Charity, Power, truth and Jimmy Saville

I appreciate the genuine desire of so many people to 'help others' through the agency of Charity.

And yet, to offer such temporary and often distal help rather than directly and with energy move to confront the actual causes of poverty, (and all the various other areas of need labelled as 'good causes' - note the use of the word cause in this which avoids the actual cause.... how ironic!), to chose  to avoid a head on collision with the truth, in order to look and feel good, rather than to resolve the issues to the greatest degree possible when we as a community and society are very much capable of doing this, (we can send a robot to Mars, design nano-computers that can be ingested, build massive international events such as The Olympics, etc), to avoid that defining human and essentially humane task, out of fear of changing the status quo, losing a job, or for any other 'reason', feels, in my heart of hearts, like a betrayal.

Charity is, to a much larger degree than most will openly acknowledge,  the guilt sop of the middle classes, and the propaganda of the ruling classes. For the lower income classes, charity always begins at home.

The Jimmy Saville story illustrates this quite well, amongst other things.
 

He was famous, feted by Power and Royalty, a TV star to millions of middle class folk, and when allegations were made during his tenure in that elevated position, they were played down, ignored or rejected because of his fame, because of his utility as a charitable agent, and his public profile as a man of good works. His 'oddness' was always besides the point.

At present, the media discussion is about the perpetrator, his accomplices, 'others', the 'enablers', and the restoration of the reputation of the BBC rather than the stories of the Survivors, and how such trauma has affected their lived experience throughout their lives, including how it has affected their families and relationships, and how those adverse affects play out in our communities.

People appear bewildered that "someone who did so much good, could be so evil."

To tell the story of what it really means to be a Survivor in this Society would be to begin to explore from a much deeper base the development of a truly profound critical analysis of our Society.

There is an unwillingness to look honestly at the many ways by which natural human empathy (not sympathy, a totally different thing) has been sidelined and effectively repressed across all sectors of Governance, Commerce and Religion, locally, nationally and internationally, as evidenced by the consistent disbelief of Survivors stories.

What kind of Society would ignore a child's plea for help? What kind of Society would protect it's image of itself in ways that permit harm to children?

Can one really be alive and fully human in a Society such as ours, working on the basis of 'this is the best of a bad lot' whilst refusing to confront and change what is harmful within it, when we know this is possible?

What kind of family would behave thus?

The blood, sweat, guts and tears of those who are oppressed, harmed or abused are hurriedly airbrushed out of the Politicians (and others) calls for change. They will not spend time reflecting on these uncomfortable realities; to FEEL THE FULL IMPACT of which would undermine that image of the status quo. That is utterly selfish, mean and cruel - even if it is not always entirely intentional.

Someone posed this statement/question : "We will also not confront the difficulty of Saville as a victim.... and what caused him to perpetuate such harm....What has happened to people for them to be so? Where have we as a Society gone wrong?"

This is the central question in the Jimmy Saville case, and is mirrored in countless ways by the actions of State leaders who engage in war, and how their actions are 'justified' by media and Offices of State, is mirrored by The Vatican (Worldwide Clerical Abuse, The Inquisition, )and Anglican Churches (Indian Boarding Schools in Canada and USA) and beyond.
 
This is crucial: for unless we examine the genesis of abuse, we will not prevent it.....

Of course, we must hold the adult who harms others 100% accountable, and yet at the same time we need to look to see how the child became such an adult, and seek to ensure that we fully understand that and then alter all of that within our Society that breeds such psychopathy. Resolution is the only long term path worth taking.

The mistreated infant most often loses touch with his or her true self - suppressing the truth of his or her felt experience - in order to adapt to the mistreating situation, and this leads to a loss of empathy for others.

This then lends itself to the creation a sense of disconnection from others, from those who ought to be nurturing the child, and from all of that which nurtures us in life, and this sense of disconnection has a fear associated with it which compounds the fear and trauma of the original mistreatment and leads to a strengthening desire to control others (or oneself) to get perceived needs met. Perceived needs are often distorted, A natural organism will resist such control, and it is here that violence is 'utilised', to enforce the control. Abusers are violent because they feel the power of enforcement by violence is effective.

When a group of people with this psycho-dynamic operate, when they work together, they will inevitably insert their psychology and behaviour into that structure.

This explains the emergence of Institutions of Power that are cruel and violent, even if in name they are social institutions swith roles in Education, Religion, Governance or Commerce, whose stated intent is 'to improve life' for humanity.

This briefly explains how an entire society - or large swathes of a Society, enough to make a difference - can be rallied under the false flags of people like Hitler, Blair, The Pope, Abu Hamza and Bush.

We need, all of us to engage in this matter and to do so for a multitude of reasons - the many billions of Survivors of abuse - be it the Iraqi people, the Syrian people, the Palestinian people, the children in 'care home' and similar Institutions, the many aboriginal peoples whose lands are being invaded by commerce for profit, and not least for the benefit of all our own children and their children's futures.

Kindest regards

Corneilius

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

The Essence of the Jimmy Saville story

This is the essence of the Jimmy Saville/ The Pope/ David Cameron/ George Bush/Tony Blair/ Saddam Hussien etc etc etc story - those who use Power do so because they lack empathy, and respect - the basis of love.

They were not born thus, but became thus largely due to their earliest childhood traumas... this is not to excuse what they do - they are adults, and adults are always, always accountable for any harm they cause to others - it is to say that as a society, as individuals and parents we must address who we relate to children, how we treat them...

As Charlie Chaplin is reputed to have said : "You need power only when you want to do something harmful. Love is enough to get everything done."

We all will do to our own, to a greater or lessor extent, what was done to us if we cannot resolve what we went through in those earliest days and months. Few can recall what occurred because we learn by experience, by feeling and by emotion at depth. That learning is the primary relational information we have, and it is mostly unconscious.

This that leaves a majority of people open to direct manipulation .... which is essential for Power and Mass Media to operate..... without that, they would fall.

The psychology of any given society, community or family is both revealed and perpetuated in how the children are related to and treated. Change that and you can change everything.

It cannot be change by Government dictat, as all dictats run counter to this change towards empathy, it must be changed at the grass roots and grow from there...

We are at across roads, in that so much information is emerging about abuse, and about the natural development of empathy in early childhood..

With this information, which concurs with common sense we can move forwards.....

Kindest regards

Corneilius

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

Simon Jenkins, Jimmy Saville, The BBC and The Pope

Simon Jenkins, in today's Guardian, writes an article that tries to typify the public's response, and that of some media, to the Jimmy Saville story as a 'witch-hunt' that feeds paranoia. To him there are other far more important issues that deserve the front page headlines...

"In our rush to apportion blame for the actions of an individual, we risk becoming blind to the real issues of the day" 

And he writes of how other 'issues' or stories have been sidelined due to this stories prominence...

"Is Jimmy Savile and the BBC the biggest story on Earth? Apparently so. Today the British media placed it above Romney versus Obama, above the implosion of Lebanon and above the birth of the world's largest oil company. Savile was bigger than killer drones in Lincolnshire, bigger than Cameron's prison policy, bigger than the sensational Birmingham terrorism trial."

(though the fact remains that any reader or consumer of news might read the entirety of a newspaper, watch innumerable sources of on-line video news and still see all those other stories) and then Jenkins proceeds to say that nothing good will come of this, because a) Saville is dead and damned b) everyone in Institutions will be now driven to ensure no-one is allowed near a child without a chaperone :

"Soon doctors, lawyers and priests will have to practise, like the police, in pairs. Responsibility for our behaviour apparently no longer rests on us as individuals but on anyone whom a lawyer can claim was "responsible" for our contact with others. We are no longer our own masters. This is the royal road to Orwellian hell."

 

Jenkins is using hyperbole to distract his readers from the fundamentals of what the Saville story really means.

FACT : The abuse of power is at the root of most of the really serious problems we face, be it at the personal level or beyond.....

Those who seek power - be it at the personal level, at the political level or in the office or school - are often psychologically damaged (and therefore dangerous) people - while not all will be as harmful as Tony Blair, George Bush or Jimmy Saville, the multitude of those who seek and attain some degree of power and who look the other way, who justify their silence when they have access to evidence that deserves to be revealed, who fear to speak out because they might lose a job or damage their careers are an essential component in the abuse of Power by those prepared to cause harm to others.

Sue Gerhardt's analysis of Tony Blair and George Bush in her book 'Selfish Society' r2010 e-iterates what Alice Miller's 'For Your Own Good: The roots of violence in childhood mistreatment' clearly demonstrated in 1986.

If we really want an empathic, healthily functioning Society in the long term, we, all of us, have to address the way our Society relates to children, to parenting and education, to 'care' and in particular address the fact that Power sees children/people as potential workers, economic units essential for 'growth' and that Power underplays and undermines what we all need for genuine happiness, as we race towards the illusion that wealth (consumerism) generates happiness.

Simon Jenkins unwillingness to admit or acknowledge this is typical of those who prefer to protect the status quo. The tone of his article is dismissive, angry, petulant.

"Those running big organisations, in the public and private sectors, face a lethal pincer movement. On the one side is a rising tide of risk aversion, seeping into every factory, office and profession, stifling enterprise, "reassessing" risk, clogging decision. On the other is a fear of what happens should this process fail. Just as the concept of an accident has slid from legal status, so has the "honest mistake". When Entwistle today admitted and regretted his mistake in not asking in more detail about the Savile programme, his tormenters hardly noticed. Honest mistakes do not exist, being replaced by only the most serious and probably criminal negligence, fit only for the pillory, the stocks or the gallows."

George Entwhistle's honest mistake? ignoring evidence that Jimmy Saville, far from deserving a 'celebratory special' was a nasty, nasty harmful man, and ignoring the fact that the many Survivors of his horrific abuse would be further traumatised by the transmission of that 'celebratory special', and that those who had come forward would once again suffer from being ignored, rejected, not believed.

That was not an honest mistake, that was an act of incredible irresponsibility, and act that demonstrates a profound lack of empathy for all those adversely affected by Jimmy Saville's abuse. The Survivors and their families.

Nothing he has done yet is sufficient to repair this. George Entwhistle has a choice to make. To honestly admit his error, and respond as required or do what so many people in power are prepared to do .... avoid empathy, attend to the status quo, to the agenda of Power.

Just as David Cameron's Coalition Government's actions in cutting funding to services that support vulnerable people, cuts that have caused yet more pain and suffering to thousands of disabled people all over the UK are evidence of a deep lack of empathy for the reality of the lives of other less powerful people.
(I  do not hold Cameron alone responsible - every member of the Government, and all  Parliamentarians are equally culpable unless they counter these particular cuts with all their might, as these particular cuts in funding are 100% un-neccessary.)

Just as the Pope, and many Bishops and Curates, and others around the world who ignored Survivors testimony, or hushed it up to protect their Institutions revealed a profound lack of empathy for those who suffered so much at the hands of predatory priests, at the hands of men and women willing to visit intolerable violence upon children.

(The BBC's sickeningly fawning coverage of the Pope's visit to the UK in 2010 which sidelined the world wide story of intolerable suffering inflicted upon hundreds of thousands, if not millions of children over the past centuries in favour of a celebration  of the Pope parallels the Saville story.... a pattern is repeated..)

We CAN live without Institutions which are populated and controlled by adults who refuse to tackle this behavioural dysfunction head-on. We must.

Any institution that permits this kind of dysfunction for whatever reason, or tries to 'manage a crisis' from the perspective of protecting itself, suggesting that the crisis is the revelation  of abuse, and not the abuse itself - is an inhumane, psycho-pathological entity that does far more harm than good.

If the BBC wants to regain trust, then it must be 100% honest, and man up to the realities, no matter how much it hurts or costs... no matter who amongst the powerful is exposed as an abuser, a facilitator of abuse or an apologist for abusers...

I am furious, yet not at all petulant, when I say:

"Grow up, Jenkins, grow up!"
Let me make something clear here : George Entwhistle is not responsible for Jimmy Saville's behaviour. That responsibility lies with Jimmy Saville - he made his choices. Thus, he removed choice from many young peoples lives.

Entwhistle IS responsible for the BBC, and therefore for the BBC's response to these revelations, and is equally responsible to ALL the licence payers, and to all of those who have survived Saville's abuse. He is in the hot seat, and he elected to apply for that job.

He may well be on a very fast learning curve. So be it. He will not be forgiven for failing in his duty as an adult human being. Nor should he be  given any slack. The same applies to Simon Jenkins.

Kindest regards

Corneilius

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

Jimmy Saville, The Pope, and the 'coalition of the unwilling....'

The issue is no longer one of individual abusers. It is about a ‘culture of abuse’. And that includes, of course, how that ‘culture’ protects itself.

The Jimmy Saville story is all the more revealing because of the commentary on the story. The ‘comments’ sections, where attitudes are nakedly expressed, reveal that many of the arguments offered tend to be a mixture of considered opinion, knowledge, data, unexamined assumptions, bile, wilful ignorance and bigotry.

A cross section of our Society?

Including the trolls, of course...

What is clear is that there is a large constituency who are unable to look at the facts, the objective realities of Survivor testimony, of documentation of incidents and of cover-ups, across a vast range of settings where adults have power and access to children and a cover story. Very much akin to settings where politicians and corporate executives have power, access to cash and a cover story. There is a pattern here.Links to some of what we know....

http://www.express.co.uk/features/view/349976/The-disgusted-captain-who-threw-Jimmy-Savile-off-a-cruise-ship - anecdotal evidence from 45 years ago ....

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2213636/Uncle-Jimmy-took-sick-parties-Nephew-tells-childhood-stolen-13.html#ixzz28V6p6JTy - nephew alleges Jimmy Saville took him to 'parties' where other children, men but no women "participated" until 3 or 4 am. Well past the watershed so beloved of the BBC!

http://timesopinion.tumblr.com/post/32804536645/jimmy-saviles-affections-laid-bare-by-jimmy-savile - Jimmy Saville describes an incident that suggests officials were turning a blind eye or that there may have been collusion by way of permitting the assaults, which continued.

http://www.express.co.uk/posts/view/349975/BBC-aware-of-Jimmy-Saville-rumours-and-fears-in-1973 - BBC Top Management were aware of the 'rumours'.. well aware.

Catholic Jimmy Saville page removed from Christian site! - OOOOS! http://offerimustibidomine.blogspot.co.uk/2011/11/sir-jimmy-savile-and-his-catholic-faith.html

It is on the record, part of our collective history. Standard practice.

Keep what ever it is, not matter how nasty, anything that might damage our image , keep it tightly under wraps, irrespective the gravity of the crime or the depth of consequence for those adversely affected or the number of people affected. KEEP A LID ON IT!

This I know also from my own experience .... many people have experienced that moment when I refused to accept what I knew about myself that I must change to be more fully human,only because I clung to an image of who I believed myself to be over knowing me. So Society at large clings to it's self image.Well folks, it's time to let go. Relax, make it easy. We can grow through this, collectively.Or is it this?

Don’t rock the boat, or threaten your income/job. This is partly how some of us, as employees who see some of the evidence,are ‘managed’.  Jobsworths. Fear.Whistle blowers are hounded. Bradley Manning. Julian Assange. Within any bureaucracy, within the party structures associated with Power and the exercise of Power, there is a threat implicit in what is called ‘team playing’: “he’s on our team, so we must protect him to protect the team.” That and job security. Workers have families. Mouths to feed. Old age to fear. More masked threats. Don't risk your job.

That unwillingness, that fear, that dependency helps the abuser culture survive. And thrive. By abuser culture I mean ALL abuse. It's a spectrum of behaviour from what some might 'mild' to extreme and lethal. It IS connected at the sociological psyche level. This quietness, this unwillingness,this sense of POWERLESSNESS? does not inspire confidence in Survivors, and I think it is a symptom of the disease with which we have been afflicted : the result of being coerced by situational circumstance into fitting into a diseased, pathological Institutional Power Structure, one that dominates our lives, and has proven that it will protect itself with violence even if in the legal and moral wrong. That twists us all, one way or another.

Power is not easily dislodged by power, as new power most often replaces the old power, and refines its messages so as to mask itself anew. Power can be dislodged when it is ignored, when it’s instructions no longer have any effect. When it’s wisdoms are seen as merely the controlling thoughts that are permitted for a position of relative comfort within the framework of the system, for those who are the ‘ruled’, as long as one is in passive participation with the pathological instructions. For the most part, those who are ruled over in Democracies are passive participants in Power.

When Survivors come forward to tell their stories, and we find that the evidence supports them, those Survivors are first and foremost refusing to participate with the pathological instructions. This takes immense courage. All Survivors experience a deep fear, an existential dread, for the earlier experience of powerlessness they lived through will have scarred them deeply, so deep it is oft written into their bodies at the neurological and cellular level. This is no easy wound to heal. It is one of the most debilitating wounds of all. Thus their recovery to the extent they report the crimes is already a massive achievement .... and it is only the beginning....

We all know that resignation/acceptance is the moment when one says “well, that’s the way it is, and always will be. I can do nothing to alter the situation.” That can be a relief for a survivor or a dysfunctional survival mechanism for anyone born into a pathological Institutional Power System (IPS).

The attitudes expounded in the public commentary reveal that dysfunctional survival is widely spread. This is part of the problem too.

An advocate for Survivors who were in care at Casa Pisa, in Lisbon, Portugal, whose abusers finally went to trial after many years, and the abuser was convicted, said this:

“I hope this day will allow us to show the country that the boys have told the truth from the start.”

That he felt the boys were doubted by so many is clear. That does not make reporting and pursuing justice easy at all. If anything it weights in favour of abusers, whose abuse is often made quite easy by others fearful or wilful ignorance.

Almost 1,000 witnesses were called during the trial, which critics say has exposed the sluggishness and inefficiency of the Portuguese justice system and shaken public trust in the country’s institutions.

The Survivors were not lying nor were they fabricating their stories.

This pattern of witnesses being disbelieved, obstructed, intimidated, ignored, turned away from and otherwise suppressed is being repeated in almost every State on the planet. This is a Societal matter to be reflected upon.Let MORE evidence emerge, and let those who protect and those who abuse and destroy children, condemn adults be revealed. Let's deal with them and at the same time, we can deal deal with our own issues about POWERLESSNESS and human empathy, about children as who they really, naturally are,  as individuals, families, communities, regions, states. I know this can be done, it is so much in the realm of practical material reality.

Kindest regards

Corneilius

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