Empathy, Truth and Power - Nature, Church and State

Empathy and Power are two mutually exclusive realities. The exercise of power over others destroys innate empathy, transforming it at best to sympathy (charidee) and at worst it becomes  a form of 'intelligence' gathering, the kind sociopaths engage in order to exert greater control over those they seek to control. They call it knowing your adversaries 'weaknesses'. 

The recent elections in the UK are an example of that lack of empathy, in that the Illegal war in Iraq and Afghanistan is not an election issue, nor is the bail-out of the irresponsibly greedy investment bankers.

The 'deficit is however a very important issue because all parties are agreed on one thing: the debt or deficit MUST be paid, and it will be paid by the ordinary citizen!

Another example is the Roman Catholic Church's response to the witnessing of so many traumatised people, survivors of a world wide Institutional system of Residential Schools, a system that was and remains Policy; as was the landing of three Black Hawk helicopters of the US 7th Calvary on the sacred burial grounds of Wounded Knee last week. The same 7th Calvary that slaughtered 350 unarmed men, women and children and had the temerity to call that bloody event a 'battle' worthy of a battle pennant. The landing was touted as a 'peace offering'. 

Think on the reaction were some Germans to do something similar, and drive a few tanks into Treblinka by way of an apology!

If anything defines this 'civilisation' it is the almost complete lack of empathy more than any other single factor.

Canadian Oil Company, Talisman Energy, is currently attempting to invade the lands of the Achuar people, to exploit the 'resources' that lie under their land, land they have lived on, and eaten of, for tens of thousands of years. They are wedded to the land in ways few 'civilised' people understand. Talisman will utterly destroy that  relationship, and is supported by the Columbian State, a state that is also 'advised' by Tony Blair, who also 'advises' JP Morgan, UBS and Israel and the Palestinian People. Tony Blair is a Roman Catholic convert, a man who placed his hand on his heart at the Chilcott Iraq Inquiry earlier this year, and told the world that he sincerely 'believed' that the Invasion of Iraq, which was proven to be illegal, was the 'right thing to do.'

His lack of empathy for the 1.3 million Iraqis who have died violently, the millions of Iraqi orphans, the hundreds of thousands of seriously maimed children apparently makes him a good candidate to advise states and huge multinational banking corporations.

As regards the sociopathic gathering of intelligence, marketing targeting infants and young children is but one example. 

Another is the vast dataset of first contact writings that described the indigenous peoples who lived in and on the lands taken for the Church and various States over the past 600 years or so. The data shows that the vast majority were egalitarian, peaceful, stable societies. Those who recorded their observations, for the most part honestly, were not fully aware of the use to which those works would be put.

The history reveals the intent. That intent is proven by the ways in which the Australian, Canadian, Thai, North American, Columbian and many other Governments are treating the first peoples of those lands those States lay claim to, even today,even as I write people are being killed for 'progress' and 'souls are being saved'. Indeed.

The rationalisation that converts 'virgin' territories  into 'leases' for exploration, mining and development is one of many rationalisations of absolutely irrational behaviour - the destruction of life for profit. 

Residential Schools, Magdalene Launderies, Uranium Mining, People Trafficking, Cocaine, Heroin, Tea, Coffee, Sugar, Ritalin, Lockheed, Mossad are all part of the same pattern of destroying life for profit.

Here's a very fine article on the History of Debt.

http://blog.longnow.org/2010/04/22/debt-the-first-five-thousand-years/

"Debt: The first five thousand years by David Graeber

Throughout its 5000 year history, debt has always involved institutions – whether Mesopotamian sacred kingship, Mosaic jubilees, Sharia or Canon Law – that place controls on debt’s potentially catastrophic social consequences. It is only in the current era, writes anthropologist David Graeber, that we have begun to see the creation of the first effective planetary administrative system largely in order to protect the interests of creditors.

What follows is a fragment of a much larger project of research on debt and debt money in human history. The first and overwhelming conclusion of this project is that in studying economic history, we tend to systematically ignore the role of violence, the absolutely central role of war and slavery in creating and shaping the basic institutions of what we now call “the economy”. What’s more, origins matter. The violence may be invisible, but it remains inscribed in the very logic of our economic common sense, in the apparently self-evident nature of institutions that simply would never and could never exist outside of the monopoly of violence – but also, the systematic threat of violence – maintained by the contemporary state.

Let me start with the institution of slavery, whose role, I think, is key. In most times and places..........."

Read it, it's easy enough to understand. Debt and Violence are lovers, entwined and inextricably linked. He ends with a positive note. I agree. It's not all bad, though it is pretty ugly in most places...

The truth is out - when people who have been isolated can come together, and share their stories, they begin to form a dataset that cannot be denied. This is what the Catholic Church Residential School revelations are showing. Witness reports are reliable, when they can be verified, as they are. Mainstream Society cannot ignore these data, without becoming complicit.


The isolation of the individual is Societies condom, protecting Society from it's most feared STD : solid truth disclosure.

I have a song about this : here

Tell the truth, YOUR truth; that's how you start to bring the system of power down.

Kindest regards 

Corneilius 

 Do what you love, it's your gift to universe

Empathy : a biological imperative.

Borage Flower, my garden, a haven of careless nurture

Empathy : Standard Definitions

The English word is derived from the Greek word ἐμπάθεια (empatheia), "physical affection, passion, partiality" which comes from ἐν (en), "in, at" + πάθος (pathos), "passion" or "suffering".

The term was adapted by Rudolf Lotz to create the German word Einfühlung ("feeling into") from which the English term is then more directly derived

Wynn Schwartz defines it thus: We recognize others as empathic when we feel that they have accurately acted on or somehow acknowledged in stated or unstated fashion our values or motivations, our knowledge, and our skills or competence, but especially as they appear to recognize the significance of our actions in a manner that we can tolerate their being recognized.

Most definitions express empathy in Anthropomorphic terms, limiting the word to a given cultural assumption.

I intend to extend those definitions to define empathy as a core biological function that enables a level of precision that for most of us is almost unimaginable.  


Biological Communication and Precision

Firstly we must to look at how cells communicate. The biology of intra-cellular and inter cellular communication operates from the atomic and ionic level upwards; that is to say at the frequency wavelength of any given atom with a variation of one electron, plus or minus.

It is clear from current scientific observation that all cells communicate; that all cells examine their immediate and distal habitats, gathering information and then acting on that information.

It is also clear that all cellular movement creates an electromagnetic pulse that is strongest closest to the cell, yet extends indefinitely as does a radio signal, getting weaker as it travels. The particular signal appears weaker as other signals, including any background ‘noise’ crowd it out.

Arrays of cells can detect what appear to us to be extremely tiny variations within the electromagnetic spectrum, by a process of averaging the combined signals from each cell, and by stochastic resonance, can use the background ‘noise’ to amplify the minute signal they are looking for.

And example is the sensitivity of the arrays of cells that run the length of a sharks side, that detect electrical energy.

If one took a 1.5 volt battery and place one terminal at the East coast of the Atlantic, and another at the West coast of the Atlantic, the shark would be capable of detecting that signal!

Bacteria exhibit a similar capability, which is extended as they gather in larger and larger self organising groups.

There are many, many examples of this level of precision in nature. In fact, given that natural living processes are built from the ‘grass-roots’, that is to say that minute bacteria are the fundamental building and metabolising agents of all living processes, we can begin to comprehend somewhat the amazing hidden universe of the communications and responses of the myriad of living organisms in any one habitat such as a forest or river or ocean; and even within one larger physical body, such as a grass plant, a tree, an animal of any kind which is a essentially collection of self organised organs all of which work together.  


The Human Being : a self organised bag of bacteria

For the human being, we understand now that our bodies are composed of approximately 1 trillion human cells. There are a further 90 trillion bacterial cells that co-habit within and around the human being. These cells are absolutely vital to the functionality and health of the human being. They are of course invisible to the eye. It is possible to state with some certainty that while the framework might appear human, the organism is bacterial.

Thus Empathy as a biological imperative means for me that I can to certain degree comprehend the fundamental dynamics of natural living processes that increase fecundity and generate abundance for all life – it is the innate and intrinsic ability to ‘feel into’ the habitat and all that dwell there to elicit information that is pertinent to the living processes themselves in terms of how they thrive, how they maintain a dynamic equilibrium within a constantly changing environment.

With regard to the human being, research clearly shows that there are two main poles or modes of human society – the egalitarian and the hierarchical, and that the egalitarian has been the predominant mode for most of our existence on Earth.

This makes sense to me, in that there is no proven, discernible hierarchy in the natural world.

Self organisation is the primary mode, involving co-operation from minute to macro habitats. So it is with our bodies. The western concept of ‘mind’ does not operate the body. We call it ‘automatic’ a mechanistic attribution. From what I have written above, it is clear that it is far from being ‘automatic’, rather it is the result of trillions of cells engaged in exploration, communication, and responsive action.

Furthermore the collective conscious intelligence of the bag of bacteria can be sensed by an individual if she or he choses to ‘lose his or her mind’, to set aside that acculturated sense of identity and to experience that range of sensings that emerge into awareness as a result.

Now I would like to look at empathy as a human attribute within the human societal context.  


The Empathetic Human Being : The Natural Child

A child gestates for 9 months, living inside his or her mother, as part of her, and is directly linked into her entire being – and lives in absolute empathy with the mother. Twins display an a profound level of empathy, and that emerges from their ‘living together’ in the womb. How could it be otherwise. Their cells are entraining, growing together at the same time.

We know from biochemistry that any chemicals the mother is exposed to are amplified by 100 times when they reach the developing child. This effect was discovered primarily through research into the effects of toxic chemicals such as DDT etc. which are now found in breast milk and in the foetus of most people on Earth, certainly ALL of those born to ‘civilisation’.

We know that the brain development of the baby within the womb is intense, that the growth and organisation of the brain is extraordinarily rapid and complex, and that learning occurs, that is to say that experience within the womb is written into the developing neural structures,

On birth, the baby moves from this deeply connected state, to one of disconnection, of separation.

It is crucial to understand that the new born baby has twice as many neurons in his or her brain as an adult, and that the learning process that writes neural pathways already underway in the womb, is geared for a rapid increase immediately on birth, and that this learning is experiential.

The first learning’s are to do with developing appropriate empathetic neural pathways for life outside the womb.  


Egalitarian Biology

In egalitarian societies the mother-child bond is retained as a primary focus from birth onwards, and extends throughout childhood, albeit modulating as the child grows and becomes independent. Thus the child is not separated from the mother, breast feeding is extended, skin to skin contact is maintained. The smells, sounds, movements, sights, tastes and other sensing’s all contribute to the development of appropriate neural pathways. A secure and happy child-mother bond results in hormonal cascades originating from the heart that increase the ability to make connections, to write neural pathways, in effect to learn.

Any stress the child experiences releases cortisol, the fight or flight hormone, which damages the neurons and inhibits the development of the appropriate neural pathways the child requires to complete his or her empathetic learning. Damage or Trauma caused at this stage is relatively difficult to address later on. However there are plenty of examples of children with neural damage in one area of their brain transferring the functions normally assigned to that area, language for example, to another area. This demonstrates the plasticity of the brain and of the child’s learning process, given the appropriate nurturing and environment. Recovery is possible.  


The Dominant Culture : a product of damaged empathetic neurology

In the current dominant culture, the child-mother bond is broken in many, many ways, and we see a profound lack of empathy distributed across all sectors of society, from the individual to the collective. Teachers who ‘need’ to ‘control’ a classroom; politicians who demonise an ‘enemy’ and orchestrate wars in which innocent people die and are maimed; religions that proscribe certain behaviours; marketing that resolves around stereotype; racism, sexism, ageism, scientific reductionism, vivisection all require a profound lack of empathy. The money system that coerces us all to work for money to buy food produced for profit so as to enrich a tiny percentage of the people above and beyond all others; the hubris of the elites, the discrimination learned in school and amongst the divided poor all depend upon a lack of empathy that is practically hard-wired.

Colonisation is the process of extirpating the natural societies from any given land base, and replacing that lived experience with ‘progress’ … and is an expression of lack of empathy at it’s core; a lack of empathy for the people and for the land itself, from which those people emerge.

The current ‘crisis’ of the Church, that paragon of Virtue, demonstrates such a profound loss of empathy, that even with the evidence in the clear daylight, those who identify with it, both lay and clerical even still seek to assign blame to anything other than the Church itself, and characterise those who are bringing the sordid evidence to light as their ‘enemies’. And so it goes.

As I pointed out above, empathy is the ability to sense or feel into the world within which one is embedded, and is a skill-set that is intrinsic to all cells and all groupings of cells. It is absolutely a bio-logical imperative of all living beings, and extends across species. It is the basis for appropriate behaviours which enable all life to thrive, to sustain life beyond mere ‘survival’.  


The Natural Child : Natural Society

For a natural human being empathy is a core quality, one that enables an accurate ‘reading’ of the habitat, and indeed of other human beings within one’s community. This ‘reading’ is essential to egalitarian ways of living.

The ability to sense what any action one might think upon might have in terms of repercussions of those subject to that action, in terms of feeling that within oneself, is a far greater driver of healthy behaviour that any set of rules or morals. Indeed, rules and morals emerge from a community that lacks empathy. The anthropological research shows this time and time again.

The ability to include rather than exclude information, to gather the widest possible data-set for any experience though sharing perceptions, observations and other sensing’s as well as stored memories is a crucial to the well being of nature based community.

There are many examples of this behaviour that emerge from groups of living beings working together, from bacteria to ants, bees swarming, flocks of birds in flight, shoals of fish and more. It is likely that this level of empathy, of natural precision inheres in all living processes.

It goes a long way to explain the precision and diversity of nature, without recourse to mechanistic explanations which are both crude and inadequate to the task to describing what transpires in living processes, and are most often the result of projections of a certain mindset onto natural processes.


The Heart as a cognitive, sentient organ of perception


Empathy as described above involves the full range of somata-sensory abilities inherent to the human body, and the primary organ in this regards is the heart, amongst other centers such as the 'gut' and various parts of the body, including the standard sensory organs.

The heart is linked directly to the seat of the brain, the region called the amygdala, and the hippocampus and other areas... by 80,000 single neurons (that is there are no breaks or synapses between the heart and the brain) and signals from the heart reach the brain for processing before even visual signals - thus much is 'felt' even before it is registered.... This has been 'measured' scientifically and is now proven beyond any doubt.

The heart is an electromagnetic transmitter and receiver, emitting an electromagnetic field that is 5000 times stronger than the brains magnetic field, and that encompasses the entire body and nearby surroundings, with an ever extending range, peaking from the skin to about 8 feet, then trailing off into infinity. The heart receives inputs from that immediate area, and can also focus onto and amplify weaker electromagnetic signals.

The heart regulates the brain and all other parts of the body by releasing hormones known as DHEAs and others. This regulation is crucial to the well being of the physical body, and is undermined by focussing on the brain/mind as the seat of consciousness, which forces the body to entrain to the brain and the concept of mind, which is usually the product of  acculturation, and overlays the natural stasis. The old usage of the heart as in 'heart-felt', 'hearty', 'heart broken'  etc etc suggests that in times past there was an awareness of the locus of consciousness in the heart.


While most of us born into the dominant culture would find it quite difficult be truly precise in noticing and determining incoming signals to the heart from the environment, and from other co-habitants, human and non-human, it is absolutely possible to retrain ourselves to do so, though this does indeed take some time, possibly decades. Nonetheless it is a worthwhile path of self exploration and learning. 


To start this process, one needs only to breath gently into one's heart,  and allow the 'mind' to silence, and to sense the entrainment of the body to the heart. If one is looking for information, one needs only to ask "what or how does this feel?" and to allow all the insights, images, senses that follow just to be, noticing them. The feel of being heart centered is deeply pleasant, and grows with practice. It is extremely beneficial for one's physical health.


For further exploration of heart awareness I suggest the Heart Math Institute and the book "The Secret Teaching of Plants : The intelligence of the Heart in the direct perception of nature" BY Steve Harrod Buhner and googling the term 'heart coherence' and 'HRV + Heart'.  A research paper on Intuition and the role of the heart in processing intuition.

And here's a song to go with this piece, it's called The Heart Song.

http://www.reverbnation.com/play_now/song_1171480

Kindest regards

Corneilius

Thank you for reading this blog.

"Do what you love, it is your gift to universe."

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Do What You Love, It's Your Gift to Universe

As far as I know I thought of this phrase myself, back in 1995, after reflecting upon the perfection of universe.

How everything in universe (that we know of) IMPROVES the habitat for all life, how everything in universe does what it does SO WELL, so precisely, maintaining dynamic equilibrium.

How we are the only species on earth who live with constant background personal and external anxiety as 'normal'.... which being the exception proves the rule : that the natural child, like any seed, is innately capable of developing his/her mastery of self so that he/she too improves the habitat for all life, in the course of her/his chosen path in life and day to day activities on this Earth.... and if innate, then it is children who must surely lead the way in their process of learning and adults who assist, sharing their experience when requested ...

A process I see leading towards a natural human community that improves the habitat for all life AND enjoys life all the more deeply, empathically connected to the very process of life itself, moment by moment. Bliss. Dynamic Bliss not the Perfect Bliss of myth and seduction.

The inspiration to abandon the tuse of the definitive article before 'universe' comes from Buckminster Fuller. He correctly pointed out that using the definitive article before universe creates two seperate entities : the speaker, and the universe. That seperation is illusion.

Being oneself, honestly, transparantly therefore completes oneself in universe and completes universe too (though universe is NEVER incomplete), and one is yet another part of the precise dynamic equilibrium that is natural life in motion.

That is, in my heart at least, the best response to meet the gift of life itself and the wonder of experiencing life through the human body and mind.

And all the more reason to simply stop those activities engaged by adults such as war, oppression, abuse of environment and the conditioning of children.

Kindest regards

Corneilius

Do what you love, it's your gift to universe

Somehow, the ice has to break,

Somehow, the ice has to break, the illusion has to be penetrated, the conditioned reflexive defence responses must be seen for what they are. Industrial Society is a (disease) State that is expanding, thrashing the habitat of all living creatures, that is wilfully ignoring the costs to itself and others, in much the same manner as a crack addict destroys his or her body…

It is one thing to lay blame for this at policies, industrial practices, corporations, weapons manufacturers, bankers. It is another to seek to understand the core psychology of those who implement all of the above, and those who comply with instructions (authority) of the implementers.

And it is this second option that is necessary for any healthy change to become a possibility.

Contrasting the fundamental processes and facts of nature with those of Industrial Society, I see the following :

1. In Nature everywhere is food….. All beings receive what they need in order to thrive, there is food everywhere, even though the supply of food may have seasonal variations….

1.a In Industrial Society food is restricted to those who can buy food with money … thus all people must earn money in order to buy food. The ability to earn money is tightly controlled, with an elite 1% of people controlling the distribution of money to other 99%. These variations are imposed. Poverty is invention.

2. In Nature everything that is excess to metabolism is returned to the habitat in a form that others can metabolise, and the processes that enable this occur from the macro to the micro. This means that life is constantly being nourished on all levels. It is the basis for the continuity of Natural Life on Earth…

2.a In Industrial Society, excess is either hoarded as wealth or discarded and turned into toxic waste, thus robbing the environmental system of nutrients. That can only have one possible outcome.

3. In Nature, all young have the innate ability to learn what is needed in terms of physical mastery of self, intimate knowledge of the habitat such that each can thrive. The struggle for survival is merely a projection of Industrial Society onto Nature.

3.a In Industrial Society, it is assumed that all young have to be carefully conditioned, that they are fundamentally incapable of learning what they need to learn to thrive, that they are effectively blanks slates upon which society should write it’s own script. This is called ‘education’….

4. In Nature struggles to the death are rare, apart from when one form is eating another.

4.a In Industrial Society, struggles to the death are a regular occurrence, most often highly organised, and most often orchestrated as a means of establishing and defining power centres, known as States.

All of the above can be said to be obvious.

So how can it be that the obvious is ignored by so many people, such that 99% of the peoples living in Industrialised States comply with the status quo, and seem almost powerless to effect a recognition of the facts, never mind to effect realistic change?

The Myopia of Emotional Blindness.

It has to be the case that the human being is but one of many life-forms living on Earth. And that the source for the human being is Nature. The human being is a natural phenomenon, a natural being, part of the wild. The cells that make up the individual writing this or reading this essay are natures creation, they are natural and wild - yet the thought processes and behaviours of the collection of trillions of cells that is each human body are often not natural - they are the result of cultural conditioning.

The conditioning processes we are exposed to in Industrial society reflect the needs of Power and the use of Power. They do not reflect the processes of nature nor do they reflect the needs and processes of a natural human being. Thus the vast majority of the people of Industrial Society are exposed to conditioning processes that effectively de-natures the individual, alienates the natural self, and replaces the natural identity with another identity. That identity is one that serves Power.

This process has to be pretty robust, and it is, in that people will live 100 years of life and never realise that they are nature at the cellular level - they will live within the confines of the prevailing mind-set, imposed by Power.

The one core element that all this hinges upon is inculcating emotional blindness in the young at a very early age, in such a way that it is all but invisible to the individual and to the community at large.

The young must quickly become emotionally blind to the value of their own feelings and insights, a process that has to cause some pain and at the same time carried out in a manner that ensures each individual will suppress awareness of their pain. This is one of the basics of extreme physical training - be for animals or human beings.

Pain is recognised, yet at the same time accepted, worn like a badge of honour. This does not occur in nature - pain is information, and it tells creatures what to avoid or it lets them know there is something wrong. An animal or human being that is capable of ignoring his or her own pain is one that will continue to make serious errors, ad infinitum, errors that the trainer sees as desirable results.

And so it is with kindergarten, primary school, secondary school and beyond. Students learn to modify their behaviour so as to conform to the requirements of these institutions, by virtue of pain and pain avoidance. Shame, public humiliation, physical violence have all been used as teaching aids within the compulsion schooling systems. These days while physical violence is less common, shame and humiliation, the hidden results of ‘testing’ are rife. There is also the terror of ‘peer pressure’, much of it driven by commercial propaganda.

The lesson is conform or be outcast.

Outcast to where? The only place left to go is nature - your nature, your inner intelligence and sensing. Within. This has been the wisdom of the ages, and indeed it is the best place to start.

That wisdom has seemed as though it were alien to many in the west. When various ‘teachers’ and ‘gurus’ have spoken of this, many in the west have found it very difficult to ‘get’ exactly what was meant, we are easily confused by arcane language due to the conditioning processes we underwent and so looked inside, yet saw images gleaned from externals ….false images which reading and watching others produced. We have become emotionally blind to our own realities and replaced them with myths and fears of others.

The personal inner world is not of such images, it is of the honest feelings and sensings we have been told to avoid, to fear. Those who seek to control others know that that honesty is their un-doing.

And so we can start the journey by asking ourselves to remember our first responses to teachers and domineering adults. We all have at one time or another looked at the adults and thought “You are wrong!”. We were right. And thus honesty, fearlessly opening up to how we really feel, is the key.

Clean, happy organic food, grown for nourishment rather than purely profit helps greatly.

Reducing or eliminating the toxic influences of mainstream media, TV, movies and fear inducing conspiracies is also useful.

The point is to get to the original feelings, insights of ourselves, and to draw those out, to bring them into the light that they might once again threaten those who seek control over our very being, by rejecting utterly such controls, by trusting our innate life urges to love, to live well, to enjoy being who we are, as we find ourselves and to grow and change from there, exploring this existence with our own personal resources, which are immense.

There is room for hope, yet not in externals. We have the seeds for freedom in every wild cell of our being. Call to the wild in yourself, the natural, the honest child and follow the clues.

Here is a loopstation version of my song, Peace of Mind, in which I sing of the ways in which the natural peace within can find it's expression in the external world.

http://www.corneilius.net/acousticmusic/mp3/livelooppeaceofmind.mp3

It can also be found on my reverbnation profile and player, a shorter version....

Kindest regards

Corneilius

Do what you love, it's your gift to universe

Teachers, Stress, a good income and compliance!

I woke up this morning with thoughts about the pressures teacher friends of mine had been living with. These thoughts were stimulated by a recent BBC Panorama expose on 'care' for the elderly and infirm, which showed 'carers' as being untrained, under pressure and cutting corners whilst earning just above the minimum wage. I was enraged that they'd continue to work under such circumstances, when they daily witness the distress this causes to their 'clients'. I wondered how they could justify continuing that work in that way. They could of course lay the blame at the foot of the organisations they worked for, but that is simply not good enough.

In the same way, those policemen who assaulted the climate camp bear individual and collective responsibility for the harm they have caused. No-one can argue with that.

And then this report came out in the media today :

More teachers 'suffer breakdowns'

Teachers' mental health is increasingly being put at risk by the pressures heaped on them during school time, union leaders said.

http://uk.news.yahoo.com/21/20090412/tuk-more-teachers-suffer-breakdowns-6323e80.html

Now given the stresses that teachers experience AND the stresses they observe in the children in their 'care', all they can do is ask for more money? How dumb, how emotionally blind are these people? Why don't they strike to change the system? Do they feel that the income (average £25 grand a year) is worth all that stress, to themselves and the children? How stupid is that? How dumb? Very.

With regard to dumbed down people, one must understand what one is dealing with.

John Taylor Gattos work "The Underground History of American Education" and "Weapons of Mass Instruction" detail the historical processes behind the imposition of enforced schooling (compulsory state education) as the essential tool for the dumbing down the people, so that the Banking and Industrial owners could direct society and craft a predictable mass of people. His work is illuminating. Gatto went to the Archives of the great foundations and their acolytes and unearthed such pearls as the following :

“The primary purpose for government is to be a vehicle for the rich to get their hands into our pockets” Buckminster Fuller in Grunch of Giants

“The purpose of the foundation was to use the power of money, not to raise the level of education…, as was widely believed at the time, but to influence the direction of that education… The object was to use the classroom to teach attitudes that encourage people to be passive and submissive to their rulers. The goal was – and is – to create citizens who were educated enough for productive work under supervision but not enough to question authority or seek to rise above their class. True education was to be restricted to the sons and daughters if the elite. For the rest, it would be better to produce skilled workers with no particular aspirations other than to enjoy life.” - G Edward Griffin in The Creature from Jekyll Island, on Rockefeller’s General Education Board, founded 1903

“In our dream, we have limitless resources, and the people yield themselves with perfect docility to our melding hands. The present educational conventions fade from our minds; and, unhampered by tradition, we work our own good upon a grateful and responsive rural folk.” - from 1st occasional paper of General Education Board, The Country School of Tomorrow

The City Academies, Blairs baby, the one that cried "Education, Education, Education" is the first stage in handing our children over to private corporate interests, free of democratic or local oversight. For example, AEON, the Pentagons largest buildings management/ facilities contractor is managing 9 of these City Academies in London.

On a deeper psychological and personal level Alice Millers work 'The Roots of Violence in Child Rearing Practices" traces the history of how the elites infected the people with their own child-rearing practices, which were designed to ensure that those children who 'inherited' POWER would wield it without remorse. In essence they needed to ensure a certain level of emotional blindness in their children to ensure they would be as brutal and venally corruptible as they themselves were.

Her work explains why in Nazi Germany many 'good people' complied with the system of brutality and lived in denial of the reality, in much the same way the people of the UK have done with regard to Kosovo, Afghanistan and Iraq.

And it explains how 'good people' become compliant partners with Government in the dumbing down of our children.

'nuff said!

WAKEY WAKEY TEACHERS!


Kindest regards

Corneilius

Do what you love, it's your gift to universe

Unity, Empathy and Diversity.

Unity, Empathy and Diversity.

Many people are talking about A New World Order, and the imposition of the ‘one good way’ to do things.

From religions to corporations to ideologies through to governments, many are espousing, what appears to me at least, an singular or monotheistic approach to how humanity ought best ‘advance’ in the near and distant future.

“Our way is the best and only way!” is the common cry.

“Democracy!”, shouts “George Bush!”

“No Condoms!”, squeals the Pope!

“Sugababes and I-pods”, blare the media adverts! “

”Free Trade!” , shouts Gordon Brown!

“Education, Education, Education!”, shouted Tony Blair!

“Pharmaceuticals!” trill the medical Authorities!

“Caesareans or forceps”, roar the birthing surgeons!

“More Exams!”, bluster the Educators!

“Off with their heads!”, scream the fundamentalists!

All of these fanatics (and lets be clear here - they are fanatics) are, it would appear, lacking in at least one quality essential to a healthy and enjoyable human life : true empathy. They also harbour a deep distrust in native intelligence.

They all seem to take the view that there is no real need for diversity, no need to trust localised intelligence, no room for assuming that those on the ground in different places may have the ability to adapt to those unique sets of circumstance in ways that are essentially their own. In ways that are essentially successful and sustainable.

An example is the comparison between the range of types of apples available in supermarkets and the range of apples to be found in the English countryside.

Supermarkets - 6 to ten, English countryside 14,000. This can be applied across the board to all foodstuffs. And all habitats and climates. Why so few when we have so many to chose from? Why not have the local varieties in the local supermarkets? Duh! Instead they will seek to grow a few species in concentrated areas, pick and pack them, then ship them to their distribution centres and sort and pack them again, then ship them back to their shops! And in order to make this process cheap they squeeze the prices the producer gets, making it more difficult for producers to keep the local variety! Doh!

What I am saying here is that local adaptation is driven by local knowledge that can only be gained through intimacy, and that the universal imposition of ‘the one good way’ is essentially a profound lack of intimacy. Or empathy.

Empathy is described as the capacity to recognize or understand or feel or sense another's state of mind or emotion. It is often characterized as the ability to "put oneself into another's shoes", or to in some way experience the outlook or emotions of another being within oneself. It can also be used to describe sensitivity to the nature of the environment. A sensitivity that embraces the basic scientific method in itself, for it is fundamentally an observation of the factual world. Thus theories about what is toxic or otherwise in food are likely to be lethal. Knowledge is required.

Nature is extraordinarily good at the localised unique adaptation process and produces more than enough food, water and shelter for the billions of creature and plants that abide across our home, the surface of planet Earth. There is no scientific evidence nor any reasonable way to assume that human beings are anything but of nature. And therefore innately and perfectly well equipped for that localised adaptive process.

So why is there this incessant demand for a unitary way? And what evidence is there to support it’s evangelists assertions?


Kindest regards

Corneilius

Do what you love, it's your gift to universe