My writings - and those of others.
Language reveals us
Through the years I have watched Peter Baker on PBS and read him in the New York Times - as well as his wife Susan, who writes for the New Yorker. When the couple recently produced a book on the Trump era it looked like an interesting read. Rather than buying it I put a hold on it on Libby to read on a tablet - and assumed that since it has just recently been published, there would be a long wait - I certainly wasn’t at the top of the line.
And then it arrived. It was some 1200 pages on the device with a limited time to go through it, but I have persevered. I’m not surprised that those waiting for it an anticipating learning something new have given it a rather quick read and are somewhat happy to be freed from it. It would never have been a keeper that I would want to return to for either facts or inspiration. This is what stands out.
The Trump era has mostly been in plain sight, so there is surprisingly little that an American politics obsessive like me didn’t know already from reading or watching the New York Times, PBS, Washington Post and even Canadian news and the Globe and Mail. The main takeaway from their comprehensive reporting is the perpetual use by all the key players is - the F word. It must occur in quoted conversations in the book at least as many times as Trump’s 30,000 plus lies. I suppose there was a time when such quotations were shocking but now it’s just banal.
The authors never comment on this. I have no idea how they feel about it, though they are quick to pass judgment on many other issues in the book. But I will. I grew up in an era when the use of profanity was a shocker when it occurred; it was rarely used even in private. Get on any bus now and the F word has actually replaced “like” as something to amuse one’s self counting.
But words do say something about our society. Occasional profanity in the past suggested that the sacred actually mattered. Using the F word in every sentence means we have moved way beyond obscene - and any kind of violence is okay now. Civil society used to demand something better. It suggested a world of citizens who were polite to one another because others were human beings. There was such a thing as civil rights. Civil law had to do with things that had different implications than criminal law. Those who worked at any level of government were described as civil servants.
As Americans head into mid term elections, our own little news cycle here notes that the provincial government has withdrawn its use of the Notwithstanding Clause of our constitution - due to a good deal of backlash to shut down a strike - and the union has called off its strike of school support workers and custodians - those who support the lives of our children. It’s a small consolation that both will at least return to the negotiating table. I have no desire to be a fly on the wall in that room. But let’s hope for even a small degree of civility. When tempers flair, no amounf of use of the F word is going to make things better. It’s always arrogant because the speaker is always responding to the other. I echo my fellow octogenarian Ursula LeGuin in her wonderful essay in the book, No Time to Spare. “Would you please just F-cking STOP.
Turning up the Heat
People throughout the world are baking in the heat and occasionally there is a faint recognition that this has something to do with climate change. The country that puts the most carbon emissions into the atmosphere is nevertheless stymied by one key player.
One politician, Senator Joe Manchin, says he will not support his party’s climate change initiatives
The US Supreme Court has limited the ability of the government to curb emissions from power plants
The opposition party is against any climate legislation.
The US loses its ability to influence other major emitters, like China. India and Brazil.
The US is not on track to meet its goals for the Paris Accord. It doesn’t provide a great example to other countries.
One man’s action has severely limited the role of the party in power leaving it dysfunctional in a democratic system.
It’s no wonder that E. M. Forster suggested only two cheers for democracy. He expressed his concern for the individual in a world facing totalitarianism, as well as extremism from both the left and the right. He claimed at the time that the title was a joke when his writings included material going back to 1936, the year of my birth. One writer evaluating the collection suggests that it has worn well. He was looking ahead at the time to the rise of Nazi Germany.
Leadership demands morality for the public good. We need it now more than ever.
An Elder Paves the Way
So many messages don’t receive an audience. Jane Goodall could teach many of us who want to communicate about a cause to think of the channels used by the receivers rather than the senders. She founded Roots and Shoots to speak to the coming generation about the three crises we currently face - biodiversity loss, climate change, and environmental inequality.
“Only if we understand, can we care. Only if we care, will we help. Only if we help, we shall be saved.” she says. She notes that we have been stealing the futures of the young at least since the industrial revolution. But the young are interesting what she has to say - and they have influence over their parents and grandparents and the way they think. Those adults may be CEOs or senior government officials and the influence of the young reaches others with decision making power.
She founded a global institute in 1991 - and it now has a Canadian chapter here. In a recent interview with Fast Company, she spoke about partnering with a comic book publisher to tell the story in a meaningful way for its readers. Starting as a book called Rewriting Extinction, the formats are monthly cartoon videos - webtoons - with scripts read by celebrities. What we can do alone is wonderful, she reminds us - but what we can do with at least one other person can be even better. The cartoon reading platform has 72 million global readers. You can become another one and share it with kids you know.
Insights and a Question
I’m quoting from Matthew Fox today as he examines the need for a sense of the sacred - and contends that the opposite of evil is not good - it’s the sense of the sacred. For a renewed discovery of the sacred, he turns to the astronauts - whose experience, he says turns them into cosmonauts.
“That beautiful, warm, living object looked so fragile, so delicate, that if you touched it with a finger it would crumble and fall apart.” James Irwin, Apollo mission.
"On the return trip home, gazing through 240,000 miles of space toward the stars and the planet from which I had come, I suddenly experienced the universe as intelligent, loving, harmonious. . . "My view of our planet was a glimpse of divinity." - Edgar Mitchell, the Moon landing
And here was a statement from Russian cosmonaut Boris Volynov:
“During a space flight, the psyche of each astronaut is reshaped. Having seen the sun, the stars, and our planet, you become more full of life, softer. You begin to look at all living things with great trepidation and you begin to be more kind and patient with the people around you. At any rate, that is what happened to me.”
Matthew Fox then asks: What would it mean if these testimonies from space truly coursed through decision-makers in various countries from which they come?
What indeed!
Questions? Answers?
My website starts bravely with questions like these:
Why are we here?
What is our role?
How do we use our gifts?
How can we learn and grow?
Well drilling down this morning, the answers don’t come to mind, but simply more questions. The morning paper (read digitally but in facsimile format) headlines the impasse created by six wheelers parked in front of the Canadian House of Parliament with their drivers determined to stay until their demands are met. The Ukraine is angry with us because we won’t send them lethal weapons. The British Prime Minister is saying sorry, sorry, sorry about 20 parties at 10 Downing Street when everyone else was locked down. Canadian Conservative Party members seem ready to throw out yet another leader - this one because he apparently reneged by supporting conversion therapy when several others didn’t want it banned. On a brighter note, the Webb telescope seems to be behaving the way it was intended.
I’ll have to leave the Conservatives here in Canada and in the UK to fend for themselves, but I feel more sympathy for those residents in Ottawa. I lived there for several years and it is a beautiful and livable city - 30 minutes from anything even if you live in the burbs, the best shopping, the ski hills, the lakes, the Canals. Six Wheelers have become weaponized to support political agendas - and they seem to be towing all kinds of other angry folks with them. Confederate flags and Swastikas are rightly condemned by all of us and it’s appalling to have to even say so - but we are having more trouble with Freedom.
It’s been said that when most think of America, Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness comes to mind - and the Constitution. Move over to Canada and it’s Peace, Order and Good Government. Somehow I hear echoes former NDP Leader Tom Mulcair asking the party in power some years ago with a twinkle in his eye, “So How’s That Working for You?”.
It gets personal. So I’ll start today asking a bunch of questions of myself, because living the questions sometimes gets me where I need to go.
Have I ever spent any time on framing documents? What if I set an agenda over the coming weeks to read the US Constitution, The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms - and perhaps ones written by the UN?
What if I looked more seriously at protests? The one going on right now in Ottawa doesn’t have a permit. The citizens who live in the city are rightly put off by visitors who desecrate monuments, harass their citizens, impede their traffic, and break their pandemic protocols. The police have make judgment calls in applying the law judiciously when verbal anger can lead to physical violence. It doesn’t always erupt that way in a protest, but the latter is almost always preceded by the former. What’s the right call? What does the law say? What’s the right course of action? How does the treatment of white protesters compare with that of visible minorities.
Most of the protesters are angry white men. Have we failed them? If yes, how? If no, what do we do about it?
Here is a what-if. What if politicians stopped demonizing one another? What if any member said simply, “I disagree with member X. This is what I think is important instead”. They complain about the use of social media - but is there an opportunity to think about parliamentary civil discourse?
Here is another? What if we expected less of leaders and more of members? Do heroes always ultimately disappoint us because we expect so much of them when they are simply human beings - often letting us off the hook of doing much except judging them?
With the decline of institutional religion, is anything still sacred?
What are we really going to learn in the next two decades from the Webb telescope? Spoiler alert - how many of us will last that long? One good writer recently suggested that it will confirm that we are finally just tiny specks in a universe. Like Odysseus we act like his followers, when encouraged to stay the course and look ahead - and then drown - but do we just move forward anyway?
It looks as though my work is cut out for me over the rest of the week - and for future posts.