h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Hmm...

I was only ever threatened with corporal punishement when I was really bad, until our Stepfather came on the block. Cold baths, belts, dead legs, running in the sun... His mind seemed wired up to administer pointless, unimaginative and cruel punishments for every event, from correcting a word to reading a book, from laughing too much to falling down the stairs. It sent me spiralling into depression. Some nights I'd cry my eyes out, trying to convince myself that I really deserved this and that I still loved him, that someone still loved me.

Oddly enough, until this point I was without exception thought of as scrupulous, honest, polite and considerate. Under his rule, I began to swear, I stabbed someone with a compass and got more detentions in a month than from a whole lifetime of school attendance. I stole, I lied. I had never once stole in my life before this - aside from when I was seven, when I dipped my finger in some cream on top of a cake. How strange. How terribly, terribly unexpected.

Needless to say, I think corporal punishment says more about the punisher than the punished. Though there are situations that warrant violence - if anyone dares lay a hand on my future children (and I will have children, no matter what the 'law' in Britain), I will beat their f**king brains out.

Just my opinion. Not quite the usual me, I know, but I have strong feelings on this matter.

- Jordan

Az
It's amazing really that there appear to be no female religious leaders/prophets or philosophers of note in the history of the world.
I suppose the neaerst we have is the Virgin Mary.
A mother who got there without the usual 'damming' business
not mush hope for the rest of us females to emulate !

much, much, much, much
Oh dear

If you stay positive and evolve you will learn all trhuths, like the reason we are breading on this planet to be able to go on forever... What we are doing with technology is redundant, we want to go into space and be self-sufficient... if you leave your body you will intantanously achieve this... right?

hi hass,

in fact, there are several 'religions' that have the mother as the supreme being - of course can't remember any of them offhand, but they do exist. I shall look up their names. They just never ended up being the 'controlling religions' that we now have.

Wonder why?

As much as I can recall, the mother religions are connected to the earth - hey can Math help out with this one? As I think some of them are connected to druid stuff.

sorry for not being able to say more right now - but I'll look this stuff up and get back to you.

az

hi Jordan,

After living under a constant life of senseless physical punishment, my youngest brother ended up in prison at age 19 after taking a hammer to his mother's (my step-mother's) boyfriend's head. I come from a family of six siblings, with various mother-father combinations, though I never think of them as 'half' anything - they are all my brothers.

Joey was the youngest, the most sensitive and creative, the one I always related to best. He also became the most self-abusive, the most hurt one I guess. And he then began to hurt others.

He's much better now. He's 27 with a nine-year-old kid, who he would never so much as hurt a hair on his head. Still has substance abuse problems, anger management stuff to deal with. He often tells me that HE is the black sheep of the family - we have good natured fights about this as this is MY family role and I tell him he is much too young to even think of ever de-throning me.

So, I know what you are saying. That you learnt certain behaviour as a result of being treated unfairly. And let's face it, kids don't have the wherewithall to cope with things being done to them that are totally out of their control. Their only defense is to react. And to survive.

Why would the law in Britain stop you from having kids?

But I know what you mean. I don't have kids, but it's the only situation that I could ever see myself killing another human and not feeling badly about it at all - if ever they threatened or hurt my kids.

Not sure what I'd do if anyone ever threatened my cats! Probably just maim them terribly. Just enough so that they would wish they had never been born. Ho hum.

azahar,

(not quite cured, but working on it . . .)

Although you'd hardly guess it from the Bible, whose writers couldn't bring themselves to admit that such a thing was even possible, the "abominations" so often fulminated against by the OT prophets mainly involved the worship of Astarte, a powerful Mother Goddess loosely equivalent to Isis and Ishtar.

I don't know if people online are a representative sample of people IRL (probably not), as people IRL don't seem to be as ready to talk about such things, but there does seem to be a high proportion who have suffered some form of abuse in childhood here (or maybe this thread attracts people who are trying to make sense of the results on their lives.) I couldn't say I was abused exactly, but my parents were pretty neurotic and dysfunctional in many ways, and probably responsible for the periodic depressions I suffered through my teens and twenties.

Noggin

Hasslefree;
Thanks
I love hearing that, it makes me feel like I still have a chance. Did you get a lecture on the event with the answer being 'wwld' ? Or was it a review which ended in a decision that you could make to rectify the behavior?

diversity

Hi azahar

"Oh." As in; material read, understood, compared to personal beliefs, judged to be different but not less valid, acknowledged in non-judgmental manner.

diversity

hi noggin,

sorry, IRL?

az

IRL - in real life.

As opposed to here. So they tell me.

Noggin

hi diversity,

okay, the 'oh' was a good thing then - glad to know.

(sorry, am terribly insecure and often don't know how to take some responses, especially one syllable ones)

az

Hello Noggin;

Abuse is different in different cultures and time frames. In America in the 70's it was not unlikely for a high school student to put the boxing gloves on and try to settle the score with a teacher. Now the mere suggestion of such a thing would initiate an investigation and probably culminate in the dismissal of the teacher. Very few captains go down with the ship nowadays, and I can't remember the last time I heard of a soldier falling on his sword to honor the emperor. The act of decimation has been abandoned as an acceptable military practice. You are right about making sense of lives, but I don't know if all the levels of abuse may be equal.

diversity

hi azahar

Oh.


(sorry, couldn't pass that one up )

diversity

diversity,






az

Diversity
Struggles to articulate
NDE is a bit like having a program downloaded directly to mind.
Without the explanation of it, you feel you'know' something.
Imagine if you could, suddenly without experience of it and in an instant knowing how to play chess, when you've never seen a chess board.
I have to say that though this may sound egotistical, the price paid is very high to have a NDE.
This is I think how I got to be what Toxx suggests is a person who can 'think' things without the words to use and Noggin says is a person able to bipass the 'moderator.'
If I want to know the 'answer' to anything I can just tap into the program in my subconscious.
The response I get is sufficient for me.
I suppose tnat anyone harming my children would bring out the primitive in me too.
I'd just go straight past that subconscious 'lesson' and come out snarling.
Step parents are often acting out the primitive , rather than being a reasoning being.
See what male alpha dogs do to the offspring of another male when they 'take over' .
Primitively speaking it isn't 'worth' then hunting for some other dogs DNA.
Often the good step parent bipasses this instinct with humanity.
Jordan's sad experience is A typical of the child lost and confused by adults, who behave primitively and the sudden reverting to 'bad' behaviour is merely asking the world to help them out by making big enough waves.

Hi Hasslefree

>Imagine if you could, suddenly without experience of it and in an instant knowing how to play chess, when you've never seen a chess board<

Ok, I'll buy that. What percentage of the time do you find yourself answering situations in advance with 'wwld'?

diversity

hi noggin,

It turns out that IRL, one in three girl children are abused and and one in five boy children. At least, those are the latest statistics I know about. And this is only - ONLY! - talking about sexual abuse.

Meanwhile, I think by recently sharing various personal stories we are realizing that abuse also takes many other forms.

We are not the exception, unfortunately.

And sometimes, like perhaps in your case, Noggin, when you say your parents were not maybe outwardly abusive but were quite dysfunctional and left you with depression problems - sometimes it's these insidious types of abuse that are the hardest to cope with. Because you cannot ever quite put your finger on WHAT it was that upset you so much.

I mean, if a parent either beats you to smithereens or else rapes you, part of your being knows that THIS IS WRONG - and although that does f**k you up, there is a place for you to start with in order to heal - that THIS happened to me. But if you can't say exactly WHAT happened, I wonder if that isn't even more difficult to learn to live with.

Because we WANT to love our parents, or grandparents, or whoever it was that did the damage. And then we often take on the responsibility - I must have done something bad, I must be a bad person, I must have deserved this, etc etc. Small kids are the most vulnerable things going - they need their caregivers, otherwise they know they will die, they are not capable of surviving on their own. So they will attach themselves - and with love - to the person they depend on most. Even if that person is supremely damaging them at the same time.

One in three girls.

One in five boys.

Anyone out there who is the exception? THAT I would find quite exceptional, very sad to say.

az

Az
I think sometimes that the denials of truth about abuse are as damaging as the actual abuse.
The not being able to voice it to a unbelieving world.

Diversity
Not enough %
but learning...

Actually that's kind of relevant for me today
Friend of my daughter, now a young woman, Sian...
Self mutilator, Scars all over. Banging head into walls, from age of 10.
In and out of mental hospitals.
She said she'd been sexually abused by her older step brother who was also troubled and ended up in prison
but no one believed her. One of Sian's stories they said.
Or some 'false memory' inserted by ill advised counsellors, they said
My Daughter is attending her funeral on friday
She was 25. Very pretty girl.
never had a peacefull day in her short life, but she was maginally happy when she was with my daughter aged 12 through 15 when they mucked about with our horses.
"My dad's promised me a pony." she used to say
he never did get her a pony, and later said it was just something he said to keep her happy.
lies don't keep people happy.
She's alright now.