Showing posts with label kindness. Show all posts
Showing posts with label kindness. Show all posts

Kindness is political III

Kindness is political III



Kindness is ancient. Kindness makes us humane.  Kindness is big.  Being humane is a thing. Being humane is the biggest thing. We cannot be fully human if we are not also humane.

When we study the evolution of the human neuro-endocrine system and how it functions we discover something. It is optimised for a peaceful life, with occasional moments of stress. It is not optimised for constant, chronic stress.

Egalitarian life, as it happens, is generally peaceful, healthy, grounded in solid emotional  attachment and mature affective state self regulation which reduced incidence of lost tempers and thus prevented general violence - peaceful people tend not to have short fuses. Peaceful people are patient.

We use the word Humanity and most often it is with a positive connotation. "Show some Humanity!"  "Show some empathy, kindness, compassion, understanding."  We urge one another to be more kind with these sentences. 

And, as we know, there are those who think Humanity is the problem.  "Humanity is destroying the environment" they will say. "Humans are a parasite, a plague" some people say.

Some religions hold the view that there exists innate badness, amorality, bestiality and that only adherence to the ways of the Religion can counter these dynamics. I think that that is a dehumanising perspective, the suggestion that the human being without the religion is inhumane, a lessor being, somehow tainted. How unkind is that of those who claim that their sacred texts espouse human kindness and morality at its very best.

Then there is active de-humanisation - taking away from a person or a group their humanity is the precursor to all forms of abuse, exploitation and manipulation.  The other person or group becomes an object, a thing less than human. 

Anti-Semitism, Misogyny, Racism, Xenophobia, the hatred of Zionists towards the Palestinian People, a hatred that does not have it's own name. A hatred that is not encapsulated in Islamophobia because it is about people and their land tenure, their ancient embedded polity, their language, it is about generations of families and communities who are all Arab ethnicity - it is directed at Jewish, Christian, Secular and Muslim Arabs. Zionists are historically European or Caucasian. 

A world view that abolishes kindness towards an entire nation - just as the Europeans in North America extirpated the Native land tenures, their polities and their cultures. They even stole their children, so that the children might forget their mothers and fathers language.

One culture deems itself superior to another, such that they can inflict mass trauma without flinching. How unkind is that?

Humanity is not the problem.

The truth is that it is a particular culture that is destroying the environment, waging war, seeking profit over the welfare of people rather than Humanity per se.  A culture that is unkind, even as kind people may well live within it and exercise as much kindness as they possible can. All birth location is accident of birth. No baby chooses to be born one or the other. 

As Ani Di France puts it: 
"We're all citizens of the womb
Before we subdivide
Into sexes and shades
This side
That side."

Such a kind thought, such a beautiful song..

I have written about this idea, that humanity is not the problem, many times before. 


There's too many people, claims Johnson and his father Stanley, and that is the problem as they see it. 

And yet these men of wealth and privilege, they are fine, at ease within the extractive, exploitive, predatory culture that they represent. Their culture is not the problem, as they see things. Both are noted for their lack of kindness, among other things.

Kindness is more accurate than Gross Domestic Product as a measure of human success. Gross National Happiness makes more sense to me, as a humane being.. Kindness is more, so much more than National Pride. Kindness is older than any religious creed. Kindness is more beautiful than sending a rocket to Mars. Kindness makes us human. Kindness is prehistoric. Kindness is in our evolved genetic and behavioural disposition.

Our default state is trust. Our bodies and our minds are evolved for kindness, not for bullying.

Jacinda Ardern is kind. Kindness is real human strength.




Kindness is political.

Boris Johnson is unkind. Here is speaks, in Greenwich, February 3rd 2020, aware already that a global pandemic is underway. He accuses the kind of being in a panic. He claims superiority, as a super man, an economic Uber Mensch, fighting against the medically irrational to champion sales and trade, profits and power.

"And in that context, we are starting to hear some bizarre autarkic rhetoric, when barriers are going up, and when there is a risk that new diseases such as coronavirus will trigger a panic and a desire for market segregation that go beyond what is medically rational to the point of doing real and unnecessary economic damage, then at that moment humanity needs some government somewhere that is willing at least to make the case powerfully for freedom of exchange, some country ready to take off its Clark Kent spectacles and leap into the phone booth and emerge with its cloak flowing as the supercharged champion, of the right of the populations of the earth to buy and sell freely among each other."

Note that Johnson makes no reference to human harms, death and damage from severe disease in this speech. How unkind.

"And here in Greenwich in the first week of February 2020, I can tell you in all humility that the UK is ready for that role.

We are ready for the great multi-dimensional game of chess in which we engage in more than one negotiation at once and we are limbering up to use nerves and muscles and instincts that this country has not had to use for half a century."


He underlined that part of the speech. " I can tell you in all humility " He prefers international chess play to caring for the people. And 14 months later, the harms he said he would have avoided, have fully materialised.

He rushed us all headlong into those harms - and he has not had the courage, the gumption to put his hand up, to stop the train wreck, to do the right thing. How unkind. Kindness is political.

He receives donations for holidays and wall paper, and much else besides. His fawning associations with oligarchs many hundreds of times wealthier than either he or his father as he seeks out their 'kindness' is abhorrent in a normal person, but in a leading politician in the Highest Office it is unkindness of a profound quality. 

Let me be direct, because I am angry and saddened - Boris Johnson is a weakling, a petty bully pimped up by high office.  He is not alone. The Cabinet and Party are with him, all the way. They prefer their power to the welfare of the people 'they serve' - so unkindly. 

Boris Alexander Johnson is unkind, even as he wishes public debate to be 'kind and civil'.  What kind of man is he?

Boris Johnson Tackles children.


Watch as he leans into the child, hanging on to his prize. He cannot control himself.

Boris Johnson Tackles Adults.


Watch as he chooses to bend down and head butt the other player, then pretends it was an accident.

Johnson betrayed his wife, and mother of four of his children, while she suffers from cancer, by conducting a 4 year affair with a young American woman. How unkind is that? How cruel and callous, how utterly selfish! And then in addition there is the corruption. Channelling hundreds of thousands of pounds of tax payers money to his younger lovers ill fated and repetitively faulty business ideas. How kind of him! What a waste of tax payers money! 

Kindness is political.  

Obama was charming. His political action was unkind. Not much of a difference, really, if you were one of the many innocent people harmed by US Foreign and Domestic Policy during his 8 year stint as President and Chief of Staff. Poverty expanded, Drone Warfare and War in Syria and Libya expanded, as did the wealth of billionaires, under his 'leadership'.


Bullies twist arms, bullies with charms.

Kindness never hides behind a flag, a uniform, a monument or a temple the way patriarchy rooted power and cruelty does. Boris Johnson is unkind. Cressida Dick is unkind. Kindness is political.

Evolution and Kindness.

In terms of our long evolution as a co-operative animal, a social species, one of the key elements in the development of the social brain and all the social complexity, diversity and beauty that flows from that is the shift from the single parenting typical of most primates, to what we call alloparenting. 


Sarah Blaffer Hrdy - Anthropologist, Primatologist, Authord of 'Mothers and Others'

That is to say that the evolution of our bigger brains dealing with more complex relationships over longer time frames is inextricable from the evolution of shared parenting, multiple bonded relationships, among hominids. Kindness again. Group kindness is a thrivivalist behaviour. One needs a much more complex brain to live well through shared mutually nurturant relationships as a social group, a social species. Kindness is evolutionary!

Some would say that, politically, kindness has the potential to be revolutionary. Jacinda Ardern is revolutionary, it could be said - and not a guillotine or an AK47 in sight.

Thriving Children.

For all mammals and for all primates the mother is the primary carer of her children. There are some species that share the care, to varying degrees - the majority do not. 

In all species of primate the infant stays close to the mother for extended periods of time, physically close, attached, in touch, body to body. Mammalian and primate infants are vulnerable and they need that constant care and protection while they are growing. Human infants are among the most totally vulnerable, and our vulnerability lasts for a long time. 

Mothering is expensive.

Every mother knows how much resources, effort and time is needed to adequately care for, nurture and protect a baby, an infant, a toddler and a young child. It takes the meaning of full time job into the realm of 24/7/365. How many hours are there in a week? Parenting requires all of them. Some estimates value unpaid mother work at $10 trillion dollars annually.

We often think of the unequal gender division of unpaid labour as a personal issue, but a new report by Oxfam proves that it is a global issue—and that a handful of men are becoming incredibly wealthy while women and girls bear the burden of unpaid work and poverty.

According to Oxfam, the unpaid care work done by women and girls has an economic value of $10.8 trillion per year and benefits the global economy three times more than the entire technology industry.

"Women are supporting the market economy with cheap and free labour and they are also supporting the state by providing care that should be provided by the public sector," the report notes.

The unpaid work of hundreds of millions of women is generating massive wealth for a couple of thousand (predominantly male) billionaires. "What is clear is that this unpaid work is fuelling a sexist economic system that takes from the many and puts money in the pockets of the few," the report states.

Kindness exploited is political.

Single parenting is so much more difficult than alloparenting. Still, single parenting is, within the existing industrial culture,  somewhat easier than partially shared parenting with a partner who is abusive, negligent, distant or disinterested. If only because such partners need caring for as well, and in effect the mother is caring for two - an infant and an immature adult, or worse a dysfunctional and possibly dangerous 'partner'. Stress levels way above any normal healthy background level. Those women who opt for single parenting deserve societal support as much as possible, and to be honest, a lot more is possible than is being provided for now. That needs to change.

Shared child care is evolutionary economics.

Egalitarian and peasant cultures of all kinds are rooted in extended families. Industrial culture has atomised the community, and the presence of extended family care is becoming rarer. Double and Single parenting is a lot more difficult than living with an extended family to share the care

For humans, in evolutionary terms, shared parenting is the bio-logical norm. Children are cared for and nurtured by the community. In egalitarian cultures this is a very well documented dynamic. The evidence base for this is immense. Egalitarian relationships are loving relationships. The children in egalitarian communities form deep bonds with many adults, as much as with each other. The community cares for and nurtures all the children. Children form many healthy attachments.

Attachment Theory

In looking at the relationships that are formed between mother and child in the 1960s, at a time when the nuclear family was very much the majority structure in industrialised cultures, some interested scientists carried out experiments with monkeys, where, unfortunately for the subjects, they mistreated baby monkeys to varying degrees  - by separating them from the mother, and then providing a range of fake mothers in the form of a structure (wire cage, wooden body, furry body, furry body that rocked, warm furry body that rocked and so on and a feeding method, a bottle with a teat) designed to mimic the presence of a mother.

What they found was that the baby monkeys would vary in their behaviour as sociable animals, with the least mothered presenting with the most anti-social behaviours.  The less warmth with which they were raised, the more defensive their behaviour, the weaker their self regulation, the greater their aggression. These awful experiments were not accurate, in as much as animals in zoos and laboratories are not going to present behaviour that they would do in the wild. Those experiments were de facto torture. Fortunately these experiments were not frequent, and not repeated.  That said animal experimentation is still a massive practice of unkindness.

It is a mark of this culture that in order to prove that something is toxic, or harmful that our scientists are driven to experiment with animals - when in fact there is no need to do so, when we know that most of the novel synthetic compounds being tested cannot be broken down by any known biological process, when in this case it is obvious that disruption to any infants relationship with the mother is going to cause problems for that child.

Nonetheless, those experiments and the consequences or 'evidence' of disruption of child-mother bonding formed the scientific germ of the idea of that became Attachment Theory.

The theory stated that the degree of  nurturance or disruption of child-mother bonding in infancy - that vulnerable stage - determined the sociability and adult behaviour of the adult to be. One aspect of the theory looked at the setting within which mothering occurs, and took note of external stressors that might impact attachment bonding. A stressed mother can undermine healthy attachment, through no personal fault of her own, simply because she has to endure stresses imposed by external events and actions of others.

Some portrayed this as 'blaming mothers' and used that as a distraction tactic, a way to trigger emotional reactions that led people to reject the ideas of attachment theory. 

Attachment Theory was lauded for a brief period, and then fell into relative obscurity, not least because some of it's proponents were suggesting that the troubles of civilisation are behavioural in origin - violence, hierarchies of power, war fare, misogyny, addiction - and have their roots in disrupted child-mother bonding. 

This was a bridge too far for the existing psychology and psychiatry industry. Such an assertion, without substantive evidence,  challenged the  establishment (and everyone else, truth be told) in ways that patriarchy minded authorities rejected, quite forcibly. It questioned their claims on certain universalities of Human Nature and The Human Condition. That was a challenge too far. Attachment theory questions the 'bad seed' world view of behaviour, the idea that some people are born evil. 

Attachment Theory 2.0

50 years on, and Attachment Theory has been subjected to and informed by a lot more detailed research. Neuroscience, endocrinology, developmental studies, bio-chemistry, trauma studies, anthropology and other scientific disciplines have gathered a lot of new evidence, using ever more precise technological developments, allowing better measurement, observation and statistical analysis. 

Science can describe with ever greater detail and intimacy the processes of brain development from within the womb, through birth and infancy, toddlerhood and onwards. Science can describe with great accuracy how experience and environmental factors have effects that are invisible, that happen beneath the skin and within the skull, yet which lead to outcomes in behaviours that are all too visible and easy to misconstrue. 

Current scientific understanding can describe the biology, the bio-chemistry of what is happening within the brain and the body during the development of the emotional self. 

https://www.developmentalscience.com/blog/2017/3/31/what-is-a-secure-attachmentand-why-doesnt-attachment-parenting-get-you-there

The Extended Family Brain

Allan Schore describes the biology of affective state self regulation within the context of the carer-brain to infant-brain relationship, and as body to body embodied minds relating to one another, as a dynamic of carer to cared-for, irrespective of gender or biological relationship.  Both brains are altered by the experience. Brains are designed to build through experience and as organs our brains are the least constrained by genetics.

“The brain is heavily influenced by genes. But from birth through young adulthood, the part of the human brain that most defines us (frontal cortex) is less a product of the genes with which you started life than of what life has thrown at you. 

Because it is the least constrained by genes and most sculpted by experience. 

This must be so, to be the supremely complex social species that we are. Ironically, it seems that the genetic program of human brain development has evolved to, as much as possible, free the frontal cortext from genes.

Brian to Brain.

Whilst there are key dynamics between every mother and her infant child, the development of healthy self regulation is modulated by all carers and the more loving carers a child has, the better it is for that child and consequently the adult the child will become. In essence shared care is an evolutionary dynamic that has altered our brains and our behaviour, for the better, and it underpins our co-operative, egalitarian nature.

Extend that across a population and we can suggest a way to prevent distress emerging in future populations by nurturing the earliest relationships that extended families can provide.  Kindness in policy is indeed political.

What is now well established is that the development of affective state emotional self regulation is key to sociability and to competence in learning, and that it is, in healthy conditions, a matter of right brain maturation which is largely complete by age two.

That bears repeating - affective state self regulation is largely matured by age two, in all healthy human children and it is entirely dependent upon the quality of the relationship and interactions of all the adults or carers in that child's life.

The 'terrible twos' is a cultural symptom of distress, not a biological marker.

As I understand it, this is when the infant becomes a walker, and is capable of independent exploration of the new world she or he is in, and the last thing the new explorer needs is a shortened fuse. The care and kindness that earliest empathic parenting is delivered with sets the child up for life and equips the child with affective state self regulation that is necessary for adult life. Beliefs about innate behaviour need to be challenged, especially when they inform public policy discussions.

"“The brain is heavily influenced by genes. But from birth through young adulthood, the part of the human brain that most defines us (frontal cortex) is less a product of the genes with which you started life than of what life has thrown at you. 

Because it is the least constrained by genes and most sculpted by experience. 

This must be so, to be the supremely complex social species that we are. Ironically, it seems that the genetic program of human brain development has evolved to, as much as possible, free the frontal cortex from genes.”

― Robert M. Sapolsky, Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst

Families and culture.

In a typical human extended family, child care is shared. That is the norm for all studied egalitarian cultures. That is also the norm in most older pre-industrial sedentary cultures. In peasant families, siblings care for younger sibling;, babies and infants are held by mothers, fathers, aunts, uncles and grand parents. This care is typically loving, replete with those little kindnesses that inform life long bonds of friendship and support. 

The Nuclear Family and The Factory

In the development of the Industrial Factory and the creation of a worker culture The Protestant Calvinist Religious ideology - the work ethic - was used as a tool of social engineering, and it was deployed to reshape entire communities, to integrate the nuclear family as a universal human characteristic. Christianity does not speak of the relatives of Jesus. The model of the nuclear family suited the factory owners. 

In addition because contraception was not used, serial pregnancies were normal outcomes, infant mortality was high, and child care was shared by siblings, aunts and grandparents, and so they all lived within easy reach. This helped build resilient factory system communities out of the destruction of the older peasant communities. The men went to work, and the women collectively cared for the children and the men.

General schools for the workers children were invented to indoctrinate successive generations, and to train future factory workers. Personal development was deliberately ignored as a subject worthy of the educators efforts. Workers children need not study the classics, or Law or philosophy, or the Arts.

Poverty is a structure.

Poverty was and remains a standard status for a large part of the population within inequitable hierarchy of power social systems, as is the concentration of wealth and power in a smaller class who dominate all others. The children born into either do not chose that situation. We call this accident of birth.

. The existence of poverty is unkind, it is a structural and cultural unkindness. It absolutely imposes chronic stress on the families of the poor. The life expectancy of the poorer is always shorter than those of the wealthier.  The impact of structural unkindness is meaningful. Thus social solidarity and kindness among impoverished people's and their families is a matter of survival and provides some of the resilience necessary for survival. In the large families typical of impoverished people's child care is to a degree shared by siblings

Nannies and others.

In wealthier families child care is often handed to employed nannies and tutors.  Being too busy being rich and powerful to parent, they devolve care for their children to others. Private boarding schools are an expression of class. Nannies are an expression of power. The devolved authoritarian who must deliver the well rounded adolescent who will inherit the dynastic mantle.

In wealthy industrialised countries, where the nuclear family is common, where the tradition of men as bread winners rooted is in the factory system, the bulk of the work of caring falls upon the mother - this is true even in households where both parents are workers earning a wage. In those households, child care is farmed out. And we see the outcome of that in the greater incidence of anxiety and distress among every class within industrialised cultures. A population that is overworked, underpaid, that is working to build economies and working to service debt and neglecting the familial nurturing space is profoundly impacted.  Kindness needs people, kindness needs time and space. Kindness is large brained. Unkindness is small minded.

Kindness is political. 

Right now, as the pandemic of SARSCOV2 and it's disease CODIV19 rolls out across the Earth's countries,  we are seeing the impact of lack of kindness across the developed world, were some nations have rejected zero community transmission strategies for dealing with an epidemic, with intolerable human costs and associated economic costs, all of which is met with continued denial of shared responsibility. That is unkind. That is an institutionalised lack of kindness at scale.

Other countries have adopted zero community transmission, and have avoided all the costs and harms, and that represents a form of institutional kindness. Indeed, Jacinda Ardern is explicit about this, and has been since before her first election into office as New Zealand's Prime Minister.

Kindness is political. Callous disregard is also political.

If we want a healthier future for all our children, and for all their children, then we had better start acting with political kindness in mind at every part of our culture. The bullying is lethal, the bullying is toxic nonsense and in evolutionary terms utterly, utterly irrational. We must bring it to an end, with kindness as our primary ethic.




Kindest regards 

Corneilius 

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

Kindness is Political II

Kindness is Political II

For at least 250,000 years, counting all the lives lived, it is clear that billions upon billions of people, generation after generation, old and young, women, men and children have lived well and have largely behaved with kindness and grace, with respect and honesty in trillions upon trillions of small daily interactions, pottering around in life, looking after one another.

All those actions created webs of many larger actions, in wider contexts.  Every second of every minute of every day. A lot more people are being kind than are being cruel.

Kindness.  Sharing some food.

I would like to see a news channel reflect that kindness that happens everywhere, in each country, a 24 hour rolling kindnesses being presented as they are. That would be encouraging. . 

Kindness. 

Listening and hearing,  

Comfort and acceptance.

Help offered, without cost.



Our truly ancient ancestral past has been as egalitarian or partnership human communities, in diverse forms of many, many highly functional social organisation of culture, from nomad to dweller, from gatherer to gardener with many mixes in between, on land, on plains, in forests, on mountains, on ice and on the waters

The human species is is superbly evolved for egalitarian behaviour.

Bullying is unkind, and quite obviously dysfunctional.  We are not evolved to be bullied or to be bullies. Bullying is a sign of dysfunction, a distortion of what it means to be human and humanised.

There is a void between the Conquest Culture and the Partnership Culture.

Egalitarian peoples do not bully. No one is biologically evolved to be bullied. No one is bio-logically evolved to be a bully. We are evolved to be kind, co-operative, intelligent, well balanced psychologically, grounded and practical, curious and creative by learning by experience from adults who demonstrate those skills and qualities.

Robert Sapolsky :

“The brain is heavily influenced by genes. But from birth through young adulthood, the part of the human brain that most defines us (frontal cortex) is less a product of the genes with which you started life than of what life has thrown at you. Because it is the least constrained by genes and most sculpted by experience. This must be so, to be the supremely complex social species that we are. Ironically, it seems that the genetic program of human brain development has evolved to, as much as possible, free the frontal cortext from genes.”

― Robert M. Sapolsky, 
Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst

Basically the brain's observed 'design' is that it is not so much a blank slate as a structured notebook with lots of free space available to write neural pathways into through experience.

We must learn almost everything we do - from sucking to walking, from focusing our eyes to crafting a tool - and this is why the brain is sensitive.  Because the organism is sensitive to the dynamic of ourselves within a changing environment, our neurology can pick up the signals and we can then make adjustments where needed. Learning.

We are evolved to learn most of our behaviour, all of our skill sets. We are evolved to learn how to self regulate our emotions and focus, how to feel and share the world and how to work  and organise efficiently without authoritarian direction or formal hierarchy. 

The healthy baby in the womb is not expecting to meet a world of bullies, yet we all do, in the end, meet this bully culture and that meeting always distorts our humanity. Not what we were expecting. Not what we are built for.

Bullying inhibits learning as a personal way of being a fully social human. Bullying weaponises learning as a utilitarian hierarchical power play.

Being bullied causes disease. Bullying is a behavioural dis-ease. A bully culture festers more bullying, and it trickles down through power structures, it leaks into ordinary people's lives and is a psychological pollutant. Bullying remains a serious issue afflicting school children in the UK. 1 in 5 children are being bullied, to one degree or another, in various self reporting surveys from 2018.

These -  kindness, co-operation, intelligence, emotionally well balanced, psychologically grounded, practical, curious and creative - are all bio-logical mandates for optimal human health, individually and collectively for human beings as animals. Just the basic raw data.

The ancient and evolved genetics, the neurobiology of attachment and emotional self regulation describes the biological space where human kindness is an ordinary learned behaviour, nothing remarkable, and is grounded in direct experience. Direct experience as Allan Schore puts it is the brain to brain dynamic, functioning through the body and the whole sensory experience, between mother and infant, carer and child, between siblings and throughout the family and community.

I think the evidence is quite clear that we humans, as a  species, are social, co-operative family structure egalitarian by evolution, and it is because we learn by being vulnerable and sensitive and exploratory that we are also vulnerable to harms caused by being bullied, and that is why healthy trustful parenting is central to adults behaviour within egalitarian cultures.

Work enables healthy parenting in that it is kept brief as possible, so that there is plenty time to be relaxed, to be creative, and so the children grow up, feeling trusted, around healthy relaxed happy adults, whom they can then model without losing their individual sense of self and place.

"News of The Kind"

"Kind News"

"The Daily Kindness"

Kindness o'clock.

The decision to be kind is perhaps one of the least energy demanding changes anyone of us can make.

It is just a decision, after all.

The decision to be kind is one decision from which flows a series of other decisions, actions with outcomes,  and the need for constant reflection, because the context within which the kindness will be done will contain questions, problems to resolve.

Kindness is taking everything into consideration, without favour or bias.

Kindness would be the News Press and Media and Government making it clear, in the most humane interest of the people of the nation  that there are 11 million adults in the UK with one chronic disease condition, of which 3.8 million are struck with two or more conditions, and there are 1.3 million children who have one or more chronic disease conditions. 

So that is about 4 million people for whom the risk posed by the Corona Virus (sarscov2) is quite significant. Lacking a vaccine or preventative medicine, those 4 million people can only be protected by never, ever meeting the virus.

Stop the spread, Spread the Love. Kindness. Care Homes ought to be the very essence of kindness.

Unclear COVID19 regulations, misinformation and evasion of responsibility combine to usher in 'accidental cruelties' that are not addressed.

Listening this afternoon to Sheelagh Fogarty on LBC in the UK, the stories of people's experiences around Care Homes amidst this slow spread policy. People told stories about their elder parents and relatives and these were gut wrenching, one after the other. Detail after detail missed. Pain, trauma, confusion, terror and anger are being caused by Government policy because it is inadequate and impervious to all calls for help, for paying attention to the detail.

The detail matters.

How to enable visitation in safe ways, so that the isolated do not become alienated and lonely, so that they continue to feel loved an d cared for as persons? 

It is unkind that Government practice is to not challenge the spreaders of misinformation, to not lay out the clear evidence-led needs that the epidemic demands., It is unkinder still then fail to provide for the needs whilst shovelling billions to inexperienced friends, acquaintances and business associates.

Every effort must be taken to care kindly.

DNR notices are a bureaucratic unkindness.

Let this one die.  That is more cruel than unkind.

Generic  DNRs are cruel. Economic Efficiency dressed up as kindness. Fordism.

That assessment  is indicative of the pertinent facts.

Who holds power?

How do they deploy it?
  
For whose benefit?

Where does responsibility rest?

Looking at the chronic disease profile of the UK population, where 19% present with two or more chronic diseases, 19% of the population at risk is not just 'some people are at risk' is it?

Using language to mask the truth.

Detail in Kindness.

The detail is so important because life is truly intimate for each of us, the lived experience is equally intense for each and everyone of us and for that lived detail to be blotted out by a caricature that is publicly disseminated is, to my mind and heart, fundamentally abusive. 

One cannot blot out the detail of a person, or the detail, complex as it is, of hundreds of millions of persons, just to make a point.

Well, yes people do, and it is seriously unkind. It is pathologically cruel. The imposition of a falsehood blots out the human personhood.

'Immigrants'.

It's also living in a dark fantasy dystopian delusion, and completely out of touch with the social material reality of ordinary people, the 7 billion or more of my brothers and sisters born into this.

We are not caricatures, generalisations, stereotypes.

We are people. We mostly do kindness.

Community Transmission.

When the virus is travelling in the community, and the community is not tight, it will find it's way into the vulnerable population. Thus achieving zero community transmission with really effective treatment of any outbreaks or clusters is the most logical, efficacious and proven approach. Yes, it was easier, for example in New Zealand, earlier on, and the UK missed that boat,  yet it is also true that it is not too late to start, now. 

We are nowhere near mythical 'herd immunity'.

Vaccines are a distant horizon, not an assured future with a clear timetable. Work is ongoing, and will continue for some time.

5 million lovely people who are at severe risk, with potential adverse health repercussions for another 8 million people. And the unlucky healthy who might contract the full disease, and the long-covid sequalae.

So much detail.

Kindness.

We are learning as we go.

So yes, given that 21% of UK population is way, way more persons, real people than 'some people get ill from CoVid19' that is why we must act with caution. 

Government/State and everyone else ought to be supporting zero community transmission, and quarantine borders, for the duration. We know it can work, and save lives, help communities, businesses and economies work through the epidemic, safely.

Kindly, of course. 

This is no time to panic. 

Be Calm, the posters urge us.

That is I think that why zero community transmission practice (especially  because we know it can work without year long shutdowns) is necessary - start now, why not?

Kindness is honesty and transparency.

I was quite ill with COVDI19, and was fortunate enough to recover. It did frighten me to be that ill, that uncertain. I stayed home, took Vitamin C and D, lots of ginger and lemon, fluids, steam baths, soups etc and I rested and I let the fever run it's course, I lost two stone in 5 weeks, and stayed mostly in bed. I tried to be as kind as I could to myself.

Bugger the bills! They can wait!

If I am not here, they won't be paid!

Wearing a mask seemed like a small effort to help reduce the spread, and as I studied the East Asian countries response, the Chinese errors and how they responded and corrected them, how different governments engaged with the people to stop uncontrolled community transmission i was reassured somewhat.

Kindness,  if it is present, is ever present including throughout individual moods, temperament or feelings. Of course we go through moods of grumpy, out of sorts, depressed, angry, sad, teary-ness.

The kindness never goes away.

Kindness could be a culture.

Kindness is Political.

Kindness is de-militarisation.

Kindness is abolishing poverty.

Kindness is ensuring unfettered access to clean water, secure habitation, clean environment, regenerative agriculture, local food security for all our peoples, and environmentally for all others.

Kindness is supporting parents with their babies, infants, toddlers and young children by affirming healthy attachment bonding and emotional development - the community looks after everyone who is a carer, so that are cared for, those who are vulnerable are never unduly stressed. Their condition is already enough to bear. That is kindness.

Kindness is making products that last a generation, kindness is making products that can also be fully recycled or re-used at end of use-life.

Kindness is repairing land that has been poisoned, degraded, destroyed - finally paying those costs the accountants 'externalised' during the last two centuries of industrialised production and profit gouging.

Kindness is creating regenerative, nurturing work that I want to do because I can see the benefit in immediate, short and long term perspectives and I know this work supports all life, and within it all human community. There is much healthy work to be done. I would happily work the food forests of a permaculture project. I would happily assist in cleaning damaged lands. What would you do?

Kindness is abolishing structural poverty and ceasing warfare at the same time, turning the war budget into a regeneration budget, as a gift to future generations.

I think that is a first step in any 'revolution'.

Remove the whip. Stop the fight.

No more wars.

Kindness is paying close attention to disagreements of opinion and fact between friends and associates that become weaponised - our friendships are more important than our opinions, especially about matters very few of us can directly affect.  I get we feel the world we are in, all of us, intensely. All of us.

What to do, to chill?

How do I ease the pressure I feel when I am triggered?

The price of wheat is beyond your remit.  Neither of us can anything about the price of wheat.

The starting and ending of wars is beyond my remit. No one I know has been able to stop a war.

Stopping money laundering is not something a few of us could knock up in a weekend workshop and a media campaign.

True, a well organised political grass roots of working and middle class communities in solidarity could  shift the balance of power. It has been done before. 

Distraction.

Micro-targeting aka Hearts and Minds, psychology as a weapons system.

Everyone online leaves a trace of  their activity - we are broadcasting and receiving and everything is logged, measured, banked.

 Online is an advertising media world, drawing attention to content around which advertisements are embedded.

A bit like rodents and their urine, we make trails we re-use, we leave traces. These trails are also data points. Data points are what marketeers aim at.

I like images of kittens, I like guns and own three, I drive a Ford, I live at a certain address, my income is median range, I  like America, UK and Australia and I am suspicious of Russia, China, India, I eat meat, I wear chino's, I react to images, I get angry in on line chats, I leave the computer on for 24 hours every day, I commute, I shop at Walmart, I use credit card and a debit card, I have a mortgage on a  property worth £500,000, I have blue eye, blonde hair, I wear contact lenses, I like reggae but not folk, I did an online course,  and so on.... thousands of data points that can be used to sell at me. Everyone leaves a trail to be examined and exploited. Because PR marketing is exploitative to it's core.

Micro-targeting is marketeers aiming at your data point or a whole series of data points. A cat on the scent of a particular rat. Or a 'tribe' of rats.

What the Cambridge Analytica story revealed was the precision of the techniques, the scope and the adverse effect of the billionaire funded  'industrial political whispering-bullshit-in-someones-ear-at-the-party-to-start-some-shit-we-can-exploit' where 'ear-at-the-party' is our online experience and what we unwittingly expose ourselves to by revealing all this information.

This psychological industrial warfare has expanded over the last 6 years and is some respects has become automated, and it is is widespread. That behaviour, in any setting, is abuse.

Hyper-normalisation. 

Any family with someone behaving like that has to take action.  

So too a culture, or a country. If that level of personal manipulation is being weaponised as a political trigger, and nobody in the legislature or judiciary is moving to stop that then we can say that Democracy is null and void for the duration. Democracy if it exists, is transparent. Lacking transparency, it becomes a toxic mime, where we have no real power to make changes in our legislatures that would prevent abuse and exploitation.

Yes, whispering in the ears of millions of people, knowing  they are triggering peoples fears, frightening and angering these people deliberately so that they can exploit the reaction-addiction is abuse. That's what marketing and news marketing and media marketing and religious marketing do, and it is all cruelty for profit and power. Unkindness.

To deliberately undermine kindness in the community is cruelty. 

Unkindness.

Bullies in power are adept at finding ways through story and narrative to stimulate a persons hormone stasis. Mood control.

"Immigrants!"

This repeat activity then is used to alter behaviour over time through inviting the target to  'debate', to engage, and then feeding contest that suggests 'argument',  tweaking the content, refining it, followed by material that draws in other supporters to generate Social Hatred Opposition Conflict Kink,  us/them polarisation,  all fueled with verbal and visual fight or flight triggering, with most of the targeted, and those who  'oppose' them, all entirely unaware this is happening all around them.

Like someone's in the room stirring the shit in everybody's ears, and it's working, good friends are getting cross at each other, and not wanting to spend time together... not good.

It's been  used in digital marketing for ages to increase traffic. The Internet of Beefs.

 Weaponised and industrialised as a political tool.

Kindness is deciding to act, remembering that context. 

Kindness is  deciding it's ok to turn down the noise, balance up the signal.

So remember 11 million adults, 1.3 million children within the UK are vulnerable, and we all need to look after them, the way they would if we were in need.

Kindness is indeed political.


Kindest regards

Corneilius

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

This blog, like all my other content creation work is not monetised via advertising. If you like what I present, consider sharing my content. If you can afford the price of a cup of coffee or a pint of beer/ale/cider for a few months, please donate via my Patreon account.

Thank you for reading this blog.

https://patreon.com/corneilius - donations gratefully received



Kindness is Political : the key strategy when faced with vulnerability.

Kindness is a key strategic dynamic when faced with vulnerability.

People spontaneously making public music for pleasure and solidarity in Italy during the lock down that was made necessary because the transmission of the viral infection had been allowed to get out of control.

Bella Chao!

#kindnessispolitical


We do not need to be cruel to be kind, when faced with vulnerability.



These two pages of the same corporate newspaper, in different neighbouring countries, presenting entirely different narratives, speak volumes, dated Friday 13th March.

An appalling vista. One one hand let us work together as a people, and let us take action to save lives.
On the other hand, we have already failed you and thus you will lose more people because we will not take the appropriate action, because the economy - our ability to exploit it - is our priority, get ready for more deaths.

Kindness and it's opposite, indifferent, callous negligence. Some other countries are blessed with Governments that bring care for the people to the forefront of their deliberations. It's not rocket science.


Jacinda Ardern speaks of kindness as a political dynamic within Government. Her intellect, her grasp  of both the economic and social detail, whilst being able to keep the larger picture in focus, her intense concern is self evident, and thus she stand in contrast to the buffonery of Boris Johnson, the narcissism of frontman Donald Trump and others of similar disposition.

Corona Virus is upon us.

I am unwell. I have been unwell since 4th March, and it is unlike any previous illness I have experienced, although it has similarities to colds or flu.

I had no idea about COVID19, I was totally not paying any attention to events in China, Taiwan, South Korea, Italy or Spain. I was clueless. Until I had a conversation  a few days ago with my daughter, who was also very unwell, and was going into 'self isolation' - a term I was unfamiliar with.  That has changed. I can assure you of that. I am now well acquainted with the phrase. I was listening to her and she was telling me about the virus, and the threat it represented. I, in my ignorance, suggested she was being terrorised by the media.

She suggested I re-think my position, and not be so arrogant. I was taken aback and respectful - my daughter is no fool, nor is she the kind to be dismissive or rude for the sake of it - and so I took her seriously and I turned to examine what was known at that stage. 24 hours later and up to speed, I understood her concern, and I apologised. I had been really unwell a week before, with severe aches around old injuries, as if they are inflamed, splitting headaches, heavy sweats whilst sleeping, chest trouble, loss of sense of smell, fatigue. I had assumed it was a flu of some kind. I was really unwell for about 5 days, and then it calmed down. That was when I was speaking with my daughter. It has resurfaced.

I now believe I am unwell with COVDI9. My breathing is way, way down, my chest feels like I cannot fill it, and I feel very fatigued, I cannot sleep much, my appetite is minimal

It's a little scary, in that there are many unknowns, I cannot get tested, and I am self  treating with Vit C, lots of fluids, rest, light foods, and hoping for the best. I am being kind to myself.

So here's the thing.  Kindness is political. Let me explain by way of looking at UK Government policy on Corona Virus, as I know it today, (I am sure I will learn a lot more in the coming months) in contrast to others who are taking a very different stances.

Monday 16th of MarchBritish Newspaper Front Pages focus on protecting the elderly by secluding them, by isolating them; on protecting the economy by allowing business as usual among the less vulnerable; on police powers to arrest suspected covid-19 patients (with no testing available?) and a front page portrayal of people of colour as loo roll panic buyers.

Crime and punishment, emotional blackmail and vague policy directives lacking any evidence, as grooming devices.


https://www.thepaperboy.com/uk/the-daily-telegraph/front-pages-today.cfm?frontpage=59566

This portrayal reminds me, again, of everything repulsive that has gone on in British Corporate News Media and in online trolling in the past decades, the dehumanisation of certain demographic groups, and the caricature of situations as emotive trigger material, the dearth of honest analysis leading to confusion across our population.

Where is the kindness needed in a time of increasing vulnerability?

I like to think of kindness, beyond being a personal trait or quality, as a practical method, as a way of coping with life, and as a way of learning and growing in the real material world, through experience, reflection, deliberation, honesty and practical application.

We could envision kindness as a social organisational strategic behaviour, in and of itself. Especially so in a time of emerging vulnerability and great difficulty.

Kindness is looking at the whole situation, taking the detail as well as the larger field of view. Making that extra effort to see the small and the large with equal precision.

Kindness is responsive, rather than reactive. Kindness is responding to the needs of the people in the situation of increased vulnerability.

Kindness is receptive : "I  hear you and  I have made sure that you know that I have heard and understood you, and that I am responding to your need."

Kindness is focused.

Kindness is political, in that the lack or presence of kindness in managing a power disparity and in handling governance of the commons has huge impact on the well being of the governed, who have less power by orders of magnitude than the few who occupy positions of power.

A small policy adjustment of the powerful leader or official or office can alter the lives of millions of people, one way or the other, in ways no one individual can counter.

That is not safe, if that decision, choice or action is careless.

Kindness is political.

Kindness is what is missing from the concerns of overtly financial budgets, gross population models, behavioural modification, reward/sanction dynamics, artificial intelligence and machine learning .

Kindness cannot be found in an algorithm or in coding.

And kindness is what is missing from the interactions between the powerful and the vulnerable, in our current political dynamic.

This lack of kindness, of attention to the detail of people's lives translates into a consistent and incremental escalation of chronic stress imposed upon vulnerable people, whose immune systems, living conditions or will to deal with that lack of kindness can often break down under the combined pressures.

This is what is playing out at home, on broadcast TV news and on the international political stages. Break down.

Lessons from 1918 Flu pandemic

To the biology of the virus, to the human body and to the T-cells of the human being it does not matter what kind of political or economic model China operates, what ideology is chosen by any Government.

What matters is that State and the people agreed to a strategy of limiting the spread by top down lockdown, and by a bottom upwards and outwards process of identifying the infected and the unwell, providing support for contact tracing all cases, to identify, quarantine and offer good treatment all the way to ICU level support where necessary, covering everyone's living costs, with an aim to stopping the spread of the infection.

We have known since 1918 that this method works. It is established scientific and clinical practice.

This one chart demonstrates the efficacy of social distancing, treatment of infected people away from the community,  which helped to reduce transmission of infection during the 1918 flu epidemic - two cites, two different policies, two different outcomes.



One city went into early lock down, the other allowed large gatherings to go ahead.

Because these cities varied in their responses, and because we also know that this variation repeated itself across the Earths population affected during 1917-18, we know this is true.

SARS in 2002/3 and MERS in 2012/13 and other outbreaks of infectious diseases spread by human to human have led to further study and development of the protocols to stop the spread of infection.

Learning from experience : China

The Chinese Government and people know that they will see future out breaks, and they are devoting funds and resources to prepare for that, right now. This epidemic in China is not yet over - their systems remain active and vigilant.

The Chinese Government did not suppress information about the outbreak as they have been accused by various western news media. Some errors were made in the early days, and these have been acknowledged and addressed.

There was a case of local Wuhan Government having a go at a number of doctors, for sharing information in online social media, before the genome of the novel virus had been sequenced.  Censorship of those comments as they spread through social media was carried on for a few days.

The Chinese Government and the WHO were perhaps too cautious. The 'unwillingness' to slap an international travel ban cannot be laid at the feet on the WHO alone - that body can advise, it cannot impose.

The Chinese medical, clinical and epidemiological communities were totally open about what was happening, and were sharing there information with others in other countries across the Earths nation states, including the British Government who rule over me and my compatriots, and our visitors.

From 31st December to 7th January was the timeline involved between Li Wenliang publishing his concerns on social media and the sequencing of the genome,

It was the National Chinese Government that initiated the lock down, and threw all available resources into limiting and stopping the spread of the infection, and ramping up hospital and treatment facilities, contact tracing etc...

Taiwan, South Korea, Hong Kong and Vietnam have all acted rapidly to suppress community transmission.

Boris Johnson's plan is bogus.

Boris Johnson tells us that "many of your loved ones will die".

He says the strategy is to move 'from contain, to delay.'

Containment would mean clear and timely communication of the threat. a temporary lock down, social distancing, testing and contact tracing to identify pockets of infection, quarantine  of contacts, treatment in fever hospitals and the focus of resources in order to stop the spread of infection.

That never happened. There has never been any serious attempt at containing the virus, within the UK.

Delay is in practice to delay the correct action as indicated by best practice epidemiological protocol. That is the only delay the UK Government have made. Slowing the spread is not the same as stopping the spread of the infection. Slowing the spread is allowing the spread.

That is the policy in how it is actually happening, whatever they might call it.

The UK Government, 'led' by Boris Johnson has carried out no program of containment, and has not acted according the best medical practice. They are pursuing a herd immunity policy.

"Our policy is informed by data modelling and behavioural science" said Chris Whitty, the Chief Medical Officer, UK Government. That claim was repeated by Sir Patrick Valence, the Governments Chief Scientific Adviser.

I fell off my seat, listening to that. What  the actual flabbergasted?

Behavioural Science - not epidemiology, not medical practice, not public health protocols.

Nudge, anyone?

Herd Immunity, or Hoard Immunity? 

Protect the People or the Economy?

It can be both. This is not an either or situation.

As of this date, there is no testing offered locally, no accurate public information on local outbreaks, on the full range of symptoms, no contact tracing,  no solid information, in fact there was such confusion published in media and across online  social media that the Government were forced to say out loud that "this is not a flu!" but something much, much different.

As of this date there is still no contact tracing, no fever hospitals, no checks at airports - the UK is still receiving flights from other infected countries, there is no quarantine of incoming travellers, nothing.

No  testing, no process of identifying infected patients as early as possible, offering correct protocol advice for self management and when to move to more intensive care, there are no enhanced facilities to operate that care at sufficient strength to be kind all the way through. Nothing.

No attention to detail, no practical structural kindness by way of policy.

Social distancing, identification of people afflicted, quarantine and treatment in isolation properly supported works as a policy, together, and any gap in that undermines the whole..

It worked in 1918, where it was applied, and where it was not applied, mortality rates went way up.

There are more examples, detailed in the history of 1918, and beyond.

SARS (2002 -2003), MERS (2011 -2015),

In these epidemics, Governments involved chose to deploy all available resources to ensuring as few people as possible become infected,  they chose to act to stop the spread of the infection, not merely to slow it down. Those Governments activated a protocol that demanded that as much resources as can be made available to treat the unwell, and the seriously ill, in isolation from the general population.  The policy was to acknowledge the fatalities, and to keep and provide accurate up to date information at local level, so people know what is happening.

This method had form, has been used to contain epidemics for a long time, and was clearly successful where applied during the 1918 worldwide flu outbreak. People need to know what is happening in order to be better engaged in the process of suppression of an infection.

The worst misleading public narrative for me was the insistence in News Mefia and across the online social media that the illness was similar to the 'flu.

This is not a 'flu.

That typification was deliberately misleading..

That is a dangerous lie.

In terms of prevention of spread, and provision of treatment, the Chinese, Taiwanese, Koreans, Vietnamese and other East Asian states have developed practical protocols which they know from direct experience have been helpful.   Aware that there will have be many variations in dosage and reaction, they have developed the capability to analyse the data, the evidence.

Which means that they have an array of field tested protocols. Attention to detail is kindness.

Studying these as the international epidemiology community does all the time is about helping other States draft responses within their own territories - co-operation is a matter of international care, and form of kindness.

The understanding since the Spanish Flu of 1918, SARS, MERS and other cases of infectious diseases is based on real experience, the truest evidence set of all.

It is recorded in some detail that social distancing, self isolation, testing, treatment once infected or infectious until recovery all are essential parts of stopping the spread on an infection.

https://qz.com/1816060/a-chart-of-the-1918-spanish-flu-shows-why-social-distancing-works/

We can arrive at a reasonable and rational evidence based observation.

In amongst all of this, I watched  some live Al Jazeera, today and a segment on refugees, in refugee camps, about the vulnerability of those 100 million displaced people.

How can that not be front page news here?

What about the 320,000 people in the UK who are living in temporary accommodation, in B&Bs, Hotels and Hostels where most of those involved are families, all of them living in very close quarters were self isolation is very difficult to maintain?

Are they left to gamble with a loaded dice on life and death with Boris Johnson's pseudoscience and behavioural nudges as their only 'advantage'?

"Take it on the chin.".

Some reality checks.

The T-cells do not care about our political consciousness, they respond to how we are supporting our living bodies, our brothers and sister, our mothers and fathers and grandparents immune systems with every tool available. Kindness boost one's immune system.

That kindness of quality care at all stages - that people care enough to engage with and carry out shutdown and  social distancing for a temporary situation, that the care the state and other agencies take in carrying out action -  all of that care is our immune systems ally, and is a counter force to the spread of the virus within any given population in this outbreak.

What happened - real material evidence -  in China and South Korea was that the transmission from person to person was reduced, those who were infected were treated until they were clear and no longer infectious, until they had proven immunity, so that they could then not be a transmission or infection agent or submit to the disease state again, because their immune systems now know the virus, and have anti-bodies.

And there are variations in peoples immune systems which led to variations in outcomes. Including, tragically many fatalities.

Boris Johnson would not follow this practical, proven advice for all the T-cells in China!

Excuse the pun - kindness has a sense of humour.

Kindness has to be robust, firm, gentle, determined, and given an unquestioned budget for cost and excellence in delivery - the profit is the health of the population, our welfare and well-being.

Jeremy Corbyn is the kind of public figure who could hold that together.

He has ideas, based on the evidence.

If only the competing bullies could just stand aside, just for now, while we are dealing with this public threat, within Labour as much as anywhere else. We need to empower the population to be well organised as a grass roots, to turn to mutual aid, in conjunction with NHS, social services, councils and other logistics support, to organise around resources placed at our disposal according to need, so that we can all live without infecting millions and watching hundreds of thousands to die?

Would that be so bad?

Genuine Social Kindness is calling for all of  this, and more, and those who stand for power and status, the ruling oligarchies, do not agree: what they will tell you, is that genuine social kindness is a threat to the economy, austerity is necessary.

Corbyn is a threat.

Sanders is a threat.

The Chinese are a threat.

Grass roots request for the human right to regulate and eliminate industrial pollution is a threat.

The virus is just a virus, doing it's thing.

There is no 'war against a virus'; that language is puerile nonsense -  there is living with the virus, there is supporting strong immune systems supported by nurturant social behaviour.

There is knowledge based proven efficacy of care.

The Virus has no political or religious affiliations or concerns.

Kindness, as suggested above, and attention to detail are the critical elements of our societal response to the virus.


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.

Politics, Arguments, Debates and Institutionalised Emotional Blindness

Politics, arguments, debates and the abdication of responsibility.


The Power Inquiry Report 2006.

If you have not heard of it, then I suggest that you need to know more about it. We all need to read the report and understand it's full implications, not least because it emerged from the grass roots, rather than a think-tank. And it challenges a number of assumptions about the ability of grass roots folk to engage with shared responsibility, robust governance and detailed policy deliberation.

The Power inquiry, an independent investigation into the condition of democracy in Britain, was set up in 2004. The members of its commission (chaired by Helena Kennedy) hosted meetings around Britain and heard submissions from a wide variety of interest groups, professionals, and concerned citizens. The commission published its report on 27 February 2006.

"After eighteen months of investigation, the final report of Power is a devastating critique of the state of formal democracy in Britain. Many of us actively support campaigns such as Greenpeace or the Countryside Alliance. And millions more take part in charity or community work. But political parties and elections have been a growing turn-off for years.

The cause is not apathy. The problem is that we don't feel we have real influence over the decisions made in our name. The need for a solution is urgent. And that solution is radical. Nothing less than a major programme of reform to give power back to the people of Britain..."

Examine it.

D. Cameron, E. Milliband and Menzies Campbell paid lip service to the report and initiative at the time. Cameron said, in public, and it's on video, that The Power Inquiry was the 'most important initiative in Democracy in the UK' in a long, long time.

I was there. I heard them speak and mouth hearty support for the report, as they stood and spoke before the assembled crowd of more than 500 people. 

Less than a week after attending the launch of the report, at a conference in Queen Elizabeth Hall, Parliament Square, after praising it during that weekend conference, after saying how important it was, after speaking about it in glowing terms to the attendees, they dismissed it as 'impractical.'

'Impractical'? Well, yes. Ceding power to people is always 'impractical' to the Ruling Class.

Here's an outline of the recommendations:

http://www.lgcplus.com/give-citizens-power-to-make-laws-urges-inquiry/513437.article

Here's the full document, PDF download, very much worth a reading.

http://www.jrrt.org.uk/publications/power-people-independent-inquiry-britains-democracy-full-report

Power without accountability or shared responsibility is always going to be a serious problem, and open to abuse.

Quite a lot of the comments flying around about Russel Brand, UKIP, and politics in general are antagonistic 'debating' style, rather than mature deliberation or critical analysis. Trying to win or batter the other side down as opposed to learning enough to develop a win-win solution.

What's that phrase they use about the Court system?

Adversarial.

I find that appalling. An abdication of responsibility. Politically immature. Psychologically immature. An adversarial Parliament is immature, and unworthy, easily corrupted - a collegiate parliament would be mature and worthy and would repel corruption.

Because the issue of power and legislation is really about us, we, the people who form the community and how we work together (or not) to create a society that nurtures, that cares for the vulnerable.

The issue is about relationships based on kindness, rather than power.

Healthy discourse is about sharing, exploring and growing together.

Debate is about power, it's about who wins.

The Power Inquiry emerged out of the Community Voluntary Sector, which has decades of providing services at the local community level, dealing with amongst other things : finances, governance, research, best practices, transparency, service provis
ion, understanding their 'clients' needs, overcoming institutional obstacles, overcoming Institutionalised Emotional Blindness, campaigning, fund raising, discourse on policy formulation and much else besides. These are real life skills.

It was these people that David Cameron's BIG SOCIETY was aimed at, as a direct institutional assault. And it was their clients, the vulnerable who suffer doubly as a result.

And it's working.

Speak to any disabled people currently being denied benefits on the false basis of 'austerity'?

Use your voice to nurture the active grass roots, as well as to chastise the powerful.

In another comment, elsewhere, I pointed out how appalled I was at the sniping that is so common.

Instituionalised Emotional Blindness. There's something here for everyone to consider.

The immaturity of the debating style of the discourse, as opposed to an effort to share, learn and grow in order to create a more nurturant society.

An abdication of responsibility. It's really quite ugly.




Kindest regards

Corneilius

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

This blog, like all my other content creation work is not monetised via advertising. If you like what I present, consider sharing my content. If you can afford the price of a cup of coffee or a pint of beer/ale/cider for a few months, please donate via my Patreon account.

Thank you for reading this blog.

https://patreon.com/corneilius - donations gratefully received