Calling on America's "better angels" to flesh out the true American "soul"

A brief report in the Dispatches section of the latest The Atlantic paints a picture of the deep internet, where one can find porn photography of digital bodies, with superimposed movie actresses heads, making the distinction between the “fake” and what is “real” almost imperceptible. The goal of the developers of this technology is to “democratize” it to the extent that anyone, with only two or three clicks can wreak vengeance on anyone they wish, simply by inserting their visage over such disgusting activity.

We already live in a universe in which the chief executive of the United States is blatantly and melodramatically profiting from his own superimposing the “fake” news designation on giant, historic and reputable news outlets. With the cataract of digital developments, current and imminent, most of us will be literally unable to establish a “set of facts” on which to build some relatively reasonable, and agreeable perception of reality. Nothing, including the most outlandish of both denials and of promises, will be out of line. Just this morning, a few Republican members of Congress, asked if they believed their president had lied, replied, “The president exaggerates, and does not speak the way I do; but I would be more concerned if we were not “getting things done”. Co-dependence and the enmeshment it requires and imposes turns normal people into functional echoes of the presidential universe, not merely velcroing each of them to his power and influence, while emasculating their own independent voice.

The National Institutes of Health has just embarked on a mission to gather the DNA, along with other personal biographic details of the lives of millions of Americans, with a view to studying the aggregate and the individual profiles of human identities, hoping to develop enhanced measures to combat human illnesses. Congress is reported to have passed a law encircling the data collected with protective caveats that are designed to prevent the leaking and the illicit use of the highly sensitive data. Now, dear reader, ask yourself if you would be willing to  submit your personal data, including your DNA, to the National Institutes of Health, given the sieve-like deluges of data from various sources resulting from hackers, and technological break-downs? According to the report, filed on PBS last night by Lenny Bernstein, a reporter at the Washington Post, all data is never supposed to be used even by police and law enforcement in the prosecution of any crime. Does that caveat meet your minimal expectations of personal security and freedom from invasion by forces that neither you nor I can or would trust?

This morning, on MSNBC’s Morning Joe, Jon Meacham’s new book, The Search for the Soul of America, provided the opportunity for the author to articulate his thesis, that, based on a deep awareness of American history, the current epoch is less depressing and soul-destroying than many believe. As he put it, we have been ‘here’ before and have summoned our better angels to move the country to a higher and a better place each time. And while none of us would question either Meacham’s research or his interpretative conclusions, and while everyone needs a large dose of historical perspective in the middle of this tsunami of lies and braggadocio, there is something different about the current situation, with threats we have never had to confront before.

Let’s make a short list:

·        Global warming and climate change with deniers in power

·        The rampant revolution in digital technology, much of it in the hands of insidious, cruel and vindictive persons and agencies

·        3 men owning more of the American economy than 50% of the people (Bazos, Buffett, Gates)

·        CEO incomes running a hundreds of percentage points above the factory floor worker

·        Insurgent rogue nations with nuclear weapons

·        An anaesthetized House of Representatives and Senate

·        More guns per capita and household than at any time in America history

·        Volcanic eruptions of violence by law enforcement agents

·        A surge of fear bordering on hysteria about immigrants

·        Poverty rates that threaten health and life of many

While this is hardly an exhaustive list, it does tend to put a cloud over Meacham’s rainbow.

And yet, we all know that much of the best in humanity’s creativity has erupted from the most egregious personal, communal and national conditions. Individuals, like Polish soldiers, risked their lives, from inside Auchwitz, in order to try to liberate Jewish prisoners from the death camp. Beethoven wrote some of his most treasured scores while facing deafness, loneliness and poverty.  Renoir painted much of his portfolio under considerable physical and emotional pain….Rescuers, ion the eye of many natural disasters, as well as human-inflicted tragedies lifted the spirits of many victims and potential victims, while risking considerable danger to themselves. Heroism, on both on the scale of a battalion, as well as from an individual, punctuates all of human history, and Meacham may well be counting on its emergence from the American slough of despair if the current depression and fear give way to positive action.

In the American lexicon of “better angels” there are names never to be forgotten, of men and women who have sprouted through the darkness and the most threatening clouds of depression, war, disease, poverty and racism. Eleanor Roosevelt, King, Bobby Kennedy, and even some of the barons of former wealth whose philanthropy established some of the best universities, hospitals, boys and girls clubs, and even some legislators worked long and hard to embolden workers, and to expand the right to vote, and to underwrite scientific and scholarly research in all fields. Legal minds, among the best in the world, have dedicated themselves to the project of a “better and more perfect union” and their memory and their role-modelling continue like stars in a part of the sky not yet completely darkened by despair. Shriver’s Peace Corps, the American Red Cross, American Foreign Aid, and the legendary Marshall Plan point dramatically and altruistically, as well as honourably and even in an exemplary manner to the core of “better angels” from which the country can draw inspiration, courage, creativity and compassion, as well as hope.

In fact, it does seem that humans have to be pushed into a corner before they become sufficiently exercised, motivated and determined to resist. And clearly, trump and his gang are doing everything they can (whether deliberately or not) to generate a massive push-back.

From another perspective, however, there is the notion of a nation mired between two extreme perceptions, as if they have become so familiar with simplifying most situations into a “good-bad” dichotomy. The retreat from the complexity of reality, into a binary world view, however, can be characterized as a reduction that both masks the nuances and enables many to take themselves off the “hook” of taking responsibility. Whether they believe they are powerless to effect change, or whether they prefer to let things slide into the sewer as a titillating and predictable (and expected)  salatious freek show of the kind that generates profit for tabloids, and for the underworld, the result is the same: a kind of passive aggression that would make most domestic displays of the trait look like a tea party.

We do not have to look far to find the kind of paralysis I am speaking of: just cast a brief glance at the United States Congress, that body that was designed to rein in autocrats and wannabe tyrants in the Oval Office. Aiding and abetting  the construct of a binary universe is a national media that turns almost all political stories into a competition between the good guy(s) and the bad guy(s)…depending on the political persuasion of the owners and the journalists. Digging an historic trench with an unshakeable tradition of and commitment to only two political parties, further heightens the profile of a “two-sided” narrative, literally and metaphorically rendering anything different too “marginal” (radical, underfunded, out in left field, dangerous, stupid, led by a fool or a nobody, too costly in dollars and/or jobs/military action, or any of a number of rationalizations).

Meacham’s prescription from history of a return of the better angels of American history, even if it has truth and validity to justify its assertion, has to be seen as modest at best. Martin Luther King’s freedom marches, incarcerations, loyalist beatings, and the unleashed angry dogs, although all of that took great courage, conviction and faith in the hope for change, based on what Meacham would toda8y call America’s better angels, fell far short of generating a modicum of equality. Voting rights were extended somewhat, and yet today have begun to fall under the spell of Republican restrictions of various sorts that make it much more difficult for blacks and poor people to cast their vote. Similarly, in the mid-twentieth century, courageous labour leaders risked their lives while generating real social change in the workplace, through fair(er) wages, benefits, pensions and hours. Again, Meacham would point to America’s better angels in his depiction of this progressive movement. And, yet, much of that enhancement of the conditions under which ordinary men and women were expected to work, has fallen into disrepair, if not actual entombment, with the overt destruction of the labour movement. Similarly, from the1970’s through to the end of the Obama presidency, there was a general and growing consciousness about the need for the “greening of America” as well as the rest of the planet. America’s better angels were soaring on the wings of public support and identification with the growing consciousness that we are, were and continue to pollute our own atmosphere with toxic gases, dirty industrial effluent and excessive garbage that overflowed thousands of land-fill sites. There were then naysayers, but there was light at the end of the tunnel on the issue, and the consciousness seeped over into other areas of American life. That whole movement, although now undergirded by even more indisputable scientific evidence, and hundreds if not thousands of additional respected and professional voices joining the choir of taking action to sustain the environment for our children and grandchildren, is atrophying under the “dead” weight of capitalists who demand fewer regulations in order to increase their profits and their dividends, and the even “deader” rigor mortis of a compliant Congress.

There is an underlying deep and profound irony in the abandonment of the “better angels” archetype by the very group one might expect to embrace, and even to exhort their colleagues to embrace the American “better angels”. That group is the evangelical “Christians” who, for the most part, have joined the trump conflagration, believing that they have found their secular “saviour”. No theatrical gestures with his family Bible, given to him by his mother, will ever penetrate the scepticism of this scribe that trump can or will save the nation from its darker angels. In fact, there is considerable evidence that he is one of those very same dark angels, wretching and shouting in anguish on the television screens, twisting in the agony of his own secrets, while evangelicals wrap him in shrouds of their brand of the sacred. How pitiable and how tragic!

So, while Meacham is a honourable, dignified and respected historian, writer and recent outstanding eulogist for Betty Ford, his “better angels” thesis will be tested severely by the short-term narcissism and head-strong intransigence of many of the 1% who increasingly call the shots in America and in too many other countries.

And the 1% is not identical to, or in any way compatible with the “better angels” in any country, and certainly not in America.

Reflections on "Strong men" (Part 2)

These “strong men” can only hold power because they have manipulated others, the facts, the agents who distribute the information and generally painted a picture in which the masses either believe or believe they are powerless to change.

The emasculation of the masses did not start with trump. Nor will it be over on his demise. The emasculation of the masses began with the notion that “father knows best”….back in the dark ages when some chief and tribe both believed that they had discovered the shortest path to “reconciled power” within the tribe. And even then, specific traditions limited the purview of those “chiefs”….And  there was also the notion of a God, the Pope, and the ignorance of the masses, enshrined in the notion that ordinary people could not be trusted to “read” the Bible correctly. Only the “educated elite” in the Vatican were so enlightened as to be able to with promulgate the real “truth” of God’s word. And since we absolutely abhor uncertainty, chaos, and the complexities of ambiguities, we prefer the “order” imposed by a single voice.

Noel Coward notes: It is discouraging how many people are shocked by honesty and how few by deceit.

T.S. Eliot reminds us: people cannot tolerate too much truth.*

Of course, truth-telling is a reliable approach to being marginalized in any organization, family, or government, especially truth telling that exposes the abuse of power by others. Having held secrets deeply hidden in my heart and mind, forhalf a century, believing that to expose the truth would embarrass those who “parented” my sister and me. I now recognize the futility and the failed responsibility of my silence because the pattern spilled over into my own marriage. Meagre attempts to open the Pandora’s Box of the real truth of what was going on inside what was then 104 Gibson not only were fruitless, but actually back-fired with even more violence, now triggered by whispered disclosure by letter to distant family members.

Whistle-blowers, we all know, are despised by those in power. They represent if not the greatest, then certainly one of the most virulent threats to anyone in power who is abusing that power. Legislation to “protect” whistle-blowers, too, is so ineffective that it is virtually useless. Any negative public disclosure of the failings of an organization, or specifically a leader (one of those strong men) is so abhorrent, especially when one considers the fragility of the character and the ego’s of such men. Rage, unfettered rage and revenge are the immediate reactions of “strong men” to the disclosure of their longest, best-kept and most heinous secrets. Even secrets that would not impact negatively the personal reputation of a discloser, but perhaps the honour and public reputation of a family, have to be sealed from public light, in a repression of the truth that can and does compromise the secret-bearer as well as the family or organization.

Mental and emotional health, deeply and inextricably linked even enmeshed with the freedom and openness to receive and to honour the full truth, especially when it is hard to digest, is compromised through the rigorous silence that some of us impose on our family history. “Black” Uncle Tom, the drunk, who is never spoken of by family rule and tradition, is an example. The unwed teen who had to leave home to have her baby is just another of the many “secrets” that haunt the streets and the coffee shops of many towns and cities. The family, or organization, too, is compromised by the repression of its “darkest” secrets, given the notion that only the truth can and will ‘set everyone free’. To live under a cloud, without either acknowledging or opening up and confronting the secrets, is to render much of what goes on there as a form of play acting.

The church, too, has its own “secrets”…like the many kangaroo courts that have been summoned, to discipline someone who is challenging the status quo. While it is no secret that the ecclesial body has adopted both the administrative hierarchical top-down structure of organization and the deployment of power, such a structure puts the few at the top, including the top honcho on a kind of pedestal, a target really, for the critics to focus their attacks. And having declared itself the “keeper of the morality” of the culture, (either officially or unconsciously) the church has embraced the notion of defining sin, and then taken to manufacturing both inadequate processes and even more suspect decisions as ‘punishment’ or exclusion as its way of living out a theology of “forgiveness”.

So, within the structure of that culture, it has felt obliged to place a veil, or perhaps a reredos, on the vaults of its many secrets. Pursuing a culture in which it expects people to place ultimate confidence and trust, as does the military, the medical profession, the legal profession, as well as most governments and bureaucracies, only enhances the potential for accumulating secrets, which in themselves, might not be all that serious, nevertheless places those in charge in a position of having to choose between looking the other way, or taking action that is “decisive” and “strong”. Overlooking, or preferring to ignore the basic truth of nature that both change and imperfection are “baked into the cake” of everything human, we have entrapped leadership, as well as our perception of what passes for acceptable and trustworthy and integrous, in a vice so narrow and so inflexible, as to seriously impair the effective, open and honest dynamic of civility, mutual respect and the potential of readily accessible reformation.

Capital punishment, for example, is demonstrated not to provide a deterrent for others, and yet, in our unbridled and voracious appetite for revenge, some 38 American states have re-instituted it in the last decade. Similarly, “war” on opiods, or illicit street drugs, manifests a wanton disregard for the conditions in which people are living, that lead them to medicate their inordinate psychic, emotional and even physical pain. It does, however, underly, enhance and reproduce a culture so bound up by its own fear of failure that it falls victim to that very fear, (just another of the many secrets that we refuse to deal with honestly, openly and moderately).

Another secret that we refuse to discuss is our dependence on hard power, as the panacea for protecting us from potential “invasion” by a foreign power. It is a mere shibboleth that no one wins in any military conflict, and yet, the American budget for the Pentagon consumes by far the largest percentage of the national budget, while people starve, live on the streets, or have to choose between needed medications and food or rent. Keeping others in power, under such specious foundations, only exaggerates a culture of both denial and self-sabotage.

The denial of human agency in global warming and climate change, too, is a glaring reality that threatens the survival of the planet and all of us. And while there are voices crying in the wilderness, and voices taking some steps to confront our own dependence on fossil fuel, for example, as one of the more significant contributors to CO2 emissions, we are both slow and reluctant to be honest and open in our public policy to address the danger. Of course, there are arguments, in the short term for the preservation of jobs, incomes and family stability. However, creative approaches to this and many other public issues, tend to struggle under the weight of opposition from those seeking to preserve their personal, and their temporary and fleeting grasp of the brass ring.

Leaders like trump and putin are using the public’s attraction, even obsession, with stories of trite and tawdry human sex and private money “dirt”, as distractions from the truths that such leaders are carving out the very foundations of a healthy society and political culture. They are also depending on our being overwhelmed with the sheer volume and weight of stories that our memories will be drowning in “stuff” and we will either forget or ignore their nefarious obsession with their own power.

Deceit shows itself, and we can hear this story in every coffee shop and bus stop, and waiting room, in how we have participated in and permitted a culture of refusal (denial of) to accept responsibility, linked to the demolition of the notion of shame. To hear someone acknowledge “this is on me” today is so jarring to our ears that we actually wonder if there might be a loose “screw” inside the head of such a person. Employers too cover their obsession with greed and profit in the mascara of crumbs of classical conditioning rewards, while denying they are increasing the workload of every worker, without once bringing those workers into the planning and discussion of the very changes those workers will be expected to carry out.

The notion of corporate team, and the circle organizational model, once considered a healthy way to build a workplace culture of respect has been replaced by a regression return to scientific management enabled by the proliferation of digital technology that can and does measure every piece of work by the nano-second. Obvious such measurement feeds the insatiable appetite for “data” from managers, who then seek ways to wring out more work for less cost from all of the departments in his/her responsibility.

Having secured the virtual etherizing of all labour unions, and the voices of the workers, in a seemingly compulsive and obsessive march toward “entrepreneurship” and the engine the drives the economy, the establishment has gutted pensions, benefits and worker protections and replaced all of the safety net with contract positions that have no security, no benefits and no RESPECT! Even bringing in “interns” with the promise of a glowing “line” in your resume, is another deceit, playing to the exclusive advantage of the power structure. And yet, in order to even glimpse a potential hire in the future, young grads are compelled to play this game of corporate deceit.

Affairs, by the president, are now disregarded  as to whether they are acceptable in the public arena and replaced by the details over silence payments in the public media’s coverage of current events. And even then, those stories are buried in the  obfuscations of the administration’s talking heads, simply because even they have no idea where the truth lies. Such is the drama of deceit that is playing out before our eyes, under the cloud of a mere headline “fake news” attributed to formerly legitimate news outlets.

We are enmeshed in a culture of deceit, the foundations of which are rooted in fear of disclosure, fear of rejection and fear of abandonment shared by every single person. However, it is the people in positions of responsibility who have abrogated the design and delivery of the public messages to their own specific, unique and narcissistic purposes, deceiving even themselves, because there is no way they can or will remember what lies they have previously told, when, where, to whom or with what consequences.

As for me and my own family, I deeply and profoundly regret and am sorry for my own participation in a culture of silence, repression, and fear of rejection. I enabled such a culture to ensnare others in the perception, which easily becomes belief, that the truth would be too “hard” for others to handle. A veneer of “protection” can and does only mask authentic and viable connections between people, and while I was attempting to remove the masks from public figures, I was perpetuating my own mask, at the time, probably mostly unconsciously; now, not so much!

It would do all of us well to spend some time reflecting on the “secrets” we are currently hiding, in fear of disclosure from the very people we love and who love us. And such reflection might well ask questions like, “How am I sabotaging this relationship, and my own person, by burying these often deep and painful truths under a sand hill of silence, distortion or outright denial.

Such deceit, notwithstanding the warnings from some heavyweight thinkers, can and will continue to entrap us and so clip our wings from undergirding our full potential as to deprive us individually, our families and our workplaces and nations of one of the more powerful and under-accessed and under-utilized human resources. And we do not need huge rigs or monumental environmental disasters to mine this energy.

Perhaps, if we all were to find the words, the courage and the sensitivity to express our full truth, those shibboleths about not being able to withstand too much truth would fade into the mists of myth and history. And, perhaps ‘strong men’ could climb down from their vulnerable pedestals, acknowledge their fragility, and permit and enable the free-flow of human creativity, energy and real power to take responsibility for our shared lives.

Now there’s a reformation waiting to be “birthed”!

*I have been confronted directly and personally in private by a now deceased bishop anxious that the people in the church were unable and unwilling to tolerate too much honesty and truth, in conversation about prospective entrance into active ministry. I was so shocked and appalled that decades later, the scene of the conversation remains vivid, coloured, scented and clouded with the appalling self-protective bubble in which he had encased himself and his ecclesial leadership.

Another bishop, attempting to rationalize the approach taken following a church tragedy, applauded the model, spirit and leadership of Winston Churchill, as precisely what was needed, rather than the obvious choice of grief counselling. “Strong men” have embedded their image deeply even into the culture deployed in flawed and futile pastoral care.

Can we mount a global campaign to rid the world of "strong men" leaders?

Time magazine’s cover is displaying what Time calls the era of the “strong man”…a montage of photos of allegedly political leaders who have adopted the mantle of the “strong man”….putin, trump, erdogan, kim jung un, sisi, duterte, and even xi jinping (having just arranged a life appointment as Secretary of the Communist Party) and a couple of others who, taken together, along with the multiple sex offenders, terrorists, spineless ‘moderate’ leaders of the male gender demonstrate what is most objectionable, heinous and repulsive about the current menu of masculinities, grabbing the headlines.

Not satisfied with circumscribed, constitutional, historic, moderated and mediated power, determined to inflict even a violent, dictatorial and exclusionary imprint on their moment in history, these men are so tarnishing the long-term reputation of masculinity, (as if it needed more pummelling!) without a concerted, conscientious, thoughtful, and collaborative push-back from the mainstream of moderate, reasonable, respectable and even attempting to be honourable men.  Commentary on the exploits of these men, for the most part, demonstrates their abuse of power, certainly not their exemplary deployment of it. They imprison or otherwise ‘wipe-out’ dissent; they manipulate the information concerning their rule; they take for granted that their power is too restricted by norms previously considered essential to their people; they consider their career ambitions, legacies and ‘triumphs’ more significant than the welfare of their people; and they dominate their own “news outlets” as if some movie magnate(s) had taken over their domains in the production of some “heroic” super-man hero movie….

Far removed from the days of the Lee Iacoca’s, the Jack Welsh’s, when corporate governance included as an important agenda item, the support of the community in which their companies operated, it is not only the visages on the Time cover who are abusing their power. For too long, at a much lower echelon, and much less visible to the public, corporate boards and CEO’s, supported by their government pawns, have been vacuuming into their own executive field of play, the ruthless, and unobstructed pursuit of both profit and thereby dividends for investors, at the expense of committed and contracted pensions, wages, environmental and health and safety protections not to mention the viable and effective existence of labour unions which have become virtually dead.

We are witnessing an oligarchic take-over, globally, that is clearly dedicated to its own narrow narcissistic and greedy goals, without caring a ‘fig’ for the long-term health of the planet, the long-term resolution of serious and ever-morphing conflict, the strength and viability of international institutions like the UN, the WHO, the ILO, the International Criminal Court, the IMF, and then World Bank. Rape and pillage of natural resources, for immediate profit and dividends, surgical removal of regulations that would impede the unfettered pursuit of corporate profit by their puppet legislators (of so many nations and languages and ethnicities and geographies) and the dropping of a few “crumbs” of pennies in tax breaks, for example, just to keep the “dogs” of starving, un-and-under-employed, desperate and mostly hopeless people at bay.

They build up “their” military bastion, both because they can and because they never know when they might need it to retain power. They demand “loyalty” which really means a sell-out of any principles of decency, leaving only sycophants willing to assume positions of responsibility, even if their tenures will be short-lived.

It is not just the cover story that appals. It is the ‘back-story’ that infuriates ordinary people around the world. We all know that instant global communication has permeated the borders of almost all countries, (with some blatant and dangerously controlled exceptions using Canadian technology to repress internet access to their people). We also know that global markets have unleashed the lowest common denominator of corporate greed, narcissism and the unfettered and unaccountable movement and hiding of cash under the guidance of the most costly accounting and legal firms.

Oligarchs, armed with a coterie of “loyal” protectors, body-guards, lawyers, accountants and legislative pawns, walking on mountains of secretly-stashed cash, striding the corridors of their own media slaves (dependent on the ratings their “heroes” generate and the advertising dollars that ensue), dismissing negative voices as if they were mere packaging on their latest Big Mac, (a record number of jounralists, 262, have been jailed this year!), seducing more weak and gullible sycophants to replace those already carelessly thrown under the bush, denying even the merest appearance of indecency, lawlessness, and deceit.

And the story goes even deeper: these thugs in public life, striding their respective stages like self-declared super-heroes, give cover, and even role modelling to millions of young men, most of them desperate for a moment in the limelight, barely being able to distinguish fame from infamy. In a star-drugged culture, supported, aided and abetted to the social media, we are at risk of sabotaging many of our best men, who no longer seek public office, given the sacrifices required in time, resources and reputation, and of so tainting the overall reputation of men generally, that we are all at greater risk.

And because most of the “strong men” champion free enterprise, for-profit at the expense of the planet’s rising temperatures, raging fires and floods and the displacement of millions through both military conflicts and starvation, poverty, disease and infant malnutrition and the impacts of those conditions on every  newborn in the developing world. Taken together, these men represent a plethora of political parties, all of them veering far right, nationalistic, catering to their own “sub-oligarchs,’ wanting walls to keep out the most desperate, and more and more power, money and influence for themselves.

In such a climate, we need far more Macrons, Trudeaus, Merkels and articulate moderates everywhere. And yet, will the moderates be strong enough to bring serious reflective approach to world affairs, given the obstreporous intransigence of these tyrants? It is legitimate to fear that many will not see behind the headlines or this cover on Time, to tease out the black holes of vacuity, narcissism and empty ego’s that threaten the health, sanity and well-being of millions with impunity.

Micro-management in pursuit of "corporate" perfection (and ideology?) sabotages the universities

The University of Alberta has ignited a firestorm by making a formal offer of an honourary doctorate degree (he already has 29!) to Dr. David Suzuki. Conservatives like Jason Kenny, the leader of the provincial hybrid Rose-Progressive Conservatives) are threatening to withdraw public funds from the university, should he become premier (heaven forbid!) Fat-pocket donors from the oil patch are threatening to cease writing cheques to the university.

All hell is breaking out, simply because this honourable, authentic, decent, articulate, courageous and yet extremely humble scholar (of biology) has spent his life exposing the dangers, both current and future, of continuing obsessive dependence on fossil fuels. Even Rachel Notley, the NDP Premier of Alberta, says she “regrets” the decision of the university, while acknowledging their right to make it. Of course, Notley’s government is enmeshed with British Columbia over the proposed Kinder-Morgan pipeline that purports to increase the flow of bitumen (in tar sands oil) seven times, from Alberta through British Columbia. B.C., meanwhile, has submitted their “right” to restrict such a flow to the courts, under the cloud that the federal government has already given approval for the project.

So, the Suzuki doctorate has become another ignited “match” in an already crowded “room” of competing, and previously ignited ideologies and political actors, threatening what some are calling a potential constitutional crisis. Trudeau’s latest “dramatic” attempt to pour some water on the potential flame, by returning from Peru last Sunday, to meet with both Notley and Morgan (B.C. N.D.P. premier, strangled to a Green Party contract that demands opposition to the Kinder-Morgan pipeline), went nowhere. Environment and Global Warming Minister, Catherine McKenna, is left trying to be heard on the fed’s commitment to pour millions into shoreline protections, in the event of a tanker spill off B.C.’s coast, following completing of the pipeline.

One engineering professor at U. of Alberta has gone so far to exclaim that this crisis, over the proposal of granting the degree to Suzuki, is the most significant crisis to have confronted the university in his lifetime. Oh, really! (Perhaps only in HIS mind, buried as it obviously is in some alternative universe that seeks to overlook the damage of dependence on fossil fuels on people and the planet on which we depend for our survival.)

A crisis, also incubated in a Canadian university, this time Laurier University in Waterloo, has erupted over the issue of how to manage the new world of guest lecturers, symbols for the human civil right to free speech. Starting with the disciplining of a professor who supported the University of Toronto professor Jordan Peterson, (he of the defiant refusal to address members of the LGBTQ community by the preferred personal pronoun selected by each respective individual). After her dressing down, followed by her exoneration and an apology from the university, this female professor birthed the LSOI, the Laurier Society for Open Inquiry, as a further attempt to incubate the free exchange of ideas, including an active Q & A after each guest lecturer. However, upon applying for “space” to host an alt-right speaker from the U.S. who holds strong anti-immigrant views, the LSOI was faced with delays, related primarily to the cost of “security” in the event that protesters (naturally expected) generated more than vocal protests at and near the event. Attempting to move the proposal “off-campus” to the neighbouring University of Waterloo, the LSOI was met with similar “rent” costs, jumping from an initial $1400 to a whopping $28.000, after consulting with the Waterloo Police Department.

Of course, Laurier, in the dust-up, has attempted to draft a “free speech” declaration, based on the principle of inclusive voices, but circumscribed by so many restricting caveats that one would have to find an Oxford-trained constitutional lawyer to navigate a pathway through the cautions in order to bring the declaration into real effect. Words, expressing a principle, countered by caveats that effectively deny that very principle, are in a word, merely “hollow”.

And it is this hollowness, this scrupulosity, this tempest in a tea-pot, linked umbilically to the corporate universities’ absolute need for a perfect public image, that is becoming the defining trait of higher learning. As one observer put it, this conflict is at root the pursuit of dollars, on behalf of a corporate university, such a pursuit dependent as it is on the demonstration that there is no political “dirt” or “cloud” hanging over the institution.

Any policy statement that purports to advocate for “inclusive” voices, at a university, under the historical and traditional rubric of promoting all ideas, in order to provide a laboratory for students to use to form their own preferred positions, (Hegel’s thesis, anti-thesis, synthesis comes to mind) that then demands no difference of opinion with a range of specific marginal groups or identities allegedly in an attempt to protect those minorities, in order to preclude and thereby avoid the spectre of real protests, sabotages itself. It also sabotages the very administration responsible for writing the policy in the first place.

Open dialogue, under the over-riding clause that differences can and will be voiced respectfully, articulately, and without personal attacks either verbal or physical, has been a cornerstone of the academic community for centuries. And while that tradition of civility is at risk, in the current climate of intolerance and brutal contempt of anything and anyone with whom we disagree, there is a public expectation that the university will uphold its long-standing tradition of free and open, honourable and respectful, debate of competing ideas. And this tradition, especially when academic dependency on private capital has grown exponentially, can only be sustained by those making decisions for the universities, by their conscientious and deliberate lowering the rank of cash-collection to a secondary place on the university’s value priorities.

Jason Kenny’s suggestion, should he become premier, of withholding public funds from U. of Alberta, to ‘punish’ the university for the decision to award the Suzuki honourary doctorate, is a dangerous and ominous portend for the academic freedom of the public university. If a political actor is to be offered the levers of rewards and punishment (the bare bones of classical conditioning) over the academic and administrative decisions of that university, then the core identity of that institution is to be threatened. And such a suggestion warrants a public push-back from the electorate, dependent obviously, on the degree to which the public is prepared to fight for a completely independent academic community.

The issue here also opens the question of the need for more and detailed public disclosure of all private donations to public academic institutions, and the strings attached to those cheques, that might impact the academic independence of the recipient institution. Even the hiring policies, as well, merit a close scrutiny, through the lens of whether or not specific academic departments are tilted toward the for-profit corporate ideology.  A preponderance of right-wing ideologues, or left-wing ideologues, will have the unwanted impact of social engineering among its students, whether blatant and overt, or subversive and covert.

And back to the issue of public relations/micro-management trumping the macro-long-term social engagement of the academic institution, it would seem that the micro-side of these arguments is in the ascendancy….as another “power-surge” threatening how we frame and then resolve public issues, both inside and outside academia.

Temple University’s* withdrawal of Cosby’s honourary degree, following his conviction on three counts of sexual assault, however, provides legitimate counterpoint to this argument, as the recipient no longer warrants the award.

*a public university in the U.S. state of Pennsylvania

Wrestling with the seductions of pride....

Pride and hope and desire like crushed herbs in his heart sent up vapours of maddening incense before the eyes of his mind. He strode down the hill amid the tumult of suddenrisen vapours of wounded pride and fallen hope and baffled desire. They streamed upwards before his anguished eyes in dense and maddening fumes and passed away above him till at last the air was clear and cold again. (James Joyce, Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, p. 86)

Pride was my wilderness and the demon that lead me there was fear. (Margaret Laurence, The Stone Angel, p. 191)

There is a deceptively seductive and paradoxical quality to pride. Without it, one is almost literally paralyzed; and with too much of it, one is trapped in a capsule of self-sabotage. Competing for a larger share of pride on the international stage, as an obsessive game in which both trump and putin are currently enmeshed, gives voice only to the hollowness of both voices. Attempting to forge a gordion know committing both peoples of the United States and Russia to their ‘pride’ chase, is also a shell-game of significant proportions, in which millions of people are at risk. Tragically, when they both believe their own favourable press clippings, manufacturing them, themselves for the most part, they have crossed the boundary from pride into narcissism and there is really no chance their people will join them, at the end of the day.

Pride is also underpinning the British “Brexit” vote, cloaked in a mask of national independence and autonomy. Pride, in so many instances, undergirds so many decisions that lead to division, alienation, isolation and abandonment. A Russian professor in the mid-seventies, renowned for his large physical presence, even larger voice, and humungus library, teaching in a Canadian university, was fond of ridiculing the Russians, by sardonically pointing out the Russian solution to every problem: “eliminate it!” There is already too much evidence that trump has adopted this method in his executive decisions about personnel, although some have obliged him by sabotaging their own careers, once again, it can be argued, through a surfeit of pride.

As one of the original “sins,” pride does have a track record of preceding a fall almost as if the blindness to the need for correction, and for any attempt to offer correction, pushes an individual past what the rest of the world will tolerate. Pride of a parent, we all know, can result in extreme emotional abuse as the child is transformed into the means of building, growing and sustaining the parent’s reputation among the neighbours and co-workers, potentially even without either the parent or the child being fully conscious of the abuse of power. We have all met those who, through the words, actions and attitudes of their parents, believed they would never measure up to the parent’s expectations, which, then, naturally become in the grown child’s mind, no longer an expectation but an unmet, failed “demand”.  And that emptiness, that now conscious “failure” haunts the person for the rest of his/her life.

Conversely, pride can and does wrap itself around opposite attitudes, a kind of inverted snobbery, through which people without much formal education, living on a meager salary while doing punishing work, cast aspersions on those who have acquired an education, and possibly an income and professional stature that over-shadows that of their parents. “Why go to university?” they might ask, “if you’re only going to get married and have kids!” Pride, too, wraps itself in uniforms, military, clerical, police, and all forms of law enforcement and public protection. Those wearing such garb, at least at the beginning, have put on a kind of alternative ego, one behind which they can (and often do) hide their true sentiments, attitudes, beliefs and actions. And it is not only in ‘uniforms,’ but also in positions of power and statue, titles, degrees, pride is woven into the fabric of those “achievements”. Too often, children, in order to prove their “mettle” to their over-achieving, and highly insecure parents, have to demonstrate their  having graduated from childhood/adolescence to adulthood by acquiring a degree and a profession.

And when the relationship is reduced to one characterized by transaction, in which one person is expected to complete the other, and not merely complement or supplement the other, the dependency of the ‘parent’ so tarnishes the experience for both, as to render it prematurely obsolete, so devalued as to have been, on reflection, manipulated by the parent.

And this model applies not only within the family but also in the workplace world. The parent model, (not as mentor, coach, advocate and supporter) but as the one who begins from his/her own scarcity, is too often the genesis of decisions that manifest first as success, and later as hollow suits, mansions, expensive cars, and professional titles.

In fact, it can be, and here is, argued that too many of those who seek and land in titled positions are the very ones least worthy of those offices but their insecurity, their tainted sense of self, for whatever reason(s), masked by words like ambition, go-getter, public servant, generosity, public-spirited, kind and even caring….Whether they might be silently and anonymously “competing” with a highly successful sibling, or even a parent, or whether they might be covering up a different sort of scarcity, they believe they can “fill” that emptiness through getting the corner office, the promotion, the bonus, and the stock options. Similarly, many of the unneeded purchases we make, are our hollow and often pathetic attempt to fill up some scarcity, insecurity, couched in silent self-talk in terms like “not good enough”…..as if the acquisition of some costly item will somehow restore our wounded pride and sense of self.

Another way in which pride serves as a seductive siren is to convince us that we need a product, or a position in order to have “friends” and to be accepted. Another of the many extrinsic “add-ons” that we think, or convince ourselves to believe, will bring an enhancement of our confidence, our sense of self, and at root, our pride.

In these many manifestations, it is not pride but the absence of pride that is driving our decisions, our perceptions, our attitudes, and even our beliefs. Much of the religious “life” depends too on the notion that, as sinners, we “come short of the glory of God” (as Paul writes), and through our association, acceptance and embrace of a saving deity, we will guarantee our place in a heavenly afterlife. Is there really anyone who believes that such “bartering” of our attitudes, perceptions and beliefs, in such a blatantly transactional manner, will assure anyone of such a security?

Here is one of the many nexus points at which the pride of the institution intersects with the pride of the individual. The church’s pride, even hubris, in the unquestioned and unquestioning dogma, rules, regulations, liturgies and biblical interpretations and adherence to creeds. Defining a faith, while relatively significant in order to help an individual join and remain as a member/adherent (with all of the implications of that including writing cheques, instruction, parenting, schooling, and various life-passages liturgies like baptism, confirmation, marriage, and funerals), too often puts the needs of the institution ahead of those of its parishoners.

Certitude grafted to human pride, in the name of God, does both God and proponent a dis-service. Limiting God with human constrictions and expectations, seems paradoxically to be an initiative away from belief. And, of course, to then exclude those who might push back, disagree or protest, is to evoke the sounds and rhythms of unmitigated hubris.

Parents will often tell their children how “proud” of them they are. Such expressions often accompany a child’s most recent achievement or decision, or act of  compassion, mercy or support out of the spotlight. As a conditioning response, such expressions of pride have the capacity to bond parent and child, while initiating a memorable moment of positive learning. On the ‘under’ side of this expression of pride, however, is the obverse: does a parent tell a child of his/her shame if and when the child deviates from the parent’s expectations? The potential of linking the parent’s emotions in a dependency with the child has the negative impact of enmeshing both into an unhealthy reduction of the rich and clean and clear engagement of each with the other.

Pride of place/race/language/ethnicity is another of the many  manifestations of this human trait. And while such pride helps to grow “roots” in young people, it can and often does generate feelings of superiority among the insiders, thereby automatically excluding newcomers from full acceptance and full participation in those vested (and even gated) communities. Just as in the name of God we build walls, gates, hurdles and even barbed-wire fences both to keep some people “in” and others “out”, so too do we do the same in the name of our chosen “group”…We have all heard of the multiple expressions of genuine estrangement, separation, and even alienation of people who do not match the identities within the community, without even having been offered the opportunity to contribute in ways that make them feel welcome. Whether this applies to immigrants, refugees, or even new neighbours, or people seeking to volunteer in their newly adopted communities, the pride of the “insiders” is clearly linked to the insecurity of those same people that they might lose control of their respective levers of power.

Silo’s of pride have been erected inside church spires, service clubs, university convocation halls, political parties, governments, and even under the hoods of exclusive brands of cars, clothes, shoes, schools and neighbourhoods. And because we, generally, consider pride to be among our “better angels” we rarely, if ever, discuss openly how we each contribute to the alienation of others. Our tilting toward transactional parameters for each human encounter, (what have you done for me lately?) is another of our perhaps unconscious genuflections to our pride, in that transactions, by definition, are simple, easily defined and executed, without excessive chance for being judged. We are, then, able to delude ourselves into believing that we maintain our control, the ultimate and highly negative expression of our pride, or just another manifestation of our fear of loss of control.

One of the most feared expressions in our world is, “I do not know!” in answer to a question…not only because for many questions a simple “google” will answer it, but also because, it confronts our limits and our vulnerabilities. Medical students are judged daily by their professors and clinical instructors on the “correctness” of their diagnosis and treatment plans. Not to be clear and certain, being open to the option of being both undecided or uncertain is just not an option, if one is to succeed to pass through the hoops of the schooling. And so, after nearly a decade of such expectations met and even exceeded, how can we expect such “graduates” to submit easily, freely and readily to the multiple complexities of each human being, when faced with new symptoms in a private consult?

Perhaps, it is not only among medical professionals that we have excessively “hot-housed” the plant of pride, as our shared, universal cosmetic to “fake it until you make it”…..as a code for “success”. And while there are no regulations for the growth of this “plant” and no scientifically measureable side-effects of its injection into our multiple conversations, and no signs on the horizon that our public consciousness is about to question our deep dependence on its vapours, spreading through most of our conversations, we might want to ask ourselves what aspects of our lives make us proud, and what aspects of our lives ‘cover’ for other features about which we are much less comfortable.

It is not when we are puffed up that we are “at our best” but rather when we are honestly humbled, honestly vulnerable, wounded, weak and needing and seeking help, support and compassion that we are potentially most authentic. It is at such times that all the pretense and the masks have fallen away, and it is in such a state that we are most open to real human encounters, not to mention also those sacred moments with God, however we have come to envision the deity.

Can we recognize and escape the rim of suction on our whirpool of self-sabotage?

It is time to rethink and to transform how we make decisions about public policy. The institutions designed in the Middle Ages, or earlier, are simply incapable of adjusting to the pace of the discovery and the flow of new information.

Not only are we all drowning in torrents of new and often conflicting data, as well as the new tech devices that transform our capacity to integrate, access, collate and even to curate new information, but we are also, at least in the west, falling behind in our shared, collective capacity to “read” the many new linguistic expressions, some of them digital, (like emoji’s) and some of them encyclopaedic like the access to great thoughts from the whole of human history. Whether or not the flood of megabytes is a significant cause of the obstructionism that blocks much of our politics, as well as the trend to the extremes (especially to the right), seems a little “inside the beltway” from this vantage point.

Not only can we no longer tolerate the “do nothing” (or as little as possible, and protect our careers as the prime purpose of our existence) attitudes of our politicians. It is no longer satisfactory to speak of differences between the right and the left as a way into a public comprehension of the needs and the aspirations of the body politic. We have to being to speak of how to tilt the playing field in all of our public decisions, away from favouring the corporations and their insatiable appetite for profit, through greed, narcissism and, not merely an attitude but a belief that “our interests are and must remain paramount.”

Our political aspirants have to study at the school of survival, not their own political survival, but how the planet is going to survive, if it truly is. We have to support candidates whose careers, world views and activism demonstrate a commitment to the long-term health and healing of the planet, including all of the species living on it, including the human species.

It is no longer acceptable:

·        to put gun production, sale and distribution ahead of public safety

·        to put corporate production, sale and distribution of toxic plastics ahead of the health of streams, rivers, lakes and oceans

·        to put private insurance companies’ pursuit of profit ahead of universal public access to quality health care

·        to put corporate pursuit of profit ahead of responsible worker protections, safety, security, pensions and health care, as well as life-long education

·        to put access to higher education under the sword of Damocles of student loans and debt

·        to make social engineering trump unique human individuality in the acceptance, retention and graduation of professional school candidates in business, law, education, social work

·        to reduce our institutions of higher learning to skill and trade schools, dependent on the mastery of technology as the primary condition of graduation

·        to eliminate from universities the programs and departments that focus on the ancient, nuanced, complex and even ambiguous wisdom of history, even if the methods of delivery remain digital and contemporary

·        to spend the preponderance of national budgets on the military, including cyber security, at the expense of needed programs to educate citizens about their responsibilities in their communities, states/provinces, nations and world.

·        to “gate” the public figures behind a wall of secrecy, subterfuge, media spinning and dereliction of duty, while permitting them to manipulate their constituents with partial, distorted and misleading press releases from their spin-doctors

·        to emasculate organizations like the United Nations, and other international agencies supervising and monitoring such important files as health, water, literacy, poverty, disease, the environment, and hopefully the deep internet, human rights in all countries, and public access to reliable and verifiable information in all countries.

·        to starve and leave homeless, millions of people, in all countries, when the world’s wealth and capacity to feed includes the option of eliminating those blights on us all

·        to carpet bomb, maim and kill with various weapons of mass destruction including nuclear, biological, and conventional in pursuit of dictatorial, terrorist or criminal purposes

·        to permit the denial of such inhuman atrocities through various tactics of obfuscation, distraction, and outright defiance sustained by inordinate tyrannical power

·        for banks and financial institutions to charge a usury fee of 19+% on credit cards

·        for corporations to poison, maim, disable or injure their clients/customers  through willful, deliberate, conscious deviance in inferior construction quality

·        for pharmaceutical behemoths to produce drugs and other substances that have not been rigorously put through clinical trials,

·        for auto manufacturers to produce emission systems that have been “rigged” to avoid environmental testing regulations,

·        for fossil fuel companies to so dominate the transportation industry through their monopolies and oligopolies of alternative and renewable energies

·        for tech giants to operate under a business model that serves only and exclusively their corporate profit and dividend interests, while simultaneously permitting, aiding and abetting the abuse of their clients’ private information

·        for trade agreements to be signed without rigorous provisions on human rights, worker protections and wages, and environmental protections

It is not a matter of whether or not any one or all of the above noted “unacceptables” is considered part of a conservative or a liberal agenda. It is not a matter of whether or not these minimal requirements are specifically directed and designed to address primarily the needs of men or women, or members of the LGBT communities, or whether they are designed to help, support and lift up blacks, indigenous and aboriginal peoples, people scraping by in city ghettos in major cities of the so-called developed world, or refugees and migrants fleeing the oppression of military conflicts, terror threats, human rights abuses, tribal cults or ideological/theological dogma restricting access to health care and education to specifically targeted demographics like young girls.

Many years ago, while writing about leadership in organizations, the tension between the task and the human side of the enterprise was the focus. Beginning with scientific management and moving toward the “human side” leaders learned that engagement of and respect for the people in the workplace was essential for leadership to function effectively. Names like Weber, MacGregor, played prominent roles, as did writer/thinkers like Barnard. Over the last century, there have been some waves of hope followed by waves of depression among those who advocate, not merely in token terms, but in real transformative terms, for the dignity, respect, honour and creative imaginations of those people on whom the enterprise ultimately depends. And they are not the investors, although they are certainly relevant. And they are not the chief executives, nor the board members, nor the middle managers, most of whom have been summarily vacuumed out of the organization chart. They are the people who comprise the nuts and bolts of the organization, the people who conduct the business, who interact with the public, who generate the new ideas and the new methods, who extend their work day when special circumstances demand, and who, at the end of the day are proud to represent the organization, not begrudgingly cynical and bitter about the over-riding tide of increased demands for production with little or no thought to the human implications of the latest “ask”.

Similarly, in our government bureaucracies, we have grown, simultaneously, and paradoxically, complacent and fat at the top, and cynical, sinister and lean to the point of political and even literal starvation at the bottom of the ladder. And the politicians listen only to those in the fat “inner circle” on whose loyalty they depend to continue in their “power positions”. Increasingly, both inside government, and outside the halls of governmental power, the same cynical, sinister, detached and insouciant attitudes prevail at the top, fearful both of losing the battle to keep the stock price rising, the investors mesmerized, the board members flattered and the profit train rolling…and in government the voters so seduced that they return well over 90% of incumbents to  elected office.

Ordinary people, that vast 99% are barely noticed except for the demographic statics on unemployment, social welfare cases, rising house prices, wait times for health care access, and occasionally a bruising headline that indicates our lakes and oceans are dying, our indigenous people area committing suicide at alarming rates, our children are being slaughtered in their schools, our returning veterans who do not take their own lives are struggling under the weight of paralyzing PTSD, or our young adults are overdosing on illicit drugs.

All of these “problem” headlines are neither accidents, nor mere numbers. They are real sons and daughters, mothers and fathers, aunts and uncles, neighbours, co-workers and potential neighbours and co-workers. And their “classifications” as problems are universally the direct or indirect consequence of specific governmental or corporate policies and decisions either to choose to or not to choose to do “the right thing”. There is no scarcity of awareness among the vast population as to what constitutes the “right thing”….in the sense of how would I want to be judged if I were taking the decision for the whole common good? Hiding behind the political shenanigans of party pressure cookers, of rumours and innuendos, of character assassinations and back-stabbing betrayals (oh, you say, “just the ordinary stuff of office politics”!)….is and can no longer be the camouflage that hides our elected, and our appointed “leaders” in both government and the large corporations. How an individual career path is unfolding is not on the agenda of the public good. It is not the stuff for which we are prepared to shovel out our tax dollars, nor are we prepared to continue to shovel out our taxes for misguided military adventures, nuclear weapons arsenal enhancements, nor the obvious and heinous abuse of the public treasury by wanton narcissists flying around the world in their private security bubbles.

It is not a change in policy that we seek: it is a fundamentally different paradigm of how power is operated, who gets a seat at the table in each organization, who votes at each level of the organization, what mechanisms of appeal exist at all levels for re-consideration and even for veto’s of misguided decisions. The single military general, the pope, the CEO, the Chairman of the Board, the titular leader has to “go”…and the team replacing both the power and the responsibility of that dictatorial monster has to rotate, evolve, undergo constant and profound learning, travel to other operations of a similar kind and size….and even have to undergo a recall as well as a re-election provision.

Stage managing a theatre of pandering to the powerful in organizations, those in positions of titles, seniority, bloated stipends and even legacy (from inheritances) only infantilizes both the panderer and the panderee. Patronizing, whether by the media, or the rookies, or the most aspiring to that vaulted climb up the career ladder sacrifices the full truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, the most essential chemical in any effective, (and that includes profit, in the private sector) organization. Repeating the patterns of the past, because they are what we are accustomed to doing, while comfortable, and a form of pandering to the establishment, has to be replaced by innovation, change models that incorporate the initial idea, a respected and funded team of evaluators from as many departments as is feasible and affordable in order to “do the due diligence” on the idea (both in comparable and in disparate cultures, near and far) an implementation strategy that invokes “buy-in” and enables a period of trial and error, including formal time for discussion, revision and re-implementation.

The idea that such a proposal simply costs too much has to be considered a non-starter, until, and only until the research team has done a full costing, including both increased costs and enhanced savings of any new idea. And the margin between increased costs and enhanced savings has to be lowered in order to infuse the organization with a mind-set, a culture and an attitude that the “that was then” and “this is now”…..

We are far too dependent, as a culture, on the patterns and the comforts and the spread sheets and the software of the old systems, and the old modus operandi. We are conditioning our new graduates to comply and to conform to what we consider “proper” simply because it is “our’s”…..and such an attitude in an incubator for arrogance, as well as obsolescence. Our access to global information, the best practices, is no longer restricted to the stacks of the company’s archives. Our access to how people function has so outstripped our willingness to adopt new approaches as to leave us in the position of literally, metaphorically, culturally, economically and spiritually imprisoning us on our own self-sabotage.

And this self-sabotage, while perhaps permissible in a time when calm prevails in geopolitics, and safety and security prevail in the cyber-net, where terror is not a raging bull of violent hatred and murderous slaughter of innocents, and where dictators do not possess or have enabled access to nuclear and biological weapons of mass destruction, and when carbon emissions do not threaten our access to clean fresh, free water, fresh clean air and verdant lands for growing plants, and where the destruction of thousands of species every year is not occurring under our eyes, and where we are not struggling under the weight of demands and expectations of perfect performance at all levels of the work and professional arena….cannot no longer be tolerated.

The colour of our skin, the burr in our dialect, the size of our mcmansion, the number of degree diplomas hanging on our office walls, the altar at which we worship, the unique flavours of our various diets and the size of our investment portfolios…all of these no longer have any meaning, (as if they ever really did!)

What matters, and this is blatantly and proudly borrowed from the existentialists, is that we create the eminently knowable conditions for our children, grandchildren and their children to find legitimate paths to meaning for their own lives, without having to pander to ANYONE….their parents, teachers, priests, rabbis and imams, their doctors, their professors, their town and city councillors, and the real estate and industrial developers who build the sky scrapers and the factories and the new tech corporations….

And the opportunity, rather the challenge and the requirement to tell the truth is instilled from the very beginning of life and inculcated into all of the classrooms and the offices, banks, hospitals and universities, especially those funded by public dollars.

And the paradigm and the structures that evolve incorporate the values of equality, including equal rights to express the most difficult truths. We have to disavow ourselves and our institutions of  the dogma that conflict is to be avoided, tempered and twisted into such shams as to become little more than a mirage, clouding our pursuit of our shared, knowable, legitimate and simple needs.

Just as each human has primary needs for physical, emotional, intellectual and spiritual support….so too does every social organization have similar needs, obviously instilled and sustained perhaps in different ways. Nevertheless the needs do not change….and our social programs, our health budgets and our justice systems have long since broken under the strain of the competitive, conflict-based, short-term designed, narcissism imbued personal isolated ambitions.

We have siloed ourselves into a mere ghost of our true identities, for the sake of complying with the corporate culture, the for-profit success, generated primarily by beating someone, some other team, town, province/state or nation or nation’s leader. In winning personally, we also lose collaboratively.

Unless and until we fully tell the truth of our contemporary dilemma, (it is not simply trump, kim jung un, putin or even General Motors. We are imprisoned in a life-defying, life-destroying, dream-suffocating, circular whirlpool to the bottom….and we do not even recognize that we are whirling around on the edge of that whirlpool…..and for the fortunate few who risk, they are transported out to the outer reaches of the estuary of hope, creativity, community and intellectual, emotional and professional well-being. (With thanks to Margaret Avison for her  poem, The Swimmer’s Moment!)