"Look Out! Speed Bump!!"

 

The Autobahn between Frankfurt and Cologne in Germany has no speed limits posted. If you like to drive at a sedate 110 KPH, you need to stay in the right-hand lane, or better yet, in the ditch; at that speed, you’re a highway hazard. In Mexico, speed limit signs exist, as do stop signs (ALTO, meaning Stop or Tall, take your pick, language learners). But the speed limit is whatever your vehicle and your nerves can manage, except governed by whatever is ahead, like side-by-side trucks, or a series of suspension-jarring speed bumps.

In Canada, a highway  passing through a town has reduced speed limits posted, and a flashing display will tell you your speed, will sometimes even flash you a happy face if you’re under the limit. In Mexico and in Panama (incidentally the only two Latin American countries I’ve visited) speed bumps are assigned the job of slowing down traffic. The sign warning of an upcoming speed bump, though, is too long to be read at 140 KPH (“obstaculo de volocidad por delante”) so the first indication for the novice driver in Mexico might well be a passenger or driver launched through the sunroof. An abrupt education in paying closer attention!

For me, The interesting question in all this lies in deciding how best to gain public cooperation for anything, anything as seemingly benign as not littering or as consequential as driving slowly through a village where a child might be running out into traffic at any time. Every strategy has, of course been tried historically, from persuasion, to punishment, to rewards, to sheer force.

I’m sure that if the penalty for making a U-turn at a controlled corner were legislated to be a minimum of two years in prison, and for exceeding a speed limit, a thousand dollar fine for each KPH over what’s posted, I would sell my car and stay at home … problem solved; cooperation secured. Many, however, might see this as a challenge to offend without getting caught, or just as a colossal infringement on their personal freedom, an impertinence in need of defiance.

I’m betting technology will see us all becoming law abiding citizens, at least on the roads and highways. Each car will be embedded with a chip that transmits the driving speed and sundry possible driving choices to a central computer, which also automatically adds pluses for good driving and minuses for bad driving and sends you a bill or a cheque at the end of each month based on a legislated formula. Just making up the formula could be a hoot

Road-use Statement for Rhoda Dendron for March, 2027

Driving 100 Km without once exceeding the posted speed limit …………………+10

Changing lanes without proper signalling ………………………………………….-10

Swearing at another driver………………………………………………………….-10

Using a cellphone while driving……………………………………………………..-20

Zipper-merging properly…………………………………………………………….+10

Total………………………………………………………………………………….-20

Credit/Debit………………………………………………………………………….-$40

Payable online at www.bigbrotheriswatching.com

 Take that, Mister “No one tells ME what to do!” 

Probably wouldn’t work, though; tech-savvy people would very soon figure out how to hack into their own cars.

But that’s pretty pessimistic, I admit. We don’t have to breathe tobacco smoke when in a restaurant anymore, and peeing in the public street is rare. Something works, even though it’s not been that long since, for instance, people assumed a right to light up a smoke wherever they wished.

I don’t think shaming would be acceptable as the key to cooperation either. That choice could mean bringing back some variation of that ancient humiliation device; Big Mac Donalson gets caught speeding through town and by way of a corrective measure, he’s tied to a post (or stocks) in the centre of town for an afternoon wearing only his jockeys. 

Speed bumps work. It doesn’t matter if you’re a private citizen commuting to work, or the Minister of Highways being transported by security to a high-level meeting, or a passenger in a fifty-seat luxury bus, or a bank robber in a getaway car; in Mexico everybody slows down for towns, intersections, construction like good little missionary kids. You might say that speed bumps have you administering your own punishment for your own offense … ingenious!

How to apply the principle elsewhere? Now that would take some thinking/planning beyond my inchworm imagination.

Comments to gg.epp41@gmail.com welcomed. 

Is Trudeau really to blame?

The photo was startling, at least to me: Jordan Peterson, Danielle Smith, Tucker Carlson and Conrad Black posing in connection with an event in Edmonton, I think. It accompanied an article written by Black titled something like: What happened to Jordan Peterson has serious Implications for all Canadians.

What happened to Peterson is that the governing body of professional psychologists in Ontario ruled that some of Peterson’s public pronouncements went beyond the bounds governing professional conduct and obligated him to take a media course if he wished to retain his license to practice.

Since then his case, propagated as a conspiracy to stifle free speech in Canada and championed by Conrad Black and Rex Murphy and others, has become another signpost on the supposed “road to perdition in Canada.”

The article was published by the Epoch Times, a periodical that purports to tell the unvarnished truth while predominantly printing news that can be tailored to its central theme, which is the promotion of a reactionary response to liberal values and legislation. Of late, it seems clearly to have decided to jump on the bandwagon with those demonizing the Prime Minister, a strategy that’s working but is unworthy of thinking persons in a democracy, in my opinion.

Firstly, the Peterson incident is not a case of stifling free speech. Black, Murphy and Peterson himself have aired that shibboleth repeatedly in public without repercussions. Their opinions, their speech are not hemmed in by Trudeau, or the Liberal Party, or the courts; that declaration is a flag waved to attract the disaffected, individuals who feel oppressed by circumstances, convincing them that “Trudeau’s to blame.”

Based on a comparative assessment of individual economic and personal freedom, Canada ranks high, alongside other liberal democracies. (The World's 10 Most Free Countries - WorldAtlas) It’s been liberal democracy that’s established and maintained a country where the balance of individual freedom and community cooperation has been able to thrive. We need only go back as far as the eras of Lester Pearson, Tommy Douglas, Pierre Elliot Trudeau to see how liberalism in Canada ensured access to medical care for every individual, took its place on the world stage by initiating peacekeeping forces, got the police and courts out of our bedrooms, gave status to millions by legislating official multiculturalism.

And when we look back on the COVID and climate change dilemmas down the road, assess how we under Liberal governance and later, Liberal/NDP cooperation, weathered the pandemic storm, we’ll conclude that we did the best that could be expected given the knowledge and resources available. At least, comparisons to the experiences of other countries all point that way. A Pew survey reported by the World Economic Forum[i] indicated that in Canada, 88% of citizens believed their country had done well in its response to the pandemic; in the USA, the approval of the country’s response to the pandemic was at 47%. The indecisiveness of the Trump administration at the critical time has been cited as a reason for US citizen dissatisfaction.

All this is important. Two Sundays ago, in an expat church in Mexico, a pastor lamented “what’s going on in Canada.” The anti-Trudeau rhetoric was blatant and overt in US news during the convoy protest/occupation in Ottawa. Conspiracy theories, crime news, intimations of threat spread easily and far; to see our fellow Canadians bargaining away our international reputation for political points at home is discouraging, especially when using false scenarios to do so. 

We are a great country, as great as countries anywhere have so far managed to become. Per capita crime rates are lower than ever, our healthcare system is faltering but will clearly recover, literacy and education standards are higher that ever, individual freedom of choice is remarkably unhindered, our politics are made responsive to public need by free and fair elections and although we’re not nearly there yet on environmental protection protocols, we’re working hard at it.

The word on political systems popularized by Winston Churchill continues to be insightful: Democracy is the worst form of government … except for all the others that have been tried from time to time. Let’s all weigh what we hear against the reality of our own experience. Trudeau is not to blame, dictatorship neither characterizes our government nor are we moving in that direction, personal freedoms are not being stifled, there are no such things as a leftist or “woke” conspiracies, the Chinese didn’t create COVID, the phasing out of fossil fuel energy sources is good for us in more ways than one. And as every adult knows, there never were monsters under the bed. Moldy cheese sandwiches and lost socks, maybe, but no monsters.

Conrad Black, Jordan Peterson, Danielle Smith, Tucker Carlson, please think further down the road when you speak; your words have an audience, you attract followers, choose the paths you advocate carefully.

 

 

 

---

[i] These countries handled the COVID-19 pandemic well, says recent Pew survey | World Economic Forum (weforum.org) The WEF is itself the target of conspiracy theories that see it as manipulating world economic conditions for the benefit of its members, a theory which the Conservative Party of Canada is supporting as an election strategy.

Now's not the time ...

 

The Conservative Party of Canada (CPC) grew out of the Progressive Conservative Party. Without making too much of this, the fact remains interesting. What we call left wing or liberal (and perhaps, socialist) politics are also called progressive political ideologies. Voters should have learned in school what’s meant by left or liberal politics as well as the difference between it and conservative ideology.

Conservative impulses exist in all of us; we find comfort in conserving what is; change is unsettling. A good example is the CPUs campaign to “Axe the Tax,” a progressive carbon emission tax imposed to reduce the dependency on fossil fuels and their contribution to climate change. Progressive ideology recognizes that a changing climate demands new ways of doing things; conservative ideology looks to what worked yesterday and campaigns for the status quo. Progressive policies look forward; conservative thinking focuses on the present as informed by the past.

Tree-hugging environmentalists may be progressives—even socialists—on Employment Insurance, but adamantly conservative on preserving forests as they are. Being “right-wing” is not like being right-handed; we’re all politically ambidextrous depending on the issue. It’s the divisive party systems that label us either “candy-assed liberals” or “red-necked hillbillies,” making every election an us-and-them, win-and-lose proposition.

There’s a time and a place for conservative thinking, and it’s tempting to join the current rush to defying change while the “let’s all hate Trudeau” theme is threatening to displace our national anthem. It’s easy to get swept up in the notion that the time and place is now. It most certainly is not; this is the worst possible time.

The implications in a time of rapidly escalating global warming are clear: to reject progressive measures and deny the need for decisive change is to borrow life from future generations. It’s the refusal to make a small sacrifice now, even if it results in a lifetime of huge sacrifice for our grandchildren.

In times of frustration—inflation, forest fires, dependence on foodbanks, intolerance, medical care crises, “wars and rumours of wars,” etc.—the temptation to kick over the furniture in rage is strong, the blaming of leaders and the dividing into for-and-against camps is predictable. But like wars, depressions, pandemics, famines, hurricanes and such, climate change and economic cycles cannot be gone around, they must be soldiered through. Neither are they the fault of the government in office: the cycles of human social and economic fortune have always been. And because each trial is unique, it’s progressive thinking—innovation—not adamant conservatism and finger-crossing that will help us through.

Feel Free to reply to gg.epp41@gmail.com

They Ride on Moonlight

THEY RIDE ON MOONLIGHT (Copyright)

        George G. Epp 

They ride on moonlight through the night,

sad tidings at the speed of light

delivering news of wars and strife

most murderous waste of limb and life. 

    With images of blood and fire

from cities, playgrounds, churchly spires

comes news of wailing, moaning, dying

the screams of anger, life denying,

     while here in quiet Canadian town

i offer up a furrowed frown,

a wish that somehow, somewhere men

would learn compassion once again, 

    would feel the wounds their victims feel

the misery that smoke conceals,

the choking, pleading question, “why,

to serve what end must children die?” 

    Is it because we’re humankind

that selfishness has left us blind

to pain and sorrow f’ those who lie,

in fields and ditches? wounded die? 

    But let us now make this our prayer

to do more than just say “we care,”

to pick up pen, placard or phone

and tell the world “we all are one?” 

    to say a pleading prayer again

for those who suffer grievous pain

seems more a gesture, less a gift,

won’t ease their burden, bridge the rift. 

    ‘Twas hoarding, greed and selfishness

that sowed the seeds for such excess;

as humankind prepared the way,

so human hands must seize the day 

    and pave a way for lasting peace

for justice, fairness, equity

for dignity for everyone,

with news: new dawn has surely come. 

    Then sparks like sunlight through the day

glad news will bring, and hope hold sway:

“rejoice, my people everywhere,

the bow of love has banished fear.”

  

The Vulnerable Colony

 

It wouldn’t be surprising if students of the Bible and the general history of the Middle East would see parallels between the Israel/Gaza conflict today and the Biblical conquest of the territory between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea. Under Moses, and then Joshua, the Hebrew ethno/religious nation dispossessed, routed, killed indigenous tribes and clothed the genocide in the robes of manifest destiny foretold in Jehovah’s promise to Abraham to give them a dedicated homeland. [i]

As a Mennonite with a Prussian/Russian sojourn in my heritage, I recognize both the advantages and the hazards implicit in the choice of living and dying in ethnic and/or religious, homogenous colonies.[ii] Historically, Mennonite colonies tended to thrive economically because a common belief, common meeting places, parochial schools and institutions enjoy general support, and co-operation facilitates progress. But that very success made Mennonite colonies targets for the disadvantaged population surrounding them when hardship and hunger drove the mass to desperation.

The conquered Palestine gave birth to a successful “nation state” after the Hebrew conquest. Its defence, however, would prove to be a continuous concern because it too had—as an ethnic colony—enjoyed the advantages of co-operation and internal solidarity—relatively speaking. Having to repulse constant military threat can consume resources and in due time, the Babylonian Empire did to Israel and Judah what the Hebrew nation had done to the indigenous tribes of Palestine: the “promised land” was seized, resources were routed, its temple destroyed, and leadership marched into captivity.

And therein lies my main point: one price to pay for establishing and living in a homogenous colony lies in the fact that by its nature, it makes of itself a visible target. The antagonism and frustration that’s bound to accrue when hardship besets a general population will find you easily. The markers you displayed to demonstrate your solidarity with your community will become symbols drawing negative attention, even hatred: long skirts, yarmulkas and hijabs, overalls and Stetsons, horse and buggy as requirements of religious piety, a refusal to participate in the military, etc. I might think about antisemitism writ large as a model for such an eventuality.

After the Russian Revolution, Mennonite colonies saw their populations scattered to the winds, their resources confiscated, their institutions co-opted or destroyed. Those of my ancestors coming to Canada hadn’t the option of resettling in ghettos, as had their predecessors in Prussia/Russia. Land was divided into 160 acre plots in Canada, homesteaders were required to live on them, work them in order to benefit from the homestead settlement program. Solidarity in the Mennonite faith would henceforth have to be preserved in the establishment of central institutions of worship and learning while adherents might well find themselves surrounded by Catholic, Ukrainian, British, indigenous, etcetera neighbours. This, along with compulsory public education, literally forced Mennonites to live cooperatively with non-ethnics while maintaining as best they could the faith imperatives by forming a “virtual colony.” We became “less Mennonite” and “more Canadian” by outlook. [iii]

History tends to indicate that if Israel of today continues to function as a religious/ethnic colony, it might well be preparing its own destruction. This is not an antisemitic comment, but Realpolitik pertaining to the prospects of maintaining a bordered colony with citizenship tied to religious/ethnic background in the world as we find it today.

Mennonites don’t have a homeland. Neither do Gypsies, Kurds, Uyghurs, Hutterites: this list could be very long. Some Christians sing, “This world is not my home, I’m just a’passin’ through …,” even as they participate fully in the economy of “this world.” For people of faith, whatever they’re born into, the question of “in” but “not of” this world is relevant, but often ambiguous. And as communication and transportation become faster, freer and less regulated, we had all better be thinking clearly about our places in worldwide humanity. [iv]

For many, the threshold between personal freedom and the responsibility to live cooperatively is fuzzy, and they begin to see the two as either/or, so that requirements of their faith trump national and/or international convention and vice versa. For Mennonites in Latin America who have achieved a right (for now) to settle in self-determining colonies, the consciousness of being “in the world,” but not “of the world” may be satisfied for now, but they, too, are finding that living in colonies doesn’t guarantee immunity from outside influence, nor from creeping apostasy, even rebellion, from within. As necessity makes colony borders ever more porous, there’s finally no way to prevent Jacob Dueck from falling hopelessly in love with Tasha Samborski, or her brother Ivan, perhaps.

It's tempting—but probably appropriate—to invoke the natural law called entropy here, namely that every system decays, falls back toward randomness. Building a house is the gathering of materials from the random environment and forming therefrom a “system,” which in the passage of time will be rendered unusable due to entropy. A nation, municipality, church denomination, even a family or clan are all constructed systems in a process of decay, the elements of their construction returned “in dust and ashes” to whence they came. The vibrant, exciting “downtown” invariably becomes the slummy, decaying urban core.

Seeing nations, municipalities, church denominations, colonies as existing somewhere in the continuum of entropy can help us visualize our future, and prepare for it.

One can list the conditions under which life on the planet is enhanced or rendered bearable: social acceptance; enough good food; comfortable temperatures; safety from aggressors, disease, storms, floods and fires; a positive, self-respecting identity; variety, etc. Most certainly, a bordered colony provides promise of better chances than the alternative … until it doesn’t. Mennonites now living scattered among the general population in Canada mostly live lives hardly distinguishable from the general population—the “world.” Except that they find themselves—arguably— far better positioned to provide charitable, peacemaking influences than they would have had, had they settled and lived in bordered colonies like their Hutterian Brethren.[v]

That Israel was conceived of and functions as a religio-ethnic nation/colony is not in question. There are parallels to be drawn historically, even with the Mennonite experience, but there is another “truth” that can’t be ignored: nothing like the genocide of all ethnic Jews by the NAZIs had ever been attempted before, at least not in its coldly calculated magnitude. The juxtaposition of these simultaneous truths poses a quandary for many: for North American Christians, for instance, it’s as simple as praying for—or campaigning for—either Palestinians or Israelis knowing that “success” for one may mean “failure” for the other.

In Christianity Today, October 7, 2023, editor Russel Moore writes an article under the byline, “American Christians should stand with Israel under attack.” He bases his argument on a government’s right and duty to protect its citizens (the just war), not on the “Promised Land” sensibility central to parts of the Old Testament. He fails to—or chooses not to—qualify any of his comments with reference to Israel’s illegal occupation of lands by deposing residents. One wonders if his mind has changed after three months of deadly warfare.

Sometimes, models sharpen issues and whet our imaginations. One of my favourite models has been the visualization of the earth as a ship, the people as either crew or passengers, the destination the shores of the Peaceable Kingdom. As a crew member, I cooperate with the captain, the engineering, kitchen and hospitality personnel, while at the same time functioning collaboratively with the passengers in order to maintain goodwill, peace, and the well being of all. It’s not in my or anybody else’s interest to separate passengers into blocks of cabins based on their skin colour, ethnicity, religion or ideology; landing safely is everybody’s overriding interest.

All crew members and all passengers realize by the peculiarity of their situation that they are, after all, all passengers. If the ship sinks or becomes unliveable through neglect or quarreling, all will experience the same fate.

Some, of course, will always be found to be saboteurs, willing to jeopardize the ship and contents in their grasping for more than their share of the food, the comforts, the influence. There will invariably also be mutineers who seek to displace the captain and crew because all on board are of the living species known as humans, the most complicated and unpredictable of creatures. Still others will be disciples of denial: the predicted consequences of selfishness will probably never happen, so follow  the advice alluded to by the Old Testament prophet to “eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow you will die anyway.” (See, for instance, Isaiah 22:13)

Because I was born into a Christian family in a Christian community, I quite naturally see myself as having been called by Christ to join the ship’s crew, although not without the perils and frustrations of being an on again, off again, sometimes generous, sometimes selfish servant of a captain who himself has the insight to know that washing the feet of fellow humans is the epitome of leadership. I’d rather just be a vacationing passenger, sunning in a deck chair with a mug of cold beer.

Others are welcome to reach back in their story to explain their place on the ship.

Or—if you prefer—imagine Canada to be the ship, or North America, or the Middle East, or continental Europe, or your dwindling-membership church.  

(Sorry, I appear to have worked this metaphor to death.)

Unless and until the understanding that humanity is not a myriad of competing “us-es” sinks in and ethnicity, race and colony-dependency are subjugated to the “common weal,” all ships live in peril, the very next storm might well be more than can be survived. We are evolving in that direction and the hiccups we call wars illustrate the enormous resistance to the changes this evolution infers.

But:

 Given the variety of languages, religions and life options on earth today, and the apparent propensity of the human species to clump together with those who understand and can be understood, it’s hard to see how any world could exist without tight communities—like colonies—forming. I’ve lived for the better part of two years on a Canadian first nation, for three years in the heart of Germany. These experiences taught me both how resistant I can be to adopting new cultural ways and languages, and revealed to me the sheer volume of emotional energy that assimilation, even adaptation, can exact. Imagine shuffling the world’s population like one does a deck of cards and then scattering the lot onto one land mass, say, Australia. I suspect the first order of business for you and me would be to search for someone, anyone of the same language and culture as us.

The simultaneous realities of wars, famines, economic fluctuations and now, global warming effects and the migrations they necessitate, open the door to a broader discussion about literal and virtual colony formation and disintegration. That discussion, although relevant, is too large for my purpose here, namely to show how the Jewish nation/colony we call Israel shares vulnerabilities with similar structures historically.

And for another day, the topic of virtual colonies, the kind of clumping together in militant community around an opinion, a prejudice, a hatred or an ideology. Religious denominations, Naziism, Maga, conspiracy theories strike me as colony formation ... sort of.  Somehow, I intuit that the material colony informs the virtual, but like I said … that’s for another day.

 

---

[i] That is, if we read these Old Testament accounts as if they were factual histories without the colouring of a mythology that supports the chosen self-image of a people.

[ii] The word, colony, is used in the sense of the Cambridge Dictionary definition: “a group of people with a shared interest or job who live together in a way that is separate from other people.” (COLONY | English meaning - Cambridge Dictionary)

[iii] This description refers quite specifically to the “Rosenort Mennonites,” primarily immigrating and settling in the Saskatchewan Valley area in the 1890s. In the immigration in the 1870s to Southern Manitoba, not colonies but villages similar to those in Russia were developed, as they were in the Hague/Osler area of the Saskatchewan Valley. They also declined and largely disappeared as Mennonite communal settlements, a consequence of the grid survey system and gradual but persistent acculturation.

[iv] Similarities can be drawn between ethnic homelands and colonies as they’re used here. A valid argument in equating them might be that both imply homogeneity, a shared ethnicity, religion, culture if you will. My Mennonite experience informs me that shared ethnicity, religion and culture does not automatically imply common land/location ownership. Islamic worship, language, cultural markers are practiced openly in Saskatoon, for example; the only problem I’m aware of has been with occasional racist outbursts and Mosque attendees parking in residential areas. (See: https://islamiccenter.sk.ca/)

[v] My friend, Ted, brought up the case of Hutterites living successfully in colonies in North America as possibly being antithetical to the thesis posed here. I think we agreed that their success as colonies persists because they remain a relatively benign presence and show efforts to be good, unthreatening, cooperating neigbours. 

Feel Free to Respond in an email by clicking on gg.epp41@gmail.com