The problem of guns, and a solution template. It doesn't have to be like this.

Put in its most generous form, the insistence on civilians being allowed to accumulate an arsenal of deadly weapons, including assault rifles and handguns, has to be connected to the perception that to give up the right to do so would be a stage in the theft of individual, personal freedom. To that mindset, the nostalgia for an imagined Wild West of courageous men with holsters and weapons on each hip and a rifle in the scabbard is enormously appealing.

The preservation of an imagined past, refusal to accept the changes happening in the present, and the human hunger for status and power all play together to provide us with the current dilemma surrounding, for instance, gun laws. It echoes the oft-cited assertion that a focus on individual freedom without the accompanying responsibilities easily devolves into licence. The reluctance to adapt to change in the face of progress (as in a refusal to take into account the advancing destructive capability of weaponry) is immobilizing USA politics, where those with conservative viewpoints and those with progressive impulses are roughly equal in numbers.

It's futile to recite statistics to show that gun saturation in a population massively increases danger to ordinary citizens living ordinary lives. The conservative mindset seems stuck on an image from old John Wayne movies, where the fictional hero is highly individualized, is made safer by the six-shooters on his hip and could only be made finally safe and invulnerable if he had a cart behind with a nuclear weapon on board.

If it could be shown that citizens in countries with strict gun laws feel their freedom is in danger, if Canadians, Norwegians, the British, Australians were crying out that their countries had become destroyers of individual freedoms, would that reinforce in American conservatives the conviction that the sacrifice of innocents was worth their insistence on a perverted interpretation of the Second Amendment?  Not necessary; by its actions, conservative thinking on gun laws says daily that the deaths of innocents—men women and children—is unavoidable collateral damage in a just war.

People of North America: if you want the gun carnage to stop, and if you really mean it, here’s how you may need to go about it:

1.      When you see statistics comparing gun deaths in other developed countries to the USA, believe them; they can’t be faked.

2.       Organize into a “Peace Nation,” grassroots movement where every member signs up with a pledge not to vote for a candidate for public office who won’t commit to fostering a ban on military-style assault weapons except they be under the control of a “well regulated state or national militia.”

3.      Maintain “Peace Nation” as a non-partisan, one issue, one goal movement, and defend it against any attempt to attach it to a party or ideology.

4.      Do not organize beyond what’s barely necessary. Be aware that as humans, we can be corrupted by money or power. Any donations made to support this effort should be turned away if they exceed $5.00.

5.      Support your local school actively. Nothing beats a solid, truthful, broad education except for that kind of school education bolstered by the modelling of a solid, truthful, tolerant community.

6.      Use the internet, social media discretely. Announce local activities by word of mouth and by telephone wherever possible. Internet postings can be hacked and data bases—including individual names—sold to be used for commercial or nefarious purposes. Many will be tempted to exploit “Peace Nation” in any way possible.

7.      The goal is to ensure that elected persons will actually be the instruments of change. Keep that as your focus and don’t be deterred by party loyalties and don’t attack the party loyalties of other members.

8.      When this movement has done all it can do, terminate it entirely; its history will be archived in the memories of those with the courage to finally be “We, the people.” Don’t let it live as a straw man for QAnon, Fox News, Alex Jones and others to attack with baseless conspiracy theories … and they will.

“Where do I sign?”

Sorry, it doesn’t exist yet … and never will … unless a few people with determination and courage establish a centre and focus, give it birth and nurture the movement. Could that be you?

And if you’re Canadian and think that’s nothing to do with us, think again. Do a search for and read the for and against articles under "Canada's Gun Lobby" before picking a hard and fast opinion on gun control.  

 

 

   

An Image from Spiritus Mundi

 

An Eigenheim pasture, 2006

Some time ago, I wrote a speculative opinion piece about what the world might look like after the agonies of climate change mitigation and the COVID-19 Pandemic would be behind us. In it, I suggested that gasoline might well be priced at $5.00 per litre in the foreseeable future, that local business and services would improve as travel and transportation becomes expensive enough to drive us all to look—even  harder than we already are—for local alternatives for our food and necessities, fun and games, leisure and shopping, education and faith practice.

               Most of us don’t want to read or hear that kind of prognostication; particularly as we get older, our psychological energies are bent toward fighting change, not creating it. This is a dilemma for all people living in the 2020ish era of human time; rapid transitions are needed; defiance of changes such transitions require is fought tooth and nail. “I’ve always been able to fly to Barbados for a month-long break in my winter, but now the government has let travel prices go so high, I can hardly afford it!”

Poor you.

That governments feel they must add a carbon tax to fossil fuel prices is witness to our stubbornness as citizens, an obstinacy causing us to resist cooperating with absolutely necessary changes unless we’re forced. Perhaps this obstinacy is endemic to human makeup along with the usual handy excuses like, “So I could reduce my carbon footprint by driving less, but my neighbours won’t make this sacrifice, so what’s the point?”

The Industrial Revolution drove people to abandon their peasant, share-cropping agrarian lives for day labour in mills and factories. The Enclosure movement put an end to common-land sheep grazing, and other related changes shepherded people into massively-changed ways of living in the British Empire. I can still remember when the predominant means to a living was for the man of the house to “go to work” doing physical day-labour. Now professional, technical and a myriad of service jobs predominate, and women’s numbers in the “work force” are nearly equal with men’s.

All this to remind ourselves that we are in the throes of one of those periods of significant change for humanity. At 80 years of age, I’m likely to live only somewhere into the time of current turmoil. But I can faintly see some of the ends these early steps are predicting, ends that will be the shapers of the lives of future generations.

For the sake of the children, the participation of the global community in cooperative effort is absolutely essential. Will that spirit of cooperative, can-do finally prevail?

I doubt it. Too often, the spiritus mundi [i] has called to us … and been treated to a middle-finger response.             

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[i] From W.B. Yeats, The Second Coming. Hard to define, but closest probably to the Christian Holy Spirit. The truth-core of the universe? I understand Spiritus Mundi to be like “the Word” in the opening salvo of John’s Gospel: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” The general theological assessment of John’s Gospel is that it seeks to show that Jesus is God. I think Yeats would probably think of John’s Gospel as showing that Jesus is the incarnation of the Word, i.e., that Jesus came to "read" the word to us who were illiterate. In any case, I read that Yeats saw Spiritus Mundi as the source of inspiration for great art and poetry, two manifestations of spirit-inspiration we mostly “don’t get.”

Status hoarding, Runtification and other things that go bump in the night

 

Tamara Lich is on trial for breaking bail conditions by attending an award ceremony where she was honoured for her part in the Freedom Convoy demonstration/insurrection.

               This is not news, really. What would be news would be that we’ve acknowledged what it is in human nature in 2022 that’s behind the angry unrest which we’re experiencing daily.

               I have the answer and so do you if you’ve raised children or managed a classroom. But I can’t claim to have the solution. The underlying trigger for social unrest lies in the hunger for status, pure and simple.

               “Status: the relative social, professional, or other standing of someone or something.” Note the world relative here. An island where everyone works all day every day just to survive will never have a political insurrection because “relative standing” is no issue. Poor communities can provide a happy atmosphere for residents until one unlucky bastard wins the lottery, builds a house big enough for fifty and buys a Ferrari.

               To be without status is to be like a runt of the litter who’s constantly shouldered away from mommy’s teats by the bigger sucklings; denial of status for piglets can be a death sentence. What would you do if you were that hungry little runt? Sneak up and tear out the jugular of the sibling with the most status? Organize a runt convoy?

               Power to effect change is one of the key characteristics of status. In Canada, we choose people to exercise political power for us. The net effect, too often, is that minorities who disagree with the choice come to sense their powerlessness and seek ways to compensate, pick out areas of vulnerability where change can be effected … by them. Trump rallies, truck convoys are logical responses to being “runtified”[i] by the socio-political structures that fail to address status starvation. Keep favouring the same sibling over the others and "the runt" will find ways to “level the playing field,” and it won’t be pretty.

               But if this is the answer, what’s the solution? Sorry, I don't know one solution. A good teacher identifies status starvation in her/his/their classroom and finds ways to ensure no one is “runtified.” Parents who can’t see what favouritism is doing to a child have no right to the power parenthood has bestowed on them. Governments that write off, even scorn minority opinions are no longer democratic, but are leading their countries on the way to oligarchic thinking and acting.

               When it’s Christians who are practicing hierarchical, status-hoarding models of community, we should all be shaking our heads in disbelief. One of Jesus’ most important and repeated teachings was that in his kingdom, everybody shares status, period. He washed the disciples’ feet, for heaven’s sake!

               For us as individuals and communities, the “think globally, act locally” ideal might be all we have to offer. If parents and teachers model the zero-sum principle of winners and losers to kids, the next generation will repeat what we’re going through. On the other hand, if teachers and parents consciously practice status sharing and avoid the runtifying of individuals, the peace kingdom has at least a chance of coming closer in the future.

               I can’t leave this subject, though, without acknowledging that we have made progress, particularly if we remember how we reduced the indigenous population to “non-status” (pardon the pun) life through reserve and residential school systems. We have spent millions to bring electricity, phone, radio and internet to remote communities, all of which efforts enhanced their status in our national community. Women no longer need to feel like second class citizens since so much has been done to eliminate their runtification. 

               These are but three examples that point out at least some progress in wiping out status hoarding. Creative minds will come up with next steps … I hope some of us survive to see it.  

              

                 

              

              

              

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[i] A made-up-for-this-occasion word meaning being forced to accept your nobody status.

A playlet for people mourning the imagined demise of freedom in Canada

A playlet for people mourning the imagined demise of Freedom in Canada.

Pierre: When I’m your Prime Minister, I’m going to make Canada the freest country in the world. I …

Skepticus: But Canada already ranks in the top 5 in the world in terms of personal freedoms, along with Denmark, Switzerland, New Zealand, Estonia, and Ireland. (I guess that makes 6, sorry.)

Pierre: Yah, but you put on a demonstration in Ottawa and the tanks roll in, people are crushed and …

Skepticus: You’re thinking of China, Pierre.

Pierre: … and we have an election and only one candidate is allowed onto the ball….

Skepticus: China again. Sorry.

Pierre: And the liberals don’t allow any real opposition, and people who try get jailed, or poison….

Skepticus: Russia, Pierre. Russia, not Canada.

Pierre: And the Liberals own that propaganda machine, the CBC….

Skepticus: Ditto, Pierre. You’re thinking of the Russian News Agency, TASS.

Pierre: Well, anyway. We can’t cross the Canada/US border so we’re not free!

Skepticus: Thousands of Canadian and American citizens, trucks, airplanes cross that border every day. You’re reading only the sentence in the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms that says, “Canadian citizens have the right to enter, remain in, and leave Canada,” and not the part that says, “The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms guarantees the rights and freedoms set out in it subject only to such reasonable limits prescribed by law as can be demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society (emphasis mine). You cannot cross the border without the recommended vaccinations for the same reason that you aren’t allowed to drive at whatever speed you want through a school zone; the restriction on border crossing without proof of vaccination (rightly or wrongly) is justified as a measure for saving lives in the time of a pandemic. The ability to set conditions on mobility rights in dangerous times is an essential feature of “free and democratic societies.” Just like “Free Speech” doesn’t extend to hate speech, slander or libel.

Pierre: I don’t get that. A bunch of liberal bullshit, is all.

Skepticus: Why am I not surprised, Pierre? Maybe just talk to some people who have fled countries where they weren’t able to enjoy reasonable rights and freedoms. When they imagined freedom, they imagined Canada, or Ireland, or Denmark, New Zealand, Switzerland, or Estonia, the United Kingdom or the USA. Not Syria, not North Korea, not Russia, not Cuba, not Venezuela, not Communist China, not Iran, not Hungary or Bulgaria … well, you get the point … I hope. Good luck in your campaign, Pierre, but please don’t encourage Canadians thinking that we’re turning into North Korea; compared to countries with oligarchies, single party dictatorships, oppressive theocracies, Canada is personal freedom heaven. There’s nothing here for you to fix in that regard.

 

  

A post having absolutely nothing to do with Mother's Day

 

Stagflation: n. the act of blowing up male deer by filling them with compressed air ‘til they burst. A subset of inflation, which refers to the blowing full of compressed air a deer of any gender.

I took my one and only freshman course in Economics at the University of Saskatchewan from a text called Economics: Canadian Edition, 1967. Our prof was a curly-haired, youngish master’s candidate with a serious lisp so I still hear our text’s author’s name as Thamuelthon Thcott. Had I been his dean, I would have suggested he choose a text by someone whose name had fewer S’s in it. Funny how the mind is so easily distracted, how it Velcros to memories of trivia while discarding essentials one moment after the final exam is written.

Stagflation, I think, hadn’t been coined yet and I wouldn’t have known what it was meant to mean except that I have this bad habit of reading text whenever a block of it passes by. It’s a combination of stagnation and inflation, obviously, and it refers to a period of well-above-average inflation that persists for a long time. Like the 1970s, when the only mortgage I could get was for one year at 17% interest until Pierre Trudeau instituted wage and price controls and my mortgage payments dropped to something closely resembling reasonable.

So here it comes again. Luckily we have another Trudeau on the hill unless he’s accidentally run over by a mile long convoy of trucks before he can save us. It reminds us that there are levels of hell: Level one, pandemic leading to Level two, unemployment and mountains of misdirected rage, leading to labour shortage on top of continuing pandemic and inflation and even worse and escalating and louder swamps of misdirected rage. (To what hell is the devil sent when his judgment day comes. It would have to be worse than the fire and brimstone one he invented. Perhaps Northern Canada … in winter … with nothing to wear but s shorty nightie and shoes with holes in the soles and no laces? Brrrr.)

With my background in Thamuelthon Thcott, my extensive—if unfocused—reading, I can tell you exactly why stagflation may be descending upon us like a cloud of stand-up, sadistic comics with misogynist attitudes shouting "Freedumb, NOW!". Could be that our spending habits dropped during the pandemic (for obvious reasons), we inadvertently saved cash and now we’re hell bent on spending it on pleasures COVID denied us. Too much money chasing too many shiny trucks and motorcycles, trips to rotisseries of heat on sandy places where you can stare at ocean and land at the same time, gadgets and gimmicks that are obsolete in months, trips to places that are disappointingly similar to home (possibly because being there means we have to take ourselves along with all our foibles and feelings.… Maybe it’s all our fault … or the virus, or the president of the USA, or the Russians, or evangelical Christians, preservatives, or, or, or.

I’m pretty sure if we figure out why gophers evolved to live in small, underground colonies, we will also have figured out pretty much why living well as a colony of 7.5 billion of what are facetiously called “humans” can be as frightfully complicated and often devastatingly disappointing as it is.

All of which suggests a massive broadening of the English vocabulary: stagstration, stagcusations, stagrage, stagmask, stagstreaming, stagscreaming ….

Think I’ll go out into nature, blow up a few stags.

You busy?

Wear a mask.

Say Goodbye to the holy-whore

 

Claude Monet: Sunrise Impression

A recent leaked paper in the US capitol suggests that Roe v. Wade will be overturned by the Supreme Court sitting in judgment over some states’ wish for the legalization of a ban on abortion. Given that Canada suffers a cold any time the US sneezes, it looks like any such reversal on abortion rights there will reopen the conversation here. Knowing the past history of the debate before abortion was de-criminalized here (remember Henry Morgentaler?), it’s bound to be nasty … again! (See Why Canada's Roe v. Wade didn't enshrine abortion as a right | CBC News for a commentary on the legal situation regarding abortion in Canada.)

               Arguing the points for and against legal abortion will be futile as it’s always been. A demonstrator for the anti-abortion side gave as her reason the belief that abortion was murder, and she was only trying to save lives. A pro-Roe v. Wade demonstrator carried a sign saying, “You value lives before they’re born, but not after,” or words to that effect. Thoughtful, logical, courteous discussion on which approach governance should take on this issue is not to be expected; these trains ride on rails of outrage.

               What shouldn’t be forgotten is that anti-abortion pressure is driven much less by a passion for the life of the unborn than by an obsession with restoring men’s dominance over women. All through the 90s and into this century, the evangelical right in the US has waged a campaign to draw a clear line between what God wants men to be, and what God wants women to be. Reflected in the gun culture is the militant, powerful, head-of-the-house, head-of-the-nation vision of what constitutes God-ordained manhood. To say that women exist to be on call at all times to service men’s nutritional, sexual, emotional needs is no exaggeration of some of the rhetoric thrown around in circles calling themselves Christian. A good wife is destined by God to be maid, cook, au pair and 24-hour, on call holy-whore to her husband. (Numerous websites featuring testimonials of women leaving the Southern Baptist Convention style of “evangelical church,” can be found,  See one such at Beth Moore Says She Is 'No Longer A Southern Baptist' : NPR)

               And if his seed has started a pregnancy in her, she’d better suck up whatever pain, inconvenience, indeed any personal contingencies it entails, and bear and care for his child. Nothing can change; that’s the way God planned it. Obscure verses can be found in scripture to support every contention of the binary, male-dominant view of human gender and sexuality. That scribes of old put into God’s mouth “I have known you (Jeremiah) before you were born; I knit you together in the womb,” is, to one Texas preacher, irrefutable proof that a human life begins at conception. Ironically, the book of Joshua putting into God’s mouth the order to massacre all the already-born of Ai is not touted as proof that a genocidal massacre of one’s enemies is the right way to go. (Read about it at BATTLE of AI | Joshua 8; Achan's sin; Stealing the plunder; Tithing (godswarplan.com))

               Let’s be brutally honest: the so called “evangelical church” as we see it operating in the USA  doesn’t follow Jesus; it has put a leash around Jesus’ neck so that he shall follow them wherever their self-righteous rages take them.

               Were I to recite all the Biblical passages that do not support the binary gender spectrum, that don’t celebrate male gender superiority and militancy, I’d fill many pages. I might start with Second Chronicles 7:14: “If my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and I will forgive their sin and will heal their land,” and go on to “Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls” (Matt. 11:29).

               It may surprise you to hear me say that I am anti-abortion and pro-choice. Abortions are painful, distasteful medical procedures with multiple overtones of shame and guilt attached. I know no woman who would ever say, “I think I’ll get myself impregnated so I can have a delightful abortion, maybe blog about it!” The challenge for societies that can land a person on the moon and split the atom is to offer a science that gives any woman a way to prevent pregnancy until giving birth is her … oh, wait, we already have that.

               A CBC news story on this subject today cited a study saying that the reversal of the Roe v. Wade ruling would reduce the number of abortions in the US by 12%, +/- 2%. Legislating abortion and advocacy for abortions as crimes will not achieve what proponents are hoping for, anymore than murder laws eliminated killings or highway rules eliminated road accidents.

               Given the current climate of culture wars and political militancy, leaving pregnancy decisions up to the persons directly affected strikes me as the choice with the most integrity. Call it “the best of a bad lot,” if you must, it holds the best promise of children being started, birthed and raised in a nourishing, welcoming atmosphere … and avoids the folly of men who never face the physical, mental or emotional rigours of pregnancy haughtily deciding from their high towers what others shall and shall not do and think.

               I apologize to all those men who have done their thought and reading homework and have arrived at the conclusion that “lord of the manor simply because you have a penis” doesn’t reflect the suffering servant model your fellowship claims to follow. If y’all find yourself in a church that makes of women second class children of God by, for instance, banning them from the pulpit from which leadership is practiced, understandings dispensed, I strongly advise you to leave, find a church whose men have discarded illusions of their god-ordained superiority.

               I also apologize to you women who have done your thought and reading homework and concluded rightly that forced abandoning of self-esteem and personal integrity is not God’s will for you. Perhaps you’re one of those confident women who have been cajoled into the role of sycophants to the rantings of male militancy and have begun to take the road back to personal integrity. If you’re torn between uncomfortable acquiescence to men you love and the right to exercise freely the talents and understandings creation gave you, I empathize totally with your dilemma. Think of your sons and daughters; refuse to be silent when you’re pressured to make of them stereotypes of what others think they ought to be.

               That is, after all, the only thing that so many of us find ourselves able to do.