The Cheap and Easy Way to Power

This was originally posted November 12, 2016.


"So what you have is a voting base consisting of evangelical Christians, ultranationalists, racists, disaffected, angry, white working-class sectors that have been hit very hard....[and] an increase in mortality among these sectors, that just doesn’t happen in developed societies." Noam Chomsky, Today's GOP Candidate for "most dangerous organization in human history"

The easiest way to power is to pump the masses with false hope and fantasized superiority. Tell them they deserve to be angry because they are worth more than the "others" who are lower down on the scale of privilege.

Begin with very powerful interests like big corporations. Tell them over and over again they alone are saving the world from poverty by creating money; that money is pure power which rises above the complexities of human nature. Tell them your party will be on their side as long as you get the funding you need to carry the campaign to the end.

Then simply use the same method, with different instructions to the masses.  Even though they are not included in decision making policy, and not in the room where policies are created, they need to call on an "inherent superiority" such as class or skin colour. Then change the teachings of your prophets to match your agenda.

Don't bring facts or intellect into the campaign. It emphasizes reason, knowledge and leads to social justice. Once ideas are debated there are no winners. Intelligence is a private muscle which will stay true to the party line as long as there is a salary, otherwise it will wander off. Raise children to be suspicious of their own experience and interpretation of the world, replace their self worth with doubt and self contempt. The earlier the mind is intercepted with doctrine the easier it is to influence and control. "Give me a child until he is seven and he will be mine for life", said a priest.

Set one group against another. This builds a multi-generational division where parents will do most of the indoctrination. Catholic versus protestant. Christians versus Moslems, Jews, Hindu's and all other faiths. Liberal versus Conservative, Wealthy versus Poor, Men versus Women, Man versus Nature. This ensures the ongoing war in the minds and hearts of every living creature.  This also ensures that good ideas will never replace fear.

Once these systems are established, they will prevail and be generated by the poorest and weakest of the world. The oppressed become oppressors (Freire). For thousands of years this is how humanity has been governed. As long as they are in denial about their own needs and worth, they will fall in line and do your bidding.

There have been different labels and descriptors for ruling systems but they operate on the same principle - it is the worship of power over life. The holding up of violence over compassion. The celebration of ignorance over self-knowledge.

When life is not held as sacred it's easy to make abortion illegal while planning to starve the offspring.

However, the essential and everlasting way to power is that of a society built on the free and enduring inquiry of who we are and what we can do to solve the problems that face us.

Faith

This is no time for a casual faith. And we Unitarian Universalists must remember that we are not in this alone.

SUSAN FREDERICK-GRAY  |  11/7/2017  |  WINTER 2017

UUWorld

National Poetry Month III

Treasure Your Grief

Not like a piece of jewellery kept in a box

but a scar across your face

a house plant blooming where sun

glares through a window.

Go back to that time—

the sunny afternoon in the park

you didn’t question

your feelings sweeping you out

from childhood to another’s body

so close it enters like a possession

a desire that doesn’t name itself

cut by fear

this is how women are destroyed

and you run away

shut down the portal to pleasure

as you will do again and again.

Go back to the image you hold onto

the someday promised, this or this

the girl who gives because she feels

the movie star everyone wants but can’t have

the radiant flesh, the brilliant idea

all yours if you play your cards

right not wrong. Right not left. Right not alone,

starving or battered.

New dove, shapely, winged and wise, goddess poised

on the edge of a mountain in the clouds

ready to jump or fly to eternal glory

shattered by all the missteps, mistakes and failings

the undeniable proof of your unremarkable humanity

your place in the anonymous family

and all the ways you have been let down or built up

washing the cloth of invincibility.

You’ll dream of long corridors searching for a baby

taken at birth to find she was never yours

and in the mirror no tragic victim looks back at you

no Cinderella or Joan of Arc.

Grief is not loss but inheritance, your fire,

your form. Grief is the callback to play yourself

with your sweat, your fear, challenged by desire

to answer the breaking Earth as though she were a heart

or some other organ, her blood rushing through

your own veins. As though you were yourself

a mind created to save her and after all these years

you learn the only thing you can be sure about

are the many opportunities you threw away.

There are no happy endings.

There is struggle. There is gratitude.

And there is silence.

(Infinite Power, Janet Vickers, Ekstasis 2016)

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.

How to Fight Terrorism

1. Know the purpose of terrorism.
To create fear and confusion in the hearts and minds of people everywhere, to alienate them from their own humanity and their community so they can be manipulated to work for the wealth and power of a few. Xenophobia, blaming Muslims, race-baiting and hate is not the way to fight terrorism. In fact it is precisely what will keep us from an understanding of who we are. Xenophobia is really an inverted projection of ourselves - we project onto the other what we don't want to see in ourselves. Security and policing agencies are charged with the mandate to deal with the symptoms of terrorism - they cannot cure it or get rid of it.

2. Know who the terrorists are.  
Terrorists are not just those who wear suicide belts, who plant bombs and who bring machine guns into public places. Ask who funds terrorist organizations? Who supports their ideologies with propaganda? Who inflames hatred and suspicion with words, images, policies, entertainments and games? Who lobbies governments to undermine democratic systems? Who conflates crises into racist 'causes'? Who are the institutions that work secretly with other institutions to centralize power through misinformation and ideology? While most of this demographic are not entering theatre halls with guns and bombs, they are all part of the industry that creates fear and encourages public disengagement, creating fertile grounds for the marginalized to seek radical 'solutions'. Ideologies that exclude large groups of people based on race, gender, and social orientation are the most effective feeders for terrorist groups.

3. What do terrorists hate?
While I don't personally know what all the men and women who have willingly joined a terrorist organization really love or hate, the message emanates from the action. Killing people you don't know is a very strong message that symbolizes what they hate. They hate the unpredictable. They hate diversity. They hate anything that questions their world view?  They love unquestioning obedience and loyalty to a cause and the muths of perfection.

4. Know their weapons.
Their primary weapon is indoctrination that deadens thought and reflection. Guns and bombs are just the hardware to shut down all aspects of human nature, such as curiosity, language, art, love, friendship, empathy, generosity, and all the soft skills that contribute to civil engagement.

5. Know their victims.
The first victims are the volunteers who are trained to kill. PTSD is a sophisticated term to describe what happens to men and women who can no longer manage to live normal, emotionally fulfilling lives because their nervous systems have been cauterized by violence. The second victims are the families of those who have lost loved ones in terrorist attacks. The third victims are those who have lost limbs and lives. The fourth are the racial and religious minorities who are blamed for the violence because fear without access to healing is followed by hatred.

6. Know how to defeat them.
The only way to defeat them is to defeat their ideologies.  Retribution keeps terrorists alive because it is the endless game of war and violence that becomes more entrenched and imperative with each generation under siege. The most fertile nations for terrorists are those who have been economically and culturally destroyed by war. Hegemonic systems create terrorism by making people refugees in their own country by turning all of nature, including human nature, into a resource to be exploited.

Once  upon a time we might have debated the pursuit of equality and social justice as a kind of delusional idealism. Now the urgency of this call means we either build human capacities on a reverence for life or deliver the future into the hands of terrorists.

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.