Norms are for Breaking

Anonymous is urging me to move on away from precautions and towards prior norms of society in a string of comments on a previous post. I had too much to say to the most recent comment, so I moved it here.

from Catherine Flynn

Anon responded for a third time (or a third Anon -- who's to say) to this point from a week ago in which I borrowed the analogy that sharing air unprotected with someone likely carrying Covid is about as wise as having sex unprotected with someone likely carrying chlamydia:

"Analogies often fail with covid. This isn’t really like seatbelts or smoking which are additions to our base state in the world. If we’re going to play analogies, then perhaps this is like setting the right speed limit for cars. People die in crashes every year. We have speed limits to limit harms. What should these speed limits be? Some might want cars abolished. Some might want German autobahns. But here we’ve set certain norms based, ostensibly, on some sort of cost/benefit ratio. The pandemic was like a pile up on the 401. Everyone had to slow down and for a while we were all stuck. But now we're back to normal speeds. Some, though, are shell shocked. “I’m not driving again!” Some are now petitioning to lower the speed limits and to educate others to the dangers of driving. It’s all good. But life goes on and things go back to the norms that were.

Basic Christian Morals

I was scrolling mindlessly yesterday morning, on Christmas Day, and came across some outrage around unhoused people being put up in a hotel at taxpayer's expense. The naysayers clearly have never seen Dicken's A Christmas Carol or even Bill Murray's Scrooged. Remember when that line, "Are there no prisons? Are there no workhouses??" came back to bite him in the ass?

Matthew 25:35-40

First of all, what the heck are taxes for but to ensure the basic needs of all?? If we decide that each person has to manage on their own without help from anyone, then we're back to law of the jungle, and we don't need much in the way of government or leadership at all or any social organization. If we're back to might makes right, with "might" referring to the power of wealth, then we're no longer in a civilization. For thousands of years we've known that a healthy, well-functioning society requires a way to care for the less fortunate. From the most base analysis, if we don't help others, they'll be more inclined to steal from us. This stance might claim to want social organization for education and hospitals, but it seems like they just want to ensure they have it for their own families, not for everyone in general. The things that they can afford to pay for somehow don't count as basic needs to provide for all. 

Curious.

A Fruitful Exploration of the Core

Maybe there are seeds of potential deep within ourselves, but maybe there's nothing there but a collection of signals. Regardless the outcome, we need to dig in to see what we can find. 

In several classes I took last term, the idea of a core self that's fluid came through discussions of the postmodernist view of the self. But I'm not convinced we're still living the pomo life, and I'm not sure we want to be. 

Taking liberally from Charles Taylor, and others, it appears that we once had some communal ideals, then flipped from seeking answers from God to proving them with science, then realized some pretty major problems with glorifying any kind of authority and renounced all of them, but now, drawing on the types of films being made and the stories told, it feels like we're readjusting back to a place with more solid values and truths. I hope so, anyway.

We're Mutant Enablers

A friend said, "I watch the numbers. I'll start to mask again when cases get high. People who are sick should wear a mask."

And that, my friends, is why Covid will never go away.

Absolutely people who are sick should wear a mask. But that statement misses the vitally important fact that many if not most people (estimates range from 30-60%) who transmit Covid don't feel sick in the slightest.

Asymptomatic transmission has always been a thing. Haven't people heard of Typhoid Mary? Except now it's not just one or two carriers of Covid infecting all others, it's many people carrying it, unwittingly spreading it, keeping it circulating and mutating. Eventually a mutation could be far more deadly. We've been lucky so far, although it doesn't feel like it if you're one of many with Long Covid. 

Endgame Vision

"Where there is no vision, the people perish." ~ Proverbs 29:18

In many versions of that passage it says with prophetic vision people cast off restraint, but I think vision works as well on its own and is more inclusive, and perish gives a clearer image of the end result. It doesn't mean we'll all be free without a vision guiding us, but that we'll all go haywire. The proverb actually goes on to say that we'll all still be happier if we follow the law - or moral restraint - despite a lack of vision, but I'm dubious about that part of it. It can be better for everyone if we're moral, but I'm not convinced it makes us all happier. All of Proverbs 29 is about turning away from evil motives and doing the right thing, but something that jumps out to me as vital is our need for a sense of where we're headed, especially during times of chaos, even while we pretend everything is normal.

This reddit post is making the rounds. It expresses the experiences many of us are having and asks some good questions about where we go from here:

Practical issue first: I'm not sure how living with minimal Covid risk is dwindling their savings away. Five N95s can last a month (rotate them, one/day of the week) for $10, and there are several organizations that provide them for free for people in need. So I wonder if they're not going in to work or quit their job or if they're taking cabs instead of the subway or something like that. If they lost their job just for wearing a mask, that's a different issue specific to a few states in the US and a few places outside there. 

Teaching in the Face of a Bleak Future

I can't imagine teaching right now. This post is a mishmash of thought around teaching at such a momentous time in history. Well, momentous for us. 

I've only been retired a year, but the world has gotten so much worse in that time with climate change hitting some serious tipping points and potential collapse predicted to come 38-81% sooner than expected from older models (and we won't even get into Russia's "zone of nuclear catastrophe"). We tend to underestimate our impact on the world while overestimating our ability to fix the damage, so here we are!

John Gibbons: "There is NOTHING like this on the instrument record."

Tons of fish are escaping the oceans as their habitat becomes unliveable: in Texas a lack of dissolved oxygen in the water caused them to suffocate, and in Thailand they bailed because of plankton blooms. Both are a result of the warming of the oceans primarily from human consumptions of fossil fuels (oil, gas, coal) and methane production from farming cattle (not from littering, as a few students each year bizarrely believe, conflating litter with air pollution). It's no wonder the orcas are revolting. 

Looking for the Enlightened

The season finale of The Last of Us, "Look for the Light" (see what I did there?) sets up a great deontological v. teleological conundrum with the big question (tiny spoiler), which ends up being an episode-long trolley problem: Is it right to kill one person if doing so could save multitudes? (The brilliant Just an Observation explains how the entire season sets up the problem.) In a utilitarian view, of course we should sacrifice one person to potentially save all of humanity. It would be absurd not to see this and ensure the safety of all! But it doesn't pass the categorical imperative sniff test. We can't support intentional harm coming to people, any people, no matter how few, even if it will help many others.

Kant's famous rule: "I am never to act otherwise than so that I could also will that my maxim should become a universal law," so killing a person to help others is necessarily wrong. It's not a numbers game since "the moral worth of an action does not lie in the effect expected." And we have to treat each person as an end in themselves, never as a means to an end.

Or, as the great Mitchell & Webb make clear, killing some to save others is just plain wrong "because it's offensive and evil."

And people will do absolutely anything to save the children they love if they turn out to be the sacrificial lambs in question.

On Being a Bad Person

I forgot to post this from last month - my monthly posting at 3 Quarks Daily: 

A student asked, "How many bad actions does a good person have to do before becoming a bad person?"

The notion of good and bad people raises the image of final judgment at the pearly gates. We have a scale somewhere with our actions added incrementally to one side or the other until there's a tipping point, or sometimes there's just that one unspeakable act that slams one pan to the ground requiring an inconceivable effort to budge it.

It's possible that an infinite number of bad actions doesn't make a person bad. I like to think that we're all greater than the sum of our worst actions. We're all just works in progress doing our best in this world, and it's never too late to change our path. It sounds nice. But then I started to consider some real people who appear to have unlimited selfishness as well as a cold indifference to the suffering they cause to others. Can we call them bad people until we see some movement towards redemption? 

On Moral Injury

I just re-read a post full of sound and fury that I wrote last year at this time, detailing my initial shock at our unsafe and unprecedentedly intense working conditions at the time. The only policy improvements since then is that students don't have to be in the building during lunch and that we flip two courses every week so we only work five days without prep instead of seven months. What's worse is that there are twice as many in the building, and kids know they can take off their masks all the time to eat or drink. Teachers are finally allowed to wear their own masks openly (I've been hiding mine the whole time) while kids are getting lax about theirs (some teachers too due to vaccine-provoked complacency), and we have no recourse to stop them - excepting being that bitch of a teacher who won't let her kids take a sip of water in class! I realized how many rules at school I've ignored over the years to students' delight, and it sucks to suddenly be seen as a hard ass. The rules still don't make sense. We still err on the side of privacy instead of saving lives by stopping the spread. We still provide businesses with free rapid tests (paid for with our taxes) and leave the $40 option for unvaccinated children. The world feels crazy in its callousness.  

Then Dr. Hishram Ziauddeen's twitter post on moral injury really hit it home for me. Here it is in full with just minor punctuation adjusted for clarity: 

On Gun Control

I've been observing many gun control arguments online and in the classroom (also online) recently. I've written about this before, once after Sandy Hook and then after a Stoneman Douglas shooting surviver put the onus on school staff to keep kids safe. This one's closer to home, so I finally got around to sorting out my views on a whole assortment of gun-supporters' typical claims (presented largely in my own words and entirely without indications of where they're from in case people don't want their views known here). I'll follow my own classroom rules for arguing: take the most charitable read of a person's point, indicate points of agreement, and only then indicate points of disagreement. It got ridiculously long, so here's the general trajectory of my position with links to each section, and there are bolded bits throughout for faster skimming:

     A Very Brief History of Gun Control in Canada
     It's Undemocratic!
     The Regulations are Nonsense
     Semi-Automatics Aren't Necessary
     Semi-Automatic Weapons are Unnecessary and Upsetting
     Semi-Automatics Can Get in the Wrong Hands
     The Buyback is One More Way to Decrease Gun Deaths
     Violence is a Bad Thing
     Random Assertions and Refutations

But first, full disclosure: I admit that I don't know all the ins and out of the types of guns being discussed, but I hope dear readers can keep to the larger issues being debated here. My one dig at gun supporters is that some, definitely not all, but it often seems that it's a significant number of them, love to dive into the minutiae of models and parts and origins until my eyes glaze over. And when that happens (but of course it doesn't always happen), when that happens, it always reminds me of Roger Ebert's dismissal of certain (but not all) Star Wars fans:

"A lot of fans are basically fans of fandom itself. It's all about them. They have mastered the "Star Wars" or "Star Trek" universes or whatever, but their objects of veneration are useful mainly as a backdrop to their own devotion. . . . Extreme fandom may serve as a security blanket for the socially inept, who use its extreme structure as a substitute for social skills. . . . If you know absolutely all the trivia about your cubbyhole of pop culture, it saves you from having to know anything about anything else. That's why it's excruciatingly boring to talk to such people: They're always asking you questions they know the answer to."

A Bit about Cancel Culture and Academic Freedom

I've written before about how I support free speech but don't support giving platforms to "White Nationalists" or neo-Nazis or any other racist group who could use the venue to garner more followers. My concern is with audience members who might be easily led or looking for a place to direct their saved up anger. I believe we must act together to ensure that racist or bigoted values don't get amplified. People aren't barred from speaking and sharing their views otherwise, but I'm fine if they are denied a stage, particularly in a public arena. It's not just that I don't like their views, but that I fear that their views, if accepted by a greater number of people, could normalize harmful actions and threaten the safety and security of my friends and neighbours.

But Peter Singer??  [ETA a recent interview about it at RNZ]

Here's a bit of background on this ethics philosopher. He is, if it's possible, the direct opposite of a neo-Nazi. He's all about decreasing suffering worldwide! He advocates for vegetarianism and goes so far as to suggest that, to live a truly ethical life, we should take any extra money just sitting in our bank accounts and donate it to charity to alleviate global poverty. He's ever concerned with us living the best life we can have in the most ethical way possible. But one of his many arguments around alleviating suffering, from a chapter in a book he wrote back in 1979, Practical Ethics, is about the right of parents to euthanize severely disabled infants. Disability activist groups want this view shut down.

On Fridays for Future

I went to the first #fridaysforfuture protest in our area with my youngest, yesterday, outside my MP's office. The idea is the brainchild of Greta Thunberg who wants all students to strike every Friday until the political system focuses on slowing down climate change so we can avoid hitting that dreaded 1.5 degree ceiling. We've already zipped passed the 350 ppm ceiling with nary an outcry (at about 410 ppm now). We only have 11 more years, until 2030, to act before we won't be able to have any significant effect. She says, "What is the point of learning facts when the most important facts given by our finest scientists are ignored by politicians?". Before I left work, I talked to a few colleagues, discussing the ethics of a teacher taking a half day "family care" day to go to a protest, and everyone I spoke with was supportive of the idea. What's a family care day for if not to fight to sustain the planet for our families! And I decided, even if it's seen as wrong, it's worth the potential consequences. It was a well-run event with about 40 people there on a bitterly cold day (the paper said 30, but I counted at least 40); unfortunately, I think a good 60 or 70% of the crowd were long past their school days.

End of an Era: On Buying My First Car

I bought a 2009 Kia Rio. I went with a friend because I had no idea how it all worked, and I had lots of stupid questions, like: How do I get license plates before I have the car, or do I leave the car at the dealer and get them afterwards, and then walk up to the dealership carrying them? And when does insurance happen? I was a bit baffled by the sequence of events about to transpire. I thought I'd leave with the car, but it took three days to do all the things to be done.

I intend to live north when I retire, so I knew a motorized vehicle would be in my future eventually, but I was banking on getting a car in another year or two, once some of the newer electric cars had been out and tried and tested for a while. Once Ford got in, and that rebate disappeared, though, I reconsidered. I went for an old car that will hopefully make the five years until Ford is gone and the rebates return with a more reasonable premier.

If we're not all burnt to a crisp by then.

Three other events provoked decisive action:

1. My youngest leases a horse now, thanks to her dad, but she needs to get back and forth to the stable, thirty minutes away by car, three times a week. I had been borrowing vehicles to take her, since her dad can rarely make it, but that route was wearing thin. The deal I made when I agreed to the horse, of course, was that I'd only have to take her once in a while here and there, but we know how those things work.

2. My older two suddenly started making noises about getting their licences. Neither wants a car of their own, but we're beginning to realize how handy it would be if they had the ability to drive - not to mention how much more employable it makes them. And the youngest is just two years away and chomping at the bit to be at the wheel. It's hard to learn to drive without access to a vehicle to practice with. Rentals won't allow it, and I wouldn't impose that on my closest friends.

3. Whenever I rent, I throw a bike carrier on the back (like this, but for three bikes), and it often leaves some little scratch or indent, and I stress out about it for the entire trip. Before returning cars, I've sometimes had a buddy take a piece of wood and a hammer to tap the dents back out. It made it more tolerable when a slimy rental guy charged me for a dent I definitely didn't make when I used a car for a brief trip sans bikes. I figure that's just karma. I wrap the entire carrier in towels and sponges, and put socks on the pedals, but there's no great way to install one without a trailer hitch. With my new car, I pretty much immediately made an indent on the tailgate thingy, so I don't have to worry about that anymore!

A neighbour who was also scammed by the same slimy dealer considered buying a car together with me, but that started sounding complicated. It makes a whole lot of sense for neighbourhoods to share vehicles, but so many just want their own. And, with four of us using the car on my end alone, sharing with another family would be difficult.

So it's done. And now I'm dealing with a bit of buyer's remorse.

The car is really, really small. We all went up to a cottage, and it barely fit one bag each. Then a camping trip was a feat for a Tetris master, with the cooler just barely making the cut. I almost got a slightly larger car, but it was shiny orange, and it felt a bit ostentatious buying something so bright. That's the mennonite in me talking.

And the hills! I'm used to driving almost brand new cars when I rent, and the crappiest of them can easily overtake tractors with minimal extra pressure on the pedals. I never think twice about passing. This baby can barely make it up the hills once you get north enough that the roads run through blasted rock. I'm not used to being that annoying person everyone is desperately trying to pass, but 80 is a bit of a struggle sometimes. Sorry everybody. It helps to laugh at myself by listening to John Mulaney's bit about driving:

"If you're ever on the highway behind me, I hear you honking, and I also don't want to be doing what I'm doing."

Driving a piece of crap is reminiscent of driving my first boyfriend's car: a Chevette with 300,000 km on it. Whenever it hit 60, the entire car would shake. I was always pretty sure one of the doors would fall off from the vibrations. It was low to the ground, like my car, so it always felt securely on the road, and you could take the corners crazy fast, but I worried about breaking through the floor like Fred Flintstone. I drove it on its final trip: a block from home, the brakes completely failed, and my bf had cut the emergency brakes the last time he replaced the brake pads (They were in the way!!), and it was just a magical stroke of luck that the lights changed just in time for me to be able to turn left at the bottom of a hill and coast my way home in one piece.

But it's great on gas. Muskokas and back for $40.

I figured if I could drive it for five years, that would be about the cost of renting each year, but I forget insurance. Insurance alone is about the cost of all my rentals and taxis and bus rides. So it definitely won't save me any money. It's just saving me the time and trouble of booking a car, trudging to the rental place and filling in the forms to get the car, and having to bring it back later. And sometimes there isn't a car available. Rarely, but it does happen. Yes, of course I've looked into car sharing, but it costs more than renting and isn't significantly more convenient.

So now I feel a bit like a traitor to the movement. I let convenience tip the scales away from concern for my GHG production. But, really, I'm not driving more (hopefully), I'm just driving an extra car that wasn't in circulation previously. Philosopher Luke Elson, in The Conversation, recently concluded that buying carbon offsets makes air travel a moral option, and his argument could be extrapolated to work for cars as well, except I don't really agree with it. He takes a consequentialist stance banking on offsets actually having a 1:1 exchange, which is a thin premise creating a shaky foundation. Even if it were the case that we could pay someone to plant a tree whenever we drive and the GHGs produced would be fully subtracted again by the tree growth or some other fix, it's still adding GHGs to the total. Morally, it's clearly better to avoid adding those GHGs to the atmosphere AND to pay for some trees instead of paying money for a flight or a car or an air conditioner or a steak dinner. We need to get into the negatives when it comes to GHG production. There's no time for bargaining on this one.

If we all run on Elson's moral code, then we'll keep burning fossil fuels and just trying to plant trees faster than they can burn to the ground. The overriding problem with consequentialist ethics is that we can never guess the future with accuracy. For this issue, we have to err on the side of contributing less GHGs, rather than being hopeful that subtracting them might work.

There's no moral way to justify convenience of my family over the survival of our species.

But now I'm one of the normies. I was invited to a far away cottage this summer, and the owner gave me a convoluted route to take to get to there including trains and several busses, rather than the obvious choice of carpooling with another guest. Many people just can't get their head around how to live without a car. They aren't intuitively aware of all the other options, like getting rides from friends, and borrowing vehicles, and they don't recognize how far they can actually comfortably walk and bike, or how cheap it can be to take cabs and use rentals. I'm thankful my family made it this far so we've got the knowhow that makes alternatives obvious and second nature.

I still plan to bus when I go into Toronto. It's just over $10 if I book it online ahead of time, which is cheaper than parking downtown, and I can read on the way instead of stressing out on the 401.

And today I biked 7 k to MEC for my very first life jacket for my next trip. Look at me, buying all my own stuff instead of renting and borrowing like I have for five decades, starting with all my sib's hand-me-downs! To too many people, my life looked like I was cheap, or worse (because of inherent prejudices), a "poverty case." Nobody congratulated me on going without for so long. Nobody encourages others to borrow instead of buying - well, nobody in my circle. That's a paradigm shift that's got to budge soon.

Isn't this the photo everyone takes with their first car??

ETA: June 6, 2025, almost exactly 7 years later, the car died in the driveway. The back tires were completely seized. My daughter and I tried a bunch of things advised to us to get them turning again, but no luck. I tried to get it towed to a mechanic, but the tow driver said it would completely ruin the tires to drag it out, and there's no other way to get at it with my stupidly narrow driveway, and then he started telling me there's no way I could drive it with all the rust on the sides, anyway. The MTO would pull me over for that. To be fair, the body was hanging on by a thread between the back wheel and the back door on one side. He said I might get a hundred bucks from a scrapyard, but he could just drag it out and take it off my hands. I made an impulsive decision and signed it over to him, took the plates off, and watched it be dragged away. As he explained what crap it is, I was pretty sure he was conning me. He said he wasn't getting paid for the tow because I have a deal with my insurance, which is curious. He seemed to think it made us even, and clearly it didn't but whatever. I'm glad not to have to think about it anymore. So I've made peace with it. It doesn't feel like it makes sense to own a car I only drive for 2 months of the year now that my kids have their own cars. It served us well to get us my kids licensed and made it back and forth up north without ever dying on the way! 

I track everything, and the total cost of owning this car, including purchase price, service, maintenance, gas, and insurance, was $40,688.41, or almost six grand per summer. If I par down the yearly costs to just the two months of summer that I use it, insurance alone works out to almost $800/month. I have to keep that in mind next time I rent! 

I actually feel lighter from no longer being a car owner! 

The Kia's legacy!

On the Necessity for a Public Takedown

When, a couple months back, I read Katie Way's depiction of a date between "Grace" and Aziz Ansari, at first I felt badly for him to be outed as such a crappy date. How embarrassing. Then in the New York Times, Bari Weiss responded that Ansari was being asked to be a mindreader. My rejection of that idea led me to a more nuanced understanding of the issue. I commented there,

But then, as is so often the case, a discussion with students in my class clarified the issue even further.

This is an important issue to be raised. It still seems, based on this conversation with a room full of teenagers, a common problem on dates. Guys will ignore body language and use subtle leaning, pushing, guiding, and grinding as a way to progress an event that isn't explicitly desired by the pushed and leaned upon party. By using movement rather than words, it feels easier to act as if they merely misconstrued the situation. By taking it out of the realm of verbal communication, they can better claim a problem with interpretation instead of straight up consent.

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 Sugar and Socialization

An Agenda discussion on sugar use is timely for me. I typically let students eat something small and healthy in class to tide them over until lunch, but, in one class this semester, I ended up having to police their choices. A few shovelled candy into their mouths before I'd tell them to put it away on a daily basis. I'd sometimes comment on their nutritional decisions even though it's not a health class, and then I'd immediately wonder if that's crossing a line. Sometimes my mom hat slips on when I should be in teacher mode. Or is that possibly a teacher's prerogative?

Gary Taubes provides a compelling argument for refined sugar being the primary cause of obesity not because it provides empty calories, or calories at all, but because it "creates a hormonal milieu that favours fat accumulation." This isn't entirely a new idea, except he goes a bit further with it, insisting that sugar has probably killed more people than tobacco. See the documentary Sugar Coated (currently on Netflix) for more thorough arguments.

On Gender Pronouns and Peterson's Case

This is a difficult thing for me to figure out, and I'm not sure I'm quite firm on anything yet, but I've been completely fascinated by the discussions around Jordan Peterson, the University of Toronto prof who refuses to use individually-determined gender pronouns, so I'll try to narrow down what I actually think based on some of his YouTube videos, his interview with Joe Rogan, and various articles. I wrote before about some points I disagree with, but here I'll also look at where his argument has some merit. He's got some solid ideas in the mix.

First of all, the fact that I'm wary of discussing this at all, means that Peterson is on to something. He might not be entirely right about what he's doing and how, but it's always a concern when people don't feel free to counter current views. Before I knew his name, this felt like an issue that wasn't allowed to be debated, and those are always the meatiest places to explore. Why can't we question it? What's going on there? I teach philosophy and social science courses, and I get into all sorts of discussions that push boundaries: is incest necessarily immoral, or why don't we all use performance-enhancing drugs, or what if we sterilize couples right after they have one child to decrease population? Yet people questioning their gender is untouchable as a debatable topic so far. It's to the point that teens who feel strongly that they're in the wrong body are allowed significant surgery even though women in their 30s can't get their tubes tied because they can't possibly know their own minds. That's really interesting to me.

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 Sex Work

Bill C-36, which passed into law almost a year ago, begins like this:

"Whereas the Parliament of Canada has grave concerns about the exploitation that is inherent in prostitution and the risks of violence posed to those who engage in it...recognizes the social harm caused by the objectification of the human body and the commodification of sexual activity...it is important to protect human dignity and the equality of all Canadians by discouraging prostitution..."

The new law criminalizes buying sex, advertising, or otherwise benefiting from the sex trade (minimum cash fines and up to a maximum of five years in jail - ten for pimping), but it doesn't criminalize selling sex if only the sex worker benefits. It's theoretically a move to protect sex workers, except it limits their ability to advertise without walking the streets, and it limits their ability to discuss services in a public place. It took out restrictions for running bawdy houses, but it can charge men as they enter or leave.

But is prostitution necessarily exploitative?

Marlena Evans has an interesting piece at The Toast about working as a prostitute in order to pay her way through university. I'll look at the issues from the position of the prostitutes and the clients separately. I'm assuming it's a given that trafficking and pimping are obviously heinous acts that should be shut down by all means possible, but it's the grey areas that need a second look. And I'm not touching the potential for infidelity involved. Lots of things make it easier to cheat but aren't illegal. My question is: Is it necessarily exploitative or harmful to society if some people offer sex in exchange for money?


The Prostitutes: Is sex work necessary for women to survive, and is it necessarily harmful?

Evans presents her own case as proof that prostitution isn't necessarily exploitative, or at least, no more exploitative than a standard minimum wage job. And higher wages means she can work fewer hours.

She undermines the stereotype of prostitutes as struggling to feed their children or a drug-addiction. She's doing it to advance herself at school, a reason that's seen by her clients somehow as selfish.

"...people laugh about student poverty — they joke about cavities and scurvy as though one’s early twenties are merely a dry run for real life and one cannot actually starve to death."

She explains how working in the sex trade is significantly better than working in fast food.  I've had many students over the years share tales of working for exploitative managers that break ESA laws openly relating how unlikely it is that any kid will risk even a crappy job to complain - because the jobs are all crappy.

"If I got sick too often working at the fast food place, I had to provide a doctor’s note. I suffered abuse from customers who lumped me in with the automated machines. My gifts and talents were utterly squandered as I stood, sometimes for hours at a time, staring at the door, waiting for someone to come in and put me to use, knowing that if I got caught reading or writing or even listening to music I would be reprimanded. All of this and I wasn’t making enough money to pay rent and utilities in the same month."

Objectification and degradation anyone? We have a workforce of wasted talents following corporate-driven orders to behave in specific ways during their shifts (and sometimes beyond) for less than a living wage. We have many university students - the best and the brightest - who have to work 20-hours/week to pay rent and tuition even though it affects their grades and any ability to reach their potential. These are real problems in our country. I'm all for getting rid of exploitation, but it's a red herring to suggest it's just a problem in one type of business.

Some argue that a guaranteed minimum income will reduce society to a bunch of layabouts squandering their talents, but Evan's example shows quite the opposite. Some people are currently being held back from honing their talents because of their economic situation, so a guaranteed income would increase their ability to add to the greatness of our people. One Canadian study found this financial plan increased health and emotional well-being, and that the only people who quit their jobs were new moms and students, arguably the people with the greatest potential to benefit society if allowed to focus their talents without fear of economic reprisal.

Evans also gets at a different means of exploitation:

"I’ve been assaulted by countless men. By a man who was a client? Only once."

We have a vision of sex workers as throwaway women allowed to or willing to or coerced into bearing the brunt of assault, which somehow acts to keep the rest of us safe. But considering sex work as the one place that exploits is an illusion. Sexual harassment and assault is still a problem in and out of many fields of work. There are worse jobs women can do that nobody questions. Sexual oppression is in the fabric of our society. I'm not convinced the existence of the voluntary sex trade, as Evans describes it, increases that reality.

ETA: By way of contrast, see Hedges interview with Rachel Moran who calls prostitution "being raped for a living." Her experience isn't of voluntary sex work however, and I believe, as Evans suggests, that "voluntary sex work" is not an oxymoron. I believe it's condescending to suggest that all sex work is necessarily coerced even if prostitutes believe they've made a free choice. To honour people's different experiences, to believe women, means believing that they have the ability to distinguish a free choice from coercion. It's insulting to portray women as unwitting victims when they themselves feel empowered to choose sex work over fast food. Moran argues, “The nature of sex is mutuality, And where you don’t have mutuality, you have sexual abuse.” I'm not sure what "mutuality" means, but perhaps I'll dissect that quote another day.


The Clients: Will prostitution always be a reality, and is that necessarily a bad thing?

With prostitution available, people (predominantly men) can get a physical and emotional connection otherwise lacking in their lives. Many people are unable to find a mate or any physical contact at all with random strangers. They shouldn't have to live without any human connection because they're deemed less desirable by those in close proximity. This is an argument that many people can accept, especially after seeing The Sessions.

But some people seek out a prostitute for the lack of constraints this type of relationship has on their lives. They want to do something beyond the boundaries of a monogamous relationships: to have a variety of partners or acts available, to avoid any emotional responsibility, or even just to avoid having to clean themselves up a bit. When Hugh Grant was with Elizabeth Hurley and got caught with a significantly less beautiful prostitute, people speculated that Hurley wouldn't "go downtown." The infidelity aside, what makes it wrong to seek out sexual release in a specific way without courtship and commitment?

It seems we can accept the need some men have for the sex trade only if all other avenues have been exhausted. It should be a last resort for people in need, not a first choice for guys who like some convenience, variety, or just don't want to put down the video controller long enough to develop behaviours conducive to dating. But is this just a puritanical belief or a valid ethical position? Is this simple, easy sex option harmful to society in general?

A couple years ago, Wente wrote an article suggesting that men won't grow up and fulfill their potential if they don't have to work for sex. I'd completely write that off except that famed psychologist  Zimbardo furthers a similar thesis. The easy availability of sex today might prevent some men from rising to the challenge of getting a date, and, some argue, that challenge is what brings men to live up to their potential thus furthering society. But I'm not convinced that's a problem. I'm going on an assumption that most men who would only improve themselves for the reward of a stable sex life a relationship might offer are not necessarily the kind of men who are on the verge of curing cancer. I don't think it's the case that we will lose half the potential of the world if men can get laid easily. I agree that this focus might be a concern for some boys, but I don't agree with Wente and Zimbardo that it should be a concern for society.

Zimbardo laments the demise of boys, that their test scores and admittance to high-ranking schools is lower than girls now. That doesn't necessarily affect society if the strongest students are still working hard, which I imagine they are. From what I've seen, when students are exceptional, they're driven by the rewards of personal efficacy in their field - of being able to finally solve that problem. Accolades and external rewards are secondary. They don't need stickers to keep working as children or a woman's civilizing touch to keep them productive citizens as adults. From that it might follow that in schools today with fewer males entering, all things being equal (which they're not), we'd see a pretty even number of men and women getting the top marks. If it's only lower down the honour roll that will see an influx of more feminine names, then we're unlikely to suffer a loss of ingenuity as predicted. I suggest that the biggest impact easy access to sex might have in society is a lack of available partners for hetero women, but perhaps it's an effective means to separate the wheat from the chaff for them in the dating pool.

If one goal in our competitive society is for workers to be as productive as possible, on-call to answer e-mails 24/7, then having uncomplicated sex lives can foster this productive work habit. I don't think that type of life is necessarily most conducive to happiness or well-being, but if it works for some, then who benefits by making it illegal?

On Friendships of Utility not Virtue

It sounds horrible, doesn't it?  Like we're using people, hanging out with them only because they have a nice car or because they often pick up the bill for lunch. I wrote here about utility like it's a bad thing, but what if we use people for their company? Does that make it different? And is that better, on an ethical continuum, than ditching people because they're bad company?

I have people in my life whom I find irritating and infuriating, yet I also love them all to bits. From time to time sometimes remarks on a friendship I have with someone I have had occasion to despise in the past. It seems some people are more likely to completely blot people out of their lives forever, and I think this has become a trend in relationship dynamics.

One point of view rejects the popular suggestion to ditch negative Nancies in favour of surrounding yourself only with positive people because the idea fosters a prejudice against people with depression. I'd add it also is very much using people in the worst way to improve your own emotional experience of the world (or something like that) instead of seeing people as valuable in their own right (not just as they relate to you).  But I also question the suggestion that same writer makes of ditching people who are "toxic," or perhaps my issue really is with how we define toxic. Sometime people are jerks. My general path after someone does something jerk-ish is to either avoid them for a while or, more expediently, tell them off, then there's often a sheepish awkward time to wade through, and then you can hang out again. The key part is the sheepishness, the remorse, some suggestion that it wasn't good behaviour and some movement towards changing that. People who get in a cycle of jerk-apology-jerk... or just jerk-jerk-jerk... can take a hike, but I don't think they're as common as self-help articles would have us believe. I fear we're sometimes a little quick to call a minor transgression "abuse." This isn't to negate actual abuse, but the contrary: when we use the word when it's not warranted, it waters it down until it becomes meaningless. It must be used with care.

The short answer I sometimes give for why I hang with people who have wronged me in the past is that I forgive easily, but that's really bullshit. If all were so easily forgiven, I don't think the emotions would be so easily dredged up at a reminder of that one horrible thing they did so many years ago. A different short answer offered by a sometimes-infuriating friend I adore is that I'm a walking victim, a sucker for punishment. I think it's more complicated than that.  

I think it's that I recognize we all suck sometimes. All of us do. But we're also all greater than the sum of our worst bits. So it's baffling to me that some people would choose to completely write off someone, forever, for a transgression they themselves might have committed had they been in the same circumstances. I try to remember that, even though I try to ensure my decisions and actions are moral, I am embarrassingly fallible. Then I end up friends with people whose decisions I don't wholly respect, but I also don't entirely respect some of the decisions I've made either. Works in progress, we are.

Typically I waver morally due to fear or ignorance. I might get so concerned with money or safety that I make regrettable decisions. Or I don't stop to think through the ethics of a decision, like putting money in a TFSA even though I think we should be taxed on interest on extra money we've accumulated. However, fear over losing social status doesn't drive me to immoral acts as much as it seems to affect others; I'm pretty content on lower ground. And I think this fear is one that can lead to a whole lot of mean-spirited actions in attempts to maintain our place on the pecking order. This is what causes some to go down that throw-them-under-the-bus path. But all things considered, we all falter in our choices, and we'll never get on the other side of that.

What I find trickier, though, is when people are affected by none of this, but they have a strikingly "different" morality than I have. Of course, a different morality is typically perceived as an immoral way of thinking unless I can be convinced that my view is actually in error. Years ago I was about to sell a house and found out, after making a verbal promise to a buyer but before signing, that my house was worth significantly more than I had thought. It was my word vs more money. It wasn't really such a dilemma because I had made a promise, and that was enough for me. I would have been sick with guilt had I told the buyer differently. But when I told friends of the situation, I was surprised by the number (all but one) who thought I had made the wrong choice. One told me, "When money's involved, then ethics have to go out the window." I feel the exact opposite is true: that ethics needs to deploy a steely resolve when money is in the picture. The only other person on my side also has a philosophy background, which leads me to believe that affects our ability and willingness to consider issues from this stance - a way that's a little less self-serving.

More recently, my daughter had been chastised by her friend's mom for stealing pastries from the friend's house. My daughter protested that the friend had stolen them, so it wasn't her fault. I asked her one question: "Did you know your friend wasn't supposed to have them?" Since she had, and she stood to benefit from the action, then, as far as I'm concerned, she's complicit. Therefore, she should apologize even though they didn't get a chance to actually eat the treats yet. It's a hard but, I believe, vitally important lesson to learn to take responsibility when we're involved in a wrong-doing even if we're not the direct actors. But a friend thinks my daughter's not responsible at all, and that give me pause - about the friend, not the morality of the situation.

These aren't as extreme examples as trying to maintain a friendship with someone who openly, head held high, plans to vote for Harper, but it can be unnerving to watch your view of important ethical considerations so casually tossed aside. None of these are deal-breakers for me though. But should they be? Is it lacking integrity to continue fostering relationships with people we find immoral? Or is it of the highest ethical standing to turn a blind eye to other's foibles?

But back to that utility thing: there's a cost-benefit analysis that comes into play that I don't sit with comfortably. I spend time with people I find entertaining. Their moral choices could be questionable, but if they make me laugh or think or get me up dancing, then whatever. There are people out there who are far more careful with their decisions, but if they're boring, then I'm out. I will hang out with people who don't recycle or who think feminism is a waste of time or who think some people should 'go back to their own country' if they like the same movies I like. And that feels really shallow. It is really shallow. I clearly value entertainment over ethics, but I also can turn a blind eye to the nasty parts for the benefit of the other bits of people who might be generally kind even if their world view is on the narrow side.

Is it better (more ethical) to refuse to talk with people because of their stance on an issue or to tolerate the questionable ethics and refuse to give up on anyone that presents the mildest connection?

What would Aristotle say?

He'd call these relationships I've described as, technically, based on pleasure, not utility, and see them as of a slightly higher quality than utility because we appreciate the witty character of the other rather than just their pragmatic usefulness. We're still using someone for something, but it's a product of their character we're using rather than their things or abilities, so it's somewhat less transient. Permanence is everything for many of the ancient Greeks. Things that last longer are necessarily better, which is an arguable way to value friendship at the outset. Both of these conditions, pleasure or utility, are lacking because they can change over time. If my sense of humour or taste in music alters, then my friendships might fall apart. The day it hit me that catch-and-release fishing is barbaric altered one relationship dramatically, but that doesn't necessarily negate the friendship that existed prior to the change, however brief.

But, according to Aristotle, these relationships are 'incidental' because they're selfish in nature. They're about a net gain from a transaction of some sort, hence my discomfort. But is it a problem if it's a mutual using, if there's a net gain on both sides? IF someone's no longer funny because of an illness, and the friendship dissolves, does that mean it didn't exist? Is a fairweather friend still a friend? What we're supposed to be after is a friendship in which we both admire one another's values and that helps us to be more ethical than we would be otherwise. This is something I might hope for in a romantic relationship, maybe, but I can't actually imagine finding it in a variety of friendships.

"Do men love, then, the good, or what is good for them [or what seems good for them]?...To be friends, then, there must be mutually recognized as bearing goodwill and wishing well to each other" (2).... those who love for the sake of utility love for the sake of what is good for themselves, and those who love for the sake of pleasure do so for the sake of what is pleasant to themselves, and not in so far as the other is the person loved but in so far as he is useful or pleasant. And thus these friendships are only incidental; for it is not as being the man he is that the loved person is loved, but as providing some good or pleasure. Such friendships, then, are easily dissolved, if the parties do not remain like themselves; for if the one party is no longer pleasant or useful the other ceases to love him....Perfect friendship is the friendship of men who are good, and alike in virtue; for these wish well alike to each other qua good, and they are good themselves. Now those who wish well to their friends for their sake are most truly friends; for they do this by reason of own nature and not incidentally; therefore their friendship lasts as long as they are good-and goodness is an enduring thing....But it is natural that such friendships should be infrequent; for such men are rare. Further, such friendship requires time and familiarity; as the proverb says, men cannot know each other till they have 'eaten salt together'; nor can they admit each other to friendship or be friends till each has been found lovable and been trusted by each. Those who quickly show the marks of friendship to each other wish to be friends, but are not friends unless they both are lovable and know the fact; for a wish for friendship may arise quickly, but friendship does not" (3).

For a friendship to exist, we have to wish the other well, so any serious competition between two buddies could end things even if they keep hanging out as if they each actually wanted the other to get that promotion. But that's an interesting bit he says at the end of that passage: that a mutual wish for friendship is different than a friendship. According to Aristotle, if we're not alike in virtue then the company we keep are mere wishes rather than actualities.

"This kind of friendship, then, is perfect both in respect of duration and in all other respects, and in it each gets from each in all respects the same as, or something like what, he gives; which is what ought to happen between friends....Those who are friends for the sake of utility part when the advantage is at an end; for they were lovers not of each other but of profit....This bit is key to my discussion here: For the sake of pleasure or utility, then, even bad men may be friends of each other, or good men of bad, or one who is neither good nor bad may be a friend to any sort of person, but for their own sake clearly only good men can be friends; for bad men do not delight in each other unless some advantage come of the relation" (4).

But, as I suggested, this can happen in a pleasure or utility based relationship also out of sense of equity. It's not the case that friends will necessarily want to each have a better deal and run as soon as we're on the losing end. We can be ethically and equitably minded regardless of affection and equal virtue. The only thing lacking seems to be longevity. It might not go on as long as one with matching virtues. But I question the level of effort we put into friendships that aren't of this special brand or "true." When Montaigne's BFF got the plague, he sat with him day and night until he died. I would definitely do that for one of my kids, and likely for a close family member or partner, but with most friends, I might drop by to offer help, to offer a place if they're put out on the street, or offer labour to fix a shed, or offer an afternoon of company. But I wouldn't be there day and night even if I might want to be. There are closer loved-ones who would sit by the wasting body. I'm not at that level with any of my friends, and it's curious that we relegate that much more to romantic attachments now. The romance-friend hierarchy flipped in the past couple of centuries.  But I don't believe my lack of bedside sitting means the friendship doesn't exist - that it's just a wished for friendship.

"The truest friendship, then, is that of the good, as we have frequently said; for that which is without qualification good or pleasant seems to be lovable and desirable, and for each person that which is good or pleasant to him; and the good man is lovable and desirable to the good man for both these reasons...those who live together delight in each other and confer benefits on each other....Those, however, who approve of each other but do not live together seem to be well-disposed rather than actual friends. For there is nothing so characteristic of friends as living together" (5).

He paints a picture of friends who are so close they want to spend their days and nights together. I think that would be ideal - based on fond memories of living with friends in university - but I can't imagine it happening once everyone starts families. It works better if we're only talking about men, and the women and kids are cordoned off elsewhere. The best living situation I had was with a friend who called me, stuck in BC with only just enough cash for a flight home, but then nowhere to live. I offered free room and board in exchange for all the cooking, cleaning, and general upkeep of my house. He stayed almost a year until he got a job out of town. Today we still each think we got the better deal. It's only when you live together that you can start routines like Thursday night homemade fries in front of Seinfeld. They seem like nothing, but little traditions are bonding in a way we don't always notice until later. It's effortless to maintain a friendship when they're always there to talk with and eat with and argue with. But now that he's gone, I haven't seen him in years. Was that just a wished for friendship?

Aristotle's last bit of advice:

"People who are supremely happy, too, have no need of useful friends, but do need pleasant friends; for they wish to live with some one and, though they can endure for a short time what is painful, no one could put up with it continuously, nor even with the Good itself if it were painful to him; this is why they look out for friends who are pleasant. Perhaps they should look out for friends who, being pleasant, are also good, and good for them too; for so they will have all the characteristics that friends should have" (6).

Good AND good for them? That's an awful lot to ask of such a fallible lot. It makes me wonder if we've truly lost that much character over the millennia or if Aristotle's standards were always out of reach for most of us.