Products of History. Until We Release

We can't deny, we are all products of our history. History determines what we are: Our individial history, the history of our direct family, our ancestors, the collective history of our socio-cultural environment, and the history of mankind itself. Mankind who derived from protozoae who clustered to form an organism with complex interrelations. It's in us, it is in our cells. Encrypted but with enormous power.

It's a huge task to become aware and to deal with that heritage in us.


We each day, each moment, are the writers of the history of tomorrow.

In this sense, make good use of this week-end.



Lyn

Do as The Romans Do - An Unfortunate Journey Back in Time.

As promised to the operators of a theme park, please find herewith my personal statement regarding lefthanders discrimination by offering a bow shooting event which is fun for RIGHThanded kids only. Others - means the left ones - certainly experience a heavy disappointment in this park while expecting a day of fun, and their parents having paid for it. It is an e-mail directly to the Archeon in Alphen an den Rijn, The Netherlands.

It was a gorgeous day for the whole family ... except what I am describing here. Anyone who has not personally experienced this kind of discrimination during all lifetime might take a short moment what stupid things can be loaded on children, just because they are being considered as 'not right' and thus, ignored. To be honest, they simply are left out.

Imagine yourself a child and what such would do to you.

Bow shooting for lefthanders at the Archeon - disappointing and discriminating

Dear Madam or Sir,

as a family of six we had visited the Archeon last Easter Sunday and we all really enjoyed the brunch, the setting, the fun and in principle the complete day. The only exception was the bow shooting, as here it seems a very rigid policy against lefthanders is applied. For one, the bows are not suitable for both right and lefthanders. As a result, lefthanded children are forced to shoot as if being righthanders. It is by now well known that retraining lefthanded children to act as if being righthanders is a relict of some past which should already have been abandoned and overcome due to better knowledge and understanding of the fact that there simply ARE two brain hemispheres of which none is the better but both have their special qualities. Despite this, lefthanded children over and over have to experience severe discrimination and exclusion simply because daily life tools and handling requirements force them to act as if being righthanders.

This exactly already happens with the fact that the bows you are using in the Archeon are made for righthanders only.

Second, the way the person at that bow shooting stand acted towards the lefthanded children as I could observe on that Easter Sunday, was simply unbearable. A mother with a smaller child who was in the queue before us and who asked for the child being allowed to shoot lefthanded, was rigidly sent away and the child was visibly sad and disappointed. I then tried again as also both of my children and myself are lefthanders. My son of 11 years really wished to shoot, but when he asked he was not allowed to shoot lefthanded and waited and watched very disappointedly how all others were shooting with the bow.

After I discussed with the man on the stand, he first let my son shoot lefthanded but put him severly under psychological pressure by his aggressive behaviour. Next, he told my son to try it righthanded, and with that he supported him in shooting. The man was very angry and aggressive, and then sent my son rigidly away with the words where would have been the difference now. I must state, and with me any lefthanders and lefthanded children's parents would, that this behaviour towards a child is more than unacceptable and left a very bad impression of a day that was supposed to become a nice and beautiful day.

I am kindly asking you to
a) take measures that bows which allow both lefthanded and righthanded shooting will be available and
b) that the person on duty on that stand that day should get some advice about how to act towards guests of the Archeon, and especially towards children.

I will use the freedom of information to also forward this letter to lefthanders associations as this topic concerns all lefthanded children who in their daily lives over and over have to suffer such negative treatment and difficulties which are completely unnecessary. The discrimination these children have to repeatedly experience is unbearable and that their good days are spoiled because of such kind of reasons, is not justifiable at all.

With my kindest regards.

The management has not considered it necessary to answer this e-mail as of June 2011 at all. Unfortunately. So I think this fact should also be open to the interested public. People can't hide by ignoring when they are addressed. At least, the shouldn't.

I can tell that many other companies do not much better.

So does Mattel not consider it necessary to even medium term re-print their playcards as the well-known 'Uno' (anyway a copy of a much older common ownership game known as 'Mau-Mau' for instance in Germany, to be played with simple playcards as long as I can think) with the symbols top left AND right which would make it possible also for lefthanded children to hold the cards in their hands as it is according their natural personal handedness.
Mattel PI answers respective requests simply with the argument that there would be no demand for such. As we as a lefthanders organization did address them with the subject, just by this fact there certainly is a demand.  

Not to realize this must be pure, righthanded logic. Getting input and at the same time denying it is a very characteristic reaction.

And intelligent lefthanded kids have to early adapt as righthanders. If you are interested and start dealing with this subject you easily find out that such asymetric production of goods already forces children to become shifted sinistrals, with all the rat-tail of disadvantages and sometimes severely overasking effort for the brain. Nowadays, it should for long not be allowed anymore to force lefthanders to be righties, and I think we all know that. Lefthanded kids are what they are born naturally, and as good and as bad as righthanders. It may not be that some species of people claim the world only for themselves and exclude the ones which are simply different from living their lives.There are so many more items which already kids have to deal with and are only made for righthanders that it is almost impossible to list them all. Just some that instantly come back into my mind: the camera of my daughter (as any camera), the remote control of the helicopter my son wished for his last birthday and what therefore was a severe disappointment, as helicopters are already tricky to fly - imagine now to manage that with the 'wrong' as non-dominant hand and brain hemisphere.

We can constantly can see that lefties are left, indeed. Left by the adults whom they have a right to trust in. 

To summarize it in brief, there is a proverb that says:

'Dummheit und Stolz wachsen auf einem Holz'. 

Roughly translatable as ''stupidity and arrogance are growing a same material' (the English synonym though is 'Ignorance is the mother of Impudence'. I think the first one puts the causality closer to reality - as two symptoms caused by one reason which is left open and not a mono-linear relation).

Honestly disappointed about such still existing discrimination in a world that calls itself civilized,

Lyn

Findings of the Day - Signs

Found on a parking place on Jeju Island, South Korea. That car obviously knew where to park well.

And I like this one very much, found on the doors of an elevator, same location. Reads like: When you lean against wall - what you should not do - you fall down and hurt your head - what you should not do - so raise  your right hand - what you should not do. So maybe it must be read from right to left ... no idea how to in that case interpret the chain of actions. Anyhow.

Have fun and a great day,
Lyn

And some things you wished they just would pass by

An interesting article, just found, The Arms Race Intrudes on Paradise.

By GLORIA STEINEM

Published: August 6, 2011

[...] Jeju isn’t called the most beautiful place on earth for nothing. Ancient volcanoes have become snow-covered peaks with pure mountain streams running down to volcanic beaches and reefs of soft coral. In between are green hills covered with wildflowers, mandarin orange groves, nutmeg forests, tea plantations and rare orchids growing wild; all existing at peace with farms, resorts and small cities. Unesco, the United Nation’s educational, scientific and cultural organization, has designated Jeju Island a world natural heritage site.[...]

 When I was invited in May to again visit Jeju, by friends in the Korean women’s movement, I could see why it attracts peace conferences, honeymooners, environmentalists, marine biologists, film crews, pilgrims and tourists. But I also visited the peace encampment, within sight of harassing police officers and waiting bulldozers. The mayor of Gangjeong, the leader of the resisters, said quietly that he and others would give their lives to stop construction. His 92-year-old mother walks down from the village to the shore every evening to make sure he is still alive.

Still, the South Korean president, Lee Myung-bak, a former head of a construction company who was known as “Mr. Bulldozer,” hasn’t yet had a change of heart about supporting the naval base. Indeed, he seems to have the same relationship to construction that President George W. Bush had to oil. But I fear South Korea is a tail being wagged by the Pentagon dog. In contrast, his predecessor, Mr. Roh, said before he died that he regretted only two things: sending South Korean troops to Iraq and permitting a naval base on Jeju Island.[...]

[...] my faith is in the villagers who say,

“Touch not one stone, not one flower.”

Well, mine too.
Peace.

 

Lyn


[Links:

• http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/07/opinion/sunday/Steinem-the-arms-race-intrudes-on-a-south-korean-paradise.html?_r=1&ref=global-home
• http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/19/world/asia/19base.html?pagewanted=all
•  http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/IOTD/view.php?id=35900 - NASA images created by Robert Simmon, using Landsat data provided by the United States Geological Survey. Caption by Michon Scott. Instrument: Landsat 7 - ETM+
• http://whc.unesco.org/en/list/1264]

Trespassing

It is often said and quoted that people who have experienced something (whatever), will in their own future life just repeat the same, only with changed roles. This is said to count for many abusers as the reason might be, even unknowingly, that they themselves hade been abused at a point. I have seen that many times in life. What we experience and learn in early childhood remains. In our brains, as action patterns.


Our world is a world where any being anyway is to a good part the product of its environment.

If this is the assumption then the consequence will be that anything and everything repeats. Until it is relieved, somehow. If not, patterns repeat being passed on from generation to generation, in single beings as well as collectively.

Have you ever thought about the other option which we have is to distance ourselves from the not so good things that happened in our lives, even when we were very little and we do not consciously remember? We often blindly repeat what is in our programming until maybe, at a point, after having repeated nonsense over long, long time, we might be able to reflect our own doing and get into distance to it.

Or we run around and have no proper program for ourselves at all in case we neglect this predestination early but nevertheless, we ourselves have to find an own way. The latter might be accompanied by stumbling over many pitfalls and into many traps in quite a harsh learning process.


And then ....
... we have the option to invent.
To create things as we vision them to be good.
When we do the principal job of sorting out - for ourselves.


If we had a childhood which was dominated by lack of love, food, whatever, and even if we have not become conscious about it, yet, but we always run for something, always try to find something we have no clue what it is - what hinders us to

1. allow ourselves from now on to be worthy of having what we lacked
2. allow others to be worthy of the same?

The difficulty mainly is that people who have experienced hard treatment, lack of material needs or lack of love, often fall back into becoming the then active part if another one is in need of such. They keep on playing a role game for all their lifetimes, and keep on looking for 'victims' as they once had been 'victims' themselves. To get into an illusion of now not being the victim, they need others to be such. They continue a bad game that has been played on them, not reflecting what that game had felt like for themselves at a point. They never get into that state of transforming and creating by themselves. They themselves such always remain victims, even if for them it now looks the other way around.


The opposite, and same desastrous, is stuffing too much of what we have lacked ourselves into others, into children, for instance, without regarding the present circumstances thoroughly. It actually must be taken into account that the measure makes the medicine. Also are we then not free from the results of the lack at all. We just do the opposite which is the same a kind of dependency and a kind of revolting behaviour, similar the behaviour of pubiciting kids when the abandon all that the parents say or do and can not differentiate the good and bad, the useful and the unusable at all. They are just against, and that is still ... dependency. This style has nothing to do with being free at all.

Sometimes though, it is necessary to oppose and rebell, indeed. That is when something does not want to let us go. Then we must with all our efforts pull away from it, or fence off. Clearly. Just later in the process, we may come to milder conclusions and actions. When something needs to be removed for complete clearance, it does not help and does no good to keep ourselves clinging to it.

We need to untie, completely, to reconstruct a new and free relation.


We may always pick out the patterns of good from literally every where, to create what is our vision of good. What is our vision of life. Because otherwise, anyway, it will never happen.

There is lots of good around. Well, maybe not so much, but there is. The difficulty is just to see and find it.

No taboos about what we might be allowed to think or question. 
We may question all, and we may think all and everything, too.


And then we can build new houses. Such that really fit. Such that are good for us and every one around us.
Little or big - they all then are just beautiful. The only thing these willl lack then, are skeletons in the closets.


Fine regards,
Lyn.

Far from Over

As for a very special day today - I am proud of my daughter's taste in music, and am seriously honoured by my son's taste regarding women.

Must have been something I did right, for sure, even being a lynx, myself (who can not do 'right', of course, but dig out what is 'left'):



'Feeling broken
Barely holding on
But there's just something so strong
Somewhere inside me
And I am down but I'll get up again
Don't count me out just yet

I've been brought down to my knees
And I've been pushed way past the point of breaking
But I can take it
I'll be back
Back on my feet
This is far from over
You haven't seen the last of me
You haven't seen the last of me

They can say that
I won't stay around
But I'm gonna stand my ground
You're not gonna stop me
You don't know me
You don't know who I am
Don't count me out so fast

I've been brought down to my knees
And I've been pushed way past the point of breaking
But I can take it
I'll be back
Back on my feet
This is far from over
You haven't seen the last of me

There will be no fade out
This is not the end
I'm down now
But I'll be standing tall again
Times are hard but
I was built tough
I'm gonna show you all what I'm made of

I've been brought down to my knees
And I've been pushed way past the point of breaking
But I can take it
I'll be back
Back on my feet
This is far from over
I am far from over
You haven't seen the last of me

No no
I'm not going nowhere
I'm staying right here
Oh no
You won't see me begging
I'm not taking my bow
Can't stop me
It's not the end
You haven't seen the last of me
Oh no
You haven't seen the last of me
You haven't seen the last of me.'

Thanking a very unique and certainly special lady and
like you,

and ... a little bit for my ICT guys who same stand tall for me. In their own ways. Just gotta under_stand.

Thank you, boys!


Lyn

Man As A Mirror

Not finished with flowing on the for me at this moment relevant issue Powerplay, the Other Way, I stumbled over two so much contradictionary as can be examples during further screening.

One is in fact a webpage I have forwarded to Police for further international investigation. Searching for the keywords 'Daddy's girl' I unknowingly entered a video site where one of the descriptions read 'daddy's girl not so innocent'. I will not describe more of this except that it is unbelievable what some men get as ideas and phantasies into their sick brains (and not so seldomly women with same sick brains act as helpers same enjoying the power and control they can act out on others as they have none over themselves) and what they realize violently towards representatives for their hate and anger, where ever it has beein deriving from; physically and psychically much weaker beings. Kids. Teens. Children who will most likely have no further chance for achieving ever a healthy identity as women or men, ever.


The other website is one I found after long time searching on the topic, constructive. There is not much really useful to be found on how it comes to the passive aggressive feature, and what it does as an outcome, especially to women. Many 'fathering' websites glorify the 'special daughter father relation' in a kind of boyish ego adoration game, not taking into account the necessary grow factors for every human being and that we as parents will not help our children at all if we cover up inappropriate dependencies.

Now, what Hugo Schwyzer writes:

'Fathers, like other men, are supposed to be at least somewhat aware that they are being manipulated. I’ve gathered already that if I say “Yes, she’s already got me right where she wants me”, I’ll get indulgent smiles and teasing warnings about what she’s going to be like as a teen. And if I say — as I have said in one way or another several times — “I adore my girl, but she’s not going to get away with murder on my watch”, folks tend to shake their heads in real or mock pity at my stubborn refusal to acknowledge my own obvious frailty in the face of my daughter’s feminine wiles. A great deal of homosocial cameraderie is built and sustained on the theme of genuine or feigned exasperation at the supposed male inability to resist the charms of “hot chicks and pleading little girls.” I’m not particularly offended on my own behalf. I don’t have much invested in proving to the world that I’m not easily manipulated. (And one exhausts oneself trying to prove a negative.) But for the sake of both my family and feminism, I’m not willing to dismiss the “wrapped around her finger” narrative as charmingly harmless. First of all, I’m viscerally disgusted by the ways in which father-daughter relationships get framed in contemporary Western middle-class culture as quasi-romantic in nature [...]

Indeed, countless women have noted that when they hit puberty, their fathers’ attitude towards them shifted radically. Faced with the reality that their daughters were sexual beings — complete with boobs — far too many fathers withdrew both their affection and their adulation. Little girls who have been set up to be “Daddy’s little princess” not infrequently find their fathers to be suddenly remote and/or hyper-critical. Many father-daughter relationships take years to recover, and the impact on young women’s lives — right at the moment that many of them begin to explore their own sexuality — is sometimes devastating. I’m also troubled by the message this version of the myth of male weakness sends to girls. It encourages the noxious idea that men are loveable but easily led, and that “pretending to be weak” or “dressing real cute” are better strategies for young women to use to get what they want than simple forthright candor. In a very real way, it teaches little girls that manipulation is preferable to directness, and that good looks and feminine wiles are the most valuable tools a woman can possess. Above all, there’s a sinister reality that undergirds this whole discourse: if men are easily manipulated, than they can never fully be trusted. If a Dad can’t say no to his daughter, he sends her a message (however subliminal) that men are fundamentally unreliable. Whether in families or in boardrooms or in bed, one basic rule of life is that you can never, ever trust anyone who doesn’t have the strength and the agency with which to tell you “No”.'

[From: “She’s got you wrapped around her finger”: fathers, daughters, and a variation on the myth of male weakness, Published by Hugo Schwyzer on August 25, 2009].

And - whoooosh - here you are with your passive aggressive little Poison Ivys.

I have to deal seriously with this issue at the very moment, as I need to reject being integrated in such a kind of game. I have done with all my means my very, very best to educate my now teen daughter to find her very own way to herself (not my self!), having support, warmth and a helping hand where needed, socialize in a multilaterally healthy way and apart from that deserve all love from a mother that she by being on this earth deserves but not getting entangled in a web of dependencies; and also not entangled into a dependency with me. We know that we will have to leave one day. It is irresponsible to not let children go their very own way, supportedly and with love.

When women learn to stand on their own two feet, when they are supported and encouraged becoming women and not just fakes of such, they at a point can openly meet a partner they choose for love - not for neediness. This is what I think we owe to our selves and to any respective partner.

Nevertheless, we are yet far away from such ideals and visions. If mankind needs to fall lower in evolutionary level a proven mean is to seriously get humans into existencial and psychological stress and unsolvable environmental conflicts: You can then watch formerly cultured and civilized humans fall into levels of animal and reptile behaviour like flies falling from the wall with a dose of pesticide. Add some more weird role models as our media spread, confuse them with as many contradictious messages as are available, and you get them getting nowhere.


As obviously one of the very few men who obviously have dealt intellectually, emotionally and in practice with this issue, may I refer to one more article of this author:

'And I’ve seen, a time or nine, an unhealthy triangulation occur with dads, moms, and their daughters. While the dangers of physical incest and abuse are real, there’s a kind of emotionally incestuous dynamic I’ve witnessed between fathers and daughters, one in which dads seek from their daughters the validation and affirmation that they feel they are entitled to, but are not receiving from their wives.
Little children adore their parents. Really, it’s a lovely thing to come home each day and be welcomed, as I invariably am, with gales of excited laughter and delight. (I’m the primary care giver for much of the weekend and most late afternoons and evenings; my wife handles the mornings, my mother-in-law and the nanny work splendidly in the gaps.) My daughter’s love is an impressive thing to feel, especially as she’s gotten better recently at wrapping herself around my neck and squeezing me tight. No matter what has transpired during the day, no matter what I’ve said or done (or failed to say or do), Heloise seems to adore me. It’s a wonderful thing, and I eat it up with wonder and gratitude and delight. I’m told that her devotion will only grow more intense; many little girls begin to bond more intensely with their fathers in their second and third years of life, presuming that a dad is around. One looks forward to this.
Of course, spouses aren’t the same as children. My wife loves me, a fact of which I blessedly have no doubt. But she most certainly doesn’t have me a on pedestal, doesn’t think I’m flawless, and doesn’t greet me with shrieks of joy everytime I walk into the house. Eira engages with me as a partner, and she challenges me and pushes me and asks me for things; I do the same for her. In a good marriage, iron sharpens iron, and the more friction in the sharpening process, the greater and more enduring the heat. Anyone who’s met my wife knows that she’s a tall, strong force of nature. (This is a woman who can dress down Israeli soldiers on patrol and make them blush apologetically. If you know the men and women of the IDF, you’ll know how astounding that is.) She loves me and she encourages me as I do her, but she doesn’t conceal her displeasure when she’s unhappy, and she doesn’t come rushing to me like something out of a Marabel Morgan book when I enter the house.
Here’s the thing: I’ve seen men play their daughters against their wives, mistakenly believing that the way in which their daughters see them (as heroic and perfect) is the way that their spouses ought to as well. If a man hasn’t done his “work”, he may find himself looking at his daughter, gazing up at him with adoration, and he may start (resentfully) to contrast his girl’s fierce and uncomplicated devotion with the somewhat less enthusiastic reception he may be getting from his overworked and exhausted wife. In most cases, this doesn’t mean the papa will turn to his daughter sexually, though it surely, tragically, maddeningly does happen more often than we like to think about. But he may find himself relying more and more on the affirmation he gets from his adoring baby girl.'

[From: Princesses, princes, daughters and dads: against emotional incest, Published by Hugo Schwyzer on October 22, 2009]

Hoping I have now not violated internet quotation rules (which is tricky these days - but what this man has to say with these quotes is so emminently of importance that I can't just put the pieces out of the context further). I will certainly myself go on reading through his stuff as it looks sound and interesting enough. Thanks that there are also some reasonable humans existing on this planet and not only totally detached ones, in argumentation and fence-building. My respect, Sir.

There is so much to be found if we just look a little further than our fence.

Lovely regards on a rainy day,
Lyn