Half-arsed apology, bigging myself up and re-stating my mission

 To The Trustees of Southwater Area Community Centre re St Leonards Warrior Square Station & clarifying my Southwater Area interests.

Unfortunately, last Friday, there was something of a “run-in” with the Southwater Area Community Centre Manager whilst I tried to hold myself accountable for some on-line behaviour and find out what the consequences of my over-hasty actions had been.

What has clearly compounded the difficulty of the communication with the community centre manager is that she has apparently been set up to have a negative view, or at very least, an un-rounded view of my 2011-2015 time as one of your office tenants, and towards the end of that time, a fellow trustee.

This letter, in my opinion, needs to address all the above within the context of my passion for accountability and healing which has led me into becoming the Independent Candidate (for Hastings & Rye parliamentary constituency) 2019-2029?. Two Sundays ago, in the middle of the night the same passion led me to “drop a pin” on Warrior Square Station platform using the Google Business app. My intention was to mark that this is the epicentre of where my main company, Mediation Support Ltd, wishes to continue to mediate unresolved matters that block people's energies from generating the “Sharing and Care4Caring” community we could have to get through difficult times.

As I said last Friday, having dropped that pin named “Mediation Support Ltd” on the northern platform of St Leonards Warrior Square station, I “got carried away”, for, when asked to confirm the location by means of Google sending a card in the post, I let myself down in asking the card to be addressed to the Community Centre, rather than, for example, a nearby friend's address. Not only did I not have permission to use the Community Centre address in this way but, when last asking to be considered as a tenant again at the Community Centre whilst shaping the last general election campaign to “Move Forward More Together” I was told that my being an active political figure required the Community Centre trustees to refuse me use of the facilities, lest it undermine your charitable status. 

The impact of my actions on a computer two Sundays ago -and then turning up at the office- has been, at the very least, to reinforce a concern that I have on ongoing wish to re-associate myself with Southwater Area Community Centre.  And yes, whilst I will respect the boundary that has been set, I do wish to see if we can disentangle matters, including the possibility of Mediation Support Ltd renting space to undertake mediation work, whilst political interviews are to be held, as one was last Friday, on Warrior Square Station.

It was on account of being told the location of the main fire-starter on Hastings Pier ten years ago that, once I'd resigned my job in London to initiate a community mediation/restorative justice process around the loss of the iconic structure of the town, that I located at Southwater Area Community Centre. For my own crime it took supportive conditions and eleven years before I was ready to take responsibility and, via a community mediation service, approached those whom I had harmed. The dialogue that followed was very moving and I felt freed-up to make full recompense, which I did. From there on, I became not just an advocate of restorative processes but a major player on the UK Restorative Justice scene, with my work recognised, amongst other ways, by a personal invitation to be thanked at 10 Downing Street “for my work on behalf of the victims of crime.”

Those who were on Hastings Pier on the night of 5th October 2010 have not fared so lucky in terms of their friends guiding them towards (restorative) resolution of the consequences of their past intentions and actions. I write this on the basis of my interactions with the founders of the Hastings Independent newspaper who knew one of the two individuals detained on the beach that night, having jumped off the burning pier, who had been bailed for 6 months before the Crown Prosecution Service chose not to advance to prosecution. These founders of the Hastings Independent had accepted six whole-page adverts for St Leonards Sharing Consortium's #2066Timebanking initiative, but they then refused (and refused further discussion over) the advert which was seeking to build on the Pier Fire history to establish a model for how #HastingsJustice might be done in enlightened times.

Maybe I've strayed too far from the immediate concerns of the Southwater Area Community Centre trustees but I presume it to be helpful for you to be clearly informed of the lives to which the services you provide (or withhold) are highly significant. I wrote up the history of Mediation Support Ltd at Southwater Area Community Centre on the blog where this notice is going -additionalinfo.blogspot.com- as follows:

“There has been a bit of a North/South divide in relation to the railway bridge towards the Seaview Centre, Southwater Rd – the road I was told that the main person responsible for the 2010 pier fire lived; hence my establishing the Mediation Support Ltd office from 2011-2015 at the Southwater Community Centre which I kept afloat and which,as a Community Development worker (freelance but head-hunted by the Hastings Trust) I kept positively in the eye of our most senior politicians in the years 2011-2015 -and the Sussex Police into whom Mediation Support Ltd went into informal partnership, whilst doing commissioned work for Hastings Pier and White Rock Trust which was not honoured by payment for services received. I do believe that if they had taken to heart the harmonisation policy for Trustees which  I and a colleague had produced then the Hastings Pier Charity would not have had to go into administration.”(#PoliticsOnThePlatform blog post)

If an alternate history of my time there is being circulated, I would request that it be provided to me in writing so that the requirements of accountability and fairness are met. Then, I predict, it will be easier to clear the air and return to a working relationship of goodwill and co-operation, which is dear to me and more likely to be of wider benefit.  If there are tensions of which you are aware in the Southwater Area community, Mediation Support Ltd would like to offer support.

Once more, for clarity, I confirm that I will not attempt to use the community centre address, though the locus of my attention remains around the postcode TN37 6LA as I continue the #PoliticsOnAPlatform series of interviews.

Yours faithfully

Paul Crosland

Director, Mediation Support Ltd, Restorative Technology Ltd & Freelending CIC (Community Interest Company), all of which sit under the umbrella of St Leonards Sharing Consortium 

How we missed out on the most healing PM since Atlee

In the forthcoming #BookOfFourQuarters, in the quarter called The #MythOfTheHeartlessTory I will be putting the case that in 2019 Britain lost out on the most healing of British PMs since the post WW2 Labour Administration that founded the #NHS... https://youtu.be/9xCMXdGSNoU

Politics On The Platform (#PoliticsOnThePlatform)

On the 17th October 2020, aged 54, in the second film below, I came out as “an elitist” and created the hashtag #ComingOutAsAnElitist for you, in due course. We may think that we are egalitarian until we realise what DirectDemocracy could well produce. This struck home after a dialogue on St Leonards Warrior Square station the day before. Here is the last 45 seconds of that first #PoliticsOnThePlatform series, part of my “Levelling Up” my YouTube channel so that the user can choose between different kinds/levels of films, which I'll further clarify in later posts. In the future you'll be able to initiate a #WeZoomedAcrossDifference Conference on Zoom co-hosted by myself and a specialist in your chosen area of concern/influence.

For now I want to give more background to the developing #PoliticsOnThePlatform playlist:

- Political interviews of depth & originality whilst I test #KinderPoliticsWorkingHypothesis001 that #KinderPolitics will produce #DeeperAccountability. (Other benefits to self & other which you may presume please put into the form of a hypothesis to be tested)

-PoliticsOnThePlatform -initial invite sent out to “Common Treasury”, “Isolation Station Hastings”, and Maria Arpa, MBE (“for services to mediation” -see the blogpost “I've got your back Sally-Ann and Peter” composed with Maria in the aftermath of the 5th December 2019 Hustings “Minimum Wage -Did you Read the article?” debacle that prompted my beginning to write “The Myth Of The Heartless Tory*” (for 2021 publication?) *In the #BookOf4Quarters

- Other invitees intially to be those I am more easily able to go deeper with on account of friendship, starting on 16th October 2020 with my longest standing friend of 43 years, Author & Historian from St Leonards, Chris Gidlow. Soon it will be the turn of Tony May; our ten year friendship began on YouTube -& here's a playlist demonstrating some of that rich story:

Please email me with subject heading #PoliticsOnAPlatform if you want to join me on the bench which Transition Town Hastings has put there.

NB There has been a bit of a North/South divide in relation to the railway bridge towards the Seaview Centre, Southwater Rd – the road I was told that the main person responsible for the 2010 pier fire lived; hence my establishing the Mediation Support Ltd office from 2011-2015 at the Southwater Community Centre which I kept afloat and which,as a Community Development worker (freelance but head-hunted by the Hastings Trust) I kept positively in the eye of our most senior politicians in the years 2011-2015 -and the Sussex Police into whom Mediation Support Ltd went into informal partnership, whilst doing commissioned work for Hastings Pier and White Rock Trust which was not honoured by payment for services received. I do believe that if they had taken to heart the harmonisation policy for Trustees which  I and a colleague had produced then the Hastings Pier Charity would not have had to go into administration.

So following my shock at my oldest friend's views on defending against burglary and his strong case as to what Direct Democracy might produce in terms of legal support for shooting intruders in the back etc after #SleepingOnIt I headed off for my Flu Jab with an emerging need to honour the oft-hidden Elitist within me, who whilst being accountable to the Deeper Democracy envisaged by #GrassrootsManifestoes of 4-10points per citizen, leading to a #DemocracyOfNeeds; a concept I have worked-up from the work of Nonviolent Communication's (leading light?) Miki Kashtan.

 

I will be putting a link to this blogpost on Twitter.com/paulcrosland and then in the next blog post I will list the 10 points that constitute “#GrassrootsManifestoes #HastingsAndRye #HastingsCitizenManifesto @paulcrosland #PaulBasicIncomeCrosland* (*on Facebook)”

Fond Memory of "A Good Week", 2011, attracting support across the political spectrum; the letter from Amber Rudd, MP, being reproduced in the 2019 Independent Candidate Election Mailing to all 56,400 postal addresses in Hastings and Rye constituency. (Inside of A3 folded to A5)

Sally-Ann Hart has my blessing to “Get Brexit Done”, to strive towards “Kinder Politics” & “Deeper Accountability”. Also to do her best for those bringing their Hastings & Rye constituency problems to her, but not to vote on penal matters without prior discussion of our respective experience in Criminology and Criminal Justice administration.

“Deeper Legitimacy” is the movement I hereby launch today; subscribe to this blog to receive a blog post that lays out the composition of the #DeeperLegitimacyParliament, in which Sally-Ann Hart (gaining only 49.6% of the Hastings and Rye constituency vote in 2019) is only mandated by my (#AsIfByMagic) 1% of the vote only in these matters:

- #GetBrexitDone 

- #KinderPolitics and #DeeperAccountability

I favour a #BeyondPolarisationInPoliticsAlliance rather than the less principled #AntiToryAlliance; and part of my track record in advocacy for positive campaigns is recorded in the Hastings  & St Leonards Observer.

2066 Country (General Election 2024) Battle Cry: “Pensions At 30”- paid for by Land Value Tax of 3%

In what may seem Utopian(?) or Outrageous(?) to your sensibilities/conditioning  (but is to me one of three “obvious” intermediate steps to “Universal Basic Income”; the second being the abolition of the Minimum Wage for those over 30; freeing them up to do the #WorkCryingOutToBeDone in every community), “Pension At 30” is one of the (nonviolent) Battle Cries in @2066Country Hastings And Rye Constituency General Elections henceforth.

For anyone whose 1st birthday was around the time Saddham Hussain was toppled in Iraq (ie born in 2003),  a pension check at HMRC online would look like this:

Tweet clarifying matters.

Above I spoke of 3 steps to be taken alongside #PensionAt30; the third being a “Citizens Assembly”(or Sociocracy-type of representative forum) to overhaul Housing Benefit and lower rents without lowering quality of rented accommodation. Increasing accessibility to rental accommodation by those living only on £175/week benefits (ie Pension instead of Universal Basic Income)  is one key consideration and Acorn Tenants’ Union a key voice to consult with & challenge. The incentive to increased sharing of accommodation is foreseen; reducing the pressure to build new housing that pushes up rental prices. 

I propose -and await your “Grassroots Manifesto” of 4-10points that may well have a better proposal that to get rents down all Housing Benefits be cut by 50% on the day that the £175/wk pensions for those aged 30+ are introduced.

The incentive for landlords and tenants to get involved in direct democracy to restore (or reconfigure) Housing Benefit is very clear.

The larger pot of money from which the change comes is the introduction of a 3% Land Value Tax on all properties or land of greater value than £400,000. This is an arbitrary figure designed to shift the balance between expensive and less expensive places to live. It would generate a “return to the country” in a pincer movement of tax burdens and tax breaks. What figures do you favour for the cut-off points for taxation and are the differences between what I’m proposing and the 10 most important policies to you such that you will be committing any of your 4-10point #GrassrootsManifestoes in seeking an alternative taxation and spending plan?

Struggling to embody kinder politics and deeper accountability

Well here’s a draft letter that I didn’t send because it didn’t model the generosity which I still aspire to stand for in uk politics; before Christmas 2020 I intend to insert a film that critiques this attempt at “kinder politics” and “deeper accountability“; your critique appreciated in comments below this blog post, please. 

Sally-Ann Hart (MP)

House of Commons

London SW1

17th September 2020

“Kinder Politics” and “Deeper Accountability”

Dear Sally-Ann

We last corresponded on Easter Sunday and Easter Monday, when politics wasn't so heated. It is becoming clearer to me that a significant part of my role in Hastings & Rye general elections is to take some of the heat out of the flashpoints, and do my best, as an imperfect idealist/mediator, to ensure that difference gets heard and individuals valued. I would suggest that my aims chime with those in the second question you put during the “Election Candidates: Protection” discussion in the House of Commons on 22nd January: “Does [x] agree that at times during the last election the commentary and actions of others were misleading, inaccurate and vicious, and that there should be no place for that in our politics, regardless of political persuasion? What steps does she think we should take to ensure that, as leaders in our communities across parties, we conduct our engagement together in an open, respectful and honest way?”

I wonder what answer to the latter question has so far emerged?

What I offer to get us “beyond polarisation in politics” is a “virtuous spiral” of “kinder politics” and “deeper accountability”; each approach having great potential to reinforce the other. When under attack, as you have been, it takes great courage and clarity to go beyond the merely defensive justification or counter-attack and INSTEAD step into the realm of what your higher self sees as “deeper accountability”.

An advisor suggested that I limit this letter to 500 words; imagining that effectiveness is about being “business like”. You'll see from how I end this letter that I'm reaching out to touch you personally just as you did physically at the election count on the morning of 13th December, touching my chest whilst calling me a “kind man” and with your husband coming up to me to shake my hand and introduce himself. “Kinder politics” doesn't make all parliamentary candidates into friends, but friendliness is always possible, even to those who have insulted us. 
I call for all who criticise to preface their critique with an offering of to what value(s) they hold themselves to account. When I announced my candidacy in the 25th October 2019's Hastings, St Leonards and Rye Observer I clarified that I was “standing for generosity – mine and yours.” 
Please hold me to account for this stand and please hold your party leader to account for the same claim that he made as a conclusion to his 10th May 10 Downing Street address, post-recovery from Covid19; that he was leading a government to be judged on being “More Generous More Sharing”.

Just as my contemporary at the Oxford Union in the mid 1980s, Boris Johnson, has done in 2020; I set myself up in 2019 to be judged on my generosity and on policy proposals promoting more sharing. I have drafted this letter many times in my attempt to find the most generous way to ask you to call yourself to account for the readiness with which you seemed to support the most cavalier proposal from the Prime Minister in relation to International Law. Of course, some MPs voted the “United Kingdom Internal Market Bill” through the second reading in order to then support the Bill Neill amendment intended to withhold the power to break International Law from the executive and ensure that power rests in Parliament. By thus asserting the “Sovereignty of  Parliament” in matters of “trade wars”, the legal requirements of  “Getting Brexit Done” will need to be convincingly articulated in Parliament if illegal means are needed to serve the national interest above others. It cannot be in the spirit of the best of Brexit for decisions of this magnitude to be made by the executive alone and brought back to the house for mere rubber-stamping? By the way, I must say that I valued the contribution that you made in the house yesterday, culminating in your rhetorical flourish: “Faced with a choice of supporting our Union or the European Union, I know whose side I am on; do you?”

I am confident that you would condemn the Beijing Government reneging on its international treaty with Britain? Whether there is a direct parallel with our country’s prospective reneging on the Withdrawal Agreement is perhaps a moot point. What I am clear about is that I took you to be an MP who would not break international law without holding yourself duly accountable. So my request to you is that you publish something on your website, or Tweet something, that includes the word “Accountability” and offers a way in which you will deepen your accountability to your electorate.

I too am deepening my accountability in following up in particular my words from the “HIP Hastings Hustings 5-12-2019” that were subsequently transcribed and reported back verbatim in the Hastings Independent newspaper in favour of a Basic Income scheme (13th December 2019 edition). No longer simply proposing universal basic income at the austerity level advocated by Professor Standing, I am now calling for UBI to be paid for by something more easily accountable than a wealth tax ie a 3% annual levy on the value of land owned -i.e. 3% Land Value Tax.  Meanwhile, since early on in 2020 my personal Facebook page (as opposed to that of Paul Crosland, Independent Candidate) is now in the name of Paul BasicIncome Crosland.

The electoral reform I favour happens to be the system practised in all elections within the Green Party; a candidate being elected only on receiving over 50% of the voters' support; often requiring voters' second preferences to be taken into account. In terms of Hastings and Rye contituency's 12th December 2019 voting you only cross the 50% threshold of legitimacy with my support as the only other pro-Brexit* candidate.

Returning to the reliability of Boris Johnson’s words beyond #MoreGenerousMoreSharing, the Prime Minister's words need to have credibility not only for the people of Hong Kong.  It seems possible that we will have in this administration a Government perfectly willing to renege on an international treaty in relation to greenhouse gases and ecological destruction. Certainly the Paris Agreement (within the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change) does not look to me like it is being implemented. Without a green economy, we are not only in danger of going over the 1.5 or 2 degree warming but well on track for 4 degrees warming by the end of the century! Indeed a scenario of 16 degrees warming in the following two centuries is also suggested in a Zoom conference, involving the government's former chief scientific adviser, Sir David King; highlights of which were uploaded to the  PlanB Earth YouTube Channel. Unless Carbon Dioxide reduction targets are set to be met within your term of office, how can you be held to account? I look for you to adopt more accountability, not only in relation to Brexit, but also in relation to the climate crisis. 

 It was with great regret that I heard of your not attending the extinction rebellion hustings which I and my fellow candidates fully participated in. I heard that this decision was on account of safety concerns. I saw no grounds for such safety concerns and I feel strongly that unless every candidate takes part in such meetings that we will end up with more polarised politics and a society where it is no longer possible for discussions to take place. Thus, in the context of the next general election, I urge you to commit to engaging in and with a forum organised by “Extinction Rebellion - Hastings and St Leonards”; to mention them on Twitter please use @XRHSL. A commitment to being accountable for the climate crisis agenda is, I would suggest very important for your future as an MP. 
That you assured the electorate that you weren't a “career politician” should be a basis upon which your constituents can count on you to stand up for policies other than those handed down by your political party, yet so far I have not seen a single deviation in your voting from the voting that  the Whip's office would want of you. 
I don't expect you to be a “Whip-Free Accountable Maverick In Parliament”; that role I leave to my successor(s), but your constituents need to be able to trust that you will take an independent position, when principles and conscience require it.

Having written enough for one letter about “Deeper Accountability” I return to the other key aspect necessary for us to get beyond polarisation to a form of politics fit to meet the challenges of these times; “kinder politics”.  I think we both have a vested interest in “kinder politics”, although perhaps a different interpretation of how to do it.

For my part I will be saying clearly during the next election campaign that 'I don’t know best, we know better’. From this point of view I should like to work with you in putting forward our respective ideas about how kinder politics could work. There is much to be worked through at both local and national level so that those standing in each constituency work together to ensure that each candidate is given a proper hearing and treated with respect. Whilst presuming your intention to stand in the next General Election, I will hold back on my further ideas on this until you and other candidates have set out some suggestions for the agreements we may make. I will just say that in the wake of hustings I advocate for a chance to put right misunderstandings that may arise on the night and a way for each party to obtain further clarification the next day, if needs be. 
How does this land with you? I would appreciate an initial response first and then maybe later a more considered response. With your support a new style of kinder, more accountable politics can be co-created.

Regards to you and your husband

Paul

P.S. If first class post reaches you tomorrow, please spare a prayer for my Dad, whose funeral is then.

P.P.S. A copy of this letter will be published on the “Paul Crosland, Independent Candidate” Facebook page next week.

*Though, as you may have gathered:

 “I'm dreaming of a Green Brexit; 

  Just like the one in the 1991 Manifesto for a Sustainable Society”

If only there were hustings today

In the 2019 General Election in which I first stood, I admit there wasn’t a coherent alternative to Party Politics; just a protest vote or abstention.  These options accounted for a third of the electorate in Hastings and Rye constituency on that blustery and wet December day. 

The tectonic pressures of entering the #PandemicEra have now reforged #EthicsEconomicsPolitics and opened up something viable as an alternative to Party Politics as we’ve come to know (& distrust) it. 

Listening to the needs of these times I’ve arrived at a formula for effective politics in which the PartyWhip is anathema to the #DeeperDemocracy we need; a democracy in which politicians come to events such as this hustings to problem solve together, not to toe a party line. 

The #GrassrootsDemocracy of which I not only dream, but plan, do & review, combined with the ideas surrounding a #DemocracyOfNeeds ensures that a parliamentary candidate can represent their constituents like never before. What assists something to be done in politics like never before is not social media as we know it, largely a reactive medium, but a shift in consciousness and resolve (#SleepOnIt) so that it is used creatively rather than reactively, and alongside principled critiques,  a social obligation to say what it is for which you stand.

The local versions of the #GrassrootsManifestoes are called the #HastingsCitizenManifesto and for those in the constituency who don’t live in the borough of Hastings, the #HastingsAndRyeCitizenManifesto. Collecting these (4-10point #DreamBig policy proposals) together and giving voice to all the underlying needs my team of mediators will come up with a hybrid manifesto that I will demonstrate, a little later, to be something much richer than mere compromise. 

Compromise is not the essence of searching #BeyondPolarisationInPolitics. What is the essence of the higher third way? What I’m talking of here is a way that actually stands a chance of making an impactful and impressive contribution to tackling the scale of the global problems to be faced. Going #BeyondPolarisationInPolitics requires both a #KinderPolitics and a #DeeperAccountability. I wish to demonstrate how a  #KinderPolitics and a #DeeperAccountability go hand in hand. This can be shown first by the history of the delay in the first 2020 lockdown from 16th March to 23rd March* and then by the history of dialogue and action around safe Personal Protective Equipment or PPE....

*lockdown a week earlier has been estimated by Niall Ferguson as a measure that would have saved perhaps half the lives lost in the first wave of Coronavirus.

Daily Telegraph Attack on Extinction Rebellion Press Blockade - comments abound

And here’s what I added in the commentary below a clear commentator IMHO replying to Janet Daley’s hyperbole:

“Your piece has been called An Epistle; I find it a succinct and fair summary of the situation; only missing the route out, which is a shift in consciousness #BeyondPolarisationInPolitics. Joanna Macy taught most convincingly IMHO of the three aspects of The Great Turning from “The Industrial Growth Society”; only one of which is overtly political, I would suggest. Until we look to inspirational communities living more sustainably for models of respectful ways to co-exist and import the learning into politics, then the level of debate will remain reactive rather than provide a grounded creative route out. Amber Rudd asked me to send her a paper on a government policy for prompting sharing once I’d won the audience over of a Local Plan meeting in Hastings; quality of life can be maintained or improved if only we get serious about sharing & Care4Caring NonMonetary solutions to SocialCare shortages. It’s not rocket science; but the #MoreGenerousMoreSharing that Boris Johnson closed his most Churchillian speech (10th May from 10 Downing Street) has proved to be unsubstantiated; hence my call for any principled Tory to resign the Tory-Whip until Johnson shows integrity in the promise he gave after being returned from death’s door by two migrant NHS workers. Stick to #MoreGenerousMoreSharing and trust those in politics most who ensure their opponents’ voices get heard.”

To what extent has society lost touch with primary distillations of values?

Forgive the sweeping generalisations I’m about to make. Consumerism undermined our ethics; how much we cared for human rights in China was generally found wanting when weighed up against the cheapness of supply chains from China. For your money, what would you say President Trump has done of value to reshape the world in a direction it needed reshaping? For me, it is the break with China, heralding a break with globalisation that pre-dates Covid-19, and all the added impetus that pandemics bring for localised (& non-monetary?) economies.

”The old world is gone” is the article by Elif Shafak in The New Statesman (28th August - 3 September 2020):

“For far too long, we in the West have consulted the same leather-bound dictionary compiled in the aftermath of the Cold War. Now our dictionary is in flames. We reach out to save what we can, but many pages of entries are scorched. Suddenly we realise we must redefine our most fundamental concepts. What is democracy? We thought we knew the answer, we took it for granted, but now we are no longer sure. What is normal? What is happiness? What are the values we should prioritise: ambitious trade agreements, financial deregulation, profit-driven business models that destroy the environment and pay no heed to co-existence? Or health and social care, diversity and inclusion, positive interaction with our ecosystems and purpose-driven business models?”

Thank you, Elif, for that distillation of the loci of concern. Am I allowed to assert that the latter direction of change is the one for which I was standing in the 2019 General Election?; no rewriting of old blog posts here.

“What should we value?” by Martin Hagglund faced Elif Shafak’s aforementioned piece on the next page of this latest “The New Statesman”; a magazine for which last week’s edition




was exemplary:

“Human beings are the only species on Earth that do not know how they are supposed to live. All other species have a natural environment and a natural way to sustain their form of life. While some animals have to build things to make their environment what it ought to be (as is the case with beavers building dams), there is no question of what they ought to build and how species ought to make a living for itself. As in all environments, things can go wrong: a falling rock can break the dam, the water can become poisoned, a virus may spread. Yet when something goes wrong in the life of beavers, it is not because they have the wrong idea of how to organise their lives. Indeed, beavers cannot have the wrong idea of how they should live, since it is set by their nature.
“For human beings, by contrast, the question of how we should lead our lives is always at issue, even if we try to forget that fact. We can discover the ideal conditions for other species by studying their natural way of life. But we cannot discover the best way for us to live simply by studying our present or past societies.”

Let’s not concur with the implied "illiberal liberal" idea that all ideas of how we might best express our nature are equally valid and therefore to be taken off all pedestals on which history has placed them.

I wish the dialogues and cultural exchanges would open up between the “chattering classes” (whose socio-political preoccupations generally reject hierarchical concepts) and the intentional communities which shock with what the individual surrenders in service of something with unelected leaders and ideas that seem more like fantasy than science. The Bruderhof Community of East Sussex as presented in a BBC documentary caught the attention of my social circle this week. I’m a little down-hearted that the dialogue hasn’t yet provided an opener for me to propose that Buddhist Intentional Communities be discussed. I've lived in such communities, once in London and twice in Bristol; I still smile at having come up with the name "Shanti Towers" and then interviewed an ordained Buddhist to live with by playing the (recommended) game Therapy, to get to know him. In such Buddhist Communities one finds, in response to the question of how to collectively cultivate human nature at its best and support the cream rising to the top rather than demand some pseudo-egalitarianism, I have found an inspiring array of answers being lived out collectively, whilst supporting the development of "The True Individual".

Where I’m heading now is back to the hippy times through which this talk on The Ideal Human was given by one of the two most profound and impressive humans I’ve met and talked with. 

For me, the direction is clear, finding a team sharing the journey to living the highest ideal known to humankind, the Bodhisattva Ideal, and able to deliver the grassroots changes called for by the onset of this #PandemicEra (& model it all in Hastings and Rye Constituency), is somewhat problematic still for me, Imperfect Idealist & #FreeRangeBuddhist 007.

Add caption

Beyond Polarisation In Politics - Acknowledging Patriarchy?

In the wake of a police officer in Minnesota applying lethal knee pressure on George Floyd's neck for 9 minutes, the twitter-sphere -among other spheres- appears to have polarised views. Reading words from screens I have been hearing “shouting” like I've never witnessed before; the volume of messages and the tone of insistence/dogmatism of protest and counter-protest. I've been taken aback a few times, not least by banners declaring “Silence Is Violence.”

I stepped into the discussion hoping to do so with more creativity than reactivity. However, I ended up tweeting more than I intended. At best, my aim was to go #BeyondPolarisationInPolitics, acknowledge what sense I could see in President Trump's words, and adding what I thought might help round his proposals, encourage approaches that put everyone on the same side. Putting everyone on the same side takes more than the hashtag #AllLivesMatter as a response to #BlackLivesMatter.

The most visceral upset I experienced was in relation to this tweet:
[I find now that the tweet I was going to copy I can no longer see in my tweet-stream; presumably deleted by the author or by Twitter. It said it was from a woman writing of her being raped by a black man in Leeds on a given date and the lack of attention/support she received from others in contrast to the attention being put across much of the world on what happened to George Floyd.]

How long would you take to retweet these words, if you would, and with what comment appended? (May #SleepOnIt become a watch phrase for us before sending what we can reasonably expect to irritate others...) Around this time in the middle of the day, I lay down for about two hours without sleep in a darkened room processing the enormity of the stream of human suffering I was feeling in touch with via Twitter that morning.

Sometimes I retweet without comment, and, unlike many other Tweeters I do this also for many tweets with which I profoundly disagree. Rather than have the “retweets are not endorsements” type of comment on my Twitter profile, at the time of writing, I use the very limited micro-blogging persona profile space for these words: Founder(2011)StLeonardsSharing Consortium.Parliamentary Candidate2019(565votes)working with #NVC leaders towards #LivingPlanetPolitics
@2066Country @ceisenstein

By retweeting notable content, amongst other aspects of the Twittersphere I am currently noticing is, as I'm confident you'll be aware, the lull in “We're All In This Together” sentiments. In that vein there has sadly been no apparent take-up of the 3rd part of my General Election slogan/potted manifesto of “Pause5G, Citizens Assemblies Now, Move Forward More Together”.

How might it be possible to cut across the polarisation that it might be too easy to fall into in relation to the #rape tweet above? The best added comment I could manage at the time was something that has now been removed (or I've mislaid), but it said that both concerns pointed us to the need to question patriarchy.

This was the first time I can recollect having written a word that I had previously avoided like the Coronavirus/Plague. The word that took so long to alight on my page (or flash in pixels) was patriarchy. I wouldn't be using that word if I hadn't discovered its meaning within a framework of #NVC i.e. the body of understanding proliferating from the legacy of Marshall Rosenberg.

The richest exploration, for my money, of the paradigm shifts that the world need now was provided  to the East Point Peace Academy YouTube Channel by Miki Kashtan. Miki Kashtan's previous blogging (from February 2013) around one of my poems I just hyperlinked so that I/we can return to extract more of its juice in showing the shortcoming of my compassion at the time I wrote that poem, and, sadly also in many subsequent times I have read words written by others not-trained as I have been privileged to be in the clarity of separation of observation/ judgement/ feelings/ needs/ values/ requests etc
So here's the UNMISSABLE (IMHO) Film of 2020, eclipsing the 007 movie, Spectre, that the #PandemicEra led to be postponed for launch currently to the 26th October 2020:


And here's just a paragraph from what I call “The Film of The Year so Far” (#PandemicEra #BuddhistEthics #SacredEconomics #LivingPlanetPolitics blog rating: 5 stars). This is the first section in Miki Kashtan's world-view that has got me, as I hope it will “get you”, looking more closely at what alliances might be formed in arriving at a shared understanding of, and addressing, patriarchy?

I put my hands in just about everything; I work from the smallest most-internal domain to global governance and it is always like a big choice what to focus on. I decided to focus on decision making because if we get decision-making right then we can go from there to making all the decisions that we need to make to create a collaborative nonviolent future. That's why I focused in this way and we'll see if that yields benefit. I look at the Coronavirus situation as something that is an opportunity in that exposes some things that were there for quite a while but were under the surface, and now suddenly there's crisis and there's the opportunity to see the cracks; so it's even more visible. We either have a nonviolent future or we have no future because the kind of present that we have -the way of living that is based on scarcity, separation and powerlessness- that comes from 7,000 years of patriarchy. The core essence of patriarchy is scarcity, separation and powerlessness. Patriarchy manifests in gender but isn't about gender; gender emerges from it. The two main things I see in patriarchy are control and either-or thinking. I'm going to try to show that in how we approach decision-making we can exit those and go to a nonviolent future of choice, togetherness and flow so that control is replaced by purpose and either-or thinking is replaced by integration.