I've been on this planet for nearly half a century, always curious about learning new things and connecting to people in all kind of life circumstances. I spend a significant amount of time exploring consciousness, and embarked on the challenging path to find out who and what I am.
Just like everyone and everything around us, I'm an expression of universal consciousness, a crystal in Indra's net. I learned that intentions have the power to change situations for the better, and also that intentions and actions can go into entirely different directions.
I agree with Douglas Adams, and consider the population of this planet as mostly harmless. I met some less harmless people, but much less of them roam the streets, offices, shopping centres, factories and homes than the average harmless human. The existence of violent, harmful people reminds the majority of the choice each of us can make in life: To strive for peaceful cooperation or to 'win' the competition among false egos.
Our current society shows little interest in raising self-determined, cooperative individuals capable of making their own choices. Education systems prefer obedient conformists, easily controllable by fear and victimisation. Once we get sufficiently inculcated with the big lie 'us vs them', we get numbed to our own nature.
If we allow ourself to let go of our cultural programming, it becomes easy to experience that "We're all in it together". The age of global communication shrunk our planet and raised awareness about the interconnectedness of the diverse cultures, and all life on Earth. We wake up the fact that the destruction of Amazon rain forests, overfishing, monoculture, pollution and war endanger the survival of our entire species. The war waged against nature will see nature as winner, while many species, including our own, will lose.
As every human came out of nature, giving our species a special status in it sounds utterly ridiculous. Everything changes, yet the scale of change imposed on this planet by humanity in the last century alone feels like 'modern civilisation' has pushed the self-destruct button. Modern society sacrifices human life, eco-systems and other species for the sake of the 'economic system'.
While our planet offers abundant resources to feed and shelter everyone to high standards, our economic system bases on the misconception of scarcity. Our economic system thrives on scarcity, and thus needs to creates it systematically. The idea of 'eternal growth' makes up the second elementary misconception of the economic system.
In essence, we could easily say that the economic system intents an eternal growth of scarcity for optimal performance. The meme of egalitarianism doesn't exist in economic theory, only winner and losers. The promise that everyone can win the economic game distracts from the embedded injustice in it.
The global economic system didn't develop organically or spontaneously. A cabal of interested parties spreads it around the globe, utilising genocide towards indigenous people where ever they find them. Societies outside the global economic paradigm mean no market opportunity, so stealing their land and killing them for profit means acting in the interest of 'shareholder values'.
The biggest promoters of the economic system belong to the minority of winners in it. They don't win because the play better, but because they can and do rig the game in their favour. The bank bailout in 2008 poses a brilliant example for this, which got copied plenty of times since then.
Sorry for bothering you with the 'economy'. Many people still believe that government shapes society and directs it, and has some control over banks and corporations. Modern governments have degenerated to mere PR agencies selling corporate interests disguised with empty promises or general fear mongering.
The Australian government spends about $3 billion for its unjust treatment of refugees in its offshore camps. This money comes from the taxpayer (mere individuals, mainly from the non-game rigging part of the population), and goes to multinational corporations like Serco and G4S, and to other corrupt governments.
Who wins, who loses this match of the economic game with the government as referee? The usual suspects. The old game of redistribution of wealth from the bottom to the top grows scarcity among larger and larger parts of the population. Unprofitable human life can be warehoused for a profit, the economic system happily demonstrates its psychopathic nature.
Meanwhile, governments start more openly to defend corporate interests against the mandate of their population. The Queensland government considers 'environmental activism' a crime punishable more severe than owning an unregistered gun. Does it really act in the interest of its people?
Mandating governments to reign in corporations is like telling a dog what its owner should do. Politicians can't be held accountable even for crimes against humanity, which crudely hide beyond a veil of 'national security'. While governments act more and more paranoid and in secret, business secrets seem guarded even more.
The winners of economic game and their confederates in government act out of self-interest, and have taken environmental destruction to a threatening level. If society hangs on to the need to keep the current systems of economy and governance alive, despite them having failed to provide a fair share of the abundant bounty of our planet, then a collapse of civilisation, much worse than the fall of the Roman Empire, seems inevitable.
The oceans overfished, old growth forests cleared, coral reefs declining, increased weather extremes indicate that 'doing what's good for the economy' yields terrible consequences for life on this planet. The cleanup of the mess created by clinging to a system of destruction will keep humanity busy for a while.
We can co-inhabit this planet without sacrificing ethics or destroying our resources in the process. Many people have explored sustainable ways to generate energy, build houses, grow food, utilise water and deal with human waste.
We need a shift of consciousness. Do we want to continue to support a system which grows scarcity, or do we want a build a system which shares the abundance of this planet with everyone?
Showing posts with label Global Shift. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Global Shift. Show all posts
Sunday, March 20, 2016
Thursday, March 19, 2015
PTSD
It's occupy again. I came across some message of social media, got updated on twitter and hooked again in tuning into tweets and feeds from a different 'corner' of our planet. This time, not the US went into the spotlight, but Europe. In Frankfurt the European Central Bank opened its new head quarters which united many Europeans to air their dissent about the wave of austerity sweeping over Europe.
I used to live in Frankfurt, and saw many familiar views in the images and streams I came across. I even used to work for the ECB, walking over red carpet into the opera house in the summer of 1998 when its birth was celebrated. I don't expect my signature to have remained in the guest book, but you'll never know.
When Occupy Wallstreet swept like a virus around the globe, it happened in Melbourne as well as in Frankfurt, and many hundred of other cities. My friends back in Frankfurt weren't too impressed by what happened then, and like, everywhere else, the occupy movement fizzled away.
Or just went into some sort of metamorphosis. Some people continued to provide community support in various ways, continued in activism for other causes, joined cooperatives, started growing food and, of course, some spend endless time licking their wound to keep them fresh.
The major cause of misery, an economic system designed to feed the rich and starve the poor, increased its potency to cause havoc among communities and mother nature. International institutions like the ECB and the ESM (European Stability Mechanism), not to mention IMF, World Bank disempower local governments to become pawns of a monetary aristocracy.
The human family, with 7 billions or even more members, deserves a better organisation of society than one which allows anyone to starve despite the abundance the planet has to offer. All forms of government have been invented by humans. We can invent something which serves everyone. Anything less doesn't make any sense.
I used to live in Frankfurt, and saw many familiar views in the images and streams I came across. I even used to work for the ECB, walking over red carpet into the opera house in the summer of 1998 when its birth was celebrated. I don't expect my signature to have remained in the guest book, but you'll never know.
When Occupy Wallstreet swept like a virus around the globe, it happened in Melbourne as well as in Frankfurt, and many hundred of other cities. My friends back in Frankfurt weren't too impressed by what happened then, and like, everywhere else, the occupy movement fizzled away.
Or just went into some sort of metamorphosis. Some people continued to provide community support in various ways, continued in activism for other causes, joined cooperatives, started growing food and, of course, some spend endless time licking their wound to keep them fresh.
The major cause of misery, an economic system designed to feed the rich and starve the poor, increased its potency to cause havoc among communities and mother nature. International institutions like the ECB and the ESM (European Stability Mechanism), not to mention IMF, World Bank disempower local governments to become pawns of a monetary aristocracy.
The human family, with 7 billions or even more members, deserves a better organisation of society than one which allows anyone to starve despite the abundance the planet has to offer. All forms of government have been invented by humans. We can invent something which serves everyone. Anything less doesn't make any sense.
Wednesday, October 26, 2011
Occupy Everything
The speed of events left me a bit breathless, tuned into the surge of adrenaline that wavers around the globe since the occupation gained momentum. The evictions in Melbourne, Sydney, Athens, Oakland, Chicago and of course London and NYC have become a talking point in Social media.
The narratives between spectators and 'official' commenters diverges in bizarre ways. Where ever the movement had some time to teach its participants the rules of the process, the moral bankruptcy of the 'leaders' became bloody apparent. Pushing, choking, punching, kneeling on necks, tear-gassing, dragging on hair and limbs, shooting rubber bullets, riding horses into people describes the means with which 'governments' sought conversation with a dissenting public.
When we watch a documentary about civil right movements of the past we hardly get an impression about the time it takes to peacefully shift society towards more justice. Pensions, health insurance, voting rights for woman, indigenous people or descendants of slaves, decriminalisation of homosexuality weren't implemented by reasonable, benevolent politicians but came into existence due to the non-violent resistance against blatant injustices. It just took a bit longer than the average attention span for a movie to happen.
Although Australia claims 'fair dinkum' as a part of her national identity, the desire for justice seems universal. The occupy movement continues the long struggle to liberate mankind from its unchosen leaders, and as their reign of terror and oppression spans the entire planet, the whole world gets involved.
Amazingly, although no leaders emerged, the movement has developed a huge global solidarity, and many voices say similar things in different words. Participatory democracy, self-organisation, the end of wars is possible when people want to work together for that aim. Yet these 'goals' have less overall importance than the means used to achieve them: The process of non-violent communication.
I admit that it takes time to learn and embody this process, and decision-making seems much slower than in hierarchies. The need for speed, however, brought this planet to the brink of an ecological collapse - maybe slowing down prevents sinking into the abyss our society heads towards. Yet those people who learned to interact, talk, decide and live non-violently have tasted the beauty, fun and power of this way of life.
Community turned for them from a buzzword enforcing conformity into a living experience, capable of tackling a variety of practical problems. According to their preferences, different workgroups for different tasks emerged, in which the same process of consensual decision making happens. Working together as equals and the useless violence created a durable bond. 'Leadership' isn't an important task, which didn't stop many to ask for it.
In Melbourne, a small, functioning society emerged, providing exchange of ideas, some free goods, a library, tuition for many aspects of daily life. In six days. Then the Lord (Mayor Robert Doyle) used his mighty fist to smash this fledgling approach to real democracy, to a world without leaders.
No more wars, no more unnecessary starving, no more slavery - does that really sound so scary?
One of the programs to maintain unaccountable power creates the habit of uniting against a common enemy. On the surface, the occupy movement appears as yet another one of those anti-everything but the whales airy-fairy hippie bullshit. Or rather, this portrait creates a decent niche in which to scare the movement. It ignores the diversity of support from various levels of society, intellectuals like Noam Chomsky or Leslie Cannold, entertainers like Keith Olberman, as well as lesser known people from all walks of life, including bankers and politicians.
When I spend my time on a self-chosen duty as troll patrol for #occupymelbourne, I often hear that 'you people/hippies/commis/lefties/other insults don't represent me'. I can hear a wish for representation in there, and that's one of things the movement offers. Not in the traditional sense of giving up your voice but by providing an open space for everyone to be heard.
I consider the 'trolls' as my friends, and encourage them to make their voice heard on the next general assembly. First and foremost, I learn about my own reactivity to adversity, and to pause before engaging in troll patrol. Respect exists among friends, yet positions of authority and power predetermine the levels of respect expected and acted out.
I wanted to tweet 'One of the big mysteries of our times - does the Queen wipe her own bum?', yet decided against it. Maybe I need to decode myself more, however, she looks like a nice, old lady, and I respect her as such no matter how little her title means to me. After all, she might still live after the revolution, maybe even in Buckingham Palace. If the royal family finds enough supporters to squat the Palace, hardly anyone should object to this group of people self-organising in that space.
While I'm typing here, today's second wave of police violence erupts in Oakland. I checked the live feed from this morning, shocking. The Nazi had gas chambers, the police in the US throws gas grenades into crowds of peaceful people while wearing gas masks. The images from the protest become more surreal, 1984 available on your doorstep or through youtube.
However, that's also part of the predictive programming you can learn about by studying products of the entertainment industry. We have seen the images of riots in movies, and were trained to obey orders from authority. After the apocalypse, as first step a new government is elected, suggesting the innate need to be a sheep. We don't want a total breakdown of society, that's just the scare tactic from paranoid leaders.
Greed requires power structures to grow into a cancer of society. I understood the message of the GA in Berlin to the world as a determined call to heal this planet from the wounds inflicted by the unaccountable abuse of power the bureaucratic systems have created. Our current leaders simply don't care about this planet, they sent troops and drones in parts they don't live in, sell out indigenous people for the exploitation of natural resources, which mostly includes irreversible damage to well-established eco systems, while demanding us to pay for these non-sensical policies a higher and higher price.
While the planet might be healed, as well as mankind, as well as each individual, the system can't. We need to build a new one. The means of doing so matter more than the results. Nobody can predict the future, although politicians and economists talk often extremely prophetic. There can't be any promise that this experiment succeeds. However, self-organisation maintains the balance of all natural systems around us, so let's try this evolutionary successful strategy for humanity.
Don't get the illusion that this experiment is just a talk fest. Communication is essential, yet many things get done as well. In a different style than in the streamlined job slots for wage slaves, yet amazingly efficient.
No matter how often I referred to 'we', I'm not representing the Occupation Movement. I can only speak for myself, and I hope that sharing my thoughts and ideas finds some common ground.
 |
| Rubber bullet to the head, Oakland, Oct 26 2011 |
The speed of events left me a bit breathless, tuned into the surge of adrenaline that wavers around the globe since the occupation gained momentum. The evictions in Melbourne, Sydney, Athens, Oakland, Chicago and of course London and NYC have become a talking point in Social media.
The narratives between spectators and 'official' commenters diverges in bizarre ways. Where ever the movement had some time to teach its participants the rules of the process, the moral bankruptcy of the 'leaders' became bloody apparent. Pushing, choking, punching, kneeling on necks, tear-gassing, dragging on hair and limbs, shooting rubber bullets, riding horses into people describes the means with which 'governments' sought conversation with a dissenting public.
When we watch a documentary about civil right movements of the past we hardly get an impression about the time it takes to peacefully shift society towards more justice. Pensions, health insurance, voting rights for woman, indigenous people or descendants of slaves, decriminalisation of homosexuality weren't implemented by reasonable, benevolent politicians but came into existence due to the non-violent resistance against blatant injustices. It just took a bit longer than the average attention span for a movie to happen.
Although Australia claims 'fair dinkum' as a part of her national identity, the desire for justice seems universal. The occupy movement continues the long struggle to liberate mankind from its unchosen leaders, and as their reign of terror and oppression spans the entire planet, the whole world gets involved.
Amazingly, although no leaders emerged, the movement has developed a huge global solidarity, and many voices say similar things in different words. Participatory democracy, self-organisation, the end of wars is possible when people want to work together for that aim. Yet these 'goals' have less overall importance than the means used to achieve them: The process of non-violent communication.
I admit that it takes time to learn and embody this process, and decision-making seems much slower than in hierarchies. The need for speed, however, brought this planet to the brink of an ecological collapse - maybe slowing down prevents sinking into the abyss our society heads towards. Yet those people who learned to interact, talk, decide and live non-violently have tasted the beauty, fun and power of this way of life.
Community turned for them from a buzzword enforcing conformity into a living experience, capable of tackling a variety of practical problems. According to their preferences, different workgroups for different tasks emerged, in which the same process of consensual decision making happens. Working together as equals and the useless violence created a durable bond. 'Leadership' isn't an important task, which didn't stop many to ask for it.
In Melbourne, a small, functioning society emerged, providing exchange of ideas, some free goods, a library, tuition for many aspects of daily life. In six days. Then the Lord (Mayor Robert Doyle) used his mighty fist to smash this fledgling approach to real democracy, to a world without leaders.
No more wars, no more unnecessary starving, no more slavery - does that really sound so scary?
One of the programs to maintain unaccountable power creates the habit of uniting against a common enemy. On the surface, the occupy movement appears as yet another one of those anti-everything but the whales airy-fairy hippie bullshit. Or rather, this portrait creates a decent niche in which to scare the movement. It ignores the diversity of support from various levels of society, intellectuals like Noam Chomsky or Leslie Cannold, entertainers like Keith Olberman, as well as lesser known people from all walks of life, including bankers and politicians.
 |
| Banksy installation in front St. Paul's, London |
When I spend my time on a self-chosen duty as troll patrol for #occupymelbourne, I often hear that 'you people/hippies/commis/lefties/other insults don't represent me'. I can hear a wish for representation in there, and that's one of things the movement offers. Not in the traditional sense of giving up your voice but by providing an open space for everyone to be heard.
I consider the 'trolls' as my friends, and encourage them to make their voice heard on the next general assembly. First and foremost, I learn about my own reactivity to adversity, and to pause before engaging in troll patrol. Respect exists among friends, yet positions of authority and power predetermine the levels of respect expected and acted out.
I wanted to tweet 'One of the big mysteries of our times - does the Queen wipe her own bum?', yet decided against it. Maybe I need to decode myself more, however, she looks like a nice, old lady, and I respect her as such no matter how little her title means to me. After all, she might still live after the revolution, maybe even in Buckingham Palace. If the royal family finds enough supporters to squat the Palace, hardly anyone should object to this group of people self-organising in that space.
While I'm typing here, today's second wave of police violence erupts in Oakland. I checked the live feed from this morning, shocking. The Nazi had gas chambers, the police in the US throws gas grenades into crowds of peaceful people while wearing gas masks. The images from the protest become more surreal, 1984 available on your doorstep or through youtube.
However, that's also part of the predictive programming you can learn about by studying products of the entertainment industry. We have seen the images of riots in movies, and were trained to obey orders from authority. After the apocalypse, as first step a new government is elected, suggesting the innate need to be a sheep. We don't want a total breakdown of society, that's just the scare tactic from paranoid leaders.
Greed requires power structures to grow into a cancer of society. I understood the message of the GA in Berlin to the world as a determined call to heal this planet from the wounds inflicted by the unaccountable abuse of power the bureaucratic systems have created. Our current leaders simply don't care about this planet, they sent troops and drones in parts they don't live in, sell out indigenous people for the exploitation of natural resources, which mostly includes irreversible damage to well-established eco systems, while demanding us to pay for these non-sensical policies a higher and higher price.
While the planet might be healed, as well as mankind, as well as each individual, the system can't. We need to build a new one. The means of doing so matter more than the results. Nobody can predict the future, although politicians and economists talk often extremely prophetic. There can't be any promise that this experiment succeeds. However, self-organisation maintains the balance of all natural systems around us, so let's try this evolutionary successful strategy for humanity.
Don't get the illusion that this experiment is just a talk fest. Communication is essential, yet many things get done as well. In a different style than in the streamlined job slots for wage slaves, yet amazingly efficient.
No matter how often I referred to 'we', I'm not representing the Occupation Movement. I can only speak for myself, and I hope that sharing my thoughts and ideas finds some common ground.
Thursday, October 20, 2011
Sprouting seeds
Day 6 of the New Era of Humanity shows positive signs. Non-violent resistance appears in dead-end situations, usually without much more than the call for justice and equality.
The failure of the systems of society to provide justice and equality became overtly apparent after the so-called Global Financial Crisis. However, it remains mainly a question of believe whether you trust in the current systems of society to fulfil a useful functions, or not.
Obviously, the occupants can't answer this question either. Politics finds its justification by spreading fear, uncertainty and doubt. Politicians stopped promising a brighter future, they just promise to prevent everything not to get worse. And no matter how much worse any local situation gets, they can point the finger at some other country where it's much, much, mucho-macho more worse.
At the moment, there are some 'talking points' which could be understood as 'demands'. Transparency in politics, abolishment of the legal status as 'person' for corporations. Basically, it's is a re-negotiation of power structures on a global scale.
Finding consent in a large, diverse group proves difficult. Finding a common ground means a simplification of the rules in order to allow them to be flexible. So far, 'common ground' was rather enforced by law - in Victoria public swearing can be fined on the spot.
In an interesting chat with Dillon I heard some concerns about the penalising system. How should aberrant behaviour be dealt with, don't we have a 'natural need' to be policed. Yet even with an abundance of legislation defining what a society considers 'legal' or 'illegal', crime occurs as exemption from the average daily life.
Unless, of course, the crime is institutionalised. The cops beating up occupants 'just did their jobs', protecting an outdated system violently. Historically, police got away with a lot of violence, although Australian police won't get the nomination of the Biggest Beater in Uniform for October's reality-internet coverage of global affairs.
I hope the Melbourne police doesn't change their ambitions to make Melbourne 'Queen-friendly'. The royal wedding in London showed the disrespect for democracy quite clearly. I don't mind so-called royal families providing some spectacle for their fans. But they still can force everyone to finance their follies, not only those you wish to support them.
I consider human beings generally quite supportive. Especially Australia lives to an amazingly large extend its stereotype to 'give generously for a good cause'. I can even discover something positive in the outrage about free-loaders, I simply disagree about who the 'free-loaders' are.
An escalation of violence would only attract more people to join this peaceful way to resist to be transformed into a piece of corporately owned life-stock. The internet helps to bring abuse of power into the public sphere, and undecided citizens can judge for themselves whether they want to pay with their taxes for a violent and oppressive government in bed with the corporate world, or whether to find new systems of cooperation to organise co-existence of 7 billion people in peaceful ways.
Day 6 of the New Era of Humanity shows positive signs. Non-violent resistance appears in dead-end situations, usually without much more than the call for justice and equality.
The failure of the systems of society to provide justice and equality became overtly apparent after the so-called Global Financial Crisis. However, it remains mainly a question of believe whether you trust in the current systems of society to fulfil a useful functions, or not.
Obviously, the occupants can't answer this question either. Politics finds its justification by spreading fear, uncertainty and doubt. Politicians stopped promising a brighter future, they just promise to prevent everything not to get worse. And no matter how much worse any local situation gets, they can point the finger at some other country where it's much, much, mucho-macho more worse.
At the moment, there are some 'talking points' which could be understood as 'demands'. Transparency in politics, abolishment of the legal status as 'person' for corporations. Basically, it's is a re-negotiation of power structures on a global scale.
Finding consent in a large, diverse group proves difficult. Finding a common ground means a simplification of the rules in order to allow them to be flexible. So far, 'common ground' was rather enforced by law - in Victoria public swearing can be fined on the spot.
In an interesting chat with Dillon I heard some concerns about the penalising system. How should aberrant behaviour be dealt with, don't we have a 'natural need' to be policed. Yet even with an abundance of legislation defining what a society considers 'legal' or 'illegal', crime occurs as exemption from the average daily life.
Unless, of course, the crime is institutionalised. The cops beating up occupants 'just did their jobs', protecting an outdated system violently. Historically, police got away with a lot of violence, although Australian police won't get the nomination of the Biggest Beater in Uniform for October's reality-internet coverage of global affairs.
I hope the Melbourne police doesn't change their ambitions to make Melbourne 'Queen-friendly'. The royal wedding in London showed the disrespect for democracy quite clearly. I don't mind so-called royal families providing some spectacle for their fans. But they still can force everyone to finance their follies, not only those you wish to support them.
I consider human beings generally quite supportive. Especially Australia lives to an amazingly large extend its stereotype to 'give generously for a good cause'. I can even discover something positive in the outrage about free-loaders, I simply disagree about who the 'free-loaders' are.
An escalation of violence would only attract more people to join this peaceful way to resist to be transformed into a piece of corporately owned life-stock. The internet helps to bring abuse of power into the public sphere, and undecided citizens can judge for themselves whether they want to pay with their taxes for a violent and oppressive government in bed with the corporate world, or whether to find new systems of cooperation to organise co-existence of 7 billion people in peaceful ways.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)