2017-02-13 12:44
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Michael Hallett Blog
michaelhhallett.blogspot.co.uk
Seeing beyond this emotionally, environmentally and economically unsustainable world to the deeper patterns beneath.
2017-01-22 14:22
WARNING: Contains nudityPart I of this series noted how women’s fashion over the last few millennia has acted as a barometer of the extent to which sex-negative, anti-nudity patriarcha… Read More
2017-01-22 14:22
WARNING: Contains nudityThe phrase ‘women’s fashion’ conjures up images of women browsing in fashion shops and choosing exactly how they want to dress. While this is gradua… Read More
2017-01-02 11:44
Photo: Wolfsavard / Creative Commons“‘Tis the season to be jolly, fa-la-la-la-la, la-la la la...” Or not. For a lot of people, Christmas is not the time of greatest joy but… Read More
2016-12-09 12:43
While much has been written about Ascension, there has been little focus on the trajectory of an individual on the Ascension path other than in abstract terms. In reality, Ascension follows… Read More
2016-11-20 10:52
In this blog I have sometimes used real-life examples as case studies of unconscious shame, from public figures such as Amy Winehouse and Michael Jackson, to others such as Vincent Tabak and… Read More
2016-11-18 15:57
Photo: Porsche Brosseau / Creative CommonsThe first time I had a full-blown anxiety attack I was in seat 17A of a United Airlines Boeing 767 at 30,000 feet somewhere over Colorado. I had no… Read More
2016-11-13 17:08
Around 6,000 years ago, as documented by Steve Taylor (a psychology lecturer at Leeds Beckett University) in The Fall1, scattered societies with a relatively equal division of power between… Read More
2016-11-12 16:19
We all have personal crises. Those crises where our chest tightens, our brain fogs and our world seems like it’s swirling down the plughole. At the time, it feels like we are the only… Read More
2016-09-11 12:16
In other blogs I have written about how anxiety, doubt, panic, low self-esteem, low confidence, failure and futility are a family of related feelings, and how these feelings in turn give ris… Read More
2016-09-11 11:40
Radicalisation may seem a strange thing to lump in with shame-based issues, but every single extremist who ever lived has or had an unconscious but profound sense of shame. It is from this s… Read More
2016-09-09 16:29
First of all, let’s dispense with the argument about whether porn addiction actually exists. From a clinical perspective, porn addicts do not exhibit the same physiological symptoms as… Read More
2016-09-09 16:04
Many of the posts in this blog document the myriad ways that unconscious shame blights society. Yet another of these is what is termed ‘honour-based violence’. While the term is… Read More
2016-09-09 14:24
The Night Walker, a short film by Michael about sexualabuse. Warning: contains nudity and self-harm.If there is one area where humanity’s fundamental shame is glaringly obvious, it&rsq&hell…Read More
2016-09-09 13:17
“You’re staring straight ahead. Somehow your awareness peels away from you, in slow motion. It’s like you’ve cracked in two, and one half is facing the wrong way. Are… Read More
2016-09-07 09:17
In September 2014, 15-year-old Josie Herniman was found hanged in the woods near her home. She had friends and a loving family. A Facebook photo shows a smiling teenager snapping a selfie. T… Read More
2016-09-07 08:21
Those staring eyes... That bushy moustache... That accusatory finger... It’s one of the most iconic posters in history. With the caption Your Country Needs You, this poster encouraged… Read More
2016-09-04 15:54
“Let’s laugh in the face of modern disease”—Elizabeth Cook, Exodus of Venus“The word Disease is applicable to our social as wellas to our physical condition&rdq&hell…Read More
2016-09-04 12:48
Pre-historyOur prehistoric ancestors lived in a world without shame. They formed foraging societies and moved in tune with the seasons. They didn’t stockpile food, suggesting that they… Read More
2016-09-04 11:19
Michael Jackson was the King of Pop. At his peak – around 1982’s Thrilleralbum – he quite literally had the world at his feet. Jackson was mercurial, but there was always s… Read More
2016-09-02 14:21
Papua New Guinea fire dance mask, Museum of Ethnography, Sweden. Image: Grahn (CC-BY-SA-3.0)Videos from Papua New Guinea reportedly showing women accused of witchcraft being tortured have re… Read More
2016-09-01 19:54
Sigmund Freud. Photo: Max Halberstadt/LIFEIn 1929 Sigmund Freud, the ‘founding father’ of psychoanalysis, wrote a book that was originally titled The Uneasiness in Culture but em… Read More
2016-09-01 19:24
Brazil's crying shame. Image: BBCOver a decade ago I read a prediction that in the future the world’s people would divide in two. This process was referred to as “no more sitting… Read More
2016-09-01 19:22
The bodies have barely been removed. Abandoned luggage cases litter the floor. Blue and white striped tape alternately marked with 'Police' in English and Chinese hangs still in the heavy ai… Read More
2016-09-01 19:20
Swedish rape statistics. The buying of sex was criminalisedin 1998. Is it a contributing factor?Once upon a time there was a far-away land called Sweden, where circa 1998 there were 2,500 pr… Read More
2016-09-01 19:19
As you walk down a busy Soho street you feel their eyes furtively peeking between your legs. You imagine the waves of ridiculing laughter rippling in your wake. That's right; you don't have… Read More
2016-09-01 19:17
One of the most poignant memoirs of the World War II Holocaust, Anne Frank's Diary, has recently become the battleground in an entirely different kind of war. Gail Horalek, the mother o… Read More
2016-09-01 19:14
'Her eyes' by Ranoush on FlickrIn an incendiary article in Foreign Policy magazine titled Why Do They Hate Us? Mona Eltahawy lays bare the “pulsating heart of misogyny in the Middle Ea… Read More
2016-09-01 19:12
On Friday, 28 October 2011, 33-year-old Dutch engineer Vincent Tabak was convicted of murdering his neighbour, Joanna Yeates, in her Bristol apartment. The prosecution’s evidence showe… Read More
2016-09-01 19:12
On 5 September 2010, as the England football team prepared to face Switzerland in Basle for a vital 2012 European Championship qualifier, revelations emerged in the Sunday press regarding an… Read More
2016-09-01 19:11
As a child, Lynndie England was once hit so hard with a table-tennis bat by her mother that the bat snapped. “I was brought up right,” she told Emma Brockes in an interview for t… Read More
2016-09-01 19:10
During my adolescence, in what I only later realised was a subtly but significantly dysfunctional family, rock music was the main fault line between my father and I. I was a shy, sensitive… Read More
2016-04-08 08:03
This blog is currently undergoing maintenance Read More
2016-03-13 16:31
© Al Jazeera English (CC-BY-SA 2.0)Some years ago, when the Arab Spring was in its infancy, I wrote a blog entitled The Muslim Wars are upon us about this latest outbreak of Middle East… Read More
2016-03-13 16:27
© LucasFilm Ltd.Ca-ching! Multiplex cash registers around the world are still sizzling hot from the record-breaking box office performance of The Force Awakens, episode seven of the lon… Read More
2016-03-13 16:19
Image: © Mica FilmsFigures obtained by the Guardiannewspaper under the Freedom of Information act reveal a 33% rise in the number of police incidents involving people with mental health… Read More
2016-03-13 16:14
Image: © Mica FilmsA spectre hangs over the British care industry. Not the many-tentacled, world-dominating psychopath of the latest James Bond outing, but a much more fiendish adversar… Read More
2016-03-13 16:13
Arnold LayneHad a strange hobbyCollecting clothesMoonshineWashing lineThey suit him fineIn 1967 The Pink Floyd made the news with their first single, ‘Arnold Layne’, a jaunty lit… Read More
2016-03-13 16:08
The insult most often bandied at Jeremy Corbyn since his ascent to the Labour party leadership is ‘unelectable’. What is noticeable—most clearly in social media—is th… Read More
2016-03-13 16:01
No less than three new credit rating apps are set to change the face of the Chinese moneylending marketplace. The only one currently in operation is Sesame Credit, from online payment provid… Read More
2016-03-13 15:52
'A village choir' by Thomas Webster (1847)Many years ago, I used to sell parts at a motorcycle dealer in New Zealand. Aside from the Japanese brands that were the mainstay of the business, w… Read More
2016-03-13 15:51
Sigmund Freud. Photo: Max Halberstadt/LIFEIn 1929 Sigmund Freud, the ‘founding father’ of psychoanalysis, wrote a book that was originally titled The Uneasiness in Culture but em… Read More
2016-03-02 16:01
Papua New Guinea fire dance mask, Museum of Ethnography, Sweden. Image: Grahn (CC-BY-SA-3.0)Videos from Papua New Guinea reportedly showing women accused of witchcraft being tortured have re… Read More
2016-03-02 15:53
Photo: Michael H HallettIn the wake of the Volkswagen emissions scandal, where 11 million diesel cars were found to produce significantly more pollution under actual road usage than in test… Read More
2016-03-02 15:45
Image: Wikimedia CommonsAh-choo! In Europe at least, the unmistakeable sound of a human sneeze is almost immediately—and almost always—followed by utterings of “bless you&r&hell…Read More
2016-03-02 14:45
Photo: Michael H HallettIn the second half of the 19th century Paris saw the confluence of two major streams of change. The first was to the French capital itself, with the cramped old arron… Read More
2016-03-02 14:39
Photo: Michael H HallettYou wouldn’t read about it in the The Erotic Sherlock Holmes, that obscure Victorian casebook which men smirked over during billiards and women with pince-nez g… Read More
2016-03-02 14:33
Image: FacebookFollowing the Charleston shooting and the ensuing calls for gun control, a wry reminder in the form of a letter to an editor circulated on social media that it’s the fin… Read More
2016-03-02 14:19
Radicalisation. This single, scary word has rapidly shot to prominence in British current affairs. Everyday the news carries stories of people who want to go to Syria, who have gone to Syria… Read More
2016-03-02 14:12
Image: Prime Minister of Greece (via Flickr)Confusion abounds among both financial circles and the general public as to why the Greek government of Alexis Tsipras has not accepted the condit… Read More
2016-03-02 14:07
WikiLeaks. Chelsea Manning. Edward Snowden. Extraordinary people who found themselves in extraordinary circumstances and acted in extraordinary ways. Their lives seem remote from ours, their… Read More
2016-03-02 14:02
Photo: JFGananca via Flickr“Prostitution is the oldest profession.” Despite its obvious fallacy—football clearly came first—the aphorism retains currency. Another com… Read More
2016-03-02 13:57
Image: YouTube“You’re looking at a woman who was publicly silent for a decade.” So begins a brave and inspiring TED talk from Monica Lewinsky. For those of you who wer… Read More
2016-03-02 13:54
Image: TwitterBritain holds its collective breath as it awaits the outcome of the BBC inquiry into the fracas between its highest-paid star, Jeremy Clarkson, and producer Oisin Tymon in a Ne… Read More
2016-03-02 13:48
Image: Drunkenstepfatherdotcom“Makes Saturday is better with some ♯underboob”, runs a Facebook post from drunkenstepfatherdotcom (no, I’m not going to hyperlink it)… Read More
2016-02-26 10:09
Photo: Laura Bland 1988 CC-BY-SAAs the 1960s gave way to the 1970s, hopes of a freer and more egalitarian society arising from the flower power revolution and the Summer of Love gave way to… Read More
2016-02-26 09:21
Image: Metropolitan PoliceOn Tuesday 17 February 2015, three teenage girls from Bethnal Green in London boarded a Turkish Airlines flight for Istanbul. The Turkish city, however, was merely… Read More
2016-02-26 09:12
Photo: akidsphoto.comLast Friday, the eve of Valentine’s Day, red roses spontaneously appeared in the windows of many of the shops lining the Chiswick High Street. The roses marked the… Read More
2016-01-28 11:59
Image: © Mica FilmsFigures obtained by the Guardiannewspaper under the Freedom of Information act reveal a 33% rise in the number of police incidents involving people with mental health… Read More
2016-01-17 09:07
Arnold LayneHad a strange hobbyCollecting clothesMoonshineWashing lineThey suit him fineIn 1967 The Pink Floyd made the news with their first single, ‘Arnold Layne’, a jaunty lit… Read More
2016-01-14 20:30
'A village choir' by Thomas Webster (1847)Many years ago, I used to sell parts at a motorcycle dealer in New Zealand. Aside from the Japanese brands that were the mainstay of the business, w… Read More
2016-01-14 17:44
'Lupa Capitolina' from History of Rome by Henry Liddell(1860). Illustration by Sir John Gardner Wilkinson.Valentine’s Day is upon us and once again the price of a blood-red r… Read More
2016-01-14 17:39
Lakshmana temple, Khajuraho, India.Photo: Sankara SubramanianAgence France-Presse—who can be trusted on such matters—advise that two American sisters were arrested at the Angkor… Read More
2016-01-14 17:34
Photo: Lisa MathonIn a ground-breaking move, a municipal council in Beit Shemesh in Israel has been forced to pay compensation to four women after refusing to remove some “hurtful, deg… Read More
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