J’Accuse! Hegemonic Western Colonialist Media Journalists Are Accessories to Israeli Mass Murder of Children

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Jay Janson
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Hegemonic Western Colonialist Media Journalists Are Accessories to Israeli Mass Murder of Children
by jay janson

Bombed out Rafah, and the attacks are just beginning. The final stage in a deliberate ethnic cleansing operation.

Since October 7, journalists of hegemonic Western colonialist media have made themselves accessories after and then before the fact of crimes against humanity ordered by the Israeli government and committed by Israeli military in their continuous mass murderous bombing and air strikes demolishing homes and entire cities of Israel’s captive Palestinian population in Gaza - indiscriminately killing thousands of residents, 70% [1]of which are women and children. These journalists became accessories after the fact and then before the fact. How?

  • by playing up in headlines, coverage time, emphasis, and repeating [utterly mendacious] Israeli propaganda of incomprehensible and outrageous accusations of horrific atrocities said to have been committed during Palestinian guerrillas’ successful attack on Oct. 7. The beheading of 40 babies, another roasted in an oven, carried out mass, systematic rapes, and cut a foetus from its mother’s womb. All this obviously meant to justify continuous bombing and air striking of Gaza which has been taking 100 [or more] lives of children a day[2]

- by not publishing equal attention getting corrections of the outrageous atrocities afterward admitted to as untrue even by Israel’s own media, leading Western media audiences to tend to condone the ultra-massive bombing and air strikes on Gaza or to see them as somewhat justified or less condemnable. Letting go unreported efforts by the United Nations to investigate these claims being obstructed by Israel.[3]

 - by avoiding the topic of the continuous killing and maiming of children in Gaza, and focusing all their audience’s attention on the West’s demand for the hostages release, rarely if ever, mentioning the some 7,000 [4] Palestinians held in Israeli prisons, and that hostages taken on Oct. 7, were taken to bargain the release of. Not reporting that far more Palestinians have been arrested since the October 7 attacks in Israel than have been released in the negotiated exchange. Among those being held are dozens of women and scores of children.
The majority have never been convicted of a crime, including more than 2,000 of them being held in administrative detention, in which the Israeli military detains a person without charge or trial.[4] All this is not newsworthy for Western media journalism.)

- by avoiding all mention of Israel’s generations-long brutal, and often murderous illegal military occupation of Palestinian lands, the very basic cause of the many years of deadly confrontation of which these past five months is only one episode, journalists of the Western entertainment/news conglomerates, have been apologists for Israel and Israeli intentions to maintain seeking more and more Palestinian land via present genocidal military action and illegal settler colonialism in the West Bank, East Jerusalem and the Golan Heights.[5]

 - by bringing the world public to accept a preposterous Israeli  ‘Declaration of  War’ on a group of Palestinians already for a long time part of an Israeli captive population under years of Israeli military occupation. (A UN condemned illegal and brutal occupation at that.)

- by not reporting that international law holds that ‘The occupying power is to be held responsible for the well being of the population under its military occupation.’ [Fourth Geneva Convention on International Law]) Western media journalists have deceptively managed selective information in order to have audiences not realise that the events on Oct. 7 occurred during a generations-long ongoing war for Palestinian independence, and that Isreal’s calling it a reason to declare a new war on its already militarily-occupied Palestinians is fallacious.

- by not reporting that on Oct. 8 Times of Israel exposed that for years, Netanyahu propped up Hamas. The premier’s policy of treating the terror group as a partner, to divide Palestinians from a unity-seeking statehood Israel had allowed suitcases holding millions in Qatari cash to enter Gaza through its crossings since 2018, in order to maintain its fragile ceasefire with the Hamas rulers of the Strip.[6]

Never has a civilian population been more nakedly at the whims of a depraved attacker. Do those IDF pilots ever have nightmares? 

 - by not reporting the worldwide astoundment and deep condemnation of the three U.S. vetos of a UN Security Council resolution calling for a ceasefire in the Holy Land and facilitating Israel’s stated intention to continue military action already designated by the International Criminal Court as genocidal.[7]

  • by being spokespersons of Western media deflecting the charge of genocide and helping prevent Israel’s prosecution by avoiding coverage of massive pro-Palestinian demonstrations around the world calling for a ceasefire, and instead focusing attention on a so-called rise in anti-Semitism and mis-characterising demonstrations against an anti-Apartheid Israel as against the Jewish people.

- by simply not reporting reality, the heartbreaking reality that Israel goes on and on killing, maiming and crippling more and more thousands of children.

The most outrageous crime in Western entertainment/news conglomerate journalism is the perverse selection of what is news while hiding 90% of reality. Never mentioning for example, the reality of the immense and deadly suffering of the Palestinians, which is the motive for the very existence of Hamas and other militant groups. For some time many news hours had begun simply covering other world and local events to the exclusion of any mention of the extermination of Palestinians in Gaza. When the journalists are scripted to report the current death toll in Gaza it is without mention of how many of the dead are children trying to keep critical indignation against Israel at a minimum.

For 78 years, the journalists of Western media conglomerates have sought to manage the news in a way to keep the public believing that the colonial powers have been seeking peace in the Holy Land, and ignorant that in 1946, American power over an incipient United Nations of only 56 nations, produced the genocidal stratagem of torching the Holy Land with a phoney, never expected nor intended to be implemented resolution for a crazy quilt partition of Palestine into six noncontiguous areas; the Arab areas entirely noncontiguous; the Jewish areas contiguous by a thread; the designated major area for Jews containing more Arabs than Jews, and meant to immediately provoke a civil war prepared for and expected by the Colonial Powers supported and well armed Revisionist Zionists leadership [8](and the terrorist Irgun led by Menachem Begin whose horrible atrocities were condemned by Albert Einstein in a letter to the New York Times signed by other prominent Jews.)[9]

Nothing in the World More Precious Than Children - Except if They’re Palestinian Children Reported Killed by Israelis

There is nothing in this world more precious than the life of a child unless its death is that of a cold-bloodedly killed Palestinian child, or by now 13,000 Palestinian children and counting, perfunctorily reported with little or no pathos by journalists of the Western hegemonic racist caucasian colonialist giant entertainment/news conglomerates overseen by the CIA.[10]

Do IDF pilots have a conscience? 


For what these journalists of Western media must continue to impress upon to their TV viewing, radio or newspaper reading audience, is that of the prime importance of 100 Israelis hostages still held by Hamas, and the suffering of their relatives, and to never forget that Hamas has been designated by the U.S. and other countries as a terrorist organisation and to understand that the more than 29,000 Palestinians, mostly women and children, have perished as Isreal is reported seeking to justify exercising its right to defend itself after the Hamas attack on October 7.

In the presentation of ‘the news’ by Western journalists, its the campaign to free the 100 Israeli hostages that dominates the  news as worthy of public attention, even though:

- More than 100 children are killed in Gaza every day on average. The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) reports.

- A child is killed on average every 10 minutes in the Gaza Strip, World Health Organization Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told the United Nations Security Council.

Julian Assange regarding journalist complicity in war deaths,

“Let us ask ourselves of the complicit media, which is the majority of the mainstream press, what is the average death count attributed to each journalist?” Julian Assange [11]

“It is not just leaders, it is not just soldiers, it is journalists; journalists are war criminals.”[Julian Assange October 8, 2011 during the U.S. U.K. genocide in Iraq]

- More Palestinian children were killed in just the first three weeks of Israeli bombing in Gaza, than in all of the world’s conflicts combined in each of the past three years, according to the global charity Save the Children.[12]

During British BBC and German DW International Evening News, as well as U.S. News Hours Telecasts, this writer often hears lengthly interviews of relatives of Israeli hostages held in Gaza. Listening to the very appropriate commiserating tone in the voice of the interviewing Tele-journalist and to the sorrowful details from the suffering relative of an Israeli hostage drawn out for emphasis brings the thought that:

-  we never once hear the Israeli relative of a hostage asked his or her thoughts about the months of continuous Israeli bombing to death tens of thousands of Palestinians, most of whom are women and children - no mention either of the tens of thousands of Palestinian relatives suffering the Israeli imprisonment of some seven to nine thousand of their families, which was the reason and motive for capturing Israelis, namely, to bargain them in exchange of imprisoned Palestinians, prisoners who include women and children, many held without ever being charged with a crime.

- Excluding from Israeli interviews the subject of Palestinian children’s deaths, maiming, suffering amputations recently often without anesthesia, or even not referring to Palestinians at all, drives a strong message home to the Global South majority of humanity, namely, that in the Holy Land only Israeli lives (White European Jews) are considered precious. The inconsequential current number of thousands of Palestinian Arab lives taken by Israeli bombing is occasionally noted usually dryly without emotion, and almost always with the trailing reminder that the bombing of Gaza is Israel’s response to an attack by Hamas “considered a terrorist organisation by the U.S. and other countries.” in order to lessen any possible outrage.

Worldwide reaching colonialist media journalists will not report the truth that Israel admits Apache helicopters fired on their own civilians running from the Supernova music festival on October 7 - even when Haaretz Newspaper and Tel Aviv Ynet reported it to Israelis.[13]
Western media readiness to re-examine 7 October long after those events took place, for example new charges of rape two months after Oct. 7.  “Israel has the right to defend itself!” Israel has the right to defend itself!” Each and every time Western media conglomerates consider it necessary to report the number of thousands killed in Gaza, media journalists repeat words to the effect that this is “a response to October 7 attack by Hamas -- considered a terrorist group by the United States and European Union.”

"Compared to what people have been experiencing in Palestine at the hands of their colonizers, this is not extreme at all. This is what our ruling class has decided will be normal."—Aaron Bushnell (RIP, Brother)

By selective reporting, journalism of the West manages to allow for some sentiment to arise that the Palestinians might be collectively responsible for the actions of Hamas in their killing of 1,139 Israelis and abducting of over 200 and therefore might deserve some of what has been coming to them – (though the journalists never imply anyone deserves to watch their children get blown to pieces). This has been echoed far beyond Israel’s borders. In the US, Senator Lindsey Graham has called for the wholesale destruction of Gaza.[14] Israeli President Isaac Herzog had set the tone as he spoke about how far to assign guilt for the October 7 attack. “It’s an entire nation out there that is responsible.”[15] (No one expresses incredulence that it Includes the children?)

- Where is the human interest curiosity coverage by journalists backhandedly supporting Israel’s crimes by avoiding commiseration when occasionally reporting the deaths of thousands of children. For example, one could certainly wonder how Israeli pilots feel as they often drop 2,000-pound bombs on  homes of families and other buildings knowing that children will be killed, maimed and buried in the rubble? Are some Israeli airmen ashamed? Do others feel they are guiltlessly following orders and bolstered by the various rabbis quoting Bible passages that describe the lands occupied by Palestinians as belonging to the Hebrews.

A mass assassination factory’: Inside Israel’s calculated bombing of Gaza

Rabbi Dov Lior, a national religious leader and the chief rabbi of Kiryat Arba and Hebron, published a letter saying that Jewish law permits destroying the entire Gaza Strip. (Rabbi Dov Lior might have had in mind Biblical passages.)
Deuteronomy 20:16-18:
“ in the cities of the nations the Lord your God is giving you as an inheritance, do not leave alive anything that breathes.”
I Samuel 15:3
“Now go and attack Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have, and do not spare them. But kill both man and woman, infant and nursing child, ox and sheep, camel and donkey. ” [New King James Bible]

The prominence of radical Zionist Rabbis like Dov Lior marks the ascendancy of religious Zionist zealotry.

Surely many young pilots are not fanatically religious and are fans of the world’s most famous Jew and long considered the most intelligent human being on Earth, whose feeling was well known,

"For me, the Jewish religion like all other religions is an incarnation of the most childish superstitions. And the Jewish people to whom I gladly belong and with whose mentality I have a deep affinity have no different quality for me than all other people" I cannot see anything 'chosen' about them.”[Albert Einstein, in a letter to Jewish philosopher Eric Gutkind dated January 1954]

Your devoted writer, a musician turned archival research peoples' historian activist to battle the genocide promoting and defending media of America’s war investors, who still exercise hegemony over more than half the world, confesses feeling entrapped in a difficult to understand convoluted genocidal situation. Are Israeli soldiers, Western journalists, Israeli citizens and the pro-Israel hostage demonstrators able to put aside and out of mind the cute and adorable appearance of little kids as they play, their charming innocent curiosity, desire to please and excitement while having fun, common to our precious children of all nationalities? Put out of mind, the thousands of little bodies and more thousands traumatised with terror in their eyes.

The indiscriminate carnage and widespread destruction were already evident 3 months ago 

These war-supporting journalists will never recall past news items however appropriate to understanding today’s confrontations if they put the U.S. or Israel in an unfavourable  light, like. For instance, Albert Einstein’s New York Times published condemnation of the terrorist massacres of the Irgun in 1948,[x] or Einstein’s earlier call in 1946 for a government in Palestine under the UN's direct control and a constitution assuring Jews' and Arab' security against being outvoted by each other that would solve the Jewish-Arab difficulties." [17]

fionalacondesa
@fifilacondesa
Feb 19
"The cruelty is unbearable. The international neglect is unbelievable. The devastation is criminal. Long live Palestine. Down with Zionism."

Despite Einstein's efforts, the Palestinian Arabs, while still suffering British military occupation as a colony since the end of the First World War, became expelled and/or re-colonised after the Second World War by another group of armed Europeans through a genocidal civil war planned and provoked by Anglo-American machinations in order to create a well-armed colony of Europeans in the midst of the Arab nations with oil. Western journalism has long hidden and distracted its world audience from this reality and its subsequent result is synthesised below:

The State of Israel from its creation has been in bed with a US war-investing business elite that once heavily invested in Hitler, was itself anti-Semitic in outlook, coldly indifferent, even complicit during the Holocaust its investments had made possible, and afterward blocked a bill to allow 20,000 Jewish children into the U.S. [18] (a war investing business elite that owned the media conglomerates journalists worked for moulding public opinion.)

Journalists working for U.S. led Western imperialism have avoided background history unfavourable to Israel and Israel’s often less than humane treatment of Palestinian children.

In 1948, 750,000 Palestinians were forcibly displaced from the area that became Israel, and 500 Palestinian villages, as well as Palestinian-inhabited urban areas, were destroyed.[19] In the aftermath of the Nakba, Palestinian land was expropriated on a large scale and Palestinian citizens of Israel were encircled in specific areas.[20] After the Israeli capture of the Golan Heights in 1967, there was a nearly complete ethnic cleansing of the area, leaving only 6,404 Syrians out of about 128,000 who had lived there before the war. They had been forced out by campaigns of intimidation and forced removal, and those who tried to return were deported. After the Israeli capture of the West Bank, about 250,000 of 850,000 inhabitants fled or were expelled.[21]
Israel started building settlements just after capturing the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza Strip in the June 1967 Six-Day War. The transfer by an occupying power of its civilian population into the territory it occupies is a war crime, [22]
As of January 2023, over 450,000 Israeli settlers live in the West Bank, 220,000 Jewish settlers in East Jerusalem..over 25,000 Israeli settlers in the Golan Heights.[23]

Because of settlers present murderous religious bloodlust violence, even the United States and the UK have been forced to try to save face by introducing visa restrictions against “extremist Israeli settlers.”   The number of attacks has not abated in recent years, with more than 1,400 cases recorded between 2005 and 2021, according to Yesh Din, an Israeli watchdog. More than 90% of complaints were dropped by Israeli authorities, who run law enforcement in settler areas, without charges being filed. And settlers’ tactics are becoming more varied. In recent years some have uprooted olive trees during harvest, depriving many Palestinian families of a source of income.[24]

Journalists Working for U.S. Led Western Imperialism Defend Through News Management An Obvious Western Financial-industrial Capitalism’s Need of Wars very often of Genocidal Confrontation and Maintenance of Deadly Injustice for All U.S. Designated Enemies Which Invariably Takes Lives of Children More Than Adults. America’s most erudite economist Thorstein Veblen assumed depression to be the normal condition in a business-enterprise economy, to be relieved in periods of excitation caused by stimuli not intrinsic to the system (e.g., war, expansion abroad, etc.)[25]

In round table discussion programming Western media CIA subservient journalists of ABC, CBS, NBC, FOX, CN and PBS will  never choose a humanely rational theme no matter how obvious it is for peace replacing war. Apartheid Israel’s bloody history is a prime example of sidelining rationality and compassion.

Israel has since its founding, received about $300 billion (adjusted for inflation) in total economic and military assistance.
The $300 billion of US dollars [x]Israel has spent over more than seven decades since its founding on munitions and weapons of mass destruction to kill Palestinians who keep on attacking fighting for rectification of the heartless injustice done them, could have been used to compensate Arabs made destitute refugees by the criminal seizure of their lands, homes and properties (as commanded UN General Assembly Resolution #194 Dec. 11, 1948) [26]

How very very little has this writer heard or read about the starvation Israel is causing in Gaza? Such deliberate omission is a form of being an accessory to the crime of starving one’s militarily sealed-off captive population.  The Israeli finance ministry said it had blocked deliveries of food for Gaza because the shipments were intended to reach UNRWA, the main U.N. agency for Palestinians, citing allegations that some of its employees were affiliated with Hamas. While many nations stopped contributing to UNRA, little mention is made of the Palestinian children being cared for by UNRA for years.

Western journalists have largely avoided discussion that the mass starvation in Gaza is a direct result of Israeli policy to severely restrict food, water, and medicine to Gaza’s civilian population of 2.3 million, and avoided noting that it could not have been sustained without the tacit support of the Biden administration.

These journalists rarely report UNICEF-released reports documenting hunger in Gaza and warning of an “explosion in preventable child deaths” in the territory, finding that nearly 16 percent of children below the age of two in northern Gaza are acutely malnourished. [27] A full 45 percent of the West Bank population are children under 15 years of age, compared with 50 percent in Gaza. [28] [29]

When UN Secretary-General Guterres stated on October 25.

“It was important to acknowledge that the attacks by Hamas did not happen in a vacuum. The Palestinian people have been subjected to 56 years of suffocating occupation. They have seen their land steadily devoured by settlements and plagued by violence; their economy stifled; their people displaced and their homes demolished.

  • Western colonialist journalism afterward focused overwhelmingly on Israeli calls for the UN Secretary to resign. [30] and not on the Secretary’s words. Israel-UN spat intensifies after Secretary General says Hamas attacks ‘did not happen in a vacuum’ [Oct. 10, 2023 CNN]
  • In conclusion, the president of a nation under U.S. media journalists constant attack has described the greatest of Western media journalism’s criminal accomplishments: that of hiding the grand truth that the Second World War was made possible by the investments and joint venturing of the wealthy owners of America’s giant corporations arming an economically prostate Nazi Germany for war against the Soviet Union. And has made a comparison of the support of Western media journalism for Israel’s current massacre of thousands of Palestinian children within its genocide in Gaza.
  • “Modern Israel enjoys “the same encouragement, the same funding, and the same support” of the collective West like Adolf Hitler’s Nazi Germany before World War II, The Western elites kept quiet because they were preparing Hitler for him to launch his military power against the Soviet Union, ultimately, Hitler was a construct, a monster created by the collective West. The criminal military apparatus of the State of Israel also has the same encouragement, the same funding, and the same support” of the West,” [Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, who urged Jewish people who are still true to their roots to end the ongoing “massacre” of the Palestinians.] [32]
  • May this tediously painful to have written article serve to awaken at least a few readers to the criminal role of Western media conglomerates journalists acting consciously or unconsciously as accessories after and before the fact of the mass murder of thousands of children during daily and nightly bombing and air strikes since October 7 and presently causing starvation of hundreds of thousands more children.

-  Julian Assange has brought to our attention the pleasant-looking evening news anchor who captivates TV audiences with alternating joviality and gravitas, asking whether they shouldn’t be seen as insidiously evil as they generate support for horrific suffering, death, maiming and destruction.

Assange seems to have tasked us to awaken a critical number of decent but unwary citizens to the realisation that a trusted prime-time personality of theirs is in fact consciously or unconsciously a war criminal? If it be the latter, perhaps he or she will eventually become aware of his or her complicity.

Wishing to end this writing on a pleasant note and confidence -

Yocheved Lifschitz, an 85-year-old woman who was held captive by Hamas since 7 October shook her captor's hand and said shalom - goodbye in Hebrew, or literally "peace". She described clean conditions inside, with mattresses on the floor for them to sleep on. Another captive who was badly injured in a motorbike accident on the way into Gaza was treated for his injuries by a doctor.

"They made sure we wouldn't get sick, and we had a doctor with us every two or three days."
She also said they had access to medicines they needed and there were women there who knew about "feminine hygiene".
They ate the same food - pitta bread with cheese and cucumber - as the Hamas guards, her daughter Sharone added.[33]

The above pleasant beginning of its article notwithstanding, the BBC journalists had to make up for the peaceful things Mrs. Lifschitz reported about Hamas, by titling the article “ I went through hell, says elderly hostage released by Hamas - BBC in keeping with its Western media pro-U.S.-NATO-Israel war backing commitments and in general and over the long run acting as an accessory to the mass murder of children.

Jay Janson is a legendary 96-year old anti-imperialist activist. Read more about him in the author box below.

 

Notes

  1. ”70% of those killed in Gaza are women and children” warns CARE to UN Security Council, Nov. 2023 https://www.care-international.org/news/70-those-killed-gaza-are-women-and-children-care-warns-un-security-council
  2. Israel-Palestine war: Why is the media ignoring evidence of Israel’s own actions on 7 October? Jonathan Cook, Middle East Eye, 15 Dec. 2023

3.   Israeli military offensives often target densely populated civilian areas in the Gaza Strip resulting in high numbers of Palestinian child fatalities and injuries. In the Gaza Strip, massive ground and aerial military offensives are responsible for the majority of child fatalities.https://www.dci-palestine.org/right_to_a_childhood
4.   ‘Why Does Israel Have So Many Palestinians in Detention and Available to Swap?’ Human Rights Watch Nov. 29 https://www.hrw.org/news/2023/11/29/why-does-israel-have-so-many-palestinians-detention-and-available-swap
5.   Hearings have started at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague on Monday in a landmark case in which 52 countries are jointly presenting evidence about the legal consequences of Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territories.How does Israel’s occupation of Palestine work?
Why do some call it an ‘apartheid’ and what does the occupation look like in practice? Aljazeera Feb 22, 2024 https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/2/22/how-does-israels-occupation-of-palestine-work
6.  “For Years Netanyahu Propped Up Hamas”by Tal Schneider, 8 October 2023, Times of Israel] https://www.timesofisrael.com/for-years-netanyahu-propped-up-hamas-now-its-blown-up-in-our-faces/
7.  US vetoes another UN Security Council resolution urging Gaza war ceasefire. Majority of members voted to call for an immediate ceasefire in Israel’s war on Gaza that has killed more than 29,000 people. “Voting against it implies an endorsement of the brutal violence and collective punishment inflicted upon them [the Palestinians,”Amar Bendjama, Algeria’s ambassador to the UN
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/2/20/us-vetoes-another-un-security-council-resolution-urging-gaza-war-ceasefire
8.  https://worldhistorycommons.org/map-partition-israel-and-palestine Map of Proposed Partion 1946
9.  https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/einstein/1948/12/02.htm
10. “Worldwide Propaganda Network Built by the C.I.A,” December 26, 1977, New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/1977/12/26/archives/worldwide-propaganda-network-built-by-the-cia-a-worldwide-network.html
11. War By Media: "Journalists Are War Criminals," Julian Assange “The Reality That Is Constructed Around Us Is Constructed By Liars.” Celia Farber, The Truth Barrier, Oct. 10, 2023https://celiafarber.substack.com/p/war-by-media-journalists-are-war
12. More than 3,600 Palestinian children were killed in just 3 weeks of war AP Nov. 2, 2023  https://apnews.com/article/israel-hamas-11-1-2023-children-killed-4a352398b32887e60a658e0270f0a021
13. Survivor Speaks: Israeli forces shot their own civilians
You Tube   Israeli Apache helicopters killed own soldiers, civilians on ...New footage corroborates previous reports that say the Israeli military is responsible for many of the Israeli casualties during The Cradle https://thecradle.co/articles-id/11993
IDF combat helicopter targeting Hamas fighters at Nova festival massacre shot some partygoers by mistake, says Haaretz https://news.yahoo.com/idf-combat-helicopter-targeting-hamas-122629406.html
14. 'Level the Place,' Declares Lindsey Graham as Israel Does Exactly That to Gaza and he wasn't the only prominent GOP figure to make such an incendiary call.
        Plainly incitement to genocide. Common Dreams Oct 11
        https://www.commondreams.org/news/lindsey-graham
15. "We are working, operating militarily according to the rules of international law, period. Unequivocally, it's an entire nation out there that is responsible. It's not true this rhetoric about civilians not [being] aware, not involved. Absolutely not true," Herzog said (via ITV News).
16. [Rabbi Lior: Jewish law permits destruction of Gaza to bring safety to Israel Jerusalem Post, July 23, 2014 https://www.jpost.com/operation-protective-edge/rabbi-lior-jewish-law-permits-destruction-of-gaza-to-bring-safety-to-israel-368605#google_vignette]
17. New York Times, EINSTEIN URGES UNITED NATIONS RUN PALESTINE, February 15, 1946
18. The 1939 Wagner-Rogers Bill is the common name for two identical congressional bills that proposed admitting 20,000 German refugee children to the United States outside of immigration quotas. Despite congressional hearings and public debate in the spring of 1939, the bills never came to a vote
19. Collins, John (2011). "A Dream Deterred: Palestine from Total War to Total Peace". Studies in Settler Colonialism: Politics, Identity and Culture. Palgrave Macmillan UK. pp. 169–185.
20. Busbridge, Rachel (2018). "Israel-Palestine and the Settler Colonial 'Turn': From Interpretation to Decolonization". Theory, Culture & Society. 35 (1): 91–115.
21. Zionism and the Israeli–Palestinian conflict have been described as a form of settler colonialism. Patrick Wolfe, an influential theorist of settler colonial studies, considered Israel an example and discussed it in his 2006 essay "Settler colonialism and the elimination of the native". Other scholars who have used a settler-colonial analysis of Israel/Palestine include Edward Said, Rashid Khalidi, Noam Chomsky, Ilan Pappe, Fayez Sayegh,.
22. It is a grave breach of Additional Protocol I. Under the Statute of the International Criminal Court, “the transfer, directly or indirectly, by the Occupying Power of parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies” constitutes a war crime in international armed conflicts.
23. Gordon, Neve; Ram, Moriel (2016). "Ethnic cleansing and the formation of settler colonial geographies" (PDF).         The Fourth Geneva Convention concerns protected civilians in occupied territory.
24. “A history of settler violence in the West Bank,” The Economist, Feb. 8, 2024. https://www.economist.com/the-economist-explains/2024/02/08/a-history-of-settler-violence-in-the-west-bank
25. . Doud, Douglas, Thorstein Veblen (Washington Square Press, 1966, p. 66.
26. Council On Foreign Relations, Jan. 23, 2024 https://www.cfr.org/article/us-aid-israel-four-charts.
27. Palestine and Israel war heart touching story Feb. 20 YouTube
28. https://www.prb.org/resources/the-west-bank-and-gaza-a-population-profile/
29. Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide The Convention defines genocide as any of five "acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group.” unanimously adopted by the United Nations General Assembly, on 9 December 1948, during the third session of the United Nations General Assembly.[1] The Convention entered into force on 12 January 1951 and has 152 state parties as of 2022.
30. https://www.cnn.com/2023/10/25/middleeast/un-israel-spat-guterres-gaza-intl/index.html
31. https://www.rt.com/news/592798-israel-hitler-comparison-maduro/?utm_source=Newsletter&utm_medium=Email&utm_campaign=Email
32.   https://www.bignewsnetwork.com/news/274132397/israel-has-the-same-western-support-as-hitler---maduro
33. https://www.bbc.com/news/av/world-middle-east-6720462

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INDRAJIT
indi.ca
Views from the third world. Earth.

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Pippi the cat

You can read me directly at www.indi.ca.

We have a cat, or should I say, the cat has us. During the rainy season a kitten took shelter under the security guard’s chair and my daughter took it into the house. I spend a lot of time with this creature and it gives zero shits about anything I’m thinking about. Indeed, I am the one cleaning its shit. What’s going on?

Humans claim supremacy over other animals, but no other animal validates this claim. What do you call a king that crowns himself? That’s just an ordinary Burger King customer. How lame. There’s obviously no objective truth to human supremacy, just ask anyone objective, like a crow or thalagoya. They’ll just flick their tongue or shit on you, as such a stupid question deserves. Humans consider the concept of white supremacy offensive, but supremacy over all living beings is somehow normal. It’s not. It’s deranged.

By what criteria are we lords of the critters? Our power to scare and kill? By that token, viruses reign supreme. By our terrible power to literally ‘change’ the climate? What about the plant and bacterial gods that made the climate? They’re more awesome still. Is it because we can make stuff, bend nature to our will? All the stuff we make will disappear in a few million years, a shake of a T-Rex’s tail. So what’s left, to justify our airs? Sheer numbers? Our livestock outnumber us. Cars use up most of our land. We’re ruled by corporations (artificial persons). What are we even talking about? The only supremacy we can truly claim is supreme arrogance.

Given a small survey of the animals in my house, the only things they find impressive about human civilization are A) tissue paper and B) the ability to scratch itches. Scratches and sniffles, that’s all we’ve conquered that’s of general interest. The cat and dog don’t watch the TV, the Internet is just something to warm their bellies, and electricity is extraneous. What interests them is the constant amount of food in the house, but countless street dogs and cats seem to get by. Indeed, our dog’s greatest ambition is to chase the garbage truck and the cat is constantly scheming to sneak out. In no way do these creatures treat me as their superior. They’re constantly showing me their anuses.

I’m increasingly convinced that all the science, all the poetry, all the art, it’s no better or worse than the mating dance of any other creature. It may be worse because — while we’re interested in their displays— they’re not interested in us. Our vaunted intelligence is a parlor trick, a frill, a colorful feather, a red bottom.

We claim that human intelligence is the ‘height’ of evolution, but this is dumb. Evolution is adaptation to the environment, and what has ‘intelligence’ done besides destroy the environment in a few hundred generations? As far as evolutionary traits go, intelligence is objectively the worst. It fucks up the environment and kills the host. It’s like a brain virus predator.

People keep saying intelligence will solve our problems, but it literally creates them! The problem is that our concept of the world doesn’t match the world, and making even more complex concepts won’t help. In meditation you have to clear your mind of words completely to understand anything. The first rule of holes is stop digging.

Human supremacy is the fundamental hole we’re in. It’s impossible to think our way out because human supremacy is the foundation of almost human thought. Humans are made in gods’ image, and given the power to name (and tame) the animals. Humans are endowed with reason, which gives our names meaning, and lets us manipulate nature and even atoms. Humans have responsibility, including the responsibility to ‘save’ the planet. But save the planet from what? This is like the ax saving the forest. We’re from the forest but we ain’t for the forest. That much is plain.

Any bright idea we have is going to be some form of shovel, until we get out of the philosophical hole we’re in. The hole we have dug to separate ourselves from all other animals on Earth. We have to go back to what we were, and as children that respect our elders, not as men. We have to bow before the sun gods and the nature gods and respect our kin. That’s cute, but it’s too late for that, isn’t it?

Whatever brain virus infected humans with grain in rows and databases is exploding out of our brains and it has an evolutionary destiny of its own. These artificial lifeforms — genus capital, species corporations — have already colonized the world and are already killing their ancestral lifeforms, as evolution often does. And we take no notice of them at all! We’re the cats in that situation.

We’re completely dependent on artificial lifeforms like corporations and states to feed us, clean up after us, and keep us in our cages. And we pay even less attention to them than our pets do to us! We’re oblivious. We’re all just bugs in someone else’s rug. I suspect it's rugs and bugs all the way up, and all the way down.

We think we’re a higher species, but even our pets don’t acknowledge us as such. Meanwhile artificial life is higher than us, and we don’t acknowledge them either! Perhaps everyone’s arrogant and everyone’s ignorant. That nature of having one perception is that you don’t have others.

I think about this as the cat interrupts my writing to writhe in front of my keyboard. Stop bothering me dude! What do you want? But maybe it’s trying to tell me something. Or maybe it’s not. Maybe that’s the point, to STFU and just do some social grooming. Maybe we’re all just here, and the best we can do is scratch our itches and go crazy on the tissue box.

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The Standard, a UK newspaper, publishes harrowing account of Gaza animals caught in a hellish genocide

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SOURCE: The Standard (London) / BY DANNY HALPIN

Animals in Gaza are starving, say volunteers

No animal food or medicine has been allowed into the territory since the blockade began.
 

If this is the fate of human beings, imagine what the animals are suffering. (Credit: Jim Kavanagh)


MANY ANIMALS HAVE BEEN LEFT TO WANDER THE RUBBLE AS FIGHTING PREVENTS THEM BEING RESCUED

Cats, dogs and other animals in Gaza are starving to death as Israel is preventing food and medicine from crossing the border, rescue volunteers have said.

Sulala Society for Animal Care is the only official rescue organisation in the territory and it is close to running out of supplies. Hundreds of animals have already died of starvation while Sulala has only two bags of food left for the 120 cats and 30 dogs under its care, volunteers said.

The biggest issue right now is food

ANNELIES KEULEERS, SULALA SOCIETY FOR ANIMAL CARE

Heavy fighting is preventing them from saving other animals while volunteers on the Israeli side of the border are not allowed to cross over and help out.

Many Palestinians have had to abandon their animals while fleeing the conflict, with some having to leave pets at the Egyptian border as the animals are not allowed to cross over. There is now so little food left in Gaza that animals and people can no longer find it in rubbish bins, volunteers said.

Annelies Keuleers, a Sulala English language spokesperson, said the organisation’s founder Saeed Al Err was forced to leave hundreds of dogs in a shelter with the doors open and some food before evacuating south and has been unable to reach them since. 

Speaking from outside Gaza, she said: “The biggest issue right now is food. In the beginning of the war, the first days, Saeed bought a huge amount of food, everything he could find, but it’s now running out.

“In the beginning of the war, they picked up the disabled dogs because they knew they wouldn’t be able to survive on the streets and now they’re in a temporary shelter.

 “They’re looking for a more permanent place to move south, but they have to take all the animals with them.

“It’s really challenging and stressful and especially for them, not knowing how many more times they will have to move and refusing to go without the animals.”

Sulala is part of an international group of animal rescue organisations that are calling on the Israeli government to allow animal food and medicine into Gaza.

Many people have been struggling to feed themselves since Israel began its blockade late last year and while some aid for people is now crossing over in trucks, animal food is not.

In Defence of Animals, an American animal welfare campaign group, has published an open letter to the Israeli Knesset and members of the war cabinet urging them to allow rescuers to help the animals.

Volunteers also want to access chicken farms that have been destroyed by missiles along the northern border.

Yael Gabay, one of the signatories and founder of Israel’s Freedom for Animals, said her organisation rescued a lot of turkeys, chickens, cats and dogs early in the war but her volunteers are now no longer allowed into Gaza. 

She wants the Israeli military to allow her to take food into the Strip and to accompany her while she rescues abandoned animals from the warzone.

Donkeys, as larger, draft animals, have suffered immensely from inevitable starvation, thirst, overwork, and incessant bombardment. (TGP screenshot)

She told the PA news agency: “We really feel that there’s an opportunity to rescue so many other animals now in Gaza and also on the northern borders.

“We wish that the Israeli government would give us an opportunity to do that. And to provide food.”

Israeli soldiers have been giving water to some of the wandering animals and bringing some back in their tanks, she added, although they are prohibited from doing so.

We really feel that there's an opportunity to rescue so many other animals now in Gaza and also on the northern borders

YAEL GABAY, FREEDOM FOR ANIMALS

One member of the Knesset, the Israeli parliament, said she is “very sceptical” that the authorities will take animal lives in war zones seriously.

Politician Yasmin Sacks Friedman has been pushing the Israeli government to support the animals and the volunteers trying to rescue them.

She said: “My life’s mission is to improve the state of the animals in Israel, and for two-and-a-half years in the Knesset, the ministry of agriculture has not been co-operative on improving the state of the animals inside the country.

“Like everything else relating to the treatment and rescue of animals in the past, at the end, the care and rescue is done exclusively by animal loving volunteers and activists, and this should not happen!”

Thank You THE STANDARD for caring enough to run this report. 

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COLLECTIVIST, INDIVIDUALIST AND COMMUNIST SELVES, PART I

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BY BRUCE LERRO / PERSPECTIVES

Communist Selves, Part I
COLLECTIVIST, INDIVIDUALIST AND COMMUNIST SELVES, PART I
The Process Social Psychology of George Herbert Mead
 Dateline 08 NOV 2023

Medieval alchemist working in his laboratory

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Orientation

Preliminary social psychology questions and answers

People’s identity can be made sense of as existing in the cross-fire between our biological, psychological and social lives. This helps us to understand the differences between someone’s temperament, personality and self. Among social psychologists such as George Herbert Mead, the species homo sapiens is not fully human until we have been socialized. What are the skills necessary to build this social identity? Why is it that some skills have to be built before others? As adults we assume that our inner psychology and the objective world are separate. But research shows that it probably takes the child seven or eight years to develop both a subjective and objective self.

All animals have an individual temperament. But they only develop a personality if their species is social. No animal develops a self if they are not social beings. A foundation for developing a social self is to play roles, learn rules, navigate situations and learn to think abstractly. Mammals learn to play but why is play important to learning roles?

Mead’s work took place in an industrial capitalist society and the kind of self that Mead studied was what cross-cultural psychologists called an “individualist self”. Cross-culturally, researchers contrasted that to the “collectivist self”. Lastly, I ask what kind of self would be possible in an industrial communist society? How would learning roles, playing by rules and navigating situations be any different?

This article is divided into two parts. The first part is a description of the ingredients Mead identifies as needed in the cultivation of a social self. In part II I sketch out how Mead’s characteristics might play out – first in collectivist societies such as India or Japan and second what the self would be like in an ideal communist society.

George Herbert Mead and the deeply social self  

George Herbert Mead was an interdisciplinarian at heart. Born in 1863 in Massachusetts, the heart of his work was in what I call micro-social psychology. That means he was interested in the process of how an individual became a social being. But unlike many major Yankee social psychologists who followed Mead, he was a deeply social,social psychologist. While others consciously or unconsciously followed Rosseau’s social contract theory, Mead insisted that humans were constitutionally social beings. For him, individuality was a bi-product of society rather than its starting point.

Three Layers of Human Identity

Human identity can be divided into three interacting layers. The first layer is temperament. This is the biological predispositions an organism has prior to becoming socialized. These are processes such as introversion-extroversion or calmness-hyperactivity. The second layer of identity is personality. Personality results from the interaction between temperament, which is innate, and personal experience, which is learned as part of being socialized into the human community. Personality is the relatively stable set of characteristics that make an individual unique compared to others. These characteristics appear to remain stable over time and to vary little across the roles that we play and the situations we find ourselves in. While personality is socialized, it is understood to emerge from the particular biography of the individual.

The third layer of identity is the self. The micro and macro groups who make up society are relatively indifferent to people’s personality, but have high expectations about the self. It is the self that meets the social world less from the point of view of the individual biography and more from the requirements of what it takes to be a social being. The self learns to be both a recipient of social forces and their dynamics and a co-constructor of those forces.  Furthermore, in order for society to be transmitted across generations those who develop selves must also, as parents, help build the selves of their children.

Building Blocks of a Social Self

In order for an individual to develop a social self the following “building blocks” must be mastered:

  • manage the tension between individual and social self-interest (“I-Me” dialogues).

Cultivating Subjectivity and Objectivity

All of these skills can be grouped into “objective” skills and “subjective” skills. Subjective skills have to do with what is going on inside of people. This involves understanding yourself as being unique compared to others, cultivating the capacity to think abstractly, learning how to self-regulate your body as well as how to self-reflect. People imagine that having a sense of internal identity is something that exists from birth. But psychologist Margret Mahler has demonstrated that a baby has to be at least 2 years old before there is any internal identity.

Cultivating objectivity is the capacity to understand that other people have minds and intentions of their own and that people in societies have expectations about how to act, play roles and navigate situations which are independent of our needs, wishes and expectations. Learning to be objectivity is difficult. In fact, it is so difficult that many adults never master it. But if an infant at birth has neither a subjective or objective self, then how does a very young child experience the world?

What babies possess is a proto-social self that is pre-subjective and pre-objective. On the one hand, babies are too lost in their own needs to see their caretakers as full beings playing roles and navigating in situations that are independent of them. They have no social objectivity. Other people are used as a means to satisfy their needs. At the same time, this proto-social self does not realize that its own internal states (emotions, fantasies and urges) are closed off and invisible to others. In order to develop subjectivity, there must be awareness that one’s inner life cannot be publicly scrutinized.

Elaboration of the Social Building Blocks

Let us review the building blocks and connect them up to the cultivation of objectivity and subjectivity. There are a number of important skills and concepts a child must learn as part of socialization that cannot be categorized in the service of either subjectivity or objectivity because they are both. These include learning to distinguish the inner world from the outer world, learning to use verbal language as well as non-verbal body language and learning how to manipulate tools.

Making and manipulating tools

All beings have to be able to earn a living in the environment. Most other biological beings are limited to their physical anatomy in earning that living – claws for raking, teeth for tearing and beaks for pecking. Human beings craft objects – tools – that allow us to act upon other objects to meet their needs.  Tools help us to focus our attention, intensify our actions and permit us to carve and shape what the world becomes. In order to become fully human and navigate through the world we must master the most important tools – spoons and knives, hammers, nails, chisels, weaving looms, telephones and cars.

Learning language

Learning language is vital to enable us to live beyond the here-and-now. It allows us to analyze our experiences by comparing them to our past experience and to project our future plans. Language allows us to share our experiences with others. This advances the learning curve for everyone. Further, verbal language allows us to build from others’ experience in the past and share experiences with future generations.

Developing a conscience

Another foundational skill in cultivating objectivity is to develop a conscience. As all parents know, it is futile to expect a one or two-year old to know what is right and what is wrong. So too, it is unrealistic to tell a child what is right and wrong and expect this moral encouragement to govern their behavior from that point forward. Tangible consequences —reinforcement or punishment— are more likely to be effective. But there is a point at which the conversations between parents and children about beliefs and morals move from interpersonaldiscussions to intrapersonaldialogues. In other words, the child internalizes these conversations between themselves and parents and makes them their own. Then an individual possesses a conscience.

Of course, having a conscience does not guarantee that the child will do what the parents want. But if the child does not enact the beliefs and morals of their parents, they will be aware of the difference, experience an inner conflict and probably feel guilty about their actions.  Prior to this internalization of previous conversations, guilt and remorse do not exist. Wrongdoing is merely a matter of fear of punishment, and following what the parent wants is motivated by an anticipated reward. The child is building a conscience at the same time as s/he is learning their society’s morals and beliefs as their parents pass them on.

Suppressing and relativizing biological urges

Another skill to be mastered is how to suppress and relativize biological functions. Biological elimination and sexual play have to be structured spatially and temporally so as not to offend social customs and laws.

Role-making and role-taking

One of the most important skills a self must learn is how to role-take and role-make. Roles are a predictable range of expected actions that are embedded in specific situations. Roles result from a conscious or unconscious division of labor between people for how to negotiate situations successfully. Role-taking and role-making requires a long time to learn. Learning to play roles in specific situations does not happen all at once. Children must first learn what the roles are. They first do this through play and then they learn to do this in earnest.

Mead’s Four Stages of Self-development

  • Preparation – in this first stage, the child is still mastering the language, tool manipulation, body movement and developing a conscience. S(he) imitates the actions of others in roles without understanding that they are roles nor do they understand the meaning of these roles.
  • Play -in this stage the child begins to understand roles but can only play the roles one at a time. Secondly, the child cannot see themselves from the perspective of others. Improvised play involves “let’s pretend” games in which the imagination is cultivated at the expense of structure. Roles, rules and purposes are invented, changed and ended quickly at the whim of the child and their friends. In the comic strip Calvin and Hobbes, Calvinball is a great example of improvised play where Calvin makes up the rules as he goes.
  • The game – in this stage the child can assume the perspectives of several others at the same time. In addition, the individual can now see her own selffrom the perspective of others. Here imagination is tempered by playing in games that have roles, rules and expectations built into them before the game begins and these constraints are rarely subject to modification. Designed play teaches structure, self-discipline and co-operation over extended periods of time. Any kind of group sports, a musical band or a theatre company organized in grammar school fits the bill.
  • Reference groups (Shibutani, 1955) In this stage an adult begins to identify with groups beyond significant others. One’s social class, ethnic/racial background and gender become significant in understanding how one is treated and how one is supposed to treat others. A person can play different roles while in each of these groups.

Power, Status and Privilege in Adulthood

Learning to play roles seriously involves not only learning what the codes are in general, but that some of the roles involve order-giving and order-taking. Every role has a status and a range of entitlements as to what is expected, permitted and prohibited. This is the origin of prestige, influence, privilege and power in adulthood.

Learning to Navigate Situations

Roles and situations produce synergy

Most groups cooperate. The agreement to play roles has embedded in it the assumption that if we divide up the tasks into roles, the end result will be more than anyone could achieve alone. When groups do this, they produce “synergy”. This is a sense that when individuals come together to cooperate, they produce a whole that is more than the sum of its parts. Even the most seemingly uncooperative and competitive groups have some level of cooperation at their foundation.

Eight dimensions of situations

For a long time, the child does not understand that all roles are rooted in situations. Learning to decipher situations is a whole other skill. Individuals are virtually always in situations as they move across the day. Leaving the house in the morning, driving the car to work, discussing a problem at a staff meeting, going out to lunch in an outdoor restaurant and waiting in line for groceries after work are all situations that require us to play different roles. In every situation there are at least eight dimensions:

  • time-line (when is it happening? how long will it last?).

Routine, mild-problematic and crisis situations

There are three types of situations: routine, mild-problematic and crisis. A routine situation is one that is stable and repetitive in which most or all of these questions are answered by everyone in more or less the same way. They are usually taken for granted and not explicitly discussed. Lack of clarity among people over a critical mass of these eight dimensions destabilizes these routine situations and leads to either a restabilization of the routine situation through discussion or to problematic or crisis situations.

A mildly problematic situation is one in which unexpected, minor novel events stretch the boundaries of the eight dimensions without calling them into question. But in a mildly problematic situation, some of the eight dimensions come to the level of group consciousness because they must be discussed and negotiated in order for the situation to be stabilized. Sometimes mildly problematic situations emerge not because of events but because a significant number of people in the group misunderstand some of the dimensions of situations or do understand them and are in conflict about them.

In the example of a classroom, a mildly problematic situation might be a number of students questioning the absence policy or grading criteria in front of other students. The authority of the teacher, the rules for the class and the time-line are being tested. But the reason why everyone is present and what they are doing remain stable. Whether this situation returns to routine or escalates into a crisis depends on how everyone in the room negotiates over these reservations.

A crisis situation occurs when either most of the dimensions are called into question or only the most important ones are, such as the meaning, purpose or power base. Then the very meaning of what we are doing together in the situation is up for grabs. A natural disaster that rocks a school can immediately change a routine situation into a crisis. It ends the formal educational setting and forces the same group of people to renegotiate how they are to be together in a collapsing building. Because the situation has changed, all the dimensions of the situations have to be reorganized.

Designed play, role-taking and routine situations

There is an important relationship between Mead’s “play” and “the game” on the one hand and routine and crisis situations on the other. Designed play (the game) socialized children to respect structure and perseverance in order to participate in routine actions. When an individual operates in a routine situation s/he is role taking.  S/he is entering a role that is already in place.

Improvised play, role-making and crisis situations

Improvised play teaches a child how to be imaginative when the group is faced with a crisis situation. When an individual is operating in a crisis situation they are role-making. They are creating the role (with others) on the spot. These skills are the micro-roots for understanding that individuals, by our actions, are always creating order and conflict, of conforming and being creative.

Summarizing, social order goes with designed play, routine situations and role taking. Conflict and creativity goes with improvised play, problematic or crisis situations and role-making. Improvised play, role making and learning how to navigate in crisis situations in everyday life are the skills needed to participate in social movements and revolutions we shall see.

Cultivating an Objective Self and a “Generalized Other”

When children first enter a social situation they do not know anything about roles or situational rules. This proto-social self imposes their personality on the roles and situations they stumble into, oblivious to the roles people are already playing and the type of situation they are in.  But no sooner has a person learned how to play a given role than they must learn that:

  • these multiple and detachable roles will change depending on whether a person is in a routine, mildly problematic or crisis situation.
  • These roles are New roles emerge in certain historical periods, for example a computer programmer. Other roles dwindle such as the role of a peddler in the Middle Ages or a farmer operating a small farm in Yankeedom today.

Playing all these roles as children, whether in musical bands, dance companies or sports groups is of course preparation to play roles at work.

Thus far the tools that go with cultivating objectivity include playing roles and learning how to change roles as situations dictate. In addition to this, there is a movement in the experience of a young child away from present time (their individual lifetime) and local geography (the domestic household) to past and future time history) and a less local geography (beyond the domestic household). This is what Mead meant when he characterized it as cultivating a “generalized other.” Developing a generalized other is an internalized sense that other people and the situations they find themselves in are objective and independent of the internal wishes, hopes and fears of any individual.

Children come to realize that the domestic household, which they think is the world, is, in fact, a tiny slice of a world surrounded by many other domestic households. They may learn that the roles they master are small parts of historical structures that have come into being before their individual lifetime and may remain after they die. In short, developing the objective side of a self involves cultivating a detached understanding that what is going on in society is independent of our needs, wants, interests, hopes and fears.

Cultivating a Subjective Self

But what about an individual’s “subjectivity” or as symbolic interactionists call their “biographical self”? According to Mead, developing a sense of subjectivity is impossible without first understanding what it means to be objective. Once objectivity is understood one’s personal identity can be seen in perspective, as relatively small but also unique. The proto-social self of the child comes to understand that their inner world is not on display to others – that others are not simply an audience for the child’s personal dramas. Other people have individual lives that are unique to them, theirs to make for better or worse. This awakening allows them to think about, fantasize and act towards themselves, not as the center of the universe, but as a unique being among other unique beings.

Just as the individual must understand the social world as expanding in geography and time, so the individual must come to see their own life as having wider temporal and geographical reaches. The budding self realizes that it has a past and future as well as a present. The individual must be able to reflect on past experience, not only in the service of their present situation, but also in where they want to go. At the same time the individual self must understand that their ability to shape and change things can extend beyond the domestic household to work settings and as citizens. In other words, just as the individual comes to understand the world as expanding in time and space, so they come to see the same process, at least a microcosmic version of it, going on in their life. Some learn these skills better than others. Many social problems in the world result from the inability of individuals to master these building blocks.

“I-Me” Dialogues

Once an individual develops a picture of an independent objective world and a distinct subjective world, a unique problem presents itself. An understanding of the objective world means that there are stable expectations that social groups and the situation they are embedded in have for the individual. Yet at the same time, because we understand how to navigate these social roles and situations, we have a greater chance of transforming them in the service of what we want. The problem now is how to reconcile the individual and social self-interest.

Once this conflict is recognized, internal negotiations must take place. Mead calls the part of the individual who has internalized the expectations of others the “me” part of the self. This is probably confusing to many since “me” might usually refer to individual self-interest. It probably would have been better had Mead called this the “they” or the “we” part. But if we want to follow Mead we are stuck with the “me” part. The part of the self that represents the interests of the individual in relation to society is the “I” part. Mead calls the subsequent negotiation between these two parts the “I-Me” dialogue. These two sides both cooperate and compete with each other. They haggle, trade, plead when in roles and situations. The following is an example.

Suppose an individual in a tribal society sees a member of their kin group headed toward their hut expecting to visit and be fed. The I part of the potential host says to themselves, “here comes so-and-so, the loafer, expecting a free hand-out. Let’s leave quickly so we don’t have to entertain him”. The Me part says “no, he is our kinsman and I am responsible for treating him as one of our own.” The I part counters with “but he is such a free-loader. He wouldn’t do the same for me”. The me part counters with, “but the members of his family would be upset with me and they are not loafers. I don’t want to start trouble with them.”  The I part tries a compromise. “Maybe I can stay with him for a few minutes and pretend to be sick in order to send him on his way.”

Forces of Socialization and Learning Mechanisms

Coming Attractions

The self in cross-cultural perspective

Up to now we have treated the building of a social self as if it had no variation across cultures. While all societies have to provide children with the building blocks described, how they get built, what they emphasize and what gets downplayed varies from society to society, depending on whether they are hunter-gatherers’ bands, horticultural villages, herding societies, agricultural states or industrial capitalist societies. As societies change and evolve, so does the form of the social self. In part II we are leaving the direct claims of Mead and discussing how his work might be applied by cross-cultural psychologists and show how it might be connected with the collectivist self.

The self in social movements and world history as precursors of the communist self

In order to understand what a communist self might look like we also need to understand the social movements that might give rise to socialism or communism. What you are asked to do in a social movement helps to birth a new kind of self, whether that self is communist or not. Secondly, being part of a social movement is not just something that spans the globe. Being part of a social movement links the individual to history. Individuals develop a world-historical identity. It invites us to engage all of Mead’s ingredients in a social sense in a whole new way, as part of world history in the making. The world-historical self is embedded in the communist self.

This essay is part of our ESSENTIALS collection.

About the author
Bruce Lerro has taught for 25 years as an adjunct college professor of psychology at Golden Gate University, Dominican University and Diablo Valley College. He has applied a Vygotskian socio-historical perspective to his four books: From Earth-Spirits to Sky-Gods: the Socio-ecological Origins of Monotheism, Individualism and Hyper-Abstract Reasoning Power in Eden: The Emergence of Gender Hierarchies in the Ancient World Co-Authored with Christopher Chase-Dunn Social Change: Globalization from the Stone Age to the Present and Lucifer's Labyrinth: Individualism, Hyper-Abstract Thinking and the Process of Becoming Civilized. He is also a representational artist specializing in pen-and-ink drawings. Bruce is a libertarian communist and lives in Olympia WA.

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The incredible ibex defies gravity and climbs a dam | Forces of Nature with Brian Cox

Be sure to distribute this article as widely as possible. Pushing back against the Big Lie is really up to you.

Solidarity with the poor and the weak includes our moral duty of protection and compassion toward animals, the most helpless sentient beings of all.

Hair-raising feats are a way of life for this animal, one of nature's most unique and spectacular.

The incredible ibex defies gravity and climbs a dam | Forces of Nature with Brian Cox - BBC

ADDENDUM

How Mountain Goats Walk On Sheer Cliffs Subduing Gravity.

Victorious Nature

Dec 28, 2021 ВАШИНГТОН

Every climber knows that mountains are unforgiving. You have to move along the rocks very slowly, with a bunch of precautions so that, God forbid, you do not fall into the abyss, splashing your brains over the stones. Apparently, no one told the mountain goats about this. That is why they jump on steep cliffs as if on level ground, as if gravity had no effect on them. Mountain goats are divided into three groups: ibex, goats and tours. The difference between them is mainly in the structure of the horns. Mountain goats are closely related to mountain rams, with which they have many similarities. However, mountain rams avoid steep cliffs, and live on smooth slopes, at an altitude of 2200 to 3500 meters above sea level. Their more distant relatives are snow goats, chamois and gorals. In short, they have a lot of relatives. But the question arises: how can mountain goats stand on tiny rock ledges, several thousand meters high, and even run on them? What is their secret of climbing? Did they hack the laws of physics? Let's find out.

Thank you for visiting our animal defence section. Before leaving, please join us in a moment of compassion and reflection.

The wheels of business and human food compulsions are implacable and totally lacking in compassion. This is a downed cow, badly hurt, but still being dragged to slaughter. Click on this image to fully appreciate this horror repeated millions of times every day around the world. With plentiful non-animal meat substitutes that fool the palate, there is no longer any reason for this enormous senseless suffering. Meat consumption is a serious ecoanimal crime. The tyranny of the palate must be broken. Please consider changing your habits in this regard.

 

ALL CAPTIONS AND PULL QUOTES BY THE EDITORS, NOT THE AUTHORS.

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