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?  

                 

---

[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.