Outstanding piece of writing!💯 I agree this insane abomination; crime against humanity must stop. It can be labeled in anyway you like; apartheid, Ethnic cleansing, genocide. It has taken the media outlets far too long to acknowledge the atrocities. The lust for power and eternal greed has to stop.
Right on, Rachel! Where you write, “ Our culture of domination, extraction and consumption needs to be put on trial alongside Netanyahu,” I agree 💯 with Kristine’s comments below. As a restorative practitioner, one of the things that upsets me most is the way institutions, governments, and communities fail to take responsibility and engage in accountability while punishing individuals for failing to do so. Friday I sat in a United States District Court, where a portrait of Donald Trump hangs in the entryway, and I watched a federal court judge sentence my friend to 12 years in prison, even after the judge noted that my friend’s actions were totally motivated by his severe drug addiction that resulted from a traumatic childhood—because the judge said he had to deter others. And all I could think of is, how can you look yourself in the mirror when you walk by the portrait of a man convicted of dozens of felonies including sexual assault and not see the hypocrisy?
I just saw We Are Guardians, the documentary about forest guardians in the Amazon and I understood I am complicit in the deforestation because I know the food chain and the lumber industry and the financial system driving the destruction also reaches me.
Accountability is painful. I devote my life to cultivating the conditions that foster it. Sadly, my friend going to prison is far more courageous and honest than the many systems that failed him.
Even when most people finally agree the genocide in Gaza is an irreparable stain on humanity and just as heinous as the machinations of the Third Reich, far fewer will dare the ask, in what way was I even tangentially responsible? As Abraham Joshua Heschel said, when a moral wrong occurs, not all are guilty but we are all responsible.
"how he positioned himself: an advocate and an expert looking on from on high. At no point did he refer to his role in engendering this crisis. At no point did he offer any insight into how this crisis came about, nor the manifest political greed which sold off Earth to the highest bidder. At no point did he offer any concessions as to his responsibility. He spoke like an oracle, as if the future had very little to do with the past. He spoke like a man whose wealth depends on his being in charge."
Indeed, this attitude is widespread everywhere in academia. I am wondering whether it is one cause for the bad reputation that experts have in the public. On the other hand, the "view from nowhere" is important for science. Not sure where I want to go with this, but there is sth more to understand here ...
You make a good point. The scientific ‘view from nowhere’ is, I feel, a convenient myth suggesting that there is a purely objective stance from which to view the world. There is no such position. The world exists precisely because there is consciousness imbued in all things that come into being and vibrate with the source of their emergence acting upon the source and helping to propel it onwards. Quantum physics has established the ‘onlooker’ effect that gives the lie to a sanitised scientific objectivity.
The more enlightened scientists of the 19th and early 20th centuries understood implicitly that science was about meaning and they as individuals were as much a part of the enquiry as the subject matter.
None of us are apart from this reality and we are both actors and the subject of others’ actions and thereby have the choice about what we do and how we react to what we experience.
For me that’s like pretending your left arm is useless and getting annoyed when it interferes! I really feel you have to appreciate both your mechanical and mathematical side together with your emotional and philosophical side and use both. To use one only will only give you half the picture. Other views are available….!
I can definitely see how McGilchrist's insights apply here! And insight is exactly the thing - mere observations or experiments may require or be aided by exclusivity in focus (while understanding and acknowledging how what you exclude shapes the outcome), but eureka moments always require a widening of the aperture.
It was Jonathan Rowson's recommendation that led me to The Flip, and it may have even been in a conversation with McGilchrist or in the context of his work. He's got a video "The flip, the formation and the fun" that touches on it too, in the context of his theory of change.
The world's longest serving political prisoner, from Lebanon, associated with teh Palestine cuase, has just been freed. This mini-doc about Geroge Abdullah's case reminds us of the much wider longer struggle - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YkBZOskQu44 He will need protection, out at large For insider exposure to the Zionist mindset, how they justify their actions, their fears even of 'benefactors' etc, check this out - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QlK2mfYYm4U The speaker displays dissonances similar to the French economist described above.
There is a bill board next to the 101 freeway between San Francisco Airport and San Francisco that reads "If you are talking about Israel, while not talking about the Congo, why aren't you?" This piece of expensive advertising reminds us, as Rachel does herself, that terrible things are happening in many places, while at the same time, not so subtly, asking us to look into our souls and see the ugly anti-semite lurking there. In other words, outrage against the Gaza genocide is really a virtue-signaling mask for jew hatred. As a Jew, I felt embarrassed and angry at this sleazy tactic. The people who paid for this message don't care at all about the Congo. They do not want you to become more aware of injustice and crimes against humanity around the world, they only want you to feel bad about yourself for daring to be critical of Israel.
The media swing towards criticism of Israel, way way too late, reminds me of mainstream outlets like the NY Times sudden willingness to call presidential statements lies during the first Trump administration, after decades of simply repeating untruths issuing from every previous administration, most recently, during the Bush/Cheney push to invade Iraq. It seems the mainstream media can only be roused to actually do its job when situations become so extreme they threaten to overturn the establishment's apple cart by exposing the way things really work.
There is only pain and destruction in the continued failure to live within relationship to the earth and each other, resulting in the complicity of violence and the violence of extraction.
There is a better way and I believe, like many of your guests have been saying, that it starts with reclaiming our own humanity.
Outstanding piece of writing!💯 I agree this insane abomination; crime against humanity must stop. It can be labeled in anyway you like; apartheid, Ethnic cleansing, genocide. It has taken the media outlets far too long to acknowledge the atrocities. The lust for power and eternal greed has to stop.
Right on, Rachel! Where you write, “ Our culture of domination, extraction and consumption needs to be put on trial alongside Netanyahu,” I agree 💯 with Kristine’s comments below. As a restorative practitioner, one of the things that upsets me most is the way institutions, governments, and communities fail to take responsibility and engage in accountability while punishing individuals for failing to do so. Friday I sat in a United States District Court, where a portrait of Donald Trump hangs in the entryway, and I watched a federal court judge sentence my friend to 12 years in prison, even after the judge noted that my friend’s actions were totally motivated by his severe drug addiction that resulted from a traumatic childhood—because the judge said he had to deter others. And all I could think of is, how can you look yourself in the mirror when you walk by the portrait of a man convicted of dozens of felonies including sexual assault and not see the hypocrisy?
I just saw We Are Guardians, the documentary about forest guardians in the Amazon and I understood I am complicit in the deforestation because I know the food chain and the lumber industry and the financial system driving the destruction also reaches me.
Accountability is painful. I devote my life to cultivating the conditions that foster it. Sadly, my friend going to prison is far more courageous and honest than the many systems that failed him.
Even when most people finally agree the genocide in Gaza is an irreparable stain on humanity and just as heinous as the machinations of the Third Reich, far fewer will dare the ask, in what way was I even tangentially responsible? As Abraham Joshua Heschel said, when a moral wrong occurs, not all are guilty but we are all responsible.
This is very interesting:
"how he positioned himself: an advocate and an expert looking on from on high. At no point did he refer to his role in engendering this crisis. At no point did he offer any insight into how this crisis came about, nor the manifest political greed which sold off Earth to the highest bidder. At no point did he offer any concessions as to his responsibility. He spoke like an oracle, as if the future had very little to do with the past. He spoke like a man whose wealth depends on his being in charge."
Indeed, this attitude is widespread everywhere in academia. I am wondering whether it is one cause for the bad reputation that experts have in the public. On the other hand, the "view from nowhere" is important for science. Not sure where I want to go with this, but there is sth more to understand here ...
You make a good point. The scientific ‘view from nowhere’ is, I feel, a convenient myth suggesting that there is a purely objective stance from which to view the world. There is no such position. The world exists precisely because there is consciousness imbued in all things that come into being and vibrate with the source of their emergence acting upon the source and helping to propel it onwards. Quantum physics has established the ‘onlooker’ effect that gives the lie to a sanitised scientific objectivity.
The more enlightened scientists of the 19th and early 20th centuries understood implicitly that science was about meaning and they as individuals were as much a part of the enquiry as the subject matter.
None of us are apart from this reality and we are both actors and the subject of others’ actions and thereby have the choice about what we do and how we react to what we experience.
I agree that there is no purely objective stance, but I do believe that science can only work if we try to achieve this stance anyway.
For me that’s like pretending your left arm is useless and getting annoyed when it interferes! I really feel you have to appreciate both your mechanical and mathematical side together with your emotional and philosophical side and use both. To use one only will only give you half the picture. Other views are available….!
I agree that we need to balance both sides.
I just started reading Kripal's The Flip which is already excellent on this and agrees strongly with you and that metaphor within the first few pages.
Interesting! My views have been heavily influenced by Iain McGilchrist (The Matter With Things). I’ll have at look at Kripal.
I can definitely see how McGilchrist's insights apply here! And insight is exactly the thing - mere observations or experiments may require or be aided by exclusivity in focus (while understanding and acknowledging how what you exclude shapes the outcome), but eureka moments always require a widening of the aperture.
It was Jonathan Rowson's recommendation that led me to The Flip, and it may have even been in a conversation with McGilchrist or in the context of his work. He's got a video "The flip, the formation and the fun" that touches on it too, in the context of his theory of change.
Hi Rachel, I assume you're aware of Omar El Akkad's book One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This.
The world's longest serving political prisoner, from Lebanon, associated with teh Palestine cuase, has just been freed. This mini-doc about Geroge Abdullah's case reminds us of the much wider longer struggle - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YkBZOskQu44 He will need protection, out at large For insider exposure to the Zionist mindset, how they justify their actions, their fears even of 'benefactors' etc, check this out - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QlK2mfYYm4U The speaker displays dissonances similar to the French economist described above.
There is a bill board next to the 101 freeway between San Francisco Airport and San Francisco that reads "If you are talking about Israel, while not talking about the Congo, why aren't you?" This piece of expensive advertising reminds us, as Rachel does herself, that terrible things are happening in many places, while at the same time, not so subtly, asking us to look into our souls and see the ugly anti-semite lurking there. In other words, outrage against the Gaza genocide is really a virtue-signaling mask for jew hatred. As a Jew, I felt embarrassed and angry at this sleazy tactic. The people who paid for this message don't care at all about the Congo. They do not want you to become more aware of injustice and crimes against humanity around the world, they only want you to feel bad about yourself for daring to be critical of Israel.
The media swing towards criticism of Israel, way way too late, reminds me of mainstream outlets like the NY Times sudden willingness to call presidential statements lies during the first Trump administration, after decades of simply repeating untruths issuing from every previous administration, most recently, during the Bush/Cheney push to invade Iraq. It seems the mainstream media can only be roused to actually do its job when situations become so extreme they threaten to overturn the establishment's apple cart by exposing the way things really work.
Thank you Rachel, you are doing excellent work. You might enjoy my ideas for Envisioning Eco-equity. https://poemsforparliament.uk/envisioning-eco-equity
Thank you.
Names? Is that a good enough reason not to name names?
“The few who stole the rights our fathers fought to earn.
War is wrong, we know that's true.
Kill-kids ain’t war. It’s what child-killers do.
“History will judge them all.
The leader class destined to fall.
Justify their killing ways.
With words of praise.
Just words of praise.”
https://griobhtha1.substack.com/p/dumber-than-dumb?utm_campaign=reaction&utm_medium=email&utm_source=substack&utm_content=post
Yes, yes, 100% yes.
There is only pain and destruction in the continued failure to live within relationship to the earth and each other, resulting in the complicity of violence and the violence of extraction.
There is a better way and I believe, like many of your guests have been saying, that it starts with reclaiming our own humanity.
As always, thanks for this.
Rachel,
Another powerful communication.
Thank you.
Well said. Thank you.
Excellent on the imperial order, the crimes/system of, and Palestine, thank you!