The world according to Ien

I have been experiencing somewhat of  a political identity crisis. 

Increasingly I find myself cheering in favour of certain thinkers who identify as conservative. I can watch Douglas Murray videos for hours. 

Yet I believe in a strong social safety net. I don’t mind paying taxes for that. 

I believe in public institutions that create as much equality of opportunity as possible. Schools, libraries, museums, parks....

There are many other differences and I cannot imagine myself ever voting  conservative. 

It turns out that I am not alone. Youtube is crawling with channels by thoughtful people who have always considered themselves leftwing BUT.

Like myself, they are fed up with the excesses of identity politics and what has become known as the cancel culture.

The so called right is cheerfully gloating over this phenomenon and who can blame them.

Well, I am tired of trying to define myself by labels, especially since terms keep shifting in meaning.

I will never agree to seeing the noble word ‘liberal’ used as a pejorative. 

As stated before, I am aware that my life has been made easier by many privileges, but I refuse to accept the expanded definition of ‘racist’ as per the gospel according to Robin DiAngelo. 

As previous blogs attest, I have been mulling over this phenomenon for some time.

A while ago I ‘came out’ on Facebook and now self identify as Independent. If that were not an oxymoron I would call myself a fundamentalist eclectic.  Like Michel de Montaigne, I shall continue to take my good where I find it without necessarily buying into the entire world view of any thinker, left or right. 

In the case of Douglas Murray for instance I feel like standing on a street corner  handing out copies of The Madness of Crowds, yet I cringe when

I hear him praise Ronald Reagan’s breaking of the Air Traffic Controllers union.

In the case of Marx, I love the criticism of unopposed capitalism and the concept  “From each according to ability, to each according to need.” However I have no more desire to live under the dictatorship of the proletariat than under any other.

So here goes, an attempt at clarifying my own philosophy and what I would like to see.

Credo, the political section, and labels be damned. 

This has to be worked out in more detail, which is of course where the devil lives. There will be other posts on individual topics , but here is the gist.

To start with, no one gets to mess up or alienate the Commons. 

Earth, Air, Water are sacred, belong to all including  our non human fellow creatures  and are not to be messed with. 

No more externalising of costs. Polluter pays, from cradle to grave of the product. Yes, consumer items will cost more. We have too much stuff anyway. 

Humanity has to figure out its limits and play within them. 

This may require cooperation on a worldwide scale. It will not be easy.

It may well be too late. Nature has Her ways of dealing with species who overgrow their habitat. They are not pretty. 

But let’s pretend that we have some time before the great cull.

Inside the human sphere we install a floor and a ceiling.

The floor: Universal Basic Income.

Doing away with all the current bureaucracies that distribute and police existing programs would alone save a ton of money. Rutger Bregman makes a great case for this in his book Utopia for Realists.

The ceiling: A maximum income.

It can be quite high, we are not aiming for enforced equality of outcome here. But at some point enough is enough. At some point money morphs into excess power over others. Let’s call the number on the ceiling Bazinga.

Once a person’s fortune reaches Bazinga, it is time for a ceremonial GiveAway. 

I had a blog brewing titled “Why we need a Potlatch economy”,  but that

is probably a no-no what with cultural appropriation. I do want to honour the 

origin of the concept.

Anyway, for those addicted to the sport of amassing wealth and power, further status can be achieved by aiming for the maximum number of GiveAways in a lifetime.

In between the floor and the ceiling: Turn It Loose, as much as possible.

There are many discussions to be had about which functions of government 

are best performed at which level. I do not believe in full on anarchism, 

but I also like to be able to build a chicken coop without having to check a bylaw. Checking with the neighbours is another matter.

Some rules, such as those concerning the wellbeing of our shared planet, require global agreements. Others, such as the style of buildings, should be left to neighborhood level. 

Allow people to make mistakes and live with the consequences. 

Sh#t will happen. Humans are a fallible and ornery bunch. The human condition allows for the pursuit of happiness only, not its attainment. 

Happiness is more likely to occur as a byproduct anyway, but that is another topic.

 

Remember that getting it 100% right is not an option. 

The wisest law will run into cases where its application causes injustice.

What we do get is the freedom to choose in which direction to make our mistakes.

I choose to make mine in the directions of compassion and freedom.

Moulting snakes on the path. Another therapy metaphor.

When people are in ‘therapy mode’, a time of introspection and inner work, they may go through an equivalent of moulting. As a snake sheds an old skin that has got too tight, old identity is cast aside while a new one is being forged. 

Earlier I wrote about my distaste for too much therapy, for endless focus on the hole in the donut of life. Since disclaimers are often missed in the hurried reading that happens these days, let me repeat that I recognise  there may be a time for therapy. I just do not like to see people get stuck there. 

I do not like seeing people take on the mantle of victimhood as identity. 

It is ultimately disabling, but that is another topic.

To get back to the metaphor, there is a period when the old skin/ identity no  longer fits, but the new one is not quite ready. The snake is temporarily naked and extremely vulnerable. 

Meanwhile, the rest of the world keeps turning.

People walk by the place where the naked snake is trying to regenerate, accidentally scuffing sand or pebbles as they go about their ordinary business. To the snake every grain of sand feels like a rock, deliberately hurled to attack per*.  

Let’s call the person undergoing therapy  Snake and persons in snake’s life Walkers. 

Honesty moment: my only experience with the world of therapy is the role of  Walker. These remarks are based on  observations of friends and in particular a close friend, now deceased, who got stuck in therapy mode, obsessed with the hole in the donut. 

Both Snake and Walkers may do better if they keep some things in mind.

Walkers may want to tread carefully around Snake for a while, knowing that the loved is going through a tough time of vulnerability, allowing a safe space for the new identity to form, honouring Snake’s requests for specific language, avoiding triggers, and so on. 

Meanwhile Snake’s therapist may do well to remind Snake that the world does not revolve around per’s needs.  If Snake wants to maintain relationships per at some point has to recognise that the Walkers in per’s life are only fellow humans muddling through. IMHO a good therapist would help Snake to gain perspective, count some blessings,  and see interactions from both sides. 

*Per. 

Short for Person. Gender neutral pronoun pioneered by Marge Piercy in her  1976 sci fi novel Woman at the edge of Time. I like the idea of a gender neutral pronoun, but the use of They as singular grates on my  nerves. I am linguistically sensitive. 

Some more reflections on collective guilt.

Why did it take me so long to figure this one out? 

That whole thing of us pinko whites being told that we are all racists, and us liberals denying it, and then that makes us even more guilty somehow? And even worse, the final upshot of all this über 'wokeness' is that we feel less comfortable with anyone other than people like ourselves, which is precisely what we don’t want, because we want to be able to just see people as individuals, right?

It finally dawned on me that both sides are right, they are just using different definitions of the loaded term.

If I vehemently declare that I am not a racist, I am using the narrow definition, as formulated in an earlier post: Racism is a philosophy that considers certain groups of people inferior to others, and wants to organise society to reflect and reinforce that inferiority. 

When someone accuses all people of privilege of unconscious racism, they are using a wider definition. They are talking of the way we go through daily life, coming from our own experience, not recognising the many ways in which we are lucky. 

When we are blessed with a functioning pair of legs we do not think of the lack of wheelchair access every time we step over a curb. Does that make us “ableist”? (Another jargon word I thoroughly dislike.)

I say it does for instance if the issue comes up in a municipal election, and we vote against creating more accessibility because it will raise taxes. Otherwise, we are just being human.

I can approach a police officer without fear because my experience has led me to see the force as a helpful part of my community. This is privilege, yes. I should be aware of that and I am. But imho it does not make me racist, unless I support a police officer who has wrongly targeted a POC. And so on. 

The question of reparation for historical wrongs is a separate topic. First this.

The first duty of privilege is to recognise itself. Privilege needs to acknowledge that it has benefited from a long history of  oppression. Privilege needs to acknowledge that it owes as much  to luck as to merit. 

That, I am willing to do. Calling myself all kinds of -ist or -phobe and going through life groveling in apology for crimes I had nothing to do with I am not. 

Defining -isms.

This blog has been brewing for a long time. I have become increasingly impatient with excesses of political correctness. Please note: excess. When P.C. stands for Plain Civility I am all for it.  

Let's get some things straight before we start.

I am all in favour of measures designed to level a tilted playing field. 

I would gladly pay more taxes in order to fund programs designed to rectify past grievances as far as possible.
I want committed partnerships to be recognized with the full force of the law, regardless of the variation of sexual identity.
I am in favour of making workplace adaptations for people with various challenges, physical or mental.
I want schools to teach the true history of everyone, not just the winners. 

I am aware that I live on a stolen continent.
And so on.

But I am sick and tired of that whole walking on eggshells thing one keeps reading about. I say reading about because hey, I live near a village of 1500 mainly pinko beige people. My own experience is limited.  I just seem to have this compulsion to read, reflect and comment on what goes on in society at large. Maybe there is a disorder name for it. Compulsive Comment Disorder?  Some enterprising psychologist can add CCD to the next DSM. But, as is my wont, we digress. So many topics! So much to go on about! 

Anyway, here goes.

Defining  -isms.

In some circles, mainly the liberal tribe that I mostly identify with, the ugly accusation of '-ist' is taken on board at the slightest provocation. It used to be just racism, but we now have other forms of prejudice like sexism, homophobia, Islamophobia and so on. There is even "able-ism". The accusation usually has the effect of stopping a conversation in its tracks while the liberal in question adopts a stance of cringing apologetic reverence to the aggrieved minority du jour. I remember a white woman in Every Woman's Almanac twisting herself into a mental pretzel accusing herself for feeling guilty. This attitude sets my teeth on edge and rouses my inner redneck.

Some time ago CBC radio did a program on Trans people. More on that topic another time. Someone used the term "cis woman" to refer to herself. She meant she was a woman, you know, the regular kind. Estrogen, tits, vagina, just born that way. DoC forbid we use the word without qualifier as a default setting. That is Privilege, also used as verb. Privileging is a sin bound to get the perpetrator accused of being an -ist.

Here is my main beef, voiced before: too many people cannot make the distinction between being genuinely mistreated because they are a minority, and the inconvenience of being one.

I used to have the typical knee jerk guilt reaction. I still often do. But something shifted many years ago thanks to an article in another small feminist magazine that had been taken over by what we now call identity politics. The more victim categories one could claim, the greater one's status. An author was whining about the difficulty of getting time off work for her religious holidays, while Christians could be guaranteed free days at Christmas and Easter. This is when the penny dropped. You see, the author was Jewish, and so is my father, freeing me from the usual guilt reaction in this case. In a true AHA! moment it clicked: This is not persecution, it is inconvenience.

Being denied an apartment or a job because your name is Goldstein is wrongful discrimination, subvariety anti Semitism. A misnomer of a term but that is another topic.  It needs to be denounced and fought. Having to live with a weekend that starts on Saturday instead of Friday is an inconvenience. Deal with it. Replace example with minority of choice.

When it comes to defining racism I prefer a narrow definition. It goes for other -isms and phobias as well. Racism is a philosophy that considers certain groups of people inferior to others,  and wants to organise society to reflect and reinforce that inferiority. 

All too often we see an -ism claimed when the issue is not malicious persecution or even resistance to needed change, but simple lack of awareness or just old habits of thinking.

Do the fortunate among us need to be aware that privilege played a role in whatever we have accomplished?
Yes. One does not have to share a prejudice in order to benefit from centuries of it.
Do we need to somehow compensate and hear more of the voices that have been silenced for centuries? Again, Yes.

But could we please distinguish between malevolent oppression and people of good will just coming from their own experience?

Like everyone else muddling through this three dee  life, I live life as myself. I had the good fortune to be born in a favorable time and place as a white heterosexual able bodied woman with a loving, solid family of origin. On a good day I can pass for neurotypical. I have always been aware of my good luck, our parents instilled that in all four of us. I am a counter of blessings. Even so I do not go through daily life constantly wondering what a given situation would be like if I were a paraplegic lesbian of colour who was abused as a child. Fill in disability, identity or tragedy of choice. 

The following riddle went around some years ago. A surgeon and his son are in a car accident. The surgeon dies, the son is seriously wounded. As they arrive at the hospital the surgeon on duty exclaims: "I cannot operate on this patient, that is my son!" How could this be?

If you did not immediately say that surgeon #2 had to be the boy's mother, as at the time I did not, that supposedly proved you were a sexist. I say bollocks to that. It just proved your reflexes had not caught up to your convictions. Old conditioning dies hard. Refusing the boy's mother her position as surgeon just because she was a woman, now that would be sexism.


The bottom line: Could we please approach each other with an assumption of goodwill as the default setting, instead of angry suspicion? 

Thoughts on The Circus

History has always fascinated me. We are living through history in the making, a white water rapid in the river of civilisation. Someone on CBC radio compared our time to the European Renaissance, when one social order was making way for another. Interesting to read about, but not easy to live through. It is now more than a month after the end of what we have been calling The Circus, and what an ending it was. I have been spending hours on the iPad compulsively reading about USA politics.

It is not my country, for which I am grateful. Nevertheless I live right next door, within easy reach of the grasp of Empire, should that empire decide to grasp what it wants by more direct means than the current arrangement. Think water. We Canadians may take comfort in being a kinder, gentler nation, but let's not kid ourselves. The standing joke is that when the USA sneezes Canada gets pneumonia. The best we can hope for is the kind of relationship Finland has with its giant neighbour to the East. Like it or not, we both have to pay homage and attention to the great power next door.

Early on I decided to not waste energy on the insanity of a months long campaign. We skipped the endless ponderings of the pundits during the primaries, though we did feel the Bern. I rarely watch those stupid debates, with the media standing by to pounce on the slightest misstep as a "gotcha" moment. Once our favourite socialist was defeated I mainly paid attention to the dilemmas of my online friends in the USA, most of whom are not Republicans. Hold your nose and vote Democrat or say enough of this corrupt bunch and go Green?

Interestingly some thinkers whose opinion I value were happy with the outcome, mainly because they wanted to shake up the status quo. There was some approval of Trump's supposedly populist stance on certain issues. I think it was Dmitri Orlov who posted a video segment of Trump that could have been lifted from a Sanders speech. Also, quite a few people worried about poking the bear and applauded Trump's better relations with Putin.

Anyway, now that the die has been cast I find myself wondering how to behave in the face of possible tyranny. At this moment demonstrations are a waste of energy at best and counterproductive at worst if they degenerate into riots. Besides, the time to be active is during an election campaign and you just had one, duh! Then there is the need to maintain civil relations with people on the opposite side of the political spectrum. I wrote this on Facebook.

"I just found out that an internet friend who I admire for her big heart and fortitude in the face of a tough life is delighted with the outcome of the USA election. This person is the farthest thing from a bigoted racist you can imagine. She is a beautiful loving soul and I will not hear a bad word about her, Trump or no Trump. Let us maintain love above all. Avoid stereotypes. Don't let the haters win."

I have often reflected on how I would have behaved during the early years of the Nazi occupation in my native Netherlands. Good and evil are easy to tell apart with the brilliance of hindsight, especially after winners and losers have been sorted out. It is not so easy while you are in the middle of things. Imagine yourself there, in 1940. Of course you hate the occupation, but it has become a fact of life. For all you know it might last a few centuries. It is my nature to avoid conflict, and I tend to think the best of people. I might well have been a compromiser, thinking perhaps I might be able to do some good on the inside. I might have been chastised as a collaborator after the war.

Times are tough all around and not likely to get better any time soon. For many reasons that we will not get into here, it will never be 1970 anymore. I may have been spending too much time in collapsenik circles, and I alo just reread 1984. Not cheery. 

I have no idea what to suggest to any young person coming of age right now. Who knows what the future holds? In twenty years we may solve the energy crisis, learn how to live together, collect all the best from all traditions and cultures, and be on our way to a Star Trek world. Yeah, right. See those pretty flying pigs in the pink sky? Or the most vital skill may be knowing which warlord to suck up to. So much for the wisdom of elders.

All I can come up with this is this.
Above all: KEEP THINKING. Connect to your heart and gut as well as your brain. If a small voice inside whispers something feels off, pay attention to it. Ask it to speak up and explain.

Decide what your values are and defend them, regardless of who is attacking them. The enemy of your enemy may be evil. A drone strike ordered by Obama is no less deadly than one ordered by Bush. A pipeline built by charming, spouting all the right words Justin Trudeau is no less damaging than one built by dour mr. Harper.


Be careful what you wish for regarding laws that inhibit freedom of speech or assembly. Apply the same standards to your own side and to your opponent's. 

James Pfeiffer once drew a great cartoon. A man in a pinstripe suit and a hippie are chatting in a bar. Both agree that under certain conditions limits to free speech may be warranted. Says the hippie: "Exactly! And that is why I say that in Cuba...." Man in suit exclaims: "Cuba? I thought we were talking about the United States!" Horrified they turn away from each other.

Be vigilant. Beware the frog in boiling water effect, but don't get carried away by slippery slope fallacies either. 

See people as individuals first, and let the individual decide to which extent she wants to define herself as member of a group.
Avoid blindly climbing on bandwagons. Pay frequent visits to fact check sites before posting the latest meme on social media.

When the big world goes nuts and institutions start failing or grow rapacious, do what you can where you are to make a better world. Funny. I can think myself into a tizzy and I keep coming back to my mantra.

Be Here Now. Cultivate the Garden. Just Be Kind.

P.S. This excellent article in Yes Magazine says it all.

An Addendum to the Serenity Prayer

We all know the good old serenity prayer, don't we? 
"Grant us the serenity to accept what cannot be changed, 
the courage to change what can be changed
and the wisdom to know the difference."

Wise words, but too simplistic. 

A dear online friend just posted a long list of common sense advice, that starts with: "Live beneath your means".

Really?  Go tell that to an overworked parent in today's brutal economy who has to choose between paying the rent or putting food on the table. It is good advice for those who have choices. Not everyone does.
Has the writer of these homilies looked at wages lately? At the absence of job security? At the cost of housing?

Avoiding substance abuse, adopting the healthiest possible lifestyle, being willing to work and generally being a decent human is personal responsibility. Doing something about a global economic system that is destroying the planet while removing the ability to earn a living from whole communities requires working with others.

Traditionally the so called Left has stressed the need for collective action, the so called Right the need for personal responsibility. Isn't it obvious we need both? I blathered about this in part of a previous blog, see here. http://reflectionsrants.blogspot.ca/2014/03/on-evils-of-thinking-in-binaries-and.html 

Anyway, here is my addendum:

"Grant me the wisdom to know the difference between change that is my personal responsibility, and change that demands that I organise with others."

Some thoughts on collective guilt and personal responsibility

My talented virtual friend Jacqui Binford Bell, she of the amazing art and photographs, posted this thought provoking remark on Facebook. 

"Don't we at some time just have to let go? Stop all the vendettas, jihads, reparations, grudges, monuments to people who just went to work, all the days we stop for a minute of silence. All the things from the Maine to Wounded Knee we must remember even if we never participated and would not consider it today. When do we have time to just move forward and make today and the future better? How can you enjoy the dawn when you are constantly made to feel guilty, ashamed, or afraid?"

I started to reply and realised I needed a blog.

First reaction: 

Goodness yes. I am so tired of feeling guilty. I am not rich or powerful, and at least I am female, but I am white and was born at a propitious time. I have been aware of my good fortune all my life, even blogged about it. It turns out Dad's Jewish mother gave me the right to move to Israel so now Gaza etc. is on my plate too. It is overwhelming and dammit, I am not a bad person!  I did not personally infect any Sinixt (the local first nation) with small pox. I did not personally impose any head tax on the brave Chinese labourers who built Canada's railroads, nor did I bomb Gaza. On the contrary, I did my best to protest.

Yes, wouldn't it be nice to just wipe the slate clean and start over.

Then there is the sad fact that efforts to redress historical wrongs often end up creating new injustices without doing much to compensate real victims of the old order. 

Development aid has been described as money that poor people in rich countries send to rich people in poor countries. Groups consist of individuals. Picture the plight of the child of a white working class family who has worked his butt off to get the right grades to get into a college. However, affirmative action resulted in his place going to a middle class child who had it easier and whose grades are lower but who has the right colour or gender.  Affirmative action may sound like a fair idea but does it work in practice? Can we keep what is best in the idea while keeping an eye out for individual injustices?

However. (a favourite word)

History is still with us. Even as individuals of previously oppressed groups are making headway, large numbers are still facing extra obstacles. Old prejudices do not disappear overnight and everywhere at the same time. 

Then there is this. Wealth accumulates through generations. Many a baby boomer has had an inheritance from frugal depression era parents. Those parents in turn benefited from the Era of Prosperity(1946-1980, more or less), now fast receding in the rear view mirror.

As most of you know, that golden time of working class prosperity and home ownership excluded many. I highly recommend this essay  on becoming aware of white privilege. My own children owe their education partly to a legacy from their upper middle class paternal grandparents. Groups who missed the boat in past times lack that head start. The playing field is not level.

Even well intentioned individuals who would not dream of certain actions still benefit from them. My very presence in the paradise where I live was made possible by genocide. I have no idea what to do about that but there it is.

I agree with Jacqui that it would be nice to start fresh here and now. I certainly join her in rejecting a certain kind of kneejerk PC mea culpa mentality that one sees in liberal circles, where the victim is always right. But the decision may not be ours to make. As individuals we may be mostly blameless, but as members of a group we have benefitted from a past order and nothing can change that. We don't want to go through life cringing, but we must admit to our share of collective advantage. 

I have been more privileged than many and less than some. I remember a conversation, long ago, with a well-born couple about their early married days when the man was still a student. I asked them what they had lived on. "J's money". "What do you mean, "J's money"?" "J's money." Repeated with a tone of impatience for my lack of understanding the obvious. In their circles everyone started life out with an ancestral sum and J's father had died young. These were nice people. I was not out to wage class warfare. (Not that day anyhow.) I wanted to hear something  like "Well you know, we were lucky. J's dad had left him enough etc." I just wanted them to be aware that not everyone had their head start and to acknowlege their good fortune. They were blind to it.

Perhaps the most helpful thing we can all do to make this a kinder world is to be wary of ideological thinking, be it religious or secular. Be leery of any attempt to stifle debate for any reason. Do NOT circle the wagons the moment our side is attacked. Go through life with eyes, mind and heart open, and do not deny the reality of our own first hand observations in order to fit the facts into a rigid framework.
Keep asking: does this work?

I have said it before and will probably say it again, but sometimes one's opponent is right. Granting the other side a point does not mean one has to buy the entire intellectual framework.  For example admitting that some people stay home on Mondays to nurse a hangover does not mean we agree to abolish paid sick leave.

I guess it keeps coming down to trying to just be reasonable and kind.

Searching for truth amid changing trends.

I have wanted to do a blog on this topic for a while. Today the controversy around Jian Gomeshi provided the impetus.

For non Canadians or Canadians who have been living under a rock, Jian Gomeshi is or rather was the popular host of the radio show Q, devoted to pop culture but veering into more serious terrain quite often. On Sunday he was fired by the CBC. 

He wrote a long and candid Facebook post in which he claims the accusations that caused his dismissal were the work of a vengeful ex girlfriend and he is guilty of nothing more than a taste for kinky sex. 

I admit that at this point I jumped on the "It must be that dastardly Harper agenda getting rid of a popular small l liberal voice" bandwagon. I promptly signed a petition demanding his reinstatement. I am not proud of that, but then, the current neo con regime has been slashing at my beloved CBC with a vengeance for some time.

However, next thing I know a friend posts a blog post by another woman who had a disturbing encounter with the sexy stubbled one (I hate that look. Grow a beard or shave.). That post sounds authentic and supports the accusations.
More women are coming forward with allegations. It turns out the Toronto Star had been investigating for months.
This puts the affair in a new light.  

We are left with the dreaded 'he says, she says' scenario. 

What does this have to do with trends? Well, depending on the collective mood either one side or another will find it easier to get an honest or sympathetic hearing. 
For the longest time women could not get any justice in cases of sexual assault or harrassment. Children with abuse issues, ditto. Then the tide turned, though not everywhere at once and it certainly is not easy. But I do believe we have now reached a point in Western society where we need to look carefully at both sides.

The bottom line:  Women fear being raped etc.
Men fear being unjustly accused of sexual misconduct.
Both fears are justified.

For most of history power has lain with the accused, if accusations even happened. This is still the case in much of the world today. Let's not waste time on the old ways.

In some circles in our modern Western world there is now a tendency to prejudice in the other direction. Thinking may run to "The victim is always right." 

We get places where a male employer is afraid to tell a female employee she looks nice today, and teachers are afraid to be alone with a child, let alone give a much needed hug. Foster parents' lives have been destroyed by false allegations of abuse. These things happen. They are real.

Meanwhile the old horrors are still happening too.  Rape, sexual harrassment in the work place, child abuse, it is all real as well.
Waves, counterwaves, backlash, backlash against the backlash, turbulence.

Which brings us back to the difficulty of distinguishing truth from falsehood in individual cases. He says.  She says. 

I don't know what to think of the Gomeshi case. CBC should have gone about this more carefully. A forced leave of absence while matters are sorted out would be appropriate.  

I do know I find Gomeshi's proclivities disgusting even if they are consensual. Yes, this does affect my liking for him. AND I want him to have a fair hearing, in a court other than that of public opinion.

On the evils of thinking in binaries and bundles.

If I could do one thing to make this world a better place it would be this: 

Discourage thinking in terms of ideology, be it religious or secular. 
Discourage binary thinking, either/or thinking, in general.

It is easy to fall into. We are creatures of Story, and story thrives on simple narratives. Villains and victims and heroes. Good and evil. White Hats Good, Black Hats bad. Believers to heaven, all others to hell. Our tribe AKA The People, truly human, all others not quite. And so on.

Well, how has that worked so far? I dare say humanity needs a different operating system and we need it fast. I believe that we face a bottleneck in our development. IF, and this is a big if, we pull together all the good things from all past and present cultures and traditions, then we just might have a chance to squeeze past another Dark Age with the gains of the last few millennia intact. Right now I am not too optimistic, but hope springs eternal.  I shall remain a possibilist till the bitter end.

What would happen if instead of teaching "If you are not for me, you are against me", we encouraged an appreciation of the deep wisdom built into the yin/yang symbol? The Tao teaches that opposites are complimentary forces, both needed. Balance is understood to be a dynamic ongoing dance, not a steady state to be achieved once and for all.

How would it work if every time we see the words either/or, we first ask ourselves if that could be and/and?  If searching for consensus was the default setting when conflict arises? It may not always work. There may be times to just take a stand and fight. In this world true evil does exist and may at times have to be fought on its own terms. But, just as a good healer tries a non invasive method before reaching for surgery or a harsh drug, so seeking consensus could be the place where we start when faced with conflict.

Our social discourse is rife with a certain way of thinking that drives me nuts. I used to call it 'block thinking', but it is more like a bundle, as in the bundle we get from the cable or satellite company. We may not care about sports, but the only way to get BBC is to pick a bundle that includes three sports channels.

In a similar way opinions seem to have become bundled. I am stereotyping to make the point here. The reality is more nuanced, but here goes. 

In order to don the mantle of the well meaning liberal one has to close one's eyes to excesses of political correctness. The victim is always blameless. Brown peasant good, white middle class person (especially if male, poor guy) bahahad. The talk is mainly about rights and little about responsibility. Park good, redneck who needs the logging job bad. 
Pointing out that some people truly abuse the public system can get you thrown out of the club.
Recommended reading for dogmatic leftists: "Life at the Bottom" by Theodore Dalrymple.

In order to be a card carrying conservative one has to value potential humans above poverty stricken incarnated ones and deny the science of climate change.
The discourse is mainly about individual responsibility. There is little attention to the social context in which that has to be exercised. If a man knows how to fish but has no access to a clean body of water he still goes hungry.   
Pointing out that the playing field is no longer level can get you thrown out of the club.
Recommended reading for dogmatic rightists: "Nickled and dimed" by Barbara Ehrenreich.

I repeat, these are caricatures. The reality is always more nuanced. Anyway, there will be more blogs in this vein. Thoughts on babies and bathwater, margins of error, unexpected side effects, issues of scale.

Another one more or less on this topic is this one:
http://reflectionsrants.blogspot.ca/2012/02/left-right-left-right.html

And finally, Melanie Boxall did an excellent one.
http://chovblog.blogspot.ca/2014/03/the-public-gets-what-public-wants.html

On mountains, wolves, allergies and tough questions.

The pithy Latin saying Homo Homini Lupus has been much quoted, most famously by Hobbes. Man is a wolf unto man.

The saying is usually meant to state that people are both predator and prey of each other. Not that long ago fear of wolves was an entirely justified part of the collective psyche. Must re-read Fernand Braudel. Must not get side tracked.

In our city centered culture few people have to deal with predators directly. There is an irony there: because most of us live further removed from Nature, we can afford to take the more holistic view. In the beautiful phrase of Aldo Leopold, we can afford to think like a mountain, precisely because we no longer live on one. 

For those unfamiliar with Aldo's essay, it starts with a young man shooting a wolf, confident that killing a top predator will result in more deer for human hunters. Instead the shortage of wolves leads to an overpopulation of deer. The herd ends up "dead of its own too-much" after destroying its habitat. 
"I now suspect that just as a deer herd lives in mortal fear of its wolves, so does a mountain live in mortal fear of its deer."

We must remember that the wolf keeps the herd healthy. I once read an aboriginal story illustrating the same point. The Creator has granted the People their wish, and there are no more wolves. But the old and sick caribou no longer get culled. In time the herd sickens and so do the people. The wolves have to come back for the good of all.

Medical science comes up with ever more ways to keep weak and damaged individuals alive. 

CBC this morning had an item on a child with life threatening allergies to eggs and dairy. The mother accuses the school of not doing enough to accommodate her child. The words 'discrimination', 'inclusion', and 'rights' were bandied about.
A blog on the proper use of the word discrimination another time.

The mother wants a ban on the offending foods. No child in the whole school must be allowed to bring a cheese sandwich or any food item containing eggs, for the sake of protecting her fragile girl. The school is already peanut free.

Of course one feels for the family. Of course one understands that the mother is doing what any of us would do for her child. But as a collective, where do we draw the line? What about the rights of a struggling single parent to send her child off with the cheapest protein, which happens to be peanuts?

As a society, we must start tackling some thorny questions. We must dare to at least discuss certain topics without fear of being associated with past horrors. If we are wolves to each other, some of us may end up with the task of deciding when to let herd health take precedence over the care for the weak individual. This is not a position to be envied.

Persist or change course? A curmodgeonly take on cute moral stories.

This post has been brewing for a while, but was prompted by a Facebook post by a dear friend. 

The story goes as follows: donkey is stuck in well. Farmer decides neither well nor donkey is worth the expense of saving. Farmer calls neighbours to help him shovel dirt on top of donkey. Donkey shakes dirt off his back and uses piled up dirt to climb out of well. 

Moral of the story: Never give up, use adversity to your benefit.

Now, I am all in favor of positive thinking and of using adversity to build strength. But this kind of moralizing tale brings out the contrarian in me.

In the case of the donkey, unless he was a sadist capable of burying an animal alive the farmer would have shot it before calling the neighbors to help with the shoveling.

I remember similar homilies from my days in Network Marketing, which I will reminisce about one of these days.

One went like this:
A little fly is buzzing against the glass, desperate to get outside. There is another window that is open, but first the fly has to change course and give up on its useless efforts to get through this glass.

The moral of the story was presented as: Stop trying to make it as a wage slave. Change course, take charge of your life and join my MLM business!

Other ones went like this:
A frog is about to drown in a vat of milk. But before he drowns his desperate paddling creates a clot of butter, and he can jump out.

A miner gives up digging his tunnel mere inches from the vein that would have made him rich.

Moral of these stories:
Don't give up on your network marketing business! You'll make your breakthrough any day now!

Knowing when to persist or when to quit an endeavor is never simple. As a wise person whose identity escapes me said: Every important decision in life has to be taken on the basis of insufficient data. 

For the record: I enjoy buying high quality, unique products from independent distributors. I know some people who are making a living at it. AND I abhor the hype and the relentless positive posturing.