COMFORTABLY NUMB

Ben Franklin who was a economical vegetarian at one point in his career, started eating fish when he noticed that fish ate other fish.

I started eating rat for the same reason.

No matter how far I progress away from childhood conditioning, certain traits were instilled in me that won't go away, apparently. For instance, I mentioned how my stepdad worked on my head daily in an attempt to turn me stupid, thwarting every constructive move I made. I became one step away from autistic in many ways - unable to sustain a simple conversation with another person, mind going blank when called upon to speak out before anyone.
Even today, I have to know most people pretty well before behaving without restraint, carrying on a reasonable conversation. If an authority figure surprises me with a question, my mind sometimes goes blank, the way it did in the presense of my stepdad. But, I've learned ways to take the awkwardness out of these situations with little joking comments.
It reminds me of the way a duck will continue to walk around the spot where a rock once blocked the trail. Fortunately I am persistant, as well as patient.

Hmmm.... Edgar, we had family healing type discussions last weekend. My mother said she felt her parents were good parents and that she was not suffering from low self-esteem. She then said that her father was self-absorbed, selfish, and mean. My perspective was that if he was self-absorbed and selfish..... if he put himself before his children, that that would produce children with low self-esteem. I am not sure why I bring that up. I know that my mother isn't the best esteem builder in the world. I also have the mind-blanking experience and am loath to express my deepest opinions with anyone I don't know real well. My childhood wasn't even close to as demeaning as yours.

Edgar and littlek, I think sometimes it is the quirky and unpredictable combination of events that determines how much scarring will ocur in childhood. A bad school experience, a demeaning statement made in front of people the child truly cares for, someone snickering at the most fragile point in a child's day can have lasting effects. Just think of the people who will never eat spinach or other vegetables because they were forced to eat them at dinner when they were children. If an experience as relatively innocent as that can have a lifetime effect, just think what real abuse can do?

Many things we don't remember can play into our personalities. Just as littlek isn't sure why she reacts sometimes with a mind-blanking affect, there must be something that caused her to be that way.

BTW, I too am like that. Will sometimes just shut down as if I've run out of whatever it takes to think or to respond. It just doesn't bother me the way it used to. Now I will simply sit back and enjoy the voices of my friends as they all combine and circle around the room. There is something very comforting in just being quiet and listening to the voices of friends.

Some of that, I now think, has to do with non-linear thinking. Some of us who think in wildly tangled networks instead of linearly can just blank until we hear a word that triggers that line that we were off on.... we don't always have our revving ideas in marching form.

But I agree, it can come from being shaped as a child who responded too slowly...

Very interesting and occasionally moving thread. It has been my experience in life that everyone has his story. Some are objectively worse than others, but all seem to fill the cups of those who live them. As has been well illustrated in previous pages, it is the choices we make and the internal synthesis we form out of the experiences that scar us and our reactions to them that form our characters and, hopefully, finally give us peace.

I have lived a blessed life in many respects. Comfortable childhood, though beset with odd insecurities and anxiety - a very intelligent, well-educated and good-looking father to whom success and admiration came too quickly and easily, leaving him remote and alone when setbacks finally came: a loving, salt-of-the-earth mother who held things together in bad times. The first of six siblings, I was rebellious and selfish. I entered the Naval Academy, mostly to spite my father's plans (he died soon afterwards) and spent the next decade or so coming to terms with authority figures in many forms. Finally I realized how easy it was to become one and dropped the effort as a waste of energy.

No hunger except for four-day survival and escape & evasion courses in the Navy (Brunswick Maine in February and Warner Springs AZ in July. Never broke, but a few years scraping by as a junior officer with a growing family. Never lonely, but possessed of a sense of detachment that I often found either exhilarating or very depressing. A few fears and terrors to overcome along the way - first night carrier landing; first combat deployment; first sea command, alone in an angry ocean. Throughout I always felt that I lived under a special star - consistently lucky in a way I didn't truly deserve. My two closest buddies in my first squadron died within a few days of each other; the first in an aircraft accident that I watched, and the second in my arms, in a gym where we were working out, of an undetected aneurysm. Later I lost many more friends in various squadrons from both peacetime accidents and combat in Southeast Asia. I survived two ejections without injury. After the Navy a career in business that again confirmed my theory about luck.

Still we all get to 'see the bear' in our own ways. It changes us.

I have learned to look hard for something to like and admire in those I meet - a habit that has given me much satisfaction and pleasure. Perhaps this is just a compensation for a professional experience that has frankly hardened me to the necessity of harsh decisions involving others.

I read Setanta's posts with great interest and admiration. I admire both his erudition and his ability to come to terms with the events he described. I don't like his quick temper, but believe we are more or less equally overbearing when the spirit is on us.

Set. If you haven't yet read it, you might well enjoy the autobiography of the early 20th century Russian writer, Maxim Gorki. The first volume in particular, "My Childhood" expresses several struggles you might find familiar, and does so with a characteristically lyric sensitivity.

Hmmmm......

I have a partner who is an ex Navy pilot. His demeanor is of one who will never be deeply attached to anyone, even his wife. He says that its a throwback to his carrier days when life was often terminated by a "bad landing or a cold catapult".
He has, in recent years been opening up more and weve shared our separate paths and consequently discovered that we are close friends even though he is openly gregarious and social events , for me, are like root canals.

A few weeks before we left for our summer place, he shared a moment , that now, because hes been allowing himself a modicum of vulnerability, he gets scared that Ill leave him and hell be alone . Ive talked with him and tried to share my personal philosophy that we have to learn to appreciate our own company I sense that his life has been impressed mostly by the experience of losing squadron members and he then, internalized all close feelings because he is certain that theyll be taken from him.

Ive always been of the opinion that everything we love or fear,"we learned in kintergarden". Apparently not. Trauma, no matter when it occurs , leaves an indelible mark that transcends reason.

That is very true, farmerman. And very insightful of you, with regards to your friend.

Very insightful Farmerman. I have long been subject to a strange sense of detachment that has both good and bad manifestations, but which internally is mostly bad. Some of it predates my Navy days and I don't know if this is a thing involving predisposition and self-selection or is developed through exposure to these losses - or both.

One of the unique and strong elements of the bonds among squadron mates was that everyone had seen everyone else "out of airspeed, altitude, and ideas - and scared shitless" as the saying went. A certain gallows humor infected conversation. "better to die than to look bad" was a common phrase. "Can I have your stereo?" was the common whispered phrase of the guy in the last row in the ready room as you suited up to man your aircraft on a bad night. One is also left with the question of why his luck was better than that of others who didn't make it.

I believe we are all scarred and shaped by life, and these things are but one of a wide variety of such things, many far more difficult. Some are apparently destroyed by it: others survive and, depending on how they internalize it, stronger as a result. However everything, and every adaptation, has its price.

Friederich II of Prussia, known as the Great, had a father who was, for practical purposes, insane. Friederich Wilhelm lived a life of parsimony which made him the object of ridicule by other European monarchs. He was pathological in his obsessions, and unbelievably cruel. He lived and dressed austerely, and carried a cane, with which he frequently beat public officials until he could raise the cane no longer if he were dissatisfied with their performance. He reformed Prussia, long referred to as an army with its own state, to be the most efficient state in Europe, but he did so by literally terrorizing his officials and his own family.

When "Fritz" was six years old, he was thrown from a horse--his father beat him for it, publicly. His father discovered him wearing a pair of gloves in cold weather, and he was publicly beaten for it. He took an extra helping of potatoes at dinner one day, and his father began beating him until the servants left in terror, his brothers and sisters fled screaming and weeping from the room and his mother finally ended the beating by laying her own body over the boy's bleeding back.

"Fritz" responded by retreating further and further into himself. He despised all things German, would not write in the language unless duty bad him to communicate with someone who spoke no French, and then his German was badly written, spelled and ungrammatical. He wrote all of his many books in French, and corresponded with Voltaire on prose and poetry. He became quite musical, and in later life performed in chamber orchestras and composed his own works. Until he was 18, he went as far as the severe laws of his father would allow to avoid participation in the military rituals of which his father was so fond. When he publicly ridiculed his father's obsession with his "Potsdam Giants," a regiment of freakishly tall soldiers, he was again given the cane, in public. He finally "snapped," and attempted to flee Prussia with his close friend, Hans von Katte. Aprehended, they were returned and imprisoned at Küstrin. Friederich could have been legally executed for his "desertion," as he and von Katte were serving Prussian officers. Von Katte was condemned, and publicly beheaded. In Friederich's own phrase, he was frogmarched to a window and made to watch the execution, one soldier holding his head so he could not turn it away.

He became a changed man. He did all that he could to please his father. He made his own regiment the best drilled regiment in the army. Finally released from imprisonment, he remained at Küstrin to fulfill his duties to his regiment. He continued to love the French language, poetry and prose, and to play and compose music, but he strove his uttermost to be the man his father wanted. He never publicly commented on his father or his behavior. Although he married, he and his wife were quickly estranged, and after less than two years, he moved out and they never lived together again. He built a magnificent palace at Potsdam, Sans Souci ("Without a Care") and wrote passable French prose, and beautiful, if often somewhat pedestrian, music.

And he became the warrior King his father never was. He endured all hardships of the campaign that his troops endured--they grew to love him, and called him der Alter Fritz, addressing him as such to his face. He offered the Pour le mérite and a promotion to one captain who had served the throne, father and son, for 32 years, and the captain sent the decoration back, saying he could not afford to support his family and pay for the traditional dinner he would have to give his fellow officers; Friederich sent it back, with one hundred gold coins and a note apologizing for having forgotten the "debt" and not repaid it sooner. Although perhaps apochryphal, the story is repeated that he rode up to one laggard regiment in the heat of battle and the storm of musket balls and began belaboring the grenadiers on the back with the flat of his sword, demanding to know if they wanted to live forever.

He only lost his confidence once. In the aftermath of the disasterous battle with the Russians at Kunersdorf, with the screams of his wounded being mutilated and murdered in the dark by the Cossacks echoing in his mind, he wrote to his brother to say that he must give up the command of the armies. Prince Henry, who carped and complained, and so often resentfully said aloud in public that he should be the supreme commander, rose to the occassion (he had, after all, the same cruel, mad father) and told Friederich that the army and the nation would be lost without him. Friederich once more screwed his courage to the sticking point, and persevered, and in what was as close to a miracle for which history offers an example, survived the Seven Years War with his throne and nation intact.

Families are strange, often cruel, sometimes haunted bands of people--many of the members of which live lives of "quiet desparation." The high-born are no more immune from this than the low-born. The wonderful, tragic and inspiring stories you all have offered here demonstrate the variety of the human condition, and the strength of human character. I thank you all.

Setanta,

I have read of Frederich's life and youth, including the execution of his friend (and perhaps lover) at his father's hand, but never before in such eloquent and compact form. (I've seen eloquence from you before, but not such compact brevity). In his adult life Frederich seemed to me to be ... empty: full of plans for the improvement of the army and the conquest of Habsburg territories, but apart from survival, no goal beyond it.

Thanks for a very interesting thread.

Cheers . . .

I've read this thread with great interest. It's true that, as they say, every life is a work of literature. After reading this thread, however, mine seems a bit like a manual. I've been very lucky not to have had an abuser, like Edgar's step-father. My alcoholic mother loved me and my brothers and tried very hard to be a good mother until she gave up with suicide. My wife died after a five year battle with brain cancer. My father was an absent father, but no-one abused me; no-one attacked my character or discouraged my development. I feel very fortunate, and I admire the way Set, Edgar, Farmer, Shewolf, Osso and others have survived--and thrived. And, of course, I have a special admiration for the way some of you have overcome your alcoholism. That IS a major challenge. You have my love and respect (sorry Farmer).

Great admiration and solidarity with those who have lost a husband or a wife to a long term illness.

Wishes for happiness and serenity to you.

We tease Farmer but don't want to club him with our regard - it's here nonetheless.

Set, I was moved by the history on Fritz, so called, but a little confused at the beginning paragraph on who was who and was father to whom. To start with, I have already mixed Frederich II up with the fellow who went to southern italy around 1100, 'tis all a bit of a jumble, and am not clear on this family tree. I am not entirely ignrnt but read in a different way and tend to associate names with scenes more than in any structured way, partly because of the way my mind works but also because I have only read history from interest in passing --- mostly in passing from my italy fascination, which triggered my interest in much else..

Would you mind explicating which Fred is who slightly more clearly?

Not a whole big thing, but just words like father of, son of..

I think the loss of a spouse is a loss of yourself.
A loss some can not handle , and do not survive themselves.and others may never know.

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The House of Hohenzollern was originally a modest baronial family in southwest Germany, near Stuttgart (the image above is of the Zollern castle). They accumulated wealth and land, and eventually ruled, under the auspices of the Holy Roman Emperor, Nurnberg and portions of Swabia and Franconia. They also acquired land in Brandenberg, which was then on the frontier with the Polish-Lithuanian kingdom. In 1415, the Holy Roman Emperor had a nasty war on his hands, the details of which i will not go into--think religious fanatics on both sides, and power vacuums all over the place. Friederich I became the Elector of Brandenburg, meaning he was made one of the German Princes who elected the Holy Roman Emperor. Although that number has varied, there were usually seven or eight such Electors, and their power was, for obvious reasons, much greater than other German nobility. The Hohenzollern's proved to be very canny at that sort of thing. They established their capital in Brandenburg at Potsdam, but the commercial center grew up in a town just down the road, Berlin.

This Friederich was succeeded by nine Electors until we get to Georg Wilhelm, who lived in the era of the Thirty Years war, and who tried to suck up to the Catholic Emperor while making nice with the new Protestant hero, King Gustav Adolf of Sweden. It didn't work out too well for him, he became alarmed and attempted to prevent the Swedes from passing through Brandenberg. Gustavus Adolphus rolled up to Berlin, unlimbered his artillery, and gave the Elector one day to open the gates or he would blow them down. Georg caved in.

His son, Friederich Wilhelm, was mortified by his father's behavior, the humiliation of the family and their totally supine position in the face of Swedish military power. He became known as the Great Elector. He raised an army, he made impoverished Prussia and tight-fisted Brandenberg pay for it by instituting an efficient ministry (beginning with the Elector Albert Achilles, the Hohenzollerns had made themselves the Dukes of Prussia by right of conquest, which means they didn't owe that dignity to the Emperor). Friederich Wilhelm was an enlightened, thoughtful, energetic and willful man, who raised his son to be a King, and then made him a King in the traditional Hohenzollern manner--he dickered with the Holy Roman Emperor. He secured from the Emperor the recognition of the Hohenzollern ducal rights in Prussia as separate from the constitution of the Holy Roman Empire, and he consented to the theft of Silesia by the Austrians (who took it by main force in the Thirty Years War when they feared a Swedish march on Vienna) in return for a formal recognition of the Hohenzollerns as a royal family with the dignity of Archdukes (which is what the Habsburg Emperors were, the Archdukes of Austria). His son, the Elector Friederich III, called in that marker at the time of the War of the Spanish Succession in 1701, and the Emperor made him the King of Prussia. This was very canny, because having made him a King of a land which was not in his gift (i.e., the Hohenzollerns owned Prussia on their own hook), he could not "unmake" him.

This man therefore became Friederich I, King of Prussia, Electoral Prince of Brandenberg, Margrave (a sort of Prince) of Brandenberg-Ansbach, and Margrave of Brandenberg-Bayreuth. His son was Friederich Wilhelm I (same name as the Great Elector, but the first Hohenzollern of that name to be King of Prussia). This was the crazy man i described above. He had all of the drive, intelligence and willful personality of his grandfather, the Great Elector, and he also seems to have had porphyria. He lived his life in great pain, and did not suffer fools at all--he beat them within an inch of their respective lives with his cane.

That is the man above whom i described, who was the father of the second Prussian King named Friederich, known as Frederick the Great, and called Fritz within the family.

Friederich Wilhelm, crazy old man . . .

Friederich II, brilliant tormented son--Fritz . . .