#73 Men, agents of and pathway to cultural metanoia (wading into the depths of love)

 Without much disagreement, the notion(s) of love lie at the core of human encounters, and yet, the definitions, meanings, incarnations, gods and goddesses of love, throughout the centuries, have displayed innumerable faces, vocabularies, embraces and betrayals.

Novelists, playwrights, poets, and artists mine the ‘underground’ caves of this “tunnel” confident that they will merely scratch the surface of its complexity, and also that their work will find an audience, if not a plethora of audiences. Men engaged in the practical “sense” of daily business, professional and occupational routines rarely utter a word about the subject, unless they have recently watched an especially moving movie, television show, or read a heart-wrenching story that champions a loving relationship, or its opposite.

There is, nevertheless, a deep and ineradicable theme of love as the highest of human aspirations, achievements, disappointments, and even tragedies. This theme, like the current pandemic, knows no geographic, political, religious, ethnic, linguistic, or ideological boun#73daries. It is not constrained by any intellectual or cognitive formula; it cannot be captured in the test tube of any scientist; it cannot be either equated with any rank, custom, order, gender, or even age. The force of its energy completely transforms individual lives, and also so erodes the dreams of others as to render them in tatters. Popular culture is replete with songs portraying one of its many emotional penetrations, sexual fantasies, as well as its trailing and tragic memories of loss, disappointment, betrayal, and even death.

It might be useful, even perhaps worthwhile, for men, early in their lives, to open to the complexity of the energies of love some of which flow through their veins, others of which are played out in front of their eyes and minds, while others play out at their kitchen tables and on family road trips. Naturally, we all start out with some vague notion of how our parents “treat” us as babies, young children, adolescents, while we are also given a daily diet of exhibitions of behaviour/words/attitudes between our parents or guardians. If ‘things’ are calm, supportive, caring, compassionate, forgiving, and empathic, we think ‘this must be love’ that suffuses this home. On the other hand, if ‘things’ are turbulent, angry, loud, judgemental, deceitful and conspiratorial, even as young kids, we know something is ‘not right’ about the situation. Often, we might generalize such a situation as the opposite of love, and imagine what it might be like if there were love between the waring parties. Among siblings, though, some rough-housing between brothers, teasing and dissing among brothers, and even pranks are considered expressions of bonding, acceptance, and a kind of brotherly love. Playing house, however, is not among the traditional ‘games’ boys play, and if they are commandeered by a sister, they might engage ironically, sardonically, and even sarcastically, given that they do not want anyone to think they are too “girly” or feminine.

Sunday School classes will offer stories about the love of God, through His Son, as exemplified by his sacrifice on Calvary, as ‘forgiveness for our sins’ followed by His Resurrection on Easter morning. By this standard, love, to a ten-year-old, would naturally have a very high standard, one s/he would be clearly unwilling and also unable to meet, no matter how much the child “loved” anyone. Similarly, if a young child is involved in an activity for which the school or the culture disapproves, stealing, for example, or vandalizing a summer cottage, the question of how he is “treated” by his parents and the “law” will impact his gestalt of the definition and appreciation of love, especially if the parents are firm, understanding and just in their responses, and the “law” takes note of the context and the history of the young child.

Naturally, like parenting, and managing personal finances, there are no “courses” specifically in love, although some jurisdictions attempt to illumine pre-teens to the biology as well as the psychology and the morality of sexual behaviour. Unwanted pregnancies, as well as unwelcome diseases lie at the root of these curricula. In other times, the shame of an out-of-wedlock pregnancy drove many teens from their homes to deliver their babies, and left a residue of both shame and guilt for their return home.

Inextricably linked forever, in all cultures, are the notions of love and sexuality. And how sexuality is viewed and ‘prosecuted’ in any especially religious (not theological) culture will leave a significant impact on the adolescents’ impressionable mind, heart and imagination. Whether considered abominable between members of the same gender, or among and between transgendered individuals, or considered from a more broad perspective, more liberal for some, will also be a contributing factor in the evolving and developing and maturing notion of how to identify and to participate in a loving relationship.

Based on the object of one’s love, the ancient Greeks had four or more words for love:

1)    Agape: love, charity, especially the love of God for man and of man for a good God. The unconditional love of God for his children…Aquinas used these words to describe agape: “to will the good of another”.

2)    Eros: love mostly of sexual passion only to be refined by Plato to move from an initial feeling for a person, to a deeper appreciation of the beauty within that person…”platonic love” means without physical attraction.

3)    Philia: affectionat regard, friendship. Considered by Aristotle to be expressed as loyalty to friends, (brotherly love), family and community.

4)    Storge: love and affection especially of parents and children. It is used in expressions of acceptance or tolerance of situations, as in loving the ‘tyrant’ and in love for one’s country or favourite team.

5)    Philautia: self-love to love yourself or to regard for one’s own happiness (considered both as a moral flaw and basic human necessity. Greeks divided philautia into positive and negative: self-compassion, and self-obsessed love respectively.

6)    Xenia: guest friendship, hospitality, including the generosity and courtesy shown to those far from home. A reciprocal relationship between guest and host including gifts, and or favours. (Based on the Wikipedia notations)

And as a reminder that the foundational notions of the Greeks have taken root throughout the globe, religions generally have adopted and focused on the notion of love as they see it. While only basic information, here are some of the world’s religions’ notions of love:

Baha’is: Four loves: The first flows from God to humans

                                 The second flows from human beings to God

                                 The third is the love we have for ourselves

                                 The fourth is the love humans have for one another

For Baha’is, the love of God is considered the origin of love in all creation, while the love of humans for God is ‘the origin of all philanthropy’.

Buddhism: The Dalai Lama said Buddhism is about kindness. According to the Buddha,  “love is one of the paths to full spiritual liberation.” This love is characterized by freedom. “Love that involves clinging, lust, confusion, neediness, fear or grasping to self would, in Buddhist terms be seen as expressions of bondage and limitation. The four kinds of love encouraged In Buddhist doctrine are loving kindness, compassion, appreciative joy and equanimity.

Catholicism: Love of charity is defined as the “theological virtue by which we love God above all things for his own sake, and our neighbour as ourselves for the love of God.” Catholics consider storge is love for things, and animals; philia is brotherly love of friends of common values; Eros is passion, sexual and also aesthetic and spiritual; agape is generous giving of oneself without desiring anything in return.

Hinduism: Love is considered one of the main purposes of life in the theology of Hinduism. It is termed as Kama (love or pleasure), also the name given to a god of love with a flower bow and five flower arrows. The Kama ‘sends desire quivering in to the heart.” In a mystic sense,  “Kama is the essence of magic love known and preserved in esoteric doctrines, profoundly inspired by the holy mystery of life.” Love in Hinduism is towards a divine purpose, and devotional love is essential in the practice of religion. Family love, married love and other secular forms of love are subordinate to the divine love or emotional love of God.

Islam: Love is in either in divine or human form and “belongs only to the precious and valuable things as far as they are so. It also teaches that love has to be enlightened. “A sacred love is the love which is realistic and insightful”. Love has to be directed by reason in that ;one should not let one’s love for something or some person make him negligent of the whole truth. Islam also expects its followers to love God above all things, similar to the Christian notion of the love of God. ‘No other love may override one’s love for God; God should be the highest and foremost object of love.”

Janism: The highest forms of love as non-violence, sociability, compassion and peaceful coexistence. In the worldly context, love ‘is the feeling of attachment to and affection for the body or material objects.’ Physical love makes possible the institution of the family. Love creates a sense of unity, but there is also a kind of love that causes conflict—bodily love or possessiveness. Possessiveness is classified into three kinds: love for body, love for material objects and imprints of past actions on consciousness. In this sense love is a combination of happiness and suffering.

Judaism: The Jewish Torah says “love thy neighbor as thyself.” Jewish law is largely about being kind to other people and command its followers to love both Jews and non-Jews, to bestow (tzedakah) charity to those who need it, and to avoid doing wrong to anyone in what one says or in business. Kindness is a huge part of Jewish law; apparent in the word “mitzvah” which informally means any good deed. The Ten Commandments, central to Jewish law, is also a manifestation of the centrality of kindness in Judaism. The Ten Commandments says, “Thou shalt have no other gods before me,” and also about loving God above all and “Thou shalt not murder.” Jewish law goes as far as commanding Jews to protect their fellowmen and  recognizes the sacredness of life by giving much significance to its preservation.

Sikhism: Marriage is the central idea of love and romance. Marriages are arranged in Sikhism; hence dating is treated with disapproval. Premarital sex  is not allowed by the Sikh code of conduct; romance is something you’re occurs post-wedding and behind closed doors. Sikhs are very much committed to family and marriage, which is apparent in the number of divorces, under 2%.

Taoism: A major teaching in Taoism is the idea of loving oneself or self-worth, which is called “Ch’ang, ‘self-nurturing. From the Tao Te Ching: “Can you nurture your own spirit whilst holding the unity of Oneness? Can you understand your human-centred mind without corrupting your Tao-centered mind? And can you do all this whilst loving and nourishing yourself rather than indulging your self-interest and selfishness? Taoism also teaches three major forms of love an individual needs: parental love, love of a partner and universal love, that is the love that flows through the Tao* and connects all things”). (from worldreligionnews.com)

(*Tao is the natural order of the universe whose character one’s human intuition must discern in order to realize the potential for individual wisdom. This intuitive knowing of ‘life’ cannot be grasped as a concept; it is known through actual living experience of one’s everyday being.) (From Wikipedia)

How individual men, and especially the collective western masculinity embraces actual loving, is one of the significant questions facing the people on the planet. Clearly, love is not an intellectual notion, while at the same time, it is a dynamic filling the pages of both history and literature, both secular and spiritual from the beginning of human history. And borrowing again from James Hillman’s Revisioning Psychology, one finds these words:

When archetypal psychology speaks of love, it proceeds in a mythical manner because it is obliged to recall that love too is not human.  Its cosmogonic power in which human s take part is personified by Gods and Goddesses of love. When cosmogonies about the creation of the world place love at the beginning, they refer to Eros, a daimon of a God not just to a human feeling. Love’s cosmogonic power to structure a world draws humans into it according to styles of the Gods of Love….Love develops its own history and counterhistory, in groups, in families, in transference, in the histoire of an affair, with dates and keepsakes in its museums of memorabilia. This history stands outside the arena of events and sets us its private, oppositional calendar with anniversaries and festivals, commencing at the hour when love was born…..Blake must have senses the insufficiency of love as the redeemer, for he called Jesus the Imagination, implying love of imagination, or love working in and through imagination, Love then is no longer an end but a means for the return of soul through human and b means of the human to the imaginal, the return of the human psyche to its nonhuman imaginal essence….Love’s arrow, then, is to strike the soul, hit its vulnerability, in order to begin that state of deep pathologizing we call being-in-love. Hillman, Revisioning Psychology, pps. 184-5-6)

Would that all men, regardless of religious or ethnic or cultural background, could begin to open our inner eyes to see into the depth of the complexities and the ironies and the paradoxes and the impulses toward becoming that comprise the gifts of the many Gods and Goddesses, sacred and secular texts and the experiences that only through loving do we really come to our individual TAO…and the universe is crying out in humble prayer for our humble and bent pursuit of such a unifying.

#72 Men, agents of and pathway to cultural metanoia (NO to food fights between reductionistic warriors!)

Looking for ‘light’ in this dark cloud, some might anticipate a revival of global humility, uncertainty, ambiguity and complexity, emerging from the obvious truth that humans are not “in control” of this coronavirus Whether as ancillary or corollary, or perhaps supporting concept to the potential humility we all seek,  launching facts from one side of the political “table” to the other side of the political table in a literal and metaphoric “food fight” is not merely foolish and foolhardy, but narcissistically self-sabotaging.

Just recall the skirmishes over “enough” ventilators, masks, gowns, face covers, ICU beds…all of them based on a variety of statistical models, themselves based on a variety of premises ranging from the most cataclysmic to the most rainbow-like. Uncertainty, the absolute anathema of the corporate/establishment world, is endemic to rolling pandemics. And in the midst of crisis, everyone responds in a unique way, depending on the convergence of multiple factors in this partial list:

ü Personal history of trauma

ü Personal traits of loyalty, ambition, opportunism

ü Personal fear of being a victim of the immediate crisis, and/or its implications

ü Assessment of responsibility for the crisis itself

ü Current office or status, and the need to protect or maintain that status

ü The cultural demands for transparency/accountability and their benchmarks

ü Comparisons/relationships with neighbours both near and far

ü Nature of the crisis and its relevance to multiple ‘publics’

ü Consciousness of the cultural realities of other publics

ü Role of the ‘birthing’ jurisdiction of the crisis, in relation to a wider jurisdiction

ü Assessment of various instruments of mediating, or controlling the breadth and depth of the crisis

Immediate and spontaneous responses, from all quarters to any crisis like a volcano spew “facts” about, behind, and implicit in the crisis. The “facts” like left-over food in that proverbial family food-fight, are the bullets, the headlines, the tweets, the assembling of the cast of characters whose voices and faces will dominate the impressions of the specific crisis everywhere. The volume of food (facts) thrown, and the velocity and the density of the “fact” that seems most penetrating will begin to tilt the respective public recipients’ collective conscious and unconscious interpretations of the crisis.

So obvious, you say, this description is flatuent and redundant!

Try to withhold your impatience….there is more.

Each of the persons picking out specific food bits (facts or lies) has his/her own perspective so deeply embedded in his/her psyche that the selection of those food bits is partially determined by that perspective. Serving his/her agenda, as well as a hopefully broader and less personal agenda, underlies each volley from all the active participants.

While our cultural norms rush cameras and microphones and their technicians to the scene of the crisis, in order to broadcast the ‘true meaning’ of this crisis, millions of people watch and wait leaning toward or away from their favourite or least favourite broadcast outlet respectively. Following the old adage of the lawyer chasing ambulances (looking for clients), we are all engaged in our own pursuit of the ‘facts’ (food) to feed our specific hunger, itself dependent on our current and active lens, appetite, ambition, perspective and/or religious belief. Commonly, however, we are neither conscious at that moment of ingesting the “evidence” of the latest crisis or our own “lens” or world view, or archetype, and thus simply enter into the reported scene of the crisis from that perspective.

But how tantalizing, even riveting is the replay of that highly dramatic and even traumatic food-fact-fight. Naturally, like magnets first and then reverting to paint-ball guns, we first ingest our “version of the crisis” and then “spew” it out to whomever will listen. Like the crude oil in our family or neighbourhood or political party’s pipeline, we pump our perspective out, without ever having to build or finance that pipeline.

And those pictures are both the food for our imagination and the energy we pump into the imagination of our circle. Never quiet to hoard our “perspective” we are intimately and it seems, permanently hinged at the hip of our prevailing archetype.

Yesterday, however, it we had been witness to the same crisis, enacted by different actors in a different situation, we might easily, and most likely, have taken in different facts, and processed them differently and shared them with a different, potentially receptive audience. Siding with a different slant/perspective/interpretation/view of the crisis, while seeming to demonstrate an inconsistency, and an untrustworthiness, and a shallow ‘take’ on the severity of the moment, for those we spoke with in the first crisis, we are simply giving voice to a little honoured foundational premise of our human imagination.

There are indeed multiple voices, perspectives, orientations, even roles playing over the “food”(facts) in each situation we encounter. Yet, most of those voices remain hidden, silent and even discounted given our pursuit of a public persona that generates stability, respectability, responsibility and acceptance, and perhaps even those vaunted promotions, appointments, and awards we all seek. And the public “food fight” over tidbits of facts, each fact having significance dependent on the person/party/class/religion/status/role of the observer, merely captures the sizzle so endearing to the marketing and public relations departments of our organizations. Branding, naturally, demand the integration of specific information that paints the “brand” in the best possible light, in the eye of the specific and targeted audience that has already begun to endorse that brand, or the audience most likely to endorse that brand, given new information that suggests they are open to come on board.

Transactions, however, are just that, encounters ready and open for measurement, rate increases, sales spikes, promotions, new investors, and perhaps a reputational legacy. And at the root of every honoured legacy is some for of the definition of the hero, at least in North America.

And at the root of the heroic archetype, lies the Christian model of the various archetypes that have been painted onto the face of Jesus Christ, Resurrected. Whether he is teacher, healer, shepherd, or king, just to name a few of the more prominent “archetypes,” all of them flowing, interacting and generating responses from the others, those who follow, whether they/we are cognizant of it or not, have a preference for which “model” of the saviour we endorse. (This is not to suggest a branding of any deity, by disciples or opponents!) All of these dynamics flow like underground streams in our individual and in our collective unconscious.

Nevertheless, these dynamics continue to play out whether or not we give them homage in our public discourse.

Investigating each of our own ‘preferences’ is a process that mines our biographies, our families, our faith practices and beliefs, and our imaginations. The ideas, impressions, glimpses, echoes, stories, snap-shots, films of past events, words, places, even personal traumas all flow together into our “psychological archive” that some would denote as our identity, while others might prefer our “evolving’ development. Whether we consider ourselves as a “fixed” template, or a transforming stream of both consciousness and unconsciousness, is another of the “choices” (again both conscious and unconscious) we make, to be re-visited as our life unfolds.

Watching the food-fight over the procurement of ventilators, masks, gowns, testing kits, leaves everyone both exhausted and quite impatient, because we all know that the fight delays or even obstructs the acquisition of needed supplies, and threatens the lives of seriously ill individuals. Nevertheless, like moths to the porch-light, we gather round each evening, only to fall (metaphorically) to the porch floor, succumbing to our political and psychic fatigue at the spectacle, of all light and no warmth, compassion, empathy and those emotional needs we crave to feed at this time.

Some could posit that Democrats, finding repression everywhere among the dispossessed, seek to fill the holes in the status quo, through the provision of new supports for the most deserving. Republicans, on the other hand, clinging to a model of ‘the king’ seek to preserve the authority, dignity and honour of their wealthy, white and respectable and honoured colleagues. From a previous conflict between the warrior and the victim (men and women respectively, see Carol  Pearson’s The Hero Within), have we moved to a conflict between redeemer and king as exemplified primarily by men?

What is clear, nevertheless, is that the conversation about the ‘Gepetto’ archetype(s) for our individual and collective public personas, seems to be left to the artists, the writers, the film-makers, while even the acknowledgement of such a “fictitious” process of lying through the minimalism, and the literalism, and the reductionism of the food-fights is off-limits to both the political actors and to the reporting media who ‘edit’ and cover’ their words and actions microscopically, infinitesimally, analytically and myopically.

“Covering” the Oval Office, if and when it clearly does not deserve to be wall-papering our living rooms for two hours each night, is not only irresponsible; it is downright distortive. A wall of effluent from the mouth of the president offers neither hope nor light in this dark tunnel. And another cataract of rebuttal, in lock-step refutage only magnifies the bi-polar, binary notion that truth can be simply divided into two pots, one served at ‘our family’ dinner’ while the other is served at the diner table of our enemies.

Weaponizing two incomplete, simplified, superficial and reductionistic versions of a critical crisis, even what some would call an existential crisis, is insulting, both to the actors and to the audience. If this were a Broadway play, it would have closed after opening night.

Stereotypes of individuals, merely caricatures (yes, even trump) mouthing robotic memes, both on twitter and in face-to-face ‘press conferences’ washing over this one scribe, have driven me to avoid both MSNBC and FOX, and turn to sources like The Guardian, The New York Times, The Washington Post, the CBC, CTV and The Globe and Mail (the latter three in Canada).

As someone who looks at things from the ‘underside’ (James Hillman, The Knight Errant, in Revisioning Psychology, p. 161),I am much more comfortable seeing how ridiculous I can be and correspondingly, just how hollow and ‘fictitious’ are the ramblings to which we are being treated in this crisis. I am utterly tired of watching our North American (dominatingly masculine) culture’s being trapped in the “poverty of materialistic perspectives” (James  Hillman, Revisioning Psychology). There are so many legitimate perspectives politically, rationally, intuitively and imaginatively between the raw uncooked offerings from one side of the table and the burnt offerings from the other side of the table.

And yet in order to ferret out those “perspectives,” we have to develop a plethora of independent, courageous, and indefatigable detectives whose editors and managers and executives champion diversity, exhort themselves and others to engage in complexity, ambiguity, humility and integrity, at the obvious expense of the pursuit and maintenance of power, a kind of faux heroism that sees each and every situation as a zero-sum game, to be either won or lost.

It is not an accident that those countries whose record on controlling the pandemic is exemplary are governed by women. And beyond those female attributes acknowledged by Madeline Albright on CNN’s GPS with Fareed Zakaria on Sunday last:

o   the ability to multi-task,

o   the ability and willingness to listen,

o   the desire and urgency of collaboration and

o   the attention to the details of personal well-being,

I would underline and expand the Zakaria observation that women have annual medical check-ups, follow the prescriptive suggestions of their doctors, and follow ,a more healthy lifestyle and diet than do men. This gestalt of facts, to the establishment culture, may seem trivial. However, if one is going to be cavalier with one’s own body, and with the legitimate need to observe medical cautions, prescriptions and a generalized approach of individual heroism, as most North American men seem hard-wired to do and to be, then there can be little wonder that the ‘doctors’ diagnosis of the pandemic, and the diagnosis of the health of the planet would be given a similar ‘back-hand’ of rejection, denial, avoidance, and self-sabotage.

If and when men cop to the complexity of our own masculinity, including the multiple and androgynous voices in our ‘heads’ and reject the tyranny of heroic, solo and quixotic voices that have been driving our gender for centuries, without abandoning their importance, when needed (but not as a default position), then our grandchildren might be able to envisage less scapegoating, less prevarication, less dissembling, less deviousness and deception and an injection of integrity, humility, ambiguity, complexity, patience and empathy.

The male scientists[ja1]  and governors whose expressions of care, compassion and empathy, along with their respective and diligent discharge of management responsibilities, are not defaming their masculinity, nor are they incarnating a weakness or an uncertainty that defies the current complex situation we all face. Taking a page from the ‘playbook’ of their female counterparts in Germany, New Zealand, Denmark, Iceland for example, would serve the world’s suffering and frightened people honourably.

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 [ja1]alke

#71 Men, agents of and pathway to cultural metanoia (Sycophancy part 2)

Let’s take another trip into the roots, signs and implications of male sycophancy…

It is not merely how husband’s and father’s defer to their wives and the mothers of their children, although the home is one of the primary stages for male-female interactions. It is also not just how in the military, and all of the quasi-military organizations, that men are indoctrinated into a mind-set of discipline, strict discipline, never-open-your-mouth discipline, especially if to do so would bring what the authorities in the chain of command would call insubordination. And who is going to decide if and when insubordination actually occurs? Of course, it is going to be the “chief pooh-bah” of the hierarchical pyramid. And, naturally, all of the other “peers” of this individual will concur with whatever his judgement is if for no other reasons than, should they be faced with a similar act of insubordination, they would want and expect his support.

Male sycophancy begins with the notion that many adult male communities hold fast to the conviction that younger men need to be shown through profound experiences how to transition into manhood. The hunt, walking on hot coals, survival in the wilderness, isolation, severe discipline, the treacherous climb up a rope wall, the crawl through a muddy creek while carrying a heavy pack-back…these are some of the tactics deployed by men’s groups and their leaders, in order to engender a “warrior” mentality….all the while participating in an unstated and bigoted view of those males who either do not choose, or actually refuse to participate in these war games. Certainly, there is some justification in asking voluntary recruits to a strict military program to submit to the discipline of following orders. In hand-to-hand combat, and even in combat that combines grenades and missiles shot from overhead aircraft, casualties will result, and “having-my-brother’s-back” is both a useful and ethical requirement. Similarly, in order to carry out a military attack, a single plan, with limited variances, is the only way to prepare, provide needed resources, and execute the “deed” and then assess its effectiveness.

Such a plan, strategy, discipline is both necessary and ethical in the midst of a major crisis such as a military engagement, the surgical operating room, often the Emergency room, the birthing room, and the Intensive Care Unit. The various professional disciplines who are trained to work in any of these venues naturally embody a commitment and even a conviction in the observance of the minutest details of each and every protocol. And each of those protocols is based on a parametric of certain dimensions, numbers, time frames, resource banks, and  transfer requirements.

What is not okay, however, is to transfer the premises of these disciplines into the rest of the human condition. Having been raised in a home in which operating room hygiene was the norm, I awakened very early to the disconnect between our home and the OR, and never submitted to the rigour of the OR if and when I was expected to clean. In fact, it is not merely operating room hygiene that prevailed there; it was a sense of an identical hierarchical pyramid that prevailed, and my father’s absent medical degree lasooed him to his own mast of “lesser than” and thereby warranting a subservient status, in the decisions of the home.

How tragic! 

Degrees are not determinative of the value, contribution or authority of any individual although some of us were the first in our families to attend and graduate from a post-secondary institution. Nevertheless, degrees, like bank accounts, and executive titles, and awards, scholarships, elevated appointments and even elections tend to impute to their holders a level of authority to which the rest of the ordinary people not only need not, but must not submit. And one of the ironies, substantiated by a male culture at least in North America, if not in other places, is that anything that equates with seniority, expertise, piety, wealth, acclaim and social and political status is both literally and virtually revered. And those whose biographies are not saturated with any of those “symbols of success” are, like my father considered himself in comparison with his wife, second-rate.

Such an assumed ascendancy, and the concomitant sycophancy, deprives every family, school, and organization of the benefit of all perspectives. And, that divide gushes like a mountain current carving a divide in all of our public discussions, debates, and the policy sausages that emerge from those debates. This argument is not to debase the scholars, the experts, the rich and the elected. It is rather to “lift the boats” of each individual human being, without regard to their tax bracket, nor the specific government policy that attempts at least in token terms, to “provide” support and assistance to those needing a ‘hand-up’ and certainly not a ‘hand-out’.

We are effectively hoisted on our own petard, as an aspiring democracy. We allow and trumpet the value of each and every individual vote, and then parade the “stars” (regardless of their expertise) as voices of authority in the shared pursuit of those votes. We allow the have’s to pour cash into the campaigns mostly of dependent sycophants, serving as mouthpieces of the agenda of those writing the cheques. We fence in the national media as apologists of the establishment, and then watch ‘insurgency’ digital organs investigate deeply into dark corners considered out of bounds to the ‘big guns’ whose corporations are literally and virtually and metaphorically sycophants to those “deep pockets” for the revenues, dependent on ratings, another symptom of the kind of sycophancy that we not merely permit but actually foster, by our silent complicity in adhering to the model.

We permit the release of drugs boasting serious side-effects, with or without adequate clinical trials, dependent as we apparently are, on the instant chemical fixes of our most minor irritations, or the tweeking of our most detested imperfections with the latest botox (or other similar application) regardless of whether or not the long-term impact is injurious to our health.

We are, individually and collectively sycophantic to the deeply embedded traditions and expectations imposed by churches, and corporations, that include the definitions of morality, propriety, relevance for employment, and even including a socially sanctioned degree of racism, sexism, and even skill-sets that set some above and other below a median level of cultural consciousness. And we really do not question our own complicity in these nefarious ‘isms’. In fact, only if and when something like COVID-19 rips apart our collective denial of legitimate responsibilities like preparing for a pandemic, or rigorous and sanctioned inspections of our long-term care facilities (presumably because such impositions would cost their owners in decreased revenues and profits), then we cry “foul” when all along, we have participated in the conventional burying of such legitimate public functions of our governments.

And this cultural silence, in order not to offend the status quo, impales not only the residents and their care-givers in those venues, but also the governments saddled with decisions of previous office holders. And, the trail of policies that inflate benefits for the rich and powerful, but their sycophants, is so blatantly obvious, and continues to be a pattern followed by the inheritors of such “conventional wisdom” especially sacred to the right.

Another way that sycophancy is permanently ingrained in our public square is that business has become the new religion. Everyone is exhorted to be an entrepreneur, and capitalist, a climber-up-the-ladder of the corporate trophy case, into the oxygen-deprived echelons of the corner offices in the highest office towers, or on the floor of the most active stock exchanges, on among those flipping money and real estate with the touch of a digital key. And what is it that suffocates in such a climate: the public interest, the public good, as it is now conventionally regarded as a “cost” and not a “productive” element in the capitalist equation.

Even people like Bernie Sanders, himself a declared democratic socialist, is rejected, alienated, and ostracized by the democratic party, because they believe (with some justification) that only a moderate like Biden can and will attract a sufficient number of independent voters, and a few Republicans to defeat trump in November. It is not that Biden is personally or politically offensive, or unqualified, or inexperienced. However, there is a kind of default position to the “seasoned” and the “moderate” and the “comfortable” that relegates a fire-brand like Bernie to the sidelines, while continuing to trumpet his movement’s accomplishments.

The herd “mentality” as opposed to the “herd immunity” which is bandied about as a potential ceiling on the spread of COVID-19, is a much more deeply embedded sword on which we are all impaled. Herd mentality holds that international co-operation and collaboration are anathema to those convicted of the notion of individual and corporate capitalism and survival of the fittest in economic and fiscal terms. Herd mentality refuses to surrender political capital or legal jurisdiction to an international body like the WHO, or the World Court, or the IAEA, or the World Bank, or the IMF, or potentially the EU, or even NATO, for some.

The flip side of sycophany, of course, is a deep and profound fear of loss of control. “If I follow a ‘winner’ and rise to power, then I will do whatever it takes to sustain and maintain both my hold on power and the hold on power of the one who brought me to the dance!” …..seems to be the slogan and herd political mentality. The weakest leaders are those who demand the greatest degree of sycophancy, and who refuse to participate in a collaborative effort to cope with such events as a pandemic, or a rise in global temperatures of 2 or 3 degrees Celsius. Sycophancy to those weak leaders, just as was my father’s sycophancy to a frightened and boldly self-loathing spouse, leaves those weak leaders with far too much power.

Their interest stretches as far as their own circle, their own portfolio, their own clinging to power, and their own perverted version of reality that ‘they know best’…and refuse to learn, to adjust, to listen, and to compromise. “I alone can fix it” suggests and outright attests to a psyche dependent on the perks and the frivolities of autocratic power, and their hold on power is directly dependent on the acquiescence/sycophancy of millions who put them there.

And that sycophancy was on full display in Lansing Michigan, as trump supporters protested the continuance of the ‘stay-home’ lock-down imposed by Michigan Governor Witmer. Of course, the need for work and food is a compelling need. And the longer the “hiatus” of economic activity continues, the higher will be the anxiety  and fear of both failure and the normalcy we once knew.

However, there will be no return to what was before. And one sure way to make this pandemic more effective than to prompt us to stock medical supplies, and to upgrade our wages for the “real workers” who keep our society functioning, will be to totally re-evaluate our complicity, even our shared sycophancy to those shibboleths, and those status-quo markers like bulging bank accounts, and yachts, and second and third homes, and the insouciance shared about those in the “under-belly” of developed nations like Canada and the United States, Great Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, and the even more threatened populations of the under-developed nations of Africa and part of Asia.

There is a fundamental and unbridgeable incompatibility between “we are all in this together” and “we worship the state and the status of those millionaires and billionaires” who are in control. The former addresses the immediate neighbourhood and perhaps town, city and even provincial parameters, and perhaps the national boundaries. However, the international community can and will only emerge as an living entity with the acknowledgement of the complicity of millions in serving as serfs to the rich and the powerful.

We are not their pawns; we are not the instruments of their whims and their latest and best dreams. We are not the  cause of this pandemic, nor are we the ‘cost’ merely of programs and policies that enhance our living conditions, our education, our health care provisions and our unique expressions of our creativity, our dignity, and our inherent worth and value to the global choir that needs to sing out lustily from all corners of  the planet.

Ironic isn’t it, to hear an Icelander point to the truth that Americans taught his people how to conduct scientific research, how to manage crises, and how to prepare for emergencies, only to watch as Americans fail to carry out the very instructions they were so proud to share with the North Atlantic island people.

Knowledge, without a shared active will to participate, to speak up, even to protest for those legitimate moral and ethical observances (and we all know what they are, implicitly) is like blowing dust on a desert shifting into new and different land forms without growing new life.

#70 Men, agents of and pathway to cultural metanoia (Male sycophancy)

Males struggle with how, when, why and even whether to “speak up” for themselves, especially in personal relationships. Such a bald statement, without a r basis in experience, both personal and professional, however, rings hollow.

Raised in a family in which the matriarch dominated, I wondered often to my father, and even more secretly to myself, why the “boat” always tilted in her direction. Her judgements, her accusations, her insults, her absolutes were counterpointed by a stuttering, genial, compliant, hard-working and intellectually brilliant hardware store manager. Power, in the form of a loud soprano voice, somewhat trained, as well as incarnated by a short, stout nurse graduate of St. Michael’s Hospital nursing school in 1931, seemed symbolized by excess: volume, energy, generosity, a complete lack of ambiguity, a refusal to compromise, and an even more deeply embedded in a refusal to apologize, or even to recognize the emotional, psychological abuse she was inflicting while paradoxically serving sumptuous, and even elegant cholesterol-filled meals.

In other spaces is retold the story of my father’s acknowledgement to me, “You were raised by Hitler and Chamberlain!” (He claimed responsibility for his iteration of the latter.) The imbalance in that archetypal equation at the fulcrum of the twentieth century has continued to ripple, if not rumbled not only through one home but also shines light on so many other repetitions of the theme, in a biography stretching three-quarters of a century.

Lacking formal education in psychiatry, and drawing a fence around what I feel barely competent to address, I have and continue to attempt to parse the male side of this equation. Observing and listening to my father’s pronounced stutter in our home, and trying to reconcile the almost complete absence of that speech impediment while dealing with co-workers, customers, salesmen, and supervisors has offered a well of potential explanations, none of which qualify as either  final or clinical.

Was it fear of his spouse that impeded the flow of air over his larynx, and the resulting stammer only to have his pre-teen son jumping in to “sub” with what I thought might be the missing word? Was I embarrassed or merely supportive of his struggle? Never did I hear a word of reprimand for my interjections from him, only a nod in confirmation of the missing component of his sentence. And imitating father is one of the things young boys do, I followed his pattern, silently walking away after confronting my mother about her smoking habit, only to hear her rebuttal: “If God had not wanted us to smoke, He would not have created tobacco.” My silence rings loud in memory, all these sixty years on.

And then there were the incidents in which my father’s self-repression, and seeming inability to access the appropriate words to counter something she said with which he did not concur, erupted in what would have been a violent strike, except it was blocked by my own spontaneous blow to his ribs, as he reached across the ironing board to strike her. Passive aggression had suddenly let go, like a boat stripped from her mooring in a strong wind.

In a turbulent period in my first marriage, a therapist ‘diagnosed’ the problem as one of ‘communication’ to which I, tragically, and privately responded, “That hardly gets to the root of the problem, and seems to address only the most superficial symptom…that we were, and had been, talking past each other.

A half century later, however, and far too late to redeem that relationship, it ‘dons’ on me that communication was only the ‘name’ given to the dynamic, while underlying that apparently superficial and conventional and even ordinary word there lay multiple layers of temperament, culture, education, family history and world view of my then spouse and me.

And a similar layering of background influences comprised the roots of the persistent, and often violent conflict between my two parents. As an only child living for her first nine years in a boxcar in Brent, on the northern edge of Algonquin Park, while her father served as manager of the Roundhouse operated by the Canadian National Railways, her friends were her springer spaniel and her dolls, along with the occasional summer visitor to their fishing camp. Socializing consisted of bi-monthly rides in a gas car on the rails into North Bay for provisions, accompanied by parents and dog. Having to integrate and collaborate and compete and surrender and compromise with siblings, or even with friends were all ‘foreign’ to her concept of the world and how it worked.

On the other hand, dad was the son of a Baptist clergy whose various postings took him from Alvinston to Burgessville to Thornbury and finally to my home town. The eldest of four, he had only a few years of solitude, accepted responsibility for “older brother” care of his siblings, and observed a ‘religious’ family in which all siblings later reported, “Never did we see or hear a conflict between our parents.” Was passive aggressive behaviour of his father the incubator for his own excessive deference to his spouse? Or was the family of origin experience repeated when, according to hubristic reports from his wife, decades later, she proudly announced after attending a social gathering where alcohol flowed freely, “It is either the booze or our marriage: you can’t have both…so you have to choose!” Did this declaration of a non-negotiable boundary inflict a kind of “chain of command” discipline that generated his sobriety and his stammer?

Naturally, as an adult, deeply deployed in retail in a small town, catering to local and summer tourists from the United States, he was expected to display a discipline of respect, tolerance, and even generosity while negotiating sales often of substantial amounts, given the inventory of building supplies the company carried. Similarly, as a practicing nurse with hospital and home-based patients, care, compassion, attention to detail and a high level of personal and professional discipline governed her routines. Not infrequently she would experience an angry outburst of a doctor whose orders had not been followed to the letter by the nursing staff, an experience that could only have emboldened her own angry and violent outbursts at home if and when her wishes were not fulfilled.

A narrative dotted with multiple chapters of domestic violence, physical and emotional abuse of both spouse and children by our mother, while absent examples of negotiations, compromises, collaborations (except of the physical labour variety in gardening, decorating, and the occasional  social event) produces an adult “sausage” bereft of modelling in those highly nuanced, and even more highly valued social skills. Shaped on a desert of conflict, individual silo’s of parents deeply divided even about the value of sports, and a religious practice that oscillated between father’s never uttering a bad word about anyone, and mother’s preference to defame anyone whose lifestyle she abhorred, I have taken decades to ponder my own oscillation* between obsequiousness and defiance and the verdant terrain in between.

Comforted by neither sycophancy nor outright defiance, I have planted seeds of both among various contexts in which I have been engaged. Naturally, too, those under whose charge I served, were unable to predict if and when one or other response might greet their decisions. Free-lance journalism offered a reasonable and even somewhat responsible outlet for the ‘critic’ to find a voice, while assessing the relative merits of municipal policy and practicing politicians, and by consuming considerable energy, also provided a method of avoidance, denial and/or repression of what must have been opportunities to express needs, disagreements, negotiations, and collaborations. As a classroom English instructor, fostering the search for and the discovery of the students’ voices provided multiple opportunities to concentrate on the “other’s” growth and development, without having to focus on my own. So my own authentic appreciation of the opportunity to participate in what was in the decades of the sixties, seventies and eighties, an exciting and energizing profession further consumed much of my energy, while neglecting to develop those skills still absent of personal reflection, personal responsibility, the willingness to listen actively and deeply to the needs, emotions and aspirations of the other, whether a child or spouse.

And after two-plus decades of what now seems obsessive engagement in activity, writing, coaching, interviewing, teaching, I came to a moment when I asked, “The pattern of this hyper-activity seems too driven to be either healthy or sustainable; I need to step away into a different ethos where I will look within to find out what is driving me.”

And stepping away, of course, gave multiple opportunities both to reflect on my own narrative, and to observe the narratives of others, professors, bishops, lay leaders, political aspirants, candidates, and leaders, all from a new perspective.

And the decades of those experiences and reflections have brought me to the place where I now question how my father’s passive-aggressive sycophancy and obsequiousness played a part in my mother’s seemingly compulsive anger, irritability, annoyance, judgement, dissatisfaction and downright abuse of herself and her family. Her self-sabotage abounded repeatedly in her deployment of her excess energy, as well as insight and intellect, and her deep and profound intolerance of laziness, stupidity, carelessness and detachment, not to mention alcohol and non-prescription drugs, and of course, homosexuality.

And then, in the public square, we are all watching a rather dramatic, disorienting and dispiriting display of sycophancy, obsequiousness and downright venal refusal of responsibility in the United States Senate, as the Republican senators “suck-up” to an even more desperate chief executive, as thousands die, directly as the result of their complicity in his nefarious narcissism of the “toddler” as one critic has recently written.

I have witnessed similar sycophancy in too many church and educational hierarchies, especially among those most ambitious to climb the proverbial ladder to “executive and leadership” privilege. And although the sycophancy of women is not under discussion here, it inevitably exists and finds different expression than that of men. However, the issue of male obsequiousness, sycophancy and the inevitable passive-aggressive “collateral damage” it brings with it are traits for which no self-respecting man can be proud, or even content in incarnating.

Telling “truth to power” however, is a phenomenon so reprehensible to the politically correct, the professionally ethical and the excessively ambitious that all organizations suffer from the muzzling of too many good ideas, profound visionary pictures, and dramatic and long-overdue changes in too many public and private organizations.

Ted Lindsay, that formidable Detroit Red Wing left-winger on the opposite wing from the legendary Gordie Howe, took the then unenviable step of proposing a players association for the players on the then six National Hockey League original teams. His own team-mates walked past him disdained his efforts ON THEIR BEHALF, so fearful and contemptuous were they of his speaking out, and fearing reprisals for themselves from the patriarchal owners of the teams. Decades later, of course, he has been ‘reclaimed’ as both honourable and a visionary, if rebellious, voice in the history of the league. And the contemporary agreement between owners and players attests to a degree of equality, a sharing of proceeds and a potential for even greater equality and respect for players of different racial and ethnic backgrounds, including both blacks and indigenous players.

Then Archbishop Ted Scott stood firm in front of the loggers seeking to deplete the forests of British Columbia, as did the Bishop of Durham in Great Britain take up the cause of the coal miners. Archbishop Desmond Tutu took up the cause of reconciliation upon the demise of the apartheid government of South Africa. Bernie Sanders, along with heroes like Martin Luther King, John Lewis, Barack Obama and his wife Michelle Obama, have all found and deployed their voice in the service of their peers, ordinary people struggling to find and use their own voices.

My father, and the many self-declared sycophants, were well aware of the conflict between “fitting in” and “being despised”….and the latter simply did not fit the good for business model, nor the good for political establishment acceptance…And the fact is that it is never a choice between “fitting in” or “being despised”…although I have too often veered on the side of the latter. It is really a question of assessing, in detail, and in depth, the context in which one wishes to “speak” including the significance of the cause for which one wishes to advocate. And once that assessment has been conducted, one has to prepare the vernacular, and the supporting resources for the engagement. And, withdrawal from the possibility of being rejected or being opposed, or being alienated only confirms one’s tepid commitment to the cause for which one is willing to advocate.

And while my mother inflicted serious harm in open and direct behaviours, my father’s withdrawal from his confronting what he both knew and rejected as appropriate parenting has imposed an even deeper and more insidious wound on the psyche of his children. Often, our culture focuses far too much energy on the observable evidence, while ignoring the unconscious, hidden and stealthily vaulted woundedness of both young men and women…too often resulting from a refusal to step up to the plate.

And for all those whose lives have been negatively impacted by my own refusal to step up, I am deeply sorry…and I know my father would be also, upon realizing that his silence was not “peace” but “power-monkey”…in the long run….

And Republican Senators may today gloat over their hold onto power; their day of reckoning, however is inevitable, and soon.

*Oscillation is a concept I learned from the originator of Technologies of Creating, Robert Fritz...and have noted its application in both organizational and human dynamics.

#69 Men, agents of and pathway to cultural metanoia (A global response?)

Easter Monday, 2020, the air is swirling with tiny droplets of coronavirus while the airwaves are overflowing with talk of ‘opening the economy’ in an attempt to ‘return to normal’.

The range of issues facing a global population, now intrinsically and permanently linked to the people living in small towns, cities, farms, hamlets and on the mountains and in the valleys….all of us “governed” by various layers of governance is so wide, so publicly acknowledged, so ubiquitously discussed, researched, debated and perhaps even competed over that one has to wonder if we will not trip over ourselves, literally and metaphorically, on our way out of this dark tunnel.

Testing, both for those who are infected, (as well as those asymptomatic, given that those people can also spread the virus), and for the antibodies of those who have suffered and endured the disease, is high on the agenda of most jurisdictions. The provision of protective medical equipment, as well as the capacity to pinch-hit for the hundreds of thousands of already exhausted, emotionally depleted and trauma-saturated doctors, nurses, respirologists, paramedics, morticians, and even law enforcement and fire fighters continues to linger as a pressing issue for many. Researchers are busily testing for therapeutics, as well as vaccines, while corporations and even entrepreneurs are turning their systems and their hands, respectively, to production of needed products.

Whether the ‘opening’ of the economy of nations will generate an economic upturn or boom, depending on the depth of “rose-coloured” glasses a leader is wearing, remains an open question. Some, like Niall Ferguson in the Globe and Mail, wonder who might be the next John Maynard Keyes, authoring the insightful, prophetic and eminently deployable treatise on how to bring the economy back, if at all, similar to Keyes’ contribution after the Spanish flu pandemic of 1918. Ferguson, himself, is not betting on a quick ‘resurrection’ of the global economy.

The question of the transparency of the information flow in organizations, and more importantly at government levels and the authenticity of that information, continues to haunt the radars of individuals and media outlets around the world. And whether one considers it as top of the iceberg, or the underground currents, the question of whether and how the world will come together, or split apart, in reaction/response to the current pandemic remains open, if critical for all of us.

Gordon Brown former Labour Prime Minister of Great Britain has come forward with an articulated plea for “world leaders to create a temporary form of global government to tackle the twin medical and economic crises caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. The former Labour Prime Minister, who was at the centre of the international efforts  to tackle the impact of the near meltdown of the banks in 2008, said there was a need for a taskforce involving world leaders, health experts and the heads of the international organizations that would have executive powers to coordinate the response….Brown said his proposed global task force would fight the crisis on two fronts. There would need to be a coordinated effort to find a vaccine, and to organizes production purchasing and prevent profiteering.”(By Larry Elliott, The Guardian, March 26, 2020)

And lest we each become buried in the details of suffering and death in our own countries, Simon Tisdall, writing also in the Guardian, April 11, 2020,  writes this:

Oxfam says more than half a billion people may be pushed into poverty by the economic fallout. Global poverty reduction could be set back 30 years. Food companies, farmers and civil society groups are pointing to a rising tide of hunger unless food supply chains are maintained and borders kept open to trade. Coordinated action by government is necessary ‘to prevent the COVID-19 pandemic turning into a global food and humanitarian crisis,’ they say. Already creaking health systems in countries across sub-Saharan Africa and south Asia face collapse. “COVID-19 is poised to tear through poor, displaced and conflict-affected communities around the world,” Samantha Power, a former US ambassador  who helped build a coalition to combat the Ebola epidemic in 2014, warned last week. ‘Three billion people are unable to wash their hands at home, making it impossible to follow sanitation protocols,’ she wrote. ‘Because clinics in these communities have few or no gloves, masks, coronavirus tests, ventilators or ability to isolate patients, the contagion will be exponentially more lethal than in developed countries.’

Tisdall continues:

David Millband’s International Rescue Committee says it is a double emergency. First there is the direct impact ‘on unprepared health systems and populations with pre-existing vulnerabilities. Then there is the secondary havoc that will be caused to fragile states’ economies and political systems….

As the pandemic rages, the absence or failure of international leadership, waxes both chronic and scandalous. Obstructed by self-serving disagreements between the U.S> and China, the UN Security Council -meeting in virtual session- discussed the pandemic for the first time last week, more than three months after it erupted. ‘The pandemic poses a significant threat to the maintenance of  international peace and security, potentially leading to an increase in social unrest and violence,’(UN Secretary General Antonio) Guterres declared. Yet despite his pleas, and notwithstanding 103,500 deaths and 1.7 million infections worldwide as of Saturday, no action was taken.”

And then, if these utterances are not enough to bring indigestion to your most recent meal, let’s hear again from Sarah Kendzior, writing in the Globe and Mail, today about the link between the biological virus and the political virus in the U.S.:

“The coronavirus pandemic is not only a public health crisis, but a political one. Its origin might be natural, but its spread and exploitation are not. The virus emerged in a world of rapidly consolidation autocracies: The Unite States, Britain, Russia, Israel, Hungary, Brazil—and that is not a comprehensive list. The leaders of these countries seem apathetic as to whether their citizens die. In Russia, oligarchs are hoarding ventilators. In Israel and Hungary, corrupt leaders use th virus as an opportunity to consolidate power. In Brazil, the President proclaimed, ‘We’ll all die one day,’ and let the virus spread. In Britain, the Prime Minister encouraged ‘herd immunity’—and then found himself in the ICU with coronavirus. Now the country is shut down. ..

Has there ever been a time in world history where so many people are this vulnerable and are ruled by so many sadistic elites? Perhaps, but the toll of their malice was never so well-documented. Separated by social distancing, our sense of community comes through our cellphones-the deep grief of a mounting death toll, livestreamed minute by minute. It’s hard to look at, but it’s harder to look away.

In this era where few officials express the most basic empathy, you feel a desire to bear witness: to acknowledge every life, every loss, as profound. You do not want anyone to feel abandoned, because abandonment is how we got here. Those ins charge abandoned accountability, and then they abandoned the truth.” (Sarah Kendzior is co-host of the podcast, Gaslit Nation, and is the author of a new book, Hiding in Plain Sight.)

The obvious canyon of hope that clearly exists between Gordon Brown and Sarah Kendzior will have to be bridged by someone or some agency like the United Nations. And while each of us, wherever we live, are witnessing this epic “Greek” tragedy, we will have to wrestle with our own expectations, as well as how hard we are prepared to work, engage, collaborate, and even agitate, for a global, co-ordinated, collaborative approach, not only to the pandemic but also to the ensuring and ensnared existential threat of global warming and climate change. If Gordon Brown and his colleagues are able to persuade enough world leaders to join in his proposed coalition, and demonstrate the efficacy and indeed the necessity of successful co-operation, through a common vaccine, for example, and for assured trade pathways, (regulations, seaways, air-ways, tariffs, and fair pricing) then, and only then, might it be possible for some of us minor sceptics to open our nervous minds, eyes and hearts to a potential for enhanced global co-operation.

Optimists, however, seem not to be in the ascendancy, at least on the macro-perspectives. While in the micro-management or daily/hourly needs, we are witnessing enhanced collaboration among Canadian provinces, and U.S. states, for example Alberta has just offered to fly sizeable contributions of protective gear to Ontario, Quebec and to British Columbia. Their economic plight, given the price of oil and the hold on production, will offer gaping and grievous opportunities for reciprocity, and in the not-so-distant future.

As a Canadian, growing more confident and even somewhat proud of the performance of our federal government, given its apparent capacity to engage with opposition parties, in pursuit of common goals of support of both individuals and businesses, in this stay-at-home/shut-down time, would it be too much to envision a place and a time when, for example, Prime Minister Trudeau and his Deputy  Chrystia Freeland, renowned for having negotiated a new trade deal with the trump administration, could convene a convention of world powers including the Security Council of the United Nations, the G-20 and G-7, with Gordon Brown’s agenda, and his leadership, as a potential pathway to bringing some healing to the health, the economic, the environmental and the political threats we all face.

“Oh, but of course, that is far too much to dream for. You are far too intense for me! You expect far too much for anyone to be able or willing to offer or even consider! And there are far too many reasons why your “personality” is and always will be a serious impediment to such a utopian vision.”….I already hear the voices of those, with faces and names in my own life, and clearly exemplified by the narcissistic and opportunistic cynics and the oligarchs who trampled over the figures of dead people hourly in pursuit of their personal aggrandizement. Saying, “No!” and isolating those whose personalities, and whose politically refined behaviours are so off-putting to the establishments, has been and continues to be permanent mind-and political roadblocks whenever and wherever serious and worthy projects are necessary.

And one of the prime pathways of arguing for their modesty and their secretive exclusion and rejection and abandonment, both of specific individuals as well as of too ambitious proposals, is to argue “We can’t do that much, because it is too costly, or too difficult, or too complex or too new and different!”

Stability, long considered the sine qua non of Christianity, as well as of the political establishment, (translated into preservation of private personal agendas to power) is now no longer available to anyone. The very ground of the planet has shaken, and that includes the political establishment, the economic elite’s hold on power, the oligarchs’ tightly-clenched fist on both their portfolios and their acolytes, and the duly elected representatives in so-called developed democracies….every one of our leaders faces a new kind of world. And the degree to which each of them is open to acknowledging both the new threats and the new opportunities, and faces them in a collaborative manner, will determine which of them survives, as well as which of their populations will have a better chance of emerging into the new day we have all helped to generate.

Our future is literally and metaphorically, in our own hands, not only by complying with staying home, and by significant acts of generosity, kindness, compassion and care for those most threatened immediately, but also by agitating for a very different kind of world to replace the one we are watching sink into the ocean of our hopes and dreams.