Mine not mine

Night Tree Council

I look at stars
Feel cool air on my chest
and face
Smell night
Hear chips and chirps and
wind-rustle in leaves.

then for a moment I am the dreamer before now,
cursed with knowing as the first faded devils came like ants
when we had a chance to protect our ways
and future generations from this future.

behind entitled, shallow eyes I observe plastics and crammed-in-ness and know
this is not what my mothers and grandmothers want for our people.
But I am a woman, my dream will not be heard
so I watch this future world
with despair

this vision not mine, I hold as mine
in this moment, in solidarity and honour

Honour

Employers should feel honoured.

They should feel honoured to have these amazing creatures, gods-in-bodies, these single points of consciousness holding space for all of Isness, only keepers of the consciousness of the Universe, these miracles of complexity...employers should feel honoured to have even one Person paying attention, of any kind, to their petty problems of commerce. They should bow down before the amazing awesomeness that is each human life and thank them for service, ask how they can make service more pleasant, and give generously back of the bounty created for them by the magnificent creatures they call Employees but I know to be Human Beings.

Instead, Power bulldozes bullshit brainwashing, convincing the humans they are are not amazing, but in fact undeserving, unimportant, uninteresting; insufficient, ignorant and replaceable. As if any person could every truly be replaced! Outrage! Sacrilege! How dare they treat a human spirit to such blatant abuse? To be a human is a high honour; to have a human serve you still higher. As if a human life could ever be commonplace, let alone unimportant. As if any human life could not matter.

Ask all the employee surveys, all the data screaming the same message, across industries, across job titles, across socio-economic circumstances, across countries. They will tell you clearly that what people want, what people need, what people desire, what people feel in their hearts they deserve, is honour. They deserve to be honoured for what is essential in themselves, for their gifts manifested on this plane, for their courage to live a life in 2014 just when the shit is starting to hit the fan.

And by the way,

when you honour what is divine in each person, they will continually amaze you

when you expect people to behave honourably, they often do

when you meet people as honoured helpers rather than chattle,

their gifts can overflow

into abundance.

This seems to me like a tremendous competitive advantage to try for. Does it to you?

Crow and Hawk (April, 2013)

A Message from Power, delivered through Emissary and inadequate Translation

A Message from Power, delivered through Emissary and inadequate Translation:

Okay, Humans, here’s the deal.

This planet exists for a finite time. Some of us have been playing since the start, and we made sure along the way to provide for the next generation of Us. We are not like you. We are better than you. We deserve what we have because we have worked for it since the dawn of time. We hold an uneasy truce among ourselves, some of the time, and engage each other in war, the rest of the time, on many, many battlefields.

The field of The Economy is less bloody than making you fight each other in numbers with weapons. You should thank us for enslaving you in such a kind and benevolent way. But don’t mistake our attempts to improve your lives and include you in decision making as equality. We have never been equal. We will never be equal. We are better than you. We hold the power, and among us, we now own every square inch of the world with the weapons to back that up. You should let go of your delusions that you might own a piece of it. You are not worthy. We give you our scraps.

You are a worker ant, a drone. We keep you busy with our big global game called The Economy, waging our wars as we’ve always done, shifting around the piles of resources which include you. We let some of you have power over others, to keep your systems and your attitudes mean and uncooperative. We love our game. Manipulating your participation is the joy of the play. 

What are you whining about, when some of you suffer, when some of you die? When have you ever had it so good? We give you TV’s, we give you movies, we give you a man on the moon and plastic wrap and microwave ovens and cell phones, trying to keep you busy and entertained enough to play your small role in our armies. But we need to control all the resources to do that well. We can’t have you demanding safety and happiness and fulfilled lives. We can't have you bugging us with all your demands. You're here to work. We're here to play. You need to be in play. So get back to work. 

Quick, Puff, Gone

Burn Hole

Sometimes, weeks of clarity trick me into tentative self-congratulation

before dissipation 

erodes my small understanding

with alarming efficiency

(sparks on tissue

quick, puff, gone)

Coles Notes: Productive Social Dialogue

Section 1. A few simple sentences about increasing the productiveness of our dialogue

• Housing Stability is a more productive conversation topic than Homelessness.
• Food Security is a more productive topic than Hunger.
• Reducing Stress is a more productive topic than Crime.
• Capacity Building is a more productive topic than Prison. 
• Increasing Joy is a more productive topic than Depression.
• Reducing Economic Burden is a more productive topic than Poverty.
• Increasing Social Value is a more productive topic than Reducing Economic Burden.
• Peaceful Coexistence is a more productive topic than Protection.

Pass it on. 

Thanks.

Power of Persistence (April, 2014)

Selective Employment, Productive Unemployment

Selective Employment, Productive Unemployment.

Come on guys, we all have the same goals. We all want humans to work less and stay out of our way. The corporations are on a single-minded mission to remove the human element as far as possible from every human system, as quickly as possible and faster than their competitors. And the humans would rather be doing pretty much anything else than working. 

So what are we doing? Why is full employment the goal? If we have full employment, who's going to do all the actual work of making society go? Not the mothers and fathers rushing to drop baby at daycare at 7:30am, and hurrying to avoid late fees at 6:34pm when they pick baby up. Do you think those stressed-out time-poor people can join the PTA and raise money for school trips no one is paying for? Who is nursing our elderly, caring for our disabled, running our households, preparing food(!), raising our children to peace, keeping the infrastructure running, paying attention to society, spirituality, art? Why are these activities given no true economic value? Without them, the economic system grinds to a halt. 

We should be paying people to stay home. It's the inevitable future of automation and robotics. The humans who can't or don't want to contribute to the design and maintenance of systems and tools, for whatever reasons, become redundant in a fast-approaching new economy. The only other option is service, and we don't want to pay for service. So how will the money flow? How will it make that round from the bottom back up to the top again? Will we increasingly just let the bottom fester?

What if we let the humans do exactly what they want. Give every one of them a guaranteed minimum that is just a little less than a person can live on comfortably, and then encourage them to do what we need done, as a society, rather than what some corporate profiteer thinks he can sell. Offer support, offer training, offer connections and mentorship, no strings attached. Profits must be curtailed at the top end to allow society to be funded. 

Productive Unemployment becomes a career option when society chooses to tax its resources appropriately to pay for it. Caring for loved ones, raising and teaching children, supporting people who need support, pursuing our highest, deepest passions. Raising art, voice and spirit. Living happily, in peace. Eating nutritious foods and taking care of our bodies and each other. 

Regardless of whether we think it's possible, it strikes me as a worthy alternative goal to simply spiraling downward past austerity into cynical, violent unrest outside the castle walls. 

Could we talk about how to make it possible? As if it were, actually, possible?

Because, maybe it is.

And on the off chance, I'd like to see us try. 

(I have more to discuss here, over time, but today I need to move!)

Pressure & Release

Pressure builds.

Release and make room.

Pressure builds.

Release and make room.

Pressure builds.

Release and make room.


( Release valves: Short, intense bouts of crying - driving from place to place is a good time. Exercise, preferably involving a punching bag. And/or Dance. Music. Sleep. Cuddles and Love. Writing. Nature. Breath.)