Merry Christmas?

 

"Seymour Melman, in his book “Pentagon Capitalism,” documented the way militarized societies destroy their domestic economies. Billions are spent on the research and development of weapons systems while renewable energy technologies languish. Universities are flooded with military-related grants while they struggle to find money for environmental studies and the humanities. Bridges, roads, levees, rail, ports, electric grids, sewage treatment plants and drinking water infrastructures are structurally deficient and antiquated. Schools are in disrepair and lack sufficient teachers and staff. Unable to stem the COVID-19 pandemic, the for-profit health care industry forces families, including those with insurance, into bankruptcy." Chris Hedges, https://chrishedges.substack.com/p/the-democrats-are-now-the-war-party?

On CBC radio I was listening to gospel music. Most of the day's broadcasting has been Christmas stuff. Jesus who is held up as the saviour of mankind while mankind has historically destroyed life for the sake of power. The message from saviours and prophets has been mostly about love and nurture, yet the egos who seek to be in positions of power are still addicted to the notion they, and they alone, can save the world. The world they didn't create but inherited.

Empires are built and its defenders become obsessed with control. Controlling what they did not create. And so the teachings of wise people are misinterpreted so the egos can feel powerful.

Power and life are opposed to each other in civilizations we know today. Unless of course we being to celebrate and care for the life on this planet.

The problem with that is we won't have trophies and markers that indicate our achievements.

Warriors For The Human Spirit

 

WARRIORS FOR THE HUMAN SPIRIT

Training to be the Presence of Insight and Compassion

We need leaders who recognize the harm being done
to people and planet through the dominant practices that
control, ignore, abuse, and oppress the human spirit.
We need leaders who put service over self,
stand steadfast in crises and failures, and
who display unshakable faith that
people can be generous, creative, and kind.

Margaret Wheatley

https://margaretwheatley.com/2019-warriors-for-the-human-spirit-training/

Poetry as an alternative to news

 

SBN 978-1-77171-360-3 Sleep With Me (poetry) 23.95 published 2020 84 pages The trenchant poems in this book use the word 'Lullaby' as an ironic metaphor delivering incisive commentary on our capitalist society. Never predictable, the lines roll from one to the other, crashing on the headland of the mind, challenging our concepts of the world around us. Combining passion and wit, Vickers' probing questions and observations are a must read for those who want a keener look at ourselves and our cultural milieu. Box 8474 Main PO, Victoria, BC V8W 3S1 e-mail: ekstasis@islandnet.com phone: 250-385-3378 fax: 250-385-3378

Robert Reich - How the Game is Played

 https://robertreich.substack.com/p/the-economys-large-and-growing-unproductive?utm

But humanity still has language, can think and organize for a just society.

Infinite Power 

is not a zero sum game but a journey

a stone thrown in a lake

circular ripples emanating outward

parallel phylogenesis toward the shore

and we are droplets

splashing into other droplets

falling and rising with the breeze

immersing into the universal body of water

and ascending towards the sun

we laugh, we sing, we sink, we swim

all the rest is construct.

Infinite Power, Janet Vickers, Ekstasis Editions, 2016

http://www.ekstasiseditions.com/

When Life Becomes No More Than a Problem

Now I know the news is about collecting stories of violence and problems, but this morning I learned that people who can't afford health care support may be forced to choose MADE as a way out. Then I read about the recent decisions in US Republican circles which refuse to challenge the right to bare arms even after so many shootings in school classrooms. "Its not a gun problem - it's a mental health problem." Also an item about refugees fleeing countries of origin looking for a safe place to live drowning in unsafe small boats.

Where is the morality of government, where is the morality in power? Where is the morality of billionaire influencers who purchase big bling social media companies? Where is the morality of corporate mainstream media? Where is the morality of politicians who get media coverage by spreading fear of "the other"?

When did morality become the fear of sex before marriage or same sex relationships? How has public discussion become "too sensitive" when we talk about the needy, poverty, affordable housing? Where is the morality of hoarding money in offshore bank accounts to avoid paying taxes? Why has justice been limited to the law and punishment?

I believe it boils down to the political notion that we cannot afford the quality of life. We must feed the economy, not by feeding families or housing the poor, but by adding inflation to loans, mortgages. 

We cannot afford to care for the planet, the sea, the woodlands, the environment, our children's future, our health care. 

We expected the most powerful nations to organize just societies, but they have invested in war, weapons of mass destruction, prisons and keeping refugees out.

Humanity is a threat in a world where power blinds and life is an unaffordable burden. We need a whole new way of tackling problems first by interrogating the common arguments and reorganizing our priorities. We cannot afford life - your life, not mine.

People Starving, Sick, Lost - oil companies doing great

 https://mailchi.mp/nationalobserver.com/qatar-in-canada?e=bfd991718e

On Our Own Together

 

"If governments were serious about preventing climate breakdown, there would have been no Cops 2-27. The major issues would have been resolved at Cop1, as the ozone depletion crisis was at a single summit in Montreal." George Monbiot. https://www.monbiot.com/2022/11/26/fermenting-a-revolution/

We are on our own together. Reading, talking, thinking, sharing, loving, hating, hugging, raising children. We are at risk of self-destructing. What can we do?

"There are no solutions" said Anatol Rapoport, a well respected mathematician (general systems theory, mathematical biology and modeling of social interaction and stochastic models of contagion)   He contributed to general systems theory, to mathematical biology and to the mathematical modeling of social interaction and stochastic models of contagion. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anatol_Rapoport.

That shut me up quick.

If humans could bark like dogs we would be barking all the time but since we are human we create problems in our minds to satisfy egocentric needs. We tend to blame the "other" we have created in our own imaginations. Tend to generalize in our minds - until we learn better from people like Rapoport, Monbiot, Atwood, Hippies, and teachers who can tolerate the idea we are not supreme.

I am comforted by the terrifying theories of Gabor Mate as he writes about trauma in his latest book "The Myth of Normal". We could blame the Nazi's for the Holocaust, and the Communists for the holodomor in Ukraine. Blame the British for colonization further traumatizing the innocent people in the lands we invaded, blame the monarchy of Europe for creating class systems, but really we are all in this status seeking judgemental cruelty game desperately trying to prove we are worthy even if we don't own castles or fast cars. 

The rush to feel superior, to prove myself, to believe "I made it" came from not examining myself on the emotional plane where love for myself can be an acceptance there are no others, no foreigners, good guys or bad guys. 

Get rid of the construct not refugees created by politicians desperate for our vote. Or money from "influencers".

"They" are not destroying our planet, "we" can do things to calm the fears of friends and neighbours. We can raise our children with loving kindness and not demand they be "top of the class". We can live until it's our time to die without forcing others to do what we can them to.

Re-post The Art of Power Thich Nhat Han

 The Art of Power by Thich Nhat Hanh

"To me a civilised society is one where people have the time to live their daily lives deeply, to love and take care of their family and community" wrote Thich Nhat Hanh in his book The Art of Power.

The cover slip says "Power is good for one thing only: to increase our happiness and the happiness of others. Being peaceful and happy is the most important thing in our lives and yet most of the time we suffer, we run after our cravings, we look to the past or the future for our happiness".

The world renowned Vietnamese monk laid out five spiritual powers: faith, diligence, mindfulness, concentration and insight. Under each of these he explains how they work as powers. However, none of these tools are like new apps that you can purchase and install for your hand held device. They are gained by practice, by constant mindfulness. And after the discipline we must learn how to handle power skillfully through cutting off our cravings, offering love and cultivating insight.

None of this is new. It's as ancient as the Buddha himself. Sound as the teachings of Jesus, the leadership of Moses and the courage of Mohammed. It's not rocket science; the lessons are not difficult to read, and you don't have to have an Einsteinian IQ to understand. Also there are many popular books about power that offer similar teachings. They are saying that true power comes from within, and if we practice what they preach, we shall be powerful and happy. Every generation has great thinkers and great teachers, capable of imparting the power of their knowledge on the rest of us.

Are the teachings of Thich Nhat Hanh, Simone Weil, Martin Luther King, Jr., Pema Chodron, Eckhart Tolle, the Dalai Lama - simply new ideologies that could turn against the humanity it proposes to revere, if they suddenly possessed hegemonic weapons?

Why is the measure of power in our current world most noted in terms of its ability to control through death and destruction?  Why do right wing political campaigns appear to win on the premise that fear works? How is it that power, as we have learned it, turns people and institutions into monsters?

Why are some of us, so impressed with this kind of power?

Well, at the moment, I would guess that it takes less effort to avoid self-interrogation, and so we do what is easiest.  In this way we enable bullies, we support systems of oppression.

For me, the difference between the teachings of Thich Nhat Hanh and other ideologies is the former values life itself and others promote exploitation.

Ultimately it is up to us how we investigate, probe, question and interrogate all the information that competes for our attention. The way of moving forward without causing more pain in this world is through love and hope, and the understanding that even though I am not in control of the world, I am part of its desire to thrive.

What is a society?

 "There is no such thing! There are individual men and women and there are families and no government can do anything except through people and people look to themselves first." Margaret Thatcher. https://truthout.org/articles/chomsky-midterms-could-determine-whether-us-joins-ominous-global-fascist-wave/?

"A society is a group of individuals involved in persistent social interaction, or a large social group sharing the same spatial or social territory, typically subject to the same political authority and dominant cultural expectations. Societies are characterized by patterns of relationships (social relations) between individuals who share a distinctive culture and institutions; a given society may be described as the sum total of such relationships among its constituent of members. In the social sciences, a larger society often exhibits stratification or dominance patterns in subgroups." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Society

"The labor of women in the house, certainly, enables men to produce more wealth than they otherwise could; and in this way women are economic factors in society. But so are horses." Charlotte Perkins Gilman https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/charlotte_perkins_gilman_402139?src=t_women

Optimism means better than reality; pessimism means worse than reality. I'm a realist. War is what happens when language fails. People use technology only to mean digital technology. Margaret Atwood. margaretatwood.ca quotes

What do you think? You have probably been schooled by family and education. And your own observations.

Henry A. Giroux - Democracy And Its Future

 "As critical democratic agencies come under attack, modes of critical agency disappear in the fog of political infantilism, paving the way for the public’s belief in the rhetoric of racial purity, religious fundamentalism, an ecosystem of lies, a withdrawal from the language of social responsibility, an obsession with crime and punishment, and the identification of adversaries as enemies of the state. We now live in a system of manipulation, staged fear and manufactured ignorance that dissolves any vestige of residual disbelief, skepticism and critique itself." 

Henry A. Giroux

https://truthout.org/articles/the-2022-midterms-are-a-referendum-on-the-future-of-democracy-in-the-us/?eType=EmailBlastContent&eId=ef5aa920-7c5d-4360-a5bb-fdc65ffa5bc2

What is Power?

 

Today I found an excellent article in the Globe and Mail written by Marsha Lederman.

"We are living in what is increasingly a culture of meanness and bullying. And that bullying is infecting not just the public discourse, but the way government operates." https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/article-the-bullies-are-taking-over-our-politics-and-our-culture/

This is something that has troubled me for a few years. We live in a complex democracy and there are interests that seem to want to destroy us. The win-at-any-cost seems to be fascist, authoritarian. And we have had many decades of living under the power of the brutal regimes. Many news reports of life lived under the thumb of brutality. More than destroying the people who are targeted we lose ourselves. 

" To stride into life with confidence and poise. I believed this was my own wisdom that observed these but as these were merely the messages I was fed by popular programming, regurgitating the messages by corporate entertainment." http://jacksonmeadvickers.blogspot.com/2022/11/what-is-success.html

In order to have power you have to play with the "big boys" and win at their game ... was the message I received from the culture I lived in and inherited from my ancestors.

Education, money and appearance is the currency of power when we really haven't examined what it is.  At this point I believe power is an appearance of confidence more than getting the last word, shooting judgement, but still the media is impressed with how things look more than what they mean.

Marsha Lederman raises the question in her article? Is everything we have learned about health, security, science and society under the thumb of the bully? Is power everything?

Does the Professor and the Doctor rule the classroom in order to teach the student? Or is it their knowledge?

In my opinion, power is natural integrity. Knowledge glows from the teacher who brings integrity into the classroom. A fully functioning government needs integrity and to understand the grace of gifts that diversity brings to the table. It's a power each thinking person possesses in a system that values life. 

Infinite Power,  “is not a zero sum game but a journey / a stone thrown in a lake / circular ripples emanating outward” and the danger of our age is that we have lost contact with that power, made it something to possess like a personal bank account. In writing these poems Janet hopes for a reconnection to that sacred universal relationship. http://www.ekstasiseditions.com/recenthtml/infinitepower.htm

What Is Success?

 

When I came to Canada with my parents and siblings in 1965 I was determined to win, to be A SUCCESS. I got a job working in offices as a clerk-typist and figured I would rise up and be A SUCCESS.  I didn't know what success was or where I would find it. It was so remote from where I was at the time. I figured it was enough just to have that ambition. Minor skills like typing and filing were enough to begin but not enough. SUCCESS was to be found in my determination to discover what my special talent was.

My philosophy came from television sit-coms which I would watch regularly to see who would win in those shows. What was the message? Be determined to not be ordinary. To be ordinary, to find comfort in friends and family was a waste of a lifetime. I was careful not to express these feelings and assertions because of fear of being ridiculed.

It was not the skill, the discipline, the hard work that I sought but the secret to success. I was really trying hard to be focussed on goals, entertaining myself by reading psychology and philosophy - only to appear interesting. A SUCCESS depended on appearance.

As I look back to those younger days I see a shallow person who didn't even know who she was, who held opinions because she wanted TO BE A SUCCESS. What drove my ambition in those days was ego and imagination. My opinions were on my side except when I fell to depression, which became more frequent as I struggled TO BE A SUCCESS!

I had to be popular. To perform like a confident person. To stride into life with confidence and poise. I believed this was my own wisdom that observed these but as I read it to today these were merely the messages I was fed by popular programming, regurgitating the messages I was fed by corporate entertainment. 

Fortunately someone fell in love with me and we got married. We had three beautiful children. Fantasies took a back seat to the reality of daily living. That saviour was and is my life partner. He stayed with me throughout all my vanities, telling his own wisdom as it was needed throughout the various mental health crises and my hunger for rising above being a nobody.

Depression was always a threat to my mothering so I cleared away thoughts and feelings to focus on the here and now, and learned the wealth and good luck that came with having a home and good friends. My family needed a mother who was present and wise. They gave me the same as I gave them.

Community you can trust needs you to trust community. I love the people who are successful and who have integrity, the people who genuinely care and want to help, who see your friendship as part of their community of wealth. My family and community have saved my life. I didn't have to prove my worth by status and achievement any more than I needed my community to prove they were worthy other than treating others with respect.

Death of an Oracle - Gerald Stern

 "Poets, he said, had a sacred calling. They must not allow the oppressed to remain voiceless, the crimes of the oppressor to go unnamed or memory to be obliterated. They must, like the prophets of old, feel the blast from heaven, rage against the night, conquer, as Abrham Heschel wrote, “callousness, to change the inner person as well as to revolutionize history.”"'  Chris Hedges on Gerald Stern. https://chrishedges.substack.com/p/death-of-an-oracle?

Celtic Woman - The Parting Glass

The video is a performance by Celtic Woman. Although wikipedia says it is originally a Scottish ballad of the parting glass that goes back 1770 given to friends or loved ones as they depart. It is beautiful and sad.  

Of all the money that e'er I had
I spent it in good company
And all the harm I've ever done
Alas it was to none but me
And all I've done for want of wit
To mem'ry now I can't recall
So fill to me the parting glass
Good night and joy be to you all

So fill to me the parting glass
And drink a health whate’er befall,
And gently rise and softly call
Good night and joy be to you all

Of all the comrades that e'er I had
They're sorry for my going away
And all the sweethearts that e'er I had
They'd wish me one more day to stay
But since it falls unto my lot
That I should rise and you should not
I gently rise and softly call
Good night and joy be to you all

If I had money enough to spend
And leisure time to sit awhile
There is a fair maid in this town
That sorely has my heart beguiled.
Her rosy cheeks and ruby lips
I own she has my heart in thrall
Then fill to me the parting glass
Good night and joy be with you all.

A man may drink and not be drunk
A man may fight and not be slain
A man may court a pretty girl
And perhaps be welcomed back again
But since it has so ought to be
By a time to rise and a time to fall
Come fill to me the parting glass
Good night and joy be with you all
Good night and joy be with you all

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Parting_Glass

War and insanity

 

 "I dealt with many of these ideologues — David Petraeus, Elliot Abrams, Robert Kagan, Victoria Nuland — as a foreign correspondent for The New York Times. Once you strip away their chest full of medals or fancy degrees, you find shallow men and women, craven careerists who obsequiously serve the war industry that ensures their promotions, pays the budgets of their think tanks and showers them with money as board members of military contractors. They are the pimps of war. If you reported on them, as I did, you would not sleep well at night. They are vain enough and stupid enough to blow up the world long before we go extinct because of the climate crisis, which they have also dutifully accelerated." Chris Hedges

 Watch George Monbiot diagnose the problems of our age: https://youtu.be/pofTr1QKiBk 

Lintel: short poems on what keeps us together - Deadline Nov. 15, 2022

 I would like to create the opportunity for people to write poems on what holds us together on this planet in this universe. 

DEADLINE: November 15, 2022

Like the love for life, after all nothing lives if it is not given love. So to do that I am asking for submissions on the theme of what holds us together? Like for example - the Lintel holds the roof on a wall and it protects us from wind, rain and snow for as long as it can, as long as we look after the house and the people we rely upon.

This will not be a way to make money but to get into a creative salve. The book will be a small chapbook printed on white paper with black ink, ready before December, to read like the advent calendar in that winter month. 25 short poems we can use as we would a seasonal card, but with our wisdom stanzas. 

The poems must be new, not published elsewhere and must come with a letter to say you wrote it and give me a one time permission to print. The booklets can be sold for $5 each to donate to a local charity of your choosing. 

The idea is to give us the redeeming sense that all life matters just like that unadorned lintel that keeps the roof over your head.

Send your submissions to janetvickers@gmail.com with a brief intro of who you are. Put LINTEL SUBMISSION in the subject line.

Also your name, and a way you can be reached. I will let you know whether your submission has been accepted or not. Sorry I can't promise that all submissions will be accepted. If it is I will send you a copy of the chapbook as your payment.

George Monbiot on Malignant Growth

 "For many years, a small band of us “voices of decline” and “enemies of enterprise” who “don’t understand aspiration” have been trying to point out that increments in gross domestic product do not equate to increments in happiness. We have argued that no one wins the human race. We have sought to explain that what mainstream economists call progress is what ecologists call planetary ruin. We’ve contended that infinite growth on a finite planet is a recipe for catastrophe. I hope Liz Truss is right to claim that so many people now accept our arguments." https://www.monbiot.com/2022/10/14/malignant-growth/

Remembering: A Poem for Chris Straw

 

This

(for Chris Straw)

To bring people into a single room

with maps, charts, projections, theories

about huge freighters anchored in the strait 

their crews cooped in the belly for months 

for profit to those we don’t know 

… this is something he can do.

Frame pictures of Orlebar Point

taken yesterday or a hundred years ago

you stare at unable to move as if

there is a message in the invisible arms

holding you there

something important, a mystery 

which you try to grasp

… this is something he can do.

To stay with the grief 

to list all that has been lost

feel a presence from ancestors 

to grandchildren knowing tomorrow 

will never be the same

beyond our understanding

… this is something we can do.

To keep familiar faces  in the heart

when questions too large for mind

call for comfort from the bravest dreams 

in our community

… this is something I can do.

Goede Hoop Marimba Band play Vivaldi | Education Africa

Music plus movement plus health and happiness

Men Going Their Own Way

"Men Going Their Own Way is a male supremacist movement similar to the more commonly known incel, or involuntarily celibate, movement. The latter entered the Canadian public discourse in 2018 when a man who espoused the incel ideology murdered 10 people in Toronto with a van. Since then, researchers and advocates have worked to sound the alarm about misogynist radicalism and violence, especially in online forums. " https://www.nationalobserver.com/2022/10/07/news/misogynist-group-tagged-poilievres-videos-mgtow

Of course there are new hate groups. The various interests have claimed their ground, found financial support from those who found they don't belong in a world that is sectioned into various interests.

This happens when we are lead to believe we are isolated units competing for the most of what each of us wants, when the measure of wealth is the GDP, when media focus is on who scores and who loses, when hockey Canada cannot admit they have a sexual violence problem. Our "leaders" have been failing humanity since the beginning of civilization and each century we hope things will get better.

Some Good News Among The Tragedies

"When a Unitarian congregation in Ottawa’s West End neighbourhood wanted to advance reconciliation in their community, they took the advice of Verna McGregor, an Elder from Kitigan Zibi Anishinabeg, who suggested they start an Indigenous learning centre.

Ajashki, which means soil in Algonquin, grew from that conversation. The project first materialized as a modest food security project. Members of the First Unitarian Congregation started a garden in the back of the church, hosting lessons on the intersection of food security, foraging and climate change."

Matteo Cimellaro. National Observer

Truth and Reconciliation

Today is Orange Shirt Day 

in sympathy with the First Nations 

who suffered residential schools. 

My heart goes out to you. 

Tommy Douglas Lives Here

 

            Tommy Douglas Lives Here

            we, people, animals, flies

            are here together

            all sharing this planet

            in relationship to one another

            this depends on live and let live 

            world over and under, sky and rock

            together we have voice 

            and we have eyes

            the days of sun or snow

            only a lifetime to see — to 

            test the day with our best plans

            of how to raise children, care for

            our kin, our past and future

            character invested in present and past

            that each day comes from our conscience 

            matters for the present and future 

            is not a license but a duty

            how you or I achieved the good work

            we belong to one another and we 

            look — not turning our faces away

            after witnessing the body face down on

            the city sidewalk not breathing

            least of all they mattered, and we were

            fortunate for having them in our lives

            among the other kin who made

            us — who we are 

            not our possessions or trophies no matter

            how glossy they appear in magazines

            we can thank whoever 

            look to the centre of all things

            after losing someone precious

            ourselves.

Thomas Clement Douglas PC CC SOM (20 October 1904 – 24 February 1986) was a Scottish-born Canadian politician who served as seventh premier of Saskatchewan from 1944 to 1961 and Leader of the New Democratic Party from 1961 to 1971. A Baptist minister, he was elected to the House of Commons of Canada in 1935 as a member of the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation (CCF). He left federal politics to become Leader of the Saskatchewan Co-operative Commonwealth Federation and then the seventh Premier of Saskatchewan. His government introduced the continent's first single-payer, universal health care program.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tommy_Douglas