Now is the time to talk about climate change

Naomi Klein interviewed by Amy Goodman of Democracy Now, lays open the locked doors of a politics that condemns all life of the Americas, and eventually all people of Europe and Asia. 

There is so much bad news right now you might feel like turning off all the media in order to find some inner peace. But there won't be any if we cannot impress on our leaders their first duty is to serve the people and the future of this earth. 

Visit this here to watch the video  Now is the time to talk about climate change.

Fear of Social Conscience

Have you noticed how some of your relatives and friends get irritated when you mention a social issue that is not directly related to them?

Perhaps you are enjoying a good cup of coffee and a donut as you share 'what's up', and you blurt something about the threat to wild salmon, Neo Nazis in Charlottesville, or some other issue. And suddenly everything goes quiet while someone around that table gives you the evil eye.

Have you noticed in groups how some hate those who are sensitized to issues of injustice? One or two members of a board or club will target an anti-racist, a feminist, or environmentalist, who speaks up? Or mobbing at a University - how often is the target a person who has expressed a desire for social justice?

At dinner parties have you noticed if anyone mentions equal pay, equal respect, violence toward a specific group - they are quickly interrupted and the subject changed?

Why is this? Is it because we want to feel safe, that the world is just, and our co-workers and friends are ethical and have a good conscience? Or is it that any issue of injustice in our society strikes a tone of moral superiority? Or that most of us don't want to be reminded of prejudice or systemic violence when we are having fun?

Is there a flaming red flag around the aura of a person who makes it clear they are aware of the larger society? A sub conscious understanding that this person does not base their worth on getting your approval?

Is there a time and place for difficult conversations other than social gatherings? Is the common gap in all social intercourse a matter of privilege?

Stephen Metcalf wrote in The Guardian about how neoliberalism has swallowed up the world along with all the beating hearts and minds within.  "Peer through the lens of neoliberalism and you see more clearly how the political thinkers most admired by Thatcher and Reagan helped shape the ideal of society as a kind of universal market".  Social reality since then, says Metcalf,  has been reordered where the blood coursing through our veins means nothing other than the price the market will give it.

We have been dismissed. Art, science, intellect, music, love and family means nothing if they can't make a profit for someone.  We have swallowed this reasoning to the extent that any reminder of society as community, kindness, inalienable rights and duties, is almost an admittance of our gullibility over the last forty years. 

We've been had and had bad.

Racism

O'Halloran, Thomas J., photographer

In this progressive and diverse community there have been incidents of public racism and homophobia. There is neo-Nazi support from people in powerful positions. Once, not long ago, these incidents were met with jaw dropping shock because, well, we knew better didn’t we? But those who are targeted are attacked on a very deep level.

What can we do? We can’t muzzle homophobic white supremacists but we can call out against their rhetoric.  We can examine the source of the phenomenon. 

Racism is not about the colour of your skin; anti-Semitism is not about where you pray;  and homophobia is not about who you love.  All of these are about our fundamental homelessness in a world that measures our worth by the things we own.

If we are valued by our degrees, positions, homes and cars – then the blood running through our veins, the ideas in our minds, or our desire to survive have no worth. There is nothing like marketing to bring home this point, and nothing like consumerism to confirm it. It’s the impenetrable matter of our existence that keeps us falling towards fear and prejudice, and if left unchecked, to violence.

In a rabble column Amy Goodman points out that while (in the US), “law-abiding Muslims are forced to hide in their homes, and animal-rights activists are labelled as terrorists for undercover filming of abusive treatment at factory farms, right-wing hate groups are free to organize, parade, arm themselves to the hilt and murder with chilling regularity”.

Is this our fatal flaw? That we prefer to target those with less power rather than challenge our oppressors?  Even if we manage, through revolution, chaos and bloodshed, to remove them, they are soon replaced with new oppressors.

The cyclical rise and fall of empires is built on the labour of the masses.  First it exalts  then steals it through deceit and propaganda. Bigotry, racism, homophobia – are  the devices that keep us enslaved to systems of oppression because we have lost our capacity to imagine a way out.

In our families, communities, and congregations, we have learned how to care for one another, but there isn’t a military strategy, political party or an economic system that will bring this about globally. Every election, parliamentary act or corporate decision moves us closer to humanity or away from it, and every word and deed sits somewhere on the continuum of revering or exploiting life.

Social justice, that thankless, never finished, housekeeping task whose priorities change from minute to minute, IS the price of our freedom.

When an individual is attacked, ridiculed, bullied or demeaned because of who they are, it’s an attack against the dignity of life, against you and I, our children and grand-children, and we can’t afford to ignore it.

The Heart Will Not Be Managed

painting by Paul Grignon

That is what they told me as I strolled through

their territory. They said you can cut us all down

but our roots will find a way over or under

other roots. They say look at how we shield

the thinnest branches and the softest leaves

without telling how or where to grow.

We house birds of all kinds no matter

how they live or what they believe. 

We don’t ask for love from mice

or loyalty from snakes. We have not created

by-laws here, demanding that neighbours sign

before entering. We don’t judge. When something

invades our sky and we cannot reach the light

we grow in a different direction.

They ask me to look at my own ancestors

for the proof, put your gears in reverse and look 

at where you came from as you ventured slowly

out of the ocean with new found legs looking 

for something to eat. Then look at the first mother 

and the first father how they laughed and how they cried 

never questioning the authenticity of their tears. 

Look at you they say. Look at how you survived 

your first breath, learned how to walk, how to speak,

how to hold the next generation inside

until they are ready to be born.

All we ask is that you remember these thoughts

when you are locked in a concrete cell

when you are tortured by your own confessions

or sent back to the sea in a coffin.

The heart knows who you are

and will be with you until you die.

(Infinite Power, Ekstasis 2016)

Confronting Evil

by Russell McNeil

"Then they came for me — and there was no one left to speak for me." ~ Martin Niemöller


While I appreciate that a few of my friends are supportive of the US President, I have reached the end of my own psychological rope on this. My own personal daily reaction to the outrages of this imbalanced man is visceral. I have tried to understand your points-of-view. But I can no longer tolerate your positions. For me this man is my daily nightmare. I wake every morning and go to the news feeds to see what new desecrations Donald Trump has committed. I am never disappointed.

I do not believe that people are inherently evil. I do believe that the actions that Donald Trump have taken are having evil consequences. I was raised in a religious environment. I was taught the differences between right and wrong. I was taught that bullying defenseless people is wrong. I was taught that words have consequences. I was taught that preying on the weak, the young, the voiceless and the powerless is wrong. These are things Donald Trump and his sycophants do daily. This is the definition of raw cowardice.

I am speechless that a few of you still support this man. I can only conclude that you - my friends - are living in a state of permanent delusion. This is the 21st century - not the 2nd when the Roman Emperor Commodus (a man with a frighteningly similar temperament to Trump) succeeded Marcus Aurelius and began a reign of terror that ended with the disintegration of Rome.

Donald Trump is a cancer on the human family (a cancer that is now metastasizing as seen clearly in Trump's immoral speech to 40,000 cheering boy scouts this week). If you are unable or unwilling to see this I can only feel sorry for you. But I will no longer tolerate your myopia. My friends also include many who are the daily targets of Donald Trump. I can no longer remain silent while my other friends - women, minorities, LGBTQ, scientists and academics (I am one of those), and journalists (I am proud to have been one too) - are assaulted daily by this Presidential demon. Enough! #TheResistence

Recalibrating the System

System is the word I use to describe that collection of values and habits that form our society. We could call it - the world, truth, reality, democracy or capitalism - but whatever we call it we must engage with it. 

It isn’t always fair. The system seems to be indifferent towards our needs and wishes but we are not free of it until we die. Anger, love, hate, indifference, are some of the emotions we feel but we learn to adjust our responses for the least pain possible. 

BUT NOW OUR WORLD IS IN CRISIS. IT'S NOT ENOUGH TO JUST BE REFLECTIVE OR REACTIVE - WE NEED BOTH. 

Sometimes we will not submit and we find ways to change the system by talking, listening and planning to recalibrate. This is the politics that rarely gets covered publicly, although there are voices quick to claim failure or success at the end of all our work.

This post reflects on some of the initial stages of making changes. 

1. Examine Anger

Anger is a natural response to feeling threatened. Injustice, racism, phobia toward any gender or sexual orientation, religious intolerance, war, crime, all make me feel threatened. The retreat from civility to targeting (blaming) means I am not protected by principles of law or compassion. Any cruelty towards living entities and nature, means our system is moving towards brutality and away from civil society. Any fundamentalism or ideological authority means we are all at risk of being pushed through a mincing machine to produce a brand.

What makes you angry, what caused the source of your anger? To examine this question is to own your anger.

2. Choosing Hate is Not a Way Out

When does anger turn to hate? What thoughts lead us to find blame and to invest in violent “solutions”? What feelings enable us to feel sympathy for those who have chosen hate?

I have felt hate towards others when I fear, but hate for me has never led to a resolution. Hate makes me feel powerless, unable to move forward. It just makes me feel bitter and cynical.

If hell, as the saying goes, is other people, if all the problems I face are the fault of others, the biggest problem is that I have no agency. It's all the doing of the other who is entirely separate from me.  Hate doesn’t have a way out, an exit.

What hate does achieve is centralized power for those who seek to gain by violence. Hate enables the war strategist to blame the people for the conflict.

3. Invite People into the Conversation

Recalibrating the system is not about what any one person thinks the problems are. Rather it’s a conversation where friends and neighbours have a space to express their thoughts and to hear what others have to say. Some rules are necessary for participants to feel safe: (a) we agree not to share what is said in the circle outside the circle; (b) allow everyone the opportunity to speak, (c) be clear in establishing all participants are equal and valid members - there are no experts, (d) no personal insults or attacks, (e) don’t define others by their opinions, i.e. sexist, racist, bigot, snob. 

4. Plan 30 Years Ahead.

It took centuries to be where we are today. Each decade came out of the decade before. It took the current system thirty years to move from a general acceptance of social justice as a basic level of protection, to the market driven neoliberal focus that says the arbiter of all things is dependant upon “jobs and the economy”. 

Self interest is in our human nature. What are we willing to give up for our own interest? If we see a continuum where at one end there is security and peace, and at the other, we are free to do whatever we please as long as we keep a gun in the night table, we need to ask ourselves where we sit on that bench and where we would like to sit. 

To draw that bench and ask people to label the different stations from left to right can elicit a conversation about where their preferred place would be, and how can we move towards that?

5. How Will Anger Lead Us to Truth and Beauty?

O Attic shape! fair attitude! with brede

 Of marble men and maidens overwrought,

 With forest branches and the trodden weed;

 Thou, silent form! dost tease us out of thought

 As doth eternity: Cold Pastoral!

  When old age shall this generation waste,

 Thou shalt remain, in midst of other woe

 Than ours, a friend to man, to whom thou say'st,

 'Beauty is truth, truth beauty,—that is all

 Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.'

 ( Ode on a Grecian Urn - John Keats.)

How have we personally endured the last three decades? What gave us hope and courage to choose integrity over despair when faced with personal crises? What have we learned about our own strengths? How have our views of beauty changed?

These are timeless questions for those of us who shall not live as long as Keat’s  Grecian Urn.

Strategic Plan

Strategic Plan

painting by Paul Grignon

Love everyone
Hate no-one
Move to the edge

(Infinite Power, Ekstasis 2016)