'What do religion, psychology and "ancient alien theory" have in common? -- For Jung, the collective unconscious is a vast repository of human knowlege, instinct, memory and experience accumulated since the birth of the species and genetically and psychologically passed down from generation to generation. Therefore, the archaic collective unconscious is an invaluable and wisdom-filled source of information unconsciously linking us all together, much like the World Wide Web, the Internet, links us together and has become an integral part of our interconnected collective consciousness. ...many of the phenomena frequently cited by ancient alien theorists are more convincingly evidence of the existence of the collective unconscious than of early extraterrestrial influences. Whether or not extraterrestrial life exists and has visited this planet in UFO's, past or present, is still an open question. But it seems clear that deep in our collective unconscious resides the archetypal idea and imagery of these alien entities, just as the archetypal idea of God and the Devil live within us.' -- She's baaack. Mommy looms large over you laying in your crib. Nice, nasty, or indifferent? God, Devil, neither or both?

'Parents generally teach their children about "stranger danger" from an early age, telling them not to talk to, walk with or take gifts or candy from strangers. But statistics show danger often lurks closer to home. According to numbers provided by the National Association of Adult Survivors of Child Sexual Abuse, the vast majority of children who are sexually abused are abused by someone they know -- most often a family member, an adult the family trusts or, in some instances, another child.' [http://tinyurl.com/bwxcnok: 90 percent of child sexual abuse victims know the perpetrator in some way; 68 percent are abused by family members.] -- Who watches the watch-wo/men?

'"The shadow," wrote Jung (1963), is "that hidden, repressed, for the most part inferior and guilt-laden personality whose ultimate ramifications reach back into the realm of our animal ancestors and so comprise the whole historical aspect of the unconscious" (cited in Diamond, p. 96). The shadow is a primordial part of our human inheritance, which, try as we might, can never be eluded. The pervasive Freudian defense mechanism known as projection is how most people deny their shadow, unconsciously casting it onto others so as to avoid confronting it in oneself. Such projection of the shadow is engaged in not only by individuals but groups, cults, religions, and entire countries, and commonly occurs during wars and other contentious conflicts in which the outsider, enemy or adversary is made a scapegoat, dehumanized, and demonized. Two World Wars and the current escalation of violence testify to the terrible truth of this collective phenomenon. Since the turn of the twenty-first century we are witnessing a menacing resurgence of epidemic demonization or collective psychosis in the seemingly inevitable violent global collision between radical Islam and Judeo-Christian or secular western culture, each side projecting its collective shadow and perceiving the other as evil incarnate.'

'"The Hand That Rocks The Cradle Is The Hand That Rules The World" is a poem by William Ross Wallace that praises motherhood as the preeminent force for change in the world.'

"...there is a strong social condemnation of men standing up for themselves, they're supposed to stand up for other people, but not for themselves..." "...there is no socially or instinctively ingrained taboo against attacking men, there never has been. In fact, the absorption of violence and hostility is a man's natural place in the scheme of things. These perceptions are what lead people to try to justify a woman beating a man in public by assuming he must have done something to deserve it. Men are dangerous, women are harmless. Men are the appropriate targets of violence and men act while women are acted upon. So when feminism fights for women – even when its representatives are actively attacking and doing harm to men in order to do that – most people see those attacks as harmless and reactive rather than active, attacks aimed at a group whose natural role is to absorb them. It's the desperate desires that exists in most of us [who were raised by abusive mothers, girls and boys both] to recharacterize all female action – especially hostility and violence – as reactive, that left society wide open to the snake oil of patriarchy theory..." -- Sugar and spice and all things nice!

'A study published this week in the journal Pediatrics found that, within seconds of their birth, babies have the ability to sense whether their parents are losers. "From the moment they open their eyes, newborns can tell if their mother had no other options and was forced to settle for their father, or if their father is a sad sack who has no friends and gets drunk on a single glass of chardonnay," said researcher Dr. Stuart Lindstrom, explaining that despite their blurry vision, infants can still identify basic loser body types, and have specialized olfactory receptors allowing them to detect the odor of failure. "In fact, we've determined that as early as the second trimester, a fetus picks up on the income and social standing of its mother via the umbilical cord." The study also concluded that the screams of newborns stem from the sudden realization they will be stuck with their loser parents for at least 18 years.'

'Fabric-store manager Bonnie Reedner told reporters Monday that her 18-year-old son, Pfc. Matthew Reedner, is "over there, fighting in Iraq, or something." "I guess he's stationed in Baghdad or Basra—some place beginning with a B," Reedner said. "I don't really know. I should check the return address on one of his letters. I think there's another one over on the microwave with the unopened mail." Though Reedner said she hopes for her son's safe return, she admitted she should probably pick up a newspaper one of these days to get an idea of when that might be.'

'BACKGROUND: Traumatic experiences in early life are risk factors for the development of behavioral and emotional disorders. Such disorders can persist through adulthood and have often been reported to be transmitted across generations. METHODS: To investigate the transgenerational effect of early stress, mice were exposed to chronic and unpredictable maternal separation from postnatal day 1 to 14. RESULTS: We show that chronic and unpredictable maternal separation induces depressive-like behaviors and alters the behavioral response to aversive environments in the separated animals when adult. Most of the behavioral alterations are further expressed by the offspring of males subjected to maternal separation, despite the fact that these males are reared normally. Chronic and unpredictable maternal separation also alters the profile of DNA methylation in the promoter of several candidate genes in the germline of the separated males. Comparable changes in DNA methylation are also present in the brain of the offspring and are associated with altered gene expression.'

'A radical theory about the origins, power and popularity of Harry Potter versus Star Wars versus Lord of the Rings.' -- "If you cannot leave an abusive relationship – or you will not leave an abusive relationship – you will leave reality."

'[Péladan's] core work of magical theory and practice, Comment on devient mage (How To Become A Mage, 1892), contains not a single magical ritual. Its theme, to borrow a typically ornate term from his writing, was ethopoeia – the making (poesis) of an ethos, one that would enable individuals to stand apart from the collective consciousness of their time in order to think their own thoughts and make their own choices. “Society,” Péladan wrote, “is an anonymous enterprise for living a life of secondhand emotions” – and the particular emotions on offer, as he discussed in some detail, are not picked at random. The collective consciousness of the age was primed for an explosion, partly by the thaumaturgy of any number of competing political and economic interests, and partly by the rising pressures of intolerable inner conflicts that, in magician states ruled by a managed consensus, was prevented from finding a less catastrophic form of expression. It took an extraordinary degree of mental independence to stay clear of the trance state and its appalling consequences, but that was one of the things the magical training available in those days was intended to do. ...the perennial mistake of Romanticism, the notion that all you have to do is fling aside the fetters of social expectations and do what comes naturally. The problem here is of course that “what comes naturally” to every one of us is the product of a lifetime spent absorbing social cues from the people around us and the media directed at us, all of which triggers a set of unthinking and unconscious reactions we share with our nonhuman relatives: social primate see, social primate do. “’Fear the example of another, think for yourself,’” wrote Péladan; “this precept of Pythagoras contains all of magic, which is nothing other than the power of selfhood.”'

'For the second year in a row, more American soldiers—both enlisted 'men and women and veterans committed suicide than were killed in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Excluding accidents and illness, 462 soldiers died in combat, while 468 committed suicide. A difference of six isn't vast by any means, but the symbolism is significant and troubling. In 2009, there were 381 suicides by military personnel, a number that also exceeded the number of combat deaths.'

'The shocking science about the long-term effects of corporal punishment, essential viewing for every parent.' -- "Changing from how you were parented to how you are parenting is one of the most difficult – and essential – things in the world."

'The authors warn that extraterrestrials may be wary of civilisations that expand very rapidly, as these may be prone to destroy other life as they grow, just as humans have pushed species to extinction on Earth. In the most extreme scenario, aliens might choose to destroy humanity to protect other civilisations. "Humanity may just now be entering the period in which its rapid civilisational expansion could be detected by an ETI because our expansion is changing the composition of the Earth's atmosphere, via greenhouse gas emissions," the report states. "Green" aliens might object to the environmental damage humans have caused on Earth and wipe us out to save the planet. "These scenarios give us reason to limit our growth and reduce our impact on global ecosystems. It would be particularly important for us to limit our emissions of greenhouse gases, since atmospheric composition can be observed from other planets," the authors write.'

'Are opportunities available to everyone in today's society?' -- "...is that an individual who simply made a bad choice?"

'#Leadership by a self-glorifying, manipulative New Age Prophet ... #Assertion of an apocalyptic threat to all mankind. #An absolutist definition of both the threat and the proposed solution(s). #Promise of a salvation from this pending apocalypse. #A strident intolerance of any outside criticism of the Cult’s definition of the problem or of its proposed solutions. #A “Heaven-on-Earth” vision of the results of the mission’s success and/or a “Hell-on-Earth” result if the cultic mission should fail. #An inordinate fear (and an outright rejection of the possibility) of being proven wrong in either the apocalyptic vision or the proposed salvation.'

"[Moloch] demands child sacrifice; The State requires child sacrifice: it requires that children be placed in terrible schools for the sake of buying votes from teachers; it requires that children's futures be sold off for the sake of buying favors from voters in the here-and-now; and it demands that governments periodically go to war, which is the ultimate form of child sacrifice."

'The reciprocal relationship of pleasure and violence is highly significant because certain sensory experiences during the formative periods of development will create a neuropsychological predisposition for either violence-seeking or pleasure-seeking behaviors later in life. -- Physically affectionate human societies are highly unlikely to be physically violent. -- ...deprivation of body pleasure throughout life—but particularly during the formative periods of infancy, childhood, and adolescence—are very closely related to the amount of warfare and interpersonal violence. -- If violence is high, pleasure is low, and conversely, if pleasure is high, violence is low. -- If we accept the theory that the lack of sufficient somatosensory pleasure is a principal cause of violence, we can work toward promoting pleasure and encouraging affectionate interpersonal relationships as a means of combatting aggression.'

'The root of statism is our view of children.' -- "Parents have no clue why they're telling their children to do stuff – it's just cultural photocopying over and over – and children get that very quickly. And children are hurt by that. Children are very hurt by their parents being revealed as not only false gods but very often as devils claiming to be good. The merciless light of the curious and optimistic child – the skeptical but not nihilistic child – that irradiates most adult souls. That combination of curiosity and optimism, questioning rationality – and trust... [parents] feel that children are aggressing against them... And so they have to convince the child that questions are evil... and fundamentally, it's because the child can see the truth that the parents don't want them to see. ...all of the parent's hypocrisies and falsehoods become clear and parents can't handle that and so they project all of their falsehoods and manipulation and corruption onto the child..."

'Nor are wars begun mainly in periods of economic distress as is often claimed. Goldstein’s study of economic cycles and war found a strong and consistent correlation between the severity of war and economic upswings. Although developed democracies do not go to war with each other, they nevertheless go to war against non-democratic nations do even more often than other nations, since they must act out the emotional distance between their Progressive and Reactionary classes... -- Depressions therefore are periodically experienced when nations feel they are too successful, growing too fast, and then engage in hyper-risky behavior, like the unregulated borrowing that the world engaged in during the past two decades. Like gambling addicts, they were not being “greedy” but were self-destructive, causing grandiose internal sacrifices costing many billions of dollars each time they occur, even though each time the risks taken are excused as “This time is different.”'

'Most books and articles ... begin with the belief that wars are for utilitarian purposes, “to get something.” They may admit that wars are “anything but rational,” but explain the causes of wars by saying they occur “when hardliners dominate their leadership”—never asking why only periodically do these hardliners come to power, promising that they “will not discuss individual factors of human nature” and consider the minds of nations starting wars as “black boxes.” But no modern war has been shown to have been started because of greed, and none have in fact been profitable for nations starting them if the full cost of maintaining the military and of loss of productive life are considered. Even maintaining the British Empire was actually an economic loss. Wars are pathological moral crusades against “evil,” revenge group-fantasies, designed to “get respect” for oneself and make up for the disrespect and abuse of their early years.'

'...people first become hypervigilant and paranoid as catacholamine imbalances and serotonin depletion lead them to expect attack, then engage in sacrificial restaging rituals that are usually both sadistic – inflicting the trauma upon others – and masochistic – destroying your own wealth and even sacrificing your own lives. The result is a feeling of relief that we have survived the apocalypse in our heads plus a feeling of triumph produced by the manic opioid surge. Thus our early traumas become wired into separate emotional memory module and become projected onto the historical stage in such a manner that they appear to be happening to the group rather than being internal, creating group-fantasies so intense and compelling that they take on a life of their own, a life that is imagined as happening in a dissociated sphere called "society." These group-fantasies are dissociated and seem to have a life of their own, a life we term "social" or "political" or "religious."'

'...the history of humanity is founded upon the abuse of children. Most historical families once practiced infanticide, erotic beating and incest. Most states sacrificed and mutilated their children to relieve the guilt of adults. Even today, we continue to arrange the daily killing, maiming, molestation and starvation of children through our social, military and economic activities. I would like to summarize here some of the evidence I have found as to why child abuse has been humanity's most powerful and most successful ritual, why it has been the cause of war and social violence, and why the eradication of child abuse and neglect is the most important social task we face today. -- The main psychological mechanism that operates in all child abuse involves using children as what I have termed poison containers – receptacles into which adults project disowned parts of their psyches, so they can control these feelings in another body without danger to themselves.'

'...the human brain at birth is not fully developed. The abilities a person's brain develops depend on experiences in the first three years of life. Studies on abandoned and severely mistreated Romanian children revealed striking lesions in certain areas of the brain and marked emotional and cognitive insufficiencies in later life. According to very recent neurobiological findings, repeated traumatization leads to an increased release of stress hormones that attack the sensitive tissue of the brain and destroy existing neurons. Other studies of mistreated children have revealed that the areas of the brain responsible for the "management" of emotions are 20 to 30 percent smaller than in normal persons. In the absence of positive factors, affection and helping witnesses, the only course open to the mistreated individual is the disavowal of personal suffering and the idealization of cruelty with all its devastating after-effects.'

'"Let me be clear: I do not want to start a thermonuclear war. But knowing that I could at any moment, and that it would be so easy, well, it almost feels like I'm being tested or something." "Did you know that if you sort of put enough weight on the button with your fingertip, you can feel a little slack there before it actually clicks?" Obama added. Historians have noted that a strong desire to press the button is not uncommon among U.S. presidents. After just one year in office, Jimmy Carter wrote in his diary, "You don't leave a man alone in a room with a button like that," and two years later the pages were simply covered with the word "button" over and over again. In 1974, Richard Nixon rapidly pressed the button 12 times just prior to his resignation, but Pentagon officials had already disconnected its triggering mechanism. At press time, large-scale nuclear explosions had been confirmed in Pyongyang, Beijing, Moscow, Tehran, and Washington D.C.'

"I'm feeling pretty inspired. I'm feeling pretty rejuvenated. I feel like maybe Osama Bin Laden had a deeper psychological impact on me over the past ten years than I'd like to admit. I know I usually try to run from my problems and hide behind things. I'm just a bro in suburbia making consumer decisions. You see, Osama Bin Laden, you want the same things I want. I want to be famous. I want to be rich. I want to be controversial. I want to live in some sort of multimillion dollar compound. I want to be so buzzworthy that I have to go underground to preserve my authenticity and to preserve my life. I want to be remembered forever. I want people to remember that I believed in something even if what I believed in was totally wrong and I totally messed up. I just wanted people to know that there was a moment in time that I believed that I can make the world a better place, that my vision of the world was worth imposing on everyone else. I'm just trying to be an all-American Chill Bro."

'"For more than two years, we combed the Middle East looking for bin Laden," Rumsfeld said. "Frankly, it was starting to be an embarrassment. You can imagine our surprise when we finally found him hiding deep inside the darkest recesses of each and every one of our souls." "It just goes to show that sometimes it's easier to look for the man in the FBI dossier than it is to look at the man in the mirror," Rumsfeld added. "He evaded us for so long because he had such an ingenious hideout," Rumsfeld said. "Only someone as evil as bin Laden would think to crawl down into that hole inside every one of us, the one that makes us hate instead of love, forget birthdays, and ignore alternate-side parking rules." "There is only one way to defeat Osama bin Laden," Bush said. "The way to eliminate this evil man is for each American to love just a little bit more, see your brother's problems as your own, always look on the bright side, and leave every place a little better than you found it."'

'Stefan Molyneux: "Thinkers who ignore childhood and its effects on the psyche, and then say they want to reform society, are exactly the same as communists or socialists who ignore the workings of the free-market and say they want to optimize economics – it can’t be done and it’s just a kind of scam."'

'Why does a 13-year old with a three-minute, basically homemade, song get so much attention? Perhaps, the amount of attention paid to her is inverse to how fearful people are about commenting on significant issues facing their lives. We would suggest what is going on is what Sigmund Freud called "displacement." People are angry at how their lives are turning out, worried about their futures and generally feel helpless and increasingly furious because of the collapsing economy. No one is going to get into trouble for criticizing Justin Bieber, even harshly. But make the wrong comment in the wrong chat room about, say, Barack Obama and the police may show up at your door. So much attention and vituperation. Western society is in decline. People are well aware – deep down anyway – what's going on. But because of society's larger sickness, their anger and frustration is being channeled into unusual venues and finds its expression in places where it might not be expected.'

'The script for tomorrow is written in the blood of today.'

'Dominant Social Theme: David Cameron is the leader of Britain, a nation state that represents the hopes and dreams of a hundred million. Thus Britain is in a sense a person too. And a person (Britain) run by David Cameron who is the leader of Britain, assumes Britain's errors and sins and can seek redemption for it. Therefore, it can be argued that the war against Libya is a redemptive one. And David Cameron is redeemed! Free-Market Analysis: Oh, boy. This article in the Telegraph attempts to argue that war is actually a form of political conversation. It has not-so-artfully reversed the reality of war so that the act of violence and murder somehow becomes an expression of redemption for David Cameron and Britain generally. There are so many dominant social themes that it is difficult to know where to start. The article seeks to turn Cameron into a metaphor for Britain. And then it wants to anthropomorphosize Britain by turning Britain into Cameron.' -- I love you, Big Brother!

'Most of us were mistreated as children and had to learn to deny this fact at a very early stage in order to survive. We were forced to believe that we were humiliated and tormented "for our own good," that the beatings we received did not hurt and were harmless, that such treatment served to protect the community (as otherwise we would have turned into dangerous monsters). ...most people are not prepared to question and abandon preconceptions of this kind. Instead they chant this perverse litany: "My parents did their best to bring me up properly, I was a difficult child, and I needed strict discipline." Obviously, people who have been brought up to believe this cannot conceivably feel indignation about cruelty to children. Since their own childhood, they have been dissociated from their true feelings, from the pain caused by humiliation and torment. To feel their indignation they would need to get back in touch with that childhood pain. And who will want to do that?'

'...a tyrant will abuse his power in a destructive way as long as he either encounters no resistance at all or is able to nip that resistance in the bud. ...the unconscious aim concealed behind all his conscious activities, remains the same: to use his power to blot out the humiliations inflicted on him in childhood and denied by him ever since. But this aim can never be achieved. The past cannot be expunged, nor can one come to terms with it as long as one denies the suffering it involved. As a rule, beaten, tormented, and humiliated children who have never received support from a helping witness later develop a high degree of tolerance for the cruelties inflicted by parent figures and a striking indifference to the sufferings borne by children exposed to cruel treatment. The last thing they wish to be told is that they themselves once belonged to the same group. Indifference is a way of preserving them from opening their eyes to reality. In this way they become advocates of evil...'

'We loved our parents, so we believed them when they told us it was for our own good. Most of us still believe it and go around asserting that one cannot bring up children without slaps and smacks - in other words, without resorting to humiliation. And then there is no way out of the vicious circle of violence and denial of the humiliation inflicted on them. The need for revenge, reprisal, punishment lives on within them. The rage suppressed in childhood is transformed into murderous hate. Religious and ethnic groups are only too willing to provide the ideologies justifying the cultivation and projection of that hate. Humiliation is a poison that is difficult to exterminate because it is used for extermination and the production of new humiliation that fuels the proliferation of violence and masks the underlying problems. To get out of this vicious circle we must face up to our own truth. We WERE humiliated children, we WERE the victims of our parents' ignorance, of their histories...'

'Children who are given love, respect, understanding, kindness, and warmth will naturally develop different characteristics from those who experience neglect, contempt, violence or abuse, and never have anyone they can turn to for kindness and affection. Such absence of trust and love is a common denominator in the formative years of all the dictators I have studied. The result is that these children will tend to glorify the violence inflicted upon them and later to take advantage of every possible opportunity to exercise such violence... Children learn by imitation. Their bodies do not learn what we try to instill in them by words but what they have experienced physically. Battered, injured children will learn to batter and injure others; sheltered, respected children will learn to respect and protect those weaker than themselves. Children have nothing else to go on but their own experiences. Evil exists. But it is not something that some people are born with.'

'The horrors of terrorist violence are something we can all watch on our television screens; the horrors in which children grow up are very rarely shown in the media. Thus, most people are not informed about the main source of hatred. They speculate about political, religious, economic or cultural reasons but the speculations are turning in darkness because the true reason must remain obscured: the suppression and subsequent denial of early rage that often ends up in hatred with an endless number of ideologies. Hatred is hatred and rage is rage, all over the world and at any time the same... They are always the fruits of very strong emotions, reactions to injuries to their dignity endured in childhood, normal reactions of the body that were not allowed to express themselves in a safe way. Nobody comes to the world with the wish to destroy. Every newborn, independently from the culture, religion or ethnic origins needs to love, be loved, protected, and respected.'

'...the only thing beaten children learn is to fear their parents, not to drive carefully or stay out of trouble. They will also feel guilty and learn to play down their own pain. Being subjected to physical attacks they are defenseless to fend off merely instills in children a "gut" conviction that they obviously merit neither protection nor respect. This false message is then stored in the children's bodies as information and will influence their view of the world and their later attitude toward their own children. Such children will be unable to defend their right to human dignity, unable to recognize physical pain as a danger signal and act accordingly. Even their immune system may be affected. In the absence of other persons to model their behavior on -- enlightened or knowing witnesses -- these children will see the language of violence and hypocrisy as the only really effective means of communication.'

'The spectacular economic and political progress of much of the world in the 20th century was an achievement of the improvement in childrearing modes of the families that reduced child abuse, as more caring mothers began to give their children love and respect, plus were also able to reduce the jealousy of their spouses so fathers could be closer to their children. Yet because most 20th century families still abused their children, the improvement in industrialization during the century produced periodic "growth panics" during which adults re-experienced their parental abuse, and men went on more and more destructive wars to restore their masculinity and "get respect" from other nations. Plus of course the technological improvements soon led to a tremendous increase in the ability to kill others during wars, so that wars in the 20th century killed over 180 million people, mostly civilians—culminating in the current global-annihilation possibilities of nuclear nations.'

Gisted/Quoted -- The problem with the idea that men are defective and that women are just better is the basic issue that nobody talks about: that men are raised by women. Women give birth to men; women raise men; and then if men turn out bad, all you get from feminists as an explanation is propaganda about "the patriarchy". There is no greater power disparity – there is no greater victimization – than that which is possible between a mother and a child. Power disparities in society are no more prevalent than the relationship between the mother and the child. That is something which is absolutely unspoken of in society. There is no possibility for society as a whole to look at female violence directly and straight on in the face. Men are raised by women and it's not just women in the home, it's women in the daycares, women in the primary schools. If you want to get to the root of violence and corruption in society, you've got to look at the mothers.'

"You don't just come up with a soldier out of nowhere. It takes incredible preparation to turn a wonderful baby into a willing killer. This is not something The State is responsible for; this is something parents are responsible for; this is something communities are responsible for. And given that this all has to happen before the age of 3 or 4 and that women are the primary care-givers, it can be said that the cause of war is mothers. The army just picks up the broken detritus left behind by bad parenting. ...to create a soldier you have to kill the capacity of empathy... empathy develops within the first year or three of life... and it is in that phase that the soldier is born. He *was* trying to help people. Absolutely. He was trying to help his mother avoid her own evil by acting it out himself. What we don't see is the mothers because of the enormous propaganda around motherhood. Wherever you see pictures of brutality, see the ghosts of brutal matriarchy in the background."

Lucifer?

"When you've got a gun to your head, morality is irrelevant. The only people who are perfectly guilty are the intellectuals. The intellectuals who have the intelligence, the ability and the language skills to introspect and to deal with their own childhoods, and to stop projecting their own trauma onto the world as 'philosophical' systems. They're trying to normalize their own childhood experience by projecting it as a universal ideal thus inflicting it upon other people. And that's part of the rage that abused people have towards those who never tried to help them. My whole struggle as a communicator about family history, if you wanted to sum it up in a nutshell, is to get you to stop normalizing your histories. To stop you from thinking it wasn't so bad. To stop you from thinking it could have been worse. To stop you thinking that your parents did the best they could. Because we need to denormalize our experiences relative to reality, not relative to social norms."

'Projective identification ... designates a psychological process in which a person engages in the ego defense mechanism projection in such a way that their behavior towards the object of projection invokes in that person precisely the thoughts, feelings or behaviors projected. Projective identification differs from simple projection in that projective identification is a self-fulfilling prophecy, whereby a person, believing something false about another, relates to that other person in such a way that the other person alters their behavior to make the belief true. The second person is influenced by the projection and begins to behave as though he or she is in fact actually characterized by the projected thoughts or beliefs. This is a process that generally happens outside the awareness of both parties involved, though this has been debated.' -- Predations upon those of a guilty conscience. Hence the grifters motto: You can't cheat an honest man.

'For him, overpopulation is the driving force behind AGW: we are a cancer on the planet. We are, he believes, “a malignant maladaption in the corpus of living organisms, and behave and reproduce like a virus out of control” (2). We are “infected tissue in the organism of life” (3). “More than ever,” he writes, “humans can be regarded like certain species of ant” (5). The only relief from this that Tickell sees on the horizon is that “it is hard to believe that there will be anything like current or future human numbers in their present urban concentrations or elsewhere. Whether weeded out by warfare, disease, deteriorating conditions of life, or other disasters, numbers are likely to fall drastically. We must, I believe, expect some breakdowns in human society before the end of this century with unforeseeable outcomes” (4). That’ll teach us to pollute his nice clean world!' -- And when all of your poison containers have been eradicated?

Killaz know how to die. Killaz don't know nothing else but dying. Killaz dream about dying. [Chorus] I'm a muthafuking killa wit an attitude [x4] / Only the good die young, so that makes me young and bad / Putting ass kickings on the killaz that never had / So I guess that makes me tough shit / Straight up gangsta, wrong killa to fuk wit / So how can a killa die when he's causing the bloodshed / By shooting muthafukas in the head / Trying to make a killa extinct because they fear me / But never want to hear me / So imma let 'em know how a killa's living / Taking from muthafukas cause nobody ain't giving a damn thing / To a killa, a real killa / So I'm living by the muthafuking trigger / Cause a killa ain't afraid of being locked up / I'm out of luck, so why should I give a fuk / But they still want to try / To kill a killa like me but muthafuking real killaz don't die / [Chorus] I'm a muthafuking killa wit an attitude [x4] -- http://youtu.be/6jy6Nebd_e0

"Society is a number of layers: The sexual and extreme physical abuse victims become the criminals; the milder physical abuse victims become the workers; the verbal abuse victims who act out become the bosses; and the truly messed entitled sociopaths become the rulers."

'The unspoken truth behind the most terrifying novel in the world.' -- "Orwell was a murderer. Constant war – that's the constant war against the conscience that occurs in the soul of the murderer. The conscience has to be so overridden by this aggressive ego: O'Brien. O'Brien is the [false-self internalized father and dictator] part of Orwell that murdered, and the remaining shreds of his original [true-self] is Winston. The murder occurs before he writes the book and that's why Winston hasn't got a chance. ['Thoughtcrime does not entail death: thoughtcrime IS death.'] Winston is interested in the truth about the past...There is an independent self that wants to examine history but can't get any details, and that attempts to resist, and attempts to form a relationship with an outsider, with a skeptic, with someone who does understand evil and who judges the family... Big Brother. It's the family. He tries to have a relationship outside the family and the family destroys him for that."

"The true purpose of power is to have huge vats of the population that you can vomit your own poison into rather than deal with it yourself."

The "Sheeple" as a poison container for parental/sibling trauma: "If you come up with an ideology that is fundamentally impossible for, and opposed to, reality and human nature and the necessities of our biological development... why would you set up something like Anarcho-Communism? which not only is it impossible in the world but you can't even do it in your own life—at least you can do Anarcho-Capitalism/voluntary association and peaceful relations in your own life—but you can't do no property in your own life... So I think that is a way of doing 'I'm too good for this world,' where you set up this ideology of 'virtue' that is more about pomposity and hatred than it is about the desire to motivate others to be good. You set up this standard of 'virtue' which is impossible and distasteful and weird for people—and then what happens is, you get to be angry at them for not [reaching] your lofty 'moral' standards and so you get to vent all your disgust onto the world."

'...parents are the child's most lethal enemy, because inside the parents' psyches lie a powerful, dangerous alter that is their own parent's death wishes toward the child. "To appease the mother she must destroy the child, but the child is a love object too. To preserve the child she must renounce mother... She is trapped in a desperate conflict: kill mother and preserve the baby or kill the baby and preserve the mother." Mothers in the past routinely chose killing the baby, by the billions, driven to it by her devil alter (her own destructive mother image in her head). Women since the beginning of time have felt that their children "really" belonged to God-a symbol of the grandmother, and that "the child was a gift that God had every right to reclaim." When killing her child, therefore, the mother was simply acting as her own mother's avenger. What helped the dissociation was such beliefs as denying that the babies were human ... during most of history...'

'The act of having a child is, "the most forbidden act of self-realization, the ultimate and least pardonable offense," and brings with it inevitable fears of maternal retribution for one's success and individuation. Mothers in antiquity hallucinated female demons were actually grandmother alters in the mothers' heads, so jealous of their having babies that they sucked out their blood and otherwise murdered them. All early societies invented sacrificial rituals wherein babies were tortured and killed to honor maternal goddesses ... vowing that, "although Mommy wants to kill me for having sex and making a baby, if I kill the baby instead [usually the first-born was sacrificed], I can then go on having sex and other babies with less fear of retribution." Child sacrifice was the foundation of all great religions, depicted in myths as absolutely necessary to save the world from "chaos," that is, from terrible inner annihilation anxiety as punishment for success.'

'...mothers earlier in history mainly saw their children as their own screaming, needy, dominating mothers-forming a "hypersymbiotic relationship" wherein the child is expected to make up for all the love missing in the mother's own life, cure her post-partum depression and restore her vitality. The need to shut up the mother's angry voice in babies lead to their being tied up, neglected and beaten. It is only when one realizes their own severe neglect and abuse and the extent to which their babies are poison containers for their feelings that one can begin to understand why mothers in the past routinely killed, neglected and abused their children. What is miraculous – and what is the source of most social progress – is that mothers throughout history have slowly and successfully struggled with their fear and hatred with so little help from others and have managed to evolve the loving, empathic childrearing one can find in many families around the world today.'

'The problem with having only women raising children is that parenting is an emotionally demanding task, requiring considerable maturity, and throughout history girls have grown up universally despised. When a girl was born, said the Hebrews, "the walls wept." Japanese lullabies sang, "If it's a girl, stamp on her." In medieval Muslim cultures "a grave used to be prepared ... if the new-born was a female she was immediately thrown by her mother into the grave. Girls from birth have everywhere been considered full of dangerous pollution-the projected hatred of adults – and were therefore more often killed, exposed, abandoned, malnourished, raped and neglected than boys. To expect horribly abused girls to magically become mature, loving caretakers when as teenagers they go to live as virtual slaves in a strange family simply goes against the conclusions of every clinical study showing the disastrous effects of trauma upon the ability to mother.'

'The historical family, it turns out, cannot remotely be termed a "patriarchy" until modern times. It is in fact a gynarchy, composed of the grandmother, mother, aunts, unmarried daughters, female servants, midwives, neighbors called "gossips" who acted as substitute mothers, plus the children. Fathers in traditional families may sometimes eat and sleep within the gynarchy, but they do not determine its emotional atmosphere, nor do they in any way attempt to raise the children. To avoid experiencing their own domination and abuse during childhood by females, men throughout history have instead set up androcentric political and religious spheres for male-only group-fantasy activities... "The family in Egypt...was matriarchal...The most important person in the family was not the father, but the mother. The Egyptian wife was called the 'Ruler of the House'...there is no corresponding term for the husband."'

'Most of the time, parents simply reinflict upon their children what had been done to them in their own childhood. The production of developmental variations can occur only in the silent, mostly unrecorded decisions by parents to go beyond the traumas they themselves endured. It happens each time a mother decides not to use her child as an erotic object, not to hit it when it cries. It happens each time a mother encourages her child's explorations and independence, each time she overcomes her own despair and neediness and gives her child a bit more of the love and empathy she herself didn't get. These private moments are rarely recorded for historians, and social scientists have completely overlooked their role in the production of cultural variation, yet they are nonetheless the ultimate sources of the evolution of the psyche and culture. Childhood must therefore always first evolve before major social, cultural and economic innovation can occur.'

'The evolution of childhood mainly consists of parents slowly giving up killing, abandoning, mutilating, battering, terrorizing, sexually abusing and using their children for their own emotional needs and instead creating loving conditions for growth of the self. The psychogenic theory defines progress in evolution as increases in self awareness, freedom, human potential, empathy, love, trust, self control and a preponderance of conscious decisions rather than as an increase in technological, economic or political complexity. This means that some cultures on low technological levels could actually be further evolved in human terms than others that are more complex technologically and politically. The amount of time and resources any society devotes to its children's needs is far more likely to be an accurate index of its level of civilization than any of the anthropological indices of complexity or energy utilization. -- ...every expression of love toward children heals society...'

'In China before the tenth century A.D. men began to footbind little girls... This vicious anti-daughter emotional atmosphere extreme even for a time that was generally cruel and unfeeling towards daughters was obviously not conducive to mothers producing innovations in childrearing when the little girls grew up. Therefore China which was culturally ahead of the West in many ways at the time of the introduction of footbinding, became culturally and politically "frozen" until the twentieth century, when footbinding was stopped and boy-girl sex ratios in many areas dropped from 200/100 to near equality. The result was that whereas for much of its history China punished all novelty, during the twentieth century rapid cultural, political and economic evolution could resume. Japan, which shared much of Chinese culture but did not adopt footbinding of daughters, avoided the psychogenic arrest of China and could share in the scientific and industrial revolution as it occurred in the West.'

'#6. the main locus of epigenetic variations is the slow evolution of the individual conscious self that looks forward to its future and creates its own extended present, a self that evolves mainly through the growth of love in the parent-child relationship; #7. the rate of innovation in cultural evolution is determined by the conditions for parental love and therefore increase in individual self-assertion in each society, all cultural evolutions being preceded by a childrearing evolution; and #8. the locus of psychogenic evolution has historically been affected far more by maternal than paternal influence – indeed, entirely maternal in the crucial first nine months of life – rather than males and females each contributing half of the genetic information as occurs in neo-Darwinian evolution. -- ...it it has mainly been the mothers who have produced epigenetic novelty; so to discover the laws of cultural evolution one must "follow the mothers" through history.'

'#2. vehicles of transmission include neuronal groups in the brains of individual parents and children, not solely genes in the sexual organs of parents; #3. the selection of variations is accomplished through changes in a very narrow part of the human environment—the family, the main organizer of emotional symbols, particularly the mother—rather than simply through changes in the ecology; #4. preservation of emergent variations in some individuals is often prevented from being swamped by the less developed childrearing practices of the rest of the culture via the psychogenic pump effects of migration; #5. limitations to emergent variations (psychogenic devolution) occurs either because of conditions adverse to childrearing such as wars, plagues or droughts—or because sudden increased social freedom for adults creates excessive growth panic, anxieties which are turned against children as poison containers, thereby producing devolution in childrearing in a portion of a given society...'

'The psychogenic theory of evolution is based not upon Spencer and Darwin's "survival of the fittest" products of the most ruthless parents but upon the "survival of the most innovative and cooperative" products of the most loving parents. The processes of historical evolution, based upon the very slow growth of love and cooperation, are therefore the exact opposite from those of neo-Darwinian natural selection, based overwhelmingly upon conflict and competition. They include: #1. The production of variations through psychogenesis is by creating through more love different early epigenetic environments – more advanced fetal and early childhood developmental paths – not through random genetic mutations and recombinations i.e., through variations in the structures of neuronal groups achieved during post-genetic development after inception, not through mutations in DNA prior to inception...'

'The central hypothesis of the psychogenic theory of historical evolution is that epigenetic neuronal variations originating in changing interpersonal relationships with caretakers rather than only through genetic variations originating through natural selections are the primary source of the evolution of the psyche and society. "The more evolved the species is the greater the role of epigenetic mechanisms in the structure of the nervous system." The fundamental evolutionary direction in Homo sapiens is towards better interpersonal relationships, not just the satisfaction of biological instincts. While adaptation to the natural environment is the key to genetic evolution, relationship to the human environment is the key to psychological evolution, to the evolution of "human nature." Psychogenesis is also the key to cultural evolution, since the range of evolution of childrearing in every society puts inevitable limits upon what it can accomplish politically, economically and socially.'

'Environments are also opportunities, not just straightjackets. ..."men reach out to embrace and create their ecosystems, rather than the reverse proposition." It is when early childrearing experiences are impaired that children are forced to reduce their behavioral flexibility and are therefore as adults unable to improve their environments and experience cultural stagnation. The secret as to why England and not France or Germany spawned the Industrial Revolution first goes back to England's advanced childrearing in its smaller medieval households, not to any ecological advantage. English political freedom, religious tolerance, industry and innovation were all psychoclass achievements, dependent upon childrearing evolution. The most important unsolved question in cultural evolution is therefore to explain the rate of innovation and adoption of new techniques of exploiting what resources exist – factors that depend crucially upon the local rate of evolution of childrearing.'

'A goddess is a female deity. In some cultures goddesses are associated with Earth, motherhood, love, and the household. In other cultures, goddesses also rule over war, death, and destruction as well as healing. -- Joseph Campbell: "It has to do with the earth. The human woman gives birth just as the earth gives birth to the plants...so woman magic and earth magic are the same. They are related. And the personification of the energy that gives birth to forms and nourishes forms is properly female."'

'Nations engage in manic economic and political projects to get a "dopamine rush" that counters the depression and guilt about their success. Political paranoia and slow ego disintegration are seen in conspiratorial group-fantasies, fears of femininity [countered by persecution of homosexuals], imaginary humiliations by other nations [countered by a search for external enemies as grandiosity fails and Poison Alerts and sacrificial group-fantasies proliferate] [and Purity Crusades multiply as anti-modern and anti-child (Bad Boy) movements]. These are countered in the economic sphere by manic overinvestment, risky ventures, excess money supply growth, soaring debt and stock market speculations, and in the political sphere by jingoistic nationalism, expansionist ventures, military buildups and belligerent, insulting foreign affair behavior. As in drug addiction, each dopamine rush leaves a dopamine hangover that requires an even larger manic activity to overcome the resulting depression.'

'...anorexics are dominated by fantasies of persecution by the Dragon Mother, who "gives her child the impossible task of filling her ‘limitless void'" so the child fears being "eaten alive." To prevent this, when these children grow up and try to individuate, they refuse to eat so they won't have any flesh on them for the Dragon Mother to devour. Economic depressions evidence similar group-fantasies of devouring mommies; they are "economic anorexias" where nations inflict economic wounds upon themselves to limit consumption, become "all bones" and not tempt the devouring Dragon Mother. -- One of the best defenses against fears of maternal engulfment is merging with a Phallic Leader to restore potency. The most effective Phallic Leaders [are] "narcissistic personalities ... characterized by intense self-involvement ... lack of empathy ... oscillate between feelings of grandiosity and omnipotence ... inferiority and low self-esteem ... susceptible to feelings of shame and humiliation."'

'That depressions are self-inflicted wounds and not just the results of "mysteriously wrongheaded monetary policies" is still not admitted by most economists. The task of controlling growth panic by depressions is given to central banks, which first flood the nation with low interest liquidity to encourage overinvestment, excess borrowing, inflation and stock market bubbles, and then, when the expansion becomes too sinful for the national psyche, reverse the monetary expansion by increasing interest rates and reducing liquidity ("Taking away the punch bowl when the party gets going.") Depressions come because really people become depressed, reducing their spending and investment, and feel hopeless. ...nations enter into depressions because they feel persecuted for their prosperity and individuation by what Jungians have termed the "Dragon Mother" – the needy, "devouring mother of infancy who cannot let her children go because she needs them for her own psychic survival."

'(3) Internal Sacrifice Solution: If the leader cannot find an external enemy with whom to engage in a sacrificial war, he often turns to an internal sacrifice, either a violent revolution or an economic downturn. As Treasury Secretary Andrew Mellon said in 1929 as the Federal Reserve pushed the world into the Great Depression, "It will purge the rottenness out of the system." Business cycles are driven by the manic and depressive cycles of group-fantasy, as manic defenses against growth panic are followed by depressive collapses into emotional despair and inaction. Depressions and recessions are thus not due to "the Invisible Hand" of economics but are motivated sacrifices that often kill more people than wars do, halting dangerous prosperity and social progress that seem to be getting "out of control." Periodic economic downturns are the antidotes administered by sacrificial priests for the disease of "greed." ..."greedy" childhood selves felt to be responsible for the trauma...'

'(2) Martial Solution: If an external enemy can be found who will co-operate by humiliating the nation as they felt humiliated by their parents during childhood, this enemy can now be seen as the source of all their fears, and military action can be taken by the now-heroic leader in order to clear out the pollution and produce a rebirth of national strength and purpose. Wars are often preceded by apocalyptic growth panic movements, "Great Awakenings" and other end-of-the-world group-fantasies. The leader is split into two parts, and the "poison" part is projected into the "enemy" leader, who agrees to engage in a mutual humiliation ritual and then fight the cosmic battle between good and evil and "flush out" the nation's fears. The nation feels often enormous relief by the designation of the enemy, rather than being fearful of war's destructiveness. The finding of an external enemy as a poison container produces a burst of dopamine-filled euphoria.'

'(1) Regicidal Solution: If the leader fails to find an appropriate enemy, he himself can be designated as the enemy of the nation, and a ritual slaying is enacted, either by actual regicide or by throwing him out of office. Should he be reelected at the end of his first term, a symbolic death and rebirth ritual is enacted, and the leader has more time to find a solution to the growth panic.'

'#Strong Phase: The leader is portrayed as grandiose, phallic and invincible, able to ... contain the unconscious anxieties of the nation; #Collapse Phase; #Upheaval Phase: The leader begins the upheaval phase pictured as a wimp, overwhelmed by poisonous forces, impotent to ward off disaster... Anti-children crusades multiply, attacking people's projected inner child for being spoiled, sinful, greedy and out of control. When the growth panic is at a peak, "poison alerts" are declared and fears of maternal abandonment and wishes for maternal engulfment and rebirth proliferate. Rational national progress seems to be unimportant, group-delusions and group-trance projects are at a peak, and action becomes irresistible as the nation searches for some magical restoration of potency. This restoration, rebirth or revitalization wish turns into a group ritual that at times can take one or more of three forms: (1) Regicidal Solution, (2) Martial Solution, (3) Internal Sacrifice Solution'

'The notion that leaders really lead, not follow, is as much a group-fantasy as the leader's charismatic power to command the sun's rise and fall. A leader is a single individual sitting at a desk in one corner of one city. The power we conditionally delegate to him resides in the group-fantasy, since the leader's function is to act as a poison container for our group-fantasies. If he should unexpectedly die, the container disappears and our fears return to us in a rush. Even if he has been a totally incompetent leader, we panic. ...the charisma of leaders is purely a defensive grandiosity of our own, compensating for our feelings of childhood helplessness. Thus a leader's strength seems inevitably to decay. ...there are four phases of group-fantasies about leaders, as they become less and less able to provide grandiose manic solutions to the nation's growing growth panic: (1) strong, (2) cracking, (3) collapse and (4) upheaval.' ...

'...the leader is less a figure of authority than he is a delegate, someone who "takes the blame" for us. As poison container for our dissociated social alter, the leader is expected to absorb our violent feelings without collapsing. Many societies actually designate "filth men" to help the leader with this task, relatives who exchange blood with him so they can "intercept" the poisonous feelings of the people directed at him. In modern nations, cabinet members are our "filth men," and are sacrificed when the leader is under attack. This leadership task of being the delegate of irrational desires of the people makes leaders experts in masochism, rather than sadism, as traditional power theory requires. Only by carefully following our unconscious commands are leaders followed. We might follow them into war and lay down our lives to combat an enemy they alone designated, but the moment they try to ignore the group-fantasy and avoid our hidden commands, people simply do not hear them.'

'Political leaders are intuitively aware that their main function is to provide grandiose manic antidotes to growth panic. Every society acknowledges somehow its function as a defense against maternal engulfment. The more primitive the dominant childrearing mode of a society, the more growth panic must be defended against. The fears of abandonment that are triggered by social progress are felt by nations to be dramatized in their relationship with their leader, who is felt to be growing more and more distant and less and less able to provide grandiose manic projects to defend against their growing growth panic. The increasing impotence and weakness of the leader can be seen in the much-watched "ratings" he gets in his public opinion polls, which, after starting at a peak, usually decline during his term, unless revived by some particularly effective defensive manic action that the leader engages in. ...growing growth panic makes [leaders] seem more distant, less potent.'

'Societies whose institutions progress beyond their average childrearing mode become the most fearful and most violent, since their growth panic depends upon both the amount of early trauma and the amount of social progress. Thus unaccustomed Weimar freedoms lead directly to Auschwitz in a Germany formed by brutal childrearing. If there ever were a society where parents really helped their children to individuate, it would be a society without growth panics, without engulfment fears and without delusional enemies. The enemy is a poison container for groups failing to grapple with the problems of an emerging self. The enemy therefore inherits the imagery of their growth panic, so the enemy is usually described in terms of our childhood desires for growth. "They" (for instance, Jews) are imagined to be guilty of the pejorative form of every one of our desires: "greed" (all our wants); "lust" (our sexual desire); "pushiness" (our striving) and so on.'

'The reason small groups and nations are unconsciously experienced as destructive mothers is that group development requires an increase in independence and individuation, as members grow, respond to new challenges and try to change their patterns of behavior. This independence revives earlier feelings of maternal abandonment. The worse the childrearing, the more growth panic is triggered by individuation and self assertion. More advanced psychoclasses cause "too much" social progress for the majority of society. Old defenses become unavailable and people cannot dominate scapegoats—wives, slaves, servants, minorities—in quite the same way as before. These less advanced psychoclasses—the majority—begin to experience tremendous growth panic, and new ways to handle their anxiety must be invented. For them, change is everywhere; things seem to be "getting out of control." This is why growth and self assertion [is] proscribed by the religious and political systems of most societies.'

'The central fantasy function of the leader of any group, small or large, is to defend against repetitions of early trauma and abandonment, along with handling wishes for merging with the terrifying mother. The group is a mouth ...essentially female and maternal... One of the most active, or rather paralyzing, unconscious group representations is that of a Hydra: the group is felt to be a single body with a dozen arms at the ends of which are heads and mouths... ready to devour one another if they are not satisfied. When the leader is imagined to be strong, he can successfully defend against the group's engulfment fears; when the leader appears to weaken, all growth is dangerous, and desires for merging and fears of maternal engulfment increase, so the leader must somehow act to defend against the growth panic. ...the group leader is imagined to have mastered the group-as-mother and thus to have gained some of her [power] for himself. This makes him a threat as well as a protector...'

'Our social alters contain early levels of our unbearable hurts ("Why didn't mommy want me?" "Why did daddy hit me?"), restaged as fairy tales ("Are there witches?" "Will the monster kill me?") and then as social questions ("Shall we take children away from teenage mothers?" "Is Saddam Hussein a new Hitler who will blow up the world?"). The adaptive function of social alters is that they allow people to go about their daily business without being overwhelmed by traumatic memories... By dissociating early persecutors into our social alters and then identifying with these persecutors in our social lives, human beings manage to live more sane daily lives, while warding off unseen but felt dangers by "feeding" victims of society to terrifying religious, political and economic divinities. So important to our sanity is the social alter that when a poison container for a group-fantasy is removed, tremendous anxiety is aroused that has to be defended against by creating a replacement.'

'It was useless to point out to people who are dissociated and in a social trance that children or other poison containers were helpless human beings who were the victims of their actions. The children were full of our projections; they weren't real to us. Ultimately our social alters merge with the perpetrator of early traumas. In group-fantasy, we merge with the aggressor in order to avoid feeling helpless and then inflict damage upon child-scapegoats under the guise of "saving children." We see this merging with the perpetrator in every scapegoating group-fantasy. When anti-Semites persecute Jews, they are merged with the abusing parent and punishing the abused child. Jews must be persecuted... Adult events, political and economic history, usually provide only proximate causes of scapegoating group-fantasies; their ultimate cause lies in earlier traumatic events.'

'If helpless children of the poor were seen as bad babies, then obviously they were all scapegoats who were "poison containers" needed by the nation to feel early memories of hunger and despair at being unloved and abused. Without poison containers, we would have to feel these feelings ourselves. The childhood sources for Gingrich's political program are so overt they should be obvious to all, yet because we are in a social trance when we hear him we collude to deny them. The media widely reported, for instance, that Gingrich was a child of a teenage mother, but carefully didn't connect it with his speeches on how teenage mothers should be punished... The traumatic events of his infancy had to be restaged and millions of children made to feel his despair because in his social alter the child feels responsible for his or her own abuse and neglect, and so a scapegoat for the child self must be punished. As always in politics, the social alter's primary identification is with the abuser.'

'Nations, the most important group-fantasy constructions of our social alters, act out what seems to be a non-personal history because social events appear to exist in a separate reality and not to be a result of the intentions of individuals. Even when we find a leader to blame events on, we are helpless to explain why anyone followed him, imagining that the leader has the power to "hypnotize" his people. Since the emotional connections between society and self are cut off – nations are often said to behave sui generis – individuals can deny responsibility for what they do and social events can appear to be wholly without motivation. Soldiers who kill in wars are not personally called murderers and politicians who vote to withhold food from children are not personally termed child killers because these actions are imagined to be part of a different reality system, a dream-world that is somehow not really "us."'

'Social scientists have been puzzled by Milgram's experiments, wondering why people were so easily talked into inflicting pain so gratuitously. The real explanation is that, by joining a group – the "university experiment" – they switched into their social alters and merged with their own sadistic internalized persecutor, which was quite willing to take responsibility for ordering pain inflicted upon others. Their "struggle with themselves" over whether to obey was really a struggle between their social alters and their main selves. The crucial element was the existence of the group-as-terrifying-parent, the all-powerful university. Those who continue to replicate Milgram's experiments and who are still puzzled as to why "the most banal and superficial of rationales is enough to produce destructive behavior in human beings" simply underestimate the amount of trauma most people have experienced and the effectiveness of the social trance in allowing them to restage these hurts.'