My early 20's were spent reading everything I could find on psychedelics, mysticism, comparative religion and anything else a young fellow might gravitate towards, knowing that he had been born ten years too late to attend Woodstock.
Fast forward a few years, and I was an undergraduate, consumed with the search for ecological and technical solutions for saving the planet. I gained a forestry degree, and I was convinced that something like agroforestry would be humanity's saviour.
And perhaps it still can be. But fast forward a few more years, and my studies at the graduate level showed me that something else was needed…something that existed in the areas of economics, sociology, governance and culture. As I wrote in a newspaper column not too long ago, "...I'm still convinced that even if we had a magic bullet that gave us all the energy and infrastructure we wanted with no polluting side effects, we'd still find some way to foul up our nest or wage war on each other."1
I often wished I had kept more items from my youth than I did. I find it amazing that something like a Dick and Jane reader from Grade One can conjure up the strong emotions that it does.
However, I have very little from grade school that I can hold in my hands and look back on.2
From my undergraduate degree, I have none of my papers or assignments. At the time, I had neither the room nor the inclination to keep any of the hard copies with the professors' red ink scrawled in the margins. And as for the associated digital files, I was too lazy ¹ Red Deer Advocate. November 3��, 2010.
² A couple of precious exceptions are the Rand McNally World Portrait Globe, which my sister Kathy had the foresight to keep, and the 1958 Book of Knowledge children's encyclopaedia, which my sister Mary-Ann had the foresight to keep.
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to copy stuff over when 5 ¼
inch floppy disks evolved
into their 3 ½ inch
offspring.
However, I did keep
some of my university
textbooks with my multi-
coloured highlighting
splashed throughout.
And years later, at tech
school, I kept my
engineering assignments,
which have a muted
elegance that seem even
more pleasing than the
rainbows of highlighting in
my old botany textbooks.
The material I kept
from my graduate studies
is not quite so tidy. It
consists of a large trove of
5" x 8" index cards, upon
which I had scribbled notes
and bibliographical
information. I don't know
what possessed me to keep
these kernels of wisdom
written down on an ancient
analog medium – as
opposed to digital text on
my old 20mb computer –
but surely I made the right
decision, since I still have
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the precious index cards secured safely away in our storage room.
As I flip through the cards, I see that I made a very rough index, with all of the various subjects listed alphabetically. From the index, I could find the general topic that I wanted to look at (let's say democracy). From there, I’d go to the 5” x 8” democracy card, where I’d see an entry I’d like to cite: for example, Yankelovich's assertion that in order for democracy to be valid, about 70% of the electorate need to actually think about an issue before they endorse it. The entry would then direct me to a particular 5” x 8”
bibliography card, where I’d find that Yankelovich had been writing in the book Changing Maps: Governing in a World of Rapid Change. 3
Perhaps not as fast as Google and Wikipedia, but in the world of the early 1990's, it sufficed. And unlike most of the digital files I've ever made, it still exists.
What follows might seem like a dog's breakfast. But it comprises the most important concepts that I learned in five years of graduate study. And in this world of Donald Trump and alternative facts, I find – on an almost daily basis – that it is these very concepts which hold the keys to our survival.
altruism
Does it even exist? It has been called Darwin's Dilemma, since it theoretically shouldn't. And these days, the survival of the fittest seems to be the dominant ideology in society. But there is also something called "inclusive fitness", which means that teamwork in groups and societies tends to confer success. And we know there is scientific backing for this, since chimpanzees (and bonobos even more so) have often been observed behaving cooperatively.4
³ Written and edited by Stephen A. Rosell et al. Published by Carlton University Press in 1995.
⁴ See, for example, Chapter 2 in Alfie Kohn's book No Contest: The Case Against Competition. (Houghton Mifflin, 1986).
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I suspect that the slide back to barbarism was fairly recent. In fact, I would pin it to the “Me Decade”, also known as the 1970's. If the hippie heyday of the 1960's was the understandable backlash to the mindless conformity of the 1950's, then the 1970's took the navel gazing to the opposite extreme.
A few of us might remember the Great Depression, World War II and Norman Rockwell imagery as being a time when society pulled together. Neighbours had names, community still mattered, and together they formed the glue that overcame Nazi tyranny and that disturbing fellow with the ridiculous mustache.
However, the lessons of history are no match for cage fighting, Grand Theft Auto,5 the Two Dons (Cherry and Trump), and the infinite universe of pointless media distractions.
citizenship
The phrase "private citizen" is an oxymoron.6 And it was the book Habits of the Heart that woke me up to the fact that community is more than just a word in the dictionary. I'm not sure how or why I came across the book, but the message was a shocker, since a large part of me was still the young punk in the leather jacket that had the prohibition sign on the back of it, prohibiting a smaller prohibition sign underneath it. And like everyone else, I was well aware of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, but not so much the Charter of Responsibilities (since the latter doesn’t exist).7
⁵ …where players have been encouraged to torture prisoners (with knee-cappings and dental extractions), kill cops, and do away with prostitutes (in order to get some of their money back).
⁶ Habits of the Heart: Individualism and Commitment in American Life, by Robert N. Bellah, Richard Madsen, William M. Sullivan, Ann Swidler, and Steven M. Tipton. New York: Harper and Row, 1985. P270-271.
⁷ Rights might have trumped responsibilities in the Old West, when the frontiers were endless, and Andrew Jackson’s Trail of Tears gave White folks a bit more lebensraum. But on a finite planet, responsibilities should trump rights…especially when it comes to morons spouting off about micro-chips embedded in covid vaccines, while clogging up our hospitals, and causing people with malignant tumours to have their surgeries cancelled yet again.
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After Habits, I stumbled upon the works of Robert Putnam,8 who had been studying the economic regions of Italy for over twenty years. The north of Italy was much more prosperous than the south, and Putnam wondered why. He initially noticed that there were more choral societies and soccer clubs in the north. Was it because the relative prosperity in the north allowed for more social activities? Or was it the other way round? Was there, in other words, an economic advantage which arose from citizens being more involved in local community organizations? Putnam showed that it was the latter, and the key ingredient was trust. Groups that have trust can more easily share limited physical resources.
So there were virtuous circles, where trust fostered a growing economy, and which in turn, promoted institutions that nurtured trust. But in the southern regions of Italy (where the Mafia rules), there were vicious circles where "[d]efection, distrust, shirking, exploitation, isolation, disorder, and stagnation [served to intensify]
one another in a suffocating miasma…"9
commons (tragedy of the)
The term "tragedy of the commons" was first coined by Garrett Hardin in the journal Science in 1968. However, the phenomenon was known since the days of Aristotle: "For that which is common to the greatest number has the least care bestowed upon it."
Sometimes, we are able to keep care of the commons. Our national parks are a good example. We enact rules to protect them and we enforce those rules. Mining, timber harvesting and hunters looking for furry trophies are strictly forbidden.
But the atmosphere and the oceans are another story. They are nearly impossible to police. Sometimes, the destruction is visible, as in the case of over-fishing and the subsequent decline in catches. But at other times, it is invisible, as in the case of the billions of tons of carbon dioxide that we loft into the air each year. And it is those ⁸ …highlighted in Chapter 5 of Changing Maps.
⁹ R.D. Putnam, in Making Democracy Work, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993a, p. 177. Also featured in his bestselling work Bowling Alone.
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invisible molecules that are most susceptible to being incorporated into the convenient myth that says "my shit doesn't stink".
The academic term for “my shit doesn’t stink” is called the “free rider” problem. However, Michael Jacobs, author of The Green Economy, notes the obvious way around it:
“...since no one knows whether, if they use less electricity, everyone else will also, and since if everyone doesn't, there is no point in their not doing so, they don't. If, however, everyone were forced to cut their electricity consumption by higher prices or taxes, the same people might accept this as the price of doing something about global warming."10
This is called "leviathan"11 (or big government with a big stick).
communication
What a politician thinks is communication (from his or her constituents) is usually what Daniel Yankelovich calls "raw opinion". He notes that "...people tend to insist on having an opinion on any subject, whether or not they have thought about it, or whether or not they know anything about it."12 Yankelovich thus formulated three tests to determine whether or not an opinion was raw:
•Does the answer to a question change if the question is worded a bit differently?
•Is there compartmentalization? For example, would I think one ¹⁰
The Green Economy: Environment, Sustainable Development and the Politics of the Future. Vancouver: UBC Press, 1993, p.215
¹¹ Leviathan was first introduced to us as a large sea monster in the Old Testament. However Thomas Hobbes, writing during the chaos of the English Civil War (1642-1651), used it in his book of the same name, urging people to accept a strong central government which would stop the “Roundheads” and the “Royalists” from hacking each other to pieces. (The Roundheads wore buzz-cuts, whereas the Royalists wore their hair in ringlets.) ¹² In Rosell et al, Changing Maps, p. 93.
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way about taxes when it comes time to paying them, but another way when shown a school or a hospital?
•Is there a lack of knowledge about consequences?
If the answer is yes to any of the above, you can bet that there's some raw opinion being generated. And raw opinion is generally synonymous with our Dilbertesque democracy. As I mentioned in the Introduction, a voter may not know the difference between a methane molecule and a giraffe, but he/she will still give a pollster his/her opinion or shove a piece of paper into a ballot box.
However, Yankelovich also talked about "public judgement", where voters have had a chance to look at all of the subtle nuances associated with an issue. They may also have had a chance to talk to folks on the other side of the ideological abyss, perhaps finding that stereotypes about red-necks (on the one hand) and granola crunchers (on the other) aren’t always true.
Public judgement isn't needed for all decision-making. But on some issues,13 it is vital:
•When citizens are asked to make a significant sacrifice
•When a resolution of conflicting values is needed
•When public mistrust is high
Perhaps the best examples of public judgement were when B.C.
and Ontario decided to look at the possibility of changing the "first-past-the-post" voting systems. Citizen Assemblies were formed from random samples of the population, and these people (if they chose to participate) were gathered in central locations for a series of weeks (or weekends) to deliberate on the various alternatives. They then made recommendations to the rest of the population, followed by province-wide referenda.14
¹³ in Changing Maps, p.92.
¹⁴ See:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizens%27_Assembly_on_Electoral_Reform_%
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The B.C. vote was close. 60% was needed to change the constitution, and the result was 57.7%. The Ontario vote was not close. The recommendation to change the voting system to a "mixed member proportional" system lost. 63% of the electorate voted against it.
In my view, the flaw in each case was the referendum. The provinces already had the legitimacy of 103 randomly selected citizens in Ontario and 160 randomly selected citizens in B.C. The decision should have been left to them. Call me crazy, but I tend to trust the ability of my fellow citizens to think about issues if they put their minds to it. But a referendum? Call me crazy again, but I don't trust my fellow citizens to do anything other than make widgets, if all they're doing during their leisure hours is sitting in front of a bunch of pixels, watching either The Bachelor or NHL hockey.
community and mass media
Speaking of pixels, have you ever come across a weird channel that looked like it was produced in someone's living room with a camcorder? Kind of like Wayne's World, but with shorter hair and better grammar? If so, that's community cable. The big cable companies have to put 2% of their revenues into these local channels so that local groups are able to produce programs for local audiences.
Back when I was studying societal sustainability (ie, how to ensure that civilization doesn't collapse), I became interested in the possibilities inherent in community cable for enabling local dialogue about important issues.15 So much so, that I volunteered at a local Shaw Cable Station, and sometimes found myself at minor league sporting events with a heavy TV camera perched on my shoulder.
Thick wires came out of it, leading to an oversized van, parked outside, where technicians were feverishly twisting knobs and 28Ontario%29 and
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizens%27_Assembly_on_Electoral_Reform_%
28British_Columbia%29
¹⁵ I was primarily influenced by a book called The Barefoot Channel by Kim Goldberg. Vancouver, New Star Books, 1990.
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making quick editing decisions.
Years later, while running in a federal election for the Green Party, I wound up in front of one of these cameras. But it was in a studio, and the person behind the camera obviously knew a lot more about the process than I ever did.
However, I wonder if anyone actually saw me on TV. Because when I pick up the TV guide that comes with our local newspaper, I see there aren’t any programming listings for that channel. And when I look up the channel on our DVR, information is almost as sparse. It lists the weekly city council meetings, and there is a daily
"interactive lifestyle" show. But every other time slot simply shows a generic tag of "community programming".
As I write this, I've just clicked over to the community channel.
To my surprise, there is actually some interesting and relevant programming on: a short, locally produced documentary on the potential for our regional airport to get regular air service (something of interest to a lot of people here, since the alternative is driving 150
kilometres north or south to the major provincial hubs). But nobody would know about it, unless they were doing some aimless channel surfing. So our community cable channel is doing a dismal job of engaging the community.
Our local newspaper (the Red Deer Advocate) is doing a somewhat better job, with a daily circulation of over 10,000
subscribers (if my math is right, that’s about one copy for every four households).
However, if both of these organizations could align forces –
along with the political and economic power brokers in the city –
just think what could be accomplished. They could facilitate a local version of a Citizen’s Assembly. If there happened to be a very contentious issue that needed some backing in terms of legitimacy and transparency, the "barefoot channel" could certainly provide it.
consensus
Consensus. Agreement. Compromise. Cooperation. Solidarity.
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Such strange concepts. Might these words, at some point in the future, quietly disappear from the dictionary? We live in a world of special interests, individual rights, a culture of entitlement, extremely thin skins, and bumper stickers that read "he who dies with the most toys, wins".
However, this is where public judgement and deliberative democracy come to the rescue. How would they work? One particular technique, known as a "future search conference" had its start in Britain, in 1960, when the two big aircraft engine firms of Armstrong-Siddeley (piston engines) and Bristol Aero (jet engines) were amalgamated. Different management processes, radically different products, and different strategic directions all had to be smoothly harmonized into the new Bristol Siddeley Aircraft Engine Company.16
The FSC process became so successful, that in later years it was used in endeavours ranging from determining the future of urban transport in Salt Lake City, to the organized demobilization of child soldiers in South Sudan.
Imagine any issue that has a lot of heat on both sides. How about climate change? It is a prime topic, since it is heavily laden with value judgements such as inter-generational equity and equity between have and have-not nations. Politicians may (or may not) still have to make the final decisions on such matters , but FSC
facilitators know from decades of experience that deliberative processes by members of the general public tend to produce results that are well thought out, transparent, and prone to widespread buyin. And members of the general public have one huge advantage over politicians. They can see further than the next election.
How does it work? Regardless of whether the participants are chosen from stakeholder groups, or whether they are from a random ¹⁶ All information on the FSC concept was taken from Discovering Common Ground: How Future Search Conferences Bring People Together to Achieve Breakthrough Innovation, Empowerment, Shared Vision, and Collaborative Action. [phew!] Edited by Marvin R. Weisbord and 35 international coauthors, and published by Berrett-Koehler Publishers. San Francisco: 1992.
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sampling of the population, they are gathered together at one location for an extended period of time. As they are ushered into the conference area, they are each given a random number that corresponds to one of the various tables strewn around. Once everyone is seated, they are asked to look under their seats, where tags have been hidden, indicating who will be assigned tasks, such as chairperson, recorder, etc.
The conference schedule is divided up into 1) small group sessions at the individual tables, and 2) plenary sessions, where the output from the small groups is communicated to the rest of the participants.
Of course, technical experts make presentations during the plenary sessions, and in the case of climate change, they may have widely differing backgrounds, ranging from ecology to economics.
They may have differing interpretations of the same scientific evidence, or differing stances on policy implications, However, it is in the small group settings where the real magic occurs, because it's a lot harder to envision someone on the opposite side of an issue as being evil incarnate when you're sitting at the same table, discussing your relative backgrounds, and discovering potential common interests. And when you no longer see the person on the other side of the table as being the spawn of Satan, the problem at hand suddenly becomes less of a black-and-white dichotomy, and more like something that can be rendered in various shades of grey.
consumption
We can endure neither our vices, nor the remedies for them."
Titus Livius (59 BC – 17 AD)
In the documentary about Noam Chomsky (titled Manufacturing Consent), he mentions that if people spent half as much time learning about the political decisions affecting their lives, as they do watching sports on TV, the world would be a much better place. And during the sermon at church today, our minister mentioned 122
essentially the same thing with regard to "reality TV", the type of television that is so full of petty squabbles and meaningless games, that it has very little to teach us about reality (she then went on to say that it is the fictional accounts in the great works of classic literature that have much more to say about the real dilemmas we face day to day).
I sometimes stop and assess my current preoccupations (just like I did with that Hot Wheels set many decades ago). For instance, I have a love affair with a pair of sports cars – one 19 years old, and the other 30 years old. They’re absolute gems…though not terribly quick (the joke is that either of them would lose a race against a soccer mom’s minivan – and the soccer mom would be unaware that she is even in a race). But they go around corners like a kid’s slot car on crack. And they grip the pavement so well, that if I run over a dime, I can tell if it’s heads or tails.
And in the world of two wheels, I recently bought an electric motorcycle. The torque/weight ratio on that thing is insane. My last speeding ticket was in 1976, but I’m expecting my second one any day now.
My third preoccupation is with buying and selling old film cameras. I’ve spent uncountable hours (and dollars) on the internet, parsing the pros and cons of hundreds of makes and models, going all the way back to the hallowed Leica M3 (peace be upon it).
So I’ve mentally sneered at my buddies at work, as they’ve talked about their favourite sports teams. And I’ve often shook my head at some of the nonsense that my wife watches on TV. But am I any better, with my time-consuming (and expensive) hobbies?
When I was in my 20’s, and all of my jobs consisted of drudgery and sweat (like washing dishes and delivering flyers), I raced home at night to read Solzhenitsyn and Huxley and all the other stuff that I mentioned in chapter v. There were no conflicts between my wants and needs, because I wanted to do exactly what I needed to be doing. The same thing occurred in university. I was idealistic, somewhat stupid, and gradually learning about the most important things in life (like botany and societal sustainability).
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Everything was interesting, and I didn't have enough money to indulge in expensive hobbies.
But now, I sometimes cringe. Since I secretly know that the many hours and dollars I’ve spent on cameras and vehicles give me hardly any more satisfaction than what I can get from relaxing with a pint of bitter, while either reading a book about the Battle of Agincourt, or watching an old Kurosawa movie.
culture
Norway and Alberta: two jurisdictions with roughly similar endowments of population and fossil fuels. But there the similarity ends. Alberta has been stuffing away a portion of its oil and gas royalties for the last 36 years. Norway has also been saving (but only for the last 26 years). Alberta's rainy day fund is sitting at $16.6
billion. Wow! That's a lot!…isn’t it? Except that Norway's is sitting at about $1.2 trillion.
So what gives? Why is Norway about seventy times better at saving for a rainy day than Alberta? Are we dumber than Norwegian's? Not according to Richard Lynn.17 Apparently, the average Canadian's IQ is only one point behind the average Norwegian's. Do we elect dumber politicians? Perhaps. About ten years after Peter Lougheed made a very good start on our Heritage Savings Trust Fund, we elected a former football player (Don Getty), who proceeded to gut it. Then, we elected a guy with a drinking problem (Ralph Klein), who brought it back to life, but fed it on starvation rations. Then we elected a quick succession of seemingly smart people (Ed Stelmach, Alison Redford, Jim Prentice, Rachel Notley, and Jason Kenney) who nonetheless all worshipped at the altar of scandalous deficits (while pretending our province is so much better than all the other provinces that we alone can operate without a provincial sales tax).
But that only partially answers the question of why Alberta neglected to save for the future. I suspect it also has something to do with culture. I suspect it has something to do with the short-term, ¹⁷ http://sq.4mg.com/NationIQ.htm
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self-gratification mindset that filters up from our neighbour to the south. Remember: those are the folks with the $28 trillion dollar debt.18 Those are the folks who allow the mentally unstable to buy assault rifles. And those are the folks who continually remind us that they are the finest nation in the world.
But Europe is different. Very, very different. To try and understand how different, read Marnie Carroll's essay on "American Television in Europe".19 Carroll is an American living in Switzerland, and she eloquently writes about why Europeans are still fairly insulated from the bad cultural habits that often waft across the ocean:
"…Here is my list of just some of the areas in which I've observed Europeans being simply and utterly NOT American: in approaches to work, to community, to sharing, to views of time, to eating, to drinking, to sex, to nudity, views of space and distance, views of individuals' rights, views of responsibilities, views of community, views of workers and customers, views of logic, views of inconvenience, views of personal space, views of friends, acquaintances, and families, views of independence and individuality, views of leisure and exercise, shopping and consuming, materialism, views of culture, language, art, music, views of being, embodiment, emotions, expression, gender roles, race, class, sexual orientation, views of absolutely everything."
I remember reading an account of a motorcycle trip taken by a bunch of Yanks in Norway. They were pleasantly surprised by everything about the country: the natural beauty, the people, the cleanliness, the efficiency, etc, etc, etc. The author gushed about how great the country was – not seeming to realize that he was describing the extreme polar opposite of his good old US of A. And ¹⁸ As I write this, in June, 2021. For a timely update, go to: http://www.usdebtclock.org/
¹⁹ http://bad.eserver.org/issues/2001/57/carroll.html 125
with Orwellian proficiency, he noted that Norway must indeed be the 2nd finest country in the world.
decentralized decision-making
"In a civilized society it is indeed not so much the greater knowledge that the individual can acquire, as the greater benefit he receives from the knowledge possessed by others, which is the cause of his ability to pursue an infinitely wider range of ends than merely the satisfaction of his most pressing physical needs."
Friedrich Hayek (1899 - 1992)
"It is an injustice and at the same time a grave evil and disturbance of right order to assign to a greater and higher association what lesser and subordinate organizations can do"
Pope Pius XI (1857 - 1939)
Hayek is adored by the right, due to his analysis of the inherent strengths of capitalism. In his book, The Road to Serfdom, he emphasized the fact that knowledge was, by its very nature, dispersed, and thus Big Government could never be very efficient.
Pope Pius, coming at it from a moral perspective, emphasized that if something could be done at the local level, then it should be done at the local level.20 So, notwithstanding the occasional need for Hobbes’ Leviathan,21 both men understood that a large, centralized government is, by its very nature, ill equipped to be the all-knowing, omnipotent colossus as envisioned in Orwell's 1984.
Hayek and Pope Pius XI didn't seem to have much in common, ²⁰ Of course, both of the above quotes are mirrored by the Irish proverb at the very start of this book: “…the smartest person in the world…”. And then there’s the Telegu proverb: “The hunchback alone knows how he can lie comfortably.”
²¹ As I mentioned in Chapter VIII, there are some things that only governments can do passably well, such as dealing with marketplace externalities, public goods, and common property resource dilemmas. And Hayek was aware of this, warning against "...the wooden insistence...on certain rules of thumb, above all the principle of laissez-faire." ( Road to Serfdom, 1944, p.13) 126
since Hayek was an economist, and Pope Pius was, um...a pope. But they both agreed that the greatest efficiencies could be gained by leaving decision making at lower levels...when appropriate. But that's the problem, isn't it? How to determine at what level a decision should be made? The ideologically motivated among us would gladly take us down the slippery slope either way. On the one hand, there are the Hummer-driving, freedom-loving types who figure that rules are made to be broken, their shit doesn't stink, and that all society needs are cops and soldiers and lawyers to sort out the mess.
And at the other end of the spectrum, there are the bone-headed, politically correct zealots, such as the local school board members who suspended a teacher who had the audacity to give zeroes for student assignments not handed in.22
So where does that leave us? Where should decisions be made?
Well, obviously, the issue of what's for supper tonight should be made at the household or neighbourhood level. But for issues such as overfishing and climate change and international terrorism, perhaps a bit of Big Brother might be in order.
I know that Big Brother is not a popular concept in some circles.
But perhaps that’s because he often does things that the Hummer crowd finds inconvenient. He issues speeding tickets. He builds parks which they might not use. And he taxes their earnings so they can’t as easily purchase their next shiny toy.
If Hayek is adored by the right, then Adam Smith is worshipped by them. But both men were open-minded intellectuals who understood that some government was necessary. In fact, just two years after Smith wrote his masterpiece, The Wealth of Nations, he became a government bureaucrat (a customs officer, to be precise).
democracy
"Rational ignorance.”23 That's what James Fishkin calls it, when ²² http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/canada/teachers-stand-zero-work-zero-marks-156630735.html
²³ pp. 21-22 in The Voice of the People: Public Opinion and Democracy. Yale University Press: New Haven Conn. 1995.
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you and I vegetate in front of the television, watching either the Bachelorette giving out roses, or a hockey goon giving out sucker punches. That's because it doesn't make much sense for us to educate ourselves about the important political decisions that affect our lives.
Sure, we could put on our thinking caps, but if we only vote once every few years, and if that vote is only one in a few million, and if our elected representatives simply toe party lines (instead of listening to voters), then what good does that do us?
Maybe democracy needs a makeover. As Fishkin noted "...it is time for those of us in the world's freest press to become activists, not on behalf of a particular party or politician, but on behalf of the process of self government."24
Sound like a pipe dream? Well, actually we aren't as lazy or stupid as we sometimes make ourselves out to be. In fact, when given a chance, we do want to become involved in the decision-making that affects us. For example, in 1994, when voters were enabled by several local media outlets to shape the agenda for the senate debate between Ted Kennedy and Mitt Romney, they got very involved. How involved? Involved enough that the TV viewership ratings for the debate topped even the ratings for the Superbowl and the O.J. Simpson car chase.25
economics
My brother-in-law Jim is the quintessential uber-capitalist. When he sees any sort of government nonsense, it's always "bolshevik this"
and "bolshevik that". But when I brought up an idea by the American sociologist, Daniel Bell, he had to agree wholeheartedly.
Bell worked the idea up into a book called The Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism, the central theme being that
"...capitalism—and the culture it creates—harbors the seeds of its own downfall by creating a need among successful people for personal gratification—a need that corrodes the work ethic that led ²⁴ Op cit pp. 156-7. For more on how journalists can keep democracy from dying, skip ahead to the section on “public journalism”.
²⁵ Fishkin. Op cit pp 159-60.
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to their success in the first place."26 Steven Rosell put it a bit differently: "The totally unfettered operation of markets can undermine the very social capital on which their effectiveness depends."27
"Social Capital." That's academese for the simple concept of community. In the past, the community was held together by potlucks and sewing bees. Certain standards of behaviour were expected. But now, in the race to the lowest common denominator, capitalism has taken over that role. Now, we socialize our youth with video games such as Grand Theft Auto, which has the player earning points by stealing cars and shooting cops. Some might say that if played with a certain sense of ironic detachment, games such as this are harmless. That's a big "if". Who would you want babysitting your kids or running a local business? Someone who spends their leisure time shooting virtual police officers? Or someone who spends their leisure time...uh, doing pretty much anything other than shooting virtual police officers?
Capitalism, and the study of economics which bolsters its prestige, has little to say about such nagging details. That's partly because the study of economics is often divorced from the messy inconvenience of the real world. The Nobel Prize winning economist, Wassily Leontief analyzed a mountain of economic studies from the journal American Economic Review, and found that half of them were simply based on mathematical models that made absolutely no reference to any sort of data from the real world.28
How's that for pointy heads in ivory towers? And they're the same pointy heads who have no clue that the greasy loser holed up in the basement next door is being subtly influenced by aggressively anti-social electronic messaging, courtesy of the nearest big-box store.
²⁶ From the amazon.com synopsis of the Basic Books 20�� anniversary edition, 1996.
²⁷ From Changing Maps, p. 141
²⁸ From The Ecology of Commerce by Paul Hawkin. New York: Harper Collins, 1993. p. 89.
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"While all other sciences have advanced, that of government is at a standstill-little better understood, little better practiced now than three or four thousand years ago."
John Adams (2nd president of the United States) Adams stated this about 200 years ago. However, anyone watching Question Period in the House of Commons can see that little has changed.
Rosell's roundtable29 talked about government ineptitude extensively – and with authority. In fact, one of the roundtable members (Marcel Massé30) was initially the secretary to the federal cabinet for federal-provincial relations, and subsequently the minister for inter-governmental affairs.
The roundtable’s conclusion on the status quo in government was as follows:
"...exaggerated conflict in a very unproductive way."
"...debate occurs in secret, either in caucus or in cabinet."
"...limits the extent to which people can see and understand how the various interests represented in Parliament are being articulated..."
"...that sort of covert process may no longer be sufficient."31
The real key is to take a few steps back and to ask what the real goal of government – and by extension, political parties – should be.
Is it to get a majority and pass as much legislation as possible? Is it to be content with a minority and thus ensure (through ²⁹ from Changing Maps: Governing in a World of Rapid Change.
³⁰ Not to be confused with Marcel Masse, the cabinet minister under Brian Mulroney from a few years earlier.
³¹ Rosell et al. Op cit. p.88
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accommodation with other parties) that more of the electorate is represented?
Sorry. None of the above. As John Kenneth Galbraith noted, the quality of any particular government is not so much a function of the calibre of its politicians; it is mainly a function of the calibre of the voters.32 Governments and the electorate, now more than ever, need to be on the same page. This is no longer the 1950's, when energy was cheap, Rachel Carson hadn’t yet written Silent Spring, and folks in the Third World only occasionally made their presence known in the pages of National Geographic. We now live in a finite world. We won't be able to deal effectively with the challenges of the 21st century if half of us say "no" simply because the other half says
"yes".33
Shared understanding will only come about if we – and our so-called leaders – actually try to talk to each other and learn from each other. At the level of governance, some of this is already achieved via inter-party committees. But these have become an endangered species. Some of it might be achieved via some form of proportional representation…if it ever becomes anything more than an empty election promise (thanks Justin!). And sometimes, I think we should just abolished the entire party system. Voters increasingly realize how toxic it is. In fact, in the U.S., about 40% of voters now call themselves Independent.34 And here in Canada, the territory of Nunavut gets along quite well without political parties. So it is possible.
³² In The Culture of Contentment. Boston: Houghton-Mifflin. 1992. p.18
³³ …or if half of us become QAnon cultists, spreading lies like turds spread stench.
³⁴ From an excellent article in The Atlantic by Mickey Edwards (14 years in the U.S. Congress):
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2011/07/how-to-turn-republicans-and-democrats-into-americans/308521/
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Yes, that was the terminology I used on the index card (I don’t think anyone had even heard of “climate change” back then). And I had only written down entries from two sources, whereas up until quite recently, I had a regular newspaper column that was primarily centred on the subject.
But I see that I noted down Paul Hawken’s 1993 warning about horrendous feedback effects associated with methane from the thawing Arctic tundra.35 I won’t go into detail about this molecule that is twenty one times more effective as a greenhouse gas than CO2, but I will invite any complacent Canadians – or, more specifically, Albertans – who happen to be reading this, to please google the terms “positive feedback” and “climate”…and bring along a fresh pair of underwear.36
individualism
"...I see an innumerable multitude of men, alike and equal, constantly circling around in pursuit of the petty and banal pleasures with which they glut their souls. Each of them withdrawn into himself, is almost unaware of the fate of the rest."37
"Despotism, which by its nature is suspicious, sees in the separation among men the surest guarantee of its continuance, and it usually makes every effort to keep them separate”.38
³⁵
The Ecology of Commerce: A Declaration of Sustainability. New York: 1993.
Harper Business. P.30
³⁶ And for a timely update on the matter, see Canada’s thawing permafrost should be raising alarm bells in the June 12, 2021 issue of the Globe and Mail.
³⁷ Alexis de Tocqueville in Democracy in America . Ed. J. P. Mayer. Trans. George Lawrence. New York: Anchor, 1969. p.692
³⁸ Democracy in America. Henry Reeve translation, revised by Francis Bowen and edited by Phillips Bradley. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. 1945. p.102
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About 175 years ago, the young Frenchman, Alexis de Tocqueville visited the United States. France and the rest of Europe had its kings and queens, but the U.S. had democracy, which fascinated him. He saw its potential. But he also saw where it could fail, which was via individualism on steroids. You see, the ideology of individualism was the true strength of the despot, since individuals are so easy to pick off, one by one.
The opposite of the individual is the community. And in the realm of the political, community is best exemplified by the grassroots organization.
So, what is the well-respected despot supposed to do, in the face of such a formidable barrier as a grassroots organization? It gets creative, of course. If grassroots and despots don't mix, then why not create something artificial...like astroturf? The astroturf organization will have a nice sounding name like "Americans for Prosperity".39 It will have lots of cash shovelled at it, since the despot pulling the strings will have no problem finding a few million here and a few million there. And it will influence lawmakers to encourage pollution, discrimination, corruption and authoritarianism in the name of profit...even if the resulting policies hurt the folks that are supposedly being helped.40
leadership
Leadership should not simply mean "influencing the community to follow the leader's vision.”41 Rather, it should mean
"…influencing the community to face its problems." Because let’s ³⁹ Largely funded by the Koch brothers, who, like Bill Gates and Warren Buffett, are insanely rich – but unlike Bill Gates and Warren Buffett, are not known for either their philanthropy or their regard for social and environmental issues.
In fact, they are mostly known for their antagonistic stance towards social and environmental issues.
⁴⁰ See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astroturfing ⁴¹ This and the following quote from Leadership Without Easy Answers by Ronald A. Heifetz. Cambridge, Mass: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1994. p.14
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face it: our leaders are human. And their visions are often about as realistic as the average opium dream. The Vietnam War. Weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. I could create a list. However, the historian, Barbara Tuchman already did.42 Yes, she had a chapter on Vietnam.
But she also had a chapter on Troy (the leaders letting the Trojan Horse into the city); another on the Renaissance popes (acting like debauchery and corruption were central tenets of Christianity); and one on 18th Century Britain (and its response to those upstart colonists in America).
So it makes sense to let the citizenry in on the important decisions that affect their lives. However, people-power can sometimes degenerate into populism and demagoguery. Heifetz also wrote: "Charismatic authority can generate a mindless following..."
and "Focusing upward, people lose touch with their communities, markets, and personal resources."43
But then there was Churchill, who inspired the citizenry without resorting to demagoguery. How did he become the most effective leader of the 20th century? At a time when all seemed lost, he gave Hitler the finger (actually two of them, in a “V”), and sure enough, Britons rallied around him and then fought their way to victory. But how much of that was due to Churchill’s leadership, and how much was due to the old men in the Home Guard, young men in Spitfires, young women in the Land Army,44 and everyone else tending their Victory Gardens?
In 1941, George Orwell wrote:
"England is the most class-ridden country under the sun. It is a land of snobbery and privilege largely ruled by the old and the silly. But in any calculation, one has to take into account its emotional unity, the tendency of nearly all its inhabitants to feel alike and act alike and ⁴² The March of Folly. Alfred A. Knopf. 1984
⁴³ Heifetz. Op cit. p.66
⁴⁴ An organization enabling young women to replace the farmers who were off fighting the Kaiser and Hitler in WWI and WWII respectively.
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act together in moments of extreme crisis."45
Could we, in Canada, do anything remotely similar? Even if we had a Churchill? Does the average Canuck have any dedication to anything beyond his or her immediate family?
I'm hopeful that Canadians would be able to act together in a moment of extreme crisis. But since Orwell wrote those sentences, we have been through the Me Decade, the Culture of Entitlement, and the Charter of Rights and Freedoms (with no equivalent Charter of Responsibilities). And when an “extreme crisis” really hits, we have examples like the utter chaos after Hurricane Katrina.
Somehow, I get the feeling that North American society in the 21st century would not be able to accomplish half of what Britons accomplished during WWII. This is not genetics; this is culture.
But there is a solution: deliberative democracy. For deliberative democracy not only improves governance; it also improves culture.
mass media
"...the press and other institutions do a superb job of raising consciousness and of creating awareness. But what they do is get the public agitated and aroused, and then move on to another issue just when people are ready to engage an issue."46
Since those word were written in 1995, the situation has become even worse. The traditional media no longer has the hold on our consciousness that it once did. We now have an internet that enables people to search out only those views which they find comforting.
That has certainly been the case with climate change. If the science is inconvenient, then the easiest tactic is to pick and choose what to read (or what to view). A few years ago, the favourite storyline stated that if 1999 was cooler than 1998,47 then obviously ⁴⁵ From England Your England. Part III. Seen in http://orwell.ru/library/essays/lion/english/e_eye ⁴⁶ From Daniel Yankelovich in Rosell et al. Op cit. P.94
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the world is getting colder. And if the next few years also turned out to be colder, then it's written in stone. And if a few inconvenient years (2005, 2007, 2010, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, and 2019) all turned out to be warmer than 1998, then it's time to forget that meme, and toss a totally different shiny bauble out towards the gullible souls who never did terribly well in high school science class.
There are some fora for real dialogue between different groups of stakeholders, but as Daniel Yankelovich notes, "The few institutions we do have that are intended to permit people to 'work through'
issues...are designed to serve elites."48 Anything else tends to be a case of like-minded folks chatting behind ideological barricades.
For example, I was invited to help organize a three day conference on sustainability. I was hoping that at least one of the keynote speakers would be from the oil and gas industry (after all, Alberta is at the centre of North American bitumen extraction), and that he or she would be able to speak on the subject of peak oil.49
This would serve to bring in not only the folks who would be expected to attend a conference with the word "sustainability" in the title, but also a fair spectrum of people outside of that group.
However, it was not to be. The conference simply became an event where the converted could preach to the converted.
organizations
There is a ton of data which shows that there are three things that people distrust: big business, big government, and big labour. That's because these three entities each have ways of avoiding the level ⁴⁷ 1998 was an exceptionally warm year, mainly due to the strongest El Nino in recorded history (El Ninos being one of the primary methods that the oceans use to belch out excess heat).
⁴⁸ Paraphrased by Rosell et al, op cit, p.95
⁴⁹ I had David Hughes in mind. He had 32 years as a manager with the Geological Survey of Canada under his belt. He is a Fellow of the Post Carbon Institute. He contributed to the book Carbon Shift, edited by Thomas Homer Dixon. He was available. And his price was right.
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playing field of the marketplace. However, people also recognize that business, government and labour unions are necessary elements in a sustainable society.50 The trick is to keep a watchful eye over them. And who better to provide that eye than an informed citizenry?
However, an informed citizenry is an exceedingly rare commodity. We are addicted to pixelated nonsense. We are not very literate…or numerate. I’m reminded of Dave (with the ambling, pigeon-toed shuffle) who once expressed a desire for a t-shirt that shouted “Read a Book, Ass-hole!”
participation
I've nattered on and on about how participation is necessary in the political arena. But what about participation in the workplace?
And I'm not just talking about suggestion boxes and employee stock ownership plans. I'm talking about co-operatives, where employees have a major say in how the company will be run.
How would that work? Would CEO's still earn an insane multiple of what the guys/gals on the assembly line earn? Nope. In fact, in the most successful co-op in history, the wage ratio between directors and workers ranges between 3:1 and 9:1. And it is the owners of the co-op (ie, both the directors and the workers) who decide, in a democratic vote, what that ratio should be.
The Mondragon co-op started making paraffin heaters in Spain in 1956. Now, it comprises the fourth largest industrial group in the country. It has its own university. Its latest figures show it having annual revenues of nearly $18 billion,51 while employing over 81,000 people in the industrial, financial, retail and educational sectors.52 It has operations on every continent except Antarctica.
⁵⁰ Bellah et al. Op cit. p. 208
⁵¹ Just by way of comparison, that's more than the 2011 revenues of either CIBC
or the Bank of Montreal. And about double that of CN Railway.
⁵² http://www.mondragon‐corporation.com/eng/
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And in 2009, the United Steelworkers made a deal with it to set up worker co-ops in the U.S.
How has Mondragon been doing during the global financial turmoil in recent years? Not great. Since 2007, revenues have declined by 24%, and the workforce has shrunk by 21%.53
However, you can be sure that, unlike many other companies in turmoil these days, its top dogs aren't speeding away from the carnage in diamond encrusted Bentley's.
Mondragon does have one problem, though. Stupid people look at the words "co-operative" and "social" and see something that doesn't exist either in Richie Rich comics or under that thing that sits on top of Donald Trump's head. Forum comments to a recent article about Mondragon in the Guardian newspaper illustrate this perfectly.54 One writer chides the author, stating that "Apparently you missed the story where the Russians tried this for seventy years and it did not work out too well for them." Hmm. Maybe he has a point, since the first two letters in both co-operative and communism are the same. And I bet that a lot of those 81,000 people that work at Mondragon have mustaches...just like Joseph Stalin!!!
politics
According to Bellah et al, there are three types of politics.55 They call the first the "politics of community". This is the face-to-face variety most often seen at the municipal level, where personal attacks are rare, and agreements on issues are often achieved. This is seen in the Norman Rockwell painting, Freedom of Speech, where the rough-hewn worker with grimy hands and plaid flannel shirt ⁵³ http://www.mondragon‐corporation.com/eng/about‐us/economic‐and-financial-indicators/annual-report/#introduccion ⁵⁴ http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/jun/24/alternative-capitalism-mondragon The author calls Mondragon an "alternative to capitalism". However, Mondragon thrives in the capitalist marketplace, so there is a slight misconception going on.
⁵⁵ Bellah et al. Op cit. pp. 200-203
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rises in a town hall meeting to voice his concern about the annual report.
The second type of politics is the "politics of interest". There is hardly ever any consensus at this level. It is typified by chest thumping, which then produces cynicism amongst those voters who are unlucky enough to have to watch the spectacle. There is never any attempt to resolve issues via dialogue. Instead, it often boils down to fistfuls of cash given to a candidate in return for favours after he or she is elected.
The third type is called the "politics of the nation". At certain times in history, problems become so intractable that the politics of interest are brushed aside in favour of a leader who can get things done and who is looked up to by the vast majority of the electorate.
The example given by Bellah et al is Franklin Roosevelt's response to the Great Depression and World War II. Churchill would also fit the mould.
These days, we have to think long and hard to find an example of the politics of the nation. In the weeks following September 11, 2001, there seemed to be an opening. People took the time to ponder the big "why". Did the terrorists do it to the U.S. for what it was? Or did they do it in exchange for Uncle Sam poking its covetous nose into far-off places that had an abundance of fossil fuels?.
In an answer to that question, Bill Maher offered up his book When You Ride ALONE, You Ride With Bin Laden. The title was based on a WWII poster with the same title, but with "Hitler" instead of "Bin Laden". In WWII, gasoline was scarce on the home front because it was desperately needed for the war effort. In modern America, gasoline seems scarce because of an addiction for big vehicles and big houses in distant suburbs. The problem arises when the country with that addiction has to import 8 million barrels of oil per day...often from unstable countries.
polls
"Often the results are wrong, inadequate, 139
untrustworthy, unreliable, and self serving."56
"Most respondents feel obliged to have an opinion, in effect, to help the interviewer out...[that is] opinions are invented on the spot."57
"Polls can be a mirror or a window. On many issues, survey results merely reflect back what people have superficially absorbed from the media. Instead of peering into the minds of voters, reporters are sometimes merely seeing themselves in these survey results."58
None of that sounds very comforting, especially when a Prime Minister or a President bases practically everything he or she does on polling results. However, the news is not all bad. In fact, when a study looked at 115 referenda that were done over many years in California, it found that, compared to their elected representatives, voters were much more able to resist "quack nostrums" foisted on them by special interest groups and industry lobbyists.59 And furthermore, when it comes to underlying values and attitudes, we're actually quite sane. We know nothing about policy details, but when it comes to the vague generalities about the type of world we'd like our grand-kids to inherit, we are fairly civilized.60 So while we're ⁵⁶ Lawrence K. Grossman in The Electronic Republic: Reshaping Democracy in the Information Age. Toronto: Viking (Penguin), 1995. p.59. Grossman, by the way, was the past president of NBC News and PBS.
⁵⁷ James Fishkin. Voice of the People. Op cit. p.83.
⁵⁸ Fishkin. Op cit. p.160-161.
⁵⁹ Grossman ( op cit, p.67) citing Albert H. Cantril, ed. Polling on the Issues.
Bethesda, Md: Seven Locks Press, 1980. p.170.
⁶⁰ Daniel Yankelovich Coming to Public Judgement: Making Democracy Work in a Complex World. Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University Press, 1991. p.20-21.
This makes sense, because while we tend to think of the world our grand-kids will inherit, politicians tend to think about the next election, and CEO’s tend to think about the next quarterly report.
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definitely not Albert Einstein, we do have a bit of Mother Teresa61 in us.
Population
“Are humans smarter than yeast?” (Richard Heinberg) This is the biggie. This is the proverbial elephant in the room that nobody wants to mention in polite company. Actually, it's OK to mention it if you're just talking about the Third World. That's because their birthrates can be nearly as high as that of the Duggar family.62 And the solutions to unsustainable birth rates over there (such as empowering young girls to have as much schooling as the boys) tend not to step on any ideological toes (except those which deserve to see the underside of a steam-roller). But to hint that there are already too many people in North America or Europe is akin to saying that motherhood is over-rated and apple pie is fattening.
After all, we need more people! Don’t we? I mean, who’s going to change my diapers when I have one foot in the grave? Forget about the fact that the decision to have a child adds more than 9,000
tonnes of CO2 to the atmosphere.63 And forget about the fact that the average immigrant coming to Canada immediately becomes just as wasteful as the average Canadian.64 I need my diapers changed!
⁶¹ Even though the “towering and geeky” Chris reminded me of Mother Teresa’s medieval stance on 20�� Century problems, I’ll still use her as a passable symbol for goodness.
⁶² A husband and wife who somehow managed to spit out 19 children, and then got the media to base a television show on their decision to follow Genesis 9:7 with a tad too much devotion.
⁶³ Paul A. Murtaugh and Michael G. Schlax. Reproduction and the Carbon Legacies of Individuals. Global Environmental Change. Vol. 19 (2009) pp. 14–
20.
⁶⁴ Ryerson, William. 1998/99. “Political Correctness and the Population Problem.” Wild Earth 8 (4): 100-103. Not seen. Cited in Foreman, Dave. The Great Backtrack (p. 59, 64-66) in Life on the Brink: Environmentalists Confront Overpopulation. Edited by Philip Cafaro and Eileen Crist. University of Georgia Press. 2012.
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As I drive around the rural parts of central Alberta, I see a lot of
"empty space" (filled by crops or pasture). So, overcrowding doesn't seem to be an issue. But if I look at the labels on our gadgets and shiny toys, I see that most of them come from an already crowded part of the planet: Asia. And if I accept the elementary principle of cause and effect, I'm forced to see that I'm part of the problem.
Mongolia is the most polluted country in the world. In terms of airborne particulates, it is 21 times more polluted than Canada. At certain times of the year in the capital of Ulan Bator, breathing is considered an extreme sport. Mongolia exports a huge amount of copper, which is used in electronics. China is right next door. China makes a ton-o-electronic stuff, which we import. See the connection? Even a small Alberta hamlet of a hundred souls surrounded by endless fields of wheat might be considered to be complicit in the game of population overshoot.
Factor in peak oil, and you've got a whole new set of issues to deal with. Pretty much anything we do besides planting a backyard garden involves our personal allotment of hydrocarbon slaves. A barrel of oil has 6 billion joules of energy in it. That energy equates to 25,000 hours of human labour. An average Canadian uses about 20 barrels per year. See where I'm going with this? We are finding less and less easily extractable oil,65 and so far, there are no magic energy bullets on the horizon. The only bright spot is that Canadians waste a tremendous amount of energy...so we have a lot of potential to conserve.
poverty
"You thought it would be terrible; it is merely squalid and boring".
⁶⁵ We Albertans tend to be a bit smug with our bitumen inheritance, but it’s far more expensive to pull out of the ground, far more expensive to transport, and far more expensive to refine than the conventional oil that we used to have. Now, we go around with a deer-in-the-headlight gaze, wondering why $60/barrel oil doesn’t allow us all to drive around in Lamborghinis. Pipelines versus rail is just a side-show, compared to the loss of conventional oil, and compared to the fact that while Norway saved for the future, we pissed it all away.
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George Orwell (from Down and Out in Paris and London) Orwell also fought in the Spanish Civil War, so perhaps his definition of "terrible" was a bit more substantial than the average 21st century North American, who has a tendency to fume when the nearest big-box store runs out of the latest shiny toy.
To comfort us these days, we have "trickle down" economics, with the analogy of a rising tide that lifts all boats. But perhaps the more accurate analogy has proven to be the one of sparrows picking out undigested morsels of oats from the steaming stools left by the horse that has just passed.66
That might be fine for Gordon Gekko. But it is also a well established fact that relatively equitable societies tend to do well economically. Christopher Freeman67 compared the development trajectories of various Latin American countries versus the so-called
"Asian Tigers" (Hong Kong, Singapore, South Korea and Taiwan), and found that one reason for the phenomenal economic growth of the Tigers was the fairly high degree of equity in the their societies.
public goods
“…the staunchest defenders of capitalism are also its greatest ideological threat.”
Daniel Drezner68
According to Drezner, the main challenges to market capitalism
– which provides the prosperity that governments depend on – come ⁶⁶ …given by John Kenneth Galbraith on an episode of William F. Buckley's Firing Line. Date unknown, but vividly recalled from the early years of Ronald Reagan's presidency.
⁶⁷ Cited in Rosell et al, op cit, p.30.
⁶⁸ …Professor at the The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy (part of Tufts University). He is the lecturer for one of the Great Courses (www.thegreatcourses.com) titled Foundations of Economic Prosperity. The quote is from the 2ⁿ� last lecture in the course, titled Ideological Challenges to Global Prosperity.
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from four different ideological camps (or R’s as Drezner calls them).
The first three R’s are 1) the Romantics, like Thoreau, who we met in chapter v, 2) the Reactionaries, like Gandhi, who we met in chapter vii, and 3) the Revolutionaries, like Karl Marx. However, modern society generally hasn’t supported any of these first three groups anyway, since market capitalism is very efficient at putting bread and butter on the table, and shiny toys everywhere else.69
It is the 4th R that Drezner sees as being the only real remaining challenge to the long-term effectiveness of capitalism. Ironically, that 4th R is Radical Capitalism (from proponents such as Ayn Rand,70 Rand Paul and Paul Ryan…or Ayn Rand Paul Ryan for short71).
According to Drezner, Radical Capitalism (typically known as Libertarianism) is the biggest threat to present-day capitalism because 1) it sees little use for public goods (which are a necessary lubricant for the efficient workings of the market), and 2) it sees little need to guard against financial bubbles (the kind which brought us the Great Depression of the 1930s’, and the Great Recession of 2007-2008).
So where does that leave us? Drezner summarizes by stating that we need a “Goldilocks Government” (not too big, and not too small).
⁶⁹ I know what you’re thinking. However, Drezner’s 3�� last lecture is called Global Prosperity and the Environment, and he spends most of it talking about how climate change could put an existential damper on the centuries-long party that got started with Agrarian Capitalism in late 16�� century England.
⁷⁰ A somewhat homely and boring author with a simplistic philosophy, who wrote about the virtues of greed and the corrosive effects of charity.
⁷¹ A coincidental mish‐mash (seemingly discovered by Warren J. Blumenfeld of HuffPost) consisting of Rand and two of her most ardent fans, one whom was hoping to be President in 2017, and the other being the Speaker of the U.S.
House of Representatives prior to Nancy Pelosi.
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"We are not just amused bystanders, watching the idiots screw it up."72
Robert MacNeil73
MacNeil made a normative statement, because much of the time, journalists do simply behave like amused bystanders. What he is making a plea for, is a type of journalism where the object is not simply to report on what's going on, but also to help the public get involved with what's going on.
Jay Rosen (journalism professor at New York University) notes the following:
Traditional journalism assumes that democracy is what we have, and that information is what we need. Public journalism assumes that information is what we have, and that democracy is what we need. Traditional journalism assumes that people need to be informed, so that they can participate. Public journalism assumes that people need to participate, so that they can become informed.74
I once hinted to a former editor at our local newspaper that public journalism might be a good thing. He disagreed, saying that the paper's role is not to get involved in issues, but simply to report ⁷² Cited in Getting the Connections Right: Public Journalism and the Troubles in the Press by Jay Rosen. New York: The Twentieth Century Fund Press, 1996.
p.2
⁷³ Robert MacNeil was, of course, one of the two anchors on the MacNeil/Leher Report on PBS. He also happened to see a nervous fellow descending the stairs of the Texas School Book Depository on that fateful day in November, 1963. MacNeil was ascending the stairs in a breathless hurry, looking for a phone, so that he could relay the news of Kennedy's assassination back to his office.
⁷⁴ Rosen, Getting the Connections Right. Op cit. p.83
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on them. However, as Rosen notes, journalists are already
"involved" the minute they decide what makes the front page.75
religion
"...the quasi-therapeutic blandness that has afflicted much of mainline Protestant religion at the parish level for over a century cannot effectively withstand the competition of the more vigorous forms of radical religious individualism, with their claims of dramatic self-realization, or the resurgent religious conservatism that spells out clear, if simple, answers in an increasingly bewildering world."76
Bellah et al interviewed loads of folks from different religious backgrounds: Catholics, Evangelical Protestants, Episcopalians, New Agers, etc. The common thread of their inquiry was how well (or how poorly) these different traditions fostered ties with the communities in which they operated.
Twenty or thirty years ago, I would have been lumped in with the "radical religious individualism" category mentioned above. I didn't go to church, but I eagerly studied the mystical cores of the various eastern and western religious traditions.
Altering one’s consciousness is a universal quest. So don't tell me that as a child, you never spun around until you got so dizzy that you fell on the ground giggling. It seems to be wired into our DNA.
And if that urge can be paired with a similar urge to attain experiential knowledge about the underlying nature of reality – as opposed to just getting blotto with a bottle – then perhaps humanity can make a bit of progress.
However, what the great religions have also pointed out, is that spiritual awareness is only half the battle. At the end of your "trip", you still have to make some lasting contribution to society.77
⁷⁵ Rosen, Connections. Op cit. p.67
⁷⁶ Bellah et al, op cit, p. 238
⁷⁷ Bellah et al, op cit, p. 248
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At the other end of the spectrum, there is a particular form of
“quasi-therapeutic blandness” which is combined with gullibility and grift. I’m talking about Joel Osteen, who preaches the
"prosperity gospel". It says that Jesus wants you to be rich.78 So if you're not rich, you're either not buying enough of Joel's books, or you're not putting enough money in his offering plate. Theology professor, Michael Horton has rightfully called his message heresy.79
But success sells, so perhaps there ought to be a new Olympic event.
It would feature Osteen trying to coax camels through the eyes of needles.
Bellah et al closed off their chapter on religion with none other than Martin Luther King. No quasi-therapeutic blandness for him.
Nor any mystical navel gazing. King got fully involved with the most divisive issues of his era: Civil Rights and the Vietnam War.
Contrast that with Osteen, the pre-eminent pimp for the status quo.
resources (non-renewable)
Yes, folks, they are non-renewable. Despite the feverish ravings of the abiotic oil80 crowd or the Julian Simon81 crowd, there is a ⁷⁸ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prosperity_theology ⁷⁹ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joel_Osteen#Criticism ⁸⁰ The theory that petroleum isn't constituted from dead dinosaurs, but from natural forces during the formation of the earth.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abiotic_oil)
⁸¹ The business administration professor who wrote lots of book about why limited resources weren't a problem because human ingenuity would always find ways to make more of them, or find substitutes, etc. Likewise, the environment was not important, because we could always find substitutes for it (hey, the Jetsons never had to worry about the environment). And here's a bizarre quote from Simon: "You see, in the end, copper and oil come out of our minds. That's really where they are." (from an interview with William F.
Buckley). See:
http://www.thesocialcontract.com/artman2/publish/tsc1303/article_1144.sh tml
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limited amount of petroleum under the ground. So, you'd think that if we gave a shit about our grandchildren, we'd leave a bit of it for them to use. But no. We prefer not to contemplate such scenarios.
Instead, we let people like Julian Simon state that it's OK if we burn through our 300 million year endowment of fossil fuels82 in a century or two, as long as we leave a few shiny toys for the grand-kids.
As Daly and Cobb83 note, the three main orthodox arguments go as follows:
● Rapid advances in technology will allow us to increasingly do everything more and more efficiently.
Then, presumably, at some point, we'll be close to getting everything for nothing. Woo-hoo! Party on, Dude!
● We'll leave future generations with lots and lots of machinery. We've already done the hard work of getting the ore out of the ground and refining it and making it into stuff. Therefore, our grand-kids can sit back and take it easy. Woo-hoo! Party on, little dudes!
● We can use discount rates. Discounting means that a dollar in the hand right now is worth more than a dollar in the hand ten years from now (because you can invest it and make a bit of money during that time). But human lives can also be discounted.84 If discounting makes sense for money, why not transfer the concept to inter-generational equity? So we can say that you and I in 2021
are worth far more than those pathetic unborn losers from the year 2121. Woo-hoo! Party on Boomers! Party on Gen-X’ers! Party on Millennials!
⁸² ….the number of years it took the earth to make the coal, oil and gas in the first place.
⁸³ Op cit. p.408
⁸⁴ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_discount_rate 148
But, as Daly and Cobb note, there are a few holes in those arguments. For example, can we really do things more efficiently?
Certainly, information technology has made tremendous strides.
When Daly and Cobb's book came out in 1989, something like Wikipedia was just a kooky sci-fi wet dream. However, we’ve also seen $60 per barrel of oil during a global recession (as was the case in 2009). Thirty years ago, that would have seemed an equally foolish science fiction plot. And there's the rub. Even increasing efficiencies can't account for the fact that we now have to dig deeper and deeper into the ground to get the fossil fuels that enable society to survive.85
On top of that, there is Jevon’s Paradox, which happens when increasing efficiencies merely lead to a higher rates of consumption.86 We see this with vehicles. They get more efficient, but then we just give them more horsepower, and drive them more often.
What about the argument that it'll be OK if we just leave enough stuff (ie, capital goods) for our kids? First is the obvious retort that maybe they might want a bit more energy and bit less stuff. After all, a lot of stuff uses energy to run properly. And secondly, stuff deteriorates over time. A hundred years from now, the shiny widget that's used to make other widgets might not be quite so shiny. But energy left in the ground, on the other hand, is like money in the bank. So we just need to leave our kids a few widgets with which to dig it up on a rainy day, and they'll thank us.
Finally, there's the argument that the welfare of Canada in 2121
is less important than the welfare of Canada right now. I would just note that unless you belong to the Ayn Rand School of Ethics, that is ⁸⁵ The concept of "energy return on investment" (EROI) is perhaps the single most important concept for the survival of civilization. Sixty or eighty years ago, in Texas or Saudi Arabia, the ratio of the number of barrels of oil that could be pulled out of the ground by the energy in a single barrel of oil was huge (about 100:1). But now we’re now forced to sift through tar/oil sands, where estimated EROI's range from 5:1 to less than 2:1. And shale oil is only slightly better, with ratios between 5:1 and 10:1.
⁸⁶ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox 149
a thought best left to small cliques of university students who form societies that nobody else knows the purpose of.87
sustainability
Many summers ago, I sat up in a tower and listened to a radio call-in show host interview his guest: then Alberta Environment Minister, Ralph Klein. The host asked him what the definition of sustainable development was. A simple enough question, especially for an environment minister. But Ralph fumbled and bumbled and finally blurted out that sustainable development was "development that's sustainable". Smart guy. I guess if someone asks me what a turbocharged engine is, I can say that it's an engine that's turbocharged.
This was a short time after the Brundtland Commission report came out (a huge thing back in 1987), and subsequently popularized the term "sustainable development". So if Ralph had bothered to read any of it, he would have found out that its definition was development that meets the needs of the present generation without compromising the development needs of future generations.88 In other words, there is a element of inter-generational equity, and it is definitely not a vision of development that grows and grows like a cancer cell.
A couple of decades later, we had Stephen Harper. This guy wasn't such a fumbler and bumbler, but he seemed to dislike the environment with an equal passion. So much so that he abolished the National Roundtable on the Environment and the Economy. Former Conservative MP Bob Mills (Red Deer) commented on Harper's decision:
"I've always said that if you're smart you surround ⁸⁷ I remember walking past their Objectivist booths, where a lonely student sometimes sat, hoping to entice someone to pick up a brochure that tried to mask the central theme of pure greed. See http://atlassociety.org/
⁸⁸
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brundtland_Commission#Modern_Definition_of _Sustainable_Development
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yourself with really smart people. And if you're dumb, you surround yourself with a bunch of cheerleaders."89
Television
When I created this category a quarter of a century ago, it seemed perfectly apt. Now, in the age of the internet, it seems a bit quaint. However, culture is culture. And notwithstanding McLuhan's dictum that "the medium is the message", plot lines and themes are still just as important as they were in the days of Homer (the dead Greek guy, not the bald Simpson guy).
So, what about violent plot lines? Do they affect our kids? Have they affected us? According to industry executives and other
"experts", graphic violence on the screen doesn't affect us at all. The bullying and road rage that we see in real life comes from...um, somewhere else. Um…genetics. Yeah, that's it.
That argument might hold... if those same industry executives didn't turn right around and spend billions on broadcast advertisements. Advertisements, we are told, have a main effect, which is to persuade us. So, according to the exec's, it's just the ads that persuade us; not the violent bits in between.90
Don't get me wrong. I'm not automatically against the viewing of graphic violence – even for kids. In fact, my favourite set of DVD's has the deadpan monotone of Laurence Olivier wryly commenting on scenes of frozen German soldiers littering the battlefields of the Eastern Front. And matchstick Jewish corpses being tossed into a pit. But there's a context. I am learning something about the human condition. I'm not being conditioned by some soul-less corporate worm who simply wants to empty my pockets.
⁸⁹ http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/story/2012/06/07/pol‐nrtee‐round‐table-environment-economy-mills.html
⁹⁰ Frank Mankiewicz and Joel Swerdlow in Remote Control: Television and the Manipulation of American Life. New York: Times Books, 1978. p.51
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chapter xi : more university (in rhyming verse)
…and here are the same essential concepts from the previous 37 pages stated in a slightly different manner (assembled during a particularly damp tower season, many years ago).
Dick Diddled Sue
I've written a poem...perhaps a bit long.
It speaks of a future when things go quite wrong.
Oh, I know technocrat optimists spewing out drool, tell us "Don't worry! The future is cool!"
And laissez-faire bus'ness types spewing out fiction, say that the market will cure all affliction.1
But what about cod stocks and weapons at school?
And third world dictators who kill as they rule?
There's terrorist scum who're unleashing such dread, that Mohammed himself must be shaking his head.
And cee-oh-two warming and frogs in decline, and weapons-grade nuke-juice sales east of the Rhine.
There’s covid and AIDS and the H5N1.
Will they mow us all down like Attila the Hun?
Yes, we need answers. We need them quite soon.
'Cuz from stone cold extinction, we just ain't immune.
¹ The marketplace sometime's somewhat of a stale cure.
In economist's textbooks, there ARE "market failures".
Market failures conveniently group into 3.
One includes fighting o'er fish in the sea.
It's the other two though, which should be understood.
One's "market externals", and one's "public goods".
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Now SUS-tain-a-BIL-i-ty should be defined, when looking at nat'ral and civil decline.
It means vigour and health in our grandchildren's time.
A vigour and health from a new paradigm.
A new paradigm that is really quite old.
de TOKE-ville described it, but now it's lost hold.
It's the balance of power twixt three social forces.
A balance of power that each one endorses.
As it stands now though, one's in decline.
I'll let you guess which, as each I define.
The first is the "Prince"...well, government really.
The one that, at times, has been spending too freely.
But for neat stuff like schooling and health and defence, it is something with which we can never dispense.
It's true! It's true! It's not bolshevistic!
Some sphere's just have public goods char'cteristics.2
The next social force is best known as the "merchant".
It trades where "invisible hand" is emergent.
² Goods that are public can be misconstrued, so to grasp the essentials, remember one clue.
It's their output! Yes, output! It's free to us each.
If anyone wants some, they just have to reach.
The perfect example in matters marine,
are lighthouses signalling hazards unseen.
See? It's their output! Yes, output!...for which oftentimes, providers have trouble collecting a dime.
And if markets have trouble in selling the stuff, there's no rationale for supplying enough.
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But really there's two; there's "Big Merch" and "Small".
It's Small Merch we like. Big often appalls.
Big lays people off, while Small tends to hire.
Big often leaves town. Small stays in the shire.
And then there are times when Big kisses the Prince.
The Prince kisses back and the rest of us wince.
Have you guessed the third force in our so-sigh-eh-tee?
Why yes. But of course. It's SIT-i-zin-ree!
But we're now very flabby. We sit on our ass.
We give up too soon. We just let it pass.
The problem is cultural. That I am sure.
The culture we're fed spews straight out of the sewer.
It portrays us consuming, with but little else.
It neglects us producing, for that never sells.
Thus even in civics, we're passive consumers.
Getting involved? That's just some weird rumour.
Once every few years, we go to the polls
and leave all the rest for elites to control.
Another great flaw in our cultural prism
is far, far too much individualism.
Freedom expressing oneself to the rest?
Oh no! I mean greed and beating one's chest!
Our buddy de TOKE-ville first saw it a bit.
Said dictators love it when people are split.
We've been brought up on myths some economists claim.
Like ALL-truism ain't part of the game.
But ask an ecologist if competition's
the only thing life-forms have as their ambition.
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"Of course not!", she'll say, "There's co-op-er-AY-shun".
"Even Darwin acknowledged such qualifications".
There's another concern that has caused much frustration.
It's that culture has suffered so much fragmentation.
Culture at one time was fairly wholistic.
Our hopes and our dreams were much more realistic.
We thought about fam'ly. We thought about friends.
We thought of ideals that we'd die to defend.
We thought about death. We thought about birth.
We thought about life on this vast village earth.
But now that our earth is much more like a city, our culture, it seems, issues forth from committees.
We know if some jock, to a million said "nope", and if Dick diddled Sue on the afternoon soap.
It's trivial crap that is usually boring.
It's trivial crap that we should be ignoring.
But 500 channels are aw-f'lee compelling.
This, even with crises we should be out quelling.
Sure, there's the value of COM-une-i-CAY-shun, but garbage transmissions bring mental castration.
Sure, there's a switch that we all can turn off.
If you think that's the answer, I'll jeer and I'll scoff.
Let's be realistic. Let's use common sense.
Let's ask how our debt got so bloody immense.
Trudeau? Mulroney? Sure; they did their part.
But what of us peons? It's here you should start.
They frittered our billions, but what held our gaze?
Loud morons on game-shows in shameful displays.
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And what about me? Did I protest at all?
Uh...well, no...but I did see Stallone in some ass-kicking brawls!
Thus citizens shackled by cultural junk
have all their potential so utterly shrunk.
This just will not do. We cannot survive
unless the grass-roots is enabled to thrive.
Economists mention in didactic journals
some curious stuff they call "market externals".
They're side effects really...not the main aim, yet still they can maim and inflame and cause shame.
The common example is industry's dirt
or my car, out of which sickly smoke thickly spurts.
But what of the dirt on the idiot box?
Shouldn't some writers be thrown in the stocks?
Mind you, there's the contrast of our CBC
...Uh...well...for certain their radio; that I'll agree.
And yes; PBS. It uplifts and enables.
And grassroots control of community cable.
So in fact, there are two types of media ware.
Either buckets of crap or the good stuff that's rare.
The good stuff will often use taxpayer's cash, while cess that is ceaseless shows ads full of flash.
And one can presume that the Hollywood hacks at least pay some nominal burden of tax.
So the bad pays for good. A few bucks are collected.
Will that get cathodic corruption corrected?
Their market external's so bloody immense
that surely there should be much more recompense.
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And their public goods assets? So bloody minute that a skull full of grey matter quickly transmutes.
So how should we curb the worst sins of such stations that speed the erosion of civilization?
And the video games that pretend that it's fun to go out and steal cars and shoot cops with a gun.
What we need is a magnet. Something to pull
the people away from the worst of the bull.
As for magnets, there's two that I much recommend.
If we give them a chance, then our sheep-walk will end.
One deals with culture and social reforms.
"It takes a village..." being one of the norms.
The other's political. Spreading control.
Jane and Joe Lunch-box will now have a roll.
But Jane and Joe Lunch-box with boosted IQ's, discussing the critical things in the news.
Bombast and rhetoric no more will sound.
For DEE-lib-ur-AY-shun’s where answers are found.
My poem is over. There’s no more to say,
except a brief wish that we turn out OK.
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I had finished all of the required courses for my graduate studies, but now came the hard part: writing a thesis. I knew it would be about Third World forestry, but that was about all I knew.
Luckily, I didn't have to apply for funding, which would have entailed lots of background research and rigorous analysis and constructive criticism from grey-haired professors. I made enough money on the towers each summer to enable me to dispense with such formalities. So I simply told the professors that the purpose of my initial trip was to learn a bit of Spanish and sniff around for a topic to study. I guess they must've agreed, since the next thing I remember was the descent into Mexico City...or as Carlos Fuentes called it: Make-Sicko City.
I had a tightness in my gut. Except for a family holiday in the 1970’s that ventured as far south as Ensenada, this was my first time in a Third World country. I wasn't sure what to expect.
But Customs went well, and visions from the movie Midnight Express (profuse sweat, a pounding bass beat, and swarthy guys with automatic weapons casting suspicious glances) never materialized .
So within an hour, I found myself in a crowded bus station with a ticket to San Cristobal de las Casas.
Shortly after that, I was sitting in a fairly modern bus, as it rumbled south in the warm, humid night. However, I had recently heard about buses being held up by bandits, and I was thinking about the valuables that I had brought with me. Traveler's cheques in my secret pocket. A silver ring on my little finger from the Canadian Institute of Forestry. Probably worth a peso or two. Would they just cut my finger off if I couldn't remove it in time?
The paranoia was quickly overtaken by traditional folk music wafting from the funky speakers bolted to the dashboard. And as the miles rolled on, and as daylight started to make itself known, I was able to make out the colourful interior decorating that is a staple of buses in Latin America: Madonnas and Spanish blessings side by side with rock and roll iconography. I no longer felt so uneasy.
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The next morning, we descended from the main plateau that covers much of Mexico. Forested highlands were replaced by sand and heat and cacti and grubby towns that looked much like the Ensenada that I remembered from years ago.
But later in the day, we ascended once more into mountainous terrain. I'm not sure why I headed towards the southernmost state of Chiapas. Maybe it was because the agro-forestry books that I had been reading mentioned it so much. Maybe it was because of the high percentage of indigenous peoples (and thus, colourful culture) in the state. Or maybe it was simply because I much preferred life above 2,000 metres to the humid heat of the lowlands.
Toward evening, we pulled in to San Cristobal de las Casas, a city of about 125,000 people. The bus station was a bit funkier than the one in Mexico City, and it had a shrine with fresh flowers dedicated to one of the patron saints of safe travel. This made perfect sense, based on the the condition of the roads, the speeds traveled, and the condition of some of the vehicles.1
I took out my trusty Lonely Planet guide and found a suitable (ie, cheap) hotel for the night. There was another shrine in the lobby, but it was presumably to the patron saint of innkeepers. And in my room, there was a monstrous cockroach in the waste-basket, which I could hear fumbling around until well into the wee hours of the morning.
At 5:30 a.m., a cock crowed. San Cristobal was a city, but it was a city with no shortage of hobby farmers…if ensuring that one ¹ …and the attitudes of some of the drivers. A few weeks later, I was on a city bus, descending a fairly narrow road at about 50 kph. Dead ahead, there was a cow, which was in no hurry to vacate the asphalt. Neither was the driver in any mood to come to a complete stop (since that would have wasted precious momentum and gasoline). So a bit of braking was employed, but only enough to reduce the speed of the bus by half. Which was enough for the cow to halfway vacate the road. But not fully. The corner of the bus hit the ass end of the cow with enough force to spin the poor beast around about 180 degrees. I glanced back through the rear window. The cow was still standing. Still chewing its cud. The driver briefly glanced in the rear view mirror, and the other passengers barely looked up from their routine reveries.
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obtained enough dietary protein could be called a hobby.
The place was a delight. With mountains all around, and small shops selling trinkets and fast food, it was a Third World equivalent of Banff. But with a centuries-old cathedral and cobble stone streets, it might just as easily have been Old Quebec City or medieval York.
Indigenous women sold yard goods with patterns so colourful and intricate that nature seemed drab in comparison. This was not the grimy, dusty Mexico that I had come to expect.
Even back in Canada, I had heard about a place called Na Bolom. It was an old monastery-turned-hotel, built and run by a renowned archeologist and his wife.2 It was one of those places that reeked of history. Ancient wood, stone and plaster combined with culture and nature and caring hands to create a veritable museum.
I did some
work in the
attached tree
nursery, in
exchange for
meals. It
wasn't the case
that I needed
to work for my
meals, but I
was able to learn a bit more about the forests in the area...and I managed to befriend an attractive German woman who seemed to derive some pleasure from stuffing soil into little fabric bags.
I met another tourist who had cycled down from Vancouver. It was a remarkable accomplishment – especially for someone with only one foot. Actually, he had three feet: one made of flesh, a second, which was a life-like prosthetic made of some kind of ² Frans and Trudi Blom, who studied and aided the Lacandon natives of the lowland jungle region of Chiapas. The Lacandon were the only Maya who were never conquered by the Spanish. Frans was also one of the first archeologists to unearth the Mayan ruins at Palenque.
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plastic, and a spare, which he strapped on top of his bike panniers. It was the third foot which had a tendency to raise eyebrows at border crossings.
I had heard that living in Guatemala was even cheaper than living in southern Mexico. So, instead of spending an exorbitant $5
per night for a hotel, I could pay a much more reasonable $3 per night.
Guatemala had a reputation. In the 1980's, I had read the many accounts of right-wing militias and army groups exterminating whole native villages. But that was then. Now, it was 1992, and so surely the bloody massacres were just a historical blip.
At the border, the bus lurched to a stop, where there were uniforms and automatic weapons and vivid memories of the movie Salvador (with a wound-up James Woods as the mouthy journalist).
However, things went smoothly. I collected another stamp in my passport book, and in return for a crisp American $20 bill, I received an official receipt for $10. I didn't argue...even if that extra $10
could’ve bought me another three nights of accommodation.
We shuffled on to another bus, which was a step down from the Mexican variety. It still had sayings such as Via Con Dios plastered all over it, but instead being a cast-off Greyhound, it was now an old school bus. As we headed further south, more and more peasants piled on, until there were three of us on the single seat which used to hold two school children. The young American sitting next to me must have been a basketball player, since his knees were jammed up against the seat in front of us, almost level with his shoulders.
We chatted about this and that, until the conversation came around to climate change (still called "global warming" in those days). He was quite concerned, but when I mentioned that methane from the warming tundra would make the Industrial Revolution look like a tea party, he groaned and shook his head. Now, 29 years later, I also have to shake my head, knowing that our so-called "leaders"
have only made things worse.
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The border area was verdant lowland jungle, but now we climbed higher and higher to drier and drier elevations. There were numerous hair-pin turns with rock faces on one side and gut wrenching drops on the other. The rock faces were plastered with the symbols of the various political parties, and later that day, my blood froze when I saw a Rios Montt campaign sign painted on the side of a building. Throughout the 1980's, I had read about this genocidal maniac3 and was astonished that he was still allowed to run in an election.
The bus arrived in Huehue4 that afternoon,
and I made my way to the central square with its attractive colonial architecture, shade trees, and wooden benches. Another young
American was sitting and nonchalantly
chatting with some locals. So, obviously his Spanish must’ve been fairly decent.
"There's quite a few family-run language schools in Huehue, but the one I'm at is pretty good. Clean; good food; and the woman who
runs it is no-nonsense and friendly. Here, I'll write down the address for you."
So I went down one of the side streets,
knocked on a door, and a smile greeted me. An older lady with a few extra pounds (mostly muscle, I guessed) ushered me in, and I gave her an absurdly small amount of money for a week's worth of Spanish instruction, as well as room and board. She then got on the phone and a short time later, a fellow came by in a car and drove me to a small town a few kilometres to the north, called Chiantla. On the outskirts, at the top of a small hill, was a handsome house with a ³ ...and personal friend of evangelical superstars, Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell. And called by Ronald Reagan, "...a man of great personal integrity and commitment..." And as I wrote this sentence for an earlier draft, awaiting trial on charges of genocide against the indigenous population of Guatemala.
See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rios_Montt ⁴ Pronounced Way Way. Otherwise known as Huehuetenango, the major city (population of about 80,000) in western Guatemala.
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high, wrought iron fence and shrubbery all around it. This was to be my home for the next few weeks.
The house was a significant cut above the surrounding houses, so maybe that's why it had the iron fence all around. The tall, skinny fellow who drove me there was the father. His wife – short and plump – was a school principal (all the better to ensure that any verbs I might learn would have the proper tenses). They had a young son who was outgoing and friendly, as well as a small puppy, who was ironically named Rocky.
I was shown to my room, which had the typical pastel paint on plaster walls, as well as a small window looking out to a well-kept yard. Slumping down on the bed, I leafed through a Spanish comic book that I had picked up in San Cristobal. A short while later, there was a knock on the door, and the young son appeared. He asked me something, but the blank look on my face prompted him to try again.
Just one word this time.
"Co-Mare?"
Another stunned silence.
"Co-Mare?", he repeated, but this time, gesturing with his thumb and fingers close to his mouth. Still nothing. So, with a frown, he said "eat?", and I finally figured it out.
I'm sure there was a lot of variety, but I mainly remember a lot of chicken soup (plucked, but with the occasional foot still floating around) and something called pan. In a Spanish dictionary, pan means bread. But in Guatemala, it seemed to mean a light cookie or pastry. This was a common theme: sugar. Sugar in the bread. Sugar pre-mixed in the coffee urns at restaurants. Sugary drinks in bottles being fed to babies on buses. After a while, I started getting headaches, and in hindsight, I'm sure it was from the sugar that saturated everything except the chicken feet. The headaches got more persistent. I was certain I was getting a brain tumor. After all, I had smoked a fair amount of pot back in Canada. Bob Marley smoked pot. Didn't he die from a brain tumor?5
⁵ Nope. It was skin cancer. And I was much luckier. A few weeks later, I traveled 163
On an average day, the school principal would make me conjugate verbs for an hour or two. This would've been fine, if it weren't for the fact that the couch in their living room was made of plywood hiding under a thin film of cushion. After a few hundred conjugations, I felt like my butt bones had permanently fused to the plywood underneath. So the next day, I asked if I could take my lessons in the kitchen. No problemo, Senor.
Phew! Now my buttocks could recuperate. However, I could no longer enjoy the mute company of their stuffed quetzal,6 which sat on a perch in the corner.
On some days, I would walk down the hill from the house, cross a bridge over a small river, and ascend the other bank, into the tiny town of Chiantla. Occasionally, a group of soldiers would be stationed at the bridge, with sub-machine guns slung over their shoulders. I was a bit nervous, wondering if any of them had participated in the gruesome killings a decade earlier. "Hola!", I said with a smile and a nod. "Hola!", they called back, and gave a friendly wave. They were likely aware that the nice house on the top of the hill often had Spanish-challenged gringos staying there.
There wasn't much in Chiantla. Another dusty square with colonial architecture. A bus stop for the route into Huehue. A general store with more sugary goodies. And a post office bereft of any higher-denomination stamps, necessitating envelopes entirely carpeted with stamps, minus a tiny hole in the middle for my parents’ address.
For a few days while I was there, Chiantla celebrated with a fair.
It was not quite on a par with the Calgary Stampede. The merry-go-round was a hand cranked affair which utilized a differential gear-set to Guatemala City to get a cheap head x-ray at one of the hospitals. Nothing was found, except for the usual grey matter and some other useful bits.
⁶ A parrot‐like bird with fancy, iridescent tail plumage. It was thought by the ancient Mayans to be divine. It adorns the Guatemalan currency, the Guatemalan flag and the Guatemalan coat of arms. It is also officially considered a "threatened" species...presumably not entirely due to habitat destruction, but also due to the rather unfortunate tendency of sometimes finding itself stuffed and sitting on a perch in someone’s living-room.
164
from an old vehicle. The ferris wheel was also hand cranked and had a grand total of ten seats. And vendors sold rough bowl-shaped stones which the women used to laboriously grind corn into meal. It was definitely rustic. But the kids were happy, the music wasn't oppressive, and nobody was puking. I'd take it over the Stampede any day.
Quite often, I'd
take the short bus
trip into Huehue,
where I could cash
traveler's cheques
and scout out some
of the Spanish
comics7 in the
bookstore. On one
of those trips,
another couple of
gringos climbed
aboard and sat
behind me. So I
eavesdropped a bit. They were talking about a tree nursery. Trees?
Naturally, I turned around and introduced myself. I found out that Barbi and Mike were in the U.S. Peace Corps, and they were headed back out to the middle of nowhere after a short break in Chiantla for a few urban essentials. They were both quite friendly, and once they heard about my background in forestry and my interest in Third World development, they quickly invited me out to their real home, high up in the Cuchumatan Mountains.
So, about a week later, I packed up my stuff and boarded a bus heading west. Sitting at the back of the bus was a woman with a ⁷ Not crap like Archie and Superman, but substantive stuff. On my shelf, I still have three Hombres Y Heroes issues from February, 1992: one about WWII’s Operation Barbarossa, another about the Lewis and Clark expedition, and a third about Gordon Wasson, the famous ethnomycologist who has two species of magic mushroom named after him ( Psilocybe wassonii and Psilocybe wassoniorum). That’s right, a kid’s comic book about magic mushrooms.
165
large pig sitting on her lap. She had one arm wrapped around the pig's body, and her other hand was clamped down securely over the pig's snout. She seemed to be a fairly strong woman, but the pig was also strong. And every so often, it managed to wriggle its head out of her grasp and the resulting squeal tore through the bus like a banshee. Wheeeeeeeeeeeeee!!! The bus driver would glance up into the rear view mirror and give the woman another stern look. She desperately fumbled for the pig's snout, and for a short while, there was peace.
After about an hour of this entertainment, we arrived at San Sebastian, which was the main market town for the surrounding rural area. I grabbed my back-pack, stepped off the bus and wandered into the market, which was full of colourful woven yard goods and stacks of plump produce. In the meantime, Barbi and Mike had descended from somewhere in the surrounding mountains in order to do their weekly grocery shopping. We spied each other, and after loading up
with vegetables, a few
pounds of rice, and
some precious eggs,
we headed up toward
the tiny villages of
Chelom and Chejoj
(pronounced chay-
HOH, but with a sound
at the end like
someone trying to
clear mucous out of
their throat).
There were no
roads. The initial
pathway was shaded
by tall trees, but we
quickly advanced to
higher elevations,
dominated by a cruel
sun and parched earth.
166
I was struggling and I tried not to ask "are we there yet?"
We met other folks coming down the path. One old guy carried a massive (but silent) pig on his back. A group of serious looking young dudes with one or two ancient rifles gave a curt "Hola" and for a short while, they chatted with Barbi and Mike. The leader held what looked like a ceremonial staff in one hand. It had a brass ball on one end and it looked vaguely menacing. When they continued on down the mountain, Mike mentioned that the group was one of the civilian patrols. They kept an eye out for guerilla activity. And if some of the men weren't in a particularly good mood, it was likely because they didn't have much choice about whether or not they were there. The patrols were forcibly concocted by the army as a means to keep the largely indigenous population under its heel.8
We continued on. After what seemed like forever, we reached the tiny, dusty village of Chejoj. It was all built on a crazy angle, except for the cemetery, out on a flat-topped promontory. We stopped at the village store (a glorified lemonade stand) and purchased warm sodas. Barbi and Mike said that there was generally no agricultural surplus in the area, so heaving bottles of pop up from San Sebastian may have been one of the few methods of making a tiny profit.
The cemetery held a bunch of above-ground tombs, which looked to be made of whitewashed clay, and there was a small hole in each, presumably in order to allow the soul of the deceased to travel back and forth. A fellow was wailing and sobbing over one of the tombs. He was entirely sauced, and when he saw us and started over, Barbi warned me to not allow him to shake my hand. No luck, however. He soon had me in his grasp. He was blubbering about something, but it was in the local Mam dialect, not even related to Spanish. He had my hand in a firm grip and shook it up and down for several minutes. I looked into his eyes, trying to figure out what he was trying to tell me. Maybe he sensed that I was sincere. Maybe he just wanted to get back to the tomb and do some more wailing.
But when he finally let me go, Barbi said that I had gotten off lucky.
⁸ http://www.culturalsurvival.org/publications/cultural‐survival-quarterly/guatemala/civil-patrols-armed-peace-northern-huehuetenango 167
Most recipients had the pleasure of his company for much longer.
Barbi and Mike's place was a two room concrete box with a small veranda. One room was the bedroom, and the other was a kitchen about the size of a large broom closet. The sole luxury was a small propane canister, which Barbi and Mike would occasionally pay a local to haul up from San Sebastian.
That evening, I went out on the porch. The Milky Way was easily visible, but what really held my attention was music wafting down from further up the mountain. Homemade marimbas were common, but the clarity of this one in the surrounding silence, as well as the technical proficiency of the player, took my breath away.
The next morning, we headed out to the nearby village of Chelom (pronounced chay-LOME), where the tree nursery was.
Barbi and Mike spent their time in three different villages. Chelom and Chejoj were relatively close to the wider world, but the third (pronounced tweets-KEY-sill9) was tucked away much further up in the mountains. Supposedly, some of the villagers there had made vague threats on the lives of my American hosts, but Barbi and Mike ⁹ I went on Google Map,
but neither Chejoj nor
Chelom nor tweets-KEY-
sill showed up (except for
another much larger
Chejoj further to the
west). I could zoom in to
the aerial photos and see
individual plots of land
and buildings, but
jurisdictional names and
boundaries were totally
absent. I wondered if the
Guatemalan government
gave much thought to
these distant
outposts...other than to
what may have been their
potential to foster guerilla
activity.
168
didn't seem too concerned.
The topography continued to be alarmingly lop-sided. And with the distinct lack of perennial vegetation, I wondered what was to stop the whole side of the mountain from collapsing during the upcoming rainy season. Occasionally, however, we saw bundles of corn stalks, which had been laid
down parallel to the contours in a
pathetic attempt to hold back the
brown dust that masqueraded as
topsoil.
More heartening were the
sprinkler systems that we
sometimes saw, which brought
water down from the higher
elevations in a controlled manner.
The 1" plastic hose that fed these
systems must have been a valuable
commodity in the area, since there
were just as many set-ups using
hollowed out agave stalks.
But I wondered where, in this
parched corner of the planet, water could have been hiding. We did encounter fog while crossing one of the higher passes, but that was the extent of it.
After a short while, we arrived at Chelom. The nursery was a small affair, with sticks and thatch being used as a shelter against the blistering sun. But the seedlings seemed quite healthy.
Eventually, however, they would need to be transplanted –
preferably into a place that could hold a bit of water, and where the surrounding dirt wouldn't be washed away during the intense rainy season. In other words, bundles of old cornstalks laid on contours wouldn't help them one bit. They needed stones. Rocks. Something solid placed on the slopes with a bit of engineering and forethought.
The engineering was provided by the ancient Egyptians: an A-169
frame level, comprised of three pieces of wood fastened into a big letter "A". A small stone dangled down on a piece of string, and when it lined up with a mark on the cross-piece, the ground was level. Using this low-tech gadget, Barbi and Mike helped the Mam farmers find the contours of their land. And once the contours were marked out, lines of rocks could be laid out to capture moisture and retain topsoil.
I stayed for several
days at Chejoj, but a
case of giardia (a
common intestinal
parasite) put Barbi and
I out of commission
(Mike escaped the
infection), and we
decided to hike back
down the mountain in
a quick quest for 20th
century medicine and
some much needed
rest. So I spent the
remainder of the day
in my hotel room,
listening to flatulence
echoing off porcelain.
I stayed a couple more weeks in Guatemala, attempting to improve my Spanish. I spent some time in Guatemala City, where guys with sub-machine guns stood guard at the local Kwiki-Marts, and where groups of little kids sat on the sidewalks, sniffing bags of solvent. But then I traveled back north to San Cristobal, and finally to Mexico City and the flight back to Canada. I figured that I had found a potential subject for a graduate thesis. I would return to Guatemala and somehow shoehorn the Chelom tree nursery into a suitable subject that my thesis committee would approve of.
But on the way back, I wondered how Mike and Barbi did it: 170
living for years on end in an ecological and economic hinterland. I had the same ideals as they had, but nowhere near their optimism and endurance.
171
In 1963, Richard Alpert was fired from Harvard University for giving a then-legal psychedelic drug to an undergraduate student.
However, Harvard, at the time, was allowing some rather unorthodox research to take place. For example, in a double blind study (where neither the researchers nor the subjects know who is getting the real drug and who is getting a placebo), theology students were given psilocybin (the active ingredient in magic mushrooms). It was Good Friday, just before the students went to attend a church service at Boston University’s Marsh Chapel. After the event, the students were asked to write about their experiences, and according to the Wikipedia entry, "Almost all of the members of the experimental group reported experiencing profound religious experiences, providing empirical support for the notion that psychedelic drugs can facilitate religious experiences."1
Alpert wasn't directly involved with the Marsh Chapel experiment, but he and a number of other researchers were working with Timothy Leary to see if psychedelic drugs could be useful in reducing prisoner recidivism rates, as well as in treating alcoholism.2
After Alpert was fired for his slip-up, and after Leary was fired for not adhering to his classroom teaching commitments, they both realized that the use of double-blind studies and peer-reviewed journals to analyze such powerful tools as magic mushrooms and LSD was not the fastest way to change society. So, accordingly, they dropped out and began proselytizing. And the result was the 1960's.
Alpert changed his name to Ram Dass, and became a prolific author. And like Orwell, he wasn’t given to flowery prose and 100-word sentences, so I managed to read several of his books.
The first one was Be Here Now, which, in large part, was an admonition to live in the present (instead of fretting about ¹ See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marsh_Chapel_Experiment ² The results were inconclusive, though a similar study four decades later showed very positive results. See:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concord_Prison_Experiment 172
tomorrow’s deadlines or moaning about yesterday’s mistakes). And in this book, Dass wrote about the time he met an old bald guy wrapped in a plaid blanket who completely changed his life.
I would've liked to have copied, word for word, Dass's 4-page narrative3 about the meeting, since his writing style is infectious: "I was traveling with a young Western fellow in India. We had come to the mountains in a Land Rover I had borrowed from a friend, in order to find this fellow's guru to get some help with his visa problem. I was in a bad mood, having smoked too much hashish..."
But copyright laws dictate otherwise. So I’ll paraphrase. (Sorry, but I have this inexplicable urge to paraphrase like I’m a cross between James Dean and William S. Burroughs.) So Dass smoked too much hash. And he's travelling with this surfer dude…in a Land Rover. It ain't his Land Rover. Or his, either. Anyway, the surfer dude wants to see this guru. Dass doesn't. But they arrive at this spot where there's some hippies and some Indians and some old bald guy in a blanket. Everyone's crazy about the old bald guy in a blanket…except Dass. Everybody wants to touch the old guy's feet…except Dass. What the f___ is going on? he thinks. The surfer dude starts crying, while the old bald guy occasionally looks over at Dass. The old bald guy gives a picture of himself to Dass like it's a bloody Ming vase or something. Dass isn't impressed. The old bald guy looks at the expensive Land Rover and asks if Dass will give it to him. The surfer dude says SURE! No effing way, Dass thinks. Everybody laughs at Dass. The old bald guy asks Dass if he makes a lot of money. Well, yeah, sure, Dass says (lies a bit). More stuff about money. Then food comes. The old bald guy says that Dass was out under the stars last night, thinking about his mother.
Uh, yeah, I was, Dass admits. (What the f___?). Old bald guy can't speak a word of English (just Hindi), but blurts ³ …seen in Be Here Now still in print, and Miracle of Love available in a Kindle edition.
173
out "spleen, she died of spleen". Dass's head explodes...well, not literally. The End. Well, not really.
Dass then writes a book about the old bald guy.
Trust me,
Dass’s version is a
narrative worthy of
