Or
Removing the Causes of the
Murder,
Humiliation and Abuse of Children
Carlos Cardoso Aveline
Carlos Cardoso Aveline
Every child has the right to a life that is physically safe and emotionally stable
A great blessing is
now waiting for all nations of the Western civilization.
The bliss will descend upon us as
we stop promoting or accepting the practice of filicide, that is, the murder, humiliation, mutilation,
denigration, abuse and abandonment of children by parents and adults in
general.
Filicide is a multidimensional phenomenon. It
takes place both consciously and subconsciously. It is individual and
collective. Up to some extent, every human individual has been its victim: and no
one is entirely innocent.
Children face difficulties in
public schools. They are exposed to watching harmful TV shows. They suffer from
fear of abandonment, live amidst the breaking apart of traditional family, share
the poverty of their parents, and face the early possibilities of drugs and crime.
And yet they still smile, play, laugh and bring joy to the adults around them.
In the first half of 21st century, hundreds
of thousands of children around the globe are the victims of massacres, or fight
in military conflicts and are made to participate in terror-related activities.
In the Middle East and elsewhere, children
are trained by their Muslim parents and teachers to think that it is a heroic
act to kill and to die in coward acts of terror promoted for the greater glory
of Allah, and of Islam. Middle-aged people send their children to death, and then
receive money from “charity organizations” controlled by some oil-exporting
countries.
As a way to brain-wash and recruit young
Muslims, older terrorists promise them that once they die in acts of senseless violence, they
will have an eternal life in Paradise, and will have a number of beautiful
young ladies at their disposal. For some reason, such teachers and the leaders
of terror are in no hurry to go to Paradise. In Gaza and elsewhere, they do
whatever they can to escape the Israel Defense Forces, which aim at killing
them in selective actions, and avoid as much as possible causing harm to innocent civilians.
In Western countries, there are other
ways to deceive children and cause suffering and death to them. Some of the
common ways to destroy children are the practice of abortion in unnecessary
situations, domestic violence, verbal aggression, street-dwelling children,
sexual abuse, child prostitution, and a general absence of due emotional
protection. To these examples one must add the exposure of millions of children
to TV shows and video games which promote or exalt violence, criminality and other
forms of disrespect for life.
If children are a symbol of human
future, killing or abusing them, even in indirect ways, is to destroy the
common tomorrow. To stop collective
self-destruction is not easy, for we don’t even know why exactly it occurs. We can study the topic. Argentine psychoanalyst
Arnaldo Rascovsky (1907-1995) was a pioneer in investigating the causes of the
tendency to destroy that which is most valuable in human family.
By being a Jew, Rascovsky had a first-hand
knowledge regarding injustice to defenseless beings.
Since its earliest known origins our
civilization has been characterized by a bleeding conflict between parents and
children. Rascovsky uses the term filicide
to designate a complex phenomenon, largely hidden and denied: the physical and
emotional violence of adult people against children. Rascovsky explains:
“Acts of partial or total
aggression and destruction inflicted by parents on their own children are
universal, being found in all social groups, both primitive and modern. The
facts supporting these statements are recorded throughout the world.” He adds:
“…Corporal or mental punishment,
neglect or abandonment, mutilation or murder of children, infants, or youths -
among which war is the foremost example - are practiced in all regions of the
globe.” [1]
In order
to understand the fact, one must study the primitive emotions of children. Psychoanalysis
says that the first phase in the life of a human being is oral cannibalistic.
The child “bites” some parts of the
mother’s body, the breasts, and swallows part of the maternal body: the
milk. Later on, the oral cannibalistic phase is expanded to include other kinds of
food. The natural world from which these foods come is experienced as an
extension of the mother’s body.
The expression “mother nature” didn’t
appear by mere coincidence: the sweet body of the baby’s mother is the first level
of natural environment. “With the ingestion of the breast”, Rascovsky writes,
“the oral cannibalistic phase offers the supreme alternative between eating
(destroying) and being eaten (destroyed). Actually, the urgency of the
disintegrating impulse is irrepressible and constitutes the organism’s
essential expression: the fight for life.” [2]
Thus,
for mammals, to bite is a way of defending themselves and of attacking. In adult life, to bite one’s nails or eating
too much are among the habits directly related to the oral cannibalistic phase.
This period of human development is symbolically present in the New
Testament. In the last supper, Jesus
distributes pieces of bread to his disciples, and says:
“Take,
eat: this is my body.”
Then Jesus holds a cup of wine and
hands it to them saying:
“Drink you all of it; for this is
my blood.” (Matthew 26:
26-28)
These clearly cannibalistic images
were transformed in a ritual which is even now regularly reproduced in the ceremony
of Eucharist (Catholicism) or Communion (Protestant churches), and in the
yearly celebration of the Last Supper. During
such celebrations, the public is disgustingly invited to eat a piece of
Christ’s body, and to drink his blood.
The primitive attitude of wishing to
destroy in order to live is influential in various other ways. During adult life, the tendency is
mitigated. In stressing circumstances, a
strong “emotional regression” takes place which makes the old destructive
patterns of the first childhood emerge and cause harm to one’s own children, or
to children in general. Whenever there
is a social situation of profound decay, such a regression takes place. Thus children
and young people are destroyed in large scale emotionally, and sometimes physically.
Aggression to young and weaker
people is a long time tradition. The myths forming the basis of Western Culture
focus on the conflict and alternation between two situations: the Filicide
(when the parents kill or cause harm to their children) and the Parricide (when
the children kill or cause harm to their parents). The most famous among such
myths is that of Oedipus, which Sigmund Freud chose as the foundation of modern
Psychoanalysis. Yet the legend of
Oedipus is more than the story of a son who unknowingly kills his father.
Before that, king Laius had consciously
decided to cause the death of his newly born son Oedipus.
The myth narrates that an oracle
had prophesied to Laius: he would be killed by his own child. When Oedipus is born,
Laius gives orders for his son to be abandoned on the mountain Cithaeron to die
out of cold and starvation. The baby is
found there by a shepherd and saved.
Oedipus lives his first years in
foreign lands. Upon reaching adult life, he decides to travel. During a violent
incident in a crossroads, the lad kills an unknown individual, who happens to
be his father Laius. Later on, Oedipus marries
his own mother, also having no knowledge of who was she to him. When he finally
comes to know the facts, he blinds himself in despair and abandons the city
where he once ruled and was happy.
Freud built Psychoanalysis on the
basis of the Oedipus complex, or the impulse leading the son instinctively to
compete with his father for the possession of his mother. Rascovsky accepts the
importance of the Oedipus complex. However, unlike Freud, Rascovsky looks at
the situation also from the point of view of the child. He is thus able to see
the vast process of collective and individual Filicide, produced by the feelings
of fear and anger which take hold of fathers and mothers who are immature and unable
to feel deep love.
Rascovsky explains that the first
act of resentment, in such a conflict, does not come from the son; it comes
from a powerful parent, and is addressed against a defenseless newly-born. The rancor of the son towards the father is
posterior, and it emerges as a defense against the Filicide.[3]
The idea of killing children is
present all over Western culture.
Infanticide threatens the great
heroes of antiquity. Moses, as a newly-born, barely escapes death by being
abandoned down the river in a papyrus basket coated with tar and pitch. In the
legends of the New Testament, newly born Jesus was almost miraculously saved
from Herod’ order to slay every child from two years old and under. (Matthew 2: 16)
In various passages of the Jewish Torah,
or Christian “Old Testament”, God demands the sacrifice and the death of
first-born children.
In Genesis, 22, the Lord gives
Abraham an order to go to the land of Moriah and burn there his son Isaac. Abraham
obeys. When the boy is bound on top of dry wood in an altar and ready to be
burnt alive, the Lord tells Abraham to release the child. The Lord makes
Abraham know that it was a test; He wanted to see whether Abraham was willing
to obey in any circumstance.
From the psychoanalytical point of
view, however, such personal God is a projection
coming from the inner world of
Abraham himself.
The habit of circumcising newly-born
babies is a ritual to replace the ancient sacrificial murder of sons. It is a “genital
submission” of boys to the father’s authority, as Rascovsky says: a symbolic castration, through which
fathers exorcize the possibility that their sons become future rivals.
According to Psychoanalysis, circumcision
is therefore part of the wider process of incest-prohibition, which paves the
way to the sublimation of love, and to the building of an organized society. [4]
In the book of Genesis, the Lord
makes circumcision obligatory and condemns those who are not circumcised to
exile, for he says:
“…And if any male who is
uncircumcised fails to circumcise the flesh of his foreskin, that person shall
be cut off from his kin; he has broken My covenant.” (Gn, 17:14).
The life of a baby is not easy, therefore.
Sometimes, life ends even before
starting. Abortion takes place by the millions around the world in the 21st
century, even in countries where it is against the law; and it constitutes one
of the grossest forms of filicide. Yet the interruption of pregnancy is not the
only form of aggression between different generations. Military activity cannot be underestimated in
that department. Rascovsky writes:
“…Since remotest antiquity, war
represents the sacrificial pyre on which the killing of the offspring is
consummated.” [5]
And he adds something that explains
the cult of hatred and violence existing today in some “religious” communities:
“Among the diverse causes of war,
an important one is the need to perpetuate human sacrifice in the form of the
holocaust of the children with all of the primitive sociocultural meanings it
implies. (…) War is one of the highly organized methods for holding collective
paranoid anxiety at an acceptable level by elaborating and projecting guilt
onto the enemy. Thus, the enemy becomes
the depository for a dissociated part of the person who is seeking a solution
for his or her own inner conflict.” [6]
For millennia, warfare has been a way
of legitimizing murder:
“War is the institutionalization of
the primitive murder and denigration of children with the consequent denial of
their persecutors through idealization. It is social action that executes the
compulsion to eliminate children. This expression of parental aggression,
though its formal aspects have diminished in the process of civilization,
persists and preserves the dependent condition of children imposed by universal
cultural models.” [7]
Renunciation to violence cannot be
one-sided: the identification of war as a traditional form of filicide has to
be a gradual and inter-cultural process.
The “sweet and peace-loving” appeasement of anti-Semitism and terrorist
organizations only produces far greater violence and cruelty.
Another radical way to destroy
childhood, according to Rascovsky, operates through popular television
channels. Children now grow while watching violent and criminal films on TV.
After the diagnosis, Rascovsky indicates
ways of healing. Humans do not create
problems for which they cannot find solutions. They build their own destiny. The
blessings of a healthy relationship between parents and children already exist
today, in part. They can be expanded.
“The battle against filicide”, Rascovsky
says, “requires the community’s unwavering support for the defense of all
children and for the promotion of a more positive relationship between the
generations through the intensification of the initial love relationship,
parental love; in this way, it can contribute to neutralizing the hypertrophied
development of hatred in contemporary society.” [8]
Rascovsky defends the creation of
institutions for the education of parents and parental substitutes, aiming at
the development of the healthy potentialities of children. He considers a top priority to constantly
denounce every form of abuse and attack against future generations.
This is not enough.
It will be necessary to stimulate a
deeper view of the love between man and woman. Deep and wise affection paves
the way to lasting happiness. Intense
love causes a responsible wish to have children. From this comes the ability to
love children as they deserve.
The duty of protecting children is shared
by all citizens. One must remember what Kahlil Gibran writes in “The Prophet”:
“You may strive to be like [your
children], but seek not to make them like you. For life goes not backward nor
tarries with yesterday.” [9]
As to religious traditions which
stimulate violence, it is nigh time for them to realize one basic point: although
it is correct to “sacrifice our children”, such a sentence cannot be taken in a literal way. It does not mean that killing our children in
wars, or attacking them emotionally at home, is OK or morally acceptable. The phrase
is but a symbol for the need to practice detachment regarding that which we
love most. That is the test faced by
Abraham in Genesis, 22. For our love for
children is among the purest forms of affection we may feel.
Symbolic statements referring to
the “killing of our dearest ones” are present in Eastern traditions, too, and
the Buddhist “Dhammapada”, says:
“A true Brahmana goes scatheless
though he have killed father and mother and two kings of the warrior caste and
destroyed a kingdom with all its subjects”. [10]
By looking at it in the proper way,
one realizes that it is the blind attachment to our loved ones and to social
position that must be “killed”. The wording
of the teaching is a symbol for the obligation of non-violently renouncing to
any and all unexamined, or subconscious, bonds of a personal nature.
That does not mean one must
renounce all authority regarding children.
The failure to put limits to our little ones and to properly educate
them with the necessary degree of severity is a disguised form of carelessness
and of absence of real love for them. Those who care for children establish
limits to them and give them emotional stability.
One word must be said regarding the
idea of “killing our enemies”, which we find in sacred Scriptures of different
religions. It does not mean hating or attacking those who think differently from
us, or who belong to a nation diverse from our own. It means instead that we
must defeat our real enemies, which
are - of course - our own ignorance, our laziness, our fear from the unknown,
and self-delusion.
NOTES:
[1] “FILICIDE, the
Murder, Humiliation, Mutilation, Denigration, and Abandonment of Children by
Parents”, Arnaldo
Rascovsky, Jason Aronson, Inc., Northvale, New Jersey and London, 1995, 279 pp.
Introduction, p. XI.
[2] “FILICIDE, the
Murder, Humiliation, Mutilation, Denigration, and Abandonment of Children by
Parents”, Arnaldo
Rascovsky, Jason Aronson, Inc., Northvale, New Jersey and London, 1995, 279 pp.
See p. 05.
[3] “Filicide…”, see lower half of p. 252.
[4] “FILICIDE, the
Murder, Humiliation, Mutilation, Denigration, and Abandonment of Children by
Parents”, Arnaldo
Rascovsky, Jason Aronson, Inc., Northvale, New Jersey and London, 1995, 279 pp.
See pp. 69-95.
[5] “Filicide…”, p. 42.
[6] “Filicide…”, pp. 251-252.
[7] “Filicide…”,
p. 256.
[8] “Filicide…”,
Introduction, pp. XVII e XVIII. On
television: See “Filicidio, Violencia y Guerra”, by Arnaldo Rascovsky, Schapire Editor,
Buenos Aires, Argentina, 1975, 110 pp., p. 64. Also on war: “Filicidio,
Violencia y Guerra”, Schapire Editor, 1975, 110 pp., p. 09.
[9] “The Prophet”, Kahlil Gibran, Senate, 2004, Great
Britain, 114 pp., see p. 20.
[10] “The Dhammapada”, Theosophy Co., Los Angeles, USA,
1955, Chapter 21, axiom 5, p. 69. See also axiom 6 and commentaries to the
passage.
000
On the role of the esoteric movement in the
ethical awakening of mankind during the 21st century, see the book “The Fire and Light of Theosophical Literature”, by
Carlos Cardoso Aveline.
Published in
2013 by The Aquarian Theosophist,
the volume has 255 pages and can be obtained through Amazon Books.
000
