I recently watched a YouTube video by After Skool - it’s here - called, “Words that Hide the Truth, and it’s taken from a George Carlin standup routine from 1990. In case you choose not to watch it, here’s the gist - language is changed over time to cover up the reality, and to make us more accepting of what it is. He gives the example of the phrase, “shell shock”, changing eventually to “PTSD”, and some funnier quips like the ‘dump becoming the ‘landfill’, or car crashes becoming ‘automobile accidents.”
It got me thinking about the term, “generational trauma” which is something that is rife on social media. Generational trauma is defined by one website, Talkspace, as,
"the transference of traumatic experiences or stressors from one generation to the next. One of many types of trauma, it can happen through direct experience, witnessing violence, or living in an environment where violence is a constant threat.”
When we look back at the last century, it’s hard to find a time when traumatic experiences haven’t been happening. The USA, often backed by it’s allies, has created the military industrial complex, which has led to constant wars that are beamed into living rooms at dinner time when families are sitting around the table enjoying their evening meal. And now with social media, it’s hard to get away from the constant stream of toxic messaging.
We’ve had many threats of nuclear wars, famine in Africa, a huge financial bust in 2008, and numerous health scares, culminating in the most recent pandemic which is going to leave another generation of kids scarred as a result of ramped up fear-driven messaging and unnecessary lock downs. Not to mention the economic fallout - the so-called ‘cost of living crisis’, a crisis created by a financial system that is designed to keep the super-rich rich, and the poor struggling in a constant state of fear and worry. It’s tentacles are even beginning to touch the middle-class now. Add to this, the unhelpful, and never-ending messaging around a ‘climate emergency’ and it’s no wonder there is a perpetual cycle of ‘generational trauma’.
What I don’t like about the term, and why I would add it to George Carlin’s ‘soft language’ list, is that it shifts responsibility away from those who are creating all of these problems. It’s almost as if ‘blame’ for the trauma is being placed back onto each generation, and it is something that is unavoidable, that they just need to deal with. It places responsibility for resolving it onto the very people who have been affected by it to deal with, and get over.
This attitude is not helpful for anyone, as we never really shine a light onto the underbelly of the root causes, instead, glossing over it all as just something that happened - the war, the holocaust, systemic racism, the global financial monetary system of fraud, government corruption and so on.
If there was a term for ‘generational trauma’ before the soft language police got it’s claws into it, I’d suggest, ‘deliberate evil’. Perhaps they need to raise their EQ levels…
To peace and prosperity,
jaxx
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