Dietrich Post Scriptum

Since I have had a lot of reactions to my comment on Marlene Dietrich I will try to make myself clear: I do not regard Dietrich as a good or a bad person. She was brought up in an era when little love was lost on children. They were regarded as small adults, be it among the peasantry, the urban proteltariat or in fashionable socielite circles.

The early loss of her father and the apparent lack of parental affection may have developed a fragile self with a low self esteem which often result in a life long compensatory urge. Dietrich may, and it may seem a paradox but is common, have felt ”guilty” of the loss of her father and lived up to the expectations of an ”evil” self or developed a very strong urge to ensure herself of men´s affection or at least attraction which she never got from the father, a compulsary need for affection or at least attention.

Her promiscuity could have been a ”revenge” or a need to compensate for a low self esteem by ”collecting” men, weaker than herself. She made good and bad choices, like all of us, with the exception that her doings were blown up a hundred times because of her celebrity status.

If Hitler and Stalin had grown up in parental love and great affection I doubt they would have become the monsters they turned out to be...

Douglas

DIETRICH DOMINATRIX ASSOLUTA

Thom Powers has made an excellent but spooky documentray on Marlene Dietrich which clearly shows that the icon was orchestrating her life, her image, herself as a calculated product conditioned by herslef to the very last.

 Ms. Dietrich’s contract, which she continues to refer to when the director asks her for more than the audio recording interview, states that she agrees to the documentary if her image isn’t recorded on camera – only her voice. At once point she even instructs her director on how to edit the film together by just using archival footage from her films and publicity coverage on her arrival to America. As  Dietrich explains how to cut the documentary without using any present day footage of her, the actual edit follows her instruction. There is no room for improvisation. Every line is carefully prepared by the dying diva.

No one messed with Dietrich. The lack of any signs of emotionality, empathy, regrets or human feelings in the frightening documentary adds to the picture of the Preussian stereotype of an overly disciplined, organized and controlling personality, meticulously staging her own life and, shortly before the end, callously stating her arrogant wiev of and genuine despice for her audiences. Her acid remarks and constant bullying of the director and the cameracrew is like a a giant feline playing with a bunch of small rodents and she is apperantly enjoying herself. People are stupid and gullible. Always have been and always will be. Dietrich´s megalomanic persona is directing her own swansong, and the artic connotation leaves you uncomfortable, to say the least. Her chosen isolation, once Jagger and Bowie, her last marionettes, escape her, leaves little room for any sympathy for the monster she has become, a chalk white made up ghost of the passed hidden behind curtains as heavy as bedcovers in her Paris apartment.

Garbo was the first to take the bold step of boycotting the omnipotent cinema companies and taking charge of her career on her own. Twenty years later the studios took their revenge and deconstructed her without mercy. Dietrich, besides her famous promiscuity, knew all there was to know about the high and mighty of Hollywood and had no problems to let them know that she would not be discreet unless they continued to allow her to appear on the screen.

Dietrich followed Garbos´s lead but was made of harder steel and managed to end her cinematic career with an excellent performance in ” The Judgement of Nuremberg”, after which, except for cameo performances, she entered the most prestigious stages worldwide as a phenomenal estradeuse, larger than life, enacting sentimentality and nostalgia with bravura but without investing even the slighest bit of her own emotions, carefully coregraphing each move or facial expression, which gradually became hardly visible because of the multiple facelifts.

No one expected her to hit any notes and yet, she accomplished a musical experience that surpassed most. Alone in the spotlight with no sight of the orchestra, dressed in a bodycolored diamond studded evening gown, she made sure that all attention was on her and that nothing was to distract the mesmerized audience. Her choregraphy was stolen from Zarah Leander, the Swedish born German mega star, and generations of skilled varietée singers of the legendary Berlin subculture her mentors.

To critisize her for her five meter white mink stola would equal critizising the love life of the Pope. She found her followers anserine but generous with their money and Dietrich like a penny or two.

Dietrich went through all the motions of love or at least the sexual aspects of it. She bedded most male leading men, directors, cameramen and the infamous Spanish Countess da Costa, the most well known and predatory lesbian of the era. The alleged affair with Garbo is, however, pure fantasy. Dietrich wanted to seduce and humiliate her worst competitor but Garbo was not game. Greta Garbo was scared witless by the butch Dietrich and an asexual, incarcerated in her own myth as the enchanting seductress she never was.

The only man Dietrich seemed to truly have fallen for was the rising star, Yul Brunner, who bedded everything on two legs, men and women alike. She was drawn to his sociopate persona and the challenge to defeat him at the game kept her going, but to no avail.

Dietrich was born and grew up at the fashionable Unter den Linden by her stern officer father and a mother she never even mentioned. The father died at a young age and Dietrich abandoned the family in scandalous circumstances to become a starlet at the German UFA studios where she landed her first part of significance as the plumb and nasal prostitute in ”Die blaue Engel”. She never mentioned her mother again. She had been an obedient child, that should suffice.

When flattered by the documentalist for her great courage to leave Germany and go into exile in the US shortly after the Nazi take over she replied laconically: ” It had nothing to do with courage. It was common sense. Who wants to live in a country ruled by a madman killing women and children?”

Like Riefenstahl she was as aware that the masses were easy to manipulate and she never felt any regrets to implement her insights. She played the good hearted whore to perfection in a long train of movies, only she was not that good.

Dietrich, in psychiatric terms, seems to correspond to the anonplastic personality disorder This means in every sense ” the world according to me”. Her Narcissist personality close to a psychopat disorder allowed her to disqualify everything and everyone who dared to contradict her understanding of the world and with a firm belief that she was the only one able to command it.

”Ordnung muss sein”. She left nothing to chance. The icon was an obssessive compulsive woman with a paramount need to stay in control with all the skill that it takes to convince people that she was in her right and, so I believe, very convincing of her grandezza. Her strict preussian bourgeois upbringing developed her psychological self to regard the world in black and white, a docotyme challeging world wihout any other shades or colors on the emotional and intellectual palette.

This omnipotent and dominatrix primadonna, eyes half shut and possibly the highest cheekbones in Hollywood history, was filmed in the contemporary chiaroscuro fashion which made her and a handful of other beautiful actresses look like ubermensch goddesses, unattainable, of outstanding stature and enigmatic beauty.

When natural beauties such as Audrey Hepburn and Grace Kelly entered the silver screen the assolutas´ golden days were over. The filters over the camera lenses were stripped off, the lights were turned on and the veterans had to crawl back into the shadows. A happy go lucky fifties apple pie infected euphoric decade sporting cheery Doris Day and an endlessly bathing Esther Williams had no room for the anemic Garbo nor the black spider Dietrich who belonged to an era full of anxiety, starvation, financial depression, chaos, misery and devastating wars. Goddesses were no longer needed. The horrors were forgotten and the sky had no limit.

Dietrich´s husky androgynous voice attracted all sexes. Her stage performances were equalled by no one and she was hailed as one of the greatest entertainers ever and rightfully so. When closing her act she usually turned her back at the audience, peeping coquettishly back at them over her right shoulder before her grande sortie. She couldn´t have loathed them more...

Douglas

2012

Living la Vida loca: Life with a Cocker Spaniel

Living la vida loca: Life with a Cocker spaniel

The English Cocker spaniel can be traced back several hundred years as a race in it´s own right (offcially in the 1770´s). In Britain it was breeded to trace woods cocks primarily, coking spaniels, scaring the wits out of the evasive birds and later all waterbirds, swimming excellently and to retrieve, that is bring back the game when shot by the hunter owner. Spaniels, however, can be traced back to early China and onwards but with different characteristics, looks and temper.

Walking a Cocker spaniel is like walking a vacuum cleaner on legs. With the nose permanently in the grass or woodland undergrowth you seldom see her face no matter how far and for how long you roam in the wilderness. Every forty meters, or so, she stops in her track to check if you are still on your legs and have managed not to collapse of exhaustion before she continues her mission. She has absolutely no sense for proportions because she is equally enthusiastic when it comes to tracing cows or elks twenty times her size and sometimes she believs she a herder dog, trying to direct wayward majestic and aggressive red deers in an exact formation to be ushered into the nearest compound or barn. She has an admirable courage even if, at times, somewhat megalomaniac..

Her nose which is 40.000 times as sensible as ours must be an ordeal, or so I believe, since all poo and urine, no matter what species, is a pure delight to her and the object of endless sniffing, something which you involuntarily become part of when she is trying to lick you clean after an extensive safari, the mother instincts running amok with affection.

The earlier in the morning, the better. At five o´clock A.M. she becomes noisly impatient with my lazy habits and makes sufficient commotion for me to give in. The first kilometer I walk with my eyes closed, half asleep, while she is busy at work. When, upon the return, I am fully awake she instanly falls asleep on my feet.

The little lady has made me lose six kilos in four weeks, losing my taste for smoking after all the fresh air and to eat regulary and helathier since my bad habit of eating snacks while watching telly is gone. I just cannot stand the thought of stuffing myself when she can´t. There is much to say for Cocker Spaniel´s eyes. They can fill you with remorse whether you have done something norty, or not.

Despite the dog´s extreme energy and tracing instinct they, furthermore, are very social and affectionate dogs, who are constantly at your feet and by your side. The only escape is to try to make it to the bathroom before her and closing the door. That´s when she believes she is a German shepherd or a Rottweiler and guards the door wih her life.

She loves everybody and everyone, including cats and toddlers trying to pull out her eyes  but loyally shows who´s her flock leader. Anybody with a fragile self esteem should try a Cocker Spaniel as a companion. They´d do close to anything for you and never fail you. In return you will have to be prepared for miles and miles of daily excercise no matter the weather, be it icy snowstorms or exhausting heat waves.

They are very decorative, if that is important to you, but tougher than their enchanting looks. They are mildtempered but strong willed and snore to high heaven when they sleep. She is still very upset that I do not allow her to sleep on my bed but has given up the efforts since she pretends not to be able to jump up in bed when I am present. When I am not there she manages without any problem but hurries down as soon as I enter the room.

Nellie is in her subtle way orchestrating quiet a lot of my daily life but I was raised in the countryside on a huge farm and a dog will be regarded as a dog, nothing more and nothing less, and that means that a complete takeover never will happen. She will not have a Gucci dress nor a necklace with Swarovski stones, Love her to death....

Douglas

2012

La Traviata: Monroe Misled

LA TRAVIATA 

Marilyn Monroe, the Misled 

Few people have left such a prominent mark as Norma Jean Mortenson of Irish/Norwegian/Swedish descent. Surfing down history lane we may remember Zarathustra, Alexander the Great, Suleiman the Great, Maria Magdalena, Socrates, Ivan the Terrible, Da Vinci, Göthe, Marie Antoinette, Wagner and the Kennedy brothers. Still no one who has ears to hear and eyes to see seem to have missed out on the confused and fragile Monroe or the enigmatic, erratic James Dean when summing up last century. 

To some it may be uncomfortable to mention them in the company of Marie Curie, Mother Teresa and Einstein, but it is inevitable. The impact of imagery and iconographic representation has been understood since the earliest descendents of Ardia, leaving traces in forms of paintings and imagery on cave walls in order to secure a permanent mark of their existence for posterity. The need for affirmation or confirmation and to communicate the current cosmology is paramount through man´s history. 

The visual impact of the graphic representations of normative patterns and mindsets, projected in symbols, gods and spirits in forms of pottery, stone carvings, wooden art craft, sculpture, painting, architecture and photographing is paramount and leaves the viewer to react with adoration, affection, revulsion, wrath or indifference, no matter the intellectual set up or level of education or impairment of the senses. 

The image as a stimulus remains void unless you explore and activate your unique repertoire of implicit and explicit meanings to interpret it. Without reading in your reaction to a picture or a piece of symbolic art craft it does not exist, from a philosophical angle, nor does a painting or any representation, manmade, at all. 

Take a little time and look attentively at the picture of the chubby, apparently confused and anxiety ridden “Sex Goddess” caught in a moment unawares and you will find that she is a contemporary “Traviata”, misled by her inner destructive thoughts and split personality, potentiated by a dictatorial network of exploiters, callously using her genuine vulnerability and skillfully pairing it with sexually explicit outfits and racy movie score lines, which triggers off the potent attraction for “the Madonna and the Whore”, a provocative and stimulating contradiction which represents an ageless challeging combination to heterosexual males and partially to women. 

Women accepted Marilyn, knowing she was lost from the very beginning. They would sympathize with her vulnerability, grieve with her when she miscarried and rejoice when she seemed to have found yet another promising life partner. Since they all knew she was going to her destruction she could be forgiven for being a glamorous slut. In the cinema theaters the wife could calmly watch her husband lust after the silver screen leggy blonde with her eyes half shut and displaying her throat in erotic submission in the tradition of the original vamp Theda Bara and Greta Garbo before her without causing an upset. The husbands were not likely to be the one to take the diva home and dying the hair an ultra blonde could easily be done by the less glamorous housewives in innumerable beauty parlors. 

Propelled by the dollar generating movie moguls the young woman was continuously guaranteed and fed with every substance able kick her mind up or down without any scruples and making millions by broadcasting her downfall and misery without extending a hand. Screwing with her mind made her a better actress by dissociation once she was transferred from the stereotype blond bimbo by proving her comedienne talent in “Some like it hot” and her marrying the highbrow author and dramatist Arthur Miller. Her capriciousness held Hollywood captured. This was not just another Harlow or West. Monroe was the icon who, in the hands of a skilled film director and a good script, unexpectedly gave stunning performances by a combination of intuition and acting skills resting on her complex personality. 

While our elder siblings mourned the untimely deaths of Monroe and Dean, we lost our childhood innocence when the Kennedys and Martin Luther King were assassinated. The optimism of the wholesome fifties´ and the explosive and innovative sixties´ did not herd us into Schlaraffenland, but to the misery of assassins, the ferocious Civil Rights´ battle, the Vietnam War and LSD, acids and mushrooms to escape it. 

A new generation of icons was prepared to rush to their destruction generating big business and skyrocketing sales of their records as those of Joplin, Hendrix and Morrison, exploding in accordance to the mythological pattern precisely fulfilled since long before the Greek legends of youth and death making gods of the stricken. To die before “Best Before Date” is millennia old star potential, skillfully explored by those who never would reach the pinnacles of fame. 

Imagine Narcissus or Antinous as elderly, arthritis dysfunctional, incontinent elderly men or a coughing, myopic, demented and COL piping James Dean in his late eighties and the attraction wanes off. 

Mae West, appearing in her eighties, in the vulgar “Myra Breckinridge” adaptation of Vidal´s infamous novel, goes to prove that no matter the amount of hair extensions, facelifts, wigs, fake nails, fake bosoms, and a ninety nine teeth upper Hollywood bridge, the props do not create a legend and the posters of the witty and intelligent West are instinct. 

The succession of the deaths of Nathalie Wood, Montgomery Clift, Sal Mineo, Ricky Nelson and the repeated suicidal attempts of Pier Angeli (succeeding) and Brigitte Bardot began to make us increasingly indifferent. The drug dimmed seventies´ lost grip on most everything. Death was just another form of experimenting with an ordinary and boring life. The everlasting subcultures involved with death, dark forces, the occult or Satanism have a life of their own and can be traced back to the earliest tokens of human ritual expressions. In the aftermath of the hippie culture these forces may have waned but has made a strong comeback in Punk and Goth movements vividly recognizable anywhere in countries which exploit ideologies or creeds in fashion concepts for sale. 

Death and resurrection is the strongest dramatic agent in mythology: young Greek gods and goddesses are willing to become mere mortals because of their infatuation in the less divine. In addition, by dying young, mere mortals become deified such as Alexander the Great and the clever Queen Cleopatra but the mythological pattern goes further back than so and are found in the oldest elements of Aition traditions from the Indus Valley Harappan culture and onwards. 

Christ death at the cross in His early thirties may be the epitome of sacrificing life for the reason of love (in this case Agape) and is a hard phenomenon to over triumph once martyrdom became ordinary. 

We stopped to care.. Somewhere in the Cannabis dimension we lost track of proportions and death did not really exist in a chemical influenced world unless you had to pick up your lifeless parent or lover at your feet. We seemed to fare fairly well while a generation pined away in the AIDS epidemic with all the previously fashionable Mother Teresa agape and prominent Indian gurus left behind in our zest for spectacular experiences and escapism. Some of us started to mimic the lifestyles of the current celebrities by experimenting with drugs and indiscriminate sexuality and even dreaming of becoming known by dying young and fed up with society..To the Accompaniment of Alphaville´s “For ever young” , we lived as fast as our condition would allow us, copying the Beat Generation, Jack Kerouac, Ginsberg and others we had no even a notion about. “On the Road” by Kerouac made us travel as uncomfortably as possible to all corners of the world seeking enlightenment, diversion and as manipulated by the imagery and fashion industries as everybody else, but silly enough to believe us to be independent. 

Independence was a skillfully orchestrated movement at the hands of people who had their yachts waiting in Monaco. The old European aristocratic hegemony was temporarily put in quarantine while the newly rich invented themselves as a breed of aristocrats with origins in the British lower middle class or blue collar suburbs of Philadelphia. The new heroes, however, had no intention of dying young and so they lost their magic and were sent into exile on the stages of Las Vegas or the San Remo Festivals where they still earn their daily bread with Botox rigid faces and implants and no legendary status at all. 

Now, take another good look at the plumb, insecure Hollywood star, somewhere on a California beach, in her impeccable white swimsuit, the wind messing with her hair and look into her eyes. Something has already gone very wrong. 

If they would have lived to mature age, would we still love them unconditionally? Would we have loved Alexander the Great becoming an old grumpy tyrant over an elephantine Empire and a fat, submissive Cleopatra, jumping at every command of the Romans? If la Traviata had recovered from her TB, would we adore her as a Brothel Madame, no matter the tacky gilded interior decorations of her establishment? 

Do our heroes have to die young? 

No. Nelson Mandela, Dalai Lama and Mother Theresa prove otherwise…  

Douglas 2012

Honor related violence in Sweden

HONOR RELATED VIOLENCE IN SWEDEN

I.

Aggression and brutality implemented by sheer physical or mental force is a human fundamental characteristic which we have painstakingly been trained to deny, to combat ethically or religiously and to consciously disregard as a major force of human survival. We seem intent on peace promoting efforts on a global scale and denounce violence as an anomalistic behavioral irrationality which can and must be pacified at all costs.

The remnants of peaceful bartering and coexistence in a bountiful habitat seems genetically to be maintained in a collective memory of conditions contrary to contemporary conditions and, in reality, an irrational ideal where resources are scare and people too many.

Violence, helàs, is brutally apparent at all levels, conscious or subconscious, from a mega plan to the individual micro cosmos in all hitherto known societies. Most apparent or hidden structures (Levy Strauss) that control the socio economical and behavioral patterns of any given society, be it stratified, egalitarian or anarchistic, are strictly governed by determining agents in relation to the access to the basic means for survival and reproduction (biologically, socially, symbolically).

 The violent original battle over the means of production and reproduction which scattered the homo sapiens, and the homo erectus, from the forested mountain slopes of Ethiopia by the Aris, the primate presently regarded as our earliest human ancestors, spreading to the savannas of Kenya and Ethiopia and to the the still ongoing mass migrations, which, in different patterns and substance, rely on and are governed by the ultimate agent of survival, the selfish gene, (R.Dawkins) recently acknowledged by genetic state of the art science as being the optimal survival kit in human maximization, individual or collective accumulation.

Violence, in this context, is rational, disregarding our understanding of the term, and a hard act to swallow in a world, which for tens of thousands of years simultaneously have developed strategies for diplomacy, agreements and peace promoting intermarriages in order not to become extinct.

It is intensely annoying when altruism, benevolence and empathy, the socio emotional codes of cooperation and compassion, are explained by a selfish gene, but there we are; we depend on the charity of others or to offer part of our individual surplus in order to find order in a chaotic and ever changing world and the selfish gene promotes kindness and amiability because we need it to survive. We are not alone. All species rely on the gene with the disagreeable label.

Having said this, I find it important to underline that selfishness, egotism, greed and violence may be of major importance as genetically inherited determinants of survival and that the biological disposition cannot be understood from a moralistic or ethical point of view because it does not correspond to the idea of a right and a wrong.

If we do not understand the mechanisms of violence and aggression we cannot deal with it. The survival of the fittest is not that farfetched. Somehow, it doesn´t have to be the most brutal, nor the strongest. Social skills and empathy will take you far. Survival is not depending on violence solely but on flexibility and sociability when it is needed…

The knowledge is far from new: “Love Thy Next as Thou love Thyself”, is a biblical command, easy to ignore or reject because our living conditions often leave little room for divine idealism.

The earliest social contracts were those between mankind and cosmos. The symbols left to posterity on tortoise shells or the walls of caves were statements in order to ensure stability and fertility,and in addition meant as important messages for the coming generations to appease forces stronger than man. Art and decorative beauty, as we perceive it, were present even in the pre human species who decorated the skeletons of their diseased relatives with flowers, an image that tears my eyes but nevertheless is true.. Their is no logical explanation except for grief and a desire to honor and to show affection.

Art or expression,obviously, is a fundamental representation of man´s existential brooding and a need to communicate, not only with other humans, but with the presumed metaphysical forces governing human life.

In any given habitat there, soon or later, whether in an arid and poor environment or a sumptuous one, will occur a shortage of the means of production due to population growth and overpopulation on a smaller and a greater scale and the battle over the resources develop.

No human being, no matter what social organization, will willingly give up her life for others to survive, except in extremely rare cases, probably because of scientifically speaking, some kind of personal disorder or a mother´s instinct to save her offspring.

II.

Anthropologically we separate guilt oriented societies from shame oriented. Guilt can only be absolved by divine intervention or by accepting secular punishments, whereas shame can be compensated for by ceremonial rituals in order to reestablish a balance with the supernatural, as often is the case in the egalitarian hunter and gatherer societies. Sacrifice, be it of products or human beings, is globally spread and exist where we live whether we see it or refuse to acknowledge it.

Sacrifice isa fundamental ceremony to appease furious celestial or natural forces and continued even in the contemporary era, although we would never admit to it. Magical thinking does not halt at the tender age of seven. It alters in patterns of modes of rationalizing but is a steady companion until we leave this life. New Year promises are recognition of personal shortcomings we wish to get rid of and by doing giving the promise on a magically charged day, changing the course of fate to a happy and illustrious one.

Shame in a stratified society works on various levels: Without going into details a stratified society seems to globally develop a cosmology reflecting the different classes and their status by turning to bigger and lesser gods and, at the stage, which is regarded as the most developed, to a sole and omnipotent God.

The laws of necessity, such as a pattern of social interaction tolerated in a group or an extended family unit, will be canonized and regarded as Divine Order.  By deviating from the social code of the clan, family or kinsmen, you will jeopardize the survival of the whole group and by their calling upon the gods or God you will be punished by extinction or expulsion.

In animistic, animatistic and polytheistic cultural ceremonies to appease the djinns, spirits or the gods and to recover balance with the supernatural, sacrifying and/or acts of violence must be executed even within your socio emotional and interrelated group. The violence has a profound meaning and a rationality which is based on survival strategies. In a cosmos where the stratified society has developed a hierarchy it is maintained by violent force and oppression can be merciless at the expense of the submissive population strata.

Empires, without knowledge of each others, were built on forced labor and slavery on a massive scale. No one in his right mind would willingly leave his livelihood, family and habitat to work himself to death in order to build magnificent structures glorifying worldly rulers with divine pretexts in remote places and, maybe only for a second, we may reflect upon why Europe suddenly started to prosper. Cleverness?  Superior intelligence?

May I point to the fact that the Incas had a general pension system inherited from earlier Latin American cultures such as the Muisca, Nazca, Chimur and Valdivia? We have stepped back approximately in time to some 7.000 years B.C. The regional or local empires were built on slavery and violence. Europe rapidly internalized the system and prospered whereas the Latin American City States and Empires collapsed.

Now we are facing a USA with a deficit of 90% of their annual budget, meaning that they virtually do not own their own country, nor her assets. The domination of the Old World is facing violence and regression while Asia is on the rise.

Nomadism and Transhumance based on a constant battle with competitors over the basic means of survival such as food, pastures and water trigger off violent attacks on adversaries and become institutionalized and the embryo of a modern warfare conditions, which are born out of necessity.

The survival strategies, however, also demand peaceful interactions with suitable alien conglomerates in order to reproduce biologically and to avoid extinction by incest and to form alliances of defense and collaboration. The woman comes into focus as the means of value, the “currency” or the exchange value, to guarantee stability in terms of intermarriage and interrelated genetic pools.

The fierce control over female sexuality thus has it´s roots in biological and social “commerce” and survival strategies. The male, furthermore, must be absolutely sure that he is the genitor, the biological father of the offspring, or the idea of alliances fall flat. The woman must remain a virgin until she is legally married. The strictness of these criteria is never negotiable in any pre urban society and the heritage still rules the mindset on a global scale even in the post-industrial societies.

Cliterodoctomy is a brutal mesure to ensure the clan that the woman will not go astray and have sexual relations on her own initiative, since this will diminish any sexual attempt not sanctioned by her clan.

The mutilation of the clitoris and suturing the vagina is a custom, primarily among nomads, which dates back long before any of the world wide religions spread over the globe.

To deviate from patterns of control and to improvise on your own will have fierce consequences. In monotheistic cultures, pre-Lutheran, any form of anomalistic behavior would be interpreted as a crime against God, generating shame by losing your face and honor on a collective scale versus the surrounding world and has to be balanced by regulating the relation to the Almighty for the public to see.

The capital punishment, that is the killing of a woman gone astray or a homosexual son, is a concrete act to show God and the public that the relation to God has been reestablished and balanced, thus extinguishing the shame and to compensate and restore the lost honor.

Taking into regard the rational actions of violence, whether competing over scarce resources of the means of reproduction in a poor habitat or eliminating anomalistic individuals of a collective, violence has a meaning per se.

Bearing this in mind, it will not be regarded as a crime, quite the opposite, and is encouraged by an extended family, a father and a mother, siblings or a clan as the only correct thing to do in order to survive socially and avoid a perpetual stigma in the eyes of God and the public. 

Functional violence (Radcliff Brown 1962) cannot easily be morally objected to or exterminated without changing millennia old mindsets as promptly requested by highly stratified societies, often host countries to immigrants with honor related normative set of rules. It must be underlined that honor normative societies have been existing long before the debut of Judaism, Christianity and Islam and that the mindset is present in all three religions. This, however, is of little importance to the victims.

Structural violence, such as a prevailing ideology that find it perfectly rational to accept that public employees take over much of the upbringing of the children and the care of the elderly separated from their children, is subtle and works in many forms. We are as blind to these phenomenon´s as the collective oriented people are horrified by it. The adaptation to the industrial society split up the extended family and developed a small movable production unit, the nuclear family, consisting of parents and children, to be easily transported to where the industrial agents were in necessity of labor force.

Most of us seem to believe that the nuclear family is the “normal” interrelated organization and the effective backbone of contemporary post modern society without reflecting on the fact that this family set up has been a norm in a relatively small part of the world during a second of man´s history. Structural violence, obliging us to abandon the social and emotional network and support of relatives, and relying on a public sector is even regarded as an important step forward in an evolutionary aspect but, to be sincere, a step into what…?

It has been noted that immigrants in a historic and a contemporary perspective tend to potentiate their traditional mindset in order to bring order in a chaotic new world, where their skills and normative values are being disregarded and often criminalized. The polarization between the native population and the newcomers generates violence by exactly the same survival instincts as the fighting over the control over an oasis or a rich pasture in the desert lands of Arabia. It is not uncommon that religious or ideological norms become paramount and strengthened in exile to a fundamentalist degree which is unacceptable in the individual oriented host society, where personal initiative and self fulfillment are words of honor.

The shock and disbelief when the amputated immigrant family, separated from the native extended family, suddenly must take the entire responsibility of parenthood without the relatives or the whole village to assist, is being disobeyed and rebelled against by the children, can often only be compensated for by stern traditional sanctions, while the compatriots are busy studying every detail of their behavior. Shame and the loss of honor by losing control of the children´s followed by a change in the social behavior may even be more stigmatizing in a foreign environment with a community of fellow countrymen struggling to maintain some kind of identity and sanity by enforcing their original normative system.

This exposé is not a statement, nor a plea for acceptance of violence. But it is obvious that the mechanisms of violence, individual or on a mega plan, must be understood in a social darwinist, historical and contemporary social context or we stand without any means to combat it. Keep your enemy close, and enemies will always be there, so that you understand the motivation and maybe can contribute to solve a conflict including violence on the rise. It is no easy task. Mankind has not succeeded so far.

Well. The latter conclusion is no axiom. My close friend, Driton Rama, his mate Genc Uka and the mentor, Tyko Granberger, have been successfully innovative to set things a bit more straight in Sweden. The honor related violence, causing the death of several teenager girls and one boy, all killed by their own brothers ,has raised hell in our country.

The tension between the ethnic groups embracing capital punishment for wayward children and the native majority has risen to degree so that refugees are regarded as medieval, intellectually and evolutionary retarded enemies and potential terrorists. After decades of reasonable tolerance and good will the Swedes are disgusted with the succession of callous executions within a family group.

The oldest son often is called by convention and arcaic norms to restore the relation to God  by revolting brutality. Once, however, you begin to see the guilt ridden sons as victims as well, something can be done. The team of the “Your Brother” project has effectively proved that the overbearing responsibility on the shoulders of the eldest brother can and must be stopped.

By excellent counselling methods the trio with authentic street credibility has made a heavy impact on the youngsters and gradually earning the confidence of the older generation as well.

Murder, whether by divine law, or not, is not an option in Sweden. No extenuating circumstances are accepted even if the assassin is a minor of age, or older. Severe measures and sanctions are imposed. Children should never fall victim to severe sanctions. Prevention is better than cure. With all due respect for the Freedom of Religious expression, honor related violence, will not be regarded as a right. Ever. The issue is not negotiable.

None of the four religions (including the syncretist Kurdish creed) implementing honor related violence are free to ignore the Commandment “ Thou shall not kill “. 

Not even Abraham obeyed the Divine order to sacrifice his son, Isaac. Mercy obviously is stronger than “rationality”.

Douglas Modig  2012