The Psychology of a culture is revealed and perpetuated in how they relate to and treat their children and in how they relate to and treat the most vulnerable people within their society. Heal that and we can heal everything.
Critique of a States violence is not a critique of religion, or ethnicity of its constituents, and should never be conflated with either. It is critique of State Violence.
Critique of violence is not a critique of religion, or ethnicity. It is critique of Violence.
We live within a hierarchy culture of wealth and power.
The Hierarchy culture is a dominator culture that deploys layers of violence protect Wealth and Power.
This is the most honest appraisal of our culture, and it's abhorrent militarism.
Here is a song I wrote, Expectations of Every Child, about the needs of all our children, needs which all too often go unmet within Dominator Cultures.
1. "The psychology of a given culture is both revealed and perpetuated in how they relate to and treat the children. Change that and we can change everything."
The choice is ours, collectively, to make.
Jeremy Corbyn speaks quite sensibly, to the need for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza, and beyond.
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In England, Suella Braverman is demoted, for her public description of homelessness as a 'lifestyle choice' and her public labelling of Ceasefire Marches as 'Hate Marches'. She was removed only because she was embarrassing the Westminster Government, who mostly share her views. She was fired to protect that Government, not to indicate any alteration in Government policy.
2. "The pathology of a given culture is both revealed and perpetuated in how they relate to and treat the children and the most vulnerable among them. Heal that and we can heal everything."
Angela Rayner, a mother herself, refuses to call, publicly, for a ceasefire, which she must know is essential to protect the lives of so many children, mothers and fathers and grand parents living in Gaza. She stands with Starmer. This does not hold her in the best light. She may well change her mind soon...
The Irish Government, a coalition of old civil war party oligarchs, Fianna Fail and Fianna Gael, with the Green Party responded to 'opposition' parties and independents call for a ceasefire in Gaza, which the Dail, the Irish Legislative Assembly, approved.
In recent days they have rejected a motion in the Dail to expel the Israeli Ambassador, who openly and publicly, whilst remaining in Ireland, supports and praises the commission of horrific War Crimes.
The Irish Government stance is to that to expel the Israeli Ambassador is to put Irish Citizens in Israel, Gaza and the West Bank at risk and to close the door to potential influence as a Government that has helped to bring about an end to militarised violence through negotiations.
There is some merit to their argument. Thatchers Government did have back channel discussions on ending the violence, even as they publicly claimed they did not negotiate with terrorists. Those back channels were part of the process of bringing peace, though the bulk of the work was done by women's movements in Northern Ireland.
However we now understand that there was collusion between British Security Forces and Unionist Paramilitaries which led to so much avoidable harm, which exacerbated the violence rather than quell it and that the British Government were well aware of this. Public face and private face.
That stance - of keeping the diplomatic doors open - was also the Irish Governments stance with regards the invasions of Afghanistan, Iraq, the War against Libya, the civil war in Donbas, and The Russian invasion of Ukraine. Unfortunately the Irish Government also supported the movement of weapons and combat troops into those war zones, effectively contributing to the prolonging of each war. Thus the merit of the argument against expelling the Israeli ambassador fails on account that it does not reduce the avoidable harm to the people who are being harmed. There is also the potential of using the UN as the go between - where rather than a case by case basis, the matter is dealt with on a collective front.
The culture of Power, the political and social Hierarchy of Wealth, has always and is still layered with violences, to maintain its dominance. We see this undermining the potential of the UN when Security Council Members veto decisions and proposals made by the collective.
We, as the Decent People, must take up the political task of ending all of those violences from within our own polities. It is a political task, and it requires that we organise accordingly, en masse, to elect legislators who will pass laws to end all those violence, develop policies to effect that and pursue them to their final goal.
Intersectionality is the term used to describe how all these violences are part of a whole, and cannot be set as isolated and separate cases, if we are, as we must, to confront and end those layers of violence.
In Ireland, another aspect of that dominator culture was exposed over the past 30 years, through 6 public inquiries into the mistreatment of children and vulnerable adults within residential care systems. The Churches made a ton of money during that period, the state absolved itself of its constitutional responsibilities, and both State and Church covered up the crimes, repeatedly, which led directly to more and more horrific abuse. Seven decades of horrific abuse.
There is a collective change of consciousness and awareness occurring in Irish Society.
The historical crimes of Church and State are being looked at, but even still Church and State are evasive, and are delaying a full and honest accountability and reparations process that would finally resolve the matter.
The Dominator culture does not come from the womb. The Dominator culture does not respect the womb.
"All is born of Woman, no harm shall come to the children"
In short, Hierarchies of violence are evidence of dysfunction in human relationships, they are not innate nor are they part of the normal range of healthy behaviours which biological health mandates.
The work to confront this is a collective work, even as part of it starts with personal change in almost every case. When the healed work together, then change is more likely.
Follow the links on this page to learn more about this. It really does matter in terms of developing grounded political and social movements to confront the many abuses of Power inherent to the prevailing political and economic systems, which is the first step towards building an egalitarian culture, our true natural healthy birthright.
Here's my performance of the song, Universal Soldier, written by Donovan, during the Vietnam War, taken from one of my recent live stream shows on Facebook.
Kindest regards
Corneilius
Thank you for reading this blog.
I sincerely hope it has added something of value to your reflections.
"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.
A short note on Prince Harry and his comments about intergenerational trauma, his family, the Royal Family as an Institution and the media response to his comments.
"I don't think we should be pointing the finger or blaming anybody, but certainly when it comes to parenting, if I've experienced some form of pain or suffering because of the pain or suffering that perhaps my father or my parents had suffered, I'm going to make sure I break that cycle so that I don't pass it on, basically.
It's a lot of genetic pain and suffering that gets passed on.
I started to piece it together and go 'okay, so this is where he went to school, this is what happened, I know this about his life, I also know that is connected to his parents so that means he's treated me the way he was treated, so how can I change that for my own kids?"
I think Harry is doing us all a service. I think as a parent he is being honest. I think he is taking his responsibility to his children's future seriously, thoughtfully, compassionately. I think he is taking his responsibility as a public voice seriously too. I think his compassion is real.
And it's not just about Harry, nor is it about his family (which he did not choose). It is about all of us. Do not let media narratives distract you.
Harry, Meghan and Archie : photo credit, Press Association.
Imagine the changes in social policy that might emerge if trauma informed approaches percolated into the deliberations within Parliament and our NHS, our schools, our Police Forces and our Prison systems, into how we resolve homelessness and much else besides.
There is so much work to be done.
Harry is using his voice, his public presence and status to give some public space to the awareness that intergenerational trauma is a social and material dynamic that is very real, has profound effects on all of us as people and it has an effect on our culture.
Whilst he discusses this in very personal terms, and whilst his discussion relates to and involves members of his own family there is another element which is much more important - the element of this that is for the whole population to consider.
What does intergenerational trauma mean for us, in our lives, in our family lines, our communities?
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
I think that as a society, as a culture and as individuals and families, we all could benefit to some degree to look at whether or not intergenerational trauma has played a role in our lives, in the lives of our families and perhaps become more aware of the possibility that it has, and that as such, more compassion and understanding can grow that leads to less trauma effects as we grow into the future.
I would say too that in my opinion, those in the media who took Harry's words on this to be an attack on his family or an attack on a much loved institution are wrong to assume that position - they are not doing either any service by castigating Harry so.
I have written a bit about intergenerational trauma previously, and it is a subject I have spent some time looking into from a personal perspective and as a societal dynamic.
Unresolved trauma has a way of playing out in our lives, families and communities, and in the history of nations and ethnic histories. What remains unresolved continues to create distortion in behaviour.
Topically as I write, this weekend the Israeli State's 75 year mistreatment of Palestinian people comes to mind. The impact of the invention of Institutional legalised Racism as a tool to divide European and African indentured workers in the British Colonies of the Americas which was the precursor to legalised slavery of Africans comes to mind. The trauma associated with Misogyny is ever present.
The political violence perpetrated by violent governments against citizens seeking accountable democratic governance, in Colombia and Myanmar, and in so many other places comes to mind.
Libya, Syria and Yemen. Northern Ireland. We see the effects of intergenerational trauma writ large.
The football hooliganism last night, of some Rangers and Celtic 'fans' in Glasgow's centre contrasts with the peaceful protest that blocked a hostile environment deportation of asylum seekers, refugees from a traumatised land.
These are all societal level dynamics that afflict so many lives, and because the dynamics of intergenerational trauma remain unresolved, they persist.
It doesn't have to be that way. Cycles of adverse behaviour can be ended.
We can do this.
Thank you, Harry, for lending your voice to this story.
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 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.
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.
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
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
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.
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.
Do the Palestinians have to go through the same?
PROMISED LAND 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.
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 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.
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.
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
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.
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,
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!
~
What to do?
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.
"The grooming (gaslighting) of human vulnerability is one of most vile things any human being can do to another."
It is also a song.
I try to 'remember' aware that I am placed within an historical context, a point between what has happened and what will happen, in the present, the place of happening, which is here and now.
I am aware I am here because so many organisms have lived, nurtured and died.
We are all here as a result of the evolution of living systems.
And in this time, Remembrance Sunday in particular, I turn towards every ancestor ever murdered in warfare, every family bombed out of their home, every child shot in the back in flight, the terror, the pain, the loss, the grief, the disgust, the shame, the guilt, the denial, the survival, the hatred and so much else that has distorted human lives down through the wounded generations across the Earths lived in spaces, everywhere, for all time, the remembered and the forgotten.
All of that vast lived experience of terror, pain, shock, disgust.
It's a lot of peoples lives totally fucked up beyond all recognition.
It's real. It is not abstract.
I allow myself to begin to imagine the terror, the feeling, the sense of going through all of that, and I am already shattered, momentarily. This is terrifying, when I really allow it in. It is also huge - an immense sadness, grief and dismay beyond all comprehension.
I am glad that I am only imagining, that for me this is a kind of mental and emotional thought feeling experiment.
I imagine that then multiplied million upon million fold, ordinary folk caught up in the wars of the powerful, as in WWI and WWII, the wars of colonial conquest, of indigenous annihilation.
The survivors PTSD interwoven with trying to make ends meet as a slave, an indentured worker, a beggar, a low wage worker-labourer, a shopkeeper, a cobbler, a doctor, whatever.
I think about how that trauma and poverty 'informed' or conditioned all those lives of the centuries of warfare, and in relation to my own immediate ancestors in Ireland during the 1910s, 20s, 30s, 40s, 50s
Traumatised parents doing their best, yet passing on the woundedness, the loss, the behavioural dynamics on unresolved trauma.
I try to see through to the ripples of effect and affect. I try to see how all of that ripples through to today, how it afflicts the present, from 100 years ago and more, millennia of war fare.
15,000 years of Civilisation and Warfare.
And the thing is this - go back 30,000 years or 60,000 years and we see very, very little evidence of any Monumental Institutional Culture, now evidence of any Hierarchy of Violence Culture.
Kings, Palaces, Pyramids all unknown.
We know that outside the areas of 'civilisation' the vast majority of sustained cultures were egalitarian cultures built for conflict resolution, de-escalation of aggression, carrying on trade.
We know that nomadic, migratory, pastoral, horticultural, fisher-hunter-gatherers in the large part maintained healthy attachment bonding between mother and child - social cultures where nurture is highly valued, more valued than power.
War is a culture, rather than a sequence of discrete events innate to human nature.
WWI cannot be studied within it's start and finish timelines and be understood.
It was another ripple in the culture of competing militarised industrialised states - the rights and wrongs of WWI are a gaslighting exercise. The issue is the culture of warfare as a political utility, which itself emerges from hierarchy of violence culture - God the wrathful, who loves you, The Murderous State that will punish you, the dominant all powerful parent.
Ending the warfare culture is the work of all honest, free adults.
Human Welfare is our business here, not Warfare.
There was no sacrifice, nothing was won, the bland lies of polished brass, marching to order, wreaths and ceremony are in truth a private memorial attended by some few loyal Survivors, co-opted by the Chiefs of Staff and their political masters for political advantage.
Let me clarify.
The people who lived through the combat and destruction have a fraternal duty and a human need to remember, to bear witness to what happened, to grieve, to cry, to stand in stoic grace and to somehow integrate their experience, and be held, lovingly.
They also need full support to deal with their wounds, they deserve help in every possible way no questions asked. They rarely receive this because to acknowledge these wounds fully would be to expose the mythos of war as a sham.
And most of all they need the civilians to ensure that the politicians never, ever send future generations to go to war off shore.
I wear both poppies, and none.
I cannot dismiss the survivors of warfare on any side, their wounds are real, and they are victimised by those who urge warfare, by those who glorify warfare in order to condition others to habituate to warfare.
"Peace is more than the absence of War." - Arandhuti Roy
War is only possible if a culture permits child abuse.
It requires an organisational effort to prepare children for the eventuality of war.
Indoctrination is pretty central to the successful prosecution of warfare,and enforcement of conquest, and ought be understood as a grooming behaviour that has been institutionalised, weaponized and deployed, in effect if not always on concert.
All war is child abuse, child abuse is war.
The vast resources deflected away from nurturing happy healthy families, safe communities and thus functionally sound societies deprives every child of those societies, and is a form of indirect child abuse.
The training of youngsters to become combat troops, to become something that they can have no experience of; the deliberate, methodical organised killing of warfare, and it's disorganisation in the field.
They have to break the youngster and rebuild, re-condition and in effect brain wash that youngster as part of a group going through the same abusive training that it's their togetherness that matters, so they all push through, as a habit, as an emotional reaction.
This is typically done between age 16 and 22 whilst the frontal cortex of the brain is still developing, whilst the young persons brain is still vulnerable to adverse environmental influence.
."probably the most important fact about genetics and culture is the
delayed maturation of the frontal cortex—the genetic programming for the
young frontal cortex to be freer from genes than other brain regions,
to be sculpted instead by environment, to sop up cultural norms.
To hark
back to a theme from the first pages of this book, it doesn’t take a
particularly fancy brain to learn how to motorically, say, throw a
punch.
But it takes a fancy, environmentally malleable frontal cortex to
learn culture-specific rules about when it’s okay to throw punches.”
―
Robert M. Sapolsky,
Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst
Talking to children about Heaven and Hell is terrorism, if you can see it honestly, for what it is, without judgement, as a anti-biological cultural behaviour pattern.
To insert into the child's mind the existential fear of his or her own 'soul', or 'self' based on a fable through reward/sanction behaviour modification dynamics that internalise the external values into the child so that the child believes those values to be his or her own.
Terror, fear and Hope.
Look at it that way and then the behaviour can be addressed.
It's again the pattern of intruding into the child's psyche.
Colonialism.
"We do not need to shape our children, rather we need to respond to who they are."
The fear the child will not choose the Religion or System on their own is great, and is a reflection of the insecurity of all dogma, all doctrine, all religious zeal and practice.
Same thing, different appearance.
Healthy people do not go to war.
And so it goes..
The culture routinely, and understandably, ignores the meaning of the harms caused - we avoid the intensity and intimacy of each act of violence, each death moment is masked out.
They lost their lives is uttered rather than they were murdered for political power.
Yet each thing like that existed, and they continue to exist, and there is no balance, no resolution to that death. We cannot claw back the life that has been utterly destroyed.
Thus the historians and school masters utter numbers, statistics, miles gained or lost, and they speak of generals, and heroes, and the villages in between are invisible - the deaths are less than notable.
Just numbers. Just numb.
And so the war habituated people will quote such information in repetition, having 'learned' the official narrative, euphemism to mask the immensity of individual suffering, repeated in unspeakable intensity, by the millions, re-presented as historical sentiment via caricature that brings tears to the eyes, the emotions of national sacrifice so carefully tended.
That's a big ask to feel into that immense well of pain, grief, desperation, it's so much easier to take the heroic stance.
But we need to feel into that to really understand why in a fully embodied sense we must cease our states engaging in warfare.
Hence my latest release* - All War is Child Abuse.
*See and hear above!
My argument is simple.
The indoctrination that is central to the prosecution of War is child abuse.
Organised, Institutional invasive psychological grooming to exploit that child-adult for violent political activism - that's what soldiers are.
They are the tactical violent utility of the ruling class.
They wage war for political masters.
The waste of materials and wealth and human time, from extraction industries, to weapons makers, then the destruction wrought by warfare consumables 'market' - all of it is global child abuse.
I get that many millions of folk have lived experience of this in ways i do not, in ways I would never want to experience and that I am not 'expert' here...
I am looking at all the elements and I find nothing that exists that balances the harms experienced.
Nothing.
Nothing in war that I would 'endure' to serve Humanity. Nothing I would ask any other to bear to 'save' Humanity...
It's bullshit to claim there is glory, goodness, heroism, sacrifice in war - those are all after the fact rationalisations or pre-fight fantasies.
The exploitation of the hyper-adrenalenised traumatised wounded survivors trying to make sense of it all.
Nobody wins war. As I understand it 'losses' in war are in fact the numbers of people murdered by a system of power, be they troop or civilian, adult or child, volunteer or conscript.
Murders, not losses.
Losses to the organising agencies, whose concern with numbers of troops is rather obvious.
To
go after troops who murdered people in Iraq and to avoid going after
the men who organised and funded and prosecuted an invasion and war
against another state?
That is an appalling act of deliberate hypocrisy, because that failure to indict known War Criminals is part of what enables War Makers to get away with it. They never go to jail.
Colonialism and Conquest.
I find it appalling
that the majority of Europeans cannot 'see' what Colonialism
really costed, and still costs,
How can they not understand that a cruel dynamic generated the wealth and status we Europeans now stand on, which we were born into,
I find it appalling that we British are not strong enough to arrest our White European Christian
War Criminals.
Blair is free and that indicts the entire Western European polity, straight up.
Bush is free, and that indicts the entire Industrial World. Straight up.
I say this - We remember and we must prevent or it is just nostalgia and cover-up, which is very, very stinky evil.
Go on, then, televise and broadcast the old men of 'yesterdays wars' tearing up, the young men in fresh uniform, the disabled veterans, the bugle, the wind, the seriousness of the moment, the standing, lots of standing.
But if they go to war tomorrow, if we allow our Government to go to war, if we permit venal men and women to fund covert warfare, to supply active combatants in illegal Wars, in effect spreading violence, then it's just a load of political grooming gangsterism.
Just for the show.
It's not a good show.
Remember that as you go.
Remembrance.
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.
Bullies seek to co-opt the decent.
In practice it is both a behaviour pattern (unconscious), and a deliberate tactic (conscious).
If the bully cannot co-opt, the bully will denigrate the target in the eyes of others, the on-lookers, the bystanders, the target population.
'Corbyn is a Marxist', 'Corbyn is un-electable' , 'Corbyn is an anti-Semite' are all untrue, and the reason these untruths are spoke is because he would not press the Nuke trigger.
That's the real reason the established power networks hate him so much.
It has nothing to do with Socialism. The issue is with being willing to follow orders. to be willing to press the trigger, to launch mass death upon an innocent population,
Because when he is stating that he would not press it, and would in fact seek to disarm it, that is publicly rejecting their co-opting of the job of Prime Minister into that of a Warlord.
However the bullies cannot speak the truth, they cannot say "We will never let a pacifist have the power to stop War!" Instead they lay allegations against him, with ad hominem twist for spice, and then associate him with a hate figure. It is when one understands this behaviour, that one tends to look more closely, and observing the precise moment of co-option, then immediately defusing that trigger, that this kind of bullying is disabled.
You knock it on the head there and then. You name it.
You say 'This Emperor is Naked!'
This is the only way to activate the will of the people, the energy and engagement of the people with what is happening. People will only respond if they can see that there is ruthless honesty and it is clearly felt, absolutely understood.
When that practice is common amongst the electorate, we will see progressive change, because we will be driving it.
The Bullies will not, obviously, volunteer in this effort, and will resist any such efforts by every tool of disruption.
Hence the need for active engagement with understanding grooming, manipulating people through studied vulnerabilities.
Hence the active divisive marketing machine going over drive.
Corbyn, Gaza and marketing propaganda
Where ever we see a military force arranged against a civilian population, we see oppression, organised, institutionalised oppression.
We see the combined efforts of millions of workers, hundreds of thousands of troops, thousands of officers and many hundreds of civil officials, the logistical, industrial supply lines, the collection and expenditure of taxation and State policy all geared to that military operation.
That's a lot of people, that's entire cities, whole economies of regions devoted to oppression, rather than nurturance.
Today is a 15th anniversary day of so many needless deaths and maiming's in Iraq in the first weeks of the War Against Iraq. Every day is an anniversary of some horror perpetrated upon innocent people by States and their proxies in the international arena of competing militarised powers. Every day.
'Department of 'Defence'.
Yeah, whatever
ISIS. The IDF. The Burmese Army. The US Marine Corps in Iraq, Afghanistan, the Russian Army, Al-Nusra Front, Argentinian Troops in The Falklands, The IRA, FARC, Nazi War Machine, Nuclear Weapons, Bio-Weapons, covert and overt support for militia - it's all the same psycho-social dynamic. Sides are an illusion. Taking sides is a delusion, and insane delusion.
None of their justifications or rationales for political or economic violence stand the test of honesty, evidence and justice. None.
Not even WWI or WWII.
Taking sides within this culture of hierarchically organised violence merely perpetuates it.
Debt is political leverage, and the narrative of the property ladder is merely a grooming operation for debt creation as a hobble.
New Labour continued the deregulation of the banking sector, they broke the separation between high street retail and investment banking, flooding the retail sector with electronic credit, to make it easier for workers to buy property - the credit was then converted into real earned revenues by the workers, as they paid pack the mortgages, and that real wealth was transferred to the lenders.
The property remains, is perhaps redecorated, and renovated.
The material value does not fundamentally change, it is still a property, but it's nominal land price does change, because the market pushes the prices up to attract investors in debt, and so the cost of fitting in and participating in property ownership as an investment model has an entirely fictitious 'market driven' price.
It ceases being a home, part of a community of homes, it becomes an investment vehicle ofr an individual and the village dies.
The lenders convert imaginary assets into wealth.
They set the market, and politicians legislate for that need.
The home owner is politically inert, reduced to a cog in a machine.
Debt clouds the debtors horizon.
The Tories are continuing the process.
Load debt onto the electorate through credit, load the State with debt to a similar degree, and the entire country is on hock to the money men.
This is but one of many scams.
Sold as upwards social mobility.
Sold as aspirations.
Thatcher birthed some of it's recent spawn, but it started long, long before she emerged.
It's less Left vs Right any more, than it is Scam vs Honesty.
Scamservatives and ScamLabour vs Honservatives and Honest Labour
Scam vs The Honest 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.
The push, the release 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.
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,
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!
