What You Need to Know about The Anthro-Hyena

The anthro-hyena is a creation of my imagination to explain how political power can be organized to make us, (the general population who breath, bleed, fear), believe what we can or cannot do.

Let us suppose that the anthro-hyena does exist, like satan, or ghosts or highly secret societies.

Let's say the anthro-hyena have been among us since the beginning of organized human societies and they rose to the top initially because of their intellectual abilities. They learned about astronomy, farming, the creation of weapons, the calendar and tracking of the seasons, the running of the state and good orderly direction.

Let's suppose the anthro-hyena is created by design and not born, that he feels no attachment to any tribe or family; his blood is not related to any species because he has no blood. He is the algorithm of greed and self interest developed over centuries of human societies.  The anthro-hyena has triumphed over all addictions except the single-minded determination to be in control. He feels neither love nor hate towards people. His mind is a clean to-do list, quick to strike off whatever has been achieved to get on with the next task.

Let's suppose the anthro-hyena is neither good or evil. Just efficient and willing to win at any cost.

Monarchs, corporations, religions and governments have depended on anthro-hyenas to organize and carry out their campaigns for territory, wealth, and supremacy. But let me be clear. The anthro-hyena is NOT the emperor, king, queen or president of anything or anyone. He is the servant of the corporate board room.

Because of his strategic abilities we cannot live without him. Collectively they are the ether of civilization. They have the focus to create submission and obedience among the masses and then dissemble them. Their art is manipulation and anonymity. They are the shadows without flesh.

Their goal is to cleanse the planet of humanity to reach the pristine view that transcends life - the final solution, a mathematical construct free of any sentimental interference, an everlasting universal peace.

However, you won't find him on the battle field.  You will not hear his voice broadcast from any radio or television. He is the free radical brainwaves that enter the ambitions of men and women. He arouses the desperate, starving, fearful masses to spill blood or build nuclear warheads. He is the quiet dread in our night time dreams.

The ideology of individualism is the work of the anthro-hyena because it interrupts the open communication between men and women. Makes us suspicious of our kin who we dismiss as bogie men in the bushes and beneath our beds.

While we become "experts" on what is wrong with the world, the anthro-hyena becomes embedded in our language.  The strength of words like enemy, discipline, loyalty, masculinity, femininity, white, black, reason, lies, nonsense, infidel, savage, barbaric - attach themselves together to build a wall of silent screams to keep us in and the others out.

Can we save ourselves from the anthro-hyena? Whatever political ideology we create to make a better world will be invaded by memories of the past. History will keep repeating itself because the anthro-hyena will remind us of all that can go wrong, of all who are to blame, and how the shadows grow longer.

When we are in our cups, or vulnerable, in pain, near death, giving birth, or challenging the system - the anthro-hyena will be smiling like Iago as he makes his fool his purse.

The forces that control our world are the call and response between the sponsored message and our fears.

Desire, Design and the Operating System

It appears to me that human history and all its inventions dwell within a circle of power.  The glorification, the use and abuse of power interacts with our human endeavours mostly beyond our control. There are nations and people who possess power but not forever.  Anyone who has had power over others or things fears they cannot hold their control forever.  As individuals and institutions we create laws, culture (media) and ideology in order to maintain an illusion of control, to protect ourselves from chaos.  If I were to say this is the truth - it would be my attempt to wield power over this instant.  If I were to study philosophy, science, law and culture to the breadth and depth of my capacity it would be in order to influence the world.  It's too late in my life to attempt this even if I could, and even if I achieved it (500 years after William Shakespeare), it would be for a brief moment in time and place, and it would be a call for the next player to deconstruct this theory.

As news stories appear daily about our prime minister, the mayor of Toronto, or the president of the United States as they play out the extent of their given powers while they can, some may believe they possess powers beyond their position and that all they have to do is manage it well. But all political leaders must negotiate with the ever changing directions of power in their lives - the interests that support them and attack them are like tennis balls on a court which they must hit and send back to their opponents.

All that we desire and design is negotiated with other desires and designs which we cannot see or even plan for. There is always the pressure of the operating system projecting and sabotaging our strategies.

Our human history has led us to believe that we possess the power to control the world and we give those willing to stand up as leaders our loyalty, as long as they convince us they can protect us from the chaos of invading interests. But when our leaders break or reveal cracks in this promise we sack them with derision and ridicule.

This is a very violent game - to the senses of all who are involved.  It seeks scapegoats and sacrifices.  It allows millions to suffer starvation, genocide, indignity and madness, mostly because we cannot see power as something beyond our will, that no matter how much we worship and strategize, we can never control.

Because we are addicted to our own sense of entitlement we believe our leaders hold the key to our security through some kind of magic.  The esoteric rites are for high priests only, who are trained to keep the secrets of their submission to powers we cannot name or see.

So how can we live free of oppression? First by understanding that the oppressor is not a person or party or nation or corporation - it is a co-dependent game of denial.   They play their part sometimes well, sometimes appallingly, but the news reveals they are exhausted.  Even the largest corporation treating civil society like an obstruction to their goals, installing  puppet governments to do their bidding, can only maintain their illusion if we keep believing in it.

If power is within and beyond us then we must learn how to negotiate with power as we would with nature - that it belongs to history and the future, to our ancestors and our great-grandchildren.  This requires a sense of shared ownership and responsibility.

Ten Tips on How to Save the World

photo from NASA/Wikimedia

I’ve used popular jargon for the title, because, as you’ll notice below, this is not political science, or any science at all. This is a riposte against the endless hours of brutal entertainment that suggests only might makes right. To save the world might be a heroic endeavour but I don’t believe it requires a Napoleonic campaign. It does, however, require the engagement of an alert mind and open heart. 

The instructions are simple. Learn from the bees, use your caring mind to gaze at the world, reclaim your power, reclaim your nature, hold onto curiosity, celebrate your creativity, give up blaming, live from a place of love, acknowledge your political self, and honour your spirit.

1. Learn from the bees.

Marilyn Hamilton, CEO of Integral City, told a children’s story not long ago, that is easy to remember.  Three key strategies enable bee hives to survive, which can teach us how to sustain the human hive  – take care of you, take care of others, take care of this place. Our ancestors learned how to do this but sophisticated social systems have alienated us from our own capacity to manage the hive. However, world crises shows we must re-engage in the process now.  

2. Use your caring mind to gaze at the world.

Look closely at the operating system, or the ‘apparatus’ as Simone Weil put it. Read ideas and opinions wherever you can find them. Ask yourself who benefits? Expand your gaze beyond your own immediate interests. Prepare to be disturbed but not defeated.

2. Reclaim power.

Power and all its parts: politics, wealth, language, science, economics, institutional religion, is not evil. What is evil is the way institutions have been corrupted from their original purpose – to serve civil society – into clubs of privilege. Good leadership is the conduit of responsible power which demonstrates humility, vulnerability, and serves the greater good.  Good leaders spend their powers to affirm and highlight the power in all. Infinite power is not a zero sum game, it is natural, inclusive and intelligent.

3. Reclaim our nature.

We are resourceful workers and stakeholders in our society. We are not a resource or a job description. We are not left, right, conservative or liberal – we are organic, politically mobile beings.  Labels are assigned to influence and control masses. We have courage, fear, anger, love and wisdom but they are not commodities, they are strengths that emerge and hide. The deadliest weapon of oppression is that which turns humanity and all of nature into a thing, a resource.

 

4. Hold onto Curiosity.

This is what keeps us exploring, examining, interrogating the conditions we live under or in. As long as curiosity is alive we shall never be content with serving an oppressive and corrupt social order.  

5. Celebrate your Creativity.

Music, theatre, farmers’ markets, poetry, gardens, maps, new political parties, conversations –  are the means of expressing and sharing our humanity.  Art is the what, where, how and who of our species as it yearns and evolves.

6. Give up blaming.

Blaming is not problem solving and the problem is not what other people do.  To solve problems we need to re-engage our power to care creatively, with curiosity and love.

8. Live from a place of Love

Love breaks apart the structures of false hierarchies. It demands attention to suffering and violence, and calls for healing. It insists on life as the source of knowledge.  Love is what drives great minds to take courageous stands outside of their particular disciplines for the greater good. Love is the openness to pain that makes injustice, corruption, cynicism and oppression unbearable.

9. Life is political.

You are an integral, intelligent, reflective part of a larger organism. Whether we survive as a species depends on protecting our earthly home from a system that enables a few egos to hold this planet ransom for the sake of temporary profit. There is no escape from politics. Its apparatus has been built on a grandiose delusion that refuses to see the natural world as sacred, and ourselves dependent upon its health. To be apolitical is to be a doctor standing at the bed of a dying patient, refusing to be involved because the disease is dirty. To dismiss the world stage and our part in it is to lobotomize the future.

10. Honour the spirit

The spirit is our energy. It imparts our intentions before we see them. It allows us to dream and care for the world beyond our own life span.  Imagination and love is the immortal  legacy we leave for our great-grandchildren.

These are just my thoughts.  What are yours?  What would you list as the top ten tips on saving the world?

Elizabeth May: this is what a leader looks like

May taken National Day of Action, Electoral Reform

The leader of the Green Party is an example of what a leader is. She focuses on the issues. She informs Canadians about what she is doing, what needs to be done, and why. Visit her website for well written and easy to read articles.

There is so much trivial noise created from various interests that the really important issues don't get the coverage they deserve.  But if you want to find out more about why things happen, their causes and what we can do about them visit the sites that inform.

A good leader knows that our collective survival is built on social justice not popularity.

Other leaders include, David Suzuki, Council of Canadians, staff at Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives , Karen Armstrong, and Thomas Mulcair.

Why You Can't Sleep at Night

George Monbiot, the columnist and blogger, revealed that he went to a boarding school where boys of well-to-do families go.  This gave him insight into how ruling elites think. The purpose we might think is to give their children the kind of education that will make them leaders. We hope they might turn out like Ghandi or Bishop Tutu, but a few decades earlier "the role of such schools was clear: they broke boys’ attachment to their families and re-attached them to the institutions – the colonial service, the government, the armed forces – through which the British ruling class projected its power. Every year they released into the world a cadre of kamikazes, young men fanatically devoted to their caste and culture." 

I believe this is how all institutions operate - to create citizens to defend their corporate mothers.  Real mothers and fathers also raise their children to be successful in the world in which they were raised, with the hope of upward mobility. 

Now, however, we see upward mobility as unlikely.  In fact, rather than think about how to raise our children in a world that looks brutish and bleak, we seek escape through entertainment and shopping. You can hardly blame us if we feel we have no power to change our world.

We (that body of anonymous humanity) know we are not Nelson Mandela or Martin Luther King, Jr.,  or even Naomi Klein.  We are just trying to make ends meet, to be decent. We have not been trained to believe we have something to offer the world, never mind something special.  And those who might exhibit some charismatic or visionary features we tend to be suspicious of. We have been programmed through the entertainments we consume, to believe that people who seek power are self-aggrandizing or psychopathic. 

Even the Occupy and Idle No More movements, from a distant media filtered view, reveal a hostility towards those in power, the elite.  Even those of us who dip our toes into the ocean of alternative news and documentaries will feel that repulsion towards those invisible officers of control. While there are many examples of its abuse, we eschew responsible power at our peril. 

The corporate media with its focus on the big stories, make every movement, effort, discipline or courage appear futile.  The lens zooms to the end before the story begins. Any little good news story ends with defeat not because every effort is defeated but small successes are not sensational enough to be reported. 

Dr. Warren Bell, in a response to hearings on the Northern Gateway Pipeline Project, points out a threat not just to the environment but the health of our species.  Thankfully his insight and wisdom was reported by Linda Solomon in The Vancouver Observer.

He observed, while still in medical school,  that many of the most important influences on a person's health derive not just from medicine or patient choices but from broad trends in the community – from the neighbourhood to the planetary environment.

The systems that have led to the pipeline project, which he calls "structural pathology", has caused some of his younger patients to suffer anxiety, fearing the future for their children.

When the majority of people feel powerless, overwhelmed by the structural violence designed and perpetrated by institutions they can't trust, civil society breaks down.  First by individual acts of terror, then war between factions, and war between nations or even continents. 

While the ruling class will have already found an "enemy", the future for citizens looks bleaker  and we are still left so anxious and uprooted we are unable to plan, to love and to nurture what is good. In the meantime, those bright boarding school boys, carefully trained in guiding the masses, are planning the future for us.

These pathological systems need to be intervened by the power of an educated and activated citizenry.  Dr. Bell has provided four imperatives to change the power systems without killing anyone. You will find them at the end of this article: Doctor describes Harper government "pathology" at Kelowna JRP

You may or may not agree with this prescription, but if you find a civil way to engage with the system, you will at least learn that you do have the power to make changes without using hate or violence.  We can learn that the power we use will be the power our future will be built on.