I'm So Bored

 

Mennonite Preacher Anslo and Wife - Rembrandt van Rijn

Have you ever wondered what could be going on in the mind of a cow lying placidly in a pasture, and apparently contentedly chewing the cud balls she stored up in her morning feed. Or that lone horse in the pasture you drive by on your way to and from work who—standing on three legs as resting horses do—could be a lonely, living statue ... day after day after day. Surely absolute, unmitigated boredom is the lot of the domesticated animal species we imprison for our pleasure and nourishment.

            I’m intrigued by the creation myth in the first chapters of Genesis, primarily because it’s an  attempt to visualize what could make us so different from all other living things. Consciousness—or the knowledge of good and evil as Genesis calls it—is imagined to have been a choice fraught with such danger that the creator predicts that “if you eat of it, you shall surely die.”

            Scribes gathering and composing the text of Genesis 1-4 could see the fruit of this choice all around them; it was written during a time of bloody wars of conquest and revenge. Later, Charles Darwin would discover that it wasn’t choice, but natural selection and survival of the fittest that resulted in one species of life developing this knowledge of good and evil, this wonderful, yet dangerous, consciousness that gave humans a god-likeness when compared to all else that lives.

            Consciousness makes boredom not only possible but probable, I think. Because conscious minds can imagine, predict, analyze and plan, humans can visualise unlimited possibilities, a visualization which in turn incites a hunger for variety, for change, for unending newness.

            A knowledge of good and evil implies a moral consciousness, or conscience, a sensitivity about what’s right and what’s wrong to do. Unfortunately, our hunger for newness tends to override our moral judgment. Take killing devices: stick to sword to crossbow to rifles to explosives to nuclear weapons. Were we guided by a morality prohibiting the taking of life, laying down the stick would have ended the sequence in its infancy. If you eat of it, you shall surely die begins to feel like a prediction with merit when we consider the wickedness by which so many relieve their boredom. 

            I’m a Christian because even the flawed and sometimes perverted gospel of Jesus’ teaching answers the problem predicted in Genesis; namely that the core of righteousness will in the end be found NOT to have been the unflinching preoccupation with self-preservation, but the striving for the health of the species. Love your neighbour as yourself; greater love hath no man than that he should lay down his life for his friend; how can one love God whom he has not seen, if he cannot love his brother whom he can.

            The great gift of consciousness will either kill us or set us free.

            Andrew Moore wrote that “Bio-optimists, then and now, see a bright future if we can use technology to enhance our “moral sense and our capacity for social responsibility.” The “if” in Moore’s assessment parallels the debate between God and the Serpent in Genesis about whether eating from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil will mean mankind’s demise or a glowing, heavenly future.           

            Surely the gospel also seeks to “enhance moral sense and [the] capacity for social responsibility.” [1] It doesn’t, of course, propose technology as the medium to get us there.

            Although the placid cow and the tripod horse may never feel the frustration of boredom, I’m pretty sure I will never want to change places with either (although even three legs might allow me to chuck my cane). Were the three-legged horse to be suddenly endowed with human consciousness, he might well declare, “I’m so bored,” then jump the fence, break into the nearest bar, drink a pail of beer, go out and harass every pretty filly in town… ‘nough said.  

                                                                                                        

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[1] The future of our species. Will there be a sustainable evolution of humanity in the twenty-first century? - PMC

Artificial Intelligence; Artificial Happines?

 

"Artificial Intelligence" seems an odd name for a software program that operates solely on the mining and merging of accumulated mountains of data.

Computing that resembles actions of human intelligence would only make sense if the “thinking” it did was actually “intelligent.” Which it can’t be.

True, the ability to remember, compare, evaluate and predict—which AI can do—is also a characteristic of what we think of as intelligence in persons. But human intelligence is capable of compassion, respect, faith, sacrifice, love, joy, sorrow, hate, even self-sacrifice and all those attributes that can make us wise, as opposed to clever.

I shudder to think about a future characterized by artificial love (AL if you like) or artificial joy, (AJ). Put crassly, artificial intelligence is to human intelligence as an inflatable doll is to intimate companionship. Missing its most significant pieces, that is.

It’s fascinating to think that those who created the Genesis creation story called human intelligence “the knowledge of good and evil,” and that choosing to put its trust in their own endowments rather than in God was to set out on a hazardous journey, who’s end is death. While the flora and fauna are guided only by their created nature and its evolution, human intelligence (in the story) is our chosen guide.

Mind you, there are those humans we assume to be intelligent who are merely clever in narrow categories, so that the more relational parts of consciousness are crowded out. Money, for instance becoming “the root of all evil,” or fame, or notoriety, or conquest, or power, or revenge, etc.

Just watch an item on YouTube and count the ads urging us to sign up for courses in AI, that in a few weeks will make you “the most dangerous person in the room,” bolstered by the claim that “even teenagers are getting rich using AI.” The pitch is made by a cartoon avatar with one peg leg. Do you get that? I don’t.

What’s happening to our southerly neighbours now can be compared to the moral chaos East of Eden. (Oh sorry, it has been... by John Steinbeck.)¹ The White House is channelling primarily the clever, self-serving part of its consciousness; AI, I predict, will serve that mindset far more than it will the wise, the moral crusaders labouring in the shadows.

I’m going to enrol in the AI course; I have to know why their spokes-avatar has one peg leg! If you can’t find me in three weeks, send help.

NAICA

gg.epp41@gmail.com

1East of Eden by John Steinbeck | Goodreads

Truth & Reconciliation 2025

RJC Autumn

Jack Spratt could eat no fat, his wife could eat no lean,

and so between the two of them, they licked the platter clean.

Had the Spratts lived in our world, our time, they might find their mealtimes much less amiable. Jack might well have insisted that the butcher cut away all the fat from the roast while his wife seethed and choked down the bloody, half-cooked roast that he insisted was the way intelligent people know to eat animals.

The logic may seem overly simple, but the kind of peaceful mealtime the Spratts enjoyed is very simply achieved ... if the parties value and practice the moral imperative to “seek your neighbour’s welfare before your own.” Easy to say, not so easily achieved. Every successful couple has had to reconcile their differences and form a third, a new way of life which both find agreeable. I think we all know a couple who both preferred sleeping on the left side of the bed, and one pulled rank and the other gave in. We probably all know a couple who chucked out their queen-sized and bought twin beds, who proverbially found thereby a way to “lick the platter clean.”

Tuesday, September 30^th is Truth and Reconciliation Day in Canada. Examples of how a formal Truth and Reconciliation process brought new measures of justice and peace to South Africa and Rwanda should be common knowledge to every contributing citizen in a democracy like ours. (Just type “Truth and Reconciliation South Africa,” or “Truth and Reconciliation Rwanda” into your search engine.)

So much of our news reinforces the “stand your ground” and “my way is the only way” rhetoric. There has to be a third way, and for Christians—as is my case—not to have embraced the new path to a third way is tragic. We’re not cavemen with clubs anymore; we have, for instance, built into our constitution equal rights for all, a nod to the welfare of every neighbour being considered, but the fight to cancel such rights in practice always threatens.

The first word is truth, it must be there because the finding of a third way that leads to peace and harmony can’t be built on anything but the factual history by which we became what we are now. Good houses are built on the rocks, not on sand.

 The word reconciliation isn’t as clear as it could be. I’m told its origin is middle English from French and on its face, it means to conciliate again. “He became reconciled to living without his left leg” makes sense to us, but what should be happening when we engage in a Truth and Reconciliation process is more like a mutual adaptation to negotiated third way. Canada’s improvement of the conditions of those categorized as indigenous is not a case of them being reconciled to the ways of the national politic. It’s more like the visualizing of a new, third way, and the need to agree on what that would be, and then for both parties to adapt to (a) new condition(s).

I have frequently suggested a third condition, but of course, I have very few readers. Suppose we were to change the consistency and role of the senate to be 50% elected in federal elections and 50% elected by First Nations people, and that this body would have complete charge of Treaty interpretation. Negotiating the details would be reconciliation in action. The determination of both nations to adapt to it would be a small step toward peace.

I believe the Spratts lived to be nonagenarians, although not happy ever after ... but nearly.

NAICA

To comment, click gg.epp41@gmail.com  

 

 

An open letter to young adults of 2025

 

Nasturtiums

You may not know this, but you are living in a lucky age. It's a time when our world has tilted far too much to a winner/loser mentality. So much so that democracies are weakening and authoritarian ideas are strengthening. In a winner/loser world, the essentials of decency and cooperation, indeed the right to life is debased: winners take all; losers ... who cares.

            My education took place in another lucky time. I was born exactly one week after the bombing of Pearl Harbour, December 14, 1941, and lived through the aftermath of two World Wars, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, and shared the terror with the whole world as the Nuclear Bomb proliferated to the point where at any moment, a madman might obliterate life as we knew it. The threat of its use coloured our Weltanschauung, our worldview, and our political understandings far more than we acknowledged.

            So why lucky? The events of war and their precursors provided me ... and now you ... with a laboratory inviting us to think deeply beyond win and lose. What have we done, what were we thinking that made the debacles in Ukraine, Gaza, Israel, Iran possible? The conflicts have roots, and woe to us if our thinking goes no deeper than speculating on who will win, who will lose, and crossing our fingers in the hope that harm won’t fall on us.

            Certainly some of your peers will be content to party and plagiarize their way through their maturing years, as they did in mine. But for those of you whose curiosity and attention has a broader scope than win/lose, self-focused indulgence, I pose five thought experiments. Take them to your brain-lab and reach for evidence-based answers: 

1)     Why is the spread between rich and poor growing?

2)     “Freedom of Speech” is an oft repeated shibboleth. That there are limits is obvious (slander, libel, blabbing state secrets). What would make a workable description of free speech in a democracy like Canada.

3)     What conditions are needed for your neighbour to live a contented life. In other words, does Mazlow's Hierarchy of Needs still apply?

4)     What is money's purpose, and are we using wealth appropriately or has its purpose been bastardized with time, and does it matter?

5)     What dangers being predicted concerning the increasing application of Artificial Intelligence are valid, and why? 

Obviously, few have time to do the problem-method-observation-conclusion lab study on six broad issues, but I challenge you to apply your thinking and research to some of these matters. The stream of misinformation aided by image manipulation, outright lying, undeserved adulation and denigration, and partisan gate-keeping at news outlets is appalling. There's that in our very nature making us vulnerable to bias confirmation, so it takes an effort to contemplate other viewpoints judiciously. It's likely going to be your generation that leads us forward toward sanity ... or allows this “going to hell in a handcart” phenomenon grow 'til the winners can be declared and the losers disposed of. 

            It's a lucky time for you. If you join hands with your fellow thinkers to create a better future where truth reigns, you will find yourselves in that exhilarating atmosphere of discovery and innovation, like Galileo, Copernicus, Fleming, Einstein, Rousseau … If you have faith in yourselves, you will move mountains. 

George G. Epp

gg.epp41@gmail.com

306-212-7741

naica (no ai content or assistance)

 

What About Alberta?

 

Good Morning, Alberta

What about Alberta?

“The election has already been decided before the Alberta votes are even counted.”

I’ve heard this complaint any number of times. Every vote counted in Central Canada was cast by an individual in a secret booth, just like every vote cast in Alberta, B.C., Nova Scotia and P.E.I. But it’s sometimes reported as if it were a conspiracy to exclude the West whenever the results are unfavourable. In logic, this is a non-sequitur, an argument irrelevant to the case.

The trucker’s protest and the government’s response prove that the “government doesn’t uphold the right to lawful protest.”

The protest developed into an occupation as the COVID epidemic continued to be a distinct general threat. The national understanding was that Ottawa as the federal government needed to enforce (if necessary) strategies for public safety. The vaccine requirement for people who entered from another country or who worked in close contact with the public forced many who saw this as a freedom issue to make a choice, which often meant losing their jobs.

Another interpretation was that those who either were vaccinated or had not had the opportunity to be, would be endangered by contact with anti-vax persons. The relative importance of “you have no right to make me get the jab,” or “the spirit of accepting some sacrifice for the sake of my community” made for pretty severe divisions in our towns, families and, indeed, our Canada. The degree to which individuals held their cooperative view, or their personal freedom inclination, nearly gave the appearance of religions or cults.

It would be a mistake, I think, to assume that the fervour behind the two stands is unconnected to the current separatist sentiment in Alberta.   

Equalization has meant that Alberta pays into the fund, and Quebec gets it handed to them. 

There is no Equalization Fund, and Alberta doesn’t pay into it. Equalization may be the wrong word. The basic assumption is that every Canadian should have access to similar services: healthcare, education, etc. But some provinces aren’t as endowed with natural resources as their counterparts, so by a formula, the Government of Canada funds those to bring them closer to the average. Money flowing to the Federal Treasury from provinces go by the same rules in all the provinces through uniform taxation and grant legislation; Alberta pays more because they have more resources, wealthier taxpayers.

In thousands of dollars, here are the per capita GDPs of the provinces: Alberta, 97; Saskatchewan, 91; B.C., 74; NFLD & Lab, 72; Ontario, 72; Quebec, 65; Manitoba, 63; PEI, 57; New Brunswick, 57; Nova Scotia, 56. (Per capita GDP in Canadian provinces. - Search (The territories outrank all the provinces in per capita GDP, a result of their sparse populations.)

Alberta is sovereign over its own affairs. 

The “sovereign” word has been front and centre in the UCP government’s push toward greater independence. Sovereignty means, “where the buck stops,” it’s the final say on a particular entity. Canada has a division of powers outlined in the British North America Act of 1867; the feds are sovereign over borders and defense, while the provinces are sovereign over healthcare and education.

Sounds simple, but it can be muddy. The Federal Government has sovereignty over international relations, and if it deems climate change to be worthy of best efforts in its mitigation for the sake of the welfare of Canadians, does it have sovereignty over pollution drifting out of Alberta, across Saskatchewan and onward? Of course it does. Similarly, the Saskatchewan River flowing through BC, Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba could never fall under the sovereignty of any of them.

Danielle Smith’s government proposed an act which would give the sovereign right to the province to veto any federal act deemed to be against Alberta’s interests. That judgment would be left to an Alberta government committee, of course.

Because the arbitrary decision by Alberta to override federal jurisdictions is constitutionally not possible, and because the province contains large areas of indigenous “nations” with particular sovereignty over land and its use, Alberta appears to be using the Sovereignty Act to pressure Canada into negotiating a special relationship, perhaps something like Quebec’s “Sovereignty-association” relationship.

Is Alberta the Texas of Canada?

Labeling a people or place with pejoratives is always a temptation when conflicts develop. Classifying people who favour politics with a liberal, socially conscious bent as woke, and calling people who prefer right-of-centre political arrangements rednecks may feel good, like landing the final punch in a playground fight.

But both labels are fake. Labeling is a tool of propaganda, a ploy to elevate a position by denigrating its opposite. The sad thing about it is that it works. Albertans’ attitudes toward non-Albertans and non-Albertans’ attitudes toward Albertans isn’t helped by negative characterizations spread publicly.

I’ve lived and worked in Alberta for ten years and found them to be woke on some issues and redneckish on others, just like people in my town in Saskatchewan, and in Thompson, Manitoba when I lived and worked there for fifteen years, and in Europe where I was an MCC administrator for three years. The division and antagonism that we find is not our natural state as a community; the myths are seeded and nurtured for a purpose by those who finding themselves in a position of influence, fall for the temptation of using it to gain ever-increasing wealth, power and/or notoriety.

Like Canada’s need to find a way to retain the peace and harmony of our relationship with Americans, Alberta must be judicious in preserving good relations with their fellow citizens in the community that is Canada. It may be that Carney’s appeasement of Donald Trump will prove to have been judicious, and signs that he will relax regulations on fossil fuel expansion to appease the Albertans’ given their threat to separate, might work out Jim-dandy.

Then again, think Germany, Chamberlain and appeasement, and the prospects of a good end dim.

A Final Thought

Alberta as a sovereign country, landlocked among Saskatchewan, British Columbia, Northwest Territories and Montana would be faced with massive economic, social and political adjustments, not the least of which would be the first nations place in a sovereign Alberta. And their dream of pipelines carrying their oil--a gentleman conjectured to me yesterday--would necessitate an agreement with—or annexation by—the USA. And those are just for starters.

More importantly, Alberta and its people and its incredible vistas are loved by their brother and sister Canadians, who have long accepted that the colourful, rugged, can do spirit that characterizes Southern Alberta, at least, is a unique and valued part of us as a nation.

In short, we want you to stay.

I'm not biased; I just know what's true!

“Confirmation Bias” explains why we choose the books we read, the people with whom we associate, the news sources we attend to. Our beliefs, our assumptions, our “biases” are central to our character, and self-worth is built upon the “confirmation” that what we are is good, is proper, is commendable, is TRUE. Naturally, we attend more to voices that agree with our biases, less to voices that question them. In A Higher Loyalty: Truth, Lies and Leadership, former FBI director James Comey writes:

Our brains have evolved to crave information consistent with what we already believe. We seek out and focus on facts and arguments that support our beliefs. More worrisome, when we are trapped in confirmation bias, we may not consciously perceive facts that challenge us, that are inconsistent with what we have already concluded. In a complicated, changing and integrated world, our confirmation bias makes us very difficult people. We simply can’t change our minds. (Kindle, p.104)

Well, “we simply can’t change our minds” is a bit much; we can and do change our minds on occasion. Many of us assumed the warming climate was a natural phenomenon that would reverse itself in nature’s own time. Presently, many of these many have “changed their minds” and now accept the phenomenon to be tied to human activity. What it will take for all of us to grasp that climate change can’t be fought without economic sacrifice is anybody’s guess; confirmation bias weighs heavily in our avoidance of news about potential climate change consequences.

In its very definition, even, lies the stubbornness of confirmation bias; the tendency is to agree that it exists in human psychological makeup; the illusion that it affects primarily others, though, is a sinister example of confirmation bias all on its own.  

I know of a few ways in which I’ve been forced to step outside of my own biases and face up to truths that made me change my mind. Familiarity gained by living on a reserve and in Europe, extended visits to Panama and Mexico made it necessary to discard biases about cultures I’d held on to up to then. Education, of course, has the power to overwhelm old biases with knowledge and training in reasoning and debating of issues: logically and amicably. And then there’s aging, reaching a plateau in life where being right—and being rewarded for being right—are no longer urgent.

Rapid change can be an incentive to lean on our biases and to seek their confirmation. I’m reminded of that old joke in which Ole and his friend are launching a boat, and Ole ends up with one foot on the dock and the other on a gunwale of a moving boat. “Yump, Ole, Yump!” yells the friend, and Ole replies, “How can I Yump? I got no place to stood!”

For creationists, the literal interpretation of Genesis is the ground on which they stand. For some, the Yump from this safe ground would mean certain drowning. There’s plenty to read that confirms this bias.

To have a place to stand—even if it’s a wrong place—is reassuring. The evil growing around the world that sees more and more people giving rein to a “me and mine first” bias has provided many with “a place to stand.” It’s a reasonable bias given that it feels like a survival tactic. That people seek out examples of individual achievement, of domination over underlings, of the rich, the “stars,” the powerful—and vicariously live the lives of those—doesn’t surprise. And dictators and oligarchs ensure that what they say and do—and what surviving news outlets reinforce—confirm this bias. It’s what we’re looking at in our southern neighbour.

Community life was the salvation of cultures prehistorically. How we shake our individualistic biases and embrace the implications of one, whole-world community is a conundrum we’ll never unravel unless we learn to abandon our biases in favour of better ones.

But as the character said to Granny who was certain she could swim the English Channel, “Good luck with that, Grandma.” 

Just hand me a pen!

 

Borrowed from free, internet images; definitely AI generated

“The hand that signed the paper

 felled a city ...”

This opening line of Welsh poet Dylan Thomas’ lament about war should be a wake-up call today. Written in 1938, the poem preceded World War II, but Thomas would live to see the most horrifying truth in his poem manifest when in 1945, President Harry Truman “signed the paper” that “felled” Hiroshima and Nagasaki, killing somewhere between 200,000 and 300,000 civilians.

The exercise of power by "a few over many" takes on the colour of the human(s) who hold it in their hands. Would Jimmy Carter have signed off on the nuclear option to force the end of the war with Japan? Probably not. Would the current president be capable of signing it? Both had/have it in their power to sign papers that could “fell cities.”

But “felling cities” by “the few holding power over the many” scenario isn’t the only manifestation of the consequences. My church has mobilized behind the desperate need of the hungry of Gaza; many of “the many” have sacrificed in support of this cause, only to see the Prime Minister of Israel “sign a paper” to shut off humanitarian aid.

We say that “the pen is mightier than the sword;” heaven help us when the pen and the sword march together, when brutality and propaganda link arms.

Literally, many a city has been felled in Gaza and Ukraine by the abuse of power by the few.

The preservation of democratically elected governance is a must; the world, meanwhile, seems to have become enamoured with watching the exercise of unstoppable power, most probably under the delusion that that power will rub off on them. Persons with a social conscience—whether Christian, Muslim, Buddhist, Hindu or none of these—who believe that its efficacious to include both neighbours and strangers in efforts to make a better world, must act. Power easily becomes ruthless and abusive if unchecked; it doesn’t cater for public welfare but uses public assets to bolster its hold on privilege and power.

But what can I do? So many are asking. In a functioning and fair democracy, you use your vote, of course, and campaign for the candidate with integrity and a sense of public service. Even elected governance takes the shape and colour of the people chosen. 

Vote for people, not parties.

Dictatorships, Oligarchies, Kingdoms have historically been dismantled by bloody revolutions. Best case is a democracy that recognizes the signs of approaching demagoguery and nips it in the bud, as we say. Failing that, a strike would be better than armed revolution; if many lay down their tools and refuse to work until change happens, bloodless revolution has a chance. 

A boss who isn’t obeyed ceases to be boss.

The rallying of the many is difficult; rallying of the many, many is almost always beholden to extraordinary leadership.

And where will such leadership be found?