Please advise: How did civil society become so dispensable?

Canadian climate change opinion is polarized, and research shows the divide is widening. The greatest predictor of people's outlook is political affiliation. This means people's climate change perceptions are being increasingly driven by divisive political agendas rather than science and concern for our collective welfare -  writes David Suzuki in Rabble.ca.

We are addicted to the mirror myths of our selves, and our addictions are sending our planet to hell. Addictions to fossil fuel, alcohol, drugs and power.

I saw a post somewhere that said it looks like our planet is a giant mental health ward where the staff are silenced or have left.

There are about 200,000 nurses registered, almost 5,000 psychiatrists, just under 15,000 veterinarians and thousands of teachers, in Canada. Add to this the people who have invested their time in healing arts and sciences.

How many people are trained to fix our cars, drive our buses, clean our schools and hospitals, fight fires, police the streets, plan our cities, and volunteer at community services.

Think of all the labour that goes into the care and nurture of this country. How many people work for the common good? How much energy and effort does it take to keep our country running even without the special skills of our top leaders?

Why is the news exclusively about the rich and famous or the bleeding and damned? It's evident in these narratives that celebrity breeds sociopathic behaviours. Why are we so impressed with their power no matter how harmful and stupid it is?

Why is analysis about the state of our world so dismissive of integral intelligence? What does power actually create in our society? Is it protection, comfort, food and warmth? Or violence and fear? Why is community activity portrayed as dependant upon the market?

Who is it that insists the sum of human activity is not worth paying attention to unless it creates money or rises to the top?

To answer this we must look at the ways we have been played, who has benefitted and who pays for it.

BC Pro Rep - Easy Entertaining Breakdown of the 3 PR Options

Human Rights Under Attack

CBC Ideas program have a full hour of Gareth Peirce On The New Dark Age.  It is worthwhile listening to entirely.

We are getting reports from the US, Canada, the UK and Europe about violence breaking out.

In the thirties Jews were targeted in Europe. African Americans were targeted in the US. Forced starvations were organized in Russia. First Nations and Japanese were targeted in Canada.

With each decade a demographic was denied dignity, imprisoned, murdered while mainstream voices who spoke out against the violence were ostracized and punished.

Now the White supremacists have organized hate marches.

The conversation about how we can heal the conflict, comfort the afflicted and move forward doesn't seem to make the headlines. So what is wrong with this picture? What is the nature and the name of the elephant in the room?

Hate has been whipped up throughout the centuries and after the slaughter, the fear, the bloodshed and displacement, there is work to rebuild, with the mantra "never again" will we fall for the hate-mongers, Then discontent creeps in, social systems break down and the hate boils over again.

This sounds like it's an organic thing. Individuals no matter how enlightened can't reach the thugs or the fascist supporters.  But is it natural. Or is it stirred, organized and presented as a grass roots eruption which we must accept as human nature.

I think that is a cop out. I think we know about how tensions, fear and hate is whipped, where it comes from and who benefits.

What is it that I must do?

 We, the sentient creatures, are in this time and place where we are informed on many levels, that there is danger and it is urgent that we do something about it, even though we don't have the power to fix all that needs to be fixed.

Not even the President of the United States can fix it. The trauma and the structural violence of many centuries have put the human heart and mind in the centre of a large maze and whichever turn we make will not lead us out of danger.

The problems we face now cannot be fixed by authoritarian agendas or weapons of mass destruction. Yet there is a churning inside and an anxiety that is difficult to endure.

There are things I can do about the economy, politics, climate, the level of fear but it won't fix the world. So I ask myself - who do I think I am that I should worry about the big picture. And yet if I don't what will inform me on what is important and what isn't.

This quandary is not about my ego. It is a message like the rustling of leaves in the wind. It is the silence, the radio, the books and the television programs that circle my consciousness.

It is like a moment's awakening. The words that come just when I am about to fall asleep. This epiphany, vague as it is, will be lost come morning.

I am assured in a quiet way that I am here for a reason and for as long as I live, there is something I must do, something I am here to do. Not something fantastically huge but something that is needed. Something like an energy wafting out of an open window.  Something that whispers across the garden and the pond. Something that comes through me but not of me - to paraphrase Kahlil Gibran. Something that I can do because of my particular history and my particular circumstances. Something that is authentic, without fanfare or crashing cymbals or a gun. Something that will not harm anyone.

I don't yet know what it is but when the time comes I must do it. And this thing that I must do which I will know when the time comes, is a comfort to me now, and when the time comes I will trust it.

This goes for you too. There is something that you can do, before you leave this place. Something that will help to heal this battered planet.

This is not a call for war, or the use of force, not an authoritarian dictate - although we might feel tempted because of  high levels of anxiety. We can offer what might ease the fears of other beings, not tell them what to do.

Polluter Pays

The Leap group has a petition you can sign here. 

Along with answers to questions such as what does it mean, 
what's the problem, 
how is it currently enforced in Canada, 
how should it work, 
why can't we leave the well there, 
how much does it cost to clean up, 
how many jobs could it create?

So if you think we shouldn't bother with this or any other social activism here is what Chris Hedges writes about the social realities of today.

"The dark pathologies of the uber-rich, lionized by mass culture and mass media, have become our own. We have ingested their poison. We have been taught by the uber-rich to celebrate the bad freedoms and denigrate the good ones. Look at any Trump rally. Watch any reality television show. Examine the state of our planet."

The Truth As the Body Knows It by Lynda Archer

I know the news moves on quickly, but I am still back, as I expect some of you are also, with what occurred in the US Supreme Court a few days ago. I am sharing with you all an essay that I couldn't not write after Dr. Blasey Ford's testimony. Trigger warning for some of what I write. Feel free to share with whomever you wish. And thanks to those who have read earlier versions. You know who you are. 

Continuing from Dr. Blasey Ford’s Testimony, the Truths I Know 

I watched closely the Supreme Court events in the US and found myself becoming increasingly sad, angry and churned up with the process and the ultimate outcome. Spoiler alert. Yes, I clearly side with Dr. Ford and I will over the course of this essay endeavour to show you why. 

I am not myself a survivor of sexual assault or abuse. But at this historic moment I am reminded of all the brave women who I was honoured to treat in my capacity as a clinical psychologist and Assistant Clinical Professor within the Dept. of Psychiatry at McMaster University. As a clinician I bore witness to the words of women who were 30, 40, 70 years of age when they spoke to me, often for the first time, of their childhood sexual abuse or their sexual assaults as adults. Assaults by uncles, fathers, brothers, friends. 

This is what I want to say. This is the truth as I know it. This is what I’d like to shout to certain individuals. Twenty, thirty, fifty years later. Those women in my office remembered. Those women who were mothers, daughters, sisters, aunts, wives, lawyers, doctors, artists, plumbers, Asian, African American, indigenous... women.

Those women remembered. They remembered very well.

In great detail. Every one of those women remembered ALL that was done to their bodies. They remembered the words he said to them. They remembered how he whispered and taunted, told her that she liked what he was doing. Told her how he’d kill her cat if she spoke out. She remembered that he told her no one would believe her. Those women remembered. They remembered his body odour, his cologne. They remembered where he put his fingers. They remembered the weight of his body on their own bodies. 

But what I also know to be true. All those women longed to forget. They craved that their memories of those moments would evaporate.

Those women, every one of them, all those women, wished and hoped that the memory would depart from their brains and their bodies. 

Those kind, intelligent, caring, compassionate and courageous women.

Each in their own way had worked so hard to forget. Drinking too much. Working long hours. Chastising themselves. Pretending it didn’t happen. Telling themselves it wasn’t that bad.

Denial. Repression. Dissociation. All the psychological defences were employed.
Employed for months. Years. Decades. Wonderful defenses they are. Except they only work in the short term. They don’t eradicate memory.

Those defences don’t work in the long term because those kind of memories have a life of their own. They are not to be obliterated.

They will not be erased. That’s not how traumatic memory works. The body remembers what the mind forgets. The body does not lie or deny. The body may create disguises and diversions. Depression. Anxiety. Panic disorder. Headaches. Stomach aches. Nausea. Suicide attempts. Nightmares. Sleep disturbances. PTSD. But still the memories of the abuse remain. 

The memories of the abuse remain alongside SHAME. Shame rushes in with haste the moment the abuser leaves the room. Shame fills every cell of one’s body. Shame freezes the voice. Shame tells you that you are bad, unworthy, no one will believe you.

Shame is always there after abuse. Shame is the great silencer. “Shame holds secrets like a banker’s vault. Only death does a better job.” (Tears in the Grass, Lynda Archer)

I honour all the women who have courageously spoken out. I honour all the women who might never speak out. And in the words of Maya Angelou: 

“You may shoot me with your words,
You may cut me with your eyes,
You may kill me with your hatefulness,
But still, like air, I’ll rise.”

Lynda A. Archer, Ph.D., MFA
Clinical Psychologist (Retired),
Assistant Clinical Professor, Dept. of Psychiatry, McMaster University (Retired)
Author: Tears in the Grass, Dundurn Press
October 16, 2018

Silicon Billionaires Prepping for the Apocalypse?

Billionaires anticipating the collapse of democracy and the nation state?  Mark O'Connell writes in a Guardian article (Why Silicon Billionaires are Prepping for the Apocalypse in New Zealand).

O'Connell quotes from a book called The Sovereign Individual: Mastering the Transition to the Information Age.  The title looks harmless enough, but inside it contains the recipe for what feels to me, a kind of nihilism. It preaches:

"1) The democratic nation-state basically operates like a criminal cartel, forcing honest citizens to surrender large portions of their wealth to pay for stuff like roads and hospitals and schools.

2) The rise of the internet, and the advent of cryptocurrencies, will make it impossible for governments to intervene in private transactions and to tax incomes, thereby liberating individuals from the political protection racket of democracy.

3) The state will consequently become obsolete as a political entity. 

4) Out of this wreckage will emerge a new global dispensation, in which a “cognitive elite” will rise to power and influence, as a class of sovereign individuals “commanding vastly greater resources” who will no longer be subject to the power of nation-states and will redesign governments to suit their ends."

I don't know just how much influence these billionaires have, but this book reveals contempt for life as well as a hatred for democracy.   They are claiming that their money and power will help nation states collapse.  

Civil society is threatened by far right hate groups funded by dark money.

Are spills from oil pipelines accidents or intended outcomes from trans national corporations, to further the goal of weakening democracy and centralizing power? Was the postwar push to pave towns and villages with highways created to further our addiction to fossil fuels?

What will save us from this absolute destruction of all things fair and civil? What will keep fascism from destroying Canada in the way Germany was destroyed by Nazi's in the thirties. What will keep Canadians from becoming slaves to megalomaniacs? 

Well there are books like Orwell's 1984, Huxley's Brave New World, Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale, and Klein's No Is Not Enough, imagining the many dangers of a world without morality, empathy and social responsibility. 

Are all the world's nations being destroyed to clear the way for global fascism? 

We need to be curious enough to ask the most disturbing questions when threatened by highly organized evil minds, and to re-invest in the creative community power we are capable of.