The Psychology of a culture is revealed and perpetuated in how they relate to and treat their children and in how they relate to and treat the most vulnerable people within their society. Heal that and we can heal everything.
Yay! The Colston Four have been acquitted of Criminal Damage!
Well done every one involved.
Police pay 'substantial' damages and apologise to Colston 4 protesters after court arrests
From left, Rowland Dye, Ros Martin and Taus Larsen all received an apology from Avon and Somerset police for wrongfully arresting them under an unlawful interpretation of Covid regulations. Photograph: Adrian Sherratt/The Guardian
The four were wrongly arrested outside court for expressing support for those charged with toppling Edward Colston's statue. The Statue was erected many years after his death, erected by a local cult in his name. Here is a local report on the Court case:
"Four people who protested in support of the ‘Colston Four’ before their first court hearing in January have received ‘substantial damages’.
And Avon and Somerset Police’s Chief Constable has also issued an apology.
In an out-of-court settlement, Chief Constable Andy Marsh has agreed that the four people should not have been arrested and fined for turning up outside Bristol Magistrates Court back in January, when England was under a ‘stay-at-home’ coronavirus lockdown law.
The four were arrested, taken to a police station and issued with fines, but those have now been cancelled and instead, the four have received compensation pay outs for damages.
Police have admitted that they should not have been arrested, and should have been given the chance to leave the area after being warned."
They fought the Law, and they won!
I know one of the protestors, who is a good friend, and I know he to be a very kind human and very intelligent. I wrote a song about this incident, rewriting "I fought the Law and the Law won!" as "They fought the Law, and they won!" Because they did. Good for them, too. Good for the police as well, to admit their error and pay the reparations. I hope they do it with kindness, humility and grace.
Here is a live performance of the song, from my studio, as part of my weekly show "Stopping the Spread is Spreading The Love!" There are links to MP3 and CD Quality downloads at the end of this blog article. All free, as usual. Enjoy.
What is really strange about this tale is that every protestor was given an order by police officers and every protester complied with the order, yet was arrested nonetheless. The two who chalked 'Support the Colston Four' and 'Let Justice Prevail' were arrested on criminal damage grounds, then de-arrested, and re-arrested from breach of COVID19 Regulations - which they were clearly not on breach of, as they were wearing facemasks, and maintaining physical distance. All four were issued with fines. The Bristol Magistrates Court cleared them and awarded costs and compensation to the four protestors.
Reclaim These Streets and the Sarah Everard Vigil
I also added a verse about the High Court Case on behalf of 'Reclaim These Streets', which affirmed that COVID19 regulations could not be used to ban protests. We all know about the events at the Vigil for Sarah Everard. The facts that the police tried to ban the vigil on COVID19 Regulation grounds, even though Reclaim These Streets had made provision for a COVID19 safe event, with stewarding, physical distancing, PA system so no need to shout, etc was said by the court to be a misuse of the COVID19 Regulation.
The London Met withdrew from the case, and offered to support the vigil, and then dropped that offer. The Reclaim These Streets people were forced then to call off the official vigil. London Met was aware that citizens would gather anyway. They did and it was by all accounts well organised, respectful, COVID19 secure. The police waited until after dark to move in on the Bandstand, and physically removed some of the women who were occupying it.
Here is the interim judgement from the High Court asserting that the COVID19 Regulations did not amount to the right to ban protests.
The Clash covered this song "I fought the Law" in the 80s, which was written by Sonny Curtiss, way, way back in the 1950s, when he was still in the US Army. I think that, given the subject matter is about a poor person using weapons to carry out a robbery, being arrested and jailed it has some merit as a folk song. However, Sonny was not thinking of that at the time, He just made the whole thing up. So in truth, it's not really a true folk song.
In writing this rewrite, I hope to fix that, and to enhance the depth of the folk story to articulate something of the poverty of healthy policing in England, 202.
Where all too often, Police forces do not and are not capable of responding in a trauma informed way to the prevalence of gendered abuse and violence, to survivors of grooming gangs, child abusers, rapists. A country where the Establishment can assert there is no institutional Racism by citing experts who were never engaged with, spoken to or asked for submissions.
Where the Prime Ministers love affairs and his choice of expensive wall paper carry more weight in the national public media discourse than the matter of the Prime Minister and Government rejecting zero community transmission strategy out of hand, and providing contracts to cronies worth billions of pounds, doling out hundreds of millions in the middle men's commissions, ill gained easy profits that are probably off-shored by now, in spite of the evidence and ample warnings by experts, the combination of which lead directly to the deaths of 130,000 citizens, chronic disease in 350,000, with some 3 million small business people excluded from financial support as icing on this bitter cake, and much else besides.
Arrest the Criminals!
I have been saying since April 2020 that Johnson and the entire Cabinet should have been arrested last April to prevent further harm, on grounds of malfeasance in public office and corporate manslaughter. What is justice if it does not prevent harm?
COVID19 Regulations and COVID Deniers!
And since we're here, it's clear that the COVID19 Regulations are not equivalent to serious removals of Civil Rights as much as they are necessary Public Health and Health and Safety Measures needed during a badly managed epidemic, an epidemic which is not over yet.
Those Regulations are temporary, requiring a vote in Parliament every 6 months for their extension. The fact that they are not the best regulations, that they do not provide for effective zero community transmission strategy is another worrying injustice. That failure to provide for zero community transmission is more of a concern than putative claims that civil rights and liberties are being trampled over. The nations right to adequate and timely health care is being placed at risk. That should concern us all.
We all know that Laws brought in as temporary measures often become permanent fixtures. The first laws drafted to extract Income Tax from workers wages were a temporary measure to help fund wars in Europe in 1799, brought in by William Pitt the Younger. So it goes.
What my friend and others have demonstrated is that the COVID19 regulations as they stand are not really part of a conspiracy of tyranny and that the Courts are well able to assess their validity in ways that protect our liberties and civil rights.
The nut-case COVID denying, anti-mask, anti-vax propaganda does infringe on our rights, by generating a genuine health and safety risk. They have directly contributed to, they have added to the confusion emanating from 10 Downing Street, by muddying the waters so to speak, in ways that have caused three successive surges of infection.
Political Grooming Gangsters infringe on all our rights by conducting psychologically abusive media campaigns and operations designed to target and exploit studied biases and vulnerabilities for political and economic advantage over otherwise decent people. This is an issue we must address.
Both links go to the song page on their respective sites, you will need to download from there.
Lyrics:
The Colston Four were on trial
for toppling the slavers statue
people came by to support
outside Bristol Magistrates Court
Mr Larsen on his bike and trailer, playing reggae music
at a safe distance, for the defendants in the trial,
bringing a big,big, big smile
officer told him he could not stay, agreed he could cycle past on the road.
Larsen was arrested on the spot
breach of coronavirus rules he was told
"I was in a safe place, I wasn’t endangering
anyone’s health, wasn’t posing a risk
I wasn’t going to be spreading no infection, you know I'm not that sick!"
He fought the Law and he won! They fought the Law and they won!
Mr Dye, a retired teacher, had education in mind
stood on the court steps, with his sign
"Slave trade. Arms trade. Bristol wake up!”
officer said 'move on', Mr. Dye he agreed
but he was arrested as he tried to walk away.
He fought the law, and he won! They fought the law, and they won!
Ms Richardson, A gardener, came to plant some seeds
"Support the Colston Four" she chalked on the sidewalk
Ros Martin, the artist then arrived,
“Let justice prevail.” she chalked on the pavement
when ordered to leave they complied,
yet they were arrested side by side
for criminal damage, then de-arrested, and
re-arrested for breach of the Covid rules.
They fought the Law and they won! They fought the Law and they won!
Jessica, Anna, Henna and Jamie went to the high court to clarify
Corona Safety Laws cannot be applied
to ban protest, that is misuse of the law.
London Met accepted, but would not help out
they broke into the vigil, which Priti gave the shout
They fought the law and they won! They fought the Law and they won!
New Verse written 6th January 2022!
Jake, Rhian, Milo and Sage
Were sent to trial for criminal damage
For toppling the Statue of a Slaver
Colston's legacy of harm celebrated
Bristol's folk had tried for decades
to have that Statue taken down
The people decided to take action
The Courts said clearly that was not a crime.
-----
And yes, Colston was a slaver, he caused immense harm and that harm is harm that cannot be undone and thus cannot be set aside due the logically fallacious argument that it was part of 'mores of the times' and we ought to consider Colston's philanthropy as mitigation.
That's a ludicrous argument, without merit.
More information has been passed my way via the Bristol Radical History group.
In this rather superb article, the BRH folk looked at The Colston Statue and it's history and unveil myths within myths, and unearthed some astonishing insights.
One of which is the general working public of Bristol refused to fund the making and erection of the Statue. Another is that it represents an early form of the current NeoLiberalist cult of the individual, and the right or entitlement of wealthy individuals charity to assume moral superiority - in essence those who impoverish the community by doling out limited alms retain an authoritarian and spiritual position of superiority to the mass.
The article highlights how important an accurate and honest history really is. The statue topplers were correct to topple it: such a characterisation and ritualised celebration of venal avarice has no place in a healthy 21st century city.
Rees-Moggs comments on the goodness of food banks ignores the depravity of venal avarice among his peers that created the need in the first place:
"To have charitable support given by people voluntarily to support their fellow citizens I think is rather uplifting and shows what a good, compassionate country we are," he said.
"Inevitably, the state can't do everything, so I think that there is good within food banks.
"The real reason for the rise in numbers is that people know that they are there and Labour deliberately didn't tell them."
Rees-Mogg is someone who needs toppling from his lofty position, quite clearly.
Another example of the 'benefits' accrued by the Wealthy in praising publicly the appearances of charity rather than undertaking any genuine change in the conditions the created the need in the first place.
From the BRH article :
"For example, in 1884, the combined contribution of all the Colston related charities made up only 1.5 per cent of the total cost of relieving the poor that year. Not only was the amount collected fairly insignificant, despite all the fanfare, but it was also distributed in a badly organised and arbitrary manner. A report into the condition of the poor in Bristol published in 1885 directly criticised the Colston Societies in stating:
The higher interest of charity will not be served, it appears to the Committee, until… the total sum collected by the three societies is distributed on some general and well-conceived plan.[14]
This kind of criticism of private philanthropy grew in the late nineteenth century as it became clear that the charitable donations provided at the whim of a few rich ‘do-gooders’ could not deal with the widespread, chronic and abject poverty that characterised the Victorian era. However, public displays of charity by business and civic elites had another, perhaps more important, role than merely poor relief. Jordan notes that:
Although the fiscal contribution of the Colston Societies was superficial this should not lead one to understate the importance of philanthropy as ritual in the maintenance of urban power structures.[15]
Thus the ritual and ideological aspects of the ‘cult of Colston’ may have far outweighed the actual practical benefits to the ‘poor’.
And so it goes. More than statues need to be toppled in 21st Century England.
Kindest regards
Corneilius
Thank you for reading this blog.
"Do what you love, it is your gift to universe."
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English News Mefia, and the English Parliament are this week exercised by reports of callous language by Johnson that remain unverified - no witness has come forwards to say that he or she heard Johnson make those comments - and yet no attention has been paid to the proven statement made by Johnson back in February 2020 where he basically said it already - well not exactly... but almost..
Do you recall how Behavioural Science and Data Modelling were cited as the drivers of UK Government policy in March 2020? They did not cite epidemiology. they did not refer to virology and public health best practice was not mentioned.
Boris Johnson delivered a speech in Greenwich on February 3rd 2020, a month before those briefings. The policy direction had been adopted already.
"And in that context, we are starting to hear some bizarre autarkic rhetoric, when barriers are going up, and when there is a
1. **** risk that new diseases such as coronavirus will trigger a panic ****
2. ****and a desire for market segregation that ****
3. **** go beyond what is medically rational ****
4. **** to the point of doing real and unnecessary economic damage, ***
then at that moment humanity needs some government somewhere that is willing at least to make the case powerfully for freedom of exchange, some country ready to take off its Clark Kent spectacles and leap into the phone booth and emerge with its cloak flowing as the supercharged champion, of
5. ****the right of the populations of the earth to buy and sell freely among each other.***
And here in Greenwich in the first week of February 2020, I can tell you in all humility that the UK is ready for that role.
6. ***We are ready for the great multi-dimensional game of chess **
in which we engage in more than one negotiation at once and we are limbering up to use nerves and muscles and instincts that this country has not had to use for half a century."
My comments on this speech, what I think it reveals, starting with my comments on Johnson's choice of words
1. The panic stage was long over, by February 3rd - the WHO and all well run Governments were preparing for local epidemics and a global pandemic, and doing so with diligence and a calm serious focus. Johnson knew Vietnam, Taiwan, South Korea, Hong Kong, Singapore and New Zealand were already putting zero community transmission strategies in place. He was disparaging those efforts. WHO had by this stage issued warnings just short of declaring a global pandemic. Italy was experiencing the initial surges into their hospitals, with exponential spread of the virus already evident and tens of thousands of British ski tourists in the area, unprotected.
2. The only proposed barriers were to human traffic, there was no blocks on trade or goods or finance being proposed anywhere. He lied, blatantly.
3. What was medically rational was adopting a zero community transmission strategy and resourcing it fully. Every other approach was irrational, in that it ignored the proven epidemiology. The approach of the UK Government was wholly irrational. It was a deliberate choice to allow harm rather than prevent harm. He gaslighted the audience.
4. The policy choice to allow slow spread is precisely what caused the need for multiple lockdowns, which caused more harm to people and more harm to the economy than would have happened had the UK adopted a zero community transmission strategy, by a long and wide margin. It is impossible to prevent surges if one allows slow spread within the community and has no suppression systems in place. That was already well understood by the epidemiology community, SAGE and WHO.
5. The human right to proper health care for the entire population was abrogated, it was denied, it was effectively removed by the decision which had clearly been already made by February 3rd 2020 - the subsequent decisions perpetrated a slow spread tactical battle that was bound to become a war of attrition that the vulnerable lost. 130,000+ horrific deaths, 320,00 cases of long covid, 3,000,000 small business owners excluded from financial support, delays in providing day to day health care as hospitals were swamped by covid cases. All of this was avoidable.
15 months later, the policy of UK Government remains opposed to zero community transmission and amounts to total population infection, aka 'Herd Immunity' - this leads directly into the potential for vaccine escape variants, which puts everyone at risk of back to square one again.
Johnson's words then, and every policy since then are congruent with the charge of malfeasance in public office, leading to corporate manslaughter and wilful economic harm, with cronyism thrown in as a bitter condiment.
India is now, sadly, going through a horror of a second wave because their politicians have taken the same attitude and approach as those in the UK.
6. The British Empire and the wannabe Hindu Empire, Johnson and Modi - sacrificing citizens as pawns in their great game of chess.
To recap.
I am paraphrasing his words and suggesting the intent here :
'we intend to let the bodies pile up, because we believe we can make vast profits from this situation by not doing the epidemiologically correct strategy that others are doing - we are different, better, superior super men of profit!'
How muscular! How Brexit.
I predicted in a number of blog posts this time last year that the policy direction of the UK Government was going to cause more harm, harm to people and to the people's economy. I hated making that prediction, I detest that I was correct, I would gladly be wrong, be made a fool of, be a boy who cried wolf needlessly. I would endure all that, and more, happily had it been that the 127,000 + deaths and 350,000 long covid cases had not been brought about by UK Government policy.
It was the gaslighting and lies, the cronyism which contrasted with the forthright communications of Jacinda Ardern and others in the Zero Community Transmission states that really alerted me to the situation.
The Gamble of the Privateers.
The economic futures that the likes of William and Jacob Rees-Mogg of the Sovereign Individual ideology are promoting is that of Free Ports, Enterprise Cities and Private Cities that operate free of regulation by democratic state legislatures. Easier then for these new entities to avoid regulation that is needed to deal with climate change, air pollution, water pollution and the many other externalised costs that underpin the wealth of extractive industry billionaires but put the whole of humanity at serious risk of long term harm.
Cities run as Corporate States, with citizens as captive customers. Dubai, a dubious set up with ultra wealthy management for ultra wealthy clients, underpinned with low paid immigrant labour deprived of the most basic standard of workers rights, is cited as an exemplar. This is part of the underlay of Brexit, that no English News Mefia will acknowledge. The Sovereign Individual. Privateers. Buccaneers.
The Game of Chess.
Meanwhile the British Press are falling over themselves to avoid the truth, to maintain the taboo this blog article is breaking.
Labour's leader, Sir Keir Starmer and his personal choice of front bench are largely enfeebled in Parliament, they are almost totally futile, in that they support this government and whilst trying to make it look like they are being critical, they offer no solutions, the make no assertive challenge to the policy of slow spread and are in their subservience a walking, talking health and safety violation.
Grooming gangsters operate with impunity to spread the lies that the covid19 is a hoax, that lockdowns are causing more deaths than they prevent, that we need to learn to live with the virus and keep calm and get on with it.
By not specifying schools as places where mask wearing is mandatory, schools are being indirectly pressured to stop students wearing masks, in effect to become super spreaders - the only possible reason must be that to complete Government policy total infection must be achieved sooner rather than later, rather than not at all. That is in line with the 'let the herd take it on the chin' dynamic. Right wing media are touting mask wearing as an infringement rather than a safety measure.
English Football fans are willing to take on the Oligarchs they are funding, yet unwilling to take on the Government that is killing their relatives, harming their economy, paying their furlough. What is that?
It's a mess. an awful, horrible mess and many, many innocents are suffering as a result.
Pile those bodies high, and sell them cheap!
Harm causation on an industrial scale, callous avarice disguised as Nationalism. Lies, gaslighting, cronyism. Intent.
Under English law, misconductin public office is a criminal offence at common law which dates back to the 13th century.[2][3]
The offence carries a maximum penalty of life imprisonment. It is confined to those who are public office holders, and is committed when the office holder acts (or neglects to act) in a way that constitutes a breach of the duties of that office.[4]
The defendant must have been exercising his power as a public officer
The defendant is either exercising targeted malice or exceeding his powers
"Misconduct in public office" is often but inaccurately rendered as "misconduct in a public office", which has a different meaning.
Something needs to shift, or there will be more harms caused that could have been avoided.
The place where the shift needs to come from is both within the Houses of Parliament and among the electorate.
Who will protect the most vulnerable?
Who will indict the culpable?
I sincerely hope the vaccines will help ameliorate the situation, yet I fear they will not. I would not want to bet on them, given the nature of this government.
Violence and the trauma it causes cannot be treated without also treating the setting within which violence has occurred. It is not just about the individual and the assailant, it is also about the culture.
"The study of trauma is an inherently political exercise in that it brings attention to the experience of the oppressed." Judith Herman, writing about trauma and the aftermath, from domestic violence to state terror.
It is quite clear that the culture not as safe as it could be. What I mean is that the UN Declaration of Human Rights is a ratified treaty incorporated in to statute Law in a majority of States.
The meaning of the UNDHR is that part of resolving population level trauma is making the culture we live in a much safer culture than it is. Making an effort.
Arresting Derek Chauvin, and putting him on trial as a lone individual whilst ignoring the culture within which he lived and operated is inadequate to the task of addressing the issue of police violence and the issue of Racism, two issues that are intertwined in American policing and American culture and it's history.
Racism was invented. Misogyny was invented. Neither of these are naturally emergent behavioural characteristics. Some people claim that 'othering' is a natural enough behaviour. Their evidence is flimsy. Just because it can happen does not imply that it is naturally emergent.
Statistics do not tell the full story. Less people die as a result of lynching by an angry racist mob, whipped up locally in a fever of hatred and rage than in previous times, nonetheless Racism persists, the teachings of White Supremacy remain active, and there is no attempt made to counter that at it's root and so, for many people whose skin is dark, whose ancestral and ethnic roots are African, Racism today has a traumatic impact upon their lives.
That same can be said of Misogyny.
To be a political radical is to look at the very roots of any subject and from there start to confront it's inequities from their origins, with as much honesty and clarity as one can gather. Blowing up a bridge or a parliament is not inherently radical - indeed both actions are a continuation of the cycles of violence inherent in a violent hierarchy culture, and thus they are, to my mind at least, the opposite to radical.
They are not looking at the roots of violence in order to resolve the behaviours of violence. Jihadi's are not radical at all. White Supremacists are not radical. Both the Jihadist and White Supremacist deliberately avoid the roots of the problems of the world. Political English is replete with misused language. Radicalisation? It is indoctrination, it is political grooming. It is not radicalisation.
Racism.
It is the task of white people who understand the meaning, the history of systemic and personal Racism to confront it, to challenge it and to dismantle it among other white people. This is not a task for the targets of Racism alone. Personal Racism is not a personal flaw. It is the internalisation of a weapons system thought form. Racism was invented. Racism had a purpose. To counter than, to in-invent it demands that we are honest as to how and why Racism was invented.
Racism was invented to protect the interests of a violent hierarchy - the plantation owners and the rulers of colonial America, while it was still a British colony and it's citizens British subjects. The Plantation owners were a minority who faced a majority they oppressed - indentured European and African workers, and the indigenous peoples. Racism was invented to set the European indentured workers as superior humans to the Africans, and the native peoples, and to set them as antagonists, one against the other.
At the time there was a substantial indentured worker population from Africa. British Privateers had been raiding Spanish Slavers for decades, capturing the enslaved Africans as booty, bringing them to the colonies, where they were indentured as workers. There was also some movement of free Africans who took up indentured work by choice. There was therefore significant population of free Africans who had worked their indentures and were considered citizens. There was a significant inter marriage between European and African, and a significant demographic of African farmers, artisans and other trades.
The creation of the legal category White Race, or White People, in 1681, was a critical step in that process. There is no such thing in biology, morality or historical precedent where skin colour denoted superiority or inferiority that was legalised. It is a cultural definition. designed by an oppressor class to incite lateral violence among those they oppressed.
Then slowly bit by bit the Oligarchs passed laws limiting African's freedoms and rights, even banning inter marriage between Europeans and Africans. Slavery was introduced on the back of these new laws.
That is British and American History.
Misogyny.
It's the task of men who understand the meaning and history of systemic and personal Misogyny to confront it, to challenge it and to dismantle it among other men. This is not a task for women alone. Personal Misogyny is not a personal flaw. It is the internalisation of a weapons system thought form.
Misogyny is invented as part of a cultural belief set of Patriarchy. The anger of misogyny is that women do not submit. Patriarchy held that women were the chattels of men, that women should submit to the whims of men, that women were tools of patrilineal inheritance, breeders of dynasty. Greek Democracy was rooted in Patriarchy. The British Empire likewise. The American Constitution was a document drawn up by and for men of property.
System approved Feminism runs like this - if you are willing to operate the existing power system as it stands, as one of us, you are welcome. Join us. We call this 'equality'.
Genuine Feminism: we see and understand the violent hierarchy cult and we see it's inequity and we will, holding hands with one another, men and women, dismantle that violent hierarchy. we call this equity, justice, peace more than the absence of war.
Poverty.
It's the task of working class, middle class and wealthy people who understand poverty as imposed, as a structural pillar of the violent hierarchy system, to confront it, to challenge it and to dismantle all support for it among other working class, middle class and wealthy people. And then to organise together to abolish poverty. This is not a task for the impoverished. Personal poverty or hatred of the poor are not personal flaws. They are the internalisations of a weapons system thought form.
Wealth is God smiling on you, poverty is His disfavour. That is a lie.
Peace
It's the task of working class, middle class and wealthy people who understand that war is tool of a violent hierarchy, that it is imposed, structurally, and that our task is to confront war mongers, to challenge them at every turn and to dismantle the systemic use of war as a tool of a violent power, where ever we find it, starting with our immediate, local and national Governments.
Monarchy, Aristocracy, Rulers.
Monarchy is an evil. Monarchy is an invention. Monarchy is the original knife crime syndicate. The 'Stablishment. The history of Kings and Queens is a bloody mess.
Abolish Monarchy, abolish all titles. Remove all privileges. Hand the land and wealth back to the people from whom it was taken, as it was always taken at the point of a blade. Let the concept of a noble class fade into the mists. We are all noble, if any one is.
I say this and I say too that we must not make the error of personalising this.
It is not about the person who is Queen, it is not about the individual Lord, Lady or Prince, Duke or Earl - it's not about them as people, since mostly they are people trapped by accident of birth. They did not choose their parents. They were born into that position. .
It is about the institution and the systems of Hierarchy, Power and Violence.
The whole edifice of Monarchy is deeply rooted in Violent Abuse.
To praise or celebrate monarchs of the past is similar to praising or celebrating Jimmy Savile, after it has been disclosed he is a sexual predator, on the basis of his charity work. Henry the 8th was a psycho. most of the Kings and Queens have been dysfunctional, violent and abusive characters. Goes with the territory, I reckon.
"The knights were robbers, the Kings were crooks, see through the lies of our History books."
Monarchy is the original knife crime syndicate.
The Stablishment.
Monarchy is the original knife crime syndicate.
Stab you front, stab you back, stab you left, stab you right, stab you waking, stab you sleeping, in the night. Stab, stab, 'Stablishment. Just look at the history. Just look at the myriad movies that have celebrity actors cast as the Kings and Queens, and look at how the movies draw a veil over the psychopathy of monarchy.
Political Grooming Gangs undermine everybody's Freedom and Liberty by pretending to stand for Freedom and Liberty. They ask you to fight for Queen and Country, They ask you to fight for God and Country.
Kindness is ancient. Kindness makes us humane. Kindness is big. Being humane is a thing. Being humane is the biggest thing. We cannot be fully human if we are not also humane.
When we study the evolution of the human neuro-endocrine system and how it functions we discover something. It is optimised for a peaceful life, with occasional moments of stress. It is not optimised for constant, chronic stress.
Egalitarian life, as it happens, is generally peaceful, healthy, grounded in solid emotional attachment and mature affective state self regulation which reduced incidence of lost tempers and thus prevented general violence - peaceful people tend not to have short fuses. Peaceful people are patient.
We use the word Humanity and most often it is with a positive connotation. "Show some Humanity!" "Show some empathy, kindness, compassion, understanding." We urge one another to be more kind with these sentences.
And, as we know, there are those who think Humanity is the problem. "Humanity is destroying the environment" they will say. "Humans are a parasite, a plague" some people say.
Some religions hold the view that there exists innate badness, amorality, bestiality and that only adherence to the ways of the Religion can counter these dynamics. I think that that is a dehumanising perspective, the suggestion that the human being without the religion is inhumane, a lessor being, somehow tainted. How unkind is that of those who claim that their sacred texts espouse human kindness and morality at its very best.
Then there is active de-humanisation - taking away from a person or a group their humanity is the precursor to all forms of abuse, exploitation and manipulation. The other person or group becomes an object, a thing less than human.
Anti-Semitism, Misogyny, Racism, Xenophobia, the hatred of Zionists towards the Palestinian People, a hatred that does not have it's own name. A hatred that is not encapsulated in Islamophobia because it is about people and their land tenure, their ancient embedded polity, their language, it is about generations of families and communities who are all Arab ethnicity - it is directed at Jewish, Christian, Secular and Muslim Arabs. Zionists are historically European or Caucasian.
A world view that abolishes kindness towards an entire nation - just as the Europeans in North America extirpated the Native land tenures, their polities and their cultures. They even stole their children, so that the children might forget their mothers and fathers language.
One culture deems itself superior to another, such that they can inflict mass trauma without flinching. How unkind is that?
Humanity is not the problem.
The truth is that it is a particular culture that is destroying the environment, waging war, seeking profit over the welfare of people rather than Humanity per se. A culture that is unkind, even as kind people may well live within it and exercise as much kindness as they possible can. All birth location is accident of birth. No baby chooses to be born one or the other.
There's too many people, claims Johnson and his father Stanley, and that is the problem as they see it.
And yet these men of wealth and privilege, they are fine, at ease within the extractive, exploitive, predatory culture that they represent. Their culture is not the problem, as they see things. Both are noted for their lack of kindness, among other things.
Our default state is trust. Our bodies and our minds are evolved for kindness, not for bullying.
Jacinda Ardern is kind. Kindness is real human strength.
Kindness is political.
Boris Johnson is unkind. Here is speaks, in Greenwich, February 3rd 2020, aware already that a global pandemic is underway. He accuses the kind of being in a panic. He claims superiority, as a super man, an economic Uber Mensch, fighting against the medically irrational to champion sales and trade, profits and power.
"And in that context, we are starting to hear some bizarre autarkic rhetoric, when barriers are going up, and when there is a risk that new diseases such as coronavirus will trigger a panic and a desire for market segregation that go beyond what is medically rational to the point of doing real and unnecessary economic damage, then at that moment humanity needs some government somewhere that is willing at least to make the case powerfully for freedom of exchange, some country ready to take off its Clark Kent spectacles and leap into the phone booth and emerge with its cloak flowing as the supercharged champion, of the right of the populations of the earth to buy and sell freely among each other."
Note that Johnson makes no reference to human harms, death and damage from severe disease in this speech. How unkind. "And here in Greenwich in the first week of February 2020, I can tell you in all humility that the UK is ready for that role. We are ready for the great multi-dimensional game of chess in which we engage in more than one negotiation at once and we are limbering up to use nerves and muscles and instincts that this country has not had to use for half a century."
He underlined that part of the speech. " I can tell you in all humility " He prefers international chess play to caring for the people. And 14 months later, the harms he said he would have avoided, have fully materialised.
He rushed us all headlong into those harms - and he has not had the courage, the gumption to put his hand up, to stop the train wreck, to do the right thing. How unkind. Kindness is political.
He receives donations for holidays and wall paper, and much else besides. His fawning associations with oligarchs many hundreds of times wealthier than either he or his father as he seeks out their 'kindness' is abhorrent in a normal person, but in a leading politician in the Highest Office it is unkindness of a profound quality.
Let me be direct, because I am angry and saddened - Boris Johnson is a weakling, a petty bully pimped up by high office. He is not alone. The Cabinet and Party are with him, all the way. They prefer their power to the welfare of the people 'they serve' - so unkindly.
Boris Alexander Johnson is unkind, even as he wishes public debate to be 'kind and civil'. What kind of man is he?
Boris Johnson Tackles children.
Watch as he leans into the child, hanging on to his prize. He cannot control himself.
Boris Johnson Tackles Adults.
Watch as he chooses to bend down and head butt the other player, then pretends it was an accident.
Johnson betrayed his wife, and mother of four of his children, while she suffers from cancer, by conducting a 4 year affair with a young American woman. How unkind is that? How cruel and callous, how utterly selfish! And then in addition there is the corruption. Channelling hundreds of thousands of pounds of tax payers money to his younger lovers ill fated and repetitively faulty business ideas. How kind of him! What a waste of tax payers money!
Kindness is political.
Obama was charming. His political action was unkind. Not much of a difference, really, if you were one of the many innocent people harmed by US Foreign and Domestic Policy during his 8 year stint as President and Chief of Staff. Poverty expanded, Drone Warfare and War in Syria and Libya expanded, as did the wealth of billionaires, under his 'leadership'.
Bullies twist arms, bullies with charms.
Kindness never hides behind a flag, a uniform, a monument or a temple the way patriarchy rooted power and cruelty does. Boris Johnson is unkind. Cressida Dick is unkind. Kindness is political.
Evolution and Kindness.
In terms of our long evolution as a co-operative animal, a social species, one of the key elements in the development of the social brain and all the social complexity, diversity and beauty that flows from that is the shift from the single parenting typical of most primates, to what we call alloparenting.
Sarah Blaffer Hrdy - Anthropologist, Primatologist, Authord of 'Mothers and Others'
That is to say that the evolution of our bigger brains dealing with more complex relationships over longer time frames is inextricable from the evolution of shared parenting, multiple bonded relationships, among hominids. Kindness again. Group kindness is a thrivivalist behaviour. One needs a much more complex brain to live well through shared mutually nurturant relationships as a social group, a social species. Kindness is evolutionary!
Some would say that, politically, kindness has the potential to be revolutionary. Jacinda Ardern is revolutionary, it could be said - and not a guillotine or an AK47 in sight.
Thriving Children.
For all mammals and for all primates the mother is the primary carer of her children. There are some species that share the care, to varying degrees - the majority do not.
In all species of primate the infant stays close to the mother for extended periods of time, physically close, attached, in touch, body to body. Mammalian and primate infants are vulnerable and they need that constant care and protection while they are growing. Human infants are among the most totally vulnerable, and our vulnerability lasts for a long time.
Mothering is expensive.
Every mother knows how much resources, effort and time is needed to adequately care for, nurture and protect a baby, an infant, a toddler and a young child. It takes the meaning of full time job into the realm of 24/7/365. How many hours are there in a week? Parenting requires all of them. Some estimates value unpaid mother work at $10 trillion dollars annually.
According to Oxfam, the unpaid care work done by women and girls has an economic value of $10.8 trillion per year and benefits the global economy three times more than the entire technology industry.
"Women are supporting the market economy with cheap and free labour and they are also supporting the state by providing care that should be provided by the public sector," the report notes.
The unpaid work of hundreds of millions of women is generating massive wealth for a couple of thousand (predominantly male) billionaires. "What is clear is that this unpaid work is fuelling a sexist economic system that takes from the many and puts money in the pockets of the few," the report states.
Kindness exploited is political.
Single parenting is so much more difficult than alloparenting. Still, single parenting is, within the existing industrial culture, somewhat easier than partially shared parenting with a partner who is abusive, negligent, distant or disinterested. If only because such partners need caring for as well, and in effect the mother is caring for two - an infant and an immature adult, or worse a dysfunctional and possibly dangerous 'partner'. Stress levels way above any normal healthy background level. Those women who opt for single parenting deserve societal support as much as possible, and to be honest, a lot more is possible than is being provided for now. That needs to change.
Shared child care is evolutionary economics.
Egalitarian and peasant cultures of all kinds are rooted in extended families. Industrial culture has atomised the community, and the presence of extended family care is becoming rarer. Double and Single parenting is a lot more difficult than living with an extended family to share the care
For humans, in evolutionary terms, shared parenting is the bio-logical norm. Children are cared for and nurtured by the community. In egalitarian cultures this is a very well documented dynamic. The evidence base for this is immense. Egalitarian relationships are loving relationships. The children in egalitarian communities form deep bonds with many adults, as much as with each other. The community cares for and nurtures all the children. Children form many healthy attachments.
Attachment Theory
In looking at the relationships that are formed between mother and child in the 1960s, at a time when the nuclear family was very much the majority structure in industrialised cultures, some interested scientists carried out experiments with monkeys, where, unfortunately for the subjects, they mistreated baby monkeys to varying degrees - by separating them from the mother, and then providing a range of fake mothers in the form of a structure (wire cage, wooden body, furry body, furry body that rocked, warm furry body that rocked and so on and a feeding method, a bottle with a teat) designed to mimic the presence of a mother.
What they found was that the baby monkeys would vary in their behaviour as sociable animals, with the least mothered presenting with the most anti-social behaviours. The less warmth with which they were raised, the more defensive their behaviour, the weaker their self regulation, the greater their aggression. These awful experiments were not accurate, in as much as animals in zoos and laboratories are not going to present behaviour that they would do in the wild. Those experiments were de facto torture. Fortunately these experiments were not frequent, and not repeated. That said animal experimentation is still a massive practice of unkindness.
It is a mark of this culture that in order to prove that something is toxic, or harmful that our scientists are driven to experiment with animals - when in fact there is no need to do so, when we know that most of the novel synthetic compounds being tested cannot be broken down by any known biological process, when in this case it is obvious that disruption to any infants relationship with the mother is going to cause problems for that child.
Nonetheless, those experiments and the consequences or 'evidence' of disruption of child-mother bonding formed the scientific germ of the idea of that became Attachment Theory.
The theory stated that the degree of nurturance or disruption of child-mother bonding in infancy - that vulnerable stage - determined the sociability and adult behaviour of the adult to be. One aspect of the theory looked at the setting within which mothering occurs, and took note of external stressors that might impact attachment bonding. A stressed mother can undermine healthy attachment, through no personal fault of her own, simply because she has to endure stresses imposed by external events and actions of others.
Some portrayed this as 'blaming mothers' and used that as a distraction tactic, a way to trigger emotional reactions that led people to reject the ideas of attachment theory.
Attachment Theory was lauded for a brief period, and then fell into relative obscurity, not least because some of it's proponents were suggesting that the troubles of civilisation are behavioural in origin - violence, hierarchies of power, war fare, misogyny, addiction - and have their roots in disrupted child-mother bonding.
This was a bridge too far for the existing psychology and psychiatry industry. Such an assertion, without substantive evidence, challenged the establishment (and everyone else, truth be told) in ways that patriarchy minded authorities rejected, quite forcibly. It questioned their claims on certain universalities of Human Nature and The Human Condition. That was a challenge too far. Attachment theory questions the 'bad seed' world view of behaviour, the idea that some people are born evil.
Attachment Theory 2.0
50 years on, and Attachment Theory has been subjected to and informed by a lot more detailed research. Neuroscience, endocrinology, developmental studies, bio-chemistry, trauma studies, anthropology and other scientific disciplines have gathered a lot of new evidence, using ever more precise technological developments, allowing better measurement, observation and statistical analysis.
Science can describe with ever greater detail and intimacy the processes of brain development from within the womb, through birth and infancy, toddlerhood and onwards. Science can describe with great accuracy how experience and environmental factors have effects that are invisible, that happen beneath the skin and within the skull, yet which lead to outcomes in behaviours that are all too visible and easy to misconstrue.
Current scientific understanding can describe the biology, the bio-chemistry of what is happening within the brain and the body during the development of the emotional self.
Allan Schore describes the biology of affective state self regulation within the context of the carer-brain to infant-brain relationship, and as body to body embodied minds relating to one another, as a dynamic of carer to cared-for, irrespective of gender or biological relationship. Both brains are altered by the experience. Brains are designed to build through experience and as organs our brains are the least constrained by genetics.
“The brain is heavily influenced by genes. But from birth through young adulthood, the part of the human brain that most defines us (frontal cortex) is less a product of the genes with which you started life than of what life has thrown at you.
Because it is the least constrained by genes and most sculpted by experience.
This must be so, to be the supremely complex social species that we are. Ironically, it seems that the genetic program of human brain development has evolved to, as much as possible, free the frontal cortext from genes.”
Whilst there are key dynamics between every mother and her infant child, the development of healthy self regulation is modulated by all carers and the more loving carers a child has, the better it is for that child and consequently the adult the child will become. In essence shared care is an evolutionary dynamic that has altered our brains and our behaviour, for the better, and it underpins our co-operative, egalitarian nature.
Extend that across a population and we can suggest a way to prevent distress emerging in future populations by nurturing the earliest relationships that extended families can provide. Kindness in policy is indeed political.
What is now well established is that the development of affective state emotional self regulation is key to sociability and to competence in learning, and that it is, in healthy conditions, a matter of right brain maturation which is largely complete by age two.
That bears repeating - affective state self regulation is largely matured by age two, in all healthy human children and it is entirely dependent upon the quality of the relationship and interactions of all the adults or carers in that child's life.
The 'terrible twos' is a cultural symptom of distress, not a biological marker.
As I understand it, this is when the infant becomes a walker, and is capable of independent exploration of the new world she or he is in, and the last thing the new explorer needs is a shortened fuse. The care and kindness that earliest empathic parenting is delivered with sets the child up for life and equips the child with affective state self regulation that is necessary for adult life. Beliefs about innate behaviour need to be challenged, especially when they inform public policy discussions.
"“The brain is heavily influenced by genes. But from birth through young adulthood, the part of the human brain that most defines us (frontal cortex) is less a product of the genes with which you started life than of what life has thrown at you.
Because it is the least constrained by genes and most sculpted by experience.
This must be so, to be the supremely complex social species that we are. Ironically, it seems that the genetic program of human brain development has evolved to, as much as possible, free the frontal cortex from genes.”
In a typical human extended family, child care is shared. That is the norm for all studied egalitarian cultures. That is also the norm in most older pre-industrial sedentary cultures. In peasant families, siblings care for younger sibling;, babies and infants are held by mothers, fathers, aunts, uncles and grand parents. This care is typically loving, replete with those little kindnesses that inform life long bonds of friendship and support.
The Nuclear Family and The Factory
In the development of the Industrial Factory and the creation of a worker culture The Protestant Calvinist Religious ideology - the work ethic - was used as a tool of social engineering, and it was deployed to reshape entire communities, to integrate the nuclear family as a universal human characteristic. Christianity does not speak of the relatives of Jesus. The model of the nuclear family suited the factory owners.
In addition because contraception was not used, serial pregnancies were normal outcomes, infant mortality was high, and child care was shared by siblings, aunts and grandparents, and so they all lived within easy reach. This helped build resilient factory system communities out of the destruction of the older peasant communities. The men went to work, and the women collectively cared for the children and the men.
General schools for the workers children were invented to indoctrinate successive generations, and to train future factory workers. Personal development was deliberately ignored as a subject worthy of the educators efforts. Workers children need not study the classics, or Law or philosophy, or the Arts.
Poverty is a structure.
Poverty was and remains a standard status for a large part of the population within inequitable hierarchy of power social systems, as is the concentration of wealth and power in a smaller class who dominate all others. The children born into either do not chose that situation. We call this accident of birth.
. The existence of poverty is unkind, it is a structural and cultural unkindness. It absolutely imposes chronic stress on the families of the poor. The life expectancy of the poorer is always shorter than those of the wealthier. The impact of structural unkindness is meaningful. Thus social solidarity and kindness among impoverished people's and their families is a matter of survival and provides some of the resilience necessary for survival. In the large families typical of impoverished people's child care is to a degree shared by siblings
Nannies and others.
In wealthier families child care is often handed to employed nannies and tutors. Being too busy being rich and powerful to parent, they devolve care for their children to others. Private boarding schools are an expression of class. Nannies are an expression of power. The devolved authoritarian who must deliver the well rounded adolescent who will inherit the dynastic mantle.
In wealthy industrialised countries, where the nuclear family is common, where the tradition of men as bread winners rooted is in the factory system, the bulk of the work of caring falls upon the mother - this is true even in households where both parents are workers earning a wage. In those households, child care is farmed out. And we see the outcome of that in the greater incidence of anxiety and distress among every class within industrialised cultures. A population that is overworked, underpaid, that is working to build economies and working to service debt and neglecting the familial nurturing space is profoundly impacted. Kindness needs people, kindness needs time and space. Kindness is large brained. Unkindness is small minded.
Kindness is political.
Right now, as the pandemic of SARSCOV2 and it's disease CODIV19 rolls out across the Earth's countries, we are seeing the impact of lack of kindness across the developed world, were some nations have rejected zero community transmission strategies for dealing with an epidemic, with intolerable human costs and associated economic costs, all of which is met with continued denial of shared responsibility. That is unkind. That is an institutionalised lack of kindness at scale.
Other countries have adopted zero community transmission, and have avoided all the costs and harms, and that represents a form of institutional kindness. Indeed, Jacinda Ardern is explicit about this, and has been since before her first election into office as New Zealand's Prime Minister.
Kindness is political. Callous disregard is also political.
If we want a healthier future for all our children, and for all their children, then we had better start acting with political kindness in mind at every part of our culture. The bullying is lethal, the bullying is toxic nonsense and in evolutionary terms utterly, utterly irrational. We must bring it to an end, with kindness as our primary ethic.
