Anyone who knows my family background may be a little surprised at the choice of title for this blog!
However, watching the demonstrations after the election result, it was interesting to me how hostile some people are towards the police and it got me thinking. If we look at the police as a direct manifestation of the regulatory system we all have within us, we could say they are the macrocosmic version of our own inner ability to prevent ourselves inflicting harm or 'doing the wrong thing'. We could therefore call the police a large-scale version of our conscience.
Of course this inner 'judge' can be exceedingly overbearing, harsh and over-regulatory, as our own police and justice system can. However, we do not melt that harshness by coming up against it with bricks and petrol bombs. You can try it in an emotional sense within yourself, try violently punishing that voice in you if you like. But what really gets it to change is love.
Watch the 'Love Police' (Charlie Veitch and Danny Shine) who film themselves talking on megaphones and holding up signs saying 'everything is ok': they hug police and security guards to show them that the fact they won't desist (because they are not breaking the law) and will instead carry on (at times to the great frustration of officers and guards) is not personal. They are simply doing what they are doing, knowing the police also are human and have a job to do but that we can't always exactly follow what they say.
So there is a more effective way of engaging with forces which try to dominate and suppress you. These forces are doing so often out of a belief that this is the best way to protect you, just as our inner voice for example keeps us playing small in our lives, keeps us hidden if our past experience has taught us that putting our head above the parapet is likely to result in some kind of attack.
There is no way of taking that experience away but we can begin to let our system know that this was in the past and we'd like to try something new now. And that definitely works on a microcosmic scale so why not on a larger one?
And what if the police had this view of themselves as people who, rather than out to suppress or repress or judge what was right and wrong, were there instead to help people to be kind to themselves; to help people to follow their own inner voice of love and compassion when they have forgotten how.
Of course, that does not mean that at times people do not need a great deal of strength to be shown to them in order to listen to that voice - especially when people are in a large group and/or are frighteningly violent. But strength which comes from a place of love is rather different to strength which comes form a place of believing you are there to keep order at any cost or to punish 'wrongdoers'.
I wonder if we can begin a conversation in which we all remember we are human first, no matter on which side (speaker/ recipient/ dominator/ suppressed) of the voice of conscience we are.
However, watching the demonstrations after the election result, it was interesting to me how hostile some people are towards the police and it got me thinking. If we look at the police as a direct manifestation of the regulatory system we all have within us, we could say they are the macrocosmic version of our own inner ability to prevent ourselves inflicting harm or 'doing the wrong thing'. We could therefore call the police a large-scale version of our conscience.
Of course this inner 'judge' can be exceedingly overbearing, harsh and over-regulatory, as our own police and justice system can. However, we do not melt that harshness by coming up against it with bricks and petrol bombs. You can try it in an emotional sense within yourself, try violently punishing that voice in you if you like. But what really gets it to change is love.
Watch the 'Love Police' (Charlie Veitch and Danny Shine) who film themselves talking on megaphones and holding up signs saying 'everything is ok': they hug police and security guards to show them that the fact they won't desist (because they are not breaking the law) and will instead carry on (at times to the great frustration of officers and guards) is not personal. They are simply doing what they are doing, knowing the police also are human and have a job to do but that we can't always exactly follow what they say.
So there is a more effective way of engaging with forces which try to dominate and suppress you. These forces are doing so often out of a belief that this is the best way to protect you, just as our inner voice for example keeps us playing small in our lives, keeps us hidden if our past experience has taught us that putting our head above the parapet is likely to result in some kind of attack.
There is no way of taking that experience away but we can begin to let our system know that this was in the past and we'd like to try something new now. And that definitely works on a microcosmic scale so why not on a larger one?
And what if the police had this view of themselves as people who, rather than out to suppress or repress or judge what was right and wrong, were there instead to help people to be kind to themselves; to help people to follow their own inner voice of love and compassion when they have forgotten how.
Of course, that does not mean that at times people do not need a great deal of strength to be shown to them in order to listen to that voice - especially when people are in a large group and/or are frighteningly violent. But strength which comes from a place of love is rather different to strength which comes form a place of believing you are there to keep order at any cost or to punish 'wrongdoers'.
I wonder if we can begin a conversation in which we all remember we are human first, no matter on which side (speaker/ recipient/ dominator/ suppressed) of the voice of conscience we are.