The Dysfunctional Family and the kind of politics of Power I abhor.

I have often written that the dominant structures of political, economic and religious power seem to behave in patterns that are similar to a dysfunctional family within which abuse occurs.

A thought experiment  on Political Role Play: Can you identify Politicians and sectors of the electorate who demonstrate any of these behaviours?

Pick a descriptive sentence from the list below, preface it with a politician, and a link to a story or comment they have made that reveals the behaviour pattern.

• "Using" (destructively narcissistic parents who rule by fear and conditional love)

• Abusing (parents who use physical violence, or emotionally, or sexually abuse their children)

• Perfectionist (fixating on order, prestige, power, and/or perfect appearances, while preventing their child from failing at anything)

• Dogmatic or cult-like (harsh and inflexible discipline, with children not allowed, within reason, to dissent, question authority, or develop their own value system)

• Inequitable parenting (going to extremes for one child while continually ignoring the needs of another)

• Deprivation (control or neglect by withholding love, support, necessities, sympathy, praise, attention, encouragement, supervision, or otherwise putting their children's well-being at risk)

• Abuse among siblings (parents fail to intervene when a sibling physically or sexually abuses another sibling)

• Abandonment (a parent who willfully separates from their children, not wishing any further contact, and in some cases without locating alternative, long-term parenting arrangements, leaving them as orphans)

• Appeasement (parents who reward bad behavior—even by their own standards—and inevitability punish another child's good behavior in order to maintain the peace and avoid temper tantrums "Peace at any price")

• Loyalty manipulation (giving unearned rewards and lavish attention trying to ensure a favored, yet rebellious child will be the one most loyal and well-behaved, while subtly ignoring the wants and needs of their most loyal child currently)

• "Helicopter parenting" (parents who micro-manage their children's lives and/or relationships among siblings—especially minor conflicts)

• "The deceivers" (well-regarded parents in the community, likely to be involved in some charitable/non-profit works, who abuse or mistreat one or more of their children)

• "Public image manager" (sometimes related to above, children warned to not disclose what fights, abuse, or damage happens at home, or face severe punishment "Don't tell anyone what goes on in this family")

• "The paranoid parent" (a parent having persistent and irrational fear accompanied by anger and false accusations that their child is up to no good or others are plotting harm)

Kindest regards

Corneilius

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

Empathy and a sense of justice : the true threat to hegemonic Power.

I think that Empathy is a biologically mandated ability, a complete embodied sensory capability, that enables an organism to read the world, the environment that is lived in.

It is learned,through experience, initially, in human beings and primates, and probably all mammals, through the experience of being treated with empathy as an infant...

Self empathy in human beings is self understanding in a complete, embodied and pre-verbal way that can also be verbalised or expressed or articulated, as well as projected into others as a sensory capability. The feeling comes first, before the words.

Very useful indeed in the bush, jungle, desert etc in terms of discerning what is useful, nurturing or harmful.

Absolutely necessary for healthy human relationships.

Hunting demands empathy and calm.

Parent demands empathy and calm.

The core of empathy is in self empathy, from which empathy for others develops out of the acute sensitivity that self empathy is.

With that sense of self comes a sense of autonomy and of course, a sense of justness (or justice).

In terms of optimal human biological health for individuals, families, communities and societies, these qualities are core components, essential in all respects.

In terms of Hierachically Violent Societies and Institutions, these qualities represent a direct threat to the psychology of Power that Rules over the people.

It is this that lies underneath the exclusion of Aboriginal peoples from any decision making process on matters that affect their lives enacted by conquests inheritors who rule today across the Earth, and it lies behind the careful manipulation of selected assimilated Aboriginals to push for deeper assimilation.

The 'good indian' vs the 'bad indian'; 'hard working families' vs 'benefits scoungers'. We are at 'war'; they are 'terrorists'.

And it's also why so many so-called Democracies refuse to move towards a truly participative Democracy that empowers the shared responsibilities of Power across the grass roots.

Empathy and a sense of justice : the true threat to hegemonic Power.

And with the emergence of the internet as a forum for exchange and dissemination honest experience and insight, as well as leading research formerly locked away from public view within Academia,  the democractisation of information has led to a surge of empathy and a greater articulation of the felt sense of injustice.

Kindest regards

Corneilius

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

Post Election 2015, and the challenges we face, the work we must do.

The Problem

The 'problem' is way more than the actions of one man, or one party or even of the power elites.

We are in a social system that has all the symptoms, relationships, politics and denials of an abuse family dynamic, a system of power that is psychologically dysfunctional and profoundly unhealthy that is pretending the family is ok.

We are in a social system that is driven by unresolved past trauma, that re-inflicts that trauma repeatedly, quite often intentionally ( The Shock Doctrine)in the institutional desire to maintain Power over people.

We are all affected by this, through social, religious and ideological conditioning, through trauma inflicted by Power, through the disruption of natural bonding and learning processes that embed empathy and autonomy, gratitude and pleasure, and the desire to nurture all for all, which are all markers of optimal human biological health.

The resolution is not and never will systemic reform; it must be both personal and communal, and it must be a recognition of and a healing of the old wounds, the suppressed pain, the almost rampant rage and anger of which we see plenty of in movies, novels, violence. This must lead towards kinder social and institutional behaviours ....

Viva Le resolution. The old revolution concept is inadequate to the task ahead of us.

The Vision

I want to see a psycho-social healing movement that is practical that addresses the social trauma and conditioning that is inter-generational, and that feeds the urge to Power over others.

I want to see a societal model that nurtures people as persons, that articulates empathy and love, that is robust in dealing with abusers, that seeks to prevent more harm emerging, that can respect the older cultures and back of conquest of their lands for 'exploitation' and 'development' and observe and learn from them.

They have been around for a lot longer than this system has existed,and have many examples of living close to the biological optimal human health state.

The old sordid politics of the struggle for Power over the people, rather than power shared with the people*,  to nurture ALL the people as healthy loving persons by right or left is inadequate to this task.

Hatred and fear are inadequate to this task..

* (which was the primary mode of human society for the majority of our existence as a species, in spite of what most are led to think, based on the indoctrination typical of ideological compulsion schooling and mono-theistic power religions that claim to to have the 'right way' for all human beings)

I want to see a society that heals the old wounds, rather than a social institutional system that seeks to capitalise on them.



Rage or Outrage!

If we think our anger, rage and despair is going to resolve or improve matters, we are truly participating the continuation of the problem rather than the resolution of it.

Those emotions are the tip of the iceberg, and can so easily be manipulated by those who are powerful, who are abusive, who are predatory.

Those emotions are flags, calling attention to deeper feelings, to the pain, the wounding.

Harness the anger, examine the deeper feelings, resolve the matter within ourselves.

Then we can begin the work. That is the beginning of the work

The Work

"It is a failure across the progressive left in England to articulate a distinct plan that is anti-austerity, anti-cuts and anti-poverty "

I would add that there is not an adequate articulation across the so-called progressive left , of what the Community Voluntary Sector brings : empathy, care, attention to detail in meeting vulnerable peoples needs, self governance, maturation, healing; there is not enough articulation of what constitutes a healthy humane being, and there is almost no articulation of what social conditioning is, how effective it is, how it is effected.

Without these, railing against injustice has no traction.

There is also the matter of education systems, and mainstream media systems that ignore,suppress or mis-report on what is being learned in the fields of Anthropology, Neuroscience, Child Development, Trauma and Recovery studies, Biology and History as well as healthy technologies that nurture the world around us.

Plans are merely concepts, if they are not backed by the actual psychological progression I am writing about.

And for Labour the removal of the Party Whip system and a dedicated assault on that Institution in all other politcial groupings where it exists would indicate that psychological progression.

And this is where the Green party is genuinely different - I see that in Caroline Lucas, and the fact that the Green Party has rejected the concept of the Party Whip in it's entirety ... we cannot accept any practice that amounts to bullying or coercion, when it comes to decisin making processes on matters that affect our lives and the lives of others.

I see that there is a growing recognition of all of the above, every day, and am I no longer dismayed or hopeless. That is not to say I am not appalled at what goes on in politics. I am.

I have gotten over that expectation of an instant change, an easy win. I understand how deep the conditioning goes, how personal it is, and how difficult the resolution of that is as well as what helps the process of healing. I am learning to only point out the escape route rather than damn the conditioned for being conditioned. Could I damn my younger self for being conditioned, frightened, confused?

So we need to ask ourselves what we are FOR, we need to examine our conditioning, and we need to stand for that healing above all else, in the face of what ever comes... the worst outcome is we grow as people, the best outcome is we build a base of psychologically healthy solidarity as each generation passes, and in time, Society will reflect that.

Viva La Resoultion!

Kindest regards

Corneilius

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

Ancient 21st Century Skills: optimal human biological health

21st Century Skills : This list was posted by a friend, on face book, without the comments after the colon...

Those are mine.

problem solving, : not taught in schools

analytical thinking, : not taught in schools

systems-thinking : not taught in schools

credibility and judgment of information : not taught in schools

technology fluencies : only taught in terms of consumerism, in schools

the ethics of fair play : taught in schools, yet not applied, oracticed in a meaningful manner, and so a sense of basic injustice and outrage is common in all school leavers, they sense the hypocrisy but find it difficult to pin it down.

collaboration in cross-functional teams : not taught in schools

accessing knowledge networks : not taught in schools beyond the limits of approved texts.

Compulsory Indoctrination masquerading as Education ... is a real problem, and we are seeing the symptoms of that problem across this election, and in many other places...  I don't blame the indoctrinated, I blame the intentional indoctrinators,they know what they are doing.

problem solving, : identifying the problem, critical thinking, access to reliable data, testing of solutions, responding to new information

analytical thinking, : critical thinking, sourcing data, questioning assumptions, avoiding opinion
systems-thinking : being able to investigate and describe accurately how systems function, or how they are dysfunctional

credibility and judgment of information : comparing data sources, access to and understanding of research methodologies, assessment of outcomes, observation of what is

technology fluencies : understanding what is being used, what is available, the limitations of extant tech, what is appropriate

the ethics of fair play : self empathy, empathy for others, and a sense of humane responsibility, do no harm

collaboration in cross-functional teams : how to work with others who have experience in different areas, and how to learn from others within a diverse group, when the need arises.

accessing knowledge networks : knowing where to search for information, knowing where to find people who are skilled in any given area, feeling centred enough to approach those with the knowledge

These are all skills a healthy Aboriginal child in a healthy human community would have developed by the age of physical maturity, when they are ready to become parents.

That these skills are largely inhibited, limited, ignored or avoid in compulsory schooling says a lot more about schools actuall function in this Hierarchcially Violent Society, and we can all see how they impact each generation of parents, who send their children to schools to learn the same lessons, to submit, to obey, to fall into line, even as they love their children, as they assuredly do.

Kindest regards

Corneilius

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

Power, decision making, ethics and humane living: a choice

Interesting ideas are a starting point for this necessary discourse.

There ought to be a place in Parliament for some pensioners, disabled folk, some children and teenagers, and other vulnerable people, providing a commentary on the proceedings, a bit like the two old geezers at the end of the muppet show, humorous but with more bite.

PR, NOTA, and many other progressive and humane practices regarding a humane democracy are all possible.

Ask the disabled what they need, let them decide on policy on the disabled.

Ask the 'disruptive children' in schools what they need, let them inform how they are helped.

Ask the renters what they need, and let them inform how renting is regulated.

Ask mothers what they need, and then let those needs inform policy on family and community.

Ask elders what they need, and let those needs inform policy on family and community.

Ask Survivors of trauma and criminal abuse what they need, and let that inform policy.

Tell the banks what we need of their services, and ensure they comply to the 'market' : those who need their services (apart from criminal organisations, speculative betters etc etc )

Tell the police how they ought to relate to troubled youth, as carers as well as protectors, and let the troubled youth inform how they are to be treated.

Ask the Military how they can best help Society, and let that inform how they are deployed (Chavez did this in his 'exile' in the remote parts of Venuzeula, and directed the military under his command to build infrastructure, schools, wells, etc etc... which built his base from which he re-emerged to engage in Democratic Governance.)

There are a myriad of genuine examples of all of this kind of democratic behaviour that demonstrate it is both practical and effective.

We, the people, are the majority tax payers, and we need to take up the responsibility of how we organise our part of Society and not devolve that to others. We ought to employ some to do what we decide, not vote for others to decide for us. That's infantile.

The current political paradigm represents peoples fears more often than their needs or 'interests' as a means to manipulate the electorate, to gain Power over the people.

A truly representative figure head is a spokesperson carrying the message of those who have decided. Not a leader.

We need to become leaders who can select spokespersons, who can employ civil servants and politicians and direct them.

There was a time when those skills lived within the community. Amongst people known who could be trusted because if they bodged the job, you would come around to their house. This is oversight.

The time for grass roots oversight has come. Be part of it. Participate in decision making, in deliberation, in the exploration of the issues, the problems, the solutions and be a learner, a grower, a fully matured human being.

I want to live fully humanely. I do already, to a large degree, and recognise that I need to take up my shared responsibility, to all other living humans, my family to mature fully and become fully participative. I need to do this to honour my connections to you all, to honour my sense of self and to exercise the loving care I feel for all humanity.

What do you want?

Kindest regards

Corneilius

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