The lion, the lamb and cultural appropriation

In Rita's Garden on an Autumn Day 

I’m not sure how we got to the subject of cultural appropriation, but we did. Naturally, it led to questions concerning the meaning of free speech with the controversies currently swirling around what opinions one can express without the wrath of the political correctness police descending like holy fire.

I’m not comfortable with that absurd Chief Wahoo logo nor with the Indians name of the Cleveland American League baseball team. It didn’t bother me as a young man so I have to remind myself that the debate about cultural appropriation is a moving phenomenon; what was OK once ain’t OK no more! (I suspect that sports teams’ appropriation of Indigenous-culture imagery and naming was never for any other reason than to associate teams with the mostly-imagined, legendary fierceness and fiery battle skill in the “braves” Hollywood helped to create. Not a put-down, in other words. As far as I know, the name, Cleveland Anabaptists, wasn’t even considered.)

But I remember being appalled at Shakespeare’s creation of Shylock, a Jewish money-lender in The Merchant of Venice who projects every anti-Semitic stereotype that ever existed. I have to wonder if the Lone Ranger’s side-kick, Tonto, influenced my early childhood conception of the Indigenous of America. In imagination, I suspect, I always wanted to be the Lone Ranger . . . with a Tonto as servant. In 1851, Stephen Foster wrote a song called Swanee River including the line, “Oh darkies, how my heart grows weary/Far from the old folks at home. Can a choir still sing this song to an inter-racial audience without changing darkies to—perhaps—brothers?

If I’m Jewish and I express indignation at the portrayal of a fellow Jew as a despicable, grasping excuse-for-a-human-being, am I being “over-sensitive?” If I’d been aboriginal and Tonto’s portrayal nauseated me, would you have been justified in telling me to “just get over it already?” Or if I was born with a black face and I saw white faces blackened in a comic vaudevillian sketch, would I have reason to be indignant?”

Two things: Surely the test of whether a culture, an ethnicity, a race or faith is being exploited for attention or gain rests in the judgment of the one supposedly being exploited. What price do blond women eventually have to pay for the gags and jokes that portray them as having traded their intelligence for sexual availability? How often and how much can a majority culture appropriate ancient symbols and artifacts of indigenous faith and culture for decoration, before they become meaningless for the indigenous people themselves?

And second: If our writing, our art, our conversation should begin to lean again on particularly-negative stereotypes of others in order to attract attention or produce gain, how lacking in imagination would we have had to become? Identifiable idiosyncrasies, strengths, weaknesses, perversions, etc. cut across the human race; it’s not necessary to invoke our prejudices to write or talk about any of them.

The invoking of the political correctness mentality, the sensitivity about cultural/ethnic appropriation, the debate about the margins of free speech are together signs that there lives among us a growing hunger for the reconciliation of humanity—to each other and to the universe that is our home. That there should be a backlash against these impulses is to be expected; the politics of hate all around us a manifestation of this reaction. In the peaceable kingdom that Christ envisioned, people don’t use their tongues as swords, they protect one another from offense and harm, they’ve traded their militancy for gentleness, their judgment for mercy, their arrogance for humility, their greed for generosity.

We long to be born anew . . . and mostly don’t know it. The lamb and the lion long to sleep together. (That’s a metaphor; real lions long to eat tender lambs. I myself prefer them with mint jelly and rosemary. Inter-species appropriation. I’m not proud of my repeated culinary sinning.)

Guadalajara after the Conquest of the Aztecs

Guadalajara: Aztec symbols, the flame that doesn't consume and the Quetzalcoatl, the serpent bird.

Note: A correction to my last travelogue post where I said Guadalajara had 10 million residents. I’m now told it’s closer to 5 million. My apologies to the 5 million whom I led to believe were Guadalajarians and now discover they’re not . . . or worse yet, that they may not even exist.

“Guadalajara,” he said, “is a name imported from Spain and is Arabic, dating back to the Moorish rule of Spain. It means ‘stony river.’” We are six in the van plus our driver/interpreter: two male couples and Agnes and me, and we’re a jolly, curious bunch with non-stop banter from Ajijic to Guadalajara and back. “Airrrmahn” (Herman) is both a competent, careful driver and a consummate teacher; before the day is over we’ll have a much better grasp of the history of both Mexico and Jalisco province—at least if we remember to listen between bouts of picture-snapping.

Our first destination in this sprawling city in the highlands is downtown Guadalajara. In short, it’s magnificent in its ‘Catholic’ beauty. No fewer than 5 cathedrals attest to the Franciscan and Augustinian presence in the city at its establishment—he says—in 1542. Guadalajara was actually relocated at that time, the present site chosen because of the availability of fresh water and for strategic reasons; the wars of conquest, the subjugation of the indigenous population was still very much a consideration.

Central Guadalajara has been reworked considerably in the last half century. The result is a centre including no fewer than five large plazas of fountains, statuary and, of course, cathedrals. The plazas are arranged in the form of a cross, the largest, longest being the trunk of the cross and smaller ones being the arms and the top of the cross with the central, Cathedral of the Assumption of Our Lady at the juncture of the cross’s arms. The interior of this cathedral has to be seen to be appreciated; a second-rate depiction can be had here.

We visited the vaults beneath the cathedral where bishops and cardinals of Guadalajara rest. The most recent was buried here in the 1990s, possibly caught in the crossfire between drug cartels or else assassinated by them; autopsies showed that he died in his car from shots fired at close range. It reminded us of the violence that accompanies the drug trade around the world and definitely here in Mexico. The north shore communities of Lake Chapala are not exceptions in this case, the Guadalajara Reporter tells us; a shootout happened in Jocotepec just down the road a few days ago. One man was killed and a woman seriously injured.

And then there was the governor’s palace and the old congress hall and the murals depicting Mexico’s history and a wonderful pottery museum and finally, an all female Mariachi band performance and a bowl of Mexican soup that Herman assured me would be only poquito spicy, but which went down like varnish remover . . . with flavour!

We ended the day at Cosinart Restaurant in Ajijic, I had a very good Indian Chicken Curry and a glass of red wine.

Just checked my step counter . . . seeing Guadalajara took about 7 km of walking. Should have stopped at one of the leather shops (of which there are many; Guadalajara is known for its pottery and leather goods) and bought a pair of hand crafted shoes for Cdn $30 or so.

A side-note. Mexicans don’t generally wear shorts and sandals. So if you don’t want to stand out as a tourist, jeans and oxfords or sneakers are a better bet. Police and military wear black top to toe with heavy boots plus guns and radios strapped all over them; don’t know how they survive May, for instance when, I’m told, 40 C isn’t uncommon.

Tequila: (tequila is made in Tequila!)

Amante, musico y tequila. Ole!  Y si, un gallo Tambien!

It’s curious how one’s perception on arriving as a visitor at a place that is home for others . . . and probably has been for centuries . . . can be that the people and place were given birth when one (this one, at least) landed. (That may be the worst sentence I’ve ever written.) I think it’s a case of inflated self-importance: this store opened just for me; this restaurant wouldn’t exist except in anticipation of me; this town has only ever been awaiting my arrival; I’ve never been in this museum before so it must be new.

My home has never been a tourist destination but I’m thinking if visitors speaking little English streamed through Rosthern year-round, they’d begin to look alike and my courtesies would probably be in the interest of their spending more than in them personally. And if they stayed for a week—exploring all the sights and amenities, trying every restaurant—forgetting them would be an exercise of minutes. (Mind you, testing every restaurant in Rosthern takes five days only.)

I could imagine that a weary waiter in a hot and crowded restaurant is not nearly as happy to see me come in as I might hopefully expect. “Here comes another pain-in-the-ass tourist with stupid questions and impossible demands spoken in broken Spanglish. Whoopeeo dinga!” Actually, courtesy and friendliness characterizes best the people of Mexico who’ve waited on us.

An increasing number of national and local economies rely on tourism these days. Tourists bring in money, often into communities left impoverished by global “progress” including technologies that displace jobs. But it surely must be a Faustian bargain; to be a tourist-friendly town where you were once a traditional community has meant monumental cultural change; how could it not? Churches remain sparsely-attended places of worship, but become tourist attractions as well; menus in restaurants are in a language amenable to visitors; children mix into the melee of strangers and pick up who-knows-what habits (not excluding the art of begging and fawning for handouts, we’ve observed in some places); locals compete for craft and food stall sales. And possibly the most telling: tourism and expat settlement drive up the prices of things, and visitors--not locals--become the demographic for which business caters, for which municipal planning often bends both money and attention. 

In the plaza in Tequila, men with “información turistica” on their shirts walk about to help visitors find the sites they’ve come to see. Up and down the hills of Tequila, meanwhile, the blue-green fields of Agave signal that others must toil under the hot sun to support the export industry that now pays for their living. Agave here produces nothing nutritional, just juice for tequila, fiber for construction and fertilizer for the next crop of the same.

We’re told the town of Tequila was founded in ca. 1525; that’s only two decades and a bit after Columbus “discovered” the “New World.” Rosthern was founded—kind of—in 1893 at which time Tequila as a town already had about 270 years of community behind it. In both cases, the area had likely been inhabited for ten or more thousand years: by the Cree in Rosthern’s case, by Aztecs in Tequila’s.

I had a bowl of Sopa Azteca in the Plaza in Tequila with no illusions that the name was more than cultural appropriation for the tourist trade. It was very good soup.

Downtown Tequila is a visual feast.

We tasted a sample of a smooth, flavoured tequila not unlike Bailey’s Irish Cream. Wonderful. I bought a small bottle of it: 180 pesos; $10 Cdn.

The Guadalajara Freeway loop circles 3/4 of the city of some 10 million. It’s a state-of-the-art highway with only light traffic; we paid $30 in tolls driving from Ajijic to Tequila and back. Locals, we conjectured, would travel on free roads. Speed limit on the freeway: 110. Same as the Louis Riel Trail.

In the Tequila Museum we wandered into the archive room where an older man (Manuel) and a college-age companion were eager to show us the assemblage of old documents chronicling the history of Tequila and tequila. Our daughter’s Spanish is better than ours, and so the conversation limped along with general understanding. What we gathered is that a mass of letters, documents, declarations have been collected with great effort from all over the world and are being meticulously catalogued and preserved here in this small room. My archive/history juices flowed with an envy equal to the glow in these archivists’ eyes as they revealed their monumental achievement.

Friday, we take a tour introducing us to historic Guadalajara.

Carved Christ, Tequila and Sun

A crucifix with a difference

Long, leisurely mornings in a foreign country provide a good time for reading, and what better reading would there be when you’re up under a Mexican morning sun than the history of Mexico. I did some of that this morning, and now I know enough—probably—to get myself into trouble in any serious argument. 

A few gleanings from Wikipedia and similar sites seem indisputable:

• Mexico’s history has been fraught with turmoil, colonial exploitation, genocide, civil wars and near-miraculous economic achievements.
• It’s history has significant relevance for today, particularly as regards Mexico-USA relations. The uniqueness of the Mexico-USA border and the current debate about its defense can’t really be understood without reference to several hundred years of past interactions.
• Much of what is southwestern USA was Mexico until the Spanish-American war.
• The border loosened substantially during the World Wars when Mexican workers were welcomed to take work places vacated by American men serving in the military.
• Around forty-million persons living in the USA are Mexican or Mexican-American.
• Nearly a million US expats live in Mexico.

One site detailed the immigration into Mexico over the last few centuries, mentioning in passing that some enclaves of alien settlement exist as un-assimilated communities—including Mennonites. Also that in certain areas, indigenous nations have persisted as cultural, traditional communities but the vast majority of the population falls into the Mestizo category, having mixed ancestry and speaking Spanish as the first language. The website opined that the trend for a long time has been to homogenize the population, and I imagine that the obliteration of ethnicity and languages would therefor be part of that trajectory. (I was thinking Canada as I read this; I can’t verify the truth of it in Mexico’s case.)

We took the bus from Puerto Vallarta to Guadalajara and were picked up at the terminal in Zapopan, a suburb of Guadalajara. The trip takes you from the seaside and up on a winding course into the highlands of Jalisco State. The route passes through the agave-growing, red earth region around the city of Tequila, where the juice of the agave is turned into—you guessed it—tequila. (We naively thought we were passing through pineapple fields until we were straightened out on that account.) 

The hills and valleys of Jalisco are brown and lifeless right now, except for the agave fields; it’s the dry season and as we passed pastures with cattle and no sign of feeding facilities, I thought of bovines suffering through winters in Canada and on dry pastures in Mexico. 

Here Comes Tequila

Perhaps the ground-travel observations from a bus window would have to go under the category of “a little knowledge is a dangerous thing,” but I felt as sorry for the horses and cattle scrounging to find food through a hot, dry season as I do for animals suffering -30 days in Saskatchewan. We’ve been here a week; I said I’d like to be a TV meteorologist here because the forecast—high 30, low 15, calm and sunny—would apply daily. Not really any good reason to go to work on a regular basis; tape the forecast and show it all the time, eh?

Chapala-Ajijic (pronounced ah-hee'-heeq') has become home to many retired Canadians. We met some of them in church and they fill some restaurants in the evenings. Worship leader Dave at the Lakeside Community Fellowship moved here from Vancouver area; his wife grew up in Melfort, Saskatchewan. Filmmaker John Friesen from Manitoba has just completed a feature film focused on US/Mexican relations at the personal level—Pat y Paco; we’re having coffee this afternoon.

The influence—positive and negative—of expats and tourism on local economies and cultures has been a topic on which our daughter and son-in-law have been able to “go to school” in Panama and now in Mexico. Maybe Friesen should do another film about that.

An “expat” Canadian quipped yesterday about the traffic congestion, “Darned gringos!”

I said, “Don’t worry, Mexico is gonna build a wall; US and Canada are gonna pay for it!”

". . . to put hardworking families first"

I’ve always been a bit of a political junkie. I grew up in a constituency that mostly elected Liberals, but in a province where the CCF (Canadian Commonwealth Federation) later NDP (New Democratic Party) had become the apparent natural governing party. My father voted CCF; he believed in the cooperative movement with which the CCF was easily associated, what with its declared socialist leanings, particularly as regards universal health care.

In keeping with the adage that the apple never falls far from the tree, I’ve generally voted for NDP candidates except when living in a constituency where it seemed more logical to vote strategically. In Spruce Grove, Alberta, I was a reluctant Liberal supporter.

One thing I have to admit; like most everyone else, a “victory” in Saskatchewan of the CCF/NDP was cause for celebration, even before I knew next to zero about platforms and policies. 

I’ve grown up some since then, but the feeling of victory/loss lingers, not unlike the triumph/failure of the Roughriders vs, the Blue Bombers nonsense. Remember “This will be our last “first-past-the-post election,” promise? Show me a political candidate whose primary interest is the country and its future as above his or her victory/defeat anxiety and I’ll show you a paragon of thoughtfulness and honesty hard to find in every liberal democracy I’ve observed. 

We’re again into an election cycle and I hope that most Canadians, as I also am, are weighing the options. Right now, I’m feeling discouraged about all the parties and living in a constituency that will vote Conservative even if the candidate should turn out to be a fence post, the incentive to be active, even to cast a ballot, is decidedly weak. Keeping in mind that my information is generally filtered by the media, what can be known doesn’t argue for certainty, doesn’t make choices clear. But here’s what the political scene looks like—to me—right now:

Liberal Party: I’m not bothered as much as some by Trudeau’s holiday with the Aga Khan, nor about the trade trip to China that wasn’t, not even about the Trudeau family parading through India in costumes too Indian even for ordinary Indians. I am, however, bothered by the Liberal’s sloppy communication skills, their band-aid approach to reconciliation with Indigenous People, the reneging on promised electoral reform, their tendency toward knee-jerk politics-of-expedience. I’d have to get past all this if the local Liberal candidate is to get my vote. In their favour, I thought the NAFTA episode was negotiated as well as could be expected. On pipelines? Well, the jury’s still out.

Conservative Party: Andrew Scheer seems to me now to be gearing up for a campaign that will heap scorn and whatever whiff of real or imagined scandal can be found to denigrate the Liberals, Trudeau particularly. At the same time, little is heard from him that would give me a reason to vote for the CPC candidate . . . policy-wise. He strikes me like a puppy-dog sniffing around to find anti-Liberal bones only; it’s a mentality I dislike. It’s not what great leaders project. “He is in politics to put hardworking families first,” the CPC website intones. Wonder who came up with that pithy policy statement.

NDP: Jagmeet Singh strikes me as a lead-wolf who’s running at the rear of the pack, trying to catch up, howling hoarsely once in a while to remind himself that he’s the leader . . . that’s the image I have at present. If only we’d chosen Nathan Cullen or Guy Caron or Charlie Angus or Nikki Ashton to lead us, the current disarray might have been averted. For a leader to have put himself in the position of fighting a bye-election in an election year smacks, unfortunately, of political incompetence. “Jagmeet is building a fairer, more just Canada where everyone can realize their dreams,” says the NDP’s website, pointlessly. (I can ignore for the moment the use of a plural pronoun with a singular antecedent.)

Green: The Green’s best shot at becoming a force in Canadian politics lies in the obliteration of the NDP, in the absorption of their vote share. The NDP seems to be doing its best right now to help them with this project. If the local Greens politicked flat out, put piles of money into my constituency, they’d still be happy to get 5 – 10% of the vote. I know that not-voting for a party because “they can’t win” makes a bit of a mockery of democracy’s greatest strength. Of course they can’t win if everybody decides not to vote for them because they can’t win! And thanks to Trudeau’s broken promise of electoral reform, the wasting of votes (like for the Green’s, the NDP’s, the Liberal’s in my constituency) will no doubt influence me to not-vote for the Greens again “because they can’t win.”

That’s it then . . . unless one of the parties comes out with a platform that can once again ignite my fervor for national politics. That platform would include at least these: 1) a specific alternative to first-past-the-post, 2) a reconciliation proposal with teeth, like eliminating the senate and replacing it with an all-nations treaty parliament in which Canada and First Nations would have equal representation, 3) a basic-income scheme to replace welfare and other current entitlement programs, 4) an energy plan that realistically projects both climate change mitigation and energy conversion needs well into the future, 5) a universal pharma-care plan, 6) a realistic plan for converting our military into a peace-keeping, disaster mitigation and search and rescue force paid for by reducing combat-specific provisions.

Present me with this platform and a leader with actual leadership skills and at least a modicum of charisma and you’ve got my vote! Even call yourself the Progressive Conservative Social Democracy Green Party of Canada (PCSDGPC) if you like. (If I get 100 or more comments below, I’ll get to work on forming the party. The acronym might be awkward; I think “Pizduhgipsee” would work, eh?)

. . . on the other hand, when every party we have now is a disappointment, do we really need one more??

Happy 130th Birthday, Jacob

the Vanishing Point

“Did you know that Jacob was 130 years-old when he uprooted his clan and moved to Egypt?”

“No, I didn’t, but thanks for the information. Seems an old age to be making such a major life change, don’t you think?”

I took a moment to think about moving at age 130. The oldest person I’ve known personally died at 105. She’d moved into a nursing home at 99. Egypt—as far as I know—hadn’t come up for consideration at that comparatively young age.

I’m 77 and the fact that I can go for a week at a time without fretting over my physical health or my wits (others may think that a bit of worry here might be in order) or my financial security, etc., is not enough to allow me to contemplate moving kin and camels to Egypt in, say, 53 years. I’m not alone in this, I think. Nobody in his right mind would move to Egypt these days. Hague, maybe.

There are those who believe that given current strides in biology, healthcare, genetics, etc., we will in the future see longevity reminiscent of Jacob, and Noah, and—hang onto your wheelchair—Methuselah. But such advances probably won’t ever be applied retroactively, so the chance that you or I will be able to move to Egypt at 130, there to enjoy our very-slowly declining years watching our offspring being taken into slavery, well, its a future we shouldn’t bank anything on.

Living long without ever being old, that’s surely what we long for. But surely that elusive thing we call “quality of life” deserves consideration. At the extremes, you can hardly blame someone whose life is a continuous misery for not saying, “Boy! I wish this could go on for 130 years or more!” At the other end, those whose life feels like an unending series of adventures can’t legitimately be chided for wishing it would never end. (I have to wonder if Jacob—when he was a young 110 or so—could still down-hill ski, snorkel, scream at the referee in a lopsided soccer game.)

In a splurge of depression and self-pity, Shakespeare’s Hamlet says basically that we’d all kill ourselves if it weren’t for fear of whatever lies after death: “. . . who would fardels¹ bear,/To grunt and sweat under a weary life,| But that the dread of something after death,/ The undiscover'd country from whose bourn²/ No traveller returns, puzzles the will/ And makes us rather bear those ills we have/ Than fly to others that we know not of?”

A person even older than I said to me recently that our earnest discussions about changing the world for the better were useless; that things don’t change, and, that since we (he and I) were old, we should spend our time and energy preparing for death. I replied that I wasn’t even finished preparing for life yet, thank you very much! I’m pretty sure the advice was coming from someone who’d never read Hamlet, who must have picked up this abysmal pessimism somewhere else. Possibly a contemplation of an upcoming memorial service for a friend in our age-range.

My heroes are people like Abe or Paula, who read voraciously until failing eyesight overcame them: paragons of autodidacticism,³ life long learners. Or people who enroll in university after retirement, not to start a new career but because their curiosity, their imaginations have never been put out to pasture. Or Grandma Moses. Or people who move house to another country at 130. 

Thanks, Jacob. Your 130 makes my 77 feel like adolescence! 

1Fardel: a burden. Think a backpack full of bricks as metaphor for a burdensome life.

2Bourne: border, margin. In this case, a border you only cross once.

3Autodidacticism: self teaching

Settlers and other Canadians

Wild Stinkweed (sweet-smelling variety)

(Note: Please pardon the blotched formatting. BlogSpot did it to me and I don't know how to fix it!)

On its surface, the application of the word, settlers, to distinguish non-indigenous populations from indigenous is probably a question of simple, arbitrary choice. We non-indigenous could call ourselves crackers or neo-americans and have the same conversations we’re having now. Somewhere, lists exist that could be headed “indigenous persons,” and anyone not eligible to be on those lists needs to be called something if we’re to talk about the politics of indigenous/non-indigenous relations in Canada. “Canadian” vs Indigenous doesn’t work since the indigenous are also Canadians. Indian vs white fails for obvious reasons.

Perhaps we could argue with Juliet that the applied words are simply placeholders, really, and that whatever name is applied to a person changes nothing in the character or the substance of that person:

“What’s in a name? That which we call a rose, By any other word would smell as sweet.” Romeo & Juliet, (II, 2)

I get that point, but any student of linguistics will acknowledge that words have both denotations (objective meanings) and connotations (subjective or suggested meanings.) If the person who first assigned rose to the flower had decided to call it stinkweed, well . . . you get my drift.

The German word for indigenous person is Ureinwohner, a compound word directly translated as “original resident.” Ansiedler, is an “in-settler,” or “immigrant.” I suspect that the distinctions in every language suffer from the clinging connotations, not denotations of words being used.

Objection to being called settlers is being raised by persons who may well be third, fourth or even tenth-generation citizens of Canada. I work in a museum; used in that context, the word settlers has always referred to pioneering immigrants. The question seems to rise logically: how can the word settler not connote a not-yet-citizen, an immigrant? How can it not connote a questionable claim to first-class citizenship?

I have two warnings: First, let’s not push the use of the word settler to the point where it becomes the fulcrum around which our conversation turns. Shakespeare’s point made through Juliet is an education in human rights all by itself. Persons are not defined by the name by which we call them. And secondly, let’s be aware that when we quarrel over whether or not the use of a word is appropriate or not, such strife can constitute little more than a handy excuse to avoid dealing with the real subject.

And the real subject is this: In Canada today, there are pockets of population living in poverty, often under abject, hopeless conditions. Their problems are clearly endemic to remnants of colonization that persist in our time. One category of Canadians is benefiting from colonialism while another category has been plundered by it. We can choose either to ignore the inequity of opportunity or join in the grand project for equal status, opportunity and human rights for everyone.

I’m no settler by the museum definition of the word. I am a settler, however in the sense that Canada’s welcoming of my grandparents expanded the options for them and their descendants (me included) by limiting the options for the Ureinwohner, the aborigines whose tenure in this place went back ages and ages.

Call me whatever you like, except late for dinner!

Private interest; public will.

Private interest; Public will.

1. The Canada Food Guide has been revised toward encouraging consumption of plant vs. animal protein. The beef and dairy industries are protesting, saying this will hurt their industry and their workers’ livelihoods, and argue in their defense that absorption of Vitamin B12 from lentils as opposed to from meat and dairy is a health problem.

2. Albertans are rallying in support of the Trans-Mountain Pipeline, urging the federal government to “build that pipe,” its arguments including the substantial blow inflicted on the Alberta economy by current realities in the oil marketplace, the loss of jobs and revenue, and asserting that it is a Canadian, not an Alberta dilemma so the federal government must act.

3. A group of physicians are lobbying for an exception in Medical Assistance in Dying legislation that would allow physicians to refuse giving such assistance (or referring patients to doctors who would be willing) for conscience reasons. (Echoes of an earlier clash of values during woman’s- choice/right-to-life conflicting views.)

4. Although largely settled now, the inclusion of a Christian prayer in a public school classroom was discontinued in response to arguments of church/state separation and a rights argument, i.e. that all faith and non-faith persons need to have a home in public education institutions.

5. Although seemingly absurd, would those who made their living by selling weed in back alleys have a legitimate complaint to make about the legalizing of pot and its negative effect on their livelihoods?

Coming back from three years abroad in voluntary service for my church in 1989, I was experiencing months of frustration trying to find employment again in a saturated public-education marketplace. It never occurred to me to carry a placard insisting that the government solve my dilemma. On the contrary, I accepted that my own choices, my own values, my own ingenuity or lack thereof stood between me and satisfying employment at the moment. I worked hard at refocusing my efforts and landed a job-retraining position with the Alberta government. It turned out to have been a good choice—gave me a rewarding ten years of work, albeit with adjusted expectations.

This observation is not meant to be a reiteration of the “when I was a kid, I had to walk five miles to school and back, uphill both ways” story, nor do I mean it to denigrate the anxiety felt by Albertans with no jobs, doctors with convictions that clash with the public majority, people who believe that public schools in Canada are bound to uphold a Christian viewpoint, and not pot-smuggling/retailing gangs. It’s not about “tsk, tsk, kids these days.”

What it is about is finding the right balance between the application of the majority public will over against the significant individual needs and wishes of minority groups and individuals. We suck at this, some would say; just watch the news with this thought in mind and you’re bound to agree.

Some days I think it’s impossible to find a “smooth politic,” a way of living together that prevents the public will’sⁱ invariably raising outrage in one or the other of its scattered pockets and sub cultures. On other days, I compare what we have achieved to what has historically been the case and what we see in other places in the world and I conclude that our national tranquility has found a level that’s probably “as good as it gets.”

Perhaps the problems we see in the news are being viewed dimly, as in a mirror (to channel the Apostle Paul) and we need a refresher course on the basics of governance, particularly on the impulses that led us to believe that everyone should have an equal input into our choice of leadership and that that theoretically leads to “the greatest good for the greatest number.” (And—importantly—when our choice of leadership proves to have been mistaken, we can peacefully show them the door at the next election.) Perhaps its not the basics of our governance that are faulty, but rather the degree of our indignation at and response to choices that respond to the public will, but not to our individual preferences.

It’s always been the case: we as citizens have had to adapt in our individual lives to circumstances not of our choosing or preference. The option to live lives not contingent in every respect upon the public will is safeguarded by the Charter of Rights and Freedoms; if you want your child definitely to begin every school day with the Lord’s Prayer, you are allowed to innovate by getting together with the like-minded and establishing a school where that happens. The protest that everyone in the country ought to intone the Lord’s Prayer is misplaced; the very aspect of the public will that defends atheist’s right not to recite the Lord’s Prayer guarantees another individual’s right to do so. How could it do better than that?

Are the Alberta protests really cries of lament more than the expressed indignation of a people wronged? Is it the reality that adding another fossil-fuel pipeline is a rearranging of the deck chairs on a sinking ship and the sorrow that accompanies such a doomed task? Is the anger and frustration being directed at the federal government because no other “distant” cause comes to mind and self-blame is not on? Is Alberta in a retool and innovate mode as it will undoubtedly have to be?

And you ranch and dairy corporations and individuals, do you really expect governments to protect the status quo indefinitely in a rapidly changing world where the very environment is at stake, where healthcare consumes the greatest portion of tax dollars? Are you really determined to defy the public will in this, to refuse the challenges of innovation, of re-tooling, of redirecting what you do and the way you do it? Are you planning to force-feed the public your overstock of product if necessary?

Doctors of conscience, have you considered your position as individuals and as a group if the national public will determines that a physician acts in the expressed interests of patients from birth through death, or forfeits his/her license to practice? Is there any possibility of medicine going the route of the private school or home schooling in order to function effectively and legally as an enclave of dissenting values? Are you planning for that likely eventuality?

And you back-alley drug pushers, have you considered getting a job??

The public will in a democracy like ours will always feel a bit like an insensitive juggernaut, especially if you’re part of a minority on substantial issues. At the same time, Canada has worked hard at making it possible for minorities to succeed economically and to share basic human rights . . . if not always successfully. Perhaps it’s time we all put down our placards and began dialogues, took civics classes and generally, determined how we live with our realities without abusing and threatening each other.

Substituting wherever possible, ingenuity for indignation.

iBy “public will,” I mean as expressed in the democratically elected leadership and the legislation and action coming out of that leadership. In Canada today, there is no other legitimate definition of “public will.”

"Truths" about climate change - take your pick!

THE TREE: Environmental Crime Fighter Extraordinaire

“In a report released Thursday, the Canadian Chamber of Commerce says there is general consensus in Canada that something needs to be done about climate change, and the debate should not be about if, but how that happens.

“Aaron Henry, the chamber’s director of natural resources and environmental policy, said the businesses that make up its membership agree a carbon price is the most efficient way to do it.

“'Our members are very much in favour of it,' he said. 'They’re happy to do this. We applaud the Canadian government’s direction on this.'”

*****

Some of the population will applaud the Chamber's stance, some will reject it. Others will be uncertain what to think and some will take a stand without knowing the science. Some will see a sinister motive in the Chamber's declaration. There's a lot of “truth” around about climate change, and if you haven't adopted a “truth” yet, a few are listed here to help you choose.

Pick your truth:

1. Climate change is driven by nature's cycles and trying to influence it is pointless; we just need to adjust to some changes and that's no big problem.
2. Burning of fossil fuels is a major contributor to climate changes that will have disastrous global consequences and Canada is obligated to reduce the use of fossil fuels as an energy source as much and as quickly as possible.
3. Since Canada contributes less than 2% of the worldwide emissions contributing to climate change, actions that cost our economy make no sense.
4. A prosperous Canada is in a position to be a leader in green technology and in devising ways to reduce fossil fuel dependency; it's our country's obligation to global health and safety to show the way. It's also a huge economic opportunity.
5. Switching to clean energy doesn't cost jobs, it just shifts them to other ventures and venues. Canada is in a position to show how this can be done.
6. The environmental movement is little more than a conspiracy to boost the support for globalism and liberal policies.
7. Even if climate change's disastrous effects were real and predictable, we'll never get people to buy into change that affects their living standard. It's hopeless, so forget it.
8. The most effective way to persuade people to change their habits is to tax what they should not do and reward what they should.
9. If you give people and corporations the facts, they will change their habits on their own, even if it costs them something.
10. Corporations run everything, including the government and they manage to turn every argument into a scare about “hurting the economy, jobs.”
11. Fighting climate change and growing the economy can be done simultaneously.
12. What the Chamber said (see above).
13. I agree with Trudeau who thinks a carbon tax is the best way to go, that “Conservative politicians . . . still think pollution should be free"
14. I agree with what Trump tweeted: “Brutal and Extended Cold Blast could shatter ALL RECORDS - Whatever happened to Global Warming?”
15. I agree with what Scheer said, that Trudeau's carbon tax is just an election gimmick.
16. What-EV-er.

Who can be healed . . . and how?

Winter 2008, the North Saskatchewan at Shekinah

 

 

Details of the kidnapping, rape and murder of young Tori Stafford by Michael Rafferty and Terri-Lynne McClintic in April of 2009 were established in trials. Both were sentenced to life in prison for a crime so unspeakable that these details had to be delivered in euphemisms to juries and the public. It's hard to imagine any crime more debased and cruel than theirs.

It's not surprising that McClintic's transfer to a healing lodge in Saskatchewan would raise the angry reaction that it did. In a world where nothing can be imagined that would satisfy the standard of “an eye for an eye” in such a case as Stafford's murder, it was an easy jump for many to see the transfer as the diminishing of a sentence that was already far more lenient than they would have found just and appropriate.

The loud, indignant protests came from all sides up to and including the Parliament of Canada. If there were voices in defense of McClintic's transfer, I didn't hear them. If there were voices defending Justice Canada's competence in the appropriate placement of convicts, I didn't hear them either. Two problems with this stand out: the appeal to the government to reverse the decision of Justice Canada sets a dangerous precedent, particularly in that politicians are not present in the deliberations leading to any placement of a convict and so are most likely to act out of political expedience when pressed. Secondly, it undermines confidence in justice personnel trained and experienced in the difficult decisions that go into prisoner placement.

But then, it's not a new phenomenon: we appoint the best people we have to administer difficult portfolios and then we second-guess, berate and undermine them out of our ignorance, our uninformed perceptions. It's a small step toward anarchy, toward populism.

Taken all together, it reinforces the fact that our collective propensity is to see criminal and social justice to be primarily retributive. It's an “eye for an eye” view that is arguably incompatible with New Testament ethics.ⁱ Experience shows us that revenge justice doesn't act as a deterrent, that it doesn't rehabilitate offenders and that it does nothing for the victims of crime except providing them with whatever comfort can be taken from knowing that the perpetrators of a crime are suffering as they have caused others to suffer.

Whereas the overarching theme of Christian faith is for restoration, it's taken prisoner-visitation programs, Circles of Support and Accountability and the indigenous healing lodges to foster the restoration, rehabilitation option in the justice system. If restoration were really significant in our justice system overall, every jail, every penitentiary would be a healing lodge. This doesn't mean that “soft on crime” should govern our justice system; the onus to give up freedom for a period commensurate with the crime and the obligation to participate fully in whatever is prescribed so that a convict comes out of his/her sentence as a decent, law-abiding human being, these standards alone should govern release.

Unfortunately, the concept of restorative justice and the reputation of the healing lodge as an incarceration alternative have both taken a black eye through the events surrounding the McClintic transfer. There is no possibility that Michael Rafferty and Terri-Lynne McClintic can ever make adequate reparation for the horrible crime they committed, no matter how long, how arduous the retributive punishment. What little they might someday contribute to society as reparation can only be counted on if sentencing is tailored to ensure that they are finally released as repentant, nonthreatening, contributing members of society.

Or do we really believe that some humans are irredeemable? And if so, are we ready to judge which are and which aren't? 

iMatthew 5 is often cited as a guide to ethics surrounding matters of the Christian response to wrongdoers, although it is obviously personal as opposed to corporate in intent. Anabaptist, Quaker and other denominations have based their stance against violence and retribution on the life and witness of Christ more generally. Philosophically, the efficacy of pacifism and non-violence can be linked to discussions of restorative vs. retributive justice in any number of ways, particularly as regards the objective of social peace. For a useful primer, click here.

Sorting people politically 101

. . . short days ago, we lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow. Loved and were loved . . ..

If you click HERE, the website of Conservative Move will open for you. Here you'll find help if you're fed up with living in a progressive/Democratic area and want to move to a more conservative/Republican state to be with people who think like you. It's been called “sorting,” a movement that homogenizes communities, thereby providing peace from the stress of conflicting opinions, ideals. (Naturally, real estate opportunities have presented themselves as the website attests.)

“Sorting” after this fashion isn't new to us. Refugees tend to be attracted to places in a receiving country where language and culture are familiar; faith communities splinter into pools of theologically-homogenous groupings; suburbs evolve into enclaves of like-mannered; similar-stratum populations; cliques and gangs arise wherever people from a mix of demographics occupy the same space: schools, neighbourhoods, etc.

A caution being raised is that the chasm opening up between progressive and conservative elements can only become more and more pronounced as a result of people hearing only their preferred point of view day after day.

Can a democracy survive such deliberate, escalating segregation of opinion. Will it function if there's no longer the possibility of genuine, thoughtful debate? What will governance look like in future if politics is expressed primarily in emotional, angry rallies and/or placard-waving demonstrations?

In his essay, “Freedom as a Characteristic of Man in a Democratic Society”¹ American philosopher J.W. Miller writes “Man is indeed a social animal, but it would, I believe, be a mistake to interpret his primary sociability as political. When that mistake gets made, there is nothing for it but to treat man as an object, and then he is devoured by the managers who, one hears, know best how to establish community.” Miller sees functioning democracy as having no future where citizens give up their independent, self-directed persona or where truth is seen to be static and immutable rather than evolving and dynamic. “Sorting,” in Miller's scenario, then, would be tantamount to handing one's autonomy over to a manager whose version of reality will be lived out as an uncontested blueprint for whatever happiness is wanted.

The “mistake” Miller is pointing out has been demonstrated so often historically that it shouldn't come as an epiphany today. When churches, for instance, sort themselves into liberal or conservative, homogenous groups, they routinely skew the gospel in a direction that will justify the leaning that precipitated a split. Furthermore, the real community that once was—the non-political, social one—generally shatters into pieces paralleling the ideological disagreements. Friends, neighbours become dispensable. Conversation, let alone dialogue, difficult at best.

Political sorting that disrupts basic, humanitarian sociability is something democracy simply can't afford. When we begin to hear ourselves resorting to personal-attack mode to bolster our ideological allegiances, we should sense that we are hacking at the very foundation and meaning of democracy itself, a form of governance that we had hoped would ensure peace and cooperation, that would end and then prevent tyranny, that would preserve the dignity and independence of the individual, that would provide justice and fairness for all.

It may be that in America, the democracy canoe has already gone over the waterfall.

1In Miller, John William, The Paradox of Cause & Other Essays. New York: W.W. Norton. 1978