The Home Front - George Monbiot

"What we need, in all cases, is effective politics. We might decide, as a nation, that holiday lets are important enough to make other people homeless, or to trigger demand for new housing elsewhere. We do, after all, need holidays, and coastal and scenic communities want income from tourists. But good policy doesn’t happen by itself. As we proposed in the Land for the Many report, local authorities should be able to decide how many of the homes in a village or town should be permanent residences, and how many should be holiday lets. Any second home, existing or envisaged, would need planning permission for change of use." https://www.monbiot.com/2021/06/28/the-home-front/

It could have been easy. House the homeless. Take care of the needy. Just like a mother. But that's what you were afraid of. Being an ordinary feeling human.

The last forty years have been a flight from the vulnerability of being human. That's what power wants to be rid of.  That's what Hitler wanted -  to ascend from his organic body. To build the super race that has no weakness. That's what Stalin hoped to achieve. Big square blocks of building to house the rifraf. Henry the Eighth wanted to kill off the womb of his children like a magical singular sperm.

Now America wants to blow up everything it can't profit from. Now profit is safe, hidden in secret locked up vaults. This is how men are to be immortalized. So, if you are human don't think this America or Britain will save you.

Power is a drug and it's got us in its prison.

Notes from the Canadian Council of Policy Alternatives: Marc Lee, Senior Economist

Distractions

“Net zero” may sound like a good target to address the climate emergency, but I fear it’s becoming a dangerous distraction from the real work we should be focused on—actual emissions reductions.

My new report Dangerous Distractions: Canada’s carbon emissions and the pathway to net zero delves into the mechanics behind net zero and how industry and governments are playing a numbers game to talk big on climate but too often carry on with business as usual. This approach cannot be embraced if we’re actually going to reduce our emissions.

Perhaps the biggest eye opener in the research is the creative accounting Canada is practicing with our forests. While we know trees are a carbon sink, the wildfires that have been increasingly more severe because of climate change have made our forests a net emitter of greenhouse gases. Well-managed, thriving forests are certainly an important part of a healthy planet, but planting trees alone will not solve the climate crisis. My colleague Ben has recently written about that issue in greater detail.

Canadians deserve more than talking points; what we need is a plan of action from every level of government to wind down fossil fuel production and provide a just transition for the affected workers and communities. My hope is that this new research will help broaden the understanding of what it will take to get there.

Marc Lee is a senior economist at the CCPA-BC Office.

The Cost of Win-At-All-Cost means the planet and our grand-children pay

 

The strongman choices of our age simply means that the debt is paid in the future. Paid by those who do not have a voice or a seat at the table. Writing this down means I am going into time-debt. Not writing it down means I am letting my own mental health down. 

The cost of everything and the value of nothing is the tension within all my decisions. Including the invisible embryos not yet born.

The value of everything is built into my thinking too much. But that's okay because I only have so much time left to think, worry, write and read. So I've come to the conclusion that comparing my efforts with established power is worth a lot even if it never shows up on a chart somewhere.

It's very easy to believe that I must make a statement, force an issue, choose between the most effective or the least harmful.

Even though philosophers with much more education and clout are wrestling with big decisions, this doesn't give me the option to not engage.

I draw the line at force. When an action is forced it loses its moral credibility. There are times when force is necessary but I feel that ideas are worth sharing without force.

For example, if I believe that green is the best colour, I can wear it, but if I insist that green can only be the best colour therefore everyone should wear it, I am using my personal power to control others and the issue is no longer about colour but how to enforce it.

My habit is to preach but then my words lose their own power, Also my tone becomes threatening. Sadly, so many good ideas have been lost behind guns, bombs, rhetoric, domination and victimization -that our efforts lose the value of the original idea.

There are times when preaching is necessary, such as climate change, poverty, racism, sexism and crime. 

There is a time to be humble too.  Among billions of people living on this planet my attempts to make the world a better place is never going to be a fireworks display.

Winning awards is not the point. The ego must be vigilant especially when the leader is engaged.

Freedom, capitalism, socialism and all the other ideals, our species has focused on requires the discipline of not allowing the ego to eat up the good will of the masses. This is a constant tension for me -  knowing when my work and efforts are no longer helping the ideals of the group.

Republicans Willing to Destroy Democracy

 

"German industry and finance at first thought they could use the Nazis as their instrument in beating down labor and the left while remaining in charge. They learned otherwise. The current split between the more traditional corporate leadership and the Trump-led party is suggestive of something similar, but only remotely. We are far from the conditions that led to Mussolini, Hitler, and their cohorts." Noam Chomsky, Republicans Are Willing to Destroy Democracy to Retake Power, truthout. 

On Possible and Sustainable Futures: Fred Guerin

"I’m neither pessimistic nor fatalistic by nature. That we should endeavor to soberly assess the way we have raised the planets temperature, destroyed thriving ecosystems for profit and compromised the biosphere with toxic chemicals; that we should critically evaluate whether our present political and economic systems are really capable of delivering us from the scourge of capitalist greed; that we should continue to resist fossil fuel, surveillance, war, and chemical corporations that put profit over people and the health of the planet—all of these latter efforts are both necessary and morally obligatory.

... The present neoliberal corporate capitalist world is certainly destructive, but it is by no means inevitable or invincible. Yes, it is a profound constraint on the possibility of a different future—but not one that we could not collectively overcome. A destructive economic system is only a constraint when we continue to buy into it—which far too many of us have because we believe there are no other options or we think we somehow benefit from it in a personal way." Fred Guerin June 11, 2021. On Facebook.

I often keep asking myself as a mother, partner, friend and poet - how can I best support this planet knowing I am not a social scientist or politician. Reading about how things work often ties me up in knots but I do live here and feel a responsibility to help the world and its inhabitants. I can't imagine not caring and not thinking about it.

Living with integrity, without cruelty and selfishness has enabled me to avoid very painful relationships. I love people who are curious, kind and compassionate. I know I am lucky to live in a nation that has maintained a diversity of viewpoints, an education system and a health system, even though it's not perfect.

My teachers are mostly those who have struggled because of marginalization and prejudice. I have loved their courage and their intelligence.

Thank you to all those who care and who can articulate that care.

God Is Not Gendered

I don't dare proclaim what God is, but I have a strong feeling for what  God is not.

Common assumptions of God being male, Christian and white seem like shallow affirmations for hegemonic social systems such as the divine right of kings. Certainly we humans have had no trouble creating deities that support, guide and root for our side.  However this is not only not enough - it is immature and deadly.

God is not a misogynist, a racist, a capitalist and a homophobe. God does not want us to be fashionably skinny and rich. God does not want us to tear children away from their parents, imprison them in residential schools then beat and rape them in order to teach them "about His love". God does not support nuclear weapons. God is not cruel, wanting us to flagellate ourselves for having desire. And God does not want us to go to war to kill all those whose faith is different from ours.

Just because history reveals a series of beliefs that contradict themselves for the sake of maintaining the status quo, doesn't prove that God is a scam created for propaganda and control.  Humanity is very capable of doing that without God's help.

So what is God then if not that white bearded father sitting on a throne in heaven?

If I attempt to name anything like energy, mystery, or love, or the big bang,  I am struck down with my own limited understanding. Even to say that God does or does not exist is far beyond what I can ever know.

A United Church minister said, that for her, the presence of God is felt in those moments of inner peace when everything in the world feels right. Having had those moments occasionally, I am filled with tremendous gratitude and for a brief moment I feel everything connects and fits together. It is not a thought, it is more than intuition, more than spirit, more than light. And it certainly isn't he or she or Christian or Muslim or Humanist. It isn't limited by my personal knowledge or volcanic lava. It isn't the sum of all my experiences.

I am grateful for deeply meaningful relationships and experiences and not interested in arguments about whether God exists or not. What I am interested in is being part of a communication thread that elevates the mystery of life, to see in every being that they are deeper than what appears.

And needless to say, I am not satisfied with my attempt to say what God may be.

Urgent: A Planet Looks for Compassion

 

The celebration of power for the sake of power - breaks apart what we know about humanity. The White Supremacy Movement which threatens to destroy human society is simply and yet gravely, a celebration of self satisfaction for those who have been unable to find any worth in themselves or their lives.

A long time ago I read Martin Buber's "I and Thou" in which he said something like - those who cannot find any meaning in their lives have chosen hate as a way out.  

Unable to turn the political system into one of justice, compassion or fairness. They chose to focus on who was to blame among the different interests who were supported by the current class system.

Who are the privileged and what are the exercises and habits that return the focus on who or what is the final cause? Whatever that might be, we (being humans as a group) choose "the other" to blame, to vent all our fears and frustrations onto the margin and marginalized.

We blame those who have the least power in a society. In a frenzy of accusations, arguments and killing, we vent until we are exhausted.

Institutions are built to destroy them - the children of Indigenous people because we think they should be like us, the murderers of children, and we call it education.

We educate the marginalized because we are unable to educate ourselves.

The social system creates trumped up charges to enable rulers to kill others.

We  take power away from people so that we can build narratives of race, gender, class, religion and a carefully proscribed economy full of confusing terms and rules.

Since the end of WWII a new class system has very successfully obfuscated social order by the economy. This economy has no human voice. It has a spread sheet or something, called the Gross Domestic Product. The highest numbers on a stock exchange that can be published by interests who need this.

Now justice, law, politics and religion - our human creations to monitor the well-being of our world, can simply ignore the health and well-being in our provinces and count the money.

This has produced new enemies. Socialism, compassion, open conversation, nutrition, education and leadership.

When we are led to believe we are isolated units competing for the most of what each of us wants. We  are told we don't need civil society while giving the responsibility to care, to those who have no political power, while those who are given power can behave like toddlers of an aristocracy we currently call "influencers".

Every five years the world becomes more violent, shallow and morally corrupt. Because the marginalized and their unmarked graves speak volumes to the human heart and mind. But we must do the work of re-installing humanity into our consciousness, after centuries of progressive propaganda and indoctrination which worships power for the sake of power.

It's no accident that what we call strongmen are the products of a social disorder - raised and educated to feel contempt for their own humanity. Grief, sadness, regret are channelled into the dark hole of shame.

So we the people must find a way to comfort the bullied and the battered to the extent we can speak of what we really feel. We are more than job descriptions, executives and customers. We have the power to listen to another's pain, to affirm their right to be who they are, who they were born to be, someone deeper than their skin or gender, more fragile than a truck or bank account.

Henry Giroux on Counterpunch

"The toxic thrust of white supremacy runs through American culture like an electric current. Jim Crow is back without apology suffocating American society in a wave of voter suppression laws, the elevation of racist discourse to the centers of power, and the ongoing attempt by right-wing politicians to implement a form of apartheid pedagogy that makes important social issues that challenge the racial and economic status quo disappear. The cult of manufactured ignorance now works through disimagination machines engaged in a politics of falsehoods and erasure. Matters of justice, ethics, equality, and historical memory now vanish from the classrooms of public and higher education and from powerful cultural apparatuses and social media platforms that have become the new teaching machines." Henry Giroux, Counterpunch.org

The Future of Humanity

 

Hello!

I am the future of humanity

which we throw under the bus

because we found humans

too emotional

attached to sentimental ideas

like family and good health.

Humans have failed to grasp

the expedience of politics

and power and so

we have created a new species

called homo wriggle 

and replaced the spine

with flexible mucous

to slither in and out of

developing principles

extracting profit

for the greater good of banks.

What Can I Say?

 

where are the words

to trash this system

that keeps killers in power 

and children in fear?

the products of women’s bodies

have been manipulated to death

for being born of women

killers have many weapons

shame, hatred of soft skin,

contempt, hierarchy,

this ongoing glory of the mundane

and ridicule of nature’s beauty

how else besides guns and bombs

can we celebrate the work of man 

without woman

if we celebrate all earth’s gifts

we can’t help but feel the power

of the feminine and masculine

as blessings

don’t despair

think hard into your sleepless nights

what is it you don’t know?

where are the words to heal this madness

we cannot escape?

the answer is in the pecking order

those with the highest status

the most wealth the biggest stuff

are not creatures of this earth

they are the oiled  plastic puppets

upholding the ceremony of vanity 

and they live beyond this earth 

with no other home

it is their religion we are told

to lay down our own lives for.