We Are a Violent Species : I don't think so!

An article floated by, via the interwebs, when I searched on the phrase "we humans", and it carried the following headline : We are Not a Peaceful Species. It wasn't what I was looking for (as is so often the case) yet it offered me something useful.

The author points to the prevalence of violence in  human history to prove the assertion of the headline. This is such a regular argument it merits some attention because it is inaccurate. Her aim in this article is to counter arguments that say that watching Mixed Martial Arts sport makes people more violent, often made by those who watch Boxing (a gentleman's sport) and look down on MMA or cage fighting etc...

I understand the thinking behind this article. I see her point about the hypocrisy of those who enjoy boxing and deem MMA somehow worse or of less merit.

However the logic, of both, is flawed. Let me explain.

Current stats (CDC) suggest that the number of noninstitutionalized American adults   with diagnosed heart disease is 26.6 million... that cannot be used to imply that human beings are a species prone to heart disease. It can be used to say that the biological drive towards optimal health is being thwarted by any number of factors in the adult population of America. One would have to dig deeper into the data to identify what those factors are.

The CDC also states that 1 in 10 Americans are clinically depressed. That is not to say that Americans are a depressive sub-set of the species of humanity... It does suggest that there are factors which exist in American that contribute to the prevalence of depression in adulthood (which might be greater that which is diagnosed... it could be 20%...)

Likewise the propensity towards violence.

Violence is understandable, we all get angry from time to time, and for a multitude of 'reasons'. We are sensitive beings, and life is replete with challenges to that sensitivity.

Some of us get angry when our computer is too 'slow' or if we lose a piece of text we have been editing and we will swear at our screen. Very few of us will actually tear the screen off the wall or off desk and throw it out the window or assault it with a heavy, blunt instrument whilst screaming expletives... that would invalidate the warranty at the very least....

Some people get angry because others are different (eg: some Christians hatred of gay people), and some of those people will choose violence. We know that not ALL Christians harbour a hatred of gay people, and we know that not all who do harbour such a hatred will choose violence as their response. We cannot use the incidence of Christians beating up a gay person to say ALL Christians are violent or that ALL Christians hate gay people. Christianity is quite a wide brush, ranging from fuming fundamentalists to peace and love Jesus freaks. Humanity is likewise a wide brush.

We do know enough to say that those Christians who harbour that degree of hatred that they choose violence will have serious psychological and developmental issues, that they are expressing a pathology, a serious pathological issue which needs to be addressed. It would be better if it were addressed BEFORE they actualised the violence. Punishment is most often too late for the person who was assaulted.

We also know enough (developmental science, neuro-biology, neuro-chemistry, endocrinology, anthropology) to say that aspects of the societal and individual propensity towards violence have a strong pathological element, that is to say they represent an unhealthy state, a diseased state (colonisation, empire building, rule by coercion, bullying, wife beating, rape) and that our fundamental nature as a species is towards peace and empathy (these are markers of optimal human social health and well being) and that the tendency towards optimal health explains our long existence (2 million years) whilst at the same time it is obvious that a peaceful culture is more vulnerable to a violent culture.


www.violence.de/prescott/letters/Profiles_Peaceful_v_Violent.pdf - a one page chart outlining social behavioural characteristics of different cultures as outcomes of child care within those cultures.

www.violence.de/prescott/bulletin/article.html - a much more detailed paper on the origins of violence as an outcome of disrupted biologically mandated developmental processes.

It would be more correct for the author to write that she lives in a Society where violence is common, where violence is ritualised (made relatively safe) in sport (MMA, Boxing, Fencing), and where violence is deliberately chosen and actualised in Military adventures abroad, in the presence of Nuclear Weapons, in racial and other stereotyped hatreds and bigotry, in Organised Crime, Gang 'Culture' and that the State which claims a legal monopoly on Violence mirrors the pathological violence of the God of the Judeo-Christian-Abrahamic Religions, and that this is a pathological situation which causes more harm than good.

And that she enjoys watching men beat the living daylights out of each other.... especialy when they demonstrate respect for each other...

"And let’s look a little further into these professional fighters. Let’s look at how they high-five and touch gloves before they start swinging those fists. Let’s look at how, when the last round is over, they are shaking each other’s hands and giving hugs. Take a second to appreciate that pattern: respect, violence, admiration. Because that right there best encompasses the beautiful dynamic of what it means to be a human."

Oh dear!

This is a very useful article on how to counter commonly occurring falsehoods, deceptions, misinformation and outright lies...


Kindest regards

Corneilius

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

Mother's Day, and the ultimate political challenge!

Christianity dis-empowers the Mother. So too most Political power systems active today.

God is male and has no partner. 'He' has no Origin, no birthing, no Mother. He does not 'need'.

This is the idealised psychopathic male - total control over all, impervious, invulnerable.

I strongly feel that these kinds of Religions or ideologies are outcomes of unresolved trauma, a form of PTSD that has become the 'norm' over time, and has been Institutionalised...

If ten people with unresolved trauma issues create a social structure, it will have that psychology built into it and it will express or articulate that psychology by it's processes, in it's aims and intent, and in it's outcomes.

ALL the structures of Power that we have today have their origins in psycho-pathological social structures that have emerged over history.
The Department of Defence. We have no Department of Peace, no ministry of conflict resolution.
The Vatican is a Power structure much more than it is a spiritual structure, or a temple...

If those ten people who have unresolved trauma issues start families and they have children, then aspects of the adults psychology will be taken up by the children, to greater or lesser degree.. this is intergenerational trauma patterning.. the trauma remains unresolved, the patterns continue to be passed on as 'normal'.

If the children are put through a rigorous conditioning process known as 'State Education' or 'Private Education', both of which are social structures created by people whose unresolved trauma issues permeate those systems, and they fail to recognise and then deal with the unresolved trauma issues, then the patterning will go deeper, because the experience of 12 years in such a social setting will leave it's mark, and one of those marks will be the neurological pathways associated with the assumptions, and the internalisations of the systems values, which are mostly PTSD based.

These children will become adults who see the unresolved trauma state as 'normal'. They will continue to build this into their lives, and they will continue to support  the normalisation of PTSD values...

And in all of this it is considered 'normal' that Mothers work is unpaid, unmentioned in economic scales, ignored in political power plays and undermined by primary economic assumptions such as both parents need to be in debt and need to be working to pay of the debt to fit in to the 'home ownership demographic' - the 'value' to the system of that indebtedness supersedes the value of mothering. This is blatantly an insanity. It's profoundly unhealthy.
 
Nurture is the only pathway through all of this.

HAPPY MOTHERS DAY!

Let's make it more than a once yearly, coy, sly nod to Motherhood. Let's put mothering at the centre, with the welfare of the children , now and for generations to come at the VERY centre, the core of our culture.

It's EASY to wish Happy Mothers Day, and so many cards, flowers etc make it a commercial venture - yet to do the HARD WORK of mothering, or to bring THAT to the core of our Society whether one is male or female is to challenge EVERY THING we are given, every ideology and religion, every known economic system, at the most profound level of all - the reality of nurture. The lived experience. The day-to-day life.

Who has the 'balls' for this work?

Who is mature enough to stand with ALL the mothers in daily action?

Kindest regards

Corneilius

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

Adulthood, Maturity, Traumatocracies and Power.

Here are some understandings and insights, supported by detailed scientific analysis and observed reality. about the world we live in that we all really do need to acknowledge.

The behaviour of Power is adverse and it is endangering all our lives, and the lives of our grandchildren and their children to come,  in a variety of ways - from war to wilful pollution, from enforced poverty to environmental degradation, the centralisation of power, the disenfranchisement of the grass roots population and much else besides. These are all outcomes of the way Power is mediated throughout the world. The behaviour of Power is a central issue, and in some ways it can be termed as the primary single issue, the one which binds them all. Power is being abused in both the personal and in the Societal. It is not acceptable in a mature relationship.

There is a reason why these adults are immature and engaged in Power Politics in ways that are adversely affecting so many, many adults and children across the world. The systems of Power we are living with are largely Traumatocracies. They are the outcomes of thousands of years of unresolved trauma, a form of PTSD behaviour patterning that has become solidified in Socialised Institutional Structures passed down from generation to generation.

There is a pathway towards resolving this trauma, and it starts with each and every parent, as each becomes aware of the situation and re-engineers their life with proven knowledge and experience based tools, to re-balance their lives, to come home to being more fully human, to seek to grow, to desire to mature and to become fully engaged with the situation in which one finds oneself. The biological reality is that all organisms tend towards optimal biological health, and this is a fundamental 'rule' of nature, and it is only when a pathology becomes chronic that this drive is thwarted 

"The "prenatal" in our title refers to the period of about nine months including conception and the whole of gestation, while "perinatal" refers to the very short but crucial period of hours involving labor, birth, and establishment of breastfeeding. We believe that both these prenatal and perinatal experiences are formative for both babies and parents, and tend to establish patterns of intimacy and sociality for life. At stake here is quality of life--the quality of personal relationships and the quality of society itself. Ultimately, we like to point out, "Womb ecology becomes world ecology."

from: http://www.birthpsychology.com

"Mission Statement: "Our vision is a world in which all children are treated with dignity, respect, understanding, and compassion. In such a world, every child can grow into adulthood with a generous capacity for love and trust. Our society has no more urgent task."                                      

from: http://www.naturalchild.org

Kindest regards

Corneilius

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Nature, Nurture and the problem of Power Civilisation

The way I see it is as follows:

Nature or Biology is always geared towards optimal health.

Optimal health includes as a necessity the nurturing of the environment, which also includes a nurturing environment as a given.

That different kinds of organisms can find optimal health in almost every known habitat suggests this is the case.

There are also flows of nutrients from one habitat to another, such that they do not exist in isolation - there IS a whole.

We humans have emerged out of this biological whole, and the bulk of our history (mostly pre written history) we have lived as part of that whole - the development or emergence of the qualities I write about such as caring empathy, connection, sensitivity, responsiveness are part of this, as is the ability to deal with threatening or difficult situations (these are rarely chronic in nature - they are chronic only when the basic balance of optimal health is disrupted over a long period of time)...

The sense of deep connection we feel for our children, our partners,our families, our locale is part of that optimal biological health and we nurture all of this by our behaviour in the most natural state...

You and I, we have been born into a disrupted state, a system of Power that chronically abuses people and we are doing our best to recover from the wounds it has inflicted upon us, whilst living in it without much chance of altering how Power operates - until we at the grass roots re-gain enough of what our innate nature is, and then we will be able to thwart Power, and possibly help those who are stuck in that unhealthy state to recover - that is the intent in my work.

I would say too that the optimal biological health state is the natural norm, the base line of true reality, and that the Power state is the 'ideal' being imposed on the healthy reality.

Nature is realism, Power Civilisation is idealism, ideology etc.

And there IS evidence for all that I have written, solid scientific evidence as well as anecdotal and personal experience

Kindest regards

Corneilius

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

Entertainment, Mainstream Narratives, Elections and subtle body conditioning.

We need not so much a system, as a series or a web of mature, functional and nurturing relationships across families, communities and societies. Instead what we have is bullying and entertainment.

Entertainment.

Entertainment! It's ONLY entertainment!

How often have I heard this term applied to mainstream 'moving images, noise and verbiage' offered up for the fatigued consumer to relax to, to enjoy, to be 'moved' by thrilling images, to be enthralled by amazing CGI effects!

Apocalypse Now! "It's ONLY entertainment!"

Avatar! "It's ONLY entertainment!"

The Lord of The Rings! "It's ONLY entertainment!"

And even then some people will read more into these media than the authors intended. I know this from my own song-writing, and am often amazed at what audience members will read into or take out of a song, how rich that content is that I did not intend.

Apocalypse Now! "It exposes the brutality of war!"

Avatar! "It's a parable for our times!"

The Lord of The Rings! "It's about the power of the little guy!"

No, it's not. Just about that. That's the seduction, the nectar. And the point of the flower is the pollen......

Yes, what you know as entertainment has elements of that ... enjoyment... in it, though that is not the point of it all - it has to make some profit, that's a given, so it has to entertain to do that and yet it also has a function within the Power system we are living in. And that function is the point of it all...

If you read what is offered as mainstream popular entertainment the way I do (and I agree that we all have different ways to read the media and narratives we consume) they are a subtle way of saying Violence for Good is OK and the System we live is as good as it gets, barring incremental cosmetic improvements. 

Take a GOOD look at That all too common sequence of boy meets girl in the midst of some violent narrative of good vs evil, with a love scene in the middle of the extreme violence... a psychopathic switch on/off, a sweet turn-on that actually is also a turn-on for GOOD violence.. it's as nasty as it is obvious to me, and of course when this is pointed out most people do get it, though in my experience most also reject it to the extent they wish to hang on to their hit, their entertainment - what they don't get is the way in which the unobserved visceral cascades of hormones are conditioning the consumer into the psychopathic socially and Institutionally approved stand point.

And that conditioning is the KEY message, because it also underpins the States monopoly on organised violence, because the State is always benign. Or so we are told to believe, even if the evidence is patchy. God is good. Onward Christian Soldiers! etc etc etc...

For me, simply being, simply breathing and sensing my own body is pure entertainment.

Taking a dump and feeling the fullness of how my body works, that's entertaining. Watching a genuinely proficient musician/dancer/skate boarder - that's entertainment. Working my garden is very much entertaining. Seeing my children make mistakes and grow, that's entertaining.

Playing music and watching a good musician, that's entertainment...

I also understand that adage, "different strokes for different folks", and cannot deny that some people are entertained by what is offered up as mainstream consumer entertainment.

However, whilst watching movies such as THE HUNGER GAMES and LORD OF THE RINGS and JAMES BOND and BATMAN and THE MATRIX etc and observing how the body reacts to the sequential violence in these movies, I have noticed the hormone cascades, the muscular tensions, the non-thought patterns alongside the obvious and subliminal messages. These are quite different in tone and character to the cascades I experience when I am truly entertained.

I do not call this latter experience  'entertainment'....

It's entrainment rather than entertainment.

The primary narrative within mainstream movies, fiction and News Media is towards a socialised normalisation by vicarious exposure, through the use of a powerful experiential medium, to the prevailing adverse pathological psychology of force and power.

It's required for that subtle indoctrination into the various falsified justifications for POWER over others to be used AGAINST others for 'good'. It's a sop for unresolved rage and anger that so many people grow up with a result of being bullied at School, in Churches, Synagogues and Mosques, at University and at Work. It's a dead end that leads nowhere nurturing.

So yes, if we want and deserve a world where violence is accepted as long as it is for the 'good', where slapping and spanking children is a parents 'right', where the death penalty is a States 'right', where poverty is considered a problem of the 'poor' rather than a logical outcome of the hoarding of resources, where the sequestering of wealth is considered a 'good thing' for the Economy, let's call the subtle conditionings of Institutional Power Society entertainment.

Noam Chomksy, in an interview with Shira Hadad in 2005 points out that a similar dynamic applies to elections in the USA, the UK and in practically ALL States that hold elections.

"Because elections are carefully contrived so that they are like selling toothpaste. In fact, they’re run by the same people who sell toothpaste.

I mean when you turn on an ad on television, you don’t expect to get any information. You expect deception. That’s the point.

Only economists talk about markets. Business can’t tolerate markets. They don’t want markets in which informed consumers make rational choices.

What they want is deluded consumers who will make irrational choices. That’s what hundreds of billions of dollars in advertising are spent on. You don’t get any information about the product.

But what happens when the same industry sells candidates?

Exactly the same thing. I mean, about 10 percent of the crop of voters knew what the stand of the candidates was on issues.

What they knew is the delusionary imagery that was created.

So Bush is created to be an ordinary guy with his sleeves rolled up and you could have a drink with him in a bar.

My guess is he’s taught to make those mispronunciations and grammatical errors; I doubt that he talked like that at Yale.

He’s probably taught that way so that ‘them liberal intellectuals’ would make fun of him and then they can say, oh yeah, he’s an ordinary guy just like you, going off to his ranch. That makes him about as realistic as the next ad you could see on television for a lifestyle report."

The narrative exists to sell an image, and becoming acculturated to that image is essential in maintaining one's compliance with the System of Power and it's directions and instructions.

It's also true that as this becomes clear to more and more people that less and less people vote, not out of apathy.... not voting is a form of direct action, of civil disobedience as people refuse to participate in the charade. Not voting exposes the charade, and that is why Power hates the non-voter.

Imagine if no-one voted bar the membership of the parties?

And with every 'spring', every televised 'revolution', every mass movement outside the given political show, we see too that the pattern of the insertion of professional violence has become a standard counter revolutionary tactic of destabilisation. Once the violence starts, the discussions cease and we all have to run for cover.

Snipers paid to murder protesters and police in the Ukraine. Mujahadeen funded by USA and Saudi regime, in Afghanistan in the 80s. The insertion of the IRA into the Civil Rights portest movement in Northern Ireland,in spite of being rejected by Civil Rights Movement leaderships. Agent Provocateurs and undercover policemen and women inserted into grass roots Climate Change protest groups.

Anyone who has genuine grounds for protest and a well qualified argument to support it, is seen as a direct threat to Power, and must be undermined. Even if the aims of the protest would bring benefits to Society as a whole it mus be undermined; we are allowed to protest, and we are actively barred from changing the status quo.

Which is basically immature, dysfunctional and nasty, nasty behaviour. Dishonesty with petty cash is immature. Fleecing expenses is immature. It's amoral to be an adult and to refuse maturity.

Like I wrote above : "We need not so much a system, as a series or a web of mature, functional and nurturing relationships across families, communities and societies. Instead what we have is bullying and entertainment."







Kindest regards

Corneilius

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

Rape, Power and Activism

Rape is one of many abuses that are effectively cultural markers, made so by their prevalence in certain societies and the absence in others...

Industrial Society rapes the soil (pharming), the ground (mining), the sea (over fishing) abuses workers (low wages), other cultures (Aboriginals, Indigenous peoples) and the rapist rapes the victim, the child rapist rapes the child and it is NEVER just about the action of  mining, digging, fishing, the sexual assault.

In many ways these are the medium through which that kind of Power is expressed. And whilst the experience of each kind of assault is horrific, and for those who suffer it, a serious and debilitating trauma from which the action and the motivation are extremely difficult to distingish, those who seek to help the suffering in the long term, those who are concerned with activism in these areas must always keep in mind that the issue is very much about Power.

It is also about the POWER to avoid the truth of the outcomes for what is acted upon, what is abused, who is victimised that is the real issue.... that avoidance allows the abuser to retain Power, and is in essence the immaturity of a consciousness that refuses to address the outcomes of it's behaviour, which always leads to more abuse and creates lots of traumatised organisms in it's wake, which is NOT a biological mandate.

And it's a behavioural issue, so it is tractable which is to say it is a matter of choice,  there is this element of volition and thus the behaviour open to being resolved, changed.

However it requires a clear and unprejudiced observation of the behaviour and outcomes, a kind of fearlessness and determination textured with a degree of empathy and psycho-cultural understanding applied as behaviour, processes, policies and ethics for those changes to occur. This is critical.

This is about data, evidence and the insights of Survivors of rape, and other abuses, an insight that is all to often ignored or masked by the rage of the bystander community.

1. Abusive Behaviour emerges when populations or individuals (animal or human) are stressed, traumatised and exposed in particular to chronic stress and are unable to resolve it, resolve the situation within which they find themselves, and this occurs most often in hierarchical systems:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A4UMyTnlaMY

2. Studies of older cultures reveal that there IS a spectrum of behaviour from abusive to empathic, and that the primary predictor of abuse emerging in any given culture is the degree to which the natural child mother bonding processes are disrupted, stressed...

http://www.violence.de/prescott/bulletin/article.html

http://www.violence.de/.../Profiles_Peaceful_v_Violent.pdf

3. These studies of pre-conquest peoples reveal part of the reason for that empathic state is partly sensory experience : towhit the existence of a sensory acuity or liminal awareness / liminal consciousness as a key element of an operational experiential reality in interactions between people within a healthy optimally functioning societal social system.

http://rewild.info/anthropik/vault/sorenson-preconquest/

4. Recent studies on the consciousness of babies reveals a similar potential, and recognises that it requires appropriate nurturing behaviour from it’s caring community to fully deveop,

http://www.eheart.com/cesarean/babies.html

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn23401-emerging-consciousness-glimpsed-in-babies.html#.UpTQ4ydoJAk



5. Recent research over the past 40 years into child development, including brain development, bio-chemistry of hormones, how the immune system works or no, all point to a biological mandate towards empathy, connection, intelligent co-operation as expressions of optimum biological health.

www.birthpsychology.com - resource center for these kinds of studies...

I urge you to review these materials, and it WILL take some time, it is time well spent....

Kindest regards

Corneilius

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

Abuse and Resolution: an Urgent Question of Maturity

"The abused abuser is no defence - just a devious way of getting a lighter sentence. It is no excuse. "

I hear this often, and feel that more needs to be said or written on this.... as a Survivor,  I am absolutely focussed on prevention...

If we want to prevent abuse, we have to understand how and why it emerges. Otherwise we end up dealing with abuse AFTER a child has been abused, which is way too late....

There are writers, researchers and scientist/pratictioners who have outlined the dynamics of abuse and trauma (PTSD patterns) and the context of natural child development being disrupted very well, such as Alice Miller, James Prescott, John Bowlby, Gabor Maté , Marshal Rosenberg, Vincent Feletti, David Chamberlain, and others.

The basic theme is this : certain biologically mandated experiences and processes are necessary for the development of caring self empathy (sense of self) and caring empathy for others. these biological processes start with the child-mother bonding process, in the womb, at birth, infancy and toddlership... if these mandates are disrupted across a society, then statistically we see a massive increase in abuse, distress, psychological dysfunction.

In the research there is observed a direct relationship between the degree of disruption of the child-mother bonding processes and the degree of violence, hierarchy, religiosity, territorialism and abuse.

All of theses are further complicated by Trauma Events, such as war, poverty, racism, sexism, religion, climactic events esp. where there is no healing/recovery mechanisms and people are forced to cope with the situation.... the coping mechanism is appropriate in the midst of a trauma event, yet it becomes toxic if maintained after the event, if the trauma response becomes chronic... as we see in intergenerational trauma patterning, where the adverse affects of the trauma are passed down through the generations and are expressed even in a situation where the original trauma is but a dim memory, a story of legend or history..

The chronic stress associated with Hierarchically Violent Societies is profoundly damaging, even if the people within it become adjusted to it....

In order to prevent future abuse, it is necessary to support parents in ways that enable the child-mother bonding to be recognised and responded to with support.

It's also necessary to challenge all Government support for War (Trauma),

It follows that it's also necessary to challenge the status of Religious and State Indoctrination,

It becomes obvious that we need to alter State Education so that it becomes a forum for nurturing self empathy, autonomy and response ability (at core, Education needs to be democratised so the children take responsibility and are supported in developing that sense of responsibility, not through sanctions and bullying, but through respect and example...) and that it helps prepare children for becoming effective, nurturing parents as well as preparing them for a life of work...

It's also necessary to LISTEN to Survivors, for their insights are amongst the deepest in this area... as is their motivation to challenge abuse wherever it occurs.

Too often, 'normal' folk shy away from Survivors insights, from the darkness of their experiences at the hands of abusers, and this tends to lend weight to those who HYPE the issue, who contort the issue in ways that make it less likely to be resolved as part of a political ploy.

'Normal' folk also tend to have such a strong reaction and with it a desire to harm abusers, to punish them, which has nothing to do with the Survivors needs, nor the work needed to ensure prevention - it's usually an unconscious reaction of avoidance... it's easier to think of the abuser as someone to abuse (punish, kill, etc etc) than it is to face the pain, terror, harm and shame a Survivor has lived through and walk with the Survivor as a companion in their recovery.... and to then seek to understand how the abuser became the abuser and seek ways to prevent further emergences as best as possible.

If we are not focussed on prevention, then abuse will continue. Punishment is applied only to those few, and it is a minority, who get caught or are exposed.

Punishment satisfies a public's immature demand for justice and abandons all future children to potential predation as a hidden cost. This is unacceptable, morally and intellectually.

It's long past time for the discourse on abuse to mature, for those concerned with this issue to step up to the plate and confront it with clarity, commitment, maturity and grace.

I also think that abusers neurological 'wiring' and behaviour emerges out of their experience - they were not conceived with this in place. There is some evidence that certain kinds of trauma in utero and birth and infancy can alter a persons neurology in ways that if not recognised, and therefore modulated or attended to, can become the basis for the developing psychopathy.

In all cases of abuse perpetrated by an adult, we have to face the fact that the adult abuser has CHOSEN to abuse, that there is an element of volition and that this brings with it accountability, before those they have victimised and the community at large and that this accountability and consequences cannot be softened by our awareness.

Our awareness is about PREVENTION, about spotting the signs early on and modulating those children who show signs of psychopathy, of instituting a deeper society wide awareness of the need and basis for empathic parenting and empathic governance - they go together... this awarness is not to be taken to soften the consequences of those who have abused others, to excuse them.




Kindest regards

Corneilius

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

Survivors Insights ignored by The Church and The State

Again and again we see that Survivors insights and experience, and thus their real needs, are to a large degree sidelined as both Government and The Church craft 'responses' to the situation.

We are invited to make representations, we are to a degree consulted, yet in the finalised outcomes the decisions made are from the point of view of Government and The Church and how they wish to frame their liabilities, and the consultation appears to be a matter of form, rather than substance.

In recent days we have had the completion of the review by the United Nations Committee for the Rights of the Child in Geneva of The Vatican's response to the world wide child abuse issue within it's own institutions, and the announcement of  the Irish Catholic Church's 'Towards Peace' support service.

The United Nations Committee for the Rights of the Child has criticised the Vatican for it's actions to the present date, and as yet has to issue further comments and determine further action.

Eyewitness accounts and the transcripts will show that The Vatican has not altered it's course and is maintaining a strategic approach to the 'problem', rather than being open, honest, vulnerable and seeking a just resolution for all concerned.

The 'Towards Peace' support service has been launched without the detailed input of survivors, which had been promised. However what is true of the Vatican is also true of The Irish Catholic Church. Their approach is strategic, rather than open and honest.

In Australia, there is The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse which has been working since early April 2013, and is continuing as I write. In this inquiry over 5000 survivors gave evidence, as did the Church and other bodies... One of the targets of this Inquiry is the "Towards Healing" process crafted under the aegis of Archbishop Pell in Melbourne, for whom Tony Abbot has recently issued statements of support.

And yet again, at this level of Inquiry, we see the same 'strategic' approach from the Australian Catholic Church, although with the evidence of 5000 people to counter it, it will take some assistance from the Abbot Government to 'help' the Church 'manage' this situation.

"To date evidence showed the process failed some abuse victims who found it as traumatic as the original abuse because of the legalistic approach taken by the church.

Towards Healing will be the subject of several case studies by the commission which will hold public hearings in Queensland, South Australia and Western Australia as well as in NSW before June this year"
source: http://www.ntnews.com.au/news/national/child-abuse-inquiry-reopens-in-sydney/story-fnjbnvyj-1226805484854


This same approach, that of acknowledging abuse only when Survviors come forward into the public domain, and then 'managing' the response to protect the status and image of both Church and State has been seen in every case where Survivors have come forward.

Across the world, both The State and it's institutions and The Church and it's institutions  are obviously concerned about their roles in the abuse, the cover-ups and mismanagement of investigations, and understand that they have a liability that can be expanded if they are 100% honest and they seek to reduce or minimise that liability.

Whilst this is to be expected and is indeed standard corporate practice, it remains the fact that it is moral cowardice, and that Survivors lives are impacted by this management approach. It is also true that this impacts not only the Survivor, but their families and the wider society, as well as doing little to protect children, and other vulnerable people, from future abuses.

It also is a misunderstanding of the intent of the vast majority of Survivors, whose aim is to a) have the truth told and understood b) prevent further abuses (and the 'management' of exposure of abuse) c) regain some degree of healing in our own lives, and in the life of the community, the State and The Church.

We Survivors are gifting the world with our concern, our stories. The changes we represent can only increase nurturing in our Society. That's the fullest truth here.

It's long past the time that all this was recognised and responded to accordingly, not only by Government and The Church, but by society at large, by the people who sit in pews and pray and by all parents and caring people.

Kindest regards

Corneilius

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

MIchael Gove, Blackadder and our childrens futures.

Michael Gove "thinks it is important not to denigrate the patriotism, honour and courage demonstrated by ordinary British soldiers in the First World War."

He believes that "Blackadder" denigrates these.

When in fact "Blackadder", as satire, tries to show the futility of patriotism, honour and courage in a situation largely brought about by Political Power peopled by individuals who lack any or all of these qualities. (the 'patriotism' of General Staff had more to do with position, influence, career prospects, income and power than anything else: it was selfish rather than selfless)

In other words, the narcissistic self interest of the ruling classes of Europe, and their concerns about Empire dominated their deliberations and behaviour, and they used dedicated, professional and sophisticated propaganda to suggest otherwise to the people they Rule, and forced them to engage in a brutal war to meet those narcissistic perceived needs.

A bit like the way the BBC, Government (all sides) and the Mainstream Media are using dedicated, professional and sophisticated propaganda to suggest that the poor are work-shy, the disabled are blaggers, the elite rich are to be praised, the banks are to be supported and the country will be over run by Romanians .... and that the problems in Iraq today have nothing to do with the illegal and cruel invasion of Iraq in 2003 by US/UK Power, with allies....

To associate the qualities of 'honour and courage' with the realities of trench warfare in 1914-1918 is ideological posturing and wilful ignorance.

Rather Michael Gove, as Education Minister, who by his office,which he has chosen to inhabit, has a fiduciary, corporate and personal responsibility to all the children who go through the State Education system ought to consider the sheer horror so many, on all sides, were forced - conscription is coercion - to endure whilst those who sent them into harms way sought to gain from the situation a crucial lesson to be learned from, in order to prevent such outcomes in the future.

But of course, he and his colleagues are supportive of, for example, the contracted ATOS assessments of disabled folk's ability to work, as a mechanism to reduce public expenditure on services for vulnerable people. In other words, they hold their ideology above the welfare of some of the most vulnerable people in our society.

Gove and his colleagues across Parliament and elsewhere were also supportive of Tony Blair's war for 'Iraqi Freedom' which is today being played out in Fallujah with horrific results, years after the US and UK Government proclaimed end of that war.
What he will not do, of course, is confront the realities of that War. Of any war for that matter. He is not unique in this. Far from it, the standard Institutional denial of the full realities of war is a central theme in Governance, in State Education, in the mainstream media and elsewhere. We see this in the comments sections across various media all the time..... "They fought to preserve our freedom!"

A few points regarding World War I, and the British Government:

1.The Liberal Government of the time were blackmailed by their own desire to remain in Power above all else - key members of their own cabinet and party who refused the Party Whip, and threatened to resign if the Liberal Party stuck by it's own memberships wish* and policy to avoid being drawn into a war which did not directly involve Britain or protect Britain's strategic interests. Those resignations would have led immediately to a General Election which the Liberals would have lost. The Governments urge to go to war had less to do with European politics and honour than it had to do with their individual desire to remain in Power. Of course, they could not be honest about this in public, and thus the propaganda campaign was launched to sell the war to the British people. Nothing much has changed in the last 100 years in this regard.

*"On August 1^st and 2^nd, Liberal Associations across the UK met and voted that the government should pass a resolution of neutrality. "

source : http://www.historylearningsite.co.uk/decline_liberal_party.htm
2. Conscription was introduced because Britain was not prepared or ready to mobilise for a war in Europe, and it worked primarily because so many young males were unemployed, and without benefits as we know them, and it was the combination of effective propaganda and poverty which acted as the key incentives.

3. The General Staff of the Army were gung-ho, ideologically driven, professionally clueless, unwilling to admit it, and their ineptitude and dysfunction led directly to the huge degree of attrition which was the result of trench war fare with industrial weaponry.
“In print, Haig attacked a skeptic who dared question the usefulness of a cavalry charge in the age of the machine gun and the repeating rifle. It was as strong a tactic as ever, Haig was certain, since the “moral factor of an apparently irresistible force, coming on at highest speed … affects the nerves and aim of the … rifleman.”

source : Hochschild, Adam (2011-05-03). To End All Wars: A Story of Loyalty and Rebellion, 1914-1918 (Kindle Locations 819-821). Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. Kindle Edition.

4. The troops in the trenches very quickly lost their patriotism, given the ineptitude and amorality of the General Staff and the suffering they endured following insane orders. Patriotism was replaced with a desire for revenge, which drove the fighting on all sides, which is understandable in the circumstances where thousands upon thousands of troops were mown down in pointless attacks directed by General Staff, and where the soldiers had no possibility of confronting the General Staff with their ineptitude, and had the 'enemy' troops, mostly poor conscripts like themselves, to project their fury and anger onto.

And yet, that fabled moment of  a football match on no-mans land during Christmas between both sides shows that many did indeed understand they were in the same situation, poor human beings being directed by rich human beings to exercise outrageous violence against each other, just on different sides. The human side of war, the vulnerability of people caught up in it, is rarely the concern of Politicians.

5. The standard school texts on World War I do not pose a critical analysis from which students could learn about the realities, the context and the lived experience and meaning of war, and appear to focus on glorifying and justifying the slaughter as a noble and necessary sacrifice for freedom against a determined and evil foe.

6. World War I was none of these. If anything it was a a combination of Empire Logic and dreadful error, made by leaders whose own psychology was so dysfunctional that they were unwilling or incapable of acting rationally or humanely. It was a war of Empire, with various Empires seeking to thwart the aims of each other,and to come out on top. The way in which territory was 'carved up' after the Armistice proves this to be the case.



Kindest regards

Corneilius

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

THRIVIVAL: Context and Definition

1. Nature works. Impeccably. That impeccability implies, to my mind, the existence of a Natural Logic.

2. Nature does that which works, and generally does that which works in the long-term. There are exceptions, and these are situational rather than endemic.

3. Everything in Nature receives pretty much whatever is required to thrive, and returns any excess or surplus back to the environment in ways that return nutrients to the nutrient cycles of life. All life is food for more life.

4. Everything that lives has the innate ability to learn for itself those behaviours needed to  live successfully and to master it's own being in the environment.

5. All life, from the tiniest one-celled being to the largest is to some degree capable of some sensory functioning and has the ability to communicate with others and to adapt to subtle changes in the environment. by responding to those changes in precise ways. This capability is the basis of biological organisms maintaining dynamic equilibrium in an ever changing environment.

6. I am nature.

7. You are nature.

8. Any human designed process that does not return nutrients to nature, that deprives others of access to nutrients in nature is irrational in terms of bio-logic. The argument, that because we (industrialised society) are in nature, and we (industrialised society) make pesticides, then pesticides must be nature, is false.

9. Nature cannot be understood by Anthropomorphism or by projection. Just because we do not speak Elephant does not mean that Elephants are less intelligent than we are. The same goes for all organisms.

10. That assumption of innate human superiority over everything else in nature is a quasi religious faith or belief, it is a cultural artefact, one which lies at very the core of Industrialised Society, which means that those who hold it are, biologically speaking irrational.

12. They were not born irrational. That irrationality is learned, it is the outcome of what they have been indoctrinated to think, and having little choice in the matter, they learned to 'think' by adopting other peoples justifications as their own. Internalisation. Which only compounds the problem. However as all children of Industrial Society are essentially bullied, it's understandable. We are not to blame for being misled by our culture.

13. Natures fundamental logic is exceedingly simple, and the benefits of nature's simple logic are immense diversity, outstanding beauty and continued prosperity of all life. "Everything eats, everything gets eaten, all poop is food for more life." Materials are metabolised in living organisms, and then deposited for other living processes to build on.

14. The state of being and the collective noun to describe all processes that lead to nurturing the habitat so that more life flourishes is to be called THRIVIVAL.

15. THRIVIVAL; Noun : the state or fact of living such that the habitat is nurtured by one's behaviour. It is the antithesis of Survival, which implies struggle, insecurity, doubt, threat of imminent death.

Kindest regards

Corneilius

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