The Ubiquitous Nature of Power

Why would previously elected governments cut services that would ultimately harm the economy when they build their campaigns on the economy?

Why are essential services, that intervene in crises before they reach their ultimate social cost, being underfunded or shut down?

Why does the corporate media in its news and entertainment programs promote an image of our world as greed-driven, macho, and violent while all the serious discussions around how to effectively deal with the problems are slotted in the back pages or late night shows?

Why has so much hatred been directed towards those who love or pray differently and why has so much contempt for the poor and marginalized been inflamed and so little done to alleviate the misery?

Why have our governments failed to care for the environment upon which our future health and wealth depend?

At first these may seem like separate issues but to me, they are all connected in one very important way – they lead towards social breakdown and ultimately destroy civil society.

So it appears that some in government and media, actively support and work towards the destruction of the entity they are supposed to be governing. It also appears as though people in Western democracies are voting for the parties that are destroying their futures.

Is this intentional? Are there powerful interests conspiring to bring about a slow and painful end to the human project, or has something gone terribly wrong in the way we identify with the collective future?

David Suzuki points out that we have “developed a way to estimate economic activity by measuring the value of all transactions for goods and services” called the Gross Domestic Product. However it doesn’t seem to include the services that come from government – that is disdainfully called taxes.

Corporations measure their success not by the quality of their products or how it helps people, but by how much their stock sells for. Politicians measure their success, not by what they have done for their constituents, but by how many votes they get.

In essence, what this means is that the health and well-being of humanity and the environment, is “overburden” to use a mining term. What this means for us and our children is less health care, lower education in terms of learning rather than superficial tests, less public transportation, more pollution environmentally and culturally, the silencing of real debate, the end of science, a global distancing from the reality we live, and a greater focus on invasive corporate measures.

Prisons will be filled with environmentalists and activists for social justice. People will be afraid to talk to their neighbours. City centres will become territorial battle grounds for drug lords. The sensitive and educated will die quietly from drug overdose. Families will break up under stress. Suicide will overtake obesity as the major epidemic. Bigotry, prejudice and balkanized wars will make the commons uninhabitable.

If we want to know what this looks like, think of all the failed nation states constantly in turmoil while transnational companies extract huge profits. Think of pipelines covering the earth, the sky filled with industrial chimneys and dark satanic mills powered by slave labour getting crushed or burned in hazardous warehouses. To use a quote attributed to George Orwell “If you want a vision of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face – forever.”

The enemy is not one particular country, the enemy is that dissociated power universally accepted as force, rather than something that flows from our relationship to the environment in which we live. When we cease to look inside ourselves for the capacity to care and organize a humane world, we become victims or sociopathic egos punishing all that we can’t control.

We have come to this stage not because of progress but because of a ubiquitous disorder which we must examine to begin the work of healing. Our power lies in many things but mostly in accepting we are vulnerable, fallible and mortal.

This post was first published in The Flying Shingle then online at Episyllogism.

What does it mean?

What does it mean to be marginalized

 illegal, homeless, a blight on the landscape?

What does it mean when we risk polluting 

our water and food source for the economy?

What does it mean to destroy the air

we need to breathe?

What will our future be if we are willing

to sacrifice our home for quick solutions?

What if this planet is ruled by extortionists 

who silenced these questions

so that our taxes can pay even more tomorrow 

and the next day until there is nothing left

but solid rock glowing in a distant universe?

What does it mean when we are offended 

by people who have nowhere to wash

yet welcome those who hold all life as ransom

for the glory of their personal ego?

Bothering the Future with our Past

 "In 1926, Calvin Coolidge’s treasury secretary, Andrew Mellon, one of the world’s richest men, pushed through a massive tax cut that would substantially contribute to the causes of the Great Depression.” Robert S. McElvaine, The Great Depression: America 1929-1941.

The same is happening again this year in America as if the power elite fear losing their wealth and privilege when the reflective majority are engaged in the creation of their society.

It's a plan that makes democracy seem ineffective against  the power of the established hierarchy. What is this hierarchy made of? Is it instinctive? Is it earned? Is it simply brute force? The "common sense" that no moral superiority can outshoot a gun. No sensitive insight can win over greed. No rationality can fight against fear. Or can it and if it does when does it happen?

Viktor Frankl wrote about man's search for meaning from his experience of the Nazi death camps. His conclusion was that people had a better chance of survival through hope. How people found hope in a place that ritualized contempt for life can only be answered by a highly sensitive inclusive intelligence.

So rather than a hierarchy based on reptilian fear I propose there could be a hierarchy of what is essential for the survival and good health of this planet and its inhabitants.

Based on the premise that we should have our basic needs, these resources could include:  intuition, creativity,  language,  comfort, belonging, humour, storying, empathy, knowledge, love, respect, sexuality.

I have placed them in this hierarchical order of importance in terms of weaving these values into a sustainable understanding:

12: healthy sexuality - incest, rape, harassment - are not good for us as a species.
11: love is essential for an infant to survive therefore it must be essential to our health.
10: belonging - no-one can grow into a healthy person if they do not belong anywhere.
9: language - every living creature has some form of communication, a way to warn of danger and a way to welcome.
8: intuition is a neural warning or announcement, a feeling, to alert us to pay attention to something.
7: creativity - finding new ways of growing and preserving what we need.
6: storying - conveying culture through stories.
5: humour - relieving stress through humility and being able to laugh at ourselves.
4. empathy - not feeling sorry for others but recognizing when others suffer.
3. respect - without this we are operating as lizards.
2. knowledge - in order to survive we must study what is true in nature and in our selves.
1. comfort - without this or the hope for this we shall go mad.

What order would you put them in? What would be at the top of this hierarchy? What would be at the bottom? What else would be on this list? What would be left off?

A general understanding that what makes us happy and at peace is what others need too. Acknowledging what others need is acknowledging our responsibility to all sentient beings on this planet.

How does capitalism, communism, fascism, socialism meet our mental health and physical needs? How does the economy measure the health and hope for our future? Are political power struggles a sign of our dysfunctional diminishing future?

Whose fault is it then?

In response to a previous post It Isn't Your Fault, Bob Lane (Episyllogism) responded with the question whose fault is it? Later he replied:  "I would think that individuals have an obligation in a democracy to learn the facts; to learn how to distinguish facts from nonsense; and to be skeptical about all media and government bloviations."

Which means, among other things, fact checking. Tips on how to check facts from politifact.com:
1. Ask the person making the claim for evidence. 

2. Look for what other fact-checkers have found before you.
3. Do a Google search -- and then search again. 
4. Search the Deep Web.  areas of the Internet that aren’t open to surface searching.
5. Look for experts with different perspectives.
6. Check out some books.
7. Anything else?

Track Changes

Legal Strategy Coalition on Violence Against Aboriginal Women: "reviewed 58 reports dealing with aspects of violence and discrimination against Indigenous women and girls, including government studies, reports by international human rights bodies, and published research of Indigenous women's organizations. The reports cover a period of two decades. (They) found only a few of more than 700 recommendations in these reports have ever been fully implemented." 

Harper's record of refusal: An Act of violence against Indigenous Women. Muskrat Magazine, rabble: "Since 1996...over 40 reports have been delivered to the federal government calling for a national inquiry into missing and murdered Indigenous women.  In August 2014, the premiers of Canada also called for an inquiry stating there are two possible routes to getting a national public inquiry into missing and murdered Indigenous women: Prime Minister changes his mind and calls one -- or he is defeated in the 2015 federal election." 

Globe and Mail Editorial February 1, 2015; "Prime Minister Stephen Harper never tires of telling Canadians that we are at war with the Islamic State. Under the cloud of fear produced by his repeated hyperbole about the scope and nature of the threat, he now wants to turn our domestic spy agency into something that looks disturbingly like a secret police force." 

Letter to PM Harper from Ralph Nader, Rabble: "Particularly noticeable in your announcement were your exaggerated expressions that exceed the paranoia of Washington's chief attack dog, former vice-president Dick Cheney. Mr. Cheney periodically surfaces to update his pathological war mongering oblivious to facts -- past and present -- including his criminal war of aggression which devastated Iraq -- a country that never threatened the U.S." 

ICBC may withhold licence for outstanding court fines, student loans in default. CBC: "The provincial government has proposed legislation to expand ICBC's ability to refuse driver's licences to those in debt.The insurance company is already able to withhold licences from people who owe money, such as toll fees, but the new bill — if passed — would be a "last-resort measure" to collect on outstanding court fines or student loans in default." 

There are many voices of reason from individuals and groups doing all they can, with very small budgets, to influence their governments.  What must be really clear to any concerned and thinking person is that those who hold the highest seats of power  like presidents, prime ministers, and CEO's of large corporations, do not appear to be providing leadership at all.  It's as if holding power is not compatible with social responsibility. Or the media feels its not in their best interest to report when these officers do consider the greater good. That, in fact to do real leadership for their constituents, to do what is wise and responsible, to do what we expect of adults, is likely to cause their downfall. That once they have won their seats they must be obsessed with holding onto their power by any means available.

Social responsibility is not seen to be the concern of prime ministers, presidents and CEO's. Somehow the building and maintenance of order and justice must fall on the citizens, sometimes sacrificing their own lives, to defend society, or to re-build their own structures of governance.

Power without social responsibility and justice is not leadership, and therefore not legitimate power.

What is Government?

image created by DOSGuy

The most basic definition of government is the organization or administration of the state.

But much has been written about government from many voices with varying points of view, it might be said that our own personalities are defined by how we define it.

Abraham Lincoln said "This country, with its institutions, belongs to the people who inhabit it. When they shall grow weary of the existing government, they can exercise their constitutional right of amending it, or exercise their revolutionary right to overthrow it."

The often quoted Thomas Jefferson said "When the people fear the government, there is tyranny. When the government fears the people, there is liberty."

"For in reason, all government without the consent of the governed is the very definition of slavery" according to Jonathan Swift.

A part of the American consciousness is the suspicion of government as revealed by Henry David Thoreau "That government is best which governs least."

The notion that government is a handicap, brought to the new world from England by Thomas Paine is suggested in this quote. "The instant formal government is abolished, society begins to act. A general association takes place, and common interest produces common security."

Even worse, that government is our teacher. It ... "teaches the whole people by its example. If the government becomes the lawbreaker, it breeds contempt for law; it invites every man to become a law unto himself; it invites anarchy" (Louis D. Brandeis)

Or it "reflects the soul of its people. If people want change at the top, they will have to live in different ways. Our major social problems are not the cause of our decadence. They are a reflection of it." says Cal Thomas 


"Freedom isn't free" says Bill Maher. "It shouldn't be a bragging point that 'Oh, I don't get involved in politics,' as if that makes someone cleaner. No, that makes you derelict of duty in a republic. Liars and panderers in government would have a much harder time of it if so many people didn't insist on their right to remain ignorant and blindly agreeable."

Easier said than done.  Noam Chomsky is more sympathetic. "If you are working 50 hours a week in a factory, you don't have time to read 10 newspapers a day and go back to declassified government archives. But such people may have far-reaching insights into the way the world works."

Government has been studied for many centuries, so we should be getting close to electing good governments, shouldn't we?  Especially as there is no shortage in wisdom expressed on the subject. George Monbiot does it frequently:

"Just as taxation tends to redistribute wealth; regulation tends to redistribute power. A democratic state controls and contains powerful interests on behalf of the powerless. This is why billionaires and corporations hate regulation, and – through their newspapers, thinktanks and astroturf campaigns – mobilise people against it."

Although there is a shortage of quotes by women, this doesn't mean women don't comment on government. Perhaps we think of how the structure of government and power affects our society, and so the last word goes to Frances Moore Lappe in an article that appeared in Straight Goods News.

"Maybe we begin here: recognizing that our crisis is not that we humans are too individualistic or too selfish. It’s that we’ve lost touch with how deeply social we really are. Easing the fear at the root of so much pain and violence that generates more fear — from suicide to child abuse to school massacres — comes as we embrace the obvious: We are creatures who, in order to thrive individually, depend on inclusive communities in which all can thrive."

This sensitivity to what is around us, is government of the mind and the soul. 

The End of Hierarchy?

Is it possible that we will find another way of organizing ourselves, when it has become clear  our ruling elites are not capable of leading us to a sustainable future?

Now that we can easily read so many different perspectives, can we invest a little hope in the organic power of good will for the greater good? Surely the competitive, isolating ideologies around economic success now seem as believable as the existence of Santa Claus.

This is one crisis that may lead to our opportunity.  The majority of comment on the net, in the news, indicates that people have dismissed the authority of those experts invested in big institutions.  We no longer see leadership, we see a ritualized power play with the fall of intelligence and the rise of brutality. 

Our future looks like an abandoned battle field of pollution, drought, famine and guns. Who needs education or health when the resources of the whole world are saved for so few?

It's against the many bleak examples that I look to the community.

There are people organizing food banks and have been for the thirty years since corporate fascism  replaced civil society. There are organizations of volunteers who have created integral media such as rabble, The Tyee, Straight-Goods, Avaaz, etc. There are churches that have given up on doctrine in aid of support for the disenfranchised, housing the homeless on cold nights. There are theatres and musicians and artists organizing festivals still, even though their funding has been cut. And then there are parents, spouses and children who are giving continually, and blossoming in a new appreciation for what is around them and how their power is integrated in all things.

So it seems, almost, that humanity is evolving from the shallow stereotypes played out on mainstream  media, to wise new ways of being in the world, while the institutions are crumbling under the weight of greed, still stuck on oppression and exploitation.

Will humanity transcend the failing structures that have governed for centuries, and find new ways of governing ourselves through creative cooperation?