January 10, 2015

"The Battle of Our Time: Breaking the Spell of the Corporate State"

Nozomi Hayase has written a new year's essay on "systems of national governance (that) have evolved into a global network that undermines the sovereignty of countries and the rights of people and puts corporate profit above all else."

The Battle of Our Time: Breaking the Spell of the Corporate State

By Nozomi Hayase
Published on Monday, January 05, 2015, by Common Dreams

Corporate predators, cloaked in invented legal constructs of personhood, have "grabbed the levers of control, creating two tiered justice systems that reflect their lack of moral constitution, their hypocrisy and unchallenged superiority."

The article begins:

"In late 2010, political activist John Perry Barlow tweeted: “The first serious info-war is now engaged. The field of battle is WikiLeaks. You are the troops.” In the last four years, new insurgencies have arisen from cyberspace to participate in the battle against government corruption and secrecy. From Snowden’s disclosure of NSA mass surveillance to the release of the CIA torture report evidencing war crimes and murder of innocent people, a crisis of legitimacy and moral depravity of authority are becoming increasingly undeniable. All of this reveals an invisible force of governance working to control the thought and perceptions of the greater population for nefarious ends.

In his 2006 seminal writing “Conspiracy as Governance,” WikiLeaks editor Julian Assange noted how the secrecy regime works as “a system of interacting organs, a beast with arteries and veins whose blood may be thickened and slowed until it falls...” As was seen in the recent secret economic treaties like TPP and TISA exposed by WikiLeaks, systems of national governance have evolved into a global network that undermines the sovereignty of countries and the rights of people and puts corporate profit above all else.

What is this beast-like being that conspires behind a veil of secrecy? Thomas Sheridan, author of “Puzzling People: The Labyrinth of the Psychopath” (2011) pointed to the existence of a small minority in present society who are in positions of power and manifest what he characterizes as a predatory consciousness. He identified them as exhibiting a particular psychological condition categorized as the pathology of psychopathy."...

This interesting piece closes with this analysis and call:

... "The power of psychopaths is sustained through our compliance with their false words. They want us to react, whether positive or negative, so as to feed off the emotional response to further engage us in their storyline. By protesting and making demands, we continue to acknowledge illegitimate authority and allow it to maintain control.

Civil disobedience against the corporate state demands that we disobey their commands and instead begin listening to our hearts that know what is right and wrong. Our dissent requires a descent into our deeper selves to confront the darkness within; our deepest fears, vanity and desires that have been feeding the beasts.

Illegitimate corporate personhood has duped us with false promises and pushed us to the edges, but this pathology has not defeated us and cannot destroy the human spirit. From the depth of the psychopathic abyss that is modern corporate society, we are now being called to act with courage; to reclaim attributes that were judged as weak and disowned by us in our effort to survive these assaults on our intrinsic human bonds.

Our collective acts of love can resuscitate the breath behind words, awakening our humanity with conscience that can take responsibility for what we create in the world. The unleashed power of the creative word can free us from this psychopathic spell. We can begin again to create social structures that are an embodiment our empathic nature and inherent obligation to one another."

Read full posting here

Nozomi Hayase, Ph.D., is a former @wlcentral contributing writer who has been covering issues of freedom of speech, transparency and decentralized movement. Her work is featured in many publications. Follow on Twitter: @nozomimagine