Male & Female aspects
‘I want to bring together some of the things I have heard men and women saying in the last few weeks about the situation in the country,
at Westminster and what may be needed to address some of the problems which have been emerging both in relation to the Brexit debate and the political situation more generally.
I will then go on to explain what has informed the adoption of the symbol I have created for this particular campaign.
Speaking on the BBC Newsnight programme on 22nd October, Alison McGovern (Labour) in a discussion also featuring
Andrew Bridgen and Ed Vasey (both Conservative) said the following:
‘Democracy only works when it’s not a winner takes all and you listen to everybody including the people who happen to be in a minority on one occasion.
That is the attitude we should have taken to Brexit and it’s because we didn’t try to bring everyone together across the House of Commons there we are in this mess.
We need to find a way out of it and move on’.
The journalist Tom Newton Dunn, on Any Questions on October 25th, when asked to describe the political situation we are in at the moment said:
‘We are in a substantial mess.
None of the 3 main players in the Brexit saga (he identified these as the Tories, Labour and the EU) really has a clue how to move forward and all are looking at each other’.
The Tory MP Conor Burns added ‘It couldn’t be any worse after a General Election than it now is, with a paralysed Parliament and being held back from our future by this inertia.
The House of Commons as currently constituted is not capable of getting us out of this mess’.
All these responses were in relation to a question about Brexit and whether having a General Election could lead us out of that mess.
The Chair, Chris Mason wondered whether we were being offered a General Election (it had still not been called at that stage) because we are shorn of other ideas.
But Carolyn Fairbairn, Director General of the CBI, said:
‘What we really need are politicians working together, finding ways to trust each other so we can make a decision and move on’.
This was music to my ears and also echoes what so many have more recently been saying, including those from within Westminster itself.
Rory Stewart, in his campaign to become Leader of the Conservative Party in July, had said that if elected he would introduce conflict resolution skills into the Brexit debate
whilst preparing to accept Teresa May’s deal, would also have Citizens’ Assemblies to help fashion a way through the deadlock.
So this point of view has increasing pedigree, both from within Westminster and those who observe what is going on there.
This is encouraging but we need to be realistic.
It will still be necessary to offer politicians every incentive to really bring about what is now needed.
Without that there is a danger, for all the growing recognition, they may miss the moment.’
Come to camera and deliver following message):
‘Hello, I’m Richard Shaw and I’m standing as an Independent candidate for Erewash in the forthcoming parliamentary election.
Basically, I want politicians to get better at just this talking to one another in order to solve problems and to allow the softening of party lines sufficiently to enable that.
Otherwise, I fear we will go on having more and more of the same with the way forward on practically any issue harder to find.
It may be thought that a series of hung parliaments would make for more collaboration, as MPs are forced to work harder to accommodate their differences.
But so far this is a proposition which has yet to be proved. If anything, the opposite seems to be the case, with more fragmentation, more polarisation,
more stalemate as opinions collide and alliances collapse.
Opinion seems ever more to rule in an arena where the middle way cannot be found.
We know how important it is for us to be able to express ourselves.
In whatever way, or whatever endeavour, this is key to our sense of our own worth and purpose.
We also know how important it is to be able to listen to others.
But we also know how difficult this is if we are to truly make ourselves available to what the other has to say and not just be polite or tolerate them until it’s our turn to speak again.
But if we are to progress, on so many fronts, it is just this now which seems to be required.
Like many a requirement it may seem beyond us.
But it is just this which signals the need for this development and developing this will help the world.
Whatever we feel about this as individuals, the circumstances we find ourselves in now are increasingly telling us that this is what we need to do.
The expertise is out there to help us just as the potential is there within us, although we have to be careful not to just descend into techniques.
These can immediately signal to others we are less than genuine, just as they can also be helpful along the way.
They are the means, very often, not the end.
We know how important our feelings are to our sense of who we are; our feelings likewise.
Our passions are rightly prized - up to a point. But we also know how much our feeling and opinions can blind us, if only temporarily, to the needs of others or the greater needs of the situation.
Our feelings and opinions are not to be abandoned but need to be softened at the edges if mutuality is to come about.
It takes all sorts to make a world; it takes all points of view to fix a problem. We should not let the strength of our own feelings get in the way of the bigger perspective on what the situation needs. This applies to Brexit as it applies to everything else. It applies to all situations from the biggest to the smallest, where the situation is so urgent we need to act immediately without consulting anyone else. But these will usually just be situations of emergency.
So we need to express ourselves and we need to listen; to do this and to make it more possible for others to do it.
These are actually masculine and feminine qualities and we can see their continuing importance at a time when there can be confusion and conflict over male and female roles.
Both are needed if there is to be true mutuality: both are needed if there is to be new life.
We can learn from nature; we can learn from our own natures.
It’s not rocket science; we just have to apply what we already know.
Of course it’s not easy, but it would not be worth it if it were.
It is the way of the future and the way to the future and we should start now to develop it much more.
it may help us to look for the observation in our opinion, and to ask where the rest actually comes from?
Does it come from us or somewhere else?
These are deep questions but also simple ones and we can work with this at many levels.
But we need to make a start and work with it more now, in our politics.
The times in which we live are demanding nothing less.
I know that in the current climate, to seek to address male and female, or better said masculine and feminine, aspects,
dynamics and issues, whilst hoping also to make friends, can be a tricky business!
But this is about masculine and feminine characteristics we all have within ourselves as well as those which come together within relationship and I hope
this can be borne in mind whenever, more conveniently, male and female is referred to.
And the combining of male and female to create new life, even if that new life is just in the form of ‘ideas’.
Speaking is more associated with the masculine energy; listening with the feminine.
You need both to express yourself and to find and express the solutions to any problem.
But you need to emphasise the listening first, not least to give the speaker more space and licence to fully and accurately explain him or herself.
This is, of course, a function of counselling, but it is a necessary rule of conduct in respect of all conversations if we want those conversations to get somewhere
and not just slide into confrontation or conflict.
So we need better conversations and these are the things we need to take account of in order to get that.
I felt the co-leader of the Green Party, Jonathan Bartley, was to be commended last night on the Ask the Leaders programme on BBC 1, when he spoke about the need for a better conversation over Brexit, as a part of a process towards finding a more fully informed and inclusive way to resolve that particular issue;
the issue which has so divided us. Such approaches I think are on the right track and chime with those which I am myself advocating and now representing in my campaign.
This election will take place in Advent; a time of the year when we look forward to new birth as the year turns at Christmas and the Solstice.
So can we make it truly the advent of something else, a change needing to happen, a birth of something so sorely needed?
Perhaps we can all be pro-creators of this new birth.
To help bring that about, at this election please vote in accordance with this symbol, for new life and the birth of new ideas!
PS
It is important to stress that this symbol will not appear on the ballot paper.
Just like the name ‘the all of the above party’ it would have needed to have been registered at an earlier stage.
So only my name will appear on the ballot paper together with the fact that I am standing as an Independent.
But hopefully by the time December 12 comes around, you will have associated this message, and this symbol, with my name.’
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