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.

Occupy Power

The defenders of the status quo who have abandoned humanity for the sake of keeping their positions, are maintaining their denial and ignorance of our current crisis by claiming that the Occupy Movement doesn't know what it is about.

Sarah Pond who travelled from the Sunshine Coast to participate in Occupy Vancouver, and who is quoted in The Tyee, says  "In my home and in my community, income has been going down while the costs of everything else keeps going up. Meanwhile, social programs are being cut and the largest corporations are posting unprecedented profits".

"There isn't just one problem," says Tina Mohns, in the same article "There are many ... [it's] about people showing that they have a voice ... [t]his will be a success if it initiates more momentum, gets people to take even small initiatives, and gives those in power the sense that there is a rumbling out here."

People have known for a long time about the abuse of power as food banks became necessary, as families find themselves working twice as hard for less pay, as students realize they may never be able to pay off their student debts or own a home.  There have been many church organizations who have protested the centralization of wealth and power, and organizations such as Avaaz and Amnesty who have kept their eyes focused on human rights abuses.

The Occupy Movement is another enormous collective of public energy that attempts to show the world that what is shown in the commercial media networks is merely the propaganda paid for by an elite.

The major focus of centralized power is to make its lies seem believable and to replace reality with an over-arching ideology to numb the minds and imaginations of the masses, to make them feel worthless and powerless, and whose labour is required to maintain their oppression for the benefit of one percent of the world's population.

The Occupy Movement is saying we know the truth that you have worked so hard to conceal. People are saying we are not just the means to the ends of your bank account.

If we can shift this energy into a sustained dialogue, waking to the reality that our individual well being, our self-interest, is tied inextricably to the justice and well-being of all - we shall replace the oppressive ideology with our shared perceptions.  And then we shall work harder than we've ever worked before, to create a society based on free participation - or slip back into an apathy that allows another system of oppression to take the reins.

Everyone Needs Affordable Housing

We all need a home, a shelter from harm, a place to return to, cupboards for the archive of our lives, tables to prepare and eat food, a bed to sleep in, and a toilet. If we are lucky we hope for beautiful views and good neighbours. Regardless of whether you earn $10,000 a year or $100,000, whether you need five hundred or five thousand square feet, whether you own or rent, you need a home you can afford.

Affordable means more than money. It means the ability to sustain the place, to maintain it as a shelter from chaos or threat. It means the capacity to nurture those other beings who share it with us. This is a basic need we worked out centuries ago. No civilized society believes it’s okay for some to be left to live in the forest or storefront doorways because they can’t afford a home, so why would anyone think we don’t need affordable housing?

What cleavage in our common sense would lead anyone to be against affordable housing? Who benefits from the lack of it?

In the public domain of conversation, ‘affordable housing’ has come to mean housing for those who, for some reason of luck, health or happenstance, have less income than the price of a home. If you can’t afford a home then you can’t afford peace or self-esteem, and in the process you lose community support. Friends and family that most of us take for granted, become distant, lost even, because the desperation felt by those who are homeless is heartbreaking and difficult to endure. Loved ones want to rescue, help, advise, even take control sometimes, but as long as a person is homeless nothing seems to help. We all grieve and squabble to fix it.

The state none of us can afford for long is to see others suffer. Those who suffer are marginalised, placed out of sight and out of mind. I know this because I was homeless when I was twelve. My parents split up. They were not bad or irresponsible, but through a series of events they could not control, found the emotional cost of living together was unaffordable.

Suddenly my mother, brother, sister, and I found ourselves living in the homes of our relatives. Suddenly we were a burden. Then we followed our mother to a house where she would clean for a widower and his children. Soon after arriving, my mother feared the home-owner expected her services in bed too. Furthermore we felt the resentment of the children whose home we had invaded, so we lived in one bedroom as quietly as possible.

Now we were the recipients of freely given advice from self-appointed experts, indicating the many ways in which we were to blame for the predicament we found ourselves in. Our world held us in judgement, and wherever we went we carried the marks of failure, and entered a new landscape of pot holes and opportunists.

However, we were lucky. With the help of others, we found a temporary home above the local clinic, and didn’t need the numbing effects of alcohol and drugs to survive the chill of storefront doorways.

When we have food and shelter, when we are not worried where the next mortgage payment, meal, or couch will be found, we have the capacity to explore who we are within our community. Sure there are some who can do this in dangerous and dire conditions, but most communities are built on the civil engagement of people who are not heroes, but who have found compassion and creativity because their own pain is manageable.

Bullied to Death

Rick Mercer was interviewed today on The Current about his rant on Tuesday after the suicidal death of 15-year-old Jamie Hubley, earlier this month.

Why would kids bully those they think are gay?  How does it threaten them?

And why do we have so many reports of school aged children committing suicide because of bullying, or if not because of bullying, bullying was a factor in their lives?

What has happened to our places of learning that children are violated in this way, and the school,  teachers, principals, boards, seem to be unable or unwilling to intervene effectively?

What happened to that social factor of teaching fairness?

Society and all its cultural knowledge was sacked in the early eighties, by the people and institutions who are paid to govern, who set upon a course of dismantling civil society in order to appease the power of transnational corporations.  So all we need do is look at the systems running our world.  There is no bigger bully than big business, who have consistently lobbied to undermine human rights, protection against violence, social safety nets, medicare, education for all, ethical journalism and participatory democracy.

Civil service takes years of money, training and discipline but once the student leaves the school for the workplace he learns that the game is about power and strategy for his own survival, and those who do the work they were trained to do, will be tripped up and chucked out. The winners are those who have no conscience and who put all their resources into winning the game.

Civil society has been bullied to death. 

It is a top down ritual of bullying whoever is beneath you, whoever is vulnerable: your spouse, your children, your employees, your cleaning lady and the sales representatives at your local market. Intelligence has been subverted to a single thrust - that of exercising power, control or force over whoever you can.

This is the reason we are unable to deal with bullying - we are in denial. Whenever someone points out injustice, we hate them, we hate the messenger.  Participating in the game is a device to avoid seeing the violence that is all around us.  It is mob rule through unexamined fear, because the ruling principles and ideology is misogynist, misanthropic and nihilistic.  Disaster capitalism is designed to keep us, the members of our fractured and broken civil society, in fear and feeling powerless, through their funded media replays of all that makes humanity appear brutal, unreflective, violent and primitive.

Power is a central element in education and the running of all institutions.  Kids learn about power from the time they are born.  By the time they reach high school and have witnessed how their parents cope, and the thousands of hours watching commercial programming, they feel and sense the tight rope they are placed upon.  They may not be able to articulate that, but they know.  And so they target others in their group - who might be gay, or whose ears may stick out, or who dress differently - for that fleeting sense of power, of superiority. Their fearful hearts sense it won't last but for now they will find a thing more vulnerable than them.

Who will stand up and risk their job to work for social justice by teaching others how power currently works against them if they contribute to its brutality; and how power is in our hands if we work together to return to life affirming principles, such as the nurture we receive from true friends, good parents, and honourable communities?

If you think this conflict between power-over and power-from-within can be dismissed in our society, then consider what happened in the death camps of Nazi Germany.  Consider the women of Afghanistan under siege from their warrior men who courageously set up civic education, and who were crushed again by Western nations, because, instead of giving them protection and support they gave their men more guns. Consider the billions spent on arms in foreign wars as citizens go hungry, without health care, without homes. Consider the degradation of our earthly home so that the most powerful bullies are given unchallenged rights to exploit and rape every imaginable element for greater profit and power.

Consider all this and witness our children committing suicide before they have had time to know who they are. Then look at bullying in a new context.

Jean Crowder defends funding for the CBC

Below is a message from Jean Crowder, sent in response to my letter regarding the funding of CBC. Re-printed here with permission:

Good Morning,

Thank you for your recent correspondence concerning the future of CBC/Radio-Canada, and for your continued advocacy on behalf of a vigorous public broadcasting system. Heritage Minister James Moore’s recent musings about a 5% cut to CBC/Radio-Canada’s total budget represent the latest in a series of statements and actions which confirm his government’s ambivalence to public broadcasting.

In contrast, my New Democrat colleagues and I believe strongly in the importance of public broadcasting to help promote Canada's cultural identity and linguistic and regional diversity, both at home and abroad. Today’s unprecedented deficit may not permit immediate large-scale funding increases, but my colleagues and I are committed to provide stable, long-term funding for CBC/Radio-Canada, and to depoliticize the funding process by making permanent the Corporation’s annual funding allocation.

CBC/Radio-Canada took action to address a persistent deficit in 2008/09, reducing overhead costs by $171 Million – an ambitious voluntary reduction in excess of 10% of the Corporation’s annual operating budget. Even before this display of fiscal accountability, per capita spending on CBC/Radio-Canada lagged far behind that in other developed nations. For instance, the UK spent over $124 CAD per citizen on the BBC, while France’s public broadcaster received $77. In contrast, CBC/Radio-Canada’s allocation of $33 per Canadian is woefully inadequate.

My colleagues and I have proposed the following plan to enable CBC/Radio-Canada to strengthen critical components of its operations:

· Strengthening accessible local news service in rural Canada, vigorous regional programming and minority language broadcasting

· Revitalizing infrastructure to compete in the media marketplace of the 21st century

· Supporting the expanded production of compelling original Canadian content, and

· Continuing efforts to ensure transparency and fiscal accountability to taxpayers.

 As we move into the new session of Parliament, the New Democrats will redouble our efforts to protect and build upon the legacy of this important Canadian institution.

 You may be interested in a recent petition I presented to the House on September 28, 2011 :

 Mr. Speaker, the second petition has to do with the CBC.

The petitioners say they love the CBC and call on the Prime Minister to reaffirm the importance of the national public broadcaster.

Further, they call on the Prime Minister to provide the CBC with adequate financing by raising the CBC's parliamentary grant from the current levels to $40 for every citizen, in keeping with the recent recommendations of the House of Commons Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage.

 Thank you for taking the time to share your concerns with me. With your continued support, we can ensure that when CBC/Radio-Canada celebrates its centenary in 2036, it remains the strong, vigorous and dynamic national institution Canadians overwhelmingly want it to be.

 Sincerely,

Jean Crowder, MP Nanaimo-Cowichan
101-126 Ingram St., Duncan, BC, V9L 1P1

www.jeancrowder.ca

Self-Esteem

I remember hearing something on CBC radio a couple of weeks ago, about or from a teacher, who said that marking students' work is fraught with conflict and difficulty because they feel entitled to get good marks from the institution their parents support with their dollars. The school, in an unregulated capitalist society is a commodity, and the teacher is a servant. Following this idea another comment claimed that self-esteem is something to be earned - that it was not a right or an entitlement.

So in this brief discussion where I cannot remember the program or cite the source, and for which I apologize, it seemed that entitlement and high self-esteem were linked. Maybe just by me, but the thought has remained even though the source has been forgotten.

Does high self-esteem threaten the quality of education and other social institutions? Certainly billions of dollars are spent in entertainment and advertising that tell us we are special and we deserve the best. And we are surrounded by devices–little genies that pop out of laptops, cell phones and electronic games, whose purpose in their short lives, is to please us. We learn how to press the  buttons to win. Millions of imaginations in the western world can easily believe, in the privacy of their small rooms, that they are in control. Millions of egos who watch endless examples on TV, internet, and game-boys, of how to succeed, without ever having to deal with other people, may think they already have all the answers.

Civil society is under threat from many things but I don’t think self-esteem is the biggest.

Do those who have the drive to lead others always have high self-esteem? Do those who have learned the tricks to get ahead, to come out on top, who are well groomed and good looking, have high self-esteem? Do celebrities have high self-esteem? In short, do the people we hold up as good examples of success have a grounded sense of their worth beyond beauty, money and status, so that when they wake at four in the morning, they feel satisfied?

It seems to me that the drive for material success is more an instinct of survival, in a hierarchical society that marginalises those who don’t play the win or lose game. No room on this planet for the ones who don’t consume. Who refuse, as Reggie Perrin says, to hand their balls over to the corporation. Even the meagre shelters that enable these souls a bed and a toilet at night are closing down for lack of funding.

Commodities really are a cosmetic application to self-esteem that is continually under threat from the competition. Self-esteem has to arise from a sense of worth that comes from being loved and wanted as a child, to loving as an adult, and belonging to community.

It’s poor self-esteem that is destructive. The inner voice that abuses the conscience after any achievement. The bully who endlessly looks for someone to hurt because she is unable to acknowledge the abuse received when she looked for love. The addict who keeps looking for his chosen fix because he can’t find that permanent intrinsic worth.

In reality, the commercial world assigns no intrinsic value to us. In the hierarchical, political realm  there is no esteem for the self because life has no value. No more than a global virus, we serve or die alone.

Self-esteem doesn’t exist outside of the self’s participation in a community that is radical enough to love life more than power and profit.

Challenging the Looming Threat of Fascism

In the alternative press there are many thoughtful articles and essays on the current state of this planet. Mostly, they target specific issues: democracy, health care, justice, poverty, homelessness, crime and the environment.

It's as though these issues stem from different sources, but when you read them day after day, you can't help but feel they are connected, leading to a vague feeling of dread. A disturbing sense that something much deeper and bigger is going horribly wrong, and that shadow, perhaps, belongs to the looming threat of fascism.

So what if we took on the big picture - the supposed cause, instead of the symptoms? 

Using a commonly posted list of fourteen defining signs of fascism (listed in black text), attributed to a Dr. Lawrence Britt, (whose bio is hard to locate and who may even be a fictitious character) I  suggest corresponding actions we can take to challenge them (in blue text). 

1. Powerful and Continuing Nationalism: <creation and documentation of national forums that enable citizens to be heard as they express their concerns in a respectful, safe, environment.

2. Disdain for the Recognition of Human Rights: <vigilant defense of human rights for all.

3. Identification of Enemies/Scapegoats as a Unifying Cause: <determined and sustained defence of diversity, and equality.

4. Supremacy of the Military: <balance between military and civic powers in training and law.

5. Rampant Sexism: <reverence for the feminine and masculine natures within all.

6. Controlled Mass Media: <public and financial support for alternative, small media outlets, and transparent regulations that keep all media bound by laws of ethics.

7. Obsession with National Security: <democratic world government that sustains human rights by challenging abuses.

8. Religion and Government are Intertwined: <study of comparative religion as part of public education while upholding freedom of religion and separation of religion and state.

9. Corporate Power is Protected: <regulated corporate power for the protection of consumer and indigenous peoples rights.

10. Labour Power is Suppressed: <protected labour through labour laws, livable minimum wages and safe working places.

11. Disdain for Intellectuals and the Arts: <support and promotion of the arts and intellectual development.

12. Obsession with Crime and Punishment: <focus on prevention through early intervention, support for those at risk, and rehabilitation for those who are in the criminal system.

13. Rampant Cronyism and Corruption: <transparency in all systems of appointment.

14. Fraudulent Elections: <citizen based checks on media election coverage, polls and ballots.

Certainly any action has to be followed by a large portion of our population in order to be effective, but all of these actions are being tackled through various non-governmental agencies; they are viewed as different problems rather than symptoms of a larger threat to our future.

What would happen if, somehow, the majority of those who believe they are living in free democratic societies were able to see these movements as defending the freedom of all rather than a collection of special interest groups? And what if, those who are already in the trenches fighting poverty and discrimination, could see their work as having a larger, more profound impact?

What has become clear to me since 9/11

9/11 mostly consolidated what I had suspected as I witnessed changes in media, politics and behaviour patterns since arriving in Canada in the sixties.

In the years since that day I have come to see two parallel operating systems and all that is reported in the public domain fits into one or the other of those two. Power-over and power-from-within. These systems govern our feelings and emanate out towards our thoughts, actions, and relationships. So it could be said that 9/11 has either clarified my beliefs or that I have become a victim of my own ideology.

 

Watching the evolution of leadership in North America, Canada and Europe, the wars and crises in the Middle East and Asia, I perceive that those who organized 9/11, those who organized the war in Iraq, the rise of the Taliban, the rise of the Nazi's, the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand, and the illicit drug trade - are the same tribe. They may have different names and different ancestors and believe they have a unique role to play in the scheme of things, but they are committed to the goal of absolute power over all. All political, financial and ideological investment leads to the zero sum notion of power that decrees people must be kept away from their innate power and centralized into the realm of the ruling elite.

What is increasingly apparent in Western capitalist societies is that consumerism replaced civil society. The huge influence of the entertainment media has filled our lives with structural violence that informs us we should be scared of our community, that we are too fat, too ugly, don't know enough; and no matter how hard we try or wish to believe in ourselves, we are reduced to our fleeting appetites looking for the next fix. Whatever our true nature might be, we lock our doors, get in our cars, and compete for the most of what each of us wants. We have consumed our future and given up our imagination to corporate services. So when we are faced with countless images of crumbling towers, bomb shattered cities, we believe we must choose sides.

In the power-from-within world I have witnessed more determination, more strength in character, more insight and more organization to create community that reveres and sustains life. Theatre, health, music, support for those in crisis, along with the new examples of human nature. The strength of those who organize these events is often heroic.

 

Ten years after 9/11 I realize our greatest threat is our collective illusion of power. All the wars in our history  have not been about the enemies we have been told to fear, but about the power within we are asked to sacrifice, for the insatiable egos of those who have built their fleeting empires on the blood of others.

Hope and Optimism

Hope and optimism requires our attention to the current state of affairs. The dark side of power.  That is, we need to look at the events that normally disturb the comfortable and lead the disturbed to despair and pessimism.  We need to address this relationship to our world, our place within it and find a way of being that challenges injustice.

Ish Teilheimer of Straight Goods,  reporting on a study that reveals a psychological difference between rich and poor (indicating that the rich don't see a need to help others, whereas the poor understand that they depend on mutual support) goes on to say "It's good to be loving, hopeful, and optimistic, but it's also important to point out that many of the bad things happening to people today are happening because some very wealthy people wanted things that way."

Wealth is power, and those who have power-over sometimes feel more secure by creating systems that make it very difficult or impossible for the masses to gain a healthy standard of living.

"The export of good jobs to sweatshop countries, for instance, was their idea. It's not unfair or overly negative to ask about new ideas in politics and government "Does this help everyone or just the rich?" and to consistently expose the shameless voices of wealthy self-interest."

History is full of examples of how brutal some are willing to be in order to maintain power in their zero-sum game. It was wealthy interests who supported the Nazi's murder of millions of Jews, gypsies and others, causing a war across Europe that destroyed hope and optimism for most. It was wealthy interests that plummeted the lives of Africans into despair and alienation during apartheid.  It is wealthy interests that prop up despotic military governments in the Middle East and Asia.

It is wealthy interests that have destroyed the most powerful nation in the world by creating a dysfunctional hysteria among its citizens. Michael Moore in his 2003 Academy Award acceptance speech said "We like non-fiction, yet we live in fictitious times. We live in a time where we have fictitious election results that elect a fictitious president. We live in a time where we have a man sending us to war for fictitious reasons." 

For expressing his opinion he received incredible harrassment and publicly televised death threats.

America, the self-promoted defender of democracy and human rights is currently being crippled by an old strategy - divide and conquer and divide, divide, divide.

So it's apparent that the atrocities that have become familiar in our collective sub-conscious are not caused by the masses as much as they are designed and organized by a powerful few for their own benefit, not ours. However, they have been enabled by a majority who have kept silent for fear of being punished, or have given up on their own perceptions for fear of gazing into the monster.

The trouble with this 'analysis' is that it leaves us feeling powerless, in despair, pessimistic, putting us into the blaming camp of us and them. The observation itself removes any inspiration to respond by anything more than apathy.

While facing up to the fact that most of the globe's economic interests have been gathered into a very small gated community, leaving the masses without much to hope for, we need to invest in something else and rebuild the world by the natures we possess, that have not been corporatized: to witness change as it unfolds, wherever it unfolds, and ask ourselves how we can influence that change.

Hope and optimism without effort may be naive, but getting our selves engaged in the process of evolution is hard work. Hope and optimism ask us to invest in them, they don't promise us happy endings. Hope and optimism need us to be honest with ourselves and one another. Hope and optimism rely on our search for truth and not just the many generalizations trotted out by institutions and heresay.  When it comes to the truth of our lives and our future, even statistics and science need not stop our questioning.

The future we are destined to endure depends upon what we feel, and how we interrogate our feeling with thinking, and how that guides what we say and what we do, and the societies we build from character and vision.

Power Without Responsibility is War Against Humanity

The UK riots being the current media focus right now, I happened to hear a taped conversation between two self-acclaimed rioters on the CBC radio. 

Many people may have lost their livelihoods because of the destruction and looting of small businesses in the cities where the riots were held.  In today's economy they may not get much back on their insurance policies, never recover their losses, and be forced out of business.  The large companies of course will survive and may fill the vacancies, which means less choice for shoppers and more influence for big business to pressure government for further tax cuts. This, as well as those whose houses were burned down, is a crime against the people of this nation.

The two rioters, drinking a bottle of stolen wine at 9:30 am, said they were 18 years old. They felt really good about their role in the looting.  One of them claimed, to the agreement of the other, that this proves they can do what they want.

Well, no dear, you can't.  Because the power you are using is not going to offer you a future any more than the power that is used against you.  For a brief description of that I go to an article by Michael Moore published in Straight Goods.

It began centuries ago, but most recently on August 5, 1981, when Reagan fired every member of the air traffic controllers union who defied his order to return to work. They had been on strike for two days.

"Reagan had been backed by Wall Street in his run for the White House and they, along with right-wing Christians, wanted to restructure America and turn back the tide that President Franklin D Roosevelt started — a tide that was intended to make life better for the average working person."

His ideology was closely followed by Margaret Thatcher.

Since then we have seen a growing gap between haves and have-nots and our capitalist societies in the UK, Canada, and the US, have become more volatile, as jobs left the nation for places where exploitation had no competing infrastructure called "human rights". There is more hatred, despair, corrupt business practice by employers and employees, more reported issues of domestic violence, road rage, mass murderers, and more wars.

In short, what has happened to our civil society is that it has crumbled under the fierce competition for power and influence over others. Generally people will avoid blaming those who have orchestrated this break down, and instead vent their frustration on people and things that have less power than they.

For thirty years, big business with its instruments of "democratically" elected governments and media, have become the ruling party. They are instructing the people, through media persuasion and obfuscation, what to think, feel and buy.

The wisdom and morality that helped us evolve into civil societies, with law, education and health care, has eroded, and been replaced by fear.  Fear stokes the lower human qualities of greed, envy and hate.  We are continuing to spiral down, while a few elite are getting greedier and more despotic in their actions.

Michael Moore is direct in his observation of what happened in America, which trickled down to events in Europe, "those in power ... destroyed the middle class of our country and, in turn, have wrecked the future for our young people."

Moore acknowledges they had the money, the media and the cops, yet the people numbered 200 million. Only twenty percent support the Tea Party, which has thrown a wedge into the nations' bid to survive.

Linda McQuaig (also in Straight Goods) points out, "when Washington embarked on a frenzied search for ways to reduce the massive US deficit, a tax loophole that allowed hedge fund managers to pay tax at the exceptionally low rate of 15 percent certainly seemed like low-hanging fruit..." with polls indicating that Americans support "higher taxes on the rich as a way to reduce the deficit."

"Cancelling the loophole would save the treasury $20 billion over 10 years, and the public would surely be unmoved by the pain inflicted on hedge fund managers — the top 25 of whom took home an average pay last year of $880 million each."

Social programs for the middle class, the needy and the desperate, that have been cut could benefit from this $20 billion. A just society is a less fearful place to live in. But Republican Tea Party extremists, took control by cleaning the table of tax increases. McQuaig reports "All deficit reduction was to come exclusively from government spending cuts, hitting the middle and lower classes hard."

The future for us, our children, and grand-children, is debilitating poverty and chaos. We might be okay now, but in the war against humanity, we will surely be victims, as the uber powerful compete with one another to gain the most control through economic power.

Unless we wake up and see who the major looters and rioters are, we will be living in a polluted, devastated, bleak and violent world, such as Dickens illuminated in his stories of squalor. We can hardly expect our youth to be moral if our rulers are blatantly ruthless. And we can hardly rest at moralizing the rioters if we are not going to challenge the power currently operating and replace it with the human revering, power from within.

What we can do is nurture our youth, nurture their understanding of how power works, so that they learn how to re-create a sustainable and just future.  It has taken thirty years to completely undo the social justice values their grand-parents were raised on. We musn't expect our youth to learn how to rebuild it in a few days.

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.

The Gate-Beaver

This post is a continuation of the series on the new class system, and bears no relation to the slang usage referring to a part of female anatomy or to Canada’s national emblem. Nor will this post make any reference to any imagined connection between the slang meaning and Canada’s foreign policy.

The gate-beaver is the defender of the status quo. The wild beaver has his or her own reasons for eating trees and building dams, but the gate-beaver is a cunning creature who has built a career in service to centralizing wealth and power.

Gate-beaver has established a tradition of building stuff on other stuff, and is a clever engineer of converting natural systems into profit-making industry. It is the gate-beaver who invented advertising, promotion and spin. It is the gate-beaver who is responsible for turning art (music, film, fashion, interior design, literature) into a huge money-making market.

The gate-beaver will not be the folk singer or story teller, but will be the manager who creates celebrity out of art, a politician out of a charismatic speaker, commodities out of healing wisdom, and full scale wars out of survival strategies.

The gate-beaver flourishes in advertising. If the anthro-hyena is cunning then the gate-beaver is a magician in manipulating sub-conscious waterways. The gate-beaver can create many streams out of one river of knowledge, and hand out accreditation for those who follow the flow.

The gate-beaver is not the academy but will chew through whatever needs to be chewed in order to establish him or herself in the academy, and will work 24/7 to build dams that will keep out the ideologies not useful to the ruling class.

It is this creature who has designed vehicles to indicate progress in human societies while disenfranchising human intelligence and ethics. The ultimate in the gate-beaver’s book of alchemy has been to turn civilization into a global shopping mall.

The gate-beaver is not evil; he/she is so busy staying on top of his/her game (building, contracting, networking, feeding a family, saving for retirement) - that any reflection must be done on route to a drive-through breakfast.

The Anthro-Hyena

In an earlier post I proposed a  new class system consisting of Anthro-Hyenas, Gate-Beavers and Field Mice.  This post is a closer look at the Anthro-Hyena.

The anthro-hyena is a hyena in character with human intelligence. A creature not confined by capacity or ability but by narrow vision.  He/She seems unable to connect his/her actions with outcomes unless the outcome benefits the self. The anthro-hyena is capable of creating tools, weapons, machines, systems and alliances that may destroy millions of people or hectares of land, but lacks feelings of remorse or reflection on the harmful results. The anthro-hyena is not a person with a personality disorder, or incapable of feeling empathy - but exhibits a reverse of empathy, in that he/she gets a greater sense of power and accomplishment based on the numbers of those harmed or the area of control.

It's important to point out, that the anthro-hyena is not defined by a particular religion, gender or socio-economic class, but by their focus on power as the basis of life's meaning.

The four legged hyena is satisfied with enough food to eat but the anthro-hyena keeps grasping for more of whatever is out there.  Their mantra is a whisper  held almost under the breath, repeated over and over again  - "wotsinitforme".

They are often but not always, highly educated, well dressed and show impeccable manners. This is to enable their upward mobility.  They are very skilled at manipulation, and can be found in the clubs and back rooms of the most influential and powerful institutions. They seek careers in the police force, the military, law, education, politics, finance, management - not for the love of the discipline, or to help and protect, but for the power invested in the position.

The extent to which the anthro-hyena is successful  depends on his or her ability to groom others for their own benefit. They crave followers and adoration but feel no loyalty towards anyone or anything unless it elevates their interests.  The truly genius among them gain enormous powers of influence without any notoriety or fame. They manipulate and control yet always manage to escape blame for the crises they create.

The world of wealth and power is controlled by the anthro-hyena, but they are not entirely the cause of all that is unjust and evil. They succeed because of the work and discipline of the gate-beavers, and the ignorance of the field mice.

Is Pro-Life Life-Revering?

In the Guardian today we are informed that an anti-abortion group has been drafted in as a sexual health adviser to the UK government.  This surprised me because I believed that the social sciences in Europe had not yet been dismissed in government - you know those stats that say there is less unplanned pregnancy when kids get good sex education. But I do sense a trend here, that Western democratic nations are closing the doors to science and nature, choosing power strategies that seem eerily familiar to the Victorian age.

In Victorian England women were reviled for having sex outside of marriage or raising a child alone, and imprisoned or hung for having an abortion, but the other half of that equation - the man - was seen as simply sowing his wild oats. A foetus then was a wild oat.

Is this what conservatism is?  A denial of the knowledge that disturbs us in favour of simplistic illusions that morality is a family value where father knows best, mother is the domestic servant, and children obey their parents?

If the anti-abortion narrative becomes the health policy of a nation, can we assume that the unborn will be protected after birth? Will women's groups and social workers receive support in their efforts to support women and their children?  

I know that many who join the anti-abortion movement believe that they are saving the unborn, but do they see how these movements, well-funded by wealthy interests, manage to focus on the deaths of the foetus rather than how we can design a world where mothers have access to what they need to raise a healthy child? That the rows of crosses supposedly revealing the numbers of  "murdered babies" are never compared to the numbers of children and their mothers killed in war and domestic disputes?  Within these groups you might believe that children are most at risk from their mothers.  

The anti-abortion movement is also against sex education, planned parenthood, the use of contraceptives and have not been too vocal in supporting women's shelters or women's health either. If it doesn't support women or children, then who or what does it support?

Now I agree that having an abortion is not a good thing, nor is sexual promiscuity. But we need to address these raging hormones with a little more insight than the instruction to abstain. We need to teach the young how to value themselves, their own bodies and to understand the consequences of their choices.

Women in the popular media are held up as sex goddesses or sluts, and our appetites, held up as the most sacred element of our lives, must be fulfilled.  So if we create government policies that make it illegal  or very expensive for a woman to have an abortion, or have sex, will the media be pressured into cleaning up their practice of using sex to sell products?  To put it simply - if women are to be controlled will  the corporate imaging of women also be controlled by government?  Not likely.

When women and children have choice, life is revered and society is healthier; power is more creative, less oppressive. In societies where women's bodies are the possessions of men, power is about punishment and control. 

The New Class System

I remember being cornered at a party, back in the sixties when I was a new immigrant to Canada, by a young man telling me why the UK is going down hill.  The nation was mired in a class system, he thought, that kept them from reaching their economic potential, whereas Canada was free of any such out-dated confinements. 

Back then the familiar terms were upper, middle and working class, and although Canadians didn't often allude to class, there was a vast gap between the wealthiest Canadians and the poorest.

The notion of a working, middle and aristocratic class has a genteel ring to it, but we know the reality was more brutal than was ever talked about.  Therefore I propose that the class system should be renamed - either because it has changed, or because it's more in line with reality.

I would call the three classes "anthro-hyenas", "gate-beavers" and "field mice".

Anthro-hyenas very much in the minority, are the ruling elite. Fiercely carnivorous and protective of their own friends and family they are not content to simply fill their bellies as their four legged cousins might. They are hungry for everlasting security. This means controlling world resources (including labour) by creating systems of oppression for everyone else by whatever means necessary.

Field mice are us.  We are so busy trying to survive, caring for and protecting our families we barely have time to look at the big picture.  Being vulnerable to manipulation we tend not to blame the causes but the victims of the system - particularly if they are even more vulnerable than we are.

Gate-beavers are the class created to keep the field mice from knowing how the system works. They are well trained to protect the position and power of the anthro-hyenas - to be the impenetrable walls that keep the field mice out. Gate-beavers build institutions, create laws, design wars, co opt media and do whatever they can to maintain the ideology that power is a zero sum game.

Who is to blame for this?  Is it the ruling elite, the anthro-hyenas, who have abused power for thousands of years? Is it the field mice getting dizzy running around their particular wheels unable to see the landscape?  Is it the gate-beavers who invest their lives in a system of oppression by pandering to wealthy interests?  Or is blame a construct we use out of habit, because systems of oppression have always relied on setting up enemies in order to maintain the status quo?

Is it possible that the destruction of this planet might be halted by new ways of organizing human capacity as we discover the interdependent web of self interest and social responsibility? Will there be a time when left wing and right wing become redundant phrases as Canada becomes a nation free of class structures as the young man in the sixties proclaimed?

Oppressive Power Needs Enemies - People Don't

As soon as the death of Osama bin Laden found its way to the media, 'experts' were interviewed to identify the next in line. A new book by James A. Baker (who served under Reagan and George H. W. Bush) was published about a week later, titled Beyond Bin Laden: America and the future of terror.

In Uganda there is a bill threatening to make homosexuality punishable by death. Recently, John Cummins, running for leadership of the Conservative party in BC, said he believes that homosexuality is a personal choice and does not need protection under the Human Rights Act, as if to appeal to socially conservative religious groups who have openly identified as being anti-homosexual.

The treatment of women in Afghanistan, and other middle-eastern nations, makes them public enemies by requiring garments that cover their face and bodies, thereby making the feminine illegal in public. 

Terrorists, homosexuals and women are all enemies created by authoritarian interests. Of course there is a great deal of difference between those who blow up innocent people and those who love members of the same sex. However, left unchallenged to their ultimate conclusion they are treated the same. Enemies maintain the status quo, the justification of hierarchy by creating fear. Oppressive power claims ownership of the world and all its vassals by exploiting human emotion.

We need to revere life, to celebrate it, to nurture it, to create laws and systems that allow it to thrive. We need dialogue, education, music, art, poetry, transportation, work, housing, food and water.  This is enough to fill the air waves with noise as we struggle to find peace through social justice after centuries of dysfunction and violence. The task is overwhelming enough.

We don't need control, we need guidance.  We need thinkers and listeners more than charismatic speakers. We need community more than IPads and game apps.  We need wisdom through experience in conflict resolution as we learn how to live with one another, rather than hours of escapist entertainment.

We need to develop our own counsel more than we need hundreds of news channels, sponsored by a few powerful interests.

We need love, starting with self-love.

Wherever there is a heightened rhetoric around good and evil, there is an enemy-creating industry mandated to keep the masses living in fear and feeling powerless.

Yes this is apple pie, naive, idealism, written millions of times before, like a letter from a kindergarten class. But here is the clue - children get it! What happens to the minds and hearts of those who have been cleverly subjected to propaganda in all its packages, that we think preserving life is silly.