Heather Marsh's Blog, page 8

The perils of diversity

While group affiliations by clan, tribe and nation have always created ingroups and outgroups, the bigotries we experience today can be traced through history by the demands of the trade economy. Women have been kept subservient to control ownership of their offspring in patriarchal structures for the last several millennia. The role of caregiving (but […]

People are commodity

In every single part of the world, chattel slavery has been a part of human history. No region of any significant size has not had large populations of people sold as slaves and no region has not purchased slaves. There is no era in which slavery was not a significant part of societal relations. Even […]

Witches and how they are silenced

A weed is a strong plant thriving where those in power do not want it. A witch is a strong person thriving where those in power do not want them. The Inquisition was a centuries long movement to discredit and destroy the caregivers of communities and land and put all knowledge and power in the […]

People are means of destruction

If we compare the natural duties of a Father with those of a King, we find them to be all one, with no difference at all except in their latitude or extent. As the Father over one family, so the King, as Father over many families, extends his care to preserve, feed, clothe, instruct and […]

People are means of production

Patriarchal control of women’s bodies is frequently explained as an issue of property ownership. Not just the women themselves but also any offspring were considered assets to be disposed of and therefore a source of power. Any attempt by women to limit reproduction was seen as a threat to the potential wealth of the family […]

Autonomy, Diversity, Society

The history of humanity is a history of our struggle to maintain a balance between autonomy, diversity and society. As we have moved from isolated but networked tribes to today’s fully integrated global communities, we have developed rigid hierarchical systems of control favouring either autonomy or society, a perpetual pendulum between the politics of the […]

The destruction of society

The root of society is a woman giving birth to a child. No one looking at that root could fail to see the ability of one life to affect another or the changes wrought in one individual by interaction with another. A mother’s autonomy, free will and physiology are thoroughly disrupted by the experience. Hormonal […]

Thought terrorism

For us, human rights are contradictory to the rights of the people, because we base rights in man as a social product, not man as an abstract with innate rights. — Communist Party of Peru (Shining Path), Sobre las Dos Colinas[cite] Khmer Rouge: “To keep you is no benefit. To destroy you is no loss.”[cite] In […]

There are no nation states

A tribe’s faces are imprinted on their babies’ brains at earliest memory. The tribe’s smell permeates everything in the surroundings, their voices and music are heard in the womb, their dances are felt in the womb. The baby who has successfully imprinted their own tribe will cry or stare when they see a stranger. For […]

The lazy man’s empire

The trade empires were the lazy man’s empire. They acknowledged no responsibility for the people under them. All the benefits of empire were delivered directly into the ruler’s hands with none of the former trouble or effort. All the old Machiavellian difficulties of how to hold an empire were resolved as there was no need […]