How happy have you been?
During the past few years how much happiness have you known?
Can you recall moments of great happiness in recent months?
I have been happy. I am happy. I could be unhappy. I have been very unhappy at certain times in my life. My happiness varies of course, affected by me, mood, health and circumstances. But I am generally happy. I am fortunate. Yet what if the measure of my happiness had less to do with me and more to do with the actions of others that unavoidably crushed my happiness quotient. That wouldn't be fair.
A famous phrase of The United States Declaration of Independence is "Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness," and these three qualities are considered “unalienable rights” or sovereign rights of humanity.
An early champion of this philosophical view of human life on earth was John Locke in whose Essay Concerning Human Understanding written in 1693 wrote in Book 2, Chapter 21, Section 51 that "the highest perfection of intellectual nature lies in a careful and constant pursuit of true and solid happiness."
So important is happiness that it has been made a science. During the past twenty years an upsurge of scientific studies have sought to discover the causes of “subjective well being” that is, discovering what makes happy people happy. There is some consensus about key factors that produce happiness and these will not surprise you. Communicating, Caring, Exercise, Getting in the Flow, Spiritual Engagement, Cultivating Strengths and Virtues, Positive Thinking: Optimism, Savoring, and Gratitude.
Lost in this new science or at least not obvious in this list, is domestic contentment. Examining these 7 factors however, informs me that Communicating hinges upon relationships. People are happiest with friends and family and least happy if they are alone. People Caring for others consistently enjoy good mental health, are less depressed and have greater satisfaction. Regular exercise has a large effect on mood and mental well-being and mood. Getting in the Flow is involvement, becoming engrossed in creative and meaningful activity which produces self esteem and engagement and happiness. There is a close link between spiritual and religious practice and happiness. Significant benefit is derived from optimism because negative influences are viewed as temporary, limited and manageable. Gratitude interestingly causes people to interpret events uniquely and view life positively, hopefully.
Okay enough of the philosophy.
I have not spoken directly with Paul and Zabeth Bayne about the subject of happiness so what I say here is pure conjecture on my part based upon what I see of them, hear from them and read in their communications. Their happiness is inconsistent. It is certainly never at the level where they feel exhilarated in the morning and entirely fulfilled at night. They have moments of happiness and those are the 540 minutes each week that they spend with their three children. Imagine measuring that time in minutes for three years. That happiness is abruptly concluded at each of three weekly visits when the sad-faced wee ones are escorted by their contracted supervising custodian to the van that takes them back to the foster home. The rest of the time Paul and Zabeth are preoccupied by concerning thoughts that a government ministry can want to keep their children and will build a case against them to make this happen rather than build a means by which the children will be returned. And they are obsessed with thoughts of their children's happiness or lack of happiness because this same government ministry has misrepresented the concept of 'the best interests of the children,' and in practice is not doing the right things which would make for happiness for everyone. 
To those who have not witnessed the horror of child removal, please watch a real one at
ReplyDeletehttp://www.youtube.com/v/TXwBRfxRSz8
New born was removed from mother shortly after birth. You will see what power this god-like creatures have.
Watched it. Sad. I know it happens. The margin index at that Youtube location shows others. You can see sometimes this might be warranted, but other times it is interference. What disturbed me most in your referenced link was the quote from a resourced text book for training social workers which denigrated the family and exalted the State.
ReplyDeleteWikipedia entry on happiness includes at the bottom, dozens of links to other emotions such as suffering and sadness:
ReplyDeletehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Happiness
The seven deadly sins might be viewed as a destructive attempt to pursue happiness, where others are harmed as a byproduct.
An earlier blog ("Groundswell" #242 July7/10) that discussed the need for people to get angry in order to solve this problem that the MCFD represents. This is the effect of interrupting happiness.
I would be happy if the MCFD went away. The Health and education Ministry can do a better job concerning children's welfare, the police can do a better job prosecuting the few true criminal assault cases that exist.
I can well imagine the Ministry would bill itself as the agents for reducing the suffering of children in order to preserve their happiness. The could be The Happiness Police. The Ministry of the Pursuit of Happiness for Children perhaps.
If a child experiences a moment of distress, the Ministry's one solution is to remove them. If the child MIGHT become distressed at some point in the future, the Ministry's universal answer is again to remove them from their parents.
My children were in care for nearly two years. It was not a happy time, yet I have many pictures reflecting smiling faces during this time. Photos of pain and suffering are difficult to capture, and generally are not welcome in photo albums. The brief happy visits were immediately followed by a letdown when it came time for goodbyes.
This morning, my daughter wanted me to take pictures of her in her cheerleading costume in order to preserve the happy times this costume represented, as she had to return it today. Photos make us smile and remember those happy moments and forget the sad times inbetween.
My youngest child seems perpetually happy. This is absolutely infectious. The Ministry took her from me and her siblings, and no one was happy as a result. Anger is the result when our happiness is disrupted. When I'm angry, I don't stomp my feet or yell in frustration, I write.
The Baynes have kindly shared photos of their happy moments during supervised visits. Most of us reading these blogs would are wishing for a Disney-like happy ending and that the Ministry will disappear from their lives.
Disney stories happy endings, and they are targeted for children. However, these stories oddly often incorporate the death of parents. Bambi, for example. Cinderella's evil step sisters and step mother. Snow White's father died. The end of these movies are always happy.
Without tears, there cannot exist the differential state that is needed to define happiness as an "after" that is better than a "before."
There is an interesting segment in the science fiction movie The Matrix where "Mr. Smith," an artificial intelligence construct in a virtual world, has a monologue with Morpheus, a resistance leader against the machines. He talks about previous incarnations of the Matrix that were designed to keep their humans (which machines use as power cells) happy and healthy by eliminating all strife and concerns. Mr. Smith goes on to say these artificial environment failed, because it was determined the human condition needed a degree of suffering in order for the humans that were in their care in order to feel alive. More energy was obtained from captive humans by introducing suffering into their virtual world.
Youtube videos of teens being silly garner millions of hits. Youtube videos of parents with emotional outpourings of grief with the removal or death of their children get little attention by comparison. Why?
In the same sense that an oyster reacts to an irritant inside its shell produces a pearl, we should be hopeful a similar effect will result for the rest of as the Baynes fight to have their children returned. Fortunately for us, the Baynes are allowing us to witness their struggle, and we are all rooting for them and the expected happy ending.
I watched the youtube video!!
ReplyDeleteIn the past, it has been clear that this mindset of the social systems of the western world was as the textbook reads but I have never read the text until now. Wake up people!! There it is in print and each of us decides again what we want to believe. Belief is a choice.
Clearly, changing the culture is the textbook writer's goal. Money simply entices people to become a tool for the greater goals of the social engineers.
I wonder how this young woman with the order sleeps at night. Her hard heart is shocking.
On happiness, I have always been fascinated by the phiosophy of John Stuart Mill who in trying to achieve " The greatest happiness of the greatest number" developed a system he called a felicific calculus. He tried to work out mathematically how the greatest happiness could be achieved. What this proves to my mind is that people with huge intellects and formidable education can sometimes write complete nonsense.
ReplyDeleteYesterday I mentioned that most children admitted to care come from the ranks of the very poor. This simple statement of fact was then interpreted by another writer to mean that I blamed the poor for being poor. Too deep for me I am afraid, but it does lead to a topic that is often distorted. That is the relationship between poverty and child neglect.
The poorest families in society are in the bottom ten per cent of income. Yet only ten percent of these people have children admitted for child neglect. Put it another way, 90% per cent of the poorest families give adequate care to their children. So poverty alone is not a good predictor of child neglect. Sorry all you social work profs to have to tell you this. Clearly there are other factors at work here besides being poor. Some I listed yesterday. We are not going to reduce child neglect by boosting income unless we take a lot of other factors into account. However, what this does provide a strong argument for is that all those poor people who do a good job in spite of the financial struggle, should receive a lot more help. To help these people with bigger family allowances, tax breaks and subsidised housing will greatly enhance child welfare, because we will be helping the willing and able.
My 5 year old started to tell everyone her sister was in foster care. It was tough to have it brought up, but honest. With so many children taken in B.C., it is inevitable that no matter how much it is kept quiet by MCFD, someone will meet someone who has lost their kids. When my baby came back, my 5 year old was always playing games with other kids about police coming and taking the children into shelters. That was instead of playing house with a pretend mommy and a daddy. It made a huge and very frightening impression on all of my children to have ministry intervention and sibling removal.
ReplyDeleteThe horror of these stories from parents all over the world can only led to one conclusion - child protection does exactly the opposite of what it pretends to do.
ReplyDeleteRay Ferris,
ReplyDeleteI would be interested to know if you can give any proof to back up your statement:
"In my career twice as many children came into care by demand of the parent as by any other means."
Anon 5:39 PM
ReplyDeleteI have been stifling myself for two days now, holding off saying anything. This last comment did it. Ray has at least ID'd himself and his career record stands as his proof, in addition to which he has written a book on preparing for social work which includes protection of children. I have heard you both making your points about the same couple of issues for some time, and it's clear to me that you will not persuade one another, so why not give it a rest since it is to one another that you have been corresponding rather than the rest of the readers. Both of you have other important matters that need to be heard by us. Could we move on? Maybe I need a cup of coffee or a glass of wine.
The text fragment that appears in the youtube video is worth printing out so it can later be searched in this blog:
ReplyDelete-------
Arthur Calhoun's A Social History of the American Family
"The family goes back to the age of savagery while the state belongs to the age of civilization.
The modern individual is a world citizen, served by the world, and home interests can no longer be supreme…. As familism weakens, society has to assume a larger parenthood.
The school begins to assume responsibility for the functions thrust upon it…. The kindergardten grows downward toward the cradle and there arises talk of neighborhood nurseries…. Social centeres replace the old time home chimney….
The child passes more and more into the custody of community experts….It seems clear that at least in its early states, socialism will mean an increased amount of social control…. We may expect in the socialist commonwelath a system of public educational agencies that will begin with the nursery and follow the individual through life….
Those persons that experience alarm at the thought of intrinsic changes in family institutions should remember that in the light of social evolution, nothing is right or valuable in itself."
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This is indeed happening as we speak. Daycares receive subsidies from MCFD and they feed the agency statistics. Parents list their child and which daycare attended in tax returns in order to get daycare subsidies and child tax credits.
MCFD already follows children from birth, as they have access to MSP medical records, they have access to family income statistics, they know who to target and can estimate a family's ability to fight back.
Young children who publish their lives on sites like Facebook have little concept of privacy, so children themselves provide MCFD with yet more up to the minute information.
Malls and community centers become the social centres the author talks about, parents do indeed become less relevant.
Gordon Neufeld, in his book "Hold on to your kids" discusses the erosion of parent child attachments in favour of peer attachments, and competition from from schools where kids spend more daylight hours than at home due to working parents. This is another view of a similar observation of the decline of the family concept.
Child protection indeed will be ensured of a steady supply of children in the future as long as these individuals can remove children at will.
I do recall Zabeth acquiring social worker training documents, approximately 7,000 pages, and was somewhat shocked at the contents.
The best that can be done is to continue posting links to videos such as this to warn our fellow neighbors of what is going on, and how they too might someday be affected.
Of course, none of this has anything to do with happiness.
The video is a truly appalling example of state sponsored child abduction. Can you imagine Zabeth's new baby being taken in exactly the same way? This is a war on parents without the inconvenience of guns and bullets or due process.
ReplyDelete------
To Ray Ferris, I have no doubt there are large numbers of children who arrive in care that do not arrive there by true danger posed by parents, but because of the inability of these families to meet the demands of parenthood, but who know the benevolent MCFD is there, ready and waiting to take the load off. It is free daycare, initially.
This type of child welfare is all well and good. I certainly see no point in debating that aspect. But calling it child "protection" rather than "welfare" as if to imply the parents are actively endangering their child is very different than non-voluntary removals where parents fight tooth and nail to try to retain custody of their children. Whether or not these people can be, and are or are not being actively assisted or they are a lost cause is a separate subject.
The focus here in this blog is families who are absolutely capable of taking care of their children and are being prevented from doing so by a government agency whose employees are lumping them into inappropriate categories of "poor", "socially isolated", "abusive - mental" "abusive - physical" without sufficient evidence up front to justify removal.
There are numerous people online that have posted their stories where their children have been removed, and many subsequently returned, and it becomes clear the removal should never have happened in the first place. The Baynes have been inappropriately categorized as abusive parents and they are a case in point.
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This I came across just today, a BC Supreme Court Judge in concluding an appeal of a parent attempting to undo a CCO:
"Deprivation of one's child must be one of the most distressing of human emotions. It is clear to me that the appellant loves her children and seeks desperately to make contact with them. However, the evidence before the court having charge of the issue was that it was simply not in the best interests of the child to have any contact with the appellant and likely never would be. That is, indeed, a tragedy, but regrettably, not one that I can do anything more than lament over."
The Honourable Mr. Justice McKinnon,
September 26, 2003.
Because no error of law was illustrated, the Appeal did not go anywhere.
Eight years after the CCO was awarded, the parent, deemed of less than average intelligence, later applied to the Court of Appeal, the Human Rights Tribunal, and later a judicial review. The worst is, the parent knows where two children live but is not allowed contact.
Horrific. Truly horrific. These judges must be exposed, and held accountable. What they are doing is so wrong.
ReplyDeleteAnother great video about the reality of child protection:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RrS2qzk8S10