On making trauma culturally cool ... as usual, Zhiwa nails something important., and whatever the graphs might mean to a seasoned Google-data-reader, they suggest that trauma-informed inquiry (and self-inquiry) is growing. Signs of trauma, and awareness of it, is everywhere. What if it always is? Some of Zhiwa's great gift has been to link personal, cultural and intergenerational trauma with the pressures and torsions at play in the overarching - superordinate - living system of which we are part. This system is the emergent through the dynamic interactions of all its elements both with each other and with the system as a whole as homeostasis is maintained. Because the system has been rendered invisible and somehow extraneous to human interests (all the better if one wishes to treat it as an inert, extractable resource), Zhiwa suggests that the only way we are likely to notice and engage with the processes of systemic equilibrium is when it impacts us. However, lacking the frame to "read it" fully we make meaning of the information in terms of ourselves and our past history and stories. Lacking the frames that enable us to commune with the greater system, we continue to push it to extremes - and unsurprisingly, all measures of trauma (including Google searches) increase.
All of which points to "trauma" as being what happens when feedback is ignored. A mechanical example - inertia and centrifugal forces are felt in our bodies when we're in a vehicle driving fast around corners. Usually, after a period of polite, white-knuckled dismay, we ask the driver to slow down. If the driver refuses, we may feel increasingly angry, then powerless and at mortal risk. Our distress increases, potentially off the scale - and, perhaps, the vehicle leaves the road. There can be a sense of power in driving fast, in over-riding feedback, in sensing other's powerlessness and - if the vehicle takes the corner - in being able to claim there was never a problem.
The example here is somewhat akin to Thomas Berry's noticing of the tendency for our dominant world-view to perceive the world as "a collection of objects" - driver, passenger, vehicle, gravity, curve etc - colliding together.
In terms of the levels of awareness involved, I could only hazard guesses about the driver and passenger! However, the relationship between energy and power is both direct and metaphorical - as is the sense of being engaged with forces - including gravity - far greater than ourselves. Approached in the spirit of individually-focussed competition, each object accruing power by abstracting energy to itself - whether interpersonal energy or that of fossil fuels - collision is inevitable. Berry contrasted the object-centred paradigm with that of recognising a "communion of subjects".
Whilst the exchanges of this communion on the bigger scale can be recognised in the various spheres - atmosphere, biosphere and so on - theres also the mostly unrecognised "psychesphere" of all life (and maybe all existence).
Given that, trauma is surely inevitable when there is no common holding and shared awareness of our personal experience within that of the whole, because there's no shared, receptive, empathic place to explore it - so we are cast back on ourselves and half-remembered/wholly enmembered stories of distress.
So I'm wondering - literally.
Wonder: the under-noticed emotion. Our psychology, leaching into our communal understanding, tends to recognise "mad, bad, sad and glad" as the 4 proto-emotions that shape our experience. It is mostly accepted that emotions give us information about our relationship with needs (mad/anger - about boundaries; bad/fear - about safety; sad - the need for compassion and soothing; glad - the need to celebrate). But surely, confronted by being part of something greater than ourselves, we experience wonder. And the need, therefore, to connect to this greater "being part of", not only cognitively but also physically and emotionally. And spiritually, although that is already present in the being of this.
Maybe this need for being part of the greater slips in to the reductionist worldview in the fascination with statistics of disaster (including Google-researching...?) into the windspeed of hurricanes, the height of storm surges, the extent of fires, the extent of collapse and so on.... and yet, lacking the common space to reach through to these reminders and recalls to wonder, we end up tumbled into private overwhelm... and the lonely trauma of that....
Wow Mark, thank you for such a rich and insightful comment! Very keen to bring your work on the psychosphere to the readers of Resonant World. Watch this space! Just landed in Hamburg after long train journey en route to a conference in Sweden, so brain too tired to offer much more than thank you -- and I look forward to hearing more! Speak soon.
Lovely: thanks Matthew.
On making trauma culturally cool ... as usual, Zhiwa nails something important., and whatever the graphs might mean to a seasoned Google-data-reader, they suggest that trauma-informed inquiry (and self-inquiry) is growing. Signs of trauma, and awareness of it, is everywhere. What if it always is? Some of Zhiwa's great gift has been to link personal, cultural and intergenerational trauma with the pressures and torsions at play in the overarching - superordinate - living system of which we are part. This system is the emergent through the dynamic interactions of all its elements both with each other and with the system as a whole as homeostasis is maintained. Because the system has been rendered invisible and somehow extraneous to human interests (all the better if one wishes to treat it as an inert, extractable resource), Zhiwa suggests that the only way we are likely to notice and engage with the processes of systemic equilibrium is when it impacts us. However, lacking the frame to "read it" fully we make meaning of the information in terms of ourselves and our past history and stories. Lacking the frames that enable us to commune with the greater system, we continue to push it to extremes - and unsurprisingly, all measures of trauma (including Google searches) increase.
All of which points to "trauma" as being what happens when feedback is ignored. A mechanical example - inertia and centrifugal forces are felt in our bodies when we're in a vehicle driving fast around corners. Usually, after a period of polite, white-knuckled dismay, we ask the driver to slow down. If the driver refuses, we may feel increasingly angry, then powerless and at mortal risk. Our distress increases, potentially off the scale - and, perhaps, the vehicle leaves the road. There can be a sense of power in driving fast, in over-riding feedback, in sensing other's powerlessness and - if the vehicle takes the corner - in being able to claim there was never a problem.
The example here is somewhat akin to Thomas Berry's noticing of the tendency for our dominant world-view to perceive the world as "a collection of objects" - driver, passenger, vehicle, gravity, curve etc - colliding together.
In terms of the levels of awareness involved, I could only hazard guesses about the driver and passenger! However, the relationship between energy and power is both direct and metaphorical - as is the sense of being engaged with forces - including gravity - far greater than ourselves. Approached in the spirit of individually-focussed competition, each object accruing power by abstracting energy to itself - whether interpersonal energy or that of fossil fuels - collision is inevitable. Berry contrasted the object-centred paradigm with that of recognising a "communion of subjects".
Whilst the exchanges of this communion on the bigger scale can be recognised in the various spheres - atmosphere, biosphere and so on - theres also the mostly unrecognised "psychesphere" of all life (and maybe all existence).
Given that, trauma is surely inevitable when there is no common holding and shared awareness of our personal experience within that of the whole, because there's no shared, receptive, empathic place to explore it - so we are cast back on ourselves and half-remembered/wholly enmembered stories of distress.
So I'm wondering - literally.
Wonder: the under-noticed emotion. Our psychology, leaching into our communal understanding, tends to recognise "mad, bad, sad and glad" as the 4 proto-emotions that shape our experience. It is mostly accepted that emotions give us information about our relationship with needs (mad/anger - about boundaries; bad/fear - about safety; sad - the need for compassion and soothing; glad - the need to celebrate). But surely, confronted by being part of something greater than ourselves, we experience wonder. And the need, therefore, to connect to this greater "being part of", not only cognitively but also physically and emotionally. And spiritually, although that is already present in the being of this.
Maybe this need for being part of the greater slips in to the reductionist worldview in the fascination with statistics of disaster (including Google-researching...?) into the windspeed of hurricanes, the height of storm surges, the extent of fires, the extent of collapse and so on.... and yet, lacking the common space to reach through to these reminders and recalls to wonder, we end up tumbled into private overwhelm... and the lonely trauma of that....
so - to wonder - together....
Wow Mark, thank you for such a rich and insightful comment! Very keen to bring your work on the psychosphere to the readers of Resonant World. Watch this space! Just landed in Hamburg after long train journey en route to a conference in Sweden, so brain too tired to offer much more than thank you -- and I look forward to hearing more! Speak soon.