Subject - not Object

In a plenary session of a course this week, a participant observed that she watched a news report with an interview of a Russian soldier. He commented that he didn’t know who to shoot - because “they look like us”.

There is something obscene in this report. Is it all right to shoot someone who doesn’t look like the speaker? Is it all right to shoot anybody at all? Not only are we being asked to reflect as we stand by and watch the needless slaughter of others. We have lived in a dream world too long.

Disasters

Over the last few weeks I was preoccupied with a convoy of trucks. Now most if the news focuses on tanks and rockets and brave people dying. It’s easy to forget the longer term damage now coming to haunt us, that doesn’t care about how we mess up with trucks and tanks. It deals with how the practices of the first world will affect the two thirds who never enjoy our privileges and now will suffer even more. We have never come to terms with the reality that the planet has a one way irreversible journey and forgetting that impacts our own future - but not fairly. Those who already have the least will suffer the most.

The latest IPCC report still offers a sliver of hope. It’s hard to predict that the first world, already so arrogant and sure of its privilege will suddenly show remorse and change. Our track record isn’t good.

The report is immense in scope - 34,000 studies produced by more than 1,000 researchers and scientists and endorsed by 195 nations. There are things we can agree upon. Here are some of the things to recognize:

• Half the world’s population is short of water at some time in the year

• One out of three suffers from heat stress. That will grow to 50 or 75% if we fail to act.

• A billion people living in coastal areas will be exposed to flooding by 2050

• Much farm land is gradually becoming incapable of sustaining crops. A million children in Africa alone could suffer from stunted growth.

• Wild animal habitat reduction is causing animals to move and become extninct

• We don’t protect land, fresh water and oceans. Instead of carbon capture, we are sending more into the atmosphere.

• While the poor suffer most, the first world isn’t escaping. The health of the planet affects us all - physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually. As the season of Lent begins, we need to grieve our losses, but not stop there. It’s incumbent upon all of us to act individually, corporately, nationally and internationally. The planet isn’t the stage set . The heart of stone must become a heart of flesh.

O Canada

Encampment of protestors close to Canadian House of Parliament on the 18th day of their blockade

We Canadian are suddenly the centre of attention everywhere after a world wide reputation of being boring. Our fifteen minutes of fame nevertheless are an embarrassment when we become notorious for all the wrong reasons. Every gathering of more than one at a dinner table starts a conversation - and one is then left to reflect on the issues and implications for democracy.

It all began when some truckers didn’t like vaccine mandates mandated not only in Canada but also in the United States that wouldn’t allow them to travel back and forth without proof of vaccination. But what started as something fostered by a clear minority - 90% of truckers were fully vaccinated and their associations did not support the action - escalated into blockades of others that shut down borders, affected food and industrial chains, and terrorized the downtown residents of the Ottawa and federal parliament in Canada’s capital city. Hundreds of protesters settled in a downtown encampment with blaring horns and maskless invasions of the major shopping centre and nearby market. They parked their big wheelers, blocking bus routes and ambulance lanes on city streets and shutting down all surrounding businesses. Others did the same thing on major international routes - in one case stopping a quarter of Canada/US daily commercial traffic. They want all pandemic restrictions lifted - and some also are openly want to overthrow the elected government. Freedom signs are everywhere. There aren’t any Responsibility signs.

As it happened, last evening I attended a seminar on Non Violent Communication. Its founder, Marshall Rosenberg, seemingly had good reason to explore the subject based on his own upbringing and it has some good features as a model for one-on-one communication. It suggests a path with four components: observing the facts of a situation where one is impacted, examining how one feels about it, how it impacts one’s needs and values, and how one might explore the experience with the person who was involved in it. We were asked to think of a situation where something had happened that we didn’t like - and work through the other steps. We then practised with a partner, listened to each other’s account, and reflected out loud what we had heard.

All of this appears on a chart to help us. Feelings are listed under broad headings; joy and contentment, fear and anxiety, anger and frustration, sadness and grief. Each heading has numerous subsets.

The other side of the chart has headings of needs and values; subsistence, protection, security and trust, participation, creation, affection, identity, meaning and purpose, leisure, freedom, understanding, transcendence. There are subsets here as well.

But what was most interesting was an additional box labelled Faux Feelings. These were interpretations masquerading as feelings: Abandoned, abused, attacked, betrayed, ignored, intimidated, invisible, let down, manipulated, neglected, put upon, rejected, rushed, unappreciated. The descriptor for these reads, “thoughts about what someone else is doing to me.”

The Faux Feelings are rampant on both Ottawa’s encampment and its citizens. I’ll avoid the mudslinging of some of the politicians that everything is someone else’s fault. “Individuals and governments are regulated by laws and not by arbitrary actions, No person or group is above the law.” says Our guide for Aspiring Citizens. It applies in fact to all of us now since when we came as settlers it didn’t occur to us that we could take land occupied for centuries by the people of our First Nations, but that is another matter. Generally most of us believe in peace, order and good government. We are having a good deal of difficulty in communicating with those who don’t share how we interpret it.

We’re now dealing with the first ever imposition of the Emergencies Act - after watching local police forces outnumbered and inactive. Ottawa’s police chief has resigned and is replaced by an integrated force. Following the money from outside the country can now be investigated and accounts can be frozen. But these measures, coming after days of turmoil, has made us a laughing stock and a poster child for protests worldwide. It’s a totally new experience - and about the only thing that was totally predictable is that a certain US news service like Fox and its main supporter, the has-been president would be all over it. Even two New York Times opinion columnist feature it now, as well as an entire feature section. Famous we are, but not in a good way.

Tom Edsall tells us why the former president loves the the truckers. They’re his kind of people. Rand Paul invited them to come to Texas to work - though he doesn’t seem to know that they can’t come in until they are vaccinated. Edsall goes on to talk about the positive and negative effects of social capital. Bowling alone can also be Bowling for Fascism and there is an interesting map showing the US with positive and negative impacts of each. Tribes can reinforce both good and evil. Paul Krugman wrote two days ago When Freedom means the right to Destroy. He calls it a slow motion January 6. I think he is correct in describing both our fears and the speed of our response. It’s not only that we have integrated economies but we have integrated responses to pandemics and other hard stuff. And it emerges in faux feelings on both sides of the border.

Krugman compares the cost of the border crossings to Black Lives Matter protest costs. “The B.L.M. demonstrations were a reaction to police killings of innocent people; what’s going on in Canada is, on its face, about rejecting public health measures intended to save lives. Of course, even that is mainly an excuse: What it’s really about is an attempt to exploit pandemic weariness to boost the usual culture-war agenda.”

We’re still Canadian. We haven’t tear gassed our demonstrators and their trucks yet even though a news panel political commentator noted yesterday “I’ve been tear gassed for much less.” It might be the time we are thinking more about how we take our democracy for granted than ever before. And we’re watching.

Words and meanings

Very early in the morning on Monday I looked at the clock to see what time it was. The screen was blank. I tried the light beside it. Clearly the power was off. Thinking that if repairs or changes were needed, it was good to do them in the middle of the night, I went back to sleep - and woke again close to 8:00. Still no power, and also no water and no heat. I looked out the window and saw no evidence of lights on anywhere. My smart phone still worked. I texted a son to find out whether he was in the same situation - not at all was the reply. I could then turn to Twitter to find that there was a major portion of my city without power. It was apparently an underground problem and there was a promise of the power being back on around noon.

What to do? Coffee required hot water and my stove is electric. Cooking anything was out. So was reading my morning paper in a tablet - my phone would have to be the hotspot and I didn’t want to exhaust my one link to the outside world. A nice hot bath to fill the time wouldn’t work with no hot water. Neither would playing on a digital piano. I got dressed, made a peanut butter sandwich, made some juice and settled in for a long read of Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall. I didn’t think of a right to electricity - but I did think, as I very seldom do, of what a privilege to have it and how much of my life is intertwined with it. It came into my father’s childhood home just a few years before his birth. My grandparents grew up without it - as did all the ancestors before them.

My life was inconvenienced for a short time and a chance to reflect how my life is so dependent on electricity - for comfort and ultimately for survival. My discomfort is nothing compared to many experienced by some indigenous people in my own country and many beyond throughout the world. Some, whose regular lives are more like mine, have experienced longer and more serious discomfort in our capital city where I lived in the past, - in the name of what some who are occupying it are calling their search for freedom.

Lots of Canadians have started reading our Charter of Rights and Freedoms when several large trucks have disrupted the downtown of our capital city and disrupted lives of those who live there. The protestors came with assurance of Freedom of Assembly, but have stayed with their ability to occupy public streets and totally disrupt local life. Some of them support a wacky mandate to overtake the government that most people thought was laughable when we first heard about it, but we’re are not laughing any more. Some want lifting of federal vaccine mandates by both Canada and the US. Some want the lifting of all restrictions, though these are set by provinces and they are protesting in the wrong place. Their trucking associations are not supporting them and they are here as individuals, not even a loose collective. The minority government refuses to negotiate but some opposition party members are out taking pictures and politicians are squabbling among themselves. The police are outnumbered and have asked for reinforcements. The mayor has declared a state of emergency. A judge issued an injunction against constant blowing of truck horns. Businesses are closed.

A relatively small group of citizens has brought the city to an impasse while police are expressing concern about small children living in some of the trucks. There is plenty of money supporting the occupation and no one is quite sure of its source.

We’re not dealing with a mere disagreement about rights. While the larger world is concerned about one country waging war against another by occupying it with soldiers and tanks, we have a mini version of an invasion in our own capital where big vehicles create a form of hostage taking of the resident citizens. We rightly don’t want a January 6th of our own. It’s the Canadian way to be patient and show forbearance. Most of us understand a relationship between freedom and responsibility to others. Mixing in tiredness in response to a pandemic doesn’t change that, much as some politicians would like us to think.

Relying on the kind of rational interchange that we have used in the past to persuade others isn’t working. The exercise of power has entered a new stage. How we balance the needs of anger, fear, safety and justice is going to require new contemplation and action. We shall see.

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.