Post No. 3,375 - An activism email I won’t send

PS - I subsequently found that Mark Carney's speech is getting considerable attention - see:   “Jim Chalmers says Canadian PM’s ‘stunning’ denunciation of Trump is being widely discussed in Australian government | Australian foreign policy | The Guardian”   https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2026/jan/22/mark-carney-canada-denunciation-trump-australia-jim-chalmers   

Also see   “Europe must heed Mark Carney – and embrace a painful emancipation from the US | Paul Taylor | The Guardian”   https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/jan/22/europe-must-heed-mark-carney-and-embrace-a-painful-emancipation-from-the-us   and   “Mark Carney, the end of neoliberalism, and what comes next”   https://www.taxresearch.org.uk/Blog/2026/01/22/mark-carney-the-end-of-neoliberalism-and-what-comes-next/   and   “The Trump administration has a Nazi problem | Mehdi Hasan | The Guardian”   https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/jan/22/trump-administration-nazi-problem    and   “Get out of Greenland mode and stand up for yourself, Zelenskyy tells Europe | Volodymyr Zelenskyy | The Guardian”   https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/jan/22/zelenskyy-accuses-eu-leaders-waiting-direction-donald-trump-greenland   

 

After reading today’s news reports, I prepared the following email - which I will NOT send as: 

• it may become too onerous for the recipient given the number of emails I have sent of late; and 

• more importantly, it is unlikely to be responded to.   

For those reasons, I have not given this the final rounds of editing and polishing. 

 

 

Dear Member [of Parliament], 

It was pleasing to read that the OECD considers we have managed the economy well, although I have some concerns about their neoliberal tendencies in making that assessment. 

I have to also note Greg Jericho's warning that “The IMF’s banal language is sane-washing an economic crisis created by the egomaniacal [fascist leader of the USA]” - and sane washing that increasingly unstable person is a problem that has plagued the increasingly out-of-touch and clueless/incompetent far-right-controlled corporate media for years. 

But mental health is an important issue elsewhere as well - as highlighted by news that we have had one disaster a week for around a year ... and that will only continue to get worse as the world has made meeting the climate change targets impossible. 

And the world is also facing an ending of the post-World War Two international order, due to the USA's fascist leader, with the ending of the US hegemony spelled out by Mark Carney, Prime Minister of Canada (which is preparing for a guerilla style resistance after a US invasion), at Davos, in a speech which also called for an end to pretending and for smaller nations to band together, an assessment and sentiment also echoed by France's President. 

I am inclining more every day towards the sentiment that we must put normal politics aside, and inspire/inform/lead all Australians into a crisis setting to address what is functionally a third world war, a third world war built on hate by flawed characters who are either seeking healing for the abuses they have been through by finding someone lesser to pick on, or have been taught to hate minorities by old, stultified religions (with a recent history of revealed CSA and coverups) that should not be receiving public money for schools in Australia unless they agree to develop the characters of their students to also include obeying the laws of this land, including anti-discrimination laws. 

 

The sentiments I put into that are, however, real. One day I may find somewhere to usefully express them ... 

 

Possible flaws 

Where I can, I will try to highlight possible flaws / issues you should consider: 

• there may be flawed logical arguments in the above: to find out more about such flaws and thinking generally, I recommend Brendan  Myers’ free online course “Clear and Present Thinking”;  
• I could be wrong - so keep your thinking caps on, and make up your own minds for yourself.
  

 

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Any and all support will be greatly appreciated, and will aid me in continuing this work 

 

Remember: we generally need to be more human being rather than human doing, to mind our Mӕgan, and to acknowledge that all misgendering is an act of active transphobia/transmisia that puts trans+ lives at risk & accept that all insistence on the use of “trans” as a descriptor comes with commensurate use of “cis” as a descriptor to prevent “othering” (just as binary gendered [men’s and women’s] sporting teams are either both given the gender descriptor, or neither).

#PsychicABetterWorld   and  

Note that I am cutting back on aspects of my posts - see here, and Gnwmythr is pronounced new-MYTH-ear  

Copyright © Kayleen White 2007-2026     NO AI   I do not consent to any machine learning aka Artificial Intelligence (AI), generative AI, large language model, machine learning, chatbot, or other automated analysis, generative process, or replication program to reproduce, mimic, remix, summarise, or otherwise  replicate any part of this post or other posts on this blog via any means. Typo’s may be inserrted deliberately to demonstrate this is not an AI product.     Otherwise, fair and reasonable use is accepted under Creative Commons 4.0 on an Attribution-ShareAlike basis https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/  

 

Post No. 244 - But they must be better than me ... they speak so well!

One of the problems I have had at times through my life is thinking other people were better, in some way, than me - when they weren't. This is often tied up with verbal skills, or "sounding smart" - when I went to Uni, being young, naive and - let's face it - somewhat stupid (owing to a lack of life experience :) ), I used to think the older students sounded suave, sophisticated, and intelligent. Basically, however, they were intellectually arrogant - or, as I would tend to say colloquially, up themselves.

Unfortunately, it took me a little while to learn that. Now, I have no hesitation in telling graduates and engineering students that their degree is simply a Licence to START learning ...

This self put down has been a problem in other areas of my life as well - for instance, holding off on relationships before I transitioned, ostensibly because the other people were better than me. In the magical world, it has taken me some time to realise just how much I learned and developed from things like Lobsang Rampa's books, and being a student at ASPECTS,, and to realise that I should not hold back.

One of the problems I encounter when trying to not hold back, though, is occasionally a difference in ability with words: particularly in the magical/spiritual world, people can come out with pompous rubbish at times, but I may not have the words to fight them in any sort of useful way. I particularly find this when in discussions with Buddhists who have a Western ethnicity: the conversation is generally along the lines of which school you've been to, what mantra you use, etc, etc, etc - all very valuable in its own way, but when I ask people like this (which was the last last time I ran into someone like this, when helping to organise a queer spirituality conference in 2005) "How are you a different person for being a Buddhist?", they can't say.

This line of thought cropped up for me again today, when I was reading today's article about the kid in a school who snapped and fought back against a tormentor - the video has gone viral, but the article I am referring to is here. This in turn builds on an earlier article here. [4]

I have to say, today's article has got it all pretty right: I know violence is wrong, but I am so glad to see the kid stand up for himself and, in the course of doing so, actually quite probably teach the other kid a lesson [1]. Yes, he could have killed the attacker, yes there are better ways to handle this, BUT those better ways do NOT include:

• telling a teacher (my experience of this from Grade 4 is that this can be quite terrifying - and one of the people quoted in the earlier article has the good sense to say this option does not have good results);
• telling the bully how being the victim of the bully "makes" one feel (that is just reinforcing the bully's actions by showing that the desired result is happening);
• turning and walking away (as today's article points out, that's an invitation to get king hit in the back of the neck).

Above all else, it often does NOT involve learning "verbal skills to deflect the bullying", which is a load of absolute rubbish spouted by some "expert". For Goddess' sake, verbal skills are not natural to everyone! For those people who can learn the verbal techniques, great! For those who cannot, FIND SOMETHING APPROPRIATE!!!! (It all reminds me a little of someone I know who was against competitive sport, but had to admit that her son flourished when he took up footy.) Also, verbal "skills" can simply be changing one form of aggression for another, a form that too often has its inherent violence denied by its advocates.

Today's article ends with two words of advice: "judo lessons". If that is what works, if that is what makes the kid concerned feel confident enough to deal with the bullying effectively, then great - so be it.

For someone like me, it's learning about spiritual and psychic matters: those techniques DO NOT NECESSARILY WORK FOR OTHERS.

One size does not fit all, and being able to verbally out-joust others does not make one right any more than being able to aggravate others or slam dunk or otherwise physically out-joust others.

One of the other key points here is, just as the occurrence of disasters is a test to see if others care enough to get involved, the spectators/witnesses around bullying also have a key part to play - they are the third leg of the bullying triangle I posted about once before. [2]

PS - I have been rather busy doing spirit rescue [3] work as a result of the terrible earthquake in Japan. Interestingly enough, I am also finding I am rescuing people from the earthquake in Christchurch and in Sichuan in 2008. I also find, by the way, that some people who are stuck in a cloud of denial (which is well described in Lobsang Rampa's book "Three Lives"), sometimes get jolted out of their cloud of denial or confusion when their body is discovered ... so my rescue work continues throughout the "search and recovery" phase. If I get time, I may post a ritual which others could try using. One thought which came to me today is that, if there is something in the ritual that you do not understand or know how to do, then - provided you have good enough protection set up - you could ask your positive Guides to do whatever it is that is meant to be done, and wait patiently. I did this in my early days in circle in the 80s at times - for instance, I once saw everyone pointing the palms of their hands towards someone who was upset, and did so and asked to do whatever it was they were doing - and found my hands getting warmer as healing started to flow ... (I then panicked and stopped, but that's another story :) ).

Love, light, hugs and blessings

Gnwmythr
(pronounced "new-MYTH-ear")

Notes:

1. Learning cannot all be achieved by positive means: some negative experience is, unfortunately, necessary because of the lack of evolution of us lot living on this planet.
2. I sometimes do some fiction writing (don't worry - I won't give up my day job :) ), and one story I have in mind will examine the similarities and differences between merging families and company taleovers and invading other countries ...
3. See my previous posts, including here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here.
4. More links: here, which talks about the challenges in having an effective anti-bullying policy, here, on a different bullying incident (where a father takes his bullying kids to the police, and others will be added as I find them :)

This post's photo is yet to be posted.

Tags: aggression, violence, school, children, learning styles, education, communication, personal characteristics,

First published: Thorsdagr, 17th March, 2011

Last edited: Sunday, 20th March, 2011

Post No. 179 - IQ and car speed cameras

I've never been much of a believer in "Intelligence Quotient" as having much significance for anything in particular - although, mind you, mine is, I have been told quite high [1]. I mention that to show that I am not downplaying IQ out of bitterness or anything similar: it's just that I'm in a good position, I consider, to argue the point that IQ is overrated exactly because I have an IQ that is well above the average.

I have NO desire to be part of Mensa, incidentally: the people I saw applying when I was at Uni put me off because of their arrogant attitudes. I suppose they, as is the case with most people, wanted to feel good about themselves. In their case, what they excelled at was stuff measured by IQ, so ... they used that to feel good, and then they made the mistake of trying to feel even better by belittling others who had skills in other areas.

You never acheive anything of merit or genuine value when it is founded on tearing down or attacking something that is different: treasure and appreciate the good things you have, but do so because they are good, not because they are a means to lord it over others.

I consider Emotional Quotient to have greater relevance to most people's lives, for instance. One of the advantages of EQ, or Emotional Intelligence as it is sometimes called, is that it forces those who may over-intellectualise, to the exclusion of all else (and I am writing on the basis of, in part, 30 years of engineering, working, at times, under some truly appalling, dreadful managers who should never have been allowed to manage a pencil case, let alone a human being) to become aware that human interactions are important.

However, getting back to what I wanted to cover, on SBS television last night was a programme examining the alleged link between racism and intelligence. After some really aggravating views claiming that a link was found, the best objective evidence was that things like educative support and opportunities (the sort of things missing in situations of gross poverty) were what made the difference in terms of IQ. The best comment, to me, was along the lines that what IQ measures is really extent of adaptation to modernity.

I can SO relate to that. There are people I've known who have low IQ, but their skills in non-academic areas such as living rough or going bush are phenomenal. For instance, there was an Torres Strait Islander at the high school I went to in Mackay who was, to me, very clearly intelligent, but his focus was not on academic acheivement: his interest was elsewhere in life [2].

I tried to find a link to the documentary, but the SBS website defeated me ... :(

I have been thinking about this issue of adapation to environments: I think focusing too much on an intellectual situation can lead to some downright stupid behaviour elsewhere. I'm particularly thinking of some pedestrians I've seen in the last few days doing some incredibly stupid things - one man, in the city, ran across cars that had just started moving because their traffic lights had turned green. If the cars hadn't braked, he would have been hit.

This situation probably involves a whole host of other things, such as focus on the music he was listening to, focus on trying to get fit (he was clearly running some distance at some speed, and probably didn't want to stop the flow of that), not to mention to tendency I've noticed in many people to put the great God *bow, scrape, worship* PERSONAL CONVENIENCE *bow, scrape, worship* ahead of everything else, such as waiting for traffic lights. At he time, I remember thinking this person coukld quite possibly be someone who is quite intelligent in their workplace, and yet they are so incredibly dumb out on the street.

And talking of streets and traffic leads me to my final point, a nice little story from Sweden about a speed camera where (a) speeding motorists were fined, and (b) the fine money went into a lottery and those obeying the speed limit had a chance to win some of it. I like that - think i might suggest it to our new State government ...

Love, light, hugs and blessings

Gnwmythr

Notes:

1. When my family moved from Victoria to Queensland in the early 70s, one of the things the new school system made me do was an IQ test - Goddess knows why. Anyway, after completing the test, I wasn't sure whether I was allowed to move or not until I saw someone else deleiver their completed test paper, so I did (and then found out that time to complete this was assessed! I had asked, but the supervisor must have misunderstood my question, as he said "take as long as you want"). Anyway, after that, I wasn't told my actual IQ (apparently the policy of the Department), but I was given a [percentage bracket, and it was quite high ... So that statment actually does have some objective foundation; it is not a case of being arrogant.
2. I remember this kid because I actually offered to help him with his homework if he ever got stuck. The offer didn't lead to anything in the end.

This post's photo is yet to be posted.

Tags: IQ, indigenous, school, about me, attitudes, arrogance, irresponsibility, safety,

First published: Tysdagr 30th November, 2010

Last edited: Tysdagr 30th November, 2010

Post No. 176 - A few Friday thoughts: bullies, boot camps, genes and whistleblowers

When I was a kid at school, I was bullied as a kid. Mostly I just laid low and avoided trouble when I could, but occasionally I stood up to the bullies. On one occasion a bigger kid threw a football at me, hitting me in the head: I complained to the teachers and was taken to the Grade 5 classes to try and pick him out, but my nerve failed before I got to the even bigger Grade 6 classes. Which probably saved me getting bashed up after school as I walked home.

I also refused to visit one of my mother's friends: Mum's friend's son was one of the most sadistic bullies I ever met (his Mum said "oh he's so sensitive, and gets a bit misunderstood": no, he was a sadistic bully). I told Mum she should go and visit without me, but she wanted me to be the excuse. (The kid's mother was a nice human being, although a bit blind about her son.)

I was pleased to hear a few years ago that schools were implementing anti-bullying measures; but I was horrified to hear some of these measures included having victims talk of how being bullied made them feel. My experience was bullies are sadistic and want that confirmation that their behaviour is working to give them their little thrill.

So I was VERY pleased to hear a segment on ABC Radio National's Lifematters programme this week about anti-bullying measures which said: don’t talk about feelings, name the behaviour as bullying and challenge it because it is wrong.

YES! YES!! YES!!!

There were other very interesting points in the segment:

• discussion on the "bullying triangle", which is perpetrator, victim and bystanders, all of whom have a role to play in fixing this problem;
• that use of the phrase “dobbing in” (in the context of "don't tell teachers - that's dobbing, and no-one wants to be friends with a dobber" - see here and here) is in itself a form of bullying;
• bystanders may not feel able to talk to teachers about what they've seen, but they can offer support in the immediate aftermath, which apparently has been shown to be very effective;
• schools need a range of strategies to deal with bullying, not just one policy; and
• bullying is a learned behaviour: it can happen in adults if not nipped in the bud in kids.

Having put up with office politics for several decades now, I can vouch for the latter point.

The link for the segment is here.

On the topic of young people, one of our State politicians has proposed sending kids to a sort of "boot camp" to make sure they get adequate training in "life skills" such as budgeting, and, if from the city get to know what country life is like and vice-versa. I am fortunate to be sharing my life with a partner who is very much aware that she is more or less running an apprenticeship for her kids (i.e. they are apprentice adults), but I suspect such a programme could be of benefit to some kids - PROVIDED it is NOT run along military lines.

The original news article is here (Brumby plan for teenage boot camp, The Age, 16th November, 2010.)

Another one from a while ago about parents who do too much for their kids is:
http://www.smh.com.au/national/education/helicopter-parents-not-doing-enough-to-let-children-fail-20100402-rjxy.html

And on interesting news articles, how about this one, which reports that trauma has been found to have a genetic influence on offspring:
Trauma found to affect genes, The Age, 25th November, 2010
I'm going to think about that ...

And finally, whistleblowers. One of the engineering companies I've worked for in the past (and, as I have been seconded out to a few companies, those who know me should not make any assumptions about which one that is :) ) considered doing something which I considered unethical (I honestly don't remember what it was, now - it was far too long ago). I told them I had concerns, which had no effect, so I started the process of lodging a complaint with the Institute of Engineers Australia's Ethics Committee. I don't know whether it was my action, or cooler heads prevailing, but anyway, the action didn't go ahead.

So, when I read the following article about a pilot who was sacked for raising safety concerns, my immediate reaction was that the shame here is of the company, not the pilot. This does show, however, that being ethical can cost one (in many ways, I am worse of for having changed jobs in protest at human resources policies). There are many aspects to a situation, of course, so it is worth reading the article to get both sides of the story - and then, make up your own mind, which does not mean agree with me!

The article link is here, and the details are: Challenge to pilot's sacking, The Age, 26th November, 2010

Love, light, hugs and blessings

Gnwmythr

This post's photo is yet to be posted.

Tags: about me, abuse, activism, attitudes, awareness, bullying, depression, group dynamics, human rights, immaturity, interpersonal interactions, ethics, school, whistleblowing,

First published: Friday 26th November, 2010

Last edited: Friday 26th November, 2010