Everything Is For Sale?

A Nuremberg catechism maintained that even unborn babies had ‘evil lusts and appetites’. Slothfulness was frowned upon; lazy kids were immoral. These views bled into industrialisation, fuelled by child labour. In 1790, one London industrialist proposed using children in his textile factories to ‘prevent the habitual idleness and degeneracy’ destroying the community.

https://aeon.co/essays/why-arent-children-protected-from-their-parents-monetising-them?utm

Snodgrobery is that effort made by the privileged to dismiss the other parts of society that suffer from human vanity. You can feel it reading comments in social media and mainstream papers. The highest priests in our capitalist religion consistently watch for how the rest of us are trying to explain their points of view, attempting to grab some dignity for those of us who are not on the payroll of publicized "influencers" and who are routinely battered just struggling to get through the month paying their bills with a roof over their heads.

Generalizations are normally not aspired to by the compassionate grannies and grandads. Doctors and nurses are too busy to stand on public soapboxes. Teachers and professors must be careful washing the world with theories. 

Captured

 What happens if we are led to believe 

by the authority of history and popular ideas, 

that our only duty 

is to rise to the top 

of wherever we are,

and  all other considerations 

are merely sentiments?

Janet Vickers.

The Future That is Yet To Be

 

Which would you prefer...

1. Complete devastation with all species except for one aristocratic class. 

2. No nations or religions, just rocks and a little water.

3. Authoritarian rule. 

4. Or a blistered paradise where all our efforts spent taking care of the remaining species. Humanity no longer ruling the world. Violence of any kind forbidden. 

5. No kings or queens. 

6. Knowledge keepers such as those in original small societies. 

7. Survival will take an enormous amount of energy to maintain. Humans will become humble. Competition seen as destructive to the whole group, everyone charged with the responsibility of leadership. There is no gratuitous high position. It's work, responsibility. 

8. Power is recognized for what it is - the ability to care for the world using skills, disciplines and dedication. 

Rethinking Education by Henri Giroux

"Neoliberal capitalism is a death-driven machinery that infantilizes, exploits, and devalues human life and the planet itself."

 https://www.counterpunch.org/2023/03/27/rethinking-education-as-the-practice-of-freedom/

All Human Activity is Prompted By Desire - Bertrand Russel, The Marginalia

 "All human activity is prompted by desire. There is a wholly fallacious theory advanced by some earnest moralists to the effect that it is possible to resist desire in the interests of duty and moral principle. I say this is fallacious, not because no man ever acts from a sense of duty, but because duty has no hold on him unless he desires to be dutiful. If you wish to know what men will do, you must know not only, or principally, their material circumstances, but rather the whole system of their desires with their relative strengths."

https://www.themarginalian.org/2015/09/21/bertrand-russell-nobel-prize-acceptance-speech/?

Our Health versus Our Freedom: your thoughts please

published by Ekstasis Edition,
cover image created by Gabriola  artist Paul Grignon

Our health is our freedom to live to the highest calling we wish to meet. Infinite Power for all of us is probably a stretch but I feel I must begin by explaining what that is.

What it is not, is the freedom for the arms industry to make a profit by investing in war for the sake of profit.  It is not colonial power that arrives in other countries claiming they have discovered a new uninhabited land then organizes a cruel and sadistic way to remove the people who have been here for many centuries. 

As a writer of very little fame, my words, poems and books do not make me an influencer by any measure. However there are things I can do. Like talk, read and write.  I have this blog to air my thoughts as well as others who agree to having their work printed here.  

If you would like to engage in this conversation please email janetvickers@gmail.com. I know there are many blogs and publications now, but I am interested in seeing our concerns, thoughts and actions aired. 

I don't want a list of all that is wrong. I have done that in many posts. I also understand that media has money behind it which I doubt would be interested in publishing thoughts from unknown writers on Health and Freedom.

Since I only have this life to live I choose to do what I can with it.

The poems in this book is not what I want to sell. I want to sell you on your imagination and wisdom of how we can collectively move towards a preferred future using your best ideas.

Positive thinking can create new positive ideas. For example look at the number of people who write about creative worlds, who attend schools that teach medicine, political science, art and music. We invest in these and yet 500 years ago it was not on our radar that education would help us build a better society. Positive thinking doesn't create better societies, humans by their work and thoughts understand that our future depends on just societies. 

The Hunger Gap: George Monbiot

https://www.monbiot.com/2023/03/09/the-hunger-gap/

I try to understand the science behind predicting the future and its threats to us. Apart from understanding now that politicians are not leaders. They do or say what they think is right according to how they can stay in power.

The systems in our current society try to survive and that is where we collide. However I am trying to understand articles about climate change because I believe it is changing, but as one philosopher said "believing" is a lazy way. We must study, learn and know. So I attempt to understand science without ever studying how science works. So rather than report what is in Monbiots article I post the link to it.

The Right Pronoun

Are you "He", "She", "They", "We", "Us" or "Them", "Innocent" or "Guilty", "Good" or "Bad"? It matters to some because we hear so many accusations as if it's all that matters. Is the "Media" God? When I judge others am I doing it as "God's" messenger? When was society a hierarchy? When did the family become the tribe of King or Queen? Or representatives of Church, Temple or Synagogue?

Should I even be writing this?

Personally I believe that if someone feels or knows they are male or female that's enough for me. I don't work in health care or education so I don't need to know.

I do need to be respectful to LGBTQ people because it is part of a functioning community. Also realizing that I don't need to make judgements on other people's lives if they are not hurting anyone is emancipating. I trust that most people are able to run their own lives. 

I remember some years ago waiting for someone in our car, a car opposite parked in front of a doctors office. A woman got out and a child I couldn't see started crying. I saw the man in the driver's seat turn around and hit him until the child screamed.  I knew I should do something but sat in my car. He kept hitting the child and the child screamed louder.

What made me freeze, not do anything? Did I think if I went over to the driver he would beat the child even more? Was it that I believed it was not done to interfere with a family I don't know? The child was quite small and the man was big. The child started crying as soon as the mother got out of the car.

Now I believe I would intervene even if it was just to say hello to the driver. Then think what else I could say after that, such as, the child is already afraid - you don't need to keep hitting her or him.  You are already much more powerful, much bigger. 

The hitting, the screaming, and my frozen conscience are all related.

I also recall in a different place and time, a man said when I questioned the behaviour of another worker, it's just the pecking order, as if that solved my concern.