[lit-ideas] Re: 'toxic' hooey...

> [Original Message]
> From: Ursula Stange <Ursula@xxxxxxxxxx>
> To: <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> Date: 3/28/2006 11:32:20 PM
> Subject: [lit-ideas] 'toxic' hooey...
>
> On the topic of toxic shame, Irene wrote:
>
> >It's the parenting style credited with creating Nazis.
> >
> This is 'toxic' hooey.   I don't know why everybody lets people get away 
> with this kind of sloppy thinking.  Perhaps because its about the Nazis 
> that it doesn't matter.  But it does matter. 


I think you might want to take it up with Alice Miller.  Do you think I
make this stuff up?  As far as what's a Nazi, why don't we ask a Holocaust
survivor?  I personally have never seen a Nazi.



> 1. Nazis aren't all of a piece.  They got where they got in a hundred 
> different ways.
> 2. The 'parenting style' isn't all of a piece either. 


Sure it is.  It changes in the details, but overall, the parenting is the
same.  Spare the rod, spoil the child; I'll give you something to cry
about; absent/absusive fathers, and on and on.  



> 3. No one knows enough to put the two together and lay 'credit'.


I don't understand your sentence.


> 4. There are a thousand variables between the parenting style and the
Nazi.


No.  There are cultural constants among which there are variables.



> 5. What exactly does Nazi mean here?   Hitler?  Mengele?   Rudof Hess?  
> Anyone with a signed card?
>

How are you distinguishing these people?  



> We just say Nazi and everyone will understand everything?  (with 
> apologies to someone for the sentence -- I'll check tomorrow.)
>


Okay, instead of Nazi, let's say the Japanese in Nan King or the KKK
lynching someone, etc. etc.  Evil can be in smaller ways too.  

For John,  shame is a more primal emotion than guilt; it's formed earlier. 
Guilt says I did something bad.  Shame says I *am* bad.  Not even bad, but
no good. 







> Ursula
> in North Bay
>
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