The End of Humanity?

Rick Salutin wrote a thoughtful piece in the Toronto Star about Americans who still support the NRA after the shooting in Florida which killed 17 students.

The title read "Gun Enthusiasts Would Rather Lose Their Kids Than Their Guns".

The title is, of course, overreach. Who would ever think this in a country that holds the richest, most political and economic power in the world?

I think the problem is addiction not reason. Those whose self interests are bound in the status quo cling to it like heroin.  

Think of how a mind might sober up to realize they prefer guns to children? Other children maybe but not ours.

Most power systems are based on the problems of the other. It's other people's children who have a different religion or different colour skin that we scrutinize and judge. Ours we will excuse and defend no matter what they do.

Our children grow into adults who learn to be increasingly aggressive in business and politics.

On a different but related issue the CBC news reported that Rachel Notley won the war against BC by banning BC wines.  Further scrutiny will tell you the oil companies that already rule global economic policies won and small local business lost. Rachel Notley like so many politicians can win by promoting the interests of the biggest bullies, while leaders who defend justice are attacked, ridiculed and tossed out.

CBC has been under tremendous criticism by broadcasting the stories of the underdogs - those who are threatened simply because of who they are - women, gay, Muslim, first nations.  Now the hourly news broadcasts the values of big lobbies by ridiculing people for things that don't matter - such as the clothes Justin Trudeau wore in India with headlines that say his visit was a fiasco.  That's a judgement call.  That sounds more like Fox News than CBC. But its a testament to our eroding social values just like the charge that Americans love their guns more than their children.

Lobbies funded by big corporations say small businesses cannot afford $15 an hour minimum wage, cannot afford to provide affordable housing. What you see in these charges really is throwing humanity under the bus.  Oil pipelines and bitumen will destroy the local economies of fishing, tourism and entertainment while making Kinder Morgan even more powerful than it is.

Democracy cannot survive while fake news and contempt for life pollutes the fragile society. Justice for all cannot survive when oligarchs rule like demi gods and kings. When power is centralized we all become prisoners who must suck it up or be prepared to die.

Why is my example so extreme? Because our values slip away while we are not looking. How many people have found themselves giving up their values for the sake of keeping their jobs? How many who rise to the top become psychopaths because the pain of weighing their interests against the greater good cripples them. How many gang members learn that in order to survive you must serve the alpha male no matter how cruel his demands.

The best soldiers are fine people who were trained to kill and who came home broken because their nature was destroyed. Nations that rise to the top train their people to be brutal by brutalizing the most vulnerable in their society. They look strong and fearless but their GDP rises at the cost of their people.

What is called great is really that power to intimidate, to demand absolute obedience from their citizens. Now huge wealth is created by making workers slaves, but punishing those who think and who stand up to the bosses. At all costs, even our children, we are ordered to bow down to power.

We are becoming a world in which literature, culture, health and happiness are swallowed into slogans. Nestle is run by a CEO who believes water is not a human right. Large corporate interests believe human sensibilities get in the way of their control. They secretly fund think tanks and movements to shut down civil society. Hitler's fascism was a religion of killing and nihilism. The NRA is the department of everlasting fear.

What will happen to literature, music, philosophy, family and love, if this planet becomes a fascist corporation? What will happen to humanity if there is no other example of how to be in this world? 

The Field Mouse

Continuing on the theme of the new class system described in an earlier post, and subsequent descriptions of the anthro-hyena and the gate-beaver, this is a look at that faceless, nameless group known as the masses, which I call field mice. 

Field Mice are focused on survival. Caring for and protecting our families we barely have time to look at the big picture. We are running as fast as we can to keep up with trends, pay our bills, forage for food, and most importantly - keep away from predators.

The resilient field mouse has learned how to cope with different landscapes in different climates and different economic systems. The field mouse, driven to provide for his or her family, has learned how to be a good soldier, a skilled welder, or a gentle nurse. 

Profiling the field mouse as integral is counter-productive in a system built on exploitation and so their value is undermined through myth and story, where they are shown as  confused, stupid, shallow, undisciplined and self-interested.

In a recent rabble column, Rick Salutin  cites political philosopher Leo Strauss, "who lived through Hitler's rise, concluded that most people are and always will be basically emotional and for their own good must be manipulated by their betters through religion and deceit..."

Could it be true that the masses hold most of the power through numbers alone? When they aspire to get higher on the social ladder by copying anthro-hyenas and gate-beavers, do they lower their worth, precisely because they disgard their inherent truths for the lies that oppress them?

All the world's wars, that generation after generation find new enemies, have not been about finding peace, but keeping the field mice in uniform, in step and in service to those who profit by their blood, sweat and tears.

The nature of all members of the new class system are not hard-wired into the brain - we can learn to create better worlds by examining our own investment in the status quo and by interrogating the myths we look to for comfort. But will we? Will we give up our fleeting inventories of superiority for the survival of our planet, or descend into a final righteous bloodletting to the end?

The Gate-Beaver

This post is a continuation of the series on the new class system, and bears no relation to the slang usage referring to a part of female anatomy or to Canada’s national emblem. Nor will this post make any reference to any imagined connection between the slang meaning and Canada’s foreign policy.

The gate-beaver is the defender of the status quo. The wild beaver has his or her own reasons for eating trees and building dams, but the gate-beaver is a cunning creature who has built a career in service to centralizing wealth and power.

Gate-beaver has established a tradition of building stuff on other stuff, and is a clever engineer of converting natural systems into profit-making industry. It is the gate-beaver who invented advertising, promotion and spin. It is the gate-beaver who is responsible for turning art (music, film, fashion, interior design, literature) into a huge money-making market.

The gate-beaver will not be the folk singer or story teller, but will be the manager who creates celebrity out of art, a politician out of a charismatic speaker, commodities out of healing wisdom, and full scale wars out of survival strategies.

The gate-beaver flourishes in advertising. If the anthro-hyena is cunning then the gate-beaver is a magician in manipulating sub-conscious waterways. The gate-beaver can create many streams out of one river of knowledge, and hand out accreditation for those who follow the flow.

The gate-beaver is not the academy but will chew through whatever needs to be chewed in order to establish him or herself in the academy, and will work 24/7 to build dams that will keep out the ideologies not useful to the ruling class.

It is this creature who has designed vehicles to indicate progress in human societies while disenfranchising human intelligence and ethics. The ultimate in the gate-beaver’s book of alchemy has been to turn civilization into a global shopping mall.

The gate-beaver is not evil; he/she is so busy staying on top of his/her game (building, contracting, networking, feeding a family, saving for retirement) - that any reflection must be done on route to a drive-through breakfast.

The New Class System

I remember being cornered at a party, back in the sixties when I was a new immigrant to Canada, by a young man telling me why the UK is going down hill.  The nation was mired in a class system, he thought, that kept them from reaching their economic potential, whereas Canada was free of any such out-dated confinements. 

Back then the familiar terms were upper, middle and working class, and although Canadians didn't often allude to class, there was a vast gap between the wealthiest Canadians and the poorest.

The notion of a working, middle and aristocratic class has a genteel ring to it, but we know the reality was more brutal than was ever talked about.  Therefore I propose that the class system should be renamed - either because it has changed, or because it's more in line with reality.

I would call the three classes "anthro-hyenas", "gate-beavers" and "field mice".

Anthro-hyenas very much in the minority, are the ruling elite. Fiercely carnivorous and protective of their own friends and family they are not content to simply fill their bellies as their four legged cousins might. They are hungry for everlasting security. This means controlling world resources (including labour) by creating systems of oppression for everyone else by whatever means necessary.

Field mice are us.  We are so busy trying to survive, caring for and protecting our families we barely have time to look at the big picture.  Being vulnerable to manipulation we tend not to blame the causes but the victims of the system - particularly if they are even more vulnerable than we are.

Gate-beavers are the class created to keep the field mice from knowing how the system works. They are well trained to protect the position and power of the anthro-hyenas - to be the impenetrable walls that keep the field mice out. Gate-beavers build institutions, create laws, design wars, co opt media and do whatever they can to maintain the ideology that power is a zero sum game.

Who is to blame for this?  Is it the ruling elite, the anthro-hyenas, who have abused power for thousands of years? Is it the field mice getting dizzy running around their particular wheels unable to see the landscape?  Is it the gate-beavers who invest their lives in a system of oppression by pandering to wealthy interests?  Or is blame a construct we use out of habit, because systems of oppression have always relied on setting up enemies in order to maintain the status quo?

Is it possible that the destruction of this planet might be halted by new ways of organizing human capacity as we discover the interdependent web of self interest and social responsibility? Will there be a time when left wing and right wing become redundant phrases as Canada becomes a nation free of class structures as the young man in the sixties proclaimed?