Showing posts with label evil. Show all posts
Showing posts with label evil. Show all posts

We are told the Taliban are Evil. They are not alone: Johnson, Blair and Bush et al, they are all in the same club.

Greta Thunberg wrote:

"You say you hear us, and that you understand the urgency... if you really understood the situation and still kept on failing to act, then you would be evil, and that I refuse to believe."


I have to say, she'd better believe it. We all should, really. 

It is not a negative approach to acknowledge harmful behaviour as harmful. It is, in fact, a hugely positive step as it is the first step towards resolving the problems caused by the harmful behaviour.

Our collective, cultural and individual refusal to admit, to acknowledge, to accept and integrate the evidence all around us, to understand what the corruption, the bloody wars, the environmental destruction really means - the evidence that our rulers and their sponsors are engaged in evil behaviours - is our weakest point. 

We dare not go there.

We will not be able to generate the international co-operation needed to create and apply adaptive strategies that help meet the evolving dynamics of climate change, that cease harmful toxifying industrial and agricultural practice, that start the processes of repair and recovery until we confront and cease the war mongering. This is clear. All war is evil, all war is abuse of power.

We install eco-lightbulbs hoping that will be enough. We recycle, we re-use, fingers crossed. We hope and we pray. We drive a Tesla car. Faint hope. Delusion.

Everyday evil is not dramatic, it is banal. It wears a suit, a neatly ironed shirt, sports boyishly tousled hair, wears a charming smile to mask lying eyes. Evil is looking at a bank balance or a power advantage and judging that to have more value than a human life, than the environment, than the well being of others.  That decision is evil. Adopting that stance and maintaining it is evil.

Evil is normalised.

Evil is normalised, so much so we do not see it. In order to see evil, we must know what it is. 

Evil is consciously allowing, enabling or otherwise permitting avoidable un-necessary harm in order to maintain wealth advantage and power disparity over others. Externalised costs are the very definition of evil. Somebody else pays the price.

It is evil to test cosmetic formulations on captive animals in order to assess how much of the toxic compound can be used, or what toxicity levels one can get away with human use of the product. 

There is no need whatsoever to use toxic chemical compounds in any products for use by any person, except for profit. Those tests are protecting future profits, rather than protecting human beings. The captive animals bear untold and intolerable suffering, for shareholder gain. That is evil behaviour.

Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Yemen, Palestine, Vietnam

Excellent, honest and insightful interview with MP Clive Lewis, an Afghan War veteran who shows more humane leadership in this segment, than Sir Keir Starmer has shown since he joined the Labour Party.



Twenty years of war upon Afghanistan, so much violence, nothing to show for it except the prospect of more violence.

Honest history in all our schools would go a long way towards preventing the grass roots population from being manipulated or groomed into accepting war as a tool of State policy, and would undoubtedly help to reduce Xenophobia, Racism and Misogyny.

Hypocrisy

Blair, a proven liar and war criminal walks free, on a generous state pension, whilst Julian Assange, an honest journalist,  rots in a prison cell, held under false charges.

Afghanistan never needed the USUK or NATO to guide it's progress. 

As Naomi Aldort wrote: "Our children do not need us to shape them, they need us to respond to who they are."

The same applies to sovereign countries. Conquest, NeoColonialism, and the urge to force other cultures to adopt the culture of a dominating State is a negative malign influence, and undermines global efforts at peace and co-operation.

The truth about the Establishments hatred of Corbyn is this : the evidence of the past 20 years implicates a significant cohort of the English Establishment, as war criminals, who prosecuted those awful horrific wars, and who knew what they were doing was both amoral and illegal, though it did enable a massive transfer of wealth from ordinary tax payers to already obscenely wealthy oligarchs who donated heavily to the politicians, buying influence. That is evil behaviour.

Lowkey has a spot on take here.


That is a dishonourable legacy.

Evil is human action, human behaviour, more, nothing less. That means it is tractable, it is something we can confront, challenge and impede, and indeed prevent. Here Rory Stewart lays out a perspective that criticises the action of one American president, without taking the whole into consideration. He even suggests maintaining a foreign military presence in other people's lands is a virtue. It is not a virtue.
It is an evil. But Stewart's eloquence masks the evil, by pointing at just one aspect of the evil. He is correct that the way this withdrawal has been handled has exposed Afghanistan's civilian population and civil infrastructure to greater risk than need be - but he does not acknowledge that the USUK/NATO presence in Afghanistan is also a much greater evil. 

The unexciting banality of everyday evil.

War is almost always about someone making a killing.

$10,000 of stock evenly divided among America’s top five defence contractors on September 18, 2001 — the day President George W. Bush signed the Authorization for Use of Military Force in response to the 9/11 terrorist attacks — and faithfully reinvested all dividends, it would now be worth $97,295.

"Several commentators address this dynamic in the 2005 documentary “Why We Fight,” about a warning that President Dwight Eisenhower issued about the military-industrial complex. Former CIA contractor and academic Chalmers Johnson states, “I guarantee you, when war becomes that profitable, you’re going to see more of it."


Concentrated Wealth is the most powerful political collective among the developed nation states. 

War is not cheap.

The political power of Concentrated Wealth is based upon externalising costs.

Somebody else pays the price. Leveraging power to dump the costs onto others is evil.

Boris Johnson's behaviour evil. Read a list of his decisions that burdened others with the cost of his egoic avarice.

Tony Blair's behaviour is evil. There were no WMD in Iraq, and even if there had been, the War of Aggression against Iraq would still have been amoral, and illegal.

Jacob Rees-Mogg behaviour is evil. Food banks are indeed graciousness, yet the policies that created the need were one's he pursued, with others for a decade. Uplifting indeed!

The behaviour of Taliban  1.0 was evil. Theocracy always is.

The behaviour of the Saudi Regime are evil. Theocracy always is. Others pay the price.

The behaviour of the Vatican is Evil. Theocracy as a political hegemon always is. They protect their power at immense cost.

The grooming of 'Incels' as a violent political misogynist movement is evil. Grooming always is.

behaviour of NATO is evil. War is dishonour on every measure. Nobody wins in war. War is a losers enterprise.

Nigel Farage's behaviour is evil. Grooming always is. Exploiting vulnerabilities in other people is evil.

Keir Starmer's behaviour is evil. Sending children into schools, to spread the virus, in spite of the available evidence proving that it was unsafe to do so. No ifs, no buts.

Jacinda Ardern's behaviour is not evil. She places empathy at the centre of her policy decision making.

Donald Trump's behaviour is evil. The art of the steal, the grift, the con, the grooming of vulnerable people.

Obama's behaviour as an American President prosecuting multiple wars  is evil. Drone warfare expanded, killing more and more civilians. Funding violent militia in Libya and Syria. Supporting war against Yemen. And he is charming, urbane has a wide smile. So what?

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's behaviour is not evil. Empathy for the vulnerable modulates her policy deliberations. She seeks to prevent harm.

Darren Grimes behaviour is evil.  Grooming other people through their vulnerability always is.

Noam Chomsky's behaviour is not evil. He has always spoken truth to Power, properly researched and ruthlessly accurate, he has never faltered.

Katy Hopkins's behaviour is evil. Grooming always is. 

Patrick Fagan's behaviour is evil. Grooming always is. A psychologist who misuses his knowledge to exploit vulnerable people.

Gabor Mate's behaviour is not evil. He presents the evidence of socially induced trauma's adverse affects on vulnerable folk, to raise awareness and suggest  ways to recovery and prevention. He does this diligently.

Most ordinary folk, most of humankind are not evil.

Most of us ordinary folk are caught in the cross fire of systemic evil, and most of  us are trying out very best to get by, doing the best we can by ourselves and their families. Most of us ordinary people are innocents thrust into this mess by accident of birth. There's also a significant cohort who are actively trying to counter evil, attenuate the impacts of evil, a constituency of helpers and protectors and healers and pragmatic activists.

And yes, there are evil folk among us too.


The US and UK Military Command (one could argue - all military commands) are, at best, at a rather long stretch, and I am being really, really generous here, decent enough people who are manipulated by evil people, if not evil in and of themselves.

If, at best, they are decent people manipulated by evil, then they are not that intelligent, they are not that brave, they are not really courageous nor are they worthy of their status. They enable the evil rather than challenge the evil. Whose freedoms do they wage war for?.

These people and these powerful hierarchy of violence organisations are all examples of liars and lies that are institutionalised to permit avoidable harms to happen, which do not prevent harm at source, which do so for their personal and institutional gain.

I do understand that for combat veterans this is a huge problem.

Imagine the trauma of extensive violent combat, tour after tour of shocking violence, carrying that, enduring that because you believe you were serving a decent cause? But it was a lie.

To admit that you were manipulated and groomed into performing the most horrific acts of violence, repeatedly, under the pretence that they were fighting for 'freedom' would be too much to bear, alone. 

To turn to civilians who praise 'the sacrifice of our brave men and women' and say 'you are being misled by really evil people' who misled me and convinced me to do intolerable harm to others, my hands are bloodied, my spirit is tainted, my mind seared with agonising violence, my heart is broken.

To say to civilians, to those who love you, that your praise is a denial of what really happens, your concept of our bravery is a lie, your desire to believe in that lie no longer protects us - that is too much to bear.

For us civilians to hear that, to bear the burden with the combat veterans, to accept some shared responsibility for that immense sorrow, to admit that our brothers and sisters never fought for our freedoms, to admit we too were manipulated and exploited, and to understand that we too must sit with the trauma, the pain, the sorrow, the grief and then we must resolve to take action to prevent this from ever happening again.

That is courage above and beyond anything we know of.

There is immense grief here. Immense loss. Unspeakable pain and sorrow, masked by stoic perseverance and resilience, obscured by coping and mere survival - all of which is exploited wilfully by really evil people and really evil organisations.

If  the Taliban are evil, they are no more or less so than the USUK and NATO organisations they have been waging war with for the past 20 years,

The only way to cease war is to wage peace, and peace is more than the absence of war.

Peace can only start with the absence of lies. We must face the truth, which is simple, complex and is also complicated. None of this will be easy. Doing nothing is not easy either.


Kindest regards

Corneilius

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Is/was George Osborne Bush The Third Evil?

I was asked this question.

"Is George Bush Evil?"

Not really. And this does not let him off the hook. Not a bit of it.

I think there's enough evidence to suggest that Institutions, which are rigidly hierarchical, and violent, and are populated by people, whose actions according to the Instituition's rules, using powers accrued to the Institution, have an adverse affect on many other people, then all those people become to some degree Institutionalised, or conditioned, more or less 'adapted' to a sick society.

And that this can lead to individual. group and mass culturally accepted adverse behavio
ural issues, related to fear, power and control, which become 'normalised' in the eyes of those growing up into it. What his or her parents, siblings and extended family and community do, how they behave, is the model the child observes, which the biology has mandated as fundamentally empathic in nature.. It's common sense.

Due to historical influences beyond our parents ability to avoid, we were born where we were born. No plan.

And in that situation this could happen to anyone.

Where we are born in this life is an accident of birth.

Fate, not that I subscribe to the idea, could not be so cruel to so many, for so long.

Our long gatherer-hunting-gardener history goes back 1.5 millions years minimum, probably way longer back in time... we don't really know.

As it happens, that history stands as a testimony to Homo Empathicus as a biologically sound organism.

Biologically speaking, not one of us was, at birth, expecting this Society - based on our biology, as in what our biology tells us we ought to be expecting for optimal health. Which is nature's way, after all.

Yet in a traumatising environment, and I see the Dominant Civilisation as a traumatising situation, one that is set in course and maintained by Power and Influence, where are the tools to prevent this cycle from being repeated? ..... for the benefit of all concerned?

It's not rocket science.


Judgements as to 'evil' I find to be self limiting. For me the criteria is 'does this action nourish the world in which it occurs?' Nature says 'does this work, in the present and in the future?' It's that kind of criteria ......

Without mitigating the human emotional realities of the trauma, this thought helps me to find for myself a balance. I understand the shock, rage, horror, revulsion .. the healthy feelings of a sensitive human being facing such adverse behaviour and outcomes. It hurts. It sears the psyche. Pain IS physical.


And yet I sense too that under the very personal as well as the Legal Institutional desire to punish, there is grief.

The ubiquitous urge for revenge, the hyper outrage, the almost religious judge-mentalism of peer pressure, where group identity is hardened, and which is fundamental to political strategy, all of these repeated patterns creates a protective skin, neural pathways habituated to that state, the need to control certain feelings (which contain key information which that person needs) masks amongst other things, a deep grief, loss, scars and fears ... and the urge to push it all away has to be strong, such is the pain of the grief. 

Making myths concrete serves to maintain this control.

That's not to say that the use of violence is not Institutionalised in Hierarchical Societies like ours in a quite conscious and intentional manner. Which is quite an 'evil' action to undertake....


It's all quite sad.

Especially with so much testimony to the natural intelligence and beauty of human birth, infancy and early development, so we KNOW what the natural happiness bench-mark is.

All the more reason, as a conscious adult, a mature human being to engage in looking for practical pathways through this life (a gift of nature) and through observing the lives of others, finding those actions and behaviours and other material realities that nurture that empathic nature our biology mandates.

That's a long game.
With regard to people who engage in extremes of abuse through which they harm other people, children, communities, etc... there are aspects of the range of learned manipulative behaviours which are well developed in such harming people, as survival tools are generally, and in the case of abusive people, manipulation is the key tool to maintain control and mask the outcomes of the behaviour, with an inner coldness, outer charm/warmth and many more subtle characteristics. 

ALL these qualities are so at odds with the human biological mandate - homo empathicus - as to be biologically dysfunctional. What baby is born, with this in mind? None!

And the results when harming people like that organise, or build a structure, that structure will reflect their psychology, and if it is institutionalised, it makes the illusion that psychology as being the 'best' psychology more 'concrete', set in stone, so to speak.

Some folk call it '"The way it is.'" and they sigh. It does seem immense. Of course it does. It is.


The larger the organisation, empire the more people whose lives are affected in ways that disrupt the natural development of the natural human biological mandate - homo empathicus - . The more real it's self created myths, the wars they fight for peace, the stronger it's grip on the psyche of those who have no choice but to try to live through it.

The myths aren't real, of course. The myths are lies, and so the 'proof' is manufactured, war is intentional, business like and the cycles of violence continue. Institutionalised. Institutionalising all who come under it's sway.


Institutionalisation is a process that is, in and of itself, dehumanising. It's the de-humani-fication of interpersonal relationships, where everything is a matter of 'form'. Not so much formalities, as life limited by objectification, the key ingredient in Corporate Ideology.

An object is a 'thing', which can be manipulated, as cheaply as possible, so as to generate an outcome that profits the manipulator's boss. His or her owner. An object can also be discarded, Expendable. Fodder. 

Statistics and registers  can be used to turn people into 'things', separate objects, which are then manipulated and used by different factions to make spurious, and often opposing generalisations about how best to organise 'things', (without reference to the pathways the 'things' themselves might self organise, naturally .....). 

And whenever a faction is in Power, they impose their psychology on the people.

It's insane!

It can be VERY cruel and harmful.


Until someone says "Does it really have to be this way?"

And tries to answer it, through diligent yet not too onerous study, honesty and with an open mind and heart, and a healthy respect for scepticism.

Kindest regards

Corneilius

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


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