Our forefathers have undergone quite a lot. I am reading through The Alphabet Versus The Goddess by Leonard Shlain. I highly recommend it. He argues civilizations evolution of literacy and the alphabet has caused the last millenia of hatred toward the Goddess. The history of Patriarchy is tragic, from east to west; faith and hate are interwoven, and totalitarianism and control of the people is predominant throughout varying cultures.
The truth is, how our culture treats children is intimately interwoven with the meta-systems of colonialization, genocide, puritanism, racism, sexism and the decimation and exploitation of eco-systems and non-human beings. Children are innocent creatures, eager for love. And yet, many parents unconsciously devour, destroy and degrade their childrens innate love, expression, instinct, innocence and beauty.
When I first read Bruce Sanguin’s book Dismantled: How Love and Psychedelics Broke a Clergyman Apart, I was astounded by his assessment of interpersonal abusive family dynamics being a microcosm of the macrocosm of the political system. Judith Herman, in Trauma and Recovery, also writes about the ways the political system has engendered the battering and rape of many daughters by their fathers, disguised in Freud’s day as hysteria: the idea that women are just crazy for no reason.
And of course, it makes sense, if you want to control a people, then; dominate, humiliate, punish and shame their children and women. That way, when they become adults, they have no authentic voice, power, confidence, self-love or will.
It is a tragedy. Heartbreaking. Devastating.
We cannot separate the familial from the political. The family is political. The political is familial.
This is why, the way we treat the children in our lives is essential to creating the more beautiful world Charles Esenstein writes about. As adults, we must face any harsh realities we underwent as children, with a loving other, in order that we do not transmite these ways of relating onto the next generation.
I write all of this with a heart of compassion for the ways many of our lineages and ancestors have been brutally stipped of their humanity, and the ways this impacts how they relate in their most intimate relationships. There can be an acknowledgement of the ethical responsibility for the ways in which parents treat their children, and a tender heart. Hurt people truly do hurt people, on and on ad infinitum.
Until someone says, enough. It stops with me. No more. I will not pass this on to the next generation.
