They Fear Your Power

By R. Howell theannstories.co.uk

24th March 2023 - 2743 words.

Part One of Five

Introduction

~~ ↓ ~~

The following series of articles is a well-meaning but hard-facing discourse on the negative way commerce and governments affect our lives and the planet. It is opinion and admittedly and not necessarily new ones, but it is based on facts and compelled by the idea that when it comes to environmental issues we all seem to be raising lots of dust while getting little work done. There is a reason for that which the five articles explore through statements and examples.

Combined, the five parts note several related historical moments for reference and explore the present, while attempting to peer into the future. Their aim is to consider unspoken issues which trip up environmental causes which are mainly attitudes. But instead of just stating such and moving on, the why and where the hampering attitudes arose is explored.

White it is not a short read, it is a fairly easy one. There are no long technicals words or confusing jargon to contend with either. Why struggle uphill when there is a nice level path we can all easily follow?

On a personal note, I would love to enjoy my environment for a little while longer. I still have some wear left in both my jeans and genes, so why waste them. And neither do I care to stumble into a UK algae-bloomed swampy marsh, which my fuzzy ageing sight recently mistook for well-nibbled grass.

The algae should not have been there! But it was and is, everywhere - both metaphorically and physically.

In short, it is time for ‘people action’, but the course I propose is slightly different to other similar calls…

The articles rummage through the influences of the conscious and subconscious and may the ideas serve well.

~~ ↓ ~~

There are a few links here and there, mainly to ‘The Guardian News Paper’ and ‘The Conversation’. Both are highly rated publications so the links are safe to select and they will open in a new tab.

~~ ↓ ~~

So here we go in plain easy language.

Let's start off with an old hackneyed phrase.

The utterance of which is known to cause eyes to roll, but regardless, the saying is as true as the day someone in the Stone Age muttered it in temper when a buffalo dodged a spear. Or so I imagine, I was too young at the time to know for sure. Anyway, this ‘old stoney’ of ours cursed into the dust sent up by the hooves of the fleeing beast, “You need to fear people power!”

In the 60s and 70s variations of that theme exploded everywhere. It was pop art and we wore the badges proudly.

But did your 2023 eyes roll at it? If so ask yourself why? What have you read, or allowed to be said to you in the past to encourages that reaction? And why did you allow it to happen? The simple truth to take forward here is, a choir always has a better depth of tone than a single singer. Always.

So, why is people power feared? Or the idea only mocked.

To make the consideration easier let’s join forces with the idea of Conspiracies. And no, not to start one off! But to consider why such things abound.

But before we do let’s create a few phrases to carry forward with us. The first one is, ‘The Collective’. That is a heaping together of Businesses, Governments and those who consider themselves to be the ruling elite. And maybe we should include Royalty in that - although not necessarily the present bunch, but those of the Victorian times and before.

The mindless commercialisation of the earth’s resources is down to that type of person. Collectively I lump their aims, their wants and their drives to fulfil those wants in another phrase which I call, The Psychopathy Of Business*. Conveniently those two phrases nicely combine to create a third, The Collective’s Psychopathy.

*It can be said that The Psychopathy Of Business is where the Id’s strong sense of awareness and its need for fulfilment has developed from an unconscious urge into an aware state of consciousness which is able to march over Ego’s common sense mediations. That is not fancy… but as close to fact as such things can be. Consider Freud’s own view.

Freud - 1928: The id operates on the pleasure principle which is the idea that every wishful impulse should be satisfied immediately, regardless of the consequences.

Such are the impulses which spin this commercial world out of control.

These articles are aimed at those who would deny that or those who have no idea about such things.

Back To Conspiracies

Let’s take forward the idea that a sense of underhandedness is the cause of the itch that sets off many conspiracy theories. Such theories do not just materialise from nowhere, there is always a spark.

I venture, such people are not as the ‘collective’, or the misinformed so mockingly portray and loudly bray - “loonies, nutters” and other unsavoury variations thereof.

They are simply people who see or sense a wrong but are unable to uncover it. So, sometimes they offer fantastic theories, but do so only in the absence of fact. In the case of business practises, or government’s duplicity and whatever evil is happening to the environment, it does not mean whatever they are railing against is not happening.

It is simply not happening in the abstract way they might suggest.

Their lack of presentable facts does not make them nutters, nor does it dismiss their core worries or complaints. Frankly, itches should be attended to as itches can turn into a rash - or a far more unpleasant disease. And that is the spark which starts the heart of a theory beating.

So, put to put it simply, when it comes to politics or abuses of the environment, conspiracy theories are merely muses upon an underhanded act that has been ‘felt’ but not yet fully understood. That not yet understood moment is partly was causes derision. The hope is to ridicule a theory before it gains momentum and taken and explored more fully. In the debating chambers of some universities that approach to uncomfortable ‘debates’ is openly encouraged.

Businesses Are Lauded

For many, businesses are the new emperors whom governments court and fawn before. Even those states proclaiming to be Communists bend the knee to them - although maybe with gritted teeth.

Businesses are the way forward it is said by governments. Commerce will save us all.

That totally ignores the fact that uncontrolled commercial plundering has put the planet where it is today…

Reflect on Truss’s recent wild anti-environmental speeches. And yes they were! Any government or business who vow to double or treble output and increase profits are in effect declaring, we will destroy the environment and society.

The major way to increase profits is to cut corners, flout regulations and lay-off workers. The way to increase output is to increase input, meaning to Swiss-cheese the planet. Everything comes from the earth. Human’s do not create a thing, we merely take it. So how does that stack up with saving the planet. It does not. The two philosophies are dynamically opposed.

Those promises of Truss and Co are destroying so much and killing many.

If it all that sounds dramatic then take a moment to read about Erin Brockovich - the link follows.

She is not just a heroine in a film, she and the circumstances portrayed in it are true where the reality affects us all in one way or another. And yes! Such situations as shown in the film fuel conspiracy theories. Many wild rumours abounded about the causes of cancer appearing in people living in several areas of the U.S.A before the truth was finally outed. And yes the conspiracists at the time were derided as nutters.

The link: Erin Brockovich hinkley california

Just to recap the plot. Her battle was and incidentally still is, with water companies who were poisoning whole areas of the USA in the 60s and 70s, merely to ensure they earned maximum profits. She won the largest-ever payout for a large number of victims who had developed cancer as a result of the company’s actions.

So, a group of people joined together to take on the Collectives. Those people won that part of the battle, and gloriously so too, but the Collectives would not be denied their want for maximum profit regardless of consequences for long.

Recall, The Psychopathy Of Business.

The water company’s owners withdrew to their lairs. Licked wounds and counted the financial costs and hated the losses. So, they started to recoup those losses using exactly the same methods as they used before - supplying heavily contaminated water to the population. They played the numbers game. How long can we get away with it for before we have to pay out again and will we earn more than we pay? The numbers game… It can be found rolling in many businesses, including the car industry.

So, what does it have to do with the environment?

Frankly, everything!Recall, The Psychopathy Of Business.

What was the U.S Governments response to the Water Companies poisoning of people? They sat on their hands and let the matter play out, that is what.

Why? It can only be imagined they did not want to lose the tax dollars.

Which of course is absolutely daft and wrong. The company should have been banned from ever owning such a business again - the directors jailed even, indirectly through greed and negligence they killed people painfully. As for the government, tax dollars will still be available because water is needed, therefore some business would have taken it on. But cronyism amongst The Collectives counts for more than peoples health. And of course far more than the environment.

Such attitudes have everything to do with the environment’s destruction. When a meadow or wood is ploughed up to get to what lays beneath, or to build on, the environment is destroyed and often forever.

To pursue more profit by increasing production is to destroy the planet. The two go hand in hand. The determination to do so regardless of the environment or social issues, as commerce does, is The Psychopathy Of Business.

That happened in the USA you say. Yes, true, but…

English Water Companies

In the UK, English water companies regularly discharge huge quantities of untreated sewage directly into UK rivers and the sea to maintain profit levels. Link: Rivers In England Fail Pollution Tests. We in the UK are now the proud custodians of some of the world’s most polluted inland waters!

What now these fair green lands of England?

The new green is not rolling hills but algae and mould.

The government allows the companies to ‘freely’ dump effluent directly into the rivers. Destruction of the environment is fair practise in the pursuit of profit to pay shareholders maximum dividend. By not acting to stop the practise the government has indicated it prefers to pay shareholders than to force the water companies to use some of their profit to repair the system. To prove that assertion further, the government and the water companies have stated that the public will have to pay much higher water rates to repair and improve the system. Not a word ever said about reducing dividends… Returns on investments seemingly are more important than people and the environment.

Another example of The Psychopathy Of Business using a USA company, but it also affected us here because the product in question was a brand leader. In the 70s when I managed a supermarket the stuff flew off the shelves. Back then most of us liberally used the product in question. Talc! I can still recall the white powder drifting to the bathroom floor as I used it and the footprints afterwards! And of being told off about that. But now, knowing the true story of talcum powder the only thing which falls to the floor is my hair in worry.

Johnson and Johnson

Johnson and Johnson used the idea of the numbers game with their baby’s talc. A talc which since the 1950s was known by the company to contain asbestos.

Yes, for those who do not know or want to believe it. Asbestos…

I have personally witnessed swaggering builders cry and run at the merest idea of touching anything that ‘might’ have come into contact with asbestos, let-alone, contain it. And there it was knowingly in talc and marketed as desirable for babies. For Babies God Help Us!

But such is The Psychopathy Of Business. Their need for profit was greater than health and social considerations.

It took over 50 years and countless law suits to finally persuade Johnson and Johnson to pull that hideous product from the shelves. While those suits were going on they moved the product into less developed and less aware markets. For fifty years they refused to pull the product!

Link: Reuters: J&J knew for decades that asbestos lurked in its Baby Powder.

Johnson and Johnson a household name to trust… Yeah, Right!

Cynically, one can’t help but wonder. Could that product or others like it, be one of the causes driving the rapid acceleration of cancers to shoot up from 1 in 10, as it was in the 60s, to the 1 in 2 we now see in the population today? And yes, its rising…

Builders Can Be Just As Bad.

I’m not going to produce a list, I’ll just mention a recent tragedy we are all familiar with in the UK.

The Grenfell Towers fire was not the first of its kind, but it was the largest in recent times and it happened in the capital right in front of the government, so it could not be ignored. It was generally known in the industry - which I worked in for a while so I know - that the cladding used was dangerous. Regardless, it was still installed in buildings around the UK. It has been suggested that the government also knew that - a government who many of us believe did not act well in that catastrophe, or since.

Why? Well, it can argued cynically that the building firms the governments suck up to feared huge claims while also refusing to be regulated. As do the local authorities who also seem to decry the very social housing they are meant to provide and therefore the people who rely on such. It is all played down. Just like they do the severity of environmental issues. NB. Updated this section in April with the following link to a Guardian Article which expands this point. Stark Visions Of Grenfell.

Business must prevail, governments must continue. That is yet another layer of psychopathic attitudes which the environmentalists have to contend with.

So, there you have it, The Psychopathy Of Business over and over and over again in just a few obvious illustrations. It is everywhere because The Collectives ensure its proliferation for there is safety in numbers.

So you see, they are allowed to sing the tune ‘safety in numbers’, while decrying or denying those people who would join their voices in protest or raise theories or hark back to a decade when questions were freely asked and answers demanded.

Now you know why you roll your eyes when the 60’s are mentioned. Because through The Collectives poisonous whispers - examples follow in the other associated articles - you have been encouraged over the years, maybe since your birth to think that way. Remember, newspapers and the media are also businesses. They have advertisers and shareholders to satisfy, as well as their pockets and dare it be said, their egos.

Here is a throw away thought before the next article.

My generation believed that a persons moral compass could be gauged by how they run their personal affairs and family.

So, having suffered a few scandals the politicians passed a resolution to prevent newspapers from reporting their moral infractions - those very reflections of true character. So we are not allowed to know about said moral infractions… But they do expect us to vote for them! And by the way, no newspaper campaigned to prevent the government’s block. A few griped about it, The Guardian team might even have spluttered or spilt coffee in outrage, but generally it was soon forgotten and it was business as usual.

But sadly and deliberately from that moment some of the music scores for the people’s choir were glibly torn up…

Continued in Part Two - Recognising Influences

~~ ↓ ~~

Comments as always to: ray@theannstories followed by .co.uk