Vivian Broughton

Yes I know, it sure as hell doesn’t look like it, but stay with me… let’s at least explore the idea.

Do the activities and actions that we have been experiencing in the Uk over the past week have anything in common with what has been going on over the last 9 months in the Middle East? I think they do… one thing, and that is that all these occurrences have involved people saying in different ways “We’ve had enough”. Of course it may be that many of our youth who have been running riot over our cities the last week couldn’t have articulated it in this way, they don’t have the words, or the concepts or, perhaps, the education, but they have got themselves noticed by the rest of us and we have to try and understand what they are saying through the garbled and confused messages we get.

The ‘Arab Spring’ in the Middle East was just waiting to happen… and needed a small trigger, the death of the vegetable salesman in Tunisia. Now we are seeing people’s uprisings in different forms in Egypt, Tunisia, Libya, Syria, Yemen and Bahrain, with attempted such uprisings in Iran, Burma, Thailand, China, and smaller events in Morocco, Algeria, Qatar and probably others that I have forgotten. Then there are other, different kinds of uprisings, or mass congregations of people who are less than pleased with how things are run in their country such as Greece, Spain, Israel, Wisconsin in America. These are the uprisings of the so-called Western democratic countries. If you look closely at all of these uprisings they are all distinct and slightly different, all moderated by their own particular political situation, culture, national personality etc. But they are all about people wanting to address things that they see as being wrong with their society.

Sure, it is hard to make comparisons between the desperate forced militarisation of Libya’s ‘rebels’, the quiet and organised political discussion camps of Madrid and Barcelona, the desperate uncontrolled riots of Greece, the unbelievable tyranny responses of governments in Syria, Bahrain and Teheran, the mass killing of ordinary people, but I think we would all agree that these events are attempts, sometimes desperate, to change things because people have “had enough”.

The things that have horrified me about our recent riots have been, of course, the wanton out of control destructiveness, but there have been other things that have affected me. The film of the young Malaysian student being ‘helped’ and robbed at the same time, made me feel physically sick, and like many people I imagine, made me ask “how on earth can people do things like this?” There are reasons why people sometimes get caught up in such events and do things that they would not normally do. I have written another piece looking at the effects of trauma on people, causing them to dissociate thereby enabling them not to really see what they are doing (see Thoughts on the UK Riots). But here I want to talk more about the context of these events.

As I continued listening to the reports there were things that struck me, that shocked me: An interview with two young boys who were speaking so fast and in a language, that though essentially English, I could hardly understand; discussions with people who live in the areas and who can say just how appalling young people’s lives are in these areas. I began to realise in a way I hadn’t before just how much I didn’t know about many people’s lives in this country. I began to get a feel for parents who, perhaps traumatised themselves, struggle to make ends meet, living in an area conducive to youth violence and anarchy, the omnipresence of drugs and alcohol as a way of managing for them and their children, and having children who are more and more uncontrollable… in a liberal climate that says if you ‘discipline’ your child, he or she may complain to the authorities, but at the same time harbouring parents who, for whatever reasons, can be and are sometimes violent with their children; living often in difficult circumstances and collectively dealing with helplessness, hopelessness and despair. Of course this isn’t everyone in these areas… indeed some of the perpetrators came from many other areas; I don’t know where the kids who trashed Ealing came from. But all of these kids receive their culture from us. All of us. Not one of us is not complicit in this.

I live in a beautiful flat on the top floor in Bristol, and every day during these difficult times I have felt the vulnerability of my situation (what if someone set fire to my car that I have just paid off? What if someone set fire to the ground floor flat? What if I, like many others, lost everything?). I have felt the unreality of comparing my situation with those who lost everything in these riots, as I do when I compare my life and situation with those poor, starving people in Somalia, and I feel it in comparison to the lives of many of those kids and their parents. I have felt outrage and a desire to discipline; I have found myself applauding when I saw a policeman on television whacking a kid with his baton. I signed the petition requesting the culprits be stripped of their benefits. I have felt despairing of our 21st century culture and society. I wanted to obliterate these people who disturbed my world, and many times I could feel in my body the desire not to know… not to want to understand, just wanting to exclude, punish, lock away. But… at the same time I also know that these are reactions, not responses.

We can only respond when we understand things in their context. These kids receive their culture from us. And in their own limited way I think they are saying “we have had enough”.

When the first demonstrations were taking place in Tahrir Square in Egypt I remember commenting to someone on the incredible peacefulness and organisation of the event. At one point the BBC published a map of Tahrir Square showing markers for where the food stalls were, the latrines, the pharmacy, the creche, the hospital… all temporary set-ups organised by the protesters to support their efforts. In my comments I said: “Of course one of the reasons these people can manage things this way is that being Muslims they don’t have alcohol. If we had such demonstrations in the UK it would be impossible because of the alcohol component.” At that moment I knew that if we had our own version it would be different, and it would probably have a much more violent element. And so I think that this recent youth terrorising is perhaps it.

Think about it: we live in a ‘democratic’ society, not in a dictatorship or tyranny. The things that we need to feel we have “had enough of” are not always clearly visible to all of us, and yet they affect all of us, sometimes in terrible ways. The people who live in some of these areas that have been devastated know very well what is wrong with our society from their perspective, but most of us get to live in our top floor flats with beautiful views and all conveniences. I heard on the news this morning that the next generation of university students will come out of university around £50,000 in debt. This is completely shocking, and immediately reinforces a culture of living beyond one’s means: things that I want I naturally go into debt for. And this is reflected of course in the global economic problems we all have… the world lives in debt. The world has generally lived in this way for the last 100 odd years, having the benefits we have had by the states and ourselves going into debt… and that is for those of us who are better off. In my view the youth actions of the last week, with their focus on acquiring goods with violence are the symptom of our societal and cultural ills that we ignore and bury at our peril.

Now, what if those who are educated and understand these issues harnessed youth energy to do a proper peaceful, and ongoing protest? What if that energy we saw to destroy became channeled into real constructive protest? Of course the kids couldn’t initiate that on their own, they probably don’t have the education and ability to see what they can do, but there are so many people as we have seen from the many interviews over the past week, who do know the problems, and who do understand and who do want change. What if these events actually do trigger some similar societal grassroots shift that says: we need a new politics; we need to re-assess what we mean by democracy and how we implement it; we need to take the time and space together to consider these things in light of what some of our youth are telling us.

We have seen from all these other countries that it just isn’t enough to go on a day’s march; the commitment has to be to stay… and stay… and stay… perhaps in shifts, but that level of commitment has to be there, for real change. And if this happens… we may be able to say that these events were the birth of our Arab Spring.

One of the important components of the uprisings in the Middle East was that a sufficient number of people got to the point of having “had enough”. Critical mass was reached. Our difficulty is that so many of us, like me, have a good enough life under the current regime, we have no incentive to change it. As long as this is the case we are far from reaching that critical mass tipping point that allows the release of sufficient energy, passion and desire to really make changes happen. But critical masses do sometimes arrive very suddenly… they aren’t gradual events. The build up is, but the tipping point isn’t. Our youth, or at least a section of it, may just galvanise us, along with the global economic situation as it affects us all over the next few years, and if so who knows, maybe we will have our ‘Arab Spring’.

Probably like many people, I seem to have experienced a whole range of emotions over the past few days: anger, outrage, fear, despondency, warmth (towards the #riotcleanup groups), more fear, fascination, interest, sadness, confusion and so on. This morning I went and walked on the downs in Bristol and felt overwhelmed by the simple fact that most of the time as a society we operate so well; we manage complex tasks such as driving confident that others for the most part will obey the rules and that we will all be safe, we shop in supermarkets with politeness recognising the necessity of paying for what we get, we have picnics on the downs with our children confident that for the most part others will respect our space and right to enjoy ourselves, we pay our bills and our taxes… yes of course from time to time we will try and diminish these as much as possible, but all in all we obey the conventions necessary for the smooth running of an extremely complex system… our society. When such things happen as we have experienced over the last few days perhaps it brings home to us at the same time the fragility of our society… and its robustness. Many more people came out on Tuesday morning to help with the cleanup operation than were doing the violence and looting the night before. We have no choice but to protect our society… and in time most of those who were involved in the violence and looting will realise this too.

There was a very interesting piece in the Times by Dr Malcolm Cross (Reader in Psychology at City University London) entitled Convenience Crimes in the Age of Enlightenment (page 9) in which he discussed ‘group action’ and how it gives confidence:

“Group action…connects you so strongly with one set of people that you stop thinking about how your actions affect others. The group gives you confidence in your actions.” (Cross, The Times, 2011)

This concurs so well with Hellinger’s ideas about conscience and belonging and the forces at play:

“We experience these effects quite clearly. When we follow the requirements of the group we feel, as Hellinger has put it, innocent, meaning safe and secure in our belonging.” (Broughton, 2010)

and:

“Our sense of belonging is a most primitive primary need and comes into being through the intimate process of bonding. As a baby and young child we would not survive outside of a family group; our belonging helps to guarantee our survival.” (ibid)

Bringing in Franz Ruppert’s notion of symbiotic trauma, this translates into a continual need to feel safe within a certain group-style… and in my view this will follow through whatever the group identity/focus.

I read in one news report that some of the arrested, when brought to court, were not kids, but older and with good jobs; one was a primary school worker of 31; another a chef in a restaurant. The report also said that some of the arrested seemed confused and bemused that they could have done these things, almost as if they had come out of some kind of strange dream. I also read about bystanders who got involved in the looting after the kids had broken into stores, and people encouraging the kids from upstairs windows. One recording was of some people watching and discussing whether to go and join in and take some things. Why would ordinary people who every day manage their lives with honesty and integrity feel drawn in like this?

Again, I think that Ruppert’s ideas about symbiotic and trans-generational trauma help us with this.

To track the process of symbiotic trauma:

• Someone in a family experiences a traumatic event, causing their psyche to split, rendering the trauma experience unconscious and essentially locked away, but vulnerable to re-stimulation.
• This person, let’s say a woman (but could equally well be a man), then has a child. Because her psyche is split and the trauma feelings of helplessnes, terror, extreme grief, are split off (but nevertheless easily re-activated) her ability to connect with her child is affected.
• This child, in order to survive¹, must connect physically and emotionally to another, and tries to connect with his mother.
• This attempt at connection between mother and child stimulates feelings in the mother that re-activate the unconscious trauma feelings… so that love comes combined and confused for example with terror, and in order to protect herself from these uncomfortable feelings the mother dissociates in whatever way she has developed in order to survive and not feel these terrifying feelings.
• The child then can only connect with confused feelings of love/terror, and with a somewhat dissociated mother.
• This disrupted connection is in itself a trauma for the child, because his very survival depends on the connection and so every instance of dissociated and turbulent connection is experienced as a threat to his survival.
• In order to manage this the child also splits, rendering all his terrifying feelings of existential threat to his unconscious and employing dissociative strategies himself.
• This sets the parameters for all later relational experiences: all relationships involve a mix of emotions, re-stimulating the original terror of existential threat and will involve dissociation as a means of managing.

Franz has said (verbal communication) that in order to be a perpetrator the person must be traumatised. Put another way, if I were not dissociated to some degree it would be absolutely impossible for me to hurt another… we can only hurt others if we do not fully see them, and we don’t see the other when we are dissociated.

I have been reading a book called On Killing: The Psychological Cost of Learning to Kill in War, by Lt Col Dave Grossman. According to him, over the millenia of war-making up to the present day, again and again references have been made in the relevant literature of human’s dislike and avoidance of killing other humans:

…throughout history, at the moment of truth when they could and should kill the enemy, [combatants] have found themselves to be unable to kill. (Grossman, 2009)

Grossman quotes many military texts from over the last century, most of them involved in trying to understand better how to make combatants more efficient at killing. The statistics he quote are fairly consistent over these studies and come at a average 15 to 20 percent hit ratio, regardless of how close the shots are fired, compared with the amount of artillery fired. He concludes (as have others writing in the field) that, like animals, in humans the incidence of killing of our own species is very low. Most of us cannot do it. In fact it seems so that combatants in war are more likely to allow themselves to be killed rather than kill another. Of course this is a major concern for the military and has engaged them over the centuries in understanding ways of overriding this. Drilling was one way… this idea being that if a soldier was sufficiently ‘drilled’ he would act in real combat as trained, but this had very limited success.

One way, and the way that it would seem the military currently favour, is to traumatise the combatants in training (reference Jonathan Shay’s book, Odysseus in America: Combat Trauma and the Trials of Homecoming, 2002). This ties in with Franz’s idea… ie, in order to kill/hurt another one must be dissociated to a degree by traumatisation.

So, to follow through on the central theme of this post, in order to succumb to group violence one joins with a collective dissociation… from one’s own inner sense of normal morality and reality, which then, when one comes back to oneself, causes one to feel shock and bemusement at what one has done.

I had a lovely walk on the Downs surrounded by people getting on with their ordinary lives.

This piece probably needs some work… but in essence its what it is.

¹ Limbic regulation, we now know, is crucial for the survival of the new-born infant. The mother’s physiological and psychological being in the beginning regulate the child’s, keeping him alive. The child’s ability to regulate his internal physiology is virtually nil at the beginning of life, and his system is literally regulated by his mother’s, and the state of his mothers physiology influences the efficiency of his. (A General Theory of Love, T. Lewis, F. Amini, R. Lannon, 2001)