On Hedges' Empire of Illusion

"People who shut their eyes to reality simply invite their own destruction, and anyone who insists on remaining in a state of innocence long after that innocence is dead turns himself into a monster."  - James Baldwin 

Thus begins Chris Hedges' Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle (2009), a collection of five independent parts that lead to the same place.  We're in denial - thick and deadly.  It's similar to Jane Jacobs' Dark Age Ahead, but I can't, for the life of me, find my heavily annotated copy of the book.  So I'll skip the comparison except to say they both suggest we're in a similar cultural place that many empires were just before collapsing.  What Jared Diamond did with environmental degredation's effect on the fall of empires, Hedges does for cultural illusions.  The problem with this fall is that it will be global.  There will be no area of the world that can rise up afterwards.  There will be no area of the world.

Here are some of the main points in brief.  It's a quick read though, so go buy it!

On Raising the Minimum Wage

So, the argument goes something like this:  If you raise minimum wage, corporations will pay for that cost by raising prices, thereby increasing inflation, and we'll all be poorer for it as everything gets more expensive.  The problem isn't wages, but inflation. Therefore, we should not increase minimum wage.

It follows, that it's necessary that some people work full time yet live well below the poverty line because otherwise, if we raise their wages, they'll end up even poorer because everything will costs so much more - right?  So, we're actually helping people by maintaining a lower wage for them and letting them choose between heat or food.  We're awesome! 

I don't buy it.

On Solar Panels

By request - how well does using solar panels work?

Well, it's hard to say.

I covered my roof with panels under the Ontario MicroFIT (Feed-in Tariff) program that ends next year.  So far I think it's only in Ontario, but some other provinces are thinking about it.  The power I generate from the panels goes directly back to the grid, and I'm paid about 55 cents a kWh and will continue to be for the duration of my 20 year contract.  So far this summer, even with all the rain, it translates to about $300-400/month.  So the cost of the panels is paid for in about 6-8 years.  After that, the money I make in the following 12 years is mine to keep!

Just Legalize it Already

I spent a lovely extended weekend in Awenda and fell in love with Penetanguishene through a scenic bike ride.  The sun filtered through the trees on either side of the road, with the blue, blue lake peeking through - gorgeous!  But it was marred by my chosen beach read:  Chris Hedges' grim Empire of Illusion, which actually gave me nightmares - featuring Hugh Laurie for some reason.  Spooky, me possums!  I'll get to the book another day, but for now, let's focus on the distraction du jour:  marijuana legalization.  That's much easier to think about.  Tra-la-la.

Medicinal ganja is already legal, and new regulations are apparently streamlining the process to access it, but that's a boring issue anyway, so we'll move on.  The meaty question is: Should another mind-altering substance be legally available to the healthy masses?

On Categorization of Behaviours and Abilities

People are always looking for the single magic bullet that will change everything.  There is no single magic bullet.  - Temple Grandin

Some people are quite upset about the recent change to the DSM that removes Aspergers as a separate category from Autism. Now kids formally diagnosed as having Aspergers are on the Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) instead. The WHO advocates using the ICD anyway - where Aspergers is still a separate category; the DSM is more American than universal.  Whatever. I’m more bothered by how the DSM and ICD are set up to begin with.

Why do we want to label things so clearly and with finality – particularly conditions that are largely subjectively determined? There’s something nice about knowing. There’s a relief that you’ve finally figured it out and can move on. But that feeling is illusory and temporary. And I’m not convinced it helps us in the long run to have so many kids labeled with something as if they’re static beings that were completely figured out by a professional figure-outerer. As if that’s possible.

On a Four-Hour Workday

Stephen Elliott-Buckley echoes Bertrand Russell's idea of the 4-hour workday.  Russell in brief:

Above all, there will be happiness and joy of life, instead of frayed nerves, weariness, and dyspepsia. The work exacted will be enough to make leisure delightful, but not enough to produce exhaustion. Since men [and women] will not be tired in their spare time, they will not demand only such amusements as are passive and vapid.

And many of us - maybe half - could do it easily but for our unbridled desire for more stuff.  It's an easy fix for many problems if those who need less money simply worked fewer hours and freed up a job for someone else who needs it to survive.  If all the teachers who are living comfortably worked part-time, we'd be able to hire a bunch of new recruits and get some fresh ideas in the system.

Sammy Yatim: When is a Cop Justified in Using Fatal Force?

There's a "justification" piece in the National Post on behalf of the cop who shot Sammy Yatim.  It doesn't offer much to go on beyond that we shouldn't trust a brief video to tell the whole story.  But I asked a cop what he thought of the situation, and he gave me some astute points for consideration (liberally paraphrased from memory):

But it was just a little knife!

Stabbings kill far more than shootings.  One good jab with a 3" blade can do fatal damage.  Using pepper spray or a taser isn't going to cut it if someone's coming at you with a knife.  You have to stop them for sure.  Immediately.

Raising Gable Ends Alone

It's more physically demanding than raising kids alone, yet no less fraught with peril.

I'm just documenting my morning of partial success on my studio construction.  I was ecstatic to figure out all the angles for the gable end.  And it all fit perfectly - more or less.  But then how to get it up there on my own?  What if it falls on my head?  It's not that heavy, but it's awkward.  I took pictures to document it in case I died in the process!

On Liberty and Death

Does it have to be both?

One of the reasons I advocate for restrictions on personal freedom as a means to save our species from extinction is that I need my own behaviours to be externally regulated!  Intellectually, I can assess what I need from what I want - I think better than most even.  I'm usually at the tail-end of buying anything new - like a computer, which I got after many years of teaching and typing assignments on a typewriter.  I finally succumbed to the pressure to get a cellphone just three months ago.  The final blow was realizing that monthly costs for a cellphone are cheaper than for a landline.  Similarly with my car-avoidance - they're such a money-pit!  It's quite possible I'm more financially motivated than environmentally.   Even my solar panels are making me money.

And then there's this:

Too Stupid to Live - Literally

Mound of Sound has a post at Disaffected Lib about the likelihood of doubling GHG by 2100.  If we don't do something very quickly and very intentionally, then, based on temperature projections from the 1970s on, we won't be able to live in this part of the world sixty years from now.  Most of Canada and the U.S. will be basically uninhabitable - not to mention most of the world.

I commented there:

We're no longer at a point where we need contests or incentives to get people to recycle more. We need concrete restrictions - corporate and individual. I'm all for personal freedom, but not if it's costing us our lives. For instance, we could save millions of trees from being cut down each year if we just made disposable cups illegal, forcing people to remember their travel mug or go home un-caffinated. Fuck roll-up-the-rim! And that doesn't have to be a slippery slope to totalitarianism, like I'm sure some will suggest. It'll be a difficult road for politicians to face, but it'll be far worse for us all if they wimp out.

On Chomsky

I think everyone should read Chomsky. He’s brilliant, yet far less dense and inaccessible as some people think. He’s a different person than you or me – well, than me for sure. He has a wealth of knowledge and an astute analysis of events pretty much from the beginning of time to now all in his head and instantaneously available to him. I have to look up the word “hegemony” every time someone uses it. But he’s also very down to earth, which makes him all the easier to follow. Most importantly, he gives us a framework of the world necessary to understand in order to help us fight the good fight.

He’s written many books, and many others were compiled from his speeches. Below are ten common threads in his work taken from Understanding Power: The Indispensable Chomsky. (Page numbers are from the 2002 paperback edition.) The ideas here are abridged without all the evidence – you have to read the full 400-paged book for that and/or the footnotes.

On Smoking and the Illusion of Concern

I took the kids to the beach on Sunday, and there's new signage everywhere about the problems with using the sand as an ashtray.  In hopes for a "butt-free beach," they included information on wildlife concerns, toxins, costs to taxpayers, and the level of pollution:  cigarette butts are the most common type of litter found on beaches.  But the signs didn't seem to affect anybody's behaviour because they didn't come with people actually patrolling the beach to offer friendly reminders much less tickets or anything more punitive.  Nor did they offer other options - like empty cups from the garbage half-full of sand for people use as ashtrays, then throw back in the garbage.  Nothing.

Can Animals Provoke Action?

Whenever I talk about atrocities around the world in class - slavery, oil spills, and the like, and I get the class to talk about what bothers them most or what most influences them to change, or get them to do a project on it, a good 70% of the class will focus on animals.  That could be in part to distance themselves from the effect all this has on people, but I think it's more likely that it because we actually care more about animals than people.   Animals are innocent, and people often suck.

via Forbes

In one class I showed real film footage of a 12-year-old girl being saved from almost being manipulated into prostitution slavery in the Ivory Coast, and footage of young girls working 16-hour days in factories in China.  How do we help kids like this?  Do boycotts work?  Does letter-writing work?  And the student response in that particular class was, more or less, "It's their own fault for being taken in by scams.  We shouldn't do anything to help them."  The class wasn't malicious, just so immersed in information about scams they can't imagine otherwise, and they're self-protecting by victim blaming.

Faith that the End is Near

In today's G&M, Jared Bland writes from a perspective I've been taking lately as well.

"Despite seeming reasonable in other areas of my life, I believe that we are quite likely living in or near the fabled end times....[I]t's becoming easier and easier to feel that the shadow hanging over us isn't just another massive rain cloud.  That it's something bigger, something worse.  And that it's moving in awfully quickly.....I'm convinced that things would be a lot better, were we to start to expect the end.  We fear it, we suspect it, but we need to embrace it....What if, instead of responding to disaster with kindness and support, we were just kind and supportive?   What if this were how we lived?.... [Living as if the end is nigh] allows us to think and feel and act in ways we otherwise might deny ourselves.  It encourages us to be more direct, more honest, more loving.  It says, in fact, that we must."

On Worry

There were many terrible things in my life and most of them never happened.” ―  Montaigne

At first I was worried about normal things.  Plane crashes.  Theft.   Okay, maybe kidnapping and prostitution rings entered my mind a little, but I get carried away sometimes.  It’s not that I don’t trust the people of Thailand and Cambodia.  I don’t trust anyone around a young woman in an unfamiliar country.  And I never trust airplanes. 

I dropped her at the airport in the wee hours, and we cried a bit.  That was unexpected.  Neither one of us is the emotional type.  But we were both tired and run-down from the prep work of travel.  It was enough to break our resolve.          

“You can have a few drinks on the plane now!”

           

“Nope.  Drinking age is 21 in the states and 20 in Thailand.”

           

“Well, have a quick one before you leave Canada then.”

           

“Before breakfast?”

Educating the Differently-Abled

“Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid." - widely attributed to  Albert Einstein but likely in error

I love writing essays.  Sometimes organizing my thoughts on paper is the only way I can actually figure out what I really think.  I've had many jobs in my life, but, unfortunately, none that required writing.  There are some jobs that necessitate advanced writing skills but precious few.  So I'm wondering why our education system is still so heavily geared towards essay-writing.  We use it as a marker of academic excellence, but perhaps that needs to change.

Blogger Rights and Responsibilities

I think of myself as a C-list blogger.  Sometimes I wander into B-list territory, but I'm largely unseen by the masses.  If I make it into the double digits on a post, it's pretty exciting.  I have two posts that made it into triple digits here - largely, I think, because they've caused disagreement and outrage.  One's about why I'm not fond of Eckhart Tolle - some commenters insist I'm just jealous of his success.   And the other is on why I don't like Regulation 274 and the way it was just added to the Education Act without discussion.  There, commenters are on both sides which makes for a better dialogue.  The rest of my posts have a limited audience.  

So I was floored when a company called to ask me to take down a blog post that's critical of them because it's adversely affecting their business.  I took it down and won't name them here just so they stop calling me to complain about my complaining!

On Monbiot's Manifesto

A just world is one in which the labour forces of all nations recognize that they can no longer evade their own problems by demanding the exploitation of other people.  (Manifesto, p. 245)

To be truly free...we must be prepared to contemplate revolution.  (Manifesto, p. 253)

Via The Guardian

It's been interesting to see the path Monbiot's taken to offer grand solutions to the problem of climate change - well, the problems inherent to human nature, really.  He offers a means to overthrow the current world-wide governmental system, then a means for an overseeing organization to dramatically reduce GHG production, then he goes off to the woods to explore the other side of the story.  I'm invigorated by his passion, but I'm dubious that any of it can possibly come to pass.

An Unprecedented Emergency

The Guardian has an excerpt of Stephen Emmott's new book, Ten Billion, about the effects of overpopulation on the environment.  The situation is dire.  I haven't read the book, but in the excerpt he delineates that we're definitely in a state of unprecedented emergency.  Unfortunately he fails to offer any significantly radical ideas to follow that could actually happen to save us all.  Here's what Emmott says,

The only solution left to us is to change our behaviour, radically and globally, on every level. In short, we urgently need to consume less. A lot less. Radically less. And we need to conserve more. A lot more. To accomplish such a radical change in behaviour would also need radical government action. But as far as this kind of change is concerned, politicians are currently part of the problem, not part of the solution, because the decisions that need to be taken to implement significant behaviour change inevitably make politicians very unpopular – as they are all too aware....We urgently need to do – and I mean actually do – something radical to avert a global catastrophe. But I don't think we will. I think we're fucked.

A Work-Out Rant

As soon as I was in my mid-30s, women everywhere started randomly looking me up and down and warning me that as soon as I hit 40, I'd have a much harder time with my weight.  It didn't happen at 40, but now, at 48, I see what they mean.  In part.

My body's shifted.  I weigh about the same, but it's all in different places.  My butt's flatter, my hips wider, and my belly rounder.  I've become much more square-shaped.  It's a big biological call-out to the world that I'm no longer baby-making material.  Thank god!  The biggest problem is that my jeans don't fit anymore.  I went up two sizes in a year.

But the part I don't get, is some people's insistence (men and women's) that this is a huge, foreboding problem.  I jumped on my bike, head down to the local Talize, and bought some bigger clothes.

Problem solved.