My writings - and those of others.
Governance - Sage Advice
We discussed some of the basics of morality in the west in a discussion groujp yesterday. From our European perspective the scriptural documents appeared to be the guidelines for morality even when they were made more general with terms like care and compassion. But it reminded me of something that I read in Brain Pickings, where the writer sends us back to Confucius, living in the east between 551-479 BCE.
“The ancient Chinese philosopher and statesman Confucius recognized the indelible link between personal and political morality, recognized that interpersonal kindness is the foundation of social justice, recognized that democracy — a form of government only just invented on the other side of the globe in ancient Greece, not to take root in his own culture for epochs — begins in the heart.”, she says.
Confucius made a connection “between personal good and public good rooted in purity of heart and discipline of mind” – a relevant directive for current politicians.
How does one get there? It means an orderly and disciplined home environment, which means moving back to individual responsibility, developing priorities around what is important – and seeing these as organic categories, looking at these with the mind and moving back for final evaluation by the heart. With these in place, one can work back to through the steps in ascending order leading to good governance at local and regional levels - and ultimately to national and international ones that have developed long after Confucius.
What if these were the steps politicians took – as opposed to trying to stay in office as their only imperative?
Self Portrait
What will life look like when later in this century researchers look back on 2021?
I was interested in contrasting my current life as a single elderly woman living alone in the past few days with that of one of my oldest friends. I was able to renew contact via email with her daughter and hoped that we could connect via technology during the current lockdown. This is not easy, she said, because her mother’s hearing is challenged, even with hearing aids, and her sight because of macular degeneration. Personal visits are best and her children are frequent visitors – but since she lives in another city, that is not an option for me right now.
There are similarities, but key differences for which I have every reason to be grateful. I also wear hearing aids but they allow me to hear well. My optometrist can see tiny beginnings of macular degeneration, but taking a supplemental vitamin is currently preventing an increase showing in the sophisticated optimal scan. I am also reasonably mobile so long as I do gentle exercise regularly. My friend is confined to a wheelchair.
But I can also see how changes in technology make my current life not only tolerable but extremely rich during lockdown.
Books – As a child I could walk to the local public library and sometimes read a picture book on its steps and then returned it right away. I still enjoy hard cover books and am currently reading Isabel Wilkerson’s Caste, a provocative and deeply troubling portrayal of a humanly constructed system of superiority with profound implications.
Much – even most of my reading, of course is now online – via a laptop, a tablet and a phone. I first turned on a desktop in 1984 to use office software, but computing is now just part of living. Reading books happens through Kindle or Libby, the public library app, and that can include both print and audio books. My morning starts with online newspapers, New York Times, Washington Post , the Ontario edition of Canada’s Globe and Mail – and sometimes the aggregated Apple News. I still have a paper subscription to the New Yorker but I can read a library version of The Economist. These give me some balance between progressive and conservative views about current issues.
Then there are online newsletters. I first picked up the initial edition of the magazine Fast Company in an airport when I was still working, and I liked its approach to innovation. I still do. There are eclectic ones like Brain Pickings, Maria Popova’s weekly aggregations of famous writings and wonderful illustrations from children’s books that she finds in public libraries - and Aeon, an Australian newsletter with wide reaching topics. I also scan most many of the environmental newsletters referenced under the resource section of this site.
As a former resident, I’m somewhat of an American news junkie and dive in an out of CNN and PBS – as well as the Canadian channels, CBC and CTV. These can all be accessed both live and after the fact through recordings. I might turn later to Prime or Brit Box for a series of two.
There is still the telephone. I pick up less and less to avoid the robocalls – but I can see whether it’s a son calling from Hong Kong or another one who wants to borrow my car which is an easier one for his teen age son to practice driving between online lessons - or a friend wishing me a happy birthday. Less welcome is a call from a colleague who has clearly traveled down the rabbit hole of conspiracy theories. All I can do is remind him of the caring person I have known in the past – but I doubt if I have changed his view.
And I realize that in the week that the only live face to face conversations I have had is a brief one with the son and grandson picking up the car keys – and the concierge when I picked up a food box. A couple of Zoom meetings lasted much longer and provided views of welcome faces. And I’m back taking art lessons on Zoom where the gifted instructor can receive our works in progress and make suggestions for improvement, The six learners share their work and we admire one another’s creations and learn. My twice monthly piano lesson on Zoom also provide good instruction and learning.
This is a pretty rich environment where I am lucky to be alive and experience. One of the things that has struck me in writing this. While I have social media accounts, I feel almost no need to access them at this point. What that means is that I’m not part of the world totally immersed in lack of truth. And the challenge for others and for me is – how to I change that from where I sit now?
The Climate Change Challenge
President Biden’s returning to the Paris Climate Accord, halting the Keystone Pipeline project and putting new restrictions on oil and gas production is good news; but it is only the beginning of a long challenge for the leader who has vowed to become the climate president. As he vows to cut fossil fuel emissions, the oil and gas industry is immediately mobilizing to challenge any changes. Executive orders are immediately viewed as job killers in an already over stressed economy. Biden counters that new production in areas like electric cars will create and replace jobs. Last year was the hottest ever recorded. Environmentalists say that the challenges have never been greater. The US has to be a partner in climate change with the world.
It’s easy to be focused on one’s own country, so I was interested in a modeling in the New York Times this morning that allowed me to look at the primary risks for Canada. It is well worth looking at the model which presents the insights modeled by the company Four Twenty Seven with comments placed on top of maps of the areas.
The chart posits that our major climate hazard in Canada will be flooding - followed by wildfires, water stress, cyclones and sea level rise. These could affect 60% of the population. Our gross domestic product and agriculture could also be affected by at least one of the hazards.
We won’t be alone - 90% of world populations will be threatened. Some of the figures are staggering and defy imagination. In the first 18 years of this century, 165 billion people were challenged with flooding. It will be even greater by 2040.
Climate change has unequal effects. The poor suffer most and economic inequality increases. Other factors, like population density add to the discrepancy and food shortages and infrastructure decline, lead to mass migrations. Rich countries like ours are not immune from the challenges The Covid - 19 pandemic has brought home the lesson that we are all connected and the lesson is immediate. The climate pandemic is much more serious but easier to deny.
Here are some of the perceptions of Americans about climate change identified by PRRI (Public Religion Research Institute), a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization dedicated to conducting independent research at the intersection of religion, culture, and public policy. I will try to find comparable information re Canadian perspectives later.
Americans rank climate change last on a list of important issues. Only five percent of Americans say climate change is the most important issue facing the U.S. today.
When asked which environmental problem is most important for the current administration to tackle, nearly 3-in-10 (29%) Americans point to air, water, and soil pollution. One-quarter (25%) of Americans say climate change is the most pressing environment problem, while a similar number (23%) identify water shortages and drought. Fewer Americans cite the shrinking of wilderness areas and animal habitats (11%) or endangered species (4%) as the most critical environmental issue.
Americans are significantly more likely to believe that people living in poorer developing countries will be harmed by climate change than they are to say that they personally, or U.S. residents as a whole, will be negatively affected by climate change.
Less than one-quarter (24%) of Americans believe that they will be personally harmed a great deal by climate change, while 30% say climate change will affect them a moderate amount. More than 4-in-10 Americans say climate change will have only a little (23%) or no impact (22%) on them personally.
The Climate Change Concern Index—a composite measure that combines perceptions about whether climate change is a crisis and whether it will have adverse personal effects—finds that nearly 3-in-10 (29%) Americans are very concerned about climate change, 21% are somewhat concerned, 29% are somewhat unconcerned, and 21% are very unconcerned.
Close to half (46%) of Americans say that the earth is getting warmer and that these changes are primarily the result of human activity. We characterize this group as climate change “Believers.”
One-quarter (25%) of Americans believe the global temperature is rising, but say the change is due to natural fluctuations in the earth’s environment or are uncertain about its cause. We describe this group as climate change “Sympathizers.”
Finally, more than one-quarter (26%) of Americans say there is no solid evidence that the earth’s temperature has been rising over the past few decades. We call this group climate change “Skeptics.” Skeptics were asked to share, in their words, why they believe the earth’s temperature is not increasing. Answers varied considerably, but the most frequently cited reason (33% of all open-ended answers) was that they have not noticed a change in the weather around them.)
Climate change Believers are substantially more likely to than Sympathizers or Skeptics to score high on the Climate Change Concern Index.
Clearly what we believe counts - the challenge is to determine what it is base on
Plastics - Everywhere
Bill McKibben has noted this week in the New Yorker that we have to stop burning things - and notes that trading wood for oil based material may create as many problems as it was thought to solve. That may be a topic for another time. He goes on to discuss the prevalence of plastics in our lives.
Who knew the extent? He interviews Judith Enck, who tells him:
“Microplastics can be found in everything from drinking water to soil to beer to table salt to a cup of tea. In fact, we’re all ingesting roughly a credit card’s worth of plastic each week. Stunningly, scientists recently found plastics in human placentas.”
Enck, who formerly worked in the Obama administration, is a visiting professor at Bennington College and the president of Beyond Plastics, It starts by framing the plastics trifecta - focusing on the three most prominent single use products that can be replaced - and suggest that citizens in the US approach all levels of government to ask for their banning. Canadians can take note. See if you can guess the three most villainous pollution products. They have even created a sample bill to send to legislators, making the case that single use banning is less effective than looking a bans for one product individually.
This is a really good site. Go to it and take advantage of all the resources it offers. There are a number of concrete actions that citizens can take - from writing tea companies to asking food delivery companies to hold the plastic in their packaging. Individual actions are good - but they have to be supported by going to the source of the polluters and telling them what we think.
Lost and Found
I woke up early and thought about all the good things that unfolded on January 20.
Like most Canadians, I follow American News as well as reading the Globe and Mail. I was a landed immigrant in the US some years ago when my husband entered a graduate school program and I had to be the single source of family income. This made getting a teaching job in a public school impossible without taking out first papers to become a US citizen and I was not prepared to do that. The private school network was my only option and I applied for all the positions advertised in the New York Times without success. At the last minute an aunt noted that one of her friend’s granddaughters attended a little school in Manhattan and thought that the principal was a Canadian. She was right – and on the strength of our common graduation from Trinity College in Toronto, she hired me.
The Kennedy visit to New York was an early omen of all the good times to come when we arrived – seeing the original version of West Side Story and walking out the side door of the theatre to the graffiti of street gangs – and later The Music Man with Professor Harold Hill’s opening monologue - a precursor of rap or Hamilton. What I didn’t know then was that the small high school where I taught was the first private school in the United States to be racially integrated – an achievement of its bi-racial headmistress.
Unlike my parents who turned to the Britain as their cultural second home, mine has always been the USA. When I first acquired Netflix I watched all 88 episodes of The West Wing – twice. After the downside of the Bush years and the first promise of the Obama ones, that sort of political life still seemed a possibility - even when endangered by the improbable rise of a reality TV star. I hadn’t been back to NYC for a long time and when it finally happened more recently it was still the same in terms of visceral energy – but also safer and cleaner.
As I watched on the eve of the inauguration, the landscape of Washington was a grim reminder of the unbelievable events thirteen days earlier - now empty and fortified, sombre with only four people facing their new lives, a quiet invocation, a couple of solo singers – and when the lights came on to bring the Lincoln Memorial into focus, a reminder that facing daunting futures was not new.
My Wednesday morning book discussion group on Zoom was interrupted by a phone call and I didn’t take it. When I tuned in to the Inauguration, the new president had already been sworn in and was finishing his address. Amazing Grace was a good choice, and I was sorry to have missed Lady Gaga. But then came the young black poet who stole the show with the promise and hope of a new generation. Her words sparkled.
More slow pageantry followed as I settled in with a grilled cheese sandwich for a long afternoon; the somber drive to Arlington Cemetery where the new president was joined by his predecessors and by the first woman vice president to lay a wreath. The political pundits had slowed down with a welcome absence of noise. Even the previous departure of the former vice president had brought new dignity to his person, when two vice presidents and their partners ended a ceremonial good-bye with an informal laugh. It was easy to imagine that it was a quip of the former female partner to her successor in the role.
One could watch the lazy gathering of the motorcade and the sudden restraint of all the commentators, whose voices now showed almost reverence for slow and dignified processes – even apologizing for saying “Joe: instead of “President”. Watchers joined them becoming patient with wondering “Will they walk?” or “Is it too dangerous?” The constant glances of the secret service surveying the landscape and tall buildings was still a sudden reminder that only two weeks to the day we had been in a very different place.
But the new team did get out and walk the vacant streets as they headed for their workplaces. The evening’s events were spare – upbeat music that often demanded a sense of the absent audience. But the vignettes of ordinary people were warm and it seemed totally appropriate for a UPS man to be a star.
I suddenly remembered my earlier phone message and learned that a letter had been left in the mailroom of a building I lived in four years ago – and that a thoughtful friend had delivered it to my current one. Moments later the envelope came through the apartment door. On opening it I discovered a Christmas card from one of my oldest friends. I had seen her last in person several years ago when she was not well and depressed. A letter had been returned from her nursing home, and I had feared the worst. Yet here was a signature that was clearly hers – and a new address on the envelope.
I turned on the TV one last time to see Anderson Cooper interviewing young poet Amanda Gorman She was as charming and engaging as she had been on the podium. They shared the fact that they both had previous speech defects to deal with and she was pleased that they both joined the new president as members of the Speech Defect Club. She talked about her research of all previous inaugural poems but also her review of tweets, her reliance on text rather than images and her contention that words matter – especially now. She even added that she wasn’t sure about the last two lines with their options for “free it” “see it”, and “be it” but settled on “Only if we are brave enough to be it – because courage is what we need now. Anderson Cooper was clearly both charmed and moved and concluded by noting that Hillary Clinton hoped that Amanda would run for president in 2036 now that another barrier had been broken. “Madam President Gorman, - I like the sound of that,” she said.
I did too – and I want to be there when she wins. It was time to get up this morning. And I suddenly remembered it was my 85th birthday.