This is one in a series of posts with brief notes on society, politics, and nature. I sometimes include short personal notes as well. Click “read more” to see all the entries.
AN ATTITUDE AMONG THE PRIVILEGED TOWARDS THE MARGINALIZED
One attitude among the privileged towards the marginalized is that they are lazy, could work and make more money if they wanted, and so on. If they don’t have more money, it’s their fault.
This is obviously wrong in most cases. The privileged are mostly privileged they are because they were born into that situation. They had role models. Money. Resources. A good education. A network. And so on. All creating and supporting their privilege. And the marginalized typically have none of that.
So why do some among the privileged maintain this attitude?
There may be several reasons.
They are parroting what they have heard from others.
In their own privileged life, it holds true. If they themselves – with all their privileges – don’t have a relatively carefree financial life, it would be because they were lazy and didn’t want to work, and they could work and make good money.
They want to justify the current social situation, their own privilege, and that they are not doing more to improve the lives of the marginalized. Assuming the marginalized are lazy etc. is an easy (and lazy!) way of doing just that.
They don’t know anyone marginalized. They don’t have the inside view or information. Or they know some and see them as the exception.
They are not motivated to seek out contradictory and more accurate information. They have a good life. They see the current social structure as justified. They may feel they can’t do anything about it anyway. They don’t want the distress of learning more about how others live.
Any system seeks to maintain itself, and this is one of the ways our social system – with wast inequality between people and nations – is maintained.
OCTOBER 4, 2021
A DIFFERENT TYPE OF JET LAG (?)
I have now been near the equator for a few weeks, and notice an unusual sleeping pattern. When it gets dark at 6pm, I almost immediately feel irresistible sleepy, and it feels wonderful to go to bed around 8pm.
At first, it was likely just the normal jet lag. And it’s likely just a normal jet lag that has been maintained since I have gone to bed early (a little after sunset) and woken up early (around sunrise).
But I have wondered if it’s not also a different kind of jetlag. All my life until now, when it’s warm (here, it’s around 25 C during the day), it’s been summer. And, since I have been further north (Northern Europe, North America) when it got dark in the summer, it meant it was very late – often after midnight. So my system may think: It’s summer. It’s dark. That means it’s very late and well past bedtime.
COLOMBIAN BIODIVERSITY
I am in the countryside near Villa de Leyva, Colombia, and the natural life here is vibrant with insects of all types and birds. I notice that the natural life here reminds me of how it was a few decades ago in my childhood garden in Norway. It makes me wonder if Norway and similar countries aren’t a preview of what will happen in places that still have a vibrant natural life.
OCTOBER 5, 2021
HOW I MAKE DECISIONS ABOUT THE VACCINE
I had a chat with a Facebook acquaintance yesterday, and he brought up the topic of vaccines and turned out to be a vaccine conspiracy theorist. He repeated the same arguments as most in that camp seem to use, although they cannot be called arguments since they consisted of “dream on” and similar responses.
How do I make decisions about whether to take the vaccine or not?
I do it the same way I make decisions about anything I take into my body. I make myself reasonably informed at a story level, taking in information from a variety of sources. I check the pendulum. (Which is just my fingers these days, I abandoned a physical pendulum a long time ago.) And I check in more directly with the energetics of the substance and how it relates to my body.
In the case of the mRNA covid vaccine, I got a strong “yes” on the pendulum. And when I checked with the energetics I did notice a relatively mild energetic “clash” which I resolved through channeling (Vortex Healing) for perhaps 20-30 minutes, and otherwise a clear yes here as well. I assume an unresolved clash could have led to mild side effects, and as it was, I had none. If anything, I felt better after the vaccine which happens for some people with ME / CFS.
Why do I trust the pendulum and direct sensing of the energetics? For me, it’s one of several sources of information that I look at in a bigger picture. And I have used it daily for more than thirty years, and I honestly cannot remember a time it has been wrong so far when it comes to things I put into my body.
HYPOCRISY?
I sometimes see people called hypocrites because they advocate for sustainability while they fly with airplanes and do other things we know are not good for the planet.
I don’t see it that way.
We all live and function within systems unintentionally rigged to destroy Earth and our civilizations. These systems do not take ecological realities into account because they didn’t need to when they were developed in the early modern era. Now, with more advanced technology and far more people, they are unintentionally destructive and need to be thoroughly revised to take ecological realities into account.
They need to be redesigned so what’s easy and attractive to do, for us individually and collectively, is what’s beneficial for the Earth and future generations. And that’s very possible to do, if there is the will to do it.
So I wouldn’t call anyone a hypocrite for advocating sustainability while flying in jet planes or doing other obviously destructive things. It’s inevitable since we live within the systems we do.
For nearly all of us, living a normal life is inherently ecologically destructive because of the systems we live within. And these systems were created by us and can be changed by us.
SINCE MY TEENS
When I write here, I am often aware that my interests and orientations haven’t changed much since my teens. My favorite composer is the same (Arvo Pärt). My views on awakening are much the same. (With some additional differentiation and now I know more about how others talk about it.) My interest in Deep Ecology and sustainability is the same. And so on.
Does it mean I haven’t developed much? That’s a question that often comes up for me.
That may be true, in some ways. And I may also have matured a bit into the areas of interest to me.