What's your tribe?

Various authors have characterized the current political divisions in the West as an emerging tribalism. I'm sure we all have some image in our minds when tribes are spoken of, possibly of men with black and white paint on their faces holding spears and facing men with green and orange paint on their faces holding spears. They're likely dark-skinned. A common dictionary definition of tribe is: “any aggregate of people united by ties of descent from a common ancestor, community of customs and traditions, adherence to the same leaders, etc.”

          I have a feeling that what today's commentators mean when talking about tribalism is something else. Amy Chua wrote in Atlantic, "At its most basic, tribalism describes the human instinct to want to belong to a group of people who are like you."

         Tribalism probably does little harm when we're talking about clubs, church congregations or sororities and fraternities. The development of political tribalism, though, can create frightening results, particularly when components of racial or ethnic prejudices attach themselves to a political tribe.

          What’s true doesn’t depend on facts in a doctrinaire political tribe. Settling a matter can come to depend most on who raises the issue and the numbers in the tribe, facts can be submerged under painted-face, spear rattling.

           That’s a kind of harsh view of the concern being expressed in these days of reactionary politics in the USA, Canada, Europe and elsewhere.

           There was a time when tribal organization was necessary and dominated the social/political makeup of entire continents. Everyone had a group to which to belong, and although the borders occupied by that group might be fluid and indefinite, the belonging part was not in question. It’s not easy for us to visualize—now that we are a number of generations into the “nation state,” and “national citizenship” way of organizing socially/politically—how a people-hood without a defined geographic territory could even exist. (It's helpful to think this through using the current Israel/Palestine standoff as a test case.)

           What defined traditional tribal memberships generally were language, kinship, folkways and customs. And as tribes grew and evolved, physical characteristics also evolved and came to exhibit points of differentiation: who appeared to be alien and who appeared to be kin. People began to look Cree or Ojibwa, Jewish or Roman, Chinese or Japanese, Aryan or Mediterranean. In practice, tribalism defined right and wrong, bad and good: my tribe is good, others are suspect or bad. My kin are friends, other tribes are potential enemies. Conventional tribal wisdom was the glue that kept a tribe united enough to survive in a harsh world.

           The demise of kinship tribalism and the re-patterning of populations into nation state organizations has been going on for only a few centuries really. Canada as a nation state went through a few centuries of redefinition until it declared itself a nation state in 1867, after which parcels were added until it became one political entity as we see it on maps today. Territory is fundamental to the nation state and indigenous tribes that were not bound by territory but by kinship, language and customs were confined to reserve areas by treaty or by suasion—in North and Central America and Australia/New Zealand particularly. Although not spoken of in those terms, people living under kinship tribal consciousness had to be separated out; old patterns couldn’t co-exist with land ownership and title as the nation state practices it.

“Corn is the most sacred food in Maskoke society, a gift for which profound sacrificial thanks is given during the annual ceremonies called Posketv (Green Corn Dance) that renew our relationships to the natural world. Since this sacred food was left to the People by a woman, the descendant Maskoke caretakers of this crop are women. [...] Regrettably, settler colonialism deeply severed this sacred connection, as government appointed Indian agents removed women from the fields and put them in homes to fulfill domesticated roles modeled by European women. […] Today, 39% of our women experience domestic violence.” (Marcus Briggs-Cloud in “Return to the Good” in Heinrichs, Steve, ed. Unsettling the Word: Biblical Experiments in Decolonization. Winnipeg: Mennonite Church Canada, 2018)

It seems always to be on the margins of things that chaos and conflict find a home. The old adage, “Good fences make good neighbours,” expresses the thought that we can only get along if our borders are clearly defined, respected. We still find ourselves living in the chaotic margin between tribal consciousness and nation state politics, though, a fact that becomes clearer as we look at the present in light of the past.

          Do you feel yourself to be part of a group bound by kinship, custom, folkways and/or religion? A tribe, in other words? I do and I don’t. I’m a “Mennonite,” and when I think of where in the tribal/nation state border world I live, that reality continues, although diminished by time. A test of the strength of such a bond might be in a declaration of loyalty that exceeds other loyalties: is it my Mennonite tribal consciousness or my Canadian citizenship to which I go when ethical judgments are needed, when a choice is required? Clearly, I live in an age where tribal sensitivity isn’t exclusive; my “tribe” is coming undone over questions that appear to pit nation-state values against tribal values. Words from T.S. Eliot’s The Second Coming are haunting in such a time: “things fall apart, the centre cannot hold. Mere chaos is loosed upon the world.” Written about World War I, the words point to the Nation-state/tribal border quarrels that have been at the centre of all wars in recent history. It’s this chaotic margin in small or gigantic manifestations that pits persons against persons, nation-states against tribal consciousness.

          Seems to me that the more the world becomes a melting pot of intermingling people carrying vestiges of tribal consciousness, the greater the longing for a lost tribal community becomes. Nation-states are such mechanical, impersonal entities, unable even in their finest moments to satisfy the craving for kinship, cultural community. We see it in the formation of gangs of all kinds, in the multi-culturalism drive in Canada whereby kinship tribes are encouraged to nourish their customs and folkways as they evolve into citizens, in the rise of new, religious tribes while traditional tribes slide toward disintegration. The “church on every corner” syndrome. Probably the greatest anxiety of our age is that in the renewal and rise of tribalisms, the structures of nation-state governance will be torn down in the melee of competing, irreconcilable factions and we will succumb to chaos.

          Political parties in Canada today act like loosely-bound tribes, bound not around kinship so much as around ideologies and policies, like-mindedness and loyalties, and that's the really scary part of what's going on today. If at some future time we should follow the US into an ever-increasing political tribalism, we will need to face squarely the question of our nationhood as a guarantor of the best possible life for all who reside in this sea to sea to sea piece of the earth. There’s enough of tribalism evident in our current reality to make clear that we are unable to negotiate best ways forward, that hardened, partisan views prevent the development of a cooperative polity. The party-system of democratic governance encourages the conflict between tribalism and the peaceful, commonwealth nation-state that democracy promised to provide.

The election of Trump as US President and Doug Ford as Premier of Ontario had one glaring characteristic in common; both concluded that political-tribalism was strong enough to give them a win without presenting comprehensive platforms. And so their campaigns focused on denigrating the opposition, repeating grievances (real or invented) and not much else. They were right—the pundits are right—political tribalism in North America is now a fact and elections fought on thoughtful ideas may henceforth characterize losers.

Our national government has determined that taxing carbon is the way we will go as a measure toward combating climate change. Some provincial governments are balking at this and going as far as to tell us that taxing carbon does no good. Our national government has decided that a pipeline needs to be built in the national economic interest; a contingent of the population believes it to be a bad idea and will seek to obstruct it in every possible way. The indication is strong that support for opposing viewpoints is largely based on political-tribal bonding as opposed to flexible cooperation in finding solutions to emerging issues. Liberal bad, Conservative good, NDP irrelevant kind of mentality. Or vice-vice versa. Jobs good, environment a hoax. Chaos at the borders of human, social evolution. Wasted ability. Wasted energy. My tribe is always right. Your tribe is wrong. From there it’s not a giant leap to, “if you belong to that tribe, I know exactly what you are.”

         Why we must of necessity belong to any tribe in this age is a very good question. I suspect the answer is not political, but biological. We can find persons who seem to be indifferent to inter-tribal jousting, who smile to watch the quarreling. We see thoughtful people who are able to understand what it is that’s actually going on and are therefore able to be objective. Do these exceptions simply prove the rule?

          When we come to think of chaos at the margins, we’re talking about transition stages in evolution: economic, social, political, biological. I’ve been making the point that margins between the status quo before a transition and after, are prone to undergo the chaos of readjustment. The second point I’d make in this regard is that the speed and scope of a transition is relevant to the degree of chaos. Seen in this light, it’s amazing that the human race has survived the recent past.

           It took until 1804 for world population to reach 1 billion, a time lapse of arguably 10 billion years. Two billion was achieved by 1927, a mere 123 years later and the third billion by 1960, or in 33 years.ⁱ Since 1960, the population has risen to ca. 7.5 billion.ⁱⁱ The speed at which the jostling for space and resources emerged surely made change in almost everything mandatory, from family structures to urban structures to agricultural practice to right to territory. That we should have made mistakes and bad guesses (consider the folly of Stalinist “collectivism,” for instance, or the entire practice of colonization) while attempting to regularize social/political arrangements seems totally inevitable; Chaos at the margins exacerbated by the speed and depth of the transition.

          A more immediate case in point involves the unbelievable speed and depth at which communication technology has erupted. I can pick up my smart phone and engage in a face-to-face conversation with my daughter in Panama at any time; fifty years ago, airmail letters would have been the available “technology” and face-to-face out of the question. Our regularization of world communicationsystems has fallen prey to chaos at the margins. An acknowledgment of our current hacking woes, social media “news,” sexting and Twitter malfeasance must surely lead us to this conclusion, as if the theft of our privacy by providers weren't bad enough.

          As I write this, men, particularly, are being exposed daily for harassment and/or sexual assault. Our biology evolved over much time into the sexual morass of today. Copulation urges once served to ensure species survival; that need no longer exists with the same survival immediacy, but the urges linger on as if they did. To determine that for our time, copulation is for pleasure and not necessarily for procreation is not adjustment enough. The chaos on this margin should be proof enough of that. The struggle toward some order, some understanding of what the future requires of us in the area of sexuality is exemplified in the women’s equality struggle, in the “Me Too” movement and in feminism generally. And still, we have tribes forming whose goal is to stymy progress on this front.

          The reality of tribes together making up the population of a nation gives rise to unique tensions. Consider the Canadian picture: An Indigenous tribe (made up of many similar, but different, sub-tribes), a European tribe (also made up of similar, but different, sub-tribes), late-comer African, Middle-Eastern, Philippine, Latin American, etc. vestiges of tribes. Unable to govern our joint nationhood in compliance with the values of any one tribe, a way must be found to legislate and organize under the certainty that vestigial tribal values of many stripes must be brought along with what is almost always a compromise position. No mean feat. The compromises are never good enough for everyone: the anti-abortion tribe remains vocal and persistent even though the issue has been largely—and permanently?—settled at the nation level.

          Canada has chosen a national polity to ease the transition at the border. Our multiculturalism policies are attempts at expanding the time newcomers have to adjust, to ease the stresses at the most critical margins. Compared to Germany where anti-immigrant, anti-refugee demonstrations are numerous and violent at times, we could conclude that Canada has hit a harmonious chord. But young as we are as a country, we have a substantial population for whom a nationalistic tribalism trumps policies of diversity, who judge “Canadianess” by the values and mores with which they've lived for generations, the most significant component being a consciousness of Canada as a “European” country, not African, American, Asian, or Middle-Eastern, and that immigrating people of colour threaten the essence of their current, tribalized worldview.

          So what's the solution? How can we counter these waves of chauvinistic, misguided fervour and rage? I wish I knew, but I suspect that the principle of desegregation must find new ways to bring people into relationships, to discourage the concentration of like-mindedness into geographical ghettos. The tendency to imagine all sorts of negatives about people we don't really know is strong. I also think that old “whigs and tories” style of party system has to be modified through a more representative system of election. Most importantly, the training of our young people in logic, reasoning, debating skills must be returned to the centre of our curricula; the inability to cooperatively find a course of action when needed often comes down to a failure in the ability to identify and collect relevant facts, discard irrelevant ones and debate amicably the merits and demerits of suggested responses. The abysmal level of dialogue in a state that's half a nation and half tribal is appalling enough to make even children weep.

          The conservative, orthodox mind tends to reason convergently and herein lies the making of a pathway toward tribalism. Convergent views of humanity begin with categories, categories assumed from a little or a great deal of knowledge or borrowed and adopted through the grapevine of like-mindedness. The convergence happens in the process of assigning persons to a category and once assigned, assuming that the person bears all the characteristics belonging to the category. Denominational names name categories; race names name categories; places of origin become categories. After three years working and traveling in Europe, living in Germany, I chatted with a brother-in-law about the experience, except that it wasn't really a chat but rather him reeling off the character of Germans he'd never met from a store of tidbits in his “German category.” Not surprisingly, he lived in the “born again” category.

           For the categorization of people to lead to its tribal extreme, there needs to be a groundswell of voices saying the same things. The central characteristic of tribalism, after all, is the need to be with like-minded people and as the numbers singing from the same hymnbook swells, confidence in the rightness of the position grows, the emotion of being one-with-many kicks in and the tribal dance is on. I'm amazed at how every viewpoint that isn't conservative in America has been assigned to the Liberal category, how much hatred is slung at the Libs on social and tribal media, all with no regard to the fact that there exists a vast range in liberalism that defies such a label. But that's how tribes behave.

           Donald Trump is not so much a president as he is a tribal chieftain. It's evident in the tribal rallies he loves, where opportunity is given to bathe the chief in adoration. His rude, crude denigration of leaders who govern democratically (Trudeau, May, for instance) and his praise for leaders who govern autocratically (Putin, Kim, for instance) is indicative of his “tribal chieftain,” strong man inclinations.

          Heaven help us if the trend prospers. Political tribalism and democracy are incompatible and those of us who see democratic structures as safeguards of the rights of all citizens had better get busy. It CAN happen here. It IS happening here.

(Sinclair Lewis' satire, It Can't Happen Here is reviewed by me at: http://readwit.blogspot.com/2017/01/sinclair-lewis-it-cant-happen-hereimage.html)

i United Nations Secretariat, Department of Economic and Social Affairs, The World At Six Billion (1999), p. 8.

iihttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_population_estimates

Certainty, comfusion and one view of truth.

Spire of Metropolitan Cathedral, Casco Viejo, Panama

“Increasingly, Western culture embraces confusion as a virtue and decries certainty as a sin. Those who are confused about sexuality and identity are viewed as heroes. Those who are confused about morality are progressive pioneers. Those who are confused about spirituality are praised as tolerant. Conversely, those who express certainty about any of these issues are seen as bigoted, oppressive, arrogant, or intolerant.” (Abdu Murray in an interview with Bible Gateway)

I think most of us understand what Murray is talking about in the interview on his new book, (Saving Truth: Finding Meaning & Clarity in a Post-Truth World (Zondervan, 2018). Unfortunately, he begins the interview with a few logical errors that put the entire thesis in question. Broad generalizations like “Those who are confused about morality are [seen as] progressive pioneers,” makes both the generalization error as well as depending on a false dichotomy; throughout the interview as in the opening statement, certainty is paired with confusion as opposites. To begin by saying that, for instance, persons who reject Christian conventional wisdom on gender and sexuality are confused and then attributing that confusion to Western Culture is to play fast and loose with the very truth Murray sets out to defend.

Many of us are living through this false dichotomy even as we read apologists on both sides. A political comparison can probably be found to be analogous: for a socialist to hold up Karl Marx’s The Communist Manifesto as truth and to judge all divergent thought on the subjects it addresses as confusion, would be patently absurd. And yet, The Communist Manifesto contributes to the search for social and economic structures that work—but only if thinkers following Karl Marx work at critiquing his work in the light of new knowledge and experience. (This is not to equate Karl Marx with God; it’s meant to make the point that questioning the interpretation of any body of knowledge is not a consequence of confusion, but is in reality an ongoing search for beneficial meaning.)

When asked for his definition of truth, Murray says:

“Simply put, truth is that which conforms to reality. There are historical truths, moral truths, scientific truths, and spiritual truths. And all of them must be coherent and cohesive. In other words, if our worldview is true, what we learn from history and science ought to complement each other. Spiritual truths also ought to complement other areas of truth. But fundamentally, truth is objective. By that I mean that it doesn’t depend on human opinion.”

Taken literally, then, nothing is true unless it conforms to or complements truths discovered in other areas. But since truth is objective, all science, history, spiritual truth has to be chiseled and sanded down until it conforms to the one, objective truth. The internal contradiction in Murray’s definition is startling coming from a respected theologian and teacher.

But let’s bring this down to earth. What he’s saying is in defense of his and his colleagues’ insistence that the Bible is pure, objective truth, and that their method of reading it has unlocked this objective, incontrovertible truth. We see this viewpoint as defense for positions surrounding the big moral questions of the day: abortion, gender equality, same-sex marriage, divorce, medical assistance in dying, the death penalty, etc., etc. By Murray’s definition, truth conforms to reality, but in this definition also lies the seed of its confusion: in holding to a position of objective truth as Murray sees it, denying reality becomes absolutely necessary.

An example: We’re all familiar with Paul’s advice about women speaking in the assembly of Christians. Today’s reality tells us that there’s no grounds biologically, socially to consider women less competent in intellectual or spiritual teaching than men. To follow through on Murray’s definition, though, Paul is stating an objective truth and our thinking on this must conform to that objective truth.

I’m told that a local pastor is still insisting that women in his congregation be bound by this absolute truth, but even in most conservative assemblies, truth has been broadened to conform to reality in this regard.

Picking and choosing has become an art form; some would call that a state of confusion.

But I may be interpreted here as denying the existence of absolute truth. If it’s reasonable to assume such an entity, seems to me it would have to do with the repeated admonitions in scriptures that approaching the New Jerusalem, establishing the heavenly kingdom of peace and joy can only come through the practice of unconditional, sacrificial love. I find very few moral arguments that can’t be answered with Christ’s summation of all law and prophecy, namely to love with all your being the creator and creation, and to love your neighbour according to the measure of love you long for for yourself.

Reverence first, empathy second. By these the kingdom comes . . . and by no other means.

Good bye, Blue Planet

It’s possible that I, and you, will be partners in the ownership of a pipeline in the future. I’m elated. I own a share in a power corporation, a gas company and a communications corporation (I live in Saskatchewan) and a provincial bus company a refinery and a bunch of grain cars. But I’ve never owned a pipeline. Whoopee-ding!

I’m not so much worried about the fact that future generations will have to cope with increasing temperatures that will produce massive desertification, that low-lying areas will be inundated and that the resulting famines, refugee pressures, civil and international wars will be the rule rather than the exception. I don’t have grandchildren, so I’m happy to trade other peoples’ future for the dividends my share of the pipeline will produce. I could sure use the twenty bucks a year . . . maybe thirty!

That’s always been the story, at least since the industrial revolution. You only have the space between birth and death to worry about because before you’re born, you have no needs. After you’re dead, of course, you have no needs either. But in between, WOW, we get the best advice from Iago in Othello I,iii: “Put money in thy purse.” Every person has to deal with the conditions existing between his birth and death; I’ve had to deal with it; your grandchildren and great-grandchildren will deal with theirs . . . or not.

Oh, I know. Individually and as a culture we use twice as much energy as we need. We’ve let the low-energy-consuming rail system go to pot, we light up spaces when and where there are no people about, we fly far and wide, drive here, there and everywhere. But here’s the thing; we in the west are enjoying the best standard of living human-kind has ever known, and I, for one, don’t intend to waste all these amenities, luxuries and opportunities. I’m going to enjoy them; let your great-grandchildren sit at home with a candle for light and a tin stove for heat.

Two things I worry about . . . a bit. If I live to be a hundred, I might actually experience significant degradation of the environment and the chaos it’s bound to produce. Secondly, I worry a little that a future generation will dig up my bones in a rage and burn them in the town square. But, of course, how much can that matter to me . . . today particularly?

Finally, the kicker-argument: the earth’s environment fluctuates naturally, there’s not a damn thing we can do about it, thank God. And so I retreat to my Bible, because that’s where I get my guidance. 

 Ecclesiastes 8:15, “Then I commended mirth, because a man hath no better thing under the sun, than to eat, and to drink, and to be merry.”

I’ve figured it out. Our pipeline will be about 1,300 Km. long. That means my section of the pipeline will be 3.7 cm, or about ---------------------------- this long. By some estimates, it’s going to cost me and every man, woman, child, grandchild in the country only $571. That’s a measly $154 per centimetre.

How could this possibly be a bad deal??

What's that, you say?

“Propaganda: information, ideas, or rumors deliberately spread widely to help or harm a person, group, movement, institution, nation, etc.” (Dictionary.com)

It comes from the same root as propagate, which word makes the idea clearer because we know that “to propagate” is to cause something to grow. So when we “spread widely” information, ideas or rumours in a way designed to make an “idea, rumour or information” grow, we are engaging in propaganda. This one—and any other blog posts of mine—are propaganda. Televised, YouTubed evangelistic services are propaganda, as are all political broadcasts, flyers of any kind distributed to mailboxes, all advertising, etc., etc. If it’s “widely distributed” in order to propagate any idea, rumour or information, it’s propaganda. At least by the Dictionary.com definition.

Question may arise: how wide does it have to be to qualify as “widely distributed?”

None of us need to be told, I’m sure, that the internet, smart phones, email and social media—following hard upon the heels of television, radio and the telephone—have very rapidly increased the volume of propaganda to which we can be subjected on a daily basis. The problem is that the legitimate communication (actual reports of what’s going on in the world, in our community and with people we care about) and propaganda (opinion, distortion and persuasion) are all mixed together. The human mind’s ability to sort out which is which has become—in a single generation—a most necessary skill.

It’s mightily disconcerting to admit that our thinking and acting may have been influenced by propaganda; we would rather not be thought of as brainwashed, manipulated, baffled by bullshit. The fact is, though, that elections are won and lost, war sentiment is successfully propagated, people become rich selling hula hoops based entirely on who plays the propaganda game most skillfully. And every propagandist knows how gullible, how persuadable we are; every successful propagandist has studied and learned the techniques that are most effective in influencing the broadest possible audience.

A few defensive moves I’ve picked up in my reading on this question:

• In school and at home, teach children logic and reason, encourage them to question more than to answer and don’t spoon-feed them your opinions as facts.
• Educate yourself in identifying propaganda: who’s saying it, how are they saying it, what ideas are they hoping I'll embrace, or what actions are they hoping I’ll take, etc.?
• Govern your communications: If you want to be on Facebook, for instance, form a “secret group” and invite only the people you want to hear from, and don’t post personal information and photos to the general public.What you say is being sold to advertisers who will begin to target you with propaganda based on the interests you reveal.
• Get your information from the least-biased sources: BBC, CBC, CTV, PBS, Huffpost, possibly, and avoid Fox, CNN, Rebel, RT, ILTV and other sources that have an obvious “leaning.” And even if you’re watching a more trusted, more equitable source, be critical of the way propaganda tends to creep in; no news outlet is pure, no reporter without personal bias.
• Read books! Books aren’t all great, but chosen well, they represent background that has often taken an author years of researching, and hours and hours of dedicated grinding away. Books can be propaganda as well as any other communication, of course, so be critical and be aware that if you’re reading only books that support your already-held opinions, you're welcoming propaganda to come in and make itself at home in your head.

This is a critical time in world affairs. We can’t let the propagandists have the last laugh.

Smothered by respect

Found Art. Jasper National Park, August 2010

Face-book, Twitter, Linked-In, Instagram, etc., are doing some really awful and some really wonderful things for our collective consciousness. Providing a forum for many who are too timid to engage literally in the charged conversations of the day, they potentially give anyone the feeling of being included, if only through putting together a sentence or two and clicking on “post.” Being noticed, after all, is one of our basic needs; so easy to take a cute picture of my cute dog (or butterfly) and actually publish it on line where friends see it and “like” it and some even consider it worthy of being “shared” with all their friends. 

I call that a wonderful thing, even letting alone the ease with which staying in touch has become more immediate and deeper for those who choose to use social media to that end. Even letting alone the ease with which urgent news can be communicated to many, many people almost instantly. Even letting alone the fact that using social media is far more interactive and engaging than watching television, for instance, or reading a newspaper, magazine or book.

But all this wonderful stuff comes arm in arm with the revelation of some pretty awful characteristics of turbulent humanity. Seething rage now has an easy, unregulated outlet, as does the most nauseating fawning.

Those who claim “venting” is good for the soul and lessens the likelihood of physical violence might have a point; but those who say that habitual angry outbursts build on each other and raise the likelihood of eventual violence may also have a valid point.

“Yet ventilating, when it’s confined to repetitively self-vindicating messages, can also be self-limiting. And misused in this way (which is all too common) it can link to prematurely, and self-defeatingly, claiming “victimhood” when what’s really called for is actively behaving in ways that could potentially rectify a situation. As such, it can become little more than an excuse for not acting to resolve a problem or confront an issue that requires confrontation.” (Leon F. Seltzer, PhD in Psychology Today, see https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/evolution-the-self/201404/6-virtues-and-6-vices-venting)

The social media phenomenon has the power to teach us important lessons about ourselves. Because what was previously private can now be scrutinized without our knowledge, we possess the means for surreptitious break-and-enter into anyone’s underwear drawer and medicine cabinet, not to mention anyone's habits and preferences. The use of hacked material that would normally be private opens the door to targeted persuasion at the most benign end of the spectrum (as in advertising) to blackmail and political influencing of voters at the extreme, other end. We’ve already seen disturbing signs of the latter in the Muller investigation.

This could teach us something important both about our vulnerability to greasy charlatans and to temptation where power and money are at stake. 

"They won’t be gunned down in the streets but they just might find themselves smothered by respect, good will, empathy, courtesy and common sense."

49,800,000 people worldwide have chosen to have Donald J. Trump’s tweets open on their computers or smart phones on a regular basis. The web log you’re reading right now is generally read by somewhere between 125 and 175 people. The world’s population is estimated to be 7,600,000,000. That means that 7,550,200,000 don’t see Trump tweets or that 7,599,999,850 will not read this post.

What’s my point? The volume of people who are engaged in whatever dominates a given news and social media cycle today is a marble compared to the basketball of people living ordinary, nine-to-five, non-politically partisan, unterrorist, family and community lives. For every person screaming and cursing at other people screaming and cursing at them, there must be millions quietly doing their best to make the world a bit better.

When the quiet, thoughtful people finally decide to unite and gather in person or on social media, or both, the crackpot fringes—left and right—of our populations might as well kiss their rage goodbye.

They won’t be gunned down in the streets but they just might find themselves smothered by respect, good will, empathy, courtesy and common sense.

Hasten the day!

The Colton Boushie Murder

Convergence

Colton Boushie of the Red Pheasant Reserve died of a gunshot wound to the head, a gun a jury decided had discharged accidentally. Gerald Stanley was holding the gun; the presence of drunk teens invading his farm would logically have aroused his anger and he was probably right in saying that under the circumstances, he wasn’t thinking straight and may have had no intention of killing anyone when he got out and loaded the handgun. Perhaps his overriding impulse was simply to protect his wife, son and his property from danger. I could understand that. 

Like most people who followed this story, I can’t possibly know exactly what the teenagers’ or Gerald Stanley’s motivations were, theirs in invading Stanley’s farm property, his in taking out and loading the gun and pointing it at Colton Boushie’s head. Too drunk to remember perfectly, the teenagers’ testimony could hardly be relied on to recreate the tragic chain of events objectively. The Stanley family would obviously have super-strong motivation to frame the events in a manner that would lead to the result that finally obtained, and so their testimony is equally suspect. 

There are plenty of people who purport to know what went down, but elevating what I think and stating it as fact isn’t helpful. What is knowable is the degree to which tensions have arisen in many times and many places between indigenous and settler neighbours. What is also knowable is that a handgun is a lethal weapon, and as a spoon is primarily made for ladling food, a handgun is manufactured for the purpose of taking life. What is further knowable is that settler/indigenous conflict is the product of a history and that prejudice and stereotyping go back to early settlement, residential schools, treaty failures and the form of apartheid we came to call the reserve system.

In a way, Colton Boushie was murdered in 1492 when Columbus stepped off the Santa Maria and the colonial theft of the Americas was set in motion. In a way, Colton Boushie was murdered by the policy geared to clearing land for settlement by making treaties and then failing to fulfill the conditions agreed to. In a way, Colton Boushie was murdered by the many, many conversations about “useless, thieving Indians” carried on over settler fences and across tables in coffee shops in settler towns for years now. 

It’s something most of us never experience: that look in a stranger’s or neighbour’s eye when you meet and their look signals so clearly that you are despised for who you are, even if you’re not known. How much those looks—over and over again—contributed to the behaviour of the teenagers in the car with Colton Boushie that night can’t be measured by me. How much the community history of animosity and suspicion contributed to Gerald Stanley’s loading a handgun and firing it can’t be known by me either.

I’ve lived on a reserve racked by poverty, I’ve paid attention to the working of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, I’ve heard a stream of news on the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls inquiry and like you, the unbelievable statistics regarding suicide on reserves have appalled me. We have neighbours whose despair and disappointment is so deep that many can’t see any possibility of a better life.

That should spur us to action, if for no other reason than that the prevention of tragic events like Colton Boushie’s death is far, far better for all of us than the fruitless debating of who’s to blame, and court cases that resolve nothing. If I don’t care enough to pay attention, to make my voice heard on the side of reconciliation, then I’m as much to blame, probably, as . . . well, as Gerald Stanley?

Just sayin’.

God forgive us all . . . we apparently don’t know what the hell we’re doing!

What's your "core mandate?"

Mennonite Heritage Museum

“Both the job and my organization’s core mandate respect the individual human rights in Canada, including the values underlying the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms as well as other rights. These include reproductive rights and the right to be free from discrimination on the basis of sex, religion, race, national or ethnic origin, colour, mental or physical disability or sexual orientation, or gender identity or expression,” . . .. (Emphasis mine.)

The Canada Summer Jobs Application includes four “attestations,” the signing of which is required in order to qualify under the guidelines set out for organizations to receive taxpayer support in hiring students for the summer. The above is one of them. I’ve underlined the words that have offended pro-life groups particularly and parts of the population generally, thereby enabling news gatherers to milk yet another topic of marginal interest to the majority of people, most of whom will never see a Canada Summer Jobs Application.

First off, I manage the Mennonite Heritage Museum which hires a student through the government summer employment program. And, yes, I signed the attestation because our organization’s mandate and activities include nothing about reproductive rights and our student is not expected to promote any view whatsoever on the subject. In fact, if our student was using his/her contacts to hand out pro-life or pro-choice pamphlets, he/she could expect to be released. That would be no different from our student employee discriminating in his/her hosting of visitors on any of the other items in the third point of the attestation quoted above.

Most absurd in the protests is the complaint that the government is telling us with this attestation requirement what we should or should not believe. Nonsense. Signing the attestation binds me to nothing, compromises nothing regarding my personal faith; it simply requires that on matters of human rights and current Canadian law, I won’t count on taxpayers’ money to fund the propagation of my views. If I or my organization wish to take on a mandate that, for instance, includes the promotion of a pro-choice or pro-life “belief,” the option of paying a student out of our own funds is clearly there.

I think we’d all take exception to a religious organization’s using taxpayer funds to proselytize in the streets. Ruling this out is not a matter of belief or freedom; the issue is what public funds will or will not support. In Canada today, the freedom to express our faith and act on it is not infringed as it is in much of the world. This freedom needs protection and the false slant being put on this one issue is not helping.

The government can justifiably be criticized for singling out “reproductive rights” in a way that makes one wonder why this one and not other controversial beliefs and opinions are listed. But that’s probably a communication failure more than anything; the current federal government has stumbled over this brick before. Granted, the detailed policing of student employees and their activities is an impossibility given the resources assigned to this program so the attestations may be seen as a legitimate means toward requiring organizations to police themselves.

The Trudeau government has increased the number of student employment places considerably and my experience with the program has been more than positive. The Mennonite Heritage Museum has been able to provide a young man with invaluable experience and learning, probably with less public money than a classroom can offer. The provision of youth summer employment demands applause; protecting it from abuse is a laudable goal.

Trigger wasn't just a horse!

Frenchman River near Val Marie, Saskatchewan - Grasslands country

"Donald Trump (is/isn’t) a racist."

Grammatically speaking, racist in this sentence is a predicate adjective, an adjective placed in the predicating part of the sentence to modify (clarify, expand on) the sentence subject. It’s structure is the same as in the sentences, “Trigger is a horse,” or “King David was a bigamist.”

But most of us yawn at grammar niceties, so let’s simply say that using this sentence structure signals something that may not be intended, that may be harmful, and in a courtroom (with a judge who paid attention when he sat in English class in high school) might even be ruled to be slanderous or libelous. To say that someone is a racist, a bigamist, a procrastinator . . . or a horse, invites the inference that that adjective nails down the subject’s essential characteristic. It’s possibly justifiable in Trigger’s case, but nowhere else, really.

Because we’re all racists. We all attach prejudgments to people based on nationality, ethnicity, religion, age and sometimes race. It’s the kind of knee-jerk evaluation we make when we’re short of knowledge about people so that their appearance, their dress, their way of speaking leads to assumptions that may or may not have any merit. To do a racist thing, make a racist comment simply means that an assumption is being made based not on knowledge

 . . . but on a racial stereotype.

Adjectives modify (clarify, expand on) nouns, but when used to modify an action, we call them adverbs. Consider this: Donald Trump racistically decided to call African countries “s**tholes.” The racism attaches to the action, naming the quality of an incident or decision, not the person. And we all know that labels applied to people can be exceedingly harmful in general, life-destroying in some cases.

There are people who occasionally make racist remarks, occasionally engage in racist acts. I’m in that group, I think. There are also people who make a habit of applying racially based stereotypes, people like those KKK and white supremacist group members who literally believe that merit can be accurately deduced from skin colour, for instance. To label an individual KKK member as a racist, though, implies that this prejudice in him is his essential characteristic, and that would simply repeat his error.

People are never justly summed up in one word. Even Trigger is unjustly labeled as “simply a horse.” Ask Roy Rogers if you doubt this.

Dropping a racist remark doesn’t make me “just a racist.” It means that I haven’t finished my education yet and should probably wash my mouth out with soap, sit in the corner for a few hours with a grammar text and an encyclopedia.

And for those of us who believe we ought to do our bit to make the world better, we could begin by weighing our own words more carefully, by calling out racially-motivated actions in government, in business, in the social structures of our time. We need to learn and practice the difference between the adverbial and the adjectival use of our labels, for a start!

In the end, nothing worthwhile is accomplished by arriving at a consensus that Trump is or is not a racist, although people seem right now to be obsessed with this quest. His pseudo-presidency has included any number of acts that should long since have disqualified him as a leader, some to which an apparent racist motivation could certainly be applied. Would be nice if more of what the man does and says could be motivated by humility, by empathy, by courtesy.

One can always hope that sometime a light, an epiphany will break through. One can only hope.

Bridling unruly horses

OH, Earth!!

So let’s get it straight before we succumb to the “free speech” mantra that’s pervading Trump’s America and social media like a virus. 

The meaning of “freedom” ought to evolve in us as we mature. To 10-year old Bobby, the concept of equivalency is still mixed up with notions of freedom and justice: if 16-year old Mike can stay up ‘til 10, then he should be allowed to stay up ‘til 10 too! To grow into adulthood without mastering ethical nuance . . . and then shouting out invective as a right based on equivalency, well, it's inexcusable. 

I recently chided someone on Facebook for re-posting a photo of a sign displayed by a service station owner in Spruce Grove, Alberta. On the large, lighted, elevated marquee, the owner had placed the words, “F**k NDP/Trudeau.” Along with the original post came a long list of crude, supporting replies—middle-finger trolls focused on “liberals” indiscriminately and defending the station owner's sign as a demonstration of free speech.

Equivalency. If you’re allowed to say publicly that you disagree with my viewpoint, then I’m allowed to put up a sign with your name that says, “Go f**k yourself!” And if I’m allowed to say it, what’s the difference among saying it to myself, to you, to coffee-row friends or to the whole world on a marquee?

Freedom to dress as one pleases in Canada doesn’t mean that it’s OK to prance through the mall naked. Freedom to own a gun doesn’t mean it’s OK to use it to settle arguments. The entire purpose of civil law is the prevention or redress of harm and/or unwarranted offense to persons; an adult who can’t yet see the difference among constructive, neutral and harm-producing speech is missing a key component of moral development, namely the ability to differentiate, that big step beyond the equivalency sensibility of childhood.

I know from personal experience that political leanings—the conservative/liberal spectrum and where our worldview lies on it—produces enormous temptation to commit verbal harm, to undermine, to denigrate, to hurl speech rocks at “the other side.” I admit that I have often rejoiced in the pain of those who are on the other side. I’ve also felt the tooth-grinding chagrin of loss when accompanied by jubilation in the camp of the competition.

Surviving those feelings without resorting to ad hominem barb-throwing is a struggle. Granted.¹

But we’ve got to try. We need to call out in no uncertain terms those who can’t or won’t differentiate, who are becoming more and more addicted to the speech bomb. (It doesn’t help that the American president seems to be a master of destructive speech.) We’ve got to force ourselves to debate ideas and policies without reverting to ad hominem attack. We’ve got to revisit the gospel admonition that we’re called to love people, even those whom we consider enemies.

And the central component of loving is behavioral.

 

Bridling the tongue is like bridling an unruly horse; not easy . . . but necessary.

1: appealing to feelings or prejudices rather than intellect. An ad hominem argument: marked by or being an attack on an opponent's character rather than by an answer to the contentions made. (Merriam-Webster)

Conservative with age?

Typical Newfoundland

“A person who’s not a socialist when he’s twenty doesn’t have a heart; a person who’s not a conservative when he’s forty doesn’t have a brain.” This old saying was bandied about on a recent “Ideas” episode on CBC focused on whether or not—and if so, why—we become more conservative with age. Presented was some documented evidence that showed we actually do become less liberal in our worldview as we get older and interviews with a few people who have demonstrably moved from a left-wing to a right-wing outlook supported the contention.

In general, the documentary’s informants left me with the impression that as young persons they were full of good will toward their fellows and were enthusiastic about supporting those less fortunate, but turned right when they realized that a socialist economy “just doesn’t work.” Author P.J. O’Rourke said he made his big right turn when he got his first job and his first pay check and realized that almost half of his total wage had been deducted for taxes, a consequence of a “communist” system. A general consensus among some interviewees was that liberalism is both ineffective in achieving its goals and that it curbs personal initiative, entrepreneurship and—worst of all—infringes individual freedoms.

Defining liberalism and conservatism in our time is a bit of a fool’s errand. Those of us who have an interest in and some involvement in politics in Canada likely consider ourselves to be either one or the other, but that does little more than divide us politically into camps, give us a sense of belonging. Truth is, our economy, our culture are not properly labeled using the liberal/conservative polarities; Western democracies are all mixed economies with both liberal and conservative elements.

I would have liked to ask those interviewees who saw themselves now as convinced conservatives which liberal—even socialist—parts of the Canadian economy they would like to eliminate: Univeral healthcare? Public highways? Public education? Crown corporations? Old Age Pension? The Canada Pension Plan? Public hospitals and nursing homes? All this could be thrown onto the back of individual entrepreneurship: toll highways; pay as you go healthcare; family, at-home care for the aged and infirm; corporate ownership of airports; for-profit schools, jails and universities; etc.

O’Rourke referred to a quote from philosopher Michael Oakshott that he considers to be a perfect definition of conservatism: “To be conservative, then, is to prefer the familiar to the unknown, to prefer the tried to the untried, fact to mystery, the actual to the possible, the limited to the unbounded, the near to the distant, the sufficient to the superabundant, the convenient to the perfect, present laughter to utopian bliss.” O’Rourke goes on to say that the movement from a liberal to a conservative outlook is inevitable, that liberalism is an attribute of youth and that we eventually “have to grow up.”

Other interviewees saw O’Rourke’s comments as silly . . . naïve, as did I, beyond belief for someone as renowned as he has come to be. I've known many a gray-haired person with an abiding social conscience. A failure to maintain youthful idealism doesn't equate to "brainlessness."

A young woman interviewee described herself as a liberal/socialist and defined her worldview as “an unconditional commitment to social justice.” I believe she said she was the founder of "Black Lives Matter - Toronto."

I’d recommend taking an hour to listen to the podcast by clicking HERE. I found the ending particularly helpful; in other words, give it the whole hour!

Jerusalem: THE place, or A place.

A place, planet earth (not Jerusalem)

A different place, planet earth (not Jerusalem either)

Yet another place, planet earth (still not Jerusalem)

Netanyahu was positively gleeful as he thanked Donald Trump for American recognition of Jerusalem as the capital city of Israel.

His demeanour didn’t match that of most world leaders responding to the event; the fear of hostilities and armed clashes, potentially unleashed by Trump’s declaration, was palpable.

Three monotheistic religions—Muslim, Jewish and Christian—claim substantial stakes in the “holy site” status of Jerusalem. I’m not historian enough to weigh the legitimacy of these claims, except that Christian interest in being involved in the fate of Jerusalem as a “holy site” is baffling. It’s clear that through selective reading of the gospels and dispensationalist, pre- or post-millenialist explanations of the end-of-times, Jerusalem can figure in the apocalyptic formulations of people who call themselves Christian. 

But Christian faith was clearly meant by the prophetic voice that gives it its name to shift faith away from tribalism and the idolatrous worship of place. The classic conversation between Jesus and the Samaritan woman at Jacob’s well, for instance, (John 4: 19-24, NIV) can’t be easily ignored:

“Sir,” the woman said, “I can see that you are a prophet. Our ancestors worshiped on this mountain, but you Jews claim that the place where we must worship is in Jerusalem.”

“Woman,” Jesus replied, “believe me, a time is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. [. . .] Yet a time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in the Spirit and in truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks. God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in the Spirit and in truth.”

Perhaps a reverence for—even worship of—a place is inevitable given human nature. When good things happen to us, a fondness develops for the place in which we were at the time. For indigenous Canadians, cultural roots are not recorded on paper but in the memories partially residing in sacred places. There is Heimweh, homesickness that can colour our worldview, cause us to long for places lost but not forgotten. And then there’s the romance of place: Old Montreal, Paris, The Big Apple, Grand Canyon that possess an aura well beyond the stones and soil of which they’re made.

And yet, can nostalgia ever be a defensible foundation for taking up arms? I tend to see our dilemma evolutionarily: our capability to wage destructive war has surpassed by far our social progress, so Jerusalem becomes occasion for quarreling and war, not for glorious, multicultural celebration.

Perhaps Islam or Judaism are dependent on Jerusalem being a more sacred place than Budapest or London or Rio de Janeiro. Logically, if there is but one God, and if his name is Yahweh, and if there is but one God, and if his name is Allah, then Yahweh and Allah are names for the same God and I have to wonder how he/she sees the shenanigans into which Donald Trump has now inserted his blunt instrument!

As Christians, though, who worship God “neither on this (Samaritan) mountain nor in Jerusalem,” we might do well to take our mandate from Christ himself to foster reconciliation and to stop finding excuses to participate as partisans in the Muslim/Jewish nonsense that since 1949 has focused on Palestine/Israel, and now on the Temple Mount and the Wailing Wall, a politics of futility.

2 Corinthians 5:17-19 (NIV)

17. Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here!
    
18. All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation:
    
19. that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting people’s sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation. (emphasis mine)
    

I been workin' on the railroad . . .

Painting in Oils

Among the numerous curiosities in Canadian political dialogue these days, the “yes/no, maybe so” about pipelines has to be one of the curiositists. An NDP government in Alberta is working hard to swing public, government and corporate opinion toward the economic efficacy of pipelines for bringing Alberta crude to markets. The NDP government of BC knows that it’s beholden to opponents of the Trans-Mountain pipeline for its slim victory in the election there. The Conservative government of Stephen Harper eulogized pipelines but couldn’t get them done. Trudeau’s Liberals have approved the building of pipelines but there are indications that they won’t be any more successful than the Harper government was.

It’s probably most relevant to say that whether or not Keystone or Trans-Mountain or Energy East (or a few other options not much talked about) are ever completed won’t be determined in legislatures but in corporate board rooms. Environmental concerns are generally little more than irritants when profitability is being measured; it’s this measure that counts in the end. Profit-seekers usually find a way wherever there’s a buck to be made.

I’m told the price of oil is low because there’s a glut of it on the market now. That’s Economics 101. What ought to be considered in all this babble about Alberta’s—and by extension Canada’s—prosperity are the trends and trajectories that will determine the future supply and demand situation regarding fossil fuels. Every wind generator, every hydro dam, every new solar panel, every efficiency built into our cars reduces the demand for fossil fuel. Increasing populations, burgeoning middle classes in developing countries pressure the demand upward. Where do these trends cross on a graph? Is it possible that at the same time as an expensive pipeline is completed, the sale of what comes out of it will cease to be profitable?

We’ll probably never pump wheat, or lumber, or people through redundant pipelines. What looks like a surer investment for the future in this country is the modernization of trains and the twinning of rail lines. Well-planned rail systems can transport almost anything cheaply and cleanly—including oil when necessary. Modern rail systems are comparatively economically maintained, can take pressure and expense off road construction and maintenance, reduce the traffic glut and smog in urban centres and are ecologically friendlier than every other transportation mode except, possibly, ocean freighters.

And rail has a romance to it; have you ever heard of a hobbyist setting up a miniature landscape of pipelines? Neither have I.

A broadly educated, reading, studying population ought to realize that the pipeline topic is sucking up far more oxygen than it deserves. The exciting challenges of the future neither revolve around whether or not Exxon or Shell remain profitable, nor even around the jobs their activities create. We’re in an era of massive adjustments and it’s in the informed search for—and incorporation of—new technologies that a prosperous future lies. 

“Jobs, jobs, jobs” is a shibboleth politicians and corporations throw at us all the time. The goal of every corporation, ironically, is to reduce the employment of humans to as close to zero as possible through their replacement by robotics, mechanization, technology. How a living for citizens will be earned or supplied in this kind of a future is a far bigger challenge than what's represented in this tiresome pipeline quarreling.

I used to smoke a pipe. I gave it up. A pipe tends to turn into a sewer unless you tend it like you would your child. (This is irrelevant to the rest of this diatribe, except for pipe, sewer and child.)