A Survivors Manifesto

An alarming number of adults in the so-called 'civilised' world have little or no empathy for themselves as infants and small children - most have no recall of those times, which is why that empathy seems rare.... and so this also explains why most parents are at a loss with babies and small infants and therefore tend to try to control them, because they have no empathy, they cannot sense the childs needs... and so controlling the baby feels safer and so they look for INSTRUCTIONS.... and are vulnerable to those who give instructions - yet the body knows and if trusted the adult can learn empathy again and recover....

As a child I was beaten, humiliated, punished, or neglected in one way or another, almost daily, and I HAD to believe that I was wrong and deserved the beating, just to maintain my psyche,  even if I did not understand WHY I was being beaten (or their reasons for it). 

I also had to believe the FAITH they hammered into me and that brought me great fear, for I feared I was sinful, nasty, ugly,

It took a long, long time to lose those beliefs about myself.... to find my true heart, my natural integrity.

I consider myself VERY lucky to have made that journey, and whilst it IS infuriating that so many of my brothers and sisters are still stuck in the beliefs and denial, my REAL anger is directed at all those who ensure that the conditioning continues; for the rest, patience and empathy.....

My story is not at all rare, and comparitively speaking, I was lucky..... the stories I read of other childrens lives make that very clear : my point here to make it clear that many, many people have been conditioned by circumstance and Society, rather than truly loved... and only those who are truly loved, not least by themselves, can resist that conditioning in meaningful ways....

I know what it is like to be conditioned and fearful.

I deeply appreciate all the love and support I have received and continue to receive...

I never urge survivors to speak out, in public, unless they themselves feel ready to do so.... just as I would never push a child to do anything. It's always be...st to wait until the child feels eady.

I do urge survivors to find someone they can confide in, to break the silence for themselves - and I do understand that finding that empathic person can be difficult even frightening.

I tell my story to encourage a deeper understanding of what it is to be a Survivor, for there are so many in this society.

Even though I detest war, and think soldeiry a fools game, I FEEL for those troops who return from active combat duty, the many thousands who can just about cope, the many thousands who don't and who 'fall through the cracks' because those around them do not understand what violent trauma does to a persons soul - the movies do not tell the truth about violence and it's effects, neither will the media -and neither wil the NHS, the Health Service nor Social Services....

So it has to be Survivors who do this, and it has to be those strong enough and in a position to do it, because ALL survivors need to be heard, we need to be held, to be allowed to cry, to scream, to vent for this is an essential part of the healing, no matter how uncomfortable it might be for others....

The wounded experience lies trapped beneath those unexpressed cries and wails, is walled in in an attempt to keep it alltogether, to 'fit in' and that keeps us permanently wounded, closed down, shuit off from the full vitality of life.

That is something that no-one deserves.

The stiff upper lip approach has it's merits in a traumatic situation, with limitations, yet beyond that it becomes a trap, a form of denial and assures that trauma patterns are repeated, in one form or another.

And then there are those who adapt to that societal trauma, whose abuse becomes thier identity, and who inflict abuse without conscience or remorse and become part of the System of Power that drives war, neglect, inequality, abuse.. who often 'succeed' and run banks, corporations and countries.... dangerous people, damaged people, charismatic people..... what of them?

Tony Blair, George Bush, Hosni Mubarak, Saddam Hussein, Myra Hindly, Ian Brady, Fred West, David Cameron, the various CEOs of Rapacious Corporations, The Pope, the Abuser Priests, Nuns, Men and Women, children even, the torturers, the bullies and beaters and killers amongst us ...... how are we to deal with these people and how are we to avoid the creation of such damaged people in the future?

How are we to deal with the Institutions that are founded in old patterns of abusive Power?

http://www.restorativejustice.org/

How can we build Institutions that are empathic, and responsive to the needs of us vulnerable human beings, that responds to the needs of the habitat and all that dwell therein?

For it is the case that such people are rarely born, they are the outcomes of Society and Institutional Power as it is.

These are the questions that I muse on, for my childrens sake, for their childrens sake, for yours and all.

I do not have to be perfect to engage thus. I do not have to wait until I have it all sorted out.

I certainly do not have all the answers and I am so glad that there are many good men and women working on these same problems, doing so honestly, with integrity and empathy, and with diligence, day in, day out for entire lifetimes.

I am encouraged that so much is now know and understood of the dyamics of abuse, of the biology of empathy, knowledge that is practical, that replaces belief with action that makes a difference.

What better legacy for our children could there possibly be, better than all the fine buildings, the great works of art, the exploration of space (where no-one human lives...)?

"Of all the preposterous assumptions of humanity over humanity, nothing exceeds most of the criticisms made on the habits of the poor by the well-housed, well-warmed, and well-fed". -Herman Melville, novelist and poet (1819-1891)

http://www.alicemiller.com

http://www.birthpsychology.com

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

Kindest regards

Corneilius

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

Common Law, Natural Living processes and Babies...

PERMACULTURE PICTURE HOUSE, Passing Clouds, London

I went to Passing Clouds, in Hackney, London, last week to watch : John Harris : Common Law : Cause no harm, cause no loss :

This show inspired me to consider a deeper perspective, relating common law to empathic societal practices and to natural living processes. Here follows a ramble through those thoughts.

There was also a presentation on behalf of The Peoples Supermarket, in London, a self organised supermarket, run by volunteers as a co-operative, and drawing on local food suppliers to reduce food miles, imports, waste etc etc….

Cause no harm, cause no loss.

Natural Hunting is not harm in the context of the entire living biology that we are emergent of.

Natural hunting is set within the context that all living cells, and therefore all organisms and macro entities (such as forests, plains, marshes, oceans etc) metabolise materials (eats) and creates more new materials, (new body mass) and releases those materials that are not required as nutrient (excreta, death and decomposition) such that the diversity, depth and fecundity of all life increases, year on year.

We are born, we eat, we shit, we die, life grows more abundant for all life as a result. All of us.

This is Natural Common Law.

Constantly nurturing living-ness in the habitat.

All cells do this. This is a natural constant.

It is neither enforced nor can it be resisted because it is inherent. It can be ignored, if only for a while. Ignoring Natural Law always leads to the undermining of the natural processes, and inevitably the failure or collapse of what ever community dependent upon Nature.

To cause harm or to cause loss in terms of those processes pertaining to the natural environment, culture, community, family or children of ANY species has to be understood as anything that, by way of human intervention, undermines or impairs the natural viability of that species or community, and this is, by definition, the measure most appropriate to this discussion.

And as we know, all organisms, in all known natural contexts, are embedded, connected, and integrated and therefore affects on one species will by definition impact on many other species, in a myriad of possibilities, as we are discovering in the science of bio-diversity.

The non-linearity of natural processes is becoming more and more evident. Abuse on, and you abuse all.

Thus the value of the measure must always relate to the entire habitat, and this conversely requires profound local knowledge, intimate experiential knowledge of the habitat.

A living knowledge, that is shared across communities.

Common Law exists in and of the human being, the man, the woman, the child; it is intrinsic.

Common Law is a living and lived knowledge.

How does Common Law stand in relation to actual harm or loss arising within biological communities?

The communities of traveller peoples? The communities of whales? The communities of the San people, of the Yanomami, of the Inuit, of the first nation peoples of North and South America, of Australia, Africa, Asia, Europe?

We all know the harm caused and the loss caused to all those communities.

It is offensive that we have such a task to address... and yet here it is and we must address it.

This is all about the psychology of the Dominant Society, in it’s Institutions (Instruments) of Power, in the exercise of Power (action) and even the assumption of any Power disparity, (authority).

People, as individuals and Institutions, do knowingly cause harm or loss, in grievous ways that are known, undeniable; where much of the evidence is well documented and much of the evidence is living; it is in and of living people.

People, as individuals and Institutions, also cover-up, mask and deny that harm.

There is an ever growing database of scientifically described evidence of the damage emerging as time flows. It's certainly a 'growth area' of study.

It is fortunate much of use is also being learned about how to avoid those damaging behaviours, how to break the cycles. In such manner that the cycles of abuse are stopped. So that healthy empathic relationships can then emerge, naturally. That's the point.

There's our true human nature, the child, the infant, the mother, the father and kin group, living empathically. It's inherent and intrinsic to who we are, what we are.

Our biology is perfectly 'adapted' to that in so many ways – and yet, one could say too that societal stress has become, the path-way towards addressing the full scope of the problem, (if only because the illusions and delusions of the Dominant Society, are breaking down under the stress and thus only remaining way out from there is total honesty)

This is both offensive, and a testament to the natural resilience and creativity of survivors.

And thus the diversity of voices, the telling of experience, the meaning of that resilience has to be known, sensed, it must understood as different shapes of the same pattern. Survivors must be heard as they are, they must not be made ‘media ready’.

Truth and Reconciliation cannot be subject to protecting the abusers – Restorative Justice calls for more than a public Apology, compensation dependent upon the silence of the Survivors and the indemnity of those State and other Institutions responsible for the abuses.

Lose the enforcing pattern, make different shapes.

And for me, the unifying aspect is the inherent vulnerability that comes with what we Sense, the combined message set from all our sensory capabilities, when we 'get' that being truly human community is very much about empathy as an active experiential modality. (This means that as far as we know are emergent sensory organisms who are of nature, not some unique creation of a mythical God or some Alien cross breed! ;-)

How we learn, what information we process, is through the sensory systems nature has crafted within us. Babies are conscious, and in many ways much more conscious than adults who have been conditioned into conformity.

However, here we are, and for sure, right now,  the human community needs Institutional Whistle Blowers in every aspect of the community life of human being where it is founds, enlightening us by revealing exactly where there is harm or loss caused, or cover-up of harm or loss caused, and who is culpable.

There's a meeting place for ALL humans in this; this need to tell the truth, to cease abuse, is intrinsic, it is independent of faith, culture, language, colour, height, weight, age, gender.

We must all be understood. Not the merely our difference noted. Empathy. 'Got'.  ‘Grokked’ was a 70s word. Comprehended, apprehended, understood. That's crucial for the healing and for the prevention. That’s how we will move forwards.

What so many people and the media – they really miss this! – don’t get is that the survivors are not ‘moving forwards’ in trying to facilitate restorative justice. When that happens we are at the equal level, and then, and only then will we surely move forwards, as people and as a diverse human culture.

Certainly with regard to the welfare of all children, how society dictates the 'treatment' of children has to be addressed, honestly, openly: because this is the reality, it’s toxic and it's harmful, and it causes loss, and that is qualitatively more vital to the well being of the human, and the entire living, community than perceived benefits that are paraded to mask what is being done to children, whole nations, to the habitat.

Faith

If faith is to mean ANYTHING it has to honour that benchmark of Common Law, of Natural Law : which is to cause no harm, cause no loss.

Any Faith allows harm or loss is a lie.

Those of Faith express the idea that their God made the Earth. We if that is the case, then that God also made the Natural Law, and Common Law, because these are intrinsic to all life, equally.

If that is felt and understood, then the only action is to tell the truth. That's the start of the end of the journey that human civilisation has taken for the past 15,000 years as far as current archaeology can determine.

It would appear that actually, nature works.

With regard to the harming of children, of entire indigenous nations and their children, that Institutional power dynamic has to be revealed as the human poison it is at the same time as the perpetrators are exposed, and brought to justice. As a writer, as me as a survivor, that argument has to be won.

Certainly the Institutions must fall. Change is not an option, in this regard. It's the very nature of Institution, of Empire Logic. Resistant. Rigid. Hard. Cold.

Those with Faith and Heart will have to 'step away from the structure,  to let go of it, as a public narrative, just as the survivors story is part public narrative, (those what wish the knowledge be public).......... that action, more than any other deals with the Institutional rigidity - without support, it is powerless.

It's not a matter of ethics, nor of doctrine, it's a matter of restorative justice.

It's a matter of Common Law, which prefigures all other legislation instituted by what ever authority. Common Law is clear.

Cause no harm, cause no loss : That's it.

Yes we will continue this work and link, and share and learn, and be nurtured to do this.

Even though it IS offensive that we are in this sorry state - because our Society is based upon causing harm, causing loss.

We are speaking up for ALL human beings.. me as me., you as you. I am one of ALL human beings. You are one of ALL human beings. It's all or nothing. Being honest about lived experience, the meaning of lived experience is whistle blowing on any dominant power-relationship culture where harm is caused, where loss is experienced, where natural empathy disrupted and balance is disrupted.

Unite the 'causes'. Unite the 'causes'. Unite. Common Law.

Passing Clouds is a self organised hub of information sharing, grass roots self governance, exciting music and arts projects, within a larger hub that is Hackney, with larger still hubs that extend across the Earth.

Kindest regards

Corneilius

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

Watching Big Fat Gypsy Weddings : propganda, assimilation?

http://www.channel4.com/programmes/my-big-fat-gypsy-wedding

Watching Big Fat Gypsy Weddings, I was struck by the subtext of an indigenous community struggling with a mainstream society it does not want to be part of and how their way of life is being actively undermined, and the real meaning of that experience that is masked, blanded down, dumbed down for entertainment.

Assimilation. Become part of the mainstream and have one’s culture reduced to a parody, for the benefit of the mainstream society. The history of assimilation is of course omitted. And yet, to talk about tradition with out mentioning that part of it is to fail to address the elephant in the room.

Or extirpation. The willingness, and intentionality, of government Officials using Statute Law to evict the peoples of any community. Have we not seen enough jungle documentaries to understand what this really means?

Traveller People who have made their own settlements, who had built their homes on waste land, when no land was available for them that ought to have been available under Statute Law and Human Rights Law which was designed to protect their right to their cultural ways.

What were the choices that led to this – the choice to retain one’s own culture and kin structures.

Very clearly, the traveller communities are being targeted.

To have them undergo their own forced eviction and to witness the subsequent Israeli style destruction of their homes – all this because they, as a community, want desperately to retain their extended family culture, even as their nomadic way of life is being restricted – rings bells all over the Earth.

The tone of the program, the ‘show’, whilst it dealt with the present situation, and I am repeating myself, has not really made any effort to contextualise it with the history of the traveller communities, not least their experience over many hundreds of years of active discrimination by the mainstream Society.

Catching a few families whilst the first and second generations go through the process of ‘assimilation’ will always throw up instances of ‘strange’ behaviour (strange by mainstream measure……), instances of distress, of neglect and of anger which can be used to make light of what is really happening. To suggest that, yes, perhaps the best thing is for the children to get a ‘proper’ education, have a ‘better’ life.

How arrogant. Based on entirely false assumptions.

Their ‘culture’ is portrayed in this way, as entertainment, as gossip, by focussing on the colours, just as a cheap gossip magazine might do, is to make their culture appear less valuable, less meaningful than it is, as a part of the human diversity of these lands, not least to those people themselves.

There is a dreadful world wide history of assimilation or extirpation of nomadic indigenous communities.

Is this program part of that process?

What kind of action, what kind of subtle justification is being laid in peoples minds by this program?

How ubiquitous is this subtle ‘entertain-mental chain slavery process’?

Kindest regards

Corneilius

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

Self Healing Tips : we can all develope our own according to our needs

I discovered this by myself one day, by noticing that there was nothing happening in the room I was in to drive the feelings and emotions I was experiencing, and it came to me that these must be old, past feelings.... feelings that little Corneilius had been unable to resolve (I had learned that my chidlren could resolve their own feelings if allowed to by calm active listening and empathic parenting.)

So I started to talk to little Corneilius...........

I started like this : "Little Corneilius, it's big Corneilius here and I am an adult, and I love you and I can take care of you and hold you safe. Can you talk to me about the first time y...ou felt this way?"

And then I let insights come, and I used art and writing and sound to express what came up, and recorded thses, and over time I noticed that the feelings and emotions became less intense, and that I started to grow through those ares I had stopped growing as a child....

I found that this could work too for areas where I couldn't feel - I would ask littel Corneilius to talk about the first time he had to silence or suppress his feelings and why.....

I did this regularily for about three years and do it now from time to time as I feel the need....

What this taught me was that it's possible to evolve our own self-healing tools, from our own insights into ourselves.

I also learned that little Corneilius would not come out until he felt it was safe to do so, and that it never worked to push little Corneiliu, that when he was ready was when he was ready and he was usually spot on.

I know from experience that it's always inappropriate to push the child, and it's most often for the adults needs rather than the childs needs that such pushy behaviour emerges. One of the things that made me push was Societies admonitions and shoulds. These are all external drivers of behaviour, and external motivation is always less efficient than intrinsic self-motivation.

Thios is what I call natural wisdom.





Kindest regards

Corneilius

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

Are we a grown-up, responsible people .......... Letter to Irish Media.

Are we a grown-up, responsible people capable of managing ourselves with integrity and intelligence?” is the key.

(this piece was written as a response to some of the more divisive, angry and potentially abusive postings on the net with regard to the current situation in Ireland. I beleive it appplies across the Earth...)

If we are, then we don’t leave it to others – WE get involved, at the local level, and we reject the concept of being ruled, of Governance being in POWER.

We take our responsibilities towards OUR Society seriously.

We find ways to discuss, to... share information, we find ways to avoid squabbling and acting out our anger, wats to utilise that anger so it’s energy is directed towards creativity, we find time to create understanding, empathy and common ground that includes diversity, that finds ways to integrate the diverse as a pool of information and insight towards the goal of managing our country together.

Some might say it’s a lot to ask for. Well it’s not going to be easy, that’s for sure, Not as easy as voting, and sitting back, doing bugger all and handing over taxes as payment for services – we cannot afford to be mere consumers of political ideologies, of our favourite and most liked personal prejudices….

We need to mature.

We need to start and we need to be courageous enough to do this, knowing that while we don’t have all the answers, we can find them, test them and move forwards as a Society.

I am saying that we have to be aware of how our own anger and our vulnerability can be used against us; how we can be triggered by the abusers, who KNOW our vulnerabilities well.. and do exploit them - look at the Redress Board and how they took an adversarial approach to witnesses - that adversarial approach was designed to exploit known vulnerabilities of Survivors, to create hesitation in their statements and thus to sow doubt about their testimony.

Look at how unresolved anger is triggered by propaganda. These processes are known and understood by Power and used to great and unfortunately lethal effect - eg: Afghanistan and Iraq and anti-muslim propganda, or anti-imigrant propganda.

Forgiveness, if it is to occur, can only be on the basis of true remorse on the part of the perpetrators, with reparations and restorative justice actualised, in material terms, and can only be offered by those who suffered as individuals, and is more importantly to be seen as a way of enabling Survivors release themselves from the pain, shame, confusion and anger they feel.

A shorter version of this was also sent out to Irish Media, and was published in the Irish Independent on February 1st 2011.

Kindest regards

Corneilius

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

Ireland, the World : Litany of Abuse, Litany of Shame : more to come

Ireland, the World : Litany of Abuse, Litany of Shame  

Here are links to on-line copies of the reports thus far from investigations of Institutional Abuse in Residential Schools, clergy abuse in parish's in Ireland.

• Communique At Beginning Of Apostolic Visitation To Ireland
• Vatican Response (12/12/2009)
• Dublin Report - Part 1 (Beginning)
• Dublin Report - Part 1
• Dublin Report - Part 2
• Dublin Report - Appendices
• The Ryan Report (In Totality)
• The Ryan Report - Executive Summary
• Ferns Report (in Totality)
• Ferns Report - Executive Summary
• The Murphy Report Part 1
• The Murphy Report Part 2
• The Murphy Report Chapter 19 Father 'Jovito'

There are  26 dioceses in Ireland, and reports for three have been completed, with two having been released to the public domain. A third has been completed, but has yet to be released. 

   

This is the tip of the iceberg, not just in Irish terms, but also in worldwide terms.. these patterns of abuses have occurred in Canada, United States of America, Germany, Italy, Spain, Belgium, Australia where there are ongoing investigations, and in many, many other countries, in particular those lands colonised by the European powers during the last 400 years.

Strategy

These abuses also include the world-wide 'assimilation' processes of the 19th and 20th Centuries in Colonised lands, aimed at undermining the traditional cultures of the colonised, whereby Native Aboriginal children were taken by force under the juridstiction of Law and placed in Residential Schools, to be educated in the ways of the Colonist.  
 
There is clear evidence, well documented, of legislated processes whereby Aboriginal Children were taken from their families and forced into residential schools, evidence from the USA, Canada, Australia and many, many other places... 

What those children, so many, went through!

Here's a propaganda film from the 1950s in Canda concerning these Residential Schools 


Here's one of the foundational documents outlining the philosophy behind these programs.

What I am describing here amounts to a world wide, and long-term, intergenerational pattern of systemic Institutionalised abuse, with clear political and economic aims, and, subsequently as the facts have been revealed, a world wide pattern of cover-up - an a cover-up that is tactical, mediated, strategic; that reveals a clear intent, and worse a clear understanding of the vulnerabilities of Survivors, vulnerabilities which are exploited to protect the Institutions and individuals involved in abuse, neglect or denial.   

What trauma did those children suffer? What of their families and communities? Why? What of  the Poor, those people who have little, whom nobody wants to be,and  yet so many are, so many?

Tactics

This exploitation of Survivors known vulnerabilities can often re-traumatise, and that in and of itself is a criminal act, in that the exploitation is intentional, mediated, known, understood in terms of it's potential effects. 

There are many cases where questioning by defendants adversarial legal teams and investigators is directed not at the issue, but at the person, in what are attempts to trigger the claimant.  

One example that occurs all too frequently is that survivors of pedophile priests are asked, during cross examination, whether or not the priest in question was circumcised! 

In most cases, this is difficult to determine in an erect penis, especially if the survivor is young, and considering that usually such an assault involves huge amounts of stress..... (a common response in situations like this is for the victim to shut of awareness, to look away, anything to not have to face the full impact of the situation.)

This of course is understood by the defendant legal team, and thus the questioning of this sort is a tactic to try to 'punch holes' in the witness testimony. Any hesitation on the wintesses part could then be used to undermine the reliability of the witness, in the court.

At the very least this is cruelty. It re-traumatises the Surivor. As this video shows clearly. 

It is certainly an utterly repugnant practice, though common in criminal and civil actions in courts all over the world. It is called 'destroying the witness'. 

This pattern of exploitation of claimants vulnerabilities is similar in nature to the approach and methods of errant Corporations and Banks. They use their resources to tie people up in courts, in order to drive the claimants towards 'out of court' settlements which usually demand secrecy or silence on the matter therefater, which block further civillitigation, and criminal prosecution and which the defendant can use to to deny the original charges.

There are examples of this kind of exploitative behaviour from Social Services as well. 

Alternatives

And it doesn't have to be this way. Empathy is not an airy-fairy hippy dippy concept. It certianly can and should be integrated into any process of restorative justice, and can be taught to those involved the the administration of restorative justice (which is the prime responsibility of The State, and should be the primary concern of The Vatican). And it certainly ought to be the bed-rock of ALL social services training. And school-teaching for that matter. Certainly the Police could also benefit from it.

There is NO excuse for the apparant lack of empathy on the part of State or Vatican in this matter. They certainly cannot claim that they are unaware of these dynamics as the professionals and researchers who have helped develope the understandings concerning empathy and restorative justice have communicated, in very clear terms, with the Vatican and most, if not all Justice and Health System Ministeries around the Earth.

Something inspiring to listen to :

Here's a revelatory radio show, from Why Radio at Radio Times : "As the worldwide call for accountability grows louder, we talk about what state and federal governments can do to protect children against sexual abuse by clergy. Our guests are law professor Marci Hamilton and Sister Maureen  Paul Turlish, an educator and victims advocate".

The discussion is amazingly clear, compassionate and honest. Utterly unflinching. Highly reccomended.

Kindest regards

Corneilius

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

Andrew Brown's Blog in The Guardian - Facing the truth.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/mar/17/pope-benedict-cardinal-bernard-law

"A leader who wished to end the crisis would sack Cardinal Bernard Law "

Andrew Browns Blog 

THE GUARDIAN - March 17 2010 - St. Patricks Day (irony of ironies)

One ought to read this 'opinion' piece very carefully - it is a protective of The Vatican, , it is a clever piece of propaganda, and all the more nasty for that.

"What has driven a great deal of the outrage is the perception that the church placed itself above the secular law. Well it does.AS A GLOBAL INSTITUTION IT MUST. Otherwise it has no more moral worth than Google or News International, or any other multinational which will do business wherever it is profitable. And – especially under the Polish pope John Paul II who fought so hard against communism – the church's moral worth was validated by its utter refusal to bend to the standards of the society around it."

The author Andrew Brown, also implies that the 'scandals emerged' during the 70s and 80s and are over - he ignores the fact that the Residential Schools System worldwide (both Church and State) operates still, has operated for over 100 years, and that in that time, many millions of children have been profoundly harmed, by a culture of abuse thathas been described as endemic.

The Vatican leadership has long been aware of pedophile rings operating within the Church - the recent Ryan Report (2009) and more recently the Murphy Report in Ireland merely serves as one reminder of this.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commission_to_Inquire_into_Child_Abuse - The Ryan Report

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murphy_Report - The Murphy Report

The same pattern is repeated across the world. The Last Indian Residential School in Canada was closed in 1996. These were run by Catholic and Protestant Churches, in conjunction with the State.

http://www.hiddenfromhistory.org - Hidden From History : The Canadian Holocaust

The Canadian Social Services have taken over the role of 'assimilation' - Aboriginal Children are 50 times more likely to be fostered than white european children in Canada, and that figure has risen as the Residential Schools were shut down.

http://www.demeterpress.org/untilourhearts.html

Until Our Hearts are on The Ground -

Aboriginal Mothering, Oppression, Resistance and Rebirth

Edited by D. Memee Lavell-Harvard and Jeannette Corbiere Lavell

White fosterers are paid three times the rate that Aboriginal mothers are paid in State support.

This pattern is seen in all countries where Church and State operated Residential School Systems.

Assimilitation by other means. Social services as a tool of social engineering and 'resource exploitation'. The reason for the forced assimilation is that the lands from which these Aboriginal peoples emerge are rich in 'explotable resources' deemed neccessary for the Economy. 

Uranium, Coal, Oil, Timber, Gold. To access the lands the Aboriginal peoples have to be co-opted or removed.

In Ireland, Australia, the USA and elsewhere, those populations whose children were formerly sent to Residential Schools are now more likley to experience forced removal of children, who are placed in State 'care' or are fostered. The poor, the distressed, the damaged, the Aboriginal.

Andrew Brown is either unaware of these facts, and their implications, in which case his article is lazy; or he is ignoring the facts, in which case he is being ignorant.

And both of these, given the serious nature of the matter, are harmful.

There are many other like Brown, public apologists for what is criminal activity.

They must  be confronted at every turn.

Empathy demands that one NEVER uses another as a means to an end.

Kindest regards

Corneilius

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

Letter Published Examiner Ireland 24 January 2011

Here's a pdf file of letter published in The Examiner, and Irish Daily Broadsheet, based in Cork, Ireland.

The text is as follows :

THE residential school system story and all that goes with it is a far greater crime than the IMF story.

It is a crime in which the Irish State and the Vatican are equal partners. No party in Ireland at present can say it has dealt with this issue decently, honourably. What is it that stops the Irish people from defending the survivors, from demanding that those who protect the Vatican, who indemnify the Vatican and themselves from civil and criminal liability, be brought to account?

One thing I have noticed is the absolute silence on abuses within the elite fee-paying boarding schools which occurred — I know I was there. I am a survivor.

Ireland and its people need group therapy and fast. Without looking at the psychology, the intergenerational patterns of abuse and their effects, without understanding how the abused are forced to 'adapt'  to a situation where abuse is constant, no future Irish government will do any better.

"The ordinary response to atrocities is to banish them from consciousness. Certain violations of the social compact are too terrible to utter aloud: this is the meaning of the word unspeakable.

Atrocities, however, refuse to be buried. Equally as powerful as the desire to deny atrocities is the conviction that denial does not work. Folk wisdom is filled with ghosts who refuse to rest in their graves until their stories are told."

Remember what Judith Herman wrote: “Remembering and telling the truth about terrible events are prerequisites both for the restoration of the social order and for the healing of individual victims.”

Kindest regards

Corneilius

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

David Smail on Depression in 1989

Here's an insightful video, of David Smail, speaking of depression and the woundedness of those who have suffered from circumstances not of their own making.







I urge everyone to view this, to listen carefully to the fullness of what David says. His words are dense with meaning, with empathy and understanding.

Note especially that he says the most sensitive are often the most perceptive. The wounded see Society for what it really is. They are more wounded because of that perceptual ability.

This piece of video was made in 1989, during the height of the Thacherite years... and it has special resoance for these times of 'austerity' for the distressed and wounded, and bonuses for the wealthy....

This video outlines what Alice Miller has shown to be the dynmaics of abuse that are most common, that underpin much of the Dominant Cultures realities, the things that do harm, the kinds of adults those who have not faced their childhood woundings who later inflict those same woundings on others.







This is not to excuse those who cause serious harm, but to understand the dynamics of intergenerational abuse patterns.

Tony Blair can only get away with what he has done, David Cameron is getting away with what he is doing, because so many of us are wounded, blocked and in denial about the nature of our Society.


We must face these truths in order to change the patterns.

Remember what Judith Herman wrote:

"The ordinary response to atrocities is to banish them from consciousness. Certain violations of the social compact are too terrible to utter aloud: this is the meaning of the word unspeakable.

Atrocities, however, refuse to be buried. Equally as powerful as the desire to deny atrocities is the conviction that denial does not work. Folk wisdom is filled with ghosts who refuse to rest in their graves until their stories are told.

Remembering and telling the truth about terrible events are prerequisites both for the restoration of the social order and for the healing of individual victims.”

Kindest regards

Corneilius

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

Aboriginal Peoples and all our Collective Futures.

One of the things that inspires me the most is the message emerging from the Aboriginal Tribal Societies, from all over the Earth, who  have no desire to exact revenge for the brutal and inhumane treatment they have endured for many hundreds of years, treatment that continues to this day.

In Canada and  North America, in Australia, in Africa and South America, in China and in Asia, in Europe Aboriginal Tribal Societies peoples are extant - that is to say still living in their ancient ways - and they are still under threat; people speak easily of the threat to tigers and polar bears, yet there is a community of over 370 million peoples, Aboriginal Tribal Societies, who may well be extinct within the next 50 years.

The Aboriginal Tribal Societies seek an end to that treatment, they seek a full telling of their hidden history and an accounting, a recognition of the harm caused them and some form of reparation and justice; and in all of this they seek to harm no-one.

It is not in their children's best interest to seek revenge, and in many cases this is exactly why they refused to go to war to protect themselves - there is no honour in becoming like the oppressor. Liberation cannot come from behaving like the oppressor.

These peoples have been, and are being discriminated against even as they have been and are being forced into assimilation programs, even as so many died in those programs, even as some few survived and survive today to succeed in the oppressors way of life, even as some were and are being co-opted by the oppressor.

There are divisions within these peoples communities, divisions between those who have been co-opted into the mainstream dominant cultures version of these cultures, (the tourist version) and those who remain true to their traditions, their cultural roots, their languages, their landscapes.

These divisions are being nurtured and exploited by the Dominant Cultures, by Governments and by Churches and by Commercial Interests. The land these Aboriginal peoples are part of (they do not occupy the forest, they are the forest) is viewed as an 'exploitable resource' - and if that calls for the forced or 'accidental' removal of the people, so be it. Just as the forest gets in the way of exploiting the minerals underneath it and must be cut down, so too the people of the forest, the tundra, the plain. This is the price of progress.

A price the dominant culture does not pay. A price the consumer does not pay, and is often unaware of.

And thus, even as they are yet under attack from powerful interests, the Aboriginal peoples seeek to heal those rifts.. And these Aboriginal Tribal Cultures, they demonstrate great fortitude, empathy, honour and compassion which the Dominant Culture would do well to emulate.

Empathy demands that one never uses another as a means to an end.

I urge everyone who reads this blog to review this paper, to get a deeper understanding of the psychological underpinnings of the struggle of the Aboriginal Communities and Societies to assert their rightful place, to protect themselves and the lands thay are part of, in the context of understanding what drives the greed, the desire for progress both of which are symptoms of a deeper issue : a profound lack of empathy.

BODY PLEASURE AND THE ORIGINS OF VIOLENCE

By James W. Prescott

From "The Bulletin of The Atomic Scientists", November 1975, pp. 10-20

This paper explores how the disruption of the natural child-mother bonding process, which is a  biologically determined process, and is at the heart of most Aboriginal Societies,  and is related to the emergence of hierarchical power relationships, violence, abuse and the perceived need to dominate.

I am deeply, deeply inspired by the message emerging from the Aboriginal Tribal Societies, from all over the Earth, who  have no desire to exact revenge for the brutal and inhumane treatment they have endured for many hundreds of years, treatment that continues to this day.

This message resonates with my own experience as a survivor of Residential School abuse in Ireland, seeking justice for myself and the many survivors, the wounded. We mean no harm. We do not act in revenge. We will not desist until justice is served, until those structures that abused us are transformed.

That message is that empathy lies at the heart of being human, that the natural child is a gift to all life, and that, of course, there is another way for the people of the dominant culture to live - another way is possible.

Kindest regards

Corneilius

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

A Primary Skill in Parenting is Empathy.

This piece was written as a comment on 'comment is free' @ The Guardian in response to this article :

The comment was moderated and removed. Here it is in full. For what it's worth.

A primary skill in parenting is empathy.

In a Society that is predicated upon Power Relationships where a power disparity is engineered and maintained between those in Power and those they rule, sensitivity and empathy are often seen as a weaknesses. The ability to manipulate and exploit the vulnerable is seen as a strength.

Empathy for the infant in front of me will depend to some degree upon whether or not I have empathy for myself as an infant, which in turn will be dependent upon how I was treated as a baby, infant, toddler.

This kind of understanding is largely experiential. If we are related to with empathy and sensitivity in infancy, then we are, through that experience, laying down the fundamental behavioural patterns and the physiology and neurology that goes with that experience,  and therefore it tends to persist in later life. It permeates our relationships, and informs how we self regulate our own emotional states. 

If one has no experience of other peoples infants, of being around small children, then the newness of the situation as a parent is quite a challenge. 

It's even more difficult if those 'forgotten' times were in any way adverse.

On top of that, when a parent  has to work full-time plus overtime, whether  a single parent or a couple, if ones income is relatively small, if one are out of work and depressed, if one feels that society is judging you for being out of work, for being relatively poor, if one has Social Services who threaten  rather than offer support, if one's housing is sub-standard, if one lives with a partner who has issues, if you have issues, it's really hard.

And there are many, many people in this state, mostly through no fault of their own.

Poverty is absolutely the result of the concentration of vast wealth in the hands of the few. The rich always blame the poor for being poor. The colonialists always painted the colonised as sub-human. They still do.

The emergence of violence, of hierarchy, of abuse in any society is absolutely linked to the levels of empathy that permeate that society, which in itself is directly linked to the disruption or support of the natural child-mother bonding processes that our biology determines as necessary. Disruption increases the likelihood of dysfunction, support increases the likelihood of well being.

The ACE study shows the clear evidence based links between adverse childhood experiences and later risk behaviour, ill health, addiction and psychological distress.

http://xnet.kp.org/permanentejournal/winter02/goldtolead.html

I was a stressed out parent some 22 years ago, and found myself bullying my children. One day I decided that this had to stop. I sought help, and found it, in the form of a weekly group hosted by a facilitator. 

It was called Parent Link.

It was a co-counselling group, hosted by a facilitator. The group I took part in was 12 women, and myself and my partner. We were the only couple in the group. The others, all mothers, were mostly in relationships and their partners were not seeking help. I found it strange being the only man in the group. The others were very appreciative of my presence, in that it offered hope that more men would participate. They also appreciated that I could cry about my sense of loss regarding the state of my relationship with my children.

There was a lot to learn, and over 13 weeks I learned enough to start the process that has continued ever since.

The first thing I learned was that if I had had ACE's as a child, then it was likely that I would repeat the same patterns, the same controlling behaviours, because that was the unconscious information with which I was operating, in spite of my best intentions, in lieu of accurate information and support.

The next thing I learned helped me to understand that children know what they feel, even infants, and that it requires empathy and some patience to be a healthy carer, to learn how to meet their needs, to read their moods and that it is incredibly frustrating for them when they are unable to communicate and be understood, which is what they are expecting - to be felt, and understood.

I learned how to interrupt my own patterns, to notice when I was becoming irritated and to stop, to relax, and check with the reality of my children's present. I learned that my past had nothing to do with their present. I also learned that some schedules are less important than my children's well-being and that I had to take things at their pace, and that if I wished to be somewhere by a certain time I had to factor in extra time in the preparations, to avoid stressing them out to meet my needs.

These very simple learnings, supported by the group work, over 13 weeks, revolutionised my parenting experience, made life for my children so much better. They helped me end the power relationship dynamic and enter into an empathic relationship.

It also helped me to start the work of dealing with my own past experiences and start to recover.

Better than handbooks is genuine support offered by people who have proven experience, parenting requires time, and the time spent is much more important than the time spent working to pay off a mortgage, to urge forwards a career, to earn enough to have a flatscreen TV the size of a cinema screen or whatever is being touted by the marketers and bankers as the next big thing.

What really concerned me at the time was that there was not one single Government supported programme like the one I was so lucky to have found. Nothing. Zilch.

The question that arose was this : given that this information that was making such a huge impact on my life, on the lives of my children, was known, proven to be effective, had been around for some 20 years why was there nothing like this being offered through any Government or Social Services Programme?

In the end, my answer is this - they don't want to support empathic parenting because it runs counter to their embedded Power Relationships. 

Maybe they just can't see it.

Perhaps it is simply reflexive, perhaps it's psychological myopia, and then again perhaps not. 

Either way it matters greatly to those who are stressed out as parents, because that simple, effective an inexpensive support would make such a huge difference to their lives and the lives of their children.


And for that reason it must matter to anyone concerned with the welfare of Society as a whole.

(Tony Blairs 'evidence' today at the Chilcott Iraq Inquiry is pertinent in that it demonstrates the love of power, the willingness to cause harm and to rationalise that harm. In  a Society predicated on Power Relationships.....)

In the 20 years or so since then I have researched this area and have found nothing at all to counter this answer.

This research paper from 1975 makes this clear.

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

If this article makes sense to you, if you feel it, then please share it.

Kindest regards

Corneilius

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

Power Relationships, Fear, Truthers and Consumers.

In a Society that is predicated upon Power Relationships - where one party to the relationship exercises power over the other, to meet the preceived needs of the power holder, it is imperative to condition those upon whom Power is exercised... to accept those Power Relationships as 'natural'.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Niccol%C3%B2_Machiavelli#The_Prince

What is happening now is that due to the internet, both accurate and inaacurate information is made more easily available to those with access to the internet.

We KNOW more about the struggles of Tribal Societies now than we did 20 years ago. They have always KNOWN that our Governments are not to be trusted. Their blood has been spilled, their way sof life attacked. They KNOW.

www.hiddenfromhistory.org

http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/first-australians/

We KNOW more about the psychology and neurobiology of natural parenting than we did 20 years ago. That is because those who have been researching this area have been able to share their learnings outside the academic world, and those learnings have been applied successfully by many hundreds of thousands of people world wide. The data has been tested.

www.birthpsychology.com

We KNOW more about the criminality of Governance than we did 20 years ago. That is because information, such as WIKI LEAKS, has been shared, has been peer reviewed, and has been used to some effect - though there is a way to go yet - as evidenced by the work of people such as Kevin Annett, Colm O'Gorman and many other whistle blowers.

http://colmogorman.com/?page_id=16

The Power has absolutely encouraged the FEAR mongering dissemination of information as a tool to slow down this process.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Original_sin - a form of psycho-terrorism

9/11 Truth is also part of that process, designed to slow down the pace of real awakening.

Here's how it works.

By diverting attention from the War Crimes, for which Prima Facie evidence is in abundance, to the questions concerning 9/11 which cannot be answered. Eyes off the ball.

Under 3000 people died in New York on 9/11. That was truly dreadful. A horror. And there are manu unanswered questions about 9/11.

More than 1.3 million died between 2003 and 2006 in Iraq. Hundreds of thousands of people died in Afghanistan between 2001 and 2006. All due to the violence brought upon those countries by US/UK 'Coalition of the willing'. The only unanswered question is WHY is it that the war criminals are not already on trial? We have the evidence.

Unless those in Power who have engaged in War Crimes are brought to trial, which will only happen when the people make the decisions on the issues that affect their lives, and enforce them not by voting for preselected options, but by generating those options themselves, using accurate information.

www.powerinquiry.org

Alex Jones, Tsarion, David Icke and others like them are also part of this process. They absoultely ignore the learnings regarding natural parenting. They absolutely ignore the work being done on Participative Democracy. They FEED THE FEAR.

The New Age 'movement' is part of this process. (especially in the way it has co-opted Indigenous Spirituality and turned it into a mega billion dollar world wide industry designed to inculcate individualism, rather than community cohesion and empathic relationships).

It is time for civilisation's peoples to refuse BEING RULED, and to take on the mature responsibility of self governance as the mechanism for administering the needs of Society, rather than the be driven for the perceived needs of the 'economy'.

The basis for self governance is empathy, not Power.

Consumerism is THE ELITE disease.... it's what Hierarchical Elites have always done... They consume the world for their own narccisstic desires.

My studies have shown that for examlpe, the practice of seperating mother from child is one fo the oldest elite practices there is. And it's aboslutely at the heart of generating the lack of empathy that emegres through any society where this practice is widespread; what's even more interesting is that where that practice of disruption is not present, AND there is disruption to the natural emergent sexuality of the puberty, the same lack of empathy will be found.

The two drives to bond are sensory or pleasure related, are biologically driven and require some form of external power to cause a disruption. They are both empathic drives at heart. The connection to another with full perception. These are the basis for making that same connection with ALL life, from which the sense of one-ness emerges as a sensory feeling, rather than an intellectual conceit.

-----------  in addition ---------

One of the things at the core of 'civilisation' as we know it is the lack of empathy ...

ALL civilisation that have hierarchies also disrupt the child-motherbonding processes and/or disrupt naturalpost pubrttal sexuality.

This requires Power over those whose natural processes are disrupted BECAUSE these are so fundamental and because they are to do with deveoping experiential empathy, a neccessary trait in a healthy human society.

http://www.violence.de/prescott/bulletin/article.html - 1975 Paper published in The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists.... detailing this

www.birthpsychology.com - details the natural brain development through empathic parenting, citing neuroscience, development, psychology and anthropology....

This is at the the core - the rest follows as symptoms of that core lack of empathy, the development of the sociopath....

What's interesting is the Hierarchical elites in EVERY culture of Hierarchy remove the chld from the mother in their own families.. it's as though they understand the effect.

Once the printing press came into being it was possible for them to 'share' this understanding (which was written in to JudaeoChristian texts, hindi texts and much else besides) amongst the up an coming merchant classes, and from them over time iut becomes codified in Institutional Care and Education.

This all leads directly to a culture of Power Relationships.

95% of all known tribal societies are egalitarian - there are 170 million people living as tribal land based societies, and further 120 million living arounf or nearly assimilated into western civilisation ( the colonised...) - and then there's the vast first contact data - which the jesuits and other missionaries have archived... together these show a pictue of mostly egalitarian empathic relationships.

IF civilisation was empathic, our technologies woould be greener and geared to natural nurturant processes; war would be unlikely...

Unfortunatly it's not, for the above reasons...

Part of the picture is in abuse dynmaics, how people deal with truama and whether or not they can resolve it or not, and adopt controlling behaviours as a consequence, which become codified over time...

The REAL problem is this lack of empathy and how Societal Powers mediate how parenting/education is functioning is part of finding ways to break ithe cycles...

Judith Herman writes about the relationships that energe in abuse dynmaics.... the abuser (power) the apologist (middle classes) the scapegoat (the poor, some criminals, addictc) the victims (the indigneous,. the habitat), the rebel (the angry poor, some criminals) the soother (charitible people) the deniers (those who are either next in line for abuse of they slip up, or those who are comfortable or identify with the abuser/system ...) etc etc....

All the best

Corneilius

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

ps. I am writing a book, Natural Child, Natural Society...

I hope this makes sense to you, as it makes eminent sense to me.