Читать книгу The Cosmic Ocean - Paul K. Chappell - Страница 18

When I was twenty-nine years old, I went to a therapist who works with traumatized veterans. She was aware of my violent upbringing and put me in a light hypnotic sleep, saying this would reconnect me with the fourteen-year-old boy I used to be. By the time I was fourteen, I had lived in terror for ten years, afraid that my father might kill me, unable to trust the parents who were supposed to protect me, suspicious of all human beings.

As her soothing words put me into a light hypnotic sleep, the therapist asked me to imagine myself standing in a room with my teenage self. She said, “The fourteen-year-old boy you used to be is handing a gift to the twenty-nine-year-old man you are today.” She described how the gift was elegantly wrapped like a Christmas present, with festive wrapping paper and an ornate bow. Then she said, “This gift is a peace offering from the child you used to be. You carefully remove the beautiful wrapping paper and lift the lid on the box. What gift do you see, and what does this gift represent to you?”

I replied, “I see my father’s decapitated head.” After pausing for a moment, I added, “To me the decapitated head represents safety. After living in terror for ten years, the only way I could feel safe was if my father was dead, and the only way to make sure a human being is dead is to remove the person’s head.”

Some people may look down on me with condescending judgment when they read this, believing that their lack of childhood trauma makes them morally superior to me. But I will explain how extreme trauma can cause anyone to fantasize about violence, just as extreme hunger can cause anyone to fantasize about food.

Imagine if a giant snake—five times your size—had slithered into your home when you were four years old. This snake randomly bites you with its massive fangs, often when you least expect it. Sometimes it bites you in your sleep. Sometimes it coils its huge body around your tiny frame, squeezing without mercy until you think it will kill you. Imagine living with this dangerous snake for ten years of your life, from the ages of four to fourteen. Your parents cannot protect you from this predator in your home. No one can.

Imagine spending your childhood with a dangerous and unpredictable snake that goes wherever it wants. It slithers into your bedroom, through the living room, and across the kitchen floor, biting you randomly, strangling you repeatedly, making you fear for your life continually. You cannot always see the violent serpent because it usually hides deep within your father’s mind. But you know it could show up at any moment when you least expect it, on Thanksgiving Day or Sunday afternoon. And you are helpless to stop it.

If your parents cannot keep you safe from this predator, at what point do you take your protection into your own hands? After living with this snake for so many years, you would probably fantasize about killing it. Then you might fantasize about cutting its head off, just to make sure it is dead. Eventually, you could develop fear and hatred for any creature that resembles a snake, causing you to fantasize about killing all snakes, not just the one in your home. If growing up in these terrifying circumstances caused you to lack empathy for snakes, would anyone blame you? Would anyone judge you?

If you were at school, would all your fear of the giant predator living in your home miraculously disappear just because you are taking a test? Wouldn’t your frightening, unpredictable, and confusing home environment—which you must return to every day after school—make it more difficult to concentrate in class? Wouldn’t the terror that haunts you make it harder to pay attention to the teacher? If you felt that no person on earth was willing or able to protect you, if your agony had to remain a secret, and if the snake was not a snake at all, but was in fact a human being whom you had once trusted with all your heart, a part of you might begin hating the entire human race.

When my father died in 2004 from a stroke, my terror did not magically go away, because childhood trauma can leave wounds in our mind, like metaphorical scar tissue etched across our brain. When fire burns our flesh, a scar can remain on our body long after the flame has died. In a similar way, when human beings betray our trust in traumatizing ways, a scar can remain in our mind long after those who hurt us have perished.

When people quote Nietzsche’s attitude, “That which does not kill us makes us stronger,”28 they often do not acknowledge how severe psychological trauma can maim and scar our mind, just as a severe physical wound can maim and scar our body. It is possible to heal our psychological wounds when we embark on the challenging spiritual journey that allows us to find light in darkness. My lifelong spiritual journey has allowed me to find the light of empathy in the darkness of trauma.

Although I felt indescribable terror for much of my childhood, I have used these painful experiences to increase my empathy for the suffering of others. Today I can feel empathy for people from all walks of life, and I can perceive our shared humanity that transcends skin color, national identity, and political viewpoints. My empathy grew strong because of my trauma, but I had to work hard to find the light of empathy in the darkness of trauma. The light did not appear automatically; through great effort I gradually uncovered more and more of its radiance.

Just as the pain of lifting a heavy weight can strengthen the muscles in our arms, we can use the painful experiences from our past to strengthen our muscle of empathy. Transforming my agony into empathy gives purpose and meaning to my suffering, which has helped me heal. When we use the weight of trauma to strengthen our muscle of empathy, the painful experiences from our past can still hurt occasionally, but we may find that the pain becomes easier to carry.

Later in this book I will share many more insights that reveal how I found light in darkness. For now, I must emphasize that we don’t have to experience extreme trauma to strengthen our muscle of empathy, because we can also grow our empathy by improving our understanding. For example, learning about the causes of aggression has dramatically increased my empathy, and all people can benefit from a deeper understanding of aggression. Before we can explore what causes aggression, however, we must first discuss the psychology of predators.

The most powerful predators on earth can be afraid of becoming prey to other animals. Many grizzly bear cubs have been killed by wolves, and many lion cubs have been killed by a variety of mammals on the African savannah. I once saw a wildlife documentary where a herd of African buffalo spotted several lion cubs in broad daylight. Even though buffalo are herbivores, they went after the lion cubs and used their horns to kill them, while the adult lions ran around frantically, unable to stop the attacking buffalo. Lions kill countless buffalo every year, but this time the lion cubs had become the prey.

Many people in our society do not know how predators usually deal with other dangerous predators in the wild. When I give lectures around the country I often ask the audience, “When a hungry grizzly bear and hungry pack of wolves both want a dead deer carcass, what usually happens?” Most people in the audience either say “they fight” or “they share,” but the grizzly bear and wolves usually do something else. They posture.

Posturing happens when an animal makes noise or tries to appear larger in order to frighten away a creature it perceives as a threat. In my book The End of War I use the term warning aggression to describe posturing. Warning aggression can be seen when a bear roars, a wolf growls, and a cobra lifts its body and spreads its hood. Warning aggression is a nonviolent form of aggression that tries to prevent violence.

When a rattlesnake expresses warning aggression by shaking its tail, we know it is trying to tell us “leave me alone” rather than “come over here and pet me.” An animal that expresses warning aggression is basically communicating “I don’t want to get in a fight with you, so I am giving you a fair warning that will allow you to safely walk away.” If you ignore this warning, the rattlesnake will be forced to retreat or bite you (the act of biting is an example of hostile aggression).

Most animals, including those that are not predators, use a form of warning aggression as their preferred method of self-defense. Gorillas are not hunters, but they posture by beating their chest, and when elephants feel threatened they posture by making loud noises or charging.

In our society, many people have the misconception that predators in the wild are constantly killing each other. But when predators are not hunting out of necessity to feed themselves and their young, they are actually far more risk averse than many of us realize.* The reason for their aversion to danger is because there are no hospitals in the wild. If a predator is injured and loses the ability to move at full speed or overpower its prey, it cannot go to an emergency room where a doctor will treat its wounds. It will starve to death.

Most carnivores and herbivores posture when they feel threatened, and so do human beings. Our nomadic ancestors were omnivores, a combination of carnivore and herbivore that gave them greater access to food resources in the wild. Just as posturing animals will make noise and try to appear larger when afraid, two men will usually posture before getting into a fight by raising their voices, standing tall, and puffing out their chests.

If human beings were naturally violent, why would warning aggression—which tries to prevent violence—nearly always precede lethal combat between human beings (except in cases of psychotic behavior, which I discuss in chapter 3). In ancient Greece, soldiers wore big helmets and screamed when going into battle. Like posturing animals, soldiers in ancient armies tried to appear larger and made noise as a form of warning aggression.

Because our posturing instinct is stronger than our killing instinct, the inaccurate musket became more popular than the deadlier longbow and crossbow. In his book On Combat, Lieutenant Colonel Dave Grossman explains:

Napoleon said that in war, “The moral is to the physical as three is to one.” That is, the psychological factors are three times more important than the physical factors. In combat, one of the most important of these “moral” factors—or morale or psychological factors, as we would call it today—is noise.

In nature, whoever makes the biggest bark or the biggest roar is most likely to win the battle. Bagpipes, bugles and rebel yells have been used throughout history to daunt an enemy with noise. Gunpowder was the ultimate “roar,” since it had both a bark and a bite. First used as fireworks by the ancient Chinese and later in cannon and muskets, gunpowder was a noisemaker that provided sound and concussion. The concussion was felt and heard, and gunpowder provided the visual effects of flash and smoke. Since a gunpowder explosion and its drifting smoke could be tasted and smelled, it provided a powerful sensory stimulus that could potentially assault all five senses.

This is one of the primary reasons why the early, clumsy, smoothbore, muzzleloading muskets replaced the longbow and the crossbow. The longbow and the crossbow had many times the rate of fire, more accuracy and far greater accurate range when compared to the early smoothbore muskets. Yet these superior military weapons were replaced, almost overnight (historically speaking) by vastly inferior muskets. While they were inferior at killing, they were not inferior at psychologically stunning and daunting an opponent … If you are in a battle going doink, doink with a crossbow and the other guy is going Boom! Boom! with a musket, all things being equal, the doinker will lose every time.

Some observers, not fully understanding the all-important psychological aspect of combat, have assumed that the longbow disappeared because of the lifetime of training required to master it. However, this logic does not apply nearly as well to the crossbow. If training and expense were the real issues, then the tremendous expense and lifetime of training needed to create a mounted knight or cavalry trooper (and his mount) would have been sufficient to doom those instruments of war. If a weapon system provides military dominance (be it the knight, the frigate, the aircraft carrier, the fighter jet, or the nuclear missile), then a society will devote the resources needed to get that weapon system. But if a more effective weapon is found, then the merciless Darwinian evolution of the battlefield will doom the older weapon and embrace the new.

Thus, with the invention of the first crude muskets, the longbow and the crossbow were doomed, and the psychological reasons for this are, in Napoleon’s words, “three times more important than the physical …” You have probably heard of the Big Bang Theory. I call this the Bigger Bang Theory, which states that, “all other things being equal, in combat whoever makes the bigger bang wins.”29

How can a deeper understanding of aggression increase our empathy for human beings? When I was in the army a colonel told me, “In order to think strategically, you must be able to see the world from the other person’s point of view.” This reminded me of a principle from Sun Tzu’s The Art of War where he said, “Know your enemy.”30 If you can put yourself in your opponent’s frame of mind during a chess match and see the board from the opposing point of view, then you have a much better chance of winning.

When waging peace is concerned, the only way to truly know our enemy is through empathy, which causes us to realize they are not really our enemy. As Elinor “Gene” Hoffman, founder of the Compassionate Listening Project, said: “An enemy is a person whose story we have not heard.”31 Empathy tells us our true enemies are hatred and ignorance, not a particular group of people. The most effective way to fight enemies such as hatred and ignorance is with the techniques of waging peace.

Using hatred against hatred is like throwing gasoline on a fire, but when empathy is applied strategically, it has the potential to extinguish hatred like water dousing a flame. As I explain in my other books, the civil rights movement is an example of the strategic application of empathy, and waging peace gives us many effective ways to resolve conflict, which are more reliable than the last resort of violence.

Since empathy and its higher expression of unconditional love offer us the deepest insight into another human being, when Sun Tzu said, “Know your enemy” and Jesus said, “Love your enemy” they were essentially saying the same thing. The deepest way to know another human being is through the unconditional love that Jesus, Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr., Elinor “Gene” Hoffman, and many other spiritual teachers taught us to embrace.

Gaining a deeper understanding of aggression taught me that warning aggression (also known as posturing) in all animals is caused by fear or another form of discomfort. The same is true for human beings. When people behave aggressively toward me, I can have more empathy for them if I perceive the fear, frustration, confusion, or other painful emotion causing their aggression. It is easier to have empathy for a fearful, frustrated, or confused person, rather than an angry person.

Psychologist Erich Fromm said, “There are many layers of knowledge; the knowledge which is an aspect of love is one which does not stay at the periphery, but penetrates to the core. It is possible only when I can transcend the concern for myself and see the other person in his own terms. I may know, for instance, that a person is angry, even if he does not show it overtly; but I may know him more deeply than that; then I know that he is anxious, and worried; that he feels lonely, that he feels guilty. Then I know that his anger is only the manifestation of something deeper, and I see him as anxious and embarrassed, that is, as the suffering person, rather than as the angry one.”32

The more deeply you perceive another human being and embrace our shared humanity, the better you can understand the other person’s point of view and the more strategically you can think. By giving us the deepest form of knowledge into the perspective of another human being, empathy creates the strongest foundation for strategic thinking.

Human beings became predators at some point in our primordial past, and we share the posturing instinct with other predators. But we are the most unusual predator in the world, because as far as we know, we are the only predator that is troubled by killing its prey. We do not know of any other predator on earth that displays empathy, appreciation, respect, and reverence for those it hunts.

Every nomadic tribe of traditional hunters we know about, from the San people (also known as Bushmen) in Africa to the Native Americans, performs rituals to express empathy, appreciation, respect, and reverence for the animals they kill. These rituals can also serve as a way to seek forgiveness from the animal and atone for the guilt that may arise from killing. During an interview with mythologist Joseph Campbell, journalist Bill Moyers asked him, “Do you think [hunting] troubled early man?”

Campbell replied:

Absolutely, that’s why you have the rites, because it did trouble him. [These rites included] rituals of appeasement to the animal, of thanks to the animal … And some kind of respect for the animal that was killed. That’s the thing that gets me all the time in this hunting ceremonial system, the respect for the animal. And more than respect … [The buffalo] was the sacred animal for the [American] Indians. These [European] hunters go out with repeating rifles and shoot down the whole herd and leave it there, and take the skin to sell and the body is left to rot. This is a sacrilege … Can you imagine what the experience must have been for a people within ten years to lose their environment, to lose their food supply, to lose the central object of their ritual life?33

No other predator in the world kills its prey and then performs ceremonies to express respect and gratitude. No other predator transforms its prey into a sacred creature that becomes the spiritual center of its nomadic tribal life. No other predator creates art by painting depictions of its prey on cave walls, as Europeans did tens of thousands of years ago when they lived as nomadic hunter-gatherers. No other predator has spiritual traditions encouraging it to extend empathy beyond blood relatives, local community members, and even its own species.

No other predator has spiritual teachers who encourage universal love. Saint Francis of Assisi, Buddha, and Gandhi taught us to have compassion for other living beings who share this planet with us, and Christian theologian Albert Schweitzer taught us to have “reverence for life.” (Later in this book I will explain the philosophical, spiritual, and scientific meaning of reverence, and I will also discuss why we have lost reverence for human beings, animals, and nature.)

Furthermore, no other predator in the world transforms another predator, the wolf, into “man’s best friend,” the dog. And no other predator in the world transforms the cat, yet another predator, into a beloved family member. Our extraordinary human capacity for empathy makes us unusual predators indeed.

But we are the world’s most unusual predator in other ways, because trauma can turn us into predators of our own family members. My father could be kind and gentle, but his unhealed trauma caused him to unpredictably transform into a metaphorical serpent. No other predator in the world torments its own children with the fear of death.

As I share more insights about the reality of trauma in later chapters, I will reveal how I almost became an even more unusual kind of predator, who was once a helpless child but was transformed by trauma into a ticking time bomb. Why did I not explode in rage and slaughter my fellow human beings, as trauma made me capable of doing? By sharing my story, I will uncover secrets about trauma, violence, and empathy that remain buried in our unconscious mind and primordial past. By discussing how I learned to love humanity despite having reasons to hate the entire human race, I will reveal how I created a path out of darkness.