Idle No More

Idle No More Mission

Idle No More calls on all people to join in a revolution which honors and fulfills Indigenous sovereignty which protects the land and water. Colonization continues through attacks to Indigenous rights and damage to the land and water. We must repair these violations, live the spirit and intent of the treaty relationship, work towards justice in action, and protect Mother Earth. On December 10th,  Indigenous people and allies stood in solidarity across Canada to assert Indigenous  sovereignty and begin the work towards sustainable, renewable development. All  people will be affected by the continued damage to the land and water and we welcome Indigenous and non-Indigenous allies to join in creating healthy sustainable communities. We encourage youth to become engaged in this movement as you are the leaders of our future. There have always been individuals and groups who have been working towards these goals – Idle No More seeks to create solidarity and further support these goals. We recognize that there may be backlash, and encourage people to stay strong and united in spirit.

Throughout centuries of invasion, war, racial supremacy and exploitation, we have come to a cliff where we must ask ourselves what we want for the future.  A livable society where we learn how to live creatively and inclusively, or a society of fear, dread and a slow lingering death.  

Idle No More, calls for a return to conscience, to nature and justice.  Chief Theresa Spence is putting her life on the line, so that we might wake up, pay attention to the true cost of rapacious capitalism and blind consumerism. The First Nations are teaching us to care about our home, this planet and its peoples.

The Gun - a failed symbol of power

The power of America since the second world war is indisputable. Achieved through weapons, propaganda, and money, this power is as oppressive to the people who wield it as it is towards the designated enemy.

When a young gunman enters Sandy Hook Elementary School and kills twenty children, the world grieves.  We struggle to find answers to questions, too big to grasp.

But the issue is larger than guns themselves. It is what they represent in our psychology. The phallic symbol representing male fertility has been worshiped in various ways for centuries.  Since we have learned that fertility requires more than one member, we are required to understand the complexity of nature.  So effective, healthy masculinity is no longer served by the worship of a phallus any more than femininity is represented by a uterus.  Yet phallic symbols exist everywhere in images of power.

Once power was idealized as a heavenly distant god, a monarch, a ruler or military might, it separated its true nature from the power of life.  Nature, life, became the object to conquer, to dominate, to exploit. Our sexuality became a political tool, and the feminine symbol of cycles, circles, and vessels were dropped, while the phallus was made immortal by metal. Complexity, emotion and human nature was seen as weak. A man was required not just to be courageous in defending his tribe but by immortalizing himself as part of an army, a soldier.  He had to become super-human as being human was not good enough. Later he became a sword, a gun, a bomb, an aircraft. Or a minister to the divine weapon interpreting the universe through a harsh patriarchal ruler, and was required to wipe out the realities of existence, the doubts, the humanity, through staunch doctrines that require unquestioning obedience.

I am not saying this is God.  I am not attempting to explain God, but to separate divine power from the doctrines that have ruled our societies for centuries:  the corruption of the universe to serve an ideology. So the gun as the ultimate phallic symbol destroys life at its spiritual base first and then destroys fertility, whether it be new life or creativity.

The world's great religions began with men who changed their world through insight and courage and who  triumphed over mortality through resurrection into the afterlife. They mostly preached a reverence for life, not that man should transcend it. Their messages have been corrupted too, in order to fit the ruling ideology.

Men who are born here are not gods, just as women are not goddesses. We are human and mortal. We can be harmed by war, famine, climate change, abuse, torture and broken hearts. Wealth or fame does not nullify our existence. Neither does it exalt it.

We have, for the most part, gotten over the phallic symbol.  Guns do not fertilize. They intimidate. They turn men into robots. They kill.  But mostly they kill creativity, sensitivity, empathy, reason, exploration, love, joy.  They render us powerless to be who we are or could be.  They render life redundant.

But life contains confusion, pain, sorrow.  We are vulnerable to the emotional weather this brings and if we don't receive the care we need when despair falls heavy around us, we can't process it.  Certainly not in a culture that values things more than life, that preaches we are worth the sum of our gadgets and diplomas, and are required to prove ourselves not just with an inventory of these things, but with more than everyone else.  This breeds despair and contempt for our own lives and the lives of children and all those who have less power than we at any given moment. Reason tells us that we can't all be winners. And so we can't be comforted by our mothers, fathers, siblings and teachers.

It's this despair that rots our culture and makes some of our brothers so alienated they seek validation in guns. In this delusional state we shall hasten our own demise, and ultimately the womb we call the universe shall carry on without us.

A Message from Pablo Casals

“Each second we live is a new and unique moment of the universe, a moment that will never be again And what do we teach our children? We teach them that two and two make four, and that Paris is the capital of France. When will we also teach them what they are? We should say to each of them: Do you know what you are? You are a marvel. You are unique. In all the years that have passed, there has never been another child like you. Your legs, your arms, your clever fingers, the way you move. You may become a Shakespeare, a Michaelangelo, a Beethoven. You have the capacity for anything. Yes, you are a marvel. And when you grow up, can you then harm another who is, like you, a marvel? You must work, we must all work, to make the world worthy of its children.” - Pablo Casals

For Word Warriors

Write don't shoot.

Write your concerns about the future of Canada, to news outlet editors.

Murray Dobbin has published a list of emails to editors across the nation.

Other than filling up the inbox's of busy editors it will not damage the environment.  It will not cost anything other than some of your time.

The Power of Public Opinion

David Suzuki informs us that almost "all species that have existed  are estimated to have gone extinct within an average of a few million years." We are an infant species, "a mere 150,000 years old" who have adapted and survived deserts, tundra, rainforests, wetlands and high mountain ranges. Furthermore, "we’ve accelerated the rate of cultural evolution far beyond the speed of biological or genetic change."

Can we survive a million years? Will we be around in a few million or the next hundred years?

George Monbiot warns that "Humankind’s greatest crisis coincides with the rise of an ideology that makes it impossible to address."  By the late 1980's, it became clear that our world "was in the grip of an extreme political doctrine" as it also became clear that climate change was man made.  This political doctrine makes conversations about planetary health obsolete. It claims only profit and greed counts in ways that would be morally wrong even to elementary school children.

The news is not so much the news but an inventory of violence, and you would think that Socrates, Jung or Arendt had never existed. An alien visitor would think that there is no such thing as intelligence, reflection or wisdom. They might suspect that mothers never loved their children and had tossed them out of their cribs to the machines of war before they could speak.

What so many crises suggest, is that we are ruled by a nameless monster whose tentacles have spread throughout earth's surface and our neural substrate.

Some call this monster plutocracy, or capitalism,  or hegemony, or institutionalized religion. I would name it media.

Media according to the dictionary is "the means of communication, as radio and television, newspapers, and magazines, that reach or influence people widely."  It is filled with intelligent design and people who are well meaning. But it is powered one way - from a wealthy elite down to the living rooms of the common people. It behaves as though we are all involved in what spins out, and represents our best interests, but it cleverly omits most, if not all, of the diversity among its citizens.

There still exists outlets that inform, such as CBC radio, Knowledge, TVO and PBS. There are online outlets that give contextualized reports such as StraightGoods, TruthDig, Rabble, and others. But all of these are funded by the people who care about civil society. Their budgets are minute in comparison with the mainstream media who have learned how to create entertainment instead of truth, for profit rather than humanity.

Gandhi believed in a truth force just as many activists do, who have dedicated their lives to creating change. That these activities don't get broadcast frequently is really a testimony to their authenticity.  After all you don't see million dollar advertising campaigns for needs, only to create new "needs".

So signs of public opinion can be found, but in smaller print, in smaller presses and in community halls. Sometimes they reach places of influence.

Joe Oliver, at the Canada Energy Summit hosted by the Economic Club of Canada, said  “If we don’t get people on side, we don’t get the social licence — politics often follows opinion — and so we could well get a positive regulatory conclusion from the joint panel that is looking at the Northern Gateway, but if the population is not on side, there is a big problem”.

Susan McCaslin, an award winning poet, organized a protest by hanging poems on trees in McLellan Forest east of Fort Langley, to protect the land from being sold to developers. She got over 200 poems and coverage in a national newspaper.

There are many other stories like this. Many activists working for the greater good who use their powers of logic, foresight, compassion and communication.  They stand on the side of a future for our grand-children that includes rich and poor, not just an elite.

Whether we survive for the next hundred or million years depends on this kind of commitment.

A Willing Silliness in Winter

Soon it will be the first day of December, and I will be asking myself about the value of gift giving, decorating trees with little ornaments, drinking and eating too much, and going to parties.

Is there a therapeutic silliness? In the midst of snow, cold, bare trees and root vegetables growing whiskers in the cellar, how does it make us happy to put on feasts, use up our food stocks and bank accounts, for a few weeks of extravagance?

Perhaps the answer can be found among those who are too poor to have Christmas. Ask those living in poverty about Santa Claus, Jingle Bells, high hopes and high expectations? What does it mean to know you can't light up a tree like everyone else, even though you know these things are not as critical as nutritious food and good health.

The argument that Christmas is about the birth of Jesus is true for those who celebrate the birth of Jesus, and the carols and hymns around that are as beautiful as the staged nativity plays in school. However, for the majority Christmas is about something else, and the origins of these mid-winter celebrations began in Pagan Europe.

For Christians who celebrate I wish you joy, anticipation and gratitude for the Christ's birth. For others I wish you warmth, company, family, lights and celebrations. For small businesses I wish you some extra profits to store for the coming year. For children I wish you that wonderful feeling of magic that comes with imagining Santa Claus flying over the globe, bringing gifts.

Whatever it is I hope we are able to focus on the lights, on the tree, on candles, in a wood fire, in familiar songs and stories, and mostly the sense that yes we can create this warmth and light in the middle of winter. Mostly it is about a ritual that tells us we have a tribe, and we belong.

If Hate Should Win Over Love in America

The narrative coming out of media has inflamed rage, alienation and despair among the American people, and so the land is ripe for draconian measures. This will ensure absolute power for the tribe who have funded xenophobic movements, government lobbies and media, in countries all over the world.  If the haters win it means a large enough portion of American society is ready for bloodletting and the scapegoats have already been identified.  If the haters win based on their promises it means America has given up on social justice - which is not socialism but shared responsibility through civil society.

1. Planned parenthood and women's rights will be shut down along with women's voices, as promised by candidates. 
2. Same sex marriage will be banned and the LGBT community will be forced underground or targeted with violence. 
3. Abortion will be made illegal even in cases where a woman's life is at risk.
4. Medicare and social assistance will be stopped.
5. Environmental pollution will rise exponentially wiping out many species through toxic poisoning. 
6. Education funding will run out, public schools shut down and communities will be required to build and pay for their own education.
7. Libraries will be closed.
8. Psychiatry and counselling will be outlawed and mental illness viewed as a lack of morality and self-discipline. 
9. Family breakdown will be blamed on the work of feminists and liberals.
10. Worker's unions will be outlawed.
11. Civic leaders, journalists and liberal religious leaders will be arrested and placed in prisons without trial.
12. All government departments will be merged and the only services funded by taxpayers will be the police force and the military, which will eventually be contracted out to private security companies. 
13. Extreme poverty will erupt in more gang activity, and municipalities will be sponsored by corporations and run by drug cartels.
14. A war will be started with Iran, Russia and China, to employ the frustrated young men who have lost hope of making a living. 
15. Civil war will divide the country.
16. Citizens who build local economies in their workshops and gardens will have their property confiscated. 
17. The one percent will become the .5 percent and they will be much richer than they are now.
18. Current party leaders will not see this coming.

Most Americans would deny this is possible mainly because there are so many community activities built and run by good, hard working, people.  But the tribe who have employed the CEO's, the military personnel  the politicians and the experts, have already managed to erode civil society by alienating humanity from their natural power and re-creating reality through the media they sponsor.  This tribe are so powerful we will know them not by name but by their fruits - totalitarian regimes in South America and Europe since the beginning of the Twentieth Century.

The only way we can take back the power we have is to nurture what sustains us. There is no solution, no ideology, and no guaranteed strategy to fight back against the absolute rape of our psyche through the worship of power. Our hope, if there is any to be had, lies in our practice of compassion and mindfulness.

Interrogating the Dark

It has been written that conservative parties are appealing to social conservatives - their support base. I am not sure what the difference is between social and religious in the conservative camp but Wikipedia says "Social conservatism is a political ideology that focuses on the preservation of what are seen as traditional values". These seem to be based on Ambrahamist values, which are mostly about a prescribed morality particularly opposing sexual permissiveness. 

Over the years there have been many values attributed to social conservatives which include:

• making abortion absolutely illegal (even in cases of rape, incest or when the mother's life is at risk)
• that prisoners should not receive any support spiritually, psychologically, or intellectually
• that we should bring back the death penalty
• to spare the rod is to spoil the child
• that welfare for the poor is a disincentive to work
• that unions are destroying the economy
• that personal wealth is a measure of the extent to which you are blessed by God
• that same sex marriage is a threat to America
• that we live in a Christian nation and immigrants should not be allowed to practice the religion they left behind. 
• that only Christians are capable of morality
• and we should defend Christianity by going to war with nations that are not Christian (except Israel)
• teaching children and adults to think for themselves and develop their own opinions is an affront to God's laws as laid out in the Bible. 

The theme threaded through this list is about how people should behave, meaning other people. 

Values imposed on others remind me of the dark ages when men were obliged to join the crusades, and their women to wear chastity belts. Or times of war when helping or caring for people who were labelled as enemy, is treason. Or on the battlefield, where refusing to murder is wrong. These are, of course, extreme examples, but when does morality no longer arise from the conscience but from an ideology requiring unquestioned obedience? At what point does the sensitive, feeling, thinking being become a robot for the benefit of something else?

Looking at the above list, replacing "Christian" with "Muslim" does this look like conservatism or theocracy?

The problem I have with the notion of conservative values, is that I once considered myself conservative.  As a young adult in my early twenties I began reading about current issues. I felt confident I knew what was best for others and felt it my duty to give advice, even to those who never asked for it. It was the honest thing to do, I thought, because I cared. What I could not, or would not see in those days, was my ignorance, all that I did not know.

As a child growing up in England, I remember believing that I should not be emotional, irrational or demanding to men, traits I was told belong only to the weak or women. I should not be like other women. Even more disturbing, and a devastating example of my ignorance, is when I heard about Nazi Europe I asked - what did the Jews do that was so wrong that everyone turned against them? This is how naive I was. I could not see the centuries old anti-semitic and misogynist indoctrination which forms the perimeters of society, and informs my views.

My code of ethics was simple - if I hurt someone it was my fault, if someone hurt me it was my fault. All suffering was a punishment for bad behavior.  This oversimplification was a result of political and historical illiteracy. An adult deprived of any meaningful discussion or interrogation of why things happen, is still a child.

The more I read, heard and saw of the world, the more fearful I became because it shone a light on my own powerlessness. If I knew nothing how could I make the best decisions? Oh, how the shopping mall, the Christmas planning, lifted my spirits, because in these things I could forget the really important, larger problems I had no tools for, no means to fix.   

So I have some sympathy for social conservatives.  I understand their visceral anger. They are naked against the machinery of hegemony. If they cannot see their part in the game, they will seek the scape goat who will offer some relief to their pain.  But it won't be enough. It won't last. They will need to look for another. They will put all their energy into eliminating the 'enemy', avoiding at all costs, the evidence that these choices destroy their own civil society. They will embrace austerity, they will punish themselves in order to punish the other.

They, we, will keep doing this until we interrogate how power has kept us chained to the cave, not just by the ruling elite, but by our inability to stare down the monster that is half of this contract - that we seek leaders to protect us from the shadows in our own sight-lines. 

Dear Prime Minister Harper

a river by Hwy 3 in BC

I forward this letter (italicized below), found on Rev. Frances Deverell's (President of Canadian Unitarians for Social Justice) blog in support of her fast for Climate Change.

I believe current world economic distress and natural disasters are caused by climate change and as a human race we must take action.  We must address the fact that we cannot grow our economies forever.  If our children and grandchildren are to have a chance at a quality of life we need real leadership from you and we need it now.

We need to direct our attention and our resources toward building an economy based on renewable energy.  We must slow the use of oil and coal and preserve reserves in the ground for future generations.  We can do this by:

•                Putting a price on carbon

•                Supporting all initiatives that develop and promote renewable energy

•                Supporting any and all methods of energy conservation

Slowing down the development of oil, coal, and nuclear will slow economic growth, but slower growth is inevitable because oil prices will rise as reserves are depleted.   This will impact our economy and cause labour disruption and unemployment.  We must prepare by designing social systems to cushion the blow and help people make the transition.  Current policies are pushing us towards instability and chaos instead.

We need your best, most creative leadership now to address these issues.  Will you enact policies that actively promote energy conservation and renewable energy?  Will you remove subsidies to big oil and introduce a tax on carbon?  Help us build an economy focused on creating quality of life for all, in a world without growth.

Respectfully,

Janet Vickers

Citizen of Canada

Think Before You Take

Soon (April 2013) the Harper government will be considering whether to raise the salaries of politicians. 

All MP's, according to this Globe and Mail article, currently earn a basic salary of $157, 731. Senators earn a base salary of $132,300.

Meanwhile the Harper government has cut back old-age pensions, laid off public servants, cut funding to social services that help those Canadians most at risk. Unionized workers are expected to take cuts in pay, and the non-unionized are getting less pay and less hours.

The argument that politicians work hard and deserve to be well compensated means we are focused on money as the only reward for skill and hard work.  Does that mean all those who juggle multiple jobs at minimum wage are not working hard, don't have skills and don't deserve  hope for a better standard of living?  

On a planet choking from mankind's ideologies of growth and greed, a true indicator of how much a sentient being is worth is her ability to readjust her appetite to nurture the interdependent web, of which she is a part.

All who work to the best of their conscience and their ability are worth this much. So please, dear MP's don't seek more money while children are going hungry and their parents live in poverty and despair. Your yachts, your mansions, your sports cars are not worth as much as your conscience in a just society.

Rosh Hashanah: What Has Become Clear To You?

I grew up in England under the notion that I lived in a "Christian" country and went to a "Church of England" school.  So I cannot really speak about Rosh Hashanah with any credibility. However, I am happy to see that this holiday is acknowledged in social media.  

The message is probably simplified in the interfaith community, whereas the deeper meaning and discipline more rigorous for the truly observant.  Yehuda Berg says "The Kabbalists teach that Rosh Hashanah is not a religious event, but a cosmic opening where we can plant the seeds that will determine how our reality will unfold in our new year."

I do feel a newness in September. But the idea that we examine our own actions, for our own judgement, as Berg points out, is very helpful when there is so much violence resulting, in all probability, from our judgement towards the other.

Easy to believe that I am powerless to do anything about the big events, I am brought back to earth by Yehuda Berg's words: 

"Every action we perform is a boomerang we fling out into the universe. Each Rosh Hashanah, all of these many boomerangs return to our lives—all the positive ones and all the negative ones. Moreover, this experience of Rosh Hashanah is not exclusive to any one religion. According to the kabbalistic sages, all humankind shares a heightened experience of Cause."

So who has influenced whom? Who can say that throughout the centuries, our civilization, and our survival has not depended upon inspiration and communication between faiths? Who can claim that our values are Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Sikh, Buddhist, Hindu, or Unitarian, exclusively?

May the Universe be blessed by this cosmic opening, and may judgment remain within my own capacity to do what the universe most needs. 

Naked Harry

It's easy to believe you can trust your friends when you've had a drink and you're all having a good time. Easy to believe they share your sense of ethics and would not sell their pictures to the sleaziest press, even if you are naked.

The frog in this rose is also naked and wouldn't mind at all if the gardener uploaded this image to a blog, as long as owls and raccoons can't see him. So why do we get excited over a prince being naked? Or rather, how many of us besides the press, are excited?

The man is 27, good looking and rich.  He loves fun. The sight of a healthy naked body doesn't hurt anyone else, as long as its among a group of consenting adults. War, on the other hand, hurts millions.

Perhaps there is a Freudian statement about getting naked. Perhaps we all secretly long to reveal who we are, to be uncovered, undressed, natural. Perhaps Harry feels he is entitled to be himself, a regular guy, in the privacy of a rented room.

I have three adult children who have probably done things I will never know about, because they had a few drinks and felt safe and free for an evening or two.  If I was shown pictures of them naked and having fun, some years ago or even yesterday, I doubt I would lose any sleep over it.  However if they were brandishing a gun I would be very alarmed.

Publishing pictures on the front page of a newspaper does do harm because that is the intention: to humiliate and exploit. This story is about opportunism, to gain (money, superiority, smugness) at another's expense. All those who participate in promoting this image should be ashamed (except Hadley Freeman whose narrative, embedded within the context of the celebrity industrial complex, indicates the part we all play when we purchase the gossip), while so many other stories cry out to be told.  Stories such as children going hungry and governments slashing vital programs to the  most vulnerable. Interrogations of structural violence and injustice.

But then look at me grabbing a few crumbs of righteousness by writing this post even though I know finger wagging never works with anyone over the age of seven.

The Age of Integrity

What has become very clear to all who are interested in global issues, revealed through mainstream and social media, is the absence of true leadership.  The ways in which absolute power corrupts absolutely are being revealed day by day. The young are more affected by this because they  weigh the meaning of their lives with what they observe from the outside.

Because the power of rulers is mostly about control and intimidation, the world for them is not a place of texture and diversity. Everything must be managed and dominated.  Even those who instill systems of justice live under the constant threat of being dethroned. The rulers who stay in power longer, it seems, are those who have behind them the military, the media, other superpowers, and the determination to do whatever they must to stay in power, including killing their citizens.

War may appear to be about land and resources, but is, if we look deeper, about something else. It is about controlling the imagination and creativity of human nature.  It is about ideologies that keep people in fear and doubt about their own power. There must be war to interrupt the capacity for people to organize and gain knowledge. Hatred and fear of femininity, of homosexuality, of the poor, of social justice, is inflamed in order to keep us suspicious of our nature - the means to be fully engaged humans.

The war is against humanity, the environment, and nature. The war is against the future, against hope, against love and compassion, and against the capacity we all possess to change our world.

If we fail to find the integrity to create justice in our communities, to fight injustice, then we shall feel Orwell's 1984, and Atwood's Oryx and Crake, very intimately.  We shall live in the trenches of WWI, in Sarajevo, in Syria and all the other places of siege.

Integrity is not a political party or a club.  It requires our conscience to question our representatives, those given positional power, our community, our church, and our selves. It requires mindfulness, diligence, and most of all - insight.

There are no instructions on how to lead a life of integrity.  Our friends and family will not applaud. The subject won't be made into a Hollywood blockbuster. There will be no Nobel prizes for those who build the world for the good of all. (Nobel winners such as the Dalai Lama and Nelson Mandela are two who have been recognized but most of the integral work is done by millions who are never recognized.) It will go unnoticed by mass media - in fact, blacked out, just as any sign of civil engagement is intentionally censored there. All we have is our determination to seek and act upon truth, to do what we believe is right, and to live in love and compassion.

However, if this age of integrity doesn't come to pass in thought and action, life will not be worth living.

I think the most important thing to remember though - is that the terror and destruction our world has endured is not accidental.  It is not simply through ignorance and the failure of humanity to live in peace. It is the strategy of abusive power to keep the masses powerless through chaos and violence.

The point is not to kill those who have power but to replace their power with our own power - that which loves our grand-children, and is integral to the survival of life on this planet.

Design the Future Based on the Truths that Nurture Us

Yesterday’s shooting at a Sikh Temple in Wisconsin is only 16 days after the shooting in Aurora at a midnight screening of the latest Batman movie.

Whether you believe this is part of an elitist conspiracy to break down civil society by brainwashing unstable men, or whether America is being punished by God for allowing liberal views, or that the invisible hand  (the economy) is creating despair – one thing is certain – the  violence that has been glorified for the colonization of other countries and the exploitation of the masses for the profit of a few, has been brought home. No-one is spared.  No place is safe. No prayers or ideology will fix this until most of the people on this planet realize we are all in this together.

Chris Hedges notes this day in 1945 when “the United States demonstrated that it was as morally bankrupt as the Nazi machine it had recently vanquished”.  This was the bombing of Hiroshima, and Nagasaki three days later. Hedges calls it “an act of mass annihilation” when the Japanese were about to surrender.

War does not bring peace, not a better standard of living for the masses, or an example for establishing workable communities – what it does achieve is social and cultural alienation.

I see the age in which we live (modern age) as being an age that succeeded in separating  power  from life.  Every century has defined and re-defined the war between a reverence for and the degradation of life.

We live in a time where power has been so centralized and violence so internalized that the distinctions between war and peace, duty and civility, wealth and poverty, truth and lies, have no meaning in the public sphere at all. We are the victims of our nations’ foreign policies.  We live in the theatre of other powers’ fantasies.

What can we do to defend life? 

First we must organize on the principles of a life sustaining power-from-within.  This means we design the future based on the truths that have nurtured our lives.  Love, support, health, nutrition, rest and freedom from violence. It’s not rocket science, it’s not fireworks and it’s not entertainment.  But we are the stewards of that which we value.

We could give up the notion of power over others, of superiority, and consumerism. We have no need to compare ourselves with others or to compete – these are instruments of propaganda to alienate us from our own worth.

The life we want is the life we make, and we are on the bridge of the next age. 

How Oppressive Power Needs Its Own Mythology

Gary Younge, in his recent Guardian article, titled  The world as seen by Republicans, in a land of myth and amnesia lists the mythologies that drive the Republican political movement in the US.


Younge points out many conservatives believe the problems of America are caused by foreigners or foreign influences. "For a core group of Republicans "foreign" has become an epithet – a slur willfully blurring the distinction between non-American, un-American, liberal, non-Christian and non-white."


Onlookers, including Gary Younge, understand this is part of an election strategy to beat the Democrats by targeting Obama's right to be president.

"This is of course a proxy for race made popular by the birthers, who, despite all the evidence, insist Obama was born in Kenya. In a world where direct racial attacks are out of bounds, "foreign" becomes a useful metaphor. This man, it says, is essentially not like us or even from us. 

Branding him Muslim, as though this too were in itself an insult, has the same function. A recent poll revealed the proportion of Republicans who believe Obama is Muslim has doubled since 2008 and now stands at almost a third. The trouble with these dog whistles is now that everyone can hear them they are scarcely worthy of the name."

But the end result has a much more ominous outcome from a nation whose Foreign Policies have dominated the rest of the world since World War II, when another party almost dominated Europe by creating mythologies and branding scapegoats.  The whole structure of European societies were destroyed almost beyond repair.


Just as the Nazi's segregated the Jews, who had been part of European societies for centuries, the Republicans are segregating African Americans as being un-American.


After the defeat of the Nazi's, tremendous energy was put into rebuilding civil society, which then helped to bring about freedom and a better standard of living. Which then tragically funneled into  consumerism.


Centralized power controls global business, media and government, and is in the process of destroying civil society absolutely, because it is the enlightenment and education of global citizens that hold the greatest threat to their absolute domination. 


It is at this point where power no longer needs to pretend it takes care of, or protects the people, because life itself becomes redundant.  But once we deconstruct the mythologies of leadership and power, we can construct new mythologies that revere the power of diversity and the means to our survival.

Senryu

Imagine 

all the people

living

This senryu is an homage to the song "Imagine" written by John Lennon. It was released, according to Wikipedia, in 1971 as a single, and then again in 1975 with the album "Shaved Fish".


I think this song is one of the most popular anthems to peace and Lennon's words resonate as much today as they did then.  

How is your sic-o-meter?

Is your skin uploading too much information these days? Do you see strange reports on Facebook and Twitter?  Phrases quoted, beliefs expressed, coming from the mouths of those who should know better? Are you wondering what happened to our leaders and our stateswomen?  Do you ask why there is no good news anywhere?

Well you have joined the world as you perceive it.  Your body is now a nervous substrate of all the information you read, see and hear.  Your sic-o-meter is working.

If you feel there is nothing you can do to respond effectively to all this noise, you are not alone.  What I think might be happening to your mind-body receptor (and mine) is the convergence of all those tweets, headlines and status updates. They are pureed into a felt-sense of the world which may feel like you are well-informed.

This puree, already containing your tribal associations, your habits and prejudices, will blend with external information. Rationally you may think that a mud slide in the Kootenays doesn't affect you, or that suicide bombers in Pakistan are not a threat to your loved ones.  You may not even stay awake at night worrying about climate change outside of a heat wave in summer.  You may receive the hourly news with equanimity and calm as though all the bad things just happen to others.

But our sic-o-meter could be working a lot better if we are able to see the many ways in which we are connected to this world.  If any news story elicits empathy for those who are personally affected, then our sic-o-meter does more than hear and internalize the 'out-there'. It tells us how we can respond, emotionally, intellectually, and physically to the world we live in, so that we are not powerless, not simply sitting in the audience watching a movie.

This doesn't mean taking sides. Or giving all our savings to charity. Or declaring our political opinions with everyone we meet.  The way in which you or I can respond is as a member of this global human family.  It is compassion not judgement, that gives us the power to respond authentically.  Judgement  without empathy is an alienation technique that gives us the fleeting sense of being innocent bystanders.  We are not, we are stakeholders.

Water for Elephants - intentional spoiler alert

Last night I watched the movie Water for Elephants directed by Francis Lawrence, starring Reese Witherspoon, Robert Pattinson and Christoph Waltz.  The quality of the production was very good.  The acting, scenery, camera work, was all excellent.  But all this was lost under the endless frames of violence.

The bulk of the storyline, which was potentially a very good storyline, was filled with scenes of brutality, oppression and denigration of human and animal life. Frame after frame showed us just how depraved and brutal, the circus owner was.  After half an hour you get it.  The owner, August, clearly a psychopath, created his world based on the premise that you must beat down the life force in all living creatures - even those you profess to love, until all that remains is unquestioning obedience through fear.

The mainline story is about the love between a runaway hired hand, a vet student who was called away from his exams when his parents were killed in a car accident, and the circus owner's wife who is the "star performance".

The movie starts out with so much promise and descends into a tale of good versus evil; showing us how evil August is, and how good the hero is.  How beauty and innocense is raped over and over again for one and a half hours, while the love story ending gets about twenty minutes.

Why spoil such good storylines with so much emphasis on the violence?  Is it to make sure that everyone, no matter how stupid or numb, gets it? Is it because of the touted notion that violence and sex sells?

For me, the beauty of the elephant, the costumes, the actors, was crushed under the same hammer until my insides were so enraged that I was shaking. Yes I know its a movie and that it isn't real, but it isn't just the visuals that enrage me, its the consistent elevation of violence in entertainment, and what it does to our nervous substrate, that makes me so angry.

The book, written by Sara Gruen, is reviewed by bestsellers.com, and it says

Water for Elephants moves between the story of the traveling circus in 1930 to the story of the older Jacob’s fight to maintain sanity. While most of Water for Elephants is about the circus, the chapters about the older Jacob provide a depth to the novel and a poignancy to the story that makes the whole book richer and more real.

So why did this story that had so much cinematic potential become drowned in brutality? It would likely have cost millions to create.  Is there a message that the backers required from the movie in order to get their funding?  How does violence observed work within the senses when it is overemphasized? What does it do to young imaginations as they learn to participate in their community?

The Power of Insight

The fifth of the five spiritual powers is the power of insight. Thich Nhat Hanh maintains that the power of insight "is a sword that cuts painlessly through all kinds of suffering, including fear, despair, anger, and discrimination." He goes on to say that an insight is more than a notion and Hanh's key teaching is the insight of impermanence.

I look for stability through democracy and social justice perhaps because it offers some comfort that others might do unto me as I would do to them.



Because of my attachment to social justice I act according to what I believe is just and fair. I raise my family on ideas of justice and kindness and empathy.   Self-interest to me is contributing to a world guided by laws based on a reverence for life.

But at the moment what I hear and see in the news, in social media, on the internet, on the radio, goes against all the notions of justice, kindness and empathy. I feel outraged not just because I fear something bad will happen to me or my loved ones, but because I believe that when we get rid of that social contract built on the golden rule then all that remains is fear, despair, anger and discrimination.

As I look deeply into this problem I realize that my community is rich with many acts of social justice and kindness. Every day yields signs of  this. One on one, in small business, there are many acts of generosity, signs of care and concern. The violence that fills media is happening to someone else. But this insight does not make me feel better, or powerful.

Hearing about the massacre of women and children in Houla chills my bones even though it is far away from my children and grand-children. Yet impermanence suggests there is nothing to guarantee the safety of my loved ones - that the justice I expect today will not always be here. But impermanence means also that I can't anticipate how we will deal with this horror and how we will respond to it on a global scale.

So as I watch my expectations eroding in the face of impermanence, feeling absolutely powerless to find a response that is likely to hold what I value, all that remains is the civil acts I do here and now.  And these acts demand more than the golden rule - they demand compassion.

The Power of Concentration

"Mindfulness brings out the fourth power ... of concentration" says Hanh.  The power of concentration can lead to a breakthrough, to see deeply into the object of your focus. If we are suffering some ill-health, say a back ache, we can concentrate on that pain and perhaps link it to an emotional event that we have brushed aside.  Someone told me once that back ache is a sign of needing support, a lack of support. When I think of those who have suffered back pain I wonder if their active independent personality keeps them from seeking the support they need.

I often get headaches that rob me of my energy.  Would these aches be telling me that my head is resisting the work I plan to do, to concentrate on?  Or are they telling me I should concentrate on the thoughts I am having in regards to the way I  respond to the outer world? Are they telling me to stop living in my head and have some faith in action?

If someone gets angry with me my first response is to move out of ear range and get on with my day, but if I concentrate on what was said, the way it was said, and the body language at the time I can attain some insight perhaps.

Thich Nhat Hanh advises us to concentrate on what we are doing.  If we are having tea, drink tea, don't drink in the worries and the suffering. If we concentrate on what we are doing after tea or after dinner or before breakfast, we gain some nourishment from our rituals and gain some peace and strength.

Seems like a simple idea doesn't it? But throughout our lives we have been told to strive, to improve, to be a better person, and in our striving we may have forgotten to look after ourselves until we are exhausted, worried and spent, then dive into a box of doughnuts or a bottle of whiskey to escape.

Concentrating on the simple care of ourselves really is quite a radical notion.

The Power of Mindfulness

This is the third of the Five Spiritual Powers.  Hanh says "Mindfulness is the energy of being aware of what is happening in the present moment. When we have the energy of mindfulness in us, we are fully present, we are fully alive, and we live deeply every moment of our daily life."

The challenge for me is that I think a lot about what is happening globally in terms of peace and social justice.  I think about the reservist, Trevor Greene, who was severely injured during his term  fighting in Afghanistan and how the government has cut back on services to soldiers who return needing health care.

This is not considered mindfulness or is it?  Reaching out in empathy (and outrage) to someone who puts himself on the front line for his country but who believes he doesn't get the medical care he needs.

The trick is that no matter what discipline I practice there are so many things I have no control over. So is awareness going to make me more powerful in this regard?

Moving further away from the moment and into the thinking place, I return to the notion that what is happening today is because of what happened a thousand years ago.  Each action for control is a problem when the control is not ourselves but others, and how we might have internalized the power of the state with our own sense of power.

So getting back to mindfulness I think about the moment and what I can do in this moment in response to what has happened over the last millenium. "If we lose this power of mindfulness, we lose everything" claims Hanh and the fact that his writing travels all over the world, and that his Plum Village is built on these Buddhist values, is perhaps an indication of his power.

I am working on the premise that mindfulness is more than simply paying attention to the toast I eat for breakfast, and that in practice I hope for further insights.

The Power of Diligence

Hanh says we are capable of going back to our best selves but we must maintain this practice of diligence.

He says there are two kinds of consciousness - the open consciousness (the living room) and store consciousness (the basement).  But the store consciousness is described also as the land where seeds lay underground that we don't pay much attention to until something happens to remind us of those seeds.

In most people's lives, there have been times when we have felt threatened, angry, victimized and in despair - not knowing where to turn next. These feelings are seeds, hidden underground, when we are happy and life is good, but when fears arise we feel those seeds lying there, and must decide whether to water them or let them dry up.

There are four aspects of diligence: first - when negative emotions haven't manifested in your mind, you don't give them a chance to manifest; second - is calming and replacing negative seeds (anger, hate, fear, despair) in your conscious mind; third - is to always invite good seeds to manifest (love, forgiveness, joy, peace, happiness); fourth - is trying to keep a good mental formation such as compassion, joy, peace, by nurturing it.

Last night it took me awhile to get to sleep, so rather than water the seeds of frustration, I lay in bed thinking about how comfortable it was listening to the rain outside.  Focusing on positive emotions I turned on the light and began reading Naomi Beth Wakan's book The Way of Haiku, marvelling at the beautiful language there and the culture that has enabled us to create poetry. Filled with gratitude I eventually went to sleep.

Yes I know that beautiful thoughts and words can't defend us against guns and bombs, but they do inspire us and other people to act on behalf of peace and justice.

The Power of Faith

Thich Nhat Hanh translates the word faith into confidence and trust "because it is something inside you and not directed toward something external".

So I shift into a place of confidence that I am a being of integrity and that I have a right to be here.

Working through the night and the following day with this particular power enabled me to give up anxiety, to second guess and question everything I do and say.  What is that about? And - what was that?

After spending so many years looking to the external world for assessment of what is good and what is troubling, I can see how moving to a place of faith in my ability to create some goodness in a changing and unpredictable world, I can bring my focus back to my own energy.

For a start I told myself that I had faith that I could sleep through the night so that I could get up early the next morning to do what I had promised to do. It worked and I felt less like a creature oppressed by the whims of fate.

During the waking hours it soon occurred that mindfulness was also wedded to the power of faith because I need to be mindful of the tasks to do them satisfactorily.

This also reminded me of a time when I was younger and took confidence for granted, assuming I would always have that strength and ability.  How did I lose my confidence? Perhaps a few mistakes made me feel like a fumbling old lady and I questioned my abilities more and more.

Getting back to that place of comfort with the self is quieter, more peaceful, than the angst and apologies, and the continual self-reprimands grieving over a more youthful confident self.

The Five Spiritual Powers

In Thich Nhat Hanh's book The Art of Power he lays out five spiritual powers he teaches to  ground us in the power from within that many would not associate with power.

They are:

1. The Power of Faith
2. The Power of Diligence
3. The Power of Mindfulness
4. The Power of Concentration
5. The Power of Insight

Over the next few days I plan to write about these individually in the hope that I will learn how to access my own spiritual powers.

Not wanting to simply plagiarize Hanh's work, I feel it necessary to focus on my responses to what he teaches.

If I can’t rule the world I shall destroy it.

Who said that? Was it Hitler or Richard III? Is it the bad guy in any (pick one) action movie? Or the familiar fantasy of every child who can’t get her own way but which is soon forgotten when met with a suitable diversion?

The trouble is there are adults in positions of power, who I suspect operate as though control is a kind of revenge.

When our government eschews the professional knowledge of corrections workers and creates more tension within prisons by cutting programs and demanding prisoners pay more room and board; when they plan to shut down 10 of the 22 Marine Communications and Traffic Services Centres, which provide rescue and emergency services for boats; when they silence thousands of federal science workers for Environment Canada, because their research contradict Federal Government plans for economic growth particularly with shipping bitumen from the oil sands; when Jim Stanford creates a graph that shows "that in the last decade, Canadian petroleum exports grew by close to 2 percentage points of GDP ... but Canada's exports of everything else (manufacturing, services and tourism) declined by several times as much"— doesn’t it give you the impression that our world is ruled by ideologies arrested by rage because no matter how much power you have, it is never enough?

But we can develop a universal conscience and find our own ways to nurture from a place of love, gratitude, thoughtfulness and intention. These are things that raise the power of our lives through reverence and that celebrate the knowledge of those who work for the whole of this world.

Community or Asylum

In Chris Hedges article "Welcome to the asylum" he spells out the ways in which civilizations dissolve into madness.

"The quest by a bankrupt elite in the final days of empire to accumulate greater and greater wealth, as Karl Marx observed, is modern society’s version of primitive fetishism. This quest, as there is less and less to exploit, leads to mounting repression, increased human suffering, a collapse of infrastructure and, finally, collective death. It is the self-deluded, those on Wall Street or among the political elite, those who entertain and inform us, those who lack the capacity to question the lusts that will ensure our self-annihilation, who are held up as exemplars of intelligence, success and progress. The World Health Organization calculates that one in four people in the United States suffers from chronic anxiety, a mood disorder or depression—which seems to me to be a normal reaction to our march toward collective suicide."

The Western world who has wholeheartedly embraced unfettered capitalism, without any concern for social consequences, are rushing to follow in this suicidal spiral, and the good citizens question whether they can ever have a conversation with the mad bull-dogs whose jaws are firmly hanging onto any flesh linked to power, no matter how decomposed it might be.

Democracy is supposed to be that conversation that limits the damage done by megalomaniacs. But Lawrence Martin asks if we are still living in a democracy.

"... anyone who scrolls through recent media, conservative media included, might be forgiven for concluding that we have something more closely resembling the opposite. Something more akin to billy-club governance. Think of the ironclad controls, the scorning of accountability, the censorship, the smearing of opponents, the power unto one. The abuses are not just opposition talk. They’re writ large in Auditor-Generals’ reports, in internal documents and journalists’ investigations. Some of the abuses have happened in other governments but have they ever happened on the scale we’ve seen from this crowd?"

You may wonder, how did we get to this point where our elected leaders behave as though they feel contempt for democracy?  Well all you have to do is read a little history or speak to survivors of war to understand that power is based either on contempt for life or a reverence for life.

It will seem outrageously stupid to say that loving kindness or compassion is the only weapon that sustains life, until you visit or listen to some of our First Nations people who have survived the most terrible violence at a time when they were most vulnerable. They have fought every minute of every day of every year since, to mend their broken spirits by re-educating themselves and their children on how to live. The fight is never over as they now are fighting the threat of oil tankers and pipelines, as we all should be.

The tragedy of our age is that, on the one hand we witness the madness of violence and destruction designed by a controlling elite, and dismiss the goodness under our feet as benign.  This is the way power has corrupted our spirit by making us blind with anxiety. 

Anxiety will control and diminish our power as long we fail to stare it in the face, and ask our discomfort to speak to us on a deeper level. What does it mean when our governments have given up on their people and we can no longer hope for jobs, education, health care and a clean environment?

Imperialist nations that thrived on oppressing other nations for their resources are now feeling the violence of the system that fed and controlled them through propaganda and ideology until there was no ideal left uncorrupted, untainted. We live in an age now where we can't escape the immense depth of violence which we once supported through loyalty.

What can each one of us do to re-create new systems?  What do we possess that we can choose to build upon?  What can we believe in?  These are questions to ask ourselves for our answers will be our legacy.

While socialist and capitalist governments have abused power, Pickett and Wilkinson tell us (in an article published in StraightGoods)

"the evidence shows unmistakably that more equal societies — those with smaller income differences between rich and poor — are friendlier and more cohesive: community life is stronger, people trust each other more, and there is less crime and violence. So the deep human intuition that inequality is divisive and socially corrosive is true.

People in more unequal societies have worse health and lower life expectancy; they are more likely to have drug problems and to suffer more mental illness. Measures of child wellbeing are worse and children do less well at school. Rates of teenage births, obesity and violence are all higher, and more people are in prison."

It's time we stopped working for our oppressors by examining the power of institutions and the frames they contain us in, and then by re-creating the world based on social justice, compassion, freedom and responsibility.