Apocalypse, or New Dawn?: Chapter Eight: "Derailing the Cycles of War and Violence, Part 2: Can You Handle Happiness? (And the Pain That Comes With It?)" by SillyMickel Adzema

CHANGING THE PATTERNS OF MILLENNIA -- But how do we do this?  How do we convince people that feeling good is not bad?  For these unconscious forces, these cycles of... More »

CHANGING THE PATTERNS OF MILLENNIA -- But how do we do this?  How do we convince people that feeling good is not bad?  For these unconscious forces, these cycles of violence, have been pulling our strings for at least tens of thousands of years.  How can we change such an engrained pattern?

Chasing the Mirages of the Future -- Well, again, we get our leads from the experiences of individuals undergoing experiential psychotherapy.  For individuals also, if they are to heal themselves, have to learn how to appreciate success and stop self-sabotaging themselves in the myriad of ways that they do.  Individuals act out their mini-cycles of "war" in their struggles to achieve.  And people are driven to struggle to achieve because they can not be pleased with what they have.

Relating back to deMause's societal schema, people cannot simply enjoy their "prosperity"; they cannot stop to smell the roses occasionally; they cannot count their blessings and feel contented with what they have, nor can they enjoy the natural pleasure of being alive in the moment. 

No, instead what characterizes humans, for the most part because of our having birth trauma, is a persistent drive to always have more than we do. We find that every accomplishment or success is short lived, with inexplicable depression following it, for it does not bring the expected (unconscious) rewards, and leads then almost immediately to a new struggle, a new accomplishment to be sought; we are driven to chasing mirages of better times somewhere off in the future and fail to live in the present. We feel unsatisfied with what we have and are continually deluded that some new possession, accomplishment, or love "conquest" will bring with it the missing happiness.

Becoming Self-Actualizing Instead of Self-Sabotaging -- When people are aware of the way they unconsciously sabotage their happiness, they sometimes seek help.  And if they seek help in the experiential psychotherapies, they are enabled to work through their birth trauma so that they are no longer driven out of the moment, with its pleasure and pain, into an imagined but never attainable pleasureful and happy future.  So people derail their cycles of drivenness and their tendencies to sabotage their successes by learning to enjoy their "prosperity," even if it is the simple pleasure of being alive.  And when they act to add to that pleasantness, they do so, not out of drivenness, but out of feelings of flow and the simple joys of acting and actualizing one's tendencies, talents, and desires.  They become self-actualizing instead of self-sabotaging.
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OK, knowing this, one might ask me if I am suggesting that to save our species everyone needs to get into experiential therapy.  While that would be nice, it is not... More »

OK, knowing this, one might ask me if I am suggesting that to save our species everyone needs to get into experiential therapy.  While that would be nice, it is not practical.  But I also believe that it is not necessary either.  There is an element of that societal period of prosperity that can be used and focused on in order to make the societal change of pattern, the societal derailing of the tendency to self-sabotage through war-making.

And that element is this:  During times of prosperity, when one is less engaged in a struggle to survive, we find that one’s body will naturally try to heal itself of unresolved and somatically imprinted trauma by bringing into consciousness the repressed traumatic memories needing resolution.  This occurs in a manner similar to that of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs.  Basically, one’s needs to "grow emotionally" (i.e., clear away the unresolved trauma) can only come to the fore when one’s physical survival needs are relatively taken care of; and this they unerringly do, given any such opportunity.

However, when these traumatic memories arise seeking resolution, they, also unerringly, bring with them the associated feelings of depression, unease, and pain.  But because these feelings are anything but pleasant, to their detriment most people seek to avoid these feelings through addictions and other forms of "acting-out" behavior.  So addictions and acting-out behavior emerge after periods of relative stability precisely because that stability allows unresolved feelings an opening for emergence and a possibility of resolution and healing.

So there you have it; that is the crux.  The period of societal prosperity can be maintained and added to if that society refuses to run away from the negative feelings that come up with success.  As I have said, one needs to get "sicker" in order to get really well.  Societally, we need to allow the social, formerly repressed, "sicknesses," negativities, and the pain that comes with them to arise and be socially worked out, to be hashed out, rather than to escape them by resorting to scapegoating enemies and waging war against them.  But can societies do this?  Are they doing this?

With this in mind, the next chapter will be about whether there are any indications that this standing firm in the face of the rising up of the repressed social Shadow -- allowing the pain of it and facing it foursquare, hashing it out -- is to be found in the current social arena.  If we can find this, we may allow ourselves at least the hope for a change in consciousness radical enough to save us from extinction.  On the contrary, if we find little or no evidence, we might as well consider ourselves doomed.
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