The Economics of Habitat and The Invisible Natural Child

Tony Juniper @ LSE

Last night I attended a lecture by Tony Juniper, a well known ecology activist, at LSE. It was titled 'Education for Sustainable Developement.

http://www2.lse.ac.uk/publicEvents/events/2010/20100304t1830vNT.aspx

“This event will explore the role of universities in driving the sustainability agenda.

Tony Juniper is a campaigner, writer, and a senior associate with the Cambridge University Programme for Sustainability Leadership.

Professor Janet Hartley is Pro-director for teaching and learning at LSE.”


It was for me an informative occasion. I learned nothing new about the problems we face.

So what did I learn?

I learned that for far too many ‘educated’ and ‘concerned’ people the blindingly obvious is absolutely unseen, and more importantly not felt.. Even when it is pointed out in the starkest of terms….

Tony Juniper started out by saying we have to look to where we are going, what is next, what lies ahead and reviewed what had already happened, what ‘we’ had already achieved.

By way of mitigating the worst or at least some of the worst problems that have arisen.

By way of pressure groups helping to drive some Government Regulation.

Tony pointed out that ‘we’ had some successes in the past since Silent Spring.

‘We’ had banned DDT and a few other powerful pesticides, and changed the methods by which pesticides and herbicides were applied – from a wholesale drenching to a carefully modulated application. What he did not mention was that the use of GMOs and novel pesticides and herbicides, in smaller quantities is still the standard practice for the bulk of the US and US AID sponsored farming wherever it is delivered…

Tony pointed out ‘We’ had stopped the production and use of CFCs. Tony pointed out that these measures did not preclude the use of fridges, etc etc. that solutions were found, alternative chemicals produced to do the same job.

What he did not say was what effect those new chemicals will have in the long term. He didn’t even mention this novel concept. Because no-one knows in the long term. Not really. Probables, with caveats. We don’t even know if the Ozone hole will repair itself..

Industrial Chemistry is one giant experiment....no! really, it is an experiment. and the only pertinent data-set produced thus far has more to do with this is how NOT to do things... than anything else...

Tony pointed out that ‘we’ had managed to deal with acid rain, a by product of massive coal burning, by installing technology to clean and sequester the carbon emitted from power stations..

What he did not say was that the burning of coal in massive quantities for manufacturing was exported to countries with less onerous regulatory systems. So that they too could develop. By making our consumer products using cheaper labour, garnering greater profits for the brand names.

Tony was saying that ‘we’ have had some successes, that Governments have been able to encourage these moves, and to regulate them…

Tony also made the point that this was not just a question of economics, but of justice, and referred briefly to the imbalance in wealth, and in use of the earths ‘resources’ between the West and the developing world… the figures are well known, though variable…

Tony’s brief lecture ran over the salient points regarding the environmental approach that sees nothing but ‘resources’ in nature… and is causing untold damage everywhere that approach is actively being pursued.

Tony made comparisons between what nature provides as ‘services’ that are not paid for, ‘externalities’ as they are known in the economics trade.

The ludicrous, yet to all economists, sound evaluation of what those ‘services’ provide in dollar comparison looked like this at the time of the comparison : the world economy valued at $18 Trillion, nature’s services valued at between $30 to  $50 Trillion, all in US dollars? As if US Dollars are somehow a standard against which nature can be assessed.

Nature traded as a commodity.

Is this comparison itself not indicative of the myopia of the ‘educated’ and ‘concerned’? I think so. I feel it. However Tony suggested that the work done to point this out was good work. It was done by an LSE alumni, I believe.. well of course!

In essence Tony was pointing out that Government regulation must increase, and must be focussed on all of the above and on Justice.

Finally Tony pointed out that ‘we’ need to see our selves as part of nature, that there needs to be a philosophical, social and psychological element to the changes ‘we’ need to make.

 And that more or less was his lecture. Question time.

I was sitting in the front. I was determined to put the cat amongst the pigeons. I had no intention of asking Tony a question. I had a statement of fact to make….

I introduced myself as Corneilius, who is writing a book about the harmful effects of telling children what to think with sanctions imposed on them for any reasonable dissent, and that I was pleased to hear Tony’s remarks concerning a change in philosophy, as surely this was the basis, the baseline, if you will.

I pointed out that imposing thought on a child with sanctions for non-compliance was damaging to the natural child in much the same way we are damaging the environment, and is a cultural phenomenon that lies at the very heart of Compulsory State Education.

I mentioned ‘tabula rasa’, the blank slate, the empty vessel mode of seeing children, a mode of perception (not observation, and certainly not scientific) that viewed education as the process of pouring information into these empty vessels. And how that was the scientific basis of Compulsory State Education….

I also mentioned that the use of Ritalin as a means to manage dissent  amongst children no longer subject to corporal punishment was an appalling indictment of the culture.  I ended by saying that we do indeed need to change our philosophy and listen to the natural child.

Tony understood what I was saying, and pointed out that for example, the state spends £140,000 a year incarceration children who had been failed by the system, and that within the Green Party, they are discussing this issue.

Then questions went on to other attendees…. Mostly asking Tony what we need to do…. The great man advises ….. and to be fair his advice centered on the change of heart, of philosophy that is needed more than the technicalities….

There was one question, to my right, quite late in the session, that referred to my statement, by stating the following, quite energetically, after someone had pointed out the homogenising effect of the predominant culture….

 ‘It’s all very well talking about listening to children, but the problems we are facing are immensely complex, and require complex solutions …. For example The Body Shop spent 10 years and more getting to know the individual farmers and producers of their range of raw materials and products, so that they could say they knew who their money was going to, how it was being used to support those communities. This was a complex operation. Now the body shop is taken over by L’Oreal, a huge international corporation, for whom such an operation is way to complex… so my question is this. How can we get these companies to undertake these very complex processes?”

Tony’s answer to this question eventually came to the point that basically it all starts from simplicity.  I would have cited bacteria and simplicity as the very basis of natural complexity…. And thrown in a few well known examples… but there wasn’t time for Tony to do that…

I think Tony Juniper is a good man. I think he understands the problem of conditioning. The chair of the LSE lecture is a committed , conscientious educator. As are all those who attended. WE are all well meaning. The good intent is clear. Based upon my observations,  in nature results indicate intention... and there is much research to suggest this a fair generalisation.

Tony let us know that he would be  standing as a Green Party Candidate in Cambridge. That came up in response to a question what on the prospects for the environment were if David Cameron were to be the next Prime Minister. (Jesus wept!) Politics is irrelevant in this debate.

These issues lie beyond politics. Post normal science is the technical term for the philosophy behind climate change science.... decide policy in extremis, use focussed science to find what you want to solve the problem......

I feel the discussion did not pick up on the meaning and import of the statement I made at the start of the Q&A, not in any real way. Because for the most part people cannot see it, feel it. Really? Actually they can...

And is that itself not the core problem?

By not listening to, and acting on the sensing of the natural child 'we' are setting the grounds for the very philosophies and mind-sets that are creating the problems, and it is a mirror of the way in which nature is treated as a commodity. An object to be used, to be trained and coerced to meet ‘our needs’?

Indeed.

As ever 'We' discuss the symptoms, 'we' ignore the cause and 'we' watch the patient die…..

Tragedy and Farce…. Oscar Wilde would have known what to say…

“I am so clever that I do not understand myself” or words to that effect…


note :

It is of course truthful to say that I have omitted 90% of what actually was said during this lecture…

There will be a podcast and transcripts of the lecture posted on the LSE site in the next few days - and I will be interested to see whether or not my take on this event is at all accurate.

Kindest regards

Corneilius

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

St. Valentines Day reclaimed...... or exposed.... sort of!

We all are born into a conditioned and conditioning society that is NOT what we were a or are naturally expecting. 

Everyone has difficulties fitting into this rather rigid society. Some more than others. Those others lives are made that much worse for not fitting in, by sole virtue of the many sanctions that litter society, that live in so many well adjusted peoples minds....

earth circus banner adorns the wall of a liberated builidng

The Honest Expression Personal Meaning is deemed a form of heresy.

Sexuality is one area where the personal lived experience and it's meaning is most often clouded over, obscured and denied ... and where societal imposed values reign... even when 'rebellion' is evident, it is quite often merely a rejection of stricture, rather than an honest confrontation of meaning, value and experience....

I speak for myself. 

As a natural man, who has journeyed through the conditioning and played all the parts congruent within that reality, I see that the menstrual cycle is so not honoured, is not seen as a source of information, of life, but most often as a problem (pregnancy and the bleeding.... ) and treated as such. 

In fact most of womanhood is rigidly ring-fenced by societal forces, so much so that I feel despair when faced with claims of how liberal the west is compared to whatever 'tribe' or 'sect' or otherwise is offered up as proof of just how liberal the developed world is. A world that is unable to stop a super power invading a country and killing hundreds of thousands of children...? 

None so blind as those who refuse to see.

I see all this as part of a larger widespread conditioned misogyny. 

Mothers who work full-time while pregnant, with 2/6 months or so for labour, early weaning and then back to work set as the role model, along side the air brushed working 'babe' as her single counterpart...

Motherhood is unpaid, rarely mentioned as an economic flow, never acknowledged for the profound impact so many mothers have on their children in spite of what society throws at both of them..... and at the same time mothers are blamed for so much! 

The situation parents are placed in, and who or what forces directly control the situation, from near or far, is never discussed in any detail or with any empathy for the outcomes for the natural child.

And underlying that misogyny is a fear of children. Really. 

The blank slate. The wilful child. Satan makes work for idle hands.... discipline MUST be taught!

Look at the world and see just how carefully, how deeply children's lives are being monitored, controlled, measured, graded and directed... it's not 'care'.... it's a business, the business of incarceration, indoctrination ...

And within all that live we men and women. And our primary data is our experience and what it means in context of the situation of power we find ourselves in. Our histories, our feelings, our learnings.

Our exploration, if honest, will lead us to the naturally implicit treasures of being, and from that place our sexuality as well as many other areas of our lives will inform as much as entertain ... and thus be connected to life processes, those that make life itself both possible and desirable.

Voting Rights for Bacteria

VOTING RIGHTS FOR BACTERIA 
 A NEW SONG  - THIS A ROUGH CUT...


(on my rc50 loopstation)
SOME FACTS ABOUT LIFE
THAT
YOU PROBABLY
HAVEN'T BEEN TOLD 
bacteria build everything on this Earth that is living. 
That includes you and I. 
 We are, literally speaking, bags of bacteria. 
 I am a bag of bacteria.

Bacteria metabolise 'raw' Earth materials and produce the materials that other bacteria can utilise to do what they do.

Oxygen, Carbon Dioxide, Amino Acids, Proteins.... etc etc

The net result of what bacteria do is to improve the habitat, Earth, for all life.

Another way of putting it is that bacteria survive in the long run by improving the habitat for all life by being themselves and doing what they naturally do.

Another way of saying this is that our core biological function, as natural beings, on this Earth, is to improve the habitat for ALL LIFE. 
 What does that mean for Society?

It means that much of what we do runs counter to the FACTS of LIFE.

And that if we wish to survive, and more importantly, thrive, in the long run, we must be our natural selves, and that we will find the ways in which we can improve the habitat for all life, for all time, by being our natural selves.
And who knows what the natural self is like?
The Natural Child.
listen to The Natural Child and no other.
Listen.
Hear.
You were that natural child.
Behind the facade of all assumed or imposed identity
YOU ARE THAT NATURAL CHILD.

Kindest regards

Corneilius

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

Blair, the Media, Intellectuals, Complicity and Cowardice.

William Rees Mogg, in The Times, February 1st, 2010 writes in his first paragraph of an article headed :  - Blair the dictator bulldozed us into war -

 " It may never lead to his being tried in any court, but there is nevertheless a public verdict of his responsibility for the British action in Iraq." ...

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/william_rees_mogg/article7010321.ece

Why might it never lead to a trial? What right does he have to make such an assertion and then pour his feeble outrage onto paper for the public domain, and at the same time imply that 'International Law needs to be clarified' - International Law prohibiting War is the clearest Law on the planet. What planet is Rees-mogg on, or more to the point what drugs?

Is not the Law clear? YES.

Has not the crime been reported to British Police? YES

Is there an investigation under way(ish) at The London Metropolitan Police War Crimes Unit? YES

Is this a secret or covert operation, requiring special police investigation? NO!

So, why is Rees Mogg not saying all of this and not asking the following questions :

WHY IS THAT INVESTIGATION STALLED?

WHO IS STALLING IT?

AND WHAT ARE THE FULL CHARGES, and the LIST OF ALL THOSE LEGALLY LIABLE FOR THESE WAR CRIMES?

Is it possible he is unaware of all this?  Hardly.

Very slightly since those involved

( http://www.makewarshistory.org.uk )

have written to EVERY MP, to every News Media outlet, have hosted meetings in both Houses of Parliament, posted videos to youtube, have facebook, myspace, twitter and other online resources, which have been  active for quite some time (the first attempt at reporting war crimes was in 2001, for Afghnaistan!) and have an online international campaign informing people of the Law, and asking that the Law be obeyed, calling their campaign a CIVIL OBEDIENCE campaign. Hardly the shrinking violets of the activist movement, yet totally ignored by mainstream mdeia, an absolutely focussed and active ignorance. Caught in the act of ignoring.

While certain forces may have bulldozed towards war, as Rees Mogg writes, certain others (public intellectuals, media pundits etc ) refused to face the facts at the time : That  War as a Tool of Policy Enforcement is wrong, amoral AND illegal.... and they parroted the lines that Policy dictated. Terrorists. WMD. Nasty Dictators (who used weapons systems our State sold him on his own people, who waged a war with Iran on our States behalf). Half truths are often worse than outright lies.

http://www.medialens,org  a British website that had been challenging the way in which media reports wars with such deep bias as to actively support those wars, is replete with such examples, carefully de-constructed, almost to tedium, based on irrefutable evidence, by the medialens crew;  and vehemently defended by said intellectuals and pundits. Some of the former is quite entertaining. Most of the latter is utterly reprehensible.

And now, when the veil is lifted by Blair himself, when he exposed his crass logic and astute denial before Chilcott's gentle probing, in full public view, (with no option but to go the whole hog), a veil many of us have been able to pierce and had removed, even as he prepared for war, and so now, some of these intellectuals finally find their voice? Give us a break!

STOP THE WAR coalition must have known at the time that the war was utterly illegal. They have access to the best legal minds in the country. Look to the results of their actions. Did they inform or mop up concern? Did they harness the compassion, the horror and anger of the people and use that to act, or did they organise a we will  'do our best' gig, much as Bob Geldof might have, again mopping up concern, knowing that it was futile because it offered no real challenge?

A general strike would have been a good move. A blockade by the 2 million people and their friends who did not turn up for the march, yet who supported the intent of that march in Hyde Park would have been fun. And effective.It was estimated that for every one person on that march at least another 4 agreed with them. Some say 15. That's between 8 and 30 million people. That's a lot of power if marshalled. Polls say more than that opposed the war. Anyways, STWC failed, and failed miserably, in their stated aims.

So back to the future, 2010 : the majority of mainstream media even still parrot the policy line; Blair's testimony last Friday was 'assured', a 'fine performance' according to most press this weekend...

Iran still the de-stabilising force in Iraq ( a lie I have dealt with in detail elsewhere), Tony the 'victim' of circumstance and unfortunate planning...

The disconnect is further highlighted with the recent press coverage of the issue of assisted death in cases of severe debilitating painful fatal disease, where the assistance is requested by individuals whose minds are clear, whose intent is clear, whose assistant is a close and dearly loved one.

The DPP saw fit to go ahead with a prosecution for murder for a woman who helped her daughter, who had lain in bed for nearly 20 years, her body shattered by disease, her life shattered by constant unrelenting pain, who had decided enough is enough and I want to die, and was so weakened she required assistance up to the point she herself pressed the plunger of the syringe containing her final does, her final act in her own life.

Yet stalls with regard to a man and a system that not only   failed to protect a nation of 29 million innocent people, but actively and illegally enabled a war of aggression, that denied the Iraqis grass roots democracy when the Iraqis made so bold as to unite and hold their own elections, that selected it's own chosen men to run Iraqs cities, towns and villages, that actively funded and supplied a police force that actively repressed those who dared to engage their own democracy, that started a war of resistance that was portrayed as 'sectarian', that led to even more slaughter, torture, terror for Iraqis?

These are the facts.

What say you now, Rees Mogg? Defend your pious stance from this perspective. You cannot!

Take a walk to your local police station, and report the crimes of Blair and the UK Government. Do something useful.


Kindest regards

Corneilius

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

Un Convenient Truths - a message to Greenpeace et al.

Please read the quotation below, with regard to the purpose and intent of the Institution known as State Education (COMPULSORY) for it has something in it for all people who share an intention (at the very least) of contributing to bringing down the tyrants, the real tyrants, in our society. It's not an overnight job. 

This is, for all of us a lifetimes work, for our grand children.  

We must, like Howard Zinn, be prepared to work tirelessly, and die, without seeing the fruit of our work.  

We must also be prepared to ditch theory, hope, dreams and ideologies of all hue and be prepared to honestly embrace the meaning of lived experience, and be careful to apportion responsibility for harm where it truely lies...  

The base line for me is this : it is an abuse to tell a child what to think, and to enforce that thinking with any form of sanction, be it subtle or gross ... and this culture of domination is founded upon that primary abuse, for children who adapt to that adverse power relationship, as most do, will either take part in further abuse and rationalise it or be subject to the manipulation of others..... or as many 'alternativistas' do, take refuge in warm hearted cliches easily assimilated from books published for profit, to whit manipulated symbolism of other cultures myths taken totally out of local and historical context and then repeat those same cliches to prove they have learned the work, and attack those who challenge these ideas.. it's all one , maaaaaaaaan!  

How this works is is clearly laid out below. Charles Pierce, the eminence grise behind William James and John Dewey, architects of Compulsory State Education in the USA wrote, in the mid 1800s :  

“Let the will of the state act, then, instead of the will of the individual. 

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

Let all possible cause of a change of mind be removed from men’s apprehension. Let them be kept ignorant, lest they should learn of some reason to think otherwise than they do. 

Let their passions be enlisted, so that they may regard … unusual opinions with hatred and horror. 

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

We can see this in operation in the media, and in school text-books. 

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

THIS HAS TO BE INTEGRATED INTO ALL MAINSTREAM CHANGE MOVEMENTS and the conditioning of children must be seen as the crime it is ...  and identified as the key it is...

Because, even if the tyrants are removed, those who do so will, if they have not dealt with the issues I am highlighting, inevitably do the same again, and again... as we see.  

Ghand! Great PR, He facilitated an honourable withdrawal of the British Empire, as dishonest and cruel an Empire as ever existed. Nonetheless Ghandi was a misguided ideologue with regards to this issue of conditioning. His treatment of and perspective on women was instructive. India has remained a horror story in spite of the 'great' man.

Mandela! Sold the economic power of 'his' people, 'his' country down the river upon gaining Freedom..he is not solely to blame for this, of course..... the gold and diamond mines still in white hands.. whilst the story of his wife, Winnie, certainly no angel, is hardly ever told in honest terms...... and so it goes..  


Time to wake up people.

Again.

The recent tragedy in Haiti serves to illustrate this point. About conditioned gullibility. Presidents Clinton, Bush and Obama stood on the White House Lawn and urged the American People to share generously their wealth with the troubled people of Haiti.




Notice the smirk on George Bush's face, and the intonation of his voice, as he reads from his script, and tells the American People to not send blankets, shelter, food, medicine.... 'just send your cash'.... 'we will effectively spend it' which is quite different to 'we will spend it effectively'...

And the reality?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/feedarticle/8919414

 "Less than a penny of each dollar the U.S. is spending on earthquake relief in Haiti is going in the form of cash to the Haitian government, according to an Associated Press review of relief efforts."


Only a nation of people who have been passed through the system of Compulsion Schooling, like cattle through a meat grinder, could possibly be so gullible, so easily lead.... so profoundly shafted....


And there are many nations, if not all, whose people are and have been subjected to the ministrations of men such as Charles Pierce, and for whom all too often warm hearted gullibility is a refuge.


Hitler passed laws to ban home education while he was in power. Those laws still stand today in modern Germany.


I don't hold the bulk of people responsible for the conditioning they have been exposed to. 


I blame the conditioners. 


And it's not enough merely to apportion blame, but also to expose this activity of the state for what it is, to cease it and to seek solutions, some of which have been outlined by Paolo Freire, Ivan Illych, John Taylor Gatto, John Holt and others, some of which will evolve from the needs and experiences of different peoples, and their children, in differing circumstance and location.

Kindest regards

Corneilius

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