Tag Archives: politics

Doors of perception

We don’t see the world exactly as it is. We see the world through the spectrum of white light, and our eyes fill in the blank spot in our vision that is created by our optic nerve. Other animals can see in the ultraviolet spectrum. We can’t sense an earthquake tremor as quickly as birds. We can’t smell as well as our dogs, we can’t see in the dark as well as our cats. We appreciate different shades of colours that some animals can’t see. In fact, our culture and upbringing affects our appreciation of colours and our ability to distinguish colours from one another.

All this to say that we don’t see the world as it really is. Our senses are so powerful, yet they limit us. And that’s before our biases even creep in. Politics, religion, science, mind altering drugs, diet, confidence, insecurities, mood… so many things alter the way we see the world.

We don’t see the world as it is. We are quite literally delusional. Our perception of the world is one-of-a-kind, uniquely different than everyone else’s. This is useful to remember when we can’t come to a mutual understanding. When we disagree on a perspective, it isn’t just that we don’t see eye to eye, it’s also that we are seeing from different eyes.

Understanding this, we need to be more patient with each other. More open to different views. More appreciative about where others are coming from. Our perception of the world is different than others, and always will be… no matter how wide open we think our perceptual doors are.

Inequity analogy

Imagine you are a praying mantis. You are male and you mate with a female. You know there is a chance that she will decapitate you during mating:

You take a chance of dying every time you mate.

What an unjust world that one sex has so much control over another; that your life completely falls in the decision-making of the other sex. This might be ok for the praying mantis, but it would be completely unacceptable for humans.

Or would it?

https://vm.tiktok.com/ZMLnebuFv/

https://vm.tiktok.com/ZMLneTA2a/

https://vm.tiktok.com/ZMLne3y9p/

How does something like this happen in 2022 in a nation that is supposed to be a model for the free world? Free for who?

And they irony in using this analogy is that people were praying for this to happen.

A socialist democracy

I think I’ve missed voting in one local election since I became voting age. We went on holiday and I neglected to vote early. Other than that one mistake, I’ve always seen it as my civic duty to vote. I’m in favour of giving every voting age citizen a tax break if they vote, promoting full civic participation.

Here in Canada we are a socialist democracy, especially compared to the US. I watched a news clip yesterday and a rather conservative US reporter was equating social democracy to stealing tax money from the middle class to support the poor. Then I saw a Tiktok that quoted the article ‘Three Cheers for Socialism‘, and I thought this quote was very interesting:

“Americans are, of course, the most thoroughly and passively indoctrinated people on earth. They know next to nothing as a rule about their own history, or the histories of other nations, or the histories of the various social movements that have risen and fallen in the past, and they certainly know little or nothing of the complexities and contradictions comprised within words like “socialism” and “capitalism.” Chiefly, what they have been trained not to know or even suspect is that, in many ways, they enjoy far fewer freedoms, and suffer under a more intrusive centralized state, than do the citizens of countries with more vigorous social-democratic institutions. This is at once the most comic and most tragic aspect of the excitable alarm that talk of social democracy or democratic socialism can elicit on these shores. An enormous number of Americans have been persuaded to believe that they are freer in the abstract than, say, Germans or Danes precisely because they possess far fewer freedoms in the concrete. They are far more vulnerable to medical and financial crisis, far more likely to receive inadequate health coverage, far more prone to irreparable insolvency, far more unprotected against predatory creditors, far more subject to income inequality, and so forth, while effectively paying more in tax (when one figures in federal, state, local, and sales taxes, and then compounds those by all the expenditures that in this country, as almost nowhere else, their taxes do not cover). One might think that a people who once rebelled against the mightiest empire on earth on the principle of no taxation without representation would not meekly accept taxation without adequate government services. But we accept what we have become used to, I suppose. Even so, one has to ask, what state apparatus in the “free” world could be more powerful and tyrannical than the one that taxes its citizens while providing no substantial civic benefits in return, solely in order to enrich a piratically overinflated military-industrial complex and to ease the tax burdens of the immensely wealthy?”

Wow.

I don’t think Canada has the correct mix of social democratic policies, but I think that we better understand how a wide social net protects those that need protection, and lifts our entire society as a whole… as compared to the US, but not compared to some European countries. Lessons can be learned from other countries, but I fear that US political and news influences are misleading about terms like socialist democracy, and it’s easy to get lost in what is essentially propaganda.

I’m back to thinking about the blind man analogy, and wondering how we can create a vision for democracy in the future that is more all encompassing, that is less capitalist and more socialist? The true lessons of capitalism as I see them aren’t to maximize growth of wealth, but to create competitive cost efficiencies that reduce costs for public good. Bloated social programs that cost too much hurt us all. This is where the lessons in the business world can help with the public good.

But to many the perception of a socialist democracy is a step towards communism. It’s a step towards giving up freedom to a more controlling state. It’s the start of the collapse of a capitalism… It’s actually more like the collapse of exploitation of the vast majority of the working class, but that’s not the narrative. I fear that the narratives we are exposed to are convincing more and more people that capitalism and democracy share the same principles, they don’t. A true democracy is a government chosen by the people for the people… not corporations.

The free world

The free world isn’t free. It’s not. When a privileged few get to decide what people can and can’t do based on their out-dated beliefs, that’s not free.

More Than 1,500 Books Have Been Banned in Public Schools, and a U.S. House Panel Asks Why

“Most books being targeted for censorship are books that introduce ideas about diversity or our common humanity, books that teach children to recognize and respect humanity in one another,” said the chair of the Subcommittee on Civil Rights and Civil Liberties, Rep. Jamie Raskin.

When believers of religious dogma limit the choices of non-believers, that’s not free.

We don’t live in a free world, we live in a world of privileged and unprivileged. A world of bias. A world of inequity.

If I took headlines of today, like the article above, or headlines on abortion laws, or on free speech on college campuses, or on lack of social programs, and I stripped away today’s date, in 25 years you wouldn’t know when the article was written dating back as far as 75 years ago. It’s 2022 but if I told you that the article above was written in the 50’s, 60’s, or 70’s, you’d believe me.

Think about that. How much freer have we become? How much more civilized?

Just imagine

Julian Lennon has done a cover of his father’s song to raise money for Ukrainians who have been devastated by war.

These lyrics have always spoken to me:

Imagine there’s no heaven
It’s easy if you try
No hell below us
Above us only sky
Imagine all the people
Living for today… Aha-ah…Imagine there’s no countries
It isn’t hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion, too
Imagine all the people
Living life in peace… You…You may say I’m a dreamer
But I’m not the only one
I hope someday you’ll join us
And the world will be as one

~ John Lennon

Man’s inhumanity to man is shocking. The violence that happens in the name of country and/or God has been continuous for all of recorded history.

One people, no counties, no God to worship. I can’t help but think the world would be a better place. It would probably be more spiritual rather than less, with humans understanding that we are all connected… all one race, the human race… and all part of a greater ecosystem that we must work together to nurture.

Just imagine.

Insightful comedy

Last night I went to see Trevor Noah live in Vancouver. My wife and I had a little escape from our house under renovation, and we enjoyed the weekend downtown. These tickets were bought months ago for my birthday, and this was the first large event gathering either of us have done in a couple years.

It felt weird to be around so many people, as I shared in this tweet about the Trevor’s ‘Back to Abnormal Tour’.

(Follow the link in the tweet here for a cute laugh.)

Watching the comedians, Trevor and his two clever lead-offs, it occurred to me that comedians are but a few people that can tread on hot topics without eliciting anger. They can broach topics and say things that would come off as inappropriate by anyone else, then they shed some insightful light on the topics. They can provide perspectives about hot topics while eliciting laughter instead of anger.

I don’t think we should live in a society where we need to rely on comedians to provide rational insight on hot topics. We should be able to have these conversations openly without name calling and yelling. But a couple hours before going to the show we were out for lunch, and on the way back to the hotel passed some anti-mask protesters. One of them was having an exchange with someone walking past. I have no idea who started it but they were both throwing F-bombs at each other. Nothing civil about that. Nothing insightful shared. Nothing funny about it.

A few hours later, I’m having a good laugh, listening to Trevor make insightful comments about topics others just bicker about. Wouldn’t it be nice if more of us could do that?

Take 6 minutes to watch

KENYA’S AMBASSADOR TO UN MARTIN KIMANI’S SPEECH ON UKRAINE-RUSSIA CRISIS WOWS THE WORLD!!

https://youtu.be/ZxZlaiuicYM

It is seldom that I hear a world leader who understands that we can not live in the past. There are so many places in the world where a challenging history of strife and unrest cause an unstable future. Disputed borders create unstable societies and civil unrest. Countless people suffer and die unnecessarily.

War and force are not the answer.

“We must complete our recovery from the embers of dead empires in a way that does not plunge us back into new ways of domination and oppression.”

This message by Martin Kimani needs to be shared with all world leaders. It is timeless and will apply to our world for years, even decades to come.

Disengaged from the socials

It has been a slow process, but I’ve really disengaged from interactions on social media. It has become a one-way transmission tool for my daily blog, and not much else. Well, other than 30 minutes of TikTok that I watch instead of TV, but that’s entertainment rather than engagement. My only social media comments tend to be responses made to my posts about my blog.

I think the disengagement started with US political news dominating everything a few years back. I got fed up watching post after post that had no real connection to me as a Canadian, but still angered and upset me. I got tired of the childish anger and upset. Then came the pandemic, and more (digital) yelling and screaming about how to handle it… with healthy doses of ignorance and bickering about the science. But this fighting isn’t between professionals and real experts, it’s between doctors/scientists and ‘armchair experts’ that demonstrates how expert they are at spewing stupidity and ignorance.

Between politics and pandemic, I’m really done engaging on social media much. That said, these topics still reach me, and I still find myself talking about them here on my blog. Now there is a Canadian election, but I tend not to discuss who I’m voting for and why. Instead, I prefer to focus on encouraging people to get out and vote. I think it’s our duty as citizens to exercise our right to vote, and even want to see tax related fines for those that don’t.

I might be disengaged from social media. I may not like the news that I see. But I believe we should all be appreciative and respectful of living in a democracy, and that we should participate in a democracy if we want to keep it. If we value having a voice, we should use it in a vote… before worrying about what that voice should be saying on social media.

What the next year will bring

I’m not pretending that I have a crystal ball, and can see into the future, but here are some predictions on the year ahead:

1. Vaccines.

A) In the developed world: despite growing evidence that vaccines are saving lives, there are going to be too many people that choose not to get them and the Delta variant (or another yet to be named variant) will bring prolonged restrictions that the very people refusing to get the vaccine will be the most vocal about.

B) In the developing world: It will be another year from now before many countries have enough vaccines to distribute two shots to every person that wants one… but in some of these countries it will be mandated, and that will be a new front of contention and fear mongering in ‘more free’ countries.

C) Booster shots (a 3rd dose) will not be seriously considered for at least 6 months to a year, if at all… but watch for news as elites decide to get it anyway, and while this won’t influence anti-vaxers to get their shots, many with 2 shots will want the 3rd shot as a security blanket.

2. Conspiracy theories.

These will flourish for two reasons:

A) Social media is too easily exploited by clever use of targeted advertising dollars, and fake news/information travels faster than boring but true facts.

B) The news plays easily into the hands of controversy = clicks = advertising dollars. Example: Share the story of an articulate 22 year-old choosing not to be vaccinated. Let her express her concerns for a minute, give a 30 second response, let her get the last word in. The controversy is more important than the science, and the news cast plays like an anti-vaxer advertisement… for free, with a large audience.

3. American Politics: The next year will decide the 2024 election. It is comical to me that some people still think the last election will be overturned… it won’t. However, I think Trump will make a lot of waves in the next year. While I won’t make a prediction as to weather he rides the wave or sinks, I think contention around the last election will be the counterbalance to Trump’s legal woes, and both of these will play into keeping his name in the news, and on the minds of Americans. If in a year he is not in legal hot water, then be warned that he could be a legitimate candidate in 2024.

4. Climate Change: Freakish weather will make this a hot topic for the next year. That said, not much will change with respect to doing something meaningful about it. Newsworthy, but somehow not change worthy.

5. Cryptocurrency: Countries will begin to adopt their own digital currencies. Paper bills will not be produced by most countries in 5 years, and this will be evident by next summer. Developing countries with massive inflation issues will lead the way.

6. Cancel culture: I’ll end on this, and in all honesty, I think this is a wish more than a prediction. I hope that there is some rebalancing around people being cancelled for poor indiscretions. What I mean by this is that someone saying something stupid can’t be treated as equally vile as someone who commits an evil crime. Human beings make mistakes. Two things matter when those mistakes are made. First, how much harm was caused? Second, what is the response/consequence?

I don’t think public/social media spaces are spaces where restitution and resolutions happen. Instead these sites become cesspools of anger, hate, rage, and an attack on people which prevents conversation and learning. Some of these attacks are worse than the indiscretion, but that doesn’t seem to matter.

I would like to see people provided a chance for redemption, rather than vilification and cancelation. We need to allow for learning and growth.

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That’s 5 predictions and a wish. I’ll set a calendar date for a year from now and see how I did.

Thoughts from Aldous Huxley, 1962

This past Christmas holiday I listened to the audio versions of George Orwell’s 1984 and then Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World back to back. The contrast is best described in a comic by Stuart McMillen, based on Neil Postman’s ‘Amusing Ourselves to Death’, shared below.

But before reading the comic take a look at this video interview of Aldous Huxley in 1962, Love Your Servitude:

Both Orwell’s and Huxley’s dystopian worlds are scary, but Huxley’s is a little more chilling in how it connects to the world we live in today.