Awareness is being sensitive to the world, paying attention to the world, observing, hearing and feeling the world, and reflecting upon it from our centre and being able to subject all of that to acritical analysis, that allow us to see it as it really is, and understanding it, we can integrate it.
Autonomy is the recognition of that centre, ones self, and by extension, recognizing it in all others and respecting that presence in all others.
Both are keyed into natural empathy and sense of self.
Indoctrination is a process by which these are undermined. One's emergent sense of self is replaced with externally sourced opinions, feelings, perceptions, beliefs.
Take for example the indoctrinated mainstream concept of Self Defence:
Which says "violence is ok if you are defending yourself."
Example:
No one in Northern Ireland was 'defending' anything, or anyone, by resorting to violence..
The violence derailed and disrupted the peaceful Civil Rights Movement. That was the intent. That was the outcome. Both 'sides' claimed self defence, both sides were lying to themselves and everyone else.
In each case one has to examine the specifics - a generalisation works across a population as a pattern identifier, as a tool of discourse but cannot be applied to the individual human case or singular event.
So for me the specifics are to be found by asking what happened, what was done, who did it, to whom was it done and was there harm caused?
It wasn't 'Irish Catholics', it was bullies (mostly gangsters at the start) who happened to be Irish Catholics, and bullies who happened to be 'Unionist Protestants' and bullies who happened to be 'The British Security State' who launched a war at each other through attacking each other and attacking innocent civilians.
It's not Jews, it's bullies who happen to be Jewish, in the case of Israeli State Violence against the Palestinian people just as it's bullies who happen to be National Front, just as it's bullies who happen to be indoctrinated by Saudi Wahhabism and call themselves ISIS - just as the local youth gang and the local adult organised criminals are all bully institutions. They all have 'identities' which are largely irrelevant but which can be used to obscure the truth. The Bullying is what is relevant.
It's not Americans, it's bullies who have occupied American State and Military office and abused that office.
Bullies can wear a flag, a uniform, an ideology, a justification – none of that alters the banal truth : they are bullies.
It's not The State Police Force, it's the bullies within that Institution - they are the people who need to be identified and removed.
It goes without saying that all these Institutions of Power and Governance have long been occupied by a ruling class and their acolytes, mercenaries and defenders.
We KNOW why bullies bully the strong. Because the strong present a threat. We know why they exploit the weak. Because they can get away with it. We know why they use manipulation and indoctrination, as well as economics, as weapons, to enrol our children into their mythologies. We all go through the enrolment process of Compulsory State Education.
The behaviour is the issue, not the 'explanations'.
Self defence has a logical, self defining limit and the logical limit is this: to stop the attacker from completing the attack so that the threat is removed and the defender can gain safety again.
No further.
Further than that and it becomes an attack.
So I see how those who claim to defend 'justly' can become adapted to the new state of at war-ness if they are not aware, in that they become adept at war, at ease with war and end up becoming oppressors in turn.
This happens in every war, and on all sides.
War does this. Nobody wins a war. Everybody loses.
War is not a situation with a good guy bad guy narrative.
Anyone who claims or promotes the idea that (a/any) war is a good guy bad guy situation is one or all of these:
a) utterly deluded,
b) not paying attention to the available evidence,
c) psychologically immature
d) part of the violence creation system
e) in the secret service
f) indoctrinated by school history texts
g) in the military, yet to experience combat
h) really, really naïve
i) making a fortune out of war
j) a religious fanatic
k) weapons salesman
l) a dolt
m) a poltroon
n) an ejit
0) a misinformed individual
p) someone who needs help
q) a behaviourally modified organism ( BMO)
r) a 'conditioned' human being needing compassion
s) another chance to change the world, one person at a time
t) me, some 40 years ago, when I left school, and believed that there was such a black and white reality to 'war' of which I knew only through my history texts and Hollywood movies.
In other words I knew nothing and did not know that I knew nothing. I thought I knew something, yet was unsure as to what that was. That was the intended outcome of 12 years of successful indoctrination.
Lack of awareness, peer pressure and compliance, loss of genuine autonomy
I am being honest here, I was as deeply socially, religiously indoctrinated and warped, and I remember that state and I cannot judge another human being for being in that state. I am not superior to any other. There are no sheeple.
I sat and watched ‘Dallas’ at the edge of my seat.
I believed Tony Blair was going to make a healthy difference.
I thought that war was good because of all the useful inventions that it generated and that ‘our’ side was always right.
I believed in the Catholic God and prayed feverishly to statues even as I was being abused by priests, brothers, nuns, lay teachers.
I once thought I was an ‘entrepreneur’. I once believed I was both better than or worse than others.
I have be strong enough to trust, and walk with and perhaps indicate ways of looking and living that can help that persons awareness and autonomy emerge. It will always be their choice, their autonomy in the matter than matters most.
Many people have done the same for me. I am ever grateful to all those people.
Millions are doing this every day without any press release or publicity.
If you gather ‘news’ mostly from the mainstream, without a history background or ways to check sources, examine evidence, you’d hardly know this. It’s aim is to mask as much of this humane activism as possible with a negative fear based view of humanity’s future, and by extension other human beings….
It’s a lot of lies and manipulations, with enough truths and reliable reporting to carry it off.
These are the two enemies of indoctrination - awareness and autonomy.
These are the targets of the bully – anyone showing signs of either of these qualities that might inspire or energise others to do likewise.
Think for yourself, question Authority, dig for the evidence, take responsibility as the autonomous connected social nurturant animal you are. I am.
Awareness and autonomy makes the Emperor naked.
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.
