This War Against You

Does every piece of information seem like a threat to your health these days?

The latest news reports include the Robocall scandal and the teacher's strike in BC. The other day I watched a documentary about the pornography that pervades the media and how it affects our sexuality and how young people who don't even know what sex is are becoming brainwashed to believe they must look like porn stars in order to be 'normal'.

When I was a teen I was compelled to be 'in'.  That was in the sixties. The call seemed to be so authoritative that I could not see how my 'programming' was inspired by the corporate media. It took another decade before I was able to look back and see how I, and all my peers, were influenced by the notion that those images presented to us hourly through mainstream entertainments were examples of what we could be if we work at it. And it was another fifty years later where I was able to see how my need for approval has kept me in a state of prime availability to suggestion no matter how many defenses I put up.

Sure I can question everything and anything and I remind myself to do so whenever I read something that raises my temperature, however I am also aware of how my world is becoming, either through awareness or maturity, further and further removed from reality.


Reading 1984 so many years ago I thought Orwell was predicting that every household would have a television screen where we would be watched by Big Brother, but now I see he could have meant  that our inner minds were already pre-wired for manipulation.

Millions of dollars, no billions and trillions of dollars, are spent to invade our most private thoughts and desires, and to offer immediate relief. Sugar, alcohol, drugs, sex, money and power are the addictions that keep us sucking on the shiny metal tit of Capitalism. We are no longer human because we have been genetically modified through persuasion and propaganda. We are not homo sapien as much as we are consumer (meaning 'squanderer' in its middle-English origin).

The ruling systems, from the early Catholic church to imperialism keep us shopping for the next best ideology that frames and guides our future.  Ways of letting us believe we are choosing, we are in control, when in fact our consent is manufactured.

Even Jesus was killed during the Crusades when His message was co-opted to support patriarchy, military might and imperialism. Since then we have sacrificed our young on the bloody battlefields in the name of honour, which we were led to believe we could win.  But the only winners were the industrialists and the arms dealers. Personal survival meant traumatization and the interruption of our most intimate relationships.  That is how it was then and how it is today.


When societies, through intelligence, insight and cooperation, become more socially just, more civil, where power is shared more equally, suddenly a new war is paraded as a new necessity. Innocents  are swooped from their epistemic homes to slaughtering fields where they learn how to rid themselves of sensitivity and tenderness and focus on the task to kill or be killed.

Prior to the Witch hunts, to the First World War and the Second World War, women were participating and demanding their dignified place in society.  Prior to Vietnam African Americans were demanding civil rights. Prior to the Gulf wars, women were demanding more social power in the work place. War is the device that sacks civil society, and returns the masses to the brutality of strategic ritualized violence. 

Now that the Occupy movement has aroused the people to the injustice of the current system, there is another war on the horizon - with Iran. But the victims will not just be the Iranian regime. As with all wars, whether military, economic, political or class - YOU are the victim. Your social systems, your health care, your libraries, your universities, your courts of law and your neighbours will be sacrificed so that the most powerful can play their nihilistic games of power.

WHO World Cancer Day

A few days ago I received an email asking that I say a small prayer "Dear God - I pray for a cure for cancer. Amen" and then to forward to all my friends.

Since I don't do chain letters I thought I would write this blog post as a prayer to the universal mind for a cure for cancer and by finding the causes of cancer. Not just the many small details of toxic substances, but the overall cause of cancer - that resistance towards embracing the whole world and nurturing the best possible health for it through our work, our practices and our goals.

This takes more than looking to others to find magic cures. Sure we need the researchers and medicine, the scientific experts and world leaders to do what is right, but they are not magicians. We are all the stewards and agents of good health for the mind, the body, the community and the work place.  These are all connected.

Cancer is not just a single disease, it is the symptom of a very sick system that promotes oppression and greed through ignorance, fear and hatred for humanity on many levels.  Such a system doesn't care for people - it pays lip service to ideals but seeks only to exploit. It does the talk and punishes those who do the walk.

We are micro-units of that system which only has as much power as we invest in it. May we find a way to reconnect to the healing practices we are capable of by living as though health is profit.

I have a dream

To celebrate Martin Luther King, Jr.'s birthday - here is part of his famous speech delivered in Washington, D.C. in 1963.  You can find the full text on The Huffington Post web site.

Let us not wallow in the valley of despair.


I say to you today, my friends, so even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream.


I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: "We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal."


I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.


I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.


I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.


I have a dream today.


I have a dream that one day, down in Alabama, with its vicious racists, with its governor having his lips dripping with the words of interposition and nullification; one day right there in Alabama, little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers.


I have a dream today.


I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight, and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together.


This is our hope. This is the faith that I go back to the South with. With this faith we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope. With this faith we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood. With this faith we will be able to work together, to pray together, to struggle together, to go to jail together, to stand up for freedom together, knowing that we will be free one day.


This will be the day when all of God's children will be able to sing with a new meaning, "My country, 'tis of thee, sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing. Land where my fathers died, land of the pilgrim's pride, from every mountainside, let freedom ring."


And if America is to be a great nation this must become true. So let freedom ring from the prodigious hilltops of New Hampshire. Let freedom ring from the mighty mountains of New York. Let freedom ring from the heightening Alleghenies of Pennsylvania!


Let freedom ring from the snowcapped Rockies of Colorado!


Let freedom ring from the curvaceous slopes of California!


But not only that; let freedom ring from Stone Mountain of Georgia!


Let freedom ring from Lookout Mountain of Tennessee!


Let freedom ring from every hill and molehill of Mississippi. From every mountainside, let freedom ring.


And when this happens, when we allow freedom to ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God's children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual, "Free at last! free at last! thank God Almighty, we are free at last!"

Wishes for 2012

What I hope for us all is peace, in the deepest sense of the word.


That in your workplace you are seen (and respected) as the complex, gifted, individual you are.

That your family see the beauty in you and the world around them. That you appreciate and support one another. That your love is reciprocated.


That your community acknowledges your wealth in terms of what you contribute to the group - empathy, problem solving, ideas, effort, nurture, critical thinking and patience.


That your hopes and desires are aligned with the reality around you, and your expectations arise from a place of integrated kindness and justice.


That you are able to bridge the disappointments with new goals and aspirations, and that your moments of despair are short, alleviated by your resolve to carry on.


That your pain is met with healing from your own body and mind, and from your family and community.


That shame or guilt, if it must arise, is aligned to the pain we have caused (and not to the superficial crimes of failing to live up to artificial fashion) and will ultimately lead to forgiveness and compassion.


That, once and for all, we learn how power and wealth are irrevocably tied to our capacity to distribute and meet human needs for shelter, warmth, food and community; and that we understand there is no single leader who can provide this without the help and commitment from us all.

Reverberation: power from the personal to the global

Whatever we value most in life is more than just a cause for celebration, it can lead us to the tools of our collective power, as long as that power is life affirming. But using any tool requires some skill and the more we use it the more skilled we will become.

The Toolbox

Interrogation – who benefits?

Every issue, change, policy, initiative, ideology must interrogate its own value by asking who benefits by this? And if it doesn't those who are affected by it must.

Naming, Unmasking, Engaging:

In his column published in the Guardian, George Monbiot quotes Walter Wink ... "challenging a dominant system requires a three-part process: naming the powers, unmasking the powers, engaging the powers."

I would extend this exercise to all social interactions from family to neighbourhood to community to national. To assume that social relationships do not use power can lead us blithely into relationships where power is abused. Domestic violence certainly puts a strain on challenging power beyond the home. Abusive power in community undoes benefit of community.

Progressive Thinking:

In a Straight Goods article, George Lakoff writes "a robust public is necessary for private success, about all that the public gives us, about the benefits of health, about a Market for All not a Greed Market, about regulation as protection, about revenue and investment". These are all assets our ancestors gave their lives for. Lakoff warns against accepting systems that are not in our best interests. Such as those that allow corporations to get rich by keeping wages low. There is nothing morally right about centralized power that enables oppression, because it always seeks to punish not the causes but the victims of it.

Civil Society:

Yes this gives the individual the power to move freely in the city. Marilyn Hamilton writes that civil society occupies "the We and Heart of the Integral City . . . the pulse of cooperatives, credit unions, foundations, institutes, not-for-profits, NGO’s, social enterprises and other agencies who invest in cultural and social capital". We give and take in society. We have a responsibility to it and gain protections from it.


Education:

I am talking about more than certificates and accreditation here – of course those enable us more choice in our future. But I am talking about the lifelong learning that enables us to participate in systems of power that arise from our knowing and our imaginations. In order to do this we have to let go of the beliefs that comfort us. As the Bible says "the truth shall set you free". But first it will make you miserable as you read the horrors that humankind has imposed on its earthly home.

Contraction:

Every outward act will return.  Whatever we do to others will be done to us. Whatever we send out we will bring back.

In an interview with Michael Moore, Chris Hedges explains the system that currently rules the planet – unfettered capitalism, turns everything into a commodity, even human beings. It exploits and extracts the essence until it is emptied of itself, exhausted and destroyed.  Built into capitalism is a self-destructive ideology that deeply disrupts societies. Imperialism is a disease and the tyranny it imposes is also imposed on itself.

Here then is the warning we must never forget as we struggle to create a better world – we are in the throws of a "giddy intoxication" of an illusion that we can impose our will on the planet; and in the process, we have set in motion the final death of our unborn seeds.

The difference between Hedges, Moore, and myself – is that (I believe) the cause is not capitalism, communism, fascism, or religious fundamentalism – the cause is unfettered power.

We can use our power without harming or controlling. We may send out our desires and receive our limitations. We may work on hope and be discouraged. We may bring peace and be killed for it. We may knit garments of justice and watch them unravel. But work on what sustains life, no matter how futile it may seem, is the natural power we have been given.

Ethnic Cleansing - the Prelude

In the beginning there were guns and germs, then there were residential schools, then the highway of tears and missing women on the downtown east side of Vancouver.  Now there is Attawapiskat, and other under-reported reservations.

For the last hundred and sixty years what we have seen is a spiralling down of living conditions for First Nations' people, mainly as a result of the Indian Act.  Forcibly removing children from their families and placing them in warehouses where they were physically, mentally and sexually abused, then tossed back out having only learned from their 'education' that they are useless savages.

But somewhere between the sixties and nineties Canadians developed a conscience and the information about government policies and living conditions were made available. Looking at how badly our European ancestors behaved made us look more like savages than the ones we labelled. The knowledge of our past treatment of non-whites sent some into complete denial, and racism. 

When the conditions of Attawapiskat were brought to parliament, our Aboriginal Affairs Minister  wasted no time declaring that the government will take control, implying that First Nations people are unfit to govern themselves.

Of course our government doesn't have to fix it, they just have to say they will to the flash and whir of corporate media cameras. And the essential information will be neglected and forgotten by most Canadians. Except bigots who will be preaching punishment. And the desperate people who don't land in Canada's shiny new prisons, will die of self-medicating despair.

Conflict around unsettled treaties leads to frustration, which provides an opportunity for some anonymous donor to provide guns and further inflame passions, lies and blood-shed. And beneath the chaos - an opening for a transnational mining company to make their next move.

European invasions into Africa, Asia, Australia and North America, have been euphemistically termed "Progress". While drugs, alcohol, germs and wars make people homeless, the unnamed organizers are free to extract their oil, gold, diamonds and other resources, so that they can get richer, hire more politicians and more military to begin again somewhere else.

In the transnational economy, we all, or at least ninety nine percent of us, become the unwanted  indigenous savages.  We may watch the erosion of civil society as our governments continue to roll back social services, just as they outlawed First Nations culture,  through the slow and deliberate starvation of our health, education and justice systems.

Soon we may recognize ourselves in Attawapiskat because there are no jobs, no money to fix our houses, poor nutrition, hunger, and no hope.

Ethnic cleansing will be complete when all the nations' people are similarly crippled by a centralization of power whose mission is to plunder the earth more deeply and destructively, then separate themselves from the results of their actions.

This is how power has worked for centuries but we still don't get it.  We enable the abuse of power when we dedicate our lives to the acquisition of it. We circle and protect the worst abusers from the evidence of the suffering they have caused. We protect the power that oppresses us by oppressing those who have less power.  We risk our lives, and the lives of our sons and daughters, to fight the enemies that have been chosen for us.  We punish the scapegoats that are hoisted for our judgement. We keep ourselves busy with the little things while the life of this planet is rendered down further and farther away from our reach, our ability to nurture and sustain it.

But it needn't be this way.  We don't have to worship power.  We could give the world our own by caring, protecting and nourishing what sustains and reveres life.

The Power of People for a Healthy Community

The bulleted information below is lifted directly from the 2011 Report from People for a Healthy Community, of Gabriola Island, BC, to make note of and to promote how much can be achieved when people come together out of compassion.

While individuals may feel disconnected from the big national and global issues, those who work for healthy communities everywhere are making change where it counts.  For example, People for a Healthy Community in the last year:

• provided more than 4,000 lunches to hungry Gabriolans
• distributed 3,940 bags of food, 25% of which went to feed children on the island
• provided a holiday feast for nearly 125 people  December 25, 2010
• distributed Christmas Bureau vouchers to 98 Gabriola families
• nurtured community gardens that provided fresh, nutritious food for hungry people as well as gardening opportunities for children, seniors, and PHC clients
• expanded storage capabilities of their food bank so that efficient food purchases can be made
• launched a monthly lunch and social event for over 30 seniors in our community
• created a weekly social evening for Youth at Risk
• provided employment and job-skill training for unemployed Gabriolans
• developed a Circle of Care, connecting skilled Gabriolans with people who have multiple needs, while offering support services such as financial training, income tax returns, rent and job-readiness support, haircuts, massage acupuncture, and more.

If you add up provisions in numerical units here you would come up with the number of eight thousand, seven hundred and nineteen (lunches plus bags of food plus holiday dinner, etc.), not including the unknowns such as how many people were helped by mentoring and teaching of skills.

Imagine all the towns and cities in all of the provinces of this country (there are 308 Federal Government ridings in Canada) who may be providing a similar number of needs. You get a picture of social activity that is not often recognized.  Sadly the needs outweigh accomplishments, but we dismiss or overlook them at our peril.