Posted by Leo
on 1/19/2009, 10:27 am, in reply to "Re: Orthodox "Shame" in Muslim World?"
Hey Dean, Thanks! Happy New Year!
I just remembered a recent book review in the Irish Voice (a NYC weekly newspaper). They say many Irish families have a history of schizophrenia ("off with the fairies" it's often called) for multiple reasons: genetic damage because, under British inheritance rules in the 1800s, many eldest sons ended up not marrying until their 40s or 50s; Famine-era poverty and malnutrition; but also British oppression there, vicious and millennial (since AD 1168). Similarly, kids growing up during "The Troubles" in Northern Ireland show signs of trauma from living so much of their lives in basically a war zone, between oppressive (and jittery, overreactive) British cops and soldiers, Protestant terrorists, and Catholic "armed struggle".
We tend to take history's wars and oppressions for granted, but think about the damage it must have done to us all. Perhaps something for ministry, seminaries, mental health, to look into -- mass historical/hereditary trauma in ethnic/religious groups.
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