Tag: Essay

In Praise of Luddites

Posted on by Peter Scott Cameron

A confession: while I was living in Toronto, Amazon announced that it was planning to begin using robots – these would travel along city sidewalks and make deliveries to individual addresses. It was rumoured that they would start very soon in the city. I couldn’t wait. I imagined messing with them in numerous ways: from simply blocking the robots’ paths to see if I could confuse them, to forcing them to drop off the curb into the line of an oncoming Toronto Transit bus. I took pleasure in picturing assaulting the things with a baseball bat if there were no constables around. I mentioned my thoughts to a friend, explaining that sidewalks were for people, not corporate interests, and every delivery robot represented jobs lost for individuals for whom unemployment in the capitalist economy is the great motivating terror. “Luddite!” my friend exclaimed.

     Indeed. Thank you.

     Luddite is a pejorative that we have deep affection for, using it, as we do, to insult those we love, and even relatives. It means our victims are resisting technology pointlessly, or they won’t do what we want them to do, such as wasting ten minutes of their short life watching a TikTok influencer with mauve hair explaining why we should use only organic asparagus butter. Luddites are people who are uselessly anti-progress, negative nay-sayers, inept at using technology, standing against the development of human productivity and well-being. They are a bit stupid, unruly and stubborn, a bit like donkeys, we think. However, we are wrong.

     Our estimation of Luddites is incorrect, as is our assessment of donkeys. What we think about them is not who they were at all.

     The Luddites, in fact, were intelligent and self-controlled craftspeople who correctly foresaw their lives altering for the worse as a result of disruptive technological change. They consciously chose to resist. They wanted to preserve a life that was home-based, autonomous, productive, satisfying, and even artistic.

     The Luddites took their name from a “Ned Ludd,” a mythical figure in the Robin Hood tradition, who, legend has it, fought for justice in the same area of Nottinghamshire as had Robin and his merry band. “General” Ludd was said to be more or less up to the same devilry: protecting the poor and powerless from arbitrary exploitation, oppression and debasement, as carried out by the powers that be – Kings, Sheriffs, land owners, and the wealthy.(1)

     They were mainly skilled weavers, combers, and dressers of wool, along with cotton trade artisans, who worked as independent craftspeople in their workshops in homes and cottages. As a group, they were described as highly disciplined, organized and effective. They were also well supported; despite bribes and threats, no one ever betrayed them to the authorities. Given that they operated merely for a fifteen month period in 1811 and 1812, in an area that included only parts of five counties around Nottinghamshire, it is remarkable how well they became known and how long they have been remembered.

     The accurate view of them has been buried in propaganda propagated by authorities of the day, and perpetuated by the corporate and technology interests of our own time. Our current Techno-Nottingham Sheriffs would have us believe, in a form of false consciousness, that, for example, watching a video of nature online is the same as being in nature, or that we should be enchanted with the prospect of artificial intelligence.

     Yet, despite all the efforts to discredit the Luddites and our use of their name as a deprecatory label, their call echos still, if mostly in the subconscious level. I believe we know that they were on to something. Their cause, in fact, is one that resonates in all of us: our humanity itself. They were not fighting against machinery; rather, they were fighting for what it means to be a human being.

     But were they not violent, you ask? If violence can be committed against inanimate objects, I suppose that we have to say yes, they were. They attacked the new factories at night and destroyed the power looms and other machinery. In some cases they burned buildings, including factories and in a few cases, the homes of owners. However, there were no known instances of Luddites attacking or killing human beings. (There were instances of personal violence during the period, when members of the starving general population rebelled against the terrible conditions of the time but these killings were not carried out by followers of General Ludd.) Despite the actions of the Luddites being directed at machines and not people, authorities responded with everything they had, including shooting, imprisoning, transporting and executing people who they believed were part of the cause. In less than a year and a half, their resistance collapsed, although the broader unrest noted above continued because of the dreadful social conditions of the time.

    On a most basic level, the Luddites were just protecting their livelihoods, but you could say they were prescient. They did not hate machinery as such. What they hated was the life that the new industrial age devices was bringing, and they saw that life with clarity. Workers in the new factories quickly became near-slaves, held to their work hour after hour, day after day, in dirty, hot, and dark conditions. Foremen walked the aisles with whips, to ensure absolute focus on the mind-numbing and body-damaging toil. Women were abused, sexually and otherwise, and children who did not perform up to standard were beaten. The prevailing industrial theory of the day – not so far removed from the ideas of some of our present titans of the gig economy (2) – was that one should pay enough so that workers would not starve, but not so much that they would not be hungry, literally speaking.

     The result has been well documented: gruesome factory conditions, ghastly tenements, increasing crime and corruption, starvation, disease, addiction and alcoholism, demoralization and mental illness. Descriptions are nearly unbearable to read:

Not one father in a family of ten in the whole neighbourhood has other clothing than his working suit, and that is as bad and tattered as possible, many, indeed have no other covering for the night than these rags, and no bed, save a sack of
straw and shavings…

On the occasion of an inquest held Nov. 14th, 1843, by Mr. Carter, coroner for Surrey, upon the body of Ann Galway, aged 45 years, the newspapers related the following particulars concerning the deceased: she lived at No. 3 White Lion Court, Bermondsey Street, London, with her husband and a nineteen-year-old son in a little room, in which neither bedstead nor any other furniture was to be seen. She lay dead beside her son upon a heap of feathers which were scattered over her almost naked body, there being neither sheet nor coverlet. The feathers stuck so fast over the whole body that the physician could not examine the corpse until it was cleansed, and then found it starved and scarred from the bites of vermin. Part of the floor of the room was torn up, and the hole used by the family as a privy. (3)

     Who would not want to resist this?

     But of course, over time things did get better, at least in part of the world. In the Western world conditions did improve over the course of more than a century. Working conditions got better, wages grew, and health, housing and living circumstances improved to the point that it can be said that the industrial revolution resulted in a standard of living and personal longevity that was beyond the most fantastical imaginings of everyday humanity. And so, were the Luddites mistaken?

     Not exactly. Such working conditions remain in many areas of the world: the clothing factories of Bangladesh, for example. Aside from that, the changes for the better were a result of decades and decades of struggle by workers, by unions of people, by individual humanitarian champions, by agencies and governments who saw the plight of people and responded to it with regulation and legislation. The Luddites were not wrong in what they were seeing.

     However, we could say that the Luddites could not see the bigger picture, and so were shortsighted – that change is always disruptive, and technological improvement will ultimately lead to a betterment of life for humanity, if we give it time. But is this true?

     I would respond: not necessarily. First, all technological improvement comes with a price tag. The automobile was instrumental in getting rid of the mountains of horse manure on city streets, but now the planet is choking on the exhaust fumes. Cell phone technology resulted in instantaneous, full-time communication among people, but also has resulted in a distracted, misinformed population with their noses stuck in their devices at the dinner table, uninterested in communicating directly with one another. Our rivers, our lakes and oceans, our land, and even our bodies are full of plastic. Reefs are bleaching, birds are dying, animals are disappearing. And overall, we seem to believe that the meaning of life can be found in what we own. To be human, it has become, is to consume. Meanwhile, this wealthy Western world is in a crisis of meaning, wherein thousands, addicted to opioids, are dying in streets and alleys, and where, at least in America, automatic-weapon-carrying young men in a state of anomie are murdering children with great regularity in their school rooms.

 

There was a more recent span of Luddite-ism in the twentieth century: the short-lived Hippie period and its back-to-the-land movement. The Hippies have been denigrated too, and perhaps some of that is deserving. But at the heart of the movement was a rejection of materialism, a resistance to the conversion of human beings into consumers. The Hippies were opting for a life that was more generous, loving, sharing and made of authentic experience rather than possession of material goods. Of course, pampered Baby-Boomers were ill prepared for the hardship, complexity and skill requirements that life on the land entailed, and so mostly they failed. In addition, it is extraordinarily difficult to try to live outside of mainstream culture; to do so, your customs and ideology have to be very strong, as is, for example, the ethos of the Mennonites. The Hippies did not have this cohesion of practise. Finally, corporate powers recognized the threat and mobilized powerfully during the period to counter the movement and to complete the colonization of the culture. One can see this clearly in the co-opting advertisements of the nineteen-seventies. Consider these paint colours offered for your new Ford Maverick in 1970: Freudian Gilt, Hulla Blue, and the best one, Anti-Establish Mint. It was completely successful of course: the Hippies and anti-materialism became an inside joke. We capitulated and the Baby-Boomers became the most materialistic generation of humanity ever in history.

     Given all that, is there any relevance left to consider, if not for the Hippies, at least for the Luddites? I think: yes. I don’t think I am alone in this. Many people are concerned about the quality of our technological life and the associated problems of meaning. Many are disturbed and frightened by what we are doing to the planet and our fellow species with our uncontrolled spewing of fossil-fuel emissions. Many are simply dissatisfied with the state of things: the bombardment of twenty-four-hour-a-day marketing and the ever-titillating yet desolate wasteland of most television, the phones, screens, Facebook, Instagram, X, and TikTok.

     In a sign of cultural health, some groups of teenagers have emerged, in more places than one, who are rejecting the smart-phone lifestyle for something more substantive, including sketching together, discussing Dostoevsky or Kerouac, or simply listening to nature in a park. “Social media and phones are not real life,” one said, correctly. (4) Further, educators are – surprise! – discovering that children learn better on paper than on screens (5) and that banning cell phone use in school improves concentration and outcomes. (6) Who’da thunk?

     I think, when remembering the Luddites, that the story of their struggle challenges us to ask: must we accept every technological invention, every change, even when there is a chance it will degrade or debase us? Short of that, must we necessarily accept something new when it will result in our losing something old that we love? The answer is no, of course. The continuing popularity of physical books over electronic readers shows that many are willing to make such a choice. Computer word processing programs are wonderful tools, without a doubt, but is there not something satisfying about starting in writing on a yellow legal pad with a freshly sharpened pencil? Is not selecting, then taking an record album out of its sleeve, and stopping to read the liner notes, a greater pleasure than catching half a song in your Spotify stream as you go about your other business? Of course, these are trivial and we are merely talking about preferring an earlier technology to a newer one, which is a common leaning, especially for those of us with more than a few miles on us.

     But what about more profound and far-reaching change? What about genetic editing or artificial intelligence? What about a million of us living on Mars, in SpaceX City, as Elon Musk would have it? What about living in a Meta-verse designed by a Zuckerberg?

     One can say that it is futile to resist technological change: after all if we choose not to do something, someone else will do it. We might not want to select our children, through gene-editing, to become blond, blue-eyed Aryan ideals, but someone will. We may not want Musk’s chip planted in our brain so that the internet can be directly connected to our precious consciousness, but some will pay for that. We may prefer to read and research the history of Western Civilization for ourselves, but others will prefer a summary generated by AI. We may find pleasure in producing a poem or other piece of writing, a song, a painting, a photograph – but there will be others that would rather have AI do that for them, and they will see it as the same thing.

 

It is hard not to observe that we have become slaves to our technology. We, in our fun-land Western Civilization live a life of unbelievable wealth, health, and comfort, without a doubt due to our technology. There is a lot to be said for light bulbs, television, and central heating on a cold winter’s night. And yet…personally, I cannot help but feel sad when I see a group of adolescents sitting on a stoop, each one of them a gorgeous bundle of vibrating life, yet all of them with faces buried in phones, while the sun shines, and the street flows by. The birds that are still left sing directly to them, but they do not hear.

     Convenient technology can become our master. Mary Shelley, writing about science and technology, saw that likelihood. Dr. Frankenstein’s monster, his creation, says, near the end of the story: “You are my creator, but I am your master;- obey!” (7) In this, do we not hear the ghostly and premonitory whisper of artificial intelligence?

     The lesson of the Luddites is to question. They challenge us to discern and to resist if we do not like what we see, and to opt for the richness of authentic experience. As Marguerite Duras put it, “Everything seems to be done in order to spare man the effort of living, both in his work and his daily living. It’s terrible.” (8) Or, as Lao-tze said, centuries earlier: “Let there be labour-saving devices that are not used.” He was speaking, even back then, to the tendency of technology to distract us, even to alienate us, from the natural flow of life, from that the directness of experience that is our birthright. (9)

     Even if Luddite resistance is futile in the big picture, is such resistance not fundamental to who we are? Do we not have a right to say no? Is there not nobility, dignity, in refusal?

     I think so. I believe we should take courage from our Luddite brothers and sisters and resist, where and whenever we feel it, whether such resistance is futile or not in the bigger picture. Eschew the electric scooter, and take a slow walk along a city street on a sunny day. If you do see an Amazon robot, try not to get arrested, but you will have my blessing if you knock it off the sidewalk. Close the Facebook page, and call up the real friend whom you actually care about. Turn off your TikTok feed and dance a little jig yourself. The effort of being a living, breathing human animal is worth it.

_____________________________________

1. Sale, Kirkpatrick. Rebels Against the Future: The Luddites and Their War on the Industrial Revolution. Persus Books Group, 1995.

2. Greenhouse, Steven. Major US corporations threaten to return labor to ‘law of the jungle:’ Trader Joe’s and SpaceX are among businesses challenging the constitutionality of the National Labor Relations Board. The Guardian, March 10, 2024. Retrieved from: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/mar/10/starbucks-trader-joes-spacex-challenge-labor-board. 

3. Engles, Frederick. The Condition of the Working Class in England in 1844. Translated by Florence Kelley Wishnewzky. Information Age Publishing, 2010. See particularly pages 29-40.

4. Vadukul, Alex. ‘Luddite’ Teens Don’t Want Your Likes: When the only thing better than a flip phone is no phone at all. New York Times, December 15, 2022. Retrieved from: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/15/style/teens-social-media.html?searchResultPosition=1. 

5. MacArthur, John R. A groundbreaking study shows kids learn better on paper, not screens. Now what? The Guardian, January17, 2024. Retrieved from: https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2024/jan/17/kids-reading-better-paper-vs-screen.

6. Root, Tik. What happens when a school bans smartphones? A complete transformation. The Guardian, January 17, 2024. Retrieved from: https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2024/jan/17/cellphone-smartphone-bans-schools. 

7. Shelly, Mary. Frankenstein (1818 text). Oxford Wold’s Classics, 1994, p. 140.

8. Duras, Marguerite. Me & Other Writing. Dorothy, A Publishing Project, 2019, p. 82. 

9. Cathart, Thomas, and Daniel Klein. I Think, Therefore I Draw: Understanding Philosophy Through Cartoons. Penguin Books, 2018, p. 86.

The Malarkey Scale

Posted on by Peter Scott Cameron

Malarkey (mel-ŏr´kē) n. Slang. Exaggerated or foolish talk, usu. intended to deceive. (1)

Picture Joe Biden’s big blue 2019 campaign bus: NO MALARKEY! Mostly the slogan was derided, seen as antiquated, out of touch, and reflective of Joe’s advanced age. (2) However, many of us, usually oldsters, enjoyed it and understood it immediately, having endured the four chaotic years of the previous scurrilous occupant of the White House. There is some truth to the charge that it was antiquated, but that makes it even better! It is exactly the word we need to describe what we are all wading in, in our so-called “information” age. (3)

     Let me challenge, right here, those younger who would mock the word. I would say, if we old-timers have been expected to learn strange terms in our old age such as what gnarly means to a skateboarder, what gaslighting, ghosting, doxxing and catfishing mean to social media addicts, to understand what fetch means when uttered by a mean girl, or even that a really hot girl is one who wears no undergarments so as to better display her attributes – well, then, younger people should be expected to understand and use English.

     Hearken, kids: you should know what it means to peregrinate, what it is to be purblind, what chicanery involves, what sort of raiment a person is wearing, what it is to twattle, and how it is to feel crapulous after over-indulgence the night before. You should know the difference between someone being indefatigable as opposed to indomitable; they are similar, but not the same, certainly. And, for good measure, speaking as a retired professor who has graded too many papers, you should know where apostrophes go, rather than just sprinkling them on the page like confetti.

     Thus I think we owe Joe Biden kudos for his effort to revive this wonderful and useful word. In this age of distorted public discourse, social media prevarication. marketing nonsense, public relations impression management, public figure pontificating, not to mention outright lying and disinformation, we need a good word to describe it all. That word is malarkey.

     Of course, there are other words for it, as the Princeton University philosopher, Harry G. Frankfurt (1929 – 2023) described earlier. (4) Uncle Joe, though, is too circumspect and civil to have used NO BULLSHIT! on the side of his bus. The other guy, who is a much cruder and more primitive fellow, might do such, although he would be lying, of course. There are other terms; one might use “humbug” for example. Malarkey is richer, however, because it includes considerations of degree – quantity and quality – as well as consciousness vs. unconsciousness, and matters of intent. Humbug is a much simpler concept. It is mere humbug to say that the country is under the guidance of divine providence, for example, but if this is taken further, it becomes malarkey. An example would be to claim that the aforementioned providence entitles citizens to believe that they are especially selected, and have the right to exceptional privilege, usually at the expense of others.

     There are many kinds of malarkey (also spelled malarky – feel free) and the concept has important dimensions that are worth considering. Doing so leads inevitably to a Malarkey Scale: a rough measurement of the size, the qualities, and the impact of a particular piece of malarkey. Is it a little fib or a whopper? Is the intention relatively harmless, or does it seek to rob others of their well-being? Is its impact negligible or does it cause untold damage in a number of areas of civil life? That is, is it only an unconsciously believed small bit of nonsense that does little harm, or is it a monstrous lie, deliberately crafted, that harms many powerless people or helpless creatures?

     For example, it could be as harmless as the idea that not wearing your rubbers in the rain will give you a cold. Or it could be as malevolent – albeit comically preposterous, of course – as Marjorie Taylor Greene’s claim that the California wildfires of a couple of seasons ago were caused by Jews firing lasers from outer space (in order to clear the way for a Jewish-financed high-speed rail project). You see the difference: we are talking about the size, the intention, and the consequences – each of which exist in degrees on a scale. Based on these dimensions, a piece of malarkey may qualify for one M, or it may deserve two (M M), three (M M M) or even four (M M M M) Malarkeys.

 

The first component is of course, size: how much actual balderdash there is in a particular manifestation of malarkey? Is it a tiny bit of nonsensicality, say, such as the idea that dreams predict the future? (More on this later.) If so, it probably will qualify for just one M. In many cases, although consequences are a separate consideration (see below), these tend to do little harm, and may even do a bit of good. I should mention that these constitute much of what we consider as “common sense,” which is to say, shared cultural understandings, accepted at face value, but that have no inherent relationship to reality. Some of these could just as easily be referred to as humbug.

     A good example of this would be the pronouncement, most often made to teenagers, that “you can be whatever you want to be.” It is part of the constellation of common-sense American mythology and is a satisfying bit of folderol that can even be quite useful. It can be used, for example, to inspire Junior to stop watching TicTok videos of partly-clad young girls dancing, and instead get up off the couch and do something meaningful like studying mathematics or trying out for the hockey team. But it is not exactly correct, of course. True, with a reasonable I. Q., a bit of luck, a good education, and if one did the requisite ten thousand hours of study and work, one could accomplish a lot in almost any field. Nevertheless, you may not become the next Marie Curie, Max Weber, or Eric Clapton. You may just end up being an social media influencer. Still, you are a better person for having tried.

     So, the above, even if it is a bit of hooey, has a grain of useful inspirational legitimacy in it. But the idea can be inverted and used to do damage, thereby qualifying for more than one M. An inversion can be, and is often, used to shame and unjustly blame people for their predicament. For example, there is an entire ideology that has been created that condemns the poor for their plight, thereby justifying stultifying inequality and rationalizing a half-hearted social safety net. It denies the reality of the structural nature of mass poverty, both domestic and colonial, in our consumer-capitalist society. (5) We say that the poor are poor because it is their fault; they’re lazy etc. True in some cases, of course, but it is mostly poppycock that makes us feel better about ourselves when we have more wealth. I would point out just one fact and then let it go at that. The large majority of poor families in North America have at least one member working full-time, full-year, often more than one job. (6) That is a structural problem, not a failure of the person.

     This brings us to the second dimension then: intention of the malarkey-spreader. Is the person intending to deceive and thereby to harm others? Is he or she benefiting, consciously or not, from promulgating the malarkey? Is the intention to benefit, psychologically, socially, or materially usually at some cost to others? Again, it is a matter of degree. We oldsters might criticize the music of younger people because it makes us feel better while we are dealing with our arthritis or musing about our youthful hotness that has gone AWOL. This is minor: there is no harm done and their music isn’t that bad. We really don’t mean to hurt them and the young people certainly don’t feel hurt. After all, they don’t really care about our musical opinions.

     On the other hand, the malarkey could be the malicious work of, say, an Andrew Tate, the purveyor of toxic masculinity, deliberately propagating hateful ideas to a large Internet following. He provides poisonous ideology to impressionable young men, amplifying their ignorance and feeding their misogyny so that…well, so that he can be somebody. And so that he can abuse vulnerable women. And so that he can drive expensive, fast cars. Pathetic really, but there it is: a developmentally delayed boy-man, propagating harmful claptrap with the full-on intention to harm others for personal gain. This makes his malarkey monstrous.

     Finally, the third dimension is: consequences. Does spreading the malarkey do no, or little harm? Belief that the world is flat, for example, does no harm. Nobody cares, and usually the belief has no effect – and if it does have an upshot, it is positive: that is, providing beneficial amusement to others.

     But the consequences of some malarkey can be catastrophic. Think blaming immigrants for crime as Trump did when he entered office and is doing so again this year (in fact, crime rates among immigrants are consistently lower than in the host population). (7) Trumpery, indeed. Think of (Trump again) the failure to condemn white supremacists after the Charlottesville demonstration and the murder-by-car of Heather Heyer, and later, in 2020, of his message to the Proud Boys, to “stand down and stand by.” It was an endorsement of the group and their cause, and they were thrilled and encouraged. (8) Think of Hitler blaming Jews for the political and economic woes of Weimar Republic. Enough said.

    There you have it in assessing malarkey: the size or scale or degree of the lie, the intention, and the consequences. This leads quite naturally to the Malarkey Scale, as follows:

1. Minor Malarkey M:

     This involves a smaller lie, just some flapdoodle made usually without intention to harm others, and the consequences are quite minor. I was, for example, in teaching about the sleep and dreaming cycle in psychology, surprised at how many students claimed not only that dreams predicted the future, but that they, themselves, had experienced such a prognosticating function resulting from the activation of random neurons in the brain stem during rapid-eye-movement sleep. It is untrue, of course, but there is no intention to harm another, and the effects, other than the believer sounding a bit silly, are inconsequential: just one M.

2. Moderate Malarkey M M:

     This level of malarkey involves a greater degree of fibbing, possibly in more that one direction. The intention may not necessarily involve directly harming others, but there is definitely some intention to get something from or put something over on someone, for personal gain. One common example is the claim to psychic powers. One of our regional newspapers used to feature a column by someone claiming to be a pet psychic. She would tell you what your pet was thinking and even could tell you how Fido was doing beyond the grave. She could gather these “insights” just from the letter you sent her – no need to meet Buddy or hold a seance in person! A clever bit of gimcrackery, of course. Often the proponents of this kind of malarkey claim no intention to deceive and may even believe their own flim-flam. But deceive they do, with the benefit of either appearing more special than the next person, or having gainful employment (such as a clairvoyant column-writer) or both. The consequences are usually light: not much harm is done most of the time. I enjoy a good astrology column myself, and I make sure to get fortune cookies with my Chinese take-out, though I would not want to become delusional and start thinking there was anything to these things.

3. Major Malarkey M M M:

     This involves a bigger lie, sometimes even a whopper, and the intention is usually to harm others, or at least separate people from their autonomy, power, and/or money. Most advertising is this: the major lie is the claim that this product will somehow magically make one happy. Research clearly shows that this is never really the case once you are above a basic level of material well-being. But the sleight of hand connecting greater material possession with happiness is accomplished masterfully; your fundamental human emotions, and your desires for experiences like relationship, love and sensuality are cleverly linked, that is, psychologically associated with material objects though a vicarious conditioning process. The intention is to rob you of your money, of course. The consequences of this marketing ballyhoo can be quite serious: the dead-end pursuit of endless material satisfaction, slavery to a paycheque, resulting over-consumption of resources and production of waste, and even, for some, an emptiness in living, that is, the old ennui. Three Malarkeys for this existential lie: M M M !

     Some codswallop might otherwise qualify for four Malarkeys because of its maliciousness, but the fabrication is so outlandish, unbelievable, and moronic as to make it otherwise completely laughable. Marjorie Taylor Greene’s previously noted claim of Jewish outer space lasers is such an example, as well as the entire Q-Anon conspiracy theory, to which the congresswoman also adheres, by the way. (9) The scale of the bunkum would ordinarily lead them to be considered as M M M M. However, these theories are so outlandish that the harm to public discourse is somewhat curtailed in that nobody in their right mind would believe them, which leads to, of course, the non compos mentis factor – the dispensers of this baloney have lost contact with reality, and therefore most likely do not understand what they are doing and what the consequences are. Some allowance must be made here, although certainly these people should not be elected to positions of public responsibility or leadership.

4. Monstrous Malarkey M M M M:

     This is the worst level of tommyrot. Racism is M M M M. Misogyny is M M M M. The lies are huge, the intention is to exploit, disempower and oppress others, or worse, and the consequences are very damaging, if not catastrophic. In addition, the charlatan is of a sane state of mind: that is, not delusional, although usually psychopathic, like Steve Bannon or Roger Stone, both sycophants of Donald Trump. Trump’s “stolen election” bunkum qualifies as Monstrous Malarkey on all fronts: degree of nonsense, intention and state of mind, with tremendous consequences. The twaddle that the election was stolen is entirely untrue – so outlandish, with all the investigations, evidence, court cases and the like as to no longer require refutation, if it ever did. The intention is absolutely clear: to seize power, not only undeservedly, not only illegally, but immorally. The state of mind of the perp is clear: he is a psychopath, without conscience. The consequences for America are catastrophic: the undermining, and if successful in this return election engagement of 2024, even the unwinding of the two-century-plus experiment in civil democracy. M M M M !

     Monstrous Malarkey is so nefarious, so odious, that one might think that another, more dramatic word is called for, but at the bottom of it is classic malarkey. And so, I stick with the term.

 

America is in its long, tortuous election year and so we have to expect to be eyeball-deep in malarkey this year. There will be plenty of malarkey in Canada, too, which will have an election in 2025, if not before. Consider: Canada’s banking system is considered one of the best, most stable in the entire world. (There was no melt-down in 2008; the Canadian banks did not participate in the mortgage follies that preceded the crash.) However, the leading opposition candidate, Pierre Poilievre, who is likely to be the next prime minister, has proposed getting rid of the Bank of Canada and that the country go big into cryptocurrency. Go figure. And the current premiere of the oil province of Alberta, Danielle Smith, after the past year when Canada pretty much went up in smoke as a result of cumulative climate change problems, has implemented a moratorium on the development of…wait for it…renewable energy! Ah…well, go figure.

     Still, the situation is less dangerous there right now than it is immediately in the U. S. In this country, the very democracy is at stake; at the same time, we are drowning in hogwash, disinformation, law-breaking, and fraud in the political sphere. It will get worse with the use of artificial intelligence, which will make dupery much easier to carry off, and much more difficult to discern.

     Overall, “only” one-third of Americans believe the 2020 the fraud perpetrated by Trump, that the election was stolen; however that translates to close to seventy percent of Republicans who believe this hokum. (10) It also leads, incredibly, to a sizeable proportion of the population who intend to vote for the fraudster who inspires unbelievable loyalty, like a Mafia Don, and who aspires to dictatorship. The danger is grave, indeed.

     My hope is that the Malarkey Scale presented here is helpful in identifying and assessing what we are facing – and ultimately in overcoming it. One hopes that intelligence, rationality, and sanity will prevail over the dark forces, and that in the long run, good will prevail. In the meantime, what specifically can we do? The simplest and most direct thing, when we hear, read, or see something, is to ask: is it true? Is it true, for example, that immigrants have a higher crime rate than native people? Then we dig in and find out from real, objective sources.

     And finally, we all must thank Joe Biden for reminding us about the power and menace of malarkey – and for the need to be straight and true, to the best of our abilities. I, for one, would like to see the slogan go back on the bus. 

____________________________

1. ITP Nelson Canadian Dictionary of the English Language: An Encyclopedic Reference. Thompson Canada Limited, 1997.

2. Yglesias, Matthew. “No Malarkey,” Joe Biden’s unabashedly lame new slogan, explained. Vox, December 3, 2019, https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2019/12/3/20991841/joe-biden-no-malarkey. Accessed January 26, 2023. 

3. An equally or possibly more legitimate term would be the “disinformation age.”

4. Frankfurt, Harry G. On Bullshit. Princeton University Press, 2005.

5. Desmond, Mathew. Poverty, By America. Random House, 2023.

6. Carl, John, and Marc Bélanger. Think Sociology. 2nd Canadian ed., Pearson, 2013.

7. Fact check: Immigration doesn’t bring crime into U.S., data say. PBS News Hour, February. 3, 2017, https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/fact-check-immigration-doesnt-bring-crime-u-s-data-say. Accessed January 23, 2024. 

8. Subramanian, Courtney, and Jordan Culver. Donald Trump sidesteps call to condemn white supremacists — and the Proud Boys were ‘extremely excited’ about it. USA Today. September 29, 2020, https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/elections/2020/09/29/trump-debate-white-supremacists-stand-back-stand-by/3583339001/. Accessed January 23, 2024. 

9. Begs the question: how did this person ever get elected to Congress?

10. Kamisar, Ben. Almost a third of Americans still believe the 2020 election result was fraudulent. NBC News, Meet the Press Blog, June 20, 2023, https://www.nbcnews.com/meet-the-press/meetthepressblog/almost-third-americans-still-believe-2020-election-result-was-fraudule-rcna90145. Accessed January 24, 2024. 

Copyright © Peter Scott Cameron, 2024

Good News 1: Gun Control

Posted on by Peter Scott Cameron

As we start 2024, given the rather dreary year just past (wars, a tough year for climate, and a record number of mass shootings in the U.S. etc.) I thought it would be helpful to start the new year with some good news.(1)

     On the issue of gun control in the U.S.: despite a Supreme Court crackpot majority that seems bent on ensuring continuing mayhem (2) – with a preponderance of members stuck in the eighteenth century, dreaming of the day that men’s breeches are fashionable once more (or in the case of one member, petticoats) – Blue and Blue-ish States have seized the initiative. These may be baby steps, and they will be challenged in lawsuits brought forth by gun boneheads and the big money that backs them, but still they show sanity, courage, humanity, and a willingness of Legislators to take on powerful, monied interests.

1. California, Oregon, and Illinois have passed new “red flag” laws, enabling risk protection orders that allow gun possession prohibitions for people who have already demonstrated a strong potential for violence. It can be difficult to predict violence, of course, but still it is common sense to strip a previously violent person of his (usually his) guns, or someone who is threatening to kill his ex – or anyone who is menacing, for that matter. Duh.

2. Governor Newsom in California signed legislation that prohibits carrying concealed guns in twenty-six public places, including churches (!), parks (!!), and playgrounds (!!!). Of course, why people are allowed to carry concealed weapons – or open carry, for that matter – anywhere, anytime in a civil society, boggles my mind. Call me crazy if you will, but I just think we are all better off without jokers walking around carrying guns in public. But maybe that is just me: too rational, I suppose, and I’ve done therapy so that my childhood developmental issues are minimal. Anyway, go Guv, good on ya!

3. A ban on the sale of many semiautomatic assault weapons, including AK-47s and AR-15s, went into effect on New Year’s day in Illinois. I know, I know, the banning of AR-15s etc. will cramp the style of lawful squirrel hunters in the State, but hey! We all have to give a little for the common good.

4. Colorado has also banned kit and ghost guns (home-made, with no serial numbers). This logically would include plastic guns made with 3-D printers. Pro-gun dunderheads have already brought a lawsuit claiming this infringes on personal liberty to…well, to do whatever the hell they want, I suppose. But I am hopeful that even this High Court will see the wisdom here, understanding the difference between a flood of untraceable, lethal-impact weapons in a predominantly urban, high-population Civitas, versus a society that was low-density and agrarian and in which the main weapons were muskets or single-shot muzzle-loaders, along with hay forks.

5. Just prior to 2023, our good New York Governor Hochul signed legislation that took several steps, some small to be sure, but with the main thrust restricting concealed carry in certain public locations – after the Supreme Court ludicrously struck down an effective one-hundred year old N.Y. law that restricted such carry outside the home. It never struck me as particularly good idea to allow the carrying, concealed or otherwise, of guns in bars, for example, although the Supreme Court apparently thinks this is an okay idea. Go, Guv!

     So! Small steps, to be sure, but significant nonetheless. Thank you to these States and their leaders. We mustn’t give up or give in, not for a moment. Our children and grandchildren depend on us. As good old Uncle Joe Biden might say: No More Malarkey!

Notes

1. Sadly, I would be remiss not to note the school shooting yesterday (January 4) in Iowa.

2. I understand “Originalism.” But this idea is Big Malarkey. The American Constitution and its amendments are not sacred texts that came down from the mountaintop on tablets. Rather, these constitute a powerful yet living, guiding document that must be interpreted and reinterpreted in light of both past and current social and historical contexts. 

Sources

Governor Hochul Announces New Concealed Carry Laws Passed in Response to Reckless Supreme Court Decision Take Effect September 1, 2022. August 31, 2022, https://www.governor.ny.gov/news/governor-hochul-announces-new-concealed-carry-laws-passed-response-reckless-supreme-court. Accessed January 4, 2024.

Marcos, Coral Murphy. New gun safety laws take effect around the U.S. after over 650 mass shootings in 2023. The Guardian, January 1, 2024.

Global Burning: It’s Personal

Posted on by Peter Scott Cameron

Climate change is personal. I have seen it first-hand. More than a decade ago I travelled up to my hometown in Northern Ontario, the land of lakes, rivers, and pine forests. It was as savage and beautiful as always. I had a small aluminum boat in tow, with a ten-horsepower outboard motor on it, and my one-man canoe on top. I drove the few miles out of town to Lake Kenogami, where I had spent idyllic summers on the lake, swimming, fishing, and wandering its miles of blue water, and exploring the river at both ends: The Blanche.

     As a boy, alone and with childhood chums, I boated along the river, especially at the west end, which was wilder: a land of beavers, muskrats, herons, and if you were lucky, a moose or a black bear on the shore. At points in the river you would have to drag your boat over the sturdy beaver dams, strong enough to hold you, your pal (if he was with you), and your boat as you pulled it over. For a boy, it was as close to heaven as you could get on this earth. When I bite the big one, this is where I want my ashes to be scattered.

     This day, I put my boat in near the bridge over Highway 11, at the two-story wooden Kenogami Hotel (renamed later in our more pretentious age, “The Kenogami Bridge Inn”), and before heading onto the lake I motored a half-mile east on that part of the Blanche. My outboard hit two rocks on route – this might otherwise mean nothing, but despite all the years that had gone by, I still knew the river and how to navigate it. It meant the river was much lower than it used to be: it least a foot lower, by my estimate.

     I returned to the lake and moved up its length, stopping by the shore of “our” bay to look at our small log cottage now apparently relegated to a sleep cabin or storage shed. Then I stopped for a while at “my” island, a small, pine and moss-covered rock island about fifty feet long, where I had camped as a boy. With the lowered water, my old landing slip was now a rocky outcrop. When young, I would stay a day or two, skinny-dipping in the cool water, and fishing for pickerel. From the island, there were no cottages and no people to see. I had enormous freedom, but there were rules: if camping overnight, we had to go in pairs, each boy with a boat in case of problems, and once a day we had to check in at home. We’d build a fire and cook the fish we caught, eating it with tea that we brewed. At night, in our tiny pup-tents, we would fall asleep to the hallucinatory calls of the loons.

     After visiting my island, I continued another mile or so, to the point were the Blanche joined the lake at its western end. But I could not find the river mouth. There was no obvious inlet for the river water flowing south and east from Sesekinika Lake. Instead, there was a reedy area, with numerous rivulets – a marshy shoreline; somewhere behind that had to be the river, assuming it still existed. I came back with my canoe the next day and still could not find a distinct inlet. I was unable to get to my beloved Blanche. (1) The reason is straightforward: changing climate had warmed the atmosphere, shortened the winter, and reduced the snow pack and the rainfall and the water level had fallen. What I had known was gone.

 

We all read about the fires in Canada last summer, and some of us saw it, albeit second-hand, at least in the form of an orange-brown haze over both Canadian and American cities – a haze that, where I live, in Northeastern New York, you could taste on some days. The haze made it all the way to Europe. The conflagration began in early spring, and since then there have been more than 6,500 fires. (2) As of November 9, there were still 412 fires, 119 of them out of control. (3) So far the fires have burned 18.5 million hectares (45.7 million acres). Many of the fires were large and fierce enough “to create their own weather via pyrocumulonimbus clouds, or ‘fire storm clouds,’ which can stretch 200 miles (320km) wide and carry ash and other debris upward and unleash lightning that can trigger multiple other fires that immolate more trees.” (4) This was in the vast boreal forest that makes up about a quarter of the world’s intact woodlands – the boreal forest of Canada is about the size of India.

     It is a disaster. The cause? Climate change. Forests have been weakened by the changes. Winters are shorter and not as cold. The snow-pack is not as deep and does not last as long and rainfall is less. Quite simply, the forest is entering a new age, an age of fire, because it is too dry.

     In August, I read a piece in the New York Times: it was heartfelt, a description by the writer of driving (presumably from New York, where he is a member of the Times editorial board) up though the Adirondacks, though the orange haze, past Montréal, where “the sun was reduced to a red spot,” and on to La Belle, Quebec where the author has a summer cottage. He goes on to describe the fire conditions and to lament the situation both in global terms, but also in terms of its affecting the serene beauty of the lake where he is observing and writing. (5)

     Yet, nowhere did he make a connection between his driving, for hundreds of miles, from his place of work to his cottage retreat. It – the fires, the haze, and all – appear to be just happening to the world and to him, giving him feelings like sorrow and wistfulness.

     But what about that drive? And how many times a season does he make it? How much carbon does he emit as a result?

     And what about me and my earlier trips to the hometown in Northern Ontario? Did I realize my contribution to climate change? I’d like to obfuscate and say “sort of,” but that would be a lie. I did realize. I – and we – have have been publicly aware of climate change since at least 1980. (6)  But I went anyway, just wanting to do what I wanted to do, including towing a boat behind my Jeep S.U.V. and carrying a wind-dragging canoe on top. So now: should I ever travel the five-hundred miles each way to go there again, even though I would like to? No, I think not.

 

Global burning is personal; yet, we continue to live as though it is not. We are observing effects and wringing our hands alright, but we continue to do whatever we do, while waiting for the technological and market fixes that will avert the disaster and avoid any personal inconvenience. But the simple truth is, even if we are marvellously ingenious, technical and market fixes will be too little, too late. These fixes will never be enough, in any case. In order to save the planet from the worst of climate change, we have to change our behaviour. We have to change how we live.

     But I see few signs that we are willing to change. Instead, I see us continuing to build gigantic McMansions, when much smaller houses would do. I see more and more huge pickups and sports utility vehicles barrelling along the road (Ford discontinued selling standard sedans and small hatchbacks in North America in 2020, in favour of trucks). (7) I see people flocking back to travel after the pandemic, flying all over the place and packing themselves onto cruise ships. (8) Consumption, from cheap fast fashion to over-priced iPhones, shows no sign of moderation.

      This summer I was alarmed to see, on numerous occasions, locked vehicles idling in the grocery store parking lot. People were going in to shop and leaving their cars running (for 15 minutes? A half-hour? An hour?) with the air-conditioner on so that the car would be cool when they came out. The hottest summer, caused by climate change, and that is the response? Unbelievable.

     We just don’t get it.

     Of course, governments and corporate rascals are backtracking, too. Oil companies like B.P. and Exxon are quietly stepping back from previously set climate goals. The U.K.’s Conservative Sunak government announced, in September, a rollback of established climate goals and actions. Incredibly, Daniel Smith, the Alberta Premier, has imposed a moratorium (!) on renewable energy projects in that dirty oil (tar sands) province. Even good old Uncle Joe Biden is persisting in developing the Willow oil-drilling project in Alaska, despite otherwise being a “green” president.

     The rascals certainly must be held accountable, but we also must be accountable to ourselves, to each other, to our children and to our grandchildren. We have to change our behaviour.

     I am someone who abhors telling others what to do and how to live, but this is an emergency: we know the drill.

     Live in smaller homes. If you have a second home, sell it or rent it to someone who needs a place to live. Get rid of the big trucks; drive a smaller, lighter, car, preferably a sedan. (9) If you need a truck or S.U.V., make it a smaller one like a Ranger or a Forester. Drive less; combine trips. Or just don’t go. Car pool to work, and work from home as much as you can. Don’t fly unless you have to. Take the train.  Don’t go on cruises; but if you absolutely must cruise, go every second year instead of yearly. Eat less meat. Reduce buying. Keep your clothes longer; repair items rather than replace wherever possible. Avoid buying and using plastic as much as you can. Substitute old lights with L.E.D bulbs. Replace an oil or gas furnace with a heat pump if you can afford it. Buy legitimate carbon offsets (research carefully). Give up NIMBY-ism and support wind and solar projects in your area. If you are in a market that permits it, purchase renewable electricity, even if it costs you more. Support your government to implement carbon pricing and taxes even when they affect you personally. The basic theme that is the foundation of all this? Individually, personally, reduce our consumption. Do what you can. If you need inspiration like I sometimes do, read Wendell Berry or Bill McKibben.

     I say all this because there is a simple reality. Yes, corporations and governments must change their ways – but they will not do so as long as demand for fossil fuel stays strong. Instead, they will merely posture, as Canada pretends, to pursue greenhouse gas reductions. (10) Put another way, countries and companies will not reduce their output of oil products until the demand diminishes. That is squarely in our hands. It is up to us.

     I know, I know, everybody hates a noodge and I understand my good readers are doing what they can. But we need to remind and refresh ourselves and each other and take action. This does create personal dilemmas; I get that. How often do I take the 800 mile round-trip to Toronto to see my grandchildren? Answer: less often. Otherwise the planet will burn up. It is that simple.

     The good news is that the list of what we can do personally is robust – it goes on and on. More good news also is that many young people are willing to make big changes like having fewer children and not owning a car to help salvage things. They are making smaller changes also, like cutting down meat and dairy, buying secondhand clothing, and riding a bike to work. (11) And some older people, even we, the high-consuming and greenhouse-gas emitting Baby Boomers, indicate that they care, at least.

     The climate situation is dire, but we must not allow ourselves to wallow in despair. There is still time. I am not without hope; nature, if not always human beings, inspires me.

 

Late yesterday afternoon I was standing in the middle of dirt road in front of our house (obviously the traffic is not too heavy here), gazing at the patterns of crystallizing ice in the little pond on the far side of the road, when I heard the bleating of Canada geese in the twilight sky. It took a while until I could see them, as their honking conversation grew louder and louder. When they came into sight – no kidding! I felt my heart swell and a lump in my throat at the sight of them. There were hundreds, just like the old days, in those disorganized flocks that you would see in the fall – some in masses and some in competing not-quite “V” shapes. They were yakking at each other, choosing leaders, talking it over, while practising for the big travel formations they will use to fly to the southerly states and to Mexico.

     I understand some geese no longer make the trip, as we continue to warm. But nevertheless I felt, then and there, that as long as some of these big, bleating, courageous birds are willing, then I, too, should be willing. I am obligated to do what I can do, to sacrifice a few things in gratitude for all that joy and well-being that I have been given, my whole life, ever since I wandered up the beautiful Blanche River as a boy. It is not too much to give back to our paradise. It is not too much to offer our sweet old Earth.

_________________________________________________

     Notes

1. See my poem, On the Blanche, written in the seventies, below this blog post. 

2. Milman, Oliver, and Andrew Witherspoon. After a year of record wildfires, will Canada ever be the same again? The Guardian, November 9, 2023, https://www.theguardian.com/world/ 2023/nov/09/canada-wildfire-record-climate-crisis. 

3. CIFFC Home. Canadian Interagency Forest Fire Centre Inc., https://ciffc.net/. Accessed November 9, 2023.

4. Milman and Witherspoon, op. cit. 

5. Schmemann, Serge. It Is No Longer Possible to Escape What We Have Done to Ourselves. New York Times. August 23, 2023. https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/23/opinion/ canada-wildfires-climate-change.htmlopinion/canada-wildfires-climate-change.html. 

6. The first scientific publication concerning climate change potential was in 1896. The Swedish scientist Svante Arrhenius publicized calculations showing that industrial age carbon dioxide emissions would warm the planet. By 1950, the scientific community was openly discussing the problem; even economists were aware of the issue by 1970. (See The Worldly Philosophers, by Robert Heilbroner.) By the 1980’s scientists were insisting that action had to be taken. This, of course, as we all know, was countered by a massive disinformation campaign managed by so-called “think tanks,”  funded by oil interests, such as Exxon – which in its own documents, showed it knew exactly what was happening with climate change. This was entirely successful in creating the false “controversy” we live with, and in delaying any real action for forty crucial years.

7. Even with electric vehicles and increased efficiencies, North America reduced yearly vehicle emissions by only 1.6% since 2010; had both the percentage of SUVs and trucks sold not increased, and the size and weight of these vehicles not exploded, the reduction during the period would have been over 30%. Horton, Helena. Motor emissions could have fallen by over 30% without S.U.V. trend, report says. The Guardian, November 24, 2023, https://www.the guardian.com/environment/2023/nov/24/motor-emissions-could-have-fallen-without-suv-trend- report.

8. The Oasis of the Seas uses one U.S. gallon of diesel every twelve feet; or to put it another way, the comparable Freedom of the Seas uses 28 thousand (U.S.) gallons of fuel every hour. This results in 626,640 pounds of carbon dioxide per hour. 

9. Electric vehicles are touted as the panacea; I am reserving judgement for now. They may help per-vehicle life-time emissions, but come with their own serious environmental issues, particularly the massive levels of mining for battery materials. Also, E.V.s only save emissions if the grid is green or nuclear; hardly the situation at this point. Battery recycling needs to be perfected. In any case, even the automobile companies privately admit that electric conversion of all those large trucks and S.U.V.s is unsustainable. The required battery weights are just too much and minimize potential emissions gains. But still…they can be a big step forward if the mining and electric grid problems are addressed, batteries are recycled, and there is a concerted effort to reduce the size of vehicles.

10. Naishadham, Suman, and Victor Caivano. Canada says it can fight climate change and be a major oil nation. Huge fires may force a reckoning. Los Angeles Times, November 10, 2023. https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2023-11-10/canada-says-it-can-fight-climate-change-and-be-major-oil-nation-massive-fires-may-force-a-reckoning. 

11. Henley, Jon, and Michael Goodier. Young Europeans more likely to quit driving and have fewer children to save planet. The Guardian, October 25, 2023. https://www.theguardian.com/ world/2023/oct/25/young-europeans-quit-driving-fewer-children-save-planet-climate-crisis. 

 

 

 

 

On Retirement: Part II, The End Game

Posted on by Peter Scott Cameron

          Be happy if there is something to be happy about!
          When the moment comes, do not lose it!
          Though they say life lasts a hundred years,
          Who has seen a full thirty thousand days!
          You are in this world but an instant,
          So don’t sit there grumbling about money.
          At the end of The Classic of Filial Piety
          It tells you all about what funerals are like.(1)

“Be here, now!”

     So Alan Watts charged us.(2) In my twenties, it sounded great. The problem was that I couldn’t do it. I observed that I was mostly running ahead, toward completion, toward the next thing. There was much to do: studying, jobs, money, marriage, a child, where and how to live – “caught between the longing for love and the struggle for the legal tender.”(3) Admittedly, there were times of Flow: becoming lost in a ego-less process, absorbed in the moment, losing track of time itself in the pure pleasure of being.(4) But mostly not: mostly, it was do this or that, and get on to the next thing.

     This goes on for years, with the cares of family and daily life and concerns of career. Then, with retirement, an opportunity opens up. Unless one is planning a new career as a winemaker, tractor-trailer driver, or TikToc fashion influencer, or you fill the void by chauffeuring grandchildren around to Sufi dancing or kettle drum practice, the present opens in a way it has not been open for a long time.

     In this openness there is a natural inclination to review the past and to assess how one has done.(5) You have run your career race and came in seventh. This can be okay and work out well enough, depending on attitude: “I was married more times than a radio talk-show host, but I never lost hope.” Or, “I didn’t end up writing The Great Novel, but that chapbook of racy limericks was a killer!”

     In my work, I made the world a better place.

     Or this can turn to rumination and recrimination, which is never a good thing for the emotions or disposition. My ship came in, but I failed to get on board. It can be depressing, because we all fail spectacularly, and at this point there is nothing you can do about it. But the latter is also the good news. There most definitely is nothing you can do about it, so you might as well give up on it and make a nice fried egg and tomato sandwich.

     Your thoughts also go forward toward The End Game, as a ninety-two-year-old friend calls it. Somewhere along the line, starting in late middle age, our mental calculation changes from time spent on the planet to time left. In older age, this is acute. There is no room for denial: time is limited and the outcome is fixed. It is just a matter of when and how.

     How this goes is naturally affected by one’s state of health. Even without major problems, aging issues can be vexing. Brown things and skin tags start growing on you like you are a compost pile. Your arm hurts for no reason. Legs get stiff and athletic activities like tying your shoelaces make you short of breath. Or like me, a hand starts to shake one day and doesn’t stop: “essential tremor,” Dr. Google calls it, which means they have no idea where it comes from and there is nothing that can be done about it. Why it is “essential” beats me. My fine doctor offered me neurological testing, which I appreciated, but declined. Why bother if there is no fix?

     After seventy, one can become afraid to go to the doctor for fear of discovering something that will kill you sooner or later, but of which, until that appointment, you were happily ignorant. That has been the case with me. I go to the doctor with no complaint and pow! Now I have a problem. That is one reason that the annual physical is terrifying. Adding to the horror, if you are of a certain age, they start asking you to remember three words and recall them later, or ask you to draw a picture of a clock showing twenty to ten. (My advice on this? Refuse. Don’t do it – don’t go down without a fight!) All this naturally leads one to think that the obvious solution is not to go to the doctor at all, which was the recommendation of a friend’s mother. She lived to 91 and died happy. However, such a course can lead to a surprise heart attack while imagining Shania Twain without any clothes on when you are country line dancing at the Senior Centre, or keeling over with a stroke while serving figgy pudding to that felonious band of in-laws at Christmas dinner. So not having checkups is not most advisable.

     Entirely too many people in retirement age are troubled, if not tormented, by illness and debilitation, and I am sorry for them. I do not yet have this. I only have to know where the washrooms will be if I go for an urban walk. I count myself very lucky. I feel much compassion for those who are afflicted, who feel so poorly and who are stuck in endless rounds of appointments, tests, and treatments, and those as well who suffer pain and impairment. I have friends among them and have lost friends to the diseases they have encountered. It is something that the Buddhists warn us about, and they suggest that we prepare; but still, it does not feel quite fair. You put in a lifetime of effort and good work, kindness and caring, and it comes to debilitation and discomfort. Then you die. Jarring, that.

     So you have to face your mortality: The End Game. Retiring does both make it plain that you have been to the mountaintop and now are on the downslope, and it gives you more time to think about it. This might be alright, a sort of preparation for death as Freud proposed.(6) For some it might bring relief; you will miss things, of course, like how the kids are doing or the laughter or your mate; but on the other hand, you will be free of pain if you have that, and certainly you will not have to hear or read about Taylor Swift ever again – no small compensation, that.

     Still, death can be a ruminative burden and for some is frightening, although not inevitably so. Many are consoled by religion, and look forward to an afterlife. Others – those of us without a strict belief in the continuation of a human soul – are without this solace, yet we are still not afraid. After all, if we come from the cosmic ether, we will go back to it; there is not much frightening about that. Although to be sure there can be anticipatory grief – about one’s pending absence from the dance.

     So with the past done, and a future that is dodgy, what we are left with is the present moment – just as good old Watts prescribed. And as Freud implied, and the Buddhists advise, contemplation of mortality provides a focus, an opportunity to experience the present to its fullest, in a way we never have before.

     Friends and companions help a great deal on this journey. The old gang at the office or the plant have gone on ahead without us. What we are left with is a partner, if we have one, and our old friends. The old reliable, more-or-less daily, enforced socializing of the workplace has vanished, and for many a void is opens up.

     Much is made of the value of socializing in general, especially in popular psychology and the New York Times. This notion is a regular feature and sells a good number of issues of Psychology Today. But the idea appears to be overrated and there is not much real social science behind this.(7) As a confirmed and contented Introvert, I am skeptical about the value of casual socializing. I can take it or leave it, mostly the latter. And I don’t think I am alone in this: ask the third of the North American population who share my temperamental trait.

     That said, complete isolation is bad for one, and correlates with higher rates of depression, heart attack, early death and inebriated purchasing of workout equipment from infomercials at three in the morning. So for goodness sake, despite the reservation expressed above, if you are isolated and lonely, by all means do join that backgammon club, church choir, or a weekly book club, or if desperate and in danger of developing suicidal ideation, take up pickleball. Make a friend!

 

I am sitting on an August Sunday early afternoon, eating a store-bought turkey sandwich with a good old friend at the picnic table at the Stewart’s store in the quaint village that he grew up in. He is an empathetic fellow who sat with me one time many years ago in another Stewart’s, and listened when I was at a very low point in my life. A couple of times a month I receive a brilliant multi-page longhand letter from him, describing the subtleties of everyday life, his reading regimen, and intellectual explorations. He is a member of a select class of people: highly intelligent, yes, but more, a true scholar. I count myself fortunate to know not just one, but two people like this, who, no matter what they are doing as a livelihood at a particular time, read and learn and think for its own sake. Once I called up the other of them, M.W., when he was in Brooklyn visiting his daughter and I asked him what he was planning to do that evening. “I’m going back to the hotel to think,” he replied.

     K.B. takes me on a walking tour around the village, with tales of adventures at the old school, early and later grades, middle-school exploits, and unrequited teenage love. We wander by the now-dilapidated band shell where his high-school rock and roll band debuted. As we walk away from the now sad and decrepit little public park, I am carrying on about my current side-by-side re-reading of Jack Kérouac’s The Subterraneans vs. Leonard Cohen’s Beautiful Losers, and why the former is a success, while the latter is a failure, in my opinion. I declare that it is because Kerouac’s telling is full of emotion and a visceral love of life, while Cohen’s lacks these and is rather cold. I find I have no empathy for its characters: surprising in a work by the writer of So Long Marianne and Dance Me to the End of Love. K.B does not interrupt my opining and instead listens attentively, which I appreciate. Is it not true that we all want to be heard?

     After the walkabout, we talk about his upcoming project of reading the eight hundred pages of L’Être et le Néant : Essai d’Ontologie Phénoménologique that he had ordered – half-jokingly he proposes to read two or three pages at a time, in the booths at each one of the 350 plus Stewart’s stores in New York and the few in Vermont. I think this is an outstanding idea. He jokes again and wonders how it might stack up against the wanderings of Herodotus.(8) We consider what kind of car would be appropriate for such an epic journey. K. B.’s 2018 Honda does not seen quite right for the odyssey – a more classical ride would seem appropriate. I suspect my friend leans toward something like his previously-owned late-sixties Dodge Charger, but I am envisioning something more modest, such as a Morris Minor Traveller station wagon from 1957, preferably in the classic British racing green. Of course, I am thinking that offsetting the carbon would have to be considered, which is difficult these days as it has come to light that most of the available offset schemes are fraudulent.

     Before we part, we wonder out loud if there is a market for a basic car without all the annoying features like fobs, lane correction, touch screens and heated seats. Something with key-entry, roll-down windows, no-draft vents, and a standard transmission would be nice. I am imagining a two-door Valiant with a Slant Six under the hood, not with that push-button automatic, maybe a sixty-one with the classic fins. A perfect car: would there not be buyers for such a thing in 2023, I ask? We muse that one would think so, but probably not. To be sure, for my part, this – old cars were better etc. – is retired geezer jawing at its very best. Very satisfying. I am sorry to take leave of my friend.

     Now I am back in the afternoon sun, in the yard, sitting in a weather-worn wooden Adirondack chair. I am the lazy one; I am reading and smoking a cigar while my mate labours in the garden. I see a bee – not my bee from July, the one that came to the window during news time, but another one and I wonder where my bee went. I hope it wasn’t eaten. A big Monarch butterfly comes by and flutters around me, darting here and there, up and down, back and forth. Then, apparently not bothered by the the cigar smoke, it alights on my knee and there it perches.

     I am one lucky bastard. This Monarch thinks I am trustworthy enough to rest awhile on my blue jeans. I live on an acre of rural paradise. My modest income is sufficient for my needs: there is nothing more I want to own and nowhere I want to travel. My health ain’t perfect, but it ain’t bad, either. I have some friends. My wife, K., loves me unconditionally, and when I grumble about one or another of my shortcomings, tells me that I am perfect just as I am. I am inclined to disagree with this assessment, but I do not debate the point; in any case, I feel the same about her, so have no basis to argue. The sun is on my face, the book is excellent, and our friendly dog-like cat is lying by the raised garden. My daughter, off in Toronto, is thriving, and my smart and good-natured grandchildren are launching into the world. None of this is permanent, of course; any of it could change in an instant.

     But in this moment, I am grateful. I am retired and have nothing to do.

     I have only to be here, now.

__________________________________

1. Hanshan. Cold Mountain: 100 Poems by the Tang Poet Han-Shan. Translated by Burton Watson. Columbia University Press, 1970. Accurate details have been lost in time and myth, but the Buddhist recluse is thought to have lived around the seventh or eighth century. 

2. Columbus, Peter J., and Donadrian L. Rice. Alan Watts – Here and Now: Contributions to Psychology, Philosophy, and Religion. State University of New York Press, 2012.

3. Browne, Jackson. The Pretender. Flat Town Music Co., 1976.

4. Csíkszentmihályi, Mihály Róbert. Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience. New York: Harper and Row, 1990.

5. Erikson, Erik, with Joan Erikson. Childhood and Society. W. W. Norton & Co., 1959.

6. Freud, Sigmund. Beyond the Pleasure Principle. Translated by C. J. M. Huback. Digireads Publishing, 2020. First published 1920.

7. La Grassa, Jennifer. Do Exercise, Nature and Socializing Make People Happier? Research Suggests We don’t Really Know. CBC News, August 26, 2023.

8. Kapuściński, Ryszard. Travels with Herodotus. Translated by Klara Glowczewska. Vintage, 2008.

 

 

On Retirement Part I: Being

Posted on by Peter Scott Cameron

For the last part of June and most of July, every day a big bumblebee arrived at the livingroom window and buzzed around for a while – not bumping into the glass like the foolish houseflies, but just checking it out, floating. I thought of Muhammad Ali. “Float like a butterfly” – and do what a bee does. The big window is my favourite in the house, a place to daydream now that I am retired, overlooking, as it does, the lush yard, the swamp beyond, and further beyond that the Green Mountains of Vermont. The bee arrived each day as K. and I watched world tragedies without end unfold in vivid colour on the BBC news.

I know it was the same guy. Scoff not: I recognized him. Like all sentient beings, bees live according to their biological patterns of course, but at the same time, they are individuals like our cats, our dogs, our chickens, and ourselves.

In any case, I have seen this on PBS, in a documentary by Martin Dorn, who stayed home during the pandemic and studied and filmed the bees in his garden for a year. (1) He showed that they have habits, traits – you could even say personalities – and that they keep individual travel and visitation schedules, according to whatever whims are driving them, beyond their biological predispositions and imperatives. This strikes me as a good way to live: to follow a schedule that comes not from without, but within. Just like me, now. After seventy years, I have a personal schedule that is free of the relentless overlay of outside demands.

It begins with grade one at King George school. Six-and-a-half-years-old, I have lucked out and missed the calamity of kindergarten, newly introduced in Northern Ontario. Still, there I am: having been free and wild on the streets and alleys of our small town, I now find myself expected to go to the same place every day, to the same dull room, to sit unmoving in the same confining desk under the hostile eyes of the sadistic Miss Scott.

Miss Scott: she is the first among a number of bad bosses. In the first few days of class, she has us come up to her desk one at a time and sing Oh Susanna or such, a cappella, standing in front of her: excruciating enough. Then, based on what she hears, she divides us into Canaries, Robins, and Crows. I am a Robin. The poor Crows probably never sang again, not even in the shower. What sort of person does that to children?

Years later I mentioned her to a cousin who is ten years older than I am, but who also had Miss Scott. He flew into a tirade, sputtering and cursing. He had never forgotten her either.

Seventy-five percent of Americans name a bad boss as the number one stressor in the workplace. (2) But despite Miss Scott, and later Kenny and Frank, I don’t really think it was only bad bosses that made me not want to get up and go to work – but they coloured that world, to be sure.

Kenny and Frank are drill operators and hence my bosses when I work as a helper during summers as a university student. Kenny has spent thirteen years in the Kingston Pen for manslaughter after jamming a broken beer bottle into the forehead of a barroom opponent. He is okay most of the time, but you don’t want to rile him, if you follow me. A year after I work with him, I hear that his clothing gets caught and he is dragged into the business end of a big auger machine, breaking every bone that could be broken in a human being, before the helper could turn the machine off. I don’t hear how he fared after that.

Frank, on the other hand, has not been to jail, but is a wife-beater and drinks twenty beers a day. He can single-handedly pick up the two-hundred-and-fifty pound drop-hammer and place it on the equipment trailer – not that much if you consider the world dead-lift record, but still. At one point he rushes at me with fists clenched vowing to kill me after I drop a drill rod down a three-hundred-foot borehole. Terrifying to have that raging hulk come at you: I can still feel the adrenaline. He only stops when I threaten him with the thirty-six inch pipe-wrench, which I cock like a baseball bat. He comes to his senses and just curses me out; a good thing, as the pipe-wrench would not have been enough to stop him. No doubt these guys contributed to my having a bad – or at least a sceptical, you might say – attitude early on toward the supposed pleasures and benefits of the workplace.

Fortunately the work and the bosses got better after this, and once I became a boss myself, I improved a lot on my first role models: low bar, I know. Lest I create a completely negative impression here, I must say that management and working conditions improved dramatically over the years. I worked for terrific people and excellent organisations. 

Early bad bosses aside and given great improvements in the nature of the work that followed, it remains something of a mystery that I don’t remember ever really wanting to go in to a place of employment. I preferred to stay home and do things I wanted to do, by myself, probably with a coffee pot and the radio playing in the background. I suspect this feeling is common enough. It is true that you hear of people describing how they can not wait to get to the office in the morning, to accomplish this and that, and see the gang, etc. However, the reluctance of Covid-era remote workers to return to the office surely indicates something different for many of us.

I have thought that perhaps I am just lazy, but that seems unlikely. I have degrees aplenty, which certainly required work, and I did accomplish things in years of community mental health work and in teaching that I am most contented to remember. I know that in my way I made the world a better place. And I was a decent boss. Yet, the mental health work was trying; it wore me out. At the time I was studying Zen Buddhism and so I tried to emulate the scholar warriors (3) and to take heart from the teaching of the bodhisattvas: “Remedy suffering wherever it is, whatever form it takes and whoever causes it.” (4) This helped me, and then the years of teaching were easier. I experienced failure of course, but overall, I found success at both. And so now I retire happy, perhaps with some not-unusual regrets over missed opportunities or paths not taken, but with the knowledge that I did my best.

Not wanting to go into work might simply have been a result of my introversion. In any case, I can say I don’t miss it. I’m happy to stay home, and like the bee, figure out each day what I want to do. I have no empty feeling, no existential panic in face of blank canvases of days.

Nor does it bother me that I have no role and no status. I had a foretaste of this. In 2010, after some trials in my personal life, I decided to change how I was living. I wanted to stay home, to live more creatively, to write some and take a few pictures – and to move back to Canada. With few prospects, and no money to speak of, I resigned my tenured professorship. I recall the feeling, after I moved, of sitting on a park bench in Toronto on a cold November day, the wind whipping in from Lake Ontario, known to no one around me, with no persona, no role, no position – just another bozo on a bench, with no place to go and nothing to do. It was absolutely exhilarating.

Of course, I had to eat and pay the rent, so I built a late-season career as an online adjunct professor, with a couple of courses at my old college and some from other institutions. “Full-time work for one-third the pay,” an ex-colleague joked. True enough, but I loved it. I woke on my own time and read awhile with coffee and classical music on the radio. Sometimes I would go out on the balcony of my high-rise apartment and watch the homo sapiens racing to work on foot, in cars, on the busses and streetcars. I watched with satisfaction – not with schadenfreude, although there was something comical to all the intense hotfooting around, something that I can’t quite name. Mainly I felt empathy for these people along with immense gratitude that I no longer had to do this. After all the decades, I finally got to stay home.

I still had demands: course sites to build, clever assignments to create, tests to post, emails to answer, and useful feedback to give on submissions. Enjoyable enough tasks, but now I am glad to be without them. I am relieved not to wake up each Tuesday morning and to log on to sixty or a hundred essay assignments waiting in the mailbox, all begging timely review and grading. I liked my work very much, and especially liked working on my own, but I’d had enough. A clear example of Cameron’s Second Law: Good things go on too long.

By the way, it says something about human nature that although students had a full week to submit assignments, almost all of them came in about a half-hour before the time limit. Also, despite there being 167 other hours to take an online test, most were completed in the hour before the deadline.

In any case, in online teaching, I had gone as far as I could go. As a professor – never mind the formal “course assessments” that have been foisted off on teachers – when the semester ends, every educator worth his or her salt thinks “how could I do better?” After my last semester, this spring, my answer was: nothing. I could do no better. Time to go, then.

Although it is not the case so far, I expect I will miss the students more than some other things. You won’t hear me complaining about younger people. Some, of course, were happily illiterate or worse: resentful participants, just putting in time. But most wanted to accomplish something, wanted to learn, wanted to make something of themselves. And they cared about this world, about climate broiling, about racism and sexism and institutionalized inequity, and most wanted no part of these and other injustices. They helped me to feel optimism, to believe there was some hope for the human race.

Optimism is important when you have retired and are getting older, when your bones ache inexplicably and these warty things start growing on your bulgy, once-svelte body, and all the musicians and singers and great people who populated your world start dropping dead – and as well, you have all the time you could want to ruminate about the television news.

It must be said: it is critical not to end up being that old codger in his nasty recliner, Keystone beer can in hand, sitting in the corner of the room jawing at loved ones about the deplorable condition of the world and the decline of civilization as we know it. These things are true of course: the world is in deplorable condition, and civilization is in decline, but that is no excuse to sit around and allow yourself to develop OBD – Old Bastard Disorder. OBD, by the way, is not gender-typed; you may be a man or a woman, or in keeping with fashionable ideology, anything in between or outside of those categories, and still succumb to OBD.

No, you have to stay optimistic and carry on, even while, for example, a dreadful little psychopath slaughters the good people of Ukraine, or given climate change, when it looks like your grandchildren will live on a planet much like the one in Cormac McCarthy’s The Road – or while the whole country of Canada is on fire (and, to boot, firefighters say that people are stealing their equipment when they are not looking, as CBC reported about the Kelowna fire).

And the whiners: oh my God, the whiners! These people complain when the cell signal is poor – meanwhile, I remember that my parents, for decades after the Great Depression, saved string out of fear of not having any in the future. It is hard to think that civilization has not gone down the pipe when a Yellowknife story described people complaining about the (successful) evacuations. Days before the fire reached the town (the fire never made it, in fact, due to the diligence of the firefighters), 95% of the population had been evacuated hundreds of miles by air, or guided down the one two-lane highway, with the government providing free gas from tankers along the way – brilliant! Yet the paper quoted a person complaining that the government had acted too slowly, that the evacuation should have been done sooner, even though the fire had not reached the city. In the preceding days, she could smell the smoke in her office even with the “HEPA” filters going full blast, and it was “uncomfortable,” she reported, with a straight face. Perhaps she also was put off that the civil servants did not offer fresh trays of sushi and avocado-on-toast as well, along NWT Route 3 as she headed south. Another evacuee, safely ensconced at a paid-for motel hundreds of miles south of the fire, complained that there was “nothing to do.” One wonders why the news providers give these people any air time, but that is another problem, I suppose.

So, yes, it is hard to stay optimistic knowing these knuckleheads are out there, and I am not even talking about the Marjorie Taylor Greenes of the world – this one, an actual American Congressional Representative elected by real citizens eligible to vote, who believes the California fires were caused by Jews firing lasers from outer space. On purpose. No, I say I won’t even talk about these people.

But enough! Remember: OBD. In retirement, with time and space to think, you have to navigate this and other similar things. One immediate solution is to limit how much you watch the news, which is what K. and I have done: hence, the half-hour of BBC with the visiting bee.

As for the rest – what to do with your freedom from schedules, tasks and bosses? If your health is decent (that’s another story: more later), it isn’t that hard. Take a walk down the dirt road and check out the wild turkeys. Plunk yourself in the yard and read The Consolations of Philosophy that has been gathering household fallout on your bookshelf. Like K., get out the watercolour kit and paint a picture. Play your vinyl version of Sticky Fingers, or stream the Queen’s Own Highlanders piping The March of the Cameron Men on your phone, if you really must. Grow some tomatoes or sunflowers. Dust off the disused Yamaha and play My Wild Irish Rose. Write a mystery, however crappy, or a letter to the editor. Volunteer, if you are up to it, to take a person even older than yourself to a doctor’s appointment. Send a few bucks to the local fire company or the U.N. Refugee fund. Meditate and find compassion in your heart for the Miss Scotts and the Kennys and Franks of the world, for surely they must have suffered, as did their victims. Sit on a rainy September day, when the leaves are just beginning to change from green to yellow, and stare out the window. Step outside into the air and sniff it. For God’s sake, avoid OBD, although I think it is good to stay a tad crusty. Probably the best advice I’ve ever read that applies to retirement is to “chop wood, carry water.” (5)

But I take inspiration from my visitor: the free, black and orange insect who, for a while, came by regularly during news time, and reminded me of the inimitable Muhammad Ali and his counsel. “Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee.” Right. Got it.

     Next: On Retirement, Part II: The End Game.

1. Dorhn, Martin. My Garden of a Thousand Bees. Passion Planet, 2023.

2. Abbajay, Mary. What to Do When You Have a Bad Boss. Harvard Business Review, September 7, 2018.

3. Deng, Ming-Dao. Scholar Warrior: An Introduction to the Tao in Everyday life. HarperCollins Publisher, 1990.

4. Marchese, David. Talk (Matthieu Ricard). New York Times Magazine, August 20, 2023.

5. Fields, Rick. Chop Wood, Carry Water: A Guide to Finding Spiritual Fulfillment in Everyday Life. Penguin Publishing Group, 1984.

 

My Covid Trauma

Posted on by Peter Scott Cameron

Covid-19 is in retreat here in North America, where populations are vaccinated. After more than a year of staying home, holding Zoom meetings without bothering to wear pants, and streaming shows on television until brains are leaking out our ears, most people are glad to return to crowd activities: eating in restaurants, attending musical performances, ambling around street fairs and flea markets, heading out to the theatre. 

     Not me. I am reticent. I want to see my closest friends and family members, most of whom I have not seen for sixteen months. But I do not want to join groups of people that I do not know.  I am reluctant to go to the folk concert at the playhouse. I do not want to attend the talk on old barns hosted by the county historical society. I do not want to join fans at the stadium to cheer on the beleaguered minor-league baseball team. You won’t see me at the Raspberry Fest. nor the Balloon Fest. I expect not to join the crowd to see the Rockin’ Old Codgers on the outdoor stage down at Lake Desperation. You will not find me soon at the clam-bake at the firehouse.

     There have been many articles written about mental health strains arising from the isolation of Covid. Obviously, people react to isolation in different ways, and many have experienced severe loneliness. In my case, I am by temperament a satisfied introvert, not normally prone to feelings of loneliness, and so staying home during the pandemic has not been hard on me, and anyway, I’ve had a stellar companion. I will even say that in some ways it has been a pleasure. So, it is possible that I have just reverted to a more natural form as a result of not going out.

     My reticence is not worry about catching Covid. The vaccinations have proven to be very good, and I am confident in the data. I know there are unvaccinated people in the stores in the village taking advantage of the mask-optional guidance, wandering around, spreading their germ and virus-laden emissions with absolute disregard, but so what. Those creaturely emissions, coming from both upper and lower regions of the human body, although not always thrilling, do not worry me any more than they did in my previous life.

     Another possibility: an article in The Guardian discusses the idea of how our brain, the hippocampus, needs to be reset.[i] The brain’s ingenious plasticity helps us to adjust to changing situations. In this case, neuronal networks that we use to engage in social activity shrink during periods of isolation. We arrive at a new homeostasis in order to cope with less social connection. Then, once isolation ends, we again have to adjust, and initially interaction produces anxiety, until we achieve another homeostasis wherein these networks are restrengthened. Fair enough, though this strikes me as more of an extravert’s narrative than solid science. Regardless, I am not so sure that is the case for me. After all, I felt no anxiety at staying home in the first place.

     My own theory is simpler. What I think is that that the comforts and serenity of being home for sixteen months have become linked by contrast with the external political and social trauma of these last years. Mix that in with intrinsic introversion, and perhaps an excessive amount of time to think about the insanity of the larger world in absentia, and I have ended up not wanting to be part of that world. From afar, I have lost trust in people.

     I said to my daughter recently, in jest: I am suspicious of most people I don’t know, and the rest I don’t trust. There was a time when I thought that human beings were mostly good, mostly creative, mostly thoughtful – with shortcomings: warfare, exploitation, prejudice, zero-sum competitiveness, indifference to the plight of others at least, and stunning cruelty at worst.

     But these last years have eroded even that understanding that I had. Needless, unjust wars rage everywhere – Yemen, Ethiopia, Syria. Oppressive regimes proliferate: Belarus, Myanmar, China. Dangerous idiots run countries: Bolsonaro in Brazil. Islamists kidnap school children in parts of Africa, especially girls. The Taliban is taking over Afghanistan again, after twenty years of fruitless warfare. Half the population of the U.S. remains loyal to a defeated demagogue. A large number of American legislators, supporting the lie of a “stolen election,” attempt to subvert the American Democracy. Hooligans, misfits, conspiracy theorists and “ordinary” people storm the American Capitol in a deadly riot based on…nonsense. All the others: Xi Jinping and the ruthless suppression of Hong Kong’s democracy activists; deranged Q-Anon believers; the preposterous militias – Oath-Keepers, Proud Boys, Three Percenters, New York Lightfoot Militia; the yahoos in our nearby village charging around in their giant, gas-guzzling pickups with big Confederate and Gun flags mounted in their truck beds; the crypto-militia people from Connecticut, in their compound behind our house, flying their huge flag upside down on the hilltop for a month after Joe Biden was elected;[ii] the “Don’t Tread on Me” flags mounted on garage roofs; the Fox Propaganda network being the most-watched “news” network in America; the shameful exhibition of the now dead Rush Limbaugh receiving the Medal of Freedom. The climate -change deniers.

     The anti-maskers, the anti-vaxxers, the Covid-deniers: I expected that we would pull together in the face of our life-threatening pandemic, but no, not at all.[iii] Looking with a sociological eye, if society is a tapestry made of good-willed cooperation for mutual survival, then that tapestry is careworn and very frayed.

     No. I say to you that the big world of people is not to be trusted, thank you very much. It is not fear; it is aversion.

    

I sit outside at the table with its big blue, yellow and orange umbrella; the sun shines high-hot overhead, but the air is cool because of the just-passed thunderstorm that left the Ostrich ferns sparkling with heavy drops that make them tremble. The yellow yarrow plants and the pink bee balm are dripping too, as are the purple coneflowers, the white Shasta daisies, the delicate blue hollyhocks, and the pink joe pyes. Swallows are soaring and diving, eating their requisite 850 mosquitoes a day, with my approval. I have a new book in one hand, a freshly lit cigar in the other, my Panama hat on, and snazzy reading sunglasses dangling at the end of my nose. All set.

     K comes out in her bush-whacking outfit of old jeans, beaten flannel shirt, and red bandana, sickle in hand, and socks over pant legs to ward off ticks. She is off to thwack some underbrush in the back. I turn my old mug to gaze in wonder at her beautiful face, which is the same age as mine – wonder at the grace that has been bestowed upon us. We are old, old friends, and lovers twice: this time the second, last, and only time now forever.

     I still look for our small white dog who used to come to lie on grass as I read. Sandy died last spring of nothing in particular: old age, her body just stopped working. It was a sad day. It is possible she was the sweetest dog in the world. She was a rescue from Kentucky, who had lived her first six years at the end of a cruel, short chain and been abused there: beaten, one supposed. She was wary of most men other than myself; one assumes her abuser was a man. Who the hell does that to a little white dog?

     One of the cats, Dudley, is in the yard – I think he’s a tabby, although people here call him a Maine Coon Cat. What do I know, I’m from Canada. He is black and brown and tan and silky and so very friendly; it is a pleasure when he comes to sit on your lap. I call him “Big,” to honour his large front paws with the extra toes. He is crouched beside the shimmering Japanese willow tree that K and I planted as a Tree of Peace.[iv] Rather than burying a hatchet underneath the plant, we laid in a homemade, partially-bent pipe shillelagh made by one of K’s wackier Irish uncles. A ghastly-looking weapon, we buried it, followed by a short ceremony, and the newly planted willow over it has flourished ever since.

     I keep an eye on the cats – they are as loveable and funny as cats can be, but they are both hunters, and when I can, I interfere. I scare off the chipmunks, robins, and the brown rabbits – who this year have come into the yard in numbers larger than ever. Wild turkeys – strutting and confident and yakking to one another – cross the road in front regularly. Now and then a turtle: this year I have seen both a painted and a small snapping turtle. They cross from the pond and swamp behind us, passing through the yard – the cats are no threat to them, but the gravel road that they have to traverse to get to the second pond has danger. I have known of people who run over them intentionally. I wonder why they take this journey from one pond to the other – to see relatives, perhaps? The woodchucks: I love their rolling, musical gait – the cats might try to bother them, but I think the woodchucks would hold their own. Still, I am watchful.

     We had a comical possum who for a time made a sojourn every day about noon, coming down out of the field behind us, crossing the yard from the north-west corner, inspecting the compost pile, rolling down to the front of the house through the thicket of bishop’s weed, and then to the road. I loved his saunter. There was no trouble with either of the cats. He would walk along the side of the road – heading east toward Vermont, one might think. He made it back later, because the next day, there he would be, repeating the journey – until one day he didn’t. Alerted by a big, black turkey vulture, I found him on the road, halfway down the hill. He had been hit; his head squashed. I dragged him off the road and into patch of orange daylilies, muttered an apology for the human beings to the Animal Master, and left him for the vulture, who all the while had circled, riding the air streams, in no hurry, a picture of ancient patience.   

     The black cat Golly, the better hunter, recently caught a young rabbit, early in the soft evening. I saw him carrying it, and ran after him, hoping that it was not yet killed and that I could force him to drop it. A mistake, as it turned out. He deked left, but I went after him, and drop it he did. But the rabbit did not move as I approached, although I could see that its eyes were open, and it was still breathing. As I picked it up, I realized that it was paralyzed; I could tell from the limp, crossed legs, and because it did not wiggle to escape me. Golly had been carrying it by the back of its neck, and obviously the spinal cord had broken. I thought about killing it myself but could not bring myself to do so. All in all, it would have been better to have left the cat and the bunny to their deadly dance. Sadly, I placed it in the tall grass at the edge of the yard. To me, the small being seemed calm, but that could have just been the paralysis or shock. I went out later and it was dead. Once again, I mumbled an apology to the Animal Master, this time noting that it was in the nature of this cat to hunt. Golly cannot do otherwise.

 

Can human beings do otherwise? Is it just as natural for human beings to wage war with one another, to commit atrocities against other human beings? Perhaps it is in our nature also, to believe in crazy ideas, and then act out against one another based on these absurd conceptions, causing no end of harm. Perhaps this is as much part of us as taking more than we need, and purposely denying others as we do so. But if so, we are cruel and unlike the cat, we are capricious in our cruelty. For we do have our frontal lobes that provide us with alternatives, with the capacity to anticipate, to assess, and to judge, and ultimately to act with moral understanding. Normally, unless deprived or abused in childhood, we have reason, and we have a conscience. Compassion is every bit a part of our nature as human beings, as hunting is part of a cat’s nature.

     Yet far too often we turn our backs on these finer qualities and refuse to use them. Or, worse, we mis-use them, as for example, when supposedly for moral and religious reasons, Taliban men stone to death a woman for trying to educate girls, or a self-identified Christian stands outside a gay club with a sign that says, “Jesus hates fags.”

     Our human condition is that we suffer. We must labour for our survival. Women suffer pain and danger in childbirth. We suffer losses and disease. In evolutionary terms, older and newer parts of our brains are in conflict, resulting in ongoing psychological distress, as Freud described. Most of the time we desire more than we have, and our wanting pains us. We experience love and beauty, yet all the while knowing that someday we will die and lose all. But the worst of the human condition? It is the suffering that we humans intentionally inflict on one another.

     I want no part of the latter. This is what my time alone during the pandemic has brought to consciousness. This is my Covid trauma. In solitary thinking, I have come to understand that I remain a naïve idealist, as I have been since I was a fresh-faced student. Thus, I am often disappointed with human behaviour. I find it impossible to blow this stuff off and just live.

     Yet, we must be in the world, if not of it. Nobody lives outside society and culture, just as nobody lives outside nature. And so, what to do?

     Keep the lights on, at least, in the museum of human compassion. Stand and speak and act for what is good. We must choose kindness whenever possible. And of course, personally, I know I have to just get over it: starting by taking small steps to be in that world. Go to a diner and have a toasted club sandwich – with fries, of course. Go to a Sunday afternoon chamber music recital at the old music hall. Take a drive with K and a camera to Burlington, Vermont. Look forward to the possibility that we see good old Bernie Saunders on the streets of that town.

     Above all: remain calm. Meditate. Tend my own garden. Be in the world but keep part of myself separate and sacred from that larger world.

               Know the personal

               yet keep to the impersonal:

               accept the world as it is.

               If you accept the world

               the Tao will be luminous inside you

               and you will return to your primal self.[v]

____________________________________________________________________

[i] Clark, Kareem. “The Neuroscience Behind Why Your Brain May Need Time to Adjust to Un-Social Distancing.” The Guardian, July 9, 2021.

[ii] In American flag protocol, the flag flown upside down means: Dire distress: Imminent threat to life and property.

[iii] I was naïve to have been surprised at the lack of thoughtful civic cooperation. It has been no different previously. See, for example: Barry, John M. The Great Influenza: The Story of the Deadliest Pandemic in History. Penguin Books, 2018.

[iv] The “Tree of Peace,” the Great White Pine, is the symbol of peace-making in the traditions of the Haudenosaunee.   See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tree_of_Peace

[v] Mitchell, Steven. Tao Te Ching, New English Version. HarperPerennial, 1988.

 

The Pandemic is Ending: I’m Disappointed

Posted on by Peter Scott Cameron

Here in the U.S., the Covid-19 epidemic is winding down as more and more people are vaccinated. Canada is somewhat behind, but after the country’s faltering start in vaccinating, things are going well, and rates of infection are coming down there, too. This is wonderful news, and I am so very grateful. I hope to see my Canadian family and friends. And I am glad that people I know and love, and so many other people, are more-or-less out of danger. Vaccines are our way out of this, and they are working.

     World-wide, things are less rosy. India is in trouble. Rates of infection are sky-rocketing in South America; Brazil, led by a fool, has a total death number second only to that of the United States, and the situation is worsening. African countries, despite remarkable competence learned from previous dealings with epidemics, are struggling with no vaccine supply to speak of. Still, even for these areas, there is reason for optimism; we, the wealthy and privileged, are starting to share vaccine supplies and help with cash and supplies for medical infrastructure, and our leaders including Uncle Joe and Justin are showing a taste to do exactly that.

     And so, we can look forward to a time in the not-so-distant future when this terrible pandemic will be under control, at least, if not entirely wiped out. Most likely, just like the flu, we will get our annual shot, and go on our merry way. We will return to normal life.

     Yet, I am disappointed. It is “normal” life that concerns me.

    I had hoped – naïvely, perhaps – that the pause, as difficult as it was, and as much hardship as it caused, would give us a chance to rethink how frenetically we live, and about our relationship with the planet. (See my earlier posts: Imagine, Parts I and II in July and August, 2020.) I had hoped that we would consider the benefits of a more settled life, with more space and time to be human beings. More important (since what you do with your time is not my business), I had hoped that we would use the the experience of clearer skies, fresher air, and the uncluttered streets as an opportunity to change our behaviour and reduce our carbon output permanently.

     But no. It is apparent that this is unlikely to happen. It seems that we can hardly wait to get geared up and carry on, with even greater intensity, a way of life that is devastating earth. I know: Debbie Downer.

     A good friend, who is a New York State employee, has been working from home for well over a year. It has gone well. Productivity has been high, and life has been easier. Yet, it seems the department, and his bosses, cannot wait to get him and his hundreds of fellow cubicle-dwellers back under direct scrutiny. I can’t think of another plausible reason for it. The petite Mussolinis of bureaucracy and commerce cannot tolerate the thought of not having their charges back in the cubicles under “panoptic surveillance,” to use Foucault’s term, even though electronic monitoring could rather easily satisfy the neurotic compulsion[i]. And so, consequently, with that will come the stalled traffic, the time lost and the oppressive frustrations of commuting, along with the wasteful burning of fuel and the emissions of carbon dioxide and all that this entails.

     It appears that we just can’t wait! We can’t wait to drive all over the continent. We can’t wait to cram ourselves into airplanes and start flying all over the place. We can’t wait to herd ourselves onto cruise ships, all the while burning shocking quantities of fuel (28 thousand gallons of fuel per hour, in the case of the ship, Freedom of the Seas).[ii]  We can’t wait to pack ourselves into tourist cities like Barcelona and Venice, stampede into museums and cafés, and while we are at it, once again make these cities unlivable to the people who reside there. It would be comical, really, if it were not so destructive.

     The great writer and editor E. B. White penned an essay in 1956 entitled Sootfall and Fallout, which focused on his concern, even then, about environmental degradation, but especially, at that time, radioactivity that was being put into the atmosphere by nuclear bomb testing. (The fact that we no longer do this is evidence that we can stop doing harmful things if we decide to.) In that essay, he talks about “forms” – meaning the standard, habitual way we do things, often despite all the evidence that these forms have failed us and continue to fail us. Here is what he says with reference to the end of WWII and the era (the fifties) that he was writing in:

     “Are we for ‘new forms,’ or will the old ones do? In 1945, after the worst bloodbath in history, the nations settled immediately into old forms. In its structure, the United Nations reaffirms everything that caused the Second World War. At the end of a war fought to defeat dictators, the UN welcomed Stalin and Perón to full membership, and the Iron Curtain quickly descended to put the seal of authority on this inconsistent act.” [iii]

     This is exactly what we are doing. Before the pandemic, our form was that we trapped ourselves in stalled traffic, crammed into cubicles, crowded onto cruise ships, packed into airplanes, and swarmed tourist cities like locusts – all maintained by alarming levels of resource consumption and emissions that threaten to make the world unliveable.

     During the pandemic we had some respite from this. We experienced a new form. We had time to come back to ourselves. We travelled less, or not at all. Those whose work permitted it, did it at a distance, and commuted less or not at all. Monstrous cruise ships were docked. Airplanes were parked alongside the runways. Cities and other spaces suddenly became liveable once more, and quiet. Streets were free of cars. Oil and gas consumption reduced; there was a noticeable decline in the production of greenhouse gases. We slowed down and were in our world as human beings. Relatively speaking, it was a return to the Garden.

     But are we keeping this form? Quite apparently: no. We are determined to go back to the old form – with a vengeance. It is reported that after declining during 2020, carbon dioxide levels have rebounded, and in May carbon dioxide emissions rose to 419 parts per million, “the highest such measurement in the 63 years that the data has been recorded.” [iv]

     This looks like it will be an opportunity lost, and that is a great shame.      

     Many expect that technology will save us. Indeed, technological improvements are coming, and we need those badly. But the problem cannot be solved by technological fixes alone – and every new technology comes with its own, new set of problems. (Gas-powered buggies solved the problem of horse-manure pollution in nineteenth century cities.) Now, electric cars are touted as the fix-all so we can keep driving as we wish: but surprise! – they require power (coal? gas? solar? nuclear?) and their battery materials will necessitate mining on a scale that I doubt we have ever seen before. I know what mining is: I grew up in a gold-mining town.[v] Kirkland Lake was built in the nineteen-twenties on the side of a large, beautiful lake. I have a picture of my father rowing on it in the nineteen-thirties. By the fifties, when I was growing up, the lake was gone. It was filled in with a shiny greenish sludge that we called “The Slimes,” and that we, as children, played on: a mucky swill of crushed rock, chemical-laden tailings, cyanide, arsenic, and God knows what else. There are other such Slimes all over Northern Ontario and Quebec.

     No: in addition to technological improvements, we need to change behaviour if we are going to fix this problem. We need a new form: a form of doing less and consuming less, a form of sustainable economics and sustainable life.[vi] As many have pointed out, it is not possible to obtain infinite growth from a finite system (earth). And so, what to do?

     We can start by buying less stuff, and when we do buy stuff, acquire things that last longer and that can be repaired. We can travel less. Zoom to work; Zoom to out-of-town business meetings. If your recalcitrant employer resists, fight hard for the right to stay home. If we have travelled twice a year for breaks or vacations, make it once a year. I would say park the cruise ships, but if we must cruise, make it a biannual trip rather than an annual one. And we know the rest. Simply drive less. Combine trips. Don’t idle our cars while Suzie dashes into the 7-11 for a Big Gulp. Take the train. Go to into twenty-eight-day rehab, if necessary, to recover from our addiction to monster-sized SUV’s and pick-up trucks; drive smaller, more efficient vehicles. At home, if we mow our lawns once a week with a gas mower, make it every week and a half, or even two weeks. If we eat beef twice a week, make it once a week…and so on. It is not about denying ourselves. It is about moderating.    

     Canadians – and I know this will be painful – could get rid of their second fridges, those beer fridges in the basement, and recycle them.  It is a lot to ask, I know, but we could hold ceremonies to assuage the grief.

     While we are at it – if you are a person with an actual investment portfolio – dump the fossil fuel holdings and put your money in renewables or ask your mutual fund managers to do the same. And it goes without saying that we need to support and pressure our politicians to move aggressively on renewable energy infrastructure and climate improvement targets.

     It is not easy to change habits; I more than understand this. It is all about human “wanting.” We all want to get ours. It is a trait built into us, and one that is cleverly exploited by marketers and the corporate colonizers of culture. Part of me (if I had the money) could jilt my trusting and faithful seven-year-old Subaru and trade it in on a hot, gas-guzzling, 800 horsepower Saleen “Black Label” Mustang and drive the beast at over a hundred-miles-an-hour all the way to Texas. A ’68 GTO with that saucy ram-air 400 cubic inch V-8 and the four-barrel carb would do also. Well, no wait – not Texas: too many gun-toting, Covid-denying, anti-masking, voter-suppression knuckleheads there, so no, never Texas. California, then. Yes! – a big road trip to California: I’ll roar across the Golden Gate and then I’ll floor it all the way back via Oregon and the Dakotas, thereby burning up a few hundred gallons of gas. Fun!

     But in truth, I expect that I would feel no better after the binge. No doubt I would call up my Subaru and ask if I could come over, hat in hand, to see if we could reconcile and get back together.

     In any case, if we want to save ourselves and the planet, those times are over, or ought to be over. Time to find other ways to have fun, closer to home.    

     There is a fatal flaw in our culture. It is that we share this tacit belief that if an individual wants to do something, and is able to do that thing, then that person should do that thing, or has a right to do that thing. But this is faulty logic, because it leaves out a very fundamental component: the consequences, intended or not, of the action. So, if you can afford a Lincoln Navigator, then by all means, get it. If you are billionaire Bill Gates and his soon-to-be-ex, Melinda, and want a 66,000 square foot home (Xanadu 2.0!) for two people, go for it! If you are smiling Jeff Bezos and want to fly yourself into space in your own rocket, do it! There is no thought at all for the social and environmental consequences of these actions. Of course, it is not just the wealthy and their extravagances; I include myself. We all do this, all the time, and salve our consciences by telling ourselves the consequences are small or don’t matter because we have a right to “ours.”

     And so, it is a moral matter; but it is also a spiritual matter, a matter important to our simple human wellbeing.

     We really know in our hearts that materialism and the acquisition of things, beyond an essential level of comfort and security in our lives, do not make us any happier.[vii] That is old news. We never run out of desire but satisfying every want does not necessarily benefit us. The Buddhists point out that desires are inexhaustible, and their practice is to vow to put an end to them, knowing that the best we can do, in fact, is to steward these. The great Yogic teacher, Paramahansa Yogananda said to “put a hedge around your wants.” However, we do not have to look to Eastern cultures for this wisdom; in the Western tradition, from the Stoics on, the philosophers have recommended not necessarily the abandonment of desire, but rather the regulating of it. [viii]

     A moral matter: going forward, we must think of consequences not just for ourselves, but also, consider our children and grandchildren and beyond. In the aboriginal cultures of North America, a common precept when considering a course of action is to reflect on not just ourselves, but the “seven generations” that will follow. [ix]

     We do know what we need to do, where we need to go. It is only a question of will, of whether we will do it. Many are doing this: people who are already moving ahead on this good path. I invite myself, and one and all, to accompany them.

______________________________

Notes

[i] Meaning, in its simplest terms, a state of constant monitoring. Foucault, Michael. Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. Translated by Alan Sheridan, Pantheon Books, 1977.

[ii] De Santiago, Edward. “How Much Fuel Does a Cruise Ship Use?” Love to Know, www.cruises.lovetoknow.com /wiki/How_Much_Fuel_Does_a_Cruise_Ship_Use. Accessed 5 June 2021.

[iii] White, E. B. “Sootfall and Fallout.” The Golden Age of the American Essay, edited by Phillip Lopate, Anchor Books, 2021, pp. 171-182.

[iv] Gammon, Katherine. “Global Carbon Dioxide Level Continued to Rise Despite Pandemic.” The Guardian, 6 June 2021.

[v] McDonald, Joshua. “The Island With no Water: How Foreign Mining Destroyed Banaba.” The Guardian, 8 June 2021.

[vi] Victor, Peter A. Managing Without Growth: Slower by Design, Not Disaster. 1st ed., Edward Elgar Publishers, 2009.

[vii] Long-term happiness studies, such as the Harvard study begun in 1938, have confirmed this repeatedly. As material wealth increased over the decades, median happiness stayed the same, and was related to other factors, such as quality of relationships, etc., not wealth and spending. Noethen, Robin. “A Study Lasting Over 80 Years Might Change Your View of Happiness.” Curious. https://medium.com/curious/a-study-lasting-over-80-years-might-change-your-view-on-happiness-33a28cdc6611. Accessed 9 June 2021.

[viii] Loori, John Daido. The Eight Gates of Zen: Spiritual Practice in an American Zen Monastery. Dharma Communications, 1992, p. 249.

Yogananda, Paramahansa. The Science of Religion. Self-Realization Fellowship, 1982, p. 28.

The idea of “moderation in all things,” is attributed to the Greek poet Hesiod (c.700 bc).

[ix] I first heard this in a workshop with Jake Swamp-Tekaronianeken, a Mohawk Chief, an ambassador for peace, and the founder of the Tree of Peace Society. It is a simple idea changes how one think about the consequences of one’s actions in the world.

______________________________

Resources

– 350 Org. https://350.org/. Founded by Bill McKibben and colleagues with the hope that knowledge and campaigning, we could limit carbon dioxide emissions to 350 parts per million. As noted in the essay, we are now at 419 parts per million.

– David Suzuki Foundation. https://davidsuzuki.org/. Suzuki is a scientist and a naturalist; his foundation educates, and advocates for sensible environmental policy. Suzuki himself, over 80, is a Canadian national treasure.

See “Ten Reasons to be Hopeful About Climate Action.” David Suzuki Foundation. https://davidsuzuki.org/what-you-can-do/ten-reasons-hopeful-about-climate-action/. I am not as optimistic as Suzuki is, but then again, he is smarter than I am! 🙂

– Gates, Bill. How to Avoid a Climate Disaster: The Solutions We Have and the Breakthroughs We Need. Alfred A. Knopf, 2021. Ideas on technological fixes to help avoid catastrophic climate change.

– McKibben, Bill (Ed.). A Global Warming Reader: A Century of Writing about Climate Change. OR Books, 2011.

– Kolbert, Elizabeth. Field Notes from a Catastrophe. Bloomsbury Publishing, 2006. A “boot camp” primer on the real situation we are in. Of course, it is now 15 years later.

– Norgaard, Kari Marie. Living in Denial: Climate Change, Emotions, and Everyday Life. MIT Press, 2011. Concerns the mechanisms that contribute to denial of the situation.

– Rosen, Julia. “The Science of Climate Change Explained: Facts, Evidence and Proof.” The New York Times, May 12, 2021. A terrific summary.

– United Nations Climate Action: Climate Reports. https://www.un.org/en/climatechange/reports. These reports are ongoing and updated regularly.

Postscript to: The Day Democracy Died

Posted on by Peter Scott Cameron

A follow-up, and by no means is this my original thought, and I wish it were unnecessary to say so, but…

      Regarding the anemic (and in some cases even accommodating, if not outright assisting [i]) response of law enforcement with the insurrectionists: had this not been white Trump followers, but instead it had been Black Lives Matter protesters, and especially if protesters attempted to enter the Capitol building, there would have been a very different response. I believe there would have been bloody heads, tears streaming from the eyes of maced protestors, hundreds of arrests on the spot, and bodies on the steps.[ii]

     That said, I know many Capitol police officers acted with great courage. My condolences to the family of Brian Sicknick, the officer killed by an insurrectionist. I am so sorry for him and for all those who loved him. He was a really good, well-loved person. This should not have happened.

     Please read Phyllis Cavanagh’s comment; I am trying to get there.

     I also want to mention that “Democracy” in the original post was intentionally capitalized in all cases, i.e., Democracy as a venerable institution.

[i] Sam Levin, US Capitol riot: police have long history of aiding neo-Nazis and extremists. The Guardian, January 16, 2021.

[ii] Substantiated by social science findings. Lois Beckett, US police three times as likely to use force against leftwing protesters, data finds. The Guardian, January 14, 2021.

The Day Democracy Died

Posted on by Peter Scott Cameron

Yesterday, January 6, 2021, many of us watched in horror as a mob of white supremacist militia members, conspiracy theorist adherents, Christian evangelicals, bikers, “ordinary” Trump supporters, miscreants, and out-and-out thugs breached the defenses of the United States Capitol Building, a world-wide symbol of Democracy. They did so at the unequivocal urging of the rogue American President, and with the aid and abetting of a group of Congressional Representatives and Senators, seeking to overturn legitimate election results.

     Some watched in horror, but to be sure, there were many who watched not with horror at all, but rather with hope and joy in their hearts.

     The day was intended to be solemn and ceremonial: the ritual acknowledgement of the will of the people in choosing the next President. That is, Congress had gathered to ratify the votes of the Electoral College and to affirm the peaceful transfer of power. Instead, insurrectionists pushed aside police, terrified public servants, invaded the Senate Chambers, and one hoodlum even desecrated the office of the Speaker of the House, while elected members and senators were squirreled away to safety.

     The President, after earlier in the day exhorting people to do exactly this, later suggested that they “go home” but while doing so affirmed once more his lies to the effect that the election was stolen. And he concluded by saying to the white supremacists, the Neo-Nazis, the deluded, the thugs and the malefactors: “we love you” and “you are very special.”

     And so, Democracy died yesterday.

     But Democracy does not die all at once. It dies by a thousand – or a hundred – different cuts. It dies when people affirm the worst, not the best, in us. It dies when we, and our elected representatives, serve ourselves, and not the community. It dies when we turn away from decency and working to make the world a better place, and instead feed our hatreds, and stoke the suspicions of those who live in fear of “the other.” For Americans, it dies when we give up on the ideal of toiling for a “more perfect union.”

     And so, we can say that Democracy died yesterday. But we can also say that it died previously, on Election Day, November 3, 2015, when the country elected a cheater, a reality television star, a grifter, a person who represented the lowest in us, rather than the highest: a person without the temperament, the competence, the intelligence, and the moral character to assume and carry out his duties. A case in point: the complete dereliction of duty during this Covid crisis, which has only accelerated in the post-election period, and resulted thousands upon thousands of additional deaths, the responsibility for which can be laid directly at his feet, along with the dangerous crisis of governance that we are in right now.

     However, we can also say that Democracy died before that, when Mitch McConnell assumed Senate leadership, on January 3, 2015. He stated his main goal: the vindictive (and I believe, racist) determination to ensure failure of the Obama presidency. And Democracy died again and again during his tenure: for example, on March 16, 2016, when Merrick Garland was nominated by Barak Obama for the Supreme Court and McConnell refused to bring the nomination to the floor. Or again on October 26, 2020, when he presided over the confirmation of the theocratic cult member Amy Coney Barret, to replace the noble Ruth Bader Ginsburg on that same court. Or simply: Democracy died every time he refused to bring helpful legislation to the floor of the Senate. This is not about having a “loyal opposition,” helping to ensure that the government in power has some checks and stays in balance. This is about a regressive white man from a small State, illegitimately controlling the legislative agenda for the entire nation, without being elected to do so.

     Perhaps it was the Supreme Court itself that inflicted a death, in its Citizens United decision of January 21, 2010, when it struck down restrictions on “independent expenditures from corporate treasures,” thereby affirming that corporations would be unfettered in spending and bribing in their efforts to cultivate favour and direct legislative benefit toward themselves.

     We could say that Democracy died the day that Newt Gingrich became House Speaker on January 3, 1995. He ushered in a new, invigorated era of demagoguery and has never stopped carrying that flag.

     Reflecting on my lifetime, though, I go back further: yes, to the criminality of Richard Nixon; but at least he was found out and summarily (relative to today, that is), resigned rather than facing certain expulsion. (This, of course, is exactly what should happen to the current President, even though Joe Biden is taking over in thirteen days. Donald Trump is unhinged and unfit for office and should be relieved of his duties immediately.)

     But all that aside for now, I would also say that the death of Democracy occurred on August 12, 1986, when then President Reagan said: “The most terrifying words in the English language are: ‘I’m from the government and I’m here to help.’ ” People chuckled and nodded their heads upon hearing this nefarious witticism, but Reagan had planted a most destructive seed. Since that time, many Americans have turned away from an ideal: turned away from the idea of good, helpful, fair, and honourable government as a venerable and worthy institution.

     The culmination of this was yesterday, when an ignorant, vicious mob disrupted the ceremonial duties of government – aided and abetted by the President himself as well by at least six Republican Senators and one hundred and forty Republican Representatives, including mine, Elise Stefanik, who voted to overturn the election results.

     And so, what now?

     Well, some would say that Democracy also lived yesterday. Despite all, the will of the people was affirmed, the voting result of the archaic[i] Electoral College was ratified. The Representatives and the Senators reconvened as soon as they were able, and over the objection of their less-than-honourable colleagues, did their duty in the wee hours of the night. It was a remarkable affirmation.

     And one way or another, the current occupant of the White House and his corrupt family will be gone in less than two weeks. There is reason to hope and reason to believe in the resilience of the country, and that the United States will continue with its aspiration [ii] to become a real Democracy. The country has elected a President this time who is the very embodiment of decency, who more than anything works to bring out the best in us. And we have elected a Vice-President who champions justice and affirms the ambitions and capabilities of women – and men – everywhere, of all creeds and colours and ethnicities. And so, there is much to celebrate.

     But I cannot say that I am entirely optimistic. The Trump supporters who believe the lie that the election was stolen, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary, are still here. Their signs remain in their yards nearby my home, even today. I find myself struggling to find a way to understand and accept this. Also, the White Supremacists, the Misogynists, the Haters, the Militias, the Theocratic Evangelicals, the Conspiracy Believers are all still here. They are not going anywhere. I, and we, must find a way to limit their toxicity.  

    So, what, in the end, can we think and do? Rather than embrace blind optimism, I would rather abide by the words of Antonio Gramsci, who was imprisoned by the Fascists in Italy and died eventually because of the deterioration of his health and the neglect of same by his jailers. Of course, I do not embrace his Marxist philosophy, but I find a famous aphorism that he was fond of quoting to be helpful in a time like this. [iii]

     Gramsci advocated “pessimism of the intellect,” along with “optimism of the will.”   Pessimism of the intellect:  things will not get better by themselves. They will not even get better once and for all.  Optimism of the will:  we must never give up in the face of these setbacks. We must be unyielding in our striving for what is good, what is decent, what is fair and just.  We must help the Nation take its steps from an aspiring Democracy, to an actual one. In the face of darkness, it is sometimes all we can do is keep the lights on and try again in the light of morning.

     My heart is bitter today. In my weakness, I can only reach for inspiration from the great ones: Mahatma Gandhi, Nelson Mandela, Susan B. Anthony, Jane Addams, Martin Luther King, and the young Nobel prize laureate, Malala Yousafzai. I do not have their capacity, I do not have their courage, and I certainly do not have their love. But I can, at least, aspire to these.

     And we, as a people, can continue to aspire to Democracy, to go forward, and not only for our citizens, but all of humanity, to achieve a more perfect union.       

PSC

January 7, 2021

_____________________________________________

[i] More on this another time.

[ii] More on this, too, another time. It is true that formally, the U.S. is the oldest intentional aspiring Democracy, but it is not yet fully one.

[iii] He attributed this to the novelist, Romain Rolland.