Just Deserts for Dessert

 

A jury decided that Amber Heard committed 10.3 million dollars of defamation on actor, Johnny Depp, and that he in turn inflicted 2 million dollars of defamation upon her. If you followed any of this, you might well have concluded that together they defamed humanity for a great deal more than their judgments added, multiplied by whatever number you choose to pick.

Had their moms been in the jury box instead of a seven barely-interested citizens, it wouldn’t have surprised me if both got sent to their rooms, got grounded for a year, with words like apology, honesty, reconciliation, truth and humility prominent in their release-from-mom’s-house-arrest documents.

I’m fascinated by the meaning of justice, from the age of Old Testament prophecy through the medieval, then the Renaissance and the modern eras to the present. Old Testament justice takes exception to using false weights and measures in trade and bearing false witness and trying (fruitlessly, I might assert) to enforce compliance with cruel and unusual penalties for breaking laws: Leviticus 20:10 decrees that both parties to an adultery shall be killed. 

In fact, a trip through Leviticus reveals a justice system heavily weighted toward defending a peoplehood against contamination by foreign, idol-worshiping neighbours, and in the stoning of miscreants, an ancient iteration of the firing squad in which the people register their support for the justice of the punishment by participating in its execution. Generally put, criminal justice in Leviticus is based on the “life for a life” principle: should you happen to shoot a neighbour’s prized Holstein mistaking it for a moose, fairness says the neighbour is entitled to your prized Jersey. There’s some restorative justice in that, alongside an arguably good way to make justice fair.

How the jury came up with the differential in the dollar value of one defamation compared to the other is well beyond me, except that it caters for a sensibility of how much each of the combatants could have earned had they not been defamed … where Depp’s loss would arguably be greater than Heard’s.

I listened to some of the cross-examination of Heard by Depp’s lawyers. I saw video of the Depp idol worshippers outside the courthouse cheering every blow upon a woman obviously struggling with some serious mental issues, crying out to see her blood spilled, her entrails hung in the public square. To say more than this about that would be well above my pay grade, but I saw little of justice in the outcome, possibly because Depp’s “this jury gave me my life back,” seemed to miss the obvious corollary that he gained his monetary, star-life back at the expense of hers.

If that’s justice, it certainly isn’t the kind the prophet was talking about in Micah 6:8, where the admonition to “do justice” is followed by “love mercy” and then “walk humbly.” A closer look at most criminal and civil court “justice” so often displays an underlying assumption that justice must be stern and unflinching, and give no nod to mercy or humility or any other signal of weakness. We tend to like our justice adversarial, not restorative.

A truck driver fails to stop at a crossing and this failure results in the death of sixteen hockey players, the driver and coach and many more injured. We’d be right, I think, in assuming at the outset that restoration to a previous state for those involved is simply impossible, while at the same time, acknowledging that there is no eye for an eye, Levitical- or Sharia-like “justice” to be applied here: the driver cannot be flayed, mocked and crucified sixteen times. But how many years of incarceration would smell enough like justice? And if he and his family were deported to a country from which they fled in hopes of a better life, would that help to satisfy the thirst for justice? Or are we talking about retribution, revenge here?

In the Depp/Heard civil court trial, justice—or its lack—was measured in dollars and cents. That Depp said the judgment in his favour gave his life back is a reminder that injustice touches much more than the pocketbook: dignity, standing, self-respect, reputation, for starters, and assigning dollar value to any of these is very tricky. The value justice systems place on intangibles is telling: that Amber Heard has no money to pay the settlement, was shown by evidence to be truth-telling unreliable, (possibly a compulsive inventor of “truth”)  yet “fit to stand trial,” none of that figures in the judgment and indeed, can’t. To be restorative in the case of estrangement between Hollywood marriage partners, of course, invokes the question, “which of this person’s marriage arrangements are we supposed to be arbitrating here?” To speak of justice in an unjust, capitalist-consumerist environment is another story, but highly relevant in most every case where justice is being sought.

Food for thought: CoSA is a program meant to prevent reoffending by persons released from prison after a sentence for sex crime. Circles of Support and Accountability, it’s called and it’s largely funded through local donations and the federal government. CoSA has had to lobby hard for continued federal funding and is facing pressure to do with less and less support from that source. The principle of restorative justice is central to CoSA; statistically, it’s been highly effective in reducing recidivism among released sex offenders. Read about it here.

Some would say that the switch from eye-for-an-eye to adversarial to discovery to restorative justice is the central theme of the New Testament. I tend to agree. Isn't "being reborn" itself an acknowledgement that I've been a recipient of undeserved reconciliation, restoration? A justice borne of mercy? 

"You can't beat a child into behaving gently." -Klavier Onk 

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Where do I sign?”

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

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

 

 

   

An Image from Spiritus Mundi

 

An Eigenheim pasture, 2006

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

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

Poor you.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

              

                 

              

              

              

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

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

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

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

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

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

Skepticus: You’re thinking of China, Pierre.

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

Skepticus: China again. Sorry.

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

Skepticus: Russia, Pierre. Russia, not Canada.

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

  

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

You busy?

Wear a mask.

Say Goodbye to the holy-whore

 

Claude Monet: Sunrise Impression

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

How much is a picture worth?

 

Make Buns, not Propaganda. 

“A picture is worth 10,000 words,” so says an ancient Chinese proverb. What I learned in a communications course at the University of Alberta is that that sentiment is only true when making propaganda.

               A political party was holding a rally, but realized too late that attendance would fall far short of filling the venue they’d booked. So they ushered to one side all those that did come, and when photographed, the impression left was that the room was packed. We expect visuals to be “truthful,” and forget that there are many ways to make a photo support a desired impression in the mind of the beholder.

               News media are (inadvertently, often) guilty of news distortion with the pictures they present. In a disaster, cameras and reporters gravitate to the worst examples of destruction and that’s not surprising. It’s only that those photographs give viewers an impression that the destruction is general to a locale, whether it be Florida, or Wakaw, or Istanbul, even Ukraine. Using such photos in a news story doesn’t lie; it just fails to project a reliable context for the event.

               And then there are still the many photographers’ options that can help to make a statement out of a photograph: camera angle, focal point, distorting lenses, shutter speed, not to mention the Photoshop possibilities, like removing or planting people in or out of a scene, for instance.

               I can hardly watch movies anymore. Say a couple is making passionate love on a couch in front of a fire. I’m counting the number of cameras used to film the scene, estimating how many people are behind those cameras: operators, sound persons, director, “key grip or best boy,” (whatever those are). And I imagine the negotiations between the producers and the actor’s agents as to how the scene will be shot, how much clothing will have to be removed, etc., and I’m wondering how the actors went about explaining to their spouses, and possibly to their children, how it is that they had to act out having sex with another actor because “it’s my job.” (Sometimes I imagine one or the other actor saying, “If we have to reshoot this scene, I hope you’ll remember to brush your damned teeth first!”)

               How easy it is to jump start our imaginations, especially if we “can see it with our own (or a photographer’s) eyes! Also, how easy it is to convince us of either a fact or a non-fact by flashing a photo at us. A picture is worth 10,000 words? Not always, friends. Not always.

               “Suspension of Disbelief” is a phrase we use to express what makes us able, for instance, to enjoy a story or movie in which animals talk and act as if human. Quite naturally, we intuit that feature movies, even docudramas are not unvarnished news, that they are inventions. But we suspend this disbelief so that the flights of our triggered imagination can become a source of pleasure, even of a sense of what might be believed to echo reality in a new way, when we rightfully call it art. Thing is, art doesn’t claim to be news.

               Unless we have a firm grounding in what’s logically believable and what traps exist to fictionalize events to match our prejudices, we easily become propaganda consumers. Take a growing consciousness that “experts” can’t be trusted, possibly over a few demonstrable misjudgments on their part. Propaganda includes the appropriation of such cracks in trust, and spins out every example it can find that reinforces that consciousness. The current diatribe against “mainstream media” is a case in point: of course they get it wrong and have to correct themselves more often than they ought, possibly. Propaganda encourages an “all news is crap if it’s reported by the mainstream” by publicizing every mistake that can be found in order to raise a consciousness of major news being corrupt or joined in a conspiracy to misinform. The purpose is to set up a binary: if mainstream news is all bad, then the alternative must be good. Read Epoch Times on line and judge for yourself. And be equally skeptical about “mainstream” broadcasting; they make mistakes too, remember.

               As with the photo that misleads more than it enlightens, perfect news reporting is an impossibility. Journalists have to be somewhere; being everywhere—even being situated in a place that allows for filling out the complete context in which events are happening—is simply out of the question. Furthermore, every one of us is biased, a consequence of our raising, education, training and job experience. That this makes suspect the validity of everything mainstream news reports is the job of propaganda. During the invasion of Ukraine, Russia has shut down all independent reporting, allowing only government versions of events to be broadcast.

               Seems the majority of us don’t protest the distortions of propaganda until they touch us, exact a price from us personally.  How best to respond to friends who are propaganda-convinced is not easily discerned, and reading and thinking critically about what we read—and see on TV and social media—is not a slam-dunk answer, but it is a start. Abandoning what Jesus’ taught us about love is definitely not an option for those who claim to be Christians first, foremost and always.

               Obama is a legitimate American, John Wayne held harmful white supremacist and racist views, Jesus was adamant that we should love our neighbours and our enemies, a wall across America can’t solve immigration control issues, COVID can’t be cured with Ivermectin or by injecting bleach, masking in public lowers COVID transmission rates, having the most massive military can’t keep North Americans safe in a nuclear age … if these things are declared untrue, then is there any truth at all?

               NEXT POST: How to write effective propaganda.  

              

Our grandkids will p*ss on our graves.

A PARABLE:  An elementary school initiated a new way of evaluating student progress after observing that the individual students’ grades were being compared, that students with low grades were being taunted, and parents were pressing for medal awards to students with the highest marks. Teachers were beginning to recognize that a negative atmosphere was permeating the school after testing times as a consequence.

               The plan they came up with was to put the focus on group—rather than individual—achievement. They switched to numbered scores on tests, then added all the scores and gave the school a total score made up of all the student’s numbers. What was hyped via a huge banner in the hallway after testing times was this total score and whether and by how much it exceeded the earlier testing-time’s score. Every student’s grades contributed to a win for the student body.

               It didn’t work. Grade fours figured out very soon who contributed how much and the staff realized quickly that the achievers wanted desperately to be recognized as winners, expected their moment of glory.  Despite knowing what penalty the achievement-handicapped students had to bear so that the achievers and their parents could win gold, the staff sought other ways to reduce the zero-sum mindset these children were bringing to school with them. (Zero-sum simply means that every win must be accompanied by a loss. For instance in hockey, a win is recorded as a +1, a loss as a -1, the two added together equal zero.)

                The winner-loser mentality is endemic to most cultures, possibly at its most pronounced in Western societies. Not only sports but politics, economics, justice systems, even education are deeply affected by the win/lose mentality. Political parties shamelessly campaign to win; success in commerce is measured by profit/loss numbers with little said about a business’ community contribution. You’d think restorative justice would be embraced as a common-sense approach, but no, courts must produce winners and losers.

               A final exam in my Teachers’ College year had only two questions. I aced the one but couldn’t for the life of me get the other one, which asked me to do a basic Arithmetic operation like 2,855/75 in the decimal (base 10 numeration system) and in the binary (base 2 numeration) number systems. My mark, of course, was 50%. I’m pretty sure that the binary system (which, by the way, is the numeration system of computing) was never taught to me because my elementary and high school math teachers also got 50% on basic numeration, probably, and they couldn’t do that puzzling problem because their teachers in turn hadn’t fundamentally got it. Whether it’s numeration, or zero-sum thinking or the pros and cons of the parliamentary system of democracy, we pass our knowledge, our ignorance, and our misconceptions and biases down, generation to generation.

               I visualize here the proverbial “hockey-mom,” screaming at the coach to put her boy on the ice, screaming at the referee for putting him in the penalty box, screaming at her son later for taking a stupid penalty that cost them the game. Character building sport? Granted, this description is stark and unfairly misrepresentative of much of the hockey world, but like the teachers trying to help large classes of differently endowed students to become the best they can be, zero-sum thinking starting in the cradle isn’t helpful … not by a long shot.  

               There’s an argument of support for winning/losing in sports, in politics, even in musicianship. Zero-sum competition encourages us to become the best we can be, it says. We need to talk about that: moms and dads don’t become the best parents a child could have by competing with the neighbours; teachers don’t become the best teachers through popularity contests. Furthermore, what application follows from being the one in the whole world who can throw a discuss farthest? And let’s be honest; it’s not about fitness either, which can be had without cutthroat competition. 

            What it is about is the repeated gratification of our “zero-sum addiction.”  We satisfy our lust for zero-sum stimulation by watching winners humiliate losers in sports, mainly, but also in music competitions, elections, wealth accumulation, etc. “Take that, you deadbeats!” Movies that feature good guys annihilating bad guys are way more popular than those which climax with a reconciliation.

               There are those whose primary leisure occupation is watching sports on a big screen TV. Better that then drinking to excess in a bar that features the humiliation of women by paying them to remove their clothing, I suppose, but we ought to remember at least these two things:

·       Professional sports, the corporation-driven fleecing of fans hooked on zero-sum spectacles, is not sport, it’s commerce. A professional hockey player I won’t name earned almost exactly as much as I did in my entire 25-year career as a teacher … in one month! And when he was offered more, he moved to a rival team and left his fans crying.

·       Every Saturday night, a father of elementary school-aged boys gathers with some work friends on the rec room couch to watch Hockey Night in Canada, drink beer and eat pizza. Depending on the nature of their actions and conversation, the boys will absorb their dad’s attitude toward televised “sports.” Perhaps they will come to believe that zero-sum competition is where it’s at, bring it to school, and perhaps they’ll feel luckiest as adults when whole weekends are made up of beer, pizza and wall to wall hockey, curling, basketball and football … watching, that is, not playing.

THIS MATTERS: The future we’re facing demands that we continue educating ourselves from reliable sources; it takes time and effort to be a lifelong learner. We also need to be participants; doers more than watchers. We’ve got to put more effort into reducing our demands on the environment, curb our appetites for owning the best, the most, the “funnest” gadget on the market. We won’t save the planet for our grandchildren by frittering away our time with beer, pizza and the zero-sum crap all around us. Above all, we’ve got to stop making excuses for our indifference to events “out there.” For future generations, the historic imagery of baby boomers shuffling around the house in pyjamas because “we were just so busy, busy and so we were so tired, exhausted even.”

We’re not tired, our aimlessness and the world we’ve allowed to develop in our indolence has left us guilty, stressed, anxious and feeling tired, and we’re apparently not smart enough to know that more indolence is not the cure for what ails us.

              Our grandchildren will p*ss on our graves when the full force of our self-indulgent lethargy becomes apparent, when their world burns, then floods, then refuses to produce food, and half the planet’s surviving people are refugees. The history books they study will tell them that even when it came to rescuing and restoring the planet, our generation saw the dialogue as yet another zero-sum game. Why not? Perhaps the fossil fuel people won and went jubilantly into their dotage with their pockets full of money. Those environmentalists are such losers! +1 + -1 = 0

              “Ah, well. Forget all that. The Olympics are on. Canada’s probably gonna win a gold medal in the pool today.”

              “What?? Canada swims??”

 

A Question without answers

 

So first about me: I’m a do-gooder, nominally motivated by my faith, preaching way more than I’m practicing, so, a hypocrite, if not a dangerous one. I’m both mystified and disappointed by people and movements that turn their words and actions increasingly toward misanthropy and away from the mother-love they experienced in their infancy.  

               Oh, I know. ‘Twas ever thus since Cain killed Abel (and way before that, actually), through the Battle of Hastings, the Peasant Wars, the World Wars, and all the millennia of political warfare, social and ethnic strife—it all bugles the mind (pun intended). Much like all these have shown repeatedly, this rape of Ukraine by Russia will prove again that violence begets violence, and that every shot fired at a neighbour proceeds first through the shooter’s foot. “Therefore, never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee!” (John Donne)

               I donate to Community Peacemaker Teams, Mennonite Central Committee, Amnesty International, Mennonite Disaster Service, MC Canada Witness Program and to my conference and church, presuming that the dollars will serve to bring the world closer to Christ’s many appeals for love, peace, justice and mercy. It’s hard to keep trusting that hope when my very neighbours are turning toward the kick-ass view of the world and saying “To hell with ‘love your neighbour.’ I’m gonna get me some. Me, me, me.”

               Perhaps the way of sorrows, the path of suffering is the only path there is. Perhaps human nature is simply flawed to the point where Adam’s and Eve’s disobedience—if you accept the allegory—was predictable, even predestined. If not in their creation, then in their evolution.

               And yet, there are many men and women who are kind, generous and sociable, who practice justice and mercy with strength and humility. Men and women who work well with others, negotiate and compromise when they disagree. Know how to forgive and accept forgiveness.

Does misanthropy, selfishness pop up in members of the population like a gene mutation? Or does it hinge on training principles, like the difference between a “bad dog” and a “good doggie” reflects on the owner’s inability to train and educate? This seems to me to be a critical question impinging on child rearing and educational practices.

   If it’s all in the genes, well, we’re obviously screwed.

           As we watched the news last night, Agnes turned to me and asked, “What can we do to help?” The standard answer around here is that we should pray for the people of Ukraine. We’ve already personally donated two weeks of income to the Mennonite Centre in Molochansk; we could send more, and then even more than the more—our credit is good. I’ve put an appeal on Facebook for donations connected to International Women’s Day, March 8. I mused about finding a way to get over there (maybe to Zaporozhje[i] where my ancestors came from) and perhaps I could shout at the Russian soldiers to go home, hand out tracts like the leaflets dropped on competing armies in WWII telling soldiers that their wives and girlfriends were cheating on them at every opportunity.

           But I am answerless. I’ve seen enough of war to know that contrary to much of the Christian world’s protests, no God makes us do wars, no God decides to allow us to practice brutalities on each other, and no God reaches down to pluck out the tanks and mortars and bombers in order to prevent the spilling of innocent blood. Our religions serve us only as far as they both energize and give us direction for our behaviours, and nobody else’s. You would like to see God? Just look down at your hands. Whatever they do is what your God does, from rescuing children to mowing them down in the street.

           Is our “peacemaker” role in this world, then, anymore than a pipe dream? Not at all. If your hands and my hands reach out to the suffering, even in something as crass, as small as writing a cheque for a few thousand dollars rather than buying a newer car, haven’t we introduced the “God of Justice and Mercy” to the world? What more can anyone do?  

                 

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[i] The spelling in English of this city’s name varies. I’ve even seen it spelled two ways in one tourism website belonging to Ukraine.

False Logic and the Freedom Convoy

8  Types of Logical Fallacies affecting the current split in Canada regarding the “Freedom Convoy.”

• —An ad Hominem fallacy uses personal attacks rather than logic. In relation to the current split precipitated by the Freedom Convoy, both sides are guilty: the protestors heaping disdain on politicians and the opposite side characterizing protestors as ignoramuses. The end of ad hominem false logic is that it obscures the vital issues at hand while unfairly demeaning the opponent.
• — Straw Man fallacies reduce the disagreement to an attackable size. Presently the debate about a national approach to a pandemic is a monumental issue that’s been reduced to attackable size. On the protest side, the straw man being attacked is the over-simplified “Freedom” shibboleth. The other side in the controversy has made the cost and inconvenience of the occupation it’s straw man, one that can be (supposedly) eliminated in police action.
• — Appeal to Ignorance is simply explained by a statement like, “I didn’t see Joe at the demonstration, so he obviously wasn’t there.” Individual protestors can say there was no violence in the group of occupiers because they were there and didn’t see any. On the other side, it’s too easy for counter-arguers to say the police committed no violent acts against protestors because they watched all available videos and saw none.
• — Slippery Slope fallacies are predictions that what is happening now will continue to its worst possible outcome. Protestors have been saying that the freedom to cross international borders without vaccine protocols will get worse and worse until all of us have lost our basic freedoms. The counter-arguers warn that unless this occupation is successfully disbursed and the perpetrators punished, this kind of illegal occupation will become routine every time there’s a dispute.
• — Hasty Generalizations are often inserted into arguments as evidence for a set of facts. In simple terms, it’s like saying that smoking doesn’t really harm health because Grandpa smoked all his life and lived to be 100. Basing an argument on a few instances is a logical fallacy used by both sides, who select isolated incidents and publicize them as validating their opinions. There are 7 billion People on the planet; incidents of even the most bizarre anecdotes can easily be found.
• — Red Herring logical fallacies attempt to divert debate from the real issues. In the current division over pandemic protocols, the assertion that it’s about individual freedom can be considered a red herring since Canadian law makes all kinds of individual actions mandatory in the interest of public safety. On the counter-argument side, anything from the inconvenience borne by residents of Ottawa or the support from foreign sources might be red herrings drawing us away from the real question of governance during pandemic times.
• — Appeal to Hypocrisy along with ad hominem fallacies both fall into the category of attacking persons instead of issues. In the case of the former, the strategy is to scuttle an opponent’s argument by asserting that he/she/they don’t practice what they preach. Protestors rail against the Canadian government for bypassing the freedom clause in the Charter of Rights and Freedoms while preaching its defense of freedom. The counter-arguers make much of the “you can’t win freedom by stealing it from others” argument. Hypocrisy, in both cases, with valid reason, possibly, but failing in logic.
• — Argumentum ad populum fallacies point to the number of people who endorse an opinion as proof for the validity of that opinion. In this case, the Freedom Convoy has pointed to its numbers and its widespread support as evidence of the rightness of their cause. The counter-arguers have pointed to polls suggesting that 70% of Canadians approve of the dismissal of unvaccinated employees. Correct statistics can be hard to gather; in any group, the 19 who agree on a plan may be shown in retrospect to have been wrong while the one dissenter was right.

I’ve listed only seven logical fallacies. Some texts and websites list more than 40. What is most disappointing to me in this age of social media and the leaking of divisive, confrontational communication from south of the border, is that it’s becoming almost impossible to separate the false from the factual information. People without the ability to detect when a statement is fallacious or logical are put in a real bind, one in which charlatans have free rein on our loyalties and emotions. 

Brecht, McLuhan and movie violence

 

I’ve been working my way through the many episodes of How to Get Away with Murder on Netflix. It’s one of those productions that explores the dark, seamy side of the American policing, courts, and big money. I could criticize a few choices made in the writing, but somehow it drew me in like a fire, or a car crash, so horrifying that you can hardly look away.

The main plot involves a professor in an American law school who picks half a dozen students in her class to work with her in her law practice as a kind of work experience. She’s a cracker-jack defense attorney, but it turns out that her successes in the courtroom depend heavily on a strategy of win at any cost. Typically, the defense of a client begins with denial, then lying, then tampering with witnesses, then shifting the focus onto someone else and, finally, manipulating the jury with a convincing oration. As the plot develops, these tactics rub off on the students and it’s their progressive downfall that the plot follows.

How to Get Away with Murder raises some thought-provoking questions. If in a society, winning at all costs includes calculated deception, bribery and threat, how long does it take until the number that can be trusted dwindles to none? We all know how being lied to on trivial matters leads to mistrust on even weightier things. We also know that dishonesty, deception and its cousins are universal temptations because we all want to be bathed in the best light. But when the courts, law enforcement, governments and wealth are full of people who legitimize such strategies almost as a habit, what happens eventually to justice?

I’m following that up with a series called Start Up, which shares many of the characteristics of How to Get Away with Murder: internet hacking, copious gratuitous sex, graphic murder, and corruption in the halls of power and law enforcement. Assuming makers of film series respond to demand, I find the series troubling—assuming, of course—that this type of content is actually what's drawing the largest audiences.

I don’t want to be prudish, curmudgeonly. Like you, I’ve been too many times around the block for that. I occasionally ponder the meaning of passages like Matthew 15:11 (ESV) “… it is not what goes into the mouth that defiles a person, but what comes out of the mouth; this defiles a person.” Is Jesus talking about eating and vomiting here? Are the person defiling and the one defiled the same person? Do we gradually become defilers by too much watching, reading material spewed out by defilers in love with money? “You are what you eat” also comes to mind, but I can’t find that passage in my Bible. I’m trying to remember, is that other saying, “Life reflects art” or is it “art reflects life?”

Bertold Brecht is quoted thus: “We have art in order not to die of the truth. Life beats down and crushes the soul and art reminds you that you have one. If art reflects life, it does so with special mirrors.” I hesitate to call How to Get Away with Murder and Start Up art, but that we have these series to prevent us “dying of the truth” connotes  what? That art makes us recognize that our world could be a lot worse than it is? But here I’m wandering into the complex world of human psychology.

Marshall McLuhan coined the expression, “The medium is the message.” “McLuhan argued that modern electronic communications (including radio, television, films, and computers) would have far-reaching sociological, aesthetic, and philosophical consequences, to the point of actually altering the ways in which we experience the world.” 

Persons watching action movies and series like I’ve mentioned and doing little reading will come to understand the world differently from the person who gets her/his/their information from books and newspapers. The persons in the “Freedom Convoy” currently happening in Ottawa may have been influenced in the direction they’ve taken by getting their news from computers, social networks and Fox TV News, as opposed to the daily papers.

Which media have shaped those people protesting the protests? I wonder.

As regards the depiction of gratuitous—and generally adulterous or fornicative—sex at least once in every episode and generally contributing little or nothing to the plot, well, I don’t understand it except as porno-candy.

I was about 12, I think, when our country school took us all to a real movie in a real theatre in Rosthern. It was King Solomon’s Mines (1950 version) and I was already edgy when Stewart Granger pulled out a revolver and stuck it into the belly of a bad, fat man … and I ran out of the theatre. In an episode of Start Up, a corrupt cop kills his female partner with the cover of a toilet tank and sits down watching as the puddle of blood grows around her battered head.

I’ve said before that we all believe in censorship, we just draw our lines in the sand at different places. These lines change positions with time, but I hope against hope that the images of violence so freely depicted these days don’t so dominate the minds of impressionable youth that they end up finding them normative. 

I sometimes think we’re already seeing that happening.

Why did you--Brecht, McLuhan--die while we still needed you?