Power, decision making, ethics and humane living: a choice

Interesting ideas are a starting point for this necessary discourse.

There ought to be a place in Parliament for some pensioners, disabled folk, some children and teenagers, and other vulnerable people, providing a commentary on the proceedings, a bit like the two old geezers at the end of the muppet show, humorous but with more bite.

PR, NOTA, and many other progressive and humane practices regarding a humane democracy are all possible.

Ask the disabled what they need, let them decide on policy on the disabled.

Ask the 'disruptive children' in schools what they need, let them inform how they are helped.

Ask the renters what they need, and let them inform how renting is regulated.

Ask mothers what they need, and then let those needs inform policy on family and community.

Ask elders what they need, and let those needs inform policy on family and community.

Ask Survivors of trauma and criminal abuse what they need, and let that inform policy.

Tell the banks what we need of their services, and ensure they comply to the 'market' : those who need their services (apart from criminal organisations, speculative betters etc etc )

Tell the police how they ought to relate to troubled youth, as carers as well as protectors, and let the troubled youth inform how they are to be treated.

Ask the Military how they can best help Society, and let that inform how they are deployed (Chavez did this in his 'exile' in the remote parts of Venuzeula, and directed the military under his command to build infrastructure, schools, wells, etc etc... which built his base from which he re-emerged to engage in Democratic Governance.)

There are a myriad of genuine examples of all of this kind of democratic behaviour that demonstrate it is both practical and effective.

We, the people, are the majority tax payers, and we need to take up the responsibility of how we organise our part of Society and not devolve that to others. We ought to employ some to do what we decide, not vote for others to decide for us. That's infantile.

The current political paradigm represents peoples fears more often than their needs or 'interests' as a means to manipulate the electorate, to gain Power over the people.

A truly representative figure head is a spokesperson carrying the message of those who have decided. Not a leader.

We need to become leaders who can select spokespersons, who can employ civil servants and politicians and direct them.

There was a time when those skills lived within the community. Amongst people known who could be trusted because if they bodged the job, you would come around to their house. This is oversight.

The time for grass roots oversight has come. Be part of it. Participate in decision making, in deliberation, in the exploration of the issues, the problems, the solutions and be a learner, a grower, a fully matured human being.

I want to live fully humanely. I do already, to a large degree, and recognise that I need to take up my shared responsibility, to all other living humans, my family to mature fully and become fully participative. I need to do this to honour my connections to you all, to honour my sense of self and to exercise the loving care I feel for all humanity.

What do you want?

Kindest regards

Corneilius

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

2013. A message not so much of hope, but of work to do, which if done will benefit all.

Today is Jan 1st 2013. 

I am a human being, a biological organism. That is my first identity.

We human beings are in the first instance biological organisms. We have emerged from the biological processes of life on Earth. We are part of those processes. We are defined by those processes. We are alive courtesy of those processes.

The biological processes of life tend to increase the fecundity and diversity of life. This is reflected in the behaviour of all natural organisms, and is the outcome of all natural biological behaviour. All these living processes are connected and interdependent.

It follows that healthy natural human behaviour is a part of this reality.

All unhealthy behaviour is at odds with this reality.

When we look carefully, scientifically and honestly at the nature of the mother child bonding process, we see biology operating from the molecular level to the level of discrete organisms in ways that nurture both mother and child, in ways that nurture true humanity as part of the biology of Earth. We also see that the father is nurtured in the womb. In the womb we learn some the lessons of nurture, and in early childhood.

Oxytocin is no accident. It is a statement of intent.

In the case of Oxytocin, the intent is to bond mother and child during the intensity of childbirth, in ways that support each as separate, individual and conscious beings, living and growing within a community, a community which itself exists within the biology of Earth. The intent is to establish self awareness and awareness of others, in such manner as to enable empathy, understanding, care and love for one another. To nurture is our nature.

In biological terms this makes perfect sense. We are imbued with sense, with sensitivity, both towards ourselves – self awareness - and to others, including all that exists within the habitat into which we are born.

What this means is that our environment will play a large part in our emergent development and behaviour.

This sensing of life enables us to understand and work with the living biological processes that govern life itself, in ways that nurture more life.

The urge to power has it’s roots in the disruption of those processes around empathy that are the biological expression of love and care. The urge to power is not a natural outcome of biology. It is the outcome of the disruption of biology. The disruption of the child mother bonding process is central to the continuation of the urge to Power.

Evolution is not random, nor is it a question of programming, as some geneticists would have it. Evolution is governed by the ability of any organism to respond to a changing environment; all habitats are subject to change, to fluctuations of their constituents, and be it a bacterium, a human being or a rain forest, so too organisms respond to those changes to maintain the biological processes of life.

Evolution is the resolution of problems that arise for organisms as the habitat and conditions of life change over time.

Inability to resolve those problems leads to a dead-end.

In nature immense or sudden catastrophic changes can and do make it all but impossible to resolve certain problems, for certain species, in certain situations.

For example, a volcanic eruption is lethal to all life within the reach of its immediate outcomes. Species local to that event may indeed be wiped out. Yet in the long term, the volcanic eruption releases more material that supports life, and the habitat that is lethally affected by the immediate outcome of the volcano is always repopulated over time by living organisms, and brought to life once again.

The urge of life is to create more life, to nurture more life.

However the urge of Power, as a process amongst human beings, is to nurture itself alone, to retain Power, always at the expense of all which falls under it’s influence, and in particular all that cannot be manipulated to meet the demands of Power.

The urge to Power is the result of an unresolved problem. The urge to Power always avoids natural resolution of the problem it represents, because the problem is fear. That fear is related to the loss of self empathy inherent in Authoritarian Parenting, which is the predominant mode of parenting across the Dominant Culture.

That fear that drives the urge to Power, the desire to exert so much control, exists because Power does not trust the processes of life; this is an outcome of unresolved trauma.

Nature always seeks to resolve problems and stands in direct confrontation with Power.

Bacteria learn about anti-biotics and can circumvent their use, because bacteria are problem solvers rather than problem creators. Likewise the natural mind and heart of the human being. We all know of stories of people who somehow see through the veil of conditioning, who survive great trauma and yet retain humanity, empathy and human kindness.

This is why Power seeks always to inculcate the children of those over whom Power has agency. Education by Power is not designed for genuine learning, it is a form of social conditioning, a question of programming prescribed behaviours based on the knowledge of how a traumatised person or child responds to a trauma situation that they cannot control.

This can take can take the form of Religion or Ideology or Fantasy (consumerism) and always reflects the psychology of fear. It seeks to inject fear into the heart of all those who fall under it’s agency. Fear of God. Fear of The Devil. Fear of Poverty.

And this process starts in utero, for the mother, living as she does within a pre-existing structure of Power, is  most often ‘informed’ by the dominant psychology of Power. Part of this ‘information’ comes from her parents and grand parents childhoods, and what they were conditioned to, and may have generated unresolved issues which were passed on, most often unwittingly. I feel that most parents do love their children, yet are limited by the degree to which each generation can resolve what they lived through.

And it’s clear that Power inhibits the resolution of these issues.

The fears of the mother, fears that are injected by Power, replace her confidence in her biological body, which ‘knows’ how to nurture, to give birth, to care for and relate to the child she has borne. This is also true for the father.

The fears of the community that survives under the influence of Power, fears that are injected by the situation that Power determines, replace the natural communities humanity, strength and beauty and reduces community to the necessities of mere survival.

To resolve the problem of Power is the central task ahead of us.

Paolo Friere suggested that the process of liberation is in fact a process of humanisation: he wrote that both those who exercise Power and those they oppress are equally dehumanised, and that the contradiction of the oppressed lay in the need to humanise those who exercise power as much as their need to break the chains that bind them.

He pointed out that attacking, killing, destroying the oppressor dehumanises the oppressed as much as the Powerful are dehumanised by their oppression. He called for a deeper analysis, a praxis of liberation that seeks to humanise the dehumanised.

Religion, personal salvation, the accrual of wealth at the expense of others, are all the outcomes of living within a dehumanising situation, where Power dominates relationships. They are usually related to the individual’s own mere survival, rather than the nurturing of all.

Spirituality, personal growth and the sharing of resources so that all may benefit are the outcomes of a fully humanising situation. They are inextricably linked.

And it is this that I work towards and with in my life.

Kindest regards

Corneilius

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

Wrong Word : "Oi Paedo!"

Paedophile : is a technical term, and piece of misleading use of language.

More correct would be 'manipulative or violent (child/minor) focused sex attacker': irrespective of who is being attacked, the choice to attack, to manipulate, to predate upon the other, is always, always equally evil.

This choice is made  possible only when the other, the person is transformed into an object, is de-humanised.

‘OI!  PEADO!” - the unsubstantiated internet.gossip allegations being promoted with some vigour ....

This is human evil….. and the beginnings of yet more human evil, ‘oi peado!’, followed by an assault, based on what evidence?

"..... don't like the look of that individual!"? "I heard that...."? "It's on the internet!"

(as opposed to "I found direct links to proven evidence that stands up on the internet, and then I checked them....")

One might comment that those people that enjoy or seek pleasure in violence, manipulation or predation are more evil than those who perhaps behaving thus because they ‘are doing a job’.  Soldiers?  Vigilantes? Prison Officers? Police?

The Stanford Prison Experiment - The Power of the Situation to de-humanise ...

Is the line between either of these definitions really real? Does the person on the receiving end care more which side of the line their attacker is on?

Dehumanisation can also find expression in the way an agenda driven analysis might attribute negative qualities to chosen opponents, perceived ‘enemies’, as a way of undermining how others perceive them..

I don't think this is something we can leave to just one sector of Society.

This 'issue' affects us ALL! In real terms, in the lived experience.

The issue, as I see it, is not just one set of actions, by one particular group of people, but an entire spectrum of behaviours that are almost Institutionalised in full, in the social structures that have emerged from the current Dominant Statist Culture.

They might appear to be many individual states, yet there are only states, no 'nations' in the distinct sense of an aboriginal 'nation'. There is a trans national myth of social organisation that seeks infinite expansion in a finite world.

All of these sets of relationships, personal and Institutional, have been adversely  influenced by the Power, (which David Smail calls 'distal power' - power beyond the average person’s ability to affect) so that a majority of living relationships end up becoming Power Relationships.

Assault and sexual exploitation of children, or the murder of civilians, including children, by military, the willingness to really heavily harm another, or to kill to get one's perceived needs met,  as acted out by individuals or groups or Institutions.... these are extremes of that spectrum .....  of power relationships – as opposed to empathic relationships, a spectrum that ranges from close intimacy to the collective interactions that are expressed in healthy psychologically social, cultural, and organisational behaviours.

The other end of the spectrum of Power Relationships is, for me at this time, describable in a speculative manner, as a kind of starting point description:

So here goes: behaviour that may be the expression of social and experiential distress, and that has an adverse affect on others only because it appears or presents as petty bickering, jealousy, sullen-ness, sulk, mind-games, sexism, thoughtlessness and whole host of other variations on psychological distress languaging.  The person is unhappy. And needs support and help, appropriate attention.

In between we have a range of permitted behaviour that is expressed all too clearly in our history texts, our newspapers, our entertainments, notably, war, invasion, infinite growth empire/economies, militarised police FORCE, and 'non-permitted' yet fairly widespread organised violent crime (which in some cases is linked to wars pursued by Institutions of State), gang wars, organised group violence of any kind, domestic abuse, bullying.... it's all linked. Some is ‘good’ Some is ‘bad’.

IT’S ALL HARMFUL. EXTREMELY HARMFUL!

I think that to address one serious area of this harming dynamic one has to commit to  addressing the holistic image, the whole picture of a Dominant Culture in psychological distress  - to also see how this 'fits in' in a cultural sense.

This means to me that when I can fully humanise the victimiser, to fully humanise the survivor, not to excuse anything, certainly not to mitigate the trauma and what followed, and humanise what that MEANT to the survivor, the person who was victimised,  and to fully understand these events and what may have lead to them, in order to securely find a societal pathway to prevent further victimisation. This is not a single issue.

 Wherever it occurs. Starting with myself.

Let me address the behaviour, and see the human being as human, through broken, damaged and dangerous; part of my family.

One I must stop from any further damaging behaviour.

Can I see the 'enemy' as a human being, and not a monster. It makes it easier, I think, to look at the behaviour, to look at the experiences of people and assess what one finds, honestly.

It doesn't diminish the horror, the revulsion, the sheer visceral anger and shock we all naturally feel, up close to such behaviour - until we are de-humanised : that is what military training tries to do, certainly in terms of the 'enemy'. Veterans appear to 'get over it', mostly.

It doesn't mean not being angry, not feeling the rage, suppression. for me, it means choosing not to cause harm whilst feeling the anger, the rage, the frustration.

Fully conscious. Fully aware, Alive.

For me, this is all about the David Icke, Rense, Jones stable of publishing that hypes the horror, insinuates and alleges, and present no credible attributable sourced EVIDENCE for their claims,and worse, they rarely speak of the world of child development, trauma studies, intergenerational behaviour patterning, the study of the development of empathy and it's biological functioning, which it appears is our natural optimal.

Why?

Surely if there's proven evidence, then the two go together: if one is committed to resolving the issue.

The Institutionalisation of Power Relationships across Society, from violent abusers in 'care homes', 'prisons', 'schools', the office  bully, to warring states, the disruption of the child mother bonding essential to the development of empathy, as a socio-cultural structures is a crucial matter.

Address that and the rest will flow from there.

This is not to be taken to mean mitigating the needs of those being victimised or of Survivors. The two go hand in hand.

The latter being the more immediate need.

There is time then to deal with the former matter in depth, over time.

Kindest regards

Corneilius

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