Toxic Socialization
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Toxic Socialization
Toxic Socialization is a societally imposed conditioning process, orchestrated by agents of the Accumulating Class, that takes a new born infant and molds, over the course of two or three decades, them into a compliant, productivity-focused individual suitable for insertion into the socioeconomic machinery of society (Regime of Accumulation). This process prioritizes conformity, obedience, and labor over creativity, empathy, and independent thought. The TS process is illustrated metaphorically by the Allegory of the Bucket. TS undermines Human Potential
Concept Map
Key Terms
Human Development >> Socialization >
- Allegory of the Bucket
- Ego Mode
- Focus Point
- Healing and Connection Journal
- Prism Metaphor
- Self Assessment
- The Work
- Toxic Socialization
Elements of Toxic Socialization
Mechanisms of Reproduction
Mechanisms of Reproduction > State Apparatus, The State, Toxic Socialization
Syncretic Terms
Toxic Socialization > Poisonous Pedagogy
Related LP Terms
Toxic Socialization > Blocking Emotions, Clearing Emotions, Connection Blockage, Defence Mechanisms, Defense Mode, Disjuncture, Empowerment, Healing Burden, Healing Environment, Healing Space, Human Flourishing, Intragenerational Toxicity, Misalignment, No-Violence Rule, Prism Metaphor, Regime of Accumulation, Repair Mode, Self Assessment, Seven Essential Needs, Seven Toxic Needs, Stages of Human Development, System Agent, The Great Gork, Toxic Burden, Toxicity Score, Unfettered Accumulation
Related Pathfinder Terms
Toxic Socialization > Controlling Social Structure
Non-LP Related Terms
Toxic Socialization > Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE) Study, Authority, Conscientização, Culture of Silence, Dialogic Method, European Grand Narrative, Generative Themes, Love, Empathy, and Hope, Normalcy, Praxis, Problem-Posing Education, Systemic Indoctrination
Notes
TS is a destructive socialization process intentionally designed by System Agents to facilitate reproduction of the Regime of Accumulation (see Mechanisms of Reproduction).
Toxic socialization is a process characterized by 1) neglect (of the Seven Essential Needs), 2) violence[1] 3) chaos (in the home environment), 4) parentification, 5) Indoctrination, 6) distortion/destruction of healthy family Attachment. and 7) Weaponization of familial, social, and work relationships.[2]For a complete explication, see the article Toxic Socialization[3]. Toxic Socialization is illustrated allegorically in the video Allegory of the Bucket.
Toxic socialization undermines human potential and disables the body's ability to properly Connect and contain higher levels of Consciousness. The purpose of toxic socialization is to create damaged, diminished, compliant and easy-to-control individuals willing to sacrifice themselves to The System.
Toxic socialization is a colonial/imperial/European socialization process implemented in order to undermine human beings and make them more compliant, malleable, and subservient. A damaged human being is more likely to accept rote, demeaning, and exploitive working conditions found in Capitalist enterprises. A damaged human being is easier to manipulate and control.
As Fanon pointed out in the Wretched of the Earth, toxic socialization "is a totalitarian systemic negation of the colonized, and is enforced by systemic [and we would add neglect] in all areas of life." [4]
Dr. Daniel Gottlieb Moritz Schreber is a German physician who actually advocated a horrific form of Toxic Socialization. Mom Katya Degrieck[5] provides some interesting commentary, including the insight that the popularity of his methods likely contributed to the easy growth of fascism in pre-WWII Germany! If that is not an argument for the global abolition of all toxic socialization practices, I don't know what is.
Toxic socialization is encouraged in at least one passage in the Old Testament, Proverbs 23: 13-14
Martin Teicher provides a fascinating and compelling look at the neurological damage caused by violence and neglect in childhood.[6] His article is particularly interesting because he notes the damage is actually adaptive and "sculps" the brain to respond in ways that although they are toxic and antisocial, nevertheless are adaptive for the organism as a whole.
Oscar Ichazo notes that the bodily ego becomes distorted and sick as a consequence of toxic socialization. "A person retains the purity of essence for a short time. It is lost between four and six years of age when the child begins to imitate his parents, tell lies, and pretend. A contradiction develops between the inner feelings of the child and the outer social reality to which he must conform. Ego consciousness is the limited mode of awareness that develops as a result of the fall into society. Personality forms a defensive layer over the essence and the world. The ego feels the world as alien and dangerous because it constantly fails to satisfy the deeper needs of the self."[7]
In an interesting nineteen seventy-five, James Prescott published a study suggesting the link between childhood violence and neglect, and adulthood violence and war. In the conclusion, the author says, "The competitive ethic, which teaches children that they must advance at the expense of others, should be replaced by values of cooperation and a pursuit of excellence for its own sake. We must raise children to be emotionally capable of giving love and affection, rather than to exploit others."[8]
Freud recognizes toxic elements in "civilization" and even admits that it is society and its "defects" which has made people "embittered, revengeful and inaccessible." He admits the possibility that with healthier socialization, in a process where individuals "have been brought up in kindness and taught to have a high opinion of reason, and who have experienced the benefits of civilization at an early age," individuals might come to have better attitudes. He concludes that the re-education effort to attain this goal is impossibly massive and, in any case, the extant elites were simply incapable of such a feat.
Toxic socialization stunts and damages the Physical Unit. It damages the Bodily Ego and causes
- PSST - Psychosocialspiritual trauma
- Fractured Attachments
- Physical Illness
- Disjuncture
- Lower IQ
- Lower CQ
- Addictions
- Robotization
- Depression[9]
- Premature aging
- Alexithymia.[10]
Toxic socialization disconnects. "The most important obstacle to that kind of openness is a history of traumatic experiences that lead to emotional and physical blockages, a kind of Reichian armoring that separates us from the rest of the world."[11]
Toxic socialization is required by The System, important for System Maintenance, actuated through indoctrination of an Old Energy Creation Template, and supported by Intergenerational Toxicity (a.k.a. toxic "traditions")
"Spare the rod and spoil the child" is an admonishment to expose children to violence, an admonishment to Toxic Socialization.
Toxic socialization is implemented in order to create a docile and compliant Physical Unit with low CQ, willing to fit into the accumulation machinery of this planet (Sosteric, 2016).
Abraham Maslow had a nascent sense of toxic socialization. He "generally ... believed that the social environment inhibits rather than facilitates Self-actualization, for example by frustrating the lower needs, encouraging defensiveness, or masking the real self with an idealized self."[12] Maslow felt that a "culture gone bad" suppressed "love, kindness, and tenderness" and inhibited authentic human actualization[13] He suggested the need to consider the development of a Eupsychia or a "psychologically healthy culture" that encourages full human development, in particular, the expression of higher human needs and values.[14]
Maslow noted "I find children, up to the time they are spoiled and flattened out by the culture, nicer, better, more attractive human beings than their elders..." [15]
Again Maslow noted that toxic socialization wasn't necessary. "Culture is not intrinsically at sword's points with man's deepest impulses. It is not necessarily an instrument for taming, restraining, or inhibiting mankind, but could be, and I think, we'll be, seen as an instrument for more efficient satisfaction of man's deepest needs and impulses; in a word not "instinct" controlling but "instinct" gratifying. The fact that today our culture is in truth opposed to our basic impulses I regard as in part an artifact resulting from the incorrect conception not only of "instinct" but also of culture. It is an accident, not an inherent necessity.”[16]
Again, Maslow "...the impulses to hate, to be jealous, to be hostile, to be greedy, to be egoistic and selfish, are now being discovered more and more clearly to be acquired and not instinctive. They are almost certainly neurotic and sick reactions to bad situations, more specifically to frustrations of our truly basic and instinct-like needs and impulses."[17]
Abraham Maslow distinguished between "coping," which is a response to toxic environments, and expression, which can occur only in positive environments.[18]
Maslow: Humans basically good, the System fucks them up. "This inner nature, as much as we know of it so far, seems not to be intrinsically or primarily or necessarily evil. The basic needs (for life, for safety and security, for belongingness and affection, for respect and self-respect, and for self-actualization), the basic human emotions and the basic human capacities are on their face either neutral, pre-moral or positively “good.” Destructiveness, sadism, cruelty, malice, etc., seem so far to be not intrinsic but rather they seem to be violent reactions against frustration of our intrinsic needs, emotions and capacities.... Since this inner nature is good or neutral rather than bad, it is best to bring it out and to encourage it rather than to sup press it. If it is permitted to guide our life, we grow healthy, fruitful, and happy....If this essential core of the person is denied or suppressed, he gets sick sometimes in obvious ways, sometimes in subtle ways, sometimes immediately, sometimes later....This inner nature is not strong and overpowering and un mistakable like the instincts of animals. It is weak and delicate and subtle and easily overcome by habit, cultural pressure, and wrong attitudes toward it."[19]
Artistic Renderings
John Lennon wrote Working Class Hero which is a discussion of Toxic Socialization in the context of social class exploitation.
The song wage slaves is about breaking the shackles that hold workers down in a system that depends on the diminishment of people through manipulation and constant demeaning, to service the greed of by people in powerful positions. (VJB).
The toxic quality of western cultures is recognized by others. A Samoan chief, for example, writes that in Samoan culture, "grey hair comes very slowly, not in youth, as it comes to the white man.[20]
You need sleep to regenerate. A system that encourages workaholism, 35+ hours, interferes with sleep https://www.wired.com/story/scientists-now-know-how-sleep-cleans-toxins-from-the-brain/?mbid=social_tw_sci&utm_brand=wired-science&utm_medium=social&utm_social-type=owned&utm_source=twitter
Jason Mraz sings about the impact of toxic socialization.
Madame Blavatsky of Theosophical fame recognizes that violence and harming against an individual has serious repercussions, not only for the individual but for all of society . "Therefore, we say, that unless every man is brought to understand and accept as an axiomatic truth that by wronging one man we wrong not only ourselves but the whole of humanity in the long run, no brotherly feelings such as preached by all the great Reformers, pre-eminently by Buddha and Jesus, are possible on earth."[21]
Interestingly, prior to WWII in Germany, a Dr. Daniel Gottlieb Moritz Schreber advocated a horrific form of socialization, a “systematic approach close to torture” (Degrieck, 2015). The goal was unconditional obedience through harsh discipline—complete submission of the child.
“You will be master of the child forever. From then on, a glance, a word, a single threatening gesture will be sufficient to control the child,” Dr. Schreber.
This toxic socialization advocated by Schreber, a socialization process that destroyed his own child, may have contributed to the emotional wreckage that facilitated the rise of Hitler.
Quotes
God created [humanity] incorruptible, and to the image of its own likeness made them. But by the envy of the devil, death came into the world. Wisdom, II. 23, 24--or as we might say on the LP, toxic socialization leads to the 3Ds of Toxic Existence
Resources
- 8 Toxic Things Parents Say To their Children
- Human Rights Watch, endemic child abuse in American society
Related LP Content and Courses
Citation and Legal
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Footnotes
- ↑ The deleterious effects of violence and neglect in childhood are well-established. For a summary, see Sosteric. “Toxic Socialization.” Socjourn, 2016. https://www.academia.edu/25275338/Toxic_Socialization.
- ↑ Weaponization added Jan 7, 2025
- ↑ For more detail, see Sosteric, Mike, and Gina Ratkovic. “Toxic Socialization,” 2016. https://www.academia.edu/25275338/Toxic_Socialization.
- ↑ CHECK THIS QUOTE Gibson, N.C., and R. Beneduce. Frantz Fanon, Psychiatry and Politics. London: Rowman & Littlefield, 2017. p. 7.
- ↑ Degrieck, Katya. “Dr. Daniel Gottlieb Moritz Schreber Archives.” Motherhood (blog). Accessed May 7, 2019. http://motherhoodinpointoffact.com/tag/dr-daniel-gottlieb-moritz-schreber/.
- ↑ Teicher, Martin. “Scars That Won’t Heal: The Neurobiology of Child Abuse.” Scientific American, 2002. https://cdpsdocs.state.co.us/ccjj/Committees/JuvenileTF/Handout/ScarsThatWontHeal-NeurobiologyOfChildAbuse.pdf.
- ↑ Keen, Sam. “Breaking the Tyranny of the Ego.” In Interviews with Oscar Ichazo. New York: Arica Institute Press, 1982. https://amzn.to/2MOwleU. p. 9
- ↑ Prescott, James W. “Body Pleasure and the Origins of Violence.” The Bulletin of The Atomic Scientists, 1975, 10–20. http://www.violence.de/prescott/bulletin/article.html
- ↑ Nikki Main, “Everybody in the US Is Getting Depressed, CDC Says,” Gizmodo, 1686865520, https://news.yahoo.com/everybody-us-getting-depressed-cdc-214520272.ht
- ↑ Ditzer, Julia, Eileen Y. Wong, Rhea N. Modi, Maciej Behnke, James J. Gross, and Anat Talmon. “Child Maltreatment and Alexithymia: A Meta-Analytic Review.” Psychological Bulletin 149, no. 5–6 (2023): 311–29. https://doi.org/10.1037/bul0000391
- ↑ Laszlo, Ervin, Stanislav Grof, and Peter Russell. The Consciousness Revolution. Las Vegas: Elf Rock Productions, 1999. https://amzn.to/2TlOCmC.
- ↑ Daniels, M. “The Development of the Concept of Self-Actualization in the Writings of Abraham Maslow.” Current Psychological Perspectives 2 (1982): 71.
- ↑ Maslow, Abraham. “Eupsychia—The Good Society.” Journal of Humanistic Psychology 1, no. 2 (1961): p. 7.
- ↑ Maslow, Abraham. “Eupsychia—The Good Society.” Journal of Humanistic Psychology 1, no. 2 (1961): p. 1-2.
- ↑ Maslow, Abraham. “Eupsychia—The Good Society.” Journal of Humanistic Psychology 1, no. 2 (1961): p. 274.
- ↑ Journal of Psychology 27 (January 1, 1949): 276.
- ↑ Maslow, A.H. “Our Maligned Animal Nature.” Journal of Psychology 27 (January 1, 1949): 273. p. 276
- ↑ Maslow.“The Expressive Component of Behavior.” Psychological Review 56, no. 5 (September 1949): 261–72. https://doi.org/10.1037/h0053630.
- ↑ Maslow, A.H. Towards a Psychology of Being (2nd Edition). New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold Company, 1968. p. 3
- ↑ Mead, Margaret. Coming of Age in Samoa (Perennial Classics) (p. 46). William Morrow. Kindle Edition. "
- ↑ Blavatsky, H. P. The Key to Theosophy: A Clear Exposition Based on the Wisdom Religion of All Ages. Theosophical University Press, 1889.