Neural pathways, Power and Society

Beliefs and Behaviour Patterns are Neural Pathways that have Become Hardened.

As the brain is growing and forming in the young child, with each new experience a new neural pathway is created, and as those experiences are repeated that pathway or sets of pathways get used repeatedly. Thus certain pathways will become ‘well-worn’ or ‘hardened’.

This is necessary, and is how, for example, learning to ride a bike gets to a point where one does not need to think about it. The thinking during repeated training has formed enough of a pathway series to carry out all the various task required to maintain balance, note direction, read the ground and so on. Without having to think about it, whilst retaining the ability to respond to subtle changes.

Learning

In this way the child learns and stores vital skills, such as control of her/his limbs, balance, co-ordination and so on.

We know that it takes about 10,000 hours of training to become competently fluent on say a given musical instrument so that one is a 'virtuoso', (indeed any particular skill/talent) that is then viewed, in our culture, as ‘pretty damn good’.

This applies to physical action as much as thought processes.

We know that children learn much quicker when their learning is self-directed, and that the enthusiasm of the child is a major factor in driving what they will learn.

We know that infants and very young children learn at rapid rate, way beyond what is learned in later life, at university and as ones ‘career’ develops.

It stands to reason that this learning ability is a biological imperative. The child in nature has much to learn, much that is essential for self-reliance and thus survival or as I like to say ‘thrivival’, and not a huge amount of time to do it in. Can it be that natures learning driver is pleasure, or ease or an aura of empathy?

What is obvious to me, and to many others, is this : this mode of learning cannot be improved in any way by any artifice!

Typically indigenous peoples children are fully competent by age 6.

That is to say they are no longer utterly dependent and are considered an asset to their community. It is common for older children to care for the younger children, and there is much learning that is passed from child to child, rather than from adult to child. That adult to child sharing comes later, as the child approaches young adulthood.

To give you an idea of just how much a typical indigenous person will learn, I have seen estimates of a comparison of the botanical knowledge of a rain forest dweller compared to that of a European university trained botanist. The estimate suggests that the indigenous forest dweller contains the equivalent of 35 botanists with 15 years experience each!

That goes way beyond anything we in the West now consider an ‘expert’ or’ virtuoso’. Who is learning what? What is being taught?

Given this amazing learning ability and the imaginal intentional capacity of the natural human being, what are the implications for the natural child in a typical industrial society school environment?

Immediately arises the question of how much time does a child spend in a school environment as opposed to the real world (which is where the natural child’s learning is logically based)?

What does the loss of that real-world learning mean for the natural child being westernised, industrialised?

Given the general tendency within indigenous peoples to respect the unique personal entity, to embrace diversity and independence along side interdependence, what does the current practice of the 'teaching' of ‘belief systems’ imply for the natural child? And what does that imply for society?

The Roots of Modern Compulsory State Education

To answer these questions, in the context of a western styled education, one has to go to the roots of that system and seek out the inspiration for it. John Taylor Gatto has done that in great detail in his phenomenal work, “The Underground History of American Education”. I will give a brief description here, culled from his book.

The initial inspiration for Western Mass Schooling, or Compulsory State Education, came from observations ,by the British Empire in India, of the Hindi Rote System of education devised for the lower classes within the Hindi system. It was an Anglican Military Chaplain who first observed and understood how this system worked. His name was Andrew Bell.

What he saw and understood was that by gathering the children into large groups, where they had to learn drills by rote, where corporal punishment was widely used, where there was a number of powerful external imperatives to show that one had learned, (could repeat the scriptures, perform the rituals, read the texts, understood one's place in Hindi Society, embodied the concepts of class and so on) the Hindi Caste system had created a psychologically solid state and class structure that had endured for thousands of years, and had resisted the British in spite of the British technological superiority in sea faring and in warfare.

Indeed there was meeting of minds in that the elites of both cultures recognised each other, and thus the British Raj, an accommodation of equals, both ruling their respective masses. The older was to refine the younger. And this was driven largely by commercial interests.

The Hindi Class System

An ancient civilisation, one which had propsered peacefully for millenia, The Political Structure of the Hindi Caste system, at the time of the English invasion of India, looked a bit like this :

Top 5% of three groups : in Order of Power : Brahmin's (priests and the professions), Warriors and Administrators, Merchants and Land Cultivators

Lower 95% of two groups : Menials, and Untouchables.

The Brahmin's ensured that the warriors, administrators and the bulk of the leaderships received a diluted insight into the drivers of this system, so that they alone retained overall control.

The lower 95% received the mass schooling, administered by teachers, who drilled student leaders, who then drilled hundreds of students, in groups of ten or so, all of this in large single rooms. The entire operation of each school was directed by a single Brahmin.

And all this because the belief systems were so entrenched by the time the child was 7 or so, ‘hardwired’ if you will, the overall system of the Hindi centralised power was secure.

“The entire purpose of the Hindu (Western Compulsion) Schooling was to preserve the class system.”

At the time there was no formalised education in the British Empire, apart from the few elite schools and colleges. The peasant yeomanry were to a large degree self educated. Home schooled. The recent move from peasant yeomanry to factory and mine worker had transformed the British Empire, though there was stiff resistance to this move, as the yeomanry/peasant came from a background of liberty and dignity. The Luddites were literate and clearly understood the what the coming factory system implied. The loss of their lands via The Enclosure Acts was a coercive move, designed to drive them into factories. Read E E Thompson's fine work "The Making of The English Working Class" for a detailed look at who, how and why this process developed. One of the most striking aspects of this was the way Methodism dove-tailed with the interests of the factory owners in conditioning compliant factory workers to acceptance of their lot as good!

The first expression of this kind of schooling arose from a complete mis-understanding , and can be found in the Lancaster Schools of England. Joseph Lancaster, a Quaker, was inspired by an account written by Bell in 1797 of the Hindi system. Bell had made it clear that such a system was an effective impediment to learning, and created in it’s subjects a docility perfectly suited to mass production labour. Lancaster missed this, and concluded that it would be cheap way to awaken intellect in the lower classes. A classic case of a genuine do-gooder who missed the point completely.

Sparta : The Legend of the 300

The rest as they say is History. The History of Compulsory State Education Systems, … Do not confuse the system with the people on the ground, and their varying motivations. Like all centrally managed industrial processes the Education System depends utterly upon predictability. Predictable processes, predictable results, predictable products. And management ignore the effluent, the waste, they hide it from view, they dump it or they recycle it. They get state subsidies to deal with the waste?

Business psychology. Bullying. Quite not the exciting feel of the 'illuminati' etc etc.... Banal truth.

I would add here that the inspiration for Western Military Training came from the legendary Spartan Culture, and within that the concept of the militarisation of an entire culture was perfected. This was what drove the tiny Prussian State from near collapse, to become one of Europe's most feared fighting machines and thus a mighty Empire. That was where the first 'kindergartens' were crafted. The logic was impeccable. And it was the Prussian system that refined Compulsory State Education as we know it. It was American, French, German and English Coal and Steel Barons, and their paid Educators who were most inspired by the Prussian Military success at Waterloo.

I highly recommend J T Gatto’s work. He unveils much about the history of the project for a world wide state sponsored system of compulsory education for the masses, and it has ever since defined the nature of our society and it’s ills. Gatto's work will both shock and reward the reader many, many times.

Implications

So now that we have looked to the core inspiration, we can ask what are the implications for a natural child in a typical western school environment? Lets take a look at what happens to that child.

1. They are cut off from the real world experience, from the wider community and segregated from their parents.

2. They are forced into un-natural groupings, according to age and ‘ability’ to conform.

3. They are required to ‘learn’ what they are told to learn, which really means to memorise texts provided by the teachers, who have been given these texts by other unseen administrators of the system.

4. Failure to learn leads to punishment.

Early schooling is about learning to respond appropriately to authority. Obedience is inculcated, and becomes hard-wired in the first three years of primary school, as a direct result of' schooling'. Irrespective of how kind the teacher, how colourful the class room, the responses to authority are learned and internalised, and remain throughout the child's 'education' and into adult life. (These days the State wants your children even earlier!)

Thus the child learns that his or her own interests do not matter unless they get approval from the teachers. Their parents, having been through the same process, continue the training at home, unaware of what they are doing, innocently drawn into this process, because they are for the most part unaware of these processes.

Under these circumstances, the child will therefore of course choose an interest to follow within the scope of what is offered, this in order for the psyche to survive, and will become ever more dependent upon external approvals.

The child will have to become devious, self-limiting and reactive to external cue driven stimuli because they are expected to NOT MAKE MISTAKES, (such is the nature of rote learning) and what we know from nature is that making a mistake, observing it and correcting it, (an internal feedback loop) is an essential part of the natural learning process. Once that is disabled, then self motivated learning is all but impossible.

Conditioning and Control

All of this conditions the child in ways that make them ‘ideal’ for working in factories and bureaucracy's. Both are situations that demand a certain 'inhumanity' of the worker or clerk. Boxes must be ticked, time cards stamped, targets met. The stick is the possible loss of one's job... the carrot is 'security'. An ability to shut down key feeling centres is the core ability sought by corporations, military and police forces and bureaucracies.

The childs teachers and the childs parents have all been through and accepted this system, and this further isolates the child, for there is no-one to talk to who understands what is happening.

Those that ‘do not fit in’ or give up are then channelled towards unskilled labour or roles such as the rank and file of the military and the police. The system has a use for all.

And then finally there’s those who rebel, or those who become severely damaged by this system and thus become ‘drop-outs’ , whose chances of getting a ‘good job’ are diminished … they are demonised, and held up as a frightening example to the others.

Of course this process has varying rates of success....

Not everyone is equally effected. Some escape. Officers and Political Leaders, those who do not escape, are most often drawn from the better schools and colleges, or from a carefully screened few who work their way up the ranks, each move up being dependent upon a demonstrable willingness to comply with the directives of the system.

Meaning

In essence this is all about the control of meaning, of replacing inner meaning with received meaning, thus shutting the gate on the possibility of inner meaning arising as a threat to the established meaning. What this means is that the children develop belief systems about their abilities, about their place in society and indeed about their society itself (these beliefs are embedded in the texts of the subjects they are taught/forced to learn in school) by constant repetition. These beliefs become hard wired, neural pathways, and become a sort of ersatz identity, one that is defensive and quite resistant to alteration - held in place by fear.

And that is the nature of belief systems, state and commercial control, in a nut shell.

Protest as A Safety Valve

That is why 20 million taxpaying adults will allow a Government to rip them off, time and time again, to send their sons and daughters to war, to manufacture and then drop bombs on other peoples who have been demonised in media and statements by politicians who know the depth of the conditioning, given their role in that conditioning process, all this in spite of a nagging sense that somehow it’s not right!

This is why some people will read one newspaper and others another, and they will sit in a pub, or on a TV panel, or in a Legislative Assembly and debate the issues, repeating what they have read, thinking all the time that their debates are genuinely based upon their own unique understandings and particular viewpoints, rather than share experienced knowledge culled from the wider world and information they have gleaned for themselves so as to enlighten each other. In debates, the winner takes all!

This is why people with strong beliefs are often impervious to anything that counters the basis for or adherence to those beliefs. This is why so many people fail to engage their hearts and minds with the increasingly urgent issues we are all faced with.

This is why the ‘new age’ leads to ideologues, fantasists and sectarian divides, because of this mode of reading and repeating what one has read. Original thinking is all but obliterated, and where it exists, it is limited to ‘invention’, ‘fashion’, ‘art’ and literature and corralled into a world that is carefully structured by this whole process. Thus the majority of people become mere repositories of belief.

TV and Advertising work because of this very fact.

Processed and less than optimum foods don’t help matters either.

A Violent System

What has to be understood is that this system was imposed, is still imposing itself and is inherently violent - as is the nature of the city state and industrialism as we know them. The natural child is robbed of his or her innate sensory acuity, and is practically blinded by this process, made emotionally blind because the child has to suppress his or her natural anger at this imposition in order to survive.

On top of this, parenting practices handed down over the years, from the elites, have made violence an acceptable mode of training. As Alice Miller points out a child who has been beaten or humiliated all the while being told by those they are dependent upon, those whose love they require for their own psychic development,’that this is for your own good’ must believe that admonishment, and will in turn do the same to their own children.

It was in 1998 that corporal punishment was outlawed in English Schools. At the same time, to counter that, increased testing was introduced - and we know that this increased testing has not led to an increased intellectual ability in our children. Schools were driven to meet targets in order to secure funding, and so the teachers role become that of a trainer for testing, rather than an educator. The system is designed so that tinkering with it appears to bring novel change, yet the core underlying dynamics remain in place and the power structures retain their over arching power.

This is what the various mainstream movements for peace, for liberty, for ecologically sound cultures have failed to grasp - that this conditioning permeates our society, creates a mass emotional blindness, and is the basis for all the violence of states, corporations, warlords, wifebeaters, thugs and bullies. and the tacit compliance of ordinary people. And unless unravelling this conditioning process is included in the work of these movements, up front and in yer face, it is unlikely that they will be successful.

The issues are all encapsulated in this : that the adult world manipulates the minds and hearts of children for their desires and wants, irrespective of the inherent, natural and essential psychic needs of the child.


End that condtioning, and much of the violence of states etc will vanish, as people grow up with their empathy intact, as people refuse to comply, refuse to accept the justifications and adverse behaviour of Governments, of the Military Industrial Complex, of the Establishment. End that conditioning, let the children learn as naturally as they can, and they will find the solutions - as Einstein noted "“We can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.”" and "Intellectual growth should commence at birth and cease only at death”

Yes we can, and only we can do it!

If all this seems a bit too much or unlikely, than don't take my word for it. Explore the issues I have highlighted, do your own research, check in with your own experiences and inner sensing, and decide for yourself.



A spontaneous perfomance that attempts to frame some of these ideas for an audience





Kindest regards

Corneilius

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



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THE NATURAL CHILD : what every child needs!

THE EXPECTATIONS OF EVERY CHILD



The expectations of the natural child are to be loved, to be recognised as a unique being, to be seen as a valid being with feelings and sensings that no one need fear or challenge.

The natural child expects to meet competent adults who know what they are doing, who are integrated in harmony with the environment, who have mastered their own being and who behave with a deep respect.

The natural child expects to explore freely and to learn about the world he/she is born into.

The natural child expects to be able to learn from his oe her own experiences, and from older children, as much as the adults.

To the extent that these inherent expectations are met or not, and to the extent that the natural child is coerced or not, these factors will determine the psychological balance of the child and of course the adult the child grows into.

And an adult world that does not meet those expectatitons is the result of those adults having not met with their inherent natural expectations. For most this process is unconscious, and thus the cycles are repeated and as the saying goes ' we do not learn from history'....

Well then, enough is already far too much. Start now.

You can explore the nature of adverse systemic conditioning with these resources :


Alice Miller
www. alice-miller.com
David Smail
www.davidsmail.freeuk.com
John Taylor Gatto
www.johntaylorgatto.com
John Holt
www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Holt_(educator)
Paulo Freire
www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paulo_Freire


You can explore these themes with your heart, with a ruthless self honesty and by talking to and really listening to very young children .... ideology is of no use here, and neither is religion.

Break the cycles, see through your conditioning, only you can do the work that must be done for fre your mind and your heart.

There is nothng you can buy, steal or take that will open the fullest bliss of a life lived as life intends.

Kindest regards

Corneilius

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



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I Saw Vishnu

Here's a song I love to sing.

It's a call to all the religions to unite as one. It is my sense of  the wonder of being a living being, expressed in diverse complementary ways.... it's a call to revere each other and it's my claim that life is, for me, in spite of all I have lived through, so much better than anything the religions say the heaven or the after life holds for us. The idealised future is not as important as the peaceful present as a continuum.

 

There's also a message to our leaders to nurture the children of Gaza, that they might sing, dance and play with their neighbours. What possible objection could they raise to that suggestion?

 Kindest regards

Corneilius

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

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Dear BBC .... from an appalled viewer ...

This is the (spell checked version - I was so incensed I sent it off with a few typos) text of a letter I sent to the BBC, after reading this :

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7846150.stm

--------------------------

To Helen Boaden, Peter Horrocks and Richard Sambrook

I was one of many people who spent many hours watching coverage of the recent war in Gaza, partly to witness what was transpiring, partly to witness the way this terrible crime was covered and reported, noting very early on that the BBC was ever so careful to refer to the war as a 'conflict', and without saying so directly, and by continued use of the word 'conflict', even as children were murdered, as UN buildings destroyed, and as White Phosphorous Weapons were used, thus implying that the 'conflict' was equal sided in terms of responsibility for what was happening in Gaza.

The historical record, known at the time, shows that Israel planned this war back in March, 2008, that Israel had broken the cease fire, that Hamas had all but stemmed the rocket attacks on Israeli towns (they were reduced to 3 a month during this cease-fire period ... not a 100% success, though surely enough to warrant negotiation....)

Because of this I also watched coverage on other channels, to compare the way the war or 'conflict' as you would have it was being reported. The stark contrast between the BBCs coverage and that of Al Jazeera, and others was stark indeed. I feel very, very angry about this.

Then I learned that a formal request was made to the BBC, by The Disasters Emergency Committee (DEC), an umbrella organisation for 13 aid charities, for air-time to broadcast an urgent and humane appeal for support and funds to aid the stricken citizens of Gaza, during and after the recent war.

Apparently the BBC saw fit to refuse this request!

On the grounds of preserving the BBCs record of impartiality, and the spurious notion that there were questions as to the safety of providing aid during the war!

I am utterly appalled that the BBC acted in this way.

You, and the BBC in general, by acting as I have outlined, have added grave insult to profound and deeply ugly injury. You have besmirched the very concept of public service. You have offended the very notion of accurate and unbiased reporting. You have failed your mandate and abrogated your profound responsibility, and done all of this willfully.

To go further, the BBC has devoted hours upon hours of time to the US Presidential Inauguration, with hours of sugary coverage of Obama's carefully edited life story, in what amounted to nothing less than a PR campaign on his behalf, with little in the way of sound critical analysis of the sordid role the US Government has played in the Gaza war, and the fact of Obama's silence on the matter.

You, and the combined senior management of the BBC, are in my eyes, complicit with the US Administration, as you were in the run up to the illegal wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Under International Law and UK National Law, specifically The International Criminal Court Act 2001, the BBC's actions amount to 'conduct ancillary to the commission of war crimes', and you will be held accountable.

Yours etc

Corneilius Crowley


----------------------------


Kindest regards

Corneilius

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



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Obama, Hope, War and the Weather

With regards to Obama and HOPE I would like to make this point.

There are, in our world, two lobby groups - the political elites (including the corporations, banks) and the media, and then there's us, the people. We the people are by far the most powerful of these groups, given that we pay the governments wages.... and lots of us work for the government (public servants). They however are by far the most consistent, in terms of a willingness to keep doing what they do, and too bad if we are in the way - collateral damage, so to speak (which is, as we know, quite acceptable to those who launch wars).

The state of play is such that there is no time to wait and see how our Governments and their backers respond to the deeply felt need to act, thus we must start to PUSH real hard to do more than merely influence Government - we must direct it or subvert it. Non-violently of course!

We must do everything we can to shift POWER away from the executive, back to the grass roots.

So here's a critical analysis of my won, flawed as it is, which I would like you to comment upon, of the climate change mainstream movement that ties in most of the issues facing all of us. War and Climate Change are not seperate issues, but inextricably intertwined.

---------

1. Hey folks, geuss what! THE Climate changes. Always has and always will. Because of what we call natural dynamic equilibrium. A finely tuned balancing process that ALL LIFE ON EARTH IS ENGAGED IN. Fine.

2. Did you know that the billions of industrially farmed animals, (10 billion are slaughtered annually for the US) market fed on soy/grain processed foods, for which their stomachs are, in evolutionary biological terms, unprepared for, fart quite alot more than they would if they were grazing. They fart Methane. In fact they fart so bad, so frequently they have to be treated with medicines to stay alive.

Lots of methane! Lots of medicines. Someones making a killing.... excuse the pun.

Can you imagine what it's like to live with constant farting, just how uncomfortable that might be?

And in the USA where the car is king, the car is responsible for 3-4% of greenhouse carbon type gas emissions... Methane produced by the aformentioned murdered beasties accounts for 20% of carbon greenhouse gas emissions.

3. NOBODY in the mainstream climate change movement or in the IPCC is talking about this....( not true .... the chair of the IPCC Dr, Rajendra Pachauri,a vegetarian urges that we drastically reduce meat consumption, for all the above reasons and for human health reasons to....)

4. The bulk of the maisntream talk is about fossil fuels, plastic shopping bags, energy wastage etc etc and the suggested alternatives are green fuels, 'renweable energy', swiutching off at the powerpoint, and eco shopping bags. All useful, yet I have this nagging feeling......hmmmmmmm.

5. Did you know that the invisible 'externailsed' costs of manufacturing a car are in the region of ten to fifteen time the $ cost of the fuels used to power those cars ... and NO REMEDIAL action is being taken to deal with those costs, in environmental terms - such as loss of habitat, pollution, loss of livelihood for indigenous peoples, soil depletion, flooding etc etc etc... AND GREEN FUELS AIN'T GONNA MAKE ANY DIFFERENCE OTHER THAN MORE DEFORESTATION and NOBODY on the IPCC is talking about this (THE EXTERNALISED COSTS) either!

6. The single biggest activity our culture has engaged in since the time of the Babylonians is, along with WAR and SHOPPING, DEFORESTATION so as to create farmland, and in particular commodity crops - tea,sugar cane, cotton, flax, wheat, barley etc etc....

7. SO.. why not employ millions of people to plant premaculture type forests, for harvestable local food, for materials and for the animals to have some home again! Good work, healthy work, great fun, even children could get in on it!

Why not?

It's not going to be promoted by Government or Corporations - Because there is no easy PROFIT to get from it, thats why.

8. NOBODY in the mainstream or in the IPCC is talking about this....

9. The 'technological fixes' will of course be touted as the way out because those can be a source of profits....... as long as we can continue to work for others and shop to self medicate the psychic pain of being made dependent ...... instead of being self-reliant living creatures of Earth.

10. SO TO ALL CLIMATE CHANGE ACTIVISTS - WOULD YOU PLEASE STOP THINKING WITHIN THE LIMITED CONCEPTS THAT YOU HAVE BEEN FED TO THINK WITH, AND THINK WITH YOUR HEARTS AND YOUR INNER INTELLIGENCE.

11. (an extra free point, becuse I care) .... re point 10 .... NOBODY in the mainstream or in the IPCC is talking about this....

and finally

One other salient point - WE MUST STOP INDUSTRIALISED WAR as a prerequisite to any other changes.... because WE CAN, and THIS IS NON-NEGOTIABLE...

We need to do this because we know the harm it causes, because unless we stop this fighting we cannot ever hope to co-operate, and if we do make this happen, then those who are at the hard and bloddy end of the wars will see that WE MEAN WHAT WE SAY and that we're not doing this simply because we are fearful and wish to preserve our fat life-styles, by greening our 'economies' rather than changing the way we do things.

-------------------

ps :

"Hardly any of the 'symptoms' of psychological distress may correctly be seen as medical matters. The so-called 'neuroses', 'psychoses' and related forms of suffering 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."

From David Smail..... (see my posting below ..... "Power, psychological distress and Society"

and pps : I have a new video out of a song called "I saw Vishnu" recorded live in Brighton, it's on youtube, facebook and myspace..

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=k2JWV9QRwc8


Kindest regards

Corneilius

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



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Power, Gaza, indifference and compassion

To those who claim that Hamas or any of the resistance groups of the Palestinian nation (who are as the Maquis in France were to the German Occupiers in WWII) are equally to blame for the current war in Gaza I say this. 


When you live on the land, and eat of it’s fruits, drink it’s water, breathe it’s air, excrete your waste (which is manure more than it is waste, it is the return of what is not required, for re-use) you are truly made of that land, therefore you identify with that land and the land owns you more than you own it. 

That is why the Israeli Government pushed the settlement of occupied and annexed lands - they understand the power of that connection to land, to place that is built up by those who work land, whose food, water and air feeds and holds them. 

That’s a thing one protects to the end. The Palestinians in Gaza, once lived in what is now called Israel, and they ate of the land, they drank it’s water, tended the farms and olive groves, the shat on the ground and breathed it’s air - and the land owned them. 

They had been there a long time, time enough for each rock, each blade of grass, each olive tree to be embedded in the specific consciousness of their very lives, and their culture. 

The Palestinians were forced ( like may others in other placers throughout ‘history’ ) starting in 1947, to move from those lands, lands they had lived on for many, many generations, land they were deeply embedded in. Violently. 

Extremely violently. 

By the British Empire and the UK Government and by the Israeli Government. One a proxy for the other. Such is history. 

That violence unresolved, ignored, suppressed begets yet more violence is the dynamic the civilians of these lands are caught up in. Them and their children. And it is Governments that carry out the bulk of the violence. Both the occupiers and the occupied. 

This is the core issue regarding the specifics of the Israeli/Palestine War. 

For many people in the Western urban civilisation, this sense of land, this visceral connection to that which holds life, to that which sustains ones community, is an alien concept. 

For these people this natural relationship is no longer relevant, and is replaced by Nationalism or Ideology, concepts that are abstractions of reality, that exist merely to justify the concepts of centralised power and the ‘management of society’ which have grown out of the European led Industrial Revolution and for which more people have died needlessly, violently than any other single causative factor over the past 2000 years.


Thus the rootless well-schooled urban population fall prey to clever propaganda, and rarely if ever, look any deeper into the problem. If the Times/Sun says it, then it is! This illusion is being finally being dismantled by the net, and independent news outlets such as Al Jazeera, Democracy Now, The Real News, Indymedia and others are providing a much needed public service, funded by grass roots funding. 


So much for State Public Broadcasting! There is much activity around the world across a wide range of areas that is exploring the nooks and crannies of the SYSTEM OF POWER and day by day revealing the agenda of the system, POWER and it’s drivers, as well as working on the psychological and physical processes and memes that have been put in place to support the POWER and protect POWER from dissent and non-compliance. 


 The activities of the militant wings of Hamas are the actions of a desperate few, for whom the burden of daily humiliation, slaughter and indifference (on the part of the 'international community') have become too much to bear. 

That the bulk of Palestinians do their best to be good mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters, lovers and good citizens, good doctors, good teachers bears testament to the resilience and innate good-will of people. 

If only that were mirrored by those who claim the leadership roles. If only. 

To those who support the claim that Hamas or any of the resistance groups of the Palestinian nation (who are as the Maqui's in France were to the German Occupiers in WWII) are equally to blame for the current war in Gaza I say this. 

You have been conditioned to accept that others submit to the unacceptable. 

Get over it! 


 Kindest regards Cornelius Do what you love, it's your gift to universe
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Real Courage ........under fire!

I was sent this video : watch and learn.



http://december18th.org/

Kindest regards

Corneilius

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



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You Have To Be Asleep

To believe in The American Dream.

The contrast between Ban KI Moons address today from the ruins of the UN Food Distribution Centre in Gaza and Barak Hussein Obama's inaugural speech was clear.

The former expressed a profound loss of words to describe his feelings as he started to take in the full extent of the destruction wrought by the Israeli Military upon a civilian population in crowded into a tiny patch of land, a military that is funded and fully supported by the Government that President Obama now leads.

There was no attempt by Ban Ki Moon to grandstand the occasion, no attempt at hyperbole.

Obamas speech raised less cheers than his actual arrival on the podium, indicating the gulf between hope and real-politik and while replete with well delivered platitudes such as " for those who seek to advance their aims by inducing terror and slaughtering innocents, we say to you now that our spirit is stronger and cannot be broken; you cannot outlast us, and we will defeat you" : words that the Palestinian People might well utter in reply to the US abstention at the UN Security Council from a vote censuring the Israeli assault upon Gaza, a few weeks ago, even as their homes were being destroyed, only to be followed, day slater, by the destruction of the UN safe havens they were sheltering in!

Early days, give the man a chance - well he had his chance and he chose to remain silent! And he has often stated his support for Israel alongside his condemnation of 'terrorism' and of Iran. He, the leader of a nation that has directly and indirectly murdered 1.3 million Iraqis, not to mention the afghans, vietnamese, chileans, bolivians, peruvians, indonesians and countless others who have died by US made weaponry, weapons whose triggers were pulled by US/UK proxie Governments!

You have to be asleep to believe in the American Dream!



Kindest regards

Corneilius

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



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POWER, Psychological Distress and Society

"Hardly any of the 'symptoms' of psychological distress may correctly be seen as medical matters. The so-called 'neuroses', 'psychoses' and related forms of suffering 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."


My Comments :

That adverse POWER, when exercised over any other living being, is at the roots of psychological and much physical distress should be blindingly obvious.

Recent events in Gaza are surely evidence enough, given the bland platitudes of political leaders, the cowardice of mainstream media, the bigotry of various citizens and the willful ignoring (verb) of human suffering by these various actors, not to mention what we know of our history and of the genesis of and use of so-called 'scriptures' as tools of control, rather than inspirational texts.

Yet all too often that is not the case!

What in the name of all that is good and beautiful that is of life is going on here?

Education, Psychiatry, Religion, Economics and Ideology as we know them in our society all share this quality of the exercise of adverse power over others. Of ignoring the true and terrible consequences of adverse POWER.

The process of denying a child the responsibility for and expression of her or his true feelings is the basis for all of the above, and in my mind, is the basis for all that is corrupt in our world. Corrupt in this context means isolated from the dynamic equilibrium inherent in what we call nature.

That dynamic equilibrium is at the core of the adpative ability of natural beings - an ability to read intelligently the multiple changes of any environment so as to retain optimum living balance. This implies an innate feedback process of cognitive understanding in order to function. That this exists and permeates all living systems is understood by science (at last), has been understood by indigenous peoples for millenia and is probably understood by all life forms - the indigenous peoples have said time andf time again that their knowledge of herbs, of plant and animal life comes direct from those life forms.

We know, for example, that there are 14,550 natural varieties of apple indigenous to England - that speaks volumes to the specificity of adaptation to locale, precise adaptation to subtle changes in environemnt that occur as the land flows. Similar variations account for the immense bio-diversity of the rain forests etc etc and that variety also affords these living systems their fundamental resilience.

Adverse POWER by it's very nature is an impediment to that feedback process. De-forestation as opposed to harvesting what has fallen. One cannot eat the fruit of a felled tree or nor the berries of a burned bush.

And that is at the core of the problems we are all faced with. POWER most often assumes that because others do not speak POWERS language that POWER is somehow superior. That is the meaning of 'experts' such as Lawyers, Priests, Rabbis, Imans, Psychiatrists etc etc. When in fact it is POWERS inability to empathetically connect and integrate feedback that is the problem.

We learn at home, in school, in our temples and at work that feedback is not appreciated - don't talk back! - and that such honest feedbcak can in fact be life/career threatening. And so we shut down that process within ourselves, and that leads directly to distress. Blocking our own internal flows of sensory information is deeply harmful.

The solution to this problems is so simple that it is overlooked by most of us. Certainly those in POWER, denigrate this approach in favour of over-complicated jargonised instituionalised narratives that are designed to "blind us with brilliance of baffle us with bullshit" and thus retain that adverse POWER. Psychiatry, Pharming, 'Experts' etc etc......... all wish to justify their positions......

The solution, as I see things, is ruthless self-honesty in the personal, familial and societal arenas of our lives and within our culture, founded upon an understanding and experience of Love as a joyful awareness of the wonder of being a living creature. Such an awareness can also be described as an expression of sensory acuity. It would naurally extend itself to all life.

Sensory acuity based around joyful awareness will always be sensitive to even the most subtle changes in the environment, and that in turn enables cognitive intelligent responses to those changes - sensory acuity is 'de facto' a neccessity so that this essential feedback loop process can function.

Here's a link to an article that I found useful, regarding the basis for a thankful life, written by Dr. Peter Breggin...

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dr-peter-breggin/fifteen-principles-of-lif_b_34782.html



Kindest regards

Corneilius

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



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Compulsory State Education exposed ........

The fundamentals of State Control and the true agenda of Compulsory State Education (schooling) are revealed by the following quotations

Charles Pierce, the eminence grise behind William James and John Dewey, architects of Compulsory State Education in the USA wrote :

“Let the will of the state act, then, instead of the will of the individual. Let an institution be created which shall have for its object to keep correct doctrines before the attention of the people, to reiterate them perpetually, and to teach them to the young, having at the same time power to prevent contrary doctrines from being taught, advocated or expressed.

Let all possible cause of a change of mind be removed from men’s apprehension. Let them be kept ignorant, lest they should learn of some reason to think otherwise than they do. Let their passions be enlisted, so that they may regard … unusual opinions with hatred and horror. Then, let all men who reject the established belief be terrified into silence….

Let a list of opinions be drawn up to which no man of the least independence of thought can assent, and let the faithful be required to accept all these propositions in order to segregate them as radically as possible from the influence of the rest of the world.”

Woodrow Wilson speaking to an audience of businessmen in New York City in 1909 :

“We want one class to have a liberal education. We want another class, a very much larger class, to forgo the privilege of a liberal education and fit themselves to perform specific difficult manual tasks.”

This is the technology of modern management ……this is the doctrine which drove William James in “Principles of Psychology” (1890), to assign habit-training, not intellectual development, the place of honour in schooling :

“Habit is the enormous fly-wheel of society, it’s most precious conservative agent. It alone is what … saves the children of fortune from the envious uprisings of the poor … it alone prevents the hardest and most repulsive (jobs) from being deserted. It holds the miner in his darkness. It keeps different strata of society from mixing.”

All of us who attended state schooling have been exposed to and conditioned to accept the imposed and limited ideas that are taught through that education, reinforced through the media and that underpin the success of marketing.

This is the core technology of psychological state control upon which the likes of Tony Blair, David Cameron and the leaders of Indusrty et al depend upon.

Of course they retain that other oh-so familiar stick, that of poverty, physical violence or imprisonment to curtail those few who escape this conditioning. That’s what the War Against Terror and the consistent attack on civil liberties is all about.




Reminding you and I that ‘we are either with us or against us”. And that there are penalties for non-compliance. You will be excluded!

With thanks to John Taylor Gatto, in whose most recent book, "Weapons of Mass Instruction", I found these and other quotes and resources.

http://www.johntaylorgatto.com

Gattos book, "An Underground History of American Education" is published on-line at his website. In it he researched the international project to establish Compulsory State Education, from it's roots in the beginnings of the Industrial Revolution to the 21st Century.


Kindest regards

Corneilius

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



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Right or wrong, what works, works!

The factual recent history of Palestine is clear. 


 Utilising standards current in International Law, the Israeli Government is the aggressor, the US/UK Governments their supporters, the Palestinian and Israeli civilians are the victims, and the UN and the rest of us appalled and somewhat confused bystanders. Let me help clear some of the confusion. This situation has little to do with Religion, and a lot more to do with colonialism, conquest, Empire.

The Palestinians are 'guilty' of violent resistance. A somewhat lessor crime perhaps, though current International Law allows for armed resistance to military occupation by foreign powers, from invasion right through to departure. Thus guilt is the wrong word, even though I detest violence, the intentional causation of harm to anyone. 


 This aggression we are talking about is the aggression that is driven by power politics, often using religion or race as a 'white phosphorous" smoke screen. 

 Power politics is essentially about adverse control over the lives of others considered 'inferior' by those exercising that power - the power of life and death, full dining, charidee or scraps. 

 One can say that those who make the decisions to exercise that power in that any harmful way are culpable for they have transgressed the natural state of welfare and it is correct action, on the part of a mature adult, to confront that head-on... 

 We know that by conditioning children, such governments condemn those children as parents to become the instruments of that conditioning, innocently harming their own beloved children. 

 It is correct action, on the part of a mature adult, to confront that head-on. That means making accurate assessments - not to be confused with 'judging' which in common use means to see the other as inferior. To assess means to call the behaviour what it is, distinguishing that from the person. 

 A person thus confronted who denies and/or shows no remorse has judged themselves in the eyes of those who confront adverse dysfunctional behaviour. 

 Within the so called mainstream Peace and Environment movements there is far too much proto-Christian/hippy-psychoblather about the 'ego' and 'judgement', way too much political correctness, essentially an unwillingness to call it for what it is. 

If you feel it, then you feel it, so say it... Otherwise it's fear! 

 If only right and wrong was so easy to see…. If only........ 

Many people express this sentiment. Here's my take on it, for what it is worth. 

 Take the side of the civilians on all sides, and oppose the military power on all sides. 

 But as to the question right and wrong, in Gaza, right now for example, it is the right to life that is being violated and in that the Israeli Government is behaving in a way that is clearly anti-life, and doing so in a well organised, mechanised, industrialised way. 

 Their propaganda machine is well served by our western media and by a lack of critical thinking and feeble sentimentality. 

 Have you seen or read any of the work by Derrick Jensen? He is right on the ball with this void of critical analysis. Worth a watch. 

 Here's a quote, in which he debunks survival of the fittest, elegantly and precisely - I suggest you read it out loud : 

 "Those creatures that have survived in the long run have survived in the long run; you don’t survive in the long run by exploiting your habitat; you survive in the long run by actually improving your habitat; that’s what salmon do, that’s what merganzers do, that’s what bears do, that’s what everybody does; except us." 

 Thus, my question is this : what exactly have the Israeli Government done to improve the habitat of the Palestinians? 

  Precision Munitions 

 And another aspect of this connection to habitat is that we do have an innate and precise sensory ability that allows us, if we chose to use it, to listen to and comprehend all the elements in nature, from clouds to oceans, from mountains to clay. 

 Our hearts are neurally set-up to receive and transmit electromagnetic communications. All living beings emit electromagnetic information. These are signature transmissions. This has been scientifically measured. We are talking KNOWLEDGE here. Fact. 

 The ancients all claimed that their plant knowledge and herbal lore came direct from the plants themselves. We laughed at them, patronised them, slaughtered them and took their lands. 

 We know that in swarms of bats, that their ability to fly in huge swarms, at high speed, comes from their rapid 'reactions' - each individual is acutely aware of the seven around him, and as they fly in formation,  their so-called 'reactions' are 14 times faster than the human brain can think. 

They are using electromagnetic info to co-ordinate their efforts. 

This happens in all swarms, flocks, shoals etc etc.. 

 A mechanical instinct, driven by trial and error rather than direct comprehension is simply too blunt to craft this level of finesse. They think faster than we can! 

 In school, empire school, the one most of us went to, I was told that the ancients learned what they knew by trial and error! Profoundly arrogant and a fatal flaw in our ‘civilisation’. Fatal. 

  Precision - Natures Weapon of Mass Interaction 

 The point being that each living entity has within its being the facility to discern clearly what is appropriate for it's well being and what is not, to communicate with other life-forms and to thus adapt to a changing environment that is in dynamic equilibrium. And it is that that is at the core of the amazing diversity, vast co-operation and deep balance of nature. 

And it’s abundance. This quality/ability is missing in Israeli/US/UK governance. By reducing things to mechanics in order to understand them in a laboratory one gains knowledge of a bit, only in the case of urban civilisation, to than lose contact with the whole being. 

 In order to justify that loss, in itself an act of incredible stupidity and a functionally fatal one at that, intellectual philosophers and religious leaders of the city civilisations who evolved using that 'scientific' methodology had to create a disconnect, and elevate them selves ABOVE nature. As did the Constantine, the first Imperial Pope
.
Nature does not do right and wrong, nature does what works and what works is co-operation. Everything in nature that is alive works. What does not work, dies. Every creature devotes a large slice of it's being to improving the environment it inhabits. 

Apart from civilised humanity. And that does not work. Neither is the Israeli aggression on the Palestinian people ‘working’. 

  It is an insanity to suggest that either ever was, is, or might be working. 

 Kindest regards 

 Corneilius 

 Do what you love, it's your gift to universe
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Alice Miller, Pedagogy and Foreign Policy

Nice Video outlining the basics of Alice Millers understanding of how child rearing practices govern foreign policy.... I kid you not!




Kindest regards

Corneilius

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



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The Roots of Violence

Nice Video outlining the basics of Alice Millers understanding of how child rearing practices govern foreign policy.... I kid you not! Watch it and make the link yourself!






http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C2uNfn_CtZw








And here's a fantastic short article covering the same ground, in a warm and touching, yet logically sound way.

http://knol.google.com/k/michael-pastore/the-mission-of-alice-miller/1g0dr1xj3zbds/4#


here's a part of it....

""Miller's argument, in The Truth Will Set You Free might be summarized as something like this:

1. Many adults manage their children with parenting and teaching methods which employ physical or emotional violence against the child.

2. Because of this violent treatment, the children grow up blind to the dangers of violent parenting, and out of touch with their true feelings and needs.

3. When these children grow to become teachers and parents, they will practice these same violent methods against their own children.

4. This cycle of "violence breeds more violence" can be broken, and abused adults can heal themselves and become nonviolent parents.

Miller begins by explaining, with many examples, how and why childhood reality is avoided "in six fields where we should expect precisely the opposite: medicine, psychotherapy, politics, the penal system, religion, and biography." ... Miller's next section, ‘How We Are Struck Emotionally Blind', offers an explanation for the remarkable and often-repeated story: "A father will beat his son and humiliate him with sarcastic remarks but not have any memory whatever of having been similarly humiliated by his own father.' ... In the third part of the book, Miller offers examples of courageous adults who have healed themselves despite long histories of parental abuse."


And another great video :



Short video outlining Alice Millers work and recent evidence to support it.



Pass this on!

Kindest regards

Corneilius

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



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From a man who knows War.....

Chris Hedges has spent 20 years covering wars.

In these video segments he describes the reality of war, noting the three types as civil wars, 'conventional' wars of army to army and militarised occupations by a foreign force.

He speaks to the reality of the casualties of war, (civilians, women and children predominate) and why the toll is so high in Iraq and Gaza and else where.

Eloquent, passionate without losing his centre, these ten minutes are worth watching to get an idea of the reality in Gaza, Iraq, Afghanistan and where ever occupations occur.

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=cL3ToWgtfDA - short introduction,

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=221047753114925234&hl=en - full lecture with questions

This kind of clarity helps cut through the propaganda, spin and outright lies which are disseminated via the mainstream media.

Hedges also makes the distinction between ‘killing’ and ‘murder’. Killing involves two armed sides hostile to one another.

Murder involves those who are armed versus those who unarmed, who pose no threat and who are simply I’n the way‘. Collateral Damage… is the euphemism now well worn and tattered.

Recently, currently in Gaza, we are being allowed to see the pictures of the carnage .... via the internet, youtube etc we are being allowed to sense the chaos and terror that missiles and automatic fire from an industrialised war machine inflict upon a civilian, urban area.

That same horror has been common place all over Iraq since March 2003. And the death toll is 1.2 million needless violent deaths amongst Iraqis, not to mention the woundings and trauma.

And who will help the Iraqis heal these wounds? Who speaks of this today? Why the silence?

How will this horror manifest in the following generations, in the psychology of the children of the traumatised and maimed Iraqis, Gazans, Afghans if there is no real resolution, no healing?

All of us have to think beyond the arguments of those who espouse violence, irrespective of their 'case' (' freedom fighters' et al) and argue the case for an outright ban by civilian populations on funding and industry for war or a military of any kind........ upto the right to hold national strikes to force this upon the political and corporate worlds - by right of the obligation and real need to defend civilians world wide from the degradation of war.


Kindest regards

Corneilius

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



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