The issue of boundaries & space

The border issue isn’t just about asylum seekers trying to cross the English Channel, but is all about the various boundaries and divisions which are going up all around you.

All these borders, boundaries and divisions are being created because those with lots of financial wealth are demanding divisions and boundaries be put in place to prevent them from contributing a bit more so that everyone has at least something.

If left unchecked what is going to happen is that we will end up with a divided society where the financially wealthy will live in well defended gated communities and everyone else will be left to struggle, to work hard, often with not enough to live on.

Often what this means is that those who fail to struggle enough will be left to starve, to become destitute or even die. Something needs to change, but what?

Generally what needs to happen or how you address the issue of boundaries and divisions is through creating space and also working to dissolve boundaries and divisions. The space needed is the space which allows people to be themselves in relationship and also in community.

This is not natural behaviour

I'm not sure if you've noticed that if you've ever got too close to a flock of birds how they will all immediately take flight and fly far enough away from you to a place of safety. They would certainly not be fighting among themselves as to whether you are a threat or not. Similarly have you seen any bird, or any animal for that matter fighting over food, or hoarding food, or birds ganging up on another bird preventing them from being in a tree? Animals generally share food, and habitat and resources quite willingly.

Human beings are naturally the same, for we are after all social animals and a species of primate with large forebrains, adept at using tools and technology, and we are naturally predisposed to collaboration and living in large communities and societies. However in cultural terms we're conditioned to be acquisitive, competitive, and to believe in a false sense of separateness between ourselves and our natural environment and also between self and other.

You don't need advanced psychology, physics or meta-physics to understand that life and existence is based around creativity and interaction. Change is the only constant in existence and because things change so too does relationship and life is really all about relationship.

Social and cultural decline

Currently we're living in a time of incredibly advanced social and cultural decline. There is a definite culture of corruption and self-serving behaviour in government and public office. I'm not willing to put any labels on this, even if other people do, but fundamentally we have the wrong people in positions of power and authority who are out for what they get and there is also a culture of distraction and deflection with all kinds of artificial and ideological conflicts being created between various groups of people so that people cannot come together in community.

Money is being diverted from social, community and welfare objectives and is being funneled into the bank accounts of wealthy individuals and of course, multinational corporations. Pointing fingers and apportioning blame is unhelpful because it feeds into further decline and collapse of society as we go into a culture of societal destruction of mutual finger pointing of arbitrary scapegoats. This undermines the efforts and hard work of all those people who are working hard in the public interest and trying to do stuff for the benefit of communities.

This is a social and cultural process of decline and the danger here is that such behaviour by certain people in positions of power will become normalized and what this mean will that there will be no sense of community, no empathy, no welfare and no looking out for each other and people will be left to starve, to become destitute, and will die as a result. These deaths will not be public or known to people, as everyone is isolated. People will simply vanish. Furthermore if corruption and self-serving behaviour in government and public office becomes normal, together with ideological divisions between people in communities, who knows just how far this will go?

We are all each other's resources and support

This is something we're asking everyone to think about. We are all each other's resource and support. Individualism is insufficient for life, simply because the choices you make are entirely dependent on your environment, your community, having a social support network, and on whatever possibilities and opportunities are accessible to you. The principle is very clear.

Poor circumstances result in poor choices.

We are all each other's resources and support. You know things that most other people do not. You are also able to do things that other people aren't able to do. The same is true when it comes to families and communities. You are living among hundreds even thousands of people and each individual knows things most other people don't, knows how to do things better or more effectively than other people.

The same is true when it comes to dealing with trauma or the bad stuff in life. Life comes with a certain amount of trauma built in and it is the trauma we experience, the setbacks, the losses, the heartaches, and the times when our lives fall apart. This is when our humanity comes into play. All that self-serving, corrupt and 'What's in it for me' attitude and behaviour is Ego, and Ego is just a front, an image, it's role play. Our humanity is something different. Our humanity is truth and our individual stories, including all our 'stuff' and emotional baggage, and unlike Ego - which is all about creating and reinforcing boundaries and divisions - humanity is essentially our consciousness, what connects us to other people.

For sure we can make choices and decisions, but just because you make decisions and choices doesn't necessarily mean that they're going to work out. This is where most people seem to misunderstand something that is very fundamental to life. In order for a choice or decision to work out, you need other people to make what it is you're deciding to do or what choice you make possible. I will even go as far to say that most people don't have that much ability when it comes to making choices. We use our past experience as a guide and make our choices and decisions on the basis of memory. It is often the case that some of the bigger choices in life don't work out while some of the small and more insignificant choices, the kind of choices we make in the bathroom, while lying in bed at night, or waiting at traffic lights or at a bus stop, can often turn out to have major consequences.

This is why many people turn to others when they have a choice or decision they need to make, or refer to other people for advice before making a decision. Therefore don't be fooled by this so-called freedom of choice or the so-called power of choice. Your freedom to make choices and decisions in your life is always limited by your personal circumstances and whatever possibilities or opportunities you have accessible to you. It's also very much the case that often other people in your life influence the kind of choices and decisions you make.

Therefore when push comes to shove and the hammer falls it's not what you know or can do which is important, but simply how well you're connected to other people and community.

The House of Constipated Reasoning and subversion

The Qultura community is a developing mystical community resource and an alternative dream weaving community. We are a small but powerful community not for the fact that we are any kind of organization, because we're not, we're simply an alternative community where different people come and go and while we've been based in Nine Elms since we first came together at the end of 2009 we are generally perceived as a London wide community. We are very much a subversive community, subversion is all about the creative self-expression of individual truth outwards into an environment. We do not seek power in any political or physical sense.

This is part of a strategy which is magical or alchemical. There's three aspects to evil which not many people seem to be aware of. Evil, however which way you define it:

• cannot ever be named or given a label.
• cannot be directed confronted or challenged. If you confront evil, then whatever evil exists will use whatever means or resources available to escalate the fight or confrontation.
• can always be subverted through creativity and interaction.

The House of Constipated Reasoning can only be subverted and infiltrated and this needs to be done by dreamers, by artists, by spiritual types, mystics and visionaries, by story-tellers, by creatives, through stealth, subversion and community. This brings to mind a quote by Timothy Leary, an important figure in 1960's US counter culture. I'm not referring to his more popular "Tune in, turn out and drop out".

Turn off your mind, relax and float downstream.. The Beatles, 'Tomorrow Never Knows'

I'm not referring to the first line of the Beatles song 'Tomorrow never knows' which is another Timothy Leary quote. I'm not even referring to his other quotation which was "You cannot use butterfly language to communicate with caterpillars." What I'm referring to is another one of his quotes which seems to have dropped out of popular culture.

Find the others

It was the one I turned into a meme previously - find the others. Most of us have access to the internet and digital technology. The internet was not designed for us, it was never intended to be used by people, but in the 1980's those in power felt that it was something we should have to keep tabs on us, as a new medium to tell us what to think and believe and also try to sell us all kinds of shit we don't need or really want.

But getting back to the Timothy Leary quote, all you need to do is find the others and seek common ground and common cause. This is all you really need to do. You are not marginalized in any way - unless you choose to give whatever labels you're walking round with some kind of reality. There are people out there in the community who are like you, who think like you, who have the same or similar experiences to you, and all you really need to do is to seek them out, find them and connect to them.

This is what Qultura is essentially all about. There is no agenda, no belief system, no ideology, it's just different people who come together in community to do whatever it is they want to do. There are some lost souls who were once part of the Community Message Board and who made the mistake of assuming that Qultura Core, which is the core of the Qultura community, would tell them what to do. It's not enough just to register and sit about waiting for someone to tell you what to do and what to thinkl, because it's never going to happen. The whole point is that it's a resource for connecting to other people and finding community.

Find the others - and then you will know what to do.

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