In politics, it isn't so much whether you are on the left or on the right. Whether you are an interventionist, or a libertarian, is more important.
You don't have to be on the Left to be a meddler or a "Nanny Stateist". The Conservative "Clause 28" which banned local authorities from promoting homosexuality, was an example of right-wing meddling.
As a general rule, people enter politics because they think that Something Should Be Done. The trend is for more and more people to be employed by government for the purpose of Doing Something, they are paid a lot of money that is taken away from us in taxes, and they create ever more layers of rules and regulations. But an objective survey of whether we are happier or more fufilled people as a result of these rules would conclude that we are anything but happy.
It's a basic principle of life that when something happens that you don't like, you should ask yourself what you are doing to perpetuate it. Just the other day, I began to realise how I myself had fallen into the political trap of wanting Something To Be Done, and it also came clear to me how there could be another way.
It was when I heard that a very rich individual had recently died. In case her lawyers are reading this, I will not name her. She had a reputation for being not only extremely rich, but extremely mean. She had had a number of relationships: mostly, as she got richer, with very wealthy men, as she did not want the sort of man who would marry her for her money. As a result, she had children, all of whom she had quarrelled with. Most of her fortune, which was numbered in the billions of pounds, had been left for the upkeep of family pets.
When I heard this, I said, "It should be the law that domestic pets cannot benefit from legacies". Then I realised what I had said. I had just advocated adding to our legislation, creating more rules for legal brains to find ways of circumventing, and not dealing with the root of the problem. That problem is that people don't have family harmony.
The rich, as well as the poor, would have happier lives if they were truly empowered to build fulfilling relationships. In the case of this woman who had just died, she was a business genius, a giant in the field of commerce, but a pygmy in the field of family life. For people like that, making money is an addiction and a way of escape. If you are beavering away creating a huge fortune and seeing nothing else, you can thereby become oblivious of the fact that your family hates you. Also, it's much more socially acceptable than turning to drink or drugs. The effect, however, is very much the same.
But when we empower ourselves to get to grips with family issues properly, then we won't need rules specifying to what we can and can't leave our money. We will all want to ensure that however little or much we die with, it will be fairly distributed.
Therefore, it will work better if the Government rowed back on making more rules, and concentrated its mind on making life easier for people.
Take cycling as an example: on page 39 of today's Standard, Andrew Neather explains that as more of us have taken up cycling, the cycle shops are seizing on the opportunity to sell us a whole lot of clutter as "must-have" cycling accessories. At the moment, every time we decide to change our way of life towards greater environmental harmony, the business world tries to make it into a chance to make more money. This is in part because, for many, cycling is impratical for the less well-off. For example, it's very difficult to find somewhere safe to leave your bike at work, unless you are the business owner, in which case you simply wheel it inside your office.
The role of the Government in such circumstances would not be to make more rules. Rather, it could build a bicycle factory somewhere, and offer everybody a free bike every so many years. Then, everyone would have the incentive to cycle. We would all be on at the local authorities to construct secure bike storage areas. The health, and reduced congestion, benefits would be obvious.
Similarly, if the Government is concerned about fossil fuel depletion, it would be much easier to offer grants and incentives for people to have solar panels, or indeed just give everyone a solar panel, than it would be to pass a lot more laws.
Government by empowerment is what I am searching for.
My opinions on anything are subject to change. My love for you will not change.
Monday, 24 September 2007
Saturday, 8 September 2007
The lost children - 4th Sept 07
It's a basic principle of spirituality that you get, in life, exactly what you want. If you wanted something other than what you receive now, you would do whatever it takes to obtain it. You may say that you want peace, love, a quiet life, a healthy environment or what you will, but if your actions aren't uncompromisingly directed towards it, then nothing will happen. It's like the old joke about the man who prayed to God that he'd win the lottery but never bought a ticket.
Linked to that is the principle that life is not about big bad corporations, governments, or armies versus innocent little people. Because of the religious ideas that underpin our culture, we are accustomed to see the world as a battleground between God and Satan. Those of us who don't believe in God or Satan usually devise some kind of dualistic theology, so to speak, around such issues as the Middle East, animal rights, nuclear power, or the environment.
In either case, we are prepared to give our favourite knights in shining armour, or avenging angels, any amount of power to do whatever they like to bring about what we see as justice. We don't ask ourselves the obvious question: given there is something going on that I don't like, what am I doing to perpetuate it?
This blog is called Spirituality and the Standard because it seeks to pick up on something the London Evening Standard wrote about in the week just gone, and examine it. I'm a Londoner first and foremost, and most people who live here read the Standard, if only to have something to do when public transport breaks down. So I'm starting with what Camila Batmanghelidjh wrote on 4th September 2007 about her work with vulnerable kids, and what it says about us. More can be found about her on http://www.kidsco.org.uk/.
The first thing to say is that the problems she describes are completely within our power to deal with. Her organisation is in danger of being unable to continue because she cannot get funding of £3 million from the Government. It costs up to £190,000 per annum for one child in youth custody. In the context of what we are spending on prisons, courts, lawyers, probation officers, and police, £3 million is a few crumbs from the Home Office budget. In the meantime, we are happy to support, and vote for, politicians who promise ever more punitive measures. To what end? No punishment is as severe as an abusive upbringing or indeed as what gang members will do to each other for not showing enough "respect".
She tells a disturbing tale of drug-addled parents, and the effect that their way of life has on their children. Most people think when reading this kind of thing, oh well, that's somebody else's problem, not mine, but that is a fallacy. It is everybody's problem. Every joint you smoke is putting money into the hands of criminals.
It isn't only illegal drugs that are the problem. I have worked with people who, quite literally, cannot sleep without sleeping pills. We used to have a secretary who looked fine on the surface, but she was held together with anti-depressants, and collapsed into a tearful heap when they were withdrawn. Add to that the statistics for alcohol consumption these days, and I think you'd be hard put it to find anyone who isn't chemically dependent.
This, again, is a completely avoidable situation. If you enquire into the reason why you took whatever substance it was, the answer is going to be a combination of two things. One, life didn't seem to be enough fun, or enough exitement, or enough peace, or enough anything else. Two, everybody else was doing the same. This is because we are conditioned to think that we need something from without to be happy. We don't, in fact. We have everything within us, including the power to choose to be happy. We just haven't, for the most part, been shown how to tap into our inner resources.
That is why I would not take any education system seriously unless it taught children how to meditate. There is no limit to what the human mind can visualise, and therefore to how exciting the world can be, if you take time to go within. It is easier to do this when you have been practising it since you were a small child, than it is to turn your thinking round, like a rather unwieldy tanker, and start a meditative discipline in your late forties.
Once you've made the choice to do so, it will make a difference. You will know it has made a difference when those closest to you remark how much more at peace you are than you were before.
The principle is the same in other life relationships. If men and women really loved their partners, demand for sex workers and pornography would dry up in no time. It is within the power of anyone to drop the expectations and the demands, and to choose to love.
If we carry into our politics a dualistic view of the world, we will divide it arbitrarily into goodies and baddies, and we will punish the bad guys and put them into prison. And if there isn't enough prison space, why, we will just build some more. We are at present taking our liberty away from ourselves at a bewildering rate, and it isn't working.
If our politics were based on a view of the world as an integrated whole, in which we seriously consider how the behaviour of all of us affects life around us, it is much more likely to work.
Linked to that is the principle that life is not about big bad corporations, governments, or armies versus innocent little people. Because of the religious ideas that underpin our culture, we are accustomed to see the world as a battleground between God and Satan. Those of us who don't believe in God or Satan usually devise some kind of dualistic theology, so to speak, around such issues as the Middle East, animal rights, nuclear power, or the environment.
In either case, we are prepared to give our favourite knights in shining armour, or avenging angels, any amount of power to do whatever they like to bring about what we see as justice. We don't ask ourselves the obvious question: given there is something going on that I don't like, what am I doing to perpetuate it?
This blog is called Spirituality and the Standard because it seeks to pick up on something the London Evening Standard wrote about in the week just gone, and examine it. I'm a Londoner first and foremost, and most people who live here read the Standard, if only to have something to do when public transport breaks down. So I'm starting with what Camila Batmanghelidjh wrote on 4th September 2007 about her work with vulnerable kids, and what it says about us. More can be found about her on http://www.kidsco.org.uk/.
The first thing to say is that the problems she describes are completely within our power to deal with. Her organisation is in danger of being unable to continue because she cannot get funding of £3 million from the Government. It costs up to £190,000 per annum for one child in youth custody. In the context of what we are spending on prisons, courts, lawyers, probation officers, and police, £3 million is a few crumbs from the Home Office budget. In the meantime, we are happy to support, and vote for, politicians who promise ever more punitive measures. To what end? No punishment is as severe as an abusive upbringing or indeed as what gang members will do to each other for not showing enough "respect".
She tells a disturbing tale of drug-addled parents, and the effect that their way of life has on their children. Most people think when reading this kind of thing, oh well, that's somebody else's problem, not mine, but that is a fallacy. It is everybody's problem. Every joint you smoke is putting money into the hands of criminals.
It isn't only illegal drugs that are the problem. I have worked with people who, quite literally, cannot sleep without sleeping pills. We used to have a secretary who looked fine on the surface, but she was held together with anti-depressants, and collapsed into a tearful heap when they were withdrawn. Add to that the statistics for alcohol consumption these days, and I think you'd be hard put it to find anyone who isn't chemically dependent.
This, again, is a completely avoidable situation. If you enquire into the reason why you took whatever substance it was, the answer is going to be a combination of two things. One, life didn't seem to be enough fun, or enough exitement, or enough peace, or enough anything else. Two, everybody else was doing the same. This is because we are conditioned to think that we need something from without to be happy. We don't, in fact. We have everything within us, including the power to choose to be happy. We just haven't, for the most part, been shown how to tap into our inner resources.
That is why I would not take any education system seriously unless it taught children how to meditate. There is no limit to what the human mind can visualise, and therefore to how exciting the world can be, if you take time to go within. It is easier to do this when you have been practising it since you were a small child, than it is to turn your thinking round, like a rather unwieldy tanker, and start a meditative discipline in your late forties.
Once you've made the choice to do so, it will make a difference. You will know it has made a difference when those closest to you remark how much more at peace you are than you were before.
The principle is the same in other life relationships. If men and women really loved their partners, demand for sex workers and pornography would dry up in no time. It is within the power of anyone to drop the expectations and the demands, and to choose to love.
If we carry into our politics a dualistic view of the world, we will divide it arbitrarily into goodies and baddies, and we will punish the bad guys and put them into prison. And if there isn't enough prison space, why, we will just build some more. We are at present taking our liberty away from ourselves at a bewildering rate, and it isn't working.
If our politics were based on a view of the world as an integrated whole, in which we seriously consider how the behaviour of all of us affects life around us, it is much more likely to work.
My opinions on anything are subject to change. My love for you will not change.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)