Interrogating my prediction in the previous post

I predict the Conservatives will get back in power in the October elections, not because of their policies but because the world is controlled economically by the monied class. Not the people with nice clothes and houses, not those with titles, but those we call the ruling elite.

Here I have not explained why I predict this. I have not even posted any of their policies, yet felt okay making this prediction. Of course I have no details on who controls the economy. In a way I am simply using an "elite" as a scapegoat.

It could be said that human's are ruled by ideas — not ideas that are too complex but complex enough to keep us under the control of rulers. There is a varying degree to our acceptance of authoritarian rule. Right now we seem to feel okay with the rule of money as though it's natural, human and comes out of our own desire for posterity.  Or the rule of power. We think it's natural that whoever is in charge will control us and it's not in our best interests to challenge them.

Again I give no examples of ideas that are too complex or ideas that keep us under the control of rulers. Also there is no proof that we feel okay with the rule of money, and that it's normal or natural. Is it that we have been raised with the normalization of capitalism, trained to fit in. How did we get to feel okay about allowing others to control us?  Through the centuries there have been stories about terrible torture and death to those who  question authority -- guess that's why.

We are so enamoured by power we created an all-powerful god whom we cannot see but who can  read our thoughts as well as control the weather.

Apparently hierarchy began with agriculture but I don't have proof because I am not skilled in the kinds of experiments that determine scientific truths.

The greatest power, besides wealth and guns, is charisma. Something that can't be explained but has influence over us. However if we have not cast the media in our own spells there is no leadership by charisma.

Who said charisma is powerful and what exactly enables someone to have charisma?

Most of us struggle to get through the day with our work, our chores, our responsibilities to loved ones. We come up with little wars that we must survive, and to do that we must have beliefs that support us.

This is a huge generalization. I suspect there is truth in it because I listen to how other people cope as well as my own experience.

One integral belief is that we see ourselves as good. Bruised but not broken. Smart but not intellectual. Tolerant to a degree. Informed but not expert. Most importantly we don't have the kind of power that billionaires or corporations do.

Again another generalization but I can think of contradictions that are equally generalized.

Our lack of power tells us we are weak, ordinary not special, willing but not always able. In short — we are vulnerable.  We don't have a corporation of staff or servants who will provide the human wall between ourselves and the outside world. When individuals without agents stand up they are easily gunned down.

I think my own self-esteem has been fed by how others see me but there are others who trust in their own power. How many feel powerless and what is powerlessness anyway?

When it comes to justice and social standards, we are on the front of the battle.  As we know now — the ones who organize the wars are not on the front. They are protected by the blood and limbs of the soldiers employed to be at the front whose names they don't even care to know.

Phrases like "as we now know" assume that we all think the same.

There is enough despair without scraping the system down to its naked function.  We need pretty words, sweet smiles, mythologies and promises. We need to believe that all is well and all will be well.

Who is the "we" who need pretty words and is that a natural thing or a nurtured things. 
So most of us don't want to know the truth. We don't examine the policies too rigorously. We won't argue with friends and neighbours and we need something to believe in. Like benevolent dictators — greatness, charisma, like being better off than others, like the promise of a better life.

What kind of truth do "we" not want to know? What lived experience would make me like benevolent dictators?

Many will eagerly forget the damage done by the Harper government if the promises are sweet. And whatever else, we will not tolerate the universal "mea culpa" required for social change.  All it takes is 40% of the votes to incubate a leadership that will send us back to sleep as the world burns, and a suitable scapegoat is found.

I don't list the things Harper did that I think was damaging. There is a hazy shared memory of policies that myself and some of my friends were horrified by. 

But the reality is — once a scapegoat is found, we (being the masses) have signed our own death certificates.

The scapegoat is the device that gives the ruler permission to kill. In the past it was women charged as witches and Jews charged with the blood libel.  It didn't seem to matter whether the charge was true or not. All that was needed was to identify a small group to blame and then everyone was silenced. Guilt or innocence didn't matter. It was the power given to the man or men who got to choose who would live and who would die. The rest became silent for fear of being the next scapegoat.

To write the original post was very easy. I just recollected my own memories and opinions but if I didn't do a thorough job on claiming "facts" how many citizens do in a capitalist system where media and politicians use myths to gain power?

Prediction 2019 Onward

I predict the Conservatives will get back in power in the October elections, not because of their policies but because the world is controlled economically by the monied class. Not the people with nice clothes and houses, not those with titles, but those we call the ruling elite.

It could be said that human's are ruled by ideas — not ideas that are too complex but complex enough to keep us under the control of rulers. There is a varying degree to our acceptance of authoritarian rule. Right now we seem to feel okay with the rule of money as though it's natural, human and comes out of our own desire for posterity.  Or the rule of power. We think it's natural that whoever is in charge will control us and it's not in our best interests to challenge them.

We are so enamoured by power we created an all-powerful god whom we cannot see but who can  read our thoughts as well as control the weather.

The greatest power, besides wealth and guns, is charisma. Something that can't be explained but has influence over us. However if we have not cast the media in our own spells there is no leadership by charisma.

Most of us struggle to get through the day with our work, our chores, our responsibilities to loved ones. We come up with little wars that we must survive, and to do that we must have beliefs that support us.

One integral belief is that we see ourselves as good. Bruised but not broken. Smart but not intellectual. Tolerant to a degree. Informed but not expert. Most importantly we don't have the kind of power that billionaires or corporations do.

Our lack of power tells us we are weak, ordinary not special, willing but not always able. In short — we are vulnerable.  We don't have a corporation of staff or servants who will provide the human wall between ourselves and the outside world. When individuals without agents stand up they are easily gunned down.

When it comes to justice and social standards, we are on the front of the battle.  As we know now — the ones who organize the wars are not on the front. They are protected by the blood and limbs of the soldiers employed to be at the front whose names they don't even care to know.

There is enough despair without scraping the system down to its naked function.  We need pretty words, sweet smiles, mythologies and promises. We need to believe that all is well and all will be well.

So most of us don't want to know the truth. We don't examine the policies too rigorously. We won't argue with friends and neighbours and we need something to believe in. Like benevolent dictators — greatness, charisma, like being better off than others, like the promise of a better life.

Many will eagerly forget the damage done by the Harper government if the promises are sweet. And whatever else, we will not tolerate the universal "mea culpa" required for social change.  All it takes is 40% of the votes to incubate a leadership that will send us back to sleep as the world burns, and a suitable scapegoat is found.

But the reality is — once a scapegoat is found, we (being the masses) have signed our own death certificates.

Mental Instability creates Political Instability

Invasive Weed

"On Monday, Maxime Bernier sent out a string of tweets attacking Greta Thunberg, the student environmental activist. The leader of the new People’s Party seeks to bring to Canada a poison afflicting many democracies: the collapse of convention."

John Ibbitson, Globe and Mail. 

People: please don't confuse political trends as public voice.   Watch for the tricksters who create public consent. They are in politics, education, business and media of course. (I am not saying these institutions have failed but propaganda is an invasive weed.)

People of integrity who value peace and social justice know how all things must be weighed and considered in our choices — how we react, who we vote for, who we believe, and who we can see through.

Does anyone believe that Trump, Bolsonaro, Boris Johnson are working for the greater good?

Yes they do but you have to check their particular interests. Why do they hate environmentalists, women, refugees and those with different religious faiths? Because their livelihood depends on maintaining a state of self-interested ignorance?

Conversely why do some feel absolute contempt for politics, education, and humanity in general — they are willing to invest in guns, violence and hate?

Setting up barricades against public conversation and engagement, is not a trend, it's a manipulation of public sentiment.

Greta Thunberg has single mindedly used her will to act in a way that gives us an example of how humanity could take back the future.

Dear America

When I came to this continent I met Ralph Waldo Emerson

and society as a home built by friendship 

and barns built by community.

Jobs for and with people — but you were awed by capitalism 

the transcendence of economy above sentiment, 

fantastic things, celebrity, the remaking of men 

and woman — a toy to play with

that only a few souls could influence.

The universal church of screens, talking heads and red lips, 

new words for new meanings, crash and bang 

you made it up and presented us with Jesus the superstar 

and Trump the christ — in the new world anyone can be 

a balloon floating on air and who needs real people 

when you can turn it on and turn it off again

but we cannot escape the meaning of this wizard who replaced 

shamans, kings and emperors with prisons for profit.  

Let them eat candy floss.

While the great fascists of Europe were fed oil and gas

you were singing in the rain and loving Lucy and we 

lapped it up like cream and sugar allowing Albert Einstein 

and Hannah Arendt to teach truth which nearly caught on
until the next economist came out with new puffs

and by then we were marshmallow chums

singing kumbaya around the campfire

more fun than British Bulldogs

(bobby sox were not for the stiff upper lip)

and those hippies knew how to put an end to war

until the neo-liberal economy crossed out

every living thing from the Amazon Forrest

to the orca whale and all that remains

is the lizard brain and far-sighted raptor.

Neo-nazi’s, I suspect,  are supported by two camps 

those afraid the people will create a new future

and those traumatized before they met tenderness.

Now the continent must be returned

to the earth and its inhabitants

or wordless bonfires without borders

will finish the game.

How to escape the mess we are in

George Monbiot expressed it so well.
Is it reasonable to hope for a better world? Study the cruelty and indifference of governments, the disarray of opposition parties, the apparently inexorable slide towards climate breakdown, the renewed threat of nuclear war, and the answer appears to be no. Our problems look intractable, our leaders dangerous, while voters are cowed and baffled. Despair looks like the only rational response.

The mess is the outcome of a long social and political fantasy - that dictates man must be in control of nature. This false assertion has disabled his ability to reflect on his relationship to the world. He cannot allow himself the vulnerability of feelings beyond the will to power. 

Every decade he invents more gadgets, weapons, and things to believe in, to possess, to give his life meaning, and every decade he creates new problems, new crises, wars, inequality, prisons, punishments and propaganda - to avoid the realization that he is not in control.

This torture has created the normalization of a mental illness, a game of elevating the self, competing with others for a fleeting sense of power. It demands that everyone exhibit the same values, the same mental illness, the same obsessions.

They are measured in new ages, new conceits and fashions - but ultimately it is about bringing an end to life - because life cannot submit to the game.  Life does not worship power over itself, unless man kills everything that refuses to submit to his will. 

The fantasy is that the eternal ruler will be the one who destroys everything else, including his own life.  The fantasy is that the narrative will be written in the barren rocks, fields and oceans.

It began with patriarchy, when men had to prove they were superior to women by overcoming their senses, by replacing their flesh with armour. Then having to keep those muscles in place by "discovering" other places, building temples, boats and doctrines. The mind had to be fought, wrestled into submission too. 

Masculinity removes man from nature, from the land, to that Zulu sentence-word that means "over there where I cry mother I am lost." Man must be broken in, taken from the protection of a loving family, from the comfort of his own nature to be the robotic soldier, the king, the executioner. 

Giving birth, love, nurture, compassion, healing, reflecting - all are dismissed as feminine, sissy, and wimpish. Death is for glory and life is for wimps.

The mess we are in is the breakdown of our own nervous system, our own eyes, our own hearts. The hatred we are asked to express is the contempt for our selves projected onto the other.

The way to escape this mess is by loving ourselves and through compassion for the suffering of others.

Quilt of Belonging A Place for All Documentary

Thanks to Germaine Kovary who introduced me to this  documentary which lasts 47 minutes - it is a good description of who Canadians are.

League of Canadian Poets -- chapbook to spotlight work of Black poets

The LCP Chapbook Series is now accepting submissions for a chapbook which will spotlight the work of Black poets, to be published in 2020. In celebration of contemporary writing in Canada, the chapbook will amplify Black voices that continue to enrich, question, and propel literature in Canada, playing a part in doing-away with single-thread narratives of the Black Canadian experience. We specifically encourage writers with intersecting marginalized identities to submit.  Poets may submit 1-3 poems for consideration. Guest editor Chelene Knight will select 1-2 poems by 10 poets. Chelene wants to see writing that pushes the rigid boundaries of form and writing that’s infused with an unapologetic voice.  The chapbook will be designed and hand-sewn by Nicole Brewer, the League’s Administrative Director and one half of the words(on)pages team. Contributors will receive payment of $25 per published poem plus 3 copies of the chapbook. There is no submission fee.  The submission deadline is October 31, 2019. The chapbook will be published during Black History Month (February) 2020.  Submission guidelines:  Poetry submissions may consist of one to three previously unpublished (print or online) poems in any style (including prose poems).Hybrid forms are highly encouraged by the editor.  Length is flexible, though poems longer than 2 pages will be considered only if they are of exceptional quality and no longer than 4 pages.  All submissions should be in doc, docx, or PDF format.  Include a cover letter with your name, email address, and a short (100 words or under) bio. If you would like to identify yourself as belonging to an equity-seeking group, please mention it in your cover letter.  All submissions must be sent to info@poets.ca.  We accept simultaneous submissions. If your piece is accepted elsewhere, please notify us immediately.  Submissions are open to members of the League of Canadian Poets. With this project, the League aims to create space and facilitate representation for marginalized poets and we recognize that folks holding marginalized identities may face barriers to access in gaining membership to the League. We are committed to working with those folks facing barriers, specifically financial barriers, who have an interest in participating in this project. Please email info@poets.ca if the cost of membership is a barrier to your participation in the League. For more information: http://poets.ca/lcpchapbookseries-blackpoets/