This is Part 2 of our podcast with social activist Mark Morey. (Part 1 can be heard here)
Much of society's ills can be resolved through changing our behavior. Native populations are a rich resource of wisdom in doing so, as they had to address many of these same problems centuries ago. The question is: Will we take the time to listen?
Relationships change people. Being in isolation is a degenerative cycle, it’s really bad. So if people feel isolated, that's an end of the road kind of thing. So cross-cultural exchanges, seeing native people perform ceremonies -- those kinds of things -- change people. Going into communities that are not your own changes you.
There’s work that has been happening at Unilever where executives go on a consciousness retreat, visiting actual coffee farms and meeting the people there. They walk away disturbed. That’s way better than data rolling across their desk every day. That’s the kind of work we should foster -- in our lives as well as other people -- this type of peacemaking. Proactive action that helps us realize we’re all related and I may know that before you. That’s creates powerful moments.
We call this regenerative mentoring. There's a mentoring process to this where you’re either in a peacemaking relationship or you’re mentoring towards that. Some people don’t feel like they have a connection to others, and so you have to really give them some surplus -- you have to get them on board and bring them into the game again. When people are really hurting they do nasty things to each other.
Click the play button below to listen to Chris' interview with Mark Morey (56m:54s).
Chris Hedges addresses fascism and the rise of the Trump war machine in the keynote speech at the “After Trump and Pussy Hats” event in Vancouver, British Columbia, on March 3, 2017.
Difficult but I believe relevant to PP thinkers:
One of the reasons I stick around PP is because I believe that my perspective adds a balance and frame of reference that might not otherwise be presented on this site. And so I want to share a perspective with my fellow readers that may be unwelcome but none-the-less valid and significant.
Just recently I traveled out of the country for a class and upon returning home I met up with a grown child and we returned to Alaska together. This grown child is the parent of teenagers. At a major International Airport in the US we had a significant amount of time before our flight so we stopped by a large gift shop and perused items for sale. I walked up to a section that displayed puzzle type time waters for children, not babies but various kid do-dads. About 3 1/2 to say 4 feet high on a low shelf were two small books with a finger puppet in the middle. The books were titled “My Little Penis” intrigued I picked one up and started to review the book. It was made out of very thick cardboard much like toddler books. The lettering was Very large and the intellectual content seemed to be aimed at about a kindergarten level. The objective of the book was to teach that to make one’s little penis grow big it needed to be kissed and tugged and loved and it would grow big as evidenced by the last page of the finger puppet book. Shocked at what seemed to me to be a pedophile how to book I showed it to my son who also found its design to be troubling and that it’s display at eye level of small children was shocking. It seems that pedophilia has gone mainstream. I shared this with a friend and she sent me a link and the advertisement for the book that does says it’s an adult book. But then all our problems are due to the Russians and only quacks believe conspiracy theory’s right? This is the first time I have seen the mainstream promotion of the kind of child sexualization and marketing in public. Guess I am behind the times.
The world I grew up in no longer exists. Where hard work, honesty, family, church, integrity and right and wrong were clear. Today it’s as James Howard Kuntsler says, “anything goes and nothing matters”. And Gerald Celente has a saying " when people have nothing to lose, they lose it." Our lives, family, jobs and health are being stolen from us.
My question, - when billions of people have nothing left to lose, what will happen, and when will the tipping point be?
The ramblings of Granny:(
Good is evil, evil is good. Truth is treason. Romans 1 lays it out:
28 And even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a debased mind, to do those things which are not fitting; 29 being filled with all unrighteousness, sexual immorality, wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness; full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, evil-mindedness; they are whisperers, 30 backbiters, haters of God, violent, proud, boasters, inventors of evil things, disobedient to parents, 31 undiscerning, untrustworthy, unloving, unforgiving, unmerciful; 32 who, knowing the righteous judgment of God, that those who practice such things are deserving of death, not only do the same but also approve of those who practice them.
Rector
Speaking of the possible markers for an unhealthy society/culture, I don’t know if you can do much better than this.
Americans consume vast majority of the world's opioids
Apr 27, 2016
Americans are in more pain than any other population around the world. At least, that's the conclusion that can be drawn from one startling number from recent years: Approximately 80 percent of the global opioid supply is consumed in the United States.
Pain drugs are the second-largest pharmaceutical class globally, after cancer medicines. "There was about 300 million pain prescriptions written in 2015," Irina Koffler, senior analyst, specialty pharma, Mizuho Securities USA, told CNBC.
The 300 million pain prescriptions equal a $24 billion market, Koffler said, but it's not a market evenly divided around the globe. Rampant use of opioids in the United States, which represents only 5 percent of the global population, points to a larger divide between affluent nations and the rest of the world when it comes to prescription painkillers.
"If you include Canada and Western Europe, [consumption of global opioid supply] increases to 95 percent, so the remaining countries only have access to about 5 percent of the opioid supply," said Vikesh Singh, assistant professor of medicine and director of the Pancreatitis Center at Johns Hopkins University.
If the US is #1 at anything, it is pain and unhappiness. How ridiculous is that?
We’ve been co-opted by a nefarious group of people who sell us fear and loathing because, well, it sells lots of other things.
Like bloated military budgets and lots of pharmaceuticals.
Why do we do this to ourselves here in North America?
Because it makes money. That’s the long and the short of it and anything and everything that needs to be destroyed along the way shall be to meet that limited end.
No worries that this is indistinguishable from the actions of a death cult, worshiping the end, not the journey.
Sadly, most people will defend this system because it provides for their most basic comfort, and so, like a 65 year old prisoner put there when he was 18, these people know no other way, and are actually afraid of finding out there is an ‘out there’ with very different rules and freedoms.
Which brings us to opioids…just a marker for unhappy people who cannot imagine escaping their virtual prison so they escape by numbing.
speaking of opiods…
last month i had the privilege to attend anarchapulco, in warm and sunny acapulco, mexico.
there were some excellent speakers like g. edward griffin, bill murphy (of GATA), david morgan (of silver-investor.com ; david is a giant of a man, and more of a scholar and a gentleman than i had realized).
a lesser known speaker was luis fernando mises, who spoke about a plant i’d never heard of, called kratom (Mitragyna speciosa), that grows in southeast asia (thailand and malaysia, mostly).
kratom is a relative of the coffee plant, but works on the opiod receptors, it is a valuable tool for pain relief, as well as helping those addicted to opiates overcome that addiction.
wikipedia has a basic write-up on kratom here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitragyna_speciosa
some success stories of people who have been helped by kratom, either for pain relief or for overcoming opiate addiction: http://www.americankratom.org/success_stories
naturally, as this is something cheap and legal that can cut into the profits of the pharmaceutical industry as well as the CIA’s heroin-running operation, the DEA is attempting to make kratom illegal as of late 2016.
this plant has been legal and used for at least hundreds of years and for now, it remains legal.
those of us who prep and want to stock up on a painkiller more potent than aspirin, but without the possible legal complications of stockpiling morphine, kratom may be a good alternative.
i ordered a 66g jar (about 22 typical 3g doses) for $44 shipped from this website, it just arrived today: http://botanicalproductsinc.com/
(if you are ordering from this site, KRATOMBIBLE discount code gives 10% off)
i plan on trying it soon, and depending on its shelf-life and efficacy, possibly adding a kilo or two of kratom to my preps.
Chris Wrote:
“If the US is #1 at anything, it is pain and unhappiness. How ridiculous is that?”
The US is #1 in all prescription drugs. The 20% of the US economy is healthcare. The US consumes the most prescription drugs, thus Pain Killer consumption will also be the most. ie don’t single out Painkillers from the rest of the prescription drug market.
FWIW: I think its probably better that people are able to seek pain killers via a doctor than get something off the street. At least the Patient can get information from a doctor that has a chance to avoid addiction, considering that buying herion off the street is guanteed to cause addiction. The DEA has put quotas on the volume of painkillers that can be sold starting in 2017. Saidly we are likely to just see an explosion in th number of people switching to heroin as their doctors are no longer able or willing to prescribe or the cost rises and fear of lawsuits.
The war on drugs has been a complete failure, and has only fuel gang violence. While I am completely disgusted by people using recreational drugs, I am more appauled by the rampant crime and violence that comes with the drug trade. We can see in nations that legalized drugs, that crime fell and drug abuse declined. Consider that during the1920’s in the USA, Prohibition created severe gang violence, but did nothing to prevent alcholism. If you try to restrict something that people want or turn it into “forbidden fruit”, they will find an away to get it, and probably willing to use violence to obtain it. Thats just the ugly reality.