Showing posts with label Teresa May. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Teresa May. Show all posts

Who to Vote for in a Warring State?

"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". ~ John Holt


Peace is more than the absence of War
Who to vote for?

John Holt, a world renowned educator and author, makes a pertinent observation of the power dynamic of Schools in the 1950s, 60s and 70s.

“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.”


-  1964, from a talk by John Holt who carried out thousands of hours of acute observation of children in schools across America.

How much does this still resonate, in 2017, in the UK?

I think the public and official discourse around War (and much else besides) as it exists in the UK 2017  General Election - or any national election, and even each bye-elections - for Parliament reminds me somewhat of this “dishonest and nervous place.” 

Who to vote for in a warring State?


One way of placing the election in context, I would suggest. For any democratic election, any time, anywhere when States wage war as a 'last resort'  tool of 'foreign policy'.

Rather focus’s the mind, don’t you think?

The fact that this is not a central question in this General Election, given that the powers of ‘defence/offence’ and ‘foreign policy' (keep the diamond mines British!) are being handed over to an elected person in this Election is troubling. It’s irrational, though those who would, for whatever reason, wish to avoid the issue, it might appear a rational avoidance.

How can you vote for that?

Indoctrination is the very dark 'art' of convincing someone that the external value presented is intrinsic, internal, part of the person.

It requires that the target loses touch with what ought to be emergent, the natural sense of self, and replaces that with an externally driven identity through which loyalty and submission to the indoctrinating system, are assured.

It's rude, and it is also a toxic mime of 'Education'.

In a healthy Society such abuse would be impossible, unthinkable.

 Warring States.  The unthinkable, the intolerable, the unacceptable.

The USA, UK, France, Russia and their allies The Saudi’s, the Qatari’s and the Israeli’s.

2017.  The UK General Election.

War Policies?

What are the war policies of the active candidates?

More importantly, what are your (my readers) War Policies, and will anyone support those?

This democracy is a veil.

It looks good, and yet the wind of honesty passes right through it, does not fill it's sails, and the fantasy ship is but a barge of mechanised death, decorated like a General’s breast pocket with gaudy baubles and pomp, going nowhere, because it is aground.

The mist is strong, and the tide is out. And its return is inevitable.

The tide will come back in.

Nature cannot be dominated indefinitely by anything that emerges out of it’s mystery of Life.

Healthy Internalisation?

I think that the natural healthy version of internalisation is honesty and living practice, experience and learning gained by observing healthy adults and being respected and treated humanely at all times..

I feel that it is innate, that it is a default setting of the natural child. It is a sensitivity to be able to learn, and it is also a vulnerability.

The art of learning through time and experience, sense and environment... the natural child who is secure will recognise aspects of self in all areas of life and living things, which can then meet the externals, the content of the child’s habitat and make sense of them, and then model them and internalise them so they are in RAM mode available, so to speak.... once internalised they do not have to think using the intellect to grasp the meaning of what is being observed or interacted with in their world.

This is also useful for anyone living closely with plants and animals, in a dynamic environment, as part of a co-operative collective.

It is a evolved mode of information gathering, data acquisition and storage as part of optimal human biological health.

Mirror Neurons existence and operation supports this view: what we see we can also sense, we can imagine within our minds, we can learn from the actions of others, we can practice in our minds.

We feel into the world, we model it and we move it within ourselves.

This is learning.... responding to what is changing, availing of new information to meet those dynamics and remain sustainable, nurturant.

Healthy Governance - An Alternative Metric

I think of Healthy Governance as being the practical realities of administering a communities shared resources for the equal benefit of all members of that community and the habitat within which or from which that community emerges.

In the case of developed States, and Governance this relates to taxation, which is collected from all, in one way or another, and is the community shared resource – it does not BELONG to the Government, they hold it in trust.

Apply that metric to policy.

What are the implications of administering a community shared resource?

- it must be evidence based, as a duty of care

- adverse outcomes must be avoided, and where they occur, by accident or lack of foresight, or due to changes beyond human agency, they must be remedied immediately.

- long term health and safety is as much a priority as short term health and safety

- The policies must be proven to nurture the whole community, in a balanced and healthy manner.

This metric applies also to the seas, waterways, lands we inhabit. These too are shared community resources, and not just for us humans of developed societies.

We share this Earth. Fact.

Healthy Governance.

For me, this old politic of competing powers is immature, it is a diseased way of conducting matters, and utterly toxic.

I cannot participate in current political discourse because this fundamental truth is being ignored, denied, avoided across all mainstreams, and beyond.

The system is bullying that has become institutionalised, and I cannot vote for it to continue.

Who to vote for in a Warring State?


Interview with Inger Skjelsbæk who works with PRIO. The Peace Research Institute Oslo (PRIO) conducts research on the conditions for peaceful relations between states, groups and people.

Researchers at PRIO seek to understand the processes that bring societies together or split them apart. We explore how conflicts erupt and how they can be resolved; we investigate how different kinds of violence affect people; and we examine how societies tackle crises – and the threat of crisis. We document general trends, seek to understand processes, and inform concrete responses.
"We focus a lot more on conflict than we do on what peace actually is. What is it that creates well-being? What is it that makes you feel at ease in your own skin, in your own life, in your own sociopolitical context? What does it take? All narratives about who you are and what your prospects are, and how that impacts your well-being, depend on how these stories are reinforced or challenged by the communities you live in. If peace is just the absence of war, then you have peace lots of places. But if peace is also well-being and resilience to conflicts, then it is more challenging."

Healthy Governance is an immense challenge facing us, and we had best do what we can to ensure our children's children do not have to do what we did not do, when we could have. 

Who to vote for in a warring State?


Kindest regards

Corneilius

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

*If you like this post, if you found the themes resonant, if you agree in part, would you be kind enough to let others know about it? I would really appreciate that. You could drop a comment too, if you felt the urge. Or not. I will moderate contributions, and block any that are abusive. For obvious reasons. Thank you for reading.

2017 and the centrality of bullying in all our lives.




Donald Trump and Miss Universe, DAESH and Jimmy Savile and are indeed part of a wider problem within our Society, our world culture of Power and State.


They are not the problem, it must be said; their behaviour are symptoms of a problem.

The problem is bullying.

From within an Imperial culture still heavily invested in 'Christian Ideals' even as it lays claim to a secular grounding; from within a 2000 year old culture that has undermined egalitarian and empathic relationships in all areas of life in favour of the relationships demanded by hierarchies of Power who see themselves as involved in a struggle for 'survival' (that is to say, a struggle to preserve their power at any cost); in that paradigm a key dynamic is the ad-mixture of sexuality and power.

The poor are ugly. The rich are beautiful.

Christians are beautiful, Pagans are ugly.

Primitive Peoples vs Civilised Peoples.

Gods view on sexuality is Law.

The unspoken line is that one must use one's sexuality as a tool to get something, as proof of one's power and potency, as a marker of who one is, as a sign of loyalty and conformity.

Marriage as a political tool.

The dynastic model.

Fucking for power.


Fucking for security.

Fucking for money.

Pleasure and Power.

When our innate, emergent and natural sensing of self is assaulted by forces we are unable to confront, specifically those forces of power that indoctrinate a people's children, a force that defines who we should be, then a wounding occurs, a wound to the emergent sense of self, and in order to survive that wounding and 'get by' on the terms power has set out, (a thriving healthy peaceful egalitarian society at all levels is but a pipe dream) within that woundedness, we are forced to 'adjust' to the status quo.

It is not that sex sells, it is that the illusion of power that sells.

You can be more attractive. Buy this product, subscribe to this belief. Gain power.

Rape is about power above all else.

Strict gender roles emerge in societies that are hierarchically and institutionally violent. Adherence to these self limiting roles is demanded by power. Seeing oneself as merely a man or a woman as defined by power.

Such societies repaint Nature, and create Gods in their own image.

Hierarchical, vengeful, domineering - and they love us!
 God loves us?

Our leaders and our Power Establishments love us.

They ‘serve’ us. It is an honour and a privilege, they acclaim.

And when our children are sacrificed, that too is an honour.

Yeah, right.

2017 onwards - can we end single issue political activism?

Or at the very least join the dots.

It's yet anoyther way the system has of dividing folk, of diluting and preventing a solid critical analysis of the situation, a way of undermining solidarity amongst our many strands of struggle. Fund and promote one above others. Create a climate of competition for funds and attention. Let the unresolved psyches of activists do the rest.

Homosexuality allowed openly within the Military is touted as ‘progress’.

"We will accept anyone who wants to enlist as a trained killer and help us bully other States!"

Gays for Trump! Fathers for Justice! Feminists for Clinton! Blacks for Obama?

How about Gay people for Heterosexual people against war and the bullying of women?

How about Climate Change activists against Bullying?

There is one issue.

It is called bullying. Power exerted over others.

Rape is bullying.

War is bullying.

Bribery is bullying.

Misogyny is bullying.

Sexism is Bullying.

Religious indoctrination is bullying.

Ideological indoctrination is bullying.

Usury is bullying.

Mortgages are a mass bullying device.

Debt is bullying.

Aspirational Marketing is bullying.

Mountain top removal is bullying.

Sex trafficking is bullying.

Uranium Mining is bullying.

Bullies always discount the costs others bear for their behaviour.

Fake News is bullying.

Every US President is a bully in Office.

Every Home Secretary is a bully in Office.

The Christian/Muslim/Jewish missionary is a bully.

And so it goes.

To cast any adverse judgement on a person's sense of their sexual self and their desire to live that sense openly where it does not involve any abuse of another is bullying.

It's not that people are homophobic, it's that they are bullies and they seek 'approved' targets, set by Higher Authorities, to vent their own frustration, pain and rage, again, and again (because their wounds remain unhealed) in the service of Power.

Bullying. Bullets. And Bombs.

They are the signal that something is out of balance and dis-eased.

I applaud everyone who engages in the work of confronting the issues within their own lives, I praise the disabled who campaign against cuts and discrimination, I delight in the peaceful who campaign against the weapons/war industry, I love the environmentally aware who campaign against environmental abuse, I admire and laud the Survivors who campaign to demand accountability from their abusers and the Institutions within which they are protected, I sing for the local folk who campaign against the imposition of fracking.

I understand the need for focused, evidence led campaigns, and I understand that they can be effective. I cannot dismiss these on any level. I can only praise these efforts.

It is the combinations of a one behaviour - bullying - across many areas of life that is the central issue.... the symptoms are not the central issue.

I hope more activists and others can make this connection as we move forwards with our struggles.

We need to see a focus on the central issue, Bullying, within and across all single issue campaigns.

We need to see that in our homes, schools, work places, Churches, Synagogues, Mosques and Temples, and across all areas of Civil Governance.

We need to see that in relation to imposed taxation.

The urge to Power.

An origin story. A paper I wrote on the origins of Hierarchically Violent Religions and Cultures as an unresolved trauma-behaviour pattern that has become institutionalised over time, and thus deeply embedded within the modern industrial cultural psyche.

A short video on one aspect of the origin of the behaviour patterning that leads to the urge to exert power over others so that they meet one’s perceived needs.

Empower.

It never strikes back.

Listen to the child.

Hear the Child.

Adults Don't Heed my Distress.









Kindest regards

Corneilius

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

*If you like this post, if you found the themes resonant, if you agree in part, would you be kind enough to let others know about it? I would really appreciate that. You could drop a comment too, if you felt the urge. Or not. I will moderate contributions, and block any that are abusive. For obvious reasons. Thank you for reading.

The Neo-Liberal Revolution: indoctrination and economic sleight of hand at home, violence abroad.

When Teresa May and David Cameron spout off about British values and then claim that those values are Democracy, Tolerance, Rule of Law, whilst they flout all three on a regular basis, one wonders what do they really intend. Especially when they are unable (or unwilling) to explain it in any logically meaningful manner.

Speaking to school leavers from varied ethnic backgrounds, young people who have conversations across the globe without the adults interjecting, people who see that underneath all national identities we are human, people who understand that being humane is the first and only value of any real importance, young people who see that they are being targeted by these claims of British values; what they see is an attempt to create division amongst their contemporaries, to build a form of Capitalist Neo-Liberal Nationalism, that equates the flag and what it symbolises with ‘hard working families’ and ‘tolerance of others’, the right to own a home (to be indebted for most of ones life), the rule of brute force in International Politics (Iraq, Libya, Syria, Northern Ireland)… what they see is a demand that they adopt values they do not hold, values that are inhumane, that are at the root of the war mongering the British Government is engaged in.

Tolerance, to tolerate suggests that those being tolerated are lessor, different, other. You will be tolerated as long as you toe the line and abandon your own sense of self in favour of the British Power Establishment.

Democracy?

With 21% of the electorate giving total Power to an ideological band of robber barons actively dismantling the social contract that we care for the vulnerable in our Society, without the profit motive, and handing it to their friends to be turned to profit?

Shamocracy!

British values in action, as by the evidence of the behaviour of the British Government:

British values – collusion with violent Militia, in Northern Ireland, in Syria, in Libya and elsewhere.

British Values – protecting predatory pedophiles from public prosecution in order to protect the Power Establishment?

British Values – Zenophobia stirred up by UKIP, the Daily Mail and others..

British Values – Fracking ....

British Values – Trident ... as a 'deterrent', worthless and useless in practice.

British Values – Institutional power over a people.

British Values – low wages, subsidised by the tax payer, to improve profitability of British Corporations.

British Values – a people coerced into debt through indoctrination, and economic sleight of hand, (right to buy, tax subsidies for mortgages) that owning a home is more important than spending time with one’s children.

British Values – children cared for by well trained and well paid nannies for the wealthy rather than by their parents, and the children of the poor cared for by low paid, ill-trained childcare workers working for private enterprise.

British Values – the elderly set aside from societal engagement and participation, held in ‘care homes’ run as profit centers.

British Values – using the Rule of Law to abuse, control, dominate and coerce the population.

And then there are human values…

..although a human type of education is here to stay, it is most certainly not the prevailing type of education. So I would like to take a look at the two polar extremes of our modes of education and at the politics that is implicit in each of them.

Before I go any further, I should say what I mean by the word ‘politics’. I am not at all thinking of political parties, or government organisations. I am using the term in it’s modern sense. We hear talk of ‘the politics of the family’ or ‘the politics of psychotherapy’ or ‘sexual politics’. In this present day sense, I believe that the word ‘politics’ has to do with power or control in relationships, and the extent to which persons strive to gain such power – or to relinquish it. It has to do with the way decisions are made. Who makes them? Where is the locus, or center, of decision making power? Politics concerns the effects of such power oriented actions on individuals and systems.

If we think of the political characteristics of education, the traditional mode is at one end of a continuum, and a person centered approach at the other.

The traditional mode:

1. The teachers are the possessors of knowledge, the students the expected recipients.

2. The lecture, or some means of verbal instruction, is the major areas of getting knowledge into the recipients. The examination measures the extent to which the students have received it.

3. The teachers are the possessors of power, the students are the ones who obey.

4. Rule by Authority is the accepted policy in the classroom.

The person centered mode.

1. The leaders, or persons who are perceived as authority figures, are sufficiently secure within themselves and in their relationships to others that they experience an essential trust in the capacity of others to think for themselves, to learn for themselves.

2. The facilitating persons share with others – students, and possibly also parents and community members- the responsibility for the learning process.

3. The focus of the learning center is primarily on fostering the continuing process of learning. The content of the learning, whilst significant, falls into a secondary place.

4. The discipline necessary to reach students goals is a self discipline, and is recognised and accepted by the learners as being their individual responsibilities. Self discipline replaces external discipline.”

This was written by Carl Rogers between 1972 and 1979.


In the late 70s and early 80s, as the person centered approach was spreading across the UK. Keith Joseph’s concern in 1984 was that people should be educated to ‘know their place’. To that end he redirected Educational policy along ideological lines, to ensure that the concerns of power and the 'economy' as understood by power were to be promoted, rather than in the best interests of our children as people in development.  "Evolving Consumers'as a technical term for children.

Neo-liberal revolutions at home were to be crafted through indoctrination, and economic falsehoods and gimmicks, as opposed to the imposition of Neo-Liberal revolution through violence, as in Chile and as so many other cases reveal.

Thatcher had a ‘soft spot’ for Pinochet. David Cameron was sent to South Africa to do her business with the Apartheid Regime. Tony Blair reworked the meaning of Labour to integrate Neo-liberalist ideology into it’s executive behaviour.

That concern remains present in current education, in much mainstream media and in politics. This concern is what drives the so-called ‘Greek Debt Crisis’ which is in truth a crisis for the IMF in that it’s imposition of Neo-Liberal Economics breaches Human Rights Law, is causing real harm to real people, and is therefore illegal. (the law under which these loans are set up is English Contract Law). Iraq was an illegal war of aggression. So too the bombing of Libya.

Power Rules and the people must submit.

The fact that Power uses our taxes is besides the point, is not up for rational discussion, let alone any rational discourse based on the evidence of adverse outcomes of the uses to which the Executive puts those taxes, which are after all a shared community resource.




Kindest regards

Corneilius

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