Why You Can't Sleep at Night

George Monbiot, the columnist and blogger, revealed that he went to a boarding school where boys of well-to-do families go.  This gave him insight into how ruling elites think. The purpose we might think is to give their children the kind of education that will make them leaders. We hope they might turn out like Ghandi or Bishop Tutu, but a few decades earlier "the role of such schools was clear: they broke boys’ attachment to their families and re-attached them to the institutions – the colonial service, the government, the armed forces – through which the British ruling class projected its power. Every year they released into the world a cadre of kamikazes, young men fanatically devoted to their caste and culture." 

I believe this is how all institutions operate - to create citizens to defend their corporate mothers.  Real mothers and fathers also raise their children to be successful in the world in which they were raised, with the hope of upward mobility. 

Now, however, we see upward mobility as unlikely.  In fact, rather than think about how to raise our children in a world that looks brutish and bleak, we seek escape through entertainment and shopping. You can hardly blame us if we feel we have no power to change our world.

We (that body of anonymous humanity) know we are not Nelson Mandela or Martin Luther King, Jr.,  or even Naomi Klein.  We are just trying to make ends meet, to be decent. We have not been trained to believe we have something to offer the world, never mind something special.  And those who might exhibit some charismatic or visionary features we tend to be suspicious of. We have been programmed through the entertainments we consume, to believe that people who seek power are self-aggrandizing or psychopathic. 

Even the Occupy and Idle No More movements, from a distant media filtered view, reveal a hostility towards those in power, the elite.  Even those of us who dip our toes into the ocean of alternative news and documentaries will feel that repulsion towards those invisible officers of control. While there are many examples of its abuse, we eschew responsible power at our peril. 

The corporate media with its focus on the big stories, make every movement, effort, discipline or courage appear futile.  The lens zooms to the end before the story begins. Any little good news story ends with defeat not because every effort is defeated but small successes are not sensational enough to be reported. 

Dr. Warren Bell, in a response to hearings on the Northern Gateway Pipeline Project, points out a threat not just to the environment but the health of our species.  Thankfully his insight and wisdom was reported by Linda Solomon in The Vancouver Observer.

He observed, while still in medical school,  that many of the most important influences on a person's health derive not just from medicine or patient choices but from broad trends in the community – from the neighbourhood to the planetary environment.

The systems that have led to the pipeline project, which he calls "structural pathology", has caused some of his younger patients to suffer anxiety, fearing the future for their children.

When the majority of people feel powerless, overwhelmed by the structural violence designed and perpetrated by institutions they can't trust, civil society breaks down.  First by individual acts of terror, then war between factions, and war between nations or even continents. 

While the ruling class will have already found an "enemy", the future for citizens looks bleaker  and we are still left so anxious and uprooted we are unable to plan, to love and to nurture what is good. In the meantime, those bright boarding school boys, carefully trained in guiding the masses, are planning the future for us.

These pathological systems need to be intervened by the power of an educated and activated citizenry.  Dr. Bell has provided four imperatives to change the power systems without killing anyone. You will find them at the end of this article: Doctor describes Harper government "pathology" at Kelowna JRP

You may or may not agree with this prescription, but if you find a civil way to engage with the system, you will at least learn that you do have the power to make changes without using hate or violence.  We can learn that the power we use will be the power our future will be built on.

Why you can't win an argument with a bully

Bullies appear to be single minded in their determination to win. Their intimidation tactics make it difficult to believe they are concerned about facts other than how to make them serve their own interests. Bullies appear to operate as though they are the centre of the universe who can't be touched or challenged by marginal forces.

Arguments are conversations directed towards an outcome: persuasion, defending a point of view, making a case.  A good argument is one that contains two sides where  willing listeners and intellectually present minds engage in the topic. An argument is not what you see on Coronation Street or reality shows.  It's not a p!$$ing contest of verbal abuse. An argument is not a diatribe or a rant where only one voice is present.

An argument requires honesty and sincerity among equals. Proving the point requires logic, insight, enlightenment, and some humility. However this is not easy as we have been raised in societies where 'right' and 'wrong' have been co-opted by self interest, and the ego feels a need to believe it is inherently right.  It takes strength of character to understand we are not always right and that our interests are not always the best interests for all.

Bullies establish their place early in life.  Perhaps in the crib when their demands were never negotiated, or in the school playground first victimized by bullies, or the narrative played out in television and movie plots where the winner takes all.  Mostly the bully's personality has been arrested by simplistic constructs of relationship where there is only one winner.

The values of a civil society, such as justice, fairness, empathy, nurture, stewardship, love and reason are beyond the bully's comprehension.  So the bully will interrupt, shout louder, use put downs, shore up racist, sexist prejudices, make false claims, use devices to confuse, use foul language and even weapons in order to win.  This is because all things are a threat to the bully.

The point then is not to win an argument with the bully but to state your truth, to bring to the arena the option of a reality that is different from the bully's world view which serves no-one but the bully. Whatever the bully says he/she has already lost credibility in civil society, dismissed or tolerated by intelligent, questioning souls. Raising the point reaches those who are hungry for justice and beauty, for a better example of human nature.

Issues of justice puts everyone in an uncomfortable pew, not because you brought it up, but because they are about to witness the very thing that caused them to acquiesce to the status quo. The thundering denial of diverse views.

Let the example stand and let the witnesses choose for themselves, in the private place of their conscience, what is right. Striving to get the last word removes the focus from the issue onto the egos.  Better to let the truth echo.

We are all capable of being bullies and most of us have at some point been victims of bullying.  What has been lost to our current society is the representation of civil discourse in government institutions and corporations. A reverence for life has been sacrificed when we allow bullies to silence the future of the human imagination.

The Indigenous Voice

Might does not make right. All the power in the world cannot save us, if we lose sight of reason and justice.

This is why we need to listen to the indigenous voice. It’s not just for their survival, it’s for all of us. Those voices that were dismissed, are the voices of our own human heart.  A heart that has been silenced for the punitive ideology misnamed progress.

This ideology assumed that humanity would be saved by industry, war, colonization, and consumerism.  These have given us many things from silk to medicine, but the instruments of this ideology also centralized power within the hands of an elite, and a new more devastating sickness infiltrated our minds and extended to our communities.

It’s not that our leaders were stupid, absolutely selfish or entirely corrupt, but that we were all influenced by the operating system – the matrix. We (those born and raised in these systems) were taken in by the teachings of our elders who had learned how to avoid falling into the machinery in factories and on battlefields. 

Children in the industrial cities who refused to submit to doctrines that didn’t make sense to them would have their pants taken down, ordered to bend over  and then caned in front of their classmates.  If they cried, if they showed emotion, they would be forever branded as weak. If their sisters got pregnant out of wedlock they were cast away from their families.  If the continual humiliation had forced their rage and despair into their subconscious, they would not know they are walking time bombs looking for someone with less muscle to punish; someone to bully to enable a fleeting feeling of power.  If they kill another on the street they are   publicly hanged, and they refuse to kill on the battlefield they are executed by a firing squad. 

This is how the great nations became great.  By squeezing the human impulse out of  humanity and replacing it with abstract disciplines far removed from the human heart yet which benefited the most powerful institutions.

Now after World War I and World War II we are able to see this system brutalizing the indigenous peoples of the entire globe.  That is, we are able to see it if we dare look back to that little child sitting in a classroom not knowing what the future holds for him, raised by adults who believe they must beat all the potential errors out of him before he makes a mistake.  If we dare see the many ways we were punished for being ourselves,  dare feel the heart that was once full of hope, empathy, and love, dare feel the vulnerability that was ridiculed and the dignity denied throughout our formative years before we found our own power, we shall make the connection.

In terms of our culture, what does it mean if we have learned how to survive in systems that reward brutality and punish vulnerability.  What do we learn from economies where managers who value their staff get fired while managers who are ruthless are promoted?

People who maintain their humanity in these institutions struggle to hang onto their jobs and their sanity. Those who give up, pretend to themselves that nothing matters except winning their own private game. 

We live in the age of the game, a labyrinth of stereotypes that fail to reveal who we are. The media, the mall and the economy has failed to reflect our real lives and our personal struggles. People who have needs, who love, who feel pain, people who want good health for their relations, people who seek joy, people who want a hopeful future. People who fight quietly against extraordinary odds. 

As Reinhold Niebuhr has been quoted, "nothing but madness will do battle with malignant power".

If we fail to see our own humanity in the struggles of our indigenous nations, we shall perish along with them. Most of them know this.  They get it.  They are us, only more so.  

First Nations: The long shadow of assimilation

Go to rabble.ca to see a clearly indicated list  of conditions the First Nations have lived under since European contact, compiled by Trish Hennessy, including links to sources. 

Even if you learn this off by heart and use this to argue with friends and family,  don't be surprised if you can't change their minds.

There is a resistance to the truths of the cruelty meted out by imperialistic forces, towards aboriginal people.  This history does not make us look pretty, but if we are to survive as a species, we must move away from  indifference and embrace compassion.  We must care and begin again ~ as one family under the sky.

Mental Health of a Species

Having been conditioned to believe that great empires are measured by the number of other nations it has conquered, and great leaders are equal to the destruction they leave in their wake, we witness the many victims of those values today.  They come in the form of six rapists mutilating a young woman on a bus in Delhi, a young man entering an elementary school in Newtown with an assault weapon and killing twenty unarmed children along with six adults, and the NRA proposing that all schools should have armed guards rather than gun controls.

Is it enough to say that those who seek power, whether it be in business, government or media, are psychopaths who have wrought this dystopia upon the land where the unnamed must duck and sweat in the hope of surviving? Or have we all been made sick and sorry creatures? Is there anything healthy that can come of us if our minds have been invaded by this power imperative?

As long as 40 percent of those who live in "democratic" nations believe they shall be spared by siding with the biggest bullies, they will never know who they are and who they can be through their own potential. As long as they feel part of the club through race, gender or religious identity, the sickness will become more severe and difficult to treat.

How can we say that killing is caused by the dissociated ego when the popularity of Presidents and Prime Ministers supposedly increases (as revealed through dubious polls) when they send their nations to war and organize the killing of millions? How can we be afraid of someone diagnosed with bipolar disorder when we blindly follow ideologies that come from the planning departments of arms industries? How can we expect our children to grow up healthy, when we think we build our economy by purchasing stuff that will be thrown out within a few years, yet dare not invest in the future of people?

Fortunately, many of our young minds have diagnosed the sickness, as have the marginalized who have been abused by it.  This is most tragically illustrated by the protest of Chief Theresa Spence.  She is saying to Canadians and Canada ~ here is your system: here is how life means so little to the structures of power, that your prime minister cannot spare a few minutes to stop the dying of a woman. See how quickly the media and its professional trolls, will dismiss her as manipulative. See how many people will blindly deny this has anything to do with them.

See.  Look.  Hear.  Feel.  This is your home.  This is your planet with its rivers and mountains. This is your family. It calls to you again and again, day after day, with its brave attempt to heal itself by reclaiming the power of life as its own.

A Wish for the New Year

May I hold on to my opinion until I identify my own biases.
May I listen to the opinions I feel uncomfortable with.
May I see conflict as part of the evolution of consciousness.

May you receive the spiritual support you need.
May you find a home among those who value your uniqueness.
May you believe in your gifts.


May we be open to the changes that include a reverence for all life.
May we not fear the dark corners but look for the cracks.
May we interrogate trends before we invest in them.


May our leaders see the forked road where leadership and strategy part.
May our citizens acknowledge their own part in the larger story.
May our species be supported as we struggle to evolve.