Moral Emotions in Prelinguistic Infants

"In various experiments, prelinguistic infants show a rudimentary sense of fairness, justice, empathy, compassion, and generosity, along with a clear ability to distinguish between kind and cruel actions. Morality is intrinsic to the human condition." Embracing Interconnectedness - Patterns of Meaning. Jeremy Lent.

Aware of a bias in myself that favoured kindness and moral responsibility, I find Neoliberalism a failure in the way it has established a pseudo-ethical regime which encouraged isolation, selfishness and cruelty over our species tendency to be compassionate in a basic sense of fairness.

This allows the individual to believe all is well as long as he is on top.

To do this a conscience must continually congratulate the ego for these 'achievements'.  

To say we are destroying our future is too neat and tidy a claim.

What is actually happening is the group attacks the individual  who is, for whatever reason (different religion, different colour skin, different fashion, language or abilities) is placed on the bottom rung in the estimation of the most articulate and cunning bully in the pack.

It assures that vulnerable people lose hope of belonging, it traumatizes those who are already traumatized, and makes others in the group feel insecure and unsafe.

It ultimately destroys civilization as we know from the rise of Nazi power.

It announces that the value of everything depends on where it lies in the pecking order, and so you have young teens ridiculing victims of rape and ultimately creates a society entertained and in awe of brutality.

We have known this from the Roman Gladiator sports, from the contempt shown to missing and murdered indigenous women after the cruelty of residential schools.

Everything and anything that is supportive and of true value like the arts, creative talent and problem solving is trashed. Children soon learn that they have no intrinsic worth, and the only survivors are psychopaths and sociopaths, applauded for all that they can destroy.

War celebrates killing, cruelty and death as though power is fed by the number of lives crushed. Refugees lose everything and in such a system we are all refugees because life means nothing. People, plants, animals, land, air and water is stolen, exploited and poisoned.

The duality of this is authoritarianism. Individuals will choose fundamentalist, fascist, systems in the belief that they will be safe. But these systems fall into the same despair they are attempting to run from.

As individuals we are genders, races, and classes — fighting to maintain our space, our 'nation'. But cunning psychopaths know how to manipulate us into giving up what little we own for the sake of a false sense of security.

The current conflict in Canada on pipelines, first nations territories, energy and jobs is one of those manufactured conflicts where ultimately all will be destroyed — either by poverty, violence and trauma — while the owners of the oil industry who live thousands of miles away will be the only ones to profit.

That Lovely Old Biddy From Gabriola: On The Arts

There is a great deal of talk about resources and how important they are for our economy. However I believe there is an even greater resource which can’t be shown in financial tables.

This is the essayist and poet, Naomi Beth Wakan — that lovely old biddy from Gabriola who, with her many years of writing and thinking, reveals a world that has not gone mad, because lovely old biddies are still giving us their views.

The most available worthy resources are people who are intelligent, articulate and compassionate. I know, as they do, we need gas to get to the market to buy food, but we also need water and fresh air. After we have the essentials we need elders who have experienced life.

This is where the old biddies come in.  Even though wise old women have been burnt at the stakes as witches, or shamed for expressing opinions — they are a threat to fascist systems when they value life for life’s sake.

Wakan has written many books in her lifetime and now has a second edition to her collection of essays On The Arts.  It is a full study of arts in our history and today.  The quotes are many from artists of the modern and post-modern era.  

Carl Jung is quoted as saying “It is not Goethe who created Faust, it is Faust that created Goethe."

If you don’t know who Goethe, Faust or Jung are, don’t be put off. As much as Wakan has studied art — she is not an academic elitist. Naomi writes for you and I not the bloviating experts.  Sure there is reference to great minds and teachers, but it is written for all of us who struggle with finding meaning in the marketplace and city.

This book questions the purpose of art not the financial wizardry of auctioneers and world class museums. ART IS FOR US! 

Art is for our mental health, our social systems, political crises and most importantly — our survival. We need creative insight to tackle the problems our planet is facing.

To explain — I go to the chapter on The Art of Personal Essay Writing.  

Wakan writes “I long for the sharp political and personal insights of Nora Ephron and Phillip Lopate’s elegant essays on anything that takes his fancy.” Then follows this with good advice on what makes an essay elegant or just readable.

A fine personal essay is absorbing because it “teaches so much about humankind”. The best personal essays “weave the eternal into everyday moments.”

Personal experiences, feelings, reflections that are simply sharing for no other reason than to meet you and other humans wherever you may sit.

Art includes, of course, music, opera, painting, theatre and even politics, if our system had the imagination to see how it is lacking when the emphasis is solely on the economy and jobs. Many politicians seem to be scared of acknowledging the importance of life on this planet and how we must take care of it.

Naomi doesn’t dwell on the crises we are facing. She writes with humility and reverence within the world, and allows the reader to inform herself on why and how, every day, according to UNHCR, 28,000 refugees flee the countries of their birth to escape persecution.

Hmmm. Between the lack of love for human experience and the emphasis on gadgets and winning or losing, is it possible that the arts are more than just entertainment?

Are lovely old biddies exactly what this planet needs right now?

ON THE ARTS

Essays by Naomi Beth Wakan

(Shanti Arts publishing 2020)

$25.00 cad
mail@pagesresort.com

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Honouring the Gifts of Curiosity

Young members of our Religious Education Program at First Unitarian Congregation of Nanaimo informed the congregation of the refugee crisis using statistics from the UNHCR. This was read to us at the end of the service.

Here are their questions and answers:

• How many people around the world are forced to leave their homes each day because of conflict and persecution? 28,300.
• What countries do most refugees in the world come from? Syria, Afghanistan, South Sudan and Somalia.
• How many refugees and migrants have died or gone missing while trying the cross the Mediterranean Sea? More than 8,000.
• How many people in the world are living away from home because of war, persecution and conflict? Over 70 million and half are children.
• What country had the largest number of resettled refugees last year and had the second highest rate of refugees who gained citizenship? Canada.
• How many refugees did Canada take in 2018? Canada took in 28,100 of the 92,400 refugees who were resettled in 25 countries during 2018.
• How many refugees became Canadian citizens in 2018? Over 18,000.
• How many people applied to come to Canada as an asylum seeker in 2018? Canada placed 9th in the world for asylum seekers with 55,400 claims filed in 2018.
• In 2016 in Canada, how many refugees and asylum seekers were homeless? 2,000 refugees sleeping in shelter, not counting those facilities designated specifically for refugees - double from two years earlier. 14% of people who identified as homeless in 2018 were newcomers to Canada.

Thank you to the young people in that program and to Sybil the program director.

Here is a link to Global News report  which was also used for information.

The Wisdom That Cannot be Found on the Stock Market

"Personally, I think the blockades at the border, the ports, etc., are not really what the FN people care about. I think it all goes back to "17 years with a boil water advisory", no respect for their land and the fact that it is unceded, not enough help/police so women are still becoming 'another one' of the Missing and Murdered Women, ........ and on and on and on. I'm sure, I'm positive, there is an answer--I think we and the politicians all know in hearts what that answer is--we just need to act upon it now with our hearts, our ears, and our minds open to their voices."

Pat Coy Bullock.

Are you a human or a consumer?

1. Are you connected to a community?            
2. Do you belong somewhere? 
3. Do you have sympathy, empathy or compassion?  
4. Do you care what others think of you? 
5. Do you value people because of their character?  
6. Do you value people because of their position and wealth? 
7. Do you love art, music, sports, stories?  
8. Do you keep on top of the news or listen to the news? 
9. Are you only interested in computer games?  
10. Are you only interested in competing with other people?
11. Do you sometimes reflect on your choices? 
12. Do you ever apologize?  
13. Are you ever wrong? 
14. Are you always right? 
15. Have you ever felt sad or cried?
16. Do you feel you've won when you get the last word or make someone cry?

These are some questions I ask myself as a member of the human family.  They are part of my responsibility as a human being. There are many others I have not listed here because of space and time.

As I listed these questions I was struck by how simple and shallow they are. These are the basic questions. The answer yes, no, sometimes, rarely or never should be considered too. 

The days bring more complex questions like where should I get my car insurance or did I remember to include my pj's in the laundry tub or who should I vote for?

But the basic questions I hope never to forget, never to be so wrapped up in excitement or fear—that after centuries of development and struggle I forget my own humanity.

Blackmail from Dirty Politics.

"What should the Prime Minister do? The choice is easy. If Teck Frontier is approved, the extortion tactics will be used again and again with every new oil and gas project. You don’t “pay” blackmailers. Reject Teck Frontier." National Observer. Jason Kenney Blackmailing Canada Won't Solve Climate Crisis.

The main drive of dirty politics is to demean a portion of the populace and hold up the opposite. Praise the loyalty of unquestioning, silent groups. Whether it's keeping children in cages or caning them when they fail to choose the right answer.

The conditioning of white men demands a silent muscularity, a competing for top dog, an anti-intellectual hardness, and indifference to the suffering of those who don't win. The winner takes all and the loser is tortured to death.

This sounds extreme but the goal of those who seek power use extremes to stay in power. It doesn't matter whether the system is capitalist, communist, authoritarian or democratic -- it is how information is conveyed that reveals what you are voting for.

Fascism now threatens the whole world and those who are operating it do not care about you or any living creature other than themselves.

George Monbiot has a thorough understanding in the roots of Fascism. “These guys are going to die in the streets like cockroaches – and that’s how it should be.” Bolsonaro is quoted fomenting hate towards the indigenous people trying to protect the forest.

Fascism puts people at the bottom of the pecking order. People who have nothing to gain but who support it are weary and overwhelmed at all the opinions and arguments dominating the waves in sound and sight.

Structural Violence: Shut Down Social Imagination

I was listening to the radio back in October and heard about plantation slavery. The owners learned how to dehumanize their workers into producing more.  It is a story of how humans become evil by focusing on how to get more by violence.  Or how those who have power over others become violent.

So the managers are instructed to beat up the workers if they produce less than they did before or less than the organizers felt they should produce. Of course the managers would lose their jobs if they didn't do as they were told or worse they would be beaten too.

I thought about how people are treated at big corporate outlets, sweatshops, prisons, mental institutions, school bullies, animals in factory farms, indigenous children in residential schools, children abducted into armies. 

Is there a common theme to this maltreatment?

Yes — it is humans of any and all races as long as they have power over others.

To be accepting of this is not in our best interests and yet we can't change the behaviour of others if we don't have power over them. 

So, dear reader (if you are still reading this) I want you to know that you are right to be angry, afraid, bitter and concerned.

You can use whatever tools you have available to resist this system by treating others with respect, by listening and caring, by protecting the vulnerable, and voting for the politicians, leaders, candidates and systems that promote peace and justice. You can change the world for a fraction of a second wherever you stand in your humanity and defend the dignity of another.

Every act that diminishes another soul, diminishes your own. Every trend, every business, every custom that diminishes another, diminishes you.

Think of the colonial rulers who lose their power over the nations they have colonized. The more violence they rely on, the more violence will meet them when they lose that power. Think of the battered child when he becomes bigger than the abusive parent — they run away and neglect them or beat them up as they become needy.

But you know all this don't you? This is old stuff. We've known this for hundreds of years. From Moses to Atwood we have talked the talk, watched the movies, read the books. 

Centralized power is power taken from the millions of sentient beings we share this planet with, until we cannot imagine a way through.

(reposted from October 2019)