Showing posts with label profit. Show all posts
Showing posts with label profit. Show all posts

Revisioning what 'profit' should really mean - by clarifying the central deceit of externalised costs.

Examining the concept and realities of  profit is a useful thought experiment.

Ordinary people, people like you and I, and especially the low income workers, who  make most of the real wealth in this world, through daily toil: every hour of our lives is equally precious. And yet the largest proportion of the wealth we generate is extracted and accumulated and used as a tool to dominate us. The poor are a permanent externalised cost of that extraction process. I think of that as a fundamental and abominable insult to the very gift of life itself.

How can wealth persuade poverty to use its political freedom to keep wealth in power? Here lies the whole art of Conservative politics in the 20th century."― Aneurin Bevan



These pre-conquest people live off the yield of the habitat, without harming it.

"Of the top 20 region-sectors ranked by environmental impacts, none would be profitable if environmental costs were fully integrated. Ponder that for a moment: None of the world’s top industrial sectors would be profitable if they were paying their full freight. Zero."

None of the world’s top industries would be profitable if they paid for the natural capital they use.




source : https://grist.org/business-technology/none-of-the-worlds-top-industries-would-be-profitable-if-they-paid-for-the-natural-capital-they-use/

In this article the author lays out some of the evidence that the institutionalised system of 'externalised costs' and the lack of proper regulation of industry is what 'creates' profits, rather than the efforts of workers, designers, inventors, investors, consumers or even market share.

"Here’s how those costs break down:

The majority of unpriced natural capital costs are from greenhouse gas emissions (38%), followed by water use (25%), land use (24%), air pollution (7%), land and water pollution (5%), and waste (1%).

So how much is that costing us? Trucost’s headline results are fairly stunning.

First, the total unpriced natural capital consumed by the more than 1,000 “global primary production and primary processing region-sectors” amounts to $7.3 trillion a year — 13 percent of 2009 global GDP.

In other words, Global Industrial Activity (GIA) is fundamentally biologically, environmentally and socially unprofitable. A damaged environment is a huge threat to the social reality of our human species.

The Trucost report can be read here.

All of it, 
Global Industrial Activity (GIA) as it is currently operating, is a deceit. A vast rip-off.

There is a way out of this awful situation, in which toxic outcomes are normalised and denied. The first step is to overcome the denial, to allow the truth to be seen and understood, and accepted. The second step is to seek to redesign all industrial activity in such manner that it does not cause such immense harm.

Cradle to Cradle

Cradle to Cradle Design is a design principle which can be applied to almost every production and usage system. 

A radical change in industry: a switch from a cradle-to-grave pattern  (landfill waste is a graveyard) to a cradle-to-cradle pattern.  This means rather than burying used, end of life consumer objects as waste, in landfills, avoid that entirely and ensure the outputs the and materials throughout production, use and end of life become 'nutrients' for more production.

This approach notes that the "reduce, reuse, recycle" methods currently being promoted, whilst useful still perpetuate the toxic cradle-to-grave strategy, because there is no point where the materials are reintegrated into production systems, to be used again, and that therefore more  radical changes need to be made.

Cradle to Cradle points towards the manufacture of products with the goal of upcycling in mind.

This vision of upcycling is based on a system of "lifecycle development" initiated by Braungart and colleagues at the Environmental Protection Encouragement Agency in the 1990s: after products have reached the end of their useful life, they become either "biological nutrients" or "technical nutrients".

Biological nutrients are materials that can re-enter the environment. 

Technical nutrients are materials that remain within closed-loop industrial cycles

The ultimate end point is a production system that generates 'no waste' - everything within the system can be re-integrated into nutrient and material systems. 

Cradle to Cradle can be applied to agriculture in the form of permaculture, re-genAg and other growing systems that lead to nutrient build up as a core part of food production practice at all stages.

The second and complimentary approach is to look again at profit, and imagine a more environmentally and socially adept meaning of the word, and the practice.

Profit.

I invite you to travel with me and examine the current concept of profit, and then follow me in redefining profit.  

I suggest we can do this by comparing the the realities of 'profit' with the realities of  'yield' in context as a living organism, a biological entity living within a biological environment, a habitat that is shared.

Profit is the excess money accrued after all acknowledged expenses are paid out. Capital is the build-up of excess to needs money, stored as a hoard of treasure, which generates it's own power, in that the holder can use that wealth to influence society as he or she, or it (an institution) pursues their own interest.

Yield is the total delivered by a biological process. A crop of rice harvested yields the food, and the stalk, the roots, all of which have their uses.

The very fact that I am alive and that I inhabit an environment that already contains organisms and processes that generate everything I truly need to live well - water, food, materials for shelter and clothing, metabolic organisms, etc - is an example of being nurtured by a yield.

I gain an immense benefit from the independent action of trillions of organisms, millions of processes, hundreds of thousands of dynamic interactions between the sun, water, weather, rock and soil. We all do. This is yield. It is not the same as profit that creates Capital, nonetheless we all profit from it.

Can I add to that benefit, in the sense of adding in a nurturant way to the whole, so that there is more benefit to go around? The biological yield is already immense, with very little in the way of externalised costs. There is no waste. The answer is, of course, that I can add to that benefit. If I chose to do so. My garden is permaculture garden.

You and I, we both gain immense benefit from the action of gazillions of organisms that process the  materials for life that we utilise. If we nurture all those processes and we add to the nutrient levels, then we are a better fit to the processing cycles, or patterns that already exist, out of which we have emerged.

The yield from the vast collective nurture of a habitat is a habitat full of living organisms whose individual and collective behaviour and action nurtures more life.   The yield is the whole, and it includes every individual participating in it. There is no excess to taken off and sequestered, hoarded, kept for exclusive use.

Evolution.

Evolution can be contextualised as the progression of that dynamic, by organisms that learn from their changing environment by engaging with it, learning within it, making adaptive changes as the environment changes.. This is what bacteria, viruses and all small single celled creatures do - they meet changes in the environment, and work out ways to deal with those changes to maintain living well in the environment.


Living well is creating more nutrients for living processes, building that nutrient richness, cycle upon cycle, minute by minute, day by day, year on year, across millions and millions of years.

The excess, the spare or the yield that is produced, the output, the material metabolised, altered and composted, the non waste of all these living creatures digestion, plus their bodies when they died, all of this feeding other life processes, building up richness of nutrients in the soil and throughout the habitat.

We are told that Oil and Coal are decomposed carbon from ancient microorganisms and trees, that have been processed over hundreds of millions of years.  Everything we see around us, even the invisible at depth, has links to nurturant processes.

Pre-conquest Nurture.

These people in the image are among the remaining traces of indigenous pre-conquest pre-industrial egalitarian peoples, our ancestors who walked across the all the lands of Earth, and who found the best places to thrive in. Our phenotype, our form, Homo Sapiens is 250,000 years old, and there are others like us, much, much older, dating back millions of years. All thrived and emerged from nurturant habitats.

These Egalitarian cultures existed and thrived cross the globe, producing tens of thousands of different language groups, an amazing diversity of cultures, sustained for many tens of thousands of years (Australian Aboriginals have a continued sustained diversity culture that is 60,000 years old) across diverse language and cultural groups, in almost every habitable place on Earth. 

We know that these cultures were very aware of their habitats, highly attuned to local dynamics and variations, gather from direct experience and observation of hundreds of generations.

We know that most practised an informal perma-cultural food plant tending, as well as hunting and foraging, most often around their living spaces, and along their track ways - these were cultures of nurturant behaviour.

They were everywhere, and they were long standing cultures even before the emergence of Civilisation Hierarchy Cultures. Profit was an alien concept in those cultures. Property was likewise an alien thing. We know the likelihood is these cultures were egalitarian, that they were not war like, that the default of the human species is healthy attachments, bonded relationships, creativity and co-operation.

Healthy human behaviour.

The point here is about relationships, it is about how all relationships are distorted by bullying within a culture of hierarchy of power and violence.

Who pays the costs, and who takes the profit?

Who pays the costs of violent hierarchy?

Bullying is not healthy.

Hierarchy of Power and Status is not healthy human behaviour.

The peoples, hundreds of millions, billions of people, (there have been a total of 1 billion plus Australian Aboriginal lives since they emerged in Australia 60,000 years ago)  like those in the image above, peoples that have probably never known poverty until others came to turn their forests and rivers and plains in to an income stream.

Abundance is the mandate across biology, thriving abundance rather than frequent scarcity.

Everything benefits. The whole is nurtured by all it's parts being nurtured.

Every living organism adds nutrient to the whole system, and all parts are connected.

The psychological difference between the Egalitarian Indigenous and the Hierarchical Civilised is that bullying and deceit is built into the Civilised Industrialised culture, in order to extract wealth which is the base of Power.

A different kind of profit.

So  let us move now,  from the forest and it's practical sharing ethic, to the urban civilisation and as we traverse, we remember to look again at what is profit, and what is theft.

Where is profit taken where harms caused remain unresolved?

Where is the thriving centre of the whole?

Welfare of all constituents is the primary defining characteristic in measuring  a true profit.

How the lived experience really is.

I suggest we re-define profit or reposition it as being the totality outcome of any activity, set as all human activity is, in the shared commons. From raw extraction to production, consumption and disposal.

So what would be considered 'profit' in terms of a healthy dynamic of urban civilisation infrastructure?

Accrued Benefits, Collective Profit

The collective profit from a national rail system is easy, cheap transport for the public which reduces the need for private cars. Plus the jobs it provides if the workers are respected, well paid and integrated into the management of the system as a social service. If it is efficient and allows people to stay connected, and people are happy using it, that too is the profit. It recycles all materials, runs on solar and other non extractive power generation systems so that it mitigates it's infrastructure costs over time.

The collective profit from a National Health System is healthy community and healed people, providing support where ill health occurs, with illness rates decreasing as healing skills and prevention advice advance, feeding into education and regulation systems to do more to prevent avoidable disease.
 
The collective profit in social care is the kindness of the care itself, the dignity and good humour of those who are vulnerable, to be safe, to feel cared for.  That being the case suggests the cost of appropriate training and the proper salary payment for service workers as a vocation should be prioritised, rather than management executive pay and shareholder dividend and 'market access'.

The collective profit from Nationalised Water is clean water, clean rivers, clean beaches, healthy wetlands.

No amount of money can replace or overprice the value of these human bio-logical social profits.

 Austerity is considered 'good for the Economy' - however Austerity causes harms which must be ignored, and thus can only be described as 'being good for the Economy' by becoming numbed to those impacts. That is psychopathy when it is institutionalised.

Anytime that profit or excess cash yield is taken out of the NHS whilst people remain unhealthy and unable to access the best care that is theft.

Anytime  money is accumulated and sequestered whilst so many families are too poor to afford Organic Clean Whole food there are multiple layers of harm being caused that could be avoided.

Anywhere there is toxicity that is not dealt with, from extraction through production and into usage and final disposal - that is not profit, it is theft.

All the financial profit generated and distributed to shareholders as dividend that does not include paying the full externalised costs, is theft, it is abuse, it is cruelty and it is criminal in nature and intent.

Getting poetic about it.

'The Profit' generated by any industry or business that causes pollution or harm, in any form, at any stage of production, use or disposal of product, is a deceit. Not all costs have been covered by the producer or consumer - others, all innocents. pay the price.



Remember that.


Polluting costs are paid, in the end, with widespread degenerative disease and  often the most painful deaths of millions of decent innocent people. Pollutions costs are often borne by our children's physical and psychological deformities. Pollution and Environmental degradation translates into life long insecurities for each successive generation of children, their future environment set on a precipice through the systemic abuse of power, which leads us all onwards towards an ever more degraded, disrupted environment, a toxic habitat.

GDP is Deceit.

GDP is the bribe we pay for accepting that Bullies Rule.

"covering the symptoms, rather than curing or preventing the illness."

Strategic policy.

Competing Powers is a culture, rather than The Human Condition - to my mind competing powers is a profound psychological sickness, a structured social pathology, an institutionalised bully logic.

Stupidity posing as clever is never intelligent.

Landing a human on the moon whilst bombing peasants in Vietnam is not a sign of progress nor is it a valid example of technological brilliance. It is clever, yes, but it is also incredibly stupid.

"The Profit generated by any industry or business that causes pollution or harm, in any form, at any stage of production, use or disposal of product, is a deceit. Not all costs have been covered by the producer or consumer - others, all innocents. pay the price."

War, Poverty, Racism, Misogyny, Power Disparity, Pollution.

These problems are all part of the Institutionalised Bully Culture behaviour dynamic.

Every hierarchy of violence and power is a Bully Culture.

Bully Culture is neither healthy nor natural - it is an unresolved traumatised psychology that has become institutionalised.

Bullies can only rule by violence or manipulation, never by genuine informed consent or choice.

How do healthy cultures become unhealthy cultures?

What happens to a culture to turn it from egalitarian co-operative to hierarchically violent?



Kindest regards

Corneilius

Thank you for reading this blog.

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

This blog, like all my other content creation work is not monetised via advertising. If you like what I present, consider sharing my content. If you can afford the price of a cup of coffee or a pint of beer/ale/cider for a few months, please donate via my Patreon account.

https://patreon.com/corneilius - donations gratefully received



On Big Business

A letter from Big Business urging George Osborne owards with the 'cuts'.


To all those who claim big business generates the taxes that the Government spends... WRONG.

Who buys the products with built in obselesence?

We do, consumers, families, on the pittance Big Business throws our way in compensation. Because we have no choice, as durable goods that last for many years are rare.

Who exposes their children to scientifically applied 'nagging' marketing?

We do, because there is no alternative. Big Business has seized all public space for it's propaganda. And is busily finding 'creative' ways to invade private space as well.

Who takes a slice of every transaction between food producers and our tables?

Big Business: through it's myriad of subsidiaries and shell companies.

Who makes processed foods that are a root cause of about 80% of degenerative disease, which costs the Health systems of all State so many billions - much of which is profit for those Big Business suppliers to State Health Systems..

Big Pharming. The simple and ugly elegance of this particular scam was outlined in some detail by Anne and Harvey Diamond in the early 80s in their soft-cover 'Fit for Life'. The data on this is now vast!

Who makes a profit out of 'care' and most often gets it badly wrong?

Private Care Homes. Who were foisted on our elderly, under the impression that private enterprise would upgrade the lived experience - well, Gerry Robinsons programme on that very subject last winter made it really clear that is NOT the case. And the Government chimed in with a policy that demanded that the elderly sell up and move into these homes (to fund the programme, thus converting their homes into someone elses profit)

Big Business functions to convert 'resources' into profits - the means to do this are the  sale opf mostly useless products and services, (80% of all consumer goods inthe USA are placed in a bin within 6 months of use - The Story of Stuff : http://www.storyofstuff.com/ ) and they are a morbid compensation offered to the majority in teturn for their toil in work that is not for their own benefit, and often not at all satisfying, psychologically, emotionally, spiritually.

The lack of adequate analysis and empathy in those who blow the trumprt of commerce is equal to those who blow the trumpet of what passes for corrupted Governance as we know it, be it centre, right or left - which is fundamentally the legalistic contractual licensing of Big Business to do as it will and earn those amassed profits at the expense of all but themselves, and the illegitimisation of any one who dissents and or provides an alternative vision of Society, and of course, with the added topping of  exercising that nasty urge to take an good hard kick at the under-dogs, the very much less well-off, the vulnerable, the damaged.

The unwillignness of Big Business and or Governance to honestly enagage with those alternatives in an open discourse on the best possible future for all our children belies the strength of their logic, practice and propaganda.

The truth is in this Society the many work for the opulence of the few, and the poor, damaged and vulnerable are fair game in the war to preserve comfort over dignity.

Big Bollocs! more like it. One has to have BIG BALLS of some kind to write such a letter under such circumstances where the people's debt is due to in large partt Government borrowing money from Banks to bail-out Banks, for conducting long term policies that have made nearly all people into debtors, finally stooping so low as to offer 'credit' to poor people in crap housing to buy the house and 'do it up', and than claiming that Society (apart from big business) and Nature must pay the costs, whilst the bankers suggest the price!

It's almost as good a con as the "God Loves you and HE NEEDS YOUR MONEY!" scam.

That both are frankly unbelievable is borne out by the formers imposition of it's creeds upon small defenceless chidlren, and in the latter case, by the walled enclaves and hired guns euphemistaclly called 'security contractors' of the super rich (Monsanto now OWNS  a good proportion of Xe, which was formerly known as Blackwater) and the existence of poverty itself.

Here's George Monbiots article on the list of quangos the media DID NOT Examine....





Kindest regards


Corneilius


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








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Empathy, Truth and Power - Nature, Church and State

Empathy and Power are two mutually exclusive realities. The exercise of power over others destroys innate empathy, transforming it at best to sympathy (charidee) and at worst it becomes  a form of 'intelligence' gathering, the kind sociopaths engage in order to exert greater control over those they seek to control. They call it knowing your adversaries 'weaknesses'. 


The recent elections in the UK are an example of that lack of empathy, in that the Illegal war in Iraq and Afghanistan is not an election issue, nor is the bail-out of the irresponsibly greedy investment bankers.

The 'deficit is however a very important issue because all parties are agreed on one thing: the debt or deficit MUST be paid, and it will be paid by the ordinary citizen!

Another example is the Roman Catholic Church's response to the witnessing of so many traumatised people, survivors of a world wide Institutional system of Residential Schools, a system that was and remains Policy; as was the landing of three Black Hawk helicopters of the US 7th Calvary on the sacred burial grounds of Wounded Knee last week. The same 7th Calvary that slaughtered 350 unarmed men, women and children and had the temerity to call that bloody event a 'battle' worthy of a battle pennant. The landing was touted as a 'peace offering'. 

Think on the reaction were some Germans to do something similar, and drive a few tanks into Treblinka by way of an apology!

If anything defines this 'civilisation' it is the almost complete lack of empathy more than any other single factor.

Canadian Oil Company, Talisman Energy, is currently attempting to invade the lands of the Achuar people, to exploit the 'resources' that lie under their land, land they have lived on, and eaten of, for tens of thousands of years. They are wedded to the land in ways few 'civilised' people understand. Talisman will utterly destroy that  relationship, and is supported by the Columbian State, a state that is also 'advised' by Tony Blair, who also 'advises' JP Morgan, UBS and Israel and the Palestinian People. Tony Blair is a Roman Catholic convert, a man who placed his hand on his heart at the Chilcott Iraq Inquiry earlier this year, and told the world that he sincerely 'believed' that the Invasion of Iraq, which was proven to be illegal, was the 'right thing to do.'

His lack of empathy for the 1.3 million Iraqis who have died violently, the millions of Iraqi orphans, the hundreds of thousands of seriously maimed children apparently makes him a good candidate to advise states and huge multinational banking corporations.

As regards the sociopathic gathering of intelligence, marketing targeting infants and young children is but one example. 

Another is the vast dataset of first contact writings that described the indigenous peoples who lived in and on the lands taken for the Church and various States over the past 600 years or so. The data shows that the vast majority were egalitarian, peaceful, stable societies. Those who recorded their observations, for the most part honestly, were not fully aware of the use to which those works would be put.

The history reveals the intent. That intent is proven by the ways in which the Australian, Canadian, Thai, North American, Columbian and many other Governments are treating the first peoples of those lands those States lay claim to, even today,even as I write people are being killed for 'progress' and 'souls are being saved'. Indeed.

The rationalisation that converts 'virgin' territories  into 'leases' for exploration, mining and development is one of many rationalisations of absolutely irrational behaviour - the destruction of life for profit. 

Residential Schools, Magdalene Launderies, Uranium Mining, People Trafficking, Cocaine, Heroin, Tea, Coffee, Sugar, Ritalin, Lockheed, Mossad are all part of the same pattern of destroying life for profit.

Here's a very fine article on the History of Debt.



"Debt: The first five thousand years by David Graeber
Throughout its 5000 year history, debt has always involved institutions – whether Mesopotamian sacred kingship, Mosaic jubilees, Sharia or Canon Law – that place controls on debt’s potentially catastrophic social consequences. It is only in the current era, writes anthropologist David Graeber, that we have begun to see the creation of the first effective planetary administrative system largely in order to protect the interests of creditors.
What follows is a fragment of a much larger project of research on debt and debt money in human history. The first and overwhelming conclusion of this project is that in studying economic history, we tend to systematically ignore the role of violence, the absolutely central role of war and slavery in creating and shaping the basic institutions of what we now call “the economy”. What’s more, origins matter. The violence may be invisible, but it remains inscribed in the very logic of our economic common sense, in the apparently self-evident nature of institutions that simply would never and could never exist outside of the monopoly of violence – but also, the systematic threat of violence – maintained by the contemporary state.


Let me start with the institution of slavery, whose role, I think, is key. In most times and places..........."

Read it, it's easy enough to understand. Debt and Violence are lovers, entwined and inextricably linked. He ends with a positive note. I agree. It's not all bad, though it is pretty ugly in most places...

The truth is out - when people who have been isolated can come together, and share their stories, they begin to form a dataset that cannot be denied. This is what the Catholic Church Residential School revelations are showing. Witness reports are reliable, when they can be verified, as they are. Mainstream Society cannot ignore these data, without becoming complicit.


The isolation of the individual is Societies condom, protecting Society from it's most feared STD : solid truth disclosure.

I have a song about this : here

Tell the truth, YOUR truth; that's how you start to bring the system of power down.



Kindest regards 

Corneilius 

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







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The Last Taboo : Abuse Culture


What is this Society we were born into?

The core problem we are all faced with is not being discussed, because it is the last taboo. Racists are not born, they are taught. Elitists are not born superior, they are taught that they are superior. Hierarchies of Violence are learned, they are neither innate nor are they inevitable. HVC - Hierarchy of Violence Culture is a-biological and unhealthy. Egalitarian Culture is closer to natural biological health by any possible measure.

Industrial Society is a Hierarchical Culture of Violence, and it is found upon molding children, telling children what to think using reward/punishment dynamics. Acceptance and habituation to Industrial Hierarchy of Violence as the normative for human society is founded upon child abuse.

The abuse family dynamic, scaled up and institutionalised. The same relationship dynamics persist throughout both structures.


Donald Trump and Boris Johnson are the result of what happened to them in their childhoods, as much as it was for Hitler and Stalin. They all bear the mark of the Hierarchy of Violence Culture, which they are perpetuating. We all are marked by this culture. This culture is neither inevitable nor is it a biological standard of health. This is a bully culture.

Natural Society is founded upon nurturing children as who they are, through empathy and common-sense.

Industrial Society is abusing the environment. Logging, mining, plastic in the oceans, exhaust particulates in fetal blood, zoonotic virus's transferring to human, and becoming human transmissible disease, war fare, deforestation, fracking and much, much more.

Industrial Society is abusing animals. Growth Hormones. Vivisection and live animal experimentation. Factory Farming. Pesticides. And more.

Industrial Society is abusing whole peoples. Iraq. Afghanistan. Congo. Honduras. Palestine. Cheap labour, high profits. Poverty amidst a growing population of billionaires. Epstein, Police Brutality.

Industrial Society is abusing our children. Indoctrination. Ritalin. Marketing to Evolving Consumers is the technical name for  relationships with children. Wars and refugee families. Nationalism and Xenophobia, Racism and Poverty. And more.....

All of this for profit. This is our history.  Past, present and if this is maintain, our futures too.

Any honest analysis of history confirms all of the above. These are the facts.

And it is all founded on one principle. That children are blank slates, upon which those who 'run' society for profit may write their own agenda, mentally, emotionally, physiologically, psychologically in such manner as to facilitate that control. The original identity of each is tampered with. Each Nation State imposes it's identity upon each child.

To tell a child what to think, to enforce ones views on a child ism without doubt, and without any legal definition, a criminal act.

This is quite often done with threats of violence, with threats of disapproval, with the threat of future poverty, and this one act is the basis of all the crimes of our society, for it robs the child of her or his innate wisdom and sensory acuity, and thus allows the children to be manipulated as adults.

Until this fact is faced, acknowledged - that some humans work together do this to others, intentionally and with full awareness of the damage they are causing, healthy and lasting change will not happen in any meaningful way.

Racists will riot to protect their symbolic affiliations. Oligarchs will continue to assume they are superior to the poor. Misogyny will persist and inequity will endure to poison social relations.

Once we, the decent yet largely powerless majority of people born into the Industrial Hierarchy of Violence Society recognise these facts as truthful observations of the historical and current socio-economic and political reality, then we will recognise how we were tricked and we will then be able to refuse to allow the same to be done to our children.

That moment is always close in all our lives, and the people who occupy the position of power are working flat out to put that time off. Their work is futile.

Their failure is inevitable, for they can never relax and they are unable to tap into natures flow, and nature will wear them out, sooner or later.


I choose to be as my innate being senses, honestly.

I choose to maintain that discipline, to remain sensitive, to be vulnerable, to feel the world as it is.

I have already won the war.

We can do this,



Kindest regards

Corneilius

Thank you for reading this blog.

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

This blog, like all my other content creation work is not monetised via advertising. If you like what I present, consider sharing my content. If you can afford the price of a cup of coffee or a pint of beer/ale/cider for a few months, please donate via my Patreon account.

https://patreon.com/corneilius - donations gratefully received

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Change Values for Survival. Set a course for Thrivival.

Four words, to meet again in a future reality where Thrivival is the human cultural setting.

I have spent a good part of my life on the healing path, firstly to heal my own wounds, so that I may breath freely, relax deeply and enjoy my being. I am still on that path.

Secondly and perhaps more importantly, to ensure that I do not inflict the same wounds upon my own children. Breaking the cycles. And I sense it as an intergenerational thing, from one entire generation to the next. We are all in this together.

The hope is that they might too breathe more freely, relax into who they are more deeply and enjoy their being. That is, I think, the second best possible gift I could give them. Peace as an internal reality.

The best gift is a cleaner, safer environment within which they can live as nurtured and nurturing beings.

Much of that healing has been through attempting to take some kind of responsibility for my diet, my thought processes, my actions. Small actions within my own limited sphere of influence.

A bumpy path, with many ‘wrong’ turnings, yet 'something' in me keeps me to the path.

That 'something' I have come to sense as an element of our innate nature. The biological urge to heal, to recover balance, to thrive, to live in a default state of trust and well being.

In recent years I have also spent much time learning about the structures that caused my wounding, by looking at them, by understanding them from different angles and by taking the piss out of them.

A sense of humour is a great gift to receive, and a necessary tool - to laugh when things do not work is a useful way to defuse, de-escalate, self regulate one's emotions. I have also devoted time to looking practices  that are truly healthy and in that now common phrase, sustainable. Often looking for love in all the wrong places.

The opportunities for self deprecating humour are everywhere in my life.

One of the things I know for sure, is that consumerism, market economies, power exercised over people as an addiction and much else of what is taken a granted by industrialised cults is not sustainable. The industrial revolution started the process whereby most of us did not grow our own food, but worked for money, and generally a pittance at that, so that we could buy food, inserting a middleman in the chain between food and eater, whilst that middleman extracted wealth from us.

Ignorance is not not knowing, ignorance is ignoring what is


That middleman does not exist in nature, and there’s the core of the problem. The fact is that in nature all living entities, from the microscopic to the macroscopic, have a direct relationship to their food, their nourishment. And we are all dependents. Others efforts make our foods available.

As lungs to oxygen. Eyes to light. Nature functions in ways that enable all living entities have access to what they require to reach their full potential, and that in the process of reaching towards that potential, they also guarantee all other living entities the resources required for reaching full potential, notwithstanding ‘shit happens’ as in natural ‘disasters’ or being eaten…….shit is not waste, it is a resource, if treated in the correct and natural way.

Given the complexity and perfection of nature, the exquisite beauty and balance of the vast system that covers the surface of our planet, it does not make sense that this is a mechanical mindless process, but an intelligent one.

The seed must ‘know’ that it is to be the plant, and must know how to become that plant, or at the very least be able to learn how to become that plant. As must all living creatures.

The culture into which I was born is by design quite different, insofar that access to resources is controlled so as to alter the innate behaviour of those that are controlled, be they plant, animal or humane being.

That control necessitates the abuse that I experienced as a child. It necessitates the abuse of billions of animals which we ‘farm’ for food. It necessitates the enslaving or exploitation of plants in much the same way, insofar that the natural life path of plants is controlled, carrots are planted in lines, forests are destroyed etc etc..

The controller is the middleman, the interventionist in the process of life. In nature all is food, and thus food is generally speaking, abundant. Strangely enough though, obesity is not common place, nor is starvation, in natural systems. Neither is existential insecurity as we experience it.

In Danger of Falling Fruit.


 Permaculture seeks to replicate those systems in such a manner as to obviate the ‘clear the land and grow food in lines’ for profit way of doing things. Bill Mollison made a great video about permaculture forest gardening entitled “In Danger of Falling Fruit” …….. as opposed to the Danger of falling bombs, as espoused by our governments, as the way towards ‘freedom‘ and ‘democracy‘.

 As ever, old Bill expressed a profound and beautiful truth in pithy terms, with no wasted words. A beautiful human being who with David Holgrem, and others, has bequeathed us with an opportunity to get ourselves out of the mess we are in. Perhaps that was the only danger in the garden of Eden.

Would that it were the only danger facing us today!

 Alice Miller and Carl Rogers are two others whose observations ring true in a similar manner, with respect to how we treat children and how we treat each other. If, in my life, I could add to, or share those great gifts, even in the slightest way, then I would judge my life worth living, beyond the sheer joy of being alive, which as ever I regard as a great mystery, a profound gift for which I am ever grateful.

We can do this!


To subvert the systems of control, we need to not give them our compliance. If nobody enlists, there can be no war. If we grow our own food, we do not need the money nor do we need Tescos.

If we don’t watch television, we don’t need the BBC. If we sing our own songs, we don’t need Bono, nor do we need the Rolling Stones.

 If we are prepared to be visionaries, we would need no movies nor would we need scripture. If we think for ourselves, we will need no leaders. We are born, each and every one of us, with innate wisdom and a great learning ability. Our expressions would be the sharing of that which enriches us all. Open sourced.

 Change values for survival" Helen Caldicott says, and I would add, let's change our values and behaviour so that we move well beyond survival and stroll and stride and run and skip and hop with joy into Thrivival.

 kindest regards Corneilius Do what you love, it's your gift to universe
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Racism or Power?

This weekend I took part in an Ayahuasca Ceremony, spent a good few hours in the company of a very good friends friends, most of whom were born in Africa, earn more than 20 times what I earn annually, who now live in Europe and who I discovered drink heartily and laugh with gusto.

They also love their children deeply, and indeed the wee ones were running all over the place until quite late, all very happy in the company of some tipsy adults.

I also dj'd at a fine squat party, One Drop 2 Far, and did the sound for an afternoon and evening of empowering and very fine acoustic music and poetry in an Organic Cafe in Londons Camden Town.

Quite a weekend! Has to be done, every now and again. Usually there's some excellent learning involved in these kinds of weekends for me.

One of the discussions I had over the course of this weekends activities was with a Zimbabwean, who grew up on a farm in Zimbabwe, was educated there in one of their elite schools and we talked about what was going on, politically and economically, in his home country and he helped me see something I had not quite sussed.

That the European Colonialists were not necessarily racist, and that they interacted and integrated with the local African power elites and worked their indigenous Power systems in their exploitation of Africa. Power talked to Power and shared the spoils of exploitation.

In a word, what's happening in Zimbabwe with regard to Mugabe and the take-over for white owned farms, for example, has more to do with power and control of wealth than it has to do with racism.

Furthermore, my new found friend is currently living in Dublin, and he has met and seen more racism in Ireland than anywhere else in his life (and he has been in Ireland only a few years!)

I remember back in the 70's and 80's being part of the anti-apartheid movement and focusing upon that issue in South Africa. Racism was the issue that seemed to be at the core of the problem. Being Irish in London in those days, I could identify with the racism issue. And so I was somewhat exercised about this issue in relation to South Africa.

When Mandela was released, and black South Africa's marched to power, we were jubilant. We were deeply impressed with the black Africans willingness to not shed blood in revenge for all that they had suffered. We were optimistic. We believed that we could see the future. That it would involve white and black, walking hand in hand. into a bright and peaceful future.

What we did not know was that very little was going to change. What we did not realise that the underlying issue was not about racism.

We did not understand that the issue of racism, while a real issue, was a cover for the root problem. And the root  problem is the same old, same old. That there are those who hold and control power, and that power has everything to do with money and wealth and that those who hold that power and wealth are more than ready to abuse, violate and destroy anything that threatens their power. Including you and I. And our children.

Bullies with Weapons. Trickle down violence.

And they know that if they give people other problems to focus upon, that they can hang onto their power. And yes, of course racism is a problem, a dysfunctional learned behaviour, as is sexism or age-ism or religion -ism. Those kinds of problems are due mostly to conditioning. Asking who controls the conditioning and why the do so leads to understanding that the conditioners have much to fear from all the people, especially if they unite - men and women, black and white, parents and children......

And thus those issues are as nothing compared to the central issue of who holds power, who exercises power and what interests those people serve, because without the conditioning those issues would fade away as people find their commonalities. And identify their common enemy.

Concentrated centralized paranoid power.

And so it is that the War Against Terrorism, the War Against Drugs, The Fight against Cancer, The Fight Against Racism are all really non-wars, they are powerful distractions designed to direct ones attention from the fact that Power works with Power, and terrorises it's opponents (for profit).


That a Pharmaceutical Medication is proffered (for profits)in place of healthy life-styles or preventative health care, the fact that cancers' true causes (stress and toxins) are ignored and surgical removal or chemical poisoning of infected body tissue is offered (for profits), Racial Equality is mooted, Affirmative Action is undertaken while at the same time segregation-ism and ghetto-isation policies are pursued with vigour, and the indigenous poor are pitted against refugee immigrants by giving the refugee immigrants enhanced benefits whilst pursuing punitive policies and taxation against the indigenous poor, and so on....................

Things ain't ever what they seem, are they? Until you look into things a little, or have a chat with someone who's been there.

There are no black children, there are no white children, there are no brown children, there are only children.

And their parents.


Who can nurture or abuse them.


Just like Governments. And Teachers, Priests, Doctors, Gurus, etc., etc.

Finally, it occurred to me that the purpose of racism, from the point of view of Power, is to enable through false attribution, to de-humanise one 'vulnerable' group of people so that another group of people (who might be likely to usurp the Power if they knew what was really happening) are more easily led to persecuting that 'other' identified group willy nilly. Thus Jews, Gypsies, Homosexuals, Poles and Intellectuals in Nazi Germany. Irish, Jamacian, Pakistani, 'Chavs' and Muslims in Modern Britain.

The good news is that these kinds of conditioning break down when people are left to their own devices. And that's the key - building lives that are independent of the system of power.