From Atoms To Bits Culture, Collaboration and Global Sustainability

From Atoms To Bits Culture, Collaboration and Global Sustainability
David Leevers, BA, MIET, VERS Associates, Virtual Environments for Real Societies CDS, Clinic for Dissociative Studies, London Based on the presentation “From a Psycho History to a Sane Future”, International Psychohistorical Association, 27th Annual Convention, New York, 3rd June 2004 Draft /3/10 This web adaptation of the presentation has been continually amended in the light of comments. Slides now discuss how culture breakdown can lead to dissociation, how collaboration breakdown can lead to schizophrenia and how learning from these failures might help us work towards a Sustainable Global Network Society Underlined words are active Web links Most references and active links to references have yet to be added. Some slides still to be translated into intelligent layman language. For best appearance print one slide per page in PowerPoint, then set 4 pages per A4 sheet in the Print: Properties: window

Destruction of global heritage in general
Strapline To make useful predictions about the future we have to understand what went wrong in the past. This presentation started 5 years ago as an attempt to build an optimistic path towards global sustainability by drawing on the two unique strengths of humans: - the symbolic thinking that has created substantial cultures the ability to collaborate in large groups against the “other” However the current message is more pessimistic and the world may have gone backwards in the last 5 years. There is still hope. We know more and more about how to increase collaboration and about how to switch the other from other communities to a common enemy: Destruction of global heritage in general Global warming in particular

Index INTRODUCTION CHILDHOOD IN RECORDED HISTORY
SOCIAL EVOLUTION - THE LOSERS EVOLUTION TO HUMANITY FROM MAGIC AND RELIGION TO RATIONAL SECULAR SOCIETY FROM CLOSED TO OPEN SOCIETY AN OPEN BUT IMMATURE AND UNSTABLE SOCIETY? THE SUSTAINABLE OPEN SOCIETY GLOBAL SUSTAINABILTY: CONTRIBUTIONS FROM SOCIAL SIMULATION + IMMATERIALISATION CONCLUSIONS

INTRODUCTION

Introduction 1 In the beginning was a universe of physical materials. Then the information store of DNA emerged and organised this material. Only then could the word emerge: symbolic thinking and language allowed one species to collaborate as well as compete and thus adapt rapidly through generational transmission of behaviour rather than through genetic change of instincts. Adaptation was further accelerated with the transmission of behaviour from peer to peer via mass communication technologies. Social change has increasingly been triggered by new technologies; firstly the material technologies of boat, wheel and steam, later the information technologies of printing, broadcasting and Internet documents. Humans have now multiplied to over-fill the earth and the global warming consequences of material technologies are more than cancelling out any further benefits. Information technologies further exacerbate the problem because they speed the dissemination of material technologies and, through centralisation, can amplify an unsustainable and unethical polarisation between rich and poor. The collaboration technologies of the peer-to-peer two-way broadband multimedia internet might be able to offer a way out.

prolong the survival of humanity by decades or perhaps even centuries.
Introduction 2 Collaboration technologies are not restricted by distance, language or age group, and tend to subvert traditional cultural barriers. Collaboration technologies augment our social capabilities and offer sustainable “immaterial” alternatives to the western desires for ever larger homes and ever more travel. The collaboration technologies of instant global media can speed up the culture changes necessary to enjoy less travel and smaller homes because peer to peer culture can change faster than generational transmission from parent to child If sustainable cultures can be introduced fast enough it may be possible to prolong the survival of humanity by decades or perhaps even centuries.

Background A human life:
Years 0-4 Acquisition of the non-verbal cultural framework and the consensus reality of the attachment figures , usually immediate family - culture Years 4-8 Wider social interaction, learning how to - collaborate Years 8-80 Acting out the attachment and collaboration skills acquired earlier to learn about society as whole in adolescence and then to apply these skills in adulthood global sustainability A deeper understanding of this lifetime process can be reached by exploring the extremes: Infanticidal behaviour against the infant between 0 and 4 that can to dissociation Neglect of the child, primarily between 4 and 8, that can lead to schizophrenia in later adulthood. What happens in years 8-80 when people are supported by the new collaboration technologies of the internet and multimedia communication? It is hoped this approach can transcend the cultural and parochial differences that delay the inevitable next stage – sustainable lifestyles within a global perspective.

Summary 1: Technology A Short History of Technology
Before 1900: agricultural & material technologies empowered the body 20th century: information technologies empowered the mind 21st onwards: collaboration technologies empower society The material technology and information technology eras have taken the West - from tribal life: infanticidal, miserable and short: years, 7.5 years or 15% with some form of disability - to western liberal democracy: 80 years, only 6 or 7.5% with some form of disability. Homo sapiens emerged as the most successful hunter-gatherer of the homo genus because our enormous and highly connected neocortex and our integrated mind allowed a unique quality of collaboration and planning. This “prehensile neocortex” more than makes up for the weakness of our bodies. Unlike the material and information technologies, the new collaboration technologies of information and communication have the potential to fully realise our uniquely human moral and social capabilities – from homo sapiens sapiens to homo democraticus. Notes F f

Summary 2: Collaboration
This evolutionary and historical perspective on technology draws on the psychological understanding of culture and value change articulated in Chris Knight’s “Blood Relations” and Lloyd deMause’s “History of Childhood”. Chris Knight identified how culture first emerged and Lloyd deMause charts our progress from a primate-like “Infanticidal Mode” culture in tribal societies to the most humane “Helping Mode” that is now emerging in prosperous western countries. This slow but accelerating social progress is difficult to recognise because it can be hidden by the “Geography of Childhood” (the enormous differences in childrearing in different cultures) and obscured by the roughly 50 year (two generation) cycle between war and peace, economic progress and recession. The ever-increasing understanding of the process of culture transmission during childhood that has come from large scale longitudinal studies is now being captured in ever-improving social models. These models are needed to identify and avoid deleterious side-effects of the new collaboration technologies and ensure we take full advantage of their benefits. Because these technologies can encourage socially responsible lifestyles they can dramatically reduce energy and material consumption and offer a credible route to global sustainability, probably reached via a “global network society”.

A Mental Health Warning
The following material on the painful evolution of childhood and of humanity may be triggering. Don’t read on if you find it difficult to accept - that we cannot turn away from the sufferings of those in other cultures that we, the human species, has already killed about 10 billion infants, usually girls, often through neglect, and killed 25% of the men in tribal cultures through violence in tribal cultures that our chosen leaders can now wipe out the planet by killing a far smaller number that our nearest neighbour in evolution, the bonobo, is the most hetero- and homosexually active higher animal that our collaboration abilities - empathy, communication, imagination, ability to anticipate pain - imply that language barriers inhibit collaboration. These abilities are most fruitfully manifested in a fair and equitable society that a holistic/systems perspective backed up by social simulation and modelling can identify a path to global coexistence rather than global annihilation – but perhaps not how to get there?

The Super Ape A particular set of circumstances allowed prehumans to evolve extremely rapidly over the last 6 million years into modern homo sapiens. The raw material was remarkably unpromising: the chaos of chimpanzee teams compared with the elegant team hunting of dolphins, wolves and lions! The first step on the path to humanity was honing fruit eating biped groups into big game hunting teams. Language enabled the group to act as a team (one man one mastodon – bad; 20 men one mastodon - good) Tools were required to allow the team of 20 physically limited prehumans to act as if it was an endlessly reconfigurable transformer superman, red in tooth and claw. One sharpened flint was equivalent to 10 claws, one thrown missile equivalent to 10 bear’s fists, one well aimed spear equivalent to 10 well sharpened canine teeth and one cooked meal the equivalent of 10 hours endlessly chewing raw food.

The Human Revolution Perhaps we can work out how to evolve to the network society by learning how we got where we are now - the last few million years. Prehuman teams learnt more and more how to operate as a superorganism. (premature birth/neoteny, the heel, long legs loss of hair, cooking food, hidden menstruation, clothes, tools, etc.) As gains from operating as a team became greater than those from natural selection of “fit” individuals, genetic selection of instinctive behaviour became a drawback rather than an advantage and instinct parts of the human genome started to deteriorate, especially in a small group of prehumans in the rift valley. This gave new flexibility and may have allowed them to supersede similar hominims when the climate changed about 75,000 years ago. Then they proliferated to fill the planet - and the rest is history! To work towards global sustainability we need to understand: 1, Evolution of homo sapiens 2, Evolution of childhood 3, Evolution of technology 4, Simulation of future social evolution And finally: 5, How to match collaborative hunter-gatherer capabilities to a 10 billion humans – one planet challenge

The Collaborating Team
The slow running and the poor eyesight of the 20 man superman could only be enhanced by “cheating”: by hunting for up to a week, at night after the prey had fallen asleep, by hunting by the light of the moon, i.e. in the quarter before full moon when the evening sunlight needed for preparation is immediately followed by enough moonlight to hunt by. The tribe could only survive the other three quarters of the moon’s cycle if the prey was big enough and the cooked meat did not rot. The biggest game, the animals that had earlier lost their competitive edge because there were no bigger predators, were actually the easier target for the 20 man “superman” monster. Because big game evolve slowly they could not adapt as fast as “homo collaboraticus” expanded to reach their territory, and they were eaten. The giant wildebeest Megalotragus of the rift valley was the first to go, then the mastodons of Siberia, the giant kangaroos of Australia, the giant sloth of South America, etc.

The Lunar Cycle Meat could only last a month if it was cooked. As prehumans learnt to cook so the disgust instinct was co-opted to protect them from raw rotting meat. A side effect may have been to be repelled by menstrual blood. Apes menstrual cycle was already close to that of the moon. It did not take much selective pressure for women’s periods to synchronise with each other and with the moon. This synchronisation was then used to reinforce the several day collaboration of the male hunting team that was required to track and kill big game. If synchronised, the females could augment their old tool of rejecting the male when not fertile with the new tool of disgust to encourage men to go out hunting in the quarter before full moon AND bring the food back. With the spear the men could strike 20 times as effectively as a lion or bear. By withholding sex during menstruation the women could strike as effectively as the men could strike. Thus ensuring all the able bodied men joined the week long hunt. This lunar synchrony might have taken the last million years. No one factor was decisive but all the factors conspired to achieve exceptionally rapid protohuman evolution. In 6 million years, prehuman DNA changed by many times the change in bonobo and chimpanzee DNA. (to be checked).

“Detachment Theory” Given that the protohumans were already walking on two feet when they diverged from apes the problem of the narrow birth canal was already raising its ugly head, i.e. the big brainy head required for progress towards language made birth more difficult. One solution was for females to grow closer to the size of men, another was to grow even wider hips but this slowed them down and may have excluded them from the several day big game hunt. A more effective solution was neoteny - earlier childbirth. But such babies could only survive if people other then the mother were co-opted to care for them. Attachment by grabbing the mother’s fur had to be replaced by attachment by results. Detaching the baby from 100% physical contact required the collaborative power of language so that a gossip linked attachment group could support the neonate baby, firstly the grandmother then father and elder siblings and eventually anyone in the tribal group. “Premature” birth and the lunar timetable provided the opposite of contraception. Protohumans had babies almost twice as often as other hominids: 1, An opportunity for rapid evolution with brain power as the primary selection criterion, 2, BUT an opportunity for rapid population growth after moving to new territory.

Neoteny is for Life, not just for Christmas
It was neoteny that really released the human genie. No longer was the baby born with a ready-made set of instincts and capabilities. The capabilities it learnt from its inner circle of carers when the baby ape is still inside the womb included the unique culture of the tribe. Thus transmission of behaviour by learning from the previous generation is taking over from transmission of instinct by DNA. Large fractions of human DNA are becoming superfluous as demonstrated by the comparison of human DNA with that of other mammals. In the wide range of two legged hominins that occupied the rift valley area in the last 6 million years there would have been many alternatives to our big game hunting forbears. Some would have gone for smaller game and more frequent hunts and would not have been under such extreme evolutionary pressure. Others would have avoided the pressure by moving to more fruit laden rain forests. But when the 75,000 years ago climate disaster hit only those who had learned how a monthly hunting cycle survived. By then they had acquired most human capabilities: early birth, huge neocortex, hairless body, powerful language, cooking skills and complex rituals. And when the climate improved again it was they who expanded to fill - and now threaten - the planet.

CHILDHOOD IN RECORDED HISTORY

Childrearing Defines Society, Not Vice Versa
“The main problem is that the evolution of child rearing has so far been a slow, uneven historical process, depending greatly on increasing the support given innovative mothers and their hopeful daughters. Unfortunately, in a world where our destructive technology has far outrun our child-rearing progress, where a single submarine can now carry a sufficient number of nuclear warheads to destroy most of the world with the push of a button - we do not have the luxury of just waiting for child rearing to evolve. If we do, we will certainly blow ourselves up long before child abuse disappears enough to make us want to disarm. What we need now is some way for the more advanced psychoclasses to teach child rearing to the less evolved parents, a way to end child abuse and neglect quickly enough to avoid the global holocaust that is awaiting us.” Lloyd deMause (originator of Psychohistory) “The Emotional Life of Nations”, p 431, 2002 I suggest that Collaboration Technologies might offer a more neutral, less capitalist, less colonial, way for “the less evolved parents” to learn sustainable child rearing - the Helping Mode defined below. The emerging global network can disseminate such information much faster and less offensively than generational transmission from “the more evolved psychoclasses”. Can dissemination of a new network assisted culture be fast enough to prevent nuclear war holocaust, or global warming holocaust, and thus ensure long-term global sustainability?

The Death of Evolution and the Birth of History
Psychohistory is the study of the psychological motivations of events since the magic moment when Hagen takes over from Siegfried, when Lloyd DeMause takes over from Chris Knight. Psychohistory combines the insights of attachment theory and psychoanalysis with the research methodology of the social sciences to understand the emotional origins of the social and political behaviour of individuals, groups and nations, past and present. Psychohistorical understanding of history comes from areas that tend to be ignored by conventional historians - parenting practice and the level of child abuse. Equally, sociobiological understanding of prehuman history comes from areas ignored by conventional anthropologist such as menstruation and the moon. Psychotherapists in general now recognise that wars and other destructive social behaviours can be re-enactments of very early abuse and neglect. Memories and flashbacks to early fears concerning destructive parenting are often triggered by very reasonable fears concerning the potential actions of others. Particular successes have been in identifying the brutality of all but recent childrearing, the processes that led to the World War II, and the acting out of his childhood humiliations by President Bush. Alas psychohistory is not popular with politicians, religious leadersand any others who may well have acquired power and influence through such acting out.

Evolution of Childrearing Modes in Western Elites
Psychohistorians see the West as having evolved from the “Infanticidal Mode” child-rearing seen in other social animals (and in most tribal societies) to the “Helping Mode” of the privileged, prosperous and educated, but resource-intensive and fragile, nuclear families that now require the resources of 3 earths if current western technology is extended to all 7 billion occupants. The “Helping Mode” culture could spread rapidly to all children if the new collaboration technologies were used to introduce this culture to resource starved and fragmented families, providing a safe and nurturing environment for every child everywhere. This spread of the Helping Mode could be very fast because it takes full advantage of new Collaboration Technologies 2000 Lloyd deMause 1975

Evolution of Childrearing Modes in the West
Carer’s Wish - Historical Manifestations Infanticidal Early, late Hunt.gath. – Tribal (Dates are for West) Mother: "I wish you were dead, to relive my fear of being killed by my own mother." Early = random infanticide, Late = ritual abuse and child-sacrifice, intolerance of child's anger, no empathy, use ghosts and magic to control child, child as a sex toy, child sodomy, child sale Abandoning From 400AD, State Christianity Mother: "I must leave you, to escape the needs I project into you." Longer swaddling, fosterage, outside wetnursing, monastery, nunnery and apprenticeship, dehumanising the child Ambivalent From 1200, feudal Mother: "You are bad (because I have put erotic and aggressive projections into you)" Shorter swaddling, early beating, enemas, mourning possible, child as erotic object precursor to empathy, physical control Intrusive From 1700, Physical Science Mother: "You can have love when I have full control over you." End of swaddling & wetnursing, early toilet training, repression of child's sexuality, empathy now possible, rise of paediatrics, psychological control, the enlightenment and reductionism Socializing From 1870, Universal Education Mother and Father: "We will love you when you are reaching our goals." Use of guilt, "mental discipline", humiliation, rise of compulsory schooling, delegation of parental unconscious wishes , guilt control Helping Early From 1950, Margaret Mead, etc. Mother and Father: "We love you and will help you reach your goals." Children's rights, de-schooling and free schooling, child therapy, birth without violence, responsibility rather than control. Self-actualisation? Helping Late technology supported Major Caregivers: “We will help your development towards our shared goals and a stable and enjoyable life” Values and culture acquired via global media as well as local community. Tailored schooling. Technology supported “pre-therapy” for all supersedes therapy for the few.

Comments on the Childrearing Modes
These modes start when the men in prehuman hunter gatherer and trader groups start to apply the leadership concepts of small family groups to larger and larger human societies. The symmetry of the 100% attachment between ape baby and mother has already been broken but the mother and family are effectively treating the child as an object until child mortality drops to a level where a multigenerational perspective brings payback, then the child starts being treated more and more as a human, a future adult, and less and less as a comforter, an addiction. It is extremely difficult and of doubtful value to attempt to map these six modes on to non-western cultures. Other cultures have been so interfered with by the earlier western prototype – and there is so much that can be learnt by avoiding the problems of the prototype! A three stage evolution might prove more universal: Beginning: Abandoning - it is not safe to care about infants , and few will survive Middle: Intrusive – the parents are recognising the child as an investment End: Helping – the child and parent are becoming equal members of wider society

SOCIAL EVOLUTION - THE LOSERS

Tribal Life and Death The early anthropologists fantasy of the noble savage has been eroded by ever improving observation of hunter-gatherer and tribal life. An understanding of generational transmission in early cultures is making sense of the increasing evidence of the painful history of tribal childhood, adult violence and ruthless trade. We are no longer taken in by the public face of tribes who are as intelligent and proud as ourselves. The homicide rate of the “peaceful” Kalahari bushmen is higher than in any US inner city, Samoan teenagers demonstrated fantasy storytelling skills when talking to Margaret Mead, and the sea of happy young smiles in a tribal village may show that both unhappiness and old age quickly lead to death when modern medicine is not available. Neglect and isolation can leave children stuck in Abandoning, Ambivalent or even Infanticidal Childhood Modes and, given the psychological holding power of tribal communities, isolation is likely to lead to the implicit suicide of a death due to violence or starvation than to a conventional schizophrenic breakdown.

Ignorance and War In social animals such as humans violence is likely to occur when the trading of goods or emotions fails due to lack of information about the material or psychological capabilities of the other. No wonder the peacock has the gentleness of a thousand eyes. But when the animal is human and the other is a nation the violence is war. A primary benefit of the rapidly expanding neocortex of pre-humans appears to have been an increasing ability to engage in complex trades: no longer an eye for an eye but a tooth for an eye, a flint for a meal, a marriage for a dowry. Animals rarely fight to the death because their fighting capabilities have evolved to be totally visible: the size of the peacock’s virtual antlers, the dexterity of the courtship dance and the symmetry of the body. With language and technology our power to deceive and damage grew so much faster than the visibility of our intentions and our weapons.

Information and Peace It was not until material and information technologies were superseded by the new collaboration technologies that we could hope to achieve comparable visibility of our intentions and military strengths. We are already trusting larger and larger numbers of other people: clans, then tribes, then nations, and now power blocks. Absolute numbers of deaths from violence grow, but percentages have dropped dramatically. New studies in the 1990’s indicated that the almost universal 25% male death rate from violence in tribal societies dropped to 3% in Germany across the whole of the 20th century and to more like 1% in other Western countries. A violent death in 25% of men is equivalent to one violent death every 180 man-years. Although a rare event it is still enough to ensure a lifetime of fear. This dramatic reduction in violent death rates is consistent with the fact that collaboration technologies, unlike earlier material and information technologies, encourage greater understanding of the relative capabilities and absolute intentions of those around us. We are now approaching global visibility of capabilities and intentions.

A Contemporary Window on Tribal Extremes
Everyone is different. Not every family has been able to progress through the 7 modes of childhood in the last few hundred years. Very small numbers of western families remain stuck in the Infanticidal Mode. In a modern society this mode can take the form of ritual abuse – witchcraft and the secret sadistic cult fetishes of blood and body fluids. The effects of abuse starting at birth, before the brain has fully integrated, include trauma and dissociation. It may be easier for therapists than anthropologists to understand these effects because, in general, they spend many more years with their subjects. Universal schooling has been an important part of progress to the more advanced childrearing modes, particularly the move to the Socialising Mode with universal schooling in the West from the late 1800’s onwards. The cloak of family secrecy is hard to maintain when children go to school and so the number of Infanticidal Mode ritual abuse families steadily decreases. More recently mobile telephones and the Internet are lifting further veils of secrecy from what goes on in abusive families. However many of the 3 billion people living on less than $2 per day are trapped in the Infanticidal or Abandoning Modes. Such a childhood can lead to dissociation (psychic separation of mind and body) and, in extreme cases, DID, Dissociative Identity Disorder (previously known as Multiple Personality Disorder).

DID: Infanticidal Mode Is Still Relevant
DID reduces and contains the experience of pain when both love and torture are experienced from the same attachment figures, usually parents, grandparents and elder siblings. DID is most easily acquired before the modules of the unfinished infant brain integrate into a single personality. The infant can survive pain if it can be confined to just one personality. A mother who is 10 times less abusive than the father can be equally as damaging because she is with the infant 10 times as much. As childrearing improves the alters become weaker. But at times of war and fear of death the anger and fear encapsulated in Lloyd deMause’s “Killer Goddess Alter” and “Killer Mommy Alter” can overwhelm rational decision making, particularly in war leaders. Understanding the extreme of dissociation can help define the scope and limits of the human mind and its pathologies in individuals, in groups and in society as a whole. Such an understanding is essential if models of mind and society are to be accurate enough to ensure that society is not destroyed by the accidental side-effects of accelerating culture changes (e.g. ADHD a result of babies and infants watching too much hyperactive TV)

Ritual Abuse Research in the UK, 1
: A study of court evidence was used by government to claim that “Satanic Abuse” did not exist in the UK. This was achieved by defining “Satanic Abuse” to be unsubstantiated abuse, “Ritual Abuse” to be abuse proven in court. This denial of Satanic abuse was helped by the fact that ritual material is removed from court evidence to avoid traumatising juries. 1994: In response to protests from professionals, the UK Department of Health, DoH, funded a one year study of 51 survivors of ritual abuse – no government response. Only bullet points from the study can be published. No survivors had recovered memories No survivors belonged to evangelical churches No survivors suffered from Munchausen Syndrome A major problem in this study was that the survivors traumatised professionals when they described their expreiences– e.g. a Christian therapist hearing a victim say “We are honest because we use real blood and real bodies, not bread and wine, the fake flesh and blood of the Christian mass”

Ritual Abuse Research in the UK, 2
14 of the 51 cases in the 1993 study were deemed suitable for police investigation. However the only case brought to court did not include satanist ritual elements. This raises the following issues: Police have no training in dissociation and abuse. Those who successfully investigate are ridiculed and sidelined, not promoted Although the survivors experiences were consistent and credible they were often expressed in childlike terms by DID child alters and thus would not have convinced a jury who did not understand DID Sadistic paedophiles add ritual elements to confuse the children and so to protect themselves from prosecution – humans have evolved to love The police see their role as making middle class citizens feel safe in the here and now, not reducing the very traumas of deprived children that lead to crime, often directed at the middle classes, in subsequent adulthood The Justice System assumes crime is rational, not social: a lone rational neocortex, not an amygdala of emotional drives embedded in a social network

Clinic for Dissociative Studies, CDS DID Therapy, 1998 onwards
CDS was set up to honour therapy commitments made to victims contributing to the Department of Health study, and to support new referrals. Few other clinics were prepared to take the victims when the study ended because they traumatised therapists. Over 400 ritual abuse survivors have been assessed. Long term therapy has been provided for 40 of these over the last 15 years. Like all belief systems, family cults are multi-generational expressions of attachment processes. Most victims come to the clinic for help in early adulthood after they have left the parental home. Such victims have improved and recovered after several years therapy. Those who were unable to escape the cults found it harder. Men with DID usually end up in prison rather than in therapy, allowing them to pass their anger and values on to other less damaged prisoners. Current understanding is sensitively conveyed in the 2004 BBC drama “May 33rd” by Guy Hibbert

Evidence of Abuse is Leaking Out
Obviously cult children are afraid to talk. Some clients who disclosed abuse received punishment rapes, and far worse, after talking. Some have been tricked into believing they have participated in murder. In many cases they subsequently withdraw evidence out of fear of and attachment to parents, or because an alter loyal to the cult comes out. Perpetrators control victims via their mobiles, but mobiles can now be tracked. Cult members use the web and evidence does leak out into public areas. Direct records of sadomasochistic rituals in BDSM clubs and paedophile activities are now appearing on the internet. Only if one assumes no BDSM club member is a paedophile and no paedophile enjoys torturing can one believe that ritual abuse of children does not exist! Many people have a need to record what excites them, and this need has helped to convict many paedophiles. However a start to finish record of a specifically satanic ritual, including abortion, infanticide or murder does not appear to have become public yet. Because military torturers have better brainwashing technology and are more socially acceptable they may well be recorded first! Three cheers for Abu Ghraib.

Dynamics of DID Many of the late abortions and early infanticides carried out in cult ceremonies appear to be genuine - the need for moon/menstruation rituals, the purifying power of innocent blood. 97% of those with DID can remember a history of childhood trauma and abuse. The level of DID in prostitutes is about 100 times higher than in the general population indicating the extent to which child abuse underlies prostitution. Parenting that prevent the early childrearing modes that lead to the need for prostitutes in later life may be enough to prevent the abusive side of prostitution. A child alter in an anorexic woman’s body can be as good as the real thing to less discriminating paedophile customers. But creating a dissociative sex and torture slave can be a risky investment because one of the alters may become suicidal. Abusers implant loyal alters that come out if the victim attempts suicide. If the victim starts to talk or becomes old and muddled the cult can remove the protective alters - with expected consequences Some anthropologists try to prevent the modern world changing tribal cultures based on DID behaviours such as speaking in voices and bloody and torturous initiation ceremonies.

Hippocampus shrinks with the Stress and Abuse that lead to Dissociative Disorders
Ehling, Nijenhuis & Krikke, 2002 Hippocampus at the centre of the brain handles memory processes. NB London taxi drivers have large hippocampuses, conversely, abused children try to suppress memories!

Hippocampus Expands during Recovery
Hippocampus volume decreases by 25% with DID increases after recovery from DID: Left side +9%, Right Side + 18% Parahippocampus volume decreases by 19-20% with DID increases after recovery from DID: 6% Ehling, Nijenhuis & Krikke, 2002 An increasing number of brain differences between DID and average brains, not all of which can be expected to return to normal after therapy. New memory tests that use word lists measure interference between the memories of different alters and cannot be faked. They show complete separation of narrative memory, but only in patients with full DID. Professor John Morton, UCL, unpublished, 2004

Ritual Abuse and Attachment Theory
Child Carer The baby and infant 0-4 years need consistent, caring and supportive one-way attachment relationships to a small number of people. If the carer appears to or actually has several contradictory personalities or then the baby’s brain adopts this culture by splitting into two or more personalities, (just as a baby’s brain develops to reflect the deep religious and moral aspects of any culture). Part of the reward for this splitting is being able to confine pain to seldom used personalities.

Psychosis and “Collaboration Theory”
Child person The older child, from 4 to about 8, needs to internalise the nature of wider society by interacting with the family and friends - sharing, obligations fairness, games, body language.

Schizophrenia: Abandoning and Ambivalent Modes Still Relevant
Families with abandoning and ambivalent modes as demonstrated in their collaboration style can, in a modern society, turn the child towards a path to eventual breakdown and schizophrenia. Three dysfunctional family cultures in which this process is stultified, UCLA project, Goldstein 1987: EE, Expressed Emotion: if EE is high in parents then the probability of an already troubled child becoming broad spectrum Schizophrenic rises from 6% to 73% AS, Affective Style: if AS ios negative, i.e. criticism, intrusiveness and guilt induction then the above probability rises from 4% to 56% Extreme Negative Affective Style can lead to “Infanticidal Attachment” CD, Communication Deviance: a shared failure to communicate in the child's family. If high then above probability rises from 9% to 50%

DID or Schizophrenia? The preschizophrenic child is brought up in an incomplete culture of distorted and inadequate communication. As with the DID child there are substantial and measurable brain changes. Survival is such a family culture comes from not thinking too much. DID: Hippocampus shrinks because communication between different parts of the brain is painful and is avoided Schizophrenia: thinning sensory cortex and overall shrinkage, perhaps through lack of use because the model of society acquired from family is out of step with the outside world of the teenager and adult. Higher level thinking is painful and is avoided. Thus the last area to develop, the Dorsolateral Prefrontal Cortex that handles executive functions, is small.

The Preschizophrenic Quiet Years in the high Expressed Emotion, the negative Affective Style and the Communication Deviance family Between 4 and 8 the child in such a family handles the conflict between society and family by cutting off. A cascade of knock-on effects, loss of friends, loss of social abilities, retreat into self, fantasy world diverges more and more from reality. The child is failing to learn how to negotiate the even greater changes that will occur when they leave school. Strong correlation between this type of child and subsequent schizophrenia. Increasingly cut off from the outside, the child fills the sensory vacuum by continuing the infants world of imagination. Children who were sexually or physically abused suffer verbal hallucinations based on the words and voice of the abuser. Social delusions are more likely in those from dysfunctional families. How to identify schizophrenic risk? “That which does not kill us makes us stronger”.

Psychohistory: From Attachment Theory to “Collaboration Theory”
Attachment theory emerged from studying the relationships with the immediate carers of the very young. It gave rise to specific hypotheses that could be tested in the “strange situations” experiments. For this reason it was accepted. It has not helped in understanding the far more complex two-way give and take that lies at the heart of mature multiway human relationships. Our primary survival strategy as an ape that is far weaker and more vulnerable than any other is the ability to collaborate rather than compete within our own species. The competitive advantage of a species with a brain that can handle theory of mind and symbolic communication compensates for its excessive size and energy consumption (2% of body weight 20% of energy consumption) The dynamics of collaboration in groups are extremely complex and have not been substantially explored in psychology and psychiatry. Only when the nature of communication was profoundly changed by multimedia technologies was its nature recognised and explored. Ethnographers working with engineers in this field were not held back by psychiatrists’ rejection of family influences. It was Del Ray, a MIT Media Lab professor, not a psychiatrist, who was the first to document every moment of the first three years of a child's life.

“Collaboration Theory” Future Experimental Evaluation
There is still virtually no record and analysis of long term collaborative communications in small groups. The most complete data covers the text chat records of internet discussions but these conversations are emotionally impoverished compared with multisensory real life communication in families with children. New technologies such as Alex Pentland’s “Sociometer” are at last capturing the nature of unconscious communication and predicting how people will behave in different complex social situations Longtitudinal studies are already showing that Expressed Emotion, Affective Style and Communication Deviance in childhood show that these are the dominant factors in determining later schizophrenia and other psychoses. Early nonritual physical and sexual abuse is also significant. Early ritual abuse produces high functioning DID individuals who are strong enough to avoid schizophrenic in spite of the dysfunctional communication in their families. Genetic propensities appear to be a minor contributor and, estimating from recent family studies (excluding early faulty twins studies), would indicate that at least 20 genes are involved, none of which are decisive.

“Collaboration Theory” Escalation into Psychosis
These results would also show that so called psychosis is not “loss of touch with reality” but emergence of a “personal reality”, a belief system that starts off from the family’s dysfunctional reality and then, because it is rejected by peers and mentors, isolates the individual. With lack of social stimulation the sensory input and executive function parts of the cortex start to atrophy. The increasing loss of complex and challenging sensory input from social interactions can cause an escalating landslide into isolation. The hungry brain searches for stimulation and grasps what were originally minor links from the motor to the sensory parts of the brain (normally used for dreaming and rehearsal processes). As these links replace the links to sensory inputs they become confused with external reality. The victim becomes well aware that it is inappropriate to talk about “reality” (they often assume everyone has such hallucinations but do not talk about them). Finally there is a life event trauma that is so out of step with their reality that they have to talk. Others realise they are odd, there is breakdown and then sectioning. If their brain is scanned it is far too late in the atrophying process so Tim Crow and others carelessly assume the brain shrinkage is genetic not environmental.

Test Case: Afro-Caribbean Schizophrenia
Afrocarribeans in UK are about 10 times more likely to suffer from Schizophrenia than average. In the Carribean they are only 2.5 times more vulnerable. This is consistent with the higher level of schizophrenia in other impoverished groups. Many desperate and devious attempts have been made to explain this away within the genetic paradigm. Ignoring the issue was the most widespread. For instance only one out of 500 studies of schizophrenia looked at the contribution from economic class. A “Collaboration theory” model explanation could be: 1, The culture of their attachment figures is Christian and western (unlike that of Arab and Asian immigrants) 2, Thus only when at school, from about 5 onwards, do they meet racial prejudice in their immediate collaborating social network 3, They make the mistake of interpreting prejudice as Negative Affective Style and Communication Deviance in their peer group and shut down to avoid perpetual subtle low level humiliation 4, The landslide into isolation starts

Preschizophrenia Sexual and Physical Abuse
60% of boys diagnosed as schizophrenic before the age of 18 have been sexually abused 80-85% of schizophrenic patients have suffered childhood abuse compared with: 26% for panic disorder, 30% for anxiety disorder 42% for depressive disorder, Friedman 2002 Identical Twins The primeval myth of the 50% cross correlation between identical twins reared apart.Used to justify the genetic thinking that peaked 20 years ago This cross correlation drops to 22% in good modern studies - easily explained by shared family culture, Joseph 2004

EVOLUTION TO HUMANITY

Mental Liberation through atrophy of superfluous instincts
Evolution is a mathematical theorem under conditions which apply to living things 1, Replication – each generation is a copy of the previous generation 2, Variation – the new generation differs slightly from the previous one 3, Survival – more of some types of variation survive than others Humans are the only species on earth in which variation in the genes has been augmented by substantial variation in culture. Symbolic thinking and language are the tools that enable one generation to convey variation in lifestyle or culture to the next. DNA based transmission of body and behaviour has been augmented by generational transmission of culture. Mental Liberation through atrophy of superfluous instincts

Traditional Intelligence
Grammatical speech greatly reduced our need for the enormous photographic memory found in closely related apes. This freed up a large fraction of the cortex at a time when it was growing for other reasons. At the same time prehumans were becoming increasingly specialised - the right brain continuing the parallel sensory and motor activities while the left side developed identity and consciousness and the new skill of language. The recent technology of writing has taken us to yet another level of abstraction by taking over parts of the brain that were previously used to the vast network of pathways in a traditional hunter gatherer territory. It is wrong to underestimate traditional tribal skills but it is wrong to overestimate their effectiveness. Modern humans can be in awe at the level of skill in traditional areas: medicinal herbs for healing, horses for transport, even darkness to support the television of the mind in the imagery evoked by storytellers. These skills are not belittled when new technologies carry out the same tasks in different more efficient ways. The car and plane are more sustainable than the horse (for equal distances travelled). Modern medicines are more effective for physical ailments and modern psychotherapy for psychological ones. However there can always be cracks in the modern concrete, for instance the arbitrary division between physical and mental illness that has trampled over the traditional healer’s integration of the two.

Neoteny and the Integrated Mind
Problem solving in advanced social animals is very context dependent. Without the integrating and abstracting power of a large prefrontal neocortex and symbolic language they find it difficult to transfer experience from one type of situation to another. The flexible integrated mind of humans appears to have started emerging about 2 million years ago. Its evolution appears to have been rapid because it required little more, genetically, than a progressive neoteny in which our adult ancestors became more like infant apes: mental flexibility, playful, fragile bodies. The neoteny process also included being born when the human brain is exceptionally undeveloped (yet is still so large that the narrow hips required for upright walking cause more mothers and babies to die in childbirth than in other apes). At the development stage when the structure of the ape brain is being defined by the secure and boring womb, the human brain is already being influenced by the social and cultural activities of the immediate family

Lamarkian Evolution of Culture?
A brain tuned to social interaction rather than immediate problem solving may have to be far more integrated than that of our nearest relatives, the apes. Advanced consciousness may well be a side effect of this integration. It is of course unexplainable because we cannot step outside it to observe it. All we can do is be aware of our own consciousness and , perhaps, that of others? If the mother is alternately loving and sadistic, e.g. suffering from Dissociative Identity Disorder, integration and empathy are hindered and the child reverts to the hypervigilant and dissociative behaviour of prey species such as antelope. Brain scans have shown that they are dissociative - one part of the brain sleeps while another watches for predators. In the case of infanticidal humans the predator is the parent - but they are usually consuming the child's feelings, not the child’s flesh. Occasionally a parent captures a glimpse of a slightly better life, and this aspiration can be passed on as a new element in the culture of their children. Thus generation by generation advance through the childrearing modes may be a form of Lamarckian evolution – the child acquires the aspirations of the parent

The Prehensile Neocortex Prehensile – ability to grasp any thing (or any concept)
Recent prehuman evolution has prolonged childhood characteristics into adulthood. As we have become physically weaker our increasingly childlike adult selves need the protection of increasingly large social groups (one man v one lion - bad, 100 men v one lion - good). In addition to the above neoteny there was evolutionary pressure to enlarge the neocortex to handle the social complexity of large groups. This rapid evolution has left a few loose ends: Back pain – result of insufficient skeletal evolution since standing on hind legs Trauma from physical pain – side-effects of the expanded neocortex include advanced consciousness and the integrated mind that brings with it the ever-present memory of past pain. Existential pain – the cries and prayers of those infant mammals that do survive to adulthood were answered by their very much larger parents. A side effect of retaining a neotenous childlike brain may be the religious instinct - adults still need the support of a relatively large and powerful parent , God the parent, 2, God the tribal ancestor, , God the humanity ancestor, 4, God the universe ancestor

The Psychohistory/Attachment Perspective on Childhood Abuse
In a 1994 study it was found that every member of a sample of 164 learning disabled patients that required psychotherapy at a London clinic had early trauma… – but their behaviour was seen as part of their learning disability. The earliest trauma comes from realising that society wishes they were dead. Child patients acted out earlier sexual abuse as inappropriate sexual behaviour; more socially aware adults acted it out in violence. None of them had an illness as such, just their response to earlier experiences. Valerie Sinason, unpublished PhD thesis, 2004. Non-disabled children are not so carefully monitored. There are increasing indications that a substantial fraction of mental illness is a result of childhood events that were not seen as abusive at the time (and may only have a deleterious effect on the most vulnerable children). Large scale longitudinal studies are giving results but take about 20 years. Reviewing the extensive home videos of the childhoods that started to be recorded about 20 years ago may give quicker results What might be possible if there was a digital record of all childhoods? Perhaps all unintentional childhood traumas could be diagnosed or even avoided?

Increasing Visibility, Reducing Abuse
The “peaceful” Kalahari bushmen have a higher homicide rate than Western inner cities. They appear peaceful because they only know about murders in their own small group. They cannot avoid pain and suffering, and so learn to dissociate from it. The more advanced child-rearing modes inhibit such dissociation. Without dissociation people cannot stand much physical pain and so try to reduce the suffering of others Improving media and mass communications give an impression that abuse and murder are rising. Fortunately this leads to social responses that do in fact reduce the level of violence. This “virtuous circle” or “runaway morality” drives advance through the childrearing modes Unfortunately “geographic or physical dissociation”, everything from gated communities to refusal to visit the starving villages and Dickensian sweat shops of the third world, undermines attempts to make globalisation tfair and humane. Only when some progress has been made can society face how bad things were in the past, for instance: 1970s - UK government stated there were ony 300 cases of incest in UK s – Acceptance that there are about 10 million survivors of incest in UK 1990s – “There is no Satanic abuse in UK” – UK Health Minister s – about 2000 survivors of Satanist abuse have contacted professionals in UK.

The Golden Age? Longing for a misremembered childhood
If only the 6 ft high adult could be cared for by a 12 foot god in the same way that the 3 ft child was cared for by a 6 ft parent

The Unconscious Mind - The Moral Instinct
“Blind Sight”, there can be unconscious visual awareness if the visual cortex is damaged. Visual information is routed through the early brain, bypassing the conscious mind. “Blind Morality” (Moral Instinct) uses early unconscious reciprocal altruism brain structures that evolved as a form of fitness for a very social species that has a big brain but a fragile body. Excessive respect for the logical conscious mind by leaders of society may explain a reluctance to accept the emotional roots of “Blind Morality”. Hence the many academic muddles over the concept of freewill, the conflict between the existence of evil and an all powerful, all good God, and the inevitable but forbidden question “Who created God”. The Global Sustainability Conundrum: How can a global society based on new and rapidly changing technology trust a moral instinct that evolved for survival in small hunter-gatherer groups?

The 6th Sense: Brain as a Prediction Machine
Perhaps we do not show enough respect for our 6th sense - the unconscious social and moral instincts that evolved for survival as a very social animal. Perhaps clairvoyants and healers have given the 6th sense a bad name amongst the rationalists and reductionists? Clairvoyants and healers have often had an abusive childhood. The resulting hyperawareness and dissociation effectively strengthens the ability to unconsciously sense other peoples feelings and drives. In most people this sense has been overwhelmed by the single track logic and language of the integrated conscious rational mind. For half a billion years neural networks have helped animals to survive by learning past patterns and recognising them when repeated – Pavlov, etc. These networks evolved into brains under three levels of evolutionary pressure: 1, Recognising repeating patterns in the “Environment of Evolutionary Adaptation” 2, Predator-prey feedback, each species learning the behaviour patterns of the other 3, Within-species feedback between competing neighbouring groups in social animals. This is faster than predator-prey feedback because the more successful genes can spread to all groups of the same species. Related to sexual selection and culminates in the Machiavellian or social brain.

The Social Brain and the Outcast
The average size of a social group in a species of ape is roughly proportional to the neocortex/brain volume ratio (Robin Dunbar). Extrapolation shows the maximum trust group for humans is about 150, up from about 50 for chimpanzees. This matches the size of tribes and the maximum size of small organisations. Above this size trust weakens and rules are required. Trust is primarily built in apes by grooming, in humans by gossip. In a tribal group the same 150 person social group is shared by every member. Side-effect: it is safe to classify outsiders as sub-human and dispensable. Technology increases the openness of society (wheel, then paper, then printing, railways, the telephone, then airplanes, now Internet) and thus increases the uniqueness of each person’s 150 person social group. Tyranny becomes impossible, everyone is connected to everyone else and my enemy might be my friend’s friend (6 degrees of separation). The telephone, perhaps the most powerful collaboration technology ever invented, encourages democratic values and appears to discourage war. There has never been a war between two countries each with more than 1 telephone per 20 people. (Only 1 telephone per 30 people in Iraq - they nearly made it!)

FROM MAGIC AND RELIGION TO RATIONAL SECULAR SOCIETY

From Artificial Intelligence to Society of Minds
Early AI researchers tried to implement the mind half of the Cartesian body-mind duality and failed. Recent research, starting with evolutionary thinking and “Society of Mind” by Marvin Minsky in the early 1970’s, is increasingly successful. Animal brains comprise fairly separate problem-solving modules. Even in social animals the modules have limited interconnections. The human neocortex grew enormously through rapid social/sexual selection in an evolutionary race between competing social groups. (The DID brain has partially reverted to the modular structure). This growth included the long distance pyramidal neurons that are related to our substantial working memory and integrated consciousness. Perhaps the global mind now needs its own pyramidal neurons - the long distance optical fibre cables now girdling the earth. The efficiency of language freed up much of the neocortex for imagination and increasing ability to forecast the future - including awareness of death. We can now forecast the physical world with incredible accuracy. However, to survive on an increasingly crowded planet, we need to forecast the behaviour of our “society of minds” better than before. This will require learning from our history as well as from the new research areas of Artificial Life, Social Robotics and Social Simulation

New Technology –> New Culture?
Useful technologies stimulate the emergence of new cultures, e.g. Writing and Wheel, ~ 3500 BC: stability of written concepts and mobility of physical location eventually led to the concept of a universal non-localised non-tribal God Industrial Machinery, ~ 1800: the first metaphor for mental power and complexity - the mind-body duality of Descartes and the tidy world of the enlightenment Computer Languages, 1950s: helped to escape behaviourist thinking, Chomsky etc. - but treated the mind as logical machine, not a collaborating organism “Society of Mind”, 1970s: superseded early reductionist Artificial Intelligence, showed a mind includes emotion as well as thought, helped understanding of DID and dissociation as a dysfunctional society inside the head, 1985 on. Artificial Life, 1990s: integrated approach to mind and body, acceptance of the body therapies, indicated how both thinking and emotions are mediated by the body, Rodney Brookes et al. Artifical Society, 2000s: Social Robotics, statistical evidence poised to supersede ideology, evidence-based social change guided by social simulation

The New Magic: from Desire via Fantasy to Reality
New science is developed into new technology if it can turn old fantasy into new reality Desire, expressed as Fantasy, is superseded by Reality e.g Healing: miracles superseded by medicine, Happiness: heaven superseded by long healthy life Telepathy: clairvoyance superseded by television Flying: broomsticks superseded by Boeings Talking to deceased spiritualism superseded by life prolonging medicine Morality based on fear of God (early childrearing modes) is being replaced by one based on respect for humanity. (group selection) This progress is encouraged by the new collaborative technologies that support Helping Mode child-rearing. A child’s questions as it tries to understand society and the environment can be used to create fear and a need for God, or to create admiration for humanity and wonder at the universe. Children whose attachment and social needs have been satisfied tend to internalise a more humane secular/rational culture that does not need God(dess) or afterlife. Scientists and technologists are, perhaps surprisingly, the primary precursors of this human-centred culture. In 500 years their numbers have risen from a handful to millions, and their culture is the first to have become truly global. Sadly the politics that pays for the science is not always so enlightened.

Declining Belief in God and Hell
General Population 400 “Greater” Scientists 100% US 30% Belief in God UK Belief in Hell US France 0% UK 72% believe in God The following is based on the article in the ‘Wall Street Journal Europe’ and reported in The Guardian of London Friday Dec10th – 2004; According to a new survey, 72% of the UK population believe in some kind of god, while almost as many, 69% associate themselves with a particular religion; In the USA 75% of people professed a specific faith. In the UK of those who did identify with a particular religion: 24% said they attended a religious service once a week or more, 22% said only between once and four times a year; 20% answered ‘almost never’. The survey conducted for the Wall Street Journal Europe, interviewed more than 21,000 people aged 15 and over in 21 countries. It found that in the UK; 40% of people identified themselves as Protestants, 29% as Catholics and 4% as Muslims. Belief -or not- in a God was absolutely clear cut in the U.K., the only country surveyed besides Turkey where there was no ‘grey area’ between those who believe and those who don't. The story was different in Sweden however; one out of five are "maybe" believers. 1914 1934 1996 50% Sweden A collaborative culture is needed both for effective scientific secular-rational thinking and to achieve global sustainability. Acceptance of imminent apocalypse is emerging in US and other fundamentalist cultures. Perhaps this is panic at the declining power of their gods rather than a rational expectation of the imminent end to this species? UK France Sweden 0% 1981 1990 Larson, etc.

“Heaven, we have a Problem” NASA
Religion makes us happy War makes us happy But haven't we forgotten something – history is written by the winners Both religion and war create enormous amounts of unhappiness – most of it in those on the losing, the invisible side If we adopt a global perspective rather than an egocentric one and include the destroyed and the defeated, the injured and the killed, we might find: religion and war decrease the happiness of others by far more than they increase the happiness of the believer! The suffering in the loser is invariably greater than the happiness of the winner (the non-linearity of Kahlman and Tversky’s Prospect Theory!). When the believing winner is in the first world and the loser is in the third the contrast can be extreme. For instance the spiritual happiness of some first world Catholics has been slightly increased by forbidding African AIDS sufferers from using condoms. The sum total of global happiness is obviously decreased when the Africans are included.

Technology to Culture Transfer in Europe
The European Community funds the short term inefficiencies of people of different cultures and languages working together on research and development. Indirectly this also helps to spread the secular-rational culture that includes science and technology. There is increasing EC concern over social issues as the scope of digital technology has expanded from self-contained gadgets to the global social infrastructure. A few early projects explored how computers could increase collaboration and reduce conflict during the 9-5 working day of the 40 year working life, e.g CICC - Collaborative Integrated Communications for the Construction industry Now there is a need to address the 24 hour day and the 80 year long lifetime and most of all, personal attachments to young and old, alive and dead. Post-Kyoto (1992), global sustainability was added to the EC research agenda However assimilating East Europe countries has become the new priority. Some in Western Europe do understand the wider message of psychohistory and are prepared to invest in protecting childhood from the damaging effects of poverty

Europe: Escaping Impoverished Childrearing
The proportion of children brought up in poverty is 8 times higher in the US than in Western Europe The social support systems of Western Europe recognise the importance of advanced childrearing modes in achieving socialised and secure personalities, and that this can be achieved by protecting childhood from poverty This huge difference has damaging consequences throughout life, e.g. proportion in prison 10 times higher in US unhappiness in US life made bearable by greater belief in God and afterlife (only 1/5th as many agnostics in US) US social inequity accepted as a precursor of inequity in the afterlife (3 times as many believe in Hell in US) 30% Help confined to Family USA 20% 10% Help from State plus Family France Germany & Sweden 0% Children born into Poverty Infancy continuing in Poverty Ref: Richardson, 1994

FROM CLOSED TO OPEN SOCIETY

“Things are getting better all the time” – so far
How can a species that evolved in hunter-gatherer groups, with an infanticidal mode childhood and all that implies in terms of subsequent behaviour, have the ability to live sustainably in peace and harmony as a global community of up to 10 billion people? The necessary social progress may be a side-effect of the emergence of the integrated mind, spoken language and symbolic thinking. Self-awareness allows us to stand outside ourselves and understand the dynamics of conflict and the long term consequences of aggression. We appear to switch between good times and bad times over a double-generational Blaffer Hrdy grandmother or Kondratieff economic cycle of about 50 years. There is also a long term improvement in quality of life (averaged across all countries, not just the current successes) as we progress through the child rearing modes. Of course, on the longest timescale this progress is irrelevant - eventually we will be blown away by the sun or prematurely by a cosmic interloper such as a meteor. On the shorter timescale there are new dangers in wilder manic-depressive oscillations of an increasingly synchronised global society

The Four Societies Paradigm
A graphical framework for expressing western and global social change, developed in European “Information Society Technologies” project ASSIST. In the following this paradigm is related to Lloyd DeMause childrearing modes 1, Tribal – Typically 150 member closed social group, Closed, Abusive, Infanticidal 2, National – Transport technologies, economies of scale. Dark Satanic Mills Rise of hierarchy and individuals, weakened social obligations 3, Multinational – Information technologies, empowered citizens but fragmented families Only works well if there is peace between countries, freedom of information and effective international law and regulation of capitalism. Otherwise open to abuse and unstable. 4, Global – Collaboration technologies: the Internet and media support a worldwide social network in which the average person’s Dunbar group of 150 people overlaps less and less with their friends groups. No one can be ostracised or treated as sub-human because everyone is connected to everyone else in the interlocking mesh of social relationships. (the number of friendship links to reach everyone on the planet may be dropping below 6) Restores the social advantages, avoids the risks of abuse in traditional extended families.

The Western Route to the Sustainable Global Network Society?
Focus on Community 4, Network Society Global 1, Traditional Society Tribal ?2050 Closed Societies Isolated Tyrannical Xenophobic Open Societies Fair International Democratic 1600 2000 1800 3, Information Society Multinational 2, Industrial Society National 1900 The Western Route Focus on Individual

The Drivers Towards the Sustainable Global Network Society?
Community 4, Network Society Global 1, Traditional Society Tribal Up to 19thC Agricultural/Material Technologies 21stC Collaboration Technologies Closed Societies The Drivers Open Societies 20th C Information Technologies 3, Information Society Multinational 1, Industrial Society National Individual

Lloyd deMause Childrearing Modes
Community 4, Network Society Global 1, Traditional Society Tribal Infanticidal Helping, from 1950 Closed Societies Open Societies Abandoning, from 400AD Socialising, from 1870 3, Information Society Multinational 2, Industrial Society National Ambivalent, from 1200 Intrusive, from 1700 Western Childhood Individual

Third World Short-Cut To Sustainable Global Network Society?
Avoiding the temporary switch from collaboration and community to competition and individual during western industrialisation 4, Network Society Global 1, Traditional Society Tribal Community Infanticidal Third World Sustainable Path Helping at 2000 Closed Societies Open Societies Abandoning at 2000 First World Unsustainable Prototype Socialising 3, Information Society Multinational 2, Industrial Society National Ambivalent Intrusive Individual

Beyond the Four Societies
The western middle class prototype of 300 million people, 5% of the worlds population, is demonstrating some of the benefits of the rapidly changing stone age environment that humans were genetically selected for over perhaps a million years and we are slowly learning to avoid the social inequalities caused by the global economies of scale that was not selected for. Part of this selection process was the ability to change far more rapidly than any other animal. By combining the flexibility of generational transmission with the even greater flexibility of peer to peer transmission via collaboration technologies we may be able to combine the equity advantages of tribal life with the quality of life advantages of all technologies. We may be able to create the illusion of collaboration within the tribe, plus competition with neighbouring tribes, without a lethal relationship with real neighbours. Tools include: The enemy can be virtual The cult of celebrity creates pseudo close networks Respect is the least costly tool We understand the moral instinct better and better Play becomes and end in itself, not a rehearsal for lethal conflict

First World Unsustainable Prototype
“Contraction and Convergence” towards Sustainable Global Network Society? The material and energy gulf between rich and poor has to close 4, Network Society Global 1, Traditional Society Tribal Community Convergence Infanticidal Third World Sustainable Path Helping at 2000 Closed Societies Open Societies Maximum Divergence Abandoning at 2000 First World Unsustainable Prototype Socialising 3, Information Society Multinational 2, Industrial Society National Ambivalent Intrusive Western Expansion Contraction Individual

An Inconvenient Truth? US society is still focused on individual not community and is feeling the need for retribution for recent prosperity. Hence the acceptance of imminent global apocalypse - and lack of desire to prevent it 4, Network Society Global Open Societies Europe continues towards Helping Mode? Socialising 3, Information Society Multinational Intrusive US reverting to Intrusive Mode? Individual

AN OPEN BUT IMMATURE AND UNSTABLE SOCIETY?

Where is the Social Glue? Social Changes over Last 30 Years (UK)
Five times as many births outside marriage: % in 1971, 40% in 1999 Then: Dissociation as protection in dead marriages? Now: Adult fulfilment but child suffering? Three times as many children brought up by lone parent: 7% in 1972, 21% in 2000 What replaces attachment to the other parent and the extended family? Are there enough helpers for “Helping Mode” childrearing to work for everyone? Nearly three times as many suicides per 100,000 in young men ages , in 1971, in NB 50-75% of male suicidees were brought up by a lone parent Smaller increase for girls aged 15-24, in 1971, in 1998 (But suicide dropping for 65 and over, in 1971, in perhaps showing that more people reach retirement without disability) Combining the above: suicide rate for the son of a lone parent in 1998 is 10 times the average in 1971

The $10,000 Knee of the Happiness Curve
Sweden Happiness / Quality of Life US UK China France Russia $10,000 Income per Person Ronald Inglehart 1997

The $10,000 (year 2000 $) Happiness Plateau
Jeremey Bentham’s criterion: “The greatest happiness for the greatest number” This implies social and economic differences are reduced but not eliminated. The current convergence of average income and quality of life between advanced western countries is striking. This “Happiness Plateau” suggests that post-materialist lifestyles could be the sustainability answer - income has a small but positive effect on happiness above about $10,000. But income inequity within countries and between nations has doubled in the last 30 years. This foments fear in the rich and envy in the poor and fragments communities, hence Quality of Life, Happiness, has not increased in the West in the last 30 years.

Terrorism and Increasing Inequity
Conflict is no longer between nations but between the western hegemony and envious and educated outsiders who were brought up in earlier childrearing modes – fundamentalists, terrorists. Social globalisation has blurred national boundaries and encouraged western/global liberal democracy and cultural flexibility. But the move towards democracy has stalled. The percentage of electoral democracies rose steadily from 41% in 1989 to 62% in 1996 but has remained stuck at that figure since then. But there is a new danger of cultural polarisation. While most individuals are becoming more open and collaborative, those who feel bound to defend the culture and childrearing practices of their parents can become more closed, more sexist and more patriarchal. Will the conflict between the culture of the harem and the culture of wife stealing be fought out in global war or on a South African football pitch? The benefits of economic globalisation (more years of life, less years of disability) may be lost if the Western emphasis on individual not community continues.

THE SUSTAINABLE OPEN SOCIETY

Cultural Evolution: The Virtual Reality of the Parent becomes the Reality of the Child
Personal values, aspirations, culture and the social construction of reality are absorbed in infancy. Thus Disneyland is fake to grandparents, reality to parents and obsolete to the children brought up on virtual reality and networked computer games. To Abraham’s parents, sacrificial blood and flesh had to be real. Abraham’s legacy was to recognise the humanity of “virtual reality” - using animal sacrifice to simulate infant sacrifice. His Christian descendents’ legacy was further virtuality, using wine to simulate blood and bread to simulate flesh. Perhaps this generation can draw even more inspiration from Abraham and switch from the unsustainable material and energy extravagance of Disneyland theme park to sustainable post-materialist lifestyles made up of: Immaterial Experiences – neighbourhood (walking distance of home) plus multimodal augmented reality (all senses, all activities, combining virtual and real, achieving far more with far less) Collaborative Relationships – avoiding the inefficiency and unsustainability of war – competition replaces conflict, global football replaces global war

“Virtual Extended Family” VEF
Even the apparently benign “Western Nuclear Family” is an incomplete foundation for Helping Mode child-rearing. The “Virtual Extended Family” is a proposed robust framework for achieving Helping Mode childrearing regardless of the particular circumstances and culture of the family. It includes technology-based alternatives for absent members of an ideal extended family The VEF includes the attachment advantages of the traditional extended family but avoids the abuse and narrowness of closed patriarchal tribal families. The VEF has to include protection from virtual reality sexual and physical abuse, from unexpected side-effects of unproven technologies and from commercial and religious pressures, e.g. ADHD from TV, addictive food, drugs, tobacco, demonisation of other religions, corporal punishment, abuse by figures in authority. Our response to global warming will have to include population reduction, preferably by choice. Virtual children will be needed to satisfy the parental instincts of many adults – the virtual siblings of Chinese one child families?

Current Status: Enhancing the Fragmented Family
The fragmented family of today, perhaps only mother and one child, is rapidly acquiring technology assisted and technology based alternatives for members of the extended family Multimedia awareness of remote members of family – family video calls, etc. interactive computer based substitutes for storytelling by members of the family Computer gaming is an exceptionally social activity for children Virtual pets are already encouraging social and caring skills in city children Robot pets, e.g. Paro, the furry robot seal, are craved for by the elderly Early pre-school replaces the extended family peer group of other infants Precursors are US Head Start and UK SureStart programmes, etc. There is steady progress towards consensus values but there is a danger of adopting inadequately researched quick fixes, ones that have rebound effects in later life, e.g. fast food for kids can be liberating for adults, but can be lethal for the kids decades later

Toys “rn’t” Us Toys are rapidly becoming more collaborative and more interactive. They will soon be able to help the child’s mind develop helping mode post-materialist lifestyles. Future toys will be more and more lifelike, blurring the boundary between toy and networked computer game and continuing to provide support and pleasure throughout life. It is essential that intelligent dolls act out a Helping Mode culture because, in a fragmenting family with few peers or adults, children will increasingly learn how to socialise from such toys. Baby talk and bending down are rather limited ways for an adult to adapt to the developing mind of an infant but they are all that tribal societies could offer. Our predecessors had to make the best of them. The new toys can be scaled and programmed to be an optimum match to the child's capabilities at every stage in their lives. Pets “rn’t” Us either. They satisfy some of the needs of people brought up in earlier childrearing modes and they do prolong the life of their adult owners, but they can reduce their owners’ rapport with other people and need for society. Like many psychiatric drugs they hide rather than solve the underlying problem

GLOBAL SUSTAINABILTY: CONTRIBUTIONS FROM SOCIAL SIMULATION AND VIRTUALISATION

Moore’s Law: Sustainability Without Conflict
Current material and energy consumption trends are unsustainable and, unbelievably, the IT world have been hiding the solution for 40 years: Moore’s Law – computer power doubles every 2 years or, in sustainability jargon, resources needed for a given amount of computer power halve every 2 years The 2% per annum drop in consumption of resources for material-intensive products such as cars is too small to compensate for the increasing numbers who can afford a car because prices drop. But the 20% per annum drop typical of computer based products and services is more than enough to reverse the destruction of non-renewable resources and thus achieve global sustainability Virtualisation is the process of switching from a material-intensive satisfier of a human needs to a computer-based or virtual alternative. Before the “Virtualisation Switch” products and services follow the 2% curve After the switch they follow the 20% “dematerialisation” curve

The Virtualiastion Switch, The Hope
From Material-Intensive Satisfier to IT-Intensive Satisfier The Switch Dematerialisation 2% per annum Material Intensity Dematerialisation 20% per annum e.g. Travel to meetings virtualised as telephone and Internet discussions Physical photographs virtualised as images from digital cameras Time

The Virtualisation Switch if only life were that simple! The Reality
By reducing prices, improving quality of life and thus stimulating demand, most virtualisation switches so far have increased overall material and energy consumption. These interactions are complex and need to be comprehensively modelled before promoting virtualisation as a universal panacea for sustainability Virtualisation will only work if the reduction in material and energy resources is combined with changing values, e.g. realising that quality of life increases when time wasted in travel is reduced. But at the moment most people associate travel with success, status and a high quality of life. Far more is invested in making travel enjoyable in itself, e.g. making the airline seat more comfortable and better serviced than the living room armchair, than in developing virtual replacements for travel.

Social Simulation Research, 1
Civilization rapidly descends into anarchy when people feel crowded. The classic examples are Germany and Japan growing beyond their limits when there were no more countries left to colonise. Cyberterritory is unlimited, as demonstrated by Second Life and other Massive Multiplayer On-line Role Playing Games (MMORPG). Can we turn this virtue of virtuality/immaterialisation into a psychological reality? Clearly, this cannot be done at the basic levels of Maslow’s pyramid of human needs - food and shelter, even though global warming is already shrinking our food parcels and space cages. Further up the pyramid there is enormous scope for replacing direct social and physical contact with long distance equivalents. They are usually different in nature and can often be better – there are many situations where telephone and are preferable to face to face discussion. Increasingly collaboration technologies are becoming better than cultural constraints at allowing people to find exactly the right level of closeness, both physically and emotionally. In the past the cultural constraints were often imposed by those in authority to hold on to power for as long as possible. They contributed to the readiness of youth to sacrifice themselves for the sake of tribe, nation or religion. However this very stable formula for social cohesion and control is now being undermined as horizontal peer to peer transmission of culture within an age cohort is taking over from vertical transmission from authority figures and parents to children…..

Social Simulation Research, 2
….the risks of new networking technologies and of apocalypse are moving too fast for the wisdom of the ancestors to guarantee the survival of the descendents. However there are enormous dangers in peer to peer transmission of unproven and novel culture. It has not been tested over several generations and on a small scale before it goes global. There are already concerns that children are losing the ability to integrate mind and body because of the technical limitations of today’s virtual reality technologies. Already some games have been shown to encourage an aggressive mind set (but so does the gun culture that was born in the Wild West and is now being exported to every part of the world). In a world where habitable space per person is contracting, the potential benefits of virtualisation and immaterialisation are obvious. However the dangers of rapid culture change are equally great. The only way out is to proceed by accelerated trial and error, not small scale multi-generational trial such as early Christianity or even the single country Victorian English trial of nationwide industrialisation. We have to find the right mix of social experiments and social simulations that will enable us to raise and synchronise community values in a few years rather than over many generations.

Raising and Synchronising Community Values
Double generation attachment between grandchildren and grandparents is a 30 to 100 years cycle which tends to get averaged out and lost in the wider community. However, community attachment processes take place between children of a particular age cohort and a small number of iconic leaders and heroes, some real, some virtual. Moods become synchronised in a roughly 50 year depression-elation cycle - the Kondratieff Cycle of economists, the Group-Fantasy Cycle of psychohistorians, the grandmother-grandchild transmission of Sarah Blaffer Hrdy. The universality of this double-generational transmission is not yet well recognised. By assimilating more and more culture and values from new media rather than from double generation transmission from community elders it may become possible to escape this 52 year depression-elation cycle of economics / war-hedonism cycle of psychohistory? By relying on digital technologies which halve in cost every 18 months it may be possible for Helping Mode child-rearing to reach a future peak global population of 9 billion without jeopardising global sustainability. Urgent Problem: How to prove that technology supported Helping Mode has no hidden long term flaws - without requiring large scale longitudinal studies that have to take a lifetime? Long Term Problem: How to slay the oxymoron “Hedonism does not make you happy”

How to Simulate and Validate “Sustainable Global Network Society”
Physical scientists can experiment. Historical scientists can observe. But evidence based social science has to wait a lifetime to understand a culture change. The network society has to be rolled out to the whole planet within a generation to avoid global warring or global warming apocalypses. But if the planners get it wrong, there might be no one left after 80 years! It will be necessary to simulate future society, perhaps by increasingly including real people as part of the simulations and presenting the simulations as networked computer games. Affective computing (computers with emotions and feelings) is addressing the very real complaint “Why can’t a computer be more like a (wo)man”. In fact, as computers behave more human so they become less visible. Already we frequently interact socially with computers and this technology is already changing the culture of the the young. Because few politicians and leaders of society recognise this, culture change is now very much in the hands of commercial forces. Many of the changes could be very damaging, e.g. internet paedophilia and sadism

From Networked Computer Game to Social Simulation
Artificial Intelligence and Artificial Life techniques are becoming as effective at modelling and simulating social groups as they are in simulating the “society of mind” inside one head. The computer game SimCity is already being used to teach social responsibility in the community. Computer games such as Creatures and “The Sims” indirectly teach genetic and cultural transmission and the attachment processes of childhood. Children are learning about mentalization (theory of mind) in virtual reality where they can experiment safely. As with any games or toys, the more convincing the fantasy the more it fills its role in allowing learning and rehearsal of adult life. By building up from simple games for babies in year 1 to more advanced network activities that mix the real and the virtual for teenagers 15 years later, increasingly sophisticated collaboration services can be tested and evaluated as the technologies improve over this 15 years. As these games mature so they become an integral part of the collaboration society Social advance funded by an adequately regulated enormous networked games market!

From Attachment Theory to Social Interaction Modelling
We need good models of the dynamics of human relationships over the whole lifecycle, not just the mother-child attachment 100% from other Adults Influences on Child Development from Peers from Secondary Carers – Father, etc Attachment Theory is confined to this corner from Elder Siblings and Grandmothers from Mother 0% Age

An Example of Social Modelling
This model of social interaction has been used to explore how new digital services can be interleaved with existing social activities. Avoids problems such as: introducing video telephones too early failing to recognise the need for texting The six stages are designed round the working day but are fractal in that they are applicable at any level from the process of formulating and uttering a single sentence to our journey through life, from exploring child via collaborating adult to persuading elder. The Cycle of Collaboration Home Theatre Map Table Landscape Room See

The Cycle - more poetically:
. All the world's a Cycle of Collaboration, And all the men and women just collaborators: They have their exits and their entrances; And one man in his time plays many parts, His acts being seven stages. At first the infant, Mewling and puking nursed in the Home. And then the whining school-boy, with his Map And shining morning face, creeping like snail Unwillingly to school. And then the lover, Sighing like furnace, from the social Landscape Made to his mistress' Doorway. Then a soldier, Full of strange oaths and bearded like the pard, Jealous in honour, sudden and quick in quarrel, Seeking the bubble reputation Even cross the meeting Table. And then the justice, In fair round belly with good capon lined, With eyes severe and beard of formal cut, Full of wise saws and modern instances; In the Theatre of his court. The sixth age shifts Into the lean and slipper'd Home-stead, With spectacles on nose and pouch on side, His youthful hose, well saved, a world too wide For his shrunk shank; and his big manly voice, Turning again toward childish treble, pipes And whistles in his sound. Last scene of all, That ends this strange eventful history, Is second childishness and mere oblivion, Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans collaboration.

Immaterialisation is Already Here
- from Material-Intensive “Car-Fetish” to media based Immaterial Experience Readership of top five magazines, UK Car and DIY magazines Immaterial satisfiers 1980 21% 6% 2000 0% 47% (One soft porn magazine) (Two soft porn magazines Three TV programme guides) Thus material-intensive satisfiers such as cars and DIY are already being replaced by more direct, more immaterial experiences for the body-mind. When it comes to culture change, commercial interests and the neophilia of the young may well be ahead of the policy makers and the professional middle classes? They are definitely ahead of the moralists!

CONCLUSIONS

A Credible Route to the Sustainable Global Network Society?
The third world is to some extent bypassing the dark satanic mills of our Victorian past. The West has become a 500 million people prototype that had to include the unjust and damaging intermediate stages of the Industrial revolution and the Information Society.. World Values Survey, etc. Societies with the greatest sum total happiness have a modest difference between rich and poor (Richard Wilkinson), but the West is heading in the wrong direction - fast Inequality between rich and poor people and between first world and third world countries has doubled over the last 30 years and is increasing even faster in the poorest countries. Michael Ashcroft’s fortune is greater than that of his homeland, Belize. The West may have left it too late to include the third world as partners. The breaking point may be intelligent outsiders on the boundary between a westernised playboy ruling class and the traditional cultures in third world countries. Many terrorists have mixed extended families that cross this boundary. But, by leapfrogging the West and liberalising millennia old extended family culture: India and China may well reach the Network Society first.

Globalisation: Length of Life & Quality of Life
Average lifetime increases and fraction of life spent disabled decreases with prosperity 7.5 out of 45 years in Sub-Saharan Africa, 15% of lifetime 6 disabled years out of 77 in the West, 8% of lifetime As experience of disability reduces so the dissociation needed to make it bearable atrophies and empathy towards others strengthens. But the remaining disabilities become even more difficult to bear. This triggers a “runaway morality” in which an ever-increasing value is placed on preserving life and avoiding disability. Life Expectancy Relationship between Life Expectancy and percentage of life spent with disability From “Global Burden of Disease”, Murray and Lopez 1997

From Closed to Open Society
UK “leads” with one CCTV surveillance camera for every 15 people, 4 million out of 25 million cameras worldwide (2002). What is safe in a liberal democracy can be very dangerous in a tyranny e.g. if homosexuality is seen by everyone as a lifestyle choice influenced by early environment and genetic predisposition (as it is with other animals), then CCTV is not a blackmail threat to the gay community. In an Open Society whistleblowers ensure that power is not abused. Photos of abuse of Iraqi prisoners indicate that the US may be more of an open society and the UK les of one than is generally assumed! Smart cameras are already recognising unusual behaviours better than people, e.g. intoxicated behaviour before getting into a car, suicidal behaviour on a platform, An open global network is a catalyst towards higher quality of life Because privacy hides abuse abuse Because openness encourages cultural tolerance

Conclusion Over the last 50 years technical innovation has shifted
from the material and energy based technologies that have exacerbated our aggressive and competitive instinct to the digital technologies that can amplify our democratic, collaborative and social instincts and reverse our escalating demand for non-renewable resources. Digital technologies may now speed the spread of Helping Mode childrearing fast enough to achieve global sustainability and a high quality of life for all by drawing on our growing understanding of the evolution of the human mind, by exploiting the collaborative potential of new “immaterial” digital technologies, by “what if” simulation of proposed collaborative social structures to ensure that they do not have unfortunate side effects The “Sustainable Global Network Society” To continue please turn to my web site:

Outline References Robin Dunbar – Human and prehuman nature, Social Group Sizes, levels of intentionality Chris Knight – Blood Relations Lloyd deMause – History of Childhood, Emotional Life of Nations Christopher Boehm – Infanticidal tribal society Andrew Oswald, Richard Wilkinson – Economics and sociology of happiness Ronald Inglehart – World Values Survey, Modernization and Postmodernization Valerie Sinason – Attachment, Trauma and Multiplicity, Dissociation Richard Benthall, John Read – Madness Explained, schizophrenia Duncan Watts – 6 Degrees of Separation and the New Science of Networks Clive Bromhall – Neoteny Steven LeBlanc – Constant Battles, Why we Fight Lawrence Keeley – War Before Civilisation, the Myth of the Peaceful Savage Sarah Blaffer Hrdy – Grandmothers as a step from ape to human Alex Pentland – Honest Signals, via collaboration technologies

David Leevers Background
40 years designing collaboration products and services; telephone exchanges, the world’s first smart phone, multimedia hard-hat, etc 15 years prototyping the social Internet in industry, including managing European Community project CICC, Collaborative Integrated Communications for Construction 10 years exploring how IT and Communications Technologies could contribute towards global sustainability – little progress because projects were confined to the secular/rational 9-5 world, ignored fear, hatred and childhood 10 years at the Clinic for Dissociative Studies, London an engineer’s experimental and creative approach to understanding the scope and limits of human mind and society, the 24 hours - 80 year culture of real life: fear, hatred, childhood - and self-fulfilment.

From Atoms To Bits Culture, Collaboration and Global Sustainability

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From Atoms To Bits Culture, Collaboration and Global Sustainability

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