withoutcentre

On being human. Our fears, desires, contradictions, and the possibility of living beyond them.

[withoutcentre @withoutcentre]

The greatest illusion of justice is the spectacle of someone being punished.

Russell Brand is behind bars. Meanwhile, untold powerful figures across politics, royalty and entertainment have faced serious allegations of sexual misconduct WITHOUT criminal convictions.

Are we really satisfied with the spectacle of accountability rather than accountability itself?

One famous man falls, the headlines erupt, the public celebrates, and somehow we feel that justice has been served.

Really?! Has anything fundamentally changed?

Have we become more interested in truth?

Are we more capable of protecting the vulnerable?

Are we more willing to question the institutions and power structures that allow abuse to flourish?

Or have we just found another person to fixate on while the machinery carries on unobserved and undisturbed?

#RussellBrand
#EpsteinFiles

@rustyrockets

[Radical Eyes @RadicalEyesUK]

🚨 CHANNEL 4 OFFERS MONEY TO WOMAN TO LlE ABOUT RUSSELL BRAND

Channel 4 found out this woman slept with Russell Brand and kept contacting her to offer her a large sum of money to make up lies about him.

If this doesn’t prove the whole ordeal is corruption then I don’t know what does. I now further believe Russell Brand has been fully stitched up.

ZERO EVIDENCE. 10 YEARS IN PRISON.

What a fucking joke.

[withoutcentre @withoutcentre]

Dejitaru $TSUKA

@RyoshiResearch

[withoutcentre @withoutcentre]

@DSmith272 @harrysoulcoach 😂

[withoutcentre @withoutcentre]

There comes a point in almost everything meaningful, a relationship, a friendship, a creative pursuit, a career, a spiritual practice, a community, when the initial excitement fades.

What happens next matters enormously because we get to discover that what we love cannot be sustained by excitement. Something else is required.

Our attention. Our participation. Our willingness to keep discovering what is here, rather than living off the image of what once was.

Reality keeps changing. Our image of it often doesn’t.

And so can we practice not in holding on to what was, but in continually breathing life into what remains worth loving.

$TSUKA

The story is still being written by us. 🐉

[withoutcentre @withoutcentre]

@orangehelicop This is actually an excellent point. Thank you for naming it.

[withoutcentre @withoutcentre]

Something troubling is happening here. The dislike of another human being becomes indistinguishable from our certainty about their guilt.

I’ve watched Russell Brand transform enormously over the years. So many here are convinced he is a monster. Could it be that none of us see the whole human being in front of us clearly?

We are so quick to divide the world into good people and bad people, victims and perpetrators, us and them. And then once we’ve decided who someone is, we stop looking. That’s it. Case closed.

As if life is that static?!!!

Do we want truth and justice, or do we want the satisfaction of seeing someone we project our own darkness onto destroyed?

Seriously, look inside folks. It’s worth it.

[Adam Golding for TDSB WARD 7 @adamgolding]

Russell Brand’s ex-girlfriend Samantha Pressdee has fiercely spoken out against the verdict.
She stated the following:
"A wife is without her husband. Three children are without their Dad. Yet everyone thinks the real victim in this is a drunk groupie who was cheating on her boyfriend. Someone who has anonymity for life and will probably get a financial payout.
“If this drunk groupie thought he was a predator, why would she stand by and watch him sleep with 1000s more women? Didn't she care about those women?
"It's not true that women in the comedy industry warned each other about Russell. No one warned me, and it could not have been more obvious that I was connected to him. Just because I am a woman doesn't mean I should 'believe all women'.
"I would be more likely to believe women who report criminals to the POLICE. Not the media, decades later. I believe in the right to a fair trial. Convince me it was fair!"
She also slammed Georgina Bailey who claimed to be Brand’s ex-lover and had urged him to “tell the truth.”
"She was a groupie too,” Samantha revealed. “The kind of women throwing themselves at Brand back then often sold kiss-and-tell [stories] that were mostly made up.
"Russell paid for Georgina to go to rehab. Ballie has made a career out of sleeping with him. She's not his ex-girlfriend. At the time, she was in a burlesque troupe called 'The Satanic Sluts'."
At the moment, we are being led to believe that Russell Brand is guilty beyond reasonable doubt. There is no evidence - only the word of one woman and more words from people who don’t like him.
Now we have other words from someone who knew him that say the opposite of what the establishment and media are saying.
I also found Reform MP Sarah Pochin’s comments on TalkTV disgraceful. In the clip, she spoke about Brand as if he was 100% guilty, spoke in a rather venomous way about him saying she hoped he would go away for a long long time, and spoke about the accusers as if they are bastions of truth even though there is no way she could possibly know that.
This is trial by media. Trial by hearsay. Trial by dislike of one person. But trial by truth? No. Russell Brand faces serious danger in prison and was forbidden from saying goodbye to his kids. No mercy is being shown to him. I see only venom and hate. Yet I have seen Brand speak repeatedly about his faith for years, urging millions of people to find their own. The entire thing feels off and rancid. The more this case goes on and the more that is revealed by people like his ex-girlfriend, the more it becomes clear that something very wrong has happened here and we are in the midst of watching something very evil taking place.
#RussellBrand

Russell Brand’s ex-girlfriend Samantha Pressdee has fiercely spoken out against the verdict. She stated the following: "... https://t.co/02lhYIC2FO

[withoutcentre @withoutcentre]

@x_Sala_24_12_72 Unfortunately, such a polarised process. So many quick to condemn. Feels like a witch hunt. The braying mob that is our cultural collective can be seen so clearly here. I do hope it is a catalyst for collective and cultural change in someway.

[withoutcentre @withoutcentre]

@tylerdurdeth @Innerdevcrypto was Cat 4. There are few others out there @chrono_chartist is a gooden

[withoutcentre @withoutcentre]

@CryptoLetsgetit @YuraVoroshilov And then on to fifteen

[withoutcentre @withoutcentre]

@RadhaStirling I’m sure he would

[withoutcentre @withoutcentre]

@mwilliamsthomas “For an addict like him, won’t be long until he’s hooked on drugs again”… bizarre take

He’s been sober for 1/4 century and clearly can observe his own mind. I doubt he relapses.

[withoutcentre @withoutcentre]

@George_T_Truth2 He didn’t need to call him a snide, but being rich and standing up for those without riches doesn’t constitute hypocrisy. He spoke up where most did not. Why is it so hard to give him that?

[withoutcentre @withoutcentre]

@briareoskfp @George_T_Truth2 Agreed. Nothing hypocritical about this

[withoutcentre @withoutcentre]

@godblesstoto You never did a shitty thing when you were a kid?

[withoutcentre @withoutcentre]

What is it about another person’s darkness that makes us so eager to condemn them?

Cruelty deserves to be confronted. But the ease with which we turn another human being into a monster should make us curious.

We all carry capacities we’d rather not acknowledge.

The greater courage lies less in pointing at someone else’s darkness, and more in recognising our own.

@rustyrockets Godspeed

[🙏🌧🌍 @godblesstoto]

Even if Russell Brand wasn't guilty of r*pe, I'd still be happy with his conviction and whatever sentence he gets on the grounds of it being justice for his childhood dog.

I mean, he wrote the below extract himself. As if he thought people would think: "Oh that's mean, but what a refreshingly honest chap he is!"

If he could do this to a defenceless animal and laugh about it years later, it tells you a lot about his treatment of those around him who he saw as vulnerable.

What an evil prick. Fuck him.

[withoutcentre @withoutcentre]

@JohnHann04 Yes. people can speak the truth, and demonstrate sound moral standing in some dimensions of their lives, whilst completely acting out the enshadowed aspects of themselves in other areas of their lives. Being a human being is inherently contradictory and paradoxical.

[withoutcentre @withoutcentre]

I don’t know which book this comes from or when it was written. I’m not defending the behaviour and I’m certainly not a rape apologist.

But I’ve followed Brand’s evolution over the years and witnessed what appears to me to be an extraordinary public transformation. Much of what he has spoken out about has demonstrated, to my mind, a genuine capacity for care and concern for others.

Surely we must leave room for the possibility that human beings can fundamentally change?

[withoutcentre @withoutcentre]

Oh, as a species we love to throw stones don’t we. To pretend that the darkness does not exist within us. That the other is so terrible and we are so pure and good. Yes this is a pretty shitty thing to do to an innocent animal, but FFS people stop pretending like there is not darkness within you. at least he has enough self-confidence to be honest about the darkness within him.

[withoutcentre @withoutcentre]

@reachgv I like this. I would say our suffering comes from a lack of observational skill. This skill can be developed. Observational hypertrophy just as we would grow a muscle