Choice and Freedom
If I am free to choose, and if my choice causes harm to another person, a harm that they then cannot avoid, what then, of their freedom? My choice has removed their freedom to be free of harm.
What of mine?
You - yes... you, the person who might be reading this and might be thinking, "I will not wear a mask! My freedom to choose matters!"
I guarantee that you did not come up with the freedom of choice agenda about wearing/not wearing a mask, in this epidemic and global pandemic, all on your own - someone whispered it into your digital ear.
You did not originate that thought yourself. I know this. You know it too.
Thinking is more than having thoughts. It involves following those thoughts through, and examining them in depth, testing them against what you already know to be true.
Hierarchy, and Hitler was a Lefty!
Hitler was a violent Hierarch. The organisation he headed up had Socialist in it's name. Everyone knows the Nazi ideology was anti-socialism. Stalin was not a socialist either, he was a military dictator. Churchill was also a military dictator, albeit guided by a military committee.
Perhaps within a hierarchy of violence system, everyone is a fascist, by default.
Not because they want to be, but because there are no truly egalitarian operations happening within this system. No place to be egalitarian.
We all pay rent to someone.
Perhaps that's really difficult to really look at.
Every Hierarchy of Power and Violence is just that, whether we call it Nazi, Communist, Democracy, Monarchy, Gang, Abuse Family, Religious State, Empire, Federation or Union.
It's all the same blood spattered room, just a different pattern of wallpaper.
Hierarchy systems have to condition the people to habituate to being exploited, to see the system as normal.
No child left behind.
Everyone must be educated! Self education is considered a threat, so much so that education is mandatory in many countries, truancy is a crime.
Perhaps everybody within a hierarchy system who seeks to reform the system with a better hierarchy is a deluded fascist, deluded in that hierarchies always produce people who want to topple the hierarchy, which creates an inevitable tension that causes those in charge to exercise violence to maintain their version of the status quo. For your own good, they say to the people at large.
Egalitarian cultures are healthy cultures, the biological default is trust..
“In other words, the default state is to trust, and what the amygdala does is learn vigilance and distrust.”
― Robert M. Sapolsky, Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst
The context of this statement by Sapolsky is that we are sensitive, vulnerable babies who learn by experience, that our behaviour is mostly learned. Very little of our behaviour is predetermined. And the science suggests strongly that the default state, the base line of healthy behaviour resolves around trust.
“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.”
― Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst
Cults and Clubs.
Hierarchy cultures are cults - they have to dominate every child's mind and psyche, they have to habituate everyone to the 'normalcy' of hierarchy...
Left/right is just a set piece, a clever ploy, a distraction that is meaningless in that it does not lead to the kind of healthy change we need, it impedes learning and healing.
Marx's theories would still have led to workers destroying the planet.
NeoLiberalism is destroying the planet just as assuredly as Chinese Socialist Capitalism is.
Perhaps.
To me it does not make bio-logical sense to 'create' a species that is dysfunctional.
It makes more sense to say that a functional species placed under chronic stress will become dysfunctional.
Fact: an aboriginal body in a rain forest is as evolved for egalitarian relationships as my body in London.
https://www.psychologytoday.com/gb/blog/freedom-learn/201105/how-hunter-gatherers-maintained-their-egalitarian-ways
"We citizens of a modern democracy claim to believe in equality, but our sense of equality is not even close to that of hunter-gatherers.
The hunter-gatherer version of equality meant that each person was equally entitled to food, regardless of his or her ability to find or capture it; so food was shared. It meant that nobody had more wealth than anyone else; so all material goods were shared.
It meant that nobody had the right to tell others what to do; so each person made his or her own decisions.
It meant that even parents didn't have the right to order their children around; hence the non-directive childrearing methods that I have discussed in previous posts. It meant that group decisions had to be made by consensus; hence no boss, "big man," or chief."
The difference is the culture.
In terms of sensory capacity, in terms of the capability to be loving and of being loved, in terms of creativity and intelligence required to build shelter, to find food, the energy and effort to care for children and elders we are precisely and beautifully evolved, and bio-logically adapted for healthy relationships.
The difference is the culture you grow up within, and what it tells you about how you 'should' behave and what to expect.
I live in London, the cultural center of a hierarchy of power and violence.
No such hierarchy persists in old growth rain forest.
Peter Gray, again, explains it another way: https://www.psychologytoday.com/gb/blog/freedom-learn/201105/human-nature-teaching-ii-how-hunter-gatherers-taught
"As I explained in that earlier post, hunter-gatherers had faith that their children would, on their own initiatives, learn what they needed to know, and so they did not worry about their children's education or attempt to control it.
Moreover, hunter-gatherers held strongly to the values of personal autonomy and equality. They believed that it is wrong for anyone to try to control another person's life, either in the short run or the long run, even if that other person is a child. Hunter-gatherers believed that it is presumptuous for anyone to think that they know what is best for another person."
For most of us habituated to hierarchies of power systems thinking, this is all idealist and dangerous nonsense. But is it?
Obviously any transition from where we, in this Industrialised Hierarchy of Power and Violence culture, are towards a culture approaching that degree of mature kindness is going to be a rather large undertaking, yet that does not mean it is impossible, does it?
Wear a mask, be kind, stay safe, stop the spread, spread the love.
Kindest regards
Corneilius
"Do what you love, it is your gift to universe."
If I am free to choose, and if my choice causes harm to another person, a harm that they then cannot avoid, what then, of their freedom? My choice has removed their freedom to be free of harm.
What of mine?
You - yes... you, the person who might be reading this and might be thinking, "I will not wear a mask! My freedom to choose matters!"
I guarantee that you did not come up with the freedom of choice agenda about wearing/not wearing a mask, in this epidemic and global pandemic, all on your own - someone whispered it into your digital ear.
You did not originate that thought yourself. I know this. You know it too.
Thinking is more than having thoughts. It involves following those thoughts through, and examining them in depth, testing them against what you already know to be true.
Hierarchy, and Hitler was a Lefty!
Hitler was a violent Hierarch. The organisation he headed up had Socialist in it's name. Everyone knows the Nazi ideology was anti-socialism. Stalin was not a socialist either, he was a military dictator. Churchill was also a military dictator, albeit guided by a military committee.
Perhaps within a hierarchy of violence system, everyone is a fascist, by default.
Not because they want to be, but because there are no truly egalitarian operations happening within this system. No place to be egalitarian.
We all pay rent to someone.
Perhaps that's really difficult to really look at.
Every Hierarchy of Power and Violence is just that, whether we call it Nazi, Communist, Democracy, Monarchy, Gang, Abuse Family, Religious State, Empire, Federation or Union.
It's all the same blood spattered room, just a different pattern of wallpaper.
Hierarchy systems have to condition the people to habituate to being exploited, to see the system as normal.
No child left behind.
Everyone must be educated! Self education is considered a threat, so much so that education is mandatory in many countries, truancy is a crime.
Perhaps everybody within a hierarchy system who seeks to reform the system with a better hierarchy is a deluded fascist, deluded in that hierarchies always produce people who want to topple the hierarchy, which creates an inevitable tension that causes those in charge to exercise violence to maintain their version of the status quo. For your own good, they say to the people at large.
Egalitarian cultures are healthy cultures, the biological default is trust..
“In other words, the default state is to trust, and what the amygdala does is learn vigilance and distrust.”
― Robert M. Sapolsky, Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst
The context of this statement by Sapolsky is that we are sensitive, vulnerable babies who learn by experience, that our behaviour is mostly learned. Very little of our behaviour is predetermined. And the science suggests strongly that the default state, the base line of healthy behaviour resolves around trust.
“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.”
― Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst
Cults and Clubs.
Hierarchy cultures are cults - they have to dominate every child's mind and psyche, they have to habituate everyone to the 'normalcy' of hierarchy...
Left/right is just a set piece, a clever ploy, a distraction that is meaningless in that it does not lead to the kind of healthy change we need, it impedes learning and healing.
Marx's theories would still have led to workers destroying the planet.
NeoLiberalism is destroying the planet just as assuredly as Chinese Socialist Capitalism is.
Perhaps.
To me it does not make bio-logical sense to 'create' a species that is dysfunctional.
It makes more sense to say that a functional species placed under chronic stress will become dysfunctional.
Fact: an aboriginal body in a rain forest is as evolved for egalitarian relationships as my body in London.
https://www.psychologytoday.com/gb/blog/freedom-learn/201105/how-hunter-gatherers-maintained-their-egalitarian-ways
"We citizens of a modern democracy claim to believe in equality, but our sense of equality is not even close to that of hunter-gatherers.
The hunter-gatherer version of equality meant that each person was equally entitled to food, regardless of his or her ability to find or capture it; so food was shared. It meant that nobody had more wealth than anyone else; so all material goods were shared.
It meant that nobody had the right to tell others what to do; so each person made his or her own decisions.
It meant that even parents didn't have the right to order their children around; hence the non-directive childrearing methods that I have discussed in previous posts. It meant that group decisions had to be made by consensus; hence no boss, "big man," or chief."
The difference is the culture.
In terms of sensory capacity, in terms of the capability to be loving and of being loved, in terms of creativity and intelligence required to build shelter, to find food, the energy and effort to care for children and elders we are precisely and beautifully evolved, and bio-logically adapted for healthy relationships.
The difference is the culture you grow up within, and what it tells you about how you 'should' behave and what to expect.
I live in London, the cultural center of a hierarchy of power and violence.
No such hierarchy persists in old growth rain forest.
Peter Gray, again, explains it another way: https://www.psychologytoday.com/gb/blog/freedom-learn/201105/human-nature-teaching-ii-how-hunter-gatherers-taught
"As I explained in that earlier post, hunter-gatherers had faith that their children would, on their own initiatives, learn what they needed to know, and so they did not worry about their children's education or attempt to control it.
Moreover, hunter-gatherers held strongly to the values of personal autonomy and equality. They believed that it is wrong for anyone to try to control another person's life, either in the short run or the long run, even if that other person is a child. Hunter-gatherers believed that it is presumptuous for anyone to think that they know what is best for another person."
For most of us habituated to hierarchies of power systems thinking, this is all idealist and dangerous nonsense. But is it?
Obviously any transition from where we, in this Industrialised Hierarchy of Power and Violence culture, are towards a culture approaching that degree of mature kindness is going to be a rather large undertaking, yet that does not mean it is impossible, does it?
Wear a mask, be kind, stay safe, stop the spread, spread the love.
Kindest regards
Corneilius
"Do what you love, it is your gift to universe."
