A God that can send you to Hell is a violent God. A God that says he, she or it loves you and can still send you to Hell, is a gaslighting God. Such Gods are always, always projections of violent people.
Hierarchies of Wealth, Power and Violence are cults, they are mafia cults.
I have written much about Hierarchy of Violence as a cult, a culture - in opposition to Humanity as a species that evolved through co-operative alloparenting and mutual aid. The culture is the probem, not the species.
I know this much, I am not the problem. Me not fitting into this society is a healthy response.
Would we or could we do things differently if we were trauma informed?
"I argued then that the study of psychological trauma is an inherently political enterprise because it calls attention to the experience of oppressed people. I predicted that our field would continue to be beset by controversy, no matter how solid its empirical foundation, because the same historical forces that in the past have consigned major discoveries to oblivion continue to operate in the world. I argued, finally, that only an ongoing connection with a global political movement for human rights could ultimately sustain our ability to speak about unspeakable things." ~ Judith Herman in Trauma and Recovery
The News is not helping, is it?
The news media is full of a myriad of stories, images and narratives - more commonly biased and less so objective - and we see that violence erupts once more as Israeli State Mechanised Warplanes bomb the prison of Gaza, where people have nowhere to run to, for safety; we see the outcome of reckless policy on COVID19 in UK, USA, Brazil and India as wave after wave of infection surges; we are all aware of the intrusion into and colonisation of 'undeveloped lands inhabited by older indigenous cultures; Myanmar's youth resist the Military oppression of their new-born democracy... there's a lot going on.
The truth is not being told.
Meanwhile, for 1.8 billion people, across East Asia, Oceania and elsewhere zero community transmission strategy is protecting their lives and livelihoods in large measure.
What is the climate within which all this is happening, and can we change that?
Music helps me ground myself when facing all of this. Here's two songs in particular, that emerge from the Irish experience, that I find particularly resonant. They humanity of both songs, and of their writers is a beauty to me.
~I know this much, I am not the problem. Me not fitting into this society is a healthy response.
Would we or could we do things differently if we were trauma informed?
"I argued then that the study of psychological trauma is an inherently political enterprise because it calls attention to the experience of oppressed people. I predicted that our field would continue to be beset by controversy, no matter how solid its empirical foundation, because the same historical forces that in the past have consigned major discoveries to oblivion continue to operate in the world. I argued, finally, that only an ongoing connection with a global political movement for human rights could ultimately sustain our ability to speak about unspeakable things." ~ Judith Herman in Trauma and Recovery
The News is not helping, is it?
The news media is full of a myriad of stories, images and narratives - more commonly biased and less so objective - and we see that violence erupts once more as Israeli State Mechanised Warplanes bomb the prison of Gaza, where people have nowhere to run to, for safety; we see the outcome of reckless policy on COVID19 in UK, USA, Brazil and India as wave after wave of infection surges; we are all aware of the intrusion into and colonisation of 'undeveloped lands inhabited by older indigenous cultures; Myanmar's youth resist the Military oppression of their new-born democracy... there's a lot going on.
The truth is not being told.
Meanwhile, for 1.8 billion people, across East Asia, Oceania and elsewhere zero community transmission strategy is protecting their lives and livelihoods in large measure.
What is the climate within which all this is happening, and can we change that?
Music helps me ground myself when facing all of this. Here's two songs in particular, that emerge from the Irish experience, that I find particularly resonant. They humanity of both songs, and of their writers is a beauty to me.
Lyrics:
"American townland
Snow in Iceland
Russian farmland
And the sword of Islam
The state of new Israel
Remembers Belsen
Now there's sand for Palestine
And grass for Israel
Won't you settle down, stop fighting for your gods...
Oh, settle down, stop fighting for your gods.
They can't hear you now, not with the noise of your guns.
Once were towering steeples
Now there's a soaring eagle
A crescent moon and a rising sun
Our prayers ascending, but what good will they bring?
If all that's willin' is more and more killin'
Won't you settle down, stop fighting for your gods...
Oh, settle down, stop fighting for your gods.
They can't hear you now, not with the noise of your guns.
The mountains of Mourne
The county Cork I was born in
This dirty old town
Where the rain's always fallin'..
Our prayers ascending, but what good will they bring?
When all that's willin' is more and more killin'
~
~
What a beautiful song, so movingly performed. Fergus O'Farrell died young, aged 48. His career was blighted by his health, he suffered from Muscular Dystrophy - his body of work is immense, intense, beautiful and worthy of all praise in and of itself.
For me this song speaks to the inhumane cruelty and ultimate futility of Religion, when Religion is used as a reason to wage wars of colonisation. It also speaks of a deeply felt empathy and a humane view. It is an historical song.
It sits comfortably with Damien Dempsey's song Colony, a fierce rebuttal of the colonial mindset and a resounding song of defiance. This song makes the hair stand on end, and is as strong a heart beat of the humane as any. Here's the writer, on why he wrote the song, for whom he wrote it.
It sits comfortably with Damien Dempsey's song Colony, a fierce rebuttal of the colonial mindset and a resounding song of defiance. This song makes the hair stand on end, and is as strong a heart beat of the humane as any. Here's the writer, on why he wrote the song, for whom he wrote it.
Here's the full song, off the album. When Damien sings this, the crowds no sing with him, and the atmosphere is electric, everyone in the room is on point, fully alive to the meaning of the song, and our place in history with it. Bearing in mind that the Palestinian people, the Aboriginals of Australia, the Ashaninka of Peru and Brazil, and many, many others all live with the oppression upon them, and resist and defend their lands and rights as best they can with little in the way of support from the rest of the world. Justice is still a long way off.
Colony Lyrics:
I sing the song of the colony
How many years and you're still not free
And your mother cries and you ask god why
Greed is the knife and the scars run deep
How many races with much reason to weep
And your children cry
And you ask god whyAnnie, she came from Dunlavin Town
The TB came and killed her family all around
Population booms
Eleven in two rooms
Katie she came from down Townsend street
Ten in a bed and no shoes on their feet
1916 came
They played the patriots game
Freddy, he came from the Iveagh flats
Tenement slums and infested with rats
Sleeping on damp straw
Trying not to break the law
Thomas, he came from Kilmaine in Mayo
Semi starvation was the only life you'd know
In a two room shack
Then jailed in Letterfrack
I look to the east, I look to the west
To the north and the south, and I'm not too impressed
Time after time
After crime after crime
They raped, robbed, pillaged, enslaved and murdered
Jesus Christ was their god and they done it in his name
So he could take the blame if it's not all a game
With bible in one hand and a sword in the other
They came to purify my land of my Gaelic Irish mothers
And fathers, and sisters and brothers
With our own ancient customs, laws, music, art
Way of life and culture
Tribal in structure
We had a civilisation
When they were still neanderthal nations
We suffer with the Native American, the Indian in Asia
Aboriginal Australia
The African people with their history so deep
And our children still weep and our lives are still cheap
You came from Germany, from France, from England
And from Spain
From Belgium and from Portugal
You all done much the same
You took what was not yours
Went against your own bible
You broke your own laws
Just to out do the rival
But did you ever apologize
For the hundreds and millions of lives
You destroyed and terrorised
Or have you never realized
Did you never feel shame
For what was done in your country's name
And find out who's to blame and why they were so inhumane
And still they teach you in your school
About those glorious days of rule
And how it's your destiny to be
Superior to me
But if you've any kind of mind
You'll see that all human kind
Are the children of this earth
And your hate for them will chew you up and spit you out
You'll never kill our will to be free, to be free
You'll never kill our will to be free, to be free
You'll never kill our will to be free, to be free
You'll never kill our will to be free, to be free
Inside our minds we hold, hold the key.
These two songs hold for me the sense of resistance that is deeply humane, that reaches for peace, knowing that although we are vulnerable, we are decent, we are lovers and builders of healthy community at heart and the bullies are bullies. They are not healthy people. Rulers are not healthy people. Colonisers are not healthy people.
Hierarchy of Violence Culture
Hierarchy of Violence Culture
From the many stories of the Bible, and before, going back 12,000 years or so, through the many Empires as they fought for territory and dominance, through to the invasion of Ireland in 1159 (I am of Irish ethnicity) and onwards as the Crusades and Islam swung back and forth, to the destruction of the Taino of the Caribbean, and the people's of South America, in 1492 onwards, to the British Colonies on what we call North America built by and for religious refugees, that stole land from Native people, and then destroyed them, utterly to the various Colonial excursions across Asia and elsewhere, pastors and merchants, armed to the teeth, through to the scramble for Africa, to the Nazi occupation of Eastern Europe where Jews and others were slaughtered in their millions 'to make room' for the German Reich, and on through to today, where yet again the Palestinian people face the brutality of colonial warfare designed to extirpate them from their native homes.
Palestine - where the act of self defence and resistance, a legal right agreed upon by the all Earths nation states, is punished by full on ethnic cleansing, social, cultural and military war fare, and where that constant punishment of an entire population has been and is still supported by the USUK political ruling classes and is enabled by the EU and UN who play the role of bystanders, even as millions of ordinary citizens in all these countries oppose the violence of the Israeli State, and are also saddened by the violence of the resistance. The Palestinian people should never have been put into that position that they needed to resist war, occupation and colonisation.
What use is there in all of this killing?
Ireland cannot adopt a zero community transmission strategy to protect it's people in large part because of the partition, (and because it's own ruling class are as venal as rulers anywhere else).
The dominant neighbour, the English government rejects zero community transmission strategy, even as ZCT is proven to protect the lives and economies of 1.8 billion people across East Asia and Oceania and elsewhere, and prevent new variants from emerging, and this places of the British Isles at risk. It could so easily have been avoided.
These are the ill effects of a thousand years of overlordism.
Who rules the English people?
Ireland is still partitioned - those old wounds are still painful, and the political interference still blatant.
What the Israeli state has done and is continuing to do the Palestinian people for the past 75 years, the Normans did to Ireland for 800.
The dominant neighbour, the English government rejects zero community transmission strategy, even as ZCT is proven to protect the lives and economies of 1.8 billion people across East Asia and Oceania and elsewhere, and prevent new variants from emerging, and this places of the British Isles at risk. It could so easily have been avoided.
These are the ill effects of a thousand years of overlordism.
Who rules the English people?
Ireland is still partitioned - those old wounds are still painful, and the political interference still blatant.
What the Israeli state has done and is continuing to do the Palestinian people for the past 75 years, the Normans did to Ireland for 800.
Do the Palestinians have to go through the same?
PROMISED LAND
a poem by Michael Rosen
a poem by Michael Rosen
A family arrived and said they had papers
to prove that his house was theirs.
No, no, said the man, my people have always lived here, my father, grandfather .... and look, the garden, my great-grandfather planted that.
No, no, said the family, look at the documents.
There was a stack of them.
Where do I start? said the man.
No need to read the beginning, they said,
turn to the page marked ‘Promised Land’.
Are they legal? he said, who wrote them?
God, they said, God wrote them, look -
Here come His tanks.
Both groups of colonisers cited religion and culture as their justifications for their behaviour. There's always a justification rooted in entitlement and supremacy. It is always a logical fallacy.
Conquest, Occupation and resistance.
Palestine - where the act of self defence and resistance, a legal right agreed upon by the all Earths nation states, is punished by full on ethnic cleansing, social, cultural and military war fare, and where that constant punishment of an entire population has been and is still supported by the USUK political ruling classes and is enabled by the EU and UN who play the role of bystanders, even as millions of ordinary citizens in all these countries oppose the violence of the Israeli State, and are also saddened by the violence of the resistance. The Palestinian people should never have been put into that position that they needed to resist war, occupation and colonisation.
What use is there in all of this killing?
What futures are nurtured by so much blood and gore?
I understand Faith, the way people grow up with the Faith of their parents and grandparents, never consciously chosen, always internalised through habit and thus integrated into sense of self - I understand the psychic trap that otherwise decent people fall into, when the Institutional and Political Power of the religion is harnessed in warfare. That is an abuse of Faith.
Unicorns against masks is yet another similar faith dynamic that pollutes responsible behaviour in the midst of a pandemic.
Unicorns against masks is yet another similar faith dynamic that pollutes responsible behaviour in the midst of a pandemic.
I detest those who build that trap, who ensnare the decent, the innocent, the children, generation after generation, just to maintain an institutional power base. They are to me the most abusive of people, bullies without pause, they liars and charlatans.
And I have no easy, simplistic answer on how to free the innocents from the trap. I was entrapped myself a number of times. It was honesty that finally freed me.
But this I know - these traps must be unset, be they religious, ideological, nationalist or genderist, and the innocent must be allowed to grow free. We have to find ways to ceasing indoctrination of defenceless children that lead to the kinds of extremism we are seeing in Israel and Saudi Arabia, in USA and elsewhere.
The Psychological Climate Issue.
Climate change is one thing, the global Pandemic is another as is the conquest and colonisation of lands already long inhabited by people who nurtured that land - be it Palestine or the Amazon Rainforest - and the psychological climate of hierarchies of violence culture is part of the problem and the puzzle to be resolved that all of these present.
What is happening in Israel, what is being done to the Palestinian people is emblematic of what this hierarchy of violence cult is doing to all of us, to humanity, and we the humane must find ways to stop it in it's track.
The Psychological Climate Issue.
Climate change is one thing, the global Pandemic is another as is the conquest and colonisation of lands already long inhabited by people who nurtured that land - be it Palestine or the Amazon Rainforest - and the psychological climate of hierarchies of violence culture is part of the problem and the puzzle to be resolved that all of these present.
What is happening in Israel, what is being done to the Palestinian people is emblematic of what this hierarchy of violence cult is doing to all of us, to humanity, and we the humane must find ways to stop it in it's track.
The train of hierarchy of violence must be halted, and we must disembark.
What is happening in England and India, and elsewhere, what is being done to the people by the reckless policies of the ruling factions in regards to COVDI19 is emblematic of what this hierarchy of violence cult is doing to all of us, to humanity, and we the humane must find ways to stop it in it's track.
What is happening in England and India, and elsewhere, what is being done to the people by the reckless policies of the ruling factions in regards to COVDI19 is emblematic of what this hierarchy of violence cult is doing to all of us, to humanity, and we the humane must find ways to stop it in it's track.
The train of hierarchy of violence must be halted, and we must disembark.
We must do this, we must commit to doing, even if we do not know how that is going to work out. It is not merely the success of the project that drives this - it is integrity.
Ani Di Franco has a song, Inside Out, in which she sings "We are all citizens of the womb." This is true.
This line inspired me to write this poem.
We must do this, we must commit to doing, even if we do not know how that is going to work out. It is not merely the success of the project that drives this - it is integrity.
Ani Di Franco has a song, Inside Out, in which she sings "We are all citizens of the womb." This is true.
This line inspired me to write this poem.
A SONG FOR THE CHILDREN OF PALESTINE AND ISRAEL
The push, the release
the squeeze, the belief
in letting go - we both
surrender to the next life
as in the new world
the squeeze, the belief
in letting go - we both
surrender to the next life
as in the new world
I arrive to the softness of
the strange dry air,
something unknown to me,
the pulse of my mothers heart
the thumping with which I have
for nine months lived
- all of my life thus far -
oh the relief of hearing that sound again
having been briefly, yet intensely
separated from that
fundamental pulse.
I gaze with all my body,
all my soul
and we catch each other,
before I reach to feed.
and oxytocin mediates the adrenaline
I am born, and we are clean, together...
My fathers deep voice rumbling in peace and joy,
amazement and bliss.
Being born is the art of the eternal welcome.
the strange dry air,
something unknown to me,
the pulse of my mothers heart
the thumping with which I have
for nine months lived
- all of my life thus far -
oh the relief of hearing that sound again
having been briefly, yet intensely
separated from that
fundamental pulse.
I gaze with all my body,
all my soul
and we catch each other,
before I reach to feed.
and oxytocin mediates the adrenaline
I am born, and we are clean, together...
My fathers deep voice rumbling in peace and joy,
amazement and bliss.
Being born is the art of the eternal welcome.
Mind and body
one ingenuous zone of love,
head to toe I know
that my love of life,
this desire to nurture,
the qualities
we see
and feel in each other,
one ingenuous zone of love,
head to toe I know
that my love of life,
this desire to nurture,
the qualities
we see
and feel in each other,
and we are recognised,
for these are the echoes,
these are the dreams
that are essential
above all else.
Nurture love,
tend the garden
Blessings are
these tears of love,
these peals of laughter
like a silken glove
held and yet unrestricted.
And then the flags, the tanks, and the shelling?
This tragedy is pathology,
the loving is all gone,
the culture says no breast-feeding in public,
it's more important
that you learn your Nations song!
Booooom!
for these are the echoes,
these are the dreams
that are essential
above all else.
Nurture love,
tend the garden
Blessings are
these tears of love,
these peals of laughter
like a silken glove
held and yet unrestricted.
And then the flags, the tanks, and the shelling?
This tragedy is pathology,
the loving is all gone,
the culture says no breast-feeding in public,
it's more important
that you learn your Nations song!
Booooom!
~
The first things that must be done is that states that organise violence on the scale that USUK and Israel and Russia and others do must be inhibited from doing so by their own populations - and in that populations across the Earth must find ways to build solidarity and generate material support for each other in achieving this. We are in this together.
It is for the British population to control their State and Oligarchy who interfere in other countries.
It is for the American population to control their State and Oligarchy who interfere win other countries.
It is for each countries population to assert our right to self govern - it is not the exclusive right of any ruling class, no such right exists. The ruling class rules by might and leveraged power and that is, in this 21st Century, wholly illegitimate.
This means we must as people in humane, informed intelligent solidarity take control of the democratic legislatures and write the laws that will control these powers and forces, and thus make them safe for people everywhere.
We need to do this just to get to the position where we can deal with Climate Change, Environmental Pollution, Air Particulate Pollution and poverty.
Climate change demands a psychological change among all democratic electorates.
We need peace to be able to work on Climate Change in meaningful ways.
Kindest regards
Corneilius
"Do what you love, it is your gift to universe."