Categories
Culture Politics Psychology

Love, power and “othering”

When the power of love overcomes the love of power, the world will know peace.

Jimmy Hendrix

In this time of increased polarisation and conflict everywhere, a new verb has appeared in the English language. To “other” someone is to stop seeing them as a fellow human who has motives and emotions that are understandable and relatable. The “other” might as well be an alien or a malevolent android: they can be opposed, blamed, hated, even killed – but not understood.

This “othering” is a real problem. It massively reduces our options for dealing with behaviours we don’t like. Here’s why:

Categories
Culture Politics Psychology

Monarchy: symbol of belonging – and not-belonging

I have been thinking a lot recently about identity and belonging – two distinct but overlapping concepts.

We are social animals. Evolution has wired deep into our DNA a sense that our survival depends on being part of a group – a tribe, family, nation, culture. Non Western cultures emphasise belonging more than individual identity. Māori writer Owen Eastwood describes the way this is expressed in his culture as whakapapa (pronounced far-ka-pa-pa). As a child searching for his identity in the years following the death of his Māori father, he received a letter from the office of his Māori tribe with the heading “You belong” and including a detailed genealogy tracing every ancestor back through grandparents, great-grandparents back to Paikea – the whale rider – a mythical ancestor who had come from the spiritual homelands of Hawaiki across the ocean to the islands the Māori now call home. This heritage, he was told, is his whakapapa, and it includes not only the names but the stories of those ancestors. And embedded in those stories are the values which describe what it is to be Māori.

Categories
Culture Politics Spirituality

Live not by Lies

If, like me, you have felt despair and helplessness at what is happening in Ukraine, what is happening to our beautiful planet, what is happening to the world’s indigenous peoples, what is happening to the poor and oppressed around the world, here is an answer. It was written by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn in 1974 on the eve of his expulsion to the West. It was written to people who also felt powerless in the face of oppression, state propaganda and violence. Please read and ponder:

************************************

Categories
Politics Psychology

When we don’t listen

Violence is often a form of communication born of desperation.

When we don’t or won’t or can’t listen to each other and respond to what we have heard at a human level, there are consequences.

The wisest commentary I ever heard on the Middle East was from a young Palestinian who observed that in her home country there are two peoples crying out in deep pain, desperate for their pain to be heard and acknowledged by the other – and yet each unable to hear and acknowledge the other’s pain. The rocks and rockets, bullets and bombs have their roots in a desperate cry to be heard and seen and acknowledged as fellow suffering humans.

Categories
Culture Politics

Why Facebook Should Pay for News

Facebook has implemented a news sharing ban in Australia.

Facebook and other social media companies make their money by selling advertising. In that respect they are like the old-style media companies – newspapers, radio, television. The difference is that Facebook, Google etc don’t pay for the content that is essential to getting people engaged on the platform so that they can keep serving up ads.

Categories
Culture Economics Politics

Are Revolutions Ever A Good Idea?

One of the things I love about the film-maker Adam Curtis’s work is that he doesn’t just accept the way things are. He keeps inviting us to look deeper and question the assumed truths of our culture.

One of those assumptions is that revolutions don’t work because the people who come into power always turn out to be just as bad as old lot.

Categories
Culture Politics Spirituality

All We, Like Sheep, Have Gone Astray

All we like sheep(le) have gone astray!

I’ve always loved the Christmas story. In the Northern hemisphere where I grew up it is closely associated with the Winter solstice (the point at which the days start to get longer again) and its theme of the coming of light into the darkness. And this marking of the seasonal transitions is linked to a deeper story about death and resurrection, power vs love, suffering and forgiveness and new beginnings.

Categories
Culture Politics

Freedom vs Trust

A lot of people are concerned about the loss of “normal” freedoms and rights that have been brought into focus by the pandemic. But I think the breakdown in trust that I see is even more concerning. Ultimately, I believe, this breakdown in trust will lead to the end of free societies, because a free society depends on an atmosphere of trust. Let me explain:

Categories
Politics

Valuing Democracy

Sometimes we don’t know the value of something until we’ve lost it!

We’ve been taking democracy for granted for a long time. For some of us that means not thinking about or engaging in political debates, not bothering to vote (in countries where that’s allowed), not studying history.

Categories
Culture Politics Psychology

Are People Waking Up to the Truth?

PEOPLE ARE WAKING UP TO THE TRUTH !!!

Or are they?

The truth is that there is a battle going on for your mind and, especially in a US election year, it’s a very unequal battle where you are up against people with vast knowledge of how to manipulate people’s emotions, natural suspicions and beliefs. And they have deep pockets to fund PSYOPS (psychological operations) using A.I. People employing these tactics include governments, (US and Russian especially) and corporations.