FILLING THE VOID – MEETING THE NEEDS OF YOUNG PEOPLE

FILLING THE VOID – MEETING THE NEEDS OF YOUNG PEOPLE There can be little doubt that this country is in the grip of a profound malaise. The August riots should come as no surprise after decades of descent into levels of greed, envy, corruption, criminal activity and violation of the natural environment which have gradually permeated so much of life in Britain. While a symptom of this descent, the riots are also a manifestation of the wider global or World Shift transition which is taking place at this time (Breakdown or Breakthrough). The media tends to focus on negative aspects of life, since scandal and celebrity trivia sells newsprint. The media has also been accused of “demonising young people” as Sir Al Ansley Green, the first Children's Commissioner, put it in addressing a national NCVYS conference some years ago. The public are therefore generally unaware of the number of excellent initiatives that are taking place in the UK where young people, despite the existence of a high level of ‘generational apartheid', are inspired to live differently. They are choosing to live by higher values and being aware of their potential, are willing to work towards a better future, and also act as role models to others on the verges of society. Such young people must be empowered and have their voices heard and acknowledged. However this must all be seen in a wider context of 'consciousness raising' and the need for a whole person development approach addressing the inner or spiritual dimension of life with the outer, which appears to be linking an increasing army of people together in this Soul purpose. The August riots resulted in a torrent of comment and reaction but a few stand out - “The need for a moral compass” (David Cameron) and “A cry for Help” (Prince Charles). “Spiritual impoverishment” (Telegraph). Dianne Abbot and Ken Livingstone both stressed that the young people involved clearly feel they have “no stake in society”. With the extreme focus on the economy and finance, we are in grave danger of continuing to be blind to the fact that young people are the greatest asset and resource of any society or culture. In less so-called 'developed' cultures, the youth are ensured a structured 'rites of passage' process, yet we leave our young to their own devices in the fragmented, dysfunctional and chaotic situations in which many find themselves. Apart from the basics of Maslow's Hierarchy of Human Needs, children and young people need Hope, Aspiration, a sense of Belonging, and Love, yet many are, as Camilla Batmanghelidjh of the Kids Company puts it: “struggling to survive their childhood”. • The UK spends more than any other European nation on social problems. • 16-24 year olds in the UK have the lowest levels of trust and belonging anywhere in Europe. • The UK could save £486 Bn over the next 20 years by switching to a preventative system of care for children and young people. (New Economics Foundation) • A 2007 UNICEF child well-being report placed the UK at the bottom of the league table and new research has shown that children in the UK feel trapped in a “materialistic culture”. Yet - “While so much seems to be going wrong in this world, so much is going right. Let us recognise and link up with the vast, diverse and joyful movement for change which is all around us and growing ever more creative and spontaneous and courageous. If we squander all our attention on what is wrong, we will miss the prize: in the chaos engulfing the world, a hopeful future resides because the past is disintegrating before us”. (Paul Hawken - Blessed Unrest) Meeting the needs of young people Making the transition from youth to adult has always been difficult. Some of the milestones - to worker, parent and home owner, for example - have been delayed. A rich 'youth' culture occupies those transitional years, in which identity is built around music, fashion, transient relationships, consumption, education and leisure. During this time young people need to explore and experiment, reject the norms of society and the oppression of adults and seek out roles in which they can express their individual talents and beliefs. In order to discover their role within their community, they also need an engagement with role models. “ Denying or proving the spiritual needs of adolescents may end up creating a void in their lives that either devolves into depression and self harm or is filled by other forms of questing and challenge, such as drinking, unbridled consumerism, petty crime, sexual precocity or flirtation with violence” (USA National Commission on Children at risk 2003) How do we meet those needs? Families and the work environment play a large part in supporting young people and meeting their needs but there is also the potential for the community to be involved, both to support and sustain the fullest aspects of our culture and to assist the development of the young people. As it ‘takes a whole village to educate a child’, there is a need for the wider development of youth activities, volunteering, mentoring and other inter-generational opportunities as part of this process. Informal educators can play their part by supporting active engagement in the community and environment in a way that helps young people to find their own directions in social, moral and spiritual terms. The central belief in working with young people is the potential of young people to transform their personal and social circumstances and so make an important contribution to society. Yet, at a time in our society when the period of youth has extended to 25 years and beyond, policy directs funding largely at young people as - 'students', 'labour' or 'problem'. Stoneleigh Report, 2004 The needs of society “Leaders for Tomorrow's Society”, published as long ago as 1999 by the then Industrial Society, now the Work Foundation, called for new approaches and 'liberated leadership' built on interconnected networks, mutual trust, values, integrity, shared beliefs and strong relationships, which allow for real progress in personal and organisational achievement. “British society as a whole, and many groups large and small within it, face rising alienation, cynicism and exclusion. Without a new, values-based approach to leadership, the risk of social disintegration is both real and urgent. The roots of the latent crisis lie in our failure as individuals, in organisations and communities, to realise our potential. This is sometimes because people don't recognise their own capabilities, sometimes because they are prevented from exploiting them. The result is a growing number of people who have lost their identity, purpose or framework for living. In addition, the response to global competitive pressures is a gradual decline into the realms of the unethical; in the absence of shared visions society is increasingly focusing on the short term and the narrow values of consumerism reign instead of values based on human dignity." “Campaign for Leadership” In Conclusion “It is the nature of the ‘new’ to be carried and expressed by the young, since they are the ones who are least defended against the spirit of the time and the ones most deeply, if not always consciously embedded in it. This is why we should pay close attention to developments in youth and popular spirituality because in and through our young we see most clearly the stirrings of the Zeitgeist”. David Tacey, 2004 References: worldshiftcouncil.org nef@theneweconomics.org www.kidsco.org.uk www.centreforsocialjustice.org.uk

happiness, beauty, freedom and fun, choose your best route

Being advised to stay focused is half a wise statement. The whole is “Whilst staying broad- visioned, free and observing of all possibilities by looking through the lens of happiness, beauty, freedom and fun, choose your best route.” Beware the focus controllers… we are conditioned before birth when one overhears constraining statements and habits embedded by parents, teachers, siblings and all society. This process continues through childhood and our true potential is in its death-throws as we fight total subservience to societal mediocrity in our adolescent years. We can be free, but as with all break-outs from mainstream socialisation it may feel a challenge, although for some it comes very naturally with hardships, recognition of brilliance or determination of insanity/strangeness, sometimes all of these, concurrently or consecutively. Possibly the most regularly stated foundation principle as one evolves humanity through oneself, is the simple 'harm no one and strive conserve this planet'. This is restated as few, especially those in an organisational or family straight-jacket, are bold enough to keep to foundation principles. This we must do, so just do it. Whilst Woody Allen is a visionary and makes highly valid jokes ("More than any other time in history, mankind faces a crossroads. One path leads to despair and utter hopelessness. The other, to total extinction.") yet his statement is so easily adopted we loose sight of the urgent and original purpose of this note - that we do not need to see the world through a deep sepulchral gloom, rather that we see it through our lens of happiness, beauty, freedom and fun, and we choose our best route. We have an emerging understanding through physics of superpositioning and our ability to influence multiple universes by being simultaneously present over time and space (see lifecollege.org). In the next series we look at learning to access allness and some practical superpositioning activities.

11.11.11.11.11 - Whither goest thou - Quo vadis?

Another date and time of special order where so many will look again at themselves, others, humanity and the cosmos.

Some will be reflective, some diminutive and some colossal Just be yourself and enjoy the ride of reality and authenticity...lifecollege.org

Being ourselves - let us not reflect!

Now we have started asking why we are losing the need for goods, we can move to working with owning ideas, creativity and creation itself. It has always been a non-sequiteur to me, how creation can be claimed to be created. We are not so desperate for credibility as to claim creation itself. We need it not, especially since the mere claiming of it removes us/sets us back along the track. Let us envisage – realize – a world where we celebrate creation, creativity and our true selves. And this is the essence of it all: when we enjoy ourselves as we are, thinking of no reason to be other than being, we will be our selves.

We need no reason. Why would we? It is worth a look at the world through the spectacles of 'Who is looking for what?' . The really great and fulfilled people are all being themselves, full of enjoyment, happiness and exciting inner peace – however fantastical;ly creative and inspirational inner peace is to each of us. So, where do we go with being so at one with ourselves that we just enjoy the creating and being? Knowing that we need not recognition and enjoy the fantastic beauty of feeling great as ourselves? Well, we have a place and a few words to help us. Needing external reassurance is part of a condition known as 'reflective living'. It is also known 'brittle self-esteem' and it drives such actions as self-harm, insecurity and high-risk activities, stress, personal panic, including the great antisocial issues of substance abuse and excessive defensiveness (often called gang-violence, knife & gun carrying, community & family disrupting and generally being in conflict with life, including refusing education, work and authority). Yet this still gets us no where useful, unless we see that a cultural learning environment which supports firstly each individual's esteem and then personal image is a way forward. We have many examples of success here – ironically all based on success! One's esteem and image does become sound, internally consistent and non-controlled by the external world, without doing anything, being anything - merely experiencing successes... which are, very importantly, built into all such learning programs. Surprise, surprise... Here we need only move to the great charitable and inspirational educational groups for sources and instant action, for this is what they do - and they have been doing it for years. Many family-focused charities also help, as do the 'development training', esteem-focused educational institutions. So, a better place for humanity lies in not only reducing the race for material wealth, but also in reducing the race for 'external recognition'. Surely knowing one is living a self-rewarding life, being fulfilled, happy and not chasing what others think is enough ? Happiness and fulfillment really are closer than most think - and much simpler to grasp. Interested? I'll tell you much more...lifecollege.org

BRAIN response times can be just as fast in the elderly as in the young.

Being courageous, adventurous, enterprising, taking more risks and being happy, fun and living in the moment = staying young. Age is cultural, comes from cultural habits and is not time-related. To stay young, live young - just break the connections with old. If you choose your age, you will be your age. Be spontaneous and stay young. You choose - be young physically, older mentally and all ages in arts, creativity and values/philosophies. more at campaignforadventure.org

Both children and the elderly have slower response times when they have to make quick decisions in some ­settings, but the latest research suggests that much of that slower response on adults is a conscious choice to emphasise accuracy over speed. However, healthy older people can be trained to respond faster in some decision-making tasks without hurting their accuracy – meaning their cognitive skills in this area are not so different from younger adults.

http://www.express.co.uk/posts/view/292371/Why-it-s-a-myth-that-brains-slow-with-age

Ohio State University researcher Professor Roger Ratcliff said: “In some situations, 70-year-olds may have response times similar to those of 25-year-olds. Many people think that it is just natural for older people’s brains to slow down as they age but we’re finding that isn’t always true.”

Fellow author Gail McKoon said: “Older people don’t want to make any errors at all and that causes them to slow down. We found that it is difficult to get them out of the habit but they can with practice.”

Positive TV - Postive News - Positive Life

Positive TV - Postive News - Positive Life
Not new, not benign, not always in one's own words or beliefs. Yet as an access point it is strong. If you have seen it before, ponder it again. Wrongly it suggests historical solutions. View it and be with it from the future you want. http://positivetv.tv/channels/2012-the-revolution-has-begun/

Conservatives? Labour? - Who wants work?

It is time to write about 'work'. In this essay 'work' is the activity done for someone else in return for pay. There may be other work but it seems 'choice work' - housework, car-cleaning, gardening, parenting. One chooses to have - or not to have - a family, a home, a car, a garden, and one chooses how one lives with these choices. The future will see fewer and smaller families, smaller homes, smaller gardens and fewer cars, so 'choice work' will decline and change.

The 'paid work' is both our time and our effort for which we recieve 'compensation'. This time and effort provides a benefit to someone else. If we enjoy spending our time and providing the effort, the compensation can be adjusted - but not necessarily.

'Work' is an invention which, on the whole, allowed others to benefit from our time and effort. They got their land tilled, their family looked after and their food prepared. Later this 'labour' grew into farming, then commerce/transport and then industry, now IT, politics, marketing & media are new specialisms - and work in the non-profit/public sector of course has grown, too.

It has been evident for some time that those demanding work seem to do it in order to gain money to spend on diverse things. This is not the obvious statement it seems. Surely those in the right of politics create work for others, and those on the left demand work for themselves? How simple is this?

In work - labour - supply and demand are about to become severely disrupted. People are beginning to value their time - creating healthy, loving, fun and inspirational lives. The need for 'work' by the individual is becomeing less. Yet the demand for labour expands(overall), and the demand for 'own time' increases, too.

Was the Labour Party created by the Conservatives?
Who needed workers who in an ideal world demanded and fought for work? Answers please....