Recently, I've been reading a bit about the concept of generational memory and how psychological trauma is passed from one generation to the next.
This concept, as soon as I stumbled upon it, struck my mind like a diamond bullet, probably because I've also been reading Manifesto for a Democratic Civilization by Abdullah Öcalan.
6000 years of state-driven, dogmatic brainwashing has, in the least, imprinted a strong mental illness upon the generational memory, and perhaps, even begun to have an evolutionary effect on humanity, such that a slave-like mentality has become the natural norm. Those who maintain a level of psychological independence from the slave mentality that grips the social consciousness today, seem to me to be the last few vestiges of a once free people. We are the evolutionary 'hold-outs' against civilizational pressure which has shaped humanity into a submissive, herd-like species that seems doomed to flock to this leader or that one.
This raises several more questions, however:
Has humanity perhaps diverged in an evolutionary fork, with slave and master phenotypes?
If you've spent any time exploring the radical fringes of the internet, you've no doubt come across various conspiracy theories to the effect of a secret master race. These range from various permutations of stories about secret societies, or aristocratic families which have been pulling metaphorical puppet strings, all the way to outright science fiction about demons, reptilian alien species, etc., who seek to enslave humanity for one nefarious reason or another.
Now, I'm not trying to lend legitimacy to any of these ideas, but most mythology/folklore, however embellished, is usually born from some forgotten truth. Every species has it's evolutionary outliers. The descendants of powerful families inherit and nurture that power, while the descendants of conquered peoples continue to labor under the yoke of oppression. What effect could this have on the species over a short five or six millennia?
Where did those of us within the plebeian population, who were born with such fiercely non-conformist minds come from?
Are we the descendants of pockets of resistance around the world, the last few egalitarian hold-outs who resisted domination until more recent history? Or, are we the descendants of members of the ruling class who were overthrown when populations pushed back against oppression? Either explanation seems feasible to me. In my own case, although my father's people migrated to North America from England, their paternal lineage can be traced back to the overthrown Czars of Russia. My mother's people, were French explorers and pioneers who trekked across this continent in the 18th and 19th Centuries, before finally settling on the Alaskan frontier. Tracing their history back to northern France however, it turns out that their heritage is not at all Gaulish or Germanic, but actually Nordic, the descendants of Viking settlers. (I have to give credit for this research to my father and mother, who both being members of the Mormon church at one time or another in their lives, became rather obsessive over the past couple decades about doing genealogical research.) Having gleaned this bits of history from each of them recently, certain puzzle pieces fell into place that helped explain in my mind why I have always thought the way I did about modern society. My five siblings are all equally resistant to societal conformity. If you have also struggled your entire life with what modern mainstream psychology terms as 'oppositional defiance disorder' as I have, I would encourage you also to dig into your generational history, if possible.
Of course, it's all well and good to get to know yourself better, but that doesn't turn the tide of history, which as I see, is about to drown us all.
So where do we go from here? This brings us to the most pressing question, for which I cannot even begin to offer an answer yet:
How do we undo 6000 years of psychological trauma caused by slavery, oppression, and false metaphysical thought?
Is it even possible to accomplish in a generation?
Many have tried over the years. There is evidence in history going back at least 2500 years of 'prophets' of anarchy who preached against authority. In almost all cases, they, and their followers were murdered for what they taught, often by the same plebeian mob people whom they were trying to save.
In modern history, many learned men have offered well-thought out critiques of civilization, yet failed to either diagnose the root cause of the illness, only managing to identify the symptoms. Due to this, they never reached or attempted to answer the questions that need to be examined, and so their prescribed solutions either fell well short of effecting positive change, or even made the problem worse. (e.g. communism.)
As Öcalan points out in the case of Marxism and all of its ideological flavors:
"One of the biggest errors of the Marxian method was that the proletariat, who were already under daily oppression and exploitation, were expected to bring about the new societal construction without the necessary mental revolution having been initiated. Marxists failed to see that the proletariat consisted of re-conquered slaves; the Marxists themselves fell for the “free worker” fallacy."
So,
How do we begin to guide the social consciousness of a people who's generational memory carries the trauma of millennia of oppression, out of the depths of this hell, and begin a process of healing, self-discovery, and enlightenment?
I don't pretend to have an answer for this question. But, those who see the urgency of our current situation as a species, need to begin discussing this question and devoting all of our collective mental effort toward developing a clear and truthful answer and implementing the solution before it's too late. The alternative doesn't bear imagining...