350 Newspapers in the US decry Trump's description of the media

From CNN:

About 350 newspapers in the United States had editorials Thursday decrying President Donald Trump's description of the media as the "enemy of the people."

Here are some of the newspapers blasting Trump's anti-press rhetoric:

https://www.cnn.com/2018/08/16/politics/newspaper-editorials-trump-list/index.html

Gabriola: The Integrity and Inspiration of Art

DRUMBEG HOUSE ANNUAL STUDIO SALE
When: Sunday, August 26th 10 am - 4 pm
Where: 3085 Mander Road

This is probably the last time we will have a day when the general public will be invited to visit the Wakan home and studio. Naomi turns 87 this year and, while she will have books for sale on the day, all present and future sales of her books are being handled by the bookstore at Page's Marina (mail@pagesresort.com). 

Eli, too, is slowing down. Several of his large pieces will be available for silent auction at a low reserve bid, so now's a chance for you to get a "big statement" for your home, or office. If you're interested in negotiating a purchase before then, please check out the sculptures at www.eliaswakan.com 

Whether you're thinking of buying, or just want to drop by, we welcome everyone to help us celebrate our 22 years of creativity on Gabriola. This is a free event. We will have refreshments for you to enjoy.

Naomi Beth Wakan
3085 Mander Rd
Gabriola, BC, V0R 1X7
www.naomiwakan.com
naomi@naomiwakan.com

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. 

The Wealth of this Land is its people - Letter to the Premier of Ontario

Dear Premier Ford

I came to Canada in 1965, full of myself. I learned about being Canadian in the years that followed, because of the kind people who corrected my views of entitlement. They didn’t put me down, make fun of me, or shut me out - they simply explained they did not agree and why.  At the time I was not happy but later I would think about what they said and could see the value of their wisdom.

Later after the birth of my children and the guidance from Victorian Order of Nurses who helped me find answers, I could see how effective social programs linked knowledge to health. They had an education beyond mine, and they saved my family’s life.

Growing up watching popular TV and reading teen magazines I thought I had to learn how to come out on top, to make sure I had the last word and climb the ladder of success.  Of course so many other people felt that too, and when I didn’t win I would berate myself until kind friends taught me that wealth was in having a supportive community.

I thought many Canadians were really good at the down to earth wisdom and it was apparent how structurally violent my competitive attitudes were, how out of touch was my ego.

Then, housing was available to most of us, further education was affordable, and Canadians were mostly authentic. First in Montreal, then in Toronto, then Abbotsford. They came from India, Italy, Hungary, Ireland, UK, Germany and Africa. Their heritage was Hindu, Jewish, Muslim, Catholic & Protestant. Within a year or two immigrants would learn the real wealth of this nation - it was equality, positivity, and cautious optimism.

As turmoil around the world has caused insecurity and anger, I have learned how privileged I was to be an immigrant here. I have learned that peace can be found in compassion, empathy and a willingness to work for the greater good. I have learned from our First Nations the strength of working on universal values and taking care of our home. 

I write to ask you to consider the wealth of this nation that is beyond the bottom line and financial spreadsheets.  Please take care of the people first.

Janet Vickers

Gabriola BC V0R 1X1

1984 - George Orwell

“Now I will tell you the answer to my question. It is this. The Party seeks power entirely for its own sake. We are not interested in the good of others; we are interested solely in power, pure power. What pure power means you will understand presently. We are different from the oligarchies of the past in that we know what we are doing. All the others, even those who resembled ourselves, were cowards and hypocrites. The German Nazis and the Russian Communists came very close to us in their methods, but they never had the courage to recognize their own motives. They pretended, perhaps they even believed, that they had seized power unwillingly and for a limited time, and that just around the corner there lay a paradise where human beings would be free and equal. We are not like that. We know that no one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it. Power is not a means; it is an end. One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship. The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power. Now you begin to understand me.”
― George Orwell, 1984

(This quote was posted in Episyllogism)

The Human Hive

This article was inspired by Marilyn Hamilton's book Integral City and was posted first in Episyllogism September 22, 2013.

This is a response against the endless hours of brutal entertainment that suggests only might makes right. To save the world might be a heroic endeavour but I don’t believe it requires a Napoleonic campaign. It does, however, require the engagement of an alert mind and open heart.

The instructions are simple. Learn from the bees, use your caring mind to gaze at the world, reclaim your nature, hold onto curiosity, celebrate your creativity, give up blaming, live from a place of gratitude, acknowledge your political self, and honour your spirit.

1. Learn from the bees.
Marilyn Hamilton, CEO of Integral City, told a children’s story not long ago, that is easy to remember. Three key strategies enable bee hives to survive, which can teach us how to sustain the human hive – take care of you, take care of others, take care of this place. Our ancestors learned how to do this but sophisticated social systems have alienated us from our own capacity to manage the hive. However, world crises shows we must re-engage in the process now.

2. Use your caring mind to gaze at the world.
Look closely at the operating system, or the ‘apparatus’ as Simone Weil put it. Read ideas and opinions wherever you can find them. Ask yourself who benefits? Expand your gaze beyond your own immediate interests. Prepare to be disturbed but not defeated.

3. Reclaim your power.
Power and all its parts: politics, wealth, language, science, economics, institutional religion, are not evil. They are tools of a civil society. What is evil is the way these institutions have been corrupted to centralize power, to make it a zero sum commodity. Infinite power is disinterested in our personal goals, the economy and war, but we learn to survive by observing it.

4. Reclaim our nature.
We are resourceful workers and stakeholders in our society. We are not a resource or a job description. We are not left, right, conservative or liberal – we are organic, politically mobile beings. Labels are assigned to influence and control masses. We have courage, fear, anger, love and wisdom but they are not commodities, they are strengths that emerge and hide. The deadliest weapon of oppression is that which turns humanity and all of nature into a thing, a resource.

5. Hold onto Curiosity.
This is what keeps us exploring, examining, interrogating the conditions we live under or in. As long as curiosity is alive we shall never be content with serving an oppressive and corrupt social order.

6. Celebrate your Creativity.                                                                                            Music, theatre, farmers’ markets, poetry, gardens, maps, new political parties, conversations – are the means of expressing and sharing our humanity. Art is the what, where, how and who of our species as it yearns and evolves.

7. Give up blaming.
Blaming is not problem solving and the problem is not what other people do. To solve problems we need to re-engage our power to care creatively, with curiosity and empathy.

8. Live from a place of Gratitude
Love for life (agape) breaks apart the structures of false hierarchies. It demands attention to suffering, violence and calls for healing. Love is what drives great minds to take courageous stands outside of their particular disciplines for the greater good. Love is the openness to pain that makes injustice, corruption, cynicism and oppression unbearable.

9. Life is political.
You are an integral, intelligent, reflective part of a larger organism. Whether we survive as a species depends on protecting our earthly home from a system that enables a few egos to hold this planet ransom for the sake of temporary profit. There is no escape from politics. Its apparatus has been built on a grandiose delusion that refuses to see the natural world as sacred, and ourselves dependent upon its health. To be apolitical is to be a witness at the bed of a dying patient, refusing to be involved because the disease is dirty. To dismiss the world stage and your part in it is to lobotomize the future.

10. Honour the spirit
The spirit is our energy. It imparts our intentions before we see them. It allows us to dream and care for the world beyond our own life. Imagination and love is the immortal legacy we leave for our great-grandchildren.

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.