Ken Scott Sep 8th, 6:26pm Hi Id like to submit an open letter - TopicsExpress

Ken Scott Sep 8th, 6:26pm Hi Id like to submit an open letter for you to post if you wish - IVE MADE UP MY MIND An Open Letter To The People Of Scotland Im about to introduce you to a word and a perspective which forms, empowers and enables this word. All of us have been conditioned to react a certain way to this word and in most cases we react in a similar negative way to it. We react with fear and with opposition to it as weve been conditioned to associate it with violence and fear and to dismiss it on a cursory base to prevent us for actually looking closer to discover the truth about it. The word is revolution. Allow yourself to mouth the word silently and explore the emotional reactions you experience by simply saying it and you inevitably scrape against the tip of the iceberg of the fear conditioning Im talking about when you hear its voice loudly in the foreground but chose to look and listen beyond the surface and in turn realise that fear is not the only emotion it evokes from us. There are somewhere deep within those feelings you experience, quietly sitting in the background, other suppressed emotions, ones that are not negative and do not come from the the conditioned fear reflex. To help illustrate the fear conditioning we are continually exposed to we need to understand that fear will point to history and tell us that all revolutions must by their very nature be violent and must come with bloodshed and in following that all revolutionaries are harbingers of this chaos and suffering This is whats called self reinforcing as fear chains and enslaves us when wielded by the tyranny of those in the establishment or government who use fear to remove our human and civil freedoms and rights in order to protect us. Revolutions need not be violent. Our reason points to examples from the same history of non violent revolutions. I could easily point to the obvious example of South Africa or the Velvet Revolution of the 1990s but the reality is harder for people to see because its far too obvious, so much so that we dont even contemplate to include it in our field of vision. Look at places like Canada, Australia and New Zealand and show me the bloody and violent revolutions. Violent revolutions are NOT inevitable, in the words of John F. Kennedy, “Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.” At this point you may sit there comfortably with your tablets or slaving over your hot PCs with your nice cup of tea never thinking for one moment that this somehow has anything to do with you or that you never would dream of classifying yourself as a revolutionary and I can understand the thinking behind that perspective as I myself used to live there too for too many years. I make no apologies for bursting that myth and the comfortable pseudo-reality you inhabit as I am about to. Revolution is not a movement, it is an idea and a perspective and it takes place inside our own consciousness. C.L.R. James said “The process of revolution is essentially the process of people finding themselves.” You have experienced it before and will do again I assure you on many occasions throughtout your life. It happens when we question the crimes we witness against social justice, when we witness the actions of the powerful against the weakest and most vulnerable of of society, when we see our freedoms and rights taken from us inch by inch in the name of security. Benjamin Franklin understood this very well when he stated that “They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” When you see these things happening around you and if you feel as I do when we witness them a deep seated cry of outrage then you are listening to the background feelings I mentioned earlier and ignoring our conditioned fear. Ill give one revolutionary perspective as an example of this and have the courage to answer it honestly to yourself: “In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act.” (George Orwell) When we choose to stop blindly following and believing those who claim to represent us when they actually rule over us and when challenge the validity of their existence and their right we do indeed need to arm ourselves but not with bullets nor bombs but with two things only that we already have in abundance. The Indian independence revolutionary Bagat Singh pointed to it as he took a stance against british imperial rule when he said, “Merciless criticism and independent thinking are the two necessary traits of revolutionary thinking.” Nelson Mandella said, “ . . . a revolution is not just a question of pulling a trigger; its purpose is to create a fair, just society.” More locally and recently during his much seen Hope Over Fear Tour, Tommy Sheridan (hes not the only one nor is it a perspective that is the sole property of socialists) said, “Voting for Independence isnt the end destination – its only the start of the journey.” To put it simply this is unassailable logic and the truth. Give yourself a moment now to allow yourself time to absorb these perspectives and reflect on your own emotional and logical responses it generates and if you feel like I do that these are not seperate items but are part of a joined structure then I invite you to observe my testament:- I have been a Yes voter since I was a young child, I wanted a country that gets the governments it votes for, a society founded on social justice where each citizen has an obligation not to its government but to each other citizen, a society that strives towards the elimination of the scourges of want of need of poverty of hunger of ignornace and like my country has refound my sense of confidence and strength then my fellow citizens, I am not a Yes supporter or a Yes voter or a Yes campaigner. What I am is unafraid, what I am is a revolutionary.