Natural Child, Natural Society

Premium Science and Humane Compassion - Robert Sapolsky on the Neuroscience of Transgender people.

Premium Science and Humane Compassion - Robert Sapolsky on the Neuroscience of Transgender people.

If I see or experience something and I don't KNOW what it is I have three choices.

1. I admit I don't know what it is.

2. I seek information, data, measurements etc to try to understand what it is. I then test that information, data, measurements for veracity.

3. I make something up.

The first two options are science.

The last option is dishonesty.

What will inform my dishonesty?

Deep Science made readily understandable.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dGBYYcH7CS8

Robert Sapolsky is a neuroendocrinology researcher and author. He is a professor of biology, neurology, neurological sciences, and neurosurgery at Stanford University.

Sapolsky has received numerous honors and awards for his work, including a MacArthur Fellowship in 1987, an Alfred P. Sloan Fellowship, and the Klingenstein Fellowship in Neuroscience.

He was also awarded the National Science Foundation Presidential Young Investigator Award, the Young Investigator of the Year Awards from the Society for Neuroscience, the International Society for Psychoneuroendocrinology, and the Biological Psychiatry Society.

Deep Compassion.

In this conversation, Robert shares scientific research related to the neurobiology of transgender people with the goal protecting the rights of transgender people via the creation of informed policies.

This discussion is what I call a rational conversation, it avoids the elements we see all too often in what is called debate - it is a win/win discussion rather than a win/lose war of words. The purpose of the conversation is to arrive at a place where the participants and the audience are enlightened and reassured.

Democracy is trapped in an old paradigm - the struggle for Power

We all know the meaning of the term 'office politics' as an indication of power struggles within person to person relationships within an office. Those relationships are inherently adversarial.

Currently every Democracy in place is an adversarial system, with a Government and an Opposition, which renders political discourse to the level of a debate, with a win/lose dynamic that attracts the most effective linguistic bullies who impede rational discussion at every turn. This amounts to Cognitive Warfare.

Election 2024

The recent 'debates' in US and UK Elections are prime examples of this dynamic being deployed to evade the evidence, reinforce bias and opinion, targeting people with emotionally charged cognitive warfare and this exposes the central lies of the Hierarchy of Wealth as Power Cult that dominates our legislatures.

We do not have any egalitarian polities operational at this time, and I suggest that we need such polities, and rapidly. The harm caused by adversarial relationships within Governance structures and between States is beyond measure. It is utterly toxic, and it is not healthy human nature. It is a cultural imposition - hierarchy of Wealth and Power is not a dynamic every baby is born for, it is not the nature of a healthy relationship between adult and child.

We have never studied the neurology of extant egalitarian peoples, left alone their psychologies.

The academic and medical scholarship is rooted in the study of people living within violent hierarchy cultures.

Normalisation and habituation and internalisation of all of that is not healthy biological behaviour, it is not adaptive, it is a coping strategy that is doomed to fail to deliver healthy humane behaviour as a cultural marker.

The psychological environmental movement is in its infancy and is struggling to be cared for and fed in such manner that it might grow, mature and nurture the world from which it has emerged.

Kindest regards

Corneilius

Thank you for reading this blog.

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Education and The Israeli War Against Palestinian Children, CTD.

The Israeli War Against Palestinian Children, CTD
Interview between Owen Jones in London and Unicef representative James Elder live in Gaza.

James Elder: "The world should be terrified of the long-term consequences. Because we know that the longer a war goes on, the more damage it does psychologically to children. UNICEF knows that from a Yemen or Afghanistan. We are in uncharted territory when it comes to the mental health of children here"
Please watch this interview, give 20 minutes of your time to this.
And share it, pass it on. I wonder if it could happen that billions of people watch this, in the next week or so, and we, the ordinary majority of Humanity watch and hear and understand what is being said, what it really means. And what it means for every war zone that is currently in motion. So many childandren, every single precious one of them is 100% innocent.
In the way I see feel life I think that every adult alive owes a responsibility to all the children, I think that this is non negotiable biological and empathic and moral and egalitarian humane evolutionary mandate, and it is not a burden, it is a gift. The gift is love, integrity and nurture. To be intentionally engaged in the way is a gift.
The technical catch all word for this Alloparenting, in every day language we would say it is shared parenting. In practice this was, for most of our evolution, the norm across any given population. Is is our oldest evolved behavioural characteristic that makes us behaviourally distinct from Primates, and every biologically healthy person would be happy to meet that duty, and succeed. It is how we thrived for most of our existence.
'All is born of woman, no harm shall come to the children.'

"if they are so hungry in the North, well they can just walk 20 minutes to the South and get the food aid." Israeli official comment a few days ago.

Education

Continuous Traumatic Distress - 24/7, minute by minute, second by agonising second.

In Gaza, there are no schools functioning, none left standing, there are no universities left standing. All intentionally and systematically targeted, bombed, destroyed. Erased. And all those students who would have been attending these schools and universities had younger brothers and sisters not yet in education.

The adverse changes that that unspeakable lived experience of constant state of warfare, imposed by a State bent on a genocidal campaign, the trauma it will inflict upon the babies, infants, toddlers, children, teens their mothers and fathers (who have no means to protect them) on their bodies and minds, on their endocrinology, lungs, heart, digestive system, lymph systems, sleeping patterns, eating patterns, resting patterns and their very essence is a grievous , grievous wound, invisible to the eye, until the symptoms present.

"some are hoping it will cease, and that somehow they will survive, some wish to be killed by war now, every second they are still alive, to end their suffering." from conversations with children in Gaza, this week, last week, six months ago, during Operation Cast Lead, every time the 'Gras was mowed'

The world's Psychology and Child Development research clinical practice Community and everyone in Education and Pediatric Health Care must speak up, in public, to Power.

We and they must form up a political lobby on behalf of all our children, a put a stop to this.

Continuous Traumatic Distress.

This short documentary from Al Jazeera, on the impacts of living with continuous traumatic distress 24/7, minute by minute, all the time... living with constant imminent threat, over decades. What it does to children, parents and families, what it does to their communities.

"proportionality, anyone?'

Education.

The university of witnessing a Genocidal war in real time is not part of the University of Life. It is the university of desolation, the college of death, maiming and survival. Nobody thrives in this place. Survivors are the only ones who graduate. The makers of the bombs, the designers, the testers, the production line managers graduated from American, British and Israeli Universities.

Part of what happening is that we the people, the civilian tax paying, voting populations of the allies of Israel, the citizens of USUK EU and others are being educated by witness testimony and reliable empirical evidence. And we are asking questions, learning more. What is this? Why is this? We are learning every day.

The object of such an unwilled for education must lead to the emergence of a motivation to confront the truth about our Ruling Class and to act on what we find to make it the harm causation is ceased.

Peace

'Peace is more than the absence of War' as Arundhuti Roy puts it.

She was and will always be correct in that axiom. We cry out on the face of injustice - "no justice, no peace!' and it is not a threat, it is not a call to riot - it is a statement for fact. Where injustice is done, peace is absent.

"There can be no real peace without justice. And without resistance, there will be no justice," writes Arundhati Roy. We have a duty to respond to the unmet needs of all our children, to meet those needs, to prevent those needs from harm.

'All is born of woman, no harm shall come to the children.'

This is the oldest 'law' of the human species. Our basic biological mandate. Remember that? I mentioned it earlier. Alloparenting - it bears repeating. This Law is not a burden, this law the art of is living designed to set us free.

A blogger writes :

"Peace, in a world bent on war and intent on drawing the rest of us into it, is a precious commodity.

But not an easy one to achieve.

Do anything you can to avoid war–personal or public. Do everything you can to make peace real. But remember that peace can never come from either fear or threat. Both of those must be dispelled before the trust that is of the essence of peace can possibly break out.

Peace is not the acceptance of evil. On the contrary, real peace requires resistance to evil. But not in evil ways. This kind of peacemaking requires courage, not power, a kind of strength that uses love rather than force to change the world."

source : https://joanchittister.org/articles/peaceful-heart

That will take all of us ordinary people becoming politically active. Not as an ideology based lobby. As a humane evidence based lobby, the biggest, strongest political lobby on Earth. Love in action.

It is what we need.

The revolution is dependent upon an educational liberation, and some counselling along the way, and I think this is absolutely essential and that we must make it happen at pace.

Emotional Blindness.

I think the evidence is there to suggest that following is likely true

If a person as a witness to these two documentaries and their meanings cannot hold all of that evidence in place, and admit it, then there has to be some profound emotional blindness that is disrupting their capacity for analytical thinking, empathy, kindness - they have to be internalising a belief system that has changed the way their brains function, they way their minds behave, robbing them of the most important aspect of being a healthy human. Belief can do that. Blind ideology can do that. Unresolved trauma can do that. Indoctrination can do that.

Beyond that simple analysis, it is abundantly clear that the major crimes of State and non State militia must cease, and then they must be accounted for, all of them , and in full - no matter where that leads.

Bears, Women and Men : internalisation of cultural values, development of affective state self-regulation.

A Bear in the Woods.....

Image by Erik Mandre via Shutterstock

Historically, for the major part of the existence of Homo sapiens, the people who lived in forests and woodlands were largely formed of egalitarian cultures.

The peoples that lived in forests knew and understood bears because they had lived together for many tens of thousands of years. The bears knew them. They knew each other well.

In egalitarian cultures rapes are rarer than bear attacks. And bear attacks are exceedingly rare. When they do happen, it is usually due to an accident rather than a deliberate intentional common action, a standard behavioural pattern.

So the issue raised by the bear question is a cultural issue.

No baby is born with a bigotry already in place.

There are no misogyny genes, there are no warrior genes, there are no racism genes, there are no xenophobia genes.

Our behaviour, is this regard, is learned within a cultural context. Hierarchically violent cultures curate bigotries.

We learn to walk, we learn to talk. We are taught to speak. Language is learned. Take an infant born to a mother in one language, and place that infant within another language group, and the child will learn the language of the secondary language group. There is no gene for any specific language.

Our learning of behaviour as we grow up occurs in and is influenced by the culture within which we live.

We internalise the values of the culture in such manner as to feel them as part of our core sense of self, our very identity.

The invisible brain?

I have posted a link to an interesting (quite dense) lecture by Allan Schore on the neurobiology and neuroendocrinology of the development of emotional or affective state self regulation, with regards to the potential impacts of living conditions, environment, cultural practice upon these processes.

What goes one in our brains has been invisible, and is now being revealed as technology improves in examining brain development with empirical science tool kits.

There is the matter too of sex brain development, much of which occurs early in gestation, which is highly vulnerable to environmental influences, coming from and through the mother. we now know that brain sex dimorphism is much more complex with a greater range of variables and outcomes which indicate that the trans experience - of sensing oneself as being of the other biological sex - is indeed a natural part of human variability. For now, though, we are addressing the meaning and implications of The Bear Question.

The Bear Question.

The issue then, with regards the Bear Question, for women, is that within the dominant cultural setting on Earth is it stands today 'our lived experience is that many, many men are dangerous to us, and we cannot reliably predict when meeting men which ones are dangerous and which ones are not, in that the majority of men do seem to operate with a sense of entitlement to our bodies as sexual objects to be used, owned, possessed, exploited and discarded as a medium of the Mens Power in this culture and that there is no way to tell in advance as to which adult males are safe and which are not, and the tension of living with that is intolerable, not to mention the actual harms caused....."

And the only people who can change that are the men who call themselves allies of women.

Specifically the genuinely safe men MUST take a stance of confronting the unsafe attitudes that unsafe men hold, within this culture, and that means confronting them directly, robustly and without equivocation. All the time. Until the problem is no longer a problem. It also means confronting every structure of social power that extolls the values of the hierarchy of power, wealth and phenotype.

It is a problem with and of Men who internalise the patriarchal hierarchy cultural values in ways that are a life threatening and life altering problem for Women. Women are correct to point it out.

As a man, I understand the problem is a cultural problem, and I am part of that culture, to the extent that I have and carry any internalisation of the dominant cultural values and then express them in my thinking and my behaviour.

I have a responsibility to confront that culture. To myself, to all women, to all children. Just by being alive and aware of the problem.

It is not about 'me' and I cannot take it personally, even if my confrontation with other men on this is personal, as in one to one.

It is about us, all of us.

Men, women and children.

I was sexually assaulted, brutalised, psychologically abused and mistreated as a child, on a daily basis, and that abuse was mostly perpetrated by adult men. That is my lived experience.

Nuance required.

All our sons: The neurobiology and neuroendocrinology of boys at risk.

Allan Schore gives a detailed lecture on what was known in 2017 about the neurobiology and neuroendocrinology of boys at risk.
His work on the development of emotional self regulation, on the development of the systems within the brain that handle emotional state self directed management helps us understand that there are dynamics that start in utero, and that continue throughout life, that mediate the ways in which we process and handle our emotional states healthfully or otherwise. The developing brain is extremely sensitive to the environmental condition of the mother.
The nuance here is that each child grows up within a cultural setting, a socio-economic condition, a familial environment where many variables come in to play in the formation of formerly invisible neurobiological processes that underpin our behaviour. When we are looking at behaviour, it is important to take this new information into consideration. This helps avoid stereotyping, categorisation and other dehumanising attitudes so often embedded in discussions of adverse behaviour patterns. We are all human, we were all innocent babies.
In this lecture Allan Schore explores what happens for boys at risk, that is to say boys who for reasons outside their control or responsibility are exposed to trauma, neglect, maternal distress, familial distress in regards the maturation of biological systems undermining emotional development and learned behaviour.
This does not form a basis for absolving adults of accountability for harm causation, and it does offer a way to respond that is more concerned with prevention, health and safety than punishment.
For my purposes I have included this here as an indicator of preventative measures that can be taken, informed by current and developing knowledge of neurobiology and neuroendocrinology, to reduce the incidence of male distress, male psychopathology and male violence as part of the overall work to meet the challenges of the bear question.
A friend responds.
I asked a friend of mine to read over this, and she made these comments, which I publish here with her permission.

“some excellent points and thoughts there.

Reading it reminded me of my other experience yesterday in a charity shop…..found a beautiful Italian leather evening style handbag in a stunning shade of turquoise…

was checking out its suitability for my needs in terms of pockets etc. it looked like it had never been used….I felt something in a pocket and thought it might be a lighter but couldn’t find which pocket it was in and the shape was a bit different so I excitedly thought it might be a small roll of cash

NOPE it was a penknife

I then took it up to the ladies at the till who were shocked and apologetic, I made a comment along the lines of whoever previously owned the bag was like me because that’s the sort of thing I’d feel the need to carry on a night out - the shop assistants and other shoppers then had a open conversation about women having such items in their bags for protection…..age range was about 20-75 years old - we all admitted to having done this, we all also agreed knife crime and carrying knives was bad.”

This anecdote, as I wrote previously was provided by a good friend of mine, a woman I respect and admire every much as a friend and fellow humane being, who describes herself as a “handbag granny : as I am a fine example of how strong and determined women become after a life time of having to be tough….yeah it would be lovely to have become old and still be floating around without a care in the world having experienced no trauma or hardship but reality isn’t like that and life makes women tough”.

She also wrote this : “I’d say between the ages of 18 and about 45 I’d regularly carry something in my bag that could easily double up as a weapon if needed when I was going somewhere that I didn’t know was 100% safe, so 99% of the time I had a weapon in my bag and at times that would be in my hand if I was walking somewhere dark etc even if that was just a rolled up umbrella or a large set of keys. For women I think this is just instincts now, it’s not even something we think about - we just do it. Even a heavy overloaded handbag swung in the right way can knock a man off his feet, I think a granny recently took out a jewellery store thief in this way…

She posted this link... https://youtu.be/ySBxMMidbEg?si=6czEfjh5Xd9A4FM_

Culture

Have you ever looked back on a moment and wondered if you made the right choice? Professor Robert Sapolsky has, but he believes that there was no actual choice at that moment.

Professor Sapolsky has staked out an extreme stance in the field: we are nothing more than the sum of our biology, over which we had no control, and its interactions with the environment, over which we also had no control. Explore what it looks like to reject the notion of free will and how doing so can be liberating rather than paralyzing and despairing.

However , he points out that the kind of culture into which we are born, and the kind of culture our mothers were born into, which sets the conditions of their lived experience, has profound impacts upon us in utero, impacts that remain largely invisible yet present as behavioural patterns and dynamics. Because culture is the setting that is created by human interaction, there is room for the possibility of change. And that is exactly what this blog is all about.

Being anti-Racist without understanding EXACTLY what Racism is, is ineffective and serves to perpetuate Racism as a weapon.

It is easy to be opposed to discrimination and bigotry.

source

Anyone can see the abhorrent cruelty. It’s what we call a ’no brainer’.

It is easy to say that discrimination towards another person because of their skin colour, hair colour, eye colour or any other characteristic is wrong.

It is easy to say that bigotry towards another person because of any naturally occurring variation is wrong, that such hatred is based on a lie.

It is easy to say that hating another person because of their skin colour is insane.

Albeism is abusive. Misogyny is harmful. Misandry is dangerous.

Racism is harmful.

These are all rather obvious considerations for most people.

It is easy to be opposed to Racism in principle.

But that will not end Racism. We see the evidence everywhere.

Combatting Racism is another matter.

Because Racism is a cultural weapon. Misogyny is a cultural weapon.

Dismantling the structures that engender Racism matters, because the way to do this is to be honest about the history of Racism, and to listen to and hear the voices of those whose lived experience is routinely adversely afflicted by structural, cultural and vernacular Racism

One cannot combat and dismantle Racism unless one knows exactly what Racism is.

Racism is a weapon.

Racism is a curated weapon.

Race as a category is a weapon invented by British Plantation owners in the Americas, during the 1640s to 1680s.

There is no such thing as ‘White People’.

The category 'White People' was invented. A discussion.

Race does not exist.

There are no Races. There is only our human species, with myriad naturally occurring variations that only add to the diversity and beauty of Humanity as a species.

The concept of Race is a cultural invention, specific to a historical situation where the invention was designed with intent to cause harm, to counter dissent and to prevent the emerging solidarity of shared humanity developing into an organised political and social material resistance to that harm.

Race was invented to segregate European indentured workers from African indentured workers in the British Colonies of Virginia and Maryland, on the North American continent.

The concept of Race was invented and institutionalised to divide a multi-ethnic working population, to prosecute a class war.

Ethnicity

There are ethnicities, there are faiths, there are language groups, there are heritage lineages, but there are no Races.

We are a single species, all of us equally human, equally vulnerable, equally fallible. We all bleed red.

Modern medicine, genetics and long lived experience proves this assertion.

I would say therefore that those who identify as White Persons, as separate from others, makes of themselves a weapon. Because inventing White as a category was the first step in segregating our species into White and non-White. Segregation asa weapon in the class war.

In the class war.

What is the class war? The class war is the struggle of Extracted Accumulated Wealth as a Political Social and Material Power, a material hierarchy of value and of violence deployed to maintain its dominance of all the population, in order to maintain itself, enhance its extraction and extend its dominance.

In this context, the official use of the category White Person, White Male, White Female, White Child is weaponised. For the purpose of continuing the class war.

There are no White People in the same way that there is no evidence of God, nor is there any evidence of an after life.

One might choose to believe in either, yet that does not establishment them as factual, material realities. To legislate a God or an afterlife would be considered utterly insane. Freedom of Religion is not the same as Theocracy.

Belief or Reality.

One might chose to believe one is a White person, yet that does not establish Whiteness as a fact.

The identity of Whiteness comes with a terrible cost.

It is a lie that perpetuates a war. A class war. The class war. It perpetuates militaristic wars too.

Every time one claims the mantle of Whiteness, one perpetuates the lie, one arms the weapon.

Even if one considers oneself White and anti-Racist, those who claim White Nationalism arm the weapon.

I am Irish by parents, English by birthplace, a citizen of both lands, humane by self definition, a person of Earth.

Speak fluent English, passable Gaelic, stuttering French.

I live in London. I could be considered as an immigrant.

Economic Immigrants.

There are Irish youth who are, once again, immigrating in large numbers, this time due to economic policy rooted in NeoLiberal ideology that makes their lives very difficult. They cannot see a future for themselves in Ireland due in large part to the housing crisis. They fly out in planes, they move about the world freely enough and they are pretty welcomed where ever they go.

There are Libyan, Syrian, Iraqi, Afghani, Sudanese, Eritrean and other international youth immigrating in large numbers due to wars prosecuted in their lands rooted in neoliberal economic ideology travelling as refugees, seeking asylum and looking for a safe land to work in, to build their families lives in safety.

The refugees and asylum seekers all seek safe routes to safety because the lands they flee have been ruined by warfare, warfare with roots traceable back to Western Hegemony. When those safe routes are block, they move through clandestine routes, which are dangerous and liable to failure. Desperation drives them to take the risk.

There are Indian, Pakistani, Kenyan, Nigerian, South African, Vietnamese, Chinese, Korean, Japanese people travelling to study and work in different countries, for a host of very good reasons.

We are all immigrants, archeologically and anthropologically.

I am not 'White'. I reject the category entirely. I refuse to be made a weapon.

I am Human.

We all are.

Racism is a weapon.

Race is a lie.

Facing the Dominator System : Solidarity, Empathy, Partnership - Crafting Egalitarian ways of living well..

Even in the ruins of their homes, in the midst of a Genocide, they prepare and share food in solidarity.
~Solidarity, humane solidarity across every variation of our cultures, our faiths, our economic status, our ethnicities is the path we need to walk, as persons, as peoples, as a species.

Solidarity requires empathy.
How would we feel is that was being done to us?
How would I feel if that was being done to me?

Solidarity in social action requires our best efforts of understanding vulnerability.

Solidarity in political action requires knowledge, rather than belief and effort through daily engagement and involvement.

Solidarity requires we examine what we have internalised of the culture that divides us in order to de-colonise our minds so that we can meet with minimal bias each others needs.

Solidarity requires we make an effort to understand that poverty is a weapon.

Solidarity requires we understand that our comfort must never come at a cost to others.

Solidarity requires we humanise ourselves, it requires that we confront every effort at dehumanising others.
Solidarity requires determination, vision and trust. We must trust ourselves to continue until the work is done. The work of solidarity is worth the effort, even if we fail from time to time.
For me, for some reason, the certainty of health as a reality, as a biological standard, optimal health of a species, or a habitat or a living environment is deeper than any sense of hope I have ever felt. That is where solidarity leads me. I stand in solidarity with life asa nurturant process. How is it for you?

Solidarity requires we self-care and work to reduce our rage to redirect our anger about the needless suffering towards active prevention and repair, and it requires we eschew lateral violence. Stop lashing out at each other in frustration...

Solidarity requires we confront Racism, Misogyny, Xenophobia, Ableism as curated, taught hatreds and we must understand that every form of bigotry that is weaponised to maintain the status quo of the Hierarchy of Wealth. Bigotry is unknown in all infants.

Solidarity requires that we get politically active, well beyond merely voting for choices others have made for us. We must learn the skills of shared deliberation and decision making, shared effort to implement and shared accountability.

Without solidarity across the grass roots, the Mad Bull of Hierarchy will continue to eat us, it will shit on us and we will not be able to turn that shit to compost for future nurturing of our grass roots into healthy landscapes.
And that is our evolutionary function - to nurture the shared commons of life.
Every other organism does so. We are not unique.
Kindest regards

Corneilius

Thank you for reading this blog.

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

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

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Conflating Freedom of Belief with Free Speech - an epistemological error weaponised as a political strategy

Has it dawned on you?

Crossed lines and beliefs really do matter -

Right, Center, Social. There is no Left.

Conflating Freedom of Belief with Free Speech - an epistemological error weaponised as a political strategy

There's a deliberate long term strategic and tactical conflation of Freedom of Religion (which is freedom to believe whatever..) and Freedom of Speech (which is protection of public political discourse from oppression or censorship by Government or legislation abusing it's power).

Freedom of Religion : you can make up any old shit, and set up a temple, and invite people in, and if they bite the bait, all good and you have tax exemption status.

Free Speech : the legal right and duty to speak truth to Power as part of combatting oppressive and authoritarian Governments,

Right Wing

Most of what is 'Right-wing' is really a matter of belief, the core belief in the might is right ideology. Racism, Misogyny, Xenophobia, hatred of immigrants as a category, Traditional Values and Hierarchy of Wealth and a sense of superiority.

That is why they are so LOUD!

Center

Most of what is centre is evading the issue of abuse of Power. They are terrified of the Might of the Right, because they understand the danger and they just want to get along. That is why they are so quiet. They never confront the Might is Right head on, they make feeble attempts to regulate minimally the ordinary street level might is righters.

Social

Most of what is Social is confronting abuse of Power. That is why they are so often cancelled, their voices regulated to the sides by the Right and the Center. They want to call it all out, they wish to build social solidarity because they understand that the only way to handle a bully in a crowd is for the crowd to stand in solidarity and say no.

Whiteness is a lie.

British ex-Empire Asset Management (the Establishment we rarely see - symbolised by The Crown which we do see) involvement is a large part of every EU and US 'intervention'. From China to Afghanistan, across Africa South America and the anglophone arena.

Even after WW2, British Commercial Interests retained dominant control of all assets previously held under Empire. They destabilised every former colony that attempted to take back control of local or indigenous assets.

And they succeeded apart from Russia, China, Vietnam, Libya, Afghanistan, Iran and North Korea.

US UK have been more than mere allies. Anglophone business partners. Not each others puppets. The narrative of puppetry places the blame on the individuals and the Governments of the day, which masks the Asset Management Group both Governments work for, and have always worked for.

Cameron initiated the bombing of Libya.

Johnson barred peace talks in Ukraine.

Blair invaded Iraq and Afghanistan, Sierra Leone.

Every British prime minister since WW2 has operated warfare on behalf of the Asset Management Group, and has done so with the assent of The British Monarch.

There are many countries that pay homage to The Crown. Those countries are not independent.

Anglophone oppression of indigenous people is still very much happening in Australia, Canada, USA and New Zealand.

The reason is Asset Management, the tactic is Racist Superiority, the strategic value is control of resources.

Imagine if the indigenous polities were instantly given full rights and they decided no more Industrial extraction of Oil, no more Uranium, Copper, Iron Ore, Lithium Mining, no more Logging, no more Fishing, no more Cattle Ranching and Commodity Crop Agriculture was to be permitted on indigenous lands?

Who would oppose that and why? And how would they go about it?

Internalised Values

There is a difficulty for lots of people born to the anglophone Caucasian European heritage, in that as long as we identify as White, we re-internalise the first step of Racism. We protect the racist asset management system with our identification.

There are no white people, they do not exist.

The very first step of Racism and Supremacy is the definition of White as a category. There are no white people. It is a delusion, an confidence trick, a very dodgy belief.

Repudiating that delusion, that confidence trick, that very dodgy belief within one's own identity construction is an essential part of the work to begin to start to dismantle the Racist Element of the Domination system.

This is essential to the task of building the kind of social political solidarity that can confront the might is right dynamic that is killing people in Gaza, Ukraine, Sudan and in many other policies, the same dynamic that is refusing to enable action of Climate Disruption to be taken in the way it is needed, the same dynamic the drives misogyny, ableism, xenophobia, anti-trans hatreds...

Right, Center, Social. There is no Left.

I am not left, I am social, I am for social equity and kindness, I am for governance that avoids avoidable harms, I am for a culture that nurtures..

Human Kind by Rutger Bergman - a useful book in these times, an indication of what is possible.

I understand why some people feel like Humanity is the problem. For some reason I have never really felt that in my bones. Even in my darkest moments, and there have been many of those.

I found this book. Human Kind, to be a useful exploration of this.

Donald and many others would disagree, of course.

six fingers to egalitarianism, accidentally, or not?

I also see a lot of memes and content that seems to be designed to exacerbate that feeling, that humanity, all the other people we don't know, are the problems. It is rare that someone will hold that view and include themselves within it. I have never heard someone say I am the problem too. It's almost always someone, if not everyone else.

For a long time. have felt that this feeling is being weaponised to breed despair and nihilism as part of larger efforts to divide us from each as persons..... Cognitive Warfare is the technical term, and I coined the term 'Political Grooming' to apply to this adversarial dynamic in our political and cultural exchanges.

I think the culture, the Dominator Culture, is the problem. To form a culture is part of our 'DNA' only in that we are creative beings, we make things, we learn to do things... wisely or otherwise.

Dominator Culture is not genetic, it is cultural. I host a daily live stream show, where I sing what I call ‘Lovesongs for Egalitarians’, currently hosted by farcebark. Readers can go to the page, and catch the shows, and see and listen to past shows archived therein.

I know that an egalitarian culture is indeed possible.

Human Kind

Product information

Author: Rutger Bregman

Type: Paperback

ISBN: 9781408898956

Date: 13th May, 2021

Publisher: BLOOMSBURY

https://www.dubraybooks.ie/product/humankind-pb-9781408898956

"THE INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER A Guardian , Daily Telegraph , New Statesman and Daily Express Book of the Year 'Hugely, highly and happily recommended' Stephen Fry 'You should read Humankind .

You'll learn a lot (I did) and you'll have good reason to feel better about the human race' Tim Harford 'Made me see humanity from a fresh perspective' Yuval Noah Harari It's a belief that unites the left and right, psychologists and philosophers, writers and historians. It drives the headlines that surround us and the laws that touch our lives. From Machiavelli to Hobbes, Freud to Dawkins, the roots of this belief have sunk deep into Western thought.

Human beings, we're taught, are by nature selfish and governed by self-interest. Humankind makes a new argument: that it is realistic, as well as revolutionary, to assume that people are good. By thinking the worst of others, we bring out the worst in our politics and economics too. In this major book, internationally bestselling author Rutger Bregman takes some of the world's most famous studies and events and reframes them, providing a new perspective on the last 200,000 years of human history.

From the real-life Lord of the Flies to the Blitz, a Siberian fox farm to an infamous New York murder, Stanley Milgram's Yale shock machine to the Stanford prison experiment, Bregman shows how believing in human kindness and altruism can be a new way to think - and act as the foundation for achieving true change in our society. It is time for a new view of human nature."

egalitarians at home, relaxed.

Thatcher claimed there is no such thing as Society. IEA tries to mitigate that with sophistry.

a useful chart...

This is what I believe to be true, in spite of the claims of others.

Kindest regards

Corneilius

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