Family Politics

 

Older readers may get the reference,.

An old saying has it that a happy family is the responsibility of the wife. There is perhaps wisdom in this. We know, that in North America, for example, women are far more likely than men to initiate a divorce. 

This also seems to be the wisdom of the ages as reflected in myth. It is Eve, after all, who upsets the happy family situation in Eden. It is Delilah. It is Pandora in Greek myth who opens the box. Or Psyche who turns on the light. 

This is also the common wisdom of fairy tales. The problem usually comes with the introduction to the family of a wicked mother, or stepmother—not a father or stepfather. Rapunzel, Cinderella, Snow White, Hansel and Gretel.

Women intrinsically have greater power in the family, because they are the ones in control of the premises: they are, in the traditional arrangement, always there. The father and husband is more in the role of a guest. They are also in more constant and intimate contact with the children. The hand that rocks the cradle rules the world. If they want to use this power, they can easily alienate the children from their partner.

It is also, broadly, feminism, the women’s movement, that is responsible for the current collapse of the North American family.

It follows, if there is a dysfunctional family, “cherchez la femme.” Most often it is because a mother plays favourites. Granted, there are cases of abusive husbands. But logic and the wisdom of the ages suggests that it is more often the wife and mother, even if this is covert, behind the scenes. Every Narcissus needs his Echo. Men are like dogs. They tend naturally to adore women and seek to make them happy.

Behold Man without God

 

Canadian artist William Kurelek suffered severe depression throughout life—ameliorated, in later years, perhaps cured, by embracing Catholicism. 

This was due to childhood abuse by his father.

The experience influences much of his work.

This is a detail from his 1957 painting “Behold Man without God,” done at about the time of his conversion. The figure at the top left is recognizable as his father. His father appears again at the bottom right.

Together, they are a portrait of childhood abuse in the real world. Like most great artists, Kurelek is an astute psychologist.

First, the form of abuse that is featured most prominently in visual terms is verbal, not physical—at the bottom right. He is scourged by his father’s tongue. This is far worse than physical abuse. And worse still, it is not simply criticism or insult: it is bait and switch. A reward is dangled in front of him, here a loaf of bread, but one he will never receive. This is the standard technique of the true abuser, false promises and misdirection. This is worst of all, because it corrodes the sense of what is real and not real, true or untrue, right or wrong.

This produces the sense of disorientation and meaninglessness that is the core experience we call depression.

Kurelek is also shown here pulling his father seated. He is carrying him emotionally. This is the general experience of the family of a narcissist, even when the narcissist himself is mild mannered or favours them: the narcissist will lean on them emotionally. If the narcissist has a bad feeling, it is always the child or spouse’s responsibility to do something about it. The narcissist is emotionally weak, unable to walk on their own.

In the centre of the detail shown, a ring of people are trapped by the head or neck, under a sign that reads “Home Sweet Home.” A commentator on the museum site says this is a “group of abused children.” Not quite; not all are obviously children. As the sign tells us, it is an image of the dysfunctional family. They are all trapped by the head or neck by the shared family dynamic or delusion emanating from the narcissistic parent, even if the narcissistic parent is not present. They are all feebly biting each other and hitting one another with maces, wherever they can. 

This is the family situation the abusive parent will set up: they will deliberately foster enmity among all other members of the family. This increases their power and control. By, for example, promising this child or that child special favour, often in return for turning against a sibling.

Kurelek, the scapegoat, beaten at the top left, seems also to be one of the figures trapped at the neck by the revolving table. He seems to be the figure in the foreground.

That it is revolving is also important: no progress is ever made. It is all set up this way by the narcissist, who fears breaking out of a severely constrained orbit. The outside world, and progress itself, threatens his delusions of his own importance and his control. Any outside contacts or friendships will be discouraged in a dysfunctional family; they will be notably clannish. Any feints towards outside success will be discouraged. Any signs of originality of thought will be punished. One must conform to the family pattern. 

Hence the sense of meaninglessness and an inability to progress that most characterizes what we call “depression.” A sense of being trapped in a horribly banal world, like Dorothy at the outset of The Wizard of Oz. A sense that you, or those around you, are robotic. Because narcissists are.

Happily, Kurelek also points the way to break out of this horror: Through art, that sees the transcendent, and through religion, that takes us there.

Britney Spears Update

 

The Real World of Discrimination

 

The much-despised Tree of Life, in Kabbalistic symbolism: a representation of the attributes of God.

Caitlin Press in Tofino is calling for poems for an anthology about trees: ideally poems that “dispel the myth of hazardous and inconvenient trees.”

This is striking, because there are no such myths. In every known culture, trees are venerated. Which is why there is a market for an anthology of poems about trees. People love trees.

The much-despised Christian Tree of Life

This points to a common phenomenon. There is a persistent tendency to declare things or groups that are especially favoured to be or to have been discriminated against. Conversely, things or groups that have genuinely experienced discrimination get no love. In fact, this almost goes without saying: you are automatically not discriminating against any group you lament as being discriminated against.

For example, we are told endlessly that women have faced discrimination throughout history. Yet demonstrably, current laws discriminate in their favour in myriad ways. This is also true historically: women have always been put on pedestals. In many cultures, women were exempt from prosecution for any crimes; they were protected in times of war, rather than being sent to the front; and on and on. The exalted status of women has always been, in a phrase, a “motherhood issue.” And this is biologically hard-wired. Men are expendable, but women are not: they are needed to ensure the survival of the tribe.

We in Canada are told incessantly, and have always been told, that Indians have been discriminated against. Yet they are demonstrably given more rights than other Canadians: special treaty rights, a wide range of benefits not available to other Canadians. Any history of the Indian in literature reveals an unrealistic reverence for the “noble savage.” Everyone has always wanted to be an Indian, in Canada and in the US. And no, their land was never taken or stolen from them—a subject that might take us, for the moment, too far afield.

What about African Americans? Everybody agrees they have been discriminated against; and surely they have a legitimate grievance? After all, they were enslaved. But compare the Irish; the Irish too were enslaved in the New World, if not perhaps to a comparable extent. Indentured servitude. Moreover, the Irish, unlike the blacks, have been systematically oppressed wherever they lived for about five hundred years, including a mass starvation in the middle of the last century. About the same time slavery was abolished—after it was abolished throughout the British Empire. On balance, then, the Irish have arguably had a tougher time of it for longer. Yet there is little or no sympathy for the Irish. Current laws discriminate in favour of African Americans; and against Irish Americans.

It may be disturbing to accept it, but chattel slavery was thought throughout its existence to be of benefit to the African American slaves. They were understood to be unable to look after themselves properly, whether due to genetic incapacity or lack of civilization, and, like children, were to be taken care of. They were not hated or despised, any more than children are.

The Irish, by contrast, were hated and despised.

Who has authentically been persecuted and discriminated against, in recent times? The Jews. Within living memory, there has been a systematic and international attempt to exterminate the Jews. Compare African American slavery—never meant to harm, and abolished a hundred and fifty years ago. Anti-Semitic attacks are still the most common hate crime in Canada, and are on a rapid upswing across North America and Europe. Yet there is little public attention to it; if anything, it seems to be encouraged by some public figures.

The Poles. As many Poles as Jews were executed by Hitler in his camps; their country was carved up and enslaved in turn by Germany, Austria, Russia, and the Soviets. Yet Poles remain one ethnic group it is still acceptable to lampoon. Polish jokes are more or less okay in polite company.

There was something like an attempt to wipe out the Ukrainians within living memory. Yet Ukrainians remain another ethnic group it is still acceptable to lampoon. 

There was a concerted attempt to wipe out the Armenians barely a hundred years ago. It may not be fashionable to mock Armenians, but there is also no sympathy for them.

Who else has known great suffering in recent decades? The Koreans suffered a brutal occupation and something like a genocide under the Japanese, from 1911 to 1945, after which they lived through a devastating war. The Filipinos suffered more under Japanese occupation, reputedly, than any other occupied nation during the Second World War. It was not a matter of discrimination, but the Chinese and the Cambodians suffered holocausts of historic proportions within the lifetimes of many, and the Vietnamese lived through perhaps thirty years of scorched-earth war. Yet these groups are given no consideration in North America; instead, they are systematically discriminated against.

To be fair, African Americans, Indians, and perhaps women have a legitimate grievance, that they have not thriven despite the special help they have been given throughout recent history. Conversely, the Irish, the Jews, the Armenians, the Poles, the Ukrainians, have been successful, even notably successful, despite persecution.

But that is neither here nor there. Being coddled is not necessarily to one’s long-term benefit, because it strips you of self-reliance. It gives you unrealistic expectations, and, when they are not met, leaves you capable of doing little but complaining loudly.

These two unlucky fates, being genuinely discriminated against and being coddled, correspond to two common fates within a dysfunctional family. One child will be spoiled into arrested development, and will grow up to be a narcissist. The next child will be tormented, but, if they survive and survive without being permanently crippled, may even be stronger for the experience. They may grow up to be a hero.

The Progress of America's Social Disease

 

What is happening now in the USA tracks closely the dynamics of a dysfunctional family.

1. Someone gives in to temptation and sins. In this case, we are talking about the “sexual revolution.”

2. Rather than repent, they allow this to develop into a settled vice. The legalization of abortion probably marks that social threshold. Instead of realizing the original idea was wrong, once confronted with its consequences, Americans moved on from lust to murder.

3. As guilt feelings grow, the guilty party begins to construct a “narrative” instead of facing the truth; a pleasant fiction, in which they are guilty of nothing. They become insane in the proper sense of the term: their thinking and their claims are no longer in accord with what is real. We see this in postmodernism: there is no truth. We can simply “construct” any truth we want.

4. In the next phase, the pretense that truth is random and arbitrary is replaced with the conviction that truth is the enemy. Rather than having the right to choose one’s own truth, one must deny objective truth. Here is where Trump Derangement Syndrome begins: he was too prone to bluntly say what he thought.

5. Now comes the scapegoating phase: anyone not in step with the general denial of reality will be accused of the sin of which the guilty party feels guilty. Trump’s supposed sin, for example, is that he is a “liar.” Within a family, this becomes the habitual scapegoating of one or more children.

6. Over time, as the situation grows more extreme and the truth risks becoming obvious to all, the insane party will then accuse the scapegoated party of themselves being insane. We are seeing this now with the drive to have Trump removed from power with eleven days to go, by declaring him mentally incompetent. The demand is in itself obviously insane.

Within a dysfunctional family, this is generally where it ends. By general consent, the one member of the dysfunctional family who is not, or is least, insane, will be declared insane, and sent off for psychiatric treatment. So the family can go on as always. The child themselves will accept the diagnosis as necessary for survival. 

But where does it end when it happens to a whole society?

Nazi Germany perhaps gives us our most obvious model.

Of Fig Trees and the Banality of Evil

 

Now in the morning, as he returned to the city, he was hungry. Seeing a fig tree by the road, he came to it and found nothing on it but leaves. He said to it, “Let there be no fruit from you forever!”

Immediately the fig tree withered away.

- Matthew 21, WEB

Many find this passage odd; yet versions appears in three of four Gospels. What does Jesus have against an innocent fig tree?

Perhaps it is meant to repeat and reinforce a message found often elsewhere in the gospels, in different ways: by their fruits you will know them.

Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly are ravening wolves. By their fruits you will know them. Do you gather grapes from thorns or figs from thistles? Even so, every good tree produces good fruit, but the corrupt tree produces evil fruit. A good tree can’t produce evil fruit, neither can a corrupt tree produce good fruit. Every tree that doesn’t grow good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. Therefore by their fruits you will know them.

--Matthew 7, WEB.

The traditional understanding of “fruits” here, especially for Catholics, is of course “good deeds.” Moral behavior. 

This does not work well, however; because Jesus elsewhere says we should perform our good deeds in secret. And any clever con artist knows enough to perform good deeds in order to deceive--what else does “wolf in sheep’s clothing” mean?

So what then are our fruits?

Fruits may instead mean works of art or craft. This may then be what Jesus means when he tells us to “let our light shine,” “be like a city on a hill.” A city is, after all, a massive work of art or craft.

But then the image is not perfect; since fruit suggests nature rather than handicraft or manufacture.

The most obvious, literal meaning is simply that we can judge a person by looking at their children.

I think that is right.

If some young person is in turmoil, engaging in self-destructive behavior, seems spiritless, or acts immorally, the parent is probably at least in part to blame. If a child’s life seems significantly less successful than their parents, then the parent is liable to be at least in part to blame.

And this is in turn the surest way to spot a bad person. For it is difficult otherwise. Bad people who are at least halfway intelligent are going to wear sheep’s clothing; their malice will be carefully hidden from view. But their children are defenseless, their power over them, when young, absolute. Everything is literally behind closed doors. Their own children are the perfect victims.

Which brings us to Hunter Biden, and his spectacularly self-destructive behavior.

You might object that the son or daughter of any very prominent person might suffer as a result of living in their shadow, and so be tempted to such errant behavior.

Yet this is demonstrably not so. Compare Donald Trump’s children. They all seem to be doing well. Notably, Ivanka’s husband, Jared Kushner, is himself a successful businessman with a prominent role in her father’s administration. This is striking, because any narcissistic father will resent the spouses of their children, especially their daughter. George H.W. Bush’s sons also obviously did quite well.

Hunter is acting out the classic role of black sheep, familiar in almost any dysfunctional family. His father is a monster. Joe Biden is the banal, congenial, classical mask of evil.

A Midrash

While he was yet speaking with them, Rachel came with her father’s sheep, for she kept them. When Jacob saw Rachel the daughter of Laban, his mother’s brother, and the sheep of Laban, his mother’s brother, Jacob went near, and rolled the stone from the well’s mouth, and watered the flock of Laban his mother’s brother. Jacob kissed Rachel, and lifted up his voice, and wept. Jacob told Rachel that he was her father’s relative, and that he was Rebekah’s son. She ran and told her father. 

--Genesis 29:9-11, WEB. 

 

Jacob treated Rachel at once as his cousin, which caused significant whispering among the by-standers. They censured Jacob for his demeanor toward her, for since God had sent the deluge upon the world, on account of the immoral life led by men, great chastity had prevailed, especially among the people of the east. The talk of the men reduced Jacob to tears. Scarcely had he kissed Rachel when he began to weep, for he repented of having done it.

There was reason enough for tears. Jacob could not but remember sadly that Eliezer, his grandfather's slave, had brought ten camels laden with presents with him to Haran, when he came to sue for a bride for Isaac, while he had not even a ring to give to Rachel. Moreover, he foresaw that his favorite wife Rachel would not lie beside him in the grave, and this, too, made him weep.

--Midrash (Ginsberg, Legends of the Jews).

“Then Jacob kissed Rachel. and he raised his voice and wept.” Bereishis 29: 11

Rashi explains that he cried because he came empty-handed. He said, “My father’s servant came with ten camels laden with gifts and finery, and I come with empty hands.”

Rashi goes on to explain to us why he didn’t bring a gift for Rachel. When Jacob found out that Esau was plotting to kill him, he fled from his father’s home. Esau sent his son Alifaz to chase down Jacob. Alifaz was a Tzaddik, and when he approached Jacob he said, “I can’t kill you because you are an innocent man. On the other hand, what will be with the command of my father?” Jacob said to him, “A poor man has the halachic status of a dead man. Take my money, and it will be considered as if you killed me, so on some level you will have fulfilled your father’s words.” As a result, Jacob came to the well empty-handed. When it was time to propose to Rachel, he didn’t have the gifts that would be expected, and so, he raised his voice and cried.

--Rabbinic commentary.

The theme that runs through this is the need to respect the proprieties. And this is the solution to the problem that sometimes moral demands will conflict: as in the case of Alifaz. Following tradition and set laws, even if in a “legalistic” manner, protects us in such moments.

Alifaz’s dilemma speaks to the children of dysfunctional families, as he was, who are torn between the requirement for “filial piety,” on the one hand, the demands of the family, and the fact that a narcissistic parent is often seeking their harm or demanding that they behave immorally towards others. The answer is apparently to give the parent their strict literal due, no more. Observe the proprieties. Confucius makes the same point.

In order to do this, it is essential to have an established moral code, the meaning of which is precise and clear. This is why we need the Ten Commandments, despite the fact that the principles of true morality are embedded in the conscience of each of us. This is why we need the Bible, and organized religion.

And this is also why people who act on their immediate desires without minding the requirements of propriety, are so damaging.

The situation of Jacob and Rachel is in turn a warning against the mirage of “true love,” which so often misleads the abused. It is not enough that two people are “in love.” A love that does not follow the proprieties is not true love, for this is ultimately disrespectful of the other party. This is putting the emotion or the urge above their human dignity.

Clear traditions and requirements protect us from giving another either too much or too little recognition. Too much, and you are feeding their possible narcissism. Too little, and you are driving them towards depression and anxiety. For this, it is essential to have a Book, a Law, a tradition.

And it is dangerous too for the once-abused to go about seeking excessive recognition—looking for the “unconditional love” they are told by some therapists they always deserved. Because this will lead that poor fly into the lair of the next narcissistic spider, who recognizes the need.

Liverpool Lullaby

A touching lyric about a dysfunctional family

Author: Stan Kelly

Oh you are a mucky kid,
Dirty as a dustbin lid
When he finds out the things you did
You'll get a belt from your da 

Oh you have your father's nose
So crimson in the dark, it glows
If you're not asleep when the boozers close
You'll get a belt from your da 

You look so scruffy lying there
Strawberry jam tufts in your hair
Though in the world you haven't a care
And I have got so many 

It's quite a struggle everyday
Living on your father's pay
'cause the bugger drinks it all away
And leaves me without any 

Although we have no silver spoon
Better days are coming soon
Now Nellie's working at the Lune
And she gets paid on Friday 

Perhaps one day we'll have a bash
When Little ones provide the cash
We'll get a house in Knotty Ash
And buy your dad a brewery 

Oh you are a mucky kid,
Dirty as a dustbin lid
When he finds out the things you did
You'll get a belt from your da 

Oh you have your father's face
You're growing up a real hard case
But there's no one can take your place
Go fast asleep for Mammy

Don 't miss the subtext; the lyricist gets this right. The Mother portrays herself as the hapless victim, but she is as abusive, and "co-dependent." Such families are always tag teams. If she is a good mother, why is the child sent to sleep with "strawberry jam tufts in his hair"?

She calls him "mucky" and "dirty": her own responsibility. In other words, she is scapegoating--scapegoating him too for his father, insisting on improbable similarities. And she is leaning on him emotionally, expecting him, the child, to fix things fer her, the adult: "When Little ones provide the cash."

An insightful take.