Thought for the Week: Cutting the roots
Bob Johnson considers how to cut the roots of destructive behaviour
Trauma pickles the mind. If you break a leg, everyone can see the damage. The mind is different. With physical injuries: you know you can’t walk – it’s obvious. This is not always so with the mind. In some ways our minds are beautifully simple, in other ways so complex we’ll never understand. The key to cutting the roots of destructive behaviour is to make sure you are dealing with the first, and avoid getting bogged down in the second.
Let’s start with those things about the mind that are simple and obvious. Firstly, we all like being smiled at – and there are powerful evolutionary, biological and ‘survival’ reasons for this that apply to every human ever born. Secondly, we are the ones who control what goes in and out of our mental furniture. So far, so simple. But the next is both impossible to understand and, yet, also impossible to live without – ‘intent’. Philosophers have debated for millennia as to whether we have ‘Free Will’. The latest scientific fashion says we don’t. I have ‘scientific’ proof we do. This is one instance where you can easily get lost in the complex, while overlooking the simple. Babies, for instance, know what they like and what they don’t. So, we need to grasp the simplicities and avoid being waylaid by the overly-complex.
To cut the roots of destructive behaviour, you first have to understand what the mind is for. Well, my view is that the mind is the organ of socialising. We need minds to keep track of all our complicated social networks: Annie Smith doesn’t like sugar in her tea, little Johnny does. Television soap operas show how intricate it can all become. But minds are, largely, under our control – that’s what we use our ‘intent’ for. We control the gateway to our minds – we decide to tell others what we’re thinking, or we don’t. And here’s the rub. Suppose parts of our mind become dangerous no-go areas and bits of our mental furniture become too hot to handle – what then?
This is the root that needs cutting before we can eliminate destructive behaviour. If we all like smiling at each other – and there’s nothing wrong with that – why do some insist on growling, or worse? It’s as if they see nettles where we see daisies – which is precisely what is happening. It’s ‘once bitten twice shy’ writ large. This is how trauma pickles the mind and, since minds basically control behaviour, if no-go areas fester in your mind, then you, and yours, are in trouble.
Again, the complexities can befuddle the whole thing. But, if the mind really is there to patch up our socialising, then, when it doesn’t, it falls to us to keep working at it until it does. The key is consent. I find a tripod works best: Truth, Trust and Consent. Don’t try and overrule, try and enlist. Don’t coerce, consensualise. Don’t bully back harder, keep asserting the lovability underneath. Don’t punish, unpickle. Trace the terror, persuade the sufferer that those nettles are long gone, that everyone deserves daisies. This is what cuts the roots of destructive behaviour.
It’s not always easy. None of us are super(wo)men – but when it works, as it assuredly does, human blossoming is miraculous to behold. It’s the ‘Healing Hand of Kindness plus Insight’, something everyone understands and which harms no one. Apply this diligently enough and you can help the mind unpickle itself and, also, restore the way we were all born: Lovable, Sociable and Nonviolent. That’s Quakerism for me – is it for you?
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