Chris Hedges on Sexual Predation

"Those who engage in (sexual predation) .... are so atomized and narcissistic that to themselves they alone exist. They are stunted, deformed human beings. They are incapable of genuine relationships. They lack the capacity for empathy or self-reflection. Their abuse of women, however, is only one example of the myriad abuses they feel entitled to carry out in their professional and personal interactions. And, sadly, surrounding them are many enablers, including some women, who bow before the same idols of power and wealth to perpetuate this cruelty." Chris Hedges

Hedges manages to include in one article all the terrible things I think of when I think of our current society.

The Greatest Gift

"We are heirs to a story that inspired a hundred generations of our ancestors and eventually transformed the Western world. What you forget, you lose. The West is forgetting its story. We must never forget ours." Rabbi Sacks.

 This is important because it is a story of a people who fled slavery in Egypt, survived pogroms and the holocaust.  It's a story of more than just survival but resilience that overcame despair, fear, and self interest.

I write this post because I want to pay attention to the stories we tell and live in, and this warning from Jonathan Sacks asks us what story guides our values today?

When I turn on the radio I learn of celebrities and politicians resigning because of charges of sexual harassment. I learn our Prime Minister who got elected on promises of integrity around consulting First Nations is approving oil pipelines across their territories. I learn of species dying because of pollution. I learn of people fleeing their homes because of fire, flood and violence.  I hear of thousands of poor homeless people dying of overdoses.

What does "the news" tell us about our story?

How will we survive when so many crises seem to loom on the horizon and leadership has been sold to the corporation. Where are our pillars of the community? Where is our social conscience? There are no stories of how we can help fix these crises coming from institutions that have national support. Whatever we had, no matter how imperfect and troubled, is being dissolved into isolated egos competing for more material wealth.

There is an article by Umair Haque on Why We're Underestimating American Collapse.  He lists the social pathologies that America is suffering and then asks us to look at what may happen  "should the world follow the American model — extreme capitalism, no public investment, cruelty as a way of life, the perversion of everyday virtue".

Suppose we write a story about a tribe who cease to care for one another, who, instead of doing what needs to be done, simply congratulate those who find new ways to exploit the vulnerable? What if the story ends with future generations so enamoured with entertainment and new technology they are unable to have real live conversations.

Imagine feeling convinced in ways we cannot articulate, that there is nothing left worth saving.

The greatest gift is the story that reminds us of joy we have felt and that without the love of life we would not have experienced it.  Poems that witness the joy of another. The pain of realizing how much contempt for humanity has been broadcast in order to create "the market" of today.

The Depth and Breadth of White Supremacy

Because the media keeps reporting on the events, utterances and activities of broken men, I think concerned citizens must jump in to offer a different view.

We are vulnerable to fashions and movements that cause tremendous suffering, such as the Thirties in Europe.

Using Hitler's playbook we know that human nature can be misrepresented and conditioned into robotic bodies to serve a political fantasy such as racial superiority. Using different words I might say the men of Europe were asked to give up their reality, their health, their livelihood, their intelligence, for an imagined glory, which meant death.

Nations of people starved so that money could be invested in global killing machines. The mental health of these "Aryan" people was battered by trauma. We lost limbs and lives, husbands and sons, fathers and mothers, wives and daughters, for the glory of war.

It meant that arguments, doubts, conversations and worry about the future were temporarily wiped out for the beat of the goose step. It meant that people no longer had to solve human problems because they could hollow out their minds and replace them with propaganda. There were only two choices to make - obey the rules and die, or be tortured to death.

Does that look like highest attainment for humanity? Does that feel like a celebration of life?

This either/or scenario didn't begin with Hitler or the Nazi's and the social conditions that were causing men to give up hope and turn to hate, began through other men who had power over the people.  Those who dictated the rules of austerity were not the ones who would go hungry.

You don't have to be a scholar to know that glory is about sacrificing life for power. Life is presented as a burden, and the only true achievement is the ability to control the lives of others.

This is not new and has been said more profoundly by Hannah Arendt, George Orwell, Noam Chomsky, Margaret Atwood, and millions of poets whose work is mostly ignored.

The culture of Europe was destroyed in politics, wealth, life and health while a few got rich. Now this hate has been ignited by North American opportunists to defend capitalism against the human conscience.

What did Hitler achieve for the world? A brutal example of how low humanity could sink and the proof of our capacity for cruelty. But also a warning to us all about what it is we need to fight against. Not the stranger but the shadow in ourselves.

White supremacy is about turning human souls into vacuous puppets in order to destabilize and destroy civil society and ultimately create a smooth path for megalomaniacs to do as they please without criticism or obstruction. Is this what we want?

When Will We Replace Outdated Left and Right Thinking?

David Bollier argues "that the commons paradigm offers a refreshing and practical lens for re-imagining politics, governance and law. The commons, briefly put, is about self-organized social systems for managing shared wealth."

Bollier writes "the commons as a system for mutualizing responsibilities and benefits is highly generative. It can be seen in the successful self-management of forests, farmland, and water, and in open source software communities, open-access scholarly journals, and “cosmo-local” design and manufacturing systems."

What Will Replace Outdated Left and Right Economic Thinking? The Commons Paradigm

It's a long article and much to chew on and takes me back to the question "what can I do?". Protests and letters are essential but I am looking for a concrete way to resist the violence and injustice so prevalent in this age.

Learn How to Write Japanese Poetry

INTRODUCTION TO WRITING JAPANESE POETRY

Learn about two time-honoured forms of Japanese poetry – haiku (the poetry of the senses, probably the most difficult poetry form to write) and tanka (the longest continually written poetry form). This workshop is suitable both for poets (emerging or experienced) and non-poets. This workshop will expand your genre as writers and deepen your understanding as readers.

TIME: April 14th, 2 – 3:30 pm
PLACE: Nanaimo Museum, corner of Commercial Street and Museum Way
FEE: $25
TO REGISTER: C. Beryl crone562003@yahoo.com

FACILITATOR: Naomi Beth Wakan is a personal essayist and poet. She is the Inaugural Poet Laureate of Nanaimo. She has written over fifty books including the prize-winning Haiku – one breath poetry, (Heian International) and, most recently, The Way of Tanka (Shanti Arts). 

Anonymous Sources

Where does "Greatness" come from? The imagination? Facts? Confidence? A willing suspension of disbelief in a slogan that makes us happy? A capacity to judge well? An ability to observe and find solutions that benefit most if not all? Taking responsibility for the community? A masters degree from Oxford or Yale?

Let me offer the opinion that greatness comes from extraordinary effort or talent.  Greatness as it may exist in our anonymous ambitions does not win fame except in isolated circumstances.  That is to say, fame is not a realistic goal for an individual.

Greatness is like a dove in the imagination, an angel, a temporary insight, a fleeting epiphany. Something aspired to in the privacy of our minds.

Greatness was an ambition I held when I was a teen and had no proof that I was good at anything or useful to the world at all. After repeated criticism and dismissal from the community around me where I attempted to win something, anything, like a medal, a competition, or a race, I dissolved into fantasies of fame. Greatness was merely, as I reflect now, a vanity to cling to when I was unable to see how my single life had value in the larger frame of discourse. So I projected the contempt I felt for myself onto others.

This is what appears to be the cause of the white supremacist hate culture and the competitive drive among businesses who strive to gain more profit by doing less.

There are slant accusations of wealthy interests grabbing, stealing, as much as their power will allow without concern or conversation about the quality of their products. The mainstream slogans that appear to inspire wealthy wannabes are focused onto gaining leverage with trickery in a base of contempt for workers and consumers.

Is this what Milton Friedman wanted?  I don't have any quotes to offer here that are worth anything. This could be fake news accept it is not news.  None of it is news.  It is the spiralling down of a system that has no moral compass and of a species who are encouraged to forget who they are.

How can we find ourselves again? How can I enter the world of conversation in order to represent a reverence for life and respect for the environment? What words can I use to offer comfort to the anxious minds wondering where it will all end?

No. 12: Healthy Sexuality

12: healthy sexuality - incest, rape, harassment - are not good for us as a species. 

Sexuality has become a commodity. Portrayed as something you can win if you are a success. Something the individual cannot control. Something the society must govern because individuals are shown as incapable of governing themselves. 

Sexuality is the entrance to adulthood and if children are taught to acknowledge their feelings and to be responsible for the way they find pleasure in their body, then society could be governed by wisdom and cooperation. Children could receive the kind of sex education given to therapists, biologists, counsellors and others, but without the jargon, without the stats.

We could grow into adults who can identify where our power lies in relationship, how vulnerability is not something to be afraid of but a reminder that we all suffer, and we need to learn non-violent communication and how to support cohorts.

A healthy sexuality is respectful of desire - it doesn't watch hours of pornography then harass strangers to alleviate the tension, it doesn't masturbate in public, it doesn't express shame for feelings of desire, it doesn't blame the objects of desire, it doesn't need slang. 

A healthy sexuality is the beginning of a healthy citizen engaged in creating a healthy community.

Incest, rape and harassment are the signifiers of social breakdown, of propaganda, abuse of power, and contempt for all life including our own.  

No. 11: Love

11: love is essential for an infant to survive therefore it must be essential to our health. 

Love is the ultimate resistance against the addiction for things.

Although I have written about a hierarchy of human based resources to replace the hierarchy of position and status, I understand that any thought can become a thing of oppression when written down.

Love makes its own demands and we can be oppressed if we love too much or too little or the wrong thing. Anything good, needful, beautiful or necessary can also be a trap. 

But love pulls us back into the family of things we are born into. This is where we live first.  We belong to another and love underpins the reason. It grounds the intellect with a root, a place that defines us, shows us where to return to.

I have some bad habits, some character faults, sometimes I get in the way, but beneath all that I know I belong here until I die. Here is where love opens for me. That's all. No flashing lights, no fanfare or gushing phrases.

But love requires attention. Wherever a question arises, pay attention to love.

Report from the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives

On wages in Canada "For the 11th year in a row, we kicked off the new year by releasing our annual report on CEO compensation. This year’s report found that, in 2016, Canada’s 100 highest paid CEOs netted 209 times more than an average worker, up from 193 times more in 2015. The minimum wage for a CEO on our list jumped from $3.7 million in 2015 to $5.2 million in 2016, a raise of $1.5 million in a single year. On an hourly basis, that means the minimum wage for the richest CEOs rose $713.88 an hour to $2,489.62 an hour in 2016." https://t.e2ma.net/message/hbqio/59wlib

No. 10 Belonging

10: belonging - no-one can grow into a healthy person if they do not belong anywhere.

The earth has been sold to the highest bidder and we are sold to them as units of energy. That's capitalism. It could also be communism or fascism. globalization, or simply the system. Whatever you call it, it is the exploitation of life for profit.

We can only belong to the degree we serve the system. We are "its" as Martin Buber pointed out. Atomized as George Monbiot points out.

The extent to which we have internalized our worth in terms of job description or position is the extent to which we are oppressed.

Belonging is a life long struggle to find worth in our selves through family and community, and our discomfort with this reveals a deep and lasting homelessness.

Yes we can go shopping as long as we have a job. We can buy a home as long as we have a sufficient salary. We can own a home but it can be taken away because we just purchased the land where our house sits, but someone who can purchase an army can move us off it. Someone who can purchase a government can rewrite the laws to make us refugees.

The only belonging we have is that of the sentient being that dwells here, and the only power we possess is what comes from a love for life.

No. 9 Language

9: language - every living creature has some form of communication, a way to warn of danger and a way to welcome. 

The language we use is the power we own. It is a weapon, a medication, a numbing or a birthing of what is yet to be.

By listening to the language of others we get a sense of their whole life. Where they have been battered and abused. Whether they are seeking revenge or resolution. This sense, however, doesn't make us experts on their truth, but it can guide us.

That is to say, by listening to a person talk about what he hates, who should be punished and by how much, can reveal the way the world was revealed through his or her earliest experience, who held power over him as a young child, and how he or she was treated when they made a mistake.

A person who is racist is saying that they can't cope with reality - that the world should be full of "me's". People of my faith, my colour, my politics. People that feed me a mirror image of my best self or the way I like to see myself.

A person who feels imposed upon with new ideas is someone who needs to feel that the way they see the world is the absolute truth.

The conflicts of today reveal the brokenness of our society but doesn't reveal what we should do about it.

What we can do is see this as a river to cross and how or where to cross it is the problem that I must attempt to solve.

No. 8 Intuition

8: intuition is a neural warning or announcement, a feeling, to alert us to pay attention to something.

Intuition is not fact, not a truth, but it can lead to a truth. Albert Einstein used intuition to guide him in his choice of what he would study.

Great leaders have honoured their intuitive side. The reason it has not been given as much air time may be the "feminization" of intuition. In our patriarchal history, the madness and destruction of war, exploitation, poverty and injustice are portrayed as simply being "the way things are". But intuition might get us to look at these things more closely and question why or how things are the way they are.

Feelings of being right and therefore anyone who has a different view is an idiot, is a lazy response to the intuitive feeling that you have worth beyond and above what you own. You might be right but what is it you are right about? What is it you actually know? What did you think you knew but were wrong about?

The gap between intuition and fact requires us to do the investigating. The investigation is the involvement of your mind and body in the revelation of the universe.

No. 7 Creativity

7: creativity - finding new ways of growing and preserving what we need.  

The act of problem solving, thinking of new ideas, conveying them and listening to others is what keeps me from falling into despair.

Despair is what I feel when the future is pre-ordained and there is nothing I can do that will affect or change it. Despair is the apathy of watching a TV program where the premise and the characters are the same as most other programs on TV. Despair is reading or listening to the news - a list of devastating crises, knowing that tomorrow there will a whole new list. Despair is being a consumer of things that don't require anything from me.

I know that this despair is very far from being a Syrian refugee or having a diagnosis of cancer, but despair is an emotional rot, and it is not naive to do or be what can alleviate these troubles. It is to participate in life, to seek new ideas, to value oneself enough to attempt a human response to the dehumanizing inventories of the system.

Just because the answer is not available right now doesn't mean it never will be.

No. 6: Storying

6: storying - conveying culture through stories.   

Jack and the Beanstalk, Little Red Riding Hood, Cinderella, Adam and Eve, The Christmas Story, Brave New World, The Handmaids Tale.

These are powerful narratives, rich in metaphor and tragedy. 

But here is a new story waiting to be told.  It is your life. 

Once upon a time there was you. There is still you.  What has saved your life? What nearly destroyed you? What do you do to keep from falling into despair? What gives your life meaning? What concerns you right now, in this minute? Is it something that will be an issue in a hundred years?