We Are on Trial In the Court of Humanity

Reading various posts, social media, news outlets and opinions I wonder what to believe, what to read and what to ignore.

I could decide to ignore everything published that does not come from one specific news outlets.

Or not believe anything that has no scientific proof.

Or not read anything that does not come from the Christian Bible.

Nothing that comes from sources that I don't know personally like my family, friends and neighbours.

Or anything that comes out of the mouths of politicians who are in parties I do not support.

I could be protecting my own ego, my own sense of right and wrong, my own sense of intelligence.

But in all this wrestling all I am doing is protecting my self, not the society I live in. 

How much does it matter what I believe? As compared to what I do to make others feel at home. How do I keep community functioning to the best of its ability.

Defending Civil Society

"If our politics is becoming less rational, crueller and more divisive, this rule of public life is partly to blame: the more disgracefully you behave, the bigger the platform the media will give you. If you are caught lying, cheating, boasting or behaving like an idiot, you’ll be flooded with invitations to appear on current affairs programmes. If you play straight, don’t expect the phone to ring." George Monbiot, Bring on the Clowns

If you are feeling your world is no longer recognizable avoid blaming the average person who may be somewhat impressed by the novel trends.  This breaking apart of civil society is being achieved by powerful dark money as well as the people who are desperate to keep their jobs.

What I hope for and depend on, for the sake of my mental health and the well being of my children and grandchildren, is the waking to our personal realities and by choosing where we find our community.

I have found, like millions of others, the goodwill in friends, family and neighbours who have not invested their belief systems in celebrity, capitalism, and material trinkets. I buy local goods made by people of integrity wherever possible. I buy natural food. I donate to organizations that challenge injustice and work for the greater good of all.

All the above are ways in which I am supported by good people, and although I am concerned about the influence of machiavellian "news" outlets and toxic propaganda, I do whatever I can to support peace and social justice.

My letters to the editor rarely get published but I send them anyway. My books of poetry haven't won awards or contests, and my blog is mostly visited by porn sites. But it comes down to this:

There is only a short time on earth for me to witness, create, or judge what is going on around me, so I will do what I can to create a better world along with the inspirational people I meet and work with.

One thing has become clear to me: elites of all kinds whether in media, school or government do not have a monopoly on the meaning of life.

Please advise: How did civil society become so dispensable?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Depth and Breadth of White Supremacy

Because the media keeps reporting on the events, utterances and activities of broken men, I think concerned citizens must jump in to offer a different view.

We are vulnerable to fashions and movements that cause tremendous suffering, such as the Thirties in Europe.

Using Hitler's playbook we know that human nature can be misrepresented and conditioned into robotic bodies to serve a political fantasy such as racial superiority. Using different words I might say the men of Europe were asked to give up their reality, their health, their livelihood, their intelligence, for an imagined glory, which meant death.

Nations of people starved so that money could be invested in global killing machines. The mental health of these "Aryan" people was battered by trauma. We lost limbs and lives, husbands and sons, fathers and mothers, wives and daughters, for the glory of war.

It meant that arguments, doubts, conversations and worry about the future were temporarily wiped out for the beat of the goose step. It meant that people no longer had to solve human problems because they could hollow out their minds and replace them with propaganda. There were only two choices to make - obey the rules and die, or be tortured to death.

Does that look like highest attainment for humanity? Does that feel like a celebration of life?

This either/or scenario didn't begin with Hitler or the Nazi's and the social conditions that were causing men to give up hope and turn to hate, began through other men who had power over the people.  Those who dictated the rules of austerity were not the ones who would go hungry.

You don't have to be a scholar to know that glory is about sacrificing life for power. Life is presented as a burden, and the only true achievement is the ability to control the lives of others.

This is not new and has been said more profoundly by Hannah Arendt, George Orwell, Noam Chomsky, Margaret Atwood, and millions of poets whose work is mostly ignored.

The culture of Europe was destroyed in politics, wealth, life and health while a few got rich. Now this hate has been ignited by North American opportunists to defend capitalism against the human conscience.

What did Hitler achieve for the world? A brutal example of how low humanity could sink and the proof of our capacity for cruelty. But also a warning to us all about what it is we need to fight against. Not the stranger but the shadow in ourselves.

White supremacy is about turning human souls into vacuous puppets in order to destabilize and destroy civil society and ultimately create a smooth path for megalomaniacs to do as they please without criticism or obstruction. Is this what we want?

A Teachable Moment From the Fire Chief

"If you are sitting at the coop gas pump, while tanker is filling the fuel system, don't light a cigarette. If you do and someone gestures not to do that, don't give them the finger and launch into a swearing and threatening tirade against them, especially with your kid in the car. Not only does this make you an extreme moron, but a moron who likely throws his butts out the car window and is also enabling the next generation of morons." Rick D. Jackson


Our whole island is at risk when even one person cannot see the danger in their actions in the middle of a dry hot spell with forests all around us. Our species is in danger when social institutions are unable to convince individuals we are all in this together.

Thoughts on Etiquette - gleaned from Facebook

When Should You Inquire Whether Your Friend is Pregnant?:

The only time we need to ask personal questions, such as: when is the baby due? is this a boy or a girl? are you married? when do you plan to start a family? how much do you earn in a year? ... is when your profession depends upon the answer. If you're a nurse, a doctor, a minister, or a lawyer you might be required to ask those questions - otherwise it's none of your business. This is good to remember then you can avoid embarrassment. And if you are not embarrassed by anything, ask away, so that people know what you are - an innocent who just wants to be friendly but who will likely become lonely. But not to worry - it's not your fault. The blame lies entirely on a culture so obsessed with jobs and the economy, it threw out all conversations about sustainable civil societies.

Wall of Silent Screams

There are times when there is so much bad news it creates a wall of silent screams. Headline after headline supports the ambition of centralized power that holds humanity in a prison of dread and fear. This is more than just a feeling, it is the body's sense that everything created is about to crash. A tsunami coming in slow motion and you know there is nothing you can do to stop it.

More than the threat of fascism it's as though life itself is atomizing into drunken parts. My own body losing muscle, my head unable to think, my fundamental ability to survive lost. Something much larger than politics is invading my universe in a way that I cannot walk through. This can't be explained by the economy. It is an organic response. Should it be ignored or should I try to understand it?

To admit to my own vulnerability is not weak, it's a maturation of my ego, a willingness to move beyond my self interested fantasy to see what is happening outside the bubble. I look for the skills in others I do not possess and call on the skills I have to build a community.

There have been other people I admire for the skills and abilities they bring. I look for strength in diversity. I look for those who can do the things I can't do and feel gratitude for all that they give. I go to them for advice and give advice when I am asked for it.

The hub of community where people have learned how to be contributing stakeholders brings me a sense of peace and comfort. However, as much as I respect them I don't always agree with what they say and do, and so we must learn how to communicate without injuring. My community is not my possession but part of the wealth that I enjoy.

Life is easier when the place we live in is not threatened by authoritarian institutions. Part of my humanity is to keep learning how to engage with my neighbours so they are safe - because when they feel safe it makes my world safer to explore.

There is so much more I need to learn about being human, about how to endure discomfort, uncertainty, or pain. How to find relief from anxiety.

Karen Armstrong writes that compassion is the way we find relief from fear of the unknown. A society that honours equality is more confident in searching for ways to solve community problems such as alienation and loneliness. We feel safer to help those who need help. We learn how to be experienced stakeholders. We can develop the insight that our wealth is the quality of our relationship to one another, and that collecting stuff does not satisfy forever.

But now, in the democratic world, we are threatened by a hatred for the other. The blaming is isolating us into fierce camps. Will we be investing in weapons so that communities protect themselves from the outside while living in denial inside?

Hunger, homelessness, domestic violence, road rage, intolerance are not separate issues - they all arise from decades of structural abuse. We cannot trust the police, the courts, the teachers, the policy makers and our doctors when civil society dissolves into a cauldron of competing egos filled with disappointment, dreading what the future may bring.

Resisting trends that we do not agree with is one way to maintain sanity. When Bertrand Russell responded to an invitation from Sir Oswald Mosley to debate  fascist ideas, he did it in a way that clearly defined his values without insulting the values of his friend.

"Thank you for your letter and for your enclosures. I have given some thought to our recent correspondence. It is always difficult to decide on how to respond to people whose ethos is so alien and, in fact, repellent to one’s own. It is not that I take exception to the general points made by you but that every ounce of my energy has been devoted to an active opposition to cruel bigotry, compulsive violence, and the sadistic persecution which has characterised the philosophy and practice of fascism.
I feel obliged to say that the emotional universes we inhabit are so distinct, and in deepest ways opposed, that nothing fruitful or sincere could ever emerge from association between us." Bertrand Russell

We must call on our own humanity to protect what we hold dear, and cannot expect to be protected by abusive power if we disown our civic estates.

Plan for Healing: a proposal for conversation

Planning is not always effective but it's a good start. Make a plan and update it frequently as you learn more along the way. Begin with a conversation with someone or some people whose ideas you respect, someone whom you admire for whatever they have achieved and how they present themselves in the world.

The conversation could cover these questions or these questions could springboard to other ideas. Be flexible and don't worry about staying on the agenda if the ideas expressed are worth exploring.

1. Write down the most critical symptom that needs to be healed. Your mental health? Relationships in your community? Letters to the editor: are they inclusive or preachy and divisive? Public discussions: are they focused on right and wrong, us against them or do they explore ideas?

2. Where do our opinions and positions come from? How useful are the facts in establishing connections with others?

3. What is it we value in ourselves and our friends? We need to write down these thoughts so we can come back to this question.

4. What are we grateful for in our community?

5. How much influence do we have in our society? How much influence do you have personally?

6. What, in your opinion, are the hallmarks of a civil society?

7. How important are predictions and expert opinions as compared to your perceptions in each moment? Is mindfulness helpful? Be Skeptical?

8. What character traits make us human? Describe the nature of a human being.

The Last Conspiracy Theory

While many hotly debated arguments raise the blood pressure of oppressed citizens, much attention is directed toward the need to get the facts straight. Who is causing what, who is to blame, and how to exterminate them.

All of the previously named culprits – capitalists, communists, patriarchs, narcissists, psychopaths or fascists, are not the cause. They are the carriers of something much more destructive and dangerous.

The Anthro-Hyena!

No you haven’t read about this before. You have never seen it, or heard it, and you won’t. The Anthro-Hyena blends into any group it seeks to dominate and control. It appears like any charismatic professional or business person. It professes an interest in the greater good, single-mindedly through stealth and charm.  The outcome however, to the shock of cohorts and witnesses, is destruction and chaos which occurs long after the Anthro-Hyena has left.

The MO of the Anthro-Hyena, revealed through centuries of revolution, war,  regime and ideology change, is to manipulate humanity by playing on our fears and basic desires. It works like a virus, entering the reptilian brain which then becomes inflamed and puts pressure on the limbic system. Human functions such as reason and language suffocate, unable to work.

Civilizations where people have lived and prospered for centuries endure intermittent episodes of madness and dysfunction where the focus moves away from stewardship to destruction.  This is known as war.

All resources are switched from food, health, community and beauty, to the basic binary of win or lose, kill or be killed, live or die. Civilization itself dissolves into competition, an obsession so ridiculous, mothers enter their babies into beauty contests. Education is rendered down to a series of tests. Infrastructure is neglected for the arms industry. Ruling nations are not progressive, effective or kind,  but simply the ones with the biggest weapons.

While the Anthro-Hyena itself is not limited to the reptilian brain it convinces humanity to discard all other sensibilities learned over centuries, for the bottom line, the lowest common denominator. In spite of the activism and intellect of a few, the Anthro-Hyena has won.

The over-arching narrative has fallen for the sensational siren and shut down public discourse for the masses. Politicians have given up on leadership to appeal to the lowest common denominator, for good reason – the system will sabotage the campaign that is life-affirming, justice-oriented and reasonable. 

Media is hostage to the noise, broadcasting propaganda without analysis. Movies, television shows, rarely play out the cause and evolution of the plot, simply going straight to the effects – explosions, crashing vehicles and pools of blood. Pornography  has trashed love and amputated the limbs of the human body from its final orgasm.

The Anthro-Hyena has corrupted art, beauty, wisdom, love, complexity, democracy and the future.  We are presented with corporate sponsored contempt for life in all its shades and colours. We are the everlasting dementia, looking for the next human sacrifice to be slaughtered for our brief exultation of having won. Replaying our delusional triumph like the circus it is.

Meanwhile the world of human capacities, civil society, literature, compassion and creativity is shrinking. Living communities are replaced with ruins and the continual rain of  bombs for which there is no solution.

No matter how smart, determined, courageous and powerful we may be, no matter how many hearts and minds are destroyed, life is made redundant. No theology, technology or philosophy can stop the fire, the floods and bullets.  The intention is that there be no witness, no argument and no narrative. To put an end to birth. Without birth there is no life, there is no light. Without light all that remains is the singular winner.  The one who destroys any chance of its own death by being the last to survive, by having the last word.

Who benefits from this nihilism? Nothing that breathes or thinks or hopes. There is no benefit other than the ego detached from everything except winning. This is the Anthro-Hyena. The thing that eats into our tender brains as we struggle so hard to conquer the universe, never seeing we have no time to live in it.   

Naming the Disease - Social Atomization

Henry Giroux writes in his recent Truthout article titled "Donald Trump and the Plague of Atomization in a Neoliberal Age" of Leo Lowenthal who warned back in the forties about the atomization of human beings under a state of fear. "What he understood with great insight, even in 1946, is that democracy cannot exist without the educational political and formative cultures and institutions that make it possible."

This confirms my sense that we are trying to fight a social disease with rational arguments while the supporters of fascist movements just want a messiah who will deal with the big problems so we don't have to, but who have no idea of the danger in giving unconditional power to a single ego. A functioning democratic society can be annoying and tiresome but it has many conditions that challenge power.

In a free and democratic society that pays taxes for education, justice, and social protections for the most vulnerable - we are continually being updated with facts that challenge assumptions of how we can instinctively know the leaders we pick will protect us. That we have social standards that can't be broken. Or that we will be okay as long as the economy is okay. Or, even that we have progressed and would never push a woman in front of a train because she was wearing a headscarf.

In the fifties and sixties I was given an education based on social justice. It wasn't in headlines but it underscored all that I learned. It didn't guarantee fairness or security but assumed we had a responsibility to care about one another. We didn't read Giroux, Lowenthal or Arendt, but we knew of Socrates and Orwell.

Yet many who graduated from this era were quite happy to throw it away because it wasn't perfect.

Now we are at such a stage of civil entropy we shrug while finance capital rules and public benefits are eroded. Those at the bottom are left without a means of earning a living wage, without hope, continually ground down by endless poverty and denied human dignity.

"Mass fear is normalized as violence increasingly becomes the default logic for handling social problems." Giroux writes.

If we stop to read this age and condense all the hostility around us, we will see that life itself is the enemy of fascism. Fascism silences conversation, it wants unquestioned obedience, human sacrifices, the glorious sunset, robotic armies.

Totalitarianism wants power without the human stain, without competing organisms, without reflection or question or thought. It is the muscle without a brain, The sperm without the egg. The knife without flesh. The future without compassion. The masculine without the feminine.

The corporate media keeps telling us this over and over again, in a thousand different scenes and sound bites.

Arrested Development and the Future of Humanity.

Endless news reports on mainstream and social media indicate that while we are in a mess, threatened by climate change, dismissal of civil society and its needs such as education, health, art and security – we do have ways of challenging the status quo.  We have the evolution of our human nature that is far more complex than is given credit. We are at risk but the world has not ended yet.

We are stuck in a mythology that arrests our development, as our political representatives cease to problem solve but focus instead on who is to blame, shopping for scape-goats. We shake at our breakfast table listening to all the pundits warn of the many threats to our security until we are convinced we have no power at all.  

Eventually we stop planning, fundraising, organizing, sharing and caring, turn inward until the next bad driver, rude neighbour, or abusive boss, reveal everything that is wrong with the world and then we blow up in rage. At the end of the day, we return home, turn on the TV and watch hours of insults and brutality for entertainment.

To fight back against this continual, sensory oppression, we need to own the future in the way we care for our family, our jobs, our clubs and our places of worship.

We are not spectators, we are investors, stakeholders.  This is what it means to be citizens in a civil society where we treat each other with respect. It’s not a competition, it’s not a game. There are helpers, advisers and experts ready to support our community building. They are not always right or wrong. The heroes are not gun totting movie stars,  but your neighbours, ready to help, grateful for what others have done.

We give and take, celebrate our achievements, acknowledge our mistakes, become literate in what works and what doesn’t.  Take on the small tasks until we develop the confidence to take on the big ones.  

Trust is developed in community when we refuse to divide it by class, skin colour, or religion. People are less threatening when we get to know the person behind the fear, and learn to listen. We learn how to be vulnerable and to be sensitive to the ways in which others are vulnerable.

Then the scales fall from our eyes as we realize we have been trained to see our world and ourselves as a construct for the ruling system, rather than who we are.  We become more curious about how our best interests are sabotaged by fear and prejudice, and how we can transcend those pitfalls, and that most crises are fixable. That we have more courage to face up to the challenges of the unknown than we thought.

Then it becomes clear to us that being human is the task. That all other things like being a parent, a teacher, a police officer, a councilor, a president, needs study and education, but most of all requires the continual engagement of the heart and mind.

Remembering Tommy Douglas

“Once more let me remind you what fascism is. It need not wear a brown shirt or a green shirt – it may even wear a dress shirt. Fascism begins the moment a ruling class, fearing the people may use their political democracy to gain economic democracy, begins to destroy political democracy in order to retain its power of exploitation and special privilege.” Tommy Douglas

Naomi Wolf: 10 easy steps towards fascism

Back in 2007 Naomi Wolf wrote an article in The Guardian on how a civilized democratic society can be reduced to a barbaric fascist state. This article is timeless and should be taught in schools, or should have been taught in schools. Is it too late? 

Here are the steps:

1. Invoke a terrifying internal and external enemy
2. Create a gulag
3. Develop a thug caste
4. Set up an internal surveillance system
5. Harass citizens' groups
6. Engage in arbitrary detention and release
7. Target key individuals
8. Control the press
9. Dissent equals treason
10. Suspend the rule of law

It's worth revisiting the article for the comments Wolf includes for each one.

Proroguing Parliament - open letter to Prime Minister Stephen Harper

Photo by Montrealais

Rt. Honourable Prime Minister Stephen Harper

Prime Minister of Canada

80 Wellington Street

Ottawa, ON

K1A 0A2

Dear Prime Minister

I write to you today because I am really concerned about what is happening in Canada. 

Since coming to Canada in 1965 I have learned a great deal about civil society. It is the spirit of caring that has enabled me to move beyond cynicism and apathy, and that spirit which also makes me really concerned about our future.

Every day I meet well informed Canadian citizens who love this country, who work hard to do their job to the best of their ability, who spend hours contributing to community, for the greater good. Among friends, colleagues and acquaintances I have observed an ethic of citizenship and social responsibility which has inspired me to think beyond my own self interest. Or better yet, to see that my self interest is located in the interest of all.

For people to be the best they can be, they need a society which inspires and acknowledges this spirit of care and concern for our fellow citizens. But many events of late indicate that Canada as a nation no longer exists. What we could so easily believe if we allow ourselves to be influenced by mainstream media news, is that this land is merely a petro state or an opportunity for foreign profit. When we as individuals and as a society believe the only thing that matters is the economy then we cease to care for life itself.

When you call for parliament to be prorogued for the third time, I wonder if you are acting as an employee of a large corporation rather than the prime protector of our nation. It allows cynicism to grow just as the events around Lac-Mégantic, the shooting of Sammy Yatim, the senate scandal and so many other news headlines, make us wonder what happened to the ethic of good government. Where are the standards we thought were realized through centuries of struggle towards human rights, and our responsibilities in a democratic society? Where are our philosophers, our healers, our teachers in parliament?

I believe they are there in Ottawa and in the Canadian conscience – but these voices must be allowed, must be heard. Please do NOT prorogue parliament in September.

yours sincerely

Janet Vickers

Let Them Eat Guns: a glimpse of the future

How many people have been killed in the US by guns since Newtown? At the point of writing this post: 2, 519.  What does this mean in terms of years or decades into the future?

The proliferation of guns is only one part of the main story here. Really it tells of social despair and nihilism.

When "let them eat cake" was attributed to Marie Antoinette  it remained as an example of contempt for the public, the majority of whom were poor. Although there is no proof that Marie said those words, it reveals the power of words, of what they represent to the people. It reveals an attitude among the  ruling elite that sees commoners as a nuisance, like mice, rats or rabbits.  Something to trap and get rid of or turn into a resource, like factory workers or rabbit stew.

Since the 1700's we have survived cultures who taught that everyone who was not white, not male, not protestant, not rich - as the other, the enemy, the stranger.  Perhaps at one time violence was just violence but somewhere along the way we attempted to idealize our own and demonize the other to maintain a choreographed and predictable future. But instead of creating peace we find ourselves in chaos.

Some of our species, we might call a ruling elite, such as the heads of church, state and business, are attempting to maintain the status quo by keeping the masses economically powerless. However this is the messiest, most violent and chaotic way.  The countries that most eagerly embraced communism, the troubles or the Arab Spring, were those where the gap between the haves and have-nots were the greatest. The populations where there is no equality between genders and races, where marginalization is ritualized throughout the land and narrative, find they have no choice but to rebel, to seek revolution.

When power is centralized to a few, then power-over or hegemony is the way the unreflective choose to feel safe. They demand guns for the institutions in place to serve them; weapons of mass destruction against other nations; ideologies that create more, not less fear; gated communities; inhumane immigration policies; private health and private schools; larger more brutalized prisons; and routine torture.  Centralized power creates war as a means to keep the focus on the other-other  so the masses will not have time to see how they are being robbed.

Right now the planet has been purchased, if not legally, then by propaganda. The governments, the leaders, the laws, and the fifth estate have abandoned the future in favour of a false sense of power, because all over the world civil society with its freedom and responsibility is being systematically destroyed.

What we have to look forward to, if we don't engage with this theft, is one of incremental suicide.  Society is not status, not communism, not a shopping mall, and not celebrity.  Society is the way our species survives by caring for one another and by creating systems that celebrate the creative community. Society is about the love of humanity and the opportunity for our evolution.

This is not idealism. It is a re-direction from the glorification of violence (which is the first gate of terrorism) to the masses estranged from their own capacities through uncertainty and fear.

When ordinary people believe that they must carry a personal weapons to protect themselves, it is because they have not experienced the protection of justice and freedom, no matter how many times the words are trotted out.  Without justice and freedom life is not worth living.

Crises in Power

Uroborus

When organizations, institutions, nations and global corporations have destroyed the means of democratic power that comes of thoughtful, intelligent cooperation among people, "Power" becomes a dirty word, and humanity appears only to be little more than vermin.

Murray Dobbins has illustrated in his post "The Tyrant's Poison Pill: the suppression of civil society" the way violence harms whole societies. But also, I suspect this mass violence permanently damages our capacity to survive by creating a new species incapable of nurturing life.

We live in a time of global, political, social and religious dysfunction. The age of pathology where  structure demands its members compete for power in the arena of zero sum games.  Politicians, CEO's, corporate representatives must, by default, divest themselves of anything civil and decent in order to play the game - where egos are isolated, alone, enemies among enemies, looking over their shoulder, in mistrust.

We are trained to believe we are successful when we are losing our way, going mad. The biggest bullies are not in control because the whole organism known as civil society is decaying.  

At the end of World War II, European civilizations were in the spiral of destruction and nihilism, and courageous people worked together to re-build new worlds through extraordinary effort, and faith in the best of human nature.

America shined like a beacon of hope for many, with its creative energy. But megalomania got hold of it too, and the more wealthy and successful they became, the more violent their foreign policy. Now America is being destroyed by the ideologies that destroyed Europe.

What are the main instruments of this destructive power? Fear, hate, and greed. But these are also natural human emotions that most, if not all, have experienced.

Where is the way out? First to acknowledge the seeds of destruction are within us. Then to see that power as something elevated or superior to life,  is the carrier of delusion in our collective mind.  Power for power's sake fixes nothing and destroys everything. It is the uroborus (the serpent that swallows its tail for the integration and assimilation of the opposite).  In Christianity it is the fallen angel Satan and "our race apart from God".

For me, the first steps towards our way out is to fill up on love and compassion, in order to return to the power that reveres and comes from life.

Why you can't win an argument with a bully

Bullies appear to be single minded in their determination to win. Their intimidation tactics make it difficult to believe they are concerned about facts other than how to make them serve their own interests. Bullies appear to operate as though they are the centre of the universe who can't be touched or challenged by marginal forces.

Arguments are conversations directed towards an outcome: persuasion, defending a point of view, making a case.  A good argument is one that contains two sides where  willing listeners and intellectually present minds engage in the topic. An argument is not what you see on Coronation Street or reality shows.  It's not a p!$$ing contest of verbal abuse. An argument is not a diatribe or a rant where only one voice is present.

An argument requires honesty and sincerity among equals. Proving the point requires logic, insight, enlightenment, and some humility. However this is not easy as we have been raised in societies where 'right' and 'wrong' have been co-opted by self interest, and the ego feels a need to believe it is inherently right.  It takes strength of character to understand we are not always right and that our interests are not always the best interests for all.

Bullies establish their place early in life.  Perhaps in the crib when their demands were never negotiated, or in the school playground first victimized by bullies, or the narrative played out in television and movie plots where the winner takes all.  Mostly the bully's personality has been arrested by simplistic constructs of relationship where there is only one winner.

The values of a civil society, such as justice, fairness, empathy, nurture, stewardship, love and reason are beyond the bully's comprehension.  So the bully will interrupt, shout louder, use put downs, shore up racist, sexist prejudices, make false claims, use devices to confuse, use foul language and even weapons in order to win.  This is because all things are a threat to the bully.

The point then is not to win an argument with the bully but to state your truth, to bring to the arena the option of a reality that is different from the bully's world view which serves no-one but the bully. Whatever the bully says he/she has already lost credibility in civil society, dismissed or tolerated by intelligent, questioning souls. Raising the point reaches those who are hungry for justice and beauty, for a better example of human nature.

Issues of justice puts everyone in an uncomfortable pew, not because you brought it up, but because they are about to witness the very thing that caused them to acquiesce to the status quo. The thundering denial of diverse views.

Let the example stand and let the witnesses choose for themselves, in the private place of their conscience, what is right. Striving to get the last word removes the focus from the issue onto the egos.  Better to let the truth echo.

We are all capable of being bullies and most of us have at some point been victims of bullying.  What has been lost to our current society is the representation of civil discourse in government institutions and corporations. A reverence for life has been sacrificed when we allow bullies to silence the future of the human imagination.

Design the Future Based on the Truths that Nurture Us

Yesterday’s shooting at a Sikh Temple in Wisconsin is only 16 days after the shooting in Aurora at a midnight screening of the latest Batman movie.

Whether you believe this is part of an elitist conspiracy to break down civil society by brainwashing unstable men, or whether America is being punished by God for allowing liberal views, or that the invisible hand  (the economy) is creating despair – one thing is certain – the  violence that has been glorified for the colonization of other countries and the exploitation of the masses for the profit of a few, has been brought home. No-one is spared.  No place is safe. No prayers or ideology will fix this until most of the people on this planet realize we are all in this together.

Chris Hedges notes this day in 1945 when “the United States demonstrated that it was as morally bankrupt as the Nazi machine it had recently vanquished”.  This was the bombing of Hiroshima, and Nagasaki three days later. Hedges calls it “an act of mass annihilation” when the Japanese were about to surrender.

War does not bring peace, not a better standard of living for the masses, or an example for establishing workable communities – what it does achieve is social and cultural alienation.

I see the age in which we live (modern age) as being an age that succeeded in separating  power  from life.  Every century has defined and re-defined the war between a reverence for and the degradation of life.

We live in a time where power has been so centralized and violence so internalized that the distinctions between war and peace, duty and civility, wealth and poverty, truth and lies, have no meaning in the public sphere at all. We are the victims of our nations’ foreign policies.  We live in the theatre of other powers’ fantasies.

What can we do to defend life? 

First we must organize on the principles of a life sustaining power-from-within.  This means we design the future based on the truths that have nurtured our lives.  Love, support, health, nutrition, rest and freedom from violence. It’s not rocket science, it’s not fireworks and it’s not entertainment.  But we are the stewards of that which we value.

We could give up the notion of power over others, of superiority, and consumerism. We have no need to compare ourselves with others or to compete – these are instruments of propaganda to alienate us from our own worth.

The life we want is the life we make, and we are on the bridge of the next age. 

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.

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.