Environment, social power and biological influence.

Every living organism on Earth that we know about is influenced by, and e influences, the environment from which they emerge.

"One cannot hope to understand the phenomena of psychological distress, nor begin to think what can be done about them, without an analysis of how power is distributed and exercised within society."  David Smail


The degrees of influence vary… and all participation matters.

There are networks of living influencers all across biology, in webs, networks, layers, currents, flows and interfaces. From bacteria to fungi, from ants to elephants, with wolves and beavers, flowers and trees.

All of life..

They all are active participants in life, rather than passive. We are too.

We are born both as influences of that environment, and as influencers of that environment.

There is a feed back loop built in that feeds into balance, that enables recovery after occasional trauma, solves problems.

A healing mechanism.

Every child on Earth will be influenced by, and will influence, the social environment.

Natural Child, Natural Society

   

I see both as cause and effect at the same time.

A natural society observes the nature of the child and responds to the child as a person, with dignity and respect, interest and support and a deep trust in the child’s abilities to cope with life, to develop the natural skills required for thriving in the environment, social and biological, in which they all live.

It’s should not come as a surprise to learn that the more that balance is disrupted, the more likely adverse behaviour and disease states will emerge in significant numbers.

Mad States make for maddened people.

Sick States make for a sickened people.

Happy States make for a happy people.

Bully States make for a bullied people.

“Given the kind of society you were born into, and all that you have experienced and lived through, it’s no wonder you feel the way you do.”

No man is an island.

David Smail puts it eloquently:

“Hardly any of the 'symptoms' of psychological distress may correctly be seen as medical matters. The so-called psychiatric 'disorders' are nothing to do with faulty biology, nor indeed are they the outcome of individual moral weakness or other personal failing. They are the creation of the social world in which we live, and that world is structured by power.

    Social power may be defined as the means of obtaining security or advantage, and it will be exercised within any given society in a variety of forms: coercive (force), economic (money power) and ideological (the control of meaning). Power is the dynamic which keeps the social world in motion. It may be used for good or for ill.

    One cannot hope to understand the phenomena of psychological distress, nor begin to think what can be done about them, without an analysis of how power is distributed and exercised within society.”

I think that’s pretty clear.

"One cannot hope to understand the phenomena of psychological distress, nor begin to think what can be done about them, without an analysis of how power is distributed and exercised within society."
read that again. reflect on it. it will deliver much useful insight, and provide a guide through the current power establishment.

Biology, being the source of intelligence, has crafted a basic functional element, which I call optimal biological health, to ensure the relatively smooth functioning of living systems within a dynamically changing environment.

Hierarchies of power and violence undermine that balance.

 Hierarchies of power and violence tend to impose chronic stress.

Balance is, in human terms, a question of how we respond to the evidence, rather than rely upon a reaction to get us out of trouble. The evidence is this.

We humans have embodied within us, within every cell and organ, a state of optimal biological health.

It does not include mass violence, abuse of power, loss of empathy, bullying, stealing or hoarding, self alienation, the generation gap, religious or ideological shame and guilt, addictions, obsessions, compulsions.

These are all symptoms of a state of dis-ease, a state of chronic stress.

These are also interwoven with symptoms of unresolved trauma that remain unresolved over many, many generations, and emerge as chronic stress related disease and socially accepted prejudice, nationalist hatreds, othering in general.

The emergence of so many adverse symptoms across all populations is a clear sign that the social and institutional environment is not a healing space, and is in fact creating a blockage to reaching a state of optimal human biological health, individually and as a species.

Sustainability is impossible if the current power culture persists in this psychological dysfunction.

It’s not about left/right, it’s about health and the people, now, today, and it must also encompass our long term responsibilities to future generations of humanity. Optimal human biological health.  

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 really honest, responsive to the evidence we find,and ready to reassess when new evidence emerges. The rest is easy.

Political Power Health and Safety Check required, immediately.

 

Milosovic

 

Blair

 

The Vatican

These three images are just a hint at the dynamic of how insitutional power is reflexively defensive of it's position and manages harms that are exposed in ways that ensure they remain in power. The individuals at the top have usually internalised that power, and identify with that rather than the people over whom they have that power.

Loss of empathy is inherent. Hubris is common. Arrogance is the norm.

Established Power needs to be submitted to a full health and safety check, by the people.

That is pure common sense logic. However, there is a problem….. we have a problem.

Institutions, power and honesty.

“School tends to be a dishonest as well as a nervous place. We adults are not often honest with children, least of all in school. We tell them, not what we think, but what we feel they ought to think; or what other people feel or tell us they ought to think.

The fact is that we (the adult world) do not feel an obligation to be truthful to children.

We are like managers and manipulators of news in Washington, Moscow, London, Peking and Paris and all the other capitals of the world.

We think it is our right and our duty, not to tell the truth but to say whatever will best serve our cause – in this case, the cause of making children grow up into the kind of people we want them to be, thinking whatever we want them to think.

We have only to convince ourselves (and we are very easily convinced) that a lie will be ‘better’ for the children than the truth, and we will lie. We don’t always need even that excuse; we often lie only for our own convenience.”

Written in 1964, by John Holt who had thousands of hours of observation of children in schools across America. He wrote a few superb books on children and learning, and energised the homeschooling/unschooling movement in the USA.

How much does this insight resonate today, in 2017, in the UK?

Institutions are power centres.

Schools are also power centres.

It’s where we learn how to behave within an institutionalised power hierarchy.

‘No child left behind.’

Power Centres will always reflexively seek to defend that Power. Those who hold high office will often internalise that value completely. To the exclusion of healthy common sense and empathy, to a psychologically unstable degree.

There are examples in every area of society – Religion: the Vatican and Pedophilia – Politics, War and indoctrination : HiIlsborough, Chilcott, Levenson I – Health and Safety : Amoco Cadiz, Bhopal, Flint Water Supply, Fracking. Can you begin to see the pattern of behaviours?

There are plenty of examples in schools where matters of abuse or negligence or bias have been hushed up.

There are plenty of schools where teachers have been ‘convinced’ to support the diagnosis of ADHD and the subsequent drugging of children as a class room management strategy, etc etc - (more than my job/income, food, shelter, family is worth to challenge this is understandable, the teacher is being bullied institutionally and knows not to irk the masters).

And, in all of this activity, in so many areas of civic and commercial insitutional culture we see minor officials, lower ranks coerced to comply with the instructions of the powerful, to defend the institution rather than acknowledge the harms and be exposed. Iraq.

This is an easily identified pattern, with a massive evidence base that is quite reliable.

Established Power will use its power to protect itself.

The People are not to challenge that.

We see the powerful hire the best and most expensive legal teams to oppose ordinary people with relatively little comparative power, where the battle is one of financial resources, with one side far wealthier than the other….

We see out of court settlements.  “It could take years, take the offer!”

We do not see the full evidence.

We do not see justice.

Fines.

No criminal indictments.

The powerful will defend their position of power at all costs.

That is why Public Inquiries have failed to deliver Justice.

Power Hierarchies impose pressure to perform downwards, upon all subordinates, and failure to follow instructions by higher ranking personnel leading to loss of job for the lower ranking personnel is one of those intentional pressures.

Even when an order or instruction is illegal, amoral, destructive, negligent or corrupt, that pressure remains a potent leverage in today’s public and private Institutions. Who wants to be a whistle blower? Who would brave that storm?

Cover ups and mitigations do happen, and never by accident.

Political, economic, ideological and religious power demands that the holder be a bully, and bullies are more attracted to power than those who are not bullies.

The bully who is driven by the institutional environment to be more effective becomes professionalised. Fully committed.

That degree of committment to gaining and holding power is a social problem, a root dysfunction, a foundational malady.

Only when power is taken up as a shared responsibility of the grass roots tax payers, the people who both fund and who work in Civil Society will we have a safe, honest social political system.

Those who hold too much power will not yield it willingly.

Teresa May is demonstrating that right now. She is for the bullies. She backs Trumps call for Air Strikes against Syria, whilst the nation reels from a horror the Government (New Labour, Tory and Lib-Dem) created in Grenfell Towers. Air Strikes against urban areas with social housing..........

What does that really mean?

I am also talking about the culture at the lowest ranks in the hierarchies of power.. how debilitating and threatening the presence of poverty and disdain is, how corrosive it is.

There are many people who will seek to defend their bias, internalise their opinion as fact, deny the evidence, mitigate the responsibility at all levels.

I am interested in the psychological experiential root, rather than then violence itself, and I want to understand how that afflicts us all, and how do we recover from that, to what degree is recovery possible in the current environment?

We here at the grass roots must work for our own recovery as part of the resolution.

We also have to organise and protect our civil society, administer our shared resources with wisdom and enhance the environment of our community.

We cannot wait for the Established Power to awaken, to come to it’s senses, to re-humanise, to recover.

We must get on with it.

If we do, and I think many of us are, and more are joining in every day, then perhaps it is more likely that Established Power can be submitted to a full health and safety check by the people.

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 really honest, responsive to the evidence we find,and ready to reassess when new evidence emerges. The rest is easy.

Our Lives Matter. I need a Government.

Our Lives Matter.

My life matters.

Your life matters.

I need a Government composed of psychologically and emotionally healthy adults who refuse to participate adversarial opinion based or ideological based power struggles, which is a key strategy in the prevention of all the ills that such power struggles generate.

I need a Government composed of psychologically whole, emotionally healthy and kind adults who energetically and passionately discuss the evidence, work through it, and then work together on delivering civil policies that resolve problems, that nurture social happiness.

I need a Government whose policy is based, I repeat it again and again, on all available evidence pertinenet to the policy, none omitted, and with an eye to new evidence emerging, requiring a healthy response, a certain plasticity for freedom to grow.

I need a Government and civil service that understands I pay it's wages, that pays all dues respect to me as an individual, and as part of the social collective.

Me and the millions of other tax payers.

We pay their wages.

We must be the ones to tell them what is working well and what is not working, or is unsafe, and that information ought tell them what to do.

Our money.

Our lives.

Our Lives Matter.

The Grenfell residents who were burned alive needed that. They asked for it. They were ignored. Individually, collectively and institutionally.

And so they died.

There is a line of responsibility here, a social influence that has corrupted sound Governance.

A breach of trust, of duty of care, a failure and a catasprophe that is only worsened by any attempts to deflect responsibility and manage perceptions of a 'crisis', in order to remain in Government or get away with statuary negligence.

Public Inquiry?

I need a Government of honest folk, who, when accidents occur and bad things happen that were avoidable, when harms are caused, they will be the kind who with all intgrity, put their hands up and take due responsibility, where it lies, in such an event.

Better still I want a Government of honest folk who will prevent the avoidable, rather than merely insure against it.

I want an honest Government, a Transparent Government and I want civil and social infrastructure to be a publicly owned and managed common wealth, I want homes not investiment vehicles and I want peace abroad rather than War.

The current set up is not inevitable, it has no natural entitlement to our lives, our hearts or, for that matter, our wallets and our children.


Let's make it plain, it's not about Labour, it's not about parties - it is about a ruling class that have disabled a geneuine democracy from emerging.

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 really honest, responsive to the evidence we find,and ready to reassess when new evidence emerges. The rest is easy.

Evidence and opinion, again.

Getting a grip on articulating the difference I sense between evidence and opinion. Spotting the danger signs.

One cannot get angry AT evidence, unless of course, the evidence incriminates that person, and they wish to avoid it. That is another matter altogether.

Evidence, simply put , is what it is.

Nothing one can say about it alters that. The evidence is neutral. It can inform, that is all.

No opinion about it alters it's basic state. Opinion does not change the evidence.

What is different in opinion is that the perception r bias of the 'observer' has interjected, and thrown up a projection, an internalisation, a denial.

Opinions tend to be held as personal opinions. They form part of self-identification and include shared internalisations, drawn from cultural, institutional, experiential, educational influencers.

The Flag, Football Team, Big Tits are Good, Religion, Ideology, Vast Wealth, Aspiration, Alpha Male, Women are ..., Republican or Democrat? all opinion.

For someone who holds a personal opinion, when it is challenged, they feel that the challenge is to them, to their very self, and react accordingly to the threat.

That's why it goes skewiff - the other party is taking things personally, and is probably unaware that they are so doing. Put two opinion holders together and watch what happens.

People who hold opinions carry a tendency to be extremist, if only because they lack accurate information, and tend to rely upon a flow of triggers(media) and their own imagination for political insight.

There is a spectrum over which we find many subtle extremisms, built into neurotypical or socially conditioned culture.

These subtle extremists are on all sides, because they like to take a side, wrong or right, but always, in their own eyes, right. They also like to know what's happening inside the other side. It's a game.

Trident. Some people believe it is right. Brexit. Some people believe it is right.

Grenfell Towers, one week on, and survivors are still not fully covered for all their very pressing needs.

The evidence is that the survivors deserve the full power of the state, and all material and psycho-social support to be given over to caring for these tragic people, without question, even as the search for the missing, and the investigation into how many were burned alive, are under way. So many people afflicted.

Is it right that these people are fixated on Brexit, and that is a distraction from the real need the must be met, now, of our own people, who they claim to 'serve'? Is that right?

These people in Government are behaving as they have been groomed and trained. Quite a lot, the Civil servants, clerical staff, back bench MPs, Coppers are decent enough people, are not violent in any way; most are doing their best to live as decent healthy humane beings who live, love and pass on. Their executive branch are a different matter. The political masters, local and national, must be held to account. They have committed crimes, and must be held to account.

The evidence suggests compassion, and direct action.

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 really honest, responsive to the evidence we find,and ready to reassess when new evidence emerges. The rest is easy.

Violence Labelling. An avoidance tactic.

I wrote this for a friend, who was articulating her sadness, her 'sombre mood' and I realise I wrote it for me, and for you too.
"Your feeling this way is part of your for humanity, and your feeling is healthy......

Stand as that health where ever you are.

Vulnerability is part of who we are at our very best, sensitive, aware. honest.... from these all kindnesses come.
And when these human qualities are trampled by insensitive government, by media and by any others dedicated to diminishing awareness and veiling blatant corruption, it is such a bigness of it that we can feel a little lost. However, that comparison, for me at least, is inaccurate, because I know we are all backed up by biology, the logic of life, the bio-logic.

Life stands with us, as we stand with Life. The system is tiny by comparison,and we are even tinier that the system. The system is a disease state that has become institutionalised, and this is a healing planet.

The biological mandate for healthy human beings does not include making war, bullying, domination..... these are all disease states emerging from hierarchical institutional violence. On a healing planet.

You are healthy.

We are healers.

That's another reason to write and speak and sing into the world we share.".

That said, I'd like to share some thoughts arising from the media led 'debate' about whether or not the van attack at the Finsbury Mosque was terrorism, and what place, ranking has White Nationalist Islamophobic Terrorism has, and so on... roll on the 24/7 word fest, a pompous parade of people who they believe they are thinking, but are not.

Here's my thinking, laid out.

Violence Labelling.

Islamic Terrorism.

Islamophobia.

British Nationalist Terrorism (IDA, UVF etc..)

Counter-Insurgency.

Domestic Abuse.

Pedophilia.

Kings.

God.

War.

Remove the adjectives.

Take away the labels.

What is in the can?

Violence.

War is violence.

Terrorism is violence.

Armed Rebellion is violence.

Insurgency is violence.

Counter-Insurgency is violence.

Rape is violence.

Bullying is violence.

Indoctrination is violence.

Usury is violence.

Debt is violence.

Psychological manipulation is violence.

Withholding shared resources is violence.

Hoarding wealth is violence.

Telling children WHAT to think, using a reward punishment dynamic is violence.

Cladding a high rise social housing building in flammable material for the aesthetic of the rich is violence.

The issue is violence.

Not merely whose violence.

“Our wars are good wars, their war is terrorism, and therefore it is bad.”

No. Not having that.

All violence.

Violence. Power. Bullying. Manipulation.

All that violence that is fully staffed, professionalised and industrialised.

One cannot talk sensibly about terrorism without examining all the evidence in detail.

Looking at all the evidence, we can say that making policy based on opinions in this area is either intentional or unintentional and therefore nastily dangerous or psychologically unstable, or both.

When States commit to war – the intent is real, emerges from a source and has  a plan and it’s run by people whose unconscious motivations are driven by disease, rather than a healthy intelligence.

To maintain the delusion of ‘Freedom and Democracy’ they avoid aspects of the available evidence, most of which exists in the lived domain of ordinary people’s lives at the bottom of the heap and talk about abstracts such as ‘Freedom and Democracy’.

It’s all drivel.

So how to tackle it? 

Refuse to participate.

Look at the problem, dig into the detail.

Learn from ones own experience as part of that examination.

Were you ever bullied? What was that? What were the outcomes?   

On a scientific, evidential basis we can look at what generates and maintains the cycles of violence at each level: for example (any substantial or diagnostic list or network charting of  actors and influences would be much more detailed than the outlines I give here).

-    Individual : Damage in Utero, disrupted development, stress induced by not     being understood, adult controlling reactions to that stress

-    Family : Addiction, bullying, child abuse, domestic abuse, Hierarchy of Power

-       Community : Fear of the other, maintenance of a hierarchy, disruption by conquest,

-        

-       Language group : Fear of the other, disruption by conquest

-        

-       Religion : Fear of the other, fear of self, shame, guilt, sin.

-        

-       Historical Trauma : Patterns of wounded behaviour become normalised

-        

-       Criminals : Can only operate within a property owning culture. For example, by decriminalising weed, and granting folk the right to grow their own, and to consume it, but not to sell it removes the criminal income stream. Why would a Government not do that?

-        

-       Institutions : Holding power, they defend themselves, even as they are hurting innocents.

-        

-       States : War Capability, Corrupted Justice and Police Systems, Wealth control

-        

-       Ideology : Belief, omitting evidence, indoctrination,

-        

-       Environment : Lack of a healthy environment, chronic stress, unresolved trauma, street violence, neglect, divide between rich and poor,

-        

-       Genetics : no evidence that violence is a genetic predisposition

-        

-       Biology : no evidence that we, as a species, are naturally violent,

-        

-       Internalisation : all evidence points towards internalisation of external values and beliefs, via indoctrination, manipulation and spin, has a huge association with the permission for violence.

… and we can try to see how they interact, what the dynamic flows are, how do these levels of action and interaction synergise and materialise.

Of course, this is just a short list, and the web is far more complex – yet the basic core is simple, and when it is disrupted, violence emerges.

What are the common themes?

Every outcome related to an event has meaning, is evidence.

All hidden outcomes are part of the product, from sourcing material to final product, use and it’s discarding.

Opinion might be a useful guide, at times, as to what might need some examination; the opinion itself, it is not evidence, and cannot take the place of evidence.

As the British public are slowly discovering with regards to Brexit, and Fire Safety for Social Housing.

Violence is the issue.

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 really honest, responsive to the evidence we find,and ready to reassess when new evidence emerges. The rest is easy.