I know this much, I am not the problem. Me not fitting into this society is a healthy response.
Would we or could we do things differently if we were trauma informed?
"I argued then that the study of psychological trauma is an inherently political enterprise because it calls attention to the experience of oppressed people. I predicted that our field would continue to be beset by controversy, no matter how solid its empirical foundation, because the same historical forces that in the past have consigned major discoveries to oblivion continue to operate in the world. I argued, finally, that only an ongoing connection with a global political movement for human rights could ultimately sustain our ability to speak about unspeakable things." ~ Judith Herman in Trauma and Recovery
The News is not helping, is it?
The news media is full of a myriad of stories, images and narratives - more commonly biased and less so objective - and we see that violence erupts once more as Israeli State Mechanised Warplanes bomb the prison of Gaza, where people have nowhere to run to, for safety; we see the outcome of reckless policy on COVID19 in UK, USA, Brazil and India as wave after wave of infection surges; we are all aware of the intrusion into and colonisation of 'undeveloped lands inhabited by older indigenous cultures; Myanmar's youth resist the Military oppression of their new-born democracy... there's a lot going on.
The truth is not being told.
Meanwhile, for 1.8 billion people, across East Asia, Oceania and elsewhere zero community transmission strategy is protecting their lives and livelihoods in large measure.
What is the climate within which all this is happening, and can we change that?
Music helps me ground myself when facing all of this. Here's two songs in particular, that emerge from the Irish experience, that I find particularly resonant. They humanity of both songs, and of their writers is a beauty to me.
~
It sits comfortably with Damien Dempsey's song Colony, a fierce rebuttal of the colonial mindset and a resounding song of defiance. This song makes the hair stand on end, and is as strong a heart beat of the humane as any. Here's the writer, on why he wrote the song, for whom he wrote it.
Colony Lyrics:
You'll never kill our will to be free, to be free
Hierarchy of Violence Culture
The dominant neighbour, the English government rejects zero community transmission strategy, even as ZCT is proven to protect the lives and economies of 1.8 billion people across East Asia and Oceania and elsewhere, and prevent new variants from emerging, and this places of the British Isles at risk. It could so easily have been avoided.
These are the ill effects of a thousand years of overlordism.
Who rules the English people?
Ireland is still partitioned - those old wounds are still painful, and the political interference still blatant.
What the Israeli state has done and is continuing to do the Palestinian people for the past 75 years, the Normans did to Ireland for 800.
a poem by Michael Rosen
Palestine - where the act of self defence and resistance, a legal right agreed upon by the all Earths nation states, is punished by full on ethnic cleansing, social, cultural and military war fare, and where that constant punishment of an entire population has been and is still supported by the USUK political ruling classes and is enabled by the EU and UN who play the role of bystanders, even as millions of ordinary citizens in all these countries oppose the violence of the Israeli State, and are also saddened by the violence of the resistance. The Palestinian people should never have been put into that position that they needed to resist war, occupation and colonisation.
What use is there in all of this killing?
Unicorns against masks is yet another similar faith dynamic that pollutes responsible behaviour in the midst of a pandemic.
The Psychological Climate Issue.
Climate change is one thing, the global Pandemic is another as is the conquest and colonisation of lands already long inhabited by people who nurtured that land - be it Palestine or the Amazon Rainforest - and the psychological climate of hierarchies of violence culture is part of the problem and the puzzle to be resolved that all of these present.
What is happening in Israel, what is being done to the Palestinian people is emblematic of what this hierarchy of violence cult is doing to all of us, to humanity, and we the humane must find ways to stop it in it's track.
What is happening in England and India, and elsewhere, what is being done to the people by the reckless policies of the ruling factions in regards to COVDI19 is emblematic of what this hierarchy of violence cult is doing to all of us, to humanity, and we the humane must find ways to stop it in it's track.
We must do this, we must commit to doing, even if we do not know how that is going to work out. It is not merely the success of the project that drives this - it is integrity.
Ani Di Franco has a song, Inside Out, in which she sings "We are all citizens of the womb." This is true.
This line inspired me to write this poem.
the squeeze, the belief
in letting go - we both
surrender to the next life
as in the new world
the strange dry air,
something unknown to me,
the pulse of my mothers heart
the thumping with which I have
for nine months lived
- all of my life thus far -
oh the relief of hearing that sound again
having been briefly, yet intensely
separated from that
fundamental pulse.
I gaze with all my body,
all my soul
and we catch each other,
before I reach to feed.
and oxytocin mediates the adrenaline
I am born, and we are clean, together...
My fathers deep voice rumbling in peace and joy,
amazement and bliss.
Being born is the art of the eternal welcome.
one ingenuous zone of love,
head to toe I know
that my love of life,
this desire to nurture,
the qualities
we see
and feel in each other,
for these are the echoes,
these are the dreams
that are essential
above all else.
Nurture love,
tend the garden
Blessings are
these tears of love,
these peals of laughter
like a silken glove
held and yet unrestricted.
And then the flags, the tanks, and the shelling?
This tragedy is pathology,
the loving is all gone,
the culture says no breast-feeding in public,
it's more important
that you learn your Nations song!
Booooom!
The first things that must be done is that states that organise violence on the scale that USUK and Israel and Russia and others do must be inhibited from doing so by their own populations - and in that populations across the Earth must find ways to build solidarity and generate material support for each other in achieving this. We are in this together.
It is for the British population to control their State and Oligarchy who interfere in other countries.
It is for the American population to control their State and Oligarchy who interfere win other countries.
It is for each countries population to assert our right to self govern - it is not the exclusive right of any ruling class, no such right exists. The ruling class rules by might and leveraged power and that is, in this 21st Century, wholly illegitimate.
This means we must as people in humane, informed intelligent solidarity take control of the democratic legislatures and write the laws that will control these powers and forces, and thus make them safe for people everywhere.
We need to do this just to get to the position where we can deal with Climate Change, Environmental Pollution, Air Particulate Pollution and poverty.
Climate change demands a psychological change among all democratic electorates.
We need peace to be able to work on Climate Change in meaningful ways.