Science of the Spirit

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The Truth Perspective: How To Survive A Totalitarian Nightmare: The Psychology Of Tyranny

Sott.net
Sat, 01 Dec 2018 17:00 UTC

What is it like to live in a country with a brutal, totalitarian government? According to Dr. Andrew Lobaczewski, the only way to truly know is to actually experience it. Literary accounts and news reports can provide some data, but even that will only be theoretical. Actually experiencing it is something else entirely: a punch in the gut that can cause anxiety, depression, and PTSD. But there's one other way to get an idea: a first-hand experience with malevolence at the hands of someone with a severe personality disorder.

Today on the Truth Perspective we discuss chapter 6 of Lobaczewski's book Political Ponerology: "Normal People Under Pathocratic Rule". The reason people who have lived with a pathological individual know what it's like to live under a pathocracy is because the two experiences are analogous: they both involve personality-disordered individuals in positions of authority. And without an understanding of psychopathology, we can't understand totalitarianism.

In this chapter, Lobaczewski discusses the experience of living under pathocratic rule: the deformations of normal human psychology that result, as well as the skills and values that develop after years of terror. The current polarization we are experiencing in our own society is not a good development, but if we don't do something to stop where it is leading us, the time will come when both sides of the political spectrum are equally terrorized. Ironically, it may only be a real pathocracy that will bring both sides together: a solidarity bred by shared suffering that seems unimaginable to us now.

Running Time: 01:35:11

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Children who start school a year early more likely to be diagnosed with ADHD, study shows

Medical Xpress
Sat, 01 Dec 2018 15:52 UTC

Children with ADHD find it more difficult to focus and to complete their schoolwork. Credit: public domain image

Could a child's birthday put them at risk for an ADHD misdiagnosis? The answer appears to be yes, at least among children born in August who start school in states with a Sept. 1 cutoff enrollment date, according to a new study led by Harvard Medical School researchers.

The findings, published Nov. 28 in The New England Journal of Medicine, show that children born in August in those states are 30 percent more likely to receive an ADHD diagnosis, compared with their slightly older peers enrolled in the same grade.

The rate of ADHD diagnoses among children has risen dramatically over the past 20 years. In 2016 alone, more than 5 percent of U.S. children were being actively treated with medication for ADHD. Experts believe the rise is fueled by a combination of factors, including a greater recognition of the disorder, a true rise in the incidence of the condition and, in some cases, improper diagnosis.

Comment: Younger kids having a difficult time sitting still for hours and paying attention isn't a medical condition. It's just normal. That a correlation like the above is being made should be ringing alarm bells for those who are trigger-happy with the medication. We'll be surprised if it makes any difference in the over-diagnosis problem.

See also:

Fearing fear itself

Frank Furedi
Aeon
Tue, 20 Nov 2018 13:36 UTC

Once parents felt children needed a little fear to grow up well. Today they are desperately protective. What went wrong?

How much fear, anxiety and risk can children handle? Until the late 19th century, most people thought that the answer was quite a lot. Aristotle himself said that education might be defined as teaching us to fear aright. It was widely believed that a sense of fear made a positive contribution to the formation of a child's character. That fear was regarded as essential for the education of children was spelled out by the Church Missionary Society in 1819, when it stated that 'it is necessary, that children fear the Schoolmasters'. Children's experience of fear was sometimes portrayed as essential for developing their powers of imagination and creativity. For example in 1848, the Christian Register advised parents that a 'child who has never known any kind of fear can have no power of imagination: can feel no wonder, no impulse of life, nor awe or veneration'.

Contrast to the culture of today, where entertainment is age-appropriate; where the wrong word (or microaggression) is said to trigger an anxiety attack; where the ultimate fear, of separation, is seen as so damaging that, if not managed well, can ruin the child for life. Childhood fears, and fear of those fears, seem ubiquitous: Fear of bullies, not to mention active shooters and public gatherings. Fear of wars and accidents streaming in through the TV. Most modern parents would no more try to frighten a child than they would beat the child with whips or send that child to a year of hard labour on a chain gang, but feel stymied by the onslaught of the world. We are mightily attuned to children's fears, and strive to blunt them at all cost.

Ian Stevenson: Birthmarks and birth defects corresponding to wounds on deceased persons

Ian Stevenson
University of Virginia
Mon, 29 Nov 1993 18:05 UTC

Abstract

Almost nothing is known about why pigmented birthmarks (moles or nevi) occur in particular locations of the skin. The causes of most birth defects are also unknown. About 35% of children who claim to remember previous lives have birthmarks and/or birth defects that they (or adult informants) attribute to wounds on a person whose life the child remembers.

The cases of 210 such children have been investigated. The birthmarks were usually areas of hairless, puckered skin; some were areas of little or no pigmentation (hypopigmented macules); others were areas of increased pigmentation (hyperpigmented nevi). The birth defects were nearly always of rare types.

In cases in which a deceased person was identified the details of whose life unmistakably matched the child's statements, a close correspondence was nearly always found between the birthmarks and/or birth defects on the child and the wounds on the deceased person. In 43 of 49 cases in which a medical document (usually a postmortem report) was obtained, it confirmed the correspondence between wounds: and birthmarks (or birth defects).

There is little evidence that parents and other informants imposed a false identity on the child in order to explain the child's birthmark or birth defect. Some paranormal process seems required to account for at least some of the details of these cases, including the birthmarks and birth defects.

Comment: For more on Dr. Stevenson's work on reincarnation, see:

What's in a name? The surprising ways your name affects your life

Cody C. Delistraty
The Atlantic
Wed, 30 Jul 2014 00:01 UTC

From dating to job prospects, a name has remarkable power over the path of its owner's life.

I was at a party for Bastille Day in Paris a few years back, and we were leaning over the balcony to watch the fireworks. A cute French girl sat next to me, but after a few flirty glances the moment was entirely ruined with the most basic of interactions: "What's your name?" she asked in French. "Cody," I said.

That was it. We were done. "Co-zee?" she said, sounding out the entirely foreign name, looking more disgruntled with each try. "Col-bee?" "Cot-ee?"

Not in front of the kids: Children can detect their parents' emotional suppression

Karen Foster
Prevent Disease
Wed, 28 Nov 2018 14:47 UTC

"Not in front of the kids." It's an age-old plea for parents to avoid showing conflict and strong negative emotions around their children. But new research from a Washington State University scientist disagrees, showing that it's better to express negative emotions in a healthy way than to tamp them down.

After people suppress compassionate feelings, they lose a bit of their commitment to morality.

Sara Waters, an assistant professor in the Department of Human Development on the WSU Vancouver campus, and co-authors from the University of California, Berkley and the University of California, San Francisco, write about their findings in the journal Emotion.

"We wanted to look at how we suppress emotions and how that changes the way parents and kids interact," Waters said. "Kids pick up on suppression, but it's something a lot of parents think is a good thing to do."

Muscle tension caused by trapped emotions

Aletheia Luna
lonerwolf.com
Sun, 14 Oct 2018 13:11 UTC

Your body is a map and storage house of every experience you have ever had.

So many of us carry repressed and trapped emotions within multiple areas of our bodies, without even knowing it. In fact, we can go for years, even decades, completely oblivious to the blocked energy our muscles are holding on to. This repressed energy is responsible for countless ailments and chronic health conditions that cause us great suffering.

The fact is that your body doesn't forget.

Your body is the most honest and obvious way to access trapped feelings and even traumatic memories. No matter how much you try to ignore, intellectualize or suppress how you feel, your body knows the truth.

If you are struggling with chronic tension in your neck, shoulders, back, thighs, legs, or any other area of your body, this article may help you get to the root of your pain, once and for all.

Comment: Keys to releasing stress and trauma stored in our physical body

Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology: Facebook can cause depression

Tyler Durden
Zero Hedge
Fri, 16 Nov 2018 12:50 UTC

A new report conducted by psychologists at the University of Pennsylvania have determined that an excessive amount of time on "social media" sites like Facebook, Instagram, and Snapchat are making millennials depressed."It was striking," said Melissa Hunt, a psychology professor at the University of Pennsylvania, who led the study. "What we found over the course of three weeks was that rates of depression and loneliness went down significantly for people who limited their (social media) use."

The study, "No More FOMO: Limiting Social Media Decreases Loneliness and Depression," is being published in December's Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology.

Researchers recruited 143 students for two different trials, one in the spring semester and one in the fall semester. Each subject was required to have a Facebook, Instagram, and Snapchat account, plus an Apple iPhone. They collected data on the students for about a week to get a baseline reading of their social media usage, and also had them submit questionnaires that assessed their mental health according to seven different factors: social support, fear of missing out, loneliness, autonomy, and self-acceptance, anxiety, depression, and self-esteem.

Political division is destroying civil society - but feeling gratitude can lift us up

Barry Brownstein
The Free Thought Project
Mon, 26 Nov 2018 00:00 UTC

Civil society seems to be waning. People are losing respect for the conditions that allow human beings to flourish, warns Jonah Goldberg in his book Suicide of the West: How the Rebirth of Tribalism, Populism, Nationalism, and Identity Politics is Destroying American Democracy.

Comment: We can't vouch for the book mentioned above, but from the title we may infer that it's something of a mixed bag.

See: NewsReal: Populism Explained and The Real Problem with Nationalism, Without the Virtue Signaling

Goldberg, a columnist for the National Review, defines civil society as "that vast social ecosystem-family, schools, churches, associations, sports, business, local communities, etc.-that mediates life between the state and the individual." Goldberg adds, "It is a healthy civil society, not the state, that civilizes people."

As more Americans place politics at the core of their identity, civil society erodes. Is authoritarianism the inevitable result of a quest to find meaning through politics?

Comment:

New Study: Human brain stays alive for hours after death

Ananya Mandal, MD
News Medical
Sun, 25 Nov 2018 22:01 UTC

One question that has baffled mankind is "after-death experience" or the experience after the heart stops beating. There have been anecdotal reports of a person being able to understand and hear what is happening around them even after they have been declared dead. A team of researchers have found that the brain works for a while after the heart has stopped. The research is reported in an a journal paper titled, 'AWARE-AWAreness during REsuscitation-A prospective study.'

The team of scientists from New York's Stony Brook University of Medicine, looked at patients with cardiac arrests in Europe and the US. They noted that those of the patients who were successfully resuscitated after their heart had stopped beating could recall the conversations around them between the healthcare personnel and were aware of their surroundings.

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Science of the Spirit

The Truth Perspective: How To Survive A Totalitarian Nightmare: The Psychology Of Tyranny

Children who start school a year early more likely to be diagnosed with ADHD, study shows

Fearing fear itself

Ian Stevenson: Birthmarks and birth defects corresponding to wounds on deceased persons

What's in a name? The surprising ways your name affects your life

Not in front of the kids: Children can detect their parents' emotional suppression

Muscle tension caused by trapped emotions

Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology: Facebook can cause depression

Political division is destroying civil society - but feeling gratitude can lift us up

New Study: Human brain stays alive for hours after death

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