Evidence and opinion, again.

Getting a grip on articulating the difference I sense between evidence and opinion. Spotting the danger signs.

One cannot get angry AT evidence, unless of course, the evidence incriminates that person, and they wish to avoid it. That is another matter altogether.

Evidence, simply put , is what it is.

Nothing one can say about it alters that. The evidence is neutral. It can inform, that is all.

No opinion about it alters it's basic state. Opinion does not change the evidence.

What is different in opinion is that the perception r bias of the 'observer' has interjected, and thrown up a projection, an internalisation, a denial.

Opinions tend to be held as personal opinions. They form part of self-identification and include shared internalisations, drawn from cultural, institutional, experiential, educational influencers.

The Flag, Football Team, Big Tits are Good, Religion, Ideology, Vast Wealth, Aspiration, Alpha Male, Women are ..., Republican or Democrat? all opinion.

For someone who holds a personal opinion, when it is challenged, they feel that the challenge is to them, to their very self, and react accordingly to the threat.

That's why it goes skewiff - the other party is taking things personally, and is probably unaware that they are so doing. Put two opinion holders together and watch what happens.

People who hold opinions carry a tendency to be extremist, if only because they lack accurate information, and tend to rely upon a flow of triggers(media) and their own imagination for political insight.

There is a spectrum over which we find many subtle extremisms, built into neurotypical or socially conditioned culture.

These subtle extremists are on all sides, because they like to take a side, wrong or right, but always, in their own eyes, right. They also like to know what's happening inside the other side. It's a game.

Trident. Some people believe it is right. Brexit. Some people believe it is right.

Grenfell Towers, one week on, and survivors are still not fully covered for all their very pressing needs.

The evidence is that the survivors deserve the full power of the state, and all material and psycho-social support to be given over to caring for these tragic people, without question, even as the search for the missing, and the investigation into how many were burned alive, are under way. So many people afflicted.

Is it right that these people are fixated on Brexit, and that is a distraction from the real need the must be met, now, of our own people, who they claim to 'serve'? Is that right?

These people in Government are behaving as they have been groomed and trained. Quite a lot, the Civil servants, clerical staff, back bench MPs, Coppers are decent enough people, are not violent in any way; most are doing their best to live as decent healthy humane beings who live, love and pass on. Their executive branch are a different matter. The political masters, local and national, must be held to account. They have committed crimes, and must be held to account.

The evidence suggests compassion, and direct action.

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.

Governance by opinion? Or evidence?

Governance is the administration of a community's shared resource..... and that has certain implications, in terms of duty of care and health and safety of the community, the entire community.

Governance by opinion?

Who would vote on that basis, and why?

A VERY important question, one that demands evidence for an accurate answer.

The Brexit campaign was an example of opinion over evidence, as was the invasion of Iraq, the bombing of Libya, the support of violent militia in Syria, and not least, the policies pertaining to how our State assists and help the most vulnerable in our Society.

I find it utterly appalling that political decision making, policy is based on opinion (ideology, etc) rather than a full appraisal of all the available evidence.

The media provide opinion and present it as fact. The Politicians react to the media and discuss opinion, rather than the evidence. I see this as a matter of health and safety.

So as to why the Election, now?

Europe will not negotiate on the basis of opinion, and an opinionated Government will find it difficult to engage in an honest negotiation, and that will be come apparent to one and all, and their grip on power will be severely diminished for some time.

So they want out...... before it all goes badly.

They know a Corbyn led Government or progressive alliance Government will be evidence based, and they will attempt to disrupt, derail that Government (from within and without) rather than be mature enough to negotiate in good faith, for all of us.

So they are handing the chalice over, and it remains to be seen what they will do after that - I think they will be disruptive.

Please bear in mind that this is really just an opinion - about the motives behind the snap election, and that I need evidence to support this conclusion and to determine the appropriate response.

My most urgent concern is the primacy of opinion in the electorate, dominated by media output, (and to a degree the way the State curriculum in history disables evidence led analysis) which enables any Government to get support for policies by touting/triggering opinion.In a similar vein, I detest the word 'benefits' when applied to Social Care.

It really ought to be called 'assistance' or 'help' so that when people who do not look at all the evidence suggest that we should not help or assist those who need it, it becomes very clear what the issue is.

Kindest regards

Corneilius

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

*If you like this post, if you found the themes resonant, if you agree in part, would you be kind enough to let others know about it? I would really appreciate that. You could drop a comment too, if you felt the urge. Or not. I will moderate contributions, and block any that are abusive. For obvious reasons. Thank you for reading.

War Crimes, Opinion or Evidence, Burkini's, Bullying and Jo Cox

The Big Issue.

 

War Crimes.

War Crimes and War Criminals going un-opposed, not being held to account by the taxpayers who funded those who made the decisions to go to war, and who paid for the troops and contractors tasked with prosecuting the wars.

Politicians who deliberately, and against all warnings, enabled massive bank fraud and then bailed out those banks who committed those frauds, using future taxpayer funds, thus in-debting (or indenturing) the emerging generation of students as future taxpayers and then, as if to rub salt into these open wounds, the same grouping of Politcians claimed 'Austerity' (lack of spare cash) as their excuse for a class war against the vulnerable and the poor.

That is the core issue here.

Opinion vs Evidence

The people who allowed this to happen, who voted for and continue to vote for the politicians on any side who administered and are yet administering all of this, are the enablers of these crimes. In that I include the mainstream media, and the conspiracy theorist industry.

One cannot, as so often happens, blame those who did not vote, out of sheer ennui, desperation or a learned, evidence based distaste for a system that is actively an institutionalized bully system.

Most of the those people did look at the evidence, and decided that the only option was not to participate in hypocrisy.

That is understandable.

There is no excuse in the 21st Century for not taking the time to examine the evidence, the data, when making choices that affect (or afflict) the entire community.

This must be addressed to all those who voted for the politicians who have, and are, committing war crimes and attacking the most vulnerable people in our society.

"You are not looking at the evidence!"

Selfishness, my mortgage, my job, my party loyalty, my allegiances, my prejudices, what I read in the papers, or see in the News on TV etc are all invalid bases for making choices that affect Governance.

We do have a social responsibility to each other. To cause no harm.

That ought to be obvious. Duty of Care. Due Diligence.

Opinion cannot replace or supplant evidence, on matters related to the administration of a communities shared contributory resources,with mere opinion.

We need to make THAT 100% CLEAR.

I refuse to argue about opinions - I say present the evidence, the facts, the outcomes.

Do not be trolled by those who insist on their 'right' to hold and impose an opinion - they can hold it, but they have no right to impose it, as that imposition is an abuse.

Fight back with honesty, truth, evidence, determination and vision, a vision that must include the liberation of those who hold opinion over evidence from the trap they are in.

Do whatever it takes in terms of a discourse.

France's Burkini Ban


It's a deliberate provocation, designed to inflame wounded people on the edges of violence into acting out that violence, and to give a false basis to those who would support violence against France on the basis of Islamaphobiic policies proving their case.

Institutionalised bullying is a scientifically mediated strategic, tactical weaponised behaviour system. It includes grooming, labeling, distraction, slander, slur, innuendo, opinion over evidence, gas lighting, lies and set-ups, as well as the many tools of direct and indirect violence. It's intent is to ensure that Power is retained, enhanced and projected.

ALL Governments or Power Hierarchies use it, media are utterly aware and complicit, and we see it in movies and 'pop' culture all the time...

We are being politically inept and socially foolish (I know it is scary, frightening to look at, yet looking away will not deal with it) if we do not take the time to recognise these tactics, and their position within the strategies of Power.

  We must also work out how to counter it, within ourselves, within our families and communities as much as across Society as a whole - otherwise those who are living where the bombs are being dropped or detonated, abroad and at home, will continue to suffer, and we will suffer, and our children suffer even more if we fail to address it.

In all it's forms.

We are paying for it, literally funding it.

Taxpayers pay for ALL the Wars, all the killing.

Superb blog, by Kitty Jones, on how bullying operates.

Read it.

Be armed, rather than armored.

Jo Cox.

Jo Cox, a British female labour politican murdered, assassinated in an extreme act of violence, less than 3 months ago.

Silence.

Silence of the Lambs, or Silence of the Wolves?

Why is this not being discussed by the Labour Party membership, with the same passion as the leadership non-contest?

Who killed Jo Cox?

Britain did.

Kindest regards

Corneilius

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

*If you like this post, if you found the themes resonant, if you agree in part, would you be kind enough to let others know about it? I would really appreciate that. You could drop a comment too, if you felt the urge. Or not. I will moderate contributions, and block any that are abusive. For obvious reasons. Thank you for reading.

Let the will of the State act, then, instead of the will of the indiviual (or community)

Here's a nice quote to illustrate the way in which childrens minds were targetted through compulsory state education, on behalf of the Industrialists who were hell-bent on turning States into representatives of business, and to do that they felt it neccessary to exercise mind-control, to deflect dissent, especially reasoned dissent.

You will recognise the elements, and for sure, each of us has fallen foul of these. I know I have.

Charles Pierce, the eminence grise behind William James and John Dewey, architects of Compulsory State Education in the USA wrote :

“Let the will of the state act, then, instead of the will of the individual. Let an institution be created which shall have for its object to keep correct doctrines before the attention of the people, to reiterate them perpetually, and to teach them to the young, having at the same time power to prevent contrary doctrines from being taught, advocated or expressed.

Let all possible cause of a change of mind be removed from men’s apprehension. Let them be kept ignorant, lest they should learn of some reason to think otherwise than they do. Let their passions be enlisted, so that they may regard … unusual opinions with hatred and horror. Then, let all men who reject the established belief be terrified into silence….

Let a list of opinions be drawn up to which no man of the least independence of thought can assent, and let the faithful be required to accept all these propositions in order to segregate them as radically as possible from the influence of the rest of the world.”

We can see this in operation in the media, and in school text-books. And we can see this in operation in our own minds as we sometimes struggle to grasp the truth of our current situation. Unexamined assumptions are a good guide to those areas of our thinking that have been 'adjusted' to fit into this 'sick society', an adjustment that Martin Luther King made clear was unacceptable.

Here's a few more quotes to flesh this process out a bit.

Woodrow Wilson speaking to an audience of businessmen in New York City in 1909 :

“We want one class to have a liberal education. We want another class, a very much larger class, to forgo the privilege of a liberal education and fit themselves to perform specific difficult manual tasks.”

This is the technology of modern management ……this is the doctrine which drove William James in “Principles of Psychology” (1890), to assign habit-training, not intellectual development, the place of honour in schooling :

“Habit is the enormous fly-wheel of society, it’s most precious conservative agent. It alone is what … saves the children of fortune from the envious uprisings of the poor … it alone prevents the hardest and most repulsive (jobs) from being deserted. It holds the miner in his darkness. It keeps different strata of society from mixing.”

All of us who attended state schooling have been exposed to and conditioned to accept the imposed and limited ideas that are taught through that education, reinforced through the media and that underpin the success of marketing.

This is the core technology of psychological state control upon which the likes of Tony Blair, David Cameron and the leaders of Indusrty et al depend upon.

Of course they retain that other oh-so familiar stick, that of poverty, physical violence or imprisonment to curtail those few who escape this conditioning. That’s what the War Against Terror and the consistent attack on civil liberties is all about.


Kindest regards

Corneilius

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