Ferguson, Missouri, the latest scene in a long-running American tragedy

America is once again bleeding!
She is fraught with so much anger and tension with so many background roots that official government seems unwilling or unable (or both) to do much to alleviate. Of course, the shooting by police of another unarmed young black man who was apparently holding his hands over his head while being shot six times twice in the head, in Ferguson Missouri is the precipitating incident.
However, with three autopsy reports being performed on his body, and dozens of people walking the streets throughout the nights, for the past ten days since the murder of Michael Brown, the removal of the local police force from the duty of providing peace and security, the responsibility having been handed over to the State Highway Patrol department, and the calling in of the National Guard just last night by the governor....there is no end in sight to the simmering angst, which is being compared favourably to other similar situations from other years and other locations throughout the U.S.
Militarizing the police, following 9/11 in a panic of fear, without appropriate training, naturally has provided additional means of crowd control, but the original police shots, plus the overriding of the local police by the governor and the demographic shift of the population of Ferguson, formerly primarily white, now primarily black although the police force itself is mainly white and the feelings of injustice that have been obviously lurking underneath the surface of the community for some time all combine to generate a toxic social cocktail that is leaving a black mark on the face of the community, as well as on the country.
The president has weighed in a couple of times calling for calm and dubbing violence against the police as well as over-reactions by those police as inexcusable, never wanting to "tip the scales" while the situations are proceeding and investigations continuing. People who have driven to Ferguson have allegedly  been arrested, so the situation is providing an opportunity for those seeking to express rage from outside the community to bring their own feelings of injustice and powerlessness to the streets of Ferguson.
This is not the Arab Spring, not the tension in eastern Ukraine, and not the war between Israel and Hamas. It is a very localized set of circumstances. However, it does have the potential of burning another historic wound into the consciousness of the nation.
Race relations, in spite of the election of the first black president, have not been reduced with that election. Race relations, in fact, have undoubtedly become exacerbated, through the growth of the gulf between the have's and the have not's.
There are stunning facts about the suspension and expulsion rates of black young men from American schools, far higher than the rates for while male students. There are also stunning numbers of unarmed black youth having been shot by law enforcement personnel in all corners of the country, numbers that eclipse the figures of white young men in relation to law enforcement. Black mothers speak openly about "having had the talk" with their male children, introducing them to the reality of having to go out into an highly unfriendly world, orienting them to the rigours of how they will have to confront that world, without losing either their dignity or their life and freedom.
White mothers and fathers, on the other hand, simply do not have to have "that talk" and the disparity continues to haunt the streets of communities across the nation.
From the outside, we can only speculate at the depth and the angst of a nation conceived in the violence of rebellion, developed through the even deeper violence of a Civil War that set brother against brother, not over a foreign invader, but over the continuation of slavery, that monster of the abuse of power that will plague the United States so long as there is a United States.
No matter how "developed" and how "advanced" and how "progressive" the country has become, and will continue to become, it will always carry with it in its conscience and in its unconscious, the plague of its own history, in proportions that few nations will understand.
Even when the president sends the Attorney General, Eric Holder, himself a respected black leader, into the situation in Ferguson, to help calm the waters, there is no guarantee that his presence will have the desired impact the president hopes for. There is no single person who has the influence sufficient to the complexities of the situation unfolding in Ferguson to calm the winds of fear, injustice, vengeance and the sheer opportunism that always attaches itself to erupting social wounds.
Criminality, without race overtones, resides inside the body of every town and city; that element will rear its ugly head wherever and whenever the occasion opens to their subversion. With the race element added, the apparent lessening of prospects for young men and women facing a life of an education that is less than what is required to survive and a degree of poverty that attends many in the black community.... the shots fired into the body and head of Michael Brown are nothing short of the spark that ignites the tinder box of a dry and parched economy, that watches the rich grow their incomes and opportunities on the backs of those seemingly "sentenced" to lives of scarcity and resentment.
If those shots actually waken the country to the kind of disparity it has grown and fostered and nurtured, and brings all elements in the political leadership to their senses through legislation that levels the playfield through job opportunities, tax policies and long-term fiscal equity, then they will have brought a needed outcome to a festering disease of denial, insouciance and irresponsibility.
However, the prospects of that kind of long-term resolution to the underlying dynamics are not promising. In fact, the  public consciousness will shift from this crisis to the next, put the faces of experts on the television screens across the country, keep the news departments up all night providing coverage, and then move on to the next enactment of the long-running drama of division, both of race and of opportunity on the streets, in the classrooms, and in the court rooms of the nation.
And the world will be the needed "audience" for this most tragic and epic of struggles, the American battle the with demon of racism, their unique version of the eternal struggle between the powerful and the powerless.

Can and will the world come together to eradicate ISIS?

Whether or not the world is prepared to confront ISIS, ISIL, or whatever these thugs want to call themselves, is still an open question. Whether or not the new iteration of Islamic terror is primarily the result of Assad's civil war in Syria, or the result of former Iraqi prime minister Maliki's pro-Shia approach, that excluded Sunni's from the government of Iraq seems almost a mute question, given the serious threat that these monsters pose for the Middle East, and much less hyperbolically that previously, to the "west".
What is facing the Obama administration, and through it the principal countries comprising the
G7, Britain, France, Germany, Japan, China, Canada (currently excluding Putin's Russia, now destined to reinstate spying capability in Cuba, after having forgiven some $32Billion in Cuban debt to the former Soviet Union) is the primary question of how to bring ISIS to heel, how to dismantle it, disarm it, destroy it....whatever verb seems appropriate...in order to rid the world of the scourge that threatens not only the land regions of Syria and Iraq, but potentially the way of life that includes both religious tolerance and some form of democracy, in order to accomplish their "holy" caliphate.
Iran's hands, arms, weapons and financial support are all over the former Maliki government's Shia leanings, excluding the Sunnis, and whether the new prime ministers, also a Shiite, is really prepared to change course, is another of those questions to which the world will have to wait to learn the answer.
It was Richard Hass, appearing on GPS with Fareed Zakaria, who proposed that the United States ramp up support for the Kurdish forces currently fighting ISIS in Iraq, and help them move through the swiss-cheese boundary that used to exist between Iraq and Syria, and begin to take on the Assad regime, ironically also opposed by the ISIS terrorists.
Why doe the people of the Middle East appear to be facing one of two equally "bad" options, rule under a repressive and Iranian backed tyranny or life under another chapter of ISIS?
And can the world even contemplate one or  both of these options, given the west's reluctance to become fully engaged, with "boots on the ground" in what looks dangerously like a quagmire of military and civil as well as sectarian conflict?
Ethnic and religious "cleansing" as a way to describe the overt mass killings of the encircled Tazidis on Sanjir mountain in northwest Iraq, likely to be renamed Kurdistan very shortly, seems almost clinical and antiseptic, given the impact on families and children. Is the world truly horrified about the massacre of this religious minority, given the hundreds of Syrians who have been slaughtered over the last three years plus in that conflict, without the west using air strikes to defeat Assad?
Or have the western leaders come to the place where avoiding military intervention in Syria is no longer a viable option, given the stronghold that ISIS has established there, far beyond what most observers would or could have predicted only a few months ago?
Of course, recruiting among the Islamists is galloping along, apparently including hundreds at least from many western countries, who, having converted to Islam, are seduced by the brainwashing propaganda of this version of the faith, including the promise of some kind of eternal paradise for those who volunteer to serve as suicide bombers. "National Security" is now the phrase that many observers are using, in reference to the dangers posed indirectly to countries like the United States, and potentially Canada, from these Islamic terrorists, trained to fight in ISIS camps, but potentially returning under their native passports, to inflict harm back home.
Fighting the last war, a theme that attends most conversations about how the western countries approach their military threats, is clearly no longer a viable option, given the dramatic changes that have evolved both through western inaction and from western action since 9/11. The course of Middle East geopolitics has changed dramatically, following the Arab Spring, that eruption that initially promised hope and change from dictatorships to democracies, for those of us naïve enough
to have swallowed that pipe dream. Violence, from and through the rapid growth and development of Islamic radicals, supported by sinister forces both civil and state from the Middle East itself, is now the norm in Syria, Iraq, as well as between Israel and Gaza with Hamas fighting under the umbrella of Iran, while she negotiates with the Group of 5 + 1 over whether or not she will be enabled to develop highly enriched nuclear materials, some fear that could be used in a bomb.
While there are attempts at diplomatic negotiations among and between "state" actors, it is clear that there can be no negotiation with ISIS, that Islamic terrorism, like Ebola, has to be stopped, stamped out and eradicated....and also just like Ebola, there is no known "cure" or political protocol that can or will achieve such an eradication...
The world is facing very dangerous threats from many quarters, spawned it seems by those ready and eager to inflict death and devastation, no matter whether military action is taken against them or not.
Quarantine is a medical tradition, that could help in the Ebola crisis; however, a similar measure is extremely difficult to impose against ISIS, if not impossible. And this ISIS cancer will not "spend itself out" if all carriers are quarantined; in fact, it has demonstrated the capacity to morph into whatever form and shape is needed, above ground and public, or underground and much more secret, depending on the ways in which it views the world's attempt to stop them.
Education, employment and the provision of good food and health care, while necessary in the long run to dry up the pool of recruits to ISIS, will take too long to remove the current threat. We have to come together, as this space has argued for months, as a world community, to put our intellectual, political, military, intelligence and creative capacities and skills together, to devise and to execute a short- medium and long-term strategy to eliminate this movement from our lives.
And we do not have much time.....and even the most responsible political leaders are now expressing similar views. They are no longer the exclusive rant of those who see the apocalypse in every outbreak of violence.

A defence of ambiguity in a world that worships dogmatic certainties

It was David Brooks, on PBS last night, who provided a clear picture of what he called the substantive differences between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama on foreign  policy. Clinton, according to Brooks, is more of a "Kennedy-Truman" Democrat, preferring to use more muscle, or hard power, in more situations, whereas Obama has to be dragged kicking and screaming into any use of military force, to fulfil the goals of America's 'national interest' in the world.
The evidence of the last few days, especially following the Clinton interview with Jeffrey Goldberg in The Atlantic, would seem to support Brooks, especially focusing on what Clinton sees as a failure to arm the rebels in Syria in the early stages of that civil war, a failure that Clinton seems to lay squarely at Obama's feet, and that she speculates led to the rise of ISIS, ISIL, the latest iteration of what began as AlQaeda, and many believe to be much more virulent than the original version.
On the macro level, Obama is following the red-neck Dubya who attempted to impose a wild west mentality of shoot first and ask questions later. Consequently, Obama may have begun his first term convinced that the world needed less of American guns, missiles and hardened will. However, on a more intimate, personal and perhaps even more important level, Obama may well have a different level of tolerance of what some would call "ambiguity".
Ambiguity is a word that has fallen into serious disrepute as the world pursues "all the facts-all the time and everywhere" through all of the means available, including 24-7 news channels, social media and the original establishment news outlets. Ambiguity is the perception that inherently includes uncertainty, even confusion, unknowing and the capacity to hold two opposite positions on the same issue at the same time.
Google defines Ambiguity as a noun meaning: uncertainty or inexactness of meaning in language.

vagueness, obscurity, abstruseness, doubtfulness, uncertainty; formaldubiety; ambivalence, equivocation, double meaning: these are some of the synonyms of the word. "the ambiguity of the rule made it impossible to follow"   One of the more odious connotations of ambiguity is indecisiveness, a failure to choose between two options, in short a serious weakness, especially in a culture dominated by the pursuit and acquisition of power. Ambiguity could then almost be an antonym of power. Our voracious appetite for immediate certainty speaks volumes about our deep and profound uncertainty, insecurity, fear and apprehension. We expect our leaders, unfortunately, to have thirty-second, black-and-white, unequivocal and unambiguous positions on the most complex and intractable problems, and to articulate those positions in the immediacy of the highest moment of the crisis that looms in the latest headline. In tandem with that demand, (and it is clearly a demand because even in the feeding of our appetites, we are unrelenting in our pursuit of their fulfilment) there is a level of stature, respect and political influence afforded to those who can and do articulate black and white positions. "We will decriminalize marijuana"....says Justin Trudeau, in a blatant bribe of the large segment of the population who has and continues to use the weed. "White men are not permitted to live on the reserve" is a current dispute on a Canadian First Nation reserve. "Black men have a target on their back" is a perception among many in Ferguson, Missouri. "The white police force in Ferguson is racist" is another of the unambiguous perceptions in Ferguson. Attempting to calm the storm, President Obama utters another "unequivocal" statement: There is no excuse for violence against law enforcement!" Also, there is no excuse for law enforcement to use excessive  force to achieve public security..... And yet, for many it is not an excuse for the black people of Ferguson to protest the actions of a white policeman who shot and killed a black youth. It is normal, natural and a reasonable expression of both anger and apprehension that they or their son could be next. Venting  violently is what Obama is calling on the people of Ferguson to stop. Violence, as the unequivocal epithet goes, begats violence. So what is it about Hillary's position to deploy American military power that evokes the American 'conservative' spirit, and about Obama's restraint in invoking that military power that evokes contempt from that same American conservative spirit? Is it possible that the American spirit is so dependent on action and action so dependent on clarity and the groundwork of that clarity is defining both the nature of the enemy and the nature of a clear, unequivocal response that will evoke public support, that the public discourse around all issues is limited by this dependence on action. Many will argue that not taking action is also decisive, unambiguous, and clear. Refusing to act for reasons that are  based on a long-term assessment of a situation, both in the midst of the situation and also upon reflection (as was Hillary's critique of Obama's Syrian default) is nevertheless unambiguous. It is, however, for many in the American political class, the wrong kind of decisiveness, the wrong kind of clarity, the wrong kind of leadership. And here is the place at which action comes into direct conflict with passivity....and for most Americans, these two are irreconcilable bedmates. Action and passivity....seemingly mutually exclusive, unless one is able and willing to include a tolerance of ambiguity in one's perception of the situation. If the situation is deemed to be so fragile that intervention of hard power would only exacerbate the dilemma, then most reasonable and responsible people would choose to refrain from intervening. If the situation is so complex that it might be impossible to discern the enemy from the allies, then taking action by military intervention could and likely would rebound on the intervening power. However, one of the dangers of ambiguity is that it can be easily deployed as a method of convincing oneself, or an administration, or a public, not to take action, for reasons unrelated to the situation, such as political survival. If the public has no stomach for military action (as does the American public after Iraq and Afghanistan) then political survival could well be deemed to be "inaction" or a kind of ambiguity with which the American public, as well as it history, is unfamiliar, uncomfortable and even in some quarters contemptuous. It was Dubya who proudly proclaimed, "I do not do nuance!" Obama, on the other hand, could be dubbed "the king of ambiguity and nuance" so capable is he of holding two opposing positions on an issue in a tolerant balance, while discerning the precise and appropriate and long-standing response that is in the best interest of the nation. And all the while is he restraining his response to any of the many complex and entangled situations boiling on the many stove elements around the world, he is inflaming his political foes, and to some extent emboldening them as well. For her part, Hillary could be forging a position midway between her two predecessors, should she chose to run for the White House and win the presidential election in 2016. Ambiguity, however, is not a political quality that warrants much public endorsement. And yet, ambiguity could well be the foundation of a national maturity and even a personal or organisational maturity, that is quite distinct from "burying the head in the sand," in order to avoid facing responsibility. There is much evidence to support the restoration of ambiguity to a position of respectability, especially given the forces ranged against it in their obsessive pursuit of political power. And while America, Russia, and ISIS are all engaged in their own version of excessive ambition, for their political ideologies, (no the American pursuit is not identical with either the Russian or the ISIS ambitions, yet has witnessed similar examples of the abuse of power throughout history) the binary aspect of technology is not as supportive of ambiguity, nor are the testing devices used to determine intellectual acuity, nor are the demands of political leadership, nor are the expectations of medical patients of their doctors, nor, unfortunately are the expectations of religious organizations on their flock. In our headlong abandonment, even destruction, of the value and importance of ambiguity, uncertainty, and the capacity to hold two equally valid and opposing positions on the same issue, we are in danger of a kind of scorched-earth policy against our intellectual capacity and complexity, as well as against our capacity to imagine a variety of situations that can and would readily inhabit the same universe engaging each other in new sparks of creativity and insight, from which some light could be introduced into previously dark corners of our consciousness.

The koolaid of extrinsic addictions: the drug of choice of the power elite

Everyone you meet these days comments somewhere in the conversation, if it extends beyond thirty seconds, that the world seems to be heading in a very dangerous direction....just waiting for a spark to ignite a very big explosion, the dimensions and the implications of which are too brutal even to contemplate.
And there is a trainload of evidence from many quarters that, taken together, bodes ill for a peaceful future. And there is another fleet of ships, all of them industries, schools, churches, corporations, armies, navies and airforces and most professions, all dedicated to the manipulation of the extrinsic symbols.
Pictures too are symbolic of our addiction to the world of evidence that can be manipulated, distorted, and deployed by those in the seats of power, for their own primary advantage.
We have lost our openness to our intrinsic, internal, often unmanageable selves, so busy are we, individually and collectively chasing whatever extrinsic symbols that are our fixations.
From a very early age, we learn how to perform, in order to "please" our caregivers; and we learn that pleasing trend through  both rewards and punishments. We are "conditioned" to seek, to earn and to receive, and thereby to become dependent on the smile, the treat, the hug and the many other rewards depending on the range of  both external resources and human imagination of the caregiver.
Then in schools, the process of our conditioning truly takes on monster proportions. We are herded into a sense of chasing after marks, the extrinsic symbols of those hugs and touches of endearment that we were introduced to in our families of origin. Of course, those whose first years were deprived of those "touches" of endearment will be less familiar with the power structure that seeks to maintain control through a balanced diet of both rewards and punishments and will seek and find activities and vocabulary and attitudes that evoke more negative responses than positive.
Whether through athletics, or technological skills, writing or scientific or math expertise, or just the exemplary capacity and talent to get along with others, we seek and develop paths that express our individual paths to the accumulation of "trophies"...scholarships, bursaries, expressions of applause, and the avoidance of those other kinds of neophyte infamy....frowns, scowls, reprimands, detentions, suspensions, and outright expulsions.
And there are multiple examples of how the "parents" actually interject their neurosis into the educational process, through such interventions as becoming active partners in the conduct of science fair experiments, even to the point of writing the "presentation" for the judges in order to achieve the "best" results for their child. Compete, win, achieve, keep the order of the tradition so that those with power, both legitimately within the family, and then within the social structures and later within the corporate, political, ecclesial and even artistic establishments can and do establish "standards" of behaviour that are uniquely suited to the achievement of their maintenance of that power.
Undergraduates learn the ideological leaning of their professors, including their "interpretation" of the literature under study, the political and historical figures and themes under the microscope, the  passions of their science, economics, technological and arts professors, and regurgitate those leanings through their essays, their reports, their examinations and their attitudes, including the display of incipient passions that reflect, and thereby burnish and polish the public images of their role models.
We rate the teachers, the professors, and even the administrators, through that ubiquitous public survey, a most blunt instrument, just like most of the other blunt instruments that seek to group attitudes, as if the average of the group was a full expression of the complexities of any situation, so that those in charge of "evaluation" can and will be better able to make their decisions.
For example, after attempting to instruct a group of aspiring police officers in a "private career college" on the ethics of police work, and failing miserably to inculcate the notion of withholding judgement while entering any scene of potential violation of the law, I included a optional question on an examination that touched on the issue, hoping that at least one of those students would have grasped the nuances of seeking, if not fully achieving objectivity, as a means of keeping one's attention open wide to the full spectrum of the evidence. When the owner of the "college" questioned those students, in an informal opinion poll, the very fact of the inclusion of that question was overturned into an act of irresponsibility because the "subject" was not covered in the classroom.
On another occasion, while teaching high school English, I constructed a marking scheme that included 5 marks for spelling, grammar and the issues of sentence structure, based on a deduction of one-half mark for each error. (This was obviously back in the dark ages of the 1970's and 80's when such issues mattered.) One student, with a bright mind, had written some very sloppy prose, from the perspective of spelling and grammar and had achieved a C grade when on content alone, the paper would have been an A. The parents, one a school psychologist, the other a professional social worker, petitioned the school in complaint of the marking scheme used for the examination, based on their belief that the classroom had not dedicated adequate time and attention to those issues of spelling and grammar for which their daughter received a low grade. They demanded a meeting of the head of department and myself, and removed their child from the school in order to avoid such poor grades.
Schools, and churches are merely complementary extensions of the families, given their deepening of the process of inculcating potential rewards and punishments for actions that both parents and churches consider "good and evil"....depending on their unique world view.
Only, with the churches, and the legal system, based as it is on a religious origin, there is the added power of God, or the criminal justice system with its many instruments to curb "deviant" behaviour...as those institutions have conceived that behaviour to be. And once again, it is the behaviour, as demonstrated by the evidence, that magnets their attention, and the motive is a much more difficult animal to tame. It is over motive and the history of the "accused" that the system is so weak, given the complexity and the time-consuming nature of any investigation into those two areas, especially the biography, given how the individual was oriented to the system of social and family controls that were taught, both by deed and by attitude.
Doctors too, in their pursuit of a professional career of "helping" are trained to examine the extrinsic evidence of a patient's "signs" through the use of various testing instruments, all of them conceived and developed in the culture of micro-extrinsic examinations, most of which either ignore completely or disdain sometimes monstrous stories that would clearly have shaped the mental, biological and attitudinal aspects of the patient's life.
And then, in one of the most negligent of applications of the "classical conditioning" manipulation of the culture, we have both consumer "education" and political pursuit of democracy, both dependent on the manipulation of evidence for the benefit of those "running" the systems, either the corporations or the political parties, for their own best results....while all the time expressing the benefits of their unique offering for their consumers, their electorate....and we, like sheep, seductively manipulated by the sheer bravado of their manipulations of their presentations, are herded into their various camps, crowned by their various "brands"....
And with the development of instruments of digital measurement of our attitudes, through the tracking of our internet searches, our internet comments and perceptions, all of them now available to the world, dangerously positioning the individual under the power of those whose power to gather such information has exceeded even their capacity to market their "wares"....and we have, on the one hand, the capacity of individuals with cell phones to collect instant mobs, but more importantly also the capacity of those who own the systems to manipulate the evidence, just as Facebook is now accused of doing, in order to socially engineer the responses of their "clients".....
And all the while, we are disdaining the kind of education, the liberal education, dedicated as it is to the discernment of bullshit, the discernment of manipulation through seduction, the discernment of underlying truths from the sizzle of the salesmanship in order to better understand our universe and our place in it. We have now turned our universities into job factories, concentrating on the pursuit of individual "extrinsic" trophies, like the BMW, the mansion, the exotic vacations and the power to command armies of drones, both human and technological, as if the culture needed only more people pursuing the same kind of sick live controlled by the conventions of our institutions and the people whose careers and reputations depend on the maintenance of those patterns...and our heart and cancer wards are filled with hordes of sick people, all of them having submitted to the rigours of following the "lead" of those in charge and refusing to challenge that "lead" as a matter of self-defence.
And we wonder why our health care budgets are straining to bankruptcy, and our armies and navies can no longer achieve the kind of submission of the enemy that once were their trophies, and their justification of their very existence, and the universities are incubators of  binge drinking, destructive competitions and career ambitions that trump, in the main, the pursuit of larger truths, more penetrating and more incisive insights that would, if permitted the light of day, transform this stampede of the cretins toward our own demise.
We have become so addicted to the pursuit of belonging, of fitting in, of achieving those extrinsic trophies that have now come to define our existence, when once they were considered means of motivation in a direction that could prove helpful for those less motivated but nevertheless capable of achieving breakthroughs in the complexities of all of our intellectual and ethical and industrial/economic theatres.
We have, in short, substituted the trophies and their acquisition for the intrinsic and much more significant activities of the mind, the spirit and the heart and in the process, we have reduced human beings to little more than transactional pawns in an overt series of exchanges of "what have you done for me lately" or "how can I manipulate you into my camp" on the part of establishments too proud and too fragile and too arrogant to acknowledge their complicity, indeed their addiction to their own powerlessness....hence their myopia in continuing the charade.
And this thesis has now been exported as the "success" of the western way of life into corners of the globe so innocent and untrained that they too will gulp our koolaid, without knowing the pits of despair to which they will be sentencing themselves and their offspring.

In Memoriam: Robin Williams

Not being a "student" of Hollywood films, my youth seemed to exclude most of the popular titles, sprinkled with the occasional "western" on Saturday afternoons, in the local "Strand Theatre" on James Street, the main street of our little sleepy town.
Although I took the opportunity to enrol in an undergrad course in the History of Film, an experience that exposed me to the pillars of film history, their cinematic technique, their production facilities, their plot structure and their "standing" in the museum of cinema, I remain an innocent neophyte with respect to the work of Hollywood.
However, there are a series of films, all of them starring the now-deceased Robin Williams, that both through his unforgettable characterizations and their narrative impact, have left me, along with millions, somewhat staggering in disbelief, shock, disappointment, and a little anger. He was the English Teacher in Dead Poet's Society, a role in which I was easily able to identify, having spent twenty-plus years in the front of English classrooms in both private and public secondary schools. His championing of both the art of acting in stage productions, especially in the face of "corporate parents" whose tolerance for such "trivial" pursuits, has to have ennobled thousands of other English teachers. while simultaneously disempowering those corporate fathers for their myopic and arrogant rejection of their thespian sons' ambition. Of course he was playing a role, but he chose to play that role.
And he chose to play the role of Patch Adams, another 'outlier-hero' in the medical arena, a therapist delivering lines that will endear him to audiences for decades if not more, as well as earning him an Oscar in Good Will Hunting, a nanny in Mrs. Doubtfire, ironically being called "back" to care for his own children following his divorce from their mother. "Doubtfire" appeared just at the time when I too had gone through the pain of a divorce, leaving three children behind, without the invitation, even in "drag" to care for them. And there was also "Good Morning Vietnam" in which he played the morning radio host, in his own "over-the-top" hypermanic style, urging  the world to take another look at what it meant to serve in the American military in that sadly tragic debacle.
There were also, we learn, dozens of appearances before troops in combat or even in peace-keeping missions, plus times when he surprised sick children by appearing in their homes, having travelled hundreds if not thousands of miles, when they could not travel, just to put a smile on their faces.
Whether it was his comedic stand-up performances, often with Whoopi Goldberg and Billy Crystal in support of raising fund for the homeless, or on Comedy Central solo performances, or his dramatic film roles, Robin Williams never held back anything from the "gift" of his performance to his audience. Some cynics might call his antics "narcissistic" because whenever there were two or more people in his presence, he "turned on" to his performing persona. (Friends of decades also report if they were alone in an elevator with Robin, there was absolute silence, almost as if he was a complete stranger. One friend of thirty-five years even commented on CNN, "Robin Williams had absolutely no social skills!"
Social skills or not, his larynx and visage are indelibly inked on the memories of millions of people, from all countries, from all generations and from all ethnicities. His dramatic talent, linked to his comedic antics render him an electric charge of human energy, crafted and honed in hundreds of hours of formal and informal rehearsal, on and off stages around the world....and yet....
As so many experts have noted, comics are generally the most depressed people, using their "jokester" as their covering "mask"....there is a guarantee that the mask will always work in the sense that they will never have to disclose the nature of the demons that live in their psyches, nor the difficulty of riding those demonic monsters in the very private corners of their personal lives.
Unhappy mothers, especially for young boys, will, as did Robin's, evoke all manner of attempts to "make Mother smile"....that is the nature of the relationship between many mothers and their sons.
Manic depression will continue to haunt millions of people around the world, without the public becoming more conscious of its tentacles, nor the carriers of its extremes finding solace from the many pharmaceutical attempts to "manage" those high's and low's that often see these highly creative individuals fly-and-crash, without their being able to rein in the force of both winds.
And that Roman candle of human energy, creativity and spontaneity has spent its life-force, on its own terms, in its own time, in its own space...leaving the world pining for a different outcome to the belt that was found around his neck, and the cuts that were found in his left wrist.
Like others who cannot and must not consider themselves "learned" about film, yet nevertheless know what they like, I join with millions of others everywhere, in mourning the loss of this larger-than-life human being, who proved, once again, as T.S. Eliot observed in the last stanza of The Hollow Men:
This is the way the world ends,
This is the way the world ends,
This is the way the world ends,
Not with a bang but a whimper.

Eliot may have been alluding to the failed Gunpowder Plot amid the talk of war.
This last line alludes to, amongst some talk of war, the actual end of the Gunpowder Plot mentioned at the beginning: not with its planned bang, but with Guy Fawkes's whimper, as he was caught, tortured and executed on the gallows. (Wikipedia)
Nevertheless, the stanza can and does apply to other situations, ironic, tragic and unbelievable...leaving the world again in shocked dismay and grief.
We are all indebted to Robin Williams, for his complete and absolute commitment to his craft, to his world and to his audience, of which we are all honoured to be a small part.

Symptom responses do not get at root causes...as we hide our ambiguity

The chair of the World Health Organization (WHO) has called for a co-ordinated response from all countries in the face of the Ebola epidemic, given that it is now dubbed an international health emergency.
Public systems, including preventive health systems built on the learnings derived from the dreaded SARS epidemic, are extremely slow to rush into action, given their complexity, and the tendency of all human beings to resist "melodrama" by over-reacting to initial evidence that could turn out to be less threatening than it really is.
However, a co-ordinated response is not only required in the face of the Ebola; it is, or should be and become the response of the world community to the many "crises" or catastrophes or exigencies, or emergencies that confront the world's population. While there is some spotty evidence of incipient states developing a model of statehood that demonstrates courage, vision, democracy, the respect for the law and for human rights, including the rights of minorities, especially religious minorities (Kurdistan, Indonesia, Turkey, India come to mind) we are being fed a steady diet of crisis met by a growing failure of world leaders to come together leaving national interests and personal political ambitions aside, for the purpose of pursuing the common good for human beings of all races, ethnicities, historic and linguistic backgrounds.
We have witnessed the over-use of the military to 9/11, to Sadam Hussein, to the Taliban, to Assad, and even from Putin, to the threat of westernizing of Ukraine by Putin. Unintended consequences, that phrase that seems to be one of the more nefarious and unpredicted results of the knee-jerk response rush to military action, in too many situations, now are reported to include the significant rise in recruits to the Islamic jihadist movement, from the several theatres of military adventure. Both the U.S. and Israel, respectively the best militarily armed national actors in their separate theatres, have adopted the model that a huge military establishment is the best and most effective defence against those who would threaten a nation state. Unfortunately, that military response is analogous to the medical deployment of anti-bacterial drugs, to so many illnesses; they both provide limited relief, a kind of repressive of the current "pain" (threat, danger, invasion, assault) but neither is a curative of the problem.
In geopolitics, as in medicine, we are living in a state of "unknowing" of mystery, of uncertainty and of ambiguity, while, for those engaged in the professional practice of both medicine and foreign affairs, we are given to belief that the experts "know" both the causes of the illness, and the prescription for its elimination.
We can no more surgically remove our illnesses nor can we eliminate them through the application of heavy antibiotics, in all cases, or even in most cases, than can we surgically remove ISIS from Syria/Iraq, nor Hamas from firing rockets into Tel Aviv by firing missiles, rockets and explosives at the enemy. Surgical removal of ISIS from Mosul and northern Iraq is not going to happen no matter how "successful" we are told the current campaign is, has been or will be.
We are living between the unknowing and the best attempts to diagnose and to remediate of the professionals in medicine and in foreign affairs, and the public's demand for instant and completely effective elimination of the problems.
The truth, far more complex and unmanageable, is that we are going to have to live with several epidemic conundrums....cancer, terrorism, global warming and climate change, ethnic cleansing,
anti-Semitism, sectarian violence between Shia and Sunni, and the failure of those sharing the same threat to bring their best efforts to the table(s) to design a strategy that could possibly offer some glimmer of hope out of whatever the presenting dilemma might be.
It took an astrophysicist Neil Degrasse Tyson, the current director of the Hayden Planetarium, to put it succinctly in response to Fareed Zakaria's question about the old idea of a combined international approach to space exploration. It does seem that politics tells us that we cannot be friendly to those we wanted to befriend for reasons that we may or may not understand or accept, was the core of his response, in outlining the breakdown in cooperation in space exploration...now that the United States has to rely in the Russians to transport their astronauts to the space station....and the emptiness of that reality given the current state of relations  between Moscow and Washington.
Human beings, the world community, will continue to face threats both of a human origin, biologically and politically, and of a "natural origin" (tornadoes, draught, tsunamis, earthquakes) for which we will have to continue to prepare. At the core of our response, however, will unfortunately continue to be the belief that human nature is by nature "evil," a cornerstone of many religious beliefs, and in need of corrective measures, designed and delivered by those adhering to a strict dogmatic set of sacred rules.
Perhaps, there is an intimate and complex connection between such a self-sabotaging premise and our continuing addiction to both intemperate and inconclusive, if violent, measures to address problems.
Just this week, a professor at Yale has released a book entitled, Miseducation....focussed on the principle that too many of our educational efforts are directed to the achievement of individual aggrandizement, and not to inherent and intrinsic human values, and the solution of human problems....is anyone paying attention?

Wall Street Journal: U.S. state Department report on international religious freedom....depressing and dangerous?

There are some appalling figures that pop out from the pages of the U.S. State department's report on international religious freedom, from the perspective of the plight to individual and family lives, and also to the social institutions that have played a significant part in fostering and sustaining social stability and the absence of violence.
A colleague let slip a phrase in our conversation yesterday, by calling the church part of the "correctional system" a name I had not heard used before in that context. Having worked with prisons and referred adolescents from the legal system, I had somewhat naively locked my definition of the "correctional system" around the institutions of the prisons in all their many and varied forms, the courts and their respective officers, the legal system and the criminal code and other assorted provincial and federal pieces of legislation that outlined both acts deemed punishable by the state and the nature of those punishments.
I had not included the "church" as an integral part of that "system."
Of course, my first reaction upon hearing the phrase was to break into laughter, given the wide berth the phrase incorporated into the concept. But immediately, I reflected on how important sin, miscreant, evil and both judgement and punishment are to both the church and the traditional correctional systems, I had to concur with my colleague's expression.
Now, it seems, in many quarters of the world, as all institutions are under attack, and a public armed with instant megaphones for their protest against whomever and whatever they deem appropriate targets flexes its political, ideological and even violent muscle against those targets, the concept of the freedom of religion is also under attack, and with it one of the long-standing cornerstones of social order.
Having worked both inside and outside the ecclesial establishment, I can see why some unsettled and perhaps unstable people, especially when collected into angry expressions of discontent, would target the ecclesial institutions of their community. First, there is the perception of "holier than thou" that attaches to those inside religious communities permanently installed on those communities by people who would never consider crossing the threshold of a religious building or institution. Then there is the deep and profound, and seemingly unbridgeable gap between belief systems, and their legitimacy including their history, that finds zealous newcomers to a faith "brand" seeking and finding revenge on those who are not believing and practicing the faith the "right" way.
Underlying much of the current discontent in all of its many forms, including religious persecution, terrorism and civil strife, of course are social and domestic conditions that are in a word unsustainable. Poverty, lack of opportunity, lack of education and access to health care, political instability and downright failed states in many cases...all of these contribute to the many forms of persecution that dot the world map like a bad case of red measles, everywhere. And included in these acts of violence and persecution are acts of religious persecution, as religion becomes both a recruiting force for those committed to the violent achievement of their ideological and "moral" goals for the world, and an army in that pursuit, with sacred texts read with untrained and insensitive eyes and imaginations operating out of their own desperate scarcity of human compassion and experience.
As you read the piece from The Wall Street Journal below, you might consider asking yourself how religion became the antithesis of the ideal. Was it because in our instant world, in which we can all see how things might be better, right here and right now, we are unwilling or unable to pursue legitimate goals for our lives and families, as well as for our respective cultures in a collegial and co-operative manner? Or perhaps, now that all regions of the world have been connected to instant information, mostly of the negative and violent kind, that we believe we are merely acting like everyone else in our anger, frustration and hopelessness.
Have we reduced human life to the acquisition of material wealth, thereby eliminating all other pursuits, and also reducing humans to allies or enemies, agents merely of human transactions?
Or perhaps, in a world in which power has seemed to flow to the powerful, leaving more and more behind, we have seen religion as another of the dividing canyons that separate the have's from the have not's, as the church too struggles to bridge the divide between the insiders and the outsiders, one that seems to have become a bridge too far?
  The U.S. State Department's annual report on international religious freedom released this week makes for bleak reading. Violent repression of religious believers the world over, whether at the hands of governments or of unchecked thugs, is creating personal tragedies for millions of faithful. This oppression also threatens social institutions that play such an important role in fostering peace and stability.

The Middle East is the most pressing hot spot at the moment. Iran and Saudi Arabia again make State's list of countries of particular concern for violations of religious liberty for their legalized intolerance of minority religions. In Syria, the report says, Bashar Assad's regime increasingly casts the ongoing civil war in religious terms, and it is ramping up persecution of religious groups it views as political threats. The number of Christians in Homs has fallen to 1,000 from 160,000 before the civil war began.

Increasing disorder is paving the way for violent non-state groups to harass religious believers. Although State's report covers 2013, the world saw a graphic illustration of this phenomenon last month, as the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham drove thousands of Christians out of areas it has seized from state control. Thugs in Egypt and Pakistan spent 2013 harassing Christian and minority Muslim groups with varying degrees of government acquiescence.

In Asia, North Korea and China again rank as the most serious offenders as their governments persecute religious groups that might challenge single-party rule. Pyongyang regularly consigns believers to its gulag simply for being found in possession of religious literature. Beijing has accelerated its clampdown on Muslims in restive Xinjiang, in addition to its restrictions on religious practice among Tibetan Buddhists and its suppression of unsanctioned Christian groups.

And then there's Europe. The recent conflict in Gaza has brought to the fore a disturbing strain of anti-Semitism, but State's report shows this is nothing new. Anti-Semitic attacks already were on the rise in 2013 in France, and in a November survey 68% of Jews in Germany said they believed anti-Semitism had worsened over the past five years. In Britain the number was 66%.

Part of the problem is the decline in European governments' capacity to enforce basic public order, which also leaves Muslims exposed to growing religious violence and all citizens vulnerable to crime. But secular European elites increasingly appear contemptuous of religion and indifferent to its protection, and they are allowing their hostility toward Israel to bleed into disdain for Judaism.

That leaves America. Thanks to its history as a refuge for religious nonconformists, Americans more than many others understand the importance of religious toleration for social order—and the importance of religion itself for social flourishing. That is precisely why the Obama Administration's trespass against religious freedom in health care, which was mild in comparison to the troubles in the rest of the world, was so controversial and overturned by the Supreme Court.

Peaceful religious practice forms a bulwark against political tyranny and social disorder, and that bulwark is under attack. The State Department's report highlights a crisis that is undermining global peace and stability, and deserves far more public attention.

From Wall Street Journal,  Opinion July 31, 2014)