'servants'. "So much of what I've read about 'boundaries" is wholly ethnocentric and western because it doesn't take into account servants or families or multi culturalism", he said. They found the big city psychiatrists talk of 'boundaries' priviledged and irrelevant , not at all realistic when their kids were all in the same school as their patients and they were coaching soccer teams and attending Bible studies with patients. "These guys must live on the moon and see patients from another planet," the way they write. The addiction psychiatrists described their experiences of being open about their lives in 12 step meetings where their patients were and then learning that one patient befriended another patient in the waiting rooom. That was why my psychoanalyst mentor had separate exit on his office so no patients passed each other.
While everyone had had similiar experiences which had helped them in being 'human' and clearly did a tremendous service for their patients and 'fellow humans' each had had a 'bad experience'. That's what we shared too. This conference is one I attend because it encourages doctors to share. Then we discuss options and reflect on solutions without doing that typical administrative and beaurocratic 'blame and shame' game. These are real physicians, healers, and not just paper pushers and rubber stampers.
I was reminded of when I played guitar on stage and sang Paul Simon's brilliant song, "I am a Rock I am an Island." The line I loved most was "I touch no one and no one touches me."
We reminisced how easy it must have been for the psychiatrists doing lobotomies and certainly surgeons can stay aloof like the administrative doctors try to be but in the end humanity seems to prevail. Only Ralf Nader could withstand having his garbage gone through daily by security firms hired for millions of dollars to find dirt on him. No one ever did but in the end he was thought a 'boring' man. In the end I thought he'd make a change as a politician and president but the hoi polloi didn't want saints ,preferring dope smoking womanizer Clinton and former alcoholic Texas bad boy Bush to Nader, the man with the cleanest garbage in history. Ralf Nader, himself, a man of truth, didn't accept politics probably because he knew politicians daily had to deal with lobbyists some of who were by nature compulsive liars.
Like the other older psychiatrists at that meeting of sharing about 'boundaries' and 'ethics' I remembered my psychoanalytic teacher saying that he wouldn't share an elevator with a patient under any condition. Yet Freud had his patients come to his house where they smelt what his wife was cooking along with every other household nuance of that canny old master, now quite unfairly criticized by 'johnny come lately's who have all benefitted from his pioneering genius.
Given the lies told about me by the sociopath and the public domain of a particularly deceitful divorce, I chose "transparency" as a measure of safety. In a particularly fascist community which thrived on dark rooms and 'secret discussions' and knew it's own share of 'lies' ,I was even 'declared dead' by a colleague who I'd named for killing patients, Unfortunately for him and his patients, I was very much alive and he was found wholly negligent and given the mandatory wrist slap.
The professionalism of the day was protect the leader at all costs and sacrifice the young for the sake of the old. It was a particularly toxic environment with some of the most heinous of acts making front page news. What was so often overlooked was that the vetting bodies were complicit in the crimes. Compulsive liars and sociopaths are most blatant in their 'cover ups' which are clearly not just 'mistakes' but declare best of all that 'evil intent' and 'false motive' were definitely present.
The recent financial crisis where the Fanny Mae and Freddie Macs compulsively lied before Congress showed that despite the lessons the world had learned from Hitler , yet again sociopaths and compulsive liars could get under the radar of countries and do all manner of damage to the world. This wasn't Stalin or the bad Chinese or really bad North Koreans but Canada's neighbour, America with Americans doing it to their fellow Americans. They're like a disease that can't even recognise their own. They behave like children whose parents just never could get them to understand that basic rule 'don't shit where you eat'.
We should all know today, only the rich or irrelevant can truly have secrets. Transparency has such merit that Beverley McLaughlan, the head of the Supreme Court of Canada has made it her central theme. Instead of "judge Judy' on tv, we can look forward to a return to real judges on television like the days of Solomon when court was an open forum and the judge didn't cut deals in his or her chambers.
Given the experience of dealing with the female doctor who rejected the truth of a dozen women of stirling character preferring her own skewed view reinforced by a crack addicted pervert whose failure to report relapses were part of her history of compulsive lying, I learned that people will often 'believe' what they want to believe and refuse to let the 'facts' get in the way of their 'opinions'.
I depend as much today on prayer and Grace as I do on 'boundaries' or 'locks'. As an old saying goes about a servant who didn't tie up the camels and they were gone in the morning, when he said to the master, "But you always say trust Allah", the master replied, "Tether the camels and then trust Allah." As Christians say, you are the hands of God. So a spiritual life isn't one of work without faith but rather work and faith. In the beginning and the end, all is God.
I have also learned that it doesn't help to confront compulsive liars , just as it doesn't help to confront a sociopath. It's like telling a cannibal that they are a cannibal. Cannibals don't care about this information. What is important is to get your hand back before they get your arm. The only hope for a compulsive liar or a sociopath is if they are an addict as well. Addiction is a treatable medical condition.
But addiction, compulsive lying, and sociopathy all share in common that for treatment the person must have reached a bottom, be coerced to accept treatment through intervention or have a moment of clarity or age. Prochaska has written very clearly about Stages of Changes starting with Precontemplation, Contemplation, Determination, and finally Action. Modern day motivation therapy encourages us to no longer waste valuable resources on patients who are not themselves further along in the process. Compulsive liars and sociopaths love an audience. Transactional analysis and other therapies showed that they 'score' not by changing for the positive but by 'defeating' your helping them.
Usually toyboys and party girls grow up in their 50's and though they do immense damage to their children along the way they might themselves find truth within their life time some being simply developmentally delayed. Others learn 'toilet training' early while this group sociologically are 'challenged' as the pc language would say. They think their shit doesn't smell even but eventually may 'get it' though frankly the evidence does suggest that as often die young.
The most important point though is that those around compulsive liars and sociopaths do best to keep them out, recognise the rat when it gets in and as quickly as possible get out before they bring more rats or tell more lies.


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Bullying

I drove into work today listening to a very enjoyable CBC Currents program on Bullying in the school.  A professor in Ontario has developped the "bully lab" to study bullying by children. Her most interesting piece of research to me, was the observation that bystanders in 80% of case egged on the bullies and clapped or cheered their victimization. Further, with exception, when they approached the parents, as one contributor said 'the seed didn't fall far from the tree'.
I became interested in bullying first as a child. It was indeed the "norm" in my neighbourhood.  My brother defended me from my first memorable bully, an older horrible boy in Scouts. I was a cub at the time and my brother was a scout.  It was good to have an older brother.  A group of brothers who I believe all ended up in jails were the notoriously feared bullies in the neighborhood.  I defended other kids and girls myself being a scrapper early before moving on to street fighting.  I remember as a youth getting pointed toed shoes and cuban heeled boots not so much for the style as their value as a weapon. Later I loved cowboy boots for the same reason.
A documentary of boys showed these happy go lucky little guys at the age of 5 then reviewed them through till they were teens.  After a year of school and the competition and physical threat that went with being a boy all of them had lost that joie de vivre.  They were learning wariness. The school and the way to and from were dangerous places.
I was lucky, bigger, faster, smarter in physical ways. After bigger boys beat us up my dad taught the neighbourhood kids boxing and self defence in the basement.  Then my friend Kirk and I got a Ju Jitsu book and practiced all the moves over and over again. Compared to the gymnastics we were learning at the YMCA this stuff was easy.  One of our coaches was a black belt in some martial art and he'd give us tips when we'd rough house at the Y.  At school the principle game we loved was 'murder ball', truly a game for bullies whereas in scouts and cubs the game was always last man standing with the one person starting in the middle and all the kids having to run to the other side. This one kid would be mowed down by the stampede till he caught another and slowly built up his team till the last man had to run through the pack.  We actually played Indian war games back then too.  So it was in many ways a war culture before the 60's, not surprising considering the recent WWII
As a psychiatrist I began to treat women raped in the office. Not sexually harrassed by trapped afterwork in empty buildings and raped by a boss or co worker.  In one famous case the wife and daughters were the principle defendants of this notorious sexual bully.  A group of girls sexually abused a younger effeminate guy sitting on him and playing with his penis.  He'd stayed a virgin until his 30's when he came to see me.
Therapy has tremendous benefits for victims.  Dr. Judith Herman's Trauma and Recovery is a classic. She works still as the psychiatrist head of trauma at Harvard.
Alot of bullying that came to my attention in the office was so overt but happened in the workplace and in the school. One teen was routinely bullied but the principle and school denied it. I discussed the matter with the police department because I believed the kid even though the parents were less supportive. The police were terrific partly because of my good relationship and trememdous respect for the tough job they have. They did a clandestine surveillance of the playground and sure enough two kids were bullying the rest of the children simply to steal their lunches and lunch money.
In the work place there's tremendous bullying.  This occurs more now with the greater difficulty getting and keeping jobs.  Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.  Psychiatrists in New Mexico had focussed on Workplace Bullying and seen in the victims variations on PTSD, lesser forms but the same elements.
The horns of dilemna arise when people simply can't 'quit' a job.  It's always the issue, 'why not jsut quit'.  Yet a person may have invested a life time in their work or may be supporting sick family. There's a whole number of reasons that make quitting seriously less easy for some than others. Predators take this into account and usually pick on the weakest.
Bullyonline is the best resource I've ever come accross as a one stop shopping for information on this matter. Tim Fielding a simple employee began the site Bullyonline in England a decade or two back when he was having difficulties with an employer.  The site went viral and since there's been tremendous interest in the matter because bullies in the workplace literally cost millions in productivity.  Even other workers hearing an individual being shouted at will work less effectively for a day or two.
Now routinely any one who tells me they're being bullied in the workplace gets referred to Tim's site.  He even has links to children's resources with cartoons on how to talk back to bullies.
Bullying stifles creativity and reduces performance.  Despite television shows that show the worker doing better for a brief period when his daughter's life is being threatened, like torture, bullying has a very short shelf life with very unpredictable outcomes. Staff turnover is often a reflection of bullying. So much of the problems in workplace are directly a consequence of the usually very poor education and training of middle management.
I've been amused as how in my own field doctors with a dozen years of training and expertise and years of experience are commonly given an administrator who at best has an undergraduate degree, if luck a 3-5 year mba and not one of these august management types has ever had a phd yet they're often bullying colleagues with several phd's demanding more work for less pay while enjoying all the perks themselves.  Overall issues like this affect performance throughout the system.
Military platoons performance was best when the leadership was seasoned and experienced.  The new management model of 'parachuting' in untried leaders rather than taking people who are experienced from the ranks might provide 'loyalty' to the crown but it doesn't provide the highest standards of leadership and hence performance by the group.
I enjoyed the professor from the 'bully lab' who said that bullying commonly is a product of the 'bully' not being educated in alternatives and themselves being afraid.  It's those who are most out of control who desire control so earnestly.  Education and learning better means of coping help the bully as much as the victim. Programs like Anger management for men and women, locally we have Moose Anger Management, are the kinds of programs that can reduce bullying and teach potential bullies how to cope better and more effectively without doing the reptile or ape dance.

Couples Therapy 4

Marriage Enhancement is commonly a weekend workshop put on by churches or synagogues or temples. It wasn't developed as a 'religious' workshop but was picked up by the religious organizations because the premise of marriage enhancement is that marriages are best and that couples benefit from help keeping them together. The exact opposite of a marriage enhancement coordinator would be the divorce lawyer.  In these workshops, often a one day session though some go on in evenings over a few weeks,  newly married and long term married folk, mix and discuss issues,  share stories, and play some couple games.  By all accounts of those I've referred to these, the experience has been fun,  entertaining, inspirational and helped the couple improve their marriages. The cost of these workshops is kept low.  They are for the married people who want to stay married but would like to know how to do marriage better.
Virginia Satir was one of the earliest leaders in Couples Therapy. Indeed her name is often synonymous with Communication Therapy for Couples.Her writings are an excellent resource for training in the 'communication school' of therapy.  Her books  include actual written tracts of therapy with the words of Virginia indicating the therapists 'take' or response.  They are easily accessible and serve as excellent training manuals. I trained with Virginia Satir and love her work.  Unfortunately I have  found that most couples who come to see me in my referral psychiatric practice aren't  ready for "communication therapy'.  Couples who I've seen in the last few years have often consulted a divorce lawyer or are on the verge of breakup when I've been able to suggest alternatives.  I think it's best that there is  a 'ceasefire' in place for Virginia Satir's 'communication theory' to work.   Higher functioning couples do well with this approach and couples once they are no longer committed to killing their partner benefit greatly from this work. PD Seminars on Gabriola Island for many years held workshops for counsellors to learn the basic techniques which could help couples who were committed to relationships and wanted to learn resolution strategies.
"Structural Family Therapy" taught by the likes of Minuchin was a well established therapy for couples and families. There's a lot of scientific research and specific training for doing this advanced form of therapy which has a high likelihood of helping couples stay together when they are on the verge of separation.
Milton Erickson, MD, psychiatrist,  was the father of American Hypnosis.  He is the founder of the school of therapy called "Strategic Therapy".  This was studied by Cameron in Canada and found to be clearly an evidence based for of therapy which required fairly advanced training.  Jay Haley wrote the book "Uncommon Therapy" describing some of Erickson's cases and how he addressed couples with difficulties. The Ericksonian Foundation continues in Phoenix and every few years has an amazing workshop which looks at all the varieties of therapy used for couples and individuals which have derived from the 'interventionist' approach which originally was behind hypnotic therapies but has expanded to encompass the Palo Alto school and other 'change' therapies.  The idea isn't laissez faire but rather there is an agreed outcome and various forms of therapy and homework and exercises are given to achieve the desired outcome.  Paradoxical intervention, reframing, sympton suggestion, psychodrama techniques are all employed.
The Love Lab is a recent successful therapeutic approach for couples. The techniques utilized by therapists have resulted in 80% success rates for couples staying together after therapy is initiated. This evidence based approach and utilization of a variety of therapy approaches from previous schools of therapy is excellent. The weakness from a scientific point of view is that it is predominantly a 'business model' which markets it's work in a modern way with only limitted availability of the actual workshop content for general perusal.  In contrast Satir and Erickson shared their material fully without any issues of 'copywrite' so that those who are more inclined to 'share ware' approaches have objected to the cost of training and materials. On the other hand the outcome success of this model argues that commonly higher costs are associated with sometimes higher quality products.  What is available to review certainly supports the validity of this approach and I strongly recommend people go to the "Love Lab" site and read the material that is posted there as well as the books which are truly inspirational.
Alot of material is now available which can be said to optimize couples functioning.  Transactional Analysis, mediation therapies, communications couples therapies, Structural and strategic therapies, Ericksonian models, all have strong evidence based results.  The difficulty is finding adequately trained therapist.  To this end it's really useful to ask ahead and review the experience and training of the person doing the therapy.
Having a phd in Psychology might mean that a person is a specialist in mice behaviour. A clinical psychologist however is a person with a phd who has worked with patients.  A psychiatrist may have gone to a school which trained them predominantly in psychopharmacology whereas other psychiatrists are trained in both psychopharmacology and psychotherapy. However many psychiatric psychotherapists and psychological psychotherapists have never been formally trained in couples therapy. Social workers have had a major contribution to the field of couples therapy given that couples therapy is more a 'sociological' external phenomena than internal 'psychological' phenomena.  Clearly a social worker who has specialized in couples therapy would be more desirable than a counsellor with limitted experience. More and more too ministers and priests have recognised that their training in pastoral counselling can be coupled with formal couples therapy to result in a stronger basis for therapeutic intervention than might a person coming from an 'insight' based therapeutic background.

Kin

The word "kin" comes from the Old English, 'cyn' which meant "family, race, kind, or nature" Kinship is considered a modern word first attested in 1833 in the writing of Mrs. Browning.

It's a key word. In McLean's Triune Brain is seen the evolution of man internally as likened externally. The lizard brain is there. Lizards have the basal brain mechanisms for maintaining breathing and heart beat, the very mechanisms of the survival and reproduction, territoriality, fight and flight, aggression, defense, and such.

Robert Hare, points out in Snakes in Suits, that the psychopath is really a lizard person with chameleon capabilities. He lacks feelings and conscience.

Feelings are associated in McLean's Triune Brain with the middle brain development, amygdala, basal ganglia and the whole emotional apparatus that is found in mammals. Lizards drop their eggs on the beach like fish drops theirs in the sea whereas the mammals care for their young and form groupings around the raising of young. ( Jurassic Park was an interesting discussion of whether the dinosaurs could do group hunt behavior because that coordinated activity was thought part of the first development of the mammalian proto kinship brain.)

Robert Hare likens this ability to be mammalian to the 'sociopath'. The psychopath is a loner. The sociopath in contrast is part of a group. In the book On Killing about PTSD in the military the writer quotes a sergeant saying that there were psychopaths and sociopaths in the military, very few in fact, because they couldn't be trained to work together. The psychopath loner might function as a sniper but couldn't be counted on not to pick his own targets. The sergeant described the sociopaths as 'wolves' and himself as a 'sheep dog'. The wolves could hunt in packs but there was a question of their loyalty. Indeed sociopaths make good mercenaries for this reason. The soldier who described himself as a 'sheepdog' had a higher sense of 'kin' associating with sheep and humans, allying as such to a greater social grouping than the mere 'blood line' or 'DNA' derived tribal association.


To Hare the sociopath had the capacity to identify with it's own kind. It had the capacity to form a kinship network. A Hell's Angel might not tell the truth to the RCMP or FBI but he would tell the truth to a fellow Hell's Angel. Similiarly a Palestianian might not speak openly with an Israeli or a Mossad with an Hamaz. Klu Klux Klan and the Black Supremacist organizations aren't going to see eye to eye the way Billy Graham and Bishop Tutu might. The issue here is kin and kinship.

Anthropologists found that all tribal people considered themselves "the people", hence the name "Inuit" meant "the people". The significance of this was any one not of the 'the people' was the "other." The rules for the 'people' didn't apply to the 'other'. This was the next question the anthropologist would ask, 'what do you call the neighbor'. When anthropologists encountered cannibals, the answer was the 'edible ones'.

To the sociopath the 'kinship' tribal boundary stops and those on the other side are 'edible ones'. To the human theoretically the kinship association should be at least as advanced as the sheep dog compared to the wolves though of course this is idealistic.

So it really doesn't matter if there are 10 commandments and we say we believe in the 10 commandments. The 10 commandments say "Thou shalt not steal". However to the sociopath or other tribal person this is like one Hell's Angel knowing that he shouldn't steal from another Hell's Angel. The question is who belongs to the 'Tribe'. A tribe can be a political party, or professional group like bankers or a society like the Freemasons or Feminists or Tea Party people.

Democracy is a pretty word until you ask 'who is a citizen'? Only the rich Athens were citizens in the original democracy. Roman citizenship was what kept St. Paul from being crucified without trial. Crucifying non "Romans" was standard operating procedure of the day. The same holds today with the incredibly lucrative business of "immigration" in the United States and the political and legal naming of whose in and whose out. It's no surprise that King Lear called 'courtly things' just that.

The concept of kinship therefore is far more important than 10 commandments or democracy or even the greatest human command, "love your neighbor as yourself" since the word 'neighbour' doesn't mean the same thing for everyone. Sociopaths simply don't use the same 'definition' as Jesus or Paul or perhaps the Christian today would use the word 'neighbour'. Chameleon psychopaths would even parrot the words,nod their heads and chant all the while they considered where they were going to take the first bite.

Sociopaths and other Tribal people aren't operating with a full deck. The lizard is a very good killing machine but it's not a particularly genteel neighbor. It's a whole other matter when your daughter wants to marry one. Kin and kinship are the stuff of Romeo and Juliett.

That said, can a fish love? Can you 'teach' a lizard conscience. Can a sociopath really become a human being in the sense of global citizenship as opposed to Israeli, Palestinian or American citizenship. And finally can this occur without a 'conversion experience'.






















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Marriage, Church and State

Marriage was traditionally an "institute of family". It was a union of husband and wife with the intent of sexual congress for the sake of creating children for the community. It was a community based recognition of the biological coupling of families and designated who would be responsible for children.
Children were appreciated by families and communities until very very recently in the history of humanity. Children were proto adults who were the principle workforce and the ingredients of armies and numbers and health and well being of these children defined the futures of the communities. Marriages were almost entirely arranged by adults and families who had long understood the importance of 'breeding' biologically since the early days of herding and politically as the stuff of alliance.
Marriage was monogamous or polygamist. If monogamous and no children, the lack of children could be grounds for dissolution of the marriage as 'barreness', initially of women and later men, was considered a grave disadvantage. In the history of the aristocracy how one pleasured oneself sexually, whether with males, females, animals or otherwise was nobody's business really, as long as children were produced as heirs. Marriage and family were essentially synonymous. If there were no children the marriage was accepted but it was not considered healthy, successful or enviable. Childless marriages were 'cursed' marriages.
In times of poverty and starvation, children, considered the future, might well be sacrificed (even eaten) by the adults who considered themselves by brute strength alone to be the rulers of the present.
Post industrial age, ie post "the age of the machine", the need for human labour for production of food, clothing, shelter,transportation and war was reduced. Children lost value as did all humans. Today one might say that with one button attached to enough warheads to annihilate all men, women and children and the planet itself children and humans in general are at an all time nadir. Certainly the very few at the very top of the food chain have more power than any tyrant of any age previously. The tolerance of these super humans for the rest of us is perhaps the same as the French Queen who said "give them cake" if only to shut them up and stop them riotting.
Mass annihilation of sub groups such as Scots, Armenians, Jews, Cambodians, Rwandas, and Aboriginals in general, and mass abortions of undesirable races such as Canadians and now the hope of euthanasia might reduce the numbers of those ruled by those ruling to a much more congenial equation in time. Right now humans and children aren't particularly desirable. Fortunately, Afghans and Vietnamese before them have demonstrated that drones and bombs are not yet as efficient in war as individual human soldiers. Thanks to the success, albeit little, of these horrible rebels, the armies of the right and good are still necessary. Therefore the ruling class continue to have need for the occasional babies.
A time in the not too distant future may come when the planetary rulers could get along with say a million servants and things would be much better all round for everyone especially the lakes and dung beetles, to say nothing of the spotted owl.
It's been only a half century that predictable and readily available birth control has been available for most. Marriage is no longer the dangerous leap into child rearing it once was. Condoms at the turn of the last century were not found in dispensers in outhouses, were highly unreliable and far more undesirable than the modern day Trojan or Sheik condom that claims to be not only secure but hardly noticeable when worn. The birth control pill for women is this generations contribution to the future and the male birth control pill is finally ready for marketing.
Gays, homosexuals or lesbians, who have entered into sexual unions never had the terrifying potential and leap of faith that young women and men did when their community approved sexual relations could saddle them with a toddler and later a teen ager at any moment. Gay sex, like adultery or adolescent sex or any non community sanctioned sex had it's illicit risks but by comparison to illicit heterosexual sex was incredibly safe in comparison. Only very recently has gay homosexual sex been a 'risky business' as a result of biological disease. Lesbian sex both biologically and socially has by many standards been the safest of all sexual unions. Pregnancy and childbirth today are however safer for women than in any other time in all of history. Acute pain therapy for childbirth is one of the miracles of modern science. Despite this childbirth's popularity with women has so decreased that scientists are desperately working all hours to develop extrauterine in vitro birth in case women completely forfeit this role which men, even those who do dishes and floss, have shown no interest in taking over.
Children have not only brought benefit to the family but also grave risk. The behavior of children has for millennia reflected poorly or positively on parents. Increasingly though children have been co-opted by the state, especially totalitarian states, as monitors and police of the parents. Countless adults now have died as a consequence of the intentional or unintentional statements of children.
With the age of machines children became less desirable. Only with the advent of the 19th Century hospitals before Lister was childbirth en mass truly dangerous. When it's dangers were addressed women gained 10 years life expectancy over men who continued to bear the brunt of the dangerous work place and wars that enriched the shrinking numbers but increasingly potent rulers. . Naturally women might opt for more life than more children in contrast with their grandmothers whose experience was 'many hands made a chore less burdensome". In contrast 'many mouths' became the post machine age nightmare.
It's been said that modern times, the last 200 years are best understood as a paragraph, less than a page, in the 200 page book of human life on this planet.
Marriage as an institution of family has been present for a goodly bit of those 200 pages whereas marriage as the term is used today is at best a line in the book of life in the present age of divorce.
Marriage until very recently for most was a lifelong institution, adult life lasting 20 to 30 and at most 40 years beyond childhood. Except in the numerology of Biblical accounting a 50 year marriage was rare indeed. There are countless 50 year heterosexual marriages, and 2/3's of the monogamous ones have not known adultery. The polygamous marriages have probably even more abiding statistics.
Kinsey first looked for Gay long term unions and found very few with supreme effort just a few decades or less than a line of history ago. Today gay unions are a terrific experiment in human relations a kin to the development of the space shuttle and as admirable givens the forces against them.
DINK'S - Dual Income No Kids marriages are another truly recent phenomena, at most a generation in the countless generations of life on earth. Women can safely enter that once dangerous union called marriage knowing they will never have to have children, never take the risk of childbirth, never raise toddlers and teenagers and have all the benefits of marriage without their partners knowing they never ever planned to have children. Men can themselves get vasectomies and marry without ever having to fear one day holding a vulnerable screeching baby in their arms or having a teen ager begging for the keys to Dad's car.
The hard political work of families on behalf of marriages in these recent years of political and economic entitlements have acknowledged the greater cost and obligations that married people, ie parents had over single people, ie unmarried people. There is a desire today for those who aren't parents to have those benefits and given the rapidity of the change in circumstance and naming of things in the last lines of the history the very meaning of marriage and family and sexuality are at stake. The rise of the singles and DINKS also has already gained them many credits over the former majority the married parents. It's no surprise that Gays want what DINKS already have.
It is only very very recently that any sexuality was open to discussion thanks to the pioneering work of Kinsey. Married sex was as much a taboo as unmarried sex. Today Gays are facing the same persecution that unmarried heterosexuals living together only mere decades ago faced. Today the children of interracial marriages are still being persecuted as seen with the colored children in today's Vietnam.
However as a community what will we give to children since all the advantages of 'marriage' given by community were specifically regarding the future of the community, ie the children.
As we define marriage as just two adults, and really whether they're female, male or two eunuchs isn't at issue here, what will we say for families especially families where there are only one adult and children or even adopted children with any number of adults. Can we seriously change the nature of marriage without really addressing the whole antequated graveyard of family legislation especially when for far two long decisions have been made by white privileged upper class old wig wearing men whose traditional servile wives have raised the children.
There would be no dispute about marriage in churches today if the law courts would have done their job of getting in touch with 21st century long before the churches and communities had to attend to the messes left them by the self serving "social courts'.
Given that the average length of marriage in north american between childless of any arrangement is commonly 5 years or less and those with children seem to be divorcing in this culture of divorce earlier and earlier, what does marriage say about 'stability' and 'commitment'. Indeed only one generation ago marriage reflected maturity and responsibility whereas today marriage may be a name associated with stupidity and immaturity. Indeed being married might mean you are gay or childless or only able to commit for 5 years. Given the 50% divorce rate maybe only bad marriages succeed and good marriages divorce. The entertainment and marketting industry responding to the decline of the wedding party began to make profits by promoting divorce parties definitely competing in popularity with he declining baby showers. Black gowns are in and white gowns are out.
The fact remains, what about the children?
All the 'domestic laws' of family and cohabitation need to be rewritten in this post machine age to stop lawyers and judges and the state from disenfranchising children in marriages with children. The divorce courts will be required shortly to pay back the children of divorce for the wholly unnacceptable cut they took from these children's heritage. Gay marriage is truly just an opening gambit in this long overdue process.
DINK's and GAYs ,who don't adopt, really don't deserve the privileges that were sought for families on behalf of the state and community.
Gays however should have every right that heterosexual DINK's have until either have children, adopted or procreated.
Love and lust matches of individuals either gay or heterosexual shouldn't be called called marriage 'retrospectively' as in the term 'common law' marriage. Marriage was and should remain a 'prospective' consensual agreement that two adults enter into and contract to do. The rights of 'squatters' should not be the same as 'homeowners' or the very courts themselves are rewarding the lawless as they have done now for decades. Parliaments and congress need to reel in the self serving courts which are by their actions not interpretting laws but actually making them for their own benefits to the detriment of the community at large. Shacking up is not marriage. Anyone who shacks up should not be seen legally as worthy of the rewards, benefits and rights of the proposed lawful gay, heteroseuxal or eunuch marriages or eunuch marriages.
Sexuality should no longer be punished by the courts who have never been sanctioned to be in the bedrooms of the nations in the first place. Individuals who live together don't get to have the others pensions and judges should stick to what they know which is contractual law, prenuptial agreements or marriage contracts. Increasingly today couples gay or heterosexuals are forced by housing costs to be roommates. Retrospectively any roommate can risk all future income if their roomy gets a slick lawyer and claims there was sexual congress whether there was or wasn't. As Gays today are wanting to have legal unions that is admirable indeed. Legal unions are to be admired by community. The problem remains that the courts don't even uphold their own laws and the consequence is the destruction of all community as we know it.
The state has always increasingly been against families and has demonstrated their penchant for divide and conquer in their unwillingness to recognize the world re live in today. No judge in social courts should be allowed to wear a wig today as it causes them to think like dinosaurs. Perhaps church leadership should consider discussing issues of marriage and family wearing sweats and having only milk with cookies for refreshments. There appears too much evidence of too much alcohol or pot in some of the decisions in this domain.
Finally, what of the rights of children? All of the rights of marriage were there to protect children and family. Should not the marriage laws be changed in the context of family laws and why is polygamy, either male or female, outlawed in a supposedly 'multi cultured' society. Really.









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Blood Libel and the new Media Bullies

The American Media continues to seek new lows in what it calls news coverage. A Democrat is shot by a seriously disturbed mentally ill young man and suddenly a Republican is 'blamed' for the shooting because Republicans "targeted" Democrats who were likely to lose in the coming elections.
If the media were arrested for every time they used metaphor and it was misunderstood then not a single reporter would be allowed out of prison today. Further the cartoonists of Norway would be jihadded to the collective applause of the world, humor would be outlawed and we'd all lose Jerry Seinfeld and the Simpsons. If that is the world the media of America wants then I would gladly take Sarah Pallins Alaska on any day.
When John Hinckley shot Republican President Reagan it was as clearly Democrats inciting Hinckley to kill the President. Today's media would have us believe that Jodie Foster should not be allowed to appear in movies.
When Saudi Ossama bin Laden attacked America on 9-11, Bush saw this as opportunity for America to invade Iraq which ironically was not Saudi but Saud's rival. It made no sense at the time and it makes even less sense today. Only the BBC appeared to notice that something was just a little off with the American media especially when the Weapons of Mass Destruction lie persisted without Americans even being allowed to know. Is there any 'Independent" "non partisan" mainstream media left in America today?
The Nature of politics and war is deceit. A big lie is even better than a little lie. The media news was supposed to tell us the 'truth', "the facts" and then discussion was supposed to debate with equal representation of competing views. American media is more and more propaganda. The sad truth today is the media is no longer reporting the truth but fabricating it's own lies for it's own ends.
The trouble is this young man was insane. If you tell an insane person not to kill somebody they are as liable to kill that person as if you were to tell them to kill. Insanity is paradoxical. It's irrational. This young person killed the Democrat because like so many people in America today he was feeling irrelevant and marginalized and wanted attention. He wanted to be real. He wanted to be a media person. He wanted Andy Warhol's 20 minutes. Life in America today is such that people want to be in the media , any other world than the world of their reality. The media world of America is now the Peter Pan Lost Boys world and it's even developing it's own unreal "media logic". The media appears not to want to report the reality.
This young man was poor in attention so he killed someone rich in attention. It's the primitive way. Take by violence what you can't get yourself. The media naturally gives meaning this week to this poor sick young man as it did a few weeks back to some crazy preacher who was attacking Moslems living near the site of 9-11. American media celebrates the most insane behavior and makes those insane marginalized people 'real' in the media world. Today's media encourages violences and bizarre behavior and no longer can that be said to be 'reporting' the news.
There is a direct scientifically supported link between the wide distribution by media of images of violence and the violence of those who are severely mentally ill or brain damaged. Given the ubiquity of drug and alcohol abuse in the United States and the further direct link between violence and drug and alcohol abuse which causes reversible brain damage and impaired reality testing, the media must be held accountable for countless deaths in the United States alone.
We know this young man was mentally ill by his action but what we don't know is why. From his own blog it appeared he was likely 'addicted' to media and living in the Tron world of digital matrix where morality does not exist. Given the increasing numbers of people living in these phony media worlds it's time that the media is required to take some responsibility for it's fear mongering and violence perpetrating messages. Given the media's negative portrayal of reality it's not surprising that so many young people escape into the insaniety of the media logic of violence and fame. A responsible media would encourage people to participate in the real world of human community. This young man's isolation and alienation was palpable.
More insane people kill themselves and others with cars yet no one says we should shut down Ford because Johnny Little Shit from Akron in road rage over the latest Simpson episode drove his red mustang at Harry Smiths police car.
The Science of Fear: How the Culture of Fear Manipulates your Brain, by Dan Gardner shows clearly that media reporting of 9-11 caused more unnecessary accidental deaths in the following 6 months than the actual terrorist attack on the World Trade Centre did.
If we trust the media on this one, Americans will lose even more freedom. Along with the freedom of speech, they will lose the freedom to think, if they haven't lost that already. It's certainly time in America for serious reflection on the media's role in perpetrating violence.
Get ready for the copy cat killings of more American politicians, thanks to the American media. Media reporters should further be required to pass a Piagian IQ tests that at least shows they've passed from concrete thinking in black and white abstract thinking of colours and signs and symbols. Today's media bullies would outlaw metaphor. Naturally they must hate poetry and would crucify Leonard Cohen right along side Sarah Pallin. Blood libel is Shakespeare. I'm afraid it's soared right over the heads of today's American military. And that's scary. Scarier even than Alaska.



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The Black Bra

Laura read to me an article from Fall 2010 25th Anniversary Issue of Elle "One Vision, the story of Dolce and Gabbana". What caught her eye was "they are best known for the simple black bra. It is the one piece that has underpinned nearly every collection that Dolce and Gabbana have ever done."
Dolce and Gabbana had begun in 1985 and Laura got the impression that Dolce and Gabbana had developed the black bra. Naturally this is probably what some marketing agent would have one believe. Just as Pavlov wanted dogs to associate bells with steak dinners, marketing always attempts such association. Ideally for Dolce and Gabbana, a woman wanting a black bra would go for theirs and believe them not only to be the authority but the originator.
I have taken an interest in the bra since my first encounter as a boy with Sears catalogue. I appreciate that colour photography came later but I just couldn't believe that the 'black bra' was something that came after 1985.
Thanks to Google I began to search the subject.
First it turns out that bras have been around since about at least 1400 BC, about 3500 years ago and slightly before 1985. We do not know the colour of the first bras that appear to have been introduced by female athletes in ancient Greece. It's further clear that the binding of breasts was not what Betty Friedan and Jane Fonda said it was, 'an instrument of torture designed by men' in that bizarre bra burning era. Today 2nd wave feminists would like to forget their youthful silliness.
Ida Rosenthall of Maidenform asked about bra burning in the 60's said that women over 35 liked her support : "Time is on our side."she said. Certainly bras sales in this billion dollar industry prove Ida knew more about women than say Betty or Jane. Feminism in general by blaming all the woes of women and the world on men did much to empower men but today women have accepted that freedom comes with responsibility. They are apparently wearing bras without being forced and held down by men to do so. It's a multi billion dollar business!
As a man I can say that given the short shrift that bras have when men and women are intimate this suggests strongly that men are as happy to look at braless women as women with bras. (However we don't look at women at today overtly because 2nd wave feminist bra burners introducted "lookism" as a criminal offence for which men are still being imprisoned indiscriminately in America.)
Personally, I kind of miss the 40's bullet bras and was much enamored by Madonna, thinking fondly of my air force father and rancher grandfather being nostalgic about this previous unsung era. Hooray Madonna!
The bikini was also developed in the 1940's. Wikipedia's History of the bikini says that it shocked when it was introduced to French beaches in 1947 but it had been around for 'millennia'. The article points to two piece athletic garments dating to 1400 BC in Greece and a Bikini Girl Roman mosaic dating to 300 AD. Crete women fashion of the Knossos Palace era with regard to breasts predates Victoria Secret by nearly 4000 years.
The modern bra was developed by a woman not a man as feminist would claim. Ms Crosby (damn her) circa 1915 is said to have developed the first modern bra with two napkins and ribbons. Around the same time another woman Ms. Jacobs was developing a more substantial modern bra.
It's apparent that the bra has been around since long before Dolce and Gabbana no doubt added some sexy design features. Italian men and women have long been trendsetters in the world of Romeo and Juliett. America in contrast has given us Hillary's pantsuits and Pallins parkas.
The history of Maidenform, the Rosenthall company, suggests truly that everything that we think about bras was probably developed by them before their bankruptcy in 1997. I'm not surprised given the parallel engineering history of the american automobile before the 80's offered most of what we like best in cars.
A 1960 fashion catalogue offers bikinis in every colour imaginable. The black, white and red colours have been the most popular bra colours. Yet in the 60's plum was a colour that bras came in. Interestingly gingham was used for bras during WWII because of the availability of that material. One imagines that black would predate the gingham colours and say calico which was an earlier available dye colour. Dyes have been available since thousands of years ago in China. Europe had it's dye guilds during medieval times. The Scots, bless their souls, introduced bleaching and presbyterianism. Brown was an early available dye colour. Purple dates well before it's popularity with Roman emperors as red predated it's popularity with of Catholic cardinals hundreds of years ago. The common aniline black dye for cotton was developed in 1860. Searching the history of the black bra I was only able to find specific reference to it going back to the 1960's. Vintage wear collections date black bras to the 1950's.
In the end I do believe that the Milan Italian fashion firm's black bra might well be very complimentary but historically not as explosive as the bullet bra.
As for men's bras they seem to be a recent phenomena. I suspect there are black men's bras. However Stanford and Boxer, unlike Maidenform and Dolce and Gabbana, do not appear to be trendsetters in male underwear development.
Further, black is ,despite it's theological implications, a forgiving colour and my suspicion is that historically women have factored this into their buying decisions. Christians may have clung to white bras but secular women may have voted for black bras early especially before the introduction of the home washing machines.
I personally as a man like black Stanfields and can appreciate that.
The recent Facebook, what colour is your bra campaign presupposes women today are not only wearing bras but are wearing colored bras. While I cling to my black Stanfords boxers, I will gladly support women whether they are or are not wearing bras, whether they are burning them or seeking their remnants in the ashes, or casting them off for one reason or the other.
Thanks to my discussion this morning I assure you I will be glad to see any Dolce and Gabana black bras on or off the rack!


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