Peter van der Werff: End of the World Bank would be a blessing

End of World Bank would be a blessing: Indirectly   because of the World Bank,  thousands of people or suffer and the  physical environment degrades . This happens disregarding ...

End of World Bank would be a blessing

Because of the World Bank, thousands of people suffer and the physical environment degrades.

This happens disregarding the fact that the World Bank is started for the purpose of poverty alleviation. 

As it was organized by the United Nations, the World Bank can only work through governments of member nations. These national governments take loans from the World Bank for big projects or to support better off people such as landowning farmers, by which they can repay the loans.

But often such projects go at the cost of the poorest households and the physical environment, with undernourishment, illnesses and death of people, and depletion and pollution of natural resources as a result.

Therefore, on balance it would be a blessing for the poor and the environment if the World Bank got closed down.

Yet, so-called progressive Dutch politicians such as Eveline Herkens, Ad Melkert and Herman Wijffels have seen it as a nice career move to go and work for the World Bank.

Peter van der Werff: Peter van der Werff: Zwarte Piet: Onderschatte kra...

Zwarte Piet: Onderschatte kra...: Peter van der Werff: Zwarte Piet: Onderschatte kracht van onbewuste. Bl... : Zwarte Piet en de onderschatte kracht van het onbewuste  Ve...

Peter van der Werff: The Return of Democracy

Peter van der Werff: The Return of Democracy: Democracy is not new. My no, not at all. Humans have lived in democratic communities for most of the time. That means, for millions of years...

Peter van der Werff: Peter van der Werff: Zwarte Piet: Onderschatte kra...

Peter van der Werff: Peter van der Werff: Zwarte Piet: Onderschatte kra...: Peter van der Werff: Zwarte Piet: Onderschatte kracht van onbewuste. Bl... : Zwarte Piet en de onderschatte kracht van het onbewuste  Ve...

Peter van der Werff: Zwarte Piet: Onderschatte kracht van onbewuste. Bl...

Peter van der Werff: Zwarte Piet: Onderschatte kracht van onbewuste. Bl...: Zwarte Piet en de onderschatte kracht van het onbewuste  Ver weg van agitatie en straattumult, en zonder het mooie Sinterklaasfeest ter...

Peter van der Werff: The Return of Democracy

Peter van der Werff: The Return of Democracy: Democracy is not new. My no, not at all. Humans have lived in democratic communities for most of the time. That means, for millions of years...

Peter van der Werff: Zwarte Piet: Onderschatte kracht van onbewuste. Bl...

Peter van der Werff: Zwarte Piet: Onderschatte kracht van onbewuste. Bl...: Zwarte Piet en deonderschatte kracht van het onbewuste  Ver weg van agitatie en straattumult, en zonder het mooie Sinterklaasfeest ter ...

Peter van der Werff: The Return of Democracy

Peter van der Werff: The Return of Democracy: THE RETURN OF DEMOCRACY Democracy is not new. My no, not at all. Humans have lived in democratic communities for most of the time. Tha...

The Return of Democracy

Democracy is not new. My no, not at all. Humans have lived in democratic communities for most of the time. That means, for millions of years. And this type of social life may still be stored in our genes. We lost it in the agricultural revolution, only some thousands of years ago.

We are now trying to regain it since about 150 years. But it is hard to reinstall democratic habits of low-tech, small communities with hardly any specialization other than between men and women. We now have to deal with large-scale society, advanced technologies and a wide specter of labor specialization. The village has become the global village, with potential similarities but also with huge differences.

With increased levels of information and education, many have come to doubt the functioning of the democratic project. They notice that voting is rather pointless as long as elections omit high officials, journalists, lobbyists and the hidden powers represented by those lobbyists.

ILLUSION

We can hope for improvement through next elections, but elections are part of the very same political system that we try to modify through elections. The last thing we should expect is that those we bring into power will try to change it. They are the ones who benefit from that political system and will not want risking the benefits of their personal investments.

To my mind, the core problem is that our elections delegate power to persons. It is ‘representative’ democracy. We have come to suppose that ruling a country is a specialized job: “It has to be done by people such as politicians and their advisors.” The consequence is that more than 99% of the citizens are to meekly implement what the experts decide. Schools and mass-production have turned us into the standard citizens who make the wheels turn.

Therefore, we as citizens cannot improve society through elections and hoping for politicians to do the job for us. If elections and politicians do bring improvements it is because the wider society has arrived at a point where a majority want something, for instance, more equality for women.

But the desire of more equality for women does not come from elections. It evolves in society, whereas elections are just an instrument. Neither does the desire of more equality for women come from politicians as opinion makers. They follow the trend, put that desire on their agenda.

So, instead of mostly focusing on elections, we may at least also focus on society, or perhaps even more. Change has to come bottom-up, through creative thought and by inspired action. Elections reinforce routine thinking and are therefore, next to their benefits, a dangerous instrument in the hands of those who want our conformity.

STONE AGE

What can we, in our attempts to improve politics, learn from our stone-age ancestors? And what have qe unlearned in farm society? What might we recover from the community organization used by democratic stone-age tribals and perhaps set free of what is still waiting in our genes?

Our stone-age ancestors show that democracy does not have a government. It is government, a certain type of government. All people are involved in managing the community. They notice a problem, discuss it, use earlier knowledge provided by elders, decide, test, re-decide and implement again, as an ongoing, joint process.

It is not a separate segment of society, like we at present see as politics, next to economics, education, health care, religion, sports, arts, and other such segments. No, tribals apply politics as an integral part of everybody’s daily life.

RE-ENACT

Now, do we have any chance of re-enact parts of this stone-age life in our high-tech, globalized and specialized lives? Well, here is the garden where we can experiment, discuss, use available knowledge, decide, test, re-decide and implement again, as an ongoing, joint process. What can we re-enact from the long gone past that, however, may still be slumbering in our genes waiting to be used again?

Which differences are simply too large to bridge? How can involve more citizens in ongoing management? How will citizens acquire and use sensible information? How to clarify, just to mention one immense challenge, the integration of issues ranging from the local to the global level? Can we hope for proper use of Internet and social media? Other media. Civil society? School education? More and better personal meetings, at various levels of scale?

In shaping the behaviors of future adults, mothers have most of the influence. In wider society we may use the power of collective consumer actions. Improve legal support to employees so that they become more vocal. Start more economic and ecological initiatives from below and keep those initiatives running. Teach constructive initiatives and their consolidation. Improve and safeguard information such as in the social media. Maintain communication between initiatives to learn and support each other.

In the visible domain, school education, established media and social media may need our critical and creative attention. In the hidden domain, the enormous power of large companies can be counterpoised, not by trade unions, but by consumers. The power of banks may be undermined by bottom-up financial initiatives that bring rivaling influence.

It’s all very difficult. But is difficulty a reason to give up? Let’s start with small steps. I can give a few ideas and welcome positive responses.

VOTE MATCH

Have you heard of Vote Match, ‘Stemwijzer’ in Dutch? It is an Internet tool, developed to help voters prepare for elections by testing their political preferences. “The user enters his/her opinion in response to some thirty propositions, and the program calculates which party most closely matches the user’s points of view. This is an attractive means to provide voters with information on political parties’ stances on an extremely wide range of issues.”

It is used by millions of people in the run-up to Dutch and European parliamentary elections, but also for municipal and provincial governments and the water boards. Furthermore, it has been developed for the French presidential and parliamentary elections. German, English, American, Swiss and Bulgarian version coming up.

It is produced by the Dutch company Prodemos. https://prodemos.nl/english/activities/international-activities/vote-match/

Part Two, about referendums, will follow due.

Zwarte Piet: De onderschatte kracht van het onbewuste

Without questioning the beautiful Sinterklaas festival, and far away from agitation and street cult, here is something to explain what might be against Piet's black.

As you often hear, children have no problem with a different color for Piet. They will therefore not have much trouble with me a white Piet. No, it is rather the adults who want to stick to the tradition of black. 

That is remarkable, because when the tradition of one Piet faded and more Pieten appeared at the Saint at the same time, it gave much less resistance. Also, the tradition of a saint who threatens children with the roe and take them in the bag quite silently released. But now that it's all about color, it's different. There the arrival of migrants and uncertainties due to globalization will not be strange.

So it requires an extra effort to understand what is so against the black of Piet. Most Dutch people are nice people who mean nothing bad with Piet's black and Saint's white. And they do not want to be a parent at all. 

But if they have white skin, they can be the parent in the eyes of people with a different skin tone. To those people, white Dutch people listen with respect to understand how underlying parties feel.

After all, it is known that parent parties often do not know that much about it. The underlying party must know what is going on in the other party. The parent party has that need much less. That is the difference. As a result, many white Dutch people, well-disposed as they are, underestimate the damage that Piet's black can cause. 

This damage occurs when children look at a subordinate, walking servant who is black and a boss with a high hat on top of a horse who is white.

Children learn from this image that black is inferior and that white is of a superior quality. They take that unfortunate distinction into their lives. The assumption that small children do not pick up the unfortunate image arises from an underestimation of our unconscious. But there is a lot of commitment in the unconscious of small children. Those early fixings in our brains determine to a large extent what we observe later and which explanation we give them. Science emphasizes that dominant role of our unconscious.

Perhaps the creeping pain does not apply to everyone with a dark complexion but to many of them. Why would not we want to prevent their pain by giving Piet and Saint the same skin color?

PS. Behind the scenes I get appreciation from people with darker skin. They would rather not talk about it in public, but are happy if someone else does.

Digital Participation to Make Democracies Democrat...

Peter van der Werff: Digital Participation to Make Democracies Democrat...: Rather than reject referendums, Lok Sabha lies, Trump gangs or Brussels labyrints, let us think constructively about better political syste...

Digital Participation to Make Democracies Democratic

Rather than reject referendums, Lok Sabha lies, Trump gangs or Brussels labyrints, let us think constructively about better political systems. One alternative is embraced by the younger generations. See what happens in the UK.

‘The internet has transformed media, retail, communication and other areas of life, but there has been one notable exception – politics.’

‘57% of all adults want the opportunity to regularly vote via digital and social media channels on key issues and legislation debated in parliament.’

https://www.theguardian.com/media-network/2015/apr/01/uk-political-system-digital-technology

And of referendums have perceived shortcomings, search for the reduction of those shortcomings so that 'democracies' become democratic. I have offered a number of improvements earlier here.

Of course, there is the risk of hijacking at the Internet. But it is a risk offline as well, and perhaps even more so.

If you keep rejecting Internet politics, do propose better alternatives.

The import-export business of lotus, communism, running and apples

For quite some westerners sitting in the lotus position to meditate is uncomfortable. Contrary to Indians, where the habit comes from, they hardly ever sit like this in daily life. At the same time, other westerners produce mounting evidence that to sit long is unhealthy. We should move - babies, school children, adults, the aged, all of us.

Russia, Mozambique, China, Vietnam and Cuba copied communism from Western Europe but logically did not keep the original model. They gave communism a range of different flavors, each adjusted to the particular culture.

East Africans, used to move over long distances while herding their cattle in the savannas, export themselves as marathon runners to the West and earn way more money with moving in the streets of Boston and New York than their cousins of the plains of Ethiopia or Kenya. One wonders if they will ever start missing savannas.

The apple tree originates from Central Asia and got exported to Asia, Europe and North America, a few thousand years ago. The Old Testament has the apple make Adam and Eve leave Paradise and start the human evolution, about seven million years ago. Paradise must for sure have been in Central Asia and, in package deals with the apple, brought to other parts of the world.

Top ten focal points in football, music and finance

Ten football centers of the world: London, Milan, Rio de Janeiro, Barcelona, Buenos Aires, Madrid, Manchester, Mexico City,  Munich, Sao Paulo.

Ten music centers of the world: London, Milan, Rio de Janeiro, Sidney, Memphis, Havana, Vienna, Berlin, Leipzig, Bologna.

Ten financial centers of the world:  London, Sidney, Toronto, New York, Beijing, Tokyo, Shanghai, Hong Kong, Singapore, Zurich.

London figures three times in these lists, Milan, Rio and Sidney twice.

Old Pain Wants True Healing

Peter van der Werff: Old Pain Wants True Healing: Meditation, energy work, yoga, aikido, qi gong, tai chi, race in a Ferrari, sports training, ecstatic dance, five rhythm dance, tango work...

Old Pain Wants True Healing

Meditation, energy work, yoga, aikido, qi gong, tai chi, race in a Ferrari, sports training, ecstatic dance, five rhythm dance, tango workshops, sleeping pills, pain killers, mushrooms, massage, tantra, hard work, stardom, reading psychology and spirituality books, pray to God, lying in the grass, orgasms, postpone orgasm, Zen focus, philosophizing, talking, listening, chanting, asking recognition from parents or managers, joining a guerrilla movement, assertiveness training, time management, analyzing astrological charts, awareness of cosmic movements, fight tooth and nail with a partner, resign, hope for the best, trust your intuition, follow your heart, shout revolution, do what the teacher says, be creative, watch your weight, gaze in the mirror, save a child, eat organic food, campaign politically, post on Facebook, hug your lover, enjoy your coffee, reject coffee – you name it – all nice or not nice, but it does not remove your hidden, old pain.

In this list are ways that can soften our old pain or help us on our way to find true healing. We may sound out if such ways lead us away from that healing or not. If they lean towards escape, they function more as blocks than roads to Rome. So, if we want a better life, much of our work is to honestly and courageously sound out our softening of old pain: does it build a road block or an access road?

After all, undigested old pain keeps giving thoughts, feelings and acts that may be unwanted by you or others. So, if you notice such effects in yourself, set sail to discover you old pain.

But you will not digest it by going with the old feelings of rage, grief and fear that were created by your old pain.

You digest old pain by imagining yourself as two different selves. The first self is the discoverer or driver that leads you to the pain. If you are lucky, the other self starts sensing the old pain and goes deeper and deeper into it. The first self stays out of the emotions, does not get swept away, just watches the feeling of the pain, doesn’t identify. It manages how far you can go each time.

If you can’t do that alone, find someone who did all this herself or himself and with whom you feel a click. <3

Political Change from the Outside

Peter van der Werff: Political Change from the Outside: FROM THE OUTSIDE As both multi-party and two-party styles of coalition governance have major flaws, discussing their pros and cons is c...

Political Change from the Outside

Peter van der Werff: Political Change from the Outside: FROM THE OUTSIDE As both multi-party and two-party styles of coalition governance have major flaws, discussing their pros and cons is c...

Political Change. Don't Leave it to Politicians

FROM THE OUTSIDE

As both multi-party and two-party styles of coalition governance have major flaws, discussing their pros and cons is covering up worldwide felt disadvantages of our so-called 'democratic' systems.

The same goes for debates on favorite political parties or presidential candidates, or the frenzy of periodically organized election circuses. They cover up the fundamental shortcomings in political systems.

Now, as politicians are the last ones wanting to fundamentally modify their system, changes have to come from outside the outdated political systems.

But a political system does not exist as an anomaly in its society, it results from that society. That means, real changes in politics require real changes in society.

Members of 'civil society', such as conscious and active youth, concerned scholars, journalists, teachers and the like will have to think hard about how to improve their societies and act upon it.

It seems that worldwide such initiatives are on the rise in number and quality.

The Bernie-Oprah Team

The US political system, seen from the outside, needs a fundamental shake-up. Bernie Sanders and Oprah Winfrey could be able to install renewal.

But they may be disliked as presidential candidates by the power and money hungry establishment of the Democratic Party.

They’d better prepare for the presidential elections with a new party. In order to avoid costly rivalry, they coin join hands and pre-arrange a team, with one as president and the other at a high-key position.

Peter van der Werff: The Delusional Focus on Religion

Peter van der Werff: The Delusional Focus on Religion: The accusing focus on religion blinds us for what politicians really do. Many politicians use divisive strategies in a number of social ...

The Delusional Focus on Religion

The accusing focus on religion blinds us for what politicians really do. Many politicians use divisive strategies in a number of social fields in order to mobilize followers, keep people away from dealing with essential issues, and cash in with the power they gain from strategies.
Think of how they amplify, intended or not, conflicts between political parties, territories within a country, national and international interests, ethnicities, tribes, car drivers and bikers, rich and poor, the sexes, or the police and demonstrators.
The more you bring this political mechanism to the surface of your mind, the less you get distracted by the subject of religion. I’ve written about this hopeless delusion before.
The unconscious, shaped by genes and culture, as a behavioral driver, is even more basic than that political mechanism.