Tag Archives: freedom

Binge watching

Every extended break I end up doing this: I pick a series and binge watch a few seasons over a few days. I watch so little television of any kind regularly, that there is always something to catch up on. My wife totally sunk into The Handmaids Tale a while back and told me I’d love it. So here I am approaching the end of Season 2, her watching it again with me, and saying ‘One more’ after already watching two episodes in a sitting.

Margaret Atwood is a brilliant writer, and the series is very well done. I remember seeing her say in a video that she didn’t put anything into Handmaid’s Tale that wasn’t something that had already happened somewhere in the world. If I was watching this series in 2019, I would have thought less about this fact, but somehow 2020 has made me see the world quite differently.

Today I’m more keenly aware that fascism can rear its ugly head. I’m more keenly aware of how religious beliefs can be argued and leveraged to reduce non-believer’s choices. I am more keenly aware of how information can be misconstrued and manipulated to fool a large percentage of the population.

We live in a world where rulers can still rule for their lifetime; Where religious and cultural genocide happen; Where rights to basic food and healthcare are dependent on geography and luck of being born to parents who can support a child’s needs. This is a not a just and free world for many, and that can lead to unrest. It can lead to upheaval, and it can spark less democratic and more totalitarian regimes. Regimes that, while not necessarily similar to Handmaids Tale, can be quite scary.

On that solemn and dark thought… my wife wants to watch another episode, and I’m quite willing to partake.

Empty Words

I responded to a post on LinkedIn by Arun Jee, on the topic of “Justice is no less challenging to teach in the classroom” by saying:

“The worst form of injustice is pretended justice.” ~Plato
The world I see today has many people using the word justice… but in defence of unjust ideas.

This is the crazy world we live in.

People talk about defending their freedoms by doing things that undermine the communities they live in… the very communities that offer those freedoms!

No, enforcing a mask policy isn’t an infringement of your rights, it’s preventing a lockdown that will reduce your freedoms while we take care of our community.

No, stricter gun laws in the US are not infringing on your constitutional amendment rights, but they will reduce easy, dangerous, and deadly weapons access to unfit people that are likely to harm your community.

No, your flat earth or QAnon conspiracies based on pseudoscience and fake facts are not counter-arguments to actual science, and don’t get equal footing in an argument.

No, All Lives Matter is not an argument against Black Lives Matter, it’s actually an argument to support the Black Lives Matter movement, “If you truly care about living in an equitable and just world.”

No, right wingers are wrong to think left wing ideals are a path to a socialist controlling government that will strip away your rights. And no, left wingers, being violent against opposing views, because you disagree with them, isn’t a left wing ideal: It’s fascist and authoritarian to block free speech.

No, media outlets you should not be sensationalizing the news by polarizing ideas. You are not reporting news when you do this, you are selling out. You are sacrificing factual reporting for the price of views and clicks. You are not reporting, you are entertaining, angering, and dividing people with bias on the verge of being called propaganda.

Justice, rights, freedoms, and truth are no longer things that have the meaning they intended. They are empty words filled with polarized and rationalized meanings shared by less convincing and less reliable sources. Each ‘side’ believes these words belong to them. But words only have meaning when their definitions are shared.

It wouldn’t surprise me

I find it mind boggling that a day before the presidential election south of our border, I would not be surprised if I hear about bloodshed on Election Day. It wouldn’t surprise me to see partisan violence causing death in a open, democratic society, in the country touted as a symbol of freedom. How sad is that?

The FBI is investigating a Friday incident in Hays County, Texas, where a group of Trump supporters in trucks surrounded and followed a Biden campaign bus on I-35.1 At least one minor collision can be seen in footage of the incident. Texas Democrats canceled three scheduled events on Friday, citing “safety concerns.” Trump tweeted a video of the incident with the caption, “I LOVE TEXAS.”2 (Source)

When I read something like this, and see that the US president condones rather than criticizes the behaviour, I’m just flabbergasted! It’s like a principal of a school publicly congratulating a school yard bully. What behaviours can you expect to happen on the school yard after that?

How did we get here? What will the cost be tomorrow? Will people lose their lives trying to exercise their right to vote… in the USA… in 2020?

I really hope not, but at this point in time I wouldn’t bet against it. It just wouldn’t surprise me, and I find that very, very sad.

When the street lights came on

How many of us Gen X kids stayed out until the street lights came on? That was the signal to head hone for bed. Until the street lights came on, all your parents knew about your location was that you were somewhere in the neighbourhood…. somewhere.

Kids today, their parents always know where they are. This isn’t that new. Even us X’ers didn’t let our kids have this freedom. We grew up in an era when news reports started telling us what a bad world we live in. Unsafe. Dangerous for kids.

Now we are locked down in a way that really limits kids freedoms even more. Where are you going? Who are you seeing? Are they all in your small bubble of friends? Coronavirus has locked us all down and limited where we go and who we see.

This is really tough for kids. They don’t have any equivalent experience of being out until the street lights turn on. They don’t have a place to be unsupervised by adults… not to raise hell and cause trouble, just to be kids.

How much of their time is organized. Even fun is organized… soccer practice, dance classes, music lessons, are all put in the calendar. Play is scheduled, like recess and lunch at school, every free moment isn’t really free at all.

I think we need to find ways to give kids some of the freedom we had as kids, when we could stay out, unsupervised, until the street lights came on.

When you live in a democracy… VOTE

I’d like to say 2 things to my BC and American friends:

1. Vote

2. This is your civic duty.

It always amazes me how many people choose not to vote in an election.

“We do not have government by the majority. We have government by the majority who participate.” – Thomas Jefferson

Poor excuses not to vote:

“My vote doesn’t matter.”

“No politician deserves my vote.”

“They are all the same.”

“The candidate I like will win/lose no matter if I vote or not.”

“One vote doesn’t make a difference.”

Two reasons to vote:

  • You have the right to do something others have died for in our countries, and will die for in other countries.
  • You squander your civic duty when you don’t.

So do your civic duty… VOTE.

Voting in a democracy

How many people have died, fighting either to earn the opportunity to vote, or to keep the freedom to participate in a free and open society? Yet many individuals in free and democratic societies don’t make the effort to exercise their right… their duty, to vote. It amazes me. It baffles me.

Even if you don’t think your vote will make a difference. Even if you feel you have to choose the lesser evil because you are not a fan of any candidate or party. Even if you aren’t passionate about any of the party platforms… you have the opportunity to contribute to a process that makes your life better than if you didn’t have that opportunity at all.

Voting in a democracy should be like renewing your driver’s licence… something you have to do every few years. If you don’t vote, you should have to pay a penalty when you pay taxes. But more than that, it should be something you want to do; to participate in a free and open society. It should be a duty you want to perform.

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Upcoming elections: With Covid-19, there are more options to vote than just in person on Election Day. Your options can including voting early, and/or by mail, but this requires action before Election Day… so register now!

BC, Canada Provincial Election – October 24th 2020: Online Voter Registration

US Federal Election – November 3rd, 2020: I Will Vote

Reciprocal influence

After a discussion with my Uncle Joe (Truss) last night on the topic of free will, I’ve reread my posts:

The Bell Curve of Free Will

And:

What does in mean to be conscious?

Joe said a couple interesting things, “Freedom comes with restraints.” And, “We influence the world and the world influences us.”

I speak of restraints on freedom in my bell curve post, but I don’t say this explicitly. I think restrictions to our freedom of choice can be circumstantial, or based on how virtuous we live our lives, or by things like our physical and emotional health. These restraints to our freedom can make us feel like we have less choice.

The simple, yet profound statement that, “We influence the world and the world influences us,” is one that I’m interested in deconstructing. When we react to the environment or situation we are in, we ultimately change that environment or situation. There are many experiments that prove the observer changes the experiment. We don’t live in a vacuum, and our interactions with the world alter that world, which alters our future interactions.

An example I’m thinking of is a crisis situation where the person in charge is calm and thoughtfully responsive vs the same crisis situation with a panicked and frantic leader. The crisis can be well handled or escalated. In both cases the leaders work in feedback loops that can help them deal with the situation at hand appropriately or have the situation become unmanageable. The leader’s actions (or inaction) changes the situation, which in turn influences their next action or reaction.

How often do we get stuck in a feedback loop of reciprocal influences between what we feel we can do next and how the outside world reacts? We move through situation after situation feeling like we lack choice and freedom because the restraints on us limit our responses… which in turn limits what we believe can happen next, and what our next actions can or need to be.

There are times when we do what we need to do, or feel obligated to do, and don’t recognize that we are in a feedback loop that continually limits our choices and decision-making. This can be especially true in work and family situations where past relationships and patterns of interactions influence our likelihood of reacting similarly the next time.

“I better do it this way or Peter will be upset.”

“Amy is going to complain about this no matter how hard I try.”

“My brother won’t want to join us, I won’t bother asking.”

We get into pattern ruts, habitual grooves where we get stuck limiting our own choices and freedom to do things differently.

I realize now that my thinking is less about free will, and more about how our habits dictate our future thinking. Our habits influence our world, our world changes and we react by reinforcing the same habits that can ultimately limit our future choices. In some ways we construct a limited future based on our habits, which emboldens our choice to keep these limiting habits. (You can also replace the word ‘habits’ with ‘addictions’.)

“We influence the world and the world influences us.”

Is this a reciprocal relationship, or is it one where we can choose to have more influence? I think there are countless self-help books written to suggest that we have more influence than we believe we do… we just need to make conscious choices rather than letting our past actions and habits limit our ability to influence the world around us.

The tightrope balance of parenting

Yesterday I recorded a podcast with Dave Sands and we discussed 7 PARENTING TIPS to help navigate the challenges of students LEARNING AT HOME during the Covid-19 pandemic. This got me thinking about how different kids are, and how hard it is to be the perfect parent for a kid.

Parents hold an imbalance of power over kids, who are in a constant state of growth. With growing up comes both more responsibility and more expectation of freedom. These things do not develop at the same speed, and our expectations will often be mismatched with our kids expectations. When it comes to how much choice and freedom kids are given versus how much of that choice and freedom they feel they deserve, parents will often think of the child they were dealing with a few months ago, while kids feel like they’ve grown up since then.

Some parents navigate this well, but many struggle. Some hold on to power over their kids to keep them safe. In doing so, they can create resentment because they are being too strict. Some parents give too much power to kids too soon, and kids tend to take advantage of that power and make poor decisions. Some parents get it right with respect to some expectations, and totally wrong with others. This can relate to chores, use of money, curfews and bedtimes, use of technology, eating habits, manners, homework, and all sorts of household rules and expectations.

The thing is, that some kids need more structure and more guidelines, and some kids need more freedom and choice, an it’s a tightrope balancing act not just to figure this out for a kid, but also to recognize that what works for one kid might not work for another… even in the same household with the same parents! To give a concrete example, one kid might need parameters around getting homework done, because without that support they won’t get it done, while an older or younger sibling might be able to do homework completely independently, without any parent supervision or support. Having different rules for these kids can create tension and so can having the same rules and not providing the freedom and responsibility that the more responsible kid deserves (especially if the one that deserves more freedom is the younger of the two).

So parenting tips are something that will always be tricky to give. What works for some, doesn’t work for all. That said, I really think Dave Sands and go over some ideas that are not prescriptive, but rather they are things to think about when trying to deal with kids learning at home… no matter how you currently parent or how good or challenging your kids might be. Here are the tips:

1. Manage Expectations
2. Make a Schedule
3. Minimize Distractions
4. Learning occurs everywhere
5. Set daily and weekly goals
6. All screen time is not created equal
7. Model learning.

I think there is something of value here for every parent. Please check the podcast out, and let me know what you think.