They Should Party

by Epiphany Fellowes

I propose a new federal and provincial political party called "They Should".  This would bring a lot of Canadians together.  

We love to say what "they" should do and will participate in politics as long as all we have to do is talk about what others should do.  

"They" are the ones who cause the problems in our world. We notice everything that "they" do and we are not happy about it.

We, on the other hand, are struggling to get through the day's "shoulds" to help the friends we like and the family we would love if "they" did what we think "they" should do.

As Party supporters we make sure we are well groomed before we leave our house. We get our news from network television so that we can make "responsible" choices. We join groups that are just like us because we don't want to be part of a group who cause problems by being different or expressing disturbing points of view.  And mostly we don't want to tell them what is wrong because that would make us feel we are not nice.

The more we participate in our like-minded groups the more we are convinced we are on the right track. We can focus on becoming better people by becoming better at the things we think we can do.

We become more convinced of our goodness as we age - as long as we are not surrounded by news of problems we might have caused  - such as climate change, injustice, lack of compassion, apathy, greed. How can we be responsible for things we don't understand?

Because there is so much news now about the risks to our future we really need to come together. Clearly, the answer is to focus on what we already know others should do. These things are easy to agree upon.

They should:

• engage in sex only if and when "they" can afford to raise a child, 
• work hard so "they" don't lose their jobs, 
• abstain from drugs and drink when "they" drive, 
• discipline their children, 
• discipline themselves, 
• wash every day, dress well in clean clothes, clean their teeth twice a day, even if "they" are homeless,
• say please and thank you at all times, smile at neighbours and retail staff, and be polite to public servants such as police officers and politicians.

It is vital to understand it is "they" who should do the things that we have learned, through intelligence, wisdom and education - how to be better citizens for a better world. However we should not be told what to do because that would be undemocratic, authoritarian and socialist.

(Posted with permission from Epiphany Fellowes)

When a child is born

If we are privileged enough to live in a community that protects and values life, we come in contact with friends and relatives who have a new life to celebrate.

When I look at a new born I am in awe again with the beauty of it. The tiny hands and fingers, the flesh that looks almost transparent it is so delicate. I am taken away from the world of power, politics, strategy and cynicism.  And what I am looking at is a mystery in the flesh, a potential that hasn't revealed itself.

This new life could become a peace maker, a defender for justice, or a billionaire who spends his or her energy selling arms to terrorists.

This new life is going to be affected by the stories she or he hears, the varied ways his or her parents nurture whatever shines through in her personality. This new life will be diminished or held in care by the environment.

To think of all that could go right or wrong is overwhelming and brings me back to my own choices.

It's About Whether We Should Care

"Personally, I’m happy to pay an extra 4.3 percent for my fast food burger if it means the person making it for me can afford to feed their own family. If you aren’t willing to fork over an extra 17 cents for a Big Mac, you’re a fundamentally different person than I am.

I’m perfectly content to pay taxes that go toward public schools, even though I’m childless and intend to stay that way, because all children deserve a quality, free education. If this seems unfair or unreasonable to you, we are never going to see eye to eye."  Kayla Chadwick, Huffington Post

What is it that makes some people so riled up about caring for others? Is it that they don't want to pay the extra "17 cents"? Or is it that they fear a fair and just society will remove the privilege they deny they have? 

What is it that makes us spend dollars on gifts we know may be thrown out soon after the wrap beneath the tree that will soon be on the curb waiting for pick up?

I remember a time when I couldn't stand to read the newspaper because the reports of poverty and injustice would make me feel depressed. I didn't want to examine that, so I loved all the diversions - the Christmas catalogues, the brightly coloured mall, the lights on neighbours houses, the tinsel of the season.

Celebrating with friends, special treats and laughter is good, but I had become a mindless consumer of habits and traditions that enabled me to feel normal. 

I had hoped that our "leaders" would be responsible and make the right decisions for me.

Self-interest is a slithery snake. It allowed me to dress myself in the common fantasy - that I worked for everything I had. But in the end my conscience could no longer deny that my happiness depended on living in a free and just community. The duty to care is very closely linked to my own self esteem.

Defending Democracy: by Russell McNeil

Why I am fighting for the survival of democracy, and why you must too: The Greek idea of democracy and the Roman idea of civitas are not just clever governing principles. They are concepts deeply embedded in - and part of - the natural law of the universe. Defending democracy isn't an option. You and I are required to defend democracy with every fiber of our intellect - even to the death. We have no option here. Read on:

The only stoic commandment (more a direction than a “commandment”) is to “live according to nature.” This means we are directed by nature to exercise virtue-based critical thinking in all that we do. Nature, meaning nature’s law, is the model we follow, because nature’s law is perfect; it is beautiful as all perfect things must be; and, we are drawn to beauty, through an attraction called love; and love brings us to the place where beauty and truth converge. We are drawn to the Law by our love of its beauty. When we get close we behold its truth. As a physicist/scientist, I get this. You must too:

Beauty is truth,

truth beauty,

that is all you know on earth,

and all you need to know. 

~ John Keats

This is more than a quaint ancient idea. This view of nature as a divine cosmic dance, animated by universal law, survives unscathed after nearly 2,500 years. If you or I were magically transported back to the steps of the Agora in the Athens of 350 BC and introduced to Xeno or Chrysippus – the two founders of Stoicism – the news we would share with them about what we know now about nature in the 21st century - would be met with rapt attention, but not disbelief.

Our stoic ancestors would be impressed with our new wisdom about the mechanics of nature with its four or five basic laws – a mechanics now in search of a Grand Unified Theory of Everything. But interestingly enough – as philosophers - they would ask themselves what new insights our modern laws brought in their pursuit of self knowledge, to know oneself? Might quantum mechanics – for example – be read in ways that would allow me to know myself better?

But the stoics had already read a great deal into the law of nature, long before we moderns uncovered its recent secrets: the Greeks understood - at least qualitatively – four ancient laws: 1. Gravity (they called it affinity); 2. Constancy - in essence the idea of energy conservation; 3. Entropy – the necessity and normality of change; and 4., that cosmic cycles lay at the heart of the rubric of nature. These four ideas are still in play – although many others have been added in the past few thousand years.

These four older “laws” - were read by ancient stoics allegorically - as parables - with deep portent for human purpose. Lest you think that the ancient stoic idea expired with the birth of Christianity - think again. The Christian world view borrowed heavily from stoicism and included this idea too. The four Christian gospels were to be read allegorically as parables that were to guide our actions in life. Nature - according to the Christian view - was to be seen as a fifth gospel which also was intended to be read in this way.

These readings of nature’s law (shared by ancient theists and non-theists alike) taught generally that actions and attitudes that alienate us from nature are not rational. Specifically, anger and dishonesty have no meaning in nature, and hence have no purpose in life. Nor does nature ever act in a thoughtless way – nature follows its internal law with unerring perfection. Humans are also social – nature teaches us that through its various affinities. This implied harmony in nature requires humans – who are also in nature - to work in concert and cooperation with one another. And so in stoicism, the Greek idea of democracy and the Roman idea of civitas – were Stoic influenced reason derived attempts to mirror nature’s law in civil law – human law - and these designs became the templates for our modern civil contracts: the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and the constitutions and charters of most modern liberal democracies, including our own Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. 

I must defend democracy - and you must too. My survival, your survival and the planet's survival depend on this. We have no other options. #TheResistence

Other post from Russell McNeil CONFRONTING EVIL 

It Isn't Your Fault

It isn't your fault that systems have learned 

how to manipulate you with false beliefs. 

It isn't your fault that patriarchy has learned how to kill 

your brothers by making you their robots. 

It isn't your fault you vote for parties who promise wealth 

but only for those at the top when you thought for all. 

It isn't your fault that rulers have philosophers, marketers, strategists 

and weapons while you have only one vote. 

It isn't your fault the oppressors have learned all the tricks 

to keep you coming back for more. 

It isn't your fault that those given the privilege to choose 

life, invested only in control of a woman's body, 

while showing contempt for the needs of the beings

born from that body. 

It isn't your fault your heart has been broken so many times

it severed the link to your brain. 

It isn't your fault the highest public endeavour 

has been turned into a 30 second commercial.

Beyond Politics of Anger - Rabbi Jonathan Sacks

"Hope is not optimism. It begins with a candid acknowledgment on all sides of how bad things actually are." So says Rabbi Jonathan Sacks after the election of Trump.

Sometimes I feel I am drowning in the weight of hopelessness, a global system that has thrown humanity under the economic bus. But we need a prophetic voice that looks beyond this moment to a future we can invest in.

Jonathan Sacks provides a wisdom that brings us to where we are now and reminds us of a way through."We need a new economics of capitalism with a human face."

This is the crux of leadership - to not choose contempt for humanity, to not sink into a worship of power that has been extracted from humanity, to not strip the tears, pain and flesh off the world and lock up the gold.

"We have seen bankers and corporate executives behaving outrageously, awarding themselves vast payments while the human cost has been borne by those who can afford it least. We have heard free-market economics invoked as a mantra in total oblivion to the pain and loss that come with the global economy. We have acted as if markets can function without morals, international corporations without social responsibility, and economic systems without regard to their effect on the people left stranded by the shifting tide. We who are grandparents know only too well that life is harder for our children than it was for us, and for our grandchildren it will be harder still." (Jonathan Sacks)

Amen.

Wall of Silent Screams

There are times when there is so much bad news it creates a wall of silent screams. Headline after headline supports the ambition of centralized power that holds humanity in a prison of dread and fear. This is more than just a feeling, it is the body's sense that everything created is about to crash. A tsunami coming in slow motion and you know there is nothing you can do to stop it.

More than the threat of fascism it's as though life itself is atomizing into drunken parts. My own body losing muscle, my head unable to think, my fundamental ability to survive lost. Something much larger than politics is invading my universe in a way that I cannot walk through. This can't be explained by the economy. It is an organic response. Should it be ignored or should I try to understand it?

To admit to my own vulnerability is not weak, it's a maturation of my ego, a willingness to move beyond my self interested fantasy to see what is happening outside the bubble. I look for the skills in others I do not possess and call on the skills I have to build a community.

There have been other people I admire for the skills and abilities they bring. I look for strength in diversity. I look for those who can do the things I can't do and feel gratitude for all that they give. I go to them for advice and give advice when I am asked for it.

The hub of community where people have learned how to be contributing stakeholders brings me a sense of peace and comfort. However, as much as I respect them I don't always agree with what they say and do, and so we must learn how to communicate without injuring. My community is not my possession but part of the wealth that I enjoy.

Life is easier when the place we live in is not threatened by authoritarian institutions. Part of my humanity is to keep learning how to engage with my neighbours so they are safe - because when they feel safe it makes my world safer to explore.

There is so much more I need to learn about being human, about how to endure discomfort, uncertainty, or pain. How to find relief from anxiety.

Karen Armstrong writes that compassion is the way we find relief from fear of the unknown. A society that honours equality is more confident in searching for ways to solve community problems such as alienation and loneliness. We feel safer to help those who need help. We learn how to be experienced stakeholders. We can develop the insight that our wealth is the quality of our relationship to one another, and that collecting stuff does not satisfy forever.

But now, in the democratic world, we are threatened by a hatred for the other. The blaming is isolating us into fierce camps. Will we be investing in weapons so that communities protect themselves from the outside while living in denial inside?

Hunger, homelessness, domestic violence, road rage, intolerance are not separate issues - they all arise from decades of structural abuse. We cannot trust the police, the courts, the teachers, the policy makers and our doctors when civil society dissolves into a cauldron of competing egos filled with disappointment, dreading what the future may bring.

Resisting trends that we do not agree with is one way to maintain sanity. When Bertrand Russell responded to an invitation from Sir Oswald Mosley to debate  fascist ideas, he did it in a way that clearly defined his values without insulting the values of his friend.

"Thank you for your letter and for your enclosures. I have given some thought to our recent correspondence. It is always difficult to decide on how to respond to people whose ethos is so alien and, in fact, repellent to one’s own. It is not that I take exception to the general points made by you but that every ounce of my energy has been devoted to an active opposition to cruel bigotry, compulsive violence, and the sadistic persecution which has characterised the philosophy and practice of fascism.
I feel obliged to say that the emotional universes we inhabit are so distinct, and in deepest ways opposed, that nothing fruitful or sincere could ever emerge from association between us." Bertrand Russell

We must call on our own humanity to protect what we hold dear, and cannot expect to be protected by abusive power if we disown our civic estates.

Socialism and Capitalism

"The "American Dream" was all about class mobility." writes political economist and scientist, C. J. Polychroniou in the truth-out interview with Chomsky. 

If you were born poor you could study and work your way out of poverty, and with sustained effort could provide a better future for your children. You could find a home, buy a car and send a child to university. The city and town was based on those expectations. Jobs, malls, institutions, education - was built on the principle that we live in a civil society and a life without fear and anxiety - was attainable.

TV dramas were based also on a set of ethics around how to sustain the family, community and the work place. Then entertainments became more sensational - violence, sex, deal-making and power struggles became the meat of the story, where the winner was the one who had access to the most force.  The theme of ethics became pablum for the good old days. Societies where these programs became a steady diet put social justice issues off the radar.  

People who don't experience justice in their lives and who don't think about what a just society is, may look on their life as a personal inventory of win or lose. Parents who want to bring back social responsibility looked to discipline as reward and punishment (for other people's kids but not theirs). Equality became a struggle to keep up with the Jones's.  When dishwashers came out in different colours one had to get rid of the old sage green model for a more fashionable one. 

And then our worth was displayed on social media with the latest selfie. As if unexamined consumerism is not pornographic enough, the bullying and hate fills the air with a new fear: had we become so estranged from who we are we have to find it in public media? Have we become vacuous inflatable robots looking for the next definition to fill us up? 

No but that is how we are presented as a whole. What we need more than anything is to find hope in our work together. To establish what is good for most if not all through getting reacquainted with who we are. To work on our capacities together and not disrupt community work with bids for power.

Which means we need to move deeper into ourselves to check that which is ego and that which is integrity. "A genuine independent left party" says Chomsky.

The Greatest Poverty

The greatest poverty of our age is when you have no control over the room you sleep in, or where the next meal is coming from. Or even worse, when social services assumes you are an unfit mother because you are too poor to give your children what they need, and you fear you will lose them.

The next greatest poverty is when you yourself assume that those living in poverty are there because they failed in some way. Or that people who have addictions are weak willed and have simply given up.

And the next greatest poverty is if you live in a society where these attitudes prevail. Because you will find categories but not the causes of social problems.

Categories really help the ones who organize society - but who are they now? Is the government organizing anything beyond budget, traffic and policing? When police officers, doctors, nurses and social workers keep fixing the wounds, go home, come back to find only more of the same, do they begin to question if they are helping at all?

Who is responsible for taking care of the bigger picture? If our prime minister is unable (or unwilling) to keep the promises he made during elections - who exactly is in charge? And if we don't know who is in charge of the infrastructures of our civilization, aren't we just refugees with debt?

The greatest poverty of our age, as I see it, is when we don't care about the infrastructures in terms of how it impacts our quality of life. It's Bleak House on a grand scale. It's like having plenty of electrical sockets in your house but you don't know which ones will charge your cell or blow you apart.

The emphasis on trade deals are saying to us - we cannot survive without plugging into a system we do not have the vocabulary to understand.

Poverty is not being able to navigate our future because the options are not available to us. Scrolling through Facebook is an inventory of injustices and structural violence from around the world. Nanosecond updates on all that is wrong and all that we (humanity) are failing at, and none of these observations and news items direct us on what we can do about it.

In this way we do not have a society, just overplayed myths about who we are, and who we are better than.

What can we plan without bullying or criticizing others? How can we hold onto a vision if no one else cares? How do we measure what matters if we have been reduced to the Gross Domestic Product?

How can we challenge one another without exploding the rage we all feel just under the skin?

The Leap Manifesto

This post is uploaded from The Leap Manifesto - put together by a group of Canadians including David Suzuki and Naomi Klein, to address the looming crisis of environmental and social breakdown.


Sign the Leap Manifesto:

"The leap must begin by respecting the inherent rights and title of the original caretakers of this land, starting by fully implementing the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.

The latest research shows we could get 100% of our electricity from renewable resources within two decades; by 2050 we could have a 100% clean economy. We demand that this shift begin now.

No new infrastructure projects that lock us into increased extraction decades into the future. The new iron law of energy development must be: if you wouldn’t want it in your backyard, then it doesn’t belong in anyone’s backyard.The time for energy democracy has come: wherever possible, communities should collectively control new clean energy systems.

Indigenous Peoples and others on the frontlines of polluting industrial activity should be first to receive public support for their own clean energy projects.We want a universal program to build and retrofit energy efficient housing, ensuring that the lowest income communities will benefit first.

We want high-speed rail powered by just renewables and affordable public transit to unite every community in this country – in place of more cars, pipelines and exploding trains that endanger and divide us.

We want training and resources for workers in carbon-intensive jobs, ensuring they are fully able to participate in the clean energy economy.

We need to invest in our decaying public infrastructure so that it can withstand increasingly frequent extreme weather events.We must develop a more localized and ecologically-based agricultural system to reduce reliance on fossil fuels, absorb shocks in the global supply – and produce healthier and more affordable food for everyone.

We call for an end to all trade deals that interfere with our attempts to rebuild local economies, regulate corporations and stop damaging extractive projects.

We demand immigration status and full protection for all workers. Canadians can begin to rebalance the scales of climate justice by welcoming refugees and migrants seeking safety and a better life.

We must expand those sectors that are already low-carbon: caregiving, teaching, social work, the arts and public-interest media.

A national childcare program is long past due.Since so much of the labour of caretaking – whether of people or the planet – is currently unpaid and often performed by women, we call for a vigorous debate about the introduction of a universal basic annual income.

We declare that “austerity” is a fossilized form of thinking that has become a threat to life on earth. The money we need to pay for this great transformation is available — we just need the right policies to release it. An end to fossil fuel subsidies. Financial transaction taxes. Increased resource royalties.
Higher income taxes on corporations and wealthy people. A progressive carbon tax. Cuts to military spending.

We must work swiftly towards a system in which every vote counts and corporate money is removed from political campaigns.


This transformation is our sacred duty to those this country harmed in the past, to those suffering needlessly in the present, and to all who have a right to a bright and safe future.
Now is the time for boldness.
Now is the time to leap."

Preparing for an uncertain future

I see a few posts on Facebook that indicate people see our future as being decided by the Harper government. I use that term because the Conservative party and Canada's democracy have been destroyed by this PM who proudly bragged we would not recognize Canada when he finished with it.

We were warned by so many quotes that he would turn us into a Republican branch plant - a petro state that Chris Hedges describes as intentionally destructive:

Extraction industries, like wars, empower a predominantly male, predatory population that is engaged in horrific destruction and violence. Wars and extraction industries are designed to extinguish all systems that give life—familial, social, cultural, economic, political and environmental. And they require the obliteration of community and the common good.

Jennifer Hinton describes the Greek Crisis as being the result of a parasite which "… comes from the surplus of the system (profit) being taken out of the real economy (the economy of physical goods and services) and put into the financial sector to generate more wealth for people who are already wealthy. This requires the economy to continually grow to compensate for the extraction of profit, which is essentially the extraction of the economy’s surplus."

So the economy in this case no longer serves the society that creates it. If Capitalism destroys societies how will it sustain itself? And is it really fascism in sheep's clothing?

A quote attributed to  Tommy Douglas, says "Fascism begins the moment a ruling class, fearing the people may use their political democracy to gain economic democracy, begins to destroy political democracy in order to retain its power of exploitation and special privilege.” 

Democracy and the kind of social responsibility which enables our freedom is clearly under threat in Europe, the US, Canada and other nations. But a percentage of the population will not see it that way.

Perhaps I am over simplifying - but it seems to me that Harper's base are those who have lived under the canopy of several absolutes:

1. that the white man is inherently superior, 
2. that men are more reasonable than women 
3. that religion is necessary to maintain morality
4. that punishment is required to keep people on the right path
5. that capitalism is the natural vehicle for our economy
6. that Canada is a Christian country. 

For these beliefs to sustain themselves a mind must avoid straying beyond these tenets - to explore is dangerous, to think is heresy. 

Christianity has been usurped and corrupted as a kind of manufactured spiritually-gated community to support the power and privilege of a ruling elite. In these cases it is no longer about Jesus and his teachings, or the insights of Biblical prophets.  This is not Christianity at all. It is not about good orderly direction in the Universe. It is not about virtue or humanity. It is a means to control minds and to keep the masses living in fear. It was the instrument that Hitler used, and that South Africa used to sustain apartheid. It is the way that war and violence has been glorified for the ambitions of colonial and imperial states.

As Chris Hedges, who is also a minister of a Christian church, reminds us: "There is nothing inevitable about human existence except birth and death. There are no forces, whether divine or technical, that will guarantee us a better future. When we give up false hopes, when we see human nature and history for what they are, when we accept that progress is not preordained, then we can act with an urgency and passion that comprehends the grim possibilities ahead." 

It is time to act, not simply accept the status quo. There is a responsibility we have to find a way to contribute to the future with the particular skills we have. To use our knowledge and art to present a different way of being. To pool our resources so that these skills are offered as an extension of our selves within our society. This is the way we contribute to our survival. We do what we can and if we are not sure we can we try it.

Judging, shaming and blaming is a waste of energy unless it leads to our action to fix that which we see is wrong. There is no righteousness in texting or twittering if we can't ask ourselves what can be done about it.
We are not required to change the world tomorrow, but let's not dismiss our capacity to meet and talk sincerely with one another about what and how we can apply our knowledge to the problem.

Voting, protesting, marching, carrying banners all have their place in revolution, but there is another step beyond that. Becoming the piece in the puzzle to support and sustain what is life revering. It means offering alternative views without name-calling, insulting and de-humanizing others.

It means researching the right information, questioning our own prejudices, interrogating our own privileges.
It means compassion. 

Track Changes

Legal Strategy Coalition on Violence Against Aboriginal Women: "reviewed 58 reports dealing with aspects of violence and discrimination against Indigenous women and girls, including government studies, reports by international human rights bodies, and published research of Indigenous women's organizations. The reports cover a period of two decades. (They) found only a few of more than 700 recommendations in these reports have ever been fully implemented." 

Harper's record of refusal: An Act of violence against Indigenous Women. Muskrat Magazine, rabble: "Since 1996...over 40 reports have been delivered to the federal government calling for a national inquiry into missing and murdered Indigenous women.  In August 2014, the premiers of Canada also called for an inquiry stating there are two possible routes to getting a national public inquiry into missing and murdered Indigenous women: Prime Minister changes his mind and calls one -- or he is defeated in the 2015 federal election." 

Globe and Mail Editorial February 1, 2015; "Prime Minister Stephen Harper never tires of telling Canadians that we are at war with the Islamic State. Under the cloud of fear produced by his repeated hyperbole about the scope and nature of the threat, he now wants to turn our domestic spy agency into something that looks disturbingly like a secret police force." 

Letter to PM Harper from Ralph Nader, Rabble: "Particularly noticeable in your announcement were your exaggerated expressions that exceed the paranoia of Washington's chief attack dog, former vice-president Dick Cheney. Mr. Cheney periodically surfaces to update his pathological war mongering oblivious to facts -- past and present -- including his criminal war of aggression which devastated Iraq -- a country that never threatened the U.S." 

ICBC may withhold licence for outstanding court fines, student loans in default. CBC: "The provincial government has proposed legislation to expand ICBC's ability to refuse driver's licences to those in debt.The insurance company is already able to withhold licences from people who owe money, such as toll fees, but the new bill — if passed — would be a "last-resort measure" to collect on outstanding court fines or student loans in default." 

There are many voices of reason from individuals and groups doing all they can, with very small budgets, to influence their governments.  What must be really clear to any concerned and thinking person is that those who hold the highest seats of power  like presidents, prime ministers, and CEO's of large corporations, do not appear to be providing leadership at all.  It's as if holding power is not compatible with social responsibility. Or the media feels its not in their best interest to report when these officers do consider the greater good. That, in fact to do real leadership for their constituents, to do what is wise and responsible, to do what we expect of adults, is likely to cause their downfall. That once they have won their seats they must be obsessed with holding onto their power by any means available.

Social responsibility is not seen to be the concern of prime ministers, presidents and CEO's. Somehow the building and maintenance of order and justice must fall on the citizens, sometimes sacrificing their own lives, to defend society, or to re-build their own structures of governance.

Power without social responsibility and justice is not leadership, and therefore not legitimate power.

The New Bourgeoisie

Is the new bourgeoisie a rising middle class who will bring about creative destruction - turning the world away from capitalism toward environmentalism?

The shocking images of rail cars full of petroleum blowing up and burning down the town of Lac-Megantic in Quebec, as tragic, and scary as it is, is only a fraction of how unregulated capitalism has wiped out the common wisdom of social responsibility for the extreme wealth of a few.  

In other words, work safety, living wages, health, social costs, justice, and standard of living, are all irrelevant arguments because life (nature) is irrelevant in the current pursuit of profit.  To care about humanity is naive and sentimental.  The mainstream media daily provides us with an inventory of examples. 

Weather, once the topic of polite society, has become political, with every extreme event being an indicator that we are not in control. Heat waves, cyclones, droughts and floods threaten to end the Anthropocene.  Yet the anthro-hyenas refuse to pay attention.

After centuries of class restrictions, the brave entrepreneurs of nineteenth century America were not going to let tradition get in the way of a new world dream.  The economy and the market place became the opiate of the people, and although the rest of the world applauded its inventions and has benefited from unbridled enthusiasm - now when this nation is the only remaining super-power, the American people are not the recipients of this wealth. (But neither were the British people when Britain "ruled the waves".) 

Chris Hedges has identified "sacrifice zones" where "Americans are trapped in endless cycles of poverty, powerlessness, and despair as a direct result of capitalistic greed".

Humanity is the sacrifice to this current fundamentalist 'religion', because wherever nature is not taken care of, where people are not allowed hope, dignity and worth, life ends in violence. Perhaps suddenly or slowly and painfully. 

Witnessing the destruction of eco systems is a mental health issue.  How can we be reasonable, nurturing and creative people when all the signs point to pollution?

Power-worship is the most devastating, debilitating mental illness of all when it threatens our survival, and prevents us from seeing what is in front of our noses.

Our governments are deluded. Britain's "former energy minister John Hayes described concerns about the rainforests of Malaysia and Indonesia – which, with their tigers, orangutans and thousands of unique species, are being destroyed to grow biofuels – as “bourgeois views” writes George Monbiot.  

This is the Orwellian new-speak we were warned about in 1984 - that something as essential as stewardship of the earth should be trivialized with words that mean the opposite. 

So those of us whose love of the natural world is a source of constant joy and constant despair, who wish to immerse ourselves in nature as others immerse themselves in art, who try to defend the marvels which enthrall us, find ourselves labelled – from the Mail to the Guardian – as romantics, escapists and fascists. That, I suppose, is the price of confronting the power of money. (Monbiot)

So let us be the new bourgeoisie. Let us agonize over how we, as individuals and collectives, can creatively redesign the operating system so that diversity and abundant nature is given the dignity it deserves.  Let capitalism represent our creativity as it did among the shop keepers of old. Let socialism represent the well-being and health of all. Let fundamentalism be the domain of roots so that vegetables, fruit, trees and families can thrive. Let the salons begin.

For Word Warriors

Write don't shoot.

Write your concerns about the future of Canada, to news outlet editors.

Murray Dobbin has published a list of emails to editors across the nation.

Other than filling up the inbox's of busy editors it will not damage the environment.  It will not cost anything other than some of your time.