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.

So I Went to the March

I went to the Jobs, Justice, Climate march on Sunday.  It's taken me a few days to think about what I think about it.

Klein so close at the pre-pre-rally.

I got to Queen's Park way early and sat under a big tree to read and wait, and I happened to sit where the media were setting up, so right next to Naomi Klein and Bill McKibben.  I missed seeing David Suzuki, and I somehow didn't recognize Jane Fonda.  But the usual crowd was there.  In the pre-rally show, they faced the media with their backs to us, which felt odd at first, but then I decided it was as if they were at the front of the crowd, on the same level with us, part of us.  Except the sound system was so bad we could barely hear anything.  I was, literally, three people back, but I gave up my spot because I couldn't see or hear anything anyway, and I went back to reading my book.  I caught it on the news at home.

Then there was a larger show with the celebs facing us, trying to work us into a frenzy, but I couldn't hear much of that either.  It didn't help that people were walking around playing accordions or talking loudly- you know, doing their own thing.  But that show went on from 1:00-2:15.  That's a long time to strain to hear something in the blazing hot sun and to allow to fester a burgeoning sense that we're not one solidified group.

And then we marched.  There's always something exciting and invigorating about marching in a crowd.  It feels powerful.  It's the same feeling I got as a teenager walking as part of a group down the middle of the street because we couldn't all fit on the sidewalk.  We walked like we owned the place.   And I met some really interesting, strong, vital people.  That's why I go to these things: to remind myself that we aren't just cogs in a machine, and to recognize that I'm not alone in my little scheme to work towards environmental and economic justice against all odds.

Then after the march, there was apparently some food somewhere, and we all dispersed.

But, more interesting, there were protesters of the protesters.  Like the People's Climate March last September, some people felt that regular citizens weren't involved enough in the organization.  The marches are running on a top-down hierarchical model, which is the problem in the first place.  Klein says in her book that there are two things necessary for effective environmental change: bold national policies and the willingness to say no to fossil fuels.  But I agree in part with the protesters that a third thing is necessary - to ensure that we don't replace one power hierarchy with another.

The problem isn't just climate change and economic policy, but the wielding of absolute power by anyone over anyone.  When the celebrities that show up are bigger news than the people, we've got a problem.  And, I think, when the leaders speak to the media instead of the people being led, then we've got a problem.  It starts to feel like it's spectacle instead of something remotely revolutionary.

Here are four of the specific claims from a primary anti-march protester, The Hamilton Institute and furthered by Why Not 350.  I'm on board with half of them:

1. The Big Green organizations are "hijacking local resources to build their own fundraising opportunity, while turning us towards the most pacified forms of opposition....This funding model impedes radical, transformative change by privileging the spectacular while concealing less glamorous day-to-day organizing. The Big Green organizations in fact parasitize local organizing to support their one-off fundraising opportunities....They talk about including diverse groups and viewpoints, but they set the terms and limits of the discussion." "350.org promotes a token, one time support of indigenous peoples and lacks real solidarity with indigenous communities."

Or, as Paulo Freire insists, "Attempting to liberate the oppressed without their reflective participation in the act of liberation is...to lead them into the populist pitfall and transform them into masses which can be manipulated" (65).  This is a concern I wasn't specifically aware of, but merely had a sense of, which isn't enough to make a compelling argument.  This video has some of the specifics.

2. There is "a long history of NGOs denouncing militant forms of resistance taken up by frontline and impacted communities and of NGOs not supporting diversity of tactics."

On the bus ride up, well-organized by a local 350 group, I listened to a discussion on this line by an activist who felt strongly that we should denounce militant forms of resistance because "we lose legitimacy if we use violence." At one point in the conversation I spoke up that we need to bring pitchforks and torches and a guillotine to these rallies, dammit, and my small audience fell awkwardly silent.  Whoops!  But I'm afraid this is too serious a time to just try to talk things out reasonably Neville Chamberlain-like. I applaud the groups that take a risk by boarding oil rigs or damaging equipment in order to directly stop a pipeline going in the ground. Yes, smashing windows at the G20 is pointless, typically hurting the franchise owner and leaving the CEO untouched, but some acts of trespassing or destruction of property can be necessary to prevent a larger, more permanent destruction. This was illustrated in The Cove and, of course, Ferngully.

3. "The divestment campaign touted by 350.org is focused on publicly traded stocks and bonds, even though much of fossil fuel divestment takes place in private hands. Fossil fuel companies hardly make money off of their stocks, they make their money by selling fossil fuels; one of many issues with fossil fuel divestment."

Okay, but every little bit helps.  I don't think it's a problem for different groups to have a different focus, as long as they don't work against one another.  Some can work on divestment while others are boots on the ground.  Coming at it from all angles at once can be very effective.

4. Finally, "Their framing is positioning political and economic leaders as actors who might make a choice in favour of people as a result of a large demonstration. We know this isn’t true."

This one is triggering. If a large demonstration won't work, then we don't have a democracy (which we largely don't anymore, I know), and this is another problem to add to the list.  It should have been called "Jobs, Justice, Climate, and Democracy." They might be right, that it has no effect, but I can't believe it. I just won't accept the possibility that we won't be heard if there are enough of us and we're persistent.  We have to be heard.  And it sometimes does have an effect. Speaking up and gathering en masse has to have an effect.  Weak argument, I know, but it's a faith necessary to keep going.

In one interview, Hedges said that one of the current problem that makes activism much more difficult than it was at the turn of the century is that we're a "post-literate society." Most people just don't read books - history or philosophy or political books.  He says it's the reason he doesn't have facebook or twitter or a website or TV; he doesn't want to be distracted from spending several hours a day reading.  That's key to our ability to understand ideas in a complex way, and it's gone. Now we skim and share headlines without getting to the bottom of how it all plays out. This could mean we'll be easily led in any direction, which is dangerous. If people won't read, we have to keep them in the know otherwise. The anti-350 group was there at the pre-rally, handing out pamphlets to help people understand their position, but the marchers have no literature to pass on to the public on the sidewalks. We need ways to make the problems transparent and easily understood by everyone to the point that they'll be compelled to join.

Like feminism, left-leaning politics, Protestantism... a group's focus on freedom from an oppressor can devolve into multiple factions that begin to fight, weakening the face of the movement so it can be too easily dismantled.  This can't be allowed to happen this time.  We have to focus on joining together and living with a social and environmental perspective, and working to stop specific acts of injustice in a variety of ways that are applauded by the other factions within the group.  Being against something or someone feels empowering, but harder and more necessary is getting it together.

Guilty of one selfie in the reflection of a building.

On Being an Ally

I'm not sure how to say this without being blasted, but I'll try:  I might understand a little piece affecting Rachel Dolezal decision to present as black rather than be a white ally.

I just have one story.  It was about ten years ago.  I had just finished reading The History of Mary Prince: A West Indian Slave Narrative and was floored by it.  I couldn't believe I had never heard of her before.  The story is compelling, and it's a good length to offer to high school students.  I was curious if anyone else had tried teaching it to that age level, so I searched for forums where it was being discussed.  Then I unwittingly threw myself to the wolves by suggesting that I'd like to teach it in an English or history class.

The others on the forum were black, something I didn't think necessary to consider until they got very angry with me:  how DARE I consider teaching a book about a black experience when I'm white?

It was all kind of familiar because I've been in the middle of discussions about men teaching books about women - is it possible that men can understand the female experience enough to teach it?  Women can teach books about men because the subordinate group always knows about the dominant group.  Canadians know more about the U.S. than the other way around.  But I contend that it IS possible to look at life from an alien perspective.  It can't be done arrogantly, however, but must come from a place of respect and acknowledged ignorance, read charitably.  Like you can't really get Plato without an understanding of what Athens was going through at the time, we sometimes have to do extra research around people's environment and history to really feel their stories and understand the logic of their ideas.

I'm game to do the work, but I was so strongly dissuaded by this one black community, that I tossed the book aside believing I'm not worthy to teach it.

So it went untaught.

It's a double-edged sword.  If women think men shouldn't be teaching women's experiences, then, since most English profs are men, we might not have books by women on the syllabus.  And then we'll complain about that.  And if people of non-white heritage don't think white people can teach their stories, then they won't be taught - not because teachers don't care about those stories, but because they're afraid of doing it wrong.  And of course it's a problem that this part of the world is dominated by white men, and whites in general, but that's what we've got to work with right now.  Having the stories out there, taught by allies is one way to eat away at the system.

I know there are feminists who don't believe men can be feminists, but I'm not one of them.  I think it's important to get dominant voices (male voices) involved in the cause to help us get anywhere.  Similarly I think environmentalists have to approach big businesses as potential allies rather than threats.  I believe in intersectionality; I believe we can't undo the oppression or exploitation of one group without getting at them all.  Sexism, racism, LGBTQ issues, ablism, poverty, environmental destruction - it's all so clearly interconnected.

But, back to Dolezal.  I don't condone what she did at all, and I think she's got bigger issues under the surface there, but the one little piece maybe I do understand is that it can be hard to be an ally of a group you don't belong to.  People don't always trust you to speak for them if you haven't lived their experiences.  But I'm not sure we have time to do it any other way.

OITNB

I read some review somewhere of the first episode of Orange is the New Black on the weekend before I dove into a marathon session of the entire season.  It suggested that the reason people like the show is because it actually shows real relationships between real women.  The context is divorced from most viewer's experiences, but the conversations are similar.  And we rarely see that elsewhere.

No spoilers.

Okay, sure.  It's nice that it's a show about women, for sure, and the dialogue is fantastic - especially between Big Boo and Pennsatucky.  But I don't relate to it because of the conversations and relationships, but because of the individual experiences.  I can relate to the experience of not having my little one with me on Mother's Day, or being trapped with some slime ball "friend" and hoping to find a way out, or watching someone getting away with crap because they're good at playing the system.  Those are universally frustrating and heartbreaking situations.  And the peek into the background of each character individually gives us a three-dimensional understanding of their motives and beliefs and longings - and their development of various coping mechanisms to deal with the world.

But beyond the personal, this season gets into privatization - how it works, how to try to stop it, why we can't win - so well that it could be mandatory viewing for a unit of one of the courses I teach.  And, at the same time, it gets into faith - why we crave it, the need for totems, and communal belonging.  And, as always, it gets into the injustices of the world.  Sometime jerks win, and good guys lose, and vengeance feels good even when it feels a little bad.  And we don't ever know people as much as we think we do.  We just barely know ourselves.

You don't have to be a woman to connect with that.

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.

Revolution, the Film

I saw and wrote about this movie two years ago, but it's being released to a wider audience now.

About ten years ago, Rob Stewart was making the film Sharkwater under his questionable conviction that, "If people knew shark populations were decreasing by 90%, they'd do something."

A question from the audience at a preview changed everything for him: "What's the point of stopping shark finning if fisheries will collapse by 2048?"

Stewart immersed himself in the larger issues with the ocean, until he got to the point of recognizing that, "The only thing we can do which will control ocean acidification is to stop burning fossil fuels." So then he got on the climate change activism path until he recognized, "We know what to do... it's down to political will," and that "We don't just have a climate problem; we have a human problem."  It took most of the film before he realized that all the planes he was taking to go around the world to talk about these issues and film animals might actually be adding to the problem.

All of the current problems are interrelated, and he didn't even touch on poverty and inequity.  We do have to fix them all, but we can jump in anywhere.  As we work we soon find the threads leading to the next issue.  It can be overwhelming, but we just have to stay afloat and keep on track to slow down our own fossil fuel use while we work together to motivate politicians and corporations (by whatever means possible) to change the system before it's too late.

The film has beautiful images that remind us of what we're going to lose if we don't get our act together. It makes it all the more devastating.

You can buy or rent the movie here.  For every movie sold, $1 will go to World Wildlife Fund.

Stewart also made a series of short educational videos.  Here is more information on...

Ocean Acidification:


Ocean Acidification World Issue Video from Rob Stewart on Vimeo.

Deforestation:



Deforestation World Issue Video from Rob Stewart on Vimeo.

Climate Change:


Climate Change World Issue Video from Rob Stewart on Vimeo.

Overfishing:


Overfishing World Issue Video from Rob Stewart on Vimeo.

Same the Humans:


Save the Humans World Issue Video from Rob Stewart on Vimeo.

On Sublime Madness

"You don't fight fascism because you're going to win. You fight fascism because it is fascist."
     - Jean-Paul Sartre, The Age of Reason

In my previous post, I intended to write about Hedges' new book, Wages of Rebellion, but I got thoroughly overcome by a rant that's been building inspired by his subtitle.  So here's the gist of his writing without repeating ideas from previous posts of late (lots about the prison system that I already mentioned).


The Courage to Know, and to Join Together:

The greatest existential crisis we face is to at once accept what lies before us - for the effects of climate change and financial instability are now inevitable - and yet find the resilience to fight back. (28).  The last days of any civilization, when populations are averting their eyes from the unpleasant realities before them, become carnivals of hedonism and folly.... Culture and literacy, in the final stage of decline, are replaced with noisy diversions, elaborate public spectacle, and empty clichés (33-34).   

We will have to find ways to fend for ourselves. And we will fend for ourselves only by building communitarian organizations (25).  It is the religion of capitalism, the maniacal quest for wealth at the expense of others, that turns human beings into beasts of prey...As those who build these communitarian structures discard the religion of capitalism, their acts of charity and resistance will merge - and they will be condemned by the corporate state (42-43). 

The goals of wholesale surveillance...is not, in the end, to discover crimes, "but to be on hand when the government decides to arrest a certain category of the population" ... This fear and loss of spontaneity keep a population traumatized and immobilized and turn the courts, along with legislative bodies, into mechanisms that legalize the crimes of state (54-55).

Lynne Stewart, a lawyer for the poor, convicted on charges of conspiracy, was allowed to leave prison because of stage 4 cancer.  Her advice:

Don't let yourself get isolated....Find the other people who think like you....This is a pretty loveless world we live in....We have lots of romantic love. We have lots of Sex and the City. But real love, love that is the kind that saves people, and makes the world better, and makes you go to bed with a smile on your face, that love is lacking greatly.  You have to search for that (50).

Class Struggles and the Origins of Revolution:

Moral courage....is always defined by the state as treason (59).  The modern corporate incarnation of this nineteenth-century oligarchic elite has created a world-wide neofeudalism under which workers across the planet toil in misery while corporate oligarchs amass hundreds of millions in personal wealth.... Class struggle defines most of human history. Marx got this right. The seesaw of history has thrust the oligarchs upward. We sit humiliated and broken on the ground. It is an old battle. It has been fought over and over in human history. The only route left to us, as Aristotle (Part IX) knew, is either submission or revolt (66). 

Revolutions, when they begin, are invisible, at least to the wider society.  They start with the slow discrediting and dismantling of an old ideology and an old language used to interpret reality and justify power (67).  Berkman said, "Because revolution is evolution at its boiling point you cannot 'make' a real revolution any more than you can hasten the boiling of a tea kettle. It is the fire underneath that makes it boil; how quickly it will come to the boiling point will depend on how strong the fire is" (86).  Thomas Paine, partly because he did not come to America from England until he was thirty-seven [kinda like John Oliver], understood that the British monarchy - not unlike our corporate state - had no interest in accommodation (154). 

In Germany there was a yearning for fascism before fascism was invented. It is the yearning that we now see.  if we do not swiftly reincorporate the unemployed and the poor back into the economy, giving them jobs and relief from crippling debt, then the nascent racism and violence that are leaping up around the edges of American society will become a full-blown conflagration. Left unchecked, the hatred for radical Islam will transform itself into a hatred for Muslims. The hatred for undocumented workers will become a hatred for Mexicans and Central Americans. The hatred for those not defined by this largely white movement as American patriots will become a hatred for African Americans. The hatred for liberals will morph into a hatred for all democratic institutions, from universities to government agencies to the press" (162).

Sublime Madness:

He starts his discussion of sublime madness with a quote from Nietzsche, but it's taken from a book by Max Weber rather from the original source.  Curious.  Anyway, here it is from the horse's mouth (Nietzsche's Beyond Good and Evil, 39):

Something might be true while being harmful and dangerous in the highest degree. Indeed, it might be a basic characteristic of existence that those who would know it completely would perish, in which case the strength of a spirit should be measured according to how much of the “truth” one could still barely endure - or to put it more clear, to what degree one would require it to be thinned down, shrouded, sweetened, blunted, falsified.

Nietzsche's saying that most people need the truth to be watered down in order to cope with it, because it's painful to know.  It takes great strength and courage to face reality.  Hedges goes on to Kant:

It is impossible to defy "radical evil" - a phrase originally coined by Immanuel Kant to describe those who surrender their freedom and morality to an extreme form of self-adulation and later adopted by Hannah Arendt to describe totalitarianism - without "sublime madness (211).

Here's Kant's explanation of radical evil from Theory of Religion (aka Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason), pages 42-44 (caps are his).  It's less about a group of people, as Hedges' words might imply, but about the evil within us all:

The vitiosity of human nature is, therefore, not so much WICKEDNESS - this word being understood in its severest sense, namely, as an inward wickedness, or intent of choosing evil as evil (for that were diabolical), - as rather PERVERSITY of heart, which, on account of the consequences flowing from it, is called AN EVIL HEART. This, however, is not inconsistent with a state of Will that may generally and on the whole be good, and arises from the infirmity of human nature, which is not sufficiently strong to adhere to the good principles it may once of all have adopted; coupled, however, with the impurity (insincerity) of not duly sifting and arranging the springs according to their ethic content, and of having an eye mainly to this, that actions quadrate with the Law, although they have not been originated by it. Now, although from such a state of matters VICE may not immediately arise, still the cast of thinking, whereby the absence of vice is looked upon as virtue, is already a radial perversity of the human heart.... 

This insincerity, shrouding our real inward character from our view, prevents the founding of genuine moral principles within, and spreads, after having deceived ourselves, so as next to beguile and impose upon others, which, if not wickedness, is at least worthlessness, and proceeds from the radical evil of human nature, which, by distorting and untuning our moral understanding in regard of what a man is to be taken for, renders slippery and uncertain all ethical imputation, and constitutes that rotten spot in humanity, which, until entirely severed, keeps back the germ of good from unfolding itself, as it otherwise infallibly would do.

But the important bit from Hedges is reaching this state of sublime madness:

The message of the rebel is disturbing because of the consequences of the truth he or she speaks.....To accept that nearly all forms of electronic communication are captured and stored by the government is to give up the illusion of freedom (213).  The moral life, celebrated only in the afterglow of history and often not celebrated at all, is lonely, frightening, and hard... The rebel knows the odds. To defy radical evil does not mean to be irrational. It is to have a sober clarity about the power of evil and one's insignificance and yet to rebel anyway. To face radical evil is to accept self-sacrifice (215). 

Those with sublime madness accept the possibility of their own death as the price paid for defending life. This curious mixture of gloom and hope, of defiance and resignation, or absurdity and meaning, is born of the rebel's awareness of the enormity of the forces that must be defeated and the remote chances for success. "Hope is definitely not the same thing as optimism," Havel wrote.  "It is not the conviction that something will turn out well, but the certainty that something makes sense, regardless of how it turns out." (219).   

People of all creeds and people of no creeds must make an absurd leap of faith to believe, despite all the empirical evidence around us, that the good draws to it the good.... and in theses acts we make possible a better world, even if we cannot see one emerging around us (226).

Hedges' Suggested Readings:

Emma Goldman's articles in Appeal to Reason
Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States
Ralph Nader's writings  - many pieces of legislation were written by him
Hannah Arendt - Origins of Totalitarianism and Eichmann in Jerusalem
Auguste Blanqui's writings
Sheldon Wolin - Democracy Incorporated
Clive Hamilton - Requiem for a Species: Why We Resist the Truth about Climate Change
Alexander Berkman - The Idea is the Thing
Thomas Paine - Common Sense

The Moral Imperative of Revolt

I prefer Hedges' subtitle to his title, Wages of Rebellion, but this post isn't about him per se.  Morally, we have to revolt against this corrupt system - like when the workers in Rome all walked out in a series of secessions (it doesn't always take the first time), or when the Barons and peasants turned on the King in the middle ages, or when workers in Winnipeg went on strike, and through all the rebellions against tyrannical rule in between and later.

The problem: unbridled power; the common people being subjected to the whims of the state; the masses living in poverty while the elites reap the rewards of their labour.  Right now we need a Clause 61 like they had in 1215:  25 MPs ordered to uphold the Charter in case the PM tries to overrule it:

Any infringement of the charter’s terms by the king or his officials was to be notified to any four of the committee; and, if within forty days no remedy or redress had been offered, then the king was to empower the full committee to ‘distrain and distress us in every way they can, namely by seizing castles, lands and possessions’ until he made amends. In this remarkable clause, then, the charter introduced the novelty of obliging the king to sanction and institute armed action against none other than himself.

Over and over throughout history whenever a small group has found the means and strategy to get total control over a people, the people eventually revolted.  Many died trying before succeeding, and sometimes their efforts made life significantly better, and things improved for a time, until everyone got complacent again.  You'd think that any knowledge of history would make leaders wary of taking so much power for themselves and screwing over the masses.  You'd think.  

But things are frighteningly different today.  Religion is not the opiate of the masses anymore; the internet is.  We're back to bread and circuses.  We have it just good enough to ignore the news.

Here's Marx's full quote (italics are his - he was an emphatic writer):

The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is the demand for their real happiness. To call on them to give up their illusions about their condition is to call on them to give up a condition that requires illusions. The criticism of religion is, therefore, in embryo, the criticism of that vale of tears of which religion is the halo.  

Getting rid of the distractions in our world is a red herring.  We have to get rid of the conditions that lead us to need so many distractions, the condition that requires illusions to exist.  We need to WAKE UP to the issues and get angry enough to act on them today.

This time, I fear, if we don't sort things out, we won't have another chance.  If we can't stop C-51 and openly protest the destruction of our air, water, and soil, then we are totally fucked.  

I'm a teacher using the "f-word," so you know this is serious!

C-51 could be made law this week if the Senate doesn't vote it down (click on each name to get a phone number and e-mail, or use this form instead/also).  An Ottawa Citizen article on the protests yesterday said,

Some organizers feel the turnout was also hurt by a general feeling of resignation, as polls show that, while more than half of Canadians now disagree with at least part of the proposed bill, they nevertheless believe C-51 will be pushed into law.... First Nations protest organizer Lynda Kitchikaeesic Juden is another strong opponent of the bill. “It troubles me and it worries me that other Canadians don’t realize that this bill, and this sounds horrible, but it means that they can be treated just like Natives,” she said.

MP Randall Garrison's speech is worth a read in full if there's any question that this bill needs to be defeated, as is Senator Grant Mitchell's blogpost.

People who let this go by without comment, without a letter in the mail or a sign in the streets, unless ignorant of the issue (which even my grade 10s understand), they are acting immorally.  As Geddy Lee said, "If you choose not to decide you still have made a choice."  That silent choice is for unfettered authoritarian state control and the freedom to obliterate our natural resources, destroy water sources, oppress the workers, and make a profit for themselves at the expense of others.  Who wouldn't agree that's immoral?  Utilitarians and deontological philosophers alike would be on the side of rejecting the bill.  It doesn't maximize pleasure for the most people, and it can't be applied universally without contradiction.

Okay, Epicurus liked to keep out of these affairs entirely, and I've thought of getting a place in the middle of nowhere, off the grid, miles from a newspaper or internet access.  I admit I might have done it already if I had found a group of friends willing to come with.  But I didn't.  And it's just as well because we have a responsibility to the next generation and to the other species who don't have a voice in this mess.  And if Epicurus' friends were taken into custody for questionable scrolls, and once he acknowledged that his garden would be affected by climate change, he would have acted.  I mean, Lucretius wrote of him,

When 'human life lay groveling ignominously in the dust, crushed beneath the grinding weight of superstition' one supremely brave man arose and became 'the first who ventured to confront it boldly.

And his student, Philodemus, wrote,

Men suffer the worst evils for the sake of the most alien desires, and they neglect the most necessary appetites as if they were the most alien to nature...It is impossible to live pleasurably....without living prudently and honourably and justly, and also without living courageously and temperately and magnanimously, and without making friends, and without being philanthropic.

So I think Epicurus wouldn't just sit in his garden oblivious to this one, chatting with his buddies about how to determine which desires are natural or necessary.  Because at this point, if we ignore politics, it won't just fizzle out, it will kill us all.

Squelching Thought

Hedges and Chomsky both complain about the education system of the universities being neo-liberal proponents of the free market schema that tell students what to think instead of how to think.  Ken Robinson says it all happens in grade school - although he's not even in the same ballpark as the other two when it comes to developing supports for his claims.  But I think the problem starts much earlier.

Our brains are wired to get better at doing whatever we do regularly.  Pathways form that make that task faster and more efficient each time, and tasks we avoid get harder to do as those pathways close up.  One of the most important things we have to do, as a species, is to think for ourselves.  It's a strikingly creative act, thinking is.  Luckily we're also wired to be creative and original, but we lose it if we don't use it.  And when parents sit their kids down in front of hours of TV shows and games, they lose their ability to invent new ways to play.  Parents organize playgroups and activities instead of kids knocking door to door and designing their own worlds with small groups of neighbours without any adult input.

Boredom is necessary to inspire kids to develop their own ideas about games and rules and entertainment.  Far too often children's boredom makes parents anxious, so they alleviate it before the kids can come up with their own brilliant ideas.

Some of the games we played had rules that changed by the minute, which was frustrating, but it allowed for decision-making and collaboration and assertiveness-training.  If the rules are rigid and enforced by an adult, then the thinking goes out the window.

Many years of being passively entertained makes it that much harder for teachers to inspire creative thought or initiative-taking.  But it makes it much easier to get kids to fill in the blanks and colour within the lines.

We have a huge capacity for imagination through songs, poetry, theatre groups.  It's through our creations that we can effect change.   But those won't happen if people get used to being told what to do - and if they get to liking it.  It will be a hard struggle to convince them that there's something more for them later on if they do a bit more work now.

It's always the way.

On Thinking

I'm not even talking about critical thinking here, just plain ol' thinking.  It's funny how many seem unable or unwilling to do it.

While I was in a discussion group talking about Chris Hedges last week, one of the older gentlemen in the group complained that Hedges explained a lot about his own activism, but he didn't tell us what to do, so we're left rudderless.

Hedges talked about the many different ways he subverted authority and changed things for the better with hugely entertaining examples.  And he suggested specifically that we be in connection with marginalized groups.  But, no, he didn't tell us precisely what to do next, each of us, individually.

So figure it out!

This is a key difference between a leader and a manager, and we're all too complacently used to being managed rather than led.  Too many of us actually want (or need) to be told precisely what to do.

The conversation reminded me of some classes in which I give a broad assignment to challenge the kids to discover the key aspects of the concepts for themselves.  There are some that are so excited to have limitless choices, and they dive in and end up producing amazing stuff.  But there are always many more who keep asking for more information until I eventually suggest I just do the assignment for them.  They prefer fill-in-the-blank handouts.  It's too hard to make decisions and come up with ideas.  They're convinced I'm asking far too much of them.

Thinking is hard work.  Figuring out what to do and how to do it is a struggle.  But it's necessary to get people to actually think for themselves.  And I'm amazed how few relish the challenge.  They like games where they make somewhat educated guesses at the best moves and are immediately rewarded or punished for their efforts, but they don't so much like puzzles.

And that doesn't bode well for my little scheme to create an army of activists in my classroom (or at least a few kids who care about life outside themselves) because this whole mess is one giant puzzle that has to be dismantled and put back together in a way that works but still fits without any pieces missing.  (Well, there might be a few pieces I'd toss.)  It's a challenge our generation is unlikely to finish, but it's our duty to take up the torch anyway - even though we might not live to see the rewards our effort reap.  And it involves a lot of thinking and deciding:  We have to figure out which issues are important to us, and then figure out all the players involved and how it all works - which also means deciding which sources are most accurate and why (which brings in some critical thinking skills), and then figure out what we bring to the table - what skills or connections we have that might help, and then actually get off the couch to do something with all that figuring.  That's insane!

But it's not impossible.  And if we can get the thinking started, who knows where it will lead!


In other news, I'm freakin' 50 today!  How the hell did that happen?

Cassandra's Curse

Climate scientists are reporting higher incidents of depression.  It could be from living like the mythological Cassandra, who had the gift of prophecy but was cursed by Apollo for refusing his advances.  Her curse was never being believed or listened to.

Imagine studying one topic for decades, figuring out the problems and solutions, and being largely ignored by the world.  Or worse - being hated and vilified regularly.

Nobel Peace Prize winner, Camille Parmesan said,

I felt like here was this huge signal I was finding and no one was paying attention to it.... I was really thinking, ‘Why am I doing this?’ ... In the U.S., [climate change] isn’t well-supported by the funding system, and when I give public talks in the U.S., I have to devote the first half of the talk to [the topic] that climate change is really happening.... I don’t know of a single scientist that’s not having an emotional reaction to what is being lost,

And, of course, the hundreds of comments on that article are full of deniers holding on to the last shreds of hope that it's all a scam.

In the words of Baldwin, "Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced."

Mad Max: Reality Road, an Even Darker Ride

It was so close.

First, the less important comparison:  It wasn't as gripping and shocking as the original Road Warrior, and my son called it before we went in:  more explosions and less rapey.  People don't accept casual rape scenes in movies like they did in the 80s.  This is a good thing, but it does take away from developing a sense of horror and brutality in this lawless world.  There were many of the same bits of humour in it, and really cool cars, but no sharpened boomerangs. But what it really lacked was character development.  Furiosa's backstory was delivered in an awkward scene of overt explanation rather than a more subtle development throughout.  We don't get to know the other characters enough to care about them.  There was no scrappy little kid surviving by his wits.  And when one of the wives died, I wasn't remotely upset.  I don't remember any of their names.  Somehow it lacked the same kind of tension that was such an important part of the first film, and this Max reminded me more of Indiana Jones than the original Road Warrior, but my kids thought I was nuts on that one. But there was one excellent scene that made me glad to have caught it in 3D.  Things blowed up real good!

But that's not the important comparison.  With a quick read of a few scientific journals, it could have been an authentic depiction of what we will likely face far too soon if we don't change the path we're on, and the movie could have been just that much more brutal because of it.  That they're fighting over water and searching for arable land instead of for oil (sort of), gets us part way there.

***spoiler alert***

A question occurred to me as I watched them suffering in the heat, using slaves to run pulley systems, and using fire for heat and light all within a contained city that turned out to be the best possible place to live:  What did they need oil for?  They didn't use it to generate electricity in any way that I could see.  And they made it clear there was no place to go to, so all that gasoline and ripping up the desert was for nought.  Oil seems to be a dead commodity in a post-apocalyptic world.  Just as well.

But one bit of reality was that whomever controls the water, controls the world.  That will be very true very soon.  Canada has lots of fresh water, but could we win against an American invasion?  Or will Harper erode our rights so much (which has already started) that the U.S. will feel the need to stage a coup and install a better leader for us under the guise of helping us reform a democratic system, and then take control of all our water while they're at it?

In the film, once the good guys win and kill the bad guy who was rationing water too stringently (and keeping slaves and many wives), they seem to decide to open the water for all without any rationing as if that's the nice thing to do.  But it's not.  It's as equally bad leadership as rationing too tightly.  Rationing will have to be a reality in their world where, like in Snowpiercer and The 100, there are too many people for too few resources.  Population control must be a top priority or they'll have to start culling people in ritual sacrifices.  

Just imagine, when the good guys made it out east and talked about going back and taking over the place, imagine that they had had one brief conversation about how they would run the place differently.  And imagine if their ideas actually made sense!   They could have excitedly talked about a fair means of delivering food and water, a choice of jobs on a rotation, a means to slow population growth...  and then we'd see the realization on their faces that no matter what they did, they would have to control childbearing.  Men and women just couldn't be allowed to have every child they wanted.  Saving women from the clutches of an evil-doer who controls their reproduction would have to be replaced by a different system of control rather than done away with completely.  Figuring out how to do that without being hated by the masses is the exciting bit.

The gang tries to find some green space that used to be Furiosa's home, but it's all dead now.  The soil is full of salt so nothing can grow.  One effect of climate change will likely be "the extension of salt-affected territories."  But something else that could have been included, that was slipped into Interstellar and discussed in The Sixth Extinction (which has already started), is that many of us will likely suffocate before we starve.  Here's my summary on the 3rd major extinction from Kolbert's book:

Ending the Permian period - 252 million years ago. This was the most devastating - called "the great dying." It was caused by an increase in carbon which acidified the oceans and, with the oxygen level dropping, most organisms probably suffocated. Reefs collapsed. It lasted maybe 100,000 years from start to finish, and eliminated 90% of all species on earth (104). The best explanation for this increased carbon is a massive burst of vulcanism in Siberia. "But this spectacular event probably released, on an annual basis, less carbon than our cars and factories and power plants" (123). This one is most similar to what we're currently experiencing, but these days we like to do things much, much faster.

It's not just water that would be a scarce resource, but oxygen would be too.  The main bad guy had the right idea with an oxygen mask, but they could also have made oxygen their drug of choice.  As the ocean acidifies (which is already happening), hydrogen sulfide is released into the atmosphere.  It tends to sit low on the ground, so they might be fine in higher altitudes but need oxygen masks on in the lowlands.  Just think of all the creative ways they could each design their masks!

And check out the effects of exposure to low levels of hydrogen sulfide: eye damage and degenerative nerve damage.  They could have had people riding through lower areas, and unmask a bad guy who suddenly has his eyes eaten away and falls into a fit of spasms!  It would also make the air more flammable, and there's so much special effects guys could do with that!  It was such a missed opportunity.

The horrors of real life scientific predictions are rife with great ideas for apocalyptic films just waiting to be taken, and maybe a disclaimer at the end with sources would wake up a few more people to the reality we could be facing.  Except that it might ruin their happy ending.

On Privilege

I saw Chris Hedges speak again at the Tommy Douglas Institute / Community Worker Program followed by smaller discussion groups.  I was so pleased that he doesn't have a set speech for each book launch and that I was treated to an entirely different set of stories than the week previous.


Here's just a bit on the smaller discussion group that followed his speech.

I spent a 30-minute break deliberating which topic to choose out of eight possible offerings.  One was on Aboriginal Perspectives, and I'm teaching Native Studies next year, so I was leaning that way, but then I decided to go for a topic more generally encompassing:  Education, Engagement and Activism facilitated by Desmond Cole.  I expected something about how to engage students towards activism, which is my biggest struggle in the classroom.  Just yesterday a few grade 12s said of a project on social justice:  "What if we just don't care about anything happening in the world?"  I told them to act like they care, and the caring might come.  But it's THE pivotal question, and I ever fail to entice many of them towards a wider worldview beyond which dress they should wear to prom.  I suck at engagement, so I really needed this.

First a disclaimer:  Cole was a kind and equitable facilitator who made every effort to hear every voice in the room, and he was excellent at demanding a respectful environment.  I sat silently, patiently waiting for the topic to come up, but we didn't come close to hitting the topic I was expecting.  Hearing every voice sometimes means hearing a variety of ideas, which can be educational in its own right.

We got into a long discussion on teacher strikes and whose voices are left out on that, which I would have expected in the "Labour Perspectives" group, which I intentionally avoided because I'm so immersed in the issue at work, I'm weary of that conversation.  I get how it could be a way to engage students except that we have strict orders not to talk about it in the classroom.  

But the bulk of the conversation was about privilege, specifically Chris Hedges' privilege, and it was interesting to me how some people seemed to understand Hedges' position and how it differed from my own interpretation (as a white, middle class woman).

Here's what I heard Hedges say:

We can never allow the oppressed to become a distraction.  We must maintain vital human relationships with people who suffer.... We must build relationships with people experiencing oppression... to understand and learn so our actions are grounded in reality. Maintaining those relationships is vital.

He described the many journalists he knows who have been killed, the many friends he has in war torn places who are now dead, and how, at 40, as he helped carry a wounded boy from the street with gunfire continuing, and as he thought of his own son becoming traumatized by the psychological damage the job was having on his dad, he decided he had to stop taking these assignments.  And he told of quitting his job at the NYT when they asked him to stop writing against the establishment, and he shared the process of teaching in the prison system and encouraging his students to write a play together and then going the distance to get it on stage in NYC (Caged, coming here in January), and promising to take all their families to see it on opening night.

He spoke of growing up in a small town with a gay uncle and a minister dad who stood up against a homophobic congregation knowing it would cost him his job.  He spoke of the actions he took for the workers at Princeton, photographing their working conditions for an underground paper knowing he could be expelled for his actions.

Throughout his speech he gave credit to the many writers and activists who came before and during his time.

And in the break-out group, several people complained heatedly about his privilege and the fact that he doesn't know what it's like to walk down the streets in Toronto and be stopped and carded by police.

And I thought, quietly and a bit defensively - pretty defensively - that after all he lived through in other parts of the world, all he threw himself into in order to give marginalized people a voice, in countries where white journalists are routinely murdered, privileged is not the word that I would use to describe Chris Hedges.  I wanted to understand the anger some of the people in the room were feeling towards him, but it was a struggle.

Yes he's white and a man and necessarily privileged because of those facts, but how is it useful to rail against him for something he can't help?  And if we want to improve our situation collectively, who does it benefit to take down someone willing to risk so much for change?

Cole wisely turned it into a discussion of experiences and how difficult (or impossible) it is to share and know how another person's oppression works and how it feels, how it's hard to access that if it's not your own reality. Hedges can't speak to it if he's not experiencing it.  And one participant explained it in terms of macro and micro issues (paraphrased):

He's talking from a macro perspective, so it feels like he's not speaking to me.  But it's because he's not experiencing micro issues. 'Micro' makes it sound small and insignificant, but it's not.  So we have to find a place where the micro issues fit within the macro view.  

That helped diffuse the separateness I felt from the more vocal members of the group.  And I thought of the years I spent in training to be a sexual abuse counsellor, and one of the leaders reminding us over and over "pain is pain, and it can't be compared."  Similarly, we can't compare forms of oppression, and it doesn't do anyone any good to rank them.  Putting troubles on a hierarchy and complaining that others don't get it, or their issue isn't important enough, doesn't work to improve the situation.  It's a slimy way we've been trained to attack one another instead of looking to the real roots of the problems.

Similarly, during the labour discussion one participant suggested the solution is for teachers to give up some of their wages to people who have less money, as if a deduction in teacher wages would actually go towards helping reduce tuition costs.  That line reminded me of part of Diamond's Collapse in his chapter on Rwanda.

The people whose children had to walk barefoot to school killed the people who could buy shoes for theirs.

Instead of looking to the power source that is the heart of the problem -- and for us right now, that's the corporation/governmental policies that have removed the middle-class tax base (through outsourcing, technology implementation, stagnating wages) to the extent that there's not enough money for schools so class sizes have to get bigger and tuition has to increase -- we look to the group just a bit more comfortable than us, and revolt against them.  They're right in front of us, and it's simple and easy, but strikingly short-term and ineffective.

But some of the participants weren't done venting their anger about Hedges' privilege.

One was particularly upset that he had the forum to speak directly to the Dean, who was right in the room during his speech, about policies she implemented.  She seemed to be hoping for a bit of a telling-off to happen.

As an outsider to this school community, I had no idea what the policies were or that the Dean of a School of Social and Community Services would be anything but community minded and hyper-aware of social injustices.  So I question how fair it is to imply that Hedges should have known that, apparently, there's a problem at the school that he could be addressing.  Maybe I'm wrong and they're highly publicized and I was just unaware, but if they're not, then that's a lot to ask.

The idea that Hedges, as a white man, should step up to help the cause makes sense to me, though.  I sometimes show this video in my class because it explain that dynamic so clearly:



But this raises a different issue for me: the white man swooping in to save the day.  I used to show Power of One to my classes because it has some great bits for civics and history, but I stopped because it also has a narrative of a white man coming in to rescue the masses single-handedly. I despise any movie with women in need so grateful for the guy who can finally help, so I try to weed it out of my choice of films to show about apartheid or civil rights or first nation issues... But it is the case the a dominant voice can sometimes go further to help than a million marginalized voices, unless, of course, the dominant voice becomes seen as marginalized by association.

This idea was approached by a different participant who was concerned that Hedges didn't clarify that the oppressed and marginalized are the experts of their situation, and that when people want to help, they have to come in as allies, not as leaders.  He didn't say it overtly, so it's only because of my personal experiences that I heard it even though it wasn't verbalized.  But it IS something that needs to be made clear.

To really help, we have to get down on the ground to understand what the marginalized and vulnerable are experiencing and to find out what they need us to do, from our position in the world, to change the system.  But it's not always easy to figure out who needs help and who wants to help.  So we have to approach it all with the utmost care and respect for one another's lives.  And, a term we learned in philosophy courses when the readings were centuries old, we have to listen to people's stories and experiences charitably as best we can - especially when it's a struggle to understand a different position.  I'm not sure how well I'm doing on that one, but I'm still in the game.

Really simply, we have to stand up for each other and remember that the problem is where the power sits.  Hedges talked about rising up and using our bodies to stop the tar sands, and we can do the same for all the oppressing acts we might see, from hurtful words in the hallways to carding in the streets.

Something like that.