- Rich Tafel
The senseless murder of a young man, apparently for no reason other than because he was black and his murderer had a fearful stigma of black people.
An indictment of single-focus idealism that, despite best intentions, is exacerbating the problems the idealists seek to solve.
The continued myelination of Canada’s democracy, where Political Parties target just their identified voters with messages aimed at established interests (or target their opponent’s supporters with misinformation) rather than promote a genuine marketplace of ideas and subject matter.
What’s the connection?
Each of these threads are examples of narrowing one’s focus and missing the bigger picture.
Trayvon Martin
In the case of Trayvon Martin’s killer, George Zimmerman, the debate around whether or not he was a racist and this was a hate crime has become the lightning rod for attention. While there’s been some discussion around how Florida’s gun laws and police culture facilitated this crime happening, I have so far seen no discussion about the impact of multiple other factors:
- Previous warning signs of instability in Zimmerman’s behaviour that didn’t receive due attention;
- The psychological impact of gated communities on those living within and without;
- Poverty and the underlying causes of the rash of crimes in Twin Lake Townhomes in the first place;
- What we’re doing in our education systems to provide Social Emotional Learning that can mitigate natural inclinations towards stigmatizing others;
- Proactive mental health services.
It’s good that people are protesting this travesty and demanding justice, but our current justice system isn’t working. Crime reduction doesn’t stem from greater punishment but rather from increased social access to education and opportunity. History bears this out; we’re on the right trajectory, but a tendency to narrow our focus to the latest outrage means we’re missing out on the larger picture.
Social Entrepreneurship

The Public Good
Canadian politics is still aflutter with the mounting robocon/voter suppression scandal. Lots of the discussion centres around how high up the scandal will reach, what punishments are appropriate, whether by-elections should be called, that kind of thing. The sad fact is, the voters who have been the most disenfranchised by this are the same ones who are likely to dismiss politics in frustration and not vote at all in 2015. That might suit the Harper Conservatives in the medium-term, but what does it mean for Canadian democracy and our capacity to develop the best sustainable solutions through debate and collaboration in the long-term?

This same insular logic pervades Canada’s public, private and not-for-profit sectors. So long as individual organizations and individual, vertically-integrated hierarchies keep a narrow focus on profits for shareholders, profits for owners, maintaining individual funding envelopes, etc, the really big solutions are going to be overlooked. You can’t solve collective problems within the confines of a silo-based mentality.

The line “move forward together” makes for a great speech-punctuator. Beyond its rhetorical value, though, it’s actually true. The only way forward is together. No matter how hard we try, we can’t box out the rest of the world – does it not make sense to acknowledge that fact and consciously build a society we can all enjoy living in?
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