On Burnout: "Can" is the New "Should"

I started reading about burnout when I walked away from teaching earlier than expected. Suddenly, I couldn't bring myself to open that door after over thirty years of bounding to work. A series of events wiped away any sense of agency, fairness, or shared values. Their wellness lunch-and-learns didn't help me, and I soon discovered I'm not alone.

An article published in JAMA last June looked at rising rates of burnout in healthcare, where 40% of physicians surveyed intended to leave their practice. They suggest, "To prevent a health care worker exodus, experts argue that the emphasis needs to shift from individual resilience to broader system-level improvements." They are looking for standardized methods to affect organizational management with "evidence-based interventions."  

Over 25 years ago, Michael Leiter and Christina Maslach came to the same conclusion. They identified six areas of worklife affecting burnout and created a specific assessment for educators. They determined the cause to be a "mismatch" between employee expectations and employer behaviours leading workers to be closer to the bleak end of a continuum from burned out to engaged. They suggest that "the task for organizations and individuals is to achieve a resolution." This is not just a matter of throwing wellness initiatives or resilience-speak into the mix, but addressing any reasonable expectations of employees with appropriate employer interventions in all six interrelating areas. 

click for clarity

Feels vindicating, right?!

Avoiding the Consequences

Our inability to measure long term consequences from short term gains will be the death of us. Covid,  climate change, and conflict are holding a mirror to our collective behaviours.

Henry Madison wrote about the shift back to normal that's essentially pushing us off a cliff towards the default normal we had prior to this century:

"As Max Planck famously observed, social change mostly happens not because of thought and innovation; it happens because one generation dies with its ideas, and the next then gets to run with its own ideas. (The reason institutions are so crucial is that they allow ideas to transcend generations.) So during that great peace and prosperity post-WW2, whole generations forgot what created it: Massive public investment and action. The new elite generation that came to power in the 1970s forgot that and began a process of erasing all of those 19th and 20th century public health and welfare actions: What we now call the birth of 'neoliberalism' and libertarian politics. Just names really; you need to zoom out to see the true social movement it represents. It's societies' most common form throughout all of human history: feudalism topped by some form of monarchial figure. That monarch can be a president too. The US presidency is the most regal figure of power in the world today; populism has transformed that democracy back into the social form the US had desperately tried to escape. The main point is that Covid inaction is just one further part of this same movement that's been going on for over 50 years: The removal of the 'public', an invention of the late-19th and 20th centuries, to restore societies to the form they'd had for centuries previously."

I've recently written more about that we've barely ever managed to creep out of feudalistic systems before we're swept back under again. It seems to be too much of a draw for the powerful to sacrifice the many for their own overwhelming gains, so the people have to continuously work for equity. If we relax for a second, we go under.

Spread the Word, Not the Virus

We've been behind the curve on Covid mitigations. At this point, we should be able to see the error in removing masks, right?!

When the wastewater data and/or hospitalization rates are low but STARTING to rise, that's when we need masks to be mandated. Instead, we wait until hospitals are overflowing to suggest maybe, if it's not too much trouble, we could put them on. And, as soon as cases start to decline, we take them off again, which makes cases rise again, ad infinitum. At the very least you'd think hospitals could keep them on permanently. 

Chesterfield Royal Hospital in England got trounced after making this statement:

"Clinical update: Masks - Recently we re-introduced mask wearing for everyone in clinical areas. We are pleased to say that we have had no outbreaks during this time and sickness and respiratory illness rates have now dropped significantly. This reduction means that we are now ceasing the requirements to wear masks in clinical areas."

It's getting harder and harder to tell reality from parody anymore:

On Legislating Kindness

If kind, other-centred behaviour isn't entirely natural to us, then should it be legislated (more than it already is)?

Many old timey philosophers agree that happiness is predicated on an increase in pleasure and decrease in pain, and that just seem like common sense. Yet all too often the choices we make don’t lead towards our intended outcome of increased pleasure; instead, we make choices that lead us towards misery. We want a clean world, but we drive everywhere. We want a strong uptown core, but we don’t stop shopping at Wal-Mart. We want civilization to continue with beautiful nature to hike in and plentiful conveniences, but we're definitely not about to stop using fossil fuels or eating beef. 

Plato might say our problem is that we don’t have the skill of measurement, and he'd call for better education. Epicurus called the same thing a lack of prudence, and he ditched the city to live in a garden with a careful selection of friends. And B.F. Skinner would agree that our immediate reinforcers or punishers seem much larger than distant rewards and punishments. It all boils down to a society full of people making poor choices. Most of us. There are some people who measure well because they seem to just care more about making wise decisions while the rest can’t be bothered to worry about long-term consequences. I think what makes the difference between those that measure well and those that don’t isn’t so much a skill they learned, but a personal disposition they inherited.

Which mean it's a fools errand to try to teach it.

Should Schools have A/C?

Or do we need hot days to be considered "bad weather" days and just close the schools? 

And do we need to re-think how we do school - and civilization - entirely as we start to feel the effects of climate change?

I was always bothered when the main office, where admin lives, had A/C while the classrooms did not. I'm not sure how frequently that happens, but their early justification, that they all have computers in there that need to stay cool, no longer holds much water as all the kids carry laptops or chromebooks to each class. All classrooms have computers in them that need to stay cool. And people.

As a teacher I used to come in at 6 am to open the windows in my classroom and the classroom across the hall for a good two hours before kids started to come in. Understandably, windows have to stay closed at night for security reasons. Just that tiny effort that afforded me two quiet hours to get my marking down, was enough that kids commented on how cool my room was still in the last period of the day. A former custodian used to open up the receiving doors in the morning to air out the school and turn off half the hallway lights. I mentioned that to the new head custodian, and she was quite certain that didn't ever happen and that it would do nothing to help. She was wrong, but she's in charge.

It's amazing what fresh air can do!

The Polycrisis and Planetary Palliative Care

Dr. Thomas Homer-Dixon and Johan Rockström wrote about the "Cascade of Crises" we're experiencing right now. They discuss global hunger, people forced to moved, political authoritarianism, violations of human rights, violent demonstrations, ongoing conflict. They point to three things: the magnitude of consumption, vastly greater connectivity among our economic and social systems, and risk synchronization. Since everyone is specialized, we don't have experts that can analyze all the connections. They advocate for creating a consortium for this. But can we do it fast enough?  

The two biggest issues right now, climate change and covid, are revealing an ongoing inability for our society to make wise decisions in the face of calamity, which may be leading us to a collapse of this civilization. But acknowledging that possibility doesn't mean giving up or hiding out. Perhaps if we accept (or just believe) that we're nearing the end, we can shift our priorities enough to usher in a more peaceful and equitable denouement.

Some recent climate change articles are painting a frighteningly bleak picture. At the Paris Agreement in 2015, countries around the world signed on to reduce greenhouse gases (GHGs) in order to cap warming at 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels by 2030. It's become clear that we won't be able to make it. 

Current pledges for action by 2030, if delivered in full, would mean a rise in global heating of about 2.5°C and catastrophic extreme weather around the world. . . . Global emissions must fall by almost 50% by that date to keep the 1.5°C target alive. . . . We had our chance to make incremental changes, but that time is over. 

The climate crisis has been a test of our ability to put long term collective needs over individual desires, and we failed miserably. It's no wonder we're not sufficiently mitigating SARS-CoV-2. Despite all our knowledge and technology and ability, we just don't want to be inconvenienced. 

On Slippery Arguments and Equity at Google

You can read most of the infamous Google memo here, and for the record, I don't think opening up this discussion should be a fireable offence, but I'm just concerned with this one piece of the puzzle right now:

"the distribution of preferences and abilities of men and women differ in part due to biological causes and these differences may explain why we don't see equal representation of women in tech and leadership."

David Brooks calls this "championing scientific research."

But consider this analogy. Walk into an art gallery full of art by Picasso, Monet, Dali, Van Gogh...  It is the case that men and women have some inherent differences on average; that claim has some validity. There are certainly more differences among the groups that between them, but there's still a difference however slight. BUT it doesn't follow that that's why we don't see equal representation in an art gallery. It's clearly not the case that women inherently, evolutionarily, don't prefer the arts and don't have any artistic talent. We can see that so clearly and easily because we are well aware that over the past centuries few women were allowed near a book much less a paintbrush.

We're far enough away from that museum scenario to really shake our head at the blatant injustices that produced such disparate results. However, as a society, we're apparently not quite able to step back and recognize the profound level of inequity that has created current gender distribution in the world of high tech.

On Community, Again

I just read local author Paul Born’s Deepening Community. In places, it’s very close to what I’ve written about in terms of ensuring that we’re kind to one another at the very end. He doesn’t skirt around the issue that we’re in dire straights and that we can choose how to behave when push comes to shove. (But I think he should have called the book, The Born Community.)













I've written about community before, and I'm going to say much of the same thing here but in many, many more words!  There are pictures and video clips to break it up. (I included headings for clarity and page numbers throughout - where I remembered.)   I aim to critique Born's book while trying to get to the bottom of what can be done to foster a cohesive sense of belonging and caring spanning the globe.  I'm using Born's book as as starting point, but I don't have all the solutions.  I'm ever in the process of seeking.

Paradigm Shift in Climate Change Policy

In the news, Caroline Lucas, in The Guardian says one good policy isn't enough; we need a paradigm shift:

"Rather than simply looking for one headline-grabbing policy, the government should be embarking on a paradigm shift when it comes to how we get about in this country. ...Ultimately we need a green transport revolution, not another tinker with a transport system that’s creaking. Let’s aim for towns and cities that are easily navigable by foot and bike, a fully electric and publicly owned train system that covers the country, and local public transport that’s a joy to use – rather than the overpriced, unreliable service that’s currently on offer in so many places."

And Brad Plumer, in the NYTimes, says California is making that shift:

"The state plans to rethink every corner of its economy, from urban planning to dairy farms....If California prevails, it could provide a model for other policy makers, even as President Trump scales back the federal government’s efforts on climate change. The state may also develop new technologies that the rest of the world can use to cut emissions....The state’s emissions are nearly back to 1990 levels... and it has installed as many solar panels as the rest of the country combined....The board envisioned the number of electric cars and other zero-emissions vehicles on California’s roads rising to 4.2 million by 2030 from 250,000 today. Freight trucks would have to become more efficient or electrified, while cities would need to adopt far-reaching strategies to promote mass transit, biking and walking."

I love that they both mention cycling. I'm not convinced cap and trade will save us, as Plumer suggests, but it's all a start. We're not at that paradigm moment yet, but at least our heads are turned in the right direction:

"There may well be an art whose aim would be to effect this very thing, the conversion of the soul, in the readiest way; not to put the power of sight into the soul's eye, which already has it, but to ensure that, instead of looking in the wrong direction, it is turned the way it ought to be." - Plato's Republic, book 7
 

On Bertrand Russell's The Conquest of Happiness

Some  Russell quotations have been floating around lately, so I read The Conquest of Happiness, first published in 1930, and, boy, did I need this right now! The main ideas and some bits I liked are below by chapter. The book is really just a mix of Stoicism and Epicureanism, so you could just read that instead, but they're not nearly as palatable. This summary is really long, but not nearly as long as the book!


Part I: Causes of Unhappiness

1: What Makes People Unhappy? 

This chapter has some racist bit, but I imagine he was still more progressive than most at the time. We won't throw the baby out with the bathwater at any rate. He raises his thesis here: we can only be happy by being prudent with desires and by focusing outward. 

If We Could Be as Smart as Frogs

I regularly tell students about our likely future. It's often met with skepticism, so I provide lots of citations from the IPCC and NASA. Then I sometimes get a lecture on being so doom and gloom. Denial is our go-to defence against reality. But for whose benefit? It's just for our own short term enjoyment at the expense of our long term survival. But we can so easily enjoy our lives without so much of the crap we've come to take as necessary to our happiness. Well, some of us better than others, I suppose. People don't want to think about the effect their choices have on the future. It feels uncomfortable to think about how bad it might be. And our culture is awash in the view that anything that causes anxiety is a bad thing. But it's so much easier to cope with knowing, to cope with some anxiety over it all today, than trying to figure out how to cope with the burgeoning ravages of climate change.

Denialists, and those who believe yet continue to hush the messengers because they're not quite ready to hear it (There will be time, There will be time...), are the frogs that refuse to budge from the boiling pot.

Rupert Read, British philosopher and politician, recently gave a grim opening address to a group of first year students but added the message that frogs in gradually warming water actually jump out! He's hopeful that we can be so smart.

He has a two-point plan to change our culture of recklessness.

1. Use the precautionary principle that state where there is a risk of serious harm, then you don't need to wait for full scientific proof to act on that harm by taking strong, precautionary action. We're wasting too much time waiting for categorical proof when we need to act now. If this becomes a guiding principle, then the world and its prognosis will begin to look very different.

2. Create a Guardians of Future Generations panel. We're stuck in short term misreasoning (and have been for 2500 years according to Plato). Politicians have even shorter time horizons; they don't think past the next news cycle. We need a change to make it necessary to think long term. Imagine if your children and their children were here with us now, and consider what they would tell us to do and not do. We need a proxy institution to create that idea - a third house of parliament with representatives of future generations with the power to strike down any idea that could recklessly damage the future. Plato would say it should be made up of the philosophers. Reed thinks it should be a random selection of the population to maintain the democratic system.

With the number of people I know who are just beginning to recycle because the new garbage restrictions have finally forced the issue, and the number who want me to stop talking about the problems with GHGs long enough for them to effectively re-sheath their lifestyle in ignorance to their own effects on the world, I'm with Plato on this one.

The Tao cautions that we should accept the trajectory of the universe because it's arrogant to think we can fix it. George Carlin says the same thing. It's a calming philosophy. Hope that we can do something makes me anxious. Hope means we have to keep fighting, keep doing our part in how we live, in how we vote, in the letters we write, and in our attempts to get others to do the same, to join the quest for a better world - a survivable world. Accepting that we can't change means accepting the end of our species. I'm not ready for that yet.

Anyway, here's the video of his talk. It's only 12 minutes.

On the Philosophy of Mr. Money Moustache

A friend pointed me towards this podcast in which Tim Ferriss interviews Mr. Money Moustache (MMM), a man who retired from work in his 30s to live on the interest from his investments and then got a significant following as a blogger.

The podcast describes the kind of life I've tried to live (except for that early retirement bit), and MMM talks about ideas I've been writing about for ages. I'm successful in actually following some parts of this lifestyle and horribly disappointing in others. Like me, he loves to build things, and I'm going to have his explanation for why he doesn't love travelling at the ready next time I'm asked why I don't travel: he gets his joy from creating, which isn't travel-friendly. Absolutely!

He hates cars as much as I do, and cautions, "You should never get a job that requires you to drive to it." Once I started a permanent job, I moved closer to it to cut my daily travel time down to a ten minute walk. People don't do things like that anymore. He thinks walking is the best medicine in the world. Tim adds, "We've evolved to be able to walk very long distances. Humans are better humans, less neurotic, when they walk a lot."

MMM's billboard of choice.

Swiss Army Man

I first saw this at the theatre and, despite the fact that it starts with a whole lot of farting in a wide variety of tones and tempos, the ending had me in tears. I highly recommend it. The surface story is about Hank, trapped on a deserted island - sort of - who finds a dead body, Manny, who slowly comes back to life - sort of, and they try to get back home in a Wizard of Oz kind of way. Here are a few different things I think it could be about; I'll likely read much into it because it had me thinking and questioning at every turn. Authorial intention be damned! There are a ton of spoilers, but they won't really ruin anything. This is a film that can be watched over and over.

Is This the Sixth Estate?

The "Fourth Estate" is an antiquated term for unofficial social and political forces, primarily the media. Use of the term recognized, over two centuries ago, that the media affect social change. But once that became clear, it became a tool of the establishment. The church, politicians, and corporations started using the media to sway the public. Then the "Fifth Estate" was born. This is alternative media that often work against newly labeled "mainstream" news sources to show a level of truth or depth not seen. We came to assume that these sources, unaffected by the man, could actually be trusted.

But the new fake news (that's not billed as satire) is a different beast. It's not from the establishment or the counter-establishment. For the most part, it seems it's from individual mischief-makers who want their time in the sun. It's not a means to show truth; it's anti-truth. It's total crap. It's not propaganda for any side so much as it's childish fibbing that plays on whatever people hate. More anger equals more clicks. Whether for ad revenue or just a base desire for popularity, it feeds the individual who can create convincing stories. It's the ultimate in individualism for a single citizen or small group of citizens to be able to influence the masses through a little creative writing.

It's not new as a concept; there have always been snake oil salesmen. When the internet first got going, I discounted so many claims from students about things like KFC raising headless chickens and people selling human meat online. It took many lessons to convince them of the inaccuracy of the sites and to be wary of what they read. And way back then - it must have been about twenty years ago - we started talking about digital literacy. Somehow it didn't take in the way it should have. And before we were on solid ground, ready and able to recognize accurate new sources for ourselves, this new breed of misinformation came out: better disguised and less outrageous. It could be true, and we're way too busy to fact check it to find out.

This reality is important enough to be discussed by Obama, but he didn't say much more than "If we can't discriminate between serious arguments and propaganda, then we have problems....In an age where we have so much misinformation, and it's packaged very well....then we won't know what to fight for." Well, yup. So what do we do about it?

Some people blame Facebook for allowing fake news to be published. But Facebook isn't a peer-reviewed journal. It's supposed to be an open arena for views. (The algorithms that feed us news in a self-perpetuating bubble is a different problem that runs counter to the open forum idea.) They're not going to allow ads on sites with misleading information now, as a bit of a concession. But if we want it to stay relatively open and uncensored, then we have to be able to filter crap ourselves.

Snowden got in on the discussion suggesting Facebook shouldn't be our only news source, but Facebook isn't one source, it's a collection of news sources that varies dramatically depending on who you like and follow. Most of us already filter our own information by reading from select journalists or publications or only following people who we think will provide accurate news. A quick glance at my own Facebook feed has a Politico article followed by a New Yorker, then NYTimes, and Counter Current News, and CBC News, and IFLScience, and Climate Reality forwarded a Guardian piece. I find Facebook, like Twitter, to be a great venue for news because I've set it up to be. I don't use it as much to connect with friends, and I'm pretty brutal about unfollowing people who post pictures of their meals. Lots of people are reading crap because they want shorter reads with more pictures and lots of drama. People want news to be entertaining.

Neil Postman (who was quoted at length by Chris Hedges - h/t Owen] recognized the prescience of Aldous Huxley's Brave New World. Huxley predicted that we've have so much information, it would render us passive, and we'd be "drowned in a sea of irrelevance." We have become the trivial culture he feared, ruined by our own desires. But Plato warned of that too, suggesting that our inability to properly measure short and long-term desires would be the end of us. We've been warned over and over for thousands of years. This is a frightening part of our own nature that seems virtually inescapable. We're largely idiots: self-centred and easily amused. I'm not sure we can be saved from ourselves.

But we can try, dammit!

Most importantly, I believe, who we think is reputable varies dramatically. What I see as the real source of the current problem it that any disagreement with outrageous claims is seen by some as a mere bias against that side rather than an argument against the claim. The most important and often the most difficult concepts to teach are "bias" and "opinion." It takes a lot of work to teach that at the grade 12 level, and it would help if it could be taught and reinforced earlier. It would help if it was a significant part of teacher's college lessons to ensure that all teachers are fluent in the terms.

I'd argue in favour of calling out bogus claims, and I do think that's important, but often it leads to bizarre accusations and hateful replies. I'm the first to jump on misattributed quotations, but moving beyond that requires a significant level of courage to be willing to stand up against an army of irrational detractors. I don't always have big enough balls for that. It would be so much easier if we all had basic skills in the dialectical method.

We have a push towards teaching critical thinking in schools, but most critical thinking discussions seem to focus on metacognition instead. It's to the point that I wonder if the board actually wants us to teach critical thought. Metacognition has us acknowledging what we're thinking as we're working through a problem. Critical thinking has us evaluating every claim and every thought we have as a response to each claim. It takes a depth of thought few want to explore. Difficult skills can be boring until we hit a baseline level of success. A few people dropped my philosophy course this term, as they always do, and I asked, "How much more time consuming is this course that people choose it to be the one to ditch?" Students answered that it's not any more time consuming at all, it's just a different level of thought that nobody's used to accessing. It's a whole new skill to question everything - in grade 12. That's more disappointing to me. I want them to question everything from kindergarten! Not just randomly arguing for the sake of being contrary, but clearly developing a line of reasoning that would have us accept or deny a claim.

I've had many arguments with educated people who get annoyed when I dismantle their arguments using the tools I learned in philosophy. That argument is a mere assertion; the other one an ad hominem; this last one an appeal to consensus....  People don't like their views questioned. They don't want to provide supports or reasoned arguments. They just want you to nod your head and admire their brilliance. I had one friend recently tell me he's "not into all that logic stuff." To me, that claim is similar to someone discounting his corrected grammar because he's not into all that grammar stuff. There are specific tools to be used when examining factual claims and arguments that we can all learn in grade school to ensure that what we're saying makes sense. But then it takes a bit more effort to develop arguments, and that's not as much fun (well, for most people).

The President of Ireland agrees:

The teaching of philosophy is one of the most powerful tools we have at our disposal to empower children into acting as free and responsible subjects in an ever more complex, interconnected and uncertain world,” Mr Higgins said. “A new politics of fear, resentment and prejudice against those who are not ‘like us’ requires the capacity to critique, which an early exposure to the themes and methods of philosophy can bring.”

I'd like to live in a society full of people willing and able to thoughtfully examine ideas - their own and others'. But an educated society is difficult to placate and pacify. Beer and circuses for the masses it is!

On Justice and Hatred

I had an online discussion at Dawg's Blawg about the primary theme of Tarantino's newest film, The Hateful Eight, and it got a bit too provocative to manage a sincere response in the window of a comment, so I brought it here. Unfortunately I can't discuss the ideas without spoiling the film, so do see it first before continuing to read. This is a movie you won't want spoiled.

The film traps ten characters in a cabin in the middle of a blizzard: two bounty hunters, a prisoner, a Sheriff, a General, four disguised gang members out to free the prisoner (one in hiding), and the coach driver. The coach driver, O.B., clearly doesn't count in the hateful eight, but it's debatable which miscreant is excluded from the tally. The movie poster above suggests the hidden outlaw doesn't rate regardless his acts of violence, but John Ruth is the only one that doesn't actually shoot anyone.

First of all, a few things stood out to me as I watched. The film celebrates ruggedness and tenacity. Daisy, the prisoner, garners our respect for being able to take a punch with a wicked little smile. She is one tough cookie. The bounty hunters argue over the merits of John Ruth's insistence on taking prisoners in alive for the hangman as opposed to Major Warren's refusal to work harder than necessary for the same pay. I'm not convinced Ruth is more moral, but that he better enjoys the game of bringing his work to its final conclusion, perhaps of toying with his prey. But this lengthy discussion serves to open the question of the right way to complete a despicable act such as watching a woman die, which, I'd argue, primes the audience to consider the type of morality necessary within a sphere of the kind of harsh reality expected of this setting. This is key.

O.B. is the only soft character in the bunch. He can barely tolerate the cold much less any violence. He's the designated "bitch" of the group, sent on errands he barely manages. One outlaw kindly offers him food, but a little later another poisons him. His softness warrants him no favours.

The film also celebrates cunning. The Sheriff is on to Warren and outs his Lincoln-letter ruse to the cabin, but later he commends the little touches included in the piece of writing. There are all sorts of cleverness and sneaky goings-on here.

Also notable to me was the spotlight cast on the many documents of import: the Lincoln-letter, the bounty hunters' respective warrants, and the faux hangman's order of execution. These acted as proof of the acceptable boundaries of their brutal behaviours and the respect duly afforded to them.

There were curious little loyalties among the group, spoken or unspoken contracts. The outlaws were tight and purposeful. The General was keeping their secret on a promise of being released at the end. The two bounty hunters made a deal to watch over either other's bounty. And Ruth and Daisy, although the most brutal relationship, show a camaraderie from time to time, like when he genially offered her a shot of whiskey and drinks with her.

One of the gang members, Oswaldo, playing the part of a licensed hangman, gave a speech about the necessity of cool heads in the pursuit of justice. He argues that the hangman's impartiality is what makes a hanging moral: "The good part about frontier justice is it’s very thirst-quenching. The bad part is, it’s apt to be wrong as right." It's the dispassionate act of killing that makes it more likely to be a moral act. But the courthouse is just another venue where a good story can win the case, and many characters here might be spinning a convincing tale. The fun in the film is figuring what's actually true, and not everything is clarified by the end.

And at the end, against Warren's first impulse to put a quick bullet into her, the Sheriff insist on stringing up Daisy under the guise of right action because it follows the letter of the law, yet clearly there was some joy garnered in watching her dance. That was a mere show of morality hiding an ulterior motive.


So, here's how I understand it all: We can't know what really is right or wrong in many cases. We can't deliver justice accurately, with any certainty, even in a court of law. Justice is a slippery notion and relative to each perspective. It's not to say it can't be found, but that it can't be done easily or with certainty, and I'm not convinced the justice metered out by a society is necessarily more fair than that determined by individuals within the claustrophobic confines of a cabin.

With respect to the debate at Dawg's Blawg, Dawg argues that the theme of the film is hatred, but I see the slipperiness of justice dominating scenes far more prevalently. By way of comparison, The Revenant was a movie about hatred. One character is driven by hate from the pivotal act of injustice to the very end. I think it can be argued that the deaths in The Hateful Eight are from a sense of survival of the self or a kinship affiliation; sometimes the murders were awash in hatred, but that hatred wasn't the primary motive of most of the acts. The film is a symposium of sorts with each key player bringing his or her own philosophy of justice to the fore leaving the audience to sort out the coherence of each claim, and a variety claims to justice do exist. Keep in mind Plato argued in favour of slavery: "Justice consists in the superior ruling over and having more than the inferior" (Gorgias section 483). It's an argument we abhor now, but there it is, on the table with the rest of the ideas.

From the outlaw perspective, saving one of their own is an act of bravery. They murdered many innocents before the beginning of the story, then continued as necessary toward their final end of freeing Daisy. Dawg suggests "Their casual killing highlights the underlying theme of hatred," and, in the comments refers to hatred as "the binary opposite of love." None of these murders was an act of hatred, but of indifference, which I'd argue is the antithesis of love. The moral fortitude of the outlaws was such that two of the gang members, Gage and Jody, gave themselves up to Warren as soon as Daisy's life was threatened.

When O.B. and Ruth are mysteriously poisoned, Warren doesn't open fire on the unarmed suspects or threaten them with torturous acts, but lines them up for questioning. He has a different set of rules than us civilized folk, but he's still operating within a system. One notion of justice is that we respect other's free actions without interference unless they violate other's rights. In that respect, he acted justly.

Warren kills the General, but it's not an impassioned acting out, but a patient game of preventing the General's hot revenge against him for a provocative tale. He manipulated the situation so he wasn't directly punishing the General for the inequities of years past but for taking aim to shoot at him. Now this was an act awash in hatred. Hatred demands pain and suffering - the kind Warren imposed on the General by implanting a horrific final memory, and the kind Warren and the Sheriff put Daisy through when an expedient death was a far easier and more merciful option. But the rest of the killings were basically collateral damage in the quest for life.

If they all acted from hatred, we might expect more torturous scenes. However, for the sake of argument, if we accept hatred as the opposite of love, then consider how a cast acting from loving kindness might behave in each situation. Warren might forgive the General his transgressions and the many derogatory comments he was asked to endure. The gang members might trap the household in the stable with adequate provisions and enable them to be found long after they escape with Daisy. And if they were caught, Warren and Ruth might have brought the outlaws to be held in a prison where they could be rehabilitated without risking harm to anyone. It might look something like O Brother Where Art Thou, a lovely film, but then we wouldn't get to see their heads blow off!

The discussion that precipitated this post ended with Dawg's very provocative point:

"Justice, to me, is based upon a social contract, and this was the most anti-social bunch of miscreants imaginable! I am wondering if we unconsciously expect hatred to be enacted in anger, given how bound up in destructive violence it is. Yet Eichmann did not strike me as an angry man. He was, however, enacting hatred at Auschwitz."

I'm not sure the analogy rings true unless we look at it from the point of view that Eichmann was working to rid his society of a perceived "Jewish Problem," and the bounty hunters were working to rid their society of the outlaw problem. Clearly these differ in that outlaws, by definition, have done some damage to society than requires punishing consequences. But they're similar in so far as the murderers are, within the perception of each time and place, acting for the greater good of their society (of their people). The law, acting from the power given it by the people, put those names on paper, not the bounty hunters. They merely acted as agents of the law - so long as they had those warrants in their pockets.

This brings it all back to the slipperiness of justice. Is the social contract the objectively true determinant of Justice, or is it just the best we've got so far? And the more I think of it, the more it occurs to me the film really is a mirror of Plato's Symposium with arguments of justice in place of love and certain death replacing party crashers ending the final scene! Cool.

ETA - Check out this review too!

On Those Statues Again

the first statue

There are dueling petitions out to continue and to stop statues of all 22 prime ministers being planted on the grounds of Wilfrid Laurier University, my old school that I loved all to bits. I wrote about this statue project on its inception two years ago. The statues were originally to be set up at Victoria Park, but a survey of our citizens showed 79% rejected the idea. This debate has made news at The Star, The National Post, and The Globe and Mail, where one professor noted,

"Parliament wants to encourage the participation of diverse groups for the 150th celebrations. No one here was asked what they wanted,” said Nelson Joannette, a history professor at the university. . . . "Imagine any other marginalized group walking around campus and seeing those 22 monuments celebrating great white leaders. What kind of message does that communicate? It flies in the face of what contemporary universities are about." 

I talked to my grade 10 students about this issue. They were in full support of the project, but their arguments are telling. They more vocal respondents fell along two lines:

1. "If it's free, then it's good. If someone wants to give you something for free, you'd be crazy not to take it."

The fact that it's privately funded takes away some of the concern of taxpayers, but it raises a different issue. Should wealthy benefactors be allowed to dictate the art that permanently represents our city? As Joannette suggests, if we want to celebrate the 150th anniversary of Canada, our voices should all be heard with respect to what type of display is warranted. Our voices were heard once in this city, and now the majority that protested the statues is being ignored.

2. "I don't see a problem with the First Nation issue. It was so long ago, who really cares about that anymore?"

Yikes! And, exactly. People don't get the connections and the long strings of history that sit behind the current occupation of land, and they don't understand problems with some of the policies of the past that have left a lasting negative impact on our nation. Missing and Murdered Indigenous  Women and the disproportional number of Indigenous people in jails are just skimming the surface of the number of problems created by colonization.

I recognize that we have to understand people's lives within a historical context, much as I praise some of Plato's work even though he was cool with slavery. We can't attack their entire body of work because of one piece. But some PMs don't have much of a piece to praise, certainly not compared to other Canadians focused more on social reform than personal status.

Some American cities have been taking down confederate memorials. It's curious we'd want to put up something that could be seen as glorifying a dark history, just as our neighbours are becoming more enlightened.

And our own Luisa D'Amato tried to explain the problems with the opposition to the statue project:

It will be one of the ways that visitors, students and employees get information, both critical and supportive, about the behaviour and legacy of that prime minister. Perhaps a conversation or two will happen. "We're not trying so much to celebrate as we've tried to document," said one of the proponents of this privately funded project, Jim Rodger.

They want to display the PMs with warts and all to elicit further discussion about our history. The problem with Rodger's argument is that he wants to change the meaning of erecting a statue, but we can't arbitrarily change the symbolic vernacular of a culture. We don't look at statues and think, "This group of people obviously wanted to discuss this person further." Culturally, we understand statues to be a commemoration. We can't just change that definition as it suits us.

We should celebrate people who have sacrificed and fought in order to help our nation flourish. Terry Fox, the Famous Five, and Shannen Koostachin are good examples. Being a politician that gets to the top through trickery, dumb luck, or honourable means shouldn't be enough to warrant a bronze legacy. Some politicians fight for the top position for power and prestige, not necessarily to make Canada a better nation. Title alone doesn't make one laudable.

If the statues are about learning about history, then a smaller version of the statues could sit in a display travelling through museums and galleries across Canada. As a temporary display, people will come to see the statues when they're near where they can remark on the trajectory through one PM to another and look for the hidden iconography of the pieces. Maybe they can end up housed in the foyer of Kitchener's The Museum. In a museum, they are clearly an educational tool. As public art, they are celebrations of former Canadians. There's no getting around that.

D'Amato closes with these words: "When people at a university start instantly dismissing something because it makes them uncomfortable, that makes me uncomfortable."

Professors openly discussing and debating an issue in the news is not the same as "instantly dismissing" them. They're presenting their views for larger consideration, and the debate will continue.

But what's really interesting to me about this issue, is how passionately I feel about it. Beyond all the rational discourse, it should be noted that I am shaking with rage at the very idea that a statue commemorating Stephen Harper could go up in MY city. After all he has done to destroy what made Canada great, if he is to be celebrated here, then I WILL MOVE!

Just sayin'.


ETA this on Cornwallis statue in Halifax.

On Measuring Well

In Plato's Protagoras, Socrates and Protagoras argue over the language Protagoras uses to explain what happens when, as he describes it, pleasure overtakes reason and people make horrible choices.  Socrates insists that it's not pleasure that overtakes reason, but ignorance.  Here's some key bits of the passage:

They maintain that there are many who recognize the best but are unwilling to act on it. It may be open to them, but they do otherwise. Whenever I ask what can be the reason for this, they answer that those who act in this way are overcome by pleasure or pain or some other of the things I mentioned just now...  

He sets out the problem, and questions how something can be a pleasure if it causes greater pains and deprive us of future pleasures *coughclimatechangecough*.  And he explains the problem like this:    

The same magnitudes seem greater to the eye from near at hand than they do from a distance. This is true of thickness and also of number, and sounds of equal loudness seem greater near at hand than at a distance. If now our happiness consisted in doing, I mean in choosing, greater lengths and avoiding smaller, where would lie salvation? In the art of measurement or in the impression made by appearances? Haven't we seen that the appearance leads us astray and throws us into confusion so that in our actions and our choices between great and small we are constantly accepting and rejecting the same things, whereas the metric art would have canceled the effect of the impression, and by revealing the true state of affairs would have caused the soul to live in peace and quiet and abide in the truth, thus saving our life?' Faced with these considerations, would people agree that our salvation would lie in the art of measurement? ... 

What would assure us a good life then? Surely knowledge, and specifically a science of measurement, since the required skill lies in the estimation of excess and defect... 

...when people make a wrong choice of pleasures and pains--that is, of good and evil--the cause of their mistake is lack of knowledge. We can go further, and call it, as you have already agreed, a science of measurement, and you know yourselves that a wrong action which is done without knowledge is done in ignorance. So that is what being mastered by pleasure really is--ignorance...

"The required skill lies in the estimation of excess and defect."

The entire dialogue has Socrates questioning Protagoras, a sophist, if how to act, or virtue, can actually be taught to people.  Socrates is skeptical.  But then he argues that since being virtuous is contingent on knowledge, and knowledge can be taught, then virtue must be able to be taught.

The fact that this very behaviour has been on trial and discussed and debated for thousands of years and still we haven't found a solution makes me skeptical that it's teachable.  Not to mention the fact that people can know right and still do wrong, as Plato outlined in his Republic during a later period of writing, so people need to be made to do what's right under threat of punishment or exile for the benefit of society as a whole.

So we're horrible at measuring current pleasures against distant pains.  But even if we could, we enjoy doing wrong too much for knowledge alone to lead us down the right path.

Lovely.

We've been over this for thousands of years, yet we still value unfettered lives that lead to unspeakable tragedies, which we call evils, over some measure of restraint which could provide some current deprivations but lead to greater pleasures later.  That which we call the good.

So it goes.

Upset Them at Your Peril

I wrote this back in 2014, but waited to retire to publish it.

Professor Edward Schlosser wrote an interesting piece in Vox about, in part, the power his students have to call the shots these days.  I can attest that it's at best, defeating, and at worst, absolutely terrifying.

First of all, to clarify, my students are typically a delight, but the current system is fostering behaviours that are a serious concern.

I have had some students, 15-19, insist that we have to do something fun on their birthdays.  When I rejected their proposals, it might take several days of arguing at the start of each class before I can convince them it's really not going to happen.  I have to help them get their head around the amount of learning that would be lost if we went off-curriculum every time it's someone's birthday.  I have to help them get their head around the fact that there are other people affected by the decisions we make.  But I also have to, unfortunately, sternly reinforce the novel idea that I alone get to choose what we do each day based on the curriculum guidelines.  They don't get to decide because they might choose what's most fun over what's most educational every day.  Some people are outraged by that reality.

I have had a few students blatantly rude to me, even lying about me to a VP.  When that happens, I call home to discuss the seriousness of it.  In the past few years, calling home has become a growing part of my job, even for kids over 18, for work unfinished, for absences, for work of poor quality, for any questionable behaviour.  There's no point when it's up to the students to take responsibility for themselves and find a solution to their own problem any more.  It's all for the parents and teachers to work out together.  We're treating them like children for longer, and they're responding by acting like children longer. Anyway, sometimes when I call home, it's reinforced that the student has a condition that makes them behave like that, and I'm negligent for not reading their files thoroughly (even if I have).

Then my question becomes:  if someone does something horrid, but it's due to a condition, is it still his/her fault?  With whom does the responsibility sit, or do we just accept bad behaviour because people can't help it anymore because of all their conditions?

It's the Of Mice and Men problem.  If someone's out of control, but can't be helped or stopped, what do we do with them?  But beyond that dilemma, to what extent are we creating these conditions so our kids get special treatment, because I'm not sure it's unusual that about a third of the kids in my school have some kind of documented problem we must accommodate.  By law.  This sometimes means test, exams, and even the literacy test is read aloud for them, and someone writes down their answers, and they're considered literate.  A ridiculous number of high school grads can't actually write for themselves anymore.  They don't have to learn how.  They have to be given scribes - their own personal adult to read and write for them.  Learned helplessness anyone?

Tra la la.

Anyway, it might not seem like such a horrid thing, lying about your teacher to admin, but it could cost me my job if the VP believed some of her stories.  That's a huge concern these days.  It can just take one student to undo decades of work in a career.  Just. One. Student.

I have had some students says bigoted or racist things in class and interrupt the class with loud and lengthy rants. It would be rude of me to interrupt (although I sometimes do anyway). If I send someone to the office, they'll come back minutes late with a form for me to fill in explaining what I could do differently to ensure that they're able to stay in the classroom next time.  And they often have a condition causing that behaviour, so we have to be understanding.

And on the student portion of that form, if there's no pre-existing condition, how often do they write "Distracted by personal problems"?  That's the  get-out-of-work-free excuse of the day.  When I was in school we used, "I had a female problem" to death.  What stops us from telling them they have to do the work anyway?  And if the problem is really serious, they might have to write-off the term and try again later.

I have a condition. But I started school in the 60s, and I was told by my mom to try to fit in so the kids don't tease me too much.  I wasn't entirely successful on that front, so I got spit on and beat up a bit.  And I got chalk whipped at my head by teachers for being such a space cadet, zoning out in class like that.  Weird.  Clearly it's NOT the case that I think any of my students deserve that kind of treatment - at all.  But it IS that case that I worked twice as hard in school as the normal kids to overcome my differences because of the attitudes of parents and teachers - and larger society - at the time.  The bullying and violence aren't acceptable, but that attitude might warrant a second look.

I spent a year one-on-one with a guidance counsellor working on basic eye contact with people.  My default is to look at my shoes when I talk - still, but I got much better at making myself lift my chin and look right at people. Whether or not it's comfortable for me to do that is inconsequential.  I was made to take responsibility for how I behave even though it's harder for me to behave "normally," and, because of that pedagogy, I could interact with other people and get my work done as well as most by the end of high-school without ongoing one-on-one support for each assignment.  That kind of support makes sense in the early years, but at some point shouldn't people have to be able to show they can do the work on their own?  I mean, Helen Keller learned how to read and write, and she had a condition or two to overcome.

Now just suggesting, "I think you can write this short quiz on your own in the classroom instead of going to Learning Services," is enough to get a teacher in trouble for not adhering to the student's IEP.  And if they fail the test, we give them a make-up test.  And if they're in the midst of failing the make-up, we might get a call from their scribe because the student doesn't have a clue, and he can't study because he can't find his notes, and he would be uncomfortable asking another student for notes.  And we might even be asked by the scribe if she could just tell the student all the answers, and have him repeat them back to her for her to write down, and then I could take off a few marks because of this special accommodation.  Really.

We're running within a system that drives that kind of rationalization.  If a student fails, it's because the teacher didn't do everything possible for the student.  If students refuse to work or pay attention in class, at no point is it because the students are lazy or maybe even, dare I say, too weak academically to do the work assigned.  Those are horrible things to say even in the face of slothfulness bordering on the absurd, and suggesting either will get the teacher a meeting with admin to discuss inappropriate behaviour in the classroom - the teacher's inappropriate behaviour.

Students today will need to have their behaviours excused forever.  We make accommodations for them rather than get them to learn the skills necessary to better work within society.  They're not being asked to make significant efforts towards monitoring and altering troubling behaviours because that would upset them.  And upsetting people is mean.

This is a startling short-term view - yet another testament to Plato's belief that we are woefully unskilled at the art of measurement: being able to determine the value of things unaffected by their distance.  Near events are given far greater importance than distant events, which is why we have an environmental crisis, a political crisis, and a crisis in education.

I had a conflict with my 10-year-old yesterday because I wouldn't let her see her friends or go outside until her room was clean enough that she could escape from a fire without tripping on toys.  I'll have you know that I am the meanest mom ever!  But I can accept that title because it'll be better for her in the long run to learn how (through punishment of deprivation of all things) to maintain her room now.

My daughter has a whole host of conditions by today's standards, but she still has to clean her room.  Because of OCPD, to name but one, she can't just tidy a bit; she has to take everything out and put it all back in.  I can see why such a routine task is so onerous for her, but she has to figure out how to deal with her own reality.  Being unfettered by chores because she struggles more isn't an option in my house - except, of course, when she completely wears me down.  But, theoretically, if made to clean enough, she might find a way to rid the perfectionistic nature of her cleaning, or she might just tolerate losing lots of playtime to cleaning.  (Yes, we use CBT too.)

We have to take a long view with kids.  And, luckily, my daughter's shrieks of injustice went unheard by any authority over me.  She might have called F&CS, but they're pretty backlogged, so I was able to do the right thing by her.  I had to tolerate some tears and tumults over the course of a morning, but we both survived.  But too many of us are too thin-skinned or sensitive or something to plug our ears and wait for the crying and tantrums and excuses to end and the work to begin.

But at school, we have to keep them happy during each class or the teachers will be the ones to suffer the consequences.  We can't make demands of them.  I've dumbed down the readings I use because parents have complained about how difficult they are - because they don't learn to really read in school anymore: by that I mean close reading of complex essays.  Nothing may be too difficult because it might be hard on their self-esteem if they can't do it.  And struggling with the challenge of difficult work isn't their forté.

And somehow that's okay.  We are accepting to a fault.

Most worrisome, I have had some students take issue with my lessons because of the "ecology bullshit" I discuss.  During one class a student  demanded that I stop talking about this immediately, and I told him, lucky for him, I was finished with the topic, and we moved on.  Climate change upsets people, so we shouldn't discuss it in school.  For some reason, genocide doesn't upset any of the kids, so we continue to show them the most gruesome videos without complaint - so far.  What I had discussed was in the curriculum, so I felt pretty safe, but it still gave me pause.  Like Professor Schlosser, I worry that I'll teach something that one student can successfully argue shouldn't be taught or said in a classroom, and I'll be gone.  Is it just me, or does that feel a little like a means to keep teachers from really teaching anything controversial of importance?  And I don't write under a pseudonym, so I'm pushing the boundaries a little here - maybe more than is wise, but it's important we turn this around.  But I have a condition that makes it so I don't always understand what's acceptable, so it's okay, right?

Clearly this fear teachers face will not make our education system world-standing, nor will it make our students responsible, well-educated adults.  It might mean classes are more entertaining and less unsettling, challenging, and provocative though.  But getting students to enjoy school and getting students to enjoy learning are two different things.  It's the latter that should be our goal.

On the Hidden Sickness of the Heart

Scott Long wrote an excellent article separating the act of supporting free speech from the act of supporting the words and images created by Charlie Hebdo.  But I disagree with this one bit:

"Words don't kill..."

As I said in a comment there, too many young people have lost lives as a direct results of malicious words and images.  We can't ignore that reality.  In my lifetime, I've seen a change in the way we talk that developed through punishments for transgressions of the new rules.  We use gender-inclusive language in scholarly writing, and professionals and politicians can no longer easily get away with cavalierly making racist, sexist, or homophobic slurs.  We recognize that words seep into our subconscious in a way we can't prevent when they're out there at large, repeated and bombarding us at every turn.

The subtle restrictions in our language, I believe, have played a part in changing in our attitudes and behaviours.  They're not the complete answer, of course, but they do have a significant impact.  The recent events have provoked some prejudicial words and views floating around social media.  We would be wise to remember this recent reaction:

Or check out how the Swedish "love-bombed" a mosque.

Long's article hits on something explained by Catarina Dutilh at New APPS, that,

"...at its core, the Enlightenment is not a tolerant movement: its ideals may be described as corresponding to “the ambition of shaping individual and social development on the basis of better and more reliable knowledge than the tangled, confused, half-articulate but deeply rooted conceptual systems inherited from our ancestors." 

Long's words:

"To defend satire because it’s indiscriminate is to admit that it discriminates against the defenseless....[This is] the truth about satire. It’s an exercise in power. It claims superiority, it aspires to win, and hence it always looms over the weak, in judgment. If it attacks the powerful, that’s because there is appetite underneath its asperity: it wants what they have....They know that while [Voltaire's] contempt amuses when directed at the potent and impervious Pope, it turns dark and sour when defaming a weak and despised community. Satire can sometimes liberate us, but it is not immune from our prejudices or untainted by our hatreds. It shouldn’t douse our critical capacities; calling something “satire” doesn’t exempt it from judgment. The superiority the satirist claims over the helpless can be both smug and sinister."

The movement we've celebrated that has us in this self-righteous state of knowledge is not founded on world peace or compassion or kindness, but on escaping religious ideologies.  It's a noble path if it takes us from powers that prevent us from open critical thought, but the path leads to a cliff when it continues unabated once religious ideas are no longer a threat as a forced belief system.

It's absolutely true that religious texts have portions that provoke hatred and intolerance of others:

But, the New Atheists also have their intolerant passages that can inspire their followers:  There's Richard Dawkins' famous tweet comparing Islam with Nazism: "Of course you can have an opinion about Islam without having read Qur'an. You don't have to read Mein Kampf to have an opinion about nazism."  And Bill Maher and Christopher Hitchens are no more accepting of differences.  We can find hatred within every faction of society.

At least religious texts also have portions insisting on the tolerance of all:

There's Hillel's famous description of the main message of Judaism:  "That which is hateful to yourself, do not do unto others. That is the heart of the Torah; all the rest is commentary. Now go and study!"  And there's the Christian rule:  "'Love your neighbour as yourself.' There is no commandment greater..." (Mark 12:31).

Similarly, the Qur'an instructs followers to,

"...show kindness to parents, and to kindred, and orphans, and the needy, and to the neighbor that is a kinsman and the neighbor that is a stranger, and the companion by your side, and the wayfarer, and those whom your right hands possess. Surely, Allah loves not the proud and the boastful" (4:37). 

Religion doesn't make us hate one another; that's a red herring.  We have the capacity to choose to follow some ideas over others in any doctrine.  I respect Chomsky's views, but I differ from him on the right to free speech.  We can be followers of Plato without condoning slavery.

Basic human nature may be the real villain here.  Zimbardo's famous experiment got to the heart of this reality, and Nietzsche recognized it almost a century earlier in this passage, 

“Somebody remarked: ‘I can tell by my own reaction to it that this book is harmful.’ But let him only wait and perhaps one day he will admit to himself that this same book has done him a great service by bringing out the hidden sickness of the heart and making it visible."

Knowing that it's possible to let this cruel part of ourselves flourish means we have to, individually and personally, work at keeping the sickness in ourselves in check.  And if we have any hope of surviving the next few decades intact, we also have to help one another make choices based on compassion and tolerance, loudly clarifying our intolerance of prejudices.  And, no, that's not a hypocrisy.  It's a necessity.   

ETA - Russell Brand made a similar point that we have to check our own selves to begin to affect change on a larger scale.

The Tao of Environmentalism

At Politics Respun, Stephen Elliott-Buckley suggests we make decarbonizing our New Year's resolution.  In a fit of frustration, I commented thusly:

What does it look like to join you? I mean I'm totally in, but what do I do to "seriously begin to decarbonize"? 

How to stop this?

I already don't own a car, freezer, clothes drier, or A/C, and I've got solar panels for electricity, but I still heat my house with natural gas. Do I have to get a fireplace and go completely off-grid - using zero fossil fuels - because my neighbours already think I'm a bit weird for the panels? 

I already write to Harper enough he sent my an 8x10 signed glossy as if he's a rock star getting fan mail, but my letters aren't having much of an effect. I can't convince many of my students that climate change is a tragedy caused by our unfettered use of energy, so I can't convince them to write angry letters or protest either. They tolerate having the lights off when I teach on sunny days, but I can't get other teachers to turn them off as well.
I'll keep trying on all these fronts, but I fear there are more of them than us. Most people just won't fight to end their own conveniences. Not yet, and, therefore, not nearly soon enough. 

Like the plethora of sites that tell us HOW to lose ten pounds with one neat trick, we need to know the next steps. HOW do we convince the elites - or even just our neighbours and friends - to radically change our world? How do we change the minds of the many who are happy with Harper? How radical are we willing to be to save our species?

His very sympathetic response, in part, after a good-for-you bit, went like this:

Teachers, I find, are not a terribly progressive bunch. I knew maybe 5% of people on staff, when I was a teacher, who understood what walking the talk looks like. But keep trying and cling to those colleagues who do get it. 

We convince the elites by threatening their power. Elected or wannabe-elected politicians need our support. If we can mobilize to hold that support in the balance, based on obeying our climate agenda, we will win. It’s mobilizing that effort. But when the federal green party [generally a pro-capitalist/consumer party] SUPPORTS* the tarsands, we have a long way to go. 

And it may just make more ice storms, Calgary/Toronto floods and effects of climate change to wake up the apathetic and complacent people. But by then it may be too late. We’ll have to see.

So...okay.   We just have to mobilize people who are largely apathetic or ignorant, but we might not be able to in time.

My point exactly.

The Tyee also has a call out to become "conscious, anti-consumerist warriors."  Like Politics Respun, they call 2014, "...the year of living - and giving - consciously.  Up until now, we haven't been serious."

Well, speak for yourself - although I was convinced to donate more.  But, once again, how to convince the masses?

We tend to see it all as a problem of justice, of stopping the evilness of the few.  But, it's not that the 1% are making evil decisions that need to be rectified, but that the masses are benefitting too greatly from many of these decisions to ever really try to stop them.  We think we're the good, but I'm not so convinced.  Scott Neigh has a post up that says it better:

"Some of us are the passive beneficiaries (and often celebrators) of the brutal violence that our state dishes out. Some of us are the exploited but still relatively privileged guardians and enforcers of how things are. That doesn't mean that life is all sunshine and roses. That doesn't mean that resistance isn't necessary, or even that resistance to oppression and exploitation isn't integral to daily life in important ways for many white North Americans -- it clearly is, and that is something to acknowledge, respect, support, and nurture....In real life, most of humanity is not clearly divided into the righteous, the shepherds, and the tyranny of evil men -- the lives of most ordinary people express a mix of the three."

It's not us against them. It's us against us.

And then I watched this George Carlin anti-environmentist rant, and it provoked a few thoughts.  (Sorry, lots of swears, of course: it's freakin' George Carlin!)

Carlin says the planet will be fine.  I agree a big mass will likely continue on, pretty definitely, but its ability to support life might not – or not for a long time. So the fight is not just about people but about all other living things. Extinctions happen, but not at this rate. We really have sped thing up.  And, closer to his point, it's never happened to us before!  

Our "indicator species" are messed up! 

I've said before that our problem is that we're viruses, and that we're too compassionate to live within nature since we want to make sure as many of us live as possible (but not too compassionate, however, to allow many to live horribly for the conveniences of the few).  A student recently gave me another analogy to use:  we're like an invasive species.  We're doing all we can to survive and spread to our outer limits, just like every other creature in the world, except we have no predators here.  There are no outer limits - yet.  Or, another way to see it is we're like the fox/mouse cycle in nature except with a really long scale.  We will hit that food shortage that will finally keep our population in check, just maybe not before we hit fatal hydrogen sulfide levels in our air.  That'll work too.

Long-term survival of the species requires selfish acts to keep the world going in the future - yes it is about us - but they work against the selfish acts to keep us entertained and convenienced in the present.  And it all comes back to Plato's admonishment that we need to be taught the art of measurement (the ability to measure future rewards/consequences against those closer and more current).  I'm not convinced we can be taught.

So maybe Carlin's right about this:  We are arrogant to think we are better able to deal with this than any other animal.  You'd think we have large enough brains to see the long game - and a few do, but not the same few who hold all the power.  The powerful bunch are the survivors defending their territory (in dollars) and spreading out as far as they can, in denial of the potential for a major total-planet catastrophe.  And, a key problem is, if the ones who see the long game get power, they sometimes start amassing wealth instead.   If we're offered enough cash today to ignore the problems of tomorrow, not many can resist that deal.  And those that can resist, often don't go for the power anyway, so they remain impotent to change anything.  It's a conundrum.  

Unlike what we understand of most mammals' grasp of the world, humans have the ability to understand time - to look to the past in order to predict the future.  But a fat lot of good it does us!!  

And the Tao Te Ching (ch. 29, which I've also discussed before) backs up Carlin's rant:

"Do you want to improve the world?
I don’t think it can be done.
The world is sacred. It can’t be improved.
If you tamper with it, you’ll ruin it.
If you treat it like an object, you’ll lose it.
There is a time for being ahead, a time for being behind;
a time for being in motion, a time for being at rest;
a time for being vigorous, a time for being exhausted;
a time for being safe, a time for being in danger.  

The Master sees things as they are, without trying to control them.
She lets them go their own way, and resides at the center of the circle."

It's certainly more calming to accept that this is the way of the world, and it's not something we can change.  We can barely manage to keep our own house in order much less worldwide eco-systems.

But is refusing to keep badgering the politicians and our friends and relations just giving up and admitting defeat or is it accepting the way of the world?  Or does it just feel like a cop-out?  It certainly feels more selfish to decide to turn up the heat than it does to try to convince governments to shut down the tar sands.  It feels better to be part of the solution even if it's really out of our hands, but maybe just because we like spinning our wheels.

As Carlin suggests glibly, "So pack your shit, folks; we're goin' away!"

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*I can't find a link to any news that says the Greens support the tar sands, but I did find one that says the NDP supports a Canadian west-to-east pipeline.  Drag.  When Mulcair said "no" to a wealth tax, it gave credence to a suspected shift:  the Liberals are the new Conservatives, and the NDP are the new Liberals.  And I fear we don't really have a significant left-leaning party anymore when we really need one.