The Wealth of this Land is its people - Letter to the Premier of Ontario

Dear Premier Ford

I came to Canada in 1965, full of myself. I learned about being Canadian in the years that followed, because of the kind people who corrected my views of entitlement. They didn’t put me down, make fun of me, or shut me out - they simply explained they did not agree and why.  At the time I was not happy but later I would think about what they said and could see the value of their wisdom.

Later after the birth of my children and the guidance from Victorian Order of Nurses who helped me find answers, I could see how effective social programs linked knowledge to health. They had an education beyond mine, and they saved my family’s life.

Growing up watching popular TV and reading teen magazines I thought I had to learn how to come out on top, to make sure I had the last word and climb the ladder of success.  Of course so many other people felt that too, and when I didn’t win I would berate myself until kind friends taught me that wealth was in having a supportive community.

I thought many Canadians were really good at the down to earth wisdom and it was apparent how structurally violent my competitive attitudes were, how out of touch was my ego.

Then, housing was available to most of us, further education was affordable, and Canadians were mostly authentic. First in Montreal, then in Toronto, then Abbotsford. They came from India, Italy, Hungary, Ireland, UK, Germany and Africa. Their heritage was Hindu, Jewish, Muslim, Catholic & Protestant. Within a year or two immigrants would learn the real wealth of this nation - it was equality, positivity, and cautious optimism.

As turmoil around the world has caused insecurity and anger, I have learned how privileged I was to be an immigrant here. I have learned that peace can be found in compassion, empathy and a willingness to work for the greater good. I have learned from our First Nations the strength of working on universal values and taking care of our home. 

I write to ask you to consider the wealth of this nation that is beyond the bottom line and financial spreadsheets.  Please take care of the people first.

Janet Vickers

Gabriola BC V0R 1X1

1984 - George Orwell

“Now I will tell you the answer to my question. It is this. The Party seeks power entirely for its own sake. We are not interested in the good of others; we are interested solely in power, pure power. What pure power means you will understand presently. We are different from the oligarchies of the past in that we know what we are doing. All the others, even those who resembled ourselves, were cowards and hypocrites. The German Nazis and the Russian Communists came very close to us in their methods, but they never had the courage to recognize their own motives. They pretended, perhaps they even believed, that they had seized power unwillingly and for a limited time, and that just around the corner there lay a paradise where human beings would be free and equal. We are not like that. We know that no one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it. Power is not a means; it is an end. One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship. The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power. Now you begin to understand me.”
― George Orwell, 1984

(This quote was posted in Episyllogism)

The Human Hive

This article was inspired by Marilyn Hamilton's book Integral City and was posted first in Episyllogism September 22, 2013.

This is a response against the endless hours of brutal entertainment that suggests only might makes right. To save the world might be a heroic endeavour but I don’t believe it requires a Napoleonic campaign. It does, however, require the engagement of an alert mind and open heart.

The instructions are simple. Learn from the bees, use your caring mind to gaze at the world, reclaim your nature, hold onto curiosity, celebrate your creativity, give up blaming, live from a place of gratitude, acknowledge your political self, and honour your spirit.

1. Learn from the bees.
Marilyn Hamilton, CEO of Integral City, told a children’s story not long ago, that is easy to remember. Three key strategies enable bee hives to survive, which can teach us how to sustain the human hive – take care of you, take care of others, take care of this place. Our ancestors learned how to do this but sophisticated social systems have alienated us from our own capacity to manage the hive. However, world crises shows we must re-engage in the process now.

2. Use your caring mind to gaze at the world.
Look closely at the operating system, or the ‘apparatus’ as Simone Weil put it. Read ideas and opinions wherever you can find them. Ask yourself who benefits? Expand your gaze beyond your own immediate interests. Prepare to be disturbed but not defeated.

3. Reclaim your power.
Power and all its parts: politics, wealth, language, science, economics, institutional religion, are not evil. They are tools of a civil society. What is evil is the way these institutions have been corrupted to centralize power, to make it a zero sum commodity. Infinite power is disinterested in our personal goals, the economy and war, but we learn to survive by observing it.

4. Reclaim our nature.
We are resourceful workers and stakeholders in our society. We are not a resource or a job description. We are not left, right, conservative or liberal – we are organic, politically mobile beings. Labels are assigned to influence and control masses. We have courage, fear, anger, love and wisdom but they are not commodities, they are strengths that emerge and hide. The deadliest weapon of oppression is that which turns humanity and all of nature into a thing, a resource.

5. Hold onto Curiosity.
This is what keeps us exploring, examining, interrogating the conditions we live under or in. As long as curiosity is alive we shall never be content with serving an oppressive and corrupt social order.

6. Celebrate your Creativity.                                                                                            Music, theatre, farmers’ markets, poetry, gardens, maps, new political parties, conversations – are the means of expressing and sharing our humanity. Art is the what, where, how and who of our species as it yearns and evolves.

7. Give up blaming.
Blaming is not problem solving and the problem is not what other people do. To solve problems we need to re-engage our power to care creatively, with curiosity and empathy.

8. Live from a place of Gratitude
Love for life (agape) breaks apart the structures of false hierarchies. It demands attention to suffering, violence and calls for healing. Love is what drives great minds to take courageous stands outside of their particular disciplines for the greater good. Love is the openness to pain that makes injustice, corruption, cynicism and oppression unbearable.

9. Life is political.
You are an integral, intelligent, reflective part of a larger organism. Whether we survive as a species depends on protecting our earthly home from a system that enables a few egos to hold this planet ransom for the sake of temporary profit. There is no escape from politics. Its apparatus has been built on a grandiose delusion that refuses to see the natural world as sacred, and ourselves dependent upon its health. To be apolitical is to be a witness at the bed of a dying patient, refusing to be involved because the disease is dirty. To dismiss the world stage and your part in it is to lobotomize the future.

10. Honour the spirit
The spirit is our energy. It imparts our intentions before we see them. It allows us to dream and care for the world beyond our own life. Imagination and love is the immortal legacy we leave for our great-grandchildren.

The Cheap and Easy Way to Power

This was originally posted November 12, 2016.


"So what you have is a voting base consisting of evangelical Christians, ultranationalists, racists, disaffected, angry, white working-class sectors that have been hit very hard....[and] an increase in mortality among these sectors, that just doesn’t happen in developed societies." Noam Chomsky, Today's GOP Candidate for "most dangerous organization in human history"

The easiest way to power is to pump the masses with false hope and fantasized superiority. Tell them they deserve to be angry because they are worth more than the "others" who are lower down on the scale of privilege.

Begin with very powerful interests like big corporations. Tell them over and over again they alone are saving the world from poverty by creating money; that money is pure power which rises above the complexities of human nature. Tell them your party will be on their side as long as you get the funding you need to carry the campaign to the end.

Then simply use the same method, with different instructions to the masses.  Even though they are not included in decision making policy, and not in the room where policies are created, they need to call on an "inherent superiority" such as class or skin colour. Then change the teachings of your prophets to match your agenda.

Don't bring facts or intellect into the campaign. It emphasizes reason, knowledge and leads to social justice. Once ideas are debated there are no winners. Intelligence is a private muscle which will stay true to the party line as long as there is a salary, otherwise it will wander off. Raise children to be suspicious of their own experience and interpretation of the world, replace their self worth with doubt and self contempt. The earlier the mind is intercepted with doctrine the easier it is to influence and control. "Give me a child until he is seven and he will be mine for life", said a priest.

Set one group against another. This builds a multi-generational division where parents will do most of the indoctrination. Catholic versus protestant. Christians versus Moslems, Jews, Hindu's and all other faiths. Liberal versus Conservative, Wealthy versus Poor, Men versus Women, Man versus Nature. This ensures the ongoing war in the minds and hearts of every living creature.  This also ensures that good ideas will never replace fear.

Once these systems are established, they will prevail and be generated by the poorest and weakest of the world. The oppressed become oppressors (Freire). For thousands of years this is how humanity has been governed. As long as they are in denial about their own needs and worth, they will fall in line and do your bidding.

There have been different labels and descriptors for ruling systems but they operate on the same principle - it is the worship of power over life. The holding up of violence over compassion. The celebration of ignorance over self-knowledge.

When life is not held as sacred it's easy to make abortion illegal while planning to starve the offspring.

However, the essential and everlasting way to power is that of a society built on the free and enduring inquiry of who we are and what we can do to solve the problems that face us.

Republiku

Haiku is a form of Japanese poetry. The word comes from haiku no ku meaning comic verse. The English haiku is usually three lines about a brief observation. For fun I call these verses Republiku - the first part refers to the Republic (nation or politics) and the last syllable refers to a poetic form.

NY Times report

facts don’t matter

anymore

🌳

Truth is truth

but we are 

above that

🌳

Americans held hostage

by their president

and money

🌳

American veterans

salute president

for protecting them

🌳

A poet wrote

when the world doesn’t make sense

rewrite from scratch

🌳

Letter to BC Ferries

I am a resident of Gabriola and often travel Taylor Bay Road to get to the village.

I have noticed the line up takes cars onto the road where there are bends. Because some of the cars are part way on to the road I must pass on the oncoming traffic lane. This is dangerous because oncoming traffic cannot see me. I move as close as possible to the cars in the line up but still go to the oncoming traffic lane.


It appears that we need more frequent ferries to avoid this long line up. When catching a ferry I get in line as the previous ferry is leaving, which is possible for retired people, but not everyone can do this.

Overburdened line ups also cause some to get too frustrated and do dangerous things. We are all responsible for our own behaviour but so much of our civil society is being destroyed by ruthless economic ideologies.

Climate change, abusive treatment of workers and the economic trend which intentionally pushes people to a deep sense of insecurity, calls for a renewal in community engagement, with empathy for all who struggle to get through their day.


Thank you for all that you do.


Janet Vickers

A reply came within a couple of hours - here:-

 Hello Janet,

We understand the concerns people are having (I was on the island Monday…spent time along various points of Taylor Bay Road and the entire ferry line up), especially around safety.

To this, we are in discussions with the Ministry of Transportation and Infrastructure…as they have also had many people contact them recently to this issue. We are analysing ideas with them for possible measures to alleviate problems.

Regards,

Darin Guenette

Manager, Public Affairs

British Columbia Ferry Services Inc.

T: 1-877-978-2385 (toll free) or 250-978-2385 C: 250-213-9253 F: 250-978-1119

darin.guenette@bcferries.com

bcferries.com

The Anthro-Hyenas Are Invisible

"A mere two millennia after Roman politicians paid mobs to riot on their behalf, we are beginning to understand the role of dark money in politics, and its perennial threat to democracy. Dark money is cash whose source is not made public, that is spent to change political outcomes." So begins George Monbiot's article on the influence of dark money in our evolving or devolving civilization. (www.monbiot.com. invisible-hands)

The tobacco industry, biotechnology, fossil fuel and junk food companies have learned how to sell poison to the ignorant masses. They use the best minds fresh out of university to create false dichotomies and fear among the people while the technology itself is unaware of what side it is on or who actually benefits.

It's all about selling ideas, persuasion, technique and strategy.

More and more we see and read about movements that make it look like people are seeking to go back to the fifties, back to racist ideologies, misogyny and inequality. If you have wondered why - it could be because we are unaware of our patterning instincts and dismissive of our shadow.

If you have ever wondered why the ruling elite need so much more money than the rest of us - I suspect it is to replace human sentiment and values with antiseptic terminology to keep us serving without argument.  Getting rid of Unions and making immigrants the enemy is just the beginning of the strategy. The repurposing of war is another.

This post WWII era has successfully sold all nations and all systems the benefit of our enslavement to the economy. 

The Anthro-Hyena is post-human in its ability to transcend compassion, empathy and family, in order to rule.

What is Power?

Years ago we visited a cottage resort, same time and same cottage each summer, reuniting with the same families in other cottages.

As was my habit I brought note books and papers to write and read. One day I asked each of the adults "what is power?".  Their  answers were varied:

• power is energy
• E=mc2 
• power is what turns men into monsters
• love is power

So I pondered these answers, as throughout the years, the subject fascinated and troubled me.

My answer to the question would be - power is the ability to create, to influence the outcome of events. Humans certainly have wielded power throughout our time on this planet.  We have created culture - opera is one example of cultural power. Language, story and education is another. People working together to create something memorable and inspiring. Cell phone technology is another magical example of technological power. Raising our children responsibly so they are able to find their way through the unknown future. Think of all the years of study and discipline that goes into building a beautiful temple. Think of the labour, the energy, the beauty of the design. Think of all the writers who have written books that sit in the library of most towns in North America and Europe.  All the cars that jam our roadways, the drivers who learned how to drive, the planners who put up traffic light and signs to guide them. The sum of our power is so great that we have created terrible problems for the environment, and yet it has become too common for us to notice.

Dismissing the power we have has bred a different kind of power. The circus, clowns exploiting vulnerable people and animals.  It clamours for attention in a way that makes humanity seem like a bunch of suckers.  Consumer commercials, magical thinking, snake oil salesmen, political bloviators, astronomical greed, Punch and Judy shows, and celebrity gossip.

I call this fake power.

The only thing this power creates is alienation from society - it doesn't even try to represent anything of worth. It arises out of our failure to appreciate the life bestowed on this planet. It's a cynical  race to see how quickly we can destroy decency, civility replaced with thuggery. Corporate media obsessed with evil,  as though we are powerless to save it.

This culture is saying to young impressionable minds you are powerless to change anything. We laugh at the naiveté of the desire to care. By example we are offering them victims to bully with the glorification of brute force. Gang rape, racist slurs, intolerance to diversity, contempt for the fragile.

Bad enough that the young might display this behaviour, but even worse are the men who hold positions that would normally demand intelligence and leadership but who brag about making it a game, as though our universe is merely a casino and man's task is simply to take home the most chips.

This is not power.  This is just capitalism. Turning the diversity of  the web of life into a lottery where there is only one winner and billions of losers.

What dominates this culture is not power at all but a soul destroying pretence of power based on the universal contempt for all life as we know it.

If we want to have a future we need to build it on the real power we have to sustain the healthy community. Peace and a reverence for life is the ultimate profit from our efforts. 

What is Love?

Douglas Rushkoff in Survival of the Richest (medium.com) writes "the trans humanist vision too easily reduces all of reality to data ... concluding that “humans are nothing but information-processing objects.”

This was the insight he discovered at a conference for rich men who wanted to know about future technology. But what he discovered was that they wanted to transcend humanity, to leave us all behind.

It brings me back to my own epiphany that in most important decisions, I must choose love or power.

It seems simplistic but I kept running into dark corners whenever I tried using power to survive. Often told that the real world is about being tough, holding your ground, being smart and winning - I had hoped I would learn how to survive here.

To cut a long story short I discovered that love made me feel weak and weepy, and power made me feel dirty. There was all kinds of social conditioning that went into this, but in the end I realized that winning the zero sum game harmed me more than anyone else - even those who loved me.

It's not that power is incapable of being a force for good in society, it was just that so much of my focus took me away from caring, protecting and supporting.

I have read many feminist opinions that point out how women are raised to be loving and kind at the cost of their own interests, and I don't support the idea that we must be martyrs. In the end though I do think and feel that life dwells in sacrifice.

Those who love life will risk their own to save the coast and all its wildlife from oil spills, whereas those who love power (money) are willing to sacrifice all life for their own power. We have plenty of people and corporations who prove this - I don't need to name them.

Explaining what love is usually produces arguments without a conclusion that satisfies everyone and the subject of love is fraught with the lack of scientific evidence. But for myself I seek to inquire by examples of what it is not.

Love is not justice or wealth or political science or medicine, but could initiate our explorations into these fields. It's not fame, celebrity, diamonds or gold or fashion, cosmetics, cars, roads or the economy, but could be the drive for these things.

Love for others somehow gave me  a balance, a home, respect for life itself. Love gave me my feedback loop and the ground of all being. A place where I return to at night.

Yes love certainly reminds me of how fragile I am and how tender I should be to others. Whatever has hurt me has taught me how not to choose pride over the well being of others. I have a sense of how to hold the moment with responsibility and care so that I don't hurt anyone. It is with this insight I see love as something that brings me into the meaning of my life by being aware of the value of all life.

Love has taught me to listen to others because life is where I came from. There is life which I feel, endure and share, whereas ideology is an instruction.

Revenge is a chain reaction to being hurt which brings more hurt. Competition is alienating if it is the base for all my other relationships.

There are many who are alienated from the comfort and security of family. Most of what is written about in social media, community and governance comes from a mind within a body that has been loved. But when the emphasis is on getting to the top, winning, buying and selling, the "home" of our values is crushed by greed.

Currently our society, environment and species is at risk from absolute dissociation from what sustains life as alpha egos seek to win at any cost. Why? Because the institutions of power have dismissed love for more power and are too fixated on the scores to feel or see what is at risk.

We might call this madness, governance by sociopathic minds, and hollow egos, disconnected to their own humanity; where power is chosen over life.

Isolated egos need the love of their neighbours, friends and families to bring them back into the fold of humanity before loneliness makes them so afraid they choose guns as the final solution.

The Field Mice: a Folk Tale for Adults

(Originally posted in 2014)

Long ago in the olden days, field mice knew the meaning of life: to gather nuts and seeds no matter how cold or wet, how hot or windy, and to bring them back to the nest.

Were they happy? Who knew? There were seasons. There was birth and there was death, but no time to contemplate and no philosophers in the field.

Then came the hyenas across the river, hidden by long grasses, salivating at the sight of tender fresh meat. And these were not your common or jungle variety. These were a new breed who could plan, who saw ways of making the larder last longer.

In the river were beavers busy building dams. They looked too dank and tough to eat but the hyenas saw that they could be useful and entered into a contract called The Trans-River Deal which promised greater status for the beavers and wealth for hyenas.

Ah, a new way of seeing the world thought the beavers and they called it “The Economy”. Congratulating themselves on their ability to analyse and re-frame reality, they found ways of influencing the field mice, and to make capital from their labour.  

And so it came to pass that the beavers entered into the field with their blueprints. Luxurious nests with running water, separate bedrooms and indoor toilets in exchange for all the nuts and seeds they could gather which would be processed into cakes and preserved.  A vision of progress, bright futures with eight hour work shifts and time for leisure.  

At first everyone was happy.  Mice were comfortable, beavers were smug, and now there was time for parties and feasts. Sadly this didn't last forever because the hyenas across the river, which the mice had never seen and did not know about, were waiting to call in the debt.

“What debt?”, asked the beavers. They and the mice had provided the labour and the ideas – and the hyenas had contributed nothing. 

The hyenas reminded them of the deal they signed and were therefore obliged to provide the agreed-upon returns. If they did not comply there would be snakes in the rivers, rats in the field, storms and plagues, and the beavers would get the blame.

“For what ends?”, asked the beavers. All their profits would be destroyed and no-one would gain in the long run.  

The hyenas laughed and ridiculed the beavers for not understanding how power works. “Create a conflict among the mice, pit neighbour against neighbour with a manufactured crisis – be creative with the truth, divide and rule”, advised the hyenas, who were clearly above such sentiments as fairness. “As soon as we have everything we want we shall move on to the next field down river.”  

“What about the suffering, the misery and death you will cause”, asked the beavers.

Again the hyenas laughed. “We deal only in power. Life is fragile and finite whereas power is eternal and everlasting.  You have no choice and now you must go back to the mice and demand they do your bidding.”

Shaken and troubled the beavers wondered whether they should invent a crisis or tell the truth about the hyenas and the coming threat of snakes, rats, and plagues.  Should they defend their field or cave in? Should they train the mice in the art of war or the natural laws of justice?

They didn't know what to do so they told the mice the truth and after many hours of deliberation they all decided to have a party and enjoy life while they had it.

Eventually, after battles won and lost, they all died and their stories died with them. Their luxurious nests, their running water and indoor toilets, their BC ferries, their schools, their hospitals, their hockey teams, museums and libraries all crumbled into dust – and all that remained was silence, because politics never had the insight to see, that it too, could not live without life.

Simone Weil on Political Parties

Andrew Nikiforuk writes in The Tyee about Simone Weil's conclusion that political parties are dedicated to “killing in all souls the sense of truth and justice.” This is not a call for the end of democracy, but a re-engagement in democratic expression and activity on behalf of the common people. It's not democracy's fault - it's politics.

Failed democracies are dangerous because of the implication that it's citizens have failed and need to be told what to do.

Nikiforuk writes that we are aware of broken promises no matter what party is in power. Hearing that Justin Trudeau won the election in 2015 with his promises of writing wrongs towards women, the indigenous people and making environmental concerns a priority - I was relieved because Trudeau's platform promise was based on compassion and social justice.

Then when Trump was "elected" I felt deflated. It was clear to me that the next few years would be built on hate, misogyny and scapegoating, and that any movement towards fairness and social health would be scrapped.

What hit home most was the thought our future would be governed by anger, spite and a lust for revenge. This is because I know there are many in Canada who long for the mythical sense of might makes right.

Suddenly our PM seemed to change direction. Buying an oil company to build pipelines for tankers on a fragile narrow coast with our pensions, screams of a totalitarian state's contempt for life.

In Europe, between the first and second world war, Weil "watched one party after another betray the best interests of working people, and saw "that political parties seem designed to destroy any vestige of democracy as well as any opportunity for free thought."

Might will do everything it can to convince the people they are powerless and worthless. We have come to an age where it is very difficult to believe otherwise.

I fear the long slow spiral down to the bottom will find new ways to return to barbaric rule. Public hangings, torture, hunger and fear will be on display. It will be painful and grievous. It will hurt physically, psychologically and spiritually. All while its leaders will preach of saving the most vulnerable, saving the economy, evening out the access to opportunity, and the long march toward progress.

In Orwell's "1984" there comes an end where the protagonist is praying to die, screaming for his life to end. The thinking sensitive being commits suicide allowing the hollow men to march on.

Voting for fascist parties is a kind of suicide. It's the temper exploding when the heart has been broken too many times.

I am thinking about how to create conversations on being human. Circles where artists, poets and musicians can gather with economists, engineers, and labourers to share their thoughts and the feelings they cannot share in public. Circles where those who did not have the opportunity to attend higher learning are heard and have the opportunity to hear others without feeling judged or put down.

Using terms like civic education or consciousness raising implies a need for "self improvement" - terms that are very threatening to those who have been rejected in so many ways, who can only feel powerful when they beat up someone who has less power than they.

Humanity with its many faults feels hope and despair, but politics is ruled by the notion of control, of rising above the fragile human ego. However a political party soon descends into strategies to win. Politicians focus on winning, and this requires a different game plan, losing sight of its original goal.

This is why we must pay attention and let them know what we think is best for our world. It's a matter of endless care and investment of energy.