Rebecca Solnit - Says so much in one article

"We are a country at war, but who that “we” is – in a nation where so many have been so disenfranchised – should be central to the conversation. There are more guns in the US than people, and the rhetoric of gun rights has been used to defend the rights of these killing machines to spread everywhere – classrooms, Walmarts, public places, homes where children have access to them." Rebecca Solnit, The Guardian.

Chris Hedges on the useful propaganda of war

"Military studies have determined that after 60 days of continuous combat, 98 percent of those who survive will have become psychiatric casualties. The common trait among the 2 percent who were able to endure sustained combat was a predisposition toward “aggressive psychopathic personalities." 

Chris Hedges, Peter Jackson's Cartoon War, Truthdig. 


An excellent piece, as always from Hedges. Worth reading and re-reading.

This is how capitalism managed to turn humanity away from its sensitive intelligence, toward the shallow workforce for profit - the man-made god.

Misogyny

After reading The Preludes to Assaults by Jane Eaton Hamilton I was compelled to post this poem on here.

Forget history, culture and knowledge. Break free

of your hoarding of facts, dates. Forget right and wrong.

Nothing means what it intends. The opposite is true

until we recognize it and then it becomes a lie.

The ideologue is the great virus, scourge of this planet.

He climbed down from his tree and turned it

into toilet paper. He tore open his mother’s flesh

to mine for gold.

Hated his kind, moulded it into a sword

made of his mother’s blood and slew his brother.

Sold his children into slavery and called himself

Ruler. Warrior. God.

Gaia is a whore and man is her pimp.

Our laws, our art, our songs, can’t rid her

of this storm, this swarm, this pandemic

this era of man who descended

from the awe and beauty bestowed upon him

by a power he could never deconstruct

this creation larger than his knowing

the stars he couldn’t reach, so instead

he sought revenge and created the order

raping every vessel of hope, each womb

of enlightenment, churned our mother’s milk

into grease, a war to be won.

So when we talk of misogyny as though

it’s simply the fear and hatred of woman

remember – it is the seed of homelessness

entrenched so deeply we blame nature

say it is natural law, say boys will be boys

corner them by two converging walls

of a doctrine so bricked no light can enter

no doubt allowed to breathe

trapped in the construct even she defends

his privilege by love’s failure to disarm

the earth he has littered with weapons

against the distant bird singing at dawn.

published in Eyewear Blink September 2015

Hate Never Makes Us Great

When men and women support movements of hate, such as white supremacists, anti-immigrant groups, the Nazi's of the 1930's, the Spanish Inquisition of the 15th Century, and witch-hunts all over the world - is that because we are desperately trying to shake off the feeling that we are redundant?

Is the absolute focus on the economy a sign that humanity has been replaced by a mathematical construct?

Is the invention of endless enemies really about culling a species that has over-populated the earth and the reason we can't deal with our own part in climate change because we cannot face the notion we are culpable for the problems we created?

What I'm talking about here is that mass of  a privileged humanity who have not had to prove themselves in any public way but who understand that "we" are included in the narrative.   The ones who spend a lot of time thinking about right and wrong but whose survival is not dependant on making the moral choice. The ones who are outraged at abortion but who will never get pregnant. The ones who watch endless hours of TV dramas happily as long as the victims are not in any way like them. The ones who believe its hypocritical to protest pipelines when we all need power, but who don't live near the proposed sites. The ones for whom history has no personal meaning in the immediate present because we do not identify with a demographic other than tax payer or consumer.

Why do we protest the symptoms of our system without looking at the whole picture? What are we afraid of seeing? What is the horror behind all the violence and cruelty listed in news headlines? What is the purpose of such contempt for life?

Underneath our rage and violence, is it ourselves that we hate and fear? We who are unable to live in peace creatively. We who invented guns, bombs, and tanks because our bows and arrows didn't bring us the success we planned.

When we are willing to believe that greed is good and climate change is a hoax surely we are creating the conditions for our demise. When we dismiss anything life-affirming as naive then aren't we announcing that WE ARE REDUNDANT?

Well we are NOT redundant even though the operating system (propaganda, ideology) keeps telling  us we are. So who or what is holding up that structure if not humanity?

Our task is to be human.  Money, the economy, the nation, security, or power is not greater than life. They are all things invented to support the community where we live.

Yes nihilism has purchased our institutions, and people who are employed are often asked to do that which is repugnant to the conscience of sane minds, but how far are we willing to cooperate with that in order to never ask ourselves what it really means? How long will we rally behind the structures that celebrate death because we are too frightened to question the meaning of it?

Is it possible to create radical change without violence?

(first posted August 24, 2016)

"The climate crisis is here, now, but a compromised, corrupted media doesn’t want to know." says George Monbiot (The Purse is Mightier Than the Pen)

Who controls culture? Is it media, public opinion, or money?

Culture is starved of wisdom if we abandon it to the authority of the purse.  If leaders are mesmerized by money they will follow trends. They will believe they have no choice, and what has happened to western culture is the wholesale sacrifice of life to the altar of profit.

The Library of Social Science researchers and scholars have hypothesized a law of sacrifice in six ways, the first of which is "Cultures invent or create ideological concepts that they elevate into “absolutes”— worshiped as the essence of society. But how do people persuade themselves that the ideas their society has constructed are real? "

Propaganda is very sophisticated, and we often can't see how we are being persuaded if not manipulated. Our own desires are reconfigured to lead us to accept horrible outcomes. Like war, for example - do we leave our home and family to slaughter strangers or let the enemy slaughter us?

We are raised to fit into the community, to trust the authority of parents and teachers, who help and protect us, and who will punish us if we don't obey.

But what constitutes  a well functioning society? One that makes clear the rules and laws and where the masses are seen as stakeholders. It's not fear that preserves this but social responsibility and integrity.

The radical change comes from the actions of an observant citizenry that is informed, educated on history and politics, who understands the principles of fairness and the power of inclusion. Those who watch and listen to what is going on around them and weigh that against media headlines. Those who ask who benefits and who choose the greater good, and who do not trust an institution just because it has power.

This would be the seed of the radical - that we practice citizenship and refuse ideological absolutes.

Often what is presented as radical is an invasion of hostile ideologies that persuade us to sacrifice our lives for God, country, communism or capitalism. These require violence and human sacrifice in the thousands because they are a transfer of power.

Whatever is worth defending is that which asks our input and attention, our care and help - to live for it, not to die for it. 

Creating Chaos

A very important article in The Guardian analyses the rise of hyper-masculinity and the phenomenon of Angry White Men.  "Sociologist Michael Kimmel is one of the world’s foremost experts on the phenomenon. - His recent research has looked at topics including spree killers (who are overwhelmingly male and white), as well as the relationship between masculinity and political extremism."

In the article there is a report on a study on testosterone where 5 monkeys are observed. The one who rises to the top beats up number 2 and number 2 beats up number 3 - and so it goes down to number 5. 

"So the experiment is: he takes monkey three out of the cage and he shoots him up with testosterone, off the scale, and puts him back in. What do you think happens? When I tell this story my students always guess that he immediately becomes number-one monkey. But that’s not true. What happens is that when he goes back in the cage he still avoids monkeys number one and two – but he beats the shit out of numbers four and five." 

The article indicates that the men who are most likely supporters of racist movements, who are ready to form gangs of thugs to threaten women, Blacks, Jews, Moslems, and LGBTQ communities - have known what it's like to be "monkeys 4 and 5". Males who were humiliated as children, who didn't do well in school, who were victimized by poverty and who have been discarded by neoliberal policies  who have not found a community where they belong. The message they have absorbed is the hyper-masculine in entertainment, the kind of virile-speak that Trump emulates. However there is a masculine example that is sacred, that takes more energy, strength and courage than being a troll.

Is it just an accident that trends have led to this or have the trends brought about an opportunity for those who benefit by social chaos and structural violence.

What Does It Mean To Be Human?

Write a list of the tasks you started or finished today. Write a list of the people you helped or who helped you. Write the name of those whose smile uplift your spirits when you see them.  Make a list of the people you worry about or would like to help but don't know how.

Now write a list of world problems you read or hear about in the media.

Which is the longest list?

If the list in the first paragraph is the longest then you are engaged in the process of being human.  If the list in the second paragraph is longer then you need to go back and check the first paragraph. It could be you have not observed all the things you have done, all the people you have helped or who have brightened your life.

All the small things that others don't notice, and the things that are not recognized for prizes or as "achievements", list those. If you washed dishes - list all the times you washed them - breakfast, lunch, supper.

Even the list of those you worry about or don't know how to help is a human endeavour.

Make a list of mistakes you have made and people you have offended. Make a list of the goals you thought you would achieve but haven't. Make a list of all the feelings you have experienced.

Are the world problems still greater than your list?

Now make a list of all the beliefs you started with when you were young. If you still believe them now put a ✓ next to them. Those you discovered were wrong put an x by them.

Right or wrong, all of this is what it means to be human. You are not good or evil, hero or victim, winner or loser. You are not a simple descriptor.

What we read about in the media or books are constructs that help us compare ourselves and our lives with others.  If we forget to engage in our own lives we are digesting other people's thoughts and experiences, some of which will be very well developed.  And some of which are designed to influence the way we see ourselves.

The problem with the world is that it's dominated by propaganda that presents the masses as disposable, as nothing.  The message in media is that we must strive to be somebody, otherwise we are nobody. To be somebody is to be a thing. A carpenter, anthropologist, bank manager, teacher. A thing that strives to remove the human from the discipline. That we must prove to be superior even though we may become more destructive, hurtful and miserable.

Once we give up our humanity and see ourselves as numbers on a spreadsheet, we dissociate from the connections between our thoughts, feelings, and practices developed over centuries of evolution. We judge our worth based on the things we own, we begin to see others as things, as problems.

We are not problems.  We are the ones who can, with reflection and insight, fix problems. Not all of them. Not immediately. But by the way we live and the choices we make, we can explore more deeply, what it means to be human.

Humanity - a Post Mortem Audit?

"The immersive and inescapable way children and teens are exposed to violence in their "media diet" on social media apps, video games and movies can make them more aggressive and fearful, the American Academy of Pediatrics says in a new policy statement." CBC.CA 

There is no doubt in my mind that a diet of violent entertainment disturbs my equilibrium. Even though I am a senior and have many years experience of living in a reciprocal community, TV dramas make me feel insecure on a vague, semi-conscious level. 

Children and teens have not yet developed their own survival skills and independence, so they are vulnerable to  messages wherever they come from.  

Also there is very little in the media that doesn't "bleed" and there are very few examples of people solving real problems. 

Have we become unconscious of how we internalize the messages that we know intellectually are fiction? The fast moving narrative of violence everywhere? After the music, images and high drama does it make hope of any kind seem naive?

I have just watched a brief interview of a gun toting white man (CBC.ca) who will vote for Donald Trump because he believes the government is corrupt.  He sees his role as protecting the innocent. Has he got his worldview from television where the dots are rarely connected, and facts don't count?  

How will Trump make things better? What would he contribute to society? According to reports, he prides himself on not paying taxes because he feels that government is a waste of money. He has power and influence because his father had good connections, lots of money and was able to influence officials.  He has the key of wealth and celebrity, and that's where (we have been lead to believe) power lies.  

The first and most dangerous violence is the notion we are isolated egos, which means we have no agency within a conscious society and makes us slaves to whatever ideology has the most funding. 

We have elected through cynicism and intellectual laziness to let the chips fall where they may.  We are losing our sanity, our integrity and our civil society. What creature will outlive us if we forget what it means to be human?

Consolidating Power through Ritual Contempt For Life

"Well over 250 million people died in the 20th Century as a result of political violence. This includes an estimated 200 million deaths that were the result of people killed intentionally by governments, and perhaps fifty million deaths as the result of warfare. Among governments that were the most prolific in murdering people were the communist USSR, China and the Mao Guerillas, Khmer Rouge Cambodia, and of course Nazi Germany." Hitler, War - and the Holocaust. Richard Koenigsberg.

The complete essay needs to be read as Koenigsberg reveals how violence breeds violence.  It appears to arrive from the idea that young men are born to experience the glory of running out on the battlefield to be gunned down.

Dying on the battlefield has mostly been portrayed as sudden death but that's not how it happens all the time or most of the time.  Sometimes they lie on the field in excruciating pain - intestines falling from a gaping wound, arms and legs blown off, eyes ripped out, faces blown away, cold icy rain on frozen mud.  Or prisoners transported in cattle cars without food or water, the stench of urine, pus, for days, weeks or more, knowing that wherever they arrive it will not be good.

Megaphones spouting the glory of giving your life to war, worshiping the men who designed the battles - Kemal, Ludendorff, Hindenburg, Hitler, who told the people in various words - we do not ask you to fight but to die for your nation.

Now I am thinking of ideologies preached by a few candidates of the Republican Party that are clearly destructive to those who have had the privilege of living in a peaceful, almost democratic nation.  Their policies are not about running a nation but about preparing people for war through hatred and division. Fascist parties in Europe and America are not interested in governing a nation  - they are looking to centralize power.

Why do they focus on hate? Is it because they/we are seeking revenge? Is it because we cannot imagine a world that is just and so we think it useless to work towards a better world? Has the system created the means to destroy us as soon as we enter school through ritual humiliation and competition, so we grow up valuing things more than ourselves? 

Would it be that education, compassion, social justice, cooperation, wisdom and social responsibility would take back the power from those who preach that our worth, our only worth, is when we become the means of aggrandizing the emperor?

Would you like to die on a bloody field or coffee shop with your limbs blown out of reach, or in a cattle car with the stench of pus and urine, or a slow and painful death as a refugee carrying your infant to nowhere? 

Who benefits from this global contempt for life?

Forward Civilizations

Just because those who promise to single-handedly save the world turn out to be fascist dictators, does not mean the goal of social justice is not worthy, nor that we are absolved of the responsibility to work for the greater good.

Rabbi Jonathan Sacks in his book "Not in God's Name" looks into the phenomena of killing for the sake of religion and religious extremism.  While some believe that we have to get rid of religion because of this Sacks puts the blame not in religious tradition but in the human heart - which he points out, is the most deadly weapon of mass destruction.

While I haven't read the book I did listen to the whole hour of  Tapestry when Sacks was interviewed. I was taken by his expressed reverence for life, by his tolerance of different view points including atheism.

As a scholar he is able to articulate the ages where humanity left God and pursued "the will to power". He pointed out that although we live in nature we have evolved to a consciousness of our effect on nature. Therefore power cannot be separated from responsibility without us losing our humanity?  Is this what Sacks means by our relationship to God? It's probably deeper than my interpretation.

I tend to see religion as having been misused to preach the supremacy of an institution, a race, a gender. When a religion becomes a mass movement the ruling elite re-interpret the doctrine in favour of consolidating their own power and their position. In listening to Sacks I understood that this misrepresentation is mostly due to our human tendency to put our selves into the centre of all things.

All stories are about how the narrator views him or herself as the interlocutor of meaning, and the many ways in which they are tripped up, thrown off their path of righteousness.  However, it is too late to interview Abraham, Jesus or Muhammad, so we have to find the wisdom in our doubts and experiences, to retrieve meaning.  The thing is we are so often wrong, we are limited, and our views must be fed with new information and examined. And what about God? 

I think the key point in Rabbi Sacks' interview is that we are in relationship to a higher power. God does not control me because I have free will, therefore anything I choose to do can be for the good of this planet and my community but I cannot claim to know what God thinks.

A way in which we might move beyond our own obsession with power is to understand that life and truth is beyond the time and place our small lives inhabit.  The clamor of extremism and a shallow fundamentalism is due to the arrogance of our species to think we have the hotline to the universe.

Religions who preach chauvinism of any kind pander to the vanity and fears of its congregation and so remove us from the whole story. Ideology that demands obedience to a certain doctrine cuts off our dialogue with the unfolding universe.

Our task is to be human, to think, to feel, to speak, to listen, and to love life, even though we don't know the outcome or the ending. Does this mean we can't help but create stories on the beginning and the end as all religions do?

Your Task is to be Human

[Public domain], Wikimedia Commons

Don't get involved in partial problems, but always take flight to where there is a free view over the whole single great problem, even if this view is still not a clear one. Ludwig Wittgenstein

The whole single great problem is what? Perhaps coming to terms with the diversity of life? Or is it daring to be human when the whole structure of your world wants you to be an example of the current value, such as making money?

There are many ways you can make money. For example the oldest profession - prostitution. But it is a dangerous one and not too well rewarded unless you learn how to prostitute whatever commodity is most highly prized.

Taking care of infants is not too high on the stock market. Teaching children and adults is fraught with conflict. Those who want to teach us how to think are often under attack. Trading in stocks and shares may be lucrative if you do it a particular way. Being a doctor or a lawyer is well paid in the Western capitalist world if your clients are rich - but if the human part of you also wants to help and not to harm then you may work for the poor and be poorly paid.

Can it be said that the measure of success is how much money you make? Of course it can and often is, but whether it's true or not requires some other study. For example, drug dealers might be the richest people on a short term basis.  Or a long term if you are the chief and not near the front where you will be required to torture and kill or be tortured and killed.

Generally humans have lots of nervous information blinking through the body and brain. When you are born you form an attachment to your mother if you're lucky. But that also means you form attachments to your father, your siblings, grand-parents, aunts or uncles.  If you are loved by them you can't help but love them back.  If they emphasize success, wealth, etc., more than unconditional love, then you may feel driven to find that elusive success that no-one really explains but expects you to achieve.

I think the problem is, that we live among so many lies about success and how to achieve it, that we are lost. Being human is taken for granted when we don't really understand what it means. Because of those messages blinking through our bodies we suffer pain - headaches, insomnia, sadness, fear.

Some harm themselves for the sake of approval, some dare not think for the pain of it, some come to the conclusion that the only way to survive is to wield power through intimidation because so much of our narrative glorifies the conqueror and silences the victim.  Some believe that the only way to win is to get rid of the blinking lights through addiction to work, power, drugs, alcohol - or whatever is available.

With each century it seems that our problems stem from symptoms caused by previous symptoms of not knowing what it means to be human. The extent to which we are willing to threaten all life on this planet in order to get a brief fix indicates to me we could lose our humanity forever and not even know it.

Read more at: http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/l/ludwigwitt147258.html

Don't get involved in partial problems, but always take flight to where there is a free view over the whole single great problem, even if this view is still not a clear one. Ludwig Wittgenstein
Read more at: http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/l/ludwigwitt147258.html

Rape Culture

Sleeping Lion

With the current focus on the Ghomeshi trial and the way victims are being branded through the courts, it would be logical to believe that choking and penetrating someone is far more violent, far more guilty than smiling and being nice.  But in rape culture the purpose of everything is to normalize rape as a way of being. To make every living entity a victim or a conqueror. In rape culture it's far more shameful to be a victim.

We are sent to the forum as gladiators whether we want to be or not. We learn that in order to win, somebody must lose. Everything on the earth is here for the purpose of being conquered by the glorious conqueror.

It's not that we are inherently evil or good.  It is that we have been, through the experiences of our ancestors, traumatized.  We have learned how to hide who we are in order to survive.  We have learned how to entertain ourselves with games that we might win so we don't address the depth and breadth of this oppression.

So it comes down to this - am I the rapist or the raped? Am I the winner or the loser? Am I the user or the used? Will I challenge what I know is wrong or recede behind the door of my home - the only sanctuary where I am allowed to be me. Will I lock those doors so no-one can get in?  Will I allow my children to enter school and the work place to be psychologically raped every time they are compared with sluts, idiots or monsters? Will I learn how to be well adjusted in this world, or if not entirely adjusted, will I survive?

The proof of this rape culture, this acceptance of violence as normal human behaviour, is the way the legal system works and media's acquiescence to power. It is not the rapist that is on trial, examined and interrogated, who must prove he is innocent, but the victim who must prove they never uttered a word, stood, sat, smiled or fluttered in any way that could be perceived as "a come on".

The purpose of rape culture is to blame the victim, to heave contempt on the tender shoots of life, and to turn innocence into powerlessness, to brutalize every diverse expression of life into silence or submission.

Cultures of rape see women as walking wombs, walking threats to man made power. Cultures of rape see men as instruments to serve the system - soldiers, CEO's, policeman, drivers, strategists - they must serve without question - and those who do question will be crucified and forgotten. Human nature is the menace and it must be reduced, ridiculed and discouraged. Misogyny will end when science has created the means to make eggs and sperm in a lab without using what nature has created.

This is the world of psychopaths who have made themselves slaves to the system so that ultimately they might make the world a playground for their egos.

This lion of justice is sleeping. Rape is not about the minds and hearts of men and women at all.  It's about the absolute triumph of the system with all its purchased institutions, over the whole of nature.

Why Are We So Angry?

Here are some answers to that question.

The breakdown in civil society means we must make personal decisions in public when we are not sure what is right, or what seems right is more dangerous than is apparent at the moment.

Driving on a two lane country road that is narrow and curved, a driver ahead of me had stopped for a few seconds. I just waited. After a few seconds the driver moved forward and stopped again. Because of the curve I couldn't safely overtake them so I waited, congratulating myself on being patient. Then the driver started backing up quite fast, so I backed up, then they made a left turn down a narrow road.

Afterward I was impressed with the sense of entitlement shown by this driver for not indicating via lights or signals what they needed to do, or for doing the safe thing and driving forward until the next turn off where they could have turned back in the right lane to make the turn they missed. The driver appeared to expect or hope that I would accommodate their needs.

Later I realized I was complicit in this dangerous driving - it could have been a mess if another had driven up around the corner as I was backing up. Later still I realized I didn't know what to do at that moment. Should I have just remained in that spot refusing to move back, honked my horn, got out of the car? There is something about being in a vehicle which makes us isolated in our decisions. In a fraction of a second we can destroy lives even if we don't want to.

Later I felt angry - not so much at that particular driver, but because I didn't know what the right thing to do was. It's easy to dismiss any social or safety discomfort as being someone else's fault. Blaming is even encouraged in hierarchical societies as long as we blame those on the bottom of the power spectrum.

We see so many big problems and grave dangers to our future, that billions of isolated egos can't seem to fix. Nevertheless there is an undercurrent of outrage and disappointment when the mind becomes aware of the broad scope of injustice which is mostly felt when a child starts looking beyond the immediate family to the larger society.


Ann Jones, in her article "After I lived in Norway America Felt Backward Here's Why" relates her experience of being a journalist in Afghanistan then travelling to Norway and returning home to America. What she finds is this:

"I had, in fact, come back to the flip side of Afghanistan and Iraq: to what America’s wars have done to America. Where I live now, in the homeland, there are not enough shelters for the homeless. Most people are either overworked or hurting for jobs; the housing is overpriced, the hospitals crowded and understaffed, the schools largely segregated and not so good. Opioid or heroin overdose is a popular form of death, and men in the street threaten women wearing hijabs. Did the American soldiers I covered in Afghanistan know they were fighting for this?"

I include this here to compare the small experiences of learning how to live with one another peacefully, with the results of centralized power that destroy millions of lives through war and neglect. For centuries marauding tribes has destroyed the civil societies they conquer and proceed to replace what might be intelligent behaviour with trauma and chaos. Here we are either exploitable resources or refugees.

Now hate groups are flourishing with their malevolent prescriptions that deflect the real causes more fear and hatred.

Meet the Cop Who Cut the Murder Rate in Glasgow

Michael Enright of CBC talks to Karyn McCluskey

Karyn McCluskey brought in a program that reduced the murder rate in Glasgow from 71 in 2002 to 14 in 2015.

Her focus was on how to prevent crime by getting involved with families in crisis rather than wait until their youth fall into the habits of crime. The results have been astonishing and yet this has hardly been reported in mainstream media.

Why would that be? Who chooses media policy? Are publishers scared to publish stories about social issues that indicate we have policy options?

McCluskey and Enright focused on causes - the lack of male guidance in the lives of youth at risk, and grinding poverty.

The Power Continuum

It seems to me that power exists on a continuum. On one end is power-from-within which we all possess to varying degrees, and at the other there is power-over. The stations between these are complex, as we learn to negotiate with others in the universe. No doubt, students of political science, sociology and psychology will have more refined descriptions than the following which comes mostly from my observations.
I see power-from-within arising from thoughts, feelings, imagination, learned skills, the arts and self-discipline. Words like express, share, understand, design, empathize, inspire, indicate to me a power-from-within.

 
Power-over resides in social position and opportunity. Parents have power over their children, teachers over their students, managers over employees, police officers over city streets, etc. Words like teach, enforce, control, limit, protect, withhold, give, take, coerce, extract – indicate power-over. 

 
Power-over is not necessarily an abuse of power, and power-from-within is not always harmless. A functioning civil society requires a sophisticated awareness of how and where power is expressed or used for the greater good. As we become more mature we are more empathic and conscious of the way we use our power and the effect it has on others. We learn to be more specific in dealing with conflict seeking outcomes that satisfy all. 

 
When societies become stressed, it’s easy to fall for a quick fix, dismissing and discrediting the complex structures that have taken centuries to evolve. The default quick fix focuses on “who is to blame”. Nature becomes a menace to be controlled. Diversity intolerable. 

When meaningful debate is discouraged and replaced with slogans and propaganda, the human conscience loses its voice. The individual feeling powerless may side with hard-line political movements for a spurious sense of power by association and a false confidence. 

When power-from-within no longer dialogues with power-over, as in times of war, power becomes a misanthropic ritual marching towards an ever greater contempt for life. It is estimated that between 136 to 148 million deaths occurred through wars and conflicts in the 20th century. This year alone there have been nearly 50,000 fatalities due to conflict.

However, there is no indication among my neighbours, friends and peers that suggests we want to murder others. So what is the cause of war? 

Retired minister, Rev. John Alexie Crane, in his sermon on Human Nature and War asks us to look more closely “at the most crucial of war’s causes, namely, the actions and ambitions of the alpha males who continue to hold positions of leadership in the nations of the world.” Leaders who have been led to believe by their supporters, that their power is all there is and they alone are responsible for saving the world.

How does power-from-within meet the alpha ego? 

When we stop asking “what is wrong with the world”, and ask instead “how can we build a livable one?” For all the territory and wealth that has been fought over and for all the lives lost and being lost, the very least we can do is to learn how power works for and against life – examples are everywhere. 

 
Power-from-within meets the centre of the continuum in community before it reaches a critical mass where the conscience reminds the discouraged mind that it can’t afford to shut up.

(First published in The Flying Shingle, August 4, 2014)

Desire, Design and the Operating System

It appears to me that human history and all its inventions dwell within a circle of power.  The glorification, the use and abuse of power interacts with our human endeavours mostly beyond our control. There are nations and people who possess power but not forever.  Anyone who has had power over others or things fears they cannot hold their control forever.  As individuals and institutions we create laws, culture (media) and ideology in order to maintain an illusion of control, to protect ourselves from chaos.  If I were to say this is the truth - it would be my attempt to wield power over this instant.  If I were to study philosophy, science, law and culture to the breadth and depth of my capacity it would be in order to influence the world.  It's too late in my life to attempt this even if I could, and even if I achieved it (500 years after William Shakespeare), it would be for a brief moment in time and place, and it would be a call for the next player to deconstruct this theory.

As news stories appear daily about our prime minister, the mayor of Toronto, or the president of the United States as they play out the extent of their given powers while they can, some may believe they possess powers beyond their position and that all they have to do is manage it well. But all political leaders must negotiate with the ever changing directions of power in their lives - the interests that support them and attack them are like tennis balls on a court which they must hit and send back to their opponents.

All that we desire and design is negotiated with other desires and designs which we cannot see or even plan for. There is always the pressure of the operating system projecting and sabotaging our strategies.

Our human history has led us to believe that we possess the power to control the world and we give those willing to stand up as leaders our loyalty, as long as they convince us they can protect us from the chaos of invading interests. But when our leaders break or reveal cracks in this promise we sack them with derision and ridicule.

This is a very violent game - to the senses of all who are involved.  It seeks scapegoats and sacrifices.  It allows millions to suffer starvation, genocide, indignity and madness, mostly because we cannot see power as something beyond our will, that no matter how much we worship and strategize, we can never control.

Because we are addicted to our own sense of entitlement we believe our leaders hold the key to our security through some kind of magic.  The esoteric rites are for high priests only, who are trained to keep the secrets of their submission to powers we cannot name or see.

So how can we live free of oppression? First by understanding that the oppressor is not a person or party or nation or corporation - it is a co-dependent game of denial.   They play their part sometimes well, sometimes appallingly, but the news reveals they are exhausted.  Even the largest corporation treating civil society like an obstruction to their goals, installing  puppet governments to do their bidding, can only maintain their illusion if we keep believing in it.

If power is within and beyond us then we must learn how to negotiate with power as we would with nature - that it belongs to history and the future, to our ancestors and our great-grandchildren.  This requires a sense of shared ownership and responsibility.

Community or Asylum

In Chris Hedges article "Welcome to the asylum" he spells out the ways in which civilizations dissolve into madness.

"The quest by a bankrupt elite in the final days of empire to accumulate greater and greater wealth, as Karl Marx observed, is modern society’s version of primitive fetishism. This quest, as there is less and less to exploit, leads to mounting repression, increased human suffering, a collapse of infrastructure and, finally, collective death. It is the self-deluded, those on Wall Street or among the political elite, those who entertain and inform us, those who lack the capacity to question the lusts that will ensure our self-annihilation, who are held up as exemplars of intelligence, success and progress. The World Health Organization calculates that one in four people in the United States suffers from chronic anxiety, a mood disorder or depression—which seems to me to be a normal reaction to our march toward collective suicide."

The Western world who has wholeheartedly embraced unfettered capitalism, without any concern for social consequences, are rushing to follow in this suicidal spiral, and the good citizens question whether they can ever have a conversation with the mad bull-dogs whose jaws are firmly hanging onto any flesh linked to power, no matter how decomposed it might be.

Democracy is supposed to be that conversation that limits the damage done by megalomaniacs. But Lawrence Martin asks if we are still living in a democracy.

"... anyone who scrolls through recent media, conservative media included, might be forgiven for concluding that we have something more closely resembling the opposite. Something more akin to billy-club governance. Think of the ironclad controls, the scorning of accountability, the censorship, the smearing of opponents, the power unto one. The abuses are not just opposition talk. They’re writ large in Auditor-Generals’ reports, in internal documents and journalists’ investigations. Some of the abuses have happened in other governments but have they ever happened on the scale we’ve seen from this crowd?"

You may wonder, how did we get to this point where our elected leaders behave as though they feel contempt for democracy?  Well all you have to do is read a little history or speak to survivors of war to understand that power is based either on contempt for life or a reverence for life.

It will seem outrageously stupid to say that loving kindness or compassion is the only weapon that sustains life, until you visit or listen to some of our First Nations people who have survived the most terrible violence at a time when they were most vulnerable. They have fought every minute of every day of every year since, to mend their broken spirits by re-educating themselves and their children on how to live. The fight is never over as they now are fighting the threat of oil tankers and pipelines, as we all should be.

The tragedy of our age is that, on the one hand we witness the madness of violence and destruction designed by a controlling elite, and dismiss the goodness under our feet as benign.  This is the way power has corrupted our spirit by making us blind with anxiety. 

Anxiety will control and diminish our power as long we fail to stare it in the face, and ask our discomfort to speak to us on a deeper level. What does it mean when our governments have given up on their people and we can no longer hope for jobs, education, health care and a clean environment?

Imperialist nations that thrived on oppressing other nations for their resources are now feeling the violence of the system that fed and controlled them through propaganda and ideology until there was no ideal left uncorrupted, untainted. We live in an age now where we can't escape the immense depth of violence which we once supported through loyalty.

What can each one of us do to re-create new systems?  What do we possess that we can choose to build upon?  What can we believe in?  These are questions to ask ourselves for our answers will be our legacy.

While socialist and capitalist governments have abused power, Pickett and Wilkinson tell us (in an article published in StraightGoods)

"the evidence shows unmistakably that more equal societies — those with smaller income differences between rich and poor — are friendlier and more cohesive: community life is stronger, people trust each other more, and there is less crime and violence. So the deep human intuition that inequality is divisive and socially corrosive is true.

People in more unequal societies have worse health and lower life expectancy; they are more likely to have drug problems and to suffer more mental illness. Measures of child wellbeing are worse and children do less well at school. Rates of teenage births, obesity and violence are all higher, and more people are in prison."

It's time we stopped working for our oppressors by examining the power of institutions and the frames they contain us in, and then by re-creating the world based on social justice, compassion, freedom and responsibility.

Gun Registry Saves Money

In a Straight Goods report headed "Gun registry saves money as well as lives", I am struck with the feeling  that saving lives needs to be justified by saving money.

"OTTAWA, April 20, 2011 – The Canadian Federation of University Women (CFUW) believes that gun control is an important measure to help prevent public violence and in particular, violence against women. Most firearm-related deaths in Canada are caused by rifles or shotguns. These are the guns most used in domestic violence."

According to this report, abolishing the registry may save us between $1.5 to $4 million per year, but money incurred as a result of deaths and injury by firearms was estimated at $6.6 billion in 1995.

We know that a registry alone will not stop violence, but we need more conversations about violence, about the cause of domestic violence to match the steady news reports of violent deaths in our nation.

Since the Harper Government has slashed funding for women’s groups that attempt to deal with this issue  and also proposes to slash the gun registry - how will they, if elected, support safety and uphold the value of life?

To what extent is violence nature or nurture and what are the socially aggravating factors that lead some people to harm their own families?