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.

Sh#t happens. We need a new relationship to tragedy.

I have wanted to blog on this topic for ages, but got inspired to do it now by reading this blog by a Canadian traveling through Europe.

The gist of it is that Europe treats people  like adults who can gauge their own risks and don't need to be protected from every conceivable danger.

This rant is about the seeming inability of people to deal with the fact that the world is not, never has been and never will be a 100% safe place. There are no guarantees. Face it folks, bad stuff happens. Tragedy is part of the human condition.

What drives me nuts is the following script, frequently heard on the news with variations. What are personal tragedies that have no impact on public life doing on the news anyway? But that is another rant. 

Here goes. Loved one dies, in some newsworthy way. Accident, medical mistake, whatever. A devastated survivor is being interviewed. Sob, sniffle, and: the survivor wants a law passed so that "this will never happen again", so that "no other family will have to go through what we are going through", so that "our loved one did not die in vain..."

Now some good comes from this sentiment. There are battles worth fighting, there are laws worth passing. If personal loss provides the energy behind the fight, great. Mothers Against Drunk Drivers is a good example.

But it gets overdone. In particular, the normal desire to keep our children safe is resulting in a generation of greenhouse flowers that is ill prepared for the harsher reality of real life.

At the risk of sounding heartless, as long as the world has both curious toddlers and backyard swimming pools some of the former will drown in the latter. It is sad, it is horrible, but there are only so many safety measures we can take. 

When cyclists become part of the traffic stream, we can expect some of the 'normal' number of traffic fatalities to be cyclists. It is sad, it is horrible, and we definitely want our cities to be designed better. We want to minimize the number of accidents, but we can't make it zero.

I can understand why people in the USA are so eager to sue anyone they can possibly blame. In the absence of a social safety net a legal settlement may be the only way a family can cope with the care for a damaged member. 

Apart from that, part of the need to find blame may be the underlying assumption that life is supposed to be safe. If life does not deliver the goods somebody, somewhere, somehow must be to blame. 

Sorry folks, it ain't necessarily so. For whatever reason, tragedy has always been a part of the human experience. We used to get kicked in the head by horses, now we get car crashes. We used to get epidemics of acute infectious diseases, now we get allergies and cancer. Of course we want to keep striving for the best possible world, but we must acknowledge that perfection is not an option. We must acknowledge that we are not always in control.

I believe children are damaged the most by the need to assign blame in the face of tragedy. Parents are already terrified to let them out of their sight, what with child molesters lurking behind every tree. But to add insult to injury, when a child does get hurt, parents have to deal with finger pointing on top of their grief. Whatever it was that harmed the child, somehow better supervision should have been able to prevent it. This climate may well contribute to the epidemic of hyper vigilance we see around us. 

In my long ago far away childhood the 5 year old brother of my bother's class mate went through the ice under a bridge and drowned. In my class a girl's big brother had been killed in traffic riding his bike at age 8.  These events were discussed as the tragedies they were, but I do not remember anyone suggesting that 5 year olds should not play on the ice with their older siblings, or that 8 year olds should not ride bikes.

There will be other blogs on the topics of risk management and personal responsibility. For now, may I suggest a visit to this great site: http://freerangekids.com

Amaria and Teamsteria, a fantasy about health freedom

Please note: This essay is NOT meant to diss trade unions in general, nor to discuss the merits of various systems of medicine.

An archived newsletter at http://jonbarron.org (June 21-2004) explains how the AMA originated: as a trade union, to support allopathic doctors in their fight against homeopaths and other natural healers.


That got my imagination going...


Imagine a country where the Union of Professional Chauffeurs is so powerful that the use of private cars is outlawed and bicycles are severely restricted.


We'll call the place Teamsteria.


Most Teamsterians see nothing wrong with their society.
They agree with their government that driving is a serious, potentially dangerous business. Of course nobody should be allowed to do it without extensive training. Imagine the chaos if every Tom, Dick and Mary could get a license. People might get hurt or even killed by insufficiently skilled drivers!


Some Teamsterians hate waiting for buses or cabs and prefer getting around as they please on bicycles. They make the point that bicycles are healthier and better for the Earth.


The authorities complain that bicycles interfere with the proper functioning of car traffic. Every accident between a bike and a car is automatically blamed on the bicycle and widely publicized to boot. Life is made harder for bicycle users all the time. The chauffeurs' lobby would like them to be totally outlawed.


Some Teamsterian radicals propose that everyone should be allowed to get a drivers' license. They are considered a dangerous lunatic fringe.


To bolster its arguments the Teamsterian government points to the chaos and carnage in the neighbouring country, Amaria.


In Amaria every private citizen over 16 is allowed to drive. Every year large numbers of Amarians get killed or maimed in traffic accidents.


Amarians love being able to travel as they please, and consider the daily death toll a price worth paying for the sake of freedom. Amarians look upon their cab-bound neighbours with a mixture of pity and contempt. They wonder why Teamsterians don't rise up and demand the freedom to move around as they please!


However, in Amaria the government is in thrall to another professional union. The Amarian Medical Association has convinced the public that care of the human body is best left to a certain kind of professional. The kind that requires an expensive industry. We are all familiar with it.


Amarians are free to kill themselves on the road, but the government decides what they can put into their bodies.


Teamsterians are utterly appalled at the thought that control over their own bodies could be any less than 100%.


Do some Teamsterians make wrong health decisions? Do some die as a result? Of course! Teamsterians consider it a price worth paying for the sake of freedom...


Which society is crazier? We are like the Amarians. Why do we all put up with it? How come health freedom has never been an election issue yet?


PS. A CBC radio program on traffic issues mentioned that traffic accidents kill 28 people per month in B.C. alone. Can we imagine the furore if a herb did that?

Death on the mountain, the blame game

The photo was taken from the Greyhound bus on the Trans Canada highway close to Rogers pass.

We live surrounded by wilderness.
It is magnificent but untamed and potentially dangerous. The pioneers knew that. They had to work hard to wrest a few modcons from the land around them. If they went into the mountains they did so with the full understanding that the place might bite back.


But these days wilderness is seen as a place to refresh the spirit by city dwellers. Wilderness attracts people with a yen for adventure. Sometimes they actually get it. Surprise!


Every time something goes wrong there is a lot of handwringing and blame seeking, and whinging about more safety measures "so that this won't ever happen again".


It has been a bad season this year. Tragedy struck a small town when 8 local snowmobilers died in an avalanche. It was all over the news for days. This week we had another tragedy: a couple from Quebec on a winter vacation in B.C. skied out of bounds, got lost, and the wife died of exposure before the husband was finally rescued after 9 grueling days.


Of course it is a tragic event and one does feel for the family.
BUT!! The media has been beating the blame drums endlessly. The RCMP should have gone out right away, the search and rescue people didn't do enough, and so on.
What they don't stress enough is that this couple made their own misfortune.


Rule 1 if you want to play in the great outdoors: Let someone know where you are going!
This hapless couple did not. No one went looking for them, because no one was missing them.
They were not staying at the resort where they went skiing. They had checked out of their independent hotel. They may have strayed out of bounds accidentally. Every resort warns skiers about the dangers of going out of bounds. Yet every winter some folks figure the rules don't apply to them, and duck under the rope.


HALLO! Earth to thrill seekers! Be careful what you go looking for, you might find it!
I am really tired of the way the media is playing the blame game.


We need to place a big part of the responsibility where it belongs: with people who flirt with danger, and then expect a flawless rescue system if they actually get it.
It is time to get some sort of insurance scheme to cover these rescues.

Discovering Dalrymple

"When we avoid the mistakes our parents used to make, we end up making the mistakes our parents avoided." (anon)

I have become increasingly worried about certain trends in society.

Most of these trends were originally a reaction to something worth reacting against. But in throwing out the stinking bathwater of outdated attitudes we have thrown out some precious babies worth keeping.


More blogs on various aspects of this topic in the future. Many of these points may become moot anyway as the economic meltdown steamrollers over the welfare state.

I am reading "Life at the Bottom", a collection of essays by a British psychiatrist who has devoted his working life to the so-called underclass.
The life patterns of his clients are sharply observed as they are, not as well-meaning do-gooders think they ought to be. The writing is clear, precise, and bitingly witty. I can't put it down. I find myself nodding with approval and cheering loudly at his comments.


The good doctor is exasperated with the excesses of the welfare state and of the mentality of political correctness. He describes horrid lives devoid of meaning, hope, and any sense of personal responsibility.


I have harboured deep suspicions about the psychology industry and the social worker establishment for a while, and find myself applauding.

The doctor considers himself a conservative. I agree with much of his thought. Question: am I still a liberal? Labels, schmabels. As Michel de Montaigne said, "Je prend mon bien où je le trouve." I take my good where I find it.

I am all in favor of both the welfare state and PC when it means Plain Civility, but anything can be overdone.
Achieving a more or less harmonious society is a dynamic process, not a steady state to be achieved once and for all. We zig and we zag.

No, I do not want to go back to the fifties when Father knew best and women were relegated to the home whether they liked it or not.


But is it so bad to give some priority to the raising of children?


I do not want to go back to a time when divorce was a horrible stigma. But is romance really a sufficient basis for a social order? I knew a couple whose wedding vows included the words "As long as love shall last." Is it any surprise they are divorced? 

I do not want to return to the days when a pregnancy out of wedlock would ruin a life and bring unbearable shame on a family. But have we not gone too far in the other direction? 

A friend was talking about a teenage Mom in her extended family. She still lives with her parents and has been supported to stay in school. Good. The welfare state is supporting her to go to college. Great. BUT! Here is her older sister who did not get into trouble, drowning in student loans. Isn't something wrong with this picture? By the way, I have always sympathized with the stay-at-home older brother of the prodigal son.

Would it really be so bad to return some stigma or pity to both divorce and fatherless families? I say SOME. I don't say teach kids abstinence till they're married, and force women to stay in abusive marriages. That would be the pendulum swinging like crazy in the opposite direction.

Excessive pendulum swings are one of my beefs. But we'll make it the topic another time.