Milosovic
Blair
The Vatican
These three images are just a hint at the dynamic of how insitutional power is reflexively defensive of it's position and manages harms that are exposed in ways that ensure they remain in power. The individuals at the top have usually internalised that power, and identify with that rather than the people over whom they have that power.
Loss of empathy is inherent. Hubris is common. Arrogance is the norm.
Loss of empathy is inherent. Hubris is common. Arrogance is the norm.
Established Power needs to be submitted to a full health and safety check, by the people.
That is pure common sense logic. However, there is a problem….. we have a problem.
Institutions, power and honesty.
“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.”
Written in 1964, by John Holt who had thousands of hours of observation of children in schools across America. He wrote a few superb books on children and learning, and energised the homeschooling/unschooling movement in the USA.
How much does this insight resonate today, in 2017, in the UK?
Institutions are power centres.
Schools are also power centres.
It’s where we learn how to behave within an institutionalised power hierarchy.
‘No child left behind.’
There are examples in every area of society – Religion: the Vatican and Pedophilia – Politics, War and indoctrination : HiIlsborough, Chilcott, Levenson I – Health and Safety : Amoco Cadiz, Bhopal, Flint Water Supply, Fracking. Can you begin to see the pattern of behaviours?
There are plenty of examples in schools where matters of abuse or negligence or bias have been hushed up.
There are plenty of schools where teachers have been ‘convinced’ to support the diagnosis of ADHD and the subsequent drugging of children as a class room management strategy, etc etc - (more than my job/income, food, shelter, family is worth to challenge this is understandable, the teacher is being bullied institutionally and knows not to irk the masters).
And, in all of this activity, in so many areas of civic and commercial insitutional culture we see minor officials, lower ranks coerced to comply with the instructions of the powerful, to defend the institution rather than acknowledge the harms and be exposed. Iraq.
This is an easily identified pattern, with a massive evidence base that is quite reliable.
Established Power will use its power to protect itself.
The People are not to challenge that.
We see the powerful hire the best and most expensive legal teams to oppose ordinary people with relatively little comparative power, where the battle is one of financial resources, with one side far wealthier than the other….
We see out of court settlements. “It could take years, take the offer!”
We do not see the full evidence.
We do not see justice.
Fines.
No criminal indictments.
The powerful will defend their position of power at all costs.
That is why Public Inquiries have failed to deliver Justice.
Power Hierarchies impose pressure to perform downwards, upon all subordinates, and failure to follow instructions by higher ranking personnel leading to loss of job for the lower ranking personnel is one of those intentional pressures.
Even when an order or instruction is illegal, amoral, destructive, negligent or corrupt, that pressure remains a potent leverage in today’s public and private Institutions. Who wants to be a whistle blower? Who would brave that storm?
Cover ups and mitigations do happen, and never by accident.
Political, economic, ideological and religious power demands that the holder be a bully, and bullies are more attracted to power than those who are not bullies.
The bully who is driven by the institutional environment to be more effective becomes professionalised. Fully committed.
That degree of committment to gaining and holding power is a social problem, a root dysfunction, a foundational malady.
Only when power is taken up as a shared responsibility of the grass roots tax payers, the people who both fund and who work in Civil Society will we have a safe, honest social political system.
Those who hold too much power will not yield it willingly.
Teresa May is demonstrating that right now. She is for the bullies. She backs Trumps call for Air Strikes against Syria, whilst the nation reels from a horror the Government (New Labour, Tory and Lib-Dem) created in Grenfell Towers. Air Strikes against urban areas with social housing..........
What does that really mean?
I am also talking about the
culture at the lowest ranks in the hierarchies of power.. how debilitating and
threatening the presence of poverty and disdain is, how corrosive it is.
There are many people who will seek to defend their bias, internalise their opinion as fact, deny the evidence, mitigate the responsibility at all levels.
I am interested in the psychological experiential root, rather than then violence itself, and I want to understand how that afflicts us all, and how do we recover from that, to what degree is recovery possible in the current environment?
We here at the grass roots must work for our own recovery as part of the resolution.
We also have to organise and protect our civil society, administer our shared resources with wisdom and enhance the environment of our community.
We cannot wait for the Established Power to awaken, to come to it’s senses, to re-humanise, to recover.
We must get on with it.
If we do, and I think many of us are, and more are joining in every day, then perhaps it is more likely that Established Power can be submitted to a full health and safety check by the people.
There are many people who will seek to defend their bias, internalise their opinion as fact, deny the evidence, mitigate the responsibility at all levels.
I am interested in the psychological experiential root, rather than then violence itself, and I want to understand how that afflicts us all, and how do we recover from that, to what degree is recovery possible in the current environment?
We here at the grass roots must work for our own recovery as part of the resolution.
We also have to organise and protect our civil society, administer our shared resources with wisdom and enhance the environment of our community.
We cannot wait for the Established Power to awaken, to come to it’s senses, to re-humanise, to recover.
We must get on with it.
If we do, and I think many of us are, and more are joining in every day, then perhaps it is more likely that Established Power can be submitted to a full health and safety check by the people.
Kindest regards
Corneilius
"Do what you love, it's Your Gift to Universe"
Thank you for reading this blog. All we need to do is be really honest, responsive to the evidence we find,and ready to reassess when new evidence emerges. The rest is easy.