The imposed burden of birth into an adverse setting one did not create. Queen Elizabeth II, Monarchy, Democracy and Republics.


Being born

Into a Family
that dictates
the parameters
of your entire lifw
in order to
meet the needs of
a thousand year old
Hierarchy of Power,
Wealth and Violence.
Is not an easy place to end up.

The person is not the Institution.

The Institution exploits the person.

Abolish the Institution,
free the family,
free their children,
free the people
and
let us
keep it humane
and
just.


Post script.

I wrote this poem at midday Thursday 8th September.

This poem could just as easily been written for all children born into this culture that is so violence prone.  Violence has many forms.

Poverty, for example, is an institutionalised setting crafted by Wealth Extraction as a dominant political force. Imagine being born into a racist or zenophobic society. We are all born into a culture we did not create, and that culture commonly fails to meet our full human needs, as it demands that we meet it's needs, often at our expense.

As various threads of commentary emerged, on Friday morning, 9th of September, I wish to add this:

Even as I wrote this poem, prior to the announcement of the passing of Queen Elizabeth II, I noticed a thread of quite  nasty comment about the Queen as a person and I think it's valid to say that it’s more than that at face value. 

It is that there are political forces that exploit anger and pain on matters political, economic and cultural to generate thoughtless nastiness on all sides.

Making angry, hurt people angrier than they already are, for political and economic gain.

For me it is important that I honour the ordinary person she could have been, acknowledge the imperfect humanity of the person she was (I too am flawed in my humanity ) and focus on the Institution, it's historical basis, it's place in our democracy and I feel that it is vital that we who embrace honesty and probity push back against the hatred the groomers are trying and will continue to try to stimulate.

I noticed during Brexit the entities grooming pro-Brexit  irrational stances were also grooming anti-Brexit hatred to harden the proBrexit narrative and to use the anti Brexit hatred as a weapon for Brexit. Setting brother against brother, sister against sister, children against parents, neighbour against neighbour.

I think such hatred on either side, whilst understandable (there is much to be angry about, there is much pain in our lives) is also inappropriate and is corrosive to genuine democratic discourse. To deploy manipulative content to exacerbate that pain and anger is beyond the pale, it is utterly cruel and is a wound upon our polity.

The groomers  (Cambridge Analytica et al, Cummings, and many, many others) were deliberately engaged in emotional  trigger manipulation via online microtargeting aimed at both sides, designed to undermine rational discussion and to amplify division, and yet nobody within the Remain spotted it. 

Remain  couldn’t counter it. Labour, Lib Dems, Greens and others did nothing to expose it and confront it. That was a major failing.  A serious vulnerability.

That’s a trait in all of us who are exposed to and often distracted by grooming, when we are targeted by deliberate content designed to exacerbate any and every emotive vulnerability, and thus 'nudge' us from Fore Brain rational thinking to Amygdala based emotional reaction. 

Being aware of it is the first step in disarming it.

Any honest observer of weekly theatre known as Prime Ministers Questions in the UK Parliament can see that dynamic being deployed by leading politicians and back benchers. 

It is not surprising then that such dynamics percolate news media, online activity and our pubs and living rooms and offices.

The trickle down effect, to reset a well worn phrase.

Monarchy and The State as a polity.

There are very good arguments to suggest the abolishment of Monarchy as part of the English political settlement. An Institution crafted by violence, enriched by violence and colonisation, imposing a hierarchy of automated respect as a citizens duty, wrapped in flags of war and conquest, is not suited to the 21st Century.

Therefore it must be a rational argument, rooted in love of the people for each other, grounded in the best that healthy democracy can deliver and aspire to, with the intent to improve the lives of ourselves and our children, and their children to come.

Hatred and stereotype, caricature and insult, polarised 'debate' will not bring us to that happy state. We must check these when they emerge, irrespective of where they emerge from.

Let us do what we can to disarm the hatred stirrers, and root our polity in love, humility, honesty and empathy.



Kindest regards


Corneilius

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"I’m a psychologist – and I believe we’ve been told devastating lies about mental health | Sanah Ahsan" - The most honest article on Mental Health I have read.





To the Editor,

Sanah Ahsan's article in The Guardian, 6th September, is the most honest article on this matter - mental health - I have ever read in any News Paper in the UK.

"I’m a psychologist – and I believe we’ve been told devastating lies about mental health | Sanah Ahsan"

"Society’s understanding of mental health issues locates the problem inside the person – and ignores the politics of their distress"

The psychology of any given family, community or society is revealed and perpetuated in how that family, community or society relates to and treats the children and the most vulnerable people within it.

"Given the kind of family, community or society you were born into, and everything you have experienced and endured, it's no wonder you feel the way you do."

I have been using this aphorism for 30 years. Because it is accurate.

The psychology of this Industrial Wealth Extraction culture, addicted to Fossil Fuels and Dominant Power, is key to examining the current situation regards mental health.

Wealth Extraction that evades the costs of preventing harm via Externalising Costs, and uses accumulated Wealth as a political utility to maintain Wealth Extraction above all other 'needs' indicates what that psychology is.

Climate Disruption is one symptom, among many. Poverty, Racism, Misogyny, Wealth inequity are others. Ordinary people everywhere suffer through no fault of our own.

I look forward to reading more honest writing about this dynamic, in every News Paper and elsewhere, to understand how this situation impacts our children and our most vulnerable fellow citizens. 

We really need to be honest as a culture, as political actors, as people and as a species, to be in a position to act healthfully on the matter of mental health across our Society.

Kindest Regards

Corneilius Crowley


Kindest regards

Corneilius

Thank you for reading this blog.

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Care, Nurture and Power - Hatred as a political weapon. Where is the nurture?


"The further a political or economic culture moves from care and nurture, the more the proponents of such a drift will encourage hatred of all those who nurture and care, precisely because that care and nurture confronts the cruelty of that cultural shift"

Beyond standard ideological L/R polarities, rooted in the historical dynamic of the French Revolution, which replaced one oppressive ruling class with another, reducing political development to a struggle between two poles of oppression, masquerading as democracy, this is a question of de-humanisation, deliberately deployed, intentionally undermining humanity, and as Climate Disruption, Environmental Degradation, Racism, Misogyny  and Poverty reveal, it is a question for Humanity as a whole. As a species.

Where is the nurture? Ask that question of every policy proposal. Dig into the detail.

Kindest regards

Corneilius

Thank you for reading this blog.

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

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Poverty is an externalised cost of efficient Wealth Extraction. Shortest blog I have ever written

Amazon Warehouse in Mexico. He could have afforded to build decent housing for all the workers as part of the plan, around the warehouse, and still have billions to spare. He chose not to use his vast wealth for the benefit of workers.

Food, Energy and Housing Poverty is an externalised cost of efficient Wealth Extraction aka Industrial Profitability and the accumulation of Wealth as a Political Hegemon.

This is the shortest blog I have ever written,

~

Kindest regards


Corneilius

Thank you for reading this blog.

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Advice to scrimp and be thrifty is gaslighting. We need a deeper policy, we need a nurture life policy platform.


"Sometimes the poor are praised for being thrifty. But to recommend thrift to the poor is both grotesque and insulting. It is like advising a man who is starving to eat less." Oscar Wilde


This image is doing the rounds at the moment - for whose benefit is this being viralised?

How would you feel if someone advised you to eat less if you and your children were already eating less, due to poverty and speculation on necessary commodities driving prices up?

1. Asking people who, for the most part earn a low income (in order for corporations to pay high dividends to shareholders) to scrimp on Energy use in our homes, by 'raising consciousness' of the expense of daily use, with a tacit implication suggesting that if we made better 'informed' choices, we'd not face such intense bills is deliberate cruelty.

2. The price rises are entirely a matter of market speculation. UK generates 97% of it's own Energy needs. It has not become more expensive to drill, produce and ship oil. Speculation is all about using Wealth as an economic weapon.

Extreme inequality is a form of economic violence, where policies and political decisions that perpetuate the wealth and power of a privileged few result in direct harm to the vast majority of ordinary people across the world and the planet itself. 

3. Where's the chart for the energy costs of Tanks, Jets, Missiles, AirCraft Carriers, Mars Missions, Moon Missions, Yachts and Palaces? 

4. Where's the chart advising industry to be 'thrifty' with using energy?

Ordinary folk are responsible for at most, 25% of all Carbon emissions. USUK and EU populations are often presented as the biggest per capita Carbon emitters. Industry accounts for the most of carbon emission, with the US Military being the single biggest institutional carbon polluter on Earth. People point at China as the biggest polluter but ignore the population differences. If you combine Europe, UK and USA as one population it turns out that it is a population similar to that of China, and China's Per Capita Carbon Emissions are still below those of USUK and EU. Well below.

5. Carbon Footprint was initially designed as a tool to help us become more aware of the environmental costs of our day to day activity. Most ordinary carbon use is in getting to and from work, and in working for the Industrial Systems that refuse to pay the costs to prevent pollution and prevent environmental degradation. Because to do so would erase their profitability.

6. In it's great wisdom and benevolence, in 2004 BP recycled and popularised Personal Carbon Footprint as a way to make us ordinary people feel guilt, shame and hopeless hope (if we all did our little bit - which amounts to less than 10% of total) we could help save the planet) whist the Industrial Cult continued stomping on us all with their Carbon Wealth Extraction Boot Print. 

We little people were directed to obsess about our day to day use, so that BP, Shell, Exxon and their allies in Finance Markets could continue to obsess about Wealth Extraction in the 'most efficient' manner - by refusing to pay the costs of prevention of harm (pollution, disease casued by pollution and environmental degradation) and by speculating the price of energy fuels.

7. The Ukraine War is not causing Energy prices to rise - England produces 97% of it's energy needs from available domestic supplies.

So whose carbon foot print matters, and why?

https://toxicnews.org/2017/08/07/whose-carbon-footprint-matters/

"consumption and market exchange only represents a thin surface of our economy and its ecological consequences.

150 years ago, Karl Marx argued that the secret to profit, or what he called surplus value, laid in analyzing the “hidden abode” of production. 

We need a similar project to understand climate accountability in our carbon-based society. Of course, the most obvious producers of climate change are the fossil fuel producers themselves. 

A recent study suggests a mere 100 companies are responsible for 71% of emissions since 1988 (in this case, it is important to remember that half of total historical emissions since the industrial revolution have come since that year of 1988).

Yet, fossil fuel companies are not the only ones profiting off carbon emissions. Energy-intensive industries like steel, chemicals, cement, and aluminum consume ungodly amounts of fossil fuels to power and materially feed their production. 

The cement industry alone is responsible for 5% of global carbon emissions. Fertilizer uses natural gas as a source of hydrogen to combine with atmospheric nitrogen to form ammonia (NH3). When they extract that hydrogen from methane (CH4) carbon dioxide is the main byproduct. 

A fertilizer plant I visited in southern Louisiana claimed to consume a staggering 9% of natural gas consumption in the entire state (a state that already hosts an enormous industry of natural gas consuming chemical factories). 

This single fertilizer plant has the highest carbon emissions in the entire chemical sector of the United States."

8. Calls to tax these companies are largely a way to distract attention from the hidden roots of all industrial profitability - the deep roots of Externalised Costs as the very foundation of industrial wealth extraction.

9. Nationalisation is a way to 'take back control' and set pricing according to the needs of the population, us little people, whose need for the utility of energy, water, transit systems, health care systems, education systems ect is a life need, it is not a luxury. Such a move would massively help to alleviate general poverty, and for that reason alone it must be done.

It is important to understand that such a policy is designed to not touch the sides of Externalised Costs.

10. Cost externalizing is a socioeconomic term describing how a business maximizes its profits by off-loading indirect costs and forcing negative effects to a third party. An externalized cost is known to economists as a negative externality.

"The corporation is an externalizing machine (moving its operating costs and risks to external organizations and people), in the same way that a shark is a killing machine." - Robert Monks (2003) Republican candidate for Senate from Maine and corporate governance adviser in the film "The Corporation". Moving industries to where cheaper workers can be sourced is an externalising procedure. It's sole purpose is wealth extraction efficiency.

What we need. Starting now.

In my opinion Nationalisation must be followed by legislation that demands that industry prevents harm, pays the costs they have externalised from the beginnings of the Industrial 'Revolution' - from material sourcing through processing, manufacturing, distribution through to point of sale, use, consumption and end of life disposal - as the most basic measure of industrial health and legitimacy.

We must challenge every attempt to place the burden for such deep change upon us little people, many of us on low incomes, many more well paid yet trapped in mortgage debt; diligent workers and so-called 'scroungers' struggling to stay financially afloat are not the problem here.

We must not pass our life jackets to the Industrial Giants who are throwing us off the ship, as they sail towards the destination of continued, maximised Wealth Extraction.

We must mutiny, we must peacably take the ship over, be the majority in our legislatures that we fund, and we must plot a new course towards a nurturant industrial economic system that abolishes poverty, regulates industry well, eschews warfare as a a tool, prevents pollution and nurtures human and environment as one. and is honest and transparent.

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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