The Power of Public Opinion

David Suzuki informs us that almost "all species that have existed  are estimated to have gone extinct within an average of a few million years." We are an infant species, "a mere 150,000 years old" who have adapted and survived deserts, tundra, rainforests, wetlands and high mountain ranges. Furthermore, "we’ve accelerated the rate of cultural evolution far beyond the speed of biological or genetic change."

Can we survive a million years? Will we be around in a few million or the next hundred years?

George Monbiot warns that "Humankind’s greatest crisis coincides with the rise of an ideology that makes it impossible to address."  By the late 1980's, it became clear that our world "was in the grip of an extreme political doctrine" as it also became clear that climate change was man made.  This political doctrine makes conversations about planetary health obsolete. It claims only profit and greed counts in ways that would be morally wrong even to elementary school children.

The news is not so much the news but an inventory of violence, and you would think that Socrates, Jung or Arendt had never existed. An alien visitor would think that there is no such thing as intelligence, reflection or wisdom. They might suspect that mothers never loved their children and had tossed them out of their cribs to the machines of war before they could speak.

What so many crises suggest, is that we are ruled by a nameless monster whose tentacles have spread throughout earth's surface and our neural substrate.

Some call this monster plutocracy, or capitalism,  or hegemony, or institutionalized religion. I would name it media.

Media according to the dictionary is "the means of communication, as radio and television, newspapers, and magazines, that reach or influence people widely."  It is filled with intelligent design and people who are well meaning. But it is powered one way - from a wealthy elite down to the living rooms of the common people. It behaves as though we are all involved in what spins out, and represents our best interests, but it cleverly omits most, if not all, of the diversity among its citizens.

There still exists outlets that inform, such as CBC radio, Knowledge, TVO and PBS. There are online outlets that give contextualized reports such as StraightGoods, TruthDig, Rabble, and others. But all of these are funded by the people who care about civil society. Their budgets are minute in comparison with the mainstream media who have learned how to create entertainment instead of truth, for profit rather than humanity.

Gandhi believed in a truth force just as many activists do, who have dedicated their lives to creating change. That these activities don't get broadcast frequently is really a testimony to their authenticity.  After all you don't see million dollar advertising campaigns for needs, only to create new "needs".

So signs of public opinion can be found, but in smaller print, in smaller presses and in community halls. Sometimes they reach places of influence.

Joe Oliver, at the Canada Energy Summit hosted by the Economic Club of Canada, said  “If we don’t get people on side, we don’t get the social licence — politics often follows opinion — and so we could well get a positive regulatory conclusion from the joint panel that is looking at the Northern Gateway, but if the population is not on side, there is a big problem”.

Susan McCaslin, an award winning poet, organized a protest by hanging poems on trees in McLellan Forest east of Fort Langley, to protect the land from being sold to developers. She got over 200 poems and coverage in a national newspaper.

There are many other stories like this. Many activists working for the greater good who use their powers of logic, foresight, compassion and communication.  They stand on the side of a future for our grand-children that includes rich and poor, not just an elite.

Whether we survive for the next hundred or million years depends on this kind of commitment.

A Willing Silliness in Winter

Soon it will be the first day of December, and I will be asking myself about the value of gift giving, decorating trees with little ornaments, drinking and eating too much, and going to parties.

Is there a therapeutic silliness? In the midst of snow, cold, bare trees and root vegetables growing whiskers in the cellar, how does it make us happy to put on feasts, use up our food stocks and bank accounts, for a few weeks of extravagance?

Perhaps the answer can be found among those who are too poor to have Christmas. Ask those living in poverty about Santa Claus, Jingle Bells, high hopes and high expectations? What does it mean to know you can't light up a tree like everyone else, even though you know these things are not as critical as nutritious food and good health.

The argument that Christmas is about the birth of Jesus is true for those who celebrate the birth of Jesus, and the carols and hymns around that are as beautiful as the staged nativity plays in school. However, for the majority Christmas is about something else, and the origins of these mid-winter celebrations began in Pagan Europe.

For Christians who celebrate I wish you joy, anticipation and gratitude for the Christ's birth. For others I wish you warmth, company, family, lights and celebrations. For small businesses I wish you some extra profits to store for the coming year. For children I wish you that wonderful feeling of magic that comes with imagining Santa Claus flying over the globe, bringing gifts.

Whatever it is I hope we are able to focus on the lights, on the tree, on candles, in a wood fire, in familiar songs and stories, and mostly the sense that yes we can create this warmth and light in the middle of winter. Mostly it is about a ritual that tells us we have a tribe, and we belong.

If Hate Should Win Over Love in America

The narrative coming out of media has inflamed rage, alienation and despair among the American people, and so the land is ripe for draconian measures. This will ensure absolute power for the tribe who have funded xenophobic movements, government lobbies and media, in countries all over the world.  If the haters win it means a large enough portion of American society is ready for bloodletting and the scapegoats have already been identified.  If the haters win based on their promises it means America has given up on social justice - which is not socialism but shared responsibility through civil society.

1. Planned parenthood and women's rights will be shut down along with women's voices, as promised by candidates. 
2. Same sex marriage will be banned and the LGBT community will be forced underground or targeted with violence. 
3. Abortion will be made illegal even in cases where a woman's life is at risk.
4. Medicare and social assistance will be stopped.
5. Environmental pollution will rise exponentially wiping out many species through toxic poisoning. 
6. Education funding will run out, public schools shut down and communities will be required to build and pay for their own education.
7. Libraries will be closed.
8. Psychiatry and counselling will be outlawed and mental illness viewed as a lack of morality and self-discipline. 
9. Family breakdown will be blamed on the work of feminists and liberals.
10. Worker's unions will be outlawed.
11. Civic leaders, journalists and liberal religious leaders will be arrested and placed in prisons without trial.
12. All government departments will be merged and the only services funded by taxpayers will be the police force and the military, which will eventually be contracted out to private security companies. 
13. Extreme poverty will erupt in more gang activity, and municipalities will be sponsored by corporations and run by drug cartels.
14. A war will be started with Iran, Russia and China, to employ the frustrated young men who have lost hope of making a living. 
15. Civil war will divide the country.
16. Citizens who build local economies in their workshops and gardens will have their property confiscated. 
17. The one percent will become the .5 percent and they will be much richer than they are now.
18. Current party leaders will not see this coming.

Most Americans would deny this is possible mainly because there are so many community activities built and run by good, hard working, people.  But the tribe who have employed the CEO's, the military personnel  the politicians and the experts, have already managed to erode civil society by alienating humanity from their natural power and re-creating reality through the media they sponsor.  This tribe are so powerful we will know them not by name but by their fruits - totalitarian regimes in South America and Europe since the beginning of the Twentieth Century.

The only way we can take back the power we have is to nurture what sustains us. There is no solution, no ideology, and no guaranteed strategy to fight back against the absolute rape of our psyche through the worship of power. Our hope, if there is any to be had, lies in our practice of compassion and mindfulness.

Interrogating the Dark

It has been written that conservative parties are appealing to social conservatives - their support base. I am not sure what the difference is between social and religious in the conservative camp but Wikipedia says "Social conservatism is a political ideology that focuses on the preservation of what are seen as traditional values". These seem to be based on Ambrahamist values, which are mostly about a prescribed morality particularly opposing sexual permissiveness. 

Over the years there have been many values attributed to social conservatives which include:

• making abortion absolutely illegal (even in cases of rape, incest or when the mother's life is at risk)
• that prisoners should not receive any support spiritually, psychologically, or intellectually
• that we should bring back the death penalty
• to spare the rod is to spoil the child
• that welfare for the poor is a disincentive to work
• that unions are destroying the economy
• that personal wealth is a measure of the extent to which you are blessed by God
• that same sex marriage is a threat to America
• that we live in a Christian nation and immigrants should not be allowed to practice the religion they left behind. 
• that only Christians are capable of morality
• and we should defend Christianity by going to war with nations that are not Christian (except Israel)
• teaching children and adults to think for themselves and develop their own opinions is an affront to God's laws as laid out in the Bible. 

The theme threaded through this list is about how people should behave, meaning other people. 

Values imposed on others remind me of the dark ages when men were obliged to join the crusades, and their women to wear chastity belts. Or times of war when helping or caring for people who were labelled as enemy, is treason. Or on the battlefield, where refusing to murder is wrong. These are, of course, extreme examples, but when does morality no longer arise from the conscience but from an ideology requiring unquestioned obedience? At what point does the sensitive, feeling, thinking being become a robot for the benefit of something else?

Looking at the above list, replacing "Christian" with "Muslim" does this look like conservatism or theocracy?

The problem I have with the notion of conservative values, is that I once considered myself conservative.  As a young adult in my early twenties I began reading about current issues. I felt confident I knew what was best for others and felt it my duty to give advice, even to those who never asked for it. It was the honest thing to do, I thought, because I cared. What I could not, or would not see in those days, was my ignorance, all that I did not know.

As a child growing up in England, I remember believing that I should not be emotional, irrational or demanding to men, traits I was told belong only to the weak or women. I should not be like other women. Even more disturbing, and a devastating example of my ignorance, is when I heard about Nazi Europe I asked - what did the Jews do that was so wrong that everyone turned against them? This is how naive I was. I could not see the centuries old anti-semitic and misogynist indoctrination which forms the perimeters of society, and informs my views.

My code of ethics was simple - if I hurt someone it was my fault, if someone hurt me it was my fault. All suffering was a punishment for bad behavior.  This oversimplification was a result of political and historical illiteracy. An adult deprived of any meaningful discussion or interrogation of why things happen, is still a child.

The more I read, heard and saw of the world, the more fearful I became because it shone a light on my own powerlessness. If I knew nothing how could I make the best decisions? Oh, how the shopping mall, the Christmas planning, lifted my spirits, because in these things I could forget the really important, larger problems I had no tools for, no means to fix.   

So I have some sympathy for social conservatives.  I understand their visceral anger. They are naked against the machinery of hegemony. If they cannot see their part in the game, they will seek the scape goat who will offer some relief to their pain.  But it won't be enough. It won't last. They will need to look for another. They will put all their energy into eliminating the 'enemy', avoiding at all costs, the evidence that these choices destroy their own civil society. They will embrace austerity, they will punish themselves in order to punish the other.

They, we, will keep doing this until we interrogate how power has kept us chained to the cave, not just by the ruling elite, but by our inability to stare down the monster that is half of this contract - that we seek leaders to protect us from the shadows in our own sight-lines. 

Dear Prime Minister Harper

a river by Hwy 3 in BC

I forward this letter (italicized below), found on Rev. Frances Deverell's (President of Canadian Unitarians for Social Justice) blog in support of her fast for Climate Change.

I believe current world economic distress and natural disasters are caused by climate change and as a human race we must take action.  We must address the fact that we cannot grow our economies forever.  If our children and grandchildren are to have a chance at a quality of life we need real leadership from you and we need it now.

We need to direct our attention and our resources toward building an economy based on renewable energy.  We must slow the use of oil and coal and preserve reserves in the ground for future generations.  We can do this by:

•                Putting a price on carbon

•                Supporting all initiatives that develop and promote renewable energy

•                Supporting any and all methods of energy conservation

Slowing down the development of oil, coal, and nuclear will slow economic growth, but slower growth is inevitable because oil prices will rise as reserves are depleted.   This will impact our economy and cause labour disruption and unemployment.  We must prepare by designing social systems to cushion the blow and help people make the transition.  Current policies are pushing us towards instability and chaos instead.

We need your best, most creative leadership now to address these issues.  Will you enact policies that actively promote energy conservation and renewable energy?  Will you remove subsidies to big oil and introduce a tax on carbon?  Help us build an economy focused on creating quality of life for all, in a world without growth.

Respectfully,

Janet Vickers

Citizen of Canada

Think Before You Take

Soon (April 2013) the Harper government will be considering whether to raise the salaries of politicians. 

All MP's, according to this Globe and Mail article, currently earn a basic salary of $157, 731. Senators earn a base salary of $132,300.

Meanwhile the Harper government has cut back old-age pensions, laid off public servants, cut funding to social services that help those Canadians most at risk. Unionized workers are expected to take cuts in pay, and the non-unionized are getting less pay and less hours.

The argument that politicians work hard and deserve to be well compensated means we are focused on money as the only reward for skill and hard work.  Does that mean all those who juggle multiple jobs at minimum wage are not working hard, don't have skills and don't deserve  hope for a better standard of living?  

On a planet choking from mankind's ideologies of growth and greed, a true indicator of how much a sentient being is worth is her ability to readjust her appetite to nurture the interdependent web, of which she is a part.

All who work to the best of their conscience and their ability are worth this much. So please, dear MP's don't seek more money while children are going hungry and their parents live in poverty and despair. Your yachts, your mansions, your sports cars are not worth as much as your conscience in a just society.

Rosh Hashanah: What Has Become Clear To You?

I grew up in England under the notion that I lived in a "Christian" country and went to a "Church of England" school.  So I cannot really speak about Rosh Hashanah with any credibility. However, I am happy to see that this holiday is acknowledged in social media.  

The message is probably simplified in the interfaith community, whereas the deeper meaning and discipline more rigorous for the truly observant.  Yehuda Berg says "The Kabbalists teach that Rosh Hashanah is not a religious event, but a cosmic opening where we can plant the seeds that will determine how our reality will unfold in our new year."

I do feel a newness in September. But the idea that we examine our own actions, for our own judgement, as Berg points out, is very helpful when there is so much violence resulting, in all probability, from our judgement towards the other.

Easy to believe that I am powerless to do anything about the big events, I am brought back to earth by Yehuda Berg's words: 

"Every action we perform is a boomerang we fling out into the universe. Each Rosh Hashanah, all of these many boomerangs return to our lives—all the positive ones and all the negative ones. Moreover, this experience of Rosh Hashanah is not exclusive to any one religion. According to the kabbalistic sages, all humankind shares a heightened experience of Cause."

So who has influenced whom? Who can say that throughout the centuries, our civilization, and our survival has not depended upon inspiration and communication between faiths? Who can claim that our values are Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Sikh, Buddhist, Hindu, or Unitarian, exclusively?

May the Universe be blessed by this cosmic opening, and may judgment remain within my own capacity to do what the universe most needs.