My writings - and those of others.
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.
Playing with Words
As I wait for the final results of COP 26, I have to find something else to write about to end the week. I am taking a course online and the subject yesterday was “Interiority” - not a word that I ever use. That sent me on a search which I posted on the course site - and I’ll share something of it here:
I'm going to have some fun with words. I became curious about the term, "interiority", because before starting the course - or perhaps before reading Thomas Berry - it was not part of my everyday vocabulary. Canadians, like me, straddle both British and American English. I started with the hard copy of my Concise Oxford Dictionary published in 1982. The word wasn't there. I moved on to Collins British dictionary online to find this: "the quality of being focused on one's inner life and identity". If the Oxford English Dictionary had allowed me to see when the word first entered the language, I would have gone there, but there is a paywall. Collins did help with a diagram. It showed brief use for the first time in 1778 - 0.07% - and then the word languished or fell off completely until 1978 when it took off at 0.33% use. But that’s not a very big number either.
I moved on to the American Merriam-Webster. It had this to say: Definition of interiority
1: interior quality or character
2: inner life or substance : psychological existence
When we are little kids, using big words gives us a sense of authority and superiority - and it also makes us part of an in-group. For me, one of the challenges of Berry’s New Story - is telling it in words that other people understand. "Story" is a simpler word. For more fun, I went back to Collins and tried translating story into French, German and Italian. In each case it brings up a native word in the language histoire, Geschichte, storia. When I tried the same thing with Interiority, this is what came up - intériorité, Innerlichkeit, Interiorità. The German seemed to have a better word of their own. The others sounded as though they adopted the English one.
When we watched Robin Wall Kimmerer this week, several in the course commented on her warmth and simplicity as it comes through in the sound of her voice and her demeanor. It's isn't as though she can't use big words when she chooses to. I've just finished two of her books, Gathering Moss and Braiding Sweetgrass. Her naming of mosses reveals a scholar who can joust with any biologist and win hands down. For me, interiority has a cold and rather scientific sound - like an empty and sparsely furnished room. But this playful research brought a phrase that I can work with - "inner life" - because it sounds as though it comes from the wisdom of the heart. It still combines an adjective and a noun. To spur myself and others to act, I have to turn a phrase into a verb. The video for this section of the course on the global brain with the outline of the human body is also a big help in showing us what it means to live - both inside and outside our skins.
A good teacher once heard a student say, "I feel very creative". The teacher asked "So what are you going to create?" "Oh I didn't mean that I was going to do anything about it. It's just how I feel today".
That's why I never use the word "creativity" either. But "create" is a verb I like.
Progress not Perfection
This blog is becoming a site of qualfiers as COP 26 proceeds. Among the recent complaints are too many old white men, so here is a refreshing message from a different cohort.
The young East Indian CEO, Svanicka Balasubranian was watching it from home on her family’s farm, where over several decades, ground water has fallen by more than half resulting in crop failures. She recognizes the frustration of many with lack of progress, but has some wise things to say.
First, when we tell stories we have to stop painting them as black or white and introduce some nuance. Few stories in the media are as glamorous or positive as they sound in terms of generating results. She sympathizes with the young, but at the same time, their dismissal of every effort may not be helpful either.
Second, we have to become more holistic. Favorite agendas can blind us to the strengths of other options. Often the agendas - especially in their marketing efforts - are filled with self-interest. It doesn’t hurt when opposed groups like Nestle and Green Peace actually sit down together and see what they can come up with that might work for both.
Third, the silos long decried in the government and corporate sectors are just as evident in the stakeholders of climate change. There are no single silver bullet solutions, she says, To over-engineer one, may be a waste of time and energy. It is more like a jigsaw puzzle with many pieces needed for completion. What matters is accountability in particular situations. Solutions may indeed be local rather than universal and the point is how much positive small changes can happen.
Small measures can indeed have good consequences. You can see what she says about that in her TED Talk.
Profiles in Courage
Like all Canadians, I rejoiced in the return of the two Michaels amid all the news of depressing news of the hospitalizations and deaths of so many Canadians who don’t understand the value of vaccinations. I grew up in the middle of a polio epidemic which left some classmates unable to ever walk again. But for once there was real news.
No sooner than a couple of hours after watching Meng Wanzhou, the financial officer of Huawei depart, we heard the newly elected Prime Minister make an announcement of their imminent return to Canada after 1019 days of captivity.
I really didn’t know either of these men - but seeing the length of their incarceration every day in the front page of my newspaper kept them in focus. One of them was a year behind my youngest son in his high school. The latter noted that Michael Kovrig was serious even then. The stories of his walking 7000 steps every day in a small cell and keeping busy with reading anything possible, in spite of almost no visits or contacts with the outside world was inspiring. Many of us complained about a restricted life during the pandemic. The story of his wife, previously separated, but now doing everything possible to secure his release, was an added inspiration - and a pleasure to share her obvious joy.
Freedom to reject vaccinations - claimed as a violation of human rights - doesn’t seem the highest form of courage. Having faith that imprisonment as retaliation will ultimately end is a more inspiring example.
Ignoring History
I am disturbed when I read the morning paper along with everyone else. Why are people not getting vaccinated, putting themselves at risk along with others? Why are governments now promising to do something about the fallout of residential schools, when the evidence has been in plain sight for so long? Why are some so unwilling to face the truth about the outcome of the US election?
While we fuss about these issues, the historian, Timothy Snyder has some cautionary reminders. In a recent New York Times Article he reminds us that a war on history is a war on democracy. Dealing with the suppression of agriculture in Ukraine in 1932, he notes the suppression of the story of the Ukrainian people themselves - as many as 3.9 million of them died of suffering and starvation. The official story was the triumph of industrialism. Real history was suppressed and rewritten.
Snyder goes on to review the current attempts to rewrite the history of slavery in the US. Suddenly in some states there are new laws of what teachers may or may not say. One of the dangerous elements relates to emotions. Teachers are not to relate parts of the story that some might find upsetting causing “discomfort, guilt, anguish or any other form of psychological distress on account of the individual’s race or sex.”
History, Snyder says, is not therapy. Becoming upset and dealing with it is part of growing up. It’s dangerous when becoming upset could call a halt to hearing the truth. Things become particularly upsetting when it affects groups - white Americans and African Americans, white Canadians and indigenous people or people of colour, respected leaders and things they said and did.
Snyder has strong words for denial. “When we claim that discrimination is only a result of personal prejudice, we liberate ourselves from responsibility.” he says. We have to face reality. Authoritarianism tries to shield us from that. By saying that we are not racist, we may think we have escaped. The only way to change the current situation is to face the past one honestly. That has to happen before anything changes.