Everything is up for grabs

 

Not long ago a politician suggested you grab'er by the pussy. In his mind she is no longer a human. She is just a thing to be used. So let me take that sentiment a step further.

Women are good for cleaning house, cooking supper and having children. This has long been the assumption, even now after in vitro fertilization and abortion.  https://www.mayoclinic.org/tests-procedures/in-vitro-fertilization/about/pac-20384716. 

Evan after feminism was born and reported and women have been a force in the workplace as something more than a sex object. LGBTQ voices awakening that gender is not the only thing that separates one from the other.  Movements for honouring our differences shows us just how the pecking order is more than poor, middle or upper class designations. Humanity has many gifts and challenges and it pays us to respect truth where ever we find it. When we are not fighting wars, the unknown is less perilous. 

However, USA, Israel, Palestine, Russia and Ukraine are suffering uncertainty as is Sudan and other nations.

Aaron Bushnell decided to set himself on fire to protest the war in Gaza https://open.substack.com/pub/chrishedges

While politics focuses on power and dismisses the beauty and pain of life, we, as a species don't seem to be fixing our problems.

Free The World for Humanity and Other Living Creatures

 Rules of engagement and good manners are traditions that have lasted for centuries. But I see a need to examine some and create new "rules". However I am one of those people who does not have a "position" where I am expected to live by the rules. But I do have some of my own that have helped me.

1. Be concerned about injustice you hear about or witness. Injustice anywhere, said Martin Luther King Jr., is a threat to justice everywhere. We (humanity) lost him too early just as we have lost Alexai Navalny. This is a loss for all now and in the future. Now none of us can sit back and hope the brave will be saving us.

2. Leadership is not about scaring everyone who knows your position. It's about sustaining places where humanity can learn who or what is ruling it and this earth. If we are not comfortable with authoritarian leaders we should not sit back and assume someone is taking care of this. Leadership is not about killing people unless we worship cruelty for its ability to shut everybody up. 

Wherever we see cruelty we must name it. I say must because it is the first stage of dysfunction. Punishment is not for those who have the power to use it. There are clear reasons for using punishment to discourage harmful behaviour in the home and the commons.

3. Weapons are designed to hurt and kill.  A good leader knows not to use punishment too soon. Even spanking and humiliating others registers as violence to the sensitive mind. Thankfully most of us have lost the appetite to watch someone being whipped or shamed in public. Watching someone  being beaten up by a gang you don't know is not entertainment. It's a sign that something in our minds and hearts has gone wrong.

4. Corporal punishment is only okay if we don't know the people involved. Adults who divide the world into good guys and bad guys have used TV dramas as their civic education. Punishment hurts those who are punished and those in denial of the trauma that hardened their feelings into denial.

5. A society that believes punishment makes men strong is one that keeps most of its people in a state of ignorance where its "shameful" to express ones thoughts and feelings, where you'll be criticized for "thinking too much".

6. An organization that doesn't encourage its members to think, is one where all the power rests with the "leader". It might pay the CEO "246 times the average worker's pay in Canada, up from 241 times in 2021, when the average was $14.3 million". https://globalnews.ca/news/10191926/top-ceo-pay-canada-2024 Such organizations do not want their staff to think too much. Mainstream media does not want more information here so shut your mouth and mind and do as you're told.

7. The future is not likely to be kind to humans if this is the goal. In fact it will celebrate humiliation for those at the bottom and vanity for those at the top. Wherever there is privilege there is anger, disappointment and cruelty regardless of whether we admit it or not. White supremacy knows this. It fears being treated the way it had treated people of colour, the poor, the homeless and women.

8. Because humans have minds and language we are the biggest threat to the egos who simply want to control others. Because rising to the top is an obsession to those who fear being vulnerable some powerful people feel they must be protected from the masses.

9. An obsession becomes harmful to everyone, relationships become fragile and dysfunctional, and all who are related suffer in some way. Worst of all humans shut down the best part of their intelligence. Kindness, sensitivity, creativity and courage are seen as opposite. Kindness becomes weakness, sensitivity becomes weakness, creativity becomes idleness, and weakness becomes ignorance. Competing for the most of what each of us wants breaks down social strengths, makes society mad. Displays of power over use childish skills and shut down communication.

10. to identify with our position in this world is to deny our humanity and human instincts.

11. Violence becomes the means to destroy life by any other name.

 

Begin Again In Love, Humility and Integrity

 

Our political systems are broken. We talk as though politics requires a sophisticated awareness of how things work. The problem is THE PECKING ORDER and its habits.

You may think that sophisticated conversation requires a lot of education. I know I used to but recently I have been overwhelmed with a get real heartache. When leaders in business are no longer interested in what is good for the people the ruling habit seems to be cynicism (a school of thought in ancient Greek philosophy, originating in the Classical period and extending into the Hellenistic and Roman Imperial periods. Wikipedia). 

Idealism does not have the kind of power to back it up because power is in itself the thing we seem to be awed by. Famous people, billionaires, educational institutions, beauty, sexuality, and all things shiny and new.

This means that ordinary is not enough anymore. But this is mostly a corporate thing. Corporations demand a CEO who almost has magical powers to shut up the common man and the strong woman, while raking in profit.

It's the Wizard of Oz effect. The magician. The trickster. But in reality it is destructive. It makes us feel worthless, frustrated, angry and afraid. Between America, Russia and Israel we are doomed. 

So I say be yourself. Your sensitive, caring, vulnerable self who relies on kindness. Because we all want a civil society that we can engage in, unless you have been traumatized to swallow the power pill that demands you must always win.

Rick Salutin calls Gideon Levy more prophet --- case in point his article

 They have been destined to pay the cruel price for what Hamas did. Alongside our joy, one cannot help but think of them and their fate. An operation cannot be perfect if that is its price. https://www.facebook.com/bobbossin/posts/pfbid0obAX7TWjF5tZ2LfhJorGQzCKYChBigJVBA1DkNcdGyW4BG4wSkXjPk8P75cugZ

Chris Hedges on revenge

" There will be scholars and historians who ...  will hold academic conferences. They will say “Never again!” They will praise themselves for being more humane and civilized. But when it comes time to speak out with each new genocide, fearful of losing their status or academic positions, they will scurry like rats into their holes. Human history is one long atrocity for the world’s poor and vulnerable. Gaza is another chapter." https://chrishedges.substack.com/p/let-them-eat-dirt-read-by-eunice?utm

So we wait for another 90 years until the next chapter. We cease to worry about freedom, music, arts, love, health, society. The only thing that matters is power, ultimately through violence, fear, torture and death. The ones who kill the most are the winners. 

Or, we let the fossil fuel industry kill off life before then?. 

To ban abortions, to target POC or LGBTQ people, to blame women and the poor, and to carry on adorning ourselves with large homes while others are homeless, to outlaw the poor and the immigrants, as this earth slowly and painfully watch the innocent die a long slow death, until AI has found a way to do all the tasks that workers used to do then claim the survivors won.

Or, it occurs to us that power must include respect for life and nurture that instead of trying to control it.  Or face up to our responsibility to do no harm, to reach the heart and soul of the nurturer, to dry the tears of the battered and bruised, to build a future on the feminine and masculine working together.

Sharing our thoughts, feeding the mind that seeks peace

 There a few of us who met two Sundays ago thought it would be good for us to have a discussion group. Those who would like to have a group that expresses or listens to our innermost anxieties during this time when there are several crises playing out. If you would like to chat, I can gather a few on zoom to meet after the service, to mention points that impressed us and points that distress.  

I am thinking of informal conversations based on current tensions. For sure, we are living in a time when it seems there are dangers coming from many corners. 

Please tell me if you are interested in the idea, interested to join, I care  what you think. 

Email me at janetvickers@shaw.ca

When You Learn

 

Everything you touch dies

no matter how much you love them 

or need them

and the accute pain

at the time seems

like a bad joke gone wrong

and there is nothing you can do

unless

you find a way to kill death itself

without killing the thing you love

and now you understand

how painful it would be

to be God.

How To Feel Superior Even When You Are Not

"It is increasingly evident that resistance to action on these challenges will only be overcome through engagement with the cultural values that underpin this resistance. It also seems clear that, in trying to meet these challenges, civil society organisations must champion some long-held (but insufficiently esteemed) values, while seeking to diminish the primacy of many values which are now prominent – at least in Western industrialised society."

https://assets.wwf.org.uk/downloads/common_cause_report.pdf 

Of course feeling superior is not relevant and never was. Take the tardigrade for instance.  It has been around for a long time but never set up talent contests or military events to announce their presence. I never knew they existed at all until I was in my 70's.

Today we have the remnants of the White Supremacy club. Whiteness has been around for centuries. Today I am ashamed to say colonialism, war, racism and sexism is still marching out in the world and otherwise instilling movements that arrest and imprison people who do not have white skin more than the people who colonized them.

Societies create pecking orders. Ruling classes down to middle and at the bottom working classes. 

What brought out the white supremacists? Social studies. Feminism. Books. Movies.

Generally there is the feeling that white people feel bad because of all the talk and focus on injustices towards the poor, people of colour, excluding certain "types" based on how they look.

A great deal of media coverage talks about body shaming, skin colour, hair, weight.

Most of this is to promote products. Sneering advertising suggests what you must and must not do if you want to fit in. You have to buy the product promoted in the clip. What it's really saying is you have to look and feel like you are perfect in face, hair, body and clothes.

It's a little different today than fifty years ago when media programming hi lighted the perfect look for those who were "keeping up appearances".

The rules are changing all the time and no matter just how good you are at your job the company has ways of "gaslighting" you so you seem to them you are ten pounds overweight and have wrinkles.

Humanity, the natural man or woman, is not good enough unless he or she is on top. Vagaries really help to keep us confused, on edge, nervous, angry, sexist and racist.

War shows us how the big rulers who have access to the best or worst bombs, guns and military might must be superhuman not ordinary, special not common. Artificial intelligence is the beginning of the end of humanity.

Climate change is the final strategy. If we don't yet own a private jet to escape to the next planet, we are just soap operas suffering from anxiety.

The big lie is capitalism. We are worth more than we own because we don't own anything forever and all we have is our breath and the moral obligation to take care of everyone we love. 

Honour your feelings and your self for all the struggles and trials you have been through. Honour those who love and support you. Superiority is a big lie. 

Nailed it! Not me but George Monbiot

https://www.monbiot.com/2024/01/31/king-of-the-extrinsics/

"Some psychologists believe our values tend to cluster around certain poles, described as “intrinsic” and “extrinsic”. People with a strong set of intrinsic values are inclined towards empathy, intimacy and self-acceptance. They tend to be open to challenge and change, interested in universal rights and equality, and protective of other people and the living world." George Monbiot. King of the Extrinsics.