- Ron Leech, Wildrose Candidate for Calgary Greenway
In his book Blood and Belonging, Michael Ignatieff discusses how easy it is for brothers and sisters to start viewing each other as opponents, given the right external stresses. As the grandson of a Holocaust survivor, I know too well how right he is.
The conditions that breed intolerance – economic tension, contentious issues about resource use and of course, a shift in demographic trends – are upon us here in Canada.
We’re also at a crossroads in the way we plan our society, a challenge unlike any we have faced since Confederation. As a people, Canadians need to decide what the future is going to look like and how we’re going to get there. We won’t get there at all if we refuse to acknowledge there is a broader “us” that extends beyond ethnicity, beyond provincial boundaries, beyond faith or political perspective.
The problem is that in our darkest hearts, we’re all bigots. We have models of understanding that we are comfortable with; we automatically challenge that which is seen to threaten our models and most often ignore those things which we don’t see as having an impact.
Poverty is one of these. We can decry poverty verbally, but how many of us donate to charitable causes to alleviate poverty? What of disabilities? I was at a major conference on Monday with some of Ontario’s brightest minds; despite the cutting edge use of social media technology, nobody thought about accommodating the fellow who was hard-of-hearing in the room with little things like subtitles on videos. Nobody even thought to ask, “is there something we’re missing?”
Ethnic diversity is another. When we keep an "us and them" frame in place, the "them" is either a threat to the "us" or not relevant and therefore get no consideration at all. Women's rights, Civil Rights, Labour Rights are all examples of "didn't think of that" models that held society back until break souls pushed themselves from irrelevant to threat to eventually, integrated. Mental health is another huge barrier we need to be breaking down to achieve a Knowledge Economy.
The Wildrose folk don’t see themselves as bigots – bigots never do. They see themselves as understanding the world as it is and probably wonder how the rest of us are missing it. These folk are living in Plato’s Cave. The same is true of Team Harper when they focus on natural resources and think they’ve found “the fix” or even in Liberals and NDPers when they figure Conservatives are out to lunch.
Nobody has access to the whole social puzzle. We all get a little comfortable with our own piece and don’t realize that, if we put those pieces together, we can put together this bigger picture of a United Canada.
We do live in a society where white people, attractive people, connected people have an advantage. It’s not fair, but it’s reality. The problem is, when we focus on the status quo of advantage, we miss the latent opportunities in disadvantage. How many innovations were developed through trying to solve someone else’s problems? The telephone is just one example.
The more close-minded we get, as a society (and I do put extra emphasis on the firewall crowd when I talk about limited thinking) the more emerging problems – and emerging solutions – we miss. We have to think outside of the box if we’re to get through today’s challenges.
I’m confident we will. We just need to start being conscious in doing so.
No comments:
Post a Comment