Opinion, Evidence and the Youth Vote

The Youth Vote:

Represents a shift from opinion to evidence as the basis for voting and political policy deliberation.

A reckoning is coming.

A day of reckoning too for all those older people who look down with condescension on young people,  claiming that the youth fell for the 'bribe of Free Tuition at University' by Jeremy Corbyn - when in fact the youth voted on many issues in a holistic manner....  and objected to being saddled with debt as a normative - debt to get further education, debt to get housing, debt to pay for bankers fraud and wars of aggression, debt due to low wages and insecure working arrangements that suit employers.

The youth also responded to the bullying by media of Jeremy Corbyn, of low income families, of the disabled and of those who seek peace and negotiation over wars of aggression. Children KNOW when they are being bullied, and we do have an older population who do not know when they are being bullied because they have adjusted to the psychology of bullying, goading, gaming and manipulation ...... that they still buy the media bias is proof enough of this statement.

Wrecked Economies!

And it occurred to me today that in terms of wrecking economies, the British, French and United States of America Establishments (New Labour, Tories, Lib Dems, Democrats, Republicans) wrecked the economies of Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and Syria whilst claiming that people like Jeremy Corbyn would do the same to the UK economy.

"Make the economy scream!"

Richard Nixon on Chile before the coup that led to General Pinochet, friend of Thatcher, assuming power.

Who really wrecks economies, and for what purpose?

Governance is different to politics.

Politics is the struggle for power, the power to Rule.

Governance is the administration of a community's shared resource base for the equity of all members of that community.

We need to disable politics and enable healthy governance.

Civil War

To prepare for a civil war a division of opinion over the evidence must be in place and then triggered.

Opinions are personally held views that always omit aspects of the available evidence.

Thus when those views are challenged, the holder tends to react as if it was a personal attack on who that person is.

That is a psychological death threat to such a person.

Only then will a civil war take root.

The War in Northern Ireland is a prime example.

The Civil Rights protests were never about Unionism vs Republicanism.

Who benefited from the shift from civil rights (evidence based) to national identity (opinion based)?

Was the man who assassinated Jo Cox operating on opinion or evidence?

How easy is it to trigger someone who holds a personal opinion?

Are groups of people who hold opinion over the evidence more easily manipulated?

These are critically important questions.

Healthy Governance is not a gambling den, it is not a cash cow and it is not a tool of hierarchical control.

It is a matter of duty of care to the people.

All of the people, rich and poor alike.

Young or old, or middle aged.

Employed or not.

Duty of care to all. Everybody deserves this.

Duty of care cannot be a question of meritocracy (I detest that word and ideology).

Healthy Governance is the administration of a community's shared resources (taxation) for the equity of ALL members on that community. Our money,our communities.

Whose bombs are being dropped from British War Planes? Do they belong to Basildon, or Bexlyheath, or Glasgow? How many weapons does your post code sell to the Saudi Regime?

This is the 21st Century - the information age - and the old politics of the 19th Century of International Empires based on military capability backing commercial activity is out of date, out of touch, out of steam, out of ideas, out of inspiration, lacking in humanity and humility and doomed to the dust bin of human history.

A reckoning and healing is underway.

Opinion is being trumped not Trumped (excuse the pun) by evidence.
Corbyn is evidence over opinion.

New Labour was opinion over evidence.

The Conservatives are all opinion over evidence.

Brexit was all opinion over evidence.

Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and Syria - opinion over evidence!

Kindest regards

Corneilius

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

*If you like this post, if you found the themes resonant, if you agree in part, would you be kind enough to let others know about it? I would really appreciate that. You could drop a comment too, if you felt the urge. Or not. I will moderate contributions, and block any that are abusive. For obvious reasons. Thank you for reading.

Governance by opinion? Or evidence?

Governance is the administration of a community's shared resource..... and that has certain implications, in terms of duty of care and health and safety of the community, the entire community.

Governance by opinion?

Who would vote on that basis, and why?

A VERY important question, one that demands evidence for an accurate answer.

The Brexit campaign was an example of opinion over evidence, as was the invasion of Iraq, the bombing of Libya, the support of violent militia in Syria, and not least, the policies pertaining to how our State assists and help the most vulnerable in our Society.

I find it utterly appalling that political decision making, policy is based on opinion (ideology, etc) rather than a full appraisal of all the available evidence.

The media provide opinion and present it as fact. The Politicians react to the media and discuss opinion, rather than the evidence. I see this as a matter of health and safety.

So as to why the Election, now?

Europe will not negotiate on the basis of opinion, and an opinionated Government will find it difficult to engage in an honest negotiation, and that will be come apparent to one and all, and their grip on power will be severely diminished for some time.

So they want out...... before it all goes badly.

They know a Corbyn led Government or progressive alliance Government will be evidence based, and they will attempt to disrupt, derail that Government (from within and without) rather than be mature enough to negotiate in good faith, for all of us.

So they are handing the chalice over, and it remains to be seen what they will do after that - I think they will be disruptive.

Please bear in mind that this is really just an opinion - about the motives behind the snap election, and that I need evidence to support this conclusion and to determine the appropriate response.

My most urgent concern is the primacy of opinion in the electorate, dominated by media output, (and to a degree the way the State curriculum in history disables evidence led analysis) which enables any Government to get support for policies by touting/triggering opinion.In a similar vein, I detest the word 'benefits' when applied to Social Care.

It really ought to be called 'assistance' or 'help' so that when people who do not look at all the evidence suggest that we should not help or assist those who need it, it becomes very clear what the issue is.

Kindest regards

Corneilius

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

*If you like this post, if you found the themes resonant, if you agree in part, would you be kind enough to let others know about it? I would really appreciate that. You could drop a comment too, if you felt the urge. Or not. I will moderate contributions, and block any that are abusive. For obvious reasons. Thank you for reading.

Evidence, David Smail and the facts before us.

I have just completed my first reading of 'The Origins of Unhappiness : A New Understanding of Personal Unhappiness' written by David Smail.  It is an astounding work, and I must say, I now believe that it is essential reading for anyone interested in psychological distress, justice and economic equity.

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/27133657-the-origins-of-unhappiness

"It is the main argument of this book that emotional and psychological distress is often brought about through the operation of social-environmental powers which have their origin at a considerable distance from those ultimately subjected to them. 

On the whole, psychology has concerned itself very little with the field of power which stretches beyond our immediate relations with each other, and this has led to serious limitations on the explanatory power of the theories it has produced. 

To illustrate this, typical cases of patient distress in the 1980s are examined. The decade when the right-wing of politics proclaimed there was no such thing as society gave rise to psychological distress across social classes, as long-standing societal institutions were dismantled. 

This is as much a work of sociology, politics, and philosophy, as it is of psychology. Fundamentals of an environmental understanding of distress are outlined. A person is the interaction of a body with the environment."

What I got from this book : realism and honesty.

I live in England where poverty is deliberately maintained and the poor are dehumanised in media representations, where the symptoms of that distress are used as signs of a flawed nature in order to blame the impoverished for their impoverished state, which protects the Wealth Extraction systems, externalising the cost of low wages and inadequate social care provision. 

"We need to realise that, rather than the patient being a problem for the world, the world is a problem for the patient. We are embodied products of environment space-time. To make a difference in our lives we need to be able to exert what little influence we have on the environment, to make it, from our perspective, a little more benign. It is not we who need to change, but the world around us.Or, to put it another way, the extent to which we are able to change will always depend upon some material change in the environmental structures of power which envelope us (and insofar as these cannot be changed, for example because they are in the past, neither can we be wiped clean of their effects).

The difficulty with this is immediately apparent: how do we, relatively powerless creatures, bring effective influence to bear on the environment?"

David Smail (goes to wiki page on David Smail) wrote this :

"Hardly any of the 'symptoms' of psychological distress may correctly be seen as medical matters. The so-called psychiatric 'disorders' are nothing to do with faulty biology, nor indeed are they the outcome of individual moral weakness or other personal failing. They are the creation of the social world in which we live, and that world is structured by power.
    
Social power may be defined as the means of obtaining security or advantage, and it will be exercised within any given society in a variety of forms: coercive (force), economic (money power) and ideological (the control of meaning). Power is the dynamic which keeps the social world in motion. It may be used for good or for ill.
    
One cannot hope to understand the phenomena of psychological distress, nor begin to think what can be done about them, without an analysis of how power is distributed and exercised within society.

Such an understanding is the focus of this web-site. "


You can go to David Smail's Website here via wayback web archive.

I respectfully suggest this as a genuinely useful resource base, to find tools and insights that relate to how power operates and behaves in this culture.

The psychology of power hierarchies. The psychology of people adjusting to this unhealthy social institutional structure and culture. Some home truths. Radicalisation. Grooming. Social meaning. Our lives in all of this.

Evidence based.





Kindest regards

Corneilius

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

*If you like this post, if you found the themes resonant, if you agree in part, would you be kind enough to let others know about it? I would really appreciate that. You could drop a comment too, if you felt the urge. Or not. I will moderate contributions, and block any that are abusive. For obvious reasons. Thank you for reading.

Dave and Alice, TWAT or Peace? Through the looking glass.

 

It matters that this conversation is happening. ~

It's not an easy conversation.

It has to be evidence based, or it will go badly.

This is the core discipline required.

Opinion now, in this conversation, is truly dangerous.

Look it as a genuine health and safety issue, along with belief, faith, hope or ideology - none of these can be allowed to trump the evidence (no topical pun intended...) in seeking to resolve this situation.

It will not be resolved overnight.

It can be resolved.

It is not the Sun.

It is us.

David Smail.

David Smails take on ‘reality’ is closest to what I feel :

“Hardly any of the ‘symptoms’ of psychological distress may correctly be seen as medical matters.

The so-called psychiatric ‘disorders’ are nothing to do with faulty biology, nor indeed are they the outcome of individual moral weakness or other personal failing.

They are the creation of the social world in which we live, and that world is structured by power.
Social power may be defined as the means of obtaining security or advantage, and it will be exercised within any given society in a variety of forms: coercive (force), economic (money power) and ideological (the control of meaning).

Power is the dynamic which keeps the social world in motion.

It may be used for good or for ill.

One cannot hope to understand the phenomena of psychological distress, nor begin to think what can be done about them, without an analysis of how power is distributed and exercised within society.

Such an understanding is the focus of this web-site.”

His website…

http://www.davidsmail.info/introfra.htm

Alice Miller.

Alice Miller wrote about how the institutional violence of the adult world afflicts all our children.

She traced the psychology of power through society, into human relationships, and how the influence of violent political power permeates society. Miller looked at the history of education in Europe, leading up to World War II, and examines the industrial powers influence on it to prepare each generation of children for participation in that violence, as workers or as fighters, as if it were something normal.

Something Patriotic.

Heroic.

Fighting for a Cause.

See where this is going?

FOR YOU OWN GOOD : The Roots of Violence in Child-Rearing.

Dip in.

https://www.alice-miller.com/…/the-roots-of-violence-are-n…/

She is not talking about individual parenting, (a common misconception of her intent) she looks at cultural parenting, which is often subject to belief, faith, religion, ideology or mere opinion rather than the evidence about, and of children themselves.

She explores how repeated war trauma fosters socialised violence when entire populations are subjected to violence, over time, to the extent that that history is seen as glorious.

Internalisation. Very much part of radicalisation.

A very strong book, a disciplined read required.

That said....

Some Steps Towards an End to TWAT And a Start to Peace. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

*This is of course an incomplete list, with only the briefest of pitches, and very little supporting, referenced documentation to substantiate the points raised.

It’s more to a thought smorgsabord on the issue of TWAT And Peace.

Here goes :

Actions that Western and all Governments can take that might lend towards a long term peace.

-caveat : there's more that I don't know than I do about all of this. A lot more. This analysis is not to be relied upon. In any way, shape or form. It is a list to things I think could alter the situation in useful ways......

1. Acknowledge the War Crime of Iraq and Afghanistan which is the responsibility of the US /UK Coalition of States that invaded and occupied both countries.

2. Arrest the War Criminals.

3. Full public accounting. Convictions.

4. Formal economic, political and cultural sanctions regime against Saudi Arabia, and it’s Wahhabist intervention in Government.

5. Cease all support for Saudi military, including ban on weapons sales. A total ban.

6. Cease all military operations against the Syrian Government. Immediately.

6.a Destroy all DAESH supply lines. No exception. Ensure no funding, arms, munitions, food, oil, petrol, diesel, medicine gets through to their fighting units. If States are involved, then they must be dealt with. International effort in good faith and honour.

7. Allow the Syrian State and people to confront DAESH in Syria, and with respect to language groups and ethnicities, enable autonomy for those as part of the political resolution of other matters. Allow the Syrian State to invite chosen allies to assist with this operation.

8. Abandon the US-UK-Russia-China competing powers behaviour which is the active dynamic in international relations. That behaviour is toxic, irrational and utterly cruel.

9. Excise all incitements to violence from all recognised Religious Texts. These are in breach of Human Rights, and cannot be countenanced.

10. Total separation of Religion and Government, and Legislation. World wide. Governance MUST be evidence based, rather than belief, faith, sectional interest or mere opinion

11. Close down Saudi funded Wahhabist Maddrassa systems, total removal. World wide. Such systems are institutionalised child abuse. No negotiation. Full records of all students to be provided.

12. Demand Saudi excise all incitement to or justification of violence from Wahhabist Texts and Teachings, and remove corporal punishment from the Saudi penal code, as an olive branch, or a carrot, a way to avoid actions 4., 5,

13. Ban Saudi Oil. Last resort.

14. Stand down all international military alliances in favour of a United Nations based resource, resourced from those competing military alliances. The UN treaties provide for a military force that maintains peace, enforces sanctions as a policing action, supporting a diplomatic, political, economic and cultural conflict resolution drive, which must, of course, be equally well resourced.

15. Detain all known participants in militia in their home countries. Process these the weed out those who are reliably dangerous, prosecute those for crimes committed and incarcerate them for Health and Safety reasons.

16. Tear apart the media cabal, and liberate the press, to articulate solid critical analysis of matters of Governance, based on evidence rather than alignments with belief, faith, ideology, bias, opinion.

17. Arrest Murdoch. Close down all media that spin, that present opinion as information, that are aligned with any political party, that are lobby tools for power interests.

18. Public Parenting information must be based on evidence rather than alignments with belief, faith, ideology, bias, opinion. Parents must be legally made to comply with the child’s Human Rights in full. Parents do not have any right to tell their child what to think. Ever.

19. Rebuilding, reparations. We must devote the resources we have to help rebuild what has been destroyed, and restore people and society to a healthy sustainable state.

20. We must also build Systems of Deliberative Democracy, rather than representative Democracy, which is obviously a failed experiment. Power as a shared responsibility.

21. Rekindle old language groups and environmental ethnicity’s, the thriving variation of healthy human culture.

22. In all, evidence based action must be the standard. All evidence must be appraised, no piece omitted, neglected, dismissed, mitigated or denied.

23. End Competing States/Warring States as an accepted political dynamic.

24, Decriminalise mind altering plants and their usage as sacred tools, and medicine.

25. Pay close attention to the Australian Aboriginals people, for they have a well of lived experience for which there is no other comparable population, listen to them and hear their message. 

They are the polar opposites of the Jidhadist/Competing Industrial Powers insanity.

They truly know how to live on Earth as fully human beings in sustainable cultures. : TWAT = The War Against Terror.

They have survived an attempted Genocide, and are here today, offering wisdom, love, nurture and peace to the culture that tried to wipe them out.

It doesn't get any tougher, in terms of diplomacy and negotiation than that. If they can, anyone can.

Yes, it's not going to be easy.

Just a reminder, Alice Miller, The Roots of Violence in Child-Rearing.

Get hold of a copy..

A Peace activists must-read.

Again and again.

Kindest regards

Corneilius

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

*If you like this post, if you found the themes resonant, if you agree in part, would you be kind enough to let others know about it? I would really appreciate that. You could drop a comment too, if you felt the urge. Or not. I will moderate contributions, and block any that are abusive. For obvious reasons. Thank you for reading.

A Metric for Governance - A People's Metric - Making Governance Safe for People.

Healthy Governance - A Metric

I think of Healthy Governance as being focused on the practical realities of administering a communities shared resources for the equal benefit of all members of that community. 

Healthy governance sets the context of governance as operating within as a shared responsibility of duty of care for one another.  In that regards healthy governance has to be evidence led at all times. Opinion and belief are insufficient to meet the responsibility of duty of care.

Healthy governance sets the global context of governance as nurturing, caring for and stewarding of the habitat within which the community lives and from which that community draws living materials and other resources. 

In the case of States, and in relation to healthy Governance we can apply this metric of care to taxation, which is collected from all, in one way or another, by the State, and is therefore a primary community shared resource. Healthy governance will determine that that resource is deployed with wisdom and equity to nurture the whole population.

Taxation is a resource which does not belong to the Government, as a possession, but is rather a resource held in trust, to be dutifully and carefully deployed on behalf of the whole of society, and the population the Government governs for. 

State borrowings are borrowed on the collateral of the States ability to pay the debt with taxation, which is gathered from the population. The population underwrite Government borrowings on behalf of the population. 

State currency, issued by State owned banks, must also be understood as a utility. Money as a medium of exchange that is deployed to nurture the whole population. 

Against that back drop, we can look at those who extract wealth from economies, and who sequester wealth away from the people, and who deploy that wealth as a political utility to preserve their political power, in order to impede regulation of their extraction of wealth. Who do they serve? Who do they harm?

Governing for is not the same as ruling over.

Apply that metric to all areas of policy.

Update on metrics: "Ignore death and disease, look at wages!"

Metrics for Healthy Governance: https://t.co/RNz1bTNxcI
Not Johnson.#SchoolStrike2021 #JohnsonLiedPeopleDied #JohnsonOut#Starmermustgo #unitygovernment#ZeroCovid pic.twitter.com/y9mDl5gZim

— Egalitarian Corneilius (@coreluminous) October 3, 2021

What are the implications of administering a community shared resource?

- Policy must be evidence based, as a fundamental duty of care - opinion and belief cannot supplant evidence. All available evidence must be brought to bear on any issue.

- Governance must not be submissive or beholden to special interests of any kind. It can and must be aware of all interests, and seek to balance those without causing harm to the people or the shared commons. No costs can be externalised.

- Adversarial dynamics must be rejected. Labour vs Tories is toxic. Christian vs Muslim is toxic. Atheism vs Religionism is toxic. Difference ought to generate richness and complexity rather than conflict. 

- Avoidable adverse outcomes must be avoided, and where they occur, by accident or lack of foresight, or due to changes beyond human agency, or by deliberate action by the State, or any others, they must be remedied immediately. Allowing avoidable harm to persist once it has been identified is unacceptable.

- Long term health and safety is as much a priority as short term health and safety

- The policies must be proven to nurture the whole community, in a balanced and healthy manner.

This metric applies also to the seas, waterways, lands we inhabit. These too are shared community resources, and not just for us humans of developed societies.

We share this Earth. Fact. That has social and psychological implications.

Healthy Governance acknowledges this.

This is a discussion to be had across the grass roots, at parish council level, in schools and in places of religious faith worship, in pubs, in clubs, on buses, in all settings. It is an understanding that must begin from the ground, must come from the people for whom Government governs.

For me, the old politic of competing powers is, in humane terms, immature and dysfunctional - it is a diseased way of conducting matters, and utterly toxic. War is a mental health issue, and a health and safety issue, as well as a matter of morality.

I cannot participate in current political discourse as a loyal citizen, loyal to the people, my, family, my neighbours, and all who live within the State, loyal to the common good, the shared commons, without being a dissenting voice, precisely because this fundamental truth is being ignored, denied, avoided across all mainstreams, and beyond.

The system is in reality characterised largely by a behavioural dynamic of habitual bullying that has become institutionalised, and I cannot vote for it to continue. 

Who to vote for in a Warring State?

The Power Inquiry 2006

The Power inquiry, an independent investigation into the condition of democracy in Britain, was set up in 2004. The members of its commission (chaired by Helena Kennedy) hosted meetings around Britain and heard submissions from a wide variety of interest groups, professionals, and concerned citizens. The commission published its report on 27 February 2006.

It was in part an acknowledgement that the democratic voice of the electorate, which was ignored in March 2003, must prevail, and for that to happen a framework that devolves decision making to the electorate.

The Power Inquiry mapped that out in some detail. It was and remains a e well reasoned, evidence led, peer reviewed thesis on how to make Government response and accountable to a democratically engaged population.

You can read it here.

An article about The Power Inquiry on OpenDemocracy.

"After eighteen months of investigation, the final report of Power is a devastating critique of the state of formal democracy in Britain. Many of us actively support campaigns such as Greenpeace or the Countryside Alliance. And millions more take part in charity or community work. But political parties and elections have been a growing turn-off for years.

The cause is not apathy. The problem is that we don't feel we have real influence over the decisions made in our name. The need for a solution is urgent. And that solution is radical. Nothing less than a major programme of reform to give power back to the people of Britain..."

There have been many, many attempts through recorded history made at scoping out healthier metrics for Government. from Ancient Chinese and Sumerian, Greek, Roman, from Magna Carta to The US Constitution, from The Chartists to the UN Declaration of Human Rights.

The Power Inquiry of 2004-2006 fits comfortably into that tradition. 

I have written a more detailed blog on the many recommendations of The Power Inquiry.

Power Disparity

The asymmetry of leverage Power Disparity infantalises those exposed to it who in all honesty hold little power. By infantilsiation I mean the relative capability of exercising power between the two is similar to a adult and and infant.

For Democracy to be genuine and effective it must involve and engage the citizen in much more than voting. Voting on it's own confers little power to the electorate. In fact it reduces the electorate to an audience. It voids the electorate as a participant in policy deliberation, decision making and over sight, it removes all responsibility from the electorate. Indeed voting infantalises the electorate, precisely because the State system pretends otherwise. 

Other 'better' people, entitled to rule, better suited educated to stand as 'superiors' who will make the 'tough decisions' and we, the people vote as supplicants.

That was the careful political power set-up determined in the 19th and 20th Centuries, by the Establishment, to preserve their order, their dominance and to protect their Wealth Extraction indefinitely. Wealth infiltrated every political and social movement that emerged from the abject social conditions that ordinary folk were forced to endure, during the start of the Industrial Revolution and beyond. That is still the case.

That experience of slowly learning to organise politically as a class, within a rigid class system, is where Socialism in England was birthed. Watt Tyler and the peasants gaining rights after the Black Death Plague was a step in that direction.

The Power Inquiry continues in that tradition, bringing it up to the 21st Century.

We need a metric for Governance that is truly 2s1st Century best practice, wisdom and skill oriented,

That 19th Century set-up has led directly to Climate Change, Air Pollution, Poverty, War Fare, Plastic Pollution Environment Degradation and more corruption. It succeeded in it's aim, but is putting the entire human species at risk and therefore it is inadequate to the task of confronting the problems it has created.

Denial of this is a comfort on the death march to hell and I just can't do that. Can you?

Kindest regards

Corneilius

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

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*If you like this post, if you found the themes resonant, if you agree in part, would you be kind enough to let others know about it? I would really appreciate that. You could drop a comment too, if you felt the urge. Or not. I will moderate contributions, and block any that are abusive. For obvious reasons. Thank you for reading.