RE: Truth, Lies and "Spin"

4 messages

Originally from: Quita

Mike,

Powerful stuff! The bit about people needing to have their truth acknowledged is very important – without that happening, many people cannot move on. Some people who have read my book have rang me up, wanting to talk, even after all this time, about every detail of what happened to them (and, in some cases, we have cried together). I feel that healing can't take place until the whole truth is out about what happened during the FMD crisis and people have said that they are sorry (although I know that's pie in the sky!). In my view, it's nothing to do with punishment. People still feel so wounded – and also so many feel that they let their animals down – and they cannot recover properly until the truth is told.

And, yes, we can still enjoy today, but we are all aware (and frightened) of the Animal Health Bill and SI843 hanging over our heads – and we all realise that the future for the small farmer in this country is very dim – so we feel that we must keep on fighting, however much we would like not to!

Love,
Quita

Originally from: Mike Meredith

Surveying the discussion evoked by World Healing Day has brought home to me the continuing pain and anger over the mistruths we experienced during last year's FMD crisis.

Perhaps these mistruths, scientific and political, reminded us of our other experiences of offical mistruth and "spin" e.g. the early days of the BSE saga.

Buddhists believe that the worst thing you can possibly do to another human being is to deny them their "truth" (i.e. their reality. To Buddhists, this is even worse than killing the person!!

When I first came across this ancient insight, I was quite surprised that it should be seen as SUCH a big deal, but the more I have considered the more it seems to ring true (notice here how "what is true" changed for me, in the light of education and experience).

When I attempted, a year ago, to make some sense of the FMD nightmare ("From Crisis to Transformation" www.pighealth.com/holisticindex.htm ), government and scientific integrity was a major issue that I picked out (www.pighealth.com/holistic3.htm#Democracy) and I saw it as a major threat to the integrity and vision of a democratic society.

How can we tackle the threat posed by mistruth and spin?
Well, we can (and often do!) see the perpetrator as bad and in
need of punishment (e.g. public humiliation or public vilification). This approach eases the immediate problem of what to do with our sense of outrage, but does it stop the mistruths and spin continuing? We know that punishment can work well at correcting the behavior
of small children, how well does it work with adults?
How well does it work, for example in the prison system?

One of the most frustrating and annoying aspects of being on the receiving end of mistruths and spin, is that it can be so incredibly hard to get the perpetrator(s) to even acknowledge that they have lied (after all who wants to be branded a "liar"?) or done wrong (in their eyes they may have only misjudged, been ill-informed or made an error).

In this frustrating, non-acknowledgement of our/the truth about the situation, there can be a huge temptation to drive our feedback message home a little harder, we may even find ourselves adding a little "spin" to it ourselves – just to "wind up" the dastardliness of what has been said or left unsaid in order to get people to listen. We may also find ourselves wanting to "knock some sense" into the enemy (the slippery slope where victims graduate into abusers).

Ancient wisdom: "We become the people we hate"

Some elements of the media are all too keen to join in such a fray – balanced, "keeping comments in context", objective, "understanding both sides" reporting sells rather less newspapers than inflammatory, "shock, horror, gasp" type reporting.

To make matters even worse, we have a national obsession with "victims" and "abusers" – always looking for, and of course finding, lots of nice "black and white" simple examples of "goodies and baddies" to feed our orgy of self-righteous indignation.

All this can be a fine game to play – we all need a bit of argument, fighting and righteous heroism in our lives, and of course there ARE GENUINE CAUSES to fight, dragons to slay, abusers to be stopped, victims to be supported.

However, there can come a point where battling for truth and justice may become a rather tedious, wearying or resource-consuming obsession. The battle for truth and justice can become a draining, personalised struggle for "I am right, you are wrong" in which neither side is really listening to the other – we are all too focussed on either WINNING ("attacking the enemy") or NOT LOSING ("defending ourselves").

What is the point of truth and justice? What are we fighting for?
What do we want WINNING to look like?

Are we so full of self-doubt that we can only feel secure in our truth if everyone else agrees with it?

"When I need to persuade others, I doubt myself"
(Harry Palmer in "Creativism: The Art of Living Deliberately")

If we are fighting for quality of life for ourselves and our loved ones, we are surely fighting for peace, security and co-creating a better society. When we are over-focussed on what others SHOULD BE DOING or SHOULD BE PROVIDING. we can easily lose track of our own power to develop, create, provide and lead by example.

One of the many shocks I had during the big crisis last year, was re-encountering, even in that awful situation, that section of society for whom "the truth" is "Farmers are always whinging and wanting handouts".

What is your truth about the kind of people who create and maintain the beautiful countryside of Britain and put food on millions of plates?
Is it a truth that you can experience, enjoy and manifest today, or must it wait until the day when everyone else is good and truthful?

Thanks for your time
Mike

Originally from: chris stockdale

Dear Mike,
a lot of points raised in your last letter. Am still harvesting, so briefly
-- surely none of us are naive enough to expect this Govt. to now stand up and admit that their management was incompetent and worse! Realistically,how can they -- such would be tantamount to resigning on mass and handing the country over to Ian Duncan Smith, a Lib-Dem /Green coalition or similar?
What I find most alarming is that these 'victors' will now write the History, including the strongly worded message that 'culling is the way to go', so that the next time it will happen again. This, and my committment given to my slaughtered livestock reinforced by daily contact with the few of their progeny which survived, is what is motivating me to see that good Contingency plans are both put in place and rehearsed, obviously including modern Diagnostics, an established 'Decision Tree' similar to that operated the Americans, advanced Vaccinology and post-vaccination Differentiation tests.
Unfortunately, it is difficult to make or propose changes if one does not know from what; nor is it easy to establish fault-lines in management structures if what happened is obscured. The Truth, temporarily leaving aside it's spiritual significance if such is possible, is our best guide to future Policy, as without knowledge of it, we must forever re-discover the wheel -- a problem particularly inherently with F.M.D. control Policy, as History has already shown us.
I agree that to seek revenge is folly in the highest degree, ensuring nothing but bad karma for that seeker. However, to seek the Truth in all that one does is part and parcel of Biodynamic farming and to deny my cattle access to the Fruits of that process is to deny the very real sense in which they, their manure, their milk, hides, flesh and their suffering contribute as co-workers in our collective management of the Planet, and to set at nought the concept of progressive farm management..
Yours sincerely and with best wishes,
Chris. Stockdale.

Originally from: Mike Meredith

even after all this time, about every detail of what happened
to them (and, in some cases, we have cried together)

Emotional sharing and support are wonderful things. They can bring us together in wonderful ways and be an enriching "up side" to the experience of trauma.

Sometimes emotional sharing and support are all that is needed to open the door of the natural healing process.

On other occasions we can become "stuck" with our wounds, in which case our emotions can become a bottomless pit of suffering.

The big medical questions of the 20th century were about "what causes us to become sick?" The big medical questions of the 21st century are around "Why do we choose sickness when there are so many opportunities to be healthy?"

One big insight that has emerged is that in fact there are many "payoffs" in staying sick/wounded, for example...

a) Being wounded draws people and resources to us. It can become a way of manipulating the world around us;

b) Staying wounded can be a way of avoiding painful truths and onerous responsibility for our own emotional, mental or physical health;

c) Staying wounded can be a way of "getting back" at others;

I feel that healing can't take place until the whole truth
is out about what happened during the FMD crisis and people
have said that they are sorry (although I know that's pie
in the sky!). In my view, it's nothing to do with punishment.
People still feel so wounded – and also so many feel that
they let their animals down – and they cannot recover properly
until the truth is told.

One excellent way of staying wounded is to set impossible conditions for our recovery.

It seems to me that some people are in a "Catch 22" double-bind situation...

There can be no healing until they "win"
But how are they going to "win" when if they are fighting while still full of wounds and crippling emotions?