Reflections on our thin veil of civilization and the threats of ubiquitous barbarity

You think that a wall as solid as the earth separates civilization from barbarism. I  tell you the division is a thread, sheet of glass. A touch here, a push there, and you bring back the reign of Saturn. (John Buchan) (Saturn (Cronos) led his brothers and sisters in a revolt against his father for power.)

William Golding’s novel, Lord of the Flies, is one of English literature’s testaments to the savagery of human nature. Both on the island where the British choir boys land after their plane crashes, and, ironically, in the ocean where the warship appears to evacuate them from their island “paradise”, violence reigns supreme. Competing ambitions, interests and ideologies enmeshed within an island and inside a global culture support, mirror, and underline each other’s energies. The pursuit of power in all of its many forms and iterations is pulsing in tension with the impulses to negotiate, compromise, collaborate and resolve….and, from Golding’s perspective, the winner is the savage.

Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter M. Miller Jr. is set in a Catholic monastery in the desert of Southwest U.S. after a monstrous nuclear war. Since it appeared n 1960, it has never been out of print, a testament to the lingering angst that hovers over the west since the inception of the nuclear generation began. Both the Iran nuclear agreement and the North Korean persistence in its determination to join the nuclear club have brought the spectre of nuclear conflict into public consciousness in a way reminiscent of the early 1960’s when bomb shelters and school drills for children on what to do in the event of a nuclear attack (remember Cuba!) were high on the “richter” scale of personal and public fears.

Wars like the Korean, (still unresolved), Viet Nam, Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan and other sites like Mali, Somalia, Nigeria, Ukraine, Chechnya as well as the several military engagements between Israel and the Palestinians have kept the stories, and the casualties of war relatively high on the scale of public issues for a long time.  They illustrate the evolution of killing technologies, spying devices and even unmanned bombers, operated from some office in Nevada, while dropping bombs on targets in Afghanistan, while keeping war on the front pages of our minds. While the “enemies” have changed, the drum-beat of the military answer to geopolitical conflict has rarely, if ever, been taken off the table by the major world powers.

Parallel to this theme of military conflict has been the political embrace of “human rights” as a hedge against ethnic cleansing, religious persecution, voter suppression, and the general abuse of power by those whose moral compass has failed them and consequently also those they “serve” has assumed a more prominent place in national and international affairs. Legislation like the 1964 Voter Registration Act, and the Canadian Charter of Rights (1981) have raised the hopes and the prospect of security somewhat for people who previously would have been powerless when denied their legitimate voice to participate in what are commonly known as modern democracies. 

In other parts of the world, however, human rights abuses continue unabated, except for the continuous, if peripheral watchful eye of agencies like Amnesty International. Dictators, too, have not exited the world stage, and the rise of Islamic terrorism has injected steroids into both the military and the security apparatus of major countries like the United State, Great Britain, Germany, Canada, Australia, India, Japan and China.

As China seeks to play a larger role on the world stage, leaders in Bejing have dedicated considerable attention and resources to the growth of their military including the building of islands in the sea to serve as airbases for their military aircraft. Just yesterday, a display of modern Russian military might was presented to western correspondents in the sea off the coast of Syria, following two years of Russian bombing of ISIS installations in support of the Assad regime.

Since taking office, trump too has given voice (and cover) to the growth of military buildup in his own country and around the world, without having the full range of experience and the propensity to learn about the dangers of both build-up and deployment. So the spectre of a renewed arms race hangs over the Middle East, and more recently over the Far East, with the escalating missile firings by both North and South Korea.

Ironically, everyone in public life knows that the military is not an effective or lasting answer to any conflict, yet their actions continue to inject billions into the arms industry, both in design and in production and sales. Sales of guns to millions of American people inside the country have ballooned in this century, resulting in a virtual armed camp in many neighbourhoods, freeways, and places where people gather.

The National Rifle Association too has poured millions of dollars in lobbying efforts to stop any legislation designed to restrict private ownership even of high-powered assault weapons designed exclusively for use by the military. Neighbourhood, school, mall shootings, and shootings on other sites like military bases themselves, have risen to an epidemic level in the United States. Doubtless, the culture of a military nation, born of revolution and nurtured by a military post-secondary tradition for millions who chose voluntary enlistment over college or university, supplemented by those who were drafted, has infected every town and city. The idolizing of veterans, regardless of the original motives for combat, or the final results of those combats, contributes to a culture of honour for the military, far beyond its national and international positive impact.

The incursion of combative language including military metaphors, combat similes, winning/losing dichotomies and the inculcation of personal winning/losing achievements among the young for centuries has contributed much to the dangers of dependence on military might, and the dangers implicit in mishaps and accidents when the political rhetoric demands military action.

The argument that military might “insures” peace, because no enemy will be willing or eager to attack a superior military power is one that has found resonance among the American taxpayers for centuries. Naturally, it comes as no surprise that dictators also revert to military protection and military aggression to preserve and enhance their hold on power.

On a domestic scale, people who allegedly love, nurture and give birth to their children are among the most vile and least suspected perpetrators of a kind of violence that cuts through any veil of civility. Such activity has been enacted by both mothers and fathers, on both sons and daughters, and too much of this abuse has been inflicted out of some misguided belief in a kind of purist and perfectionistic morality, not unlike the honour killings that have befallen “wayward” children of East Indian parents except in degree. A similar kind of wanton violence has been inflicted far too often by mainly male spouses on their female partners, for such a wide range of motives, all of them beyond the pale of even a modicum of civilization.

Of course, gangs of drug dealers, street gangs, and private militias take violence as their primary communication method, inflicting as much death and bloodshed as they possibly can. In the last few years, increasing numbers of law enforcement officers have been caught on video inflicting physical abuse, sometimes even leading to the death of the target. The military weaponizing of law enforcement, shortly after the 9/11 attacks in the U.S. has only exacerbated the frequency and level of intensity of these attacks, without eliminating the racist motive behind many of these incidents.

Are we humans inherently violent, with a paper-thin mascara of restraint, in order to be able to exercise other personal ambitions and goals, which, ironically, are also dependent on “bettering” another, whether a single person, or an organization? As Rousseau reminded us centuries ago, are we innocent at birth, and acquire both the desire for and the techniques of inflicting violence from our sociologizing among other humans, including our own families? The Christian theology of an original Fall, from innocence in the Garden of Eden, generating a need for redemption has contributed significantly to the notion of human evil. The anthropologists tell us that we are the only species which eats its own kind, and while such behaviour does not occur or find its way into our awareness frequently, it does occur, along with the murder of infants by their very troubled mothers.

We now know that much abusive behaviour is an expression of a need for power and control, much of which have been denied and out of reach for many young children. And this inappropriate need for power and control finds expression in our private homes as well as on our battlefields. Belief systems that begin with a foundation that we are all that we need to both survive and thrive, however, have often foundered on the public perception (supported by the Christian church) that such beliefs elevate humans above their need for God. Many have wondered and even asserted that such a counter-intuitive posture bruises if not rejects an unbounded, unrestricted love and acceptance from the deity. Institutional need for power and control over parishioners is not and cannot be removed from consideration as a primary impetus for man’s inhumanity. Rules, regulations, dogma and institutional theology have imposed a rigor beyond human capacity to comply, without the attendant responsibility for such abuse.

Of course, there have been innumerable theories, ranging from the rejection of altruism (Ayn Rand) to the elevation of empathy (most world religions) competing for the rights of explication, justification and leadership in world history. Words, stones, coins and other people have been, and remain, the primary agents of the seeding, nurturing and propagation of competing world views, for personal, family and national interests. And while the tension is unlikely to dissipate any time soon, the advocates for civilization continue to enter the debate under significant negative odds, given that the threat of global annihilation hangs like a cloud over all of our towns, cities and pastures.

Spectres of Armageddon have been sprinkled into the history and the theological literature, as part of the archetypal heritage of successive generations in various cultures. Eschatology is an integral component of Christian systematic theology, serving, it would seem, as an ultimate clincher to the arguments for the “purely disciplined life of the Christian pilgrim. Indeed, many still occupying pews in Christian churches are serving their time as insurance to ward off an afterlife of fire or ice, depending on one’s picture of Hell. Many have uttered those very words directly to this scribe, although they seemed universally unconscious of their vain efforts to negotiate, or even to bribe their God in that perceived leverage.

The Holocaust remains as the single most horrific act committed by humans against other humans, and the identical motivation (of the third Reich) today, armed with nuclear warheads and the missile technology to launch them, could well annhiliate millions. (Einstein writes that even a nuclear war would leave at last one-third of the world’s population still existing. Have the hydrogen bombs surpassed the atomic weapons with which he was familiar?) Clearly,

·      the manufacture and sale of highly sophisticated weapons lies at the core of the current U.S. administration’s policy manual (if there even is such a thing).

·      the list of countries to which sales have already been made, added to the list of countries the current president has publicly uttered the prospect of acquiring nuclear weapons (think South Korea and Japan for starters)

·      linked to the almost inconceivable notion that also blurted from his lips, “If we are going to have nuclear weapons, why not use them?...

·      welded to the Putin braggadocio ‘not to mess with Russia because we do have nuclear weapons….

These shadows may not add up to a conclusive prediction that human savagery will find nuclear expression. They do however demonstrate a kind of “deployment” of the threat as a way of intimidating enemies, in the geopolitical climate that is 2017. To many observers too, the early part of past centuries has too often witnessed some kind of military conflagration….and the question looms, is this century really very different?

Should either Iran or North Korea, or both, actually acquire a nuclear arsenal, what assurances does the rest of the world have that one or both would not “export” either the technology and the fissile material to manufacture nuclear weapons to a different agent, perhaps a terrorist group, which would then be beholden to their benefactor? Pakistan is reported and reputed to have already committed such an opportunistic and subversive and scurrilous act. (Dr. Khan remains under house arrest for the crime.)

Recently, military leaders in the United States have begun to speak publicly about the fragility of the veneer of civilization. It is that thin, porous, ethereal and precious veil comprised of politeness, respect, tolerance, collaboration, a shared vision of a shared future for children and grandchildren, arms reduction treaties, and the mechanisms to verify their authenticity and compliance that, metaphorically at least, flies on the wings of poets, orchestras, operas, movies and theatrical productions touring the world’s stages. And these, along with the glacial growth of international institutions like the  World Court, the International Criminal Court at the Hague, the United Nations and its several humanitarian arms and legs serving refugees, human rights and peace-keeping initiatives, give us whatever authentic hope we can grasp.

There is no hardware or software extant that can or will prevent war. There is no magic formula to which all nations subscribe that can or will head off those military incursions (like Crimea and Syria) and there is no church or religion that can or will forestall the human impulse for violence.

Indeed, much of human history sees human blood and treasure being shed in the cause of advancing a faith perspective or preventing the advance of armies of prosletytes beavering to convert “the unwashed,” the heretics, the savages, and the unclean who have no religion or the wrong religion.

Good words, exhorting humans to “turn swords into ploughshares” for example, have abounded for centuries, without churches or their adherents or leaders finding the combination of strategy, tactics, will and collaborative partners to provide the world with assurances of peace, or of minimal conflicts.

Living on the increasingly apparent precipice of the “existential” threat, as Israel claims it has been for decades, and as North Korea currently threatens North America, and as millions of soldiers have done and will do each time they don their nations’ uniform, is a prospect most face only when near a ‘natural’ death from a disease. And we all live in the “in-between” place of that land between our birth and our death, witnessing abhorrent acts of despicable violence, deceit, humiliation and abuse, often without the strength or the means to redress the situation. Nevertheless, we each also seek opportunities for reaching out to others in their time of trial and tribulation, whether that be emotional, physical financial, or professional. And in those miniscule acts of kindness, we not only find fire-fly-flickers of light and hope, we also re-ignite the fading light of hope, love, compassion and empathy in the minds and hearts of our friends.

According to the proverb, the man picking up a clam on the beach and tossing it into the sea, when asked what difference picking up that one clam makes, when there are thousands waiting to be picked up says, “Well, it makes a difference to this clam!”

Have we picked up any clams recently? It is not only good for the clam; it also restores the spirit of the picker!

Pettiness and anality abound

We have already, collectively, consciously and deliberately destroyed all vestiges of shame. Are we also participating in the full entropy of irony, context and altruism?

Of course, there will be many who argue that last night’s HandInHand.com concert from New York, Los Angeles, Nashville and San Antonio, carried by all three major networks demonstrates a significant outpouring of  support, care and some $14 million (at nine p.m. when the show went off the air) for those millions of people who have been impacted by two monster storms, Harvey and Irma. There are also many examples of not-for-profit philanthropies like Doctors Without Borders, Engineers without Borders, Right to Play, War Children and the others like World Vision, The Plan, Oxfam and many others that have been making significant contributions to the plight of the dispossessed around the world for decades. So, to be fair, altruism is not dead.

Nevertheless, there are signs that our public discourse is not merely being stripped of decency, fairness, a full appreciation of the context of many complex situations and issues, but also the apparent willful denial of irony, perspective and context. Replacing the more nuanced, complex and ironic appreciation of issues in the public forum is an instant-gratification, pulgilistic and narcissistic critical parenting of anyone, everyone and all of this without a whimper of remorse, apology, reconsideration or reflection and amendment.

While working in a hovel of a mission church on the sagebrush desert on the west side of the Continental Divide, where dry, dusty air and stunted coniferous shrubs and blowing dried clumps of tumbleweed symbolized the dried spirits and hopes of many, I placed a bottle of water behind the altar for obvious reasons while conducting services. An anal and hyper super-ego warden condemned the appearance of the bottle publicly, without successfully achieving her motive of having it removed. Separation of church and state, another of the many icons worshipped by the American people, had not found a place in this Canadian consciousness, regarding that water bottle.

Neither did the separation find resonance when conversations from the previous week were embedded in homilies, without names or references, to the dismay of those who considered such ‘invasions’ of privacy so abhorrent that they withdrew from the mission.

Ironically, however, the collection, recording and boastful reporting of cash revenue was and remained one of the more obvious secular, cultural and corporate traits that served as the identity signature of the mission, both in the eyes of the worshippers and, tragically and more importantly, in the eyes of the hierarchy of the diocese. Clearly, separation of church and state did not extend to matters of financial revenue and balance sheets. The obvious contradiction and conflict, given the more natural pursuit of spiritual growth and development of both individuals and relationships with others and with God, with the pursuit of corporate goals and methods (evangelism being a surrogate for marketing and advertising) trumping the spiritual needs of the people in the pews, seemed to be lost on many.

Recently, in Canada, there have been a couple of news reports that demonstrate a cultural and societal blindness to irony and to context both of which, if not merely singular and isolated instances, could and likely will generate more of the same. The first comes from the Ontario Judicial System and concerns a judge in Hamilton who, ironically and obviously sardonically, wore a “make America great again” hat into court on the day following the American presidential election in November, 2016. He is not and was not a supporter of the victor of that election, and merely sought a little levity. However, as a consequence of some 81 complaints against his “lack of judgement” he has not been permitted to hear a single case since, and just yesterday was hit with a 30-day suspension without pay for his lack of deference to the judicial system’s “objectivity”. An Associate Professor of Law at the University of Windsor Law School is one of the complainants, and clearly agrees with the “punishment” given that the alternative would have been to remove the transgressing judge from the bench.

Think for a moment about a judicial system that is incapable of laughing at one of the most historic, tragic and laughable election results in the history of western civilization…and a system that is prepared to discipline one of its “institutions” for not following the rules of “decorum”  (not of judicial judgement) without pausing to consider that there might be a difference in meaning and significance between judicial judgement and decorum. I would be one of possible thousands who would prefer to be a defendant before such a judge (if necessary) as compared with another of the anal “objectivists” who cannot see the forest for the trees. This is a very slippery slope on which the judicial system is setting its collective foot. IT could lead to things like the removal of water bottles from public view on judges’ desks in public courtrooms; it could also lead to a return of wigs for all judges; it could lead to a ban on all laughter, regardless of the source or the target of the wit inside Ontario courtrooms. And when laughter is surgically and clinically excised from the legal process, there is a different kind of cultural danger: that the judicial process is blind to the human condition that underlies each and every case that comes before the bench. If we “balkanize” the courts (to take this example) from the street of human activity, we risk such tunnel vision that only the most narrow reading of each case is permissible. Defendants, in such a situation, are at risk of being convicted because relevant and circumstantial and biographical evidence as to motive, background, mental and emotional state is relegated to the trash. Of course, the legal purists and the anal super-egos among us will be triumphant, in such a situation. However, too much will have been sacrificed on a hollow principle of perfection to which no one is capable of reaching, including the 81 complainants in this case. And of course, none of them has ever, or will ever, make a similar mis-step in ‘decorum’ in their pursuit of their legal careers.

Another report comes from CBC on the Canadian government’s provision of escape flights for stranded Canadians in the wake of tropical storm/hurricane Irma in the Caribbean. Some 900 people were evacuated on Canadian airline and military flights, according to the government. And yet, many of these people complained that they were not evacuated as quickly as they deemed both necessary and competitively appropriate, as compared with evacuees to other places. Evan Dyer, the CBC reporter who aired the report on Radio 2 yesterday, wisely and professionally, put the story into a more complete and relevant and merited context, including the loss of power at airports, the obstructions to flights on runways, and the relatively inappropriately narcissistic and unappreciative responses of the Canadians who were flown back to Toronto.

It is this blatant lack of appreciation, this wanton disregard for extenuating circumstances, this “me-first,” and “me-only” and “me-now” attitude that renders all others, including those who are doing whatever they can to help, to a judgement of incompetence, insouciance, insensitivity. In the process this attitude of selfishness and narrowness demonstrates a level of arrogance, isolation and abhorrence from the recipients that borders on repulsive. And of course, if and when any of those evacuees who might read this will say that this observer is out of touch with their reality, since I was not among them. And they will consider these comments themselves arrogant, judgemental and irrelevant.

This space is not a predictable supporter of this Canadian government or certainly of the previous Conservative government. However, these reports of a lack of appreciation and of criticism of our government go beyond what seems reasonable. Further, the former Canadian Ambassador to Cuba has argued publicly that those citizens who were evacuated from storm-torn islands in the sun should reimburse the federal government for the flight home, arguing persuasively that Canadian taxpayers should not be saddled with the cost.

Just because individual and collective perspectives have been so changed increasingly focussing on the micro, even the nano, aspects of every situation, (thereby elevating both the technical legal and miniscule accounting “facts” far above the “big picture” perspective, that continues to remain significant), does not represent a world view that is either sustainable, ethical or moral…nor does it elucidate the “whole truth”….There is a legitimate case to be made that such a perspective models accusatory, judgemental and derisive attitudes to all public utterances, events and motives. And such a judgement, worthy and honourable as a function of the forth estate, is incompatible with a public good of growing and enhancing human relations in all social situations, including classrooms, family kitchens, sanctuaries and retail operations.

Just yesterday, I witnessed an example of behaviour so disrespectful of a retail worker by a sixties-something female customer in a local retail store, that, had I been the worker, I would have had to excuse myself, go out back, report what was going on to my supervisor, take several deep breaths, in order to return to continue the abuse she was dishing out, without losing my composure. The relentless, patient and professional behaviour and attitude of the retail worker deserves a medal of merit and a promotion in the business.

A bus driver of my acquaintance persistently reports similar incidents of rider abuse, so painful and persistent that he retired early after thirty-plus years at the front of the bus.

The sea of evidence of distortion of  the facts, the failure to take responsibility, and the complete and total absence of any sign of remorse, reflection and apology is just another of the warning flags that can, does and will continue to exacerbate geopolitical tensions around the globe.   

Can we start looking through the telescope forward and not backward?

Of course, lives have been destroyed, defeated and even terminated in disastrous floods, hurricanes and tropical storms in both Texas and Florida, in the last couple of weeks.

And while the media coverage, including the drenched and leaning reporters, clinging to whatever they could find for support, was “wall to wall,” the failure of the major networks in the U.S. to dedicate even a few minutes in the 24-7 news cycle to the larger, more pressing and deeply troubling impact of global warming and climate change on the severity of these storms is deplorable.

The Virginia legislature has even passed a law forbidding the words global warming and climate change to be used in their chambers, replacing them with “recurrent floods” in their vain attempt to minimize both public fear and the predictable political winds of opposition, in the face of little to no action to address the issue. The city of Miami Beach has already begun to elevate their streets in anticipation of the rising ocean waters, resulting from global warming and climate change. According to Jeff Goodell, author of The Water will Come, appearing on MSNBC’s All In with Chris Hayes tonight, the city of Miami is spending some $500 million in pumps and engineering to raise the city’s elevation, in an attempt to avert more disasters like the one from Irma. An expert from Texas Tech’s research arm into the impact of global warming and climate change, being interviewed on CBC’s The National, last night, told anyone listening that two-thirds of the world’s cities are not more than one meter above sea level, a piece of information that ought to be causing a political “storm surge” of monumental proportions in capitals around the world. NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) predicts an 8-foot rise in sea levels by 2100.

When then Secretary of State, John Kerry, told the world that the greatest threat to national security comes from the impact of global warming and climate change, some Republicans even called for his immediate resignation. And yet, military bases in Florida this morning, have already been “decommissioned” by the recent invasion of Irma, without a word of reporting from the major American networks. And, given the number and size of the hundreds of military bases built and occupied by American forces around the world, one has to wonder about their relative and respective threat levels from the impact of human activity on the rising temperatures, melting ice caps and predictable rise in ocean levels.

New York city, for example, is in serious danger of being negatively impacted by the rise in the Atlantic, from the underground services like hydro, electrical, subway and road facilities that are all below sea level and which together serve several million people every day. New Orleans has yet to recover fully from the impact of Katrina; Houston, in spite of the heroic efforts to raise money to rebuild, could be years getting back to a new “normal” that will have to include recognition and full consideration of the location and the danger of additional storms on such a low-level urban area. Miami, too could take years to recover and to rebuild, even with a substantial injection of national cash from Washington. The Florida Keys, St. Martin, and other Caribbean Islands too will take considerable cash and determination to restore lives to something akin to their former state prior to Irma….and Jose is already on the horizon.

Reports that back in the 18^th century, there was very little or what we now know as urban development in southwest Florida, yet through ingenuity, engineering, and the irrepressible motive to make a “buck” a whole civilization has been built on what is actually a flood plain. Not surprisingly, a flood plain will inevitably and eventually be again covered with water.

So there are many longer term questions raising their heads in the aftermath of these storms. Among them:

·      When is the current American administration going to awaken to the science that global warming and climate change is and will continue to vacuum billions of dollars in the pursuit of avoiding damage that is, to put it bluntly, unavoidable?

·      When will local and provincial politicians finally refuse to grant building permits to developers for proposals to be constructed on flood plains?

·      When will the North American political culture detach from the enmeshing and entrapping perspective that each daily headline is the only report worth chasing in the pursuit of re-election?

·      When will the political class disengage in its obsequious sycophancy to both individuals and corporations that seek to “buy” their votes to enhance the opportunities to seek only profit, without recognizing and respecting the “public good”?

·      When will indigenous peoples’ perspective on time and history begin to supplant the sabotaging myopic nano-second view of what is important that characterizes contemporary corporate culture?

·      Will doctoral research projects begin to examine in detail the impact of the last twenty or thirty years of North America political agendas, with a view to comparing these miniscule accomplishments with those of both Roman and Greek empires at the peak of their energies?

·      How long will it take for ordinary people to finally open the windows of their abodes and cry out, “We are mad as hell and we will not put up with this madness any longer?”

Reflections on a road-trip into southwest U.S.

Having spent the last two weeks on a motor trip to the southwest part of the United States, I am a little taken aback at the gap between the attitudes and responses of ordinary people to the machinations of the current administration in Washington and the realities of the issues facing the world.

 Coming from Canada, where the president is widely reviled, where the level of angst and fear he has generated runs quite high on the anxiety scale, I found the notion, “many people seem to be panicking, but the storm will blow over,” a little disconcerting. Perhaps the historic proportions of both hurricanes Harvey and Irma have put the political windstorm in Washington into a perspective that most Canadians would find hard to recognize. Lives are being lost, disrupted, gutted and overturned by forces that, by most responsible accounts, have at least a partial (some would say a ‘major’) connection to the global warming and climate change effluent that human activity is sloughing off into the atmosphere. We seem to be “drowning in our own insouciant indifference” not to mention the torrent of winds and the flood of rains.

Adding to the vortex of current political winds, of course, is the intractable Kim Jung Un, and his relentless pursuit of nuclear weapons attached to and potentially fired from ballistic missiles. Mimicking Putin, in his determination to insert himself and his ‘nation’ onto the world stage, as a “player” who must not be taken for granted, ignored or dismissed, Kim is playing what many consider the only card in his deck, the potential to hold the world hostage to his threat of nuclear bombs dropped on….wherever, Seoul, Tokyo, San Francisco, or wherever the imagination leads. And fear can and does lead the imagination to places dark and nightmarish.

In Vladivostok, Putin hosts North Korean leaders while playing the role of a sombre, mature and moderate sedative, a kind of political Zoloft or Prozac,  (perhaps more like a magnum of Russian vodka), positioning himself as the “king” on a chessboard of pawns, knowing that both Yi Jing Ping and trump are also on the same board. Japan’s Abe, however, is also a serious actor in this scene in a political drama whose denouement is yet to be written. Based on the attempts of three previous American administrations to rein in the North Koreans, and considering the kind of international hostage-taking to which Kim seems committed (and is there really much difference between the attitudes and actions of the North Korean leader and the ‘leaders of Al Qaeda or ISIS, given only a difference in political philosophy and ideology, and in range of command?) the world’s degree of confidence and trust that current world’s geopolitical leadership can and will bring about a resolution of this crisis is running at a low ebb.

Of course, all “experts” agree, a negotiated and peaceful resolution to the Korean threat is the only “reasonable” outcome. And yet, decades have come and gone, while considerable brain and political power have been dedicated to such an outcome, without success. And serious American observers, like James Clapper, former Director of National Intelligence, now voice publicly that the world will have to accept a nuclear-armed North Korea, a position that has been unspoken in public by American leadership for decades. Needless to say, trump’s pontificating that perhaps both South Korea and Japan should also acquire nuclear weapons is not a note of calm maturity in an already swirling wind among the world’s powerful leaders.

Offering more and more sophisticated weapons to both countries, (South Korea and Japan) as he continues to do in Saudi Arabia and in Poland (and wherever else we might not have heard about yet), demonstrates trump’s one-note “diplomacy” of selling American weapons, (while providing jobs to Americans) and turning the world’s diplomatic theatre, language and modus operandi into another arms race. (“If we’ve got nuclear weapons, why not use them!” echoes from his campaign podium.)

Underlying the American trumpstorm is a historic and unyielding commitment among a majority of Americans to competing, producing, selling and distributing “whatever” for profit, both individually and corporately. Preoccupation of Americans with this pursuit tends to put all issues, including and perhaps especially, “foreign affairs,” into a file of considerably less significance. “make America great again” simply echoes the sentiment of aggressive, unilateral, parochial and selfish narcissism that lies at the heart of the American culture. Of course, the opposite compassionate, generous, empathic and muscular kindness comes out in spades, in places like Houston, and in New Orleans, as it undoubtedly  will in Miami should Irma take a course that strikes that city directly, when disaster strikes. A similar pecuniary generosity extends from many American quarters to other countries like Haiti, when a natural disaster strikes.

Yet, crises like the one posed by Pyongyang, are not resolved by throwing either money or bombs at them. And to pretend that such simplistic and hard-powered answers will suffice only exacerbates an already boiling cauldron, perhaps even igniting a match in a room already filled with combustible political gas. Personal ambition, carving one’s name in the history books for eternity, putting one’s stamp on history….this the singular (and of course blinding) ambition of the leader of North Korea, Russia, and now the United States of  America. (Perhaps a similar motive drives the leader of China; however, the state imposes considerable limits on that ambition.) The world, however, has never had to face such driving, blinding and overweening personal narcissistic ambition from the Oval Office, at least in recent memory. Even Nixon, in his drive to open China to the world, while attempting to put his signature on history, had a significant impulse to serve the broad and deeper interests of the global community.

Chaos, especially relentless and unleashed chaos, of the kind we are currently witnessing in so many quarters, breeds fear and anxiety among serious and conscientious leaders, many of whom seem no longer to hold public office in the United States. An indifferent public, fed by an aggressive and ideologically-driven, and profit-sustained (through ratings) media, in such a situation will often, and now seems to have, shoved their heads into the sand of either denial or minimizing, as their perceived route to continuing their normal lives. Kids need to be fed, taken to their games and practices, groceries need to be bought and jobs need to be done, in order to generate the income that sustains ordinary human lives, in thousands of neighbourhoods across the country. And having driven through a few of the more “leafy” and gentile and even humble neighbourhoods, in small and medium towns and cities, one takes note of the gap between the political and media “rhetoric” and the apparent cultural atmosphere in the coffee shops and the sandwich shoppes.

There is a cacophony about the political rhetoric that both exhibits and exacerbates a complex divide, as if this division is integral to the political process. And if the “divide” at home is the best the American political class can offer to its citizens, and if a national election burps a ‘leader’ like the current occupant of the Oval Office who merely takes advantage of and enhances the chaos, and if the home climate and political culture is defined by division and denial and the language of over-powering bullying, and me-first narcissism, what hope does that culture and leadership offer to the world in the midst of shared and seemingly intractable threats starved for a collaborative, international and sustainable resolution.

Withdrawal from the Paris climate accord, selling sophisticated weapons around  the world (under the guise of creating jobs at home), deporting “dreamers” again under the deception of freeing jobs for Americans, lowering taxes on the rich, once again as a “trickle-down” deception to generate jobs, gutting both Health and Human Services and Housing and Urban Development and the Environmental Protection Agency while privatizing Education, banning transgenders from serving in the military (currently blocked by the military establishment)…..these are not the signals either to Americans or to the world community, of an administration that is willing and interested in resolving problems in the public interest. (Not to mention lying about 'no connection or collusion with Russia' !)

They are exhibits in the court of public opinion that demonstrate to any jurer who is still awake, that the current administration has defined what is reality for themselves and for the rest of the world, and has determined a political course that will steer the ship of state straight into the eye of any political hurricane it can either find or generate, merely to magnetize the adoration, the nihilistic and adolescent rock-star anaesthetic of swooning so desperately needed by an empty and dangerous and hollow (national) ego, as epitomized by the man with the orange hair and the groping hands.

One observer commenting on the 2016 election, said that both coasts forgot there is a hinterland of farmers who refuse to be forgotten and ignored, and that is the result we now have, a voice from the angry, forgotten and ignored that will drain the swamp in Washington. Apparently, those alienated voters also really don’t care that the world outside the U.S. borders impacts much of the life within…and the relationship between America and the rest of the world could easily and predictably leave that hinterland gasping for clean air, clean water, and a world-view of collaboration and empathy, without which we all could implode.

Don't hold your breath on removal of the president

There was a moment, this morning, on MSNBC’s Morning Joe, in which the host asked advertising/marketing guru Donny Deutsch how he would advise a CEO from General Motors if that company were alternating between conflicting advertising/branding messages every day (as trump is doing between heal/divide).  Deutsch opened with the word “sociopath”; Scarborough immediately cut him off. “We don’t need any psycho-babble here; tell me what you would tell the GM CEO”….or words to that effect.

The American medical/political/sociological culture has put the psychiatric “issue” off the table, relegating it to the dangerous zone of denial, refusing to fund it, refusing to acknowledge it as a real and pressing problem needing serious and focused, professional and political attention, as if “it” does not deserve legitimacy in a country governed by macho testosterone. America would rather incarcerate thousands of mostly men and mostly black and Hispanic, who are addicted to drugs, both prescription and illicit than treat them for their addiction. And this is just one of the many outstanding issues facing law enforcement and the health care system, another target for gutting by the current administration.How could “real men” ever acknowledge that they might have an emotional/psychological/psychiatric issue if they refuse to acknowledge the mere existence and significance of their own emotions?

And when this morning’s moment on Morning Joe occurs, and Deutsch reverts to “if you say different things on different days, you will lose credibility and your customers will come to pay no attention to you”….(or something like that), you know that the question of trump’s psychiatric state of mind is not to be permitted exposure by lay persons, leaving the issue to the professional psychiatrists. At least some of those professionals, basing their responses on the public utterances of trump, have already declared that he is out of touch with reality. And one of the “lay’ definitions of ‘insanity’ is “doing the same thing over and over again while expecting different results”. Nevertheless, it was the advertising/marketing guru who spoke frankly, even if he used a term that was censored by Scarborough.

Of course, an advertising/marketing guru has no professional credentials to use the word “sociopath” to describe trump. The network would also attempt to avoid any possibility of a law suit, should the clinical diagnosis provoke one. And yet, the question of his “fitness” for office is gaining legitimacy and public airing, as it should. Former Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper, went public this week with his own expression of the danger trump presents, should he, in a pique, decide to unleash a nuclear weapon, an act that no law would prevent, prohibit, or even delay. He is, after all, the president, and he obviously believes that there is no law that applies to him, and behaves as if nothing can or will “fetter” his will.

Section Four of the 25^th Amendment to the Constitution reads:

Whenever the Vice President and a majority of either the principal officers of the executive departments or of such other body as Congress may by law provide, transmit to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives their written declaration that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office, the Vice President shall immediately assume the power and duties of the office as Acting President.

The Guardian writes: In practice what that means is Mike Pence plus 13 of Mr. Trump’s 24 cabinet members would have to agree…..John D. Feerick, former dean of Fordham Law School who served as one of its architects, said Senators who signed the amendment into law were clear it must be based on “reliable facts regarding the president’s physical or mental faculties,” not personal prejudice…..

Within 21 days of being triggered, the amendment requires two-thirds of both houses to uphold the decision. If they don’t then power reverts to the president.(August 23, 2017)

Obviously, this is a very high bar, and one that is highly unlikely to be crossed anytime soon.

The facts that are being reported:

·      that trump has shouted and sworn at Senators McConnell, Corker, and Tsilli for not protecting him in the Russian ‘collusion’ affair, and

·      that evidence now alleges that the Russian “dossier” contains reliable information

·      that there is pressure mounting to make that document available to the public

·      that former FBI Director Comey was fired by the president because he refused to “protect” the president by shutting down the FBI inquiry into collusion with Russia and promising his loyalty to the president

·      that trump is wild about the preparation of a bill that would protect Special Prosecutor Mueller from being fired by the president

·      that the president’s “fitness” for office is being publicly questioned in many quarters

·      that McConnell wonders out loud whether this presidency can be sustained

….mean that these facts are all compounding the political noose that is tightening around the neck of the occupant of the Oval Office.

Yesterday, reports that Vice President Pence had initiated a Political Action Committee, a fundraising organ for his own political purposes, would also be cause for anxiety inside the Oval Office. And Bannon’s firing, “freeing” him from the ‘constraints imposed on him while a White House acolyte, could also beat a little louder on drums that trump’s ears find cacophonous.

Is there enough evidence, whether that evidence is considered “legal” or “political,” to bring this president down? Perhaps not yet. Nevertheless, if and when the evidence reaches the tipping point, and specific legal steps begin to happen, the world can count on the trump “deplorables” to take to the streets railing against “fake news” and unfair treatment of their chosen candidate for the highest office in the world.

Clearly, the rest of the world is watching with growing interest and probably anxiety and concern as to whether the United States has become little more than a struggling democracy, comparable and analogous more every day to those banana republics where dictators are thrown out by a variety of methods, both peaceful and not so much.

Even the Foreign Minister of Mexico, upon hearing trump announce in Phoenix that NAFTA would probably have to be terminated, declared that the trump statement would be ignored and that Mexico’s delegation would continue to participate in negotiations already officially under way. Canadian representatives today are meeting with the Haitian community in Florida, to discuss the options available to a growing number of Haitian refugees who have been crossing the Canadian-American border, to escape what many believe will be a trump move to terminate their temporary immigration status in the U.S. So there are already serious and observable implications from the instability inside the White House, implications the world neither needs nor has the time or the resources to address.

We can all hope that this melodrama of monumental “ego” proportions, with global implications, will end sooner rather than later and with a whimper not a bang, and we can all begin to breath more easily.

Is the U.S. suffering a collosal breakdown? Methinks yes!

Let’s get away from micro-news stories and start to look at the big picture where various forms, flavours, sauces and condiments are all infected with cultural violence in the United States.

Violence against minorities, against the legal investigations of the FBI, the Special Prosecutor, and apparently even the Senate, against civil discourse, against truth-telling, against accountability, against public access to affordable health care, against the national interest, against collaboration with NATO, against the planet's eco-system, against the mainstream media, against transgender, against an equitable tax code, against moral values and against even hope.....they are all redolent across the American homeland!

There is no moral equivalency to the blame to “all sides” that has been attached to the Charlottsville VA Saturday violence, one week ago. White Supremacists, Fascists, anti-semites …of them allegedly protesting the removal of the Robert E. Lee equestrian statue, cannot and must not be compared equally with the “Antifa” (Anti-fascist) movement that showed up to oppose the racist fascists.

However, there is another equally volatile debate emerging on the ‘left’ including the “Antifa” (anti-fascist)  extremists and the Southern Poverty Law Centre. The handbook of the former argues that words have not and will not defeat fascism, that violence is and will be required. On the other hand, the SPLC argues that violence begets only more violence. They advocate non-violent protests.

Violence, as a political instrument, versus non-violent protest, the legacy of Dr..Martin Luther King (and Ghandi, and others)….this argument percolates anew if and when ordinary people are aroused by the culmination of conditions they consider unacceptable. The underlying archetypes are war and peace. And when starkly put, the public consciousness predictably votes for peace. At the same time, ironically, the war machine is injected with millions of dollars, “so that a strong military is needed to mount a strong deterrence to war”. (so goes the argument for the most massive military build-up in history.

And it is not only a massive military arsenal that has gobbled the preponderance of the American national budget allocations. It is a culture steeped in violence and military applications to almost every single one of life’s primary steps, rationalized as merely in service to the capitalist, for profit, corporatist culture. Militarizing video games, militarizing political discourse, militarizing social media, militarizing judicial appointments (all nominees having to be vetted by the Federalist Society), militarizing school yards and MBA training..militarizing neighbourhoods with private guns….militarizing organizations like hospitals and schools….while legitimizing “order” for its own sake, will inevitably generate a culture of Manichean black/white options. Similarly, telling kids at summer camp, in morning and evening chants, “I am a winner” posits the opposite (loser) for those who are not part of the group.

Hegel posits “thesis, anti-thesis, and synthesis”….as his approach to philosophy. Thinking is not and can never be satisfied with only two options, no matter how ubiquitous binary math undergirds the new technology. Sealing public discourse and debate into an “either/or” casket can and will produce only what Chuck Todd (Meet the Press host, NBC) calls a “stuck place”. Public support will accrue, in most civil societies, to those proposing non-violent protest, giving them the ‘high ground’ morally. And history gives us numerous examples of the devastation resulting from violence, both military and civilian, creating the “low”moral ground position for those espousing violence. Taking “sides”, a pretense to which the media would have all talking heads subscribe, usually generates more heat than light. Similarly, street protests that pontificate “white supremacy” versus anti-fascism, also inevitably will generate violence, and perhaps even murder as it did a week ago in Virginia.

trump has magnetized the votes of very angry, disillusioned and impatient mostly white voters, including David Duke, the former chief of the Ku Klux Kkan, in spite of Trump’s disavowal of even knowing him. He has also declared a kind of “political war” on the mainstream media, the Washington establishment, most if not all minorities (Muslims, Blacks, Latinos) and spectacularly spared Jews. (One of the white supremacists from Charlottsville, when interviewed by Vice TV, video replayed on NBC’s Meet the Press, said his group was furthering the ideas of Trump, and looking for a spokesperson like him, but one ‘who did not give his daughter to a Jew”.)

We are living on a precipice that evokes memories of the 1930’s when National Socialism, including racial contempt for Jews and other non-whites stomped across Europe. In Virginia, it is lawful to carry a loaded gun on the street, another of the many pieces of evidence that demonstrate the successful lobbying/seduction by the NRA of a majority of members of Congress, at least of Republicans in both houses. Terrorism, whether home-grown or the result of international radicalization, and whether based on white supremacy or radical Islam, has destabilized the sense of security and stability that previously prevailed in most North American towns and cities, and public institutions have been less successful in taming these beasts. Racial animus, compounded by religious fanaticism, co-incident with outsourcing millions of honourable jobs, the demise of the labour movement, and the resulting hopelessness makes a highly volatile ethos, and like a funeral pyre of dried and brittle wood, the ethos is a potential political and perhaps even violent inferno.

Attempting to inject rational arguments, for non-violence, for moderation and for a cooling-off period seem somewhat wistful and Disney-esque. Dante’s Inferno seems more appropriate as an analogy. And there has to be a mountain of both shock and surprise from many that this cauldron is boiling in a country of the most wealthy, and one of the best educated and historically one of the most healthy populations in the world. To say there is a class war merely scratches the surface of the toxic cancerous tumours that inhabit the body politic. Class, race, religion, and even gender (Sebastian Gorka, another incongruous White House freeloader, exclaimed on television that the “pyjama boys have been replaced by the alpha men”). Bannon, upon leaving his perch in the Oval Office declared that he was declaring ‘war’ on all globalists…..and Breitbart, his “weapon” is a strident and hate-mongering organ of white supremacy.

So violence, in words, in bullets, in attitudes and in expectations and even in beliefs, stalks the land…..creating a shadow of ominous fear that cannot be restricted to the 100 km width of the band of darkness generated by yesterday’s eclipse.

Congressman John Lewis was clubbed over the head when he marched as a young man with Dr. King, by police who were determined to keep the black population “in their place”…out of the voting booth, out of the restaurants, out of the city hall and government jobs and essentially out of sight and out of mind. He fully thought he was going to die. Nevertheless, he has persisted, in his shared conviction with Dr. King and others like Andrew Young, that non-violence was to better path.

The fact that a Dartmouth professor has authored a handbook for the Antifa movement, advocating violence makes one wonder how he retains his tenure at that illustrious college. Perhaps, under the protection of the First Amendment, in support of FREE SPEECH, he is unable to be dislodged. However, the American culture and political culture has to accept the need for limits to the free speech protection, and if they are unable or unwilling to curb its use, the country could easily slip into another epidemic of civic violence. Just yesterday, the ACLU (American Civil Liberties Union) announced it will no longer defend those who use weapons to protest their cause. Surely, it is long past time to put limits on the First Amendment, the right to carry and show guns, and the legalization of high powered rifles designed specifically for killing in war.

The world is watching. And while dumping trump will begin a very long process to civility, it will take a series of radical surgeries to eviscerate the tumours that are growing hourly on every organ of the United States body politic. And then “political chemo and radiation” will be required to put the disease into remission.

Trump, as has been stated so often, is a large symptom of a disease. But the disease has already metastasized far beyond the Oval Office.

There is an obvious cultural fixation on the literal meaning of words, on the  physical solutions to all problems, a kind of infantilism of both options and imagination, and a over-reaching oligarchy that has rushed into the intellectual, and political and economic vacuum.

The top 1% (or less) have already so consumed the levers of power, including voting power, fundraising power, media power, university training (job skills while sacrificing the liberal education that demands nuanced, and careful argumentation) and the debasing of the arts, culture, nuanced imagination and dialogue…and this in addition to the already complete control of the economic levers.

A kind of “soft coup” has already taken place, in a country that prides itself as the recipient of the Greek ideal of democracy, in its 21^st century incarnation. That, too, folks, is just another of the myriad of lies, deceptions, illusions, and theatrical ruses that have been inflicted on an unsuspecting, parochial, provincial, despondent and limp public so consumed with many pain-killers, opiods and illicit drugs that even the mountainous DEA cannot keep up with this symptom of the disease.

It is not that Trump could kill someone on Fifth Avenue without suffering a political blow-back; it is more that the country has spiralled into a paroxysm of what in lay language could be termed a massive “breakdown”…..and it really does not know the full extent of the illness, nor the potential pathways back to civic and national health.

To argue for or against the use of violence to confront the fascists is merely to focus on the symptoms of the disease. And violence merely gives expression to the national illness. And there are so many expressive symptoms: drugs, neighbourhood shootings, police brutality, corporate rip-offs, political pimping for all elected politicians, isolationism, militarism, bullying, racism, sexism, Islamophobia, and above all, deception, lies, salesmanship and the enmeshment of the national shadow and the ego…indicating that the “show” has replaced the “reality” and the ‘truth”…. Violence, aided and abetted by the current occupant of the Oval Office (to serve the vestiges of his miniscule ego) abounds, and proliferates across the land. Fear of being “tweeted” by the White House is not and must not become an impediment to confronting trump by those serving the republic as elected officials. They have all taken an oath to protect and to defend the constitution. When are they going to be held to their oath? And by whom?

Can the republic, currently on life support, regain full consciousness, come to its senses and throw off and out all of its nightmare demons?

Reflections on community...

What is about the search for community that leaves so many confused, ambivalent  even discouraged and certainly less than optimistic?

We are supposedly hardwired to be “social” to seek out others and intrinsically to want to help others. And to an extent we are pleasant, polite, and sociable when we meet those we have become familiar with, over a considerable length of time. And yet, such pleasantries are no surrogate for “getting to know” the other. Indeed, they may well be a defense against “social intimacy”. Of course, if and when we encounter an emergency, a fire, a flood, an accident, a break-in or robbery, we are all filled with adrenalin to do our part. Rescuers, paramedics, or just “doing what anyone else would do if faced with the same situation, we find both the energy and the strength to speak to strangers as if we have known them for a much longer time. We also put our own issues aside in the full conscious awareness that the needs of the other easily eclipse whatever we are going through.

Similarly, when in line for a public event, especially if the time stretches beyond a few minutes, strangers become on-the-spot acquaintances, often spilling their life story in an act of open dialogue that would be highly unlikely, if not out of the question in our apartment building, or on our block. Such queues, of course, have already found people interested in experiencing the same thing, whether it be a movie, a boat cruise, a plane trip to a common destination. So there is a bottom line of something in common, aa well as the “fill-in-the-time” avoidance of boredom and the “time-drag”.

Another occasion that seems to find people conversing without prior acquaintance centres on a “conversation piece” of a unique vehicle, a unique feature on a tech device, or a unique picture in the sky or on the horizon, as will undoubtedly happen in North America as millions watch the anticipated solar eclipse. People who walk their dogs in public parks will often find strangers inquiring about the “breed” of the dog, the age, and the “personality” of the dog, especially from others who, too, are fond of those animals. Infrequently, upon entering an urban restaurant, one is greeted by a departing guest extolling the food and the service of the establishment.

Increasingly, however, most folks have their eyes downward focused on their smart phones, “connecting” with people they “know” in what appears to be a pattern of behaviour that has more influence on them than the direct face-to-face contact would generate. There is, after all, a kind of veil of privacy provided by the devices, giving us all the opportunity to “connect” without really experiencing the full impact of the body language, by either party. This new dimension has made it possible for each of us to morph into a ghost-like character presenting ourselves, either in tweets or on facetime, as only partially “available” to the other.

For arranging appointments, co-ordinating schedules, exploring catalogues, and even for many other functional details, the tech devices have more than proven their value. And yet, for real human contact, the kind on which community depends, for the “showing-up” of each person, there is no digital substitute.

Small towns, where traditionally most people know a fair amount about most of the people who live there, exhibit a much higher level of face-to-face contact in the local coffee shops, and at the many events that find dates on the calendars of most families….baptisms, weddings, bar-and-bat-mitzvahs, funerals, and other civic occasions. Sporting events, too, offer opportunities for parents to share the skill development of their children, while venting their frustrations at the occasional “unfair” officiating call.

And while it is true that any of these passing moments can and often do lead to further contact, it is also true that the general public interest in and openness to participating in more lengthy conversations about more than “small talk” is quite limited. If there is a national or even an international event, or “cloud” that captures public interest (fear, anxiety, disgust, abhorrence, or even “funnybone”) it will generate a round of water-cooler talk. In this vein, weather, at least in Canada, is a “safe” topic. Yet, there is a limited range of acceptable topics for this “circle” and anyone who deviates from that acceptable norm is out of sync with the group.

And we are, both individually and collectively, highly adept and even eager, to find those attributes that offer opportunities to put the other down. It could be a speech impediment, a body size or shape, a physical/intellectual impediment, a racial or religious difference from the ‘group’ (as if we really fully felt as if we “belonged” to a group). Recent evidence suggests that even babies by six months, turn their eyes away from other six-month-olds whose visual appearance is different from their own. This evidence comes as part of the proof that some level of racism is endemic to everyone. The next question, of course, is whether we all have to be “taught” to love and accept others, or whether that trait is naturally an integral part of each person’s DNA.

And that starting point, in the world view of each person, is obviously highly determinative of the experiences one encounters for the rest of our lives. Levels and expectations of trust in the “other” are in part determined by this variable factor, within each of us. Levels of detachment, suspicion, scepticism and avoidance are also deeply dependent on this single variable.

If we start, where the Christian church has taught us to start, that everyone is full of sin, ‘having come short of the glory of God,’ and “unworthy to pick up the crumbs from under the (eucharistic) table”….then it is only ‘natural’ that we would have to be “saved” from our own isolation, depravity and dark side. And from this starting point, one is severely restricted about one’s “likeability” and sociability. This kind of “scarring” brings with it the potential of many different attitudes and perceptions, none of them free from the self-and-other perception of something akin to “worthless”. One such emanation is the notion that we will spend the rest of our lives recovering from Original Sin, and the concomitant need for both an internal and an external “Critical Parent” who will chastise, sanction, punish and generally control one’s behaviour.

And we have a booming business for Critical Parents in North America….as well as the obvious and deleterious infantilism that the “CP” requires. Developmental psychology, through whose lens we all learn about how we all change, grow, evolve, shedding early patterns and prejudices and become the “mature” adult we had hoped we would become very early contrasts with the “religious” (Christian) monochromatic “sinner” image the church dispenses. And the working out of this conflict takes decades for many, a life time for others and for some, it is never worked out. The adage that one cannot return home without encountering the experience of being the little child who left” in the mind and perception of those remaining continues to operate, although our rational mind knows different. The positive contribution of the “critical parent” when children are learning to avoid physical danger, “bad people” and seductive temptations continues to be sustained by many religious institutions, primarily for their own control needs….church then as extrinsic Critical Parent, an archetype that not only does not “fit” any deity, but supplants and/or subverts for many adults the development of the “internal” critical parent of the mature adult.

Colleges and universities offer ready-made opportunities to “rub shoulders” with others in similar programs, on the same floor in residence, in the same apartment or rooming house on the same committees or student councils. And while friendships develop, much of this type of encounter tends to be driven by the immediate ‘project’ or special interest. To be sure, life long relationships do develop, especially  among those who move on to grad school together.

Yet, at least for many males, (this may be less true for females) many of these “relationships” are focused on the  project or the team, and often skirt past the private details of one’s personal, emotional life experiences. The rise of Employee Assistance programs, (the outsourcing of many of the human contacts, to preserve the confidentiality of the individual) is clear evidence of how outsourcing the human contact to the “professionals” has supplanted and replaced the human contact that previously characterized many workplaces and local groups. It is our penchant for secrecy, in an age when a bruise on our personal reputation can sink a career, that drives much of our avoidance of participation in community development. Bosses as critical parents, however, is a feature of our contemporary culture that needs strict limitations, and with the demise of the labour movement, there is very little to restrain the employers from excising any individual who threatens the perfect reputation of the ‘firm’.

Ironically, there no single human being who is completely “free” from the possibility that life will deal a “hand of cards” that appear to compromise his/her career, and the brittle and perfect and neurotic public image of  the corporation. Life changing tidal waves, not only of  the life-death variety, hit the shores of our lives every day and if we were honest, compassionate and integrous, we would engender attitudes, processes and beliefs that integrated these truths into our professional lives.

Of course, such a process would render our workplaces much more messy, unpredictable and humane than the current clinical, hygienic, sterile and disconnected cultures we have created. Both management and unions have made large contributions to the current climate of isolated silos staring at screens, talking on phones and driving alone in vehicles, where job descriptions, time allotments, performance incidents and rules (of the critical parent) are in charge of the human contact.

And, of course, our churches, schools, universities and corporations have a common theme: “performance is king”….and our ability and willingness to measure performance (as a function of cost, and the option to reduce costs as the driving principle) grows exponentially daily, even hourly. And many of these measurements are administered in dollar ‘costs’ and “percentage of mistakes” in the scientific management belief that by tightening the collar on performance, those in charge will get the bonuses they deserve.

Whether the “people” in the organizations “feel” engaged, valued, and honoured, is a conversation for the pub after work, but certainly not for the  HR department or the executive suite.

On the other hand, however, if we begin from a place where we are loved (and loveable) by others and by God, then it is much more likely, even potentially predictable, that we will remain open, receptive, gregarious and engaging in all opportunities for “community” even if those opportunities do not involve formal memberships, formal creeds and oaths, formal rituals and obligations, and formal attire.

Community, obviously, depends on trust as does personal disclosure. One has to feel confident that personal information will not be splashed all over the neighbourhood, or the office, or the congregation, or the curling rink, in order to be willing to share, both as recipient and as discloser. And we all have a compendium of experiences in which our lives have been shredded by others, for their personal need/pleasure/revenge/superiority or whatever other stimulus might be behind the exposure. Often too, that “exposure” is not based in truth or reality. The human capacity for “assuming” and for “presuming” and for prying and for gossip, the fuel that serves as a “communicide” weeding out many of the first ‘green shoots’ of a potential authentic community, is so deeply ingrained, nurtured by convention and enhanced by repeated use.

There is another potential argument against the “spontaneous combustion” of community; and that is that only “needy” people are even thinking about their desire for (need of) community. Oh sure, if one is bereaved, then joining a “bereaved” group to share grief, memories, denial, anger and reconciliation is an open possibility. And for those who have suffered from a criminal act, there is comfort and solace in sharing with other ‘victims of violence’. Similarly, divorced persons might be willing to “process” their loss with others going through a similar tragedy. Based on a specific identifiable “need” or “loss” or “emptiness” or trauma, many people are feeling sufficiently vulnerable to risk exposing their vulnerability to others in a similar state of vulnerability.

Yet, what if we humans were honest about our vulnerability as a normal state, and set aside our fears and our anxieties about trust, and take the risk of actually entering a state of community where those anxieties could be lifted and dissipated through the very courage and experience of sharing, risking and trusting?

The notion of “doing” and of “function” has so come to pervade our culture that those considerations that foster “being” for its own sake, connecting for its own sake, and belonging for its own sake have been dismissed  without being given a fair trial. Moreover, loneliness stalks the land, in every village, town and city….and people are all around all of us. We are like the ancient mariner in Coleridge’s poem, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, from which a memorable line rings out: Water water everywhere without a drop to drink!

Of course, salt water is not the most palatable drink. And other people do not qualify as “salt water”….but their ubiquity and their loneliness walk into the office with us, enter our classrooms with us, sit beside us in our pews, and sit in the other booths at Tim’s having coffee every day. And, it is not more professionals that we need to counsel us about our health, or our legal affairs, or even our spiritual lives. In fact, there is a significant gap in conscious connection between most of these professionals and the people they “serve” and that detachment (call it objective professionalism) is a major barrier to our feeling connected to other human beings on the planet.

The work of the professionals, like the exchange between the store-keeper and his customer, is a transactional dynamic that requires, even demands, a protocol, a measurable service, and most often a specific prescription and action as follow-up. It is not that conversations with “professionals” are evil; it is just that they are stunted, protracted and problem-solution-based, like a visit to the local mechanic when the car needs brakes.

“Hanging out” that old adolescent-permitted and even encouraged “waste of time” was never wasted and never without stimulation, provocation and especially connection. As adults, naturally, we would come to the opportunity to “hang out” with people who wanted also to “hang out” (for its own sake) with a very different perspective and expectation than we did at sixteen. That difference, however, need not be an impediment to fostering community. In fact, it could enhance both the depth and the rewards of a relationship among mature adults.

There is, of course, the question of whether “community” requires the participation by both genders in the same community. Intuitively, it seems that separate gender groups would reduce some of the anxiety, as men and women might wish to share different issues and share them in a different attitude and manner.

Some fortunate readers may already be enjoying the experience of an authentic community. If so, they might offer their suggestions and recommendations to others not so fortunate, but who might be interested in seeking a community that would welcome them.

Community is not a prescription for happiness; nor it is a placebo for every kind of headache. Nevertheless, it is a sign that we can and will reach out to connect not because we have “answers” nor because we want “political or resume networks” nor because we seek to acquire admittance to a social club.

For the simple reason that we consider connection and community and relationship (beyond spouse, and blood family) to be a situation that embraces our person, and not our skill, our emotions as well as our thoughts, our pains as well as our victories, and our biographies as well as our attitude to end of life issues.

We do not seek community to “get fixed” or to transform our personalities, or to eliminate our self-sabotage. 

We seek community for its own sake….and that is reason and purpose enough!