It's not murder out there.

One of the pleasures of the Christmas break is guilt free reading. Its acceptable to spend a whole day in front of the fire reading til your eyes hurt. As is my habit I had three books on the go at the same time and even spent a good few hours reading the Sunday papers and attempting crosswords which have either got harder or I have lost my edge.

I was frustrated by Russell Brand's Revolution, confused by Kim Stanley Robinson's 2312 and mesmerised by David Whyte's Consolations. Russell Brand uses fifty words where one would do, whereas David Whyte conveys with one sentence a library of thought.

What caught my attention were a couple of articles in the Times. The first was an attempt to make sense of the falling murder rate in the Western world. Naturally the Times used this inconvenient statistic to attack left leaning academics who have repeatedly forecast an explosion of violence in response to the economy and growing inequality. Their take was that the coincidence of a massive increase in the prison population and the falling murder rate proves that prison works.

One thing that was overlooked was the increasingly obvious fact that nearly all of the violence in the world is now committed by Governments. Establishment violence is deemed necessary to prevent violence. This is the same perverse logic which supports the death penalty, "killing is wrong therefore killers should be killed"...doh!

Never was the possibility that people are fundamentally good and increasingly non-violent considered as a cause of this rather surprising fall in the murder rate. This article was followed by a report of the effective work to rule by the NYPD. In response to the killing of two officers, New York police cut back on their non-essential duties. The collapse in arrests for offences such as drunken and unruly behaviour, parking and traffic violations, drug possession and other non-violent crimes was routinely around 90%. I think its pretty obvious that in that time New York did not collapse into anarchy as we are continually threatened would be the case without diligent policing.

You see the"authorities" continue to control with fear. We are told that if the banks were allowed to fail there would be chaos. We are told that police need to be militarised and increasingly violent to protect us. The thousands of petty offences (revenue streams) which we accept are necessary to prevent society becoming unruly.

People are waking up to the extent to which we are being frightened into submissive and disempowering behaviour "for our own good". The very people you should be wary of in a crisis are already in control, and creating more crises to gain more control.

I feel that as we move further into 2015 and deeper into this evolution of human consciousness, the fundamental goodness of humanity will become ever more obvious. Without fear those in control will lose their grip over power, and ironically lose their own fear in the process. It is a holographic universe and those in power desperately hanging on are the remaining aspects of ourselves which are fearful of change. Time to let go! 

With love

Bill