De-Escalate Hate: (De-escalation Techniques Krystal Pope, JD/PhD)

Hate is a symptom of alienation. When anger becomes solidified and turns to blame, scapegoating, alienation puts our society at risk. We don't know what to do, how to fix it. There is more education and training for how to deal with this and there are suggestions of how to recognize when anger has moved beyond opinion and now looks for release.

Take notes of emotional signs of danger: crying, yelling, arguing, inappropriate laughter, fear, and confusion. 

Behavioral signs of anxiety: Rocking/Swaying, Shaking extremities, Tenseness in the body, Clenched fists, Pacing Skitish Behaviors, Rapid Breaths, Pressured Speech, Loud or Quiet, Poor Eye Contact.

Cognitive Decline: Good judgement falls away. Overgeneralizing "never" "always" "everyone". Black and white thinking, blaming.

Black and white thinking, blaming, obsessions, preoccupation, refusing to listen. What can we do? Listen without agreeing or disagreeing. Let them know you are interested and you are hearing what they say but you are not judging whether they are right or not. Bring up neutral things like music, nature, art, family if it is supportive or friends if there is no family engagement. 

Environment: maintain space, 2 arm lengths, 45 degree angle, do not block exits, ask if there is anything they need like water or food, also do they need to be alone, to sit down?

Letters to the editor that point out what we have to be grateful for, about kindness and gratitude. Mentioning the goodness but avoiding anything that sounds like an argument unless you word it gently "actually I have noticed people who ask if I am okay even though I haven't spoken to them first".

Friends are a good source of human kindness. Be gentle and kind to the people you know.

http://paetc.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/De-escalation-PACE.pdf

Conspiracy To Care About The Well Being of Others

 Conspiracy

a poem to smooth you into

sympathy with another being

a way to identify with your tribe

with affection more than DNA

you have been great for

3 hundred thousand years

carrying that big brain

wherever you went

tools, language, storytelling

appeared later 

social interaction to gain a common end

cooperation, then a great moral crash

after isolated units competed

for the most of what they wanted

establishing a class system to exploit

whoever was lower on the pecking order

invention of types, races, genders

brave new worlds of organized

relationships and religions

revolutions of industry

knowledge, schools, churches

—so this booklet is a conspiracy

of support for those who care

for our health—a common objective

the greater good. 

The booklet is now available for a donation to People For a Healthy Community or your local clinic.

Pay Attention to Words, Emotion and Habits

We often talk as though we live in a classist world, as if this is a natural outcome of how the world works. As if the pecking order is good enough, as if conflict is war and there is only one right way to do things.

If there is one thing we cannot live without (besides food), it's love and when we use that word we are accused of making the being intellectually lazy. We've got names for stars and planets in the universe and germs and DNA but love is either dismissed or unprovable, so when a parent punishes a child while the tears are flowing from her clouded eyes, he explains this is because I love you.

Or a jealous husband beats his wife to death, it's because he loved her. Or a ruler sacrifices some of his chattels, it's because he loves them. Or a chancellor rounds up millions of citizens who have been labelled as other, its because he loves his country and puts all his future into murdering those he doesn't like.

Great arguments and speeches are recorded from the mouths of powerful leaders, because they are loved by those they rule.

Love has been used to gloss over the unexplainable. The word used to control the masses, or to excuse punishment, to sell questionable things like chocolate made of beans picked by child slaves in Africa, or to mine gems for engagements rings, to grow, pick and ship flowers to say I love you Mom and sorry that I didn't clean my bedroom or help you with the dishes when you wept with exhaustion.

I convinced myself that I had to become a famous movie star to pay back my mother for suffering because I was born. To do that, without any encouragement from family or teachers, without anyone saying I had talent, I decided I had to win every argument, be right 100% of the time and be dedicated to  my appearance. 

Narcissists are not alone. They struggle, fight and worry, to be better than everyone else. Then wonder why they have no friends. Wonder why all our fairy tales have a princess that everyone adores but not her. She has failed.

But what has she failed? What if she becomes a movie star who is adored on screen but her manager rapes and abuses her. Is she a success for becoming so fabulous to look at, sing and perform, or is she a failure because she was abused.

Who do we love so much, so faithfully that we protect them from the cuts and bruises of the world?

Violence and power is loved more than all the living things on our planet homes. Capitalism in an age of corporate hegemony emotionally tortures its CEO's so they believe the only thing that matters is the money (power) they possess.

Where is love in this manufactured world? Where is love when victims are blamed? Where is love in a boardroom of men who were bullied as children to the extent they dissociate from their emotions and silently become zombies for the ruling cause. Where is love when every relationship is a contest to win and the prize never guarantees happiness or even contentment?

Where is the money that is grateful for the destruction of the entire planet to show how obedient and faithful its servants are to the brutal dictator, whose fame is based on how much death and destruction it survived?

Where is the media that writes about all this when it tells us we need them more than they need us.

Where is the will to bring the conversation back to life? Where are the feelings of those who struggle to survive, those who wish to protect the vulnerable. Why does 'the economy' not have a column to represent that thing which the wise use to protect a culture of celebration, faith, friendship and love.

Madonna - Ghosttown (Official Audio)

The Power of Addiction and The Addiction of Power: Gabor Maté at TEDxRio+20

Chomsky: Intellectuals Can't Keep Serving the Status Quo

 ... the number of critical/oppositional public intellectuals — in other words, thinkers who are versed to speak on a wide range of issues from an anti-establishment standpoint — has been in decline in recent decades, even as the public sphere has grown bigger and louder due to the dramatic expansion of the internet and social media. One factor in this trend may be universities’ overwhelming emphasis on narrow, specialized and even arcane knowledge, and a resistance within academic culture to prioritizing making an impact on the public arena by addressing issues that affect directly people’s lives and challenge the status quo. Another factor may be the rising tide of anti-intellectualism in the U.S. and beyond. 

https://truthout.org/articles/chomsky-its-life-and-death-intellectuals-cant-keep-serving-the-status-quo/? 

The only thing that sustains life is conscience

 

"Donziger, a graduate of Harvard Law School, has been fighting against polluting American oil companies for nearly three decades on behalf of indigenous communities and peasant farmers in Ecuador. His only “crime” was winning a $9.5 billion judgment in 2011 against Chevron for thousands of plaintiffs. The oil giant had bought Texaco oil company holdings in Ecuador, inheriting a lawsuit alleging it deliberately discharged 16 billion gallons of toxic waste from its oil sites into rivers, groundwater, and farmland. Since the verdict, Chevron has come after him, weaponizing litigation to destroy him economically, professionally, and personally. " https://scheerpost.com/2021/10/06/the-anonymous-executioners-of-the-corporate-state/

So you see my dear friends who live and breathe on this planet, who find love, bring children into this world and watch as anonymous players draw all the air to their own benefits and who have taught their children to deny their conscience for the sake of a manufactured entitlement ~ those who rule this world for their brief personal benefit do not have a conscience and cannot understand how they are destroying the future for all because they are invested in inventing other ways of capitalizing on their personal profit.

When we are gone and the ants take over we shall be reminded that once upon a time, we had potential and we let it go. That potential was the pounding heart, sleepless nights and tears we call love.