While the trauma that Palestinians continue to face in Gaza is sustained, brutal and seemingly never-ending, the way people experience the effects of trauma has the potential to unite humanity as much as it divides the self. Dr. Gabor Maté, renowned physician and expert in trauma and childhood development, illustrates this point articulately and beautifully on the latest episode of The Chris Hedges Report through attempting to make sense of the psychology, trauma and reason behind the actions of Palestinians, IDF soldiers, WWII survivors, Nazis and even himself.
I deeply admire and respect both of you for your unwavering commitment to seeking the truth and your perseverance through years of hardship and challenges you both endured.
What an extremely powerful and important conversation!!! I just watched the movie about Hannah Arendt's ordeal after she wrote about the Eichman trial. This was when she came up with the idea of "the banality of evil." She was persecuted for her insights about the Holocaust.
Leo Tolstoy once said, "Solving the land problem is the solving of all social problems." What is the Land Problem? Well, how we hold the Earth is how we hold each other. If we treat Mother Earth as a commodity for sale and profiteering, if we abuse and denigrate Mother Earth. so we harm and destroy each other." The Earth is the Birthright of All People. The Earth Belongs to Everyone. Warfare or Earth Share? - that is the question, as all comes from the earth, including of course these human bodies. One Earth, One Humanity.
I'd frame it more broadly as one earth, on densely interconnected (common) metabolism. One Earth, One Biology. If you look at the essential energy transforming molecules, they're the same from bacteria through human brain cells -- ATP, NAD etc. We just cannot fragment life -- no matter how hard we try (to f* ck it up).
Trees grow in obligate symbiosis with fungus on their roots; the mycorrhizosphere consists of thousands of interacting, connected critters. Which alone makes cooperation the dominant mode of life on Earth, not competition. And there are many other symbioses, including in and on humans.
Which brings it full circle back to my original point. Human symbiosis with the gut microbiome (bacteria and fungi) is now known to involve reciprocal communication with and influence on immune system function. As is repeatedly emphasized, each of us is as much microorganism as human organism, actually more microorganism if you're counting cells. But to fragment in that fashion is counterproductive because a human is one organismal whole -- its human cells with their viruses integrated with its microorganisms and their viruses. Insert artificial separators at your peril; we can't survive well without them.
Yes Vin I agree that the wholeness, the interconnectivity is the key frame to having good will intentions on all levels, from technology to taxation and everything else. For me that means working for local to global for tax shift to Commons Rent. see. theIU.org - free newsletter.
Although I'd be cautious about wholeness. It isn't healing as if erasing everything bad--my scars are part of who I am. The mystical experience of "we're all one" is wonderful, sure. But who then is speaking? We act individually even if gathering together for the common good. And are judged individually for what we do--or don't do. An activist version of the physicist Niels Bohr's "the opposite of a trivial truth is plainly false; the opposite of a great truth is also true." Both/and rather than either/or. Coalitions, not exclusive like-minded groups.
Thank you: Chris Hedges, Gabor Mate, and everyone else who attempts to empathize with the unfathomable trauma that Palestinians (especially Palestinian children) endure. Humanizing such trauma is incredibly difficult to do, especially from a distance, but might add realistic values to possibly overcome. Uniting and organizing against dehumanization is now more important than ever.
One thing this deeply personal and honest as well as heartbreakingly relentless and descriptive interview brought home to me is how vitally important it has been for me to watch something on this level nearly every day these past 15 months through the Substacks and Reports by strong and caring truth tellers who have developed the capacity of not stopping their hearts from breaking. My heart breaks over and over again only by virtue of the enormous amount of healing work I've done from the traumas in my own life. Your descriptions of unresolved trauma shutting down the capacity to feel spoke to me. I understand why people shut down. There is almost no one among my "liberal" friends or family who have not closed off to one degree or another the longer this horrific, in Gabor's words, unfathomable, unimaginable genocide has gone on (and adding the victimization of Lebanon, Syria, Sudan, Ukraine, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, and so many others). The powerfully controlled MSM also works its hardest to numb and distract and lie. It's been incredibly hard to bear and impossible not to be repeatedly triggered and a sense of helplessness, hopelessness flood in.
I need interviews like this, community, solidarity with others who are capable of bearing witness at this level, even online like this, to keep me going, solid, present, feeling all the range of feelings that burst through, and renewing the faith I have that even this depth of trauma can be healed and overcome. I know how critical it is that the traumatized child have even one person who witnesses their suffering - the question I carry in these times of the internet is can the entire world witnessing in real time the trauma being inflicted upon these beautiful people, on these mothers, fathers, children, the orphans, in Gaza/Palestine have a deeper affect upon their healing than we can yet know? I pray so.
Psycho-neuro-immunology: if you're a skeptic that needs a direct connection between the chronic mental anguish and the patho-biology, the hormonal/cytokine and neural connections between the nervous and immune systems are well established. So at minimum, on top of the malnutrition which depresses their (Palestinians') immune systems, these connections can produce even more biological chaos—infectious disease, autoimmunity, etc. This is not to downplay the psychology of trauma, but simply to emphasize the global physiological horror of it.
One of the things I've had to endure regarding the presidential election results, is abuse from Democratic voters that get very upset when I point out that they voted for a candidate who supports genocide (and openly denies that it is genocide) but also their support of the Democratic Party, for war / military aggression in general = Ukraine and China. No criticism will be heard or accepted by the Dismal D's. Unfortunately, we all have to live with the resulting Trump win because the D's refuse to listen to critical voices that saw them lose twice to the Orange Clown.
"Listen to your heart. Don't just let your mind decide, and don't accept what authority tells you." That is exactly the crux of the matter; evidence either/or Aristotelian logic is not enough. Liberal intellectuals see the silliness of fundamentalist good/evil and saved/damned, but how many see the same either/or error of science as reductionism and of philosophy limited by its own starting assumptions? Or of politics as with us/ against us?
Not letting the mind decide means don't let the brain's linear and abstract left hemisphere dominate like it has for western Euro and colonist descendants since the Enlightenment. It wants control, certainty, either/or. In contrast, the right hemisphere sees gestalts; it's comfortable with ambiguity and uncertainty. And it processes by means of symbols and metaphors, bringing meaning to life. BTW, it understands the left but the reverse is not so. This isn't New Age garbage--check out Iain McGilchrist's 2 vol magnum opus //The Matter with Things (Our Brains, Our Delusions, and the Unmaking of the World)//. Point is the methods which got us into the predicaments of today cannot fix them.
IMHO C. G. Jung's idea of The Shadow archetype fits quite well both individually and collectively. The Shadow is what each of us most dislikes about ourselves and thus denies, but sees clearly in others. The tip-off is the vehemence of the dislike; hatred even. When one finally figures out it's true of oneself it comes as a huge shock! In the U.S. we haven't admitted as a nation the truth that the country was founded in the sins of genocide and racism. Yet we're sure Russia, China, and Islamic countries are evil--look how they repress their minorities and dissidents!
Good point about Abu Graib, too. Read Joe Bageant's //Deer Hunting with Jesus (Dispatches from America's Class War)//. Heart rending first hand accounts about life in Appalachia. He's from the same town, Winchester VA, as Lynddie England, made famous by the photo of her standing over a prisoner, cigarette hanging from her mouth. There's a whole chapter in the book on her. A victim of the economic draft, she never had a chance. So of course she did prison time while the perpetrators of neolib and neocon violence are never held to account.
I know that adult abusers more often then not had a childhood history of abuse, but the majority of abused children do not grow up and become abusers. Abused children will no doubt have psychological issues, but that does not mean they themselves will be abusive toward others or their own children, or lack empathy for others. In terms of what is going on in Gaza, Israeli's have been raised to see Palestinians as less then human, or as Gallant said, animals. Animals which they have caged. Then you have a whole society who reinforces this perspective, not a family, but whole society which I believe makes what is happening now more possible, since there are few who offer an alternative perspective. Israel is a society highly indoctrinated, almost on a religious level to believe Palestinian life does not count. Too often the victimhood of the Jews, which is not to be denied, is used to justify their behavior, and anyone critical of their behavior is labeled an anti-Semite, basically a Nazi, and dismissed. "Several passages in the Hebrew Bible are interpreted as referring to genocide that God commanded the Israelites commit, notably the case of Amalek, and the Canaanites."
thank you so much to both of you, chris hedges, gabor maté! "unfathomable", as gabor maté repeatedly stated, "unfathomable!" the amount of pain and suffering people are willing and able to inflict on each 'other', the more so if the 'other' is deemed less than worthy, is deemed 'subhuman'. settler colonialism is pitiless in its greed, in its utter indifference, its death wish ...
i wish we could cut off all power to all arms manufacturers. how do people working in that line of business sleep undisturbed by pangs of CON_science at night? the CEO of an arms maker in my complicit EU country received a death threat a while ago - and was outraged ...
and then there is SUDAN. where the biggest humanitarian catastrophe on earth unfolds with hardly anyone noticing: millions displaced, another genocide going on, parallel to that in GAZA, survivors eating grass to get by, civil war never ending ... what IS the human CON_dition?
in the meantime many in the global north prepare for christmas as usual.
The end less anguish and pity demanded from those suffering from the Jewish guilt. This becomes the Jewish justification, and then as Gabor suggests, we must feel pity for the shame the Jewish person must suffer for the atrocities his own people commit. Basically, we must remember that The Jew Hates You behind the emulation of compassion and empathy where lying to the infidels face is OK. The infidel is only a contemptuous being. If you believe that Anti Semitism is a thing you have been well conscripted. Sorry, the endless Jew as victim remains as a perpetual shield of innocence, and the piety of mindless Christian support remains complicit.
I deeply admire and respect both of you for your unwavering commitment to seeking the truth and your perseverance through years of hardship and challenges you both endured.
What an extremely powerful and important conversation!!! I just watched the movie about Hannah Arendt's ordeal after she wrote about the Eichman trial. This was when she came up with the idea of "the banality of evil." She was persecuted for her insights about the Holocaust.
Leo Tolstoy once said, "Solving the land problem is the solving of all social problems." What is the Land Problem? Well, how we hold the Earth is how we hold each other. If we treat Mother Earth as a commodity for sale and profiteering, if we abuse and denigrate Mother Earth. so we harm and destroy each other." The Earth is the Birthright of All People. The Earth Belongs to Everyone. Warfare or Earth Share? - that is the question, as all comes from the earth, including of course these human bodies. One Earth, One Humanity.
I'd frame it more broadly as one earth, on densely interconnected (common) metabolism. One Earth, One Biology. If you look at the essential energy transforming molecules, they're the same from bacteria through human brain cells -- ATP, NAD etc. We just cannot fragment life -- no matter how hard we try (to f* ck it up).
Trees grow in obligate symbiosis with fungus on their roots; the mycorrhizosphere consists of thousands of interacting, connected critters. Which alone makes cooperation the dominant mode of life on Earth, not competition. And there are many other symbioses, including in and on humans.
Which brings it full circle back to my original point. Human symbiosis with the gut microbiome (bacteria and fungi) is now known to involve reciprocal communication with and influence on immune system function. As is repeatedly emphasized, each of us is as much microorganism as human organism, actually more microorganism if you're counting cells. But to fragment in that fashion is counterproductive because a human is one organismal whole -- its human cells with their viruses integrated with its microorganisms and their viruses. Insert artificial separators at your peril; we can't survive well without them.
Yes Vin I agree that the wholeness, the interconnectivity is the key frame to having good will intentions on all levels, from technology to taxation and everything else. For me that means working for local to global for tax shift to Commons Rent. see. theIU.org - free newsletter.
Although I'd be cautious about wholeness. It isn't healing as if erasing everything bad--my scars are part of who I am. The mystical experience of "we're all one" is wonderful, sure. But who then is speaking? We act individually even if gathering together for the common good. And are judged individually for what we do--or don't do. An activist version of the physicist Niels Bohr's "the opposite of a trivial truth is plainly false; the opposite of a great truth is also true." Both/and rather than either/or. Coalitions, not exclusive like-minded groups.
Thanks for the link. I see the words "internal colonialism", which immediately says "yes" to me. I shall check it out.
Thank you: Chris Hedges, Gabor Mate, and everyone else who attempts to empathize with the unfathomable trauma that Palestinians (especially Palestinian children) endure. Humanizing such trauma is incredibly difficult to do, especially from a distance, but might add realistic values to possibly overcome. Uniting and organizing against dehumanization is now more important than ever.
One thing this deeply personal and honest as well as heartbreakingly relentless and descriptive interview brought home to me is how vitally important it has been for me to watch something on this level nearly every day these past 15 months through the Substacks and Reports by strong and caring truth tellers who have developed the capacity of not stopping their hearts from breaking. My heart breaks over and over again only by virtue of the enormous amount of healing work I've done from the traumas in my own life. Your descriptions of unresolved trauma shutting down the capacity to feel spoke to me. I understand why people shut down. There is almost no one among my "liberal" friends or family who have not closed off to one degree or another the longer this horrific, in Gabor's words, unfathomable, unimaginable genocide has gone on (and adding the victimization of Lebanon, Syria, Sudan, Ukraine, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, and so many others). The powerfully controlled MSM also works its hardest to numb and distract and lie. It's been incredibly hard to bear and impossible not to be repeatedly triggered and a sense of helplessness, hopelessness flood in.
I need interviews like this, community, solidarity with others who are capable of bearing witness at this level, even online like this, to keep me going, solid, present, feeling all the range of feelings that burst through, and renewing the faith I have that even this depth of trauma can be healed and overcome. I know how critical it is that the traumatized child have even one person who witnesses their suffering - the question I carry in these times of the internet is can the entire world witnessing in real time the trauma being inflicted upon these beautiful people, on these mothers, fathers, children, the orphans, in Gaza/Palestine have a deeper affect upon their healing than we can yet know? I pray so.
I cannot thank you both enough.
I'm the same way, and almost feel guilty if I don't.
Psycho-neuro-immunology: if you're a skeptic that needs a direct connection between the chronic mental anguish and the patho-biology, the hormonal/cytokine and neural connections between the nervous and immune systems are well established. So at minimum, on top of the malnutrition which depresses their (Palestinians') immune systems, these connections can produce even more biological chaos—infectious disease, autoimmunity, etc. This is not to downplay the psychology of trauma, but simply to emphasize the global physiological horror of it.
Power selects strongly for sociopathy.
Or power IS sociopathy
One of the things I've had to endure regarding the presidential election results, is abuse from Democratic voters that get very upset when I point out that they voted for a candidate who supports genocide (and openly denies that it is genocide) but also their support of the Democratic Party, for war / military aggression in general = Ukraine and China. No criticism will be heard or accepted by the Dismal D's. Unfortunately, we all have to live with the resulting Trump win because the D's refuse to listen to critical voices that saw them lose twice to the Orange Clown.
"Listen to your heart. Don't just let your mind decide, and don't accept what authority tells you." That is exactly the crux of the matter; evidence either/or Aristotelian logic is not enough. Liberal intellectuals see the silliness of fundamentalist good/evil and saved/damned, but how many see the same either/or error of science as reductionism and of philosophy limited by its own starting assumptions? Or of politics as with us/ against us?
Not letting the mind decide means don't let the brain's linear and abstract left hemisphere dominate like it has for western Euro and colonist descendants since the Enlightenment. It wants control, certainty, either/or. In contrast, the right hemisphere sees gestalts; it's comfortable with ambiguity and uncertainty. And it processes by means of symbols and metaphors, bringing meaning to life. BTW, it understands the left but the reverse is not so. This isn't New Age garbage--check out Iain McGilchrist's 2 vol magnum opus //The Matter with Things (Our Brains, Our Delusions, and the Unmaking of the World)//. Point is the methods which got us into the predicaments of today cannot fix them.
IMHO C. G. Jung's idea of The Shadow archetype fits quite well both individually and collectively. The Shadow is what each of us most dislikes about ourselves and thus denies, but sees clearly in others. The tip-off is the vehemence of the dislike; hatred even. When one finally figures out it's true of oneself it comes as a huge shock! In the U.S. we haven't admitted as a nation the truth that the country was founded in the sins of genocide and racism. Yet we're sure Russia, China, and Islamic countries are evil--look how they repress their minorities and dissidents!
Good point about Abu Graib, too. Read Joe Bageant's //Deer Hunting with Jesus (Dispatches from America's Class War)//. Heart rending first hand accounts about life in Appalachia. He's from the same town, Winchester VA, as Lynddie England, made famous by the photo of her standing over a prisoner, cigarette hanging from her mouth. There's a whole chapter in the book on her. A victim of the economic draft, she never had a chance. So of course she did prison time while the perpetrators of neolib and neocon violence are never held to account.
What a great conversation! We are so fortunate to have people like you two sharing these important discussions.
Thank you for sharing this interview Chris.
I know that adult abusers more often then not had a childhood history of abuse, but the majority of abused children do not grow up and become abusers. Abused children will no doubt have psychological issues, but that does not mean they themselves will be abusive toward others or their own children, or lack empathy for others. In terms of what is going on in Gaza, Israeli's have been raised to see Palestinians as less then human, or as Gallant said, animals. Animals which they have caged. Then you have a whole society who reinforces this perspective, not a family, but whole society which I believe makes what is happening now more possible, since there are few who offer an alternative perspective. Israel is a society highly indoctrinated, almost on a religious level to believe Palestinian life does not count. Too often the victimhood of the Jews, which is not to be denied, is used to justify their behavior, and anyone critical of their behavior is labeled an anti-Semite, basically a Nazi, and dismissed. "Several passages in the Hebrew Bible are interpreted as referring to genocide that God commanded the Israelites commit, notably the case of Amalek, and the Canaanites."
thank you so much to both of you, chris hedges, gabor maté! "unfathomable", as gabor maté repeatedly stated, "unfathomable!" the amount of pain and suffering people are willing and able to inflict on each 'other', the more so if the 'other' is deemed less than worthy, is deemed 'subhuman'. settler colonialism is pitiless in its greed, in its utter indifference, its death wish ...
i wish we could cut off all power to all arms manufacturers. how do people working in that line of business sleep undisturbed by pangs of CON_science at night? the CEO of an arms maker in my complicit EU country received a death threat a while ago - and was outraged ...
and then there is SUDAN. where the biggest humanitarian catastrophe on earth unfolds with hardly anyone noticing: millions displaced, another genocide going on, parallel to that in GAZA, survivors eating grass to get by, civil war never ending ... what IS the human CON_dition?
in the meantime many in the global north prepare for christmas as usual.
It's like Nazi Germany all over again
THIS.
thank you
yet again, Chris.
.
Bravissimo
The end less anguish and pity demanded from those suffering from the Jewish guilt. This becomes the Jewish justification, and then as Gabor suggests, we must feel pity for the shame the Jewish person must suffer for the atrocities his own people commit. Basically, we must remember that The Jew Hates You behind the emulation of compassion and empathy where lying to the infidels face is OK. The infidel is only a contemptuous being. If you believe that Anti Semitism is a thing you have been well conscripted. Sorry, the endless Jew as victim remains as a perpetual shield of innocence, and the piety of mindless Christian support remains complicit.
Thanks Chris, another great podcast and this time with Gabor.
Again, another of my hero’s.
So much compassion and love coming from Gabor and such a needed and timely conversion with such a great living sage.
Thanks again.