COP26 is dead! Long Live Cop27? What we need is simple, the task is complex, power agenda's make it all more complicated than it needs to be

The show is not over, yet the show is over already. 

~

All the political parties are failing us. The System is failing us all. The religions are all failing us. The industrial militarised 'economic' system of competing powers extracting wealth is failing us. The adults are failing the children.  COP26 is already failing us. It is blatantly not a fair COP.

I think we urgently need a non-partisan, non ideological grass roots Political and Cultural Union of Students, Parents and Teachers - people most concerned with the medium term future - to study, understand and spread the concept that the honest appraisal and accurate understanding of the evidence is critical to healthy democratic governance.

We need a movement to advocate for evidence led policy that seeks to avoid avoidable harms at every level, from abolishing poverty to the cessation of war fare, from reducing use of fossil fuels to eliminating corruption in Government, from promoting RegenAg and Cradle to Cradle production, use and consumption to withdrawing from all undeveloped lands and their peoples, in order to meet the climate challenge. Put it like this - Poverty is avoidable, an erupting volcano is not. Invading indigenous lands to 'develop sustainably' is avoidable, and if it is not avoided the destruction of the indigenous culture is likewise not avoidable. What culture has the right to destroy those cultures who in a myriad of forms have lived sustainably in those lands for centuries?

~

COP26 is dead! Long Live Cop27?

Simple
What we need is simple. Stop causing harm. Is that so much to ask? 

Simply put we need to stop harming our shared environment, we need to stop harming the bio-diversity of living creatures with whom we share this environment, and we need to stop harming each other. Stop causing avoidable harms,  at the level of Government and Corporation, at the very least. Simple.

I am not calling for utopic behaviour. Stop causing so much harm. Is that so much to ask?

The task is complex, but competing power agendas are making it all much, much more complicated than it needs to be.
Complex

The task is complex because it demands we meet a variety of primary needs that are not being met, and it demands we find ways to balance 'competing needs'. 
For example abolishing poverty is a necessity because it is an affliction that undermines every society where it is allowed to persist. Poverty harms the entire society where it exists. Poverty is being deliberately maintained.
Abolishing poverty will dig into the wealth extraction process of the leading oligarchies, because they depend on low wages for efficiency of wealth extraction.

However, when we abolish poverty, it will reduce rather than remove their profit take. The corporations and small businesses can still make profits, without imposing poverty. Win-win. 

They do not need such immense profits, they can do with less.
Balancing real needs.

It's not rocket science. Seeking win-win outcomes is a human trait older than hierarchies of violence.

Maintaining poverty to drive people into low paid work in order to maximise profit efficiency is a serious problem, it is a harm causation.

Deforestation is low paid work, often carried out by people close to destitution, as an act of desperation, a last resort. If those people were not so impoverished, would they bother to sweat in a forest, destroying it, risking disease and nasty accidents, just so that others can make immense profits?
How do we balance the needs of people, as workers and as communities with the needs of Corporations and Shareholders for a decent return on their investments of time, energy and money?

Balancing those needs requires effort, attention to detail, it demands empathy, humane concern and technical focus to change those methods that are causing harm so that they no longer do so. This is complex, it is not complicated.

Complicated.

All of the above is made much more complicated than it needs to be because the power plays of Extracted Accumulated Wealth as a political, economic and cultural master, which I consider is a psychological illness, presenting as an hegemonic attitude, is impeding progress on every level, from refusing to abolish poverty to undermining democracy, from engaging in warfare to  Billionaires and Corporations buying political representation that disfavours the electorate - none of this activity is helping.

This hegemonic dynamic is a fabric woven with the ideological threads of 'let's conquer the world' to attain market dominance, similar in method and action as Old Empires. 

Am I repeating myself?
The abhorrent US/UK Military 'Full Spectrum Dominance' dynamic, the behaviour of Facebook, Amazon, Google -The  Surveillance Capitalists - and the intransigence of the fossil fuel industry and others seeking dominant 'market share' nationally and globally is a dynamic order that continues to refuse to address the harms they are causing, in order to continue to expand and dominate their respective domains. They also wish to avoid paying their externalised costs.
Harms are not being honestly addressed. More power is sought.

Who pays the price?
Again we can see that the same pattern of maintaining position and seeking profits is happening during this pandemic (rather than asserting unity in the purpose of protecting the global population), where wealthy global North countries are blatantly not sharing wealth and technical ability be it fair taxation or the rights to manufacture and deliver vaccines and other vital logistical elements of suppressing the virus, or resources to deploy dealing with climate change in order to protect populations exposed to risk of avoidable harm. The UN called for a cessation of warfare in early 2020. The leading powers rejected that call.

If harm is avoidable, why not make that effort? 

The tobacco smoker is addicted, and we recognise that addicts need and deserve help to break the addition, to prevent greater harm at a later date. But the big business of that addiction, and it's tax take for Governments stand as enablers of the tobacco addiction. Fossil fuel industry learned the tricks of denial from the tobacco industry.

It is the addiction to Power that is the problem that drives so many other problems. Johnson et all demonstrate that every day they sit in high office.

Global Disunity

The Global Disunity, the refusal of warring states to cease all war engagements amidst a pandemic, the refusal to waive IP rights to allow wider manufacture and distribution of Vaccines and other tools, the rejection of elimination of community transmission by USUK, Brazil, India in contrast to East Asian states and others who have better protected their populations and economies, are all down to one concern - preserving the power of the ruling class, of Accumulated Wealth to extract even more wealth, irrespective of the costs to the people or the environment.

Evil?

"The Science has been crystal clear, How dare you continue to look away, and come here and say you are doing enough when the politics and solutions needed are nowhere in sight. You say you hear us and you understand the urgency, and no  matter how sad and angry I am I do not want to believe that. Because if you understand the situation and you kept on failing to act then you would be evil and that I refuse to believe." Greta Thunberg in 2019


The Telegraph hosts this video excerpt, and it's telling that they chose this frame of Greta Thunberg as the thumbnail. They had to acknowledge her statement, yet they also needed to disparage her image, her person, wordlessly.
Making the choice to allow or enable an avoidable harm to any one who has less power, in order to maintain and enhance that power differential is evil. It is very much a matter of human behaviour, rather than some external force of 'evil', Choosing to exploiting another's vulnerability in order to gain more advantage is evil.

We are all vulnerable, and if anything the SARSCOV2 Virus is telling us it is this - "You are all in this together." 

Lying about this, gaslighting the vulnerable is evil.

What is the link?

What is it that links COP26, COVID, Warfare, Poverty and many other issues where healthy governance is most urgently needed,  (governance that acts in a timely manner to avoid avoidable harms)?
What is the impediment to appropriate action required to avoid avoidable harms?

The Underlying Problem.
The extraction of wealth, wealth which is then accumulated and deployed as political influence, to preserve the systems of wealth extraction that further enables the extractors in the exercise of the power to influence and corrupt democratic legislatures.  A vicious cycle, indeed. Venal. Economic groundhog day.
That cultural vehicle is being driven by the Wealth Extraction Party; it is a vehicle that pollutes as it rolls, because it's much more 'efficient' in generating wealth for power than it is at preventing pollution, and that cheapskate approach enhances more efficient wealth extraction. 

Who pays the price?
The masters of wealth are clearly willing to let others - the working class, the impoverished poor, the destitute - to pay the price of their wilful negligence, so that they can continue to extract wealth from the environment and the population and maintain their power to do so, against all reform.
The passengers - us ordinary citizens - are urged to play at recycling, to limit our consumption behaviours, and we are often scapegoated. We are more or less rendered impotent to make meaningful changes in the direction and speed of the cultural vehicle, and we are told to put on their safety belts and stay quiet and not distract the driver.
The 'will of the people' aka the passengers ability to choose a safer destination is not being given due attention or support. 

Wealth, Government and Democracy Undermined.
Wealth Extraction dominates the thinking of Governments where the Wealth Extraction Party prevails - their primary objective is how to maintain wealth extraction through the various crises that wealth extraction generates.

Yesterdays session, on the matter of Owen Patterson's 30 day suspension, in the House of Commons proves the point.

A corrupt Government using it's majority to derail the censure of an elected MP who was taking more than his MPs salary for part time work lobbying for Companies to be awarded commercially lucrative contracts, (which is a breach of Parliamentary Rules). To avoid a by election, which would have followed as a recall was likely. To avoid the possibility of the loss of a seat, the loss of a by election which would be a public humiliation for Johnson and the Conservative Party.

Crony Capitalism Thrives

All of this is happening within a culture of no bidding process, VIP contract lanes, crony contracts and woefully inadequate provision that exacerbates the situation it is contracted to deal with. From PPE to Test and Trace

#COP26 is not much different than COP1, 10 or 20 in this regard. In spite of lots of genuinely decent, serious and well informed people working on these problems, globally, COP26 delivers promises and inadequate action amid much talk about private finance chucking $150 trillion at the problem, with an eye towards the profits to be made from the proposed 'green revolution' above all else. 

For me, the profit we need is a cleaner environment, a population protected from harm caused by climate change, war fare, SARSCOV2 and imposed poverty.

That is a profit that has deep human value.
How can we as ordinary people get the driver to change course?
1. Refuse to vote for or support any politician who backs Wealth Extraction over public and societal health, the health of the people and our shared environment - feasible.  Recall them all! 
2. Vote instead for politicians informed and advised by grounded evidence led science and applicable practice who will preserve public health, cease the harm causation by helping to develop and enable practices that do not cause such damage. - feasible.

3. Giving the people well paid work to prevent further harms, to carry out the repair of and clean up of our shared environment would be really useful. Oddly enough, if we have enough resources to live well,  and are happier, then we have less 'need' or desire to engage in comfort shopping and more desire to do work that helps the whole community.

Universal basic income is one way to support that shift. Why not pay 8 billion people to do the work of 'going green'?
4. Reduce private car use in cities by funding green public transit systems, taxing fossil fuel cars in cities - the drivers must understand they are driving on externalised costs, and they must pay, now - make more work local and promote working from home, provide goods that can be proven to not cause harm, reduce eating meat, stabilise property values and rents - these are not immediately feasible until we find ways to abolish baseline and real value poverty.

The poor and low paid worker depend upon public transit, the wealthy use private transit. Private transit clogs the roads, making public transit less efficient. The poor suffer the most spread of this virus, the wealthy have better health outcomes. 
Abolishing poverty is a core component of how we move from harm to nurture as human culture.

5. Change to low electricity use light bulbs, use less plastic, use cloth shopping bags, conserve water by flushing the loo less frequently and thousands of other small measure - all these are reduced to symbolic gestures as long as the Wealth Extraction business and it's externalised costs are allowed to prevail. 
When the PR of the Neoliberal Ideologues claim the buyer determines the market, that if we reject a product it will not be made, they are gaslighting. It is not true. The shopper does not control the market. 

Legislate and Regulate.

Civilisation depends on the constraints imposed by legislatures to protect the vulnerable, to define and assert standards, to frustrate criminals and to wage peace, honestly. Government could be fine utility in the right hands. 
I think that what we need to do is to regulate industry and wealth extraction, and to do that we need to remove their ability to influence and corrupt Government.  

This can be done.

It requires an immense rebalancing of power: the power to act as an informed, evidence led collective, entire populations working for each other's best interests must take priority over the competing powers dynamic working to achieve hegemonic status.

Competition to become dominant is war fare. Competing to improve outcomes for each other is another level of civilised humanity, and it is where we must go.
We need to use the resources to hand 
a) - the creation of currency - to abolish poverty, impoverished peoples cannot work to address the issues we face. We need to redeploy our working in order to repair and protect the environment - 
b)  the democratic legislatures - we need the power of Government to legislate to regulate industry to shift gear and drive towards systems of raw materials extraction, production and consumption that prevent externalised costs from being generated, so that they generate nutrient cycles that nurture environment and people alike.

This can be done. It is not impossible.




Kindest regards

Corneilius

Thank you for reading this blog.

"Do what you love, it is your gift to universe."

This blog, like all my other content creation work is not monetised via advertising. If you like what I present, consider sharing my content. If you can afford the price of a cup of coffee or a pint of beer/ale/cider for a few months, please donate via my Patreon account.

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If we had been listening to the old, old peoples, we probably wouldn't be standing in this mess.

First People's
Axiom Poem

"If we had ever listened to   

the old, old peoples,

we would not be in this mess,

right now!"

I have been hearing the ancestors all my life,

heeding their call.

Others, born before me, and after,

have put me and kept me in this mess.

They call it civilisation.

Others, born before me, and after,

are doing their best to clean up this mess.

They call it living well.

"We are the forest, 

we are the rivers and the valleys, 

we are the weathered rocks, 

we are the trees, 

we are the roots and vines, 

the creatures are our neighbours, 

and we theirs.

living together, 

in a shared living space. 

we all nurture together. 

We are the food we eat. 

Knowing this, our intelligence, 

our sensitivity and 

our love is what makes us truly healthy human

in this place.."

We will tidy up the mess, if you let us.

We will help you heal, if you want to come home.

We will care for you, we will nurture you.

Oligarch, Pope, President or Prime Minister, Slave or Worker,

Your status not really matter,

Our intention is not sinister.

This is the generosity of ancient cultures,

Who have seen so much you do not know,

Calling to your heart and ears -

"Listen! We have much to show you,

and you have much laughter ahead,

when you heal the bully behaviour.

then you can safely rest your heart,
unworry your head.".

This is the generosity of ancient cultures,

Who have seen so much you do not know,

Calling to your heart and ears -

"Listen! We have much to show you,

and you have much growth and love ahead,

when you heal the bully behaviour.

then you can safely rest your heart, unworry your head"

whisper in their hearts :

"unhealthy behaviour is not a biological norm".

Now it is also a song...

  

Kindest regards

Corneilius

"Do what you love, it's Your Gift to Universe"

Thank you for reading this blog. All we need to do is be genuinely honest, responsive to the evidence we find, and ready to reassess when new evidence emerges. The rest is easier .

Politics, Arguments, Debates and Institutionalised Emotional Blindness

Politics, arguments, debates and the abdication of responsibility.

The Power Inquiry Report 2006.

If you have not heard of it, then I suggest that you need to know more about it. We all need to read the report and understand it's full implications, not least because it emerged from the grass roots, rather than a think-tank. And it challenges a number of assumptions about the ability of grass roots folk to engage with shared responsibility, robust governance and detailed policy deliberation.

The Power inquiry, an independent investigation into the condition of democracy in Britain, was set up in 2004. The members of its commission (chaired by Helena Kennedy) hosted meetings around Britain and heard submissions from a wide variety of interest groups, professionals, and concerned citizens. The commission published its report on 27 February 2006.

"After eighteen months of investigation, the final report of Power is a devastating critique of the state of formal democracy in Britain. Many of us actively support campaigns such as Greenpeace or the Countryside Alliance. And millions more take part in charity or community work. But political parties and elections have been a growing turn-off for years.

The cause is not apathy. The problem is that we don't feel we have real influence over the decisions made in our name. The need for a solution is urgent. And that solution is radical. Nothing less than a major programme of reform to give power back to the people of Britain..."

Examine it.

D. Cameron, E. Milliband and Menzies Campbell paid lip service to the report and initiative at the time. Cameron said, in public, and it's on video, that The Power Inquiry was the 'most important initiative in Democracy in the UK' in a long, long time.

I was there. I heard them speak and mouth hearty support for the report, as they stood and spoke before the assembled crowd of more than 500 people. 

Less than a week after attending the launch of the report, at a conference in Queen Elizabeth Hall, Parliament Square, after praising it during that weekend conference, after saying how important it was, after speaking about it in glowing terms to the attendees, they dismissed it as 'impractical.'

'Impractical'? Well, yes. Ceding power to people is always 'impractical' to the Ruling Class.

Here's an outline of the recommendations:

http://www.lgcplus.com/give-citizens-power-to-make-laws-urges-inquiry/513437.article

Here's the full document, PDF download, very much worth a reading.

http://www.jrrt.org.uk/publications/power-people-independent-inquiry-britains-democracy-full-report

Power without accountability or shared responsibility is always going to be a serious problem, and open to abuse.

Quite a lot of the comments flying around about Russel Brand, UKIP, and politics in general are antagonistic 'debating' style, rather than mature deliberation or critical analysis. Trying to win or batter the other side down as opposed to learning enough to develop a win-win solution.

What's that phrase they use about the Court system?

Adversarial.

I find that appalling. An abdication of responsibility. Politically immature. Psychologically immature. An adversarial Parliament is immature, and unworthy, easily corrupted - a collegiate parliament would be mature and worthy and would repel corruption.

Because the issue of power and legislation is really about us, we, the people who form the community and how we work together (or not) to create a society that nurtures, that cares for the vulnerable.

The issue is about relationships based on kindness, rather than power.

Healthy discourse is about sharing, exploring and growing together.

Debate is about power, it's about who wins.

The Power Inquiry emerged out of the Community Voluntary Sector, which has decades of providing services at the local community level, dealing with amongst other things : finances, governance, research, best practices, transparency, service provision, understanding their 'clients' needs, overcoming institutional obstacles, overcoming Institutionalised Emotional Blindness, campaigning, fund raising, discourse on policy formulation and much else besides. These are real life skills.

It was these people that David Cameron's BIG SOCIETY was aimed at, as a direct institutional assault. And it was their clients, the vulnerable who suffer doubly as a result.

And it's working.

Speak to any disabled people currently being denied benefits on the false basis of 'austerity'?

Use your voice to nurture the active grass roots, as well as to chastise the powerful.

In another comment, elsewhere, I pointed out how appalled I was at the sniping that is so common.

Instituionalised Emotional Blindness. There's something here for everyone to consider.

The immaturity of the debating style of the discourse, as opposed to an effort to share, learn and grow in order to create a more nurturant society.

An abdication of responsibility. It's really quite ugly.

Kindest regards

Corneilius

"Do what you love, it is your gift to universe."

This blog, like all my other content creation work is not monetised via advertising. If you like what I present, consider sharing my content. If you can afford the price of a cup of coffee or a pint of beer/ale/cider for a few months, please donate via my Patreon account.

Thank you for reading this blog.

https://patreon.com/corneilius - donations gratefully received

https://www.reverbnation.com/corneilius - .mp3 songs

https://www.corneilius.net - archive

https://www.soundcloud.com/coreluminous - .wav songs

Nature, Nurture and the problem of Power Civilisation

The way I see it is as follows:

Nature or Biology is always geared towards optimal health.

Optimal health includes as a necessity the nurturing of the environment, which also includes a nurturing environment as a given.

That different kinds of organisms can find optimal health in almost every known habitat suggests this is the case.

There are also flows of nutrients from one habitat to another, such that they do not exist in isolation - there IS a whole.

We humans have emerged out of this biological whole, and the bulk of our history (mostly pre written history) we have lived as part of that whole - the development or emergence of the qualities I write about such as caring empathy, connection, sensitivity, responsiveness are part of this, as is the ability to deal with threatening or difficult situations (these are rarely chronic in nature - they are chronic only when the basic balance of optimal health is disrupted over a long period of time)...

The sense of deep connection we feel for our children, our partners,our families, our locale is part of that optimal biological health and we nurture all of this by our behaviour in the most natural state...

You and I, we have been born into a disrupted state, a system of Power that chronically abuses people and we are doing our best to recover from the wounds it has inflicted upon us, whilst living in it without much chance of altering how Power operates - until we at the grass roots re-gain enough of what our innate nature is, and then we will be able to thwart Power, and possibly help those who are stuck in that unhealthy state to recover - that is the intent in my work.

I would say too that the optimal biological health state is the natural norm, the base line of true reality, and that the Power state is the 'ideal' being imposed on the healthy reality.

Nature is realism, Power Civilisation is idealism, ideology etc.

And there IS evidence for all that I have written, solid scientific evidence as well as anecdotal and personal experience

Kindest regards

Corneilius

Do what you love, it's Your Gift to Universe

THRIVIVAL or mere Survival?

THRIVIVAL : A word I have created, and have been using for many years to describe the biological reality I have observed.

Survival as a word implies struggle, threat, risk and imminent potential of death.

Narrators of Nature Documentaries repeatedly use this term, not as scientists, but as a cultural meme. They claim to be scientific in their use of the word survival. The claim is false.

Natural communities THRIVE. The hunter hunts for but a little of their time. The hunted are hunted but for a little of their time. They do not spend the bulk of their time in aggression (hunter) or fear (hunted). Both are thriving most of the time. Natural communities THRIVE, and often in very large numbers... and their behaviour nurtures the world around them, way beyond their own species. This is both obvious and scientifically understood.

THRIVIVAL is thus defined as the state of existence, sets of behaviours and conditions  that nurtures more life for all life.

However, those who exert force or Power to control people are concerned with the use of force and control most of the time, for they know that as soon as they relax, those who are being controlled will break for freedom, in diverse emergent creative ways, urged on by their own biological calling towards optimal health. Power fears this calling.

Furthermore, those who use Power are in competition with others who would also use Power and Force to take over the position of Power. And so for them, they ARE concerned with Survival as a primary objective. They feel the threat is ever present, even when it is not. (most of the time the threat is non-existent: most 'ordinary people' have no desire to kill, murder, abuse those who have abused them, they mostly want the abusers just to stop and go away - that would be enough for most people, because we are biologically mandated towards empathic self organisation at the grass roots).

And the Power addicted always project their internalised view onto the world around them. The cultural projections of narrators speak to the conditioning which the narrator/writer has submitted to, internalised or assumed as normal, more than it describes the realities of nature.

Top predators, or those creatures who have are rarely hunted by others, who reside at the tops of food chains, tend to ensure the health of the communities they get their food from. Industrial Society has stepped out of this paradigm. And this disrupts the nurturant cycles of biology.

It is well past time to disestablish the 'Survival' meme, and to move towards THRIVIVAL.

And what a lovely journey, a fine destination that is.

Kindest regards

Corneilius

Do what you love, it's Your Gift to Universe

Motherhood, Fatherhood and Nurturance.

I was asked the following question :

"Why always the biological mother relationship?" and "Why is there no mention of the paternal role in your writings?"

This is a good question.

This is my answer:

My focus on the mother child link is really simple.

We are alive and conscious and forming/developing within the womb, our first world. Any culture that nurtures that first forming, that first world will nurture what follows. Any culture that understands and respects that first world will understand and respect what follows.

Thus we learn, as Fathers, within the womb, what it is to feel to be nurtured or not at the most profund levels. The base.

Furthermore, the egg that became me was alive in my mother, in my grandmothers womb, and within my mothers body, living cells of me lived for the duration of her life. There is a distinct matri-lineal biology that expresses itself in the experiential learning of nurturance.

Nurturance is the most fundamental of all human behaviours, in terms of healthy societies. It goes way beyond parental 'roles' and extends to all behaviours within any given family, community or society - in it's healthy expression or it's distorted expression.

I speak as a Father.

I also speak as one who is deconstructing those processes that are related to the emergence and continuation of Hierarchically Violent Societies. One has to get to the root of the problem no matter where it leads.Kindest regards

Corneilius

Do what you love, it's Your Gift to Universe

DIRT : The Movie. A Nurturant Society...

Previously I have written a piece on the Nurturant Society, and coined the word THRIVIVAL. I have used this word in a few essays to describe a reality that I see in nature all the time. I have used it to make a distinction between the sense of 'survival' which is less than abundant, is fear based and generates unnecessary need to over control things that actually reduces the likelihood of Thriving.

A Nurturant Society is the emergent Society that by it's action nurtures life for all life, that by it's action takes an equal part in the biology of life, that by it's action enjoys the life it expresses and returns the gifts that life has bestowed upon it. Thrivival is the state of such a Society.

The movie DIRT is a stunning documentary, a profoundly nurturing expression of what is truly possible, what is within our ability to bring into being. It's about the living soil and our relationship to that living soil. It's not an ideological movie. It's a natural logic movie.

Watch it. It's amazing. See the effect working with plants and soil has on incarcerated people. See the rapidity with which soil and humans can remediate damaged lands.

DIRT : THE MOVIE

Get yer hands in the soil and help plants do what they love doing, gifting you and universe in the process.

We REALLY NEED to focus on the creation of a Nurturant Society, at every level of our Culture, starting with our own lives, and extending outwards into our communities, and we need to look at EVERY process and activity we are engaged in and really understand that if it is NOT Nurturing more life for all life, then it HAS TO GO!

It really is THAT SIMPLE. We are either nurturing life or we are not. And when we look at what we do, we have to take into consideration ALL the outcomes..... no 'externalisation' of costs. No justifying adverse 'collateral' damage because of one or two perceived benefits.

And we need to start NOW!

ALL LIFE MATTERS. There exists a viewpoint that is an expression of resignation, extreme low self esteem and profound selfishness.

It runs a bit like this :

"Nothing really matters, at the end of the day. We all live for a bit, have a few good times then die."

When we die, the materials our bodies are made of are released back to feed more life.

We give back what we have been given as a gift to those who have yet to come. We do this, and we gift life. That is the bare minimum.

It's a choice as to whether or not we take action in our day to day life to bring that gift or not, before we die and release the materials of our bodies.

Your materials will be released whether or not you like it or get it. That much is assured. Death assures us all of that.

What is not assured, and what is down to OUR CHOICE, is whether or not our actions nurture more life for all life and return the gift. It's your choice, it's my choice and yet I ask that each of us bears in mind that our choice has an affect on others, and if you chose not to, if I chose not to, then we deprive others yet to come of their access to that gift, by defaulting on the action possible in our lives.

I am not trying to lay a guilt trip on you. The Dominant Society is a pretty grim place to have been born into, and I wouldn't say to anyone DO NOT ENJOY BEING ALIVE.

I am just pointing out the REALITY. And the possibility.

When I confront the Church, the Government, the Corporations I do it to bring that gift through, and not to get revenge or to become the judge and punisher. That's not saying that I intend to let those Institutions of the hook, or that I give them an excuse or that I am going to be all soft and fluffy. It's to make it abundantly clear where I stand and what I intend. I will not back down, and neither should you!

Kindest regards

Corneilius

Do what you love, it's Your Gift to Universe

A Nurturant Society

A Nurturant Society

In considering the fundamentals of a Nurturant Society, one has to define the ground upon which one stands.

If that is not taken in hand, and clearly defined, then it is inevitable that the ‘revolution’, as many are calling it, by positing an ‘alternative way’ to the status quo or by adopting a position of resistance to that status quo, is to a greater extent defined within the frame of reference of the status quo. It is a response to something : that something defines the response. It is a reaction.

Thus it was with Marx, and with many others. They did not see the trap they laid for themselves by talking in terms of production, ownership, and control, which are the terms and structural processes that the oppressive Society uses to exert it's power over people and the habitat. Transferring those to the workers does not change the nature of the Society as radically as people believed, it still permits the current dominant systemic mindset of control of nature as a resource to exploit. Thus the fundamental dynamic and psyche of Power remains, with a merely a change in the Actors and their behaviour towards each other within that set of structural processes. Kinder to one another,  yet damaging to the environment, the shared habitat.

And of course, it has to be said, Marx was a man of his times, and lacked the data we have today about neuroscience, endocrinology, psychological and evolutionary development and the reality of natural empathy. A lack accurate information can lead to the invention of theory out of rudimentary thinking that is without the appropriate evidence. Marx was rightly concerned with human suffering that he knew could be avoided. 

The Nurturant Society avoids that predicament by defining itself on it’s own clear terms.

The Nurturant Society is a fundamentally simple concept.

To Nurture, as a biological process, and as in human action, is to improve the conditions of the habitat or the environment within which life occurs. This process can be observed by anyone who is careful and honest in their explorations of nature. Henry David Thoreau made this abundantly clear in his work during the 1800s, as did Rudloph Steiner (Biodynamics) and Bill Mollison (Permaculture). These three are sequential in that their lives began as one ended and they form one example of continuous thread of exploration of nature that is free of the lens of what I call Empire Logic, the 'struggle for survival' etc etc. All these people and others who were and  their contemporaries looked beyond the Herbert Spenser doctrine of struggle for survival, of civilisation as the apex of natural biological evolution.

To Nurture is to provide both space and materials for life to flourish.

To Parent? Perhaps. However, the word Parent is itself troublesome, for it contains meanings that are to do with control. Control always inhibits emergence. Parental Control implies a mistrust of the child. Control is often a question of fear.

The etymology of Parent.

Pare

"to trim by cutting close," early 14c., from O.Fr. parer "arrange, prepare, trim," from L. parare "make ready," related to parere "produce, bring forth, give birth to,"

Thus Parenting has to be redefined or qualified. Natural Parenting or Nurturant Parenting better describes this new paradigm.

Nurturant Parenting then, is fundamentally about facilitating the emergent, about recognising the innate desire and ability of the natural child to learn, to master his or her self, to develop life skills, to be able to meet his or her own needs, and with that the needs of others, as an empathically alive human being, in essence to contribute to his or her family, community, society environment such that all may thrive.

All of which is diametrically opposed to the concept and awareness of the consumer, whose concern lies solely with consumption.*

And, because human life does not occur in a vacuum, but rather takes place in a continuum, in a non-linear web of activity that is typified by connection and interdependency, it follows that when life is nurtured, it is nurtured for all life.

Thus Natural Parenting is an activity that is not exclusive to the biological parents, but includes the entire community. "It takes a village to raise a child." And a forest. No community exists independent of the habitat.

Everything is food. There is no waste.

This can only be achieved by each element with the biological process web being it’s true self, having it’s own needs met. It is therefore a question of meeting inherent needs. Nature is a web of intersecting needs being met. Algae make oxygen. Bacteria eat all kinds of materials and transform them into their bodies, which are eaten. They also produced 'waste' which is not waste, but is in reality food. Plants take in Carbon Dioxide and release Oxygen. Bacteria in the plants take in Zinc, and other trace elements and create new chemicals the plants need. Animals breathe oxygen and eat plants. And so it goes.

This - being one's true self - is not a limitation, because in all living organisms we see the same responsive ability, the ability to learn, which has been called ‘adaptation’,  that is foundational to the maintenance of the dynamic equilibrium of the processes of life. That responsive ability is biological empathy in action.

THRIVIVAL

What we see in Nurturant Biology is an outcome that can best be described by the new word, Thrivival.

Thrivival goes beyond survival**.

Thriving, in relation to the human being, is that positive sense of well being that is inherent in the process of growth. Thriving, for the human being and for all mammals, originates in utero, and extends throughout life. Thriving applies to the individual, the family, the community, the society and to the environment from which all emerge.

Because this is a simple paradigm, and because it is an empathic paradigm, it will find expression in diverse ways, mirroring the diversity of the environment, the habitat, from micro to macro, leading to diversity in human expression of community and society.

The Nurturant Society is complex, and yet it is not at all complicated. This is the nature of nurturant empathy. The precise solutions emerge out of the experiential of each community.

*The consumer eats and does not seek to nurture anyone other than him or herself; for his or her eating is the penultimate act in the receipt of a service that the consumer has paid for, and having paid for it, the consumer does not trouble him or herself with the conditions within which the food was produced, or what happens to the by-products, but merely the presence of the food on the plate, it's appearance and taste, and other similar immediate considerations and the of course the price he or she has paid for the meal to be consumed. Quite often the consumer has no concept of what it takes to produce that end product on the plate. This because the human being, the citizen consumer, unlike every other living organism, is cut off from the source and the processes that create the food. Likewise the consumer is not concerned with what happens to that which is not eaten. It is considered waste, not food.

The 'consumer' is a dehumanising term which reduces each unique human being to an object to be crafted and then manipulated for profit. And for Power.

**Survival carries with it the sense of threat, the sense of scarcity. Whilst there exists the possibility of being eaten, for each individual, that does not in and of itself threaten any entire species, and what we see is that no predator nor herbivore will consume the entirety of that species which it eats.

Both prey and predator thrive in the natural state. The are interdependent, mutually nurturant. The struggle for survival is in fact a projection of the dynamic of fear that the Hierarchical, non-empathic Society feels, generates and promotes.

This is due to a fundamental undermining of natural empathy, which leads to disconnection, and with that insecurity arises, and the need to control follows and it is from this that violence flows.

Kindest regards

Corneilius

Do what you love, it's Your Gift to Universe

"If you don't know how to nurture, you will be afraid!"

Russel Means speaks of the Nurturant Society, in clear and concised terms..

"If you don't know how to nurture, you will be afraid!"

And when you are afraid of you will kill what you are afraid of! (or try to control.... as we see..)






Useful and pertinent links

http://www.violence.de/prescott/bulletin/article.html

http://www.violence.de/prescott/letters/Social-Behavioral_Characteristics.pdf

http://www.alicemiller.com

http://naturalchild.org/

http://www.birthpsychology.com



Kindest regards

Corneilius

Do what you love, it's Your Gift to Universe

Nurture the Nature : genes will respond

A baby in utero who is exposed to stress develops his or her hind brain more than his or her fore brain. The fore brain is the neo-cortex which deals with intelligence, perception and creativity, the hind brain deals with physicality, defence and stress situations. Thus the stressed baby emerges prepared for a stressed (violent) environment and the relaxed baby emerges ready for a relaxed (empathetic) environment.

These factors are compounded by life learning; thus adverse conditioning or adverse childhood experience(s) can increase the tendency towards violent and controlling behaviours, which are often the symptoms of brain damage caused by those experiences; and empathetic nurturing increases the tendency towards peaceful egalitarian non-controlling behaviours, as the child’s brain is nurtured according to it’s nature.

Babies in utero develop touch and volitional movement by 7 weeks, light sensitivity at 10 weeks, (even though the eyes are not fully developed until 26 weeks), sensitivity to pain at 12 weeks, taste at 14 weeks, hearing at 16 weeks (even though the ear is not fully developed until 24 weeks), and spend more time in dream state at 30 weeks than in awake state, awareness and response to the language of the mother is evident at 25 weeks.

* Consciousness at birth: The range of empirical evidence (1983/1987). In Thomas Verny (Ed.), Pre- & perinatal psychology: An introduction (pp. 69-90). New York: Human Sciences Press.

Evidence of birth memories indicate full cognitive abilities at birth, equivalent to an adults abilities...

What is also known and well understood is that the environmental conditions act so as to switch gene expression on or off and indeed 'writes' new genetics, which may then be passed on….another way to say this is that genes are responsive, though it's the RNA which initates the 'writing' of or 'ateration' new genes. There is an interplay between the structual instruction sets and the environment, and they affect each other.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gene%E2%80%93environment_interaction

The tendency towards obesity evident in the current epidemic of obesity arose first out of a generation of people who ate fast foods, processed foods, were exposed to toxic chemicals and who have experienced various societal stressors such as trans-generational trauma which is directly correlated to symptoms of distress (“it’s my wall of protection” or “life is shorter” given as felt explanations of their obesity by obese people) and we now see obesity emerging in very young children.

*  http://xnet.kp.org/permanentejournal/winter02/goldtolead.html

Whilst there are genes that are 'related' to the incidence of obesity, it is the environmental experiential conditions that cause their expression in the first place. And those conditions are man-made with regard to obesity and many other health issues….

Seeking or promoting a ‘cure’ with first dealing with the environmental issues is a way of protecting the creators of those environmental conditions and of blaming those who become obsese, addicted, distressed as a result of those conditions. The 'cure' is aimed at the symptoms of the person distress, not at the conditions that give rise to that persons distress in the first place.

And it is the lack of prevention, implicit in the marketing of those toxic processed sweets and 'foods' precisely directed at those communities that experience most deprivation, and thus distress, that brings that tendency or genetic environmental reponse into material reality.

Essentialy, a massive act of control-freakery. Industrial civilisation tends towards the more violent controlling behaviours common to, if not essential to, Power Relationships.

To change the trajectory of the dominant civilisation, we have to treat ourselves and our children with far more empathy, detailed empathy, from conception onwards... to create the conditions that will support an emerging Empathic Society we have to examine Power Relationships carefully and make changes. And then we must continue, day by day, to build in the genetics of that natural empathy, in the path towards natural sustainability for all life on Earth.

Here's a classic example of the environmental factors being downgraded in importance, compared to genetic factors. They barely mention the fact that economic deprivation, cultural derpivation are often INTENSE as environmental operators, or signals capable of affecting the genes themselves, as much as the day to day behaviour - and they omit the knowledge that brain damage caused by trauma, adverse childhood experiences, toxic chemicals; thus slanting the focus on the genes.

http://psychcentral.com/news/2010/08/06/antisocial-behavior-linked-to-genes-and-environment/16513.html

Much of the info regarding a babies consciousness comes from the research of David Chamberlain :

http://rivershrink.com/cvchamberlain.html

Kindest regards

Corneilius

Do what you love, it's Your Gift to Universe

Free Will and Indoctrination

Free Will and Indoctrination

Two concepts at odds with each other. One much vaunted, by those who gloat over their ability to control others whom they indoctrinate, above all else. The other seen, rightfully so, as a threat by those who value their integrity as humane beings.

Children sense that threat, though being small and vulnerable, they must acquiesce, in order to survive. It is unfortunate for so many that they forget this acquiescence.

Those that organise the indoctrination of others rely upon that forgetting for the only source of their power, and thus those who recall the resignation of their acquiescence, and recover their free will, are the ones who will no longer comply with those who indoctrinate.

As it is with taxation, under current circumstances, so terribly demonstrated in Iraq and Afghanistan. So many horrors, daily fare for those we have abandoned. Can you imagine the pain, the terror, the wounds those people must live with?

As it ever has been, since the city states first formed and centralised governance based upon might, a governance that feeds upon the forced labours of people, that exercises the supreme ’right’ to kill, to imprison, to torture and to bomb, and so darkened the lives of human beings, and of natural creation

The tide must turn.

Will you turn it? Will you be of the rocks, the beaches, the cliffs that repel that tide, so that your children, and theirs, may walk freely upon this Earth? Will you recover your free will? Will you reclaim your soul? Will you refuse to comply with the indoctrinated systems of fear and retribution, the powers of the wrathful state, the folly of the consumer capitalist dance of death?

For that is the first step in the rebellion that must take place if we are to truly honour the miracle of our children. Parents who have reclaimed their souls, who have seen the truth of the indoctrination will know at their very core the base crime it is to indoctrinate, and will not do so.

A generation of children allowed to grow naturally, to express their true identity, to read with their own innate intelligence, the world around them, will naturally resolve the issues we are all faced with.

They will also inspire their parents in ways that their parents, and their wider community and extended family cannot but be grateful for.

The real battle is won internally, without recourse to violent confrontation, in the reclaiming of our free will, our very soul, our ability to love unconditionally. This battle is the one those that seek to control us fear the most. That is why the weapons of mass distraction are so sophisticated, so relentless.


That is why the internet is feared, that is why there are attempts to enclose the web, to integrate censorship, to flood it with banal distraction and pornography, as it is where free will may reign, it is where conversations may take place that can assist in the internal battle, for we soul seekers in the west are beginning to realise that we are not alone, we are not isolated and that we are not mad.

As we reclaim our souls, as we release ourselves from the bondage, from the mental slavery, from the fear, as we reach nirvana, as we assume our birthright of enlightenment, we will then have the sweet question of what to do with that free will.

The further work will be strenuous, will tax us to our limits at times and yet is underpinned by the true essence of nature, our own nature, the very spirit of life. It is not to be taken too lightly, though it must be taken with delight. It is a work that is a mirror of natures amazing ability to feed and nurture all living beings that exist.

One must be happy to assume this work. Proud, determined, convinced and at ease with the role we must, each of us, play. Each of us the saviour. If we so chose.

Free will.


Kindest regards

Corneilius

Do what you love, it's your gift to universe