5 Pteridophyta CultureIntroductionHuman beings have personalities. But one can see them just as easily in cultures and political systems. There is an equivalence between the two levels. The cultural level and the personal level have things in common, they have similar personalities. This is logical, as human beings form the systems of culture and politics. Human beings are part of, and form the culture just as cells are part of and form the human body. So it is interesting to look at the fern quality in our culture, our political and belief systems, our ideologies.
NormsNorms and rules have positive aspects for society. For example, traffic rules are neutral but beneficial. The rule of driving in the right lane minimises accidents. In some countries the rule is to drive at the left lane. Both are okay, as long as everyone does it. Such rules make life more predictable and easier.
Other rules are beneficial for society. For example saying hello to fellow citizens gives a friendly atmosphere. Norms are good when they are healthy and make people happy.
But there are other rules which can be very detrimental. For instance the rule that one has to follow the doctor’s advice. This can lead to the situation that iatrogenic death is the third cause of death in our culture.
The problem of norms and rules arises when the people exist for the rules instead of the rules existing for the people. Then the norms are forced onto people even when they are unhealthy or nonsensical.
CommunityA prominent part of life takes place at the community level, the
Iron series level. It is the theme to be normal, being like the others, not to be deviant, extravagant, or extraordinary. It is the theme of socialisation and normalisation. Strong concepts are togetherness, community, collectivity, solidarity, belonging, and fellowship.
UniformThe use of uniforms is still quite ubiquitous. They are used in schools, especially boarding schools, and monasteries. Uniforms are very common in the medical profession, for nurses and doctors, especially in hospitals. They are mandatory for police and in the military. The word uniform is typical and a very good expression of the normative quality of the
Iron series. There is a norm, which is expressed in a unique form, the uniform. It is a way of qualifying people on the outside, without knowing them, without knowing anything of their inside. This is what autistic personalities do.
In the past we had traditional costumes in villages. The next village had a different costume to show to which village one belongs. Women had to wear black clothes for a few months after their husband had died so that everyone could see that.
Another example is the work on assembly lines. The order of work has become strict, rigid and uniform.
One could say: the form is the norm, the uniform is the uninorm.
Codes
Modern forms of recognising people are by codes, passports, fiscal numbers, social identification numbers, passes for jobs, passwords for websites and the internet.
Animals in the bio-industry need more and more codes, numbers attached to their ears, like concentration camp prisoners being tattooed with a number. There are plans for implanting chips into people. People are transformed into numbers and codes.
Form Formalities FormalismAn important duality is form versus content, form versus information. The
Iron series is the series that is the most oriented to form. It is the most external, the most oriented towards the outside world of forms. That is why form, formalities and formalisms become so important, and in the extreme the only important thing in the world.
Computers are also producing forms. They can do fantastic things and are very handy, but in the end they are just handling codes. A calculator is just a machine. AI can produce very sophisticated answers, but in the end it it is just a machine producing something that can be valuable, but it is not intelligent. The intelligence is built-in by humans, not by the machine.
ObedienceObedience is at the heart of the fern pathology. The need for attachment, safety and survival makes it obligatory to follow the demands of the parents, teachers and so on. Obedience becomes a survival mechanism. Normalisation becomes a way to be accepted, whatever that might mean. Socialisation becomes a way to be loved, even when that means denying oneself. Parents talk happily about their "good girl". They love their children to adapt, surrender, be obedient, submissive, docile, and meek.
Children learn that obedience is the best way, that that is the way to do things well. It is a way to avoid responsibility. It is a way to avoid mistakes or doing things wrong. That is way Eichmann said he had done nothing wrong, he just followed orders.
EpidemicsA stunning example of
Pteridophyta state is the attitude of many people during the corona crisis. Many people just obeyed the rules of the governments, irrespective of whether the rules made sense or not. Even discussions about the rules were impossible. Later, even publications about alternatives were forbidden and doctors who found other ways of treatment were persecuted. Seeing how many people were obeying and refusing to think and discuss the measures one comes to the conclusion that many people have fern personalities.
ServantsIn Dutch and German there is the word “knecht”, meaning a workman. Etymologically it comes from the word “Knab”, a young man. Attached to it is the meaning of a young man being employed for various, physically demanding, and thus socially disrespected tasks. It is a servant and subordinate, a slave and feudal man, a soldier and mercenary. It is someone who is unfree, dependent on someone, having to obey instructions, submitting to the will of others by pressure and coercion, and refraining from independent and free decisions. The derived word “geknecht” is more specifically expressing that last part of being unfree. It gets translated as: enslaved, bruised, bruited, clubbed, snubbed, baton, bunted. The coercion is obvious.
The quality of obedience of many people in our society is expressed by Maaz very well: "I am also talking about the large number of people who, well-adapted to the circumstances and expectations of their environment, live relatively unremarkably, actually normally and quite decently, and, measured against the spirit of the age, can also consider themselves successful, although they live estranged from themselves with a weak and fragile self."
SuppressionIn the last expression of Maaz we see the next step, people living estranged from themselves. Obedience leads to self-denial. Arno Gruen calls it the Basic Lie. The suppression of the self leads to self-denial, self-contempt and in the most extreme cases to self-hate.
WorthlessnessWhen one cannot be authentic and autonomous or when one thinks so, one can easily conclude there is something wrong with oneself. It is a self-devaluation, it feels like being a sinner, a wrong doer.
This delusion has been promoted for a long time by the Catholic church in the form of the original sin: we as humans are born with a sin, even before we have done anything.
In the new form of religion of
Materialism this devaluation gets the form of being less than a grain of sand in the universe.
SlavesLooking back at the history of humanity we see a strong theme of slavery. Slaves are the ultimate form of being worthless. They were only worth of some money. There were many names for them such as serf or servant. They had just to follow orders, they had to obey. When we think of slavery, we think of Africans working on plantations in the Americas. The use of black people as slaves was sanctioned by the pope. But slavery is much more common and old. Rome needed galley slaves for their fleet. In its glory time, Rome needed 350.000 new slaves each year. In the mediaeval ages the slaves were called serf, or they were part of the land and could be bought together with the land. A serf means a servant, serving his master.
AutismAutism is a fairly new diagnosis. But autistic traits were normal in previous generations. People never telling about themselves and their emotions. It was normal to take one's secrets to the grave. "Normally", soldiers from World War 2 never talked about their real experiences. Incest happened often, but no one dared to talk about it. There was a strong split between the inside and outside world.
Autism is a defence mechanism, against the normalisation forced by society. By hiding in oneself one cannot be judged anymore.
Outside world The suppression of the inside world leads to a life in the outside world. The world of emotions and feelings is exchanged for the world of possessions and power to claim possessions. It is living in the outside world because the inside world is worthless.
SplitThe theme of being split from nature is the most prominent in the
Iron series. It is the struggle between life and nature, how to conquer the problems of survival and how to make tools and machines in order to make life more comfortable. Things have to be or become practical, rational, and functional. One should be able to calculate and control the environment. There is a fear of the future, arising from the idea of deficit, of shortage. Nature has to be conquered instead of lived with.
MaterialismBeing split from the inside world leads to the desire to be something in the outside world. It is living in "materialism", in thinking of matter and possessions. It is a compensation: then at least I represent something. It leads to a life of gathering possessions and money, to be admired and "loved" for one's wealth. In the extreme form it leads to narcissism, the desire for richness, fashion, glamour, and glitter. In politics we see this as a drive to become the leader, the most powerful one. This is described by Maaz in his book "The Narcissistic
Society". Gruen expresses this desire for power as: "The frustration of autonomy leads to psychological pathology and simultaneously blinds us to the madness of this struggle for power".
Good or badA basic question is if people are good or bad in nature. Bregman concludes in his book "Humanity" that the majority of people are good and virtuous.
Fern personalities have a low self-worth, imagining there is something terribly wrong with them. Then it becomes very difficult to see the good in others and to trust people. Extreme cases of self-hate project their hate onto others, seeing everyone as bad and dangerous, everyone becomes an enemy. The amount of gossip talk and gossip magazines is an expression of it. It can lead to the statement "People are aggressive beasts".
The idea that people are bad is often backed by the science of the evolution theory, where everyone is fighting against others to survive. Gruen describes that as: "We shift morality to the plane of intellectual concepts while seeing evil as emanating directly from human nature".
In politics we see the distrust in people and treating everyone as an enemy, the huge expansion of secret services, with their checking the telephone and email traffic of everyone.
DestructivenessObedience leads to destruction. That is what Maté, Gruen and Maaz are showing us. Obedience leads to self-denial and self-hate projected onto the outside world. Obedience helps the kings and dictators to start wars, with all the killing associated with it, no matter what rationalisations they invent and whatever celebrations they institutionalise afterwards, it ends in people killing each other. The self-hate leads to psychopathy and the desire to express it in violence to others, without knowing why they want to hurt and kill. Maaz expresses this as follows: "These distortions encourage the flight into the image and pseudo-feelings and lead to the lack of an autonomous self, thereby producing human beings who destroy life".
Obvious examples of destruction are World War 1 and World War 2. But all wars are madness. War is an expression of
Phase 7, where everything is out of order. It arises from feeling rejected, being excluded from civil rights, family, society, and a right to survival.
MilitaryThe military is a an example par excellence of the fern state of being. The most important thing imprinted in a soldier is to obey, obey without questioning or thinking. This is prominent in marching in columns, all in precise order. Soldiers are trained to become machines, robots that follow orders.
These aspects are well shown in the movie "A Few Good Men". In the beginning soldiers march and move in precise coordination with other soldiers, with tight faces, as if they are all machines without emotions. The plot is that two soldiers had to punish a fellow soldier, who died as a result. They were accused, but the colonel who ordered them to do so, denied that he had given the order.
The enormous amount of money and energy that goes into the military is a sign. The most important thing to learn as a soldier is to obey, much more important than learning how to fight. In the military orders are just orders that have to be followed without questioning.
The most extreme form to force obedience is killing deserters. The soldier has the choice of being shot by the enemy or by his fellow soldiers.
The number of wars would be greatly reduced if the people that decide for war have to go to the front line.
Culture IdeologiesNorms and rules are embedded in the ideologies and philosophies of a culture. They express the values of the culture, the guiding lines one has to adhere to. And just as norms can be unhealthy, so can cultural values and ideologies be unhealthy. But often people do not see that anymore as the majority is thinking the same. It is only after disasters that people are open to questio-ning the guiding principles, though many people do not even question them then. This arises from the identification with personalities with their inherent ideologies. Letting go of ideologies feels like losing oneself.
PragmatismA prominent philosophy of our culture is pragmatism, the philosophy that it is best to handle problems in a pragmatic, rational way. The problem is that pragmatism denies that there are values, goals to achieve. Pragmatism is like logic without starting points, axioms. In a way pragmatism denies that there are goals anyhow. It is like traveling, but not knowing where to.
MaterialismThe philosophy that coincides with pragmatism is materialism.
Materialism has become the most prominent philosophy of our western culture, where there is no emotional world, no free will, no God. The only thing that exists is matter, and living beings are just machines. The only important aspects are usefulness, utility and function. In the economy this is expressed in businesses that have only one goal: making as much money as one can. Life is reduced to money. Money is security against future dangers.
The negativity of materialism is that only function exists, life is pointless, meaningless, dead. People and other living beings are reduced to machines and slaves, who cannot and should not think. The bio-industry is a good example.
Materialism can be attractive for people as the lack of a free will makes that there is no responsibility.
The weird contradiction of materialism is that making money is a goal, but goals don't exist in the philosophy of materialism.
Ubiquity of fern statesPteridophyta states are not seldom, but ubiquitous as we can conclude from the above events. In my experience in the course of a few years many patients also have
Pteridophyta personalities, but they are often hidden and difficult to see. They are hidden in the background, compensated by more educated and civilised personalities.
The
Pteridophyta personalities come more to the foreground in stressful situations like war, famine and pandemics. They express themselves in peaceful times in beliefs and convictions, in worldviews and life philosophies. Examples can be found in the cases in part 3 of this book.