Trial Runs.Tues 30th Aug 2005

Topics from this morning's listening: reporting on the Iraqi constitution, violent pornography on the Internet.

The Today programme and Iraq.

I can still hear the anger in the voice of the interviewer when dealing with this topic, and sometimes it becomes very overt, but mostly I think it is subconscious. But mostly it is manifested in the obsessive attempts to get in admission from a Minister that the invasion is the main cause of Iraq's current problems. This is quite irrelevant to the issue of the Constitution but never fails to surface in any interview on any topic related to Iraq. This is an unconscious attempt to deal with the discomfort of blocked anger. I have suggested in chapter 9 of Created in the Image that language evolved partly as an excretion mechanism to deal with the buildup of unhealthy by- products from more complex mental activity. If the interviewer knew how to verbally excrete his anger appropriately we should get more rational interviews. But possibly, from the BBC's point of view, less valuable interviews because the listeners in the morning program seem to prefer irrational confrontation. This listener does not but as a sport anti-fan cannot find refuge in radio five which seems to be blessedly free of post Hutton resentment.

(Sunday 4th September) this morning's news that John Humphrys is being accused in a Sunday paper of slagging off Ministers in a speech and claiming that the BBC got it right in its sexing up claims confirms for me what I have written above. One of the effects of bottled up anger is an inability to let go. The bottomless reservoir of anger in the anti-war people is fuelled in many by a sense of betrayal, Labour does not do war, which in turn draws power from a mother projection. All governments of course evoke a mother projection, and all real mothers at some time betray their infants: either in reality, because for example they don't take small children seriously, or in experience, as for example an enforced visit to the dentist. One can hear the small child in the perpetual complaints that the government doesn't listen. Listen in this context means "do what I want", the rational possibility of listening carefully and still disagreeing is beyond infantile comprehension. Similarly the commonly heard accusation that the Prime Minister is lying is founded on an inability to distinguish between a reason or explanation which is not believed and the person putting it forward, who does believe it; this inability, which probably does not arise for the speaker in relation minor matters, is the usual result of powerful blocked emotion which often has an effect similar to that of earplugs and blindfold.

Of course any reader will have deduced that I think the decision to go to war was correct, not right as opposed to wrong but the lesser of two evils, and of course I have my own unconscious motivations. There is plenty of information about my psychology in chapter 1 of the book if anyone wants to get their own back by delving for them. Meanwhile returning to the Iraqi constitution, none of the radio four commentators controlled by unconscious motivations are able to give the credit it deserves. All questioning concentrates on the possible disasters if the constitution is rejected or accepted especially on the likelihood of civil war. However many times Iraqis themselves point out that this is not and will not happen their interrogators continue to press the possibility as if they cannot give up hope of this final proof that they were right. In fact the Constitution is an amazing achievement, the Iraqis under great stress have not succumbed to the tyranny of the hominin psyche as people did in Yugoslavia. The most rational voice to be heard on my radio on the subject of Iraq is usually someone from the interim government.

I should say something on my other topic, the issue of violent pornography, because it ties in at this point. What I call the tyranny of the hominin psyche is the effect of impressed behaviour patterns (explained in chapter 8 and in the First year of Life).

When people are brought up under a tyranny that uses violence against its citizens the patterns of violent behaviour are impressed in the psyche and will be acted out. The sapiens psyche will produce rationalisations for the behaviour. All babies have negative experiences in their first year of life; if the mother is under serious stress these will be serious, and violent pornography viewed on the Internet will build on these templates in the same way as experiencing violence in the home will do.

(Saturday 10th September) Once again this bloody machine is working, I've lost a week and the topic has gone cold. I have not received as promised the quote for setting up my website (and that's another long story that I won't bore anyone with) so the likelihood of ever getting anything out on the actual day continues to recede. Hurricane Katrina is dominating the airwaves. It brings up for me, amongst much else of course, the same old question -- has Bush ever read the parable of Dives and Lazarus? Are any of the Republicans/right-wing Christians capable of seeing Dives in the White House and the Senate, and Lazarus rotting in the flood waters of New Orleans? Obviously not!

Previously the starving Lazarus could be seen in Africa where the US could be more generous towards him in the comfortable belief that his condition was not their fault. But denial is faltering in the present circumstances. Of course Lazarus? condition in Africa and elsewhere is as much our fault here in Britain and in Europe, my fault as well as Bush's, though not to the same degree. I cannot claim to have given up a single useless luxury to enlarge my charitable giving. I wish I had the option of voting for a government that would force me to do so, but would I take the option if I had it? Perhaps now at the end of my life I might be able to do so, but 20 years ago who knows?