VIOLENCE: THE Failure of Culture

James W. Prescott, Ph.D.

The failure of Women to become Nurturing Mothers is the failure of Culture. One cannot Nurture or Love if they have not been nurtured or loved. One cannot give to someone else what he or she does not possess. Nurturing and Love are learned behaviors not to be found in our genes. There are no genes for love or violence—they are learned behaviors. This learning process begins with MOTHER in the intimacy of breastfeeding bonding, which contains all the elements of nurturing and love—from the micro molecular biochemistry of breast milk to the macro chemistry of the sensory environment of touch, movement, taste, and smell of the body of MOTHER-- all that is crucial for the development of the bran gestalt called LOVE where the Whole is greater than the sum of its Parts.

GENDER EQUALITY OF HUMAN RIGHTS and REPRESENTATION 
AMENDMENT TO THE U.S. CONSTITUTION

E-Mail correspondence below calls for a different priority.

Rabbi Lerner—It is time to launch an “agonizing reappraisal” of the destructive role that religious institutions have had upon Humanity.

The continuing violence against women and her children throughout human history must be understood within a religious framework. Transforming Cultures of Violence into Cultures of Peace is not possible without a transformation of values and assumptions of gender inequality inherent in religious theology.

So God created man in his own image; in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. (Genesis 1:27-29).

Not having health insurance I sat in the waiting room of the local ‘tribal’ clinic waiting for my annual routine blood work to be drawn. Sitting across the room was a Native or Hispanic mother with her daughter, who is just becoming a woman. She watched the television and got up a few times to answer a question or help her mother with a form. I was struck by her natural beauty, her chiseled face, large doe-like brown eyes, her body mid-way transforming from a child to a woman.

The Role of the Paleocerebellum in Eliminating Violence in Mother-deprived Primates and Permitting Expression of Affectional Behaviors Not Possible Before Paleocerebellar Surgery.

James W. Prescott, Ph.D.

It is well recognized that Violence by Homo Sapiens throughout the World threatens species and planetary survival. Violence begins with the individual and must be understood before Cultures of Violence appear. The brain is the organ of behavior and how the brain is encoded for Peaceful or Violent Behaviors is the great challenge to Humanity.

A philanthropist asked: "With so many worthy nonprofit organizations and such need, what would you do? Where would you invest ten thousand or ten million dollars, and why?"

The answer, I maintain, depends on depth; treating symptoms or root causes. A person bleeding after an accident needs immediate attention. Stop the bleeding. Preventing the injury is more complex, more challenging. We need to do both.

Culture is the cause. Self-inflicted suffering and violence is the bleeding. Yes, self-inflected. In a recent interview the Dali Lama observed that we create most of our problems. Physicist David Bohm, protégé of Einstein, put it this way:

We are faced with a breakdown of general social order and human values that threatens stability throughout the world. Existing knowledge cannot meet this challenge. Something much deeper is needed, a completely new approach. I am suggesting that the very means by which we try to solve our problems is the problem. The source of our problems is within the structure of thought itself.

Collectively what Bohm calls thought expresses as Culture. Culture is our semantic-reality, the conditioned memories triggered by words, mental, emotional and physical images and our identification with these images. The culturally induced inner image we believe we are and the outer image we call culture emanate from the same root. Both are images. Both are, at close examination, the same. This insight is both obvious and profound. The difference between our personal image of self and the outer image we call culture is defined only by which end of the telescope we are viewing, near or far, inner or outer. The root of our personal and global conflict emanates from this image.

My intent (whim) has been to awaken parents from the spell and implicit trap created by our cultural identity. I would not have described it as such twenty years ago, but that is an up-to-date and accurate description.

By encouraging adults to become more aware of our self-generated trap we might free the children who come under our spell and with that, culture, or at least lessen the entrapment produced by the enchantment. After all; kids are not the problem. Child development is dependent on adult development.

This spell or enchantment is the normal and natural function of the relatively new neocortex, the 3rd brain using Paul D. MacLean’s triune brain model.

The Sorcerer’s Apprentice symbolizes our immature mastery of the image making power generated by this 3rd brain complex. The imagery produced by this center is so vast and so new biologically that we simply get caught, again and again, in the images we create, forgetting that we have created them. Not a good thing given the creative power these images represent, which is what the Sorcerer symbolizes.