I was thinking of someone I know who I’m pretty sure was raped repeatedly as a child. He became a homosexual, and I was thinking that I think I can feel how getting fucked up the ass could become something you get used to, and then how you get positive attention. It goes from an involuntary horror, to something pursued actively. It becomes how you connect with others. It becomes, not love, but something KNOWN, and the known in a world of chaotic confusion is undeniably something. The familiar is calming. The familiar is relaxing.
And I wondered: how many people like him go on to do the same thing to other children? Let’s say that 1 in 20 victims of that sort of thing inflict it on others, but have 20 victims. R=1. I think the math is something like this. Most victims merely spend their lives wounded. But some repeat, and the ones who do, do an enormous amount of damage.
And to be clear, I’m not associating homosexuality with this. I am very aware that many pedophiles are ostensibly heterosexual–many are married with kids–and that most gay men have no interest in children.
Then I got to thinking generally about traumatic spread. Trauma is spread by trauma, but not necessarily in the same form. Some people form fire stops. Some people become super spreaders.
And of course there are superspreader “events” like wars, natural disasters, economic calamity, etc.
But I really think if we think of it as a disease, then we can begin to wrap our minds around how we STOP it, reduce it, and get R less than 1.
Reducing trauma and expanding consciousness are more or less the same thing, in my view.
A vaccination against evil would consist in dealing effectively with Developmental Trauma in particular. We need to identify it, and provide effective remedies. To build a genuinely better, happier society, this is in the end the ONLY way it can happen.
As I have said before, what about getting ACE scores as early, perhaps, as Grade School, and/or training teachers to recognize signs of emotional trauma?
To be sure, we can build walls, and add police dogs and robots, guns, torture, and coercion. But that is not BETTER. Qualitatively, we were probably better off living in trees and caves. Some growth was possible then.
A global police state would be one–as envisioned by cold, calculating, developmentally traumatized walking dead people like Klaus Schwab (who I will say again could well be an ACTUAL Nazi)–in which growth stops. Nothing but death and horror remain.
The fruit you bring forth will depend on the seed you plant. The end begins in the beginning. Or to borrow from I think Wordsworth, the seed is the father of the fruit. Obviously. And no seed planted by people who have not done their own inner work, who have not befriended and enlisted their demons (I don’t think you can conquer them) in their work, will ever yield long term, genuinely good results.