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Yes, but also, USians cannot possibly think themselves as belonging to this national community or think as their wealth as a legitimate thing to have without a complete mythology of racism and liberalism
The superstructure maintains the structure, if you could magically remove racism from the psyche of americans the revolution would be immediate
i've thought for a while now that white people are congenitally evil and this is a good explanation for why
(i'm white myself)
I got prompted to it by trying to reconcile a contradiction that I experienced. As an immigrant in Western/Northern Europe I think to myself "How can these people be polite to me, yet not see me as a human being equal to them?"
The conclusion I came up with is that because of laws and societal pressure, in public they will go through the motions, they'll do what is expected and required. But as soon as you leave that space of expectations even by a tiny bit, then it is full mask off. And they don't care, because in their "rule-based order" as long as you follow the rules, you can do whatever you want once those rules don't apply.
So as someone who is ND, this has been bothering me a lot. I am not surprised when I meet duplicity and hypocrisy in an individual person, but that it exists on a national level, that is surprising to me.
I think this is a false equivalence. Trauma is a...(sorry, im not a mental health expert) primal thing(?). As in, trauma is a part of your flight/fight/freeze/fawn response. The things that cause fear and despair and such that impact your survival can be passed down to your offspring to help them survive. But superiority and racism are something that's taught. There is a somewhat basic impulse (possibly) to be secure and to be wary of other "tribes" but it's not something passed down into offspring's subconscious, but something taught at a higher level.
I don't think we should forget that the woman who avenged Che Guevara was the daughter of a nazi
But superiority and racism are something that’s taught.
Yes. And those Nazis or whatever who have kids, they're not educating them in racism every day? Doesn't even have to be "education" but just how they refer (or not refer) to other people. Children are very good at learning by watching. That is how we learn to live in society.
the woman who avenged Che Guevara was the daughter of a nazi
An exception that proves the rule?
I think you and I are referring to two different things here then. I'm not denying that colonial people's directly or indirectly teach their children to be racist/supremacist, etc. This is just basic Gramscian Hegemony. But it's not "traumatic." It can certainly be hard to unlearn, but (with the exception of recent colonization or being the offspring of some form of colonial enforcement like a cop or military man) there's not something "basic" about the colonialist mindset. To fix them doesn't necessarily require therapy or hospitalization, it requires education (a lot of it, depending on the society, but education nonetheless.)
And my point was that the possibility exists for someone to be a direct descendant of a colonizer and yet still be revolutionary at a fairly young age. So if its possible for one there's a good chance its possible for all. Ertl did not even live under a DOTP and yet performed revolutionary action, so I do believe that a DOTP, socialist education, and the advancement towards later stage socialism/communism would allow for former imperialist peoples to "behave well" so to speak. Of course thered be turmoil and such as in any revolution but I dont think the people of a socialist germany/france/etc. Would be imperialist just because their ancestors used to be imperialist, assuming again that education is forthright.
I keep going back to Fanon, how he observed that colonialism dehumanizes the colonized and the colonizer. Torturerers and butchers and slavers traumatize and twist themselves into inhuman things, and that trauma surely gets passed down to their kids and grandkids. I suspect it might have epigenetic effects as well, although I shouldn't speculate too hard about that.
...Fanon, how he observed that colonialism dehumanizes the colonized and the colonizer. Torturerers and butchers and slavers traumatize and twist themselves into inhuman things...
^This. Fanon's decolonial science cuts deep. If the generations after are brought in the same material conditons they will too will be in the same mold as their murderous ancestors.
We don't even have to bring in epigenetics into this. You spend your time oppressing and abusing those you seeas lesser than, that will carry over into your behaviour as a person. Infamously cops go home and beat their wives.
I mean, humans who work in slaughterhouses experience mental anguish and other adverse effects. Imagine inflicting that kind of pain to humans. I think even prison guards, who could somehow logically justify what they do, also experience mental health problems. No wonder many of them "break" and become abusive monsters. But then how can one be an abusive monster 9-5 and then "switch off"? One can't, it's now 24/7.
I don't think this is the correct way of framing this idea. Using the words "People who are descended from people..." makes it sound like eugenics.
Generational trauma is a shorthand explanation of the flow on effects of trauma and the feedback loops it can cause. If you have trauma to your arm you can't use it properly. Mental and emotional trauma impedes people from thinking and acting rationally. Generational trauma is when truma isn't mentally and emotionally healed properly and then the trauma prevents the protection of the next generation. Each generation using coping mechanisms that inflicti the same wounds their parents inflicted on them.
Having your worldview shaped by oppressors can warp one's morality but it doesn't impede one's ability to think critically and act rationally. People born to horrible people do have a higher chance of turning out horrible. The inherent irrational immorality of racial supremacy leads to its decay but improved material wealth because of said racial supremacy can tip the scales. Throw some trauma in there and the immorality becomes acceptable to the emotionally crippled individual even without any material benefits.
The western world is founded on slavery, colonialism and genocide. All its institutions are founded in white supremacy and chattel slavery. Yet, the majority of western white people are only passively in support of white supremacy as far as it is material beneficial to them. They don't mind the treats but they want to have plausible deniability. They want their government to act like it is addressing racism as long as their standard of living isn't threatened.
The ones who are frothing for the blood of POC are the Rich who benefit the most from the oppression and exploitation and... The poorest white people. Their trauma (often generational from substance abuse or physical or sexual abuse) and their constant stresses obtaining the minimums of food and shelter make them less rationally and emotionally equipped to correctly apply morality and ethics.
Also being the first generation to break out of that opressor mindset is tough. Like your family, lots of friends, etc are all evil. And you have to rebuild your social life from scratch or just put up with being surrounded by evil assholes.
Men make their own history, but they do not make it as they please; they do not make it under self-selected circumstances, but under circumstances existing already, given and transmitted from the past. The tradition of all dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brains of the living. -Karl Marx
The tradition of all dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brains of the living.
Precisely!
If we all agree that a people can experience trauma on a large scale and that trauma can then pass onto the descendants, then the reverse must also be true – a people who have inflicted trauma on a large scale pass that experience onto the descendants.
Let's start with attempting to define what generational trauma is. Here's an okay medical source on it: https://www.webmd.com/mental-health/what-is-intergenerational-trauma
If you have ancestors or older relatives who went through a very distressing or oppressive event, their emotional and behavioral reactions could ripple through the generations of your family and affect you.
The exact causes aren’t clear. But some experts think the original traumatic event could affect your relatives’ relationship skills, personal behavior, and attitudes and beliefs in ways that affect future generations of your family.
How your parents talk with you about the traumatic event (or fail to talk about it) and the way your family functions seem to play important roles in whether trauma gets passed down. For example, a parent’s experience of trauma might affect their parenting skills and play a role in their children’s behavior problems.
Researchers are also looking into the possible role of “epigenetic changes.” The idea is that your environment could cause changes that affect the way your genes work, and these changes could be passed on to younger generations.
The last part doesn't appear to be anything more than "looking into" so I think it's safe to say we can consider that speculative at best and ignore it for now. So what we're left with as the most agreed upon cause appears to look something like: traumatic thing happens -> people pass it down through a warped nervous system and worldview (perhaps by sort of reliving/recreating the stress levels of the traumatic event, which then traumatizes their descendants).
Not exact, but it's something to go on. Then, how does this compare to inflicting trauma on others?
I think this question is going to depend a lot on what drove the, we'll call them "oppressor" to make it simple, what drove the oppressor's behavior and how did they experience the event? Were they also traumatized in some way by participating in a brutal/abusive/etc. act? Or was it more like that memey line from a movie "for me, it was Tuesday"? If it was the first one, then we're probably talking about another form of generational trauma, just from a different end of it (starting point of the trauma being oppressor rather than oppressed). If it was the second one, I'd think the primary attachment they're going to have is based on system level stuff; how they materially benefit, the belief systems they have that justify their position in the world, etc. Which can get passed down, but I don't think sticks as easily as trauma does. Trauma can change how you react to a loud sound before you even have time to think. A belief system can change how you react to a loud sound after you have time to think, but probably not before.
That's not to say physiology and belief are entirely separate. For example, if you have an anxious thought and you feed that anxiety, it might give you a physiological reaction. But if the worst of it is coming from what you believe in that moment and when the belief passes, you're fine again, I don't think that's the same as trauma; consider here how someone could healthily enjoy a horror movie by suspending their disbelief and inducing temporary fear, but when the movie is over and the reality comes back that none of it is real, the reaction passes and they can go back to living their normal life. Comparatively, I would expect a traumatized person may have a hard time letting go. The reaction may linger for longer and need more soothing to get back to their normal, which might not even be the other person's normal because they may be keyed up in general (ex: generalized anxiety). In other words, the healthy person's regulation of their nervous system functions pretty well; the traumatized person's nervous system is wounded somehow.
So what I'm trying to get at here is, are we talking about the simple passing down of beliefs and systems of privilege or subjugation, or are we talking about wounded nervous systems and their consequences. Though these surely have some overlap, I don't think they are quite the same. As an example, some white people need only befriend a black person to start questioning racist views they have. On the other hand, a black person who has been traumatized by racist police may deal with the impact on their nervous system for the rest of their life, even with conscious therapy; they would hopefully be able to heal somewhat, but given everything I've heard about that stuff, I get the impression there's a lot we just don't know about how to actually fix the problem. That there are therapeutic techniques, but getting at the root of the problem can be hard. (If someone knows otherwise, of research in consistently healing the nervous system or standout cases of doing so, feel free to let me know. I myself have anxiety, so I have a personal interest in it, not just curiosity over what's correct.)