How Power Eats Life

It begins with its own energy and offers people a way out, a new hope to believe in. A new ideology that links all that is wrong in the world to one final cause – this one thing that humanity or society is unable to see until the ideology points it out. It creates new structures and agendas, new laws, new trends, new fashions and gadgets. It proposes new ways of seeing ourselves as men, women, parents, children, workers, managers. Ideologies such as those that serve capitalism, communism, socialism, conservatism, are the first that come to mind.

They begin with serious study, interrogation of the current model, academic discipline and then public distribution – through sophisticated broadcasting. Resources are invested and people are rewarded by learning the skills advocated within perimeters of this new truth. Those that resist are punished by being marginalised and isolated from the resources they need to survive.

As long as the majority are comfortable working within the governing system most people won’t question it. They, we, feel this is the natural way. We enjoy its benefits and become philosophical about its structural confines. We serve the model, we become the labour force, we learn the rules of the game, and we find ways to climb the ladder of influence.

By serving the ideology we make it more powerful. The system becomes the monster that we must obey. We are obliged to do what the system tells us to do, which we learn from those, who through hard work, or privilege, interpret the system’s needs. The more we serve it, the hungrier the monster becomes.

There are times when the monster demands more than labour, unquestioning obedience and unrenewable resources – it requires war, tsunami, hurricane, flood and fire. And all the while, no matter what the crisis or the threat to nations or races, or the future of the planet – it requires a numbness from its food source.

Remember the pastoral scene in (H. G. Well’s) The Time Machine, eight hundred thousand years into a seemingly leisurely future where all the young inhabitants, hypnotized by a siren, enter an underground world to feed Morlocks? Isn’t this how the masses serve power?

We might name that hungry monster Capitalism as we watch millions of jobs lost throughout the world while huge companies gain ever larger profits, and nations go bankrupt. We might call that monster Fundamentalism as culture wars are inflamed between different religions. But the monster never dies even though its name may change. And the bigger it gets, the more it eats.

What means do we have to manage this power so that it serves life? In what ways do we already negotiate with injustice, violence, change and the future?

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?

Power Bubble

A housing bubble, according to Investopedia is "A run-up in housing prices fueled by demand, speculation and the belief that recent history is an infallible forecast of the future."

A power bubble is a written or unwritten contract on a system that we invest in psychologically, socially, physically and spiritually.  We allow ourselves to be controlled by it insofar as the system offers us something in return, for example, the ideology that our quality of life depends upon a good economy.

We spend our lives learning skills and habits to participate in this system so we can, at the very least, eat and find shelter, and at the most, buy influence over others such as retail staff, servants, employees etc. Although we contribute to this system in essential ways the operating rules are written by others in a place where we have no influence, as though people without an economy cannot survive, yet the economy without people will do just fine.

So we are slaves to this god to whom we make sacrifices, mostly through wars, genocide and forced famines. Unless of course we moderate the economy through justice. However, the instrument of power doesn't know what justice is. 

According to an editorial in the latest Flying Shingle

"One of the exploits at which those who work against economic justice seem to be most shockingly proficient is to create bad conditions and then blame them on those they harm." 

And we, the labour force, mostly go along with it because if we disagree publicly we fear we will be punished.  Even to admit we are oppressed here is to take ourselves out of the comfortable pew.

Systems can only have power over us if we obey its high priests without question. This is a power bubble.  It's worth is what we contribute to it. As long we blame the victims and seek power over those who are unable to defend themselves, we prop up the system.  We say yes to its survival as we watch it destroy the planet we depend on, the people we love, the quality of life our ancestors often gave up their lives for?

It's not the next gadget or the next entertainment that will transform us into something wonderful, it is life that is wonderful.  It is life that brings love, attachment, reward and knowledge.  It is life we serve daily, yearly and eternally. All else are instruments we created and relies upon a reverence for life to sustain it.

So if we are okay knowing men, women and children are being blown up for cheaper oil, we prop up  the power bubble that will, sooner or later, do the same to our children.

If you want to see what a power bubble looks like, when it's stripped of its godlike mythology, you can see it here on this  Universal Effects video.

Bullocracy

Recent conversations with thoughtful caring people about the state of modern democracy has caused me to think about how we are represented in the commons, and whether we have much influence in what happens in our country, our city, our planet.  There is an implication that we are held responsible.

For example, the question of Vancouver since the post Stanley Cup riots. The people of this city, through main stream media, express feelings of shame as though they are somehow associated with the people who burned cars and smashed windows.

It must be obvious to anyone above the age of ten that a hundred goons do not represent the majority of anyone anywhere, so why are the masses tarred with that brush? Sure there were many who stood and watched, but there were many who came out after the riots to clean up the mess in whatever way they could. We know that some put their own safety at risk to try and and stop the destruction.

Since then the air waves have been flooded with interviews and expert opinion on who is responsible and who is to blame. It's this part of any crisis that seems to be the meat of it all.

In a separate issue, a federal party gained a majority with only forty per cent of the vote. Online social media was incandescent with the issues, analysis, protest, to inform themselves and others.  We were engaged. We watched the televised debates. Yet the party leader whose eyes seemed glazed over for the entire debate, who said little about policy offering a mantra of platitudes - got in.

Dialogue has been replaced with sponsored media. Life and all its complexities are reduced to slogans, implications and associations. The more you care, the more it will be apparent that you have no influence, no voice, no face, and yet we are represented by images and words that bear no connection to who we know ourselves to be. We might as well stand on the corner of Main street and blow bubbles.

Democracy has become bullocracy, a reality show designed to feed us a simple plot of winners and losers, villains and heroes. The players want to feel good with the least amount of effort, and if you accept the spin, you can get on with your shopping as though nothing is happening and tomorrow will be like today, forever and ever. And as crises fall on top of other crises, managing the world will become more of a nightmare, our blaming more virrulent, our ways of coping more dysfunctional, and our saviours more ballistic.

But this does not mean there is nothing we can do. The first thing is to observe how power works in our world, how it defines and manipulates. Then we must re-build community from the nuclear family outward to the global family, on a system of reverence for life, sustained in our hearts and minds. Here is where the work to reinstate democracy begins and ends.

The Field Mouse

Continuing on the theme of the new class system described in an earlier post, and subsequent descriptions of the anthro-hyena and the gate-beaver, this is a look at that faceless, nameless group known as the masses, which I call field mice. 

Field Mice are focused on survival. Caring for and protecting our families we barely have time to look at the big picture. We are running as fast as we can to keep up with trends, pay our bills, forage for food, and most importantly - keep away from predators.

The resilient field mouse has learned how to cope with different landscapes in different climates and different economic systems. The field mouse, driven to provide for his or her family, has learned how to be a good soldier, a skilled welder, or a gentle nurse. 

Profiling the field mouse as integral is counter-productive in a system built on exploitation and so their value is undermined through myth and story, where they are shown as  confused, stupid, shallow, undisciplined and self-interested.

In a recent rabble column, Rick Salutin  cites political philosopher Leo Strauss, "who lived through Hitler's rise, concluded that most people are and always will be basically emotional and for their own good must be manipulated by their betters through religion and deceit..."

Could it be true that the masses hold most of the power through numbers alone? When they aspire to get higher on the social ladder by copying anthro-hyenas and gate-beavers, do they lower their worth, precisely because they disgard their inherent truths for the lies that oppress them?

All the world's wars, that generation after generation find new enemies, have not been about finding peace, but keeping the field mice in uniform, in step and in service to those who profit by their blood, sweat and tears.

The nature of all members of the new class system are not hard-wired into the brain - we can learn to create better worlds by examining our own investment in the status quo and by interrogating the myths we look to for comfort. But will we? Will we give up our fleeting inventories of superiority for the survival of our planet, or descend into a final righteous bloodletting to the end?

You don't need a Ph.D to save the world

You just have to believe that doing the right thing at the right time, even though you may have to sacrifice something, is all that is required.  However we know that it takes more than one person and one generation, and that justice rises and declines continually. We watch the stone roll back down the hill and must roll it up again, forever.

Brigitte DePape spoke clearly and succinctly and the only weapon she carried was her conscience and a placard. Still she was classified as a security risk by a member of government.

Here is her message posted by Janice Williamson on The Pomegranate:

Harper’s agenda is disastrous for this country and for my generation. …We have to stop him from wasting billions on fighter jets, military bases, and corporate tax cuts while cutting social programs and destroying the climate. Most people in this country know what we need are green jobs, better medicare, and a healthy environment for future generations.

Contrary to Harper’s rhetoric, Conservative values are not in fact Canadian values. How could they be when 3 out of 4 eligible voters didn’t even give their support to the Conservatives? But we will only be able to stop Harper’s agenda if people of all ages and from all walks of life engage in creative actions and civil disobedience. …This country needs a Canadian version of an Arab Spring, a flowering of popular movements that demonstrate that real power to change things lies not with Harper but in the hands of the people, when we act together in our streets, neighbourhoods and workplaces.

Would it be better if people did not protest at all? What if we all stayed in our comfortable homes, transfixed to our big screen TVs, ignoring the reality around us? Should we really just accept the status quo that makes the poor, poorer and allows the environmental destruction that is ruining our planet? Where are all the people who protested in the 60’s and 70’s that inspired many of today’s activists? Have they given up on fighting for their ideals? I fear that too many people from my parents’ generation have abandoned their ideals because they think eliminating poverty or weaning ourselves off our oil addiction just isn’t ‘realistic’.

Not only is protesting important, it is our fundamental right. Many of my friends were denied this right when the police unlawfully detained them in appalling conditions for protesting peacefully, more specifically, for holding hands in a semi-circle. In order to preserve our right and ensure this does not happen again, a public inquiry into police conduct and detainee conditions is absolutely essential.

Money is power but power is not limited to money

What if we created a system where we handed out power units (called a Pu, pronounced pyoo) for those who can't access money? Would we develop a currency based on relationship to one another instead of a system that has become so complex and remote from social needs, even the experts no longer understand it? The world of finance seems to have been taken over by tricksters and magicians and their theories work like spells over banks. But the gap between haves and have-nots is getting so wide that the fissure in our future puts even the haves at risk.

Please feel free to download this image and print as many times as you like. Hand it out to your friends and family, the local baker, the grocer. The point is you exchange it for what you want - a carrot, a paper clip, tomato seedling, oatmeal cookie. You will have to negotiate with the vendor as you both decide how many Pu's a carrot is worth - but at least this exercise will bring currency out of the locked boardrooms and into the commons. Of course you could not force anyone to take a Pu. Any time power leads to force it loses its worth (its a fact that many on this planet haven't noticed yet). Also it is not recommended for use in the illegal drug trade, human trafficking or pornography.

Ideally, a Pu should be used for necessities: food, water, love, understanding, music and art. But you could try paying your taxes with it as an exercise in creative protest. Or, if you think this whole idea is just plain silly, don't use it at all.

You can, instead, give away your help and services, without asking anything in return. Give a neighbour a lift to the library, drop off vegetables from your garden to the food bank, send encouraging letters to politicians and public service employees, fill in the comments sections of surveys. The options are endless.