The Responsibility of Leadership

I categorize the way kids view you as something you owe.

I like this, a lot.  If you choose to pursue a career in the spotlight, it's like choosing to be a police officer.  Yes, you are a human being and are allowed to be a human being, but at the same time as soon as you put on a uniform, assume a mantle or become an icon, the essence of what you are is infused with the emotional investment made by your constituents or fans, both of whom, ultimately, are the people you serve.

Particularly in the dopamanic, intrusive age in which we live, it's very hard to draw the line between what's acceptable and what's not from people in positions of power and influence.  If it's strictly a peer-competition thing, you end up with a gradual weakening of the concept as people seek new ways to undermine others or raise their own start just that little bit further.

Like driving a car or a bus, the greater the power you wield and the more people are impacted by it, the greater becomes your responsibility to be mindful of the consequence of your actions.  I would be more forgiving of the digressions of a depressed, unemployed 20 year old than I would those of an elected Chief Magistrate. 

So how do you put a floor underneath responsibility of leaders and icons to the people?

Ask yourself if you could, in good conscience, look a seven year old in the face and say "when you're my age you should feel comfortable living your life just as I do."  

Then surround yourself not with people who will have your back and clean up your messes, but remind you of your responsibility and support your ability to fulfil it.

The Exportation of Responsibility: Stewart On Ford On Mayor On Crack

"I don't look at myself as the mayor, I look at myself as just a normal, regular person."

So I have just seen the latest (but guaranteed, not the last) The Daily Show bit on Rob Ford and will admit, I cracked a politely amused smile.  Having said that, I also still think Stewart's must astute line on Ford was this:

"Are you waiting for this man to hit rock bottom? ... Mayor Ford's a lot of fun to ridicule, but my guess is not a lot of fun to eulogize and that's where this thing is headed."

Ford is clearly in denial about his personal issues; everyone in his inner circle, including his own mom, is enabling his fall.  All politicians live in a bubble, but few dwell in as toxic a space as Toronto's Mayor.

Yet, as Stewart points out, Ford still has a ton of supporters who, if a vote was called tomorrow or ten years from now would stand by their man.

The question has been asked repeatedly - how on earth can anybody still support trailer trash like Ford?  It's a question that gets asked bitingly, satirically, even mockingly, but so far not seriously.

Nobody does anything without a reason, though they may not always be conscious of what that reason is.  That's key, because there is often a significant distortion between how we see ourselves and the world and how we actually are/how the world sees us.

What happens when we are forced to face the fact that our actions don't meet our self-image?  The harder choice is that we change our actions to become what we aspire to be - that's taking responsibility.  The complete cop-out is to declare that we're entitled to our entitlements or decry that there's no morality in the world anyway, we're victims as much as anyone; this approach tends to really piss off everyone else.

The third choice is to place blame elsewhere.  If our actions are justified - even if they aren't how we believe we would act under normal circumstances - then we must have been pushed to extremes by some one or something.  This is the exportation of responsibility and by far, the most common approach of the three.

Poverty and crime within marginalizes populations like aboriginals or the descendants of imported slaves?  What happened happened, man, they need to put it in the past and take responsibility for themselves.  Youth who spent extra time and money getting post-secondary educations with the expectation of extra pay for adding extra value?  They need to get over themselves and work their way up from the ground, just like their parents did.

People who commit crimes are not like us - they are foreigners.  Those who commit terrorist acts aren't even human or if they are, they must be crazy.  People who don't see the world the way we do aren't patriotic, they're socialists and separatists.  Those who put hugging trees and thugs before stability and security are ignorant (the reverse is also true - it all depends on your point of view).

Equally - if I did something that was wrong like hit my spouse, belittle an employee, stab a colleague in the back or completely dehumanized an entire demographic as trailer trash, I must have been provoked into doing so.  They had it coming, they deserved it.  Seeing as how they're not worthy but I am, it's frankly within my rights to take what I want and ignore them entirely; it's what they would do, after all, if they were as smart as I was.

There's a fine line between delusion and desperation - both narrow one's point of view and put self-interest first.  

The worst form of desperation is a response to an acute crisis - a typhoon, for instance. 

As we're seeing in the Philippines, the first response to a disaster is to become social - to seek and offer help, to look for or offer leadership.  When help doesn't come and when designated leaders fail at their tasks, the feeling of helplessness turns to bitterness and an urge for justice sets in.

Then there's chronic crisis, which is what poverty and all its co-morbidities (like illness and crime) are.  When you can't get a job no matter what you try, can't get out of trouble because there are no alternatives and when there is no hope to be found, desperation sets in.  You'll ask for help, for a while, but eventually you're going to conclude no help is coming - and that's when you get bitter.

Conservatives of years ago saw society as organic, all being part of the whole, and tried to fashion policies that brought people together, whereas the new Conservatives/conservatives, a la Mr. Ford, see society as inherently divided between a mythical sense of "the people" and their foes.  And for this attitude, those who fall on this side of the divide reward leaders with loyalty that cannot be shaken.

So let's revisit the question - why do so many people still support Ford?  

There are those who are consistently maddened by fiscal waste and scandal and want to keep more of their deserved slice of the pie - let someone else earn theirs.  These folk will point to Ford's fiscal record as the only thing that matters, because it's the thing they have focused on as most relevant to them.  What he does in his personal life, consorting with crack-dealers in slums they'll never visit doesn't matter.

Then there are those marginalized folk in the poorer parts of Etobicoke who can't get ahead, can't achieve the success they see among others who mock them and can't shake the various layers of stigma that cast them as untouchable.  They see other people's kids get ahead while their own struggle with multiple part-time jobs or maybe fall into crime.  What happened to the Just Society?

If you don't believe in politicians because they're all self-serving and focused on issues that don't matter, it would be very refreshing to have a leader - the Mayor, no less - who focused on returning your calls and making sure you got a new playscape in your park.  Those are the things that are tactile, tangible and personal - it's the lowest tier of leadership, but the only kind you've experienced.

You want to like Ford, because he does something you can relate to.  You like the fact that he brands himself as something other than a condescending elite - he's a normal person, much like you are.  He's got substance issues, maybe, and maybe he has questionable friends, but so many in your community do because that's just the reality chronic poverty creates.  If a guy like him, warts and all, can become Mayor, maybe there is hope for your kids.

That's a powerful combination - a bit of hope, a validation of self and even more, support for your sense of inequity and desire for social justice.

Ford isn't the mayor - mayors are those kinds of people who take power and opportunity away from folks like you.  Ford is just a normal, regular person and quite frankly, the only leader on the scene that you can both relate to and feel vindicated by.

There are good reasons, contextually rational reasons for why Ford enjoys so much support and why, more broadly, we have a rising tide of movements like the Tea Party, Occupy or in the most exaggerate form, Golden Dawn.

Ford Nation isn't going away - and now, Mayor Ford will have that much more time between now and next election to stoke the fires of resentment, remind his people of what he did when he was functionally the Mayor and of course, he gets to work those phones.  He did promise a war, after all.

Do I see Ford going to extreme lengths to mobilize his base, tap into other disaffected populations and intimidate others from participating in the political process?  It's not like he's done any of those things before.  

The big difference is this time he's not likely to have the Nick Kouvalises of the world to turn to.  As we have seen, Ford is increasingly turning to the people in his world to round out his team.  Some of those folk have criminal records and histories of violence. 

You want to hope for the best, but it's wise to plan for the worst.  

Rob Ford is not rational; he dug his own partisan grave by not thinking ahead, assuming others wouldn't watch what he did closely and by ignoring issues he thought of as not essential to his narrative.  It's not that surprising; after all, he's only human.  What more can we expect of him?

Leaders don't have the luxury of being human; they have to own responsibility, unite the commons and chart a course forward, ensuring we've got the systems and resources we need to get there.  Which, of course, is why governments work better than dictators and democracy works better than feudalism.

Here's hoping our leaders are looking ahead, scouring the trend lines and planning accordingly.  Lots on their plate and it'll be hard to focus on sideline issues that distract from their core objectives, but such is the nature of public service.  They may be fun to ridicule, but I guarantee they won't be fun to eulogize - and that may just be where this is headed.

Syria: The Milgram Experiment

I could go on and on with examples of limbic, reactive, defiant or protective behaviour that goes contrary to the facts.  I don't need to, though, because you see them in the headlines every day.

Case in point?  Syria.

Mostly, however, those who are unmoved by the victims in the Aug. 21 attack - those who are indifferent about our collective obligation to punish the use of chemical weapons - have simply said one thing, over and over: Prove it happened.  "I doubt/deny it happened."

Forget Marxism - Randian objectivism is the major political philosophy at play today.  Couched in "heroic" terminology, the essence of Rand's philosophy is this - self-interest is the only noble pursuit and a fancy justification for "my mind is already made up, don't confuse me with the facts."  She misuses the term axiom (a premise so true that it is universally accepted without controversy) in a way that the laissez-faire crowd has latched on to with pride.

We're back to Syria.  Sitting in a coffee shop or 'round the kitchen table or boardroom table somewhere in North America, how do we really know what's happened in Syria?  It's in our best interest not to get involved in other people's business, even where innocents are being slaughtered - that's a bit too much like committing sociology.

Footage on TV could be faked - or, it could be misrepresented.  There's nothing axiomatic about what we're seeing, right?  I used a fancy word, so my position is validated!

Reports from Doctors Without Borders?  They're pointedly not assigning blame, so that doesn't help us any, does it?

Lots of people are saying Assad bombed his civilians with chemical weapons - Assad agrees chemical weapons were used, but says it was the other guys that did it.  How can we know for sure who's guilty on our side of the pond?

This is where the Milgram experiment comes in:

Ordinary people, simply doing their jobs, and without any particular hostility on their part, can become agents in a terrible destructive process.  Moreover, even when the destructive effects of their work become patently clear, and they are asked to carry out actions incompatible wit fundamental standards of morality, relatively few people have the resources needed to resist authority.

Or as Adalbert Lallier admitted: "I pretended not to have seen, I pretended not to have heard because I didn't want to be responsible."

Here's what'll happen if Obama caves in to "the Russian proposal."  Having already said he hasn't used chemical weapons, Assad's stockpile will be overlooked, moved, made inaccessible and therefore, the existence of them will prove unaxiomatic - you can't believe in what you can't see, right?

Meanwhile, word will spread that the rebels have chemical weapons that they received from Saudi Arabia or whatever.  That's how self-interested players in power operate, after all - present rumour as fact and make your opponents work to prove it's false.  With the Syrian and Russian governments, probably with some nods from China, point to this as evidence that they've been right all along, Western citizens looking for excuses not to get involved will defer to the "authorities" and dismiss the faceless, unelected rebels as deceitful.  The burden of proof, after all, always lies with the weak.

Believing what they want to believe - that there's no reason for them to take any responsibility - more and more Western citizens will demand their governments stay out of the fray.  For his part, though, Assad will have two tools at hand; one, a discredited opposition that he can continue to call out as liars, regardless of the facts and two, ammunition that he needs to escalate his attacks - after all, you have to fight fire with fire, right?

It's a story we've seen before, that we continue to see played out across the world and in our very own backyard.  North Korea?  Not our problem.  Falun Gong?  They're a bit airy-fairy, so you can't take their arguments seriously.  Ethnic violence and systematic abuses faced by Roma-Sinti?  Honestly, can you trust a Gypsy?  Abused and missing First Nations' women?  Drunks, drug-addicts and if anything is being done to them, it's by their own kind, so not our problem.  

If any of this was of real concern, why, the authorities would be doing something about it.

Wake up, people - we are the authorities of our own actions and, in a democratic system, our governments'.  It's not "do unto others as your governments dictate" - it's "do unto others as you'd have them do unto you." 

What Rand described as consciousness - being aware of something - is really just awareness.  True consciousness is the realization you can do something about it.

There's only one way to get ahead of these avoidable tragedies that we all wear by our inaction as much as our action; that's to own up to our responsibility to society, both here and abroad.  

Syria is as good a place to start as any.

UPDATE: I've been asked about what I would like to see us do, so in broad brushstrokes, here you go.

We (the West or just Canada if no one else is ready to pony up) should get in on the ground in the hot zones.  The goal wouldn't be to threaten one side or the other, but to put ourselves in the line of fire - with the risks and responsibilities that entails.  If we place our troops around the civilians with a mandate to protect themselves and those behind them, it forces aggressors to decide how committed they are to killing their own people.  If Assad kills Canadians/Western troops in the process, they are essentially declaring war on all of us.  Either way, he's forced to own the consequences of his actions.

Canadians can help out with mediation on the diplomatic side, but if aggressive defence is called for, we are skilled at that, too.  Is it interventionist?  Absolutely.  If we believe in protecting the innocent, intervention is called for.

Max Landis On Power and Man of Steel

"Having that much power makes you responsible for other people."

 

Yes.

 

First let's clarify what power is, though.  It isn't the mad grab for dominance over others that both capitalism and socialism breed - "I have resources and ego issues so everyone either does what I say or simply don't matter."

 

No.  Power is like driving car on streets where there are pedestrians and bicycles.  You don't try and remove the less-powerful entities, like Rob Ford would do in an attempt to push the weak to the margins and allow cars to rule the world.  What you do, as a driver, is drive responsibly.  As your vehicle has the capacity to kill you are more responsible than the pedestrian or the biker who doesn't have that kind of street clout. 

 

This isn't to say those with less power have no responsibility, only that those with power have more.  Its why those at the top of the social food chain, be they politicians or sports stars or the super-wealthy get held to a higher standard of accountability than regular people do.  Average folk know that they have less influence than those at the top and will seek to knock down or penalize behavior seen as over-the-top.  Elections, talk radio, tabloid newspapers and thanks to Social Media, social murmuration are the tools we use to keep the powerful in line.

 

Of course, this is why it's a slippery slope when politicians try to pull the HOAG (Hell Of A Guy) card.  Back to Rob Ford, who has tried to portray himself as an average bear in the same way George W, Bush did; Ford is not rooted in the same world as the everyman/woman.  He comes from wealth.  He has access to people and resources that a kid from the wrong side of the tracks simply can't connect to without a bridge.  When people like him portray themselves as average bears, they are attempting to remove themselves from the increased scrutiny society places on those we know to be elites.

 

So what if Ford gets drunk at hockey games, doesn't read his Mayoral accountability material or texts while driving?  Any average Joe does that.  Yeah, but not any average Joe is responsible for running a city.

 

With great power, we've been told, comes great responsibility.  We should demand nothing less from our leaders.

 

In fact, true leaders strive to give us nothing less.

It's not about having power.  It's about how you empower others.

The Wussification of American Men and What Tough REALLY Looks Like

 

 

I read these two articles in tandem yesterday:

 

 Listen, it’s time to toughen up. Talk about the wussification of America, the wussification of American men.

 

and

 

“Nobody really believes it’s about maintaining a militia. It’s about having possession of a tool that makes a person feel powerful nearly to the point of exaltation. …I am not saying that people who love guns inordinately are unstable; I am saying that a gun is the most powerful device there is to accessorize the ego.”
 

Of course, if you're on the far political right, both authors "don't get it" - they are, to you, enablers of the wussification of men.  Screaming at kids, deriding them as "less manly" (ie, gay as a Spartan, brotherly/paternal love between men) makes them tougher, as does throwing balls at their heads.  People like Mike Rice are tough, aggressive, bombastic - what men are supposed to be.

 

If the alpha male is so tough, then, why do they seem to need so much protection?  How can they feel so put-upon if their hides are so thick?  In some subsets of Islam, women need to cover themselves to create a wall between them and men, who would otherwise be too tempted by them.  You know, like Oscar Pistorius, tough guy, masculine athlete.  Fellow tough guys like Femi Fani Kayode seem to feel the need to circle the wagons around him, too, defending him from a mean world and telling us that his girlfriend made him kill her. 

 

 

Canada's most infamous boxer, Senator Patrick Brazeau, is another exemplification of alpha-tough; ex-military, powerfully built, likes to trash-talk.  He got beaten by a leaner, more strategic opponent in the ring, got caught behaving unethically in his position and quite likely took to assaulting his girlfriend to subconsciously prove to himself that he could still dominate at something.  When he was recently called out for making a stupid April Fools' joke about stepping down from the Senate (where he has clearly not been working hard enough to earn the people's money), his response was "I played the media" - implying, at least to himself, that he was in control.

 

Another sporting fella with a reduced on-the-job-energy expenditure is Rob Ford - football coach, tough guy, tough Mayor.  Except that he constantly whines about media criticism and is so wounded by it that he simply refuses to engage them.  I wouldn't expect a tough guy to rely so heavily on 911; maybe he just needs a gun.

 

If you have a gun, you're to be feared.  You have control over the life and death of others.  Owning a gun makes one feel powerful.  Power and dominance, of course, play a big role in gang culture - as it does in any gun culture, including the one in the States.  What guns don't do is make their wielder tough.  Any scrawny tech-geek can learn to use a gun and with it, take down the burliest of men without getting their hands dirty.  If anything, depending on an external tool like a gun to define one's ability to dominate makes one less tough, not more. 

 

When I look at the big picture, this is what I see; alpha males like Eric Bolling want a licence to dominate the herd and aren't willing to face criticism.  They call themselves tough, but they're not very resilient.  Indeed, there's a definitive fragility to their egos that seems to require protection from verbal assailants by their fellow alpha peers.

 

It's as true of tough-minded Political Parties as it is of individuals; they want unquestioned authority to dominate the landscape and have no one challenge them on resource usage.  That's the whole point of being alpha - you swat down any challengers.  Facts don't matter - he who wields the club defines the rules.

 

There's a bigger trend here, if you look for it - the "wussification of American men" plays out as the emancipation of everyone else.  So, the real issue isn't one of declining strength, but of increased responsibility and sharing of power. 

 

So, yes - Bolling is right, in a sense.  The American Culture of the Founding Fathers is in decline.  At least according to these mortal words in the Declaration of Independence concerning the rights of men:

 

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.
 

The focus here is on the rights of men (White, Anglo-Saxon land-owning men specifically), rights endowed by God.  Mike Rice exercised his rights - smacking around kids over whom he had authority made him feel powerful, which is always a good feeling.  Oscar Pistorious defended his right as a man, removing a barrier to his unalienable right to be content.  The veiling of women (when imposed), the beating of wives, the rape of daughters can be interpreted as expressions of a masculine right to freedom and pursuit of self-gratifying endeavours.  But the implication here is that rights are the unalienable property of men, only and suggests nothing about responsibility.

 

But the Delectation of Independence has something to say about responsibilities, too:

 

But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.

 

The abolition of slavery, Suffrage, Civil Rights, Gay Marriage - these are all efforts to reduce the yoke of despotism that have historically denied the rights of Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness to non-whites, the socially disenfranchised, religious and ethnic minorities and of course, women.

 

I attended a talk yesterday that focused on domestic abuse in Aboriginal communities.  The women who spoke told tales of horrific abuse; one had her jaw broken by her husband.  Another explained how alcohol saved her life, because during a fit of rage, her husband was too drunk to find the right bullets for the gun he planned to shoot her with.  Another talked about visiting rural communities and having to explain to 15 year old girls that no, she didn't have to submit to sex with her father or uncle.
 

There were tears during these presentations, but there was also indomitable strength.  These women had endured horrors far beyond the scope of a man-cold and yet had continued to support their children and seek opportunities for a better life.  Instead of expecting their fellow women to circle the wagons around them, these ladies had taken it upon themselves to empower other women and together, reduce the yoke of abuse that has historically denied them their unalienable rights.  They knew it was an uphill struggle that would continue for generations, but that didn't stop them - it only fueled their determination.

 

Internal strength, super-human resilience and a sense of responsibility for one's peers - that's what toughness really looks like.  As formerly oppressed groups gain increasing access to the market of personal independence, they truly are changing American culture into something that is equally strong, resilient and which balances personal freedoms with social responsibility.  American society, as it were, continues to evolve.

 

Which is the big weakness of Alpha males like Bolling or the GOP entire - they don't do evolution very well. 

 

I guess they're lucky to have tough, resilient and proactive progressives there to take their hands and help them move forward.

Communist Libertarianism: The North Korean Paradox

 

Such inflammatory rhetoric is common from North Korea, and especially so in recent days. North Korea is angry over the possible sanctions and over upcoming U.S.-South Korean military drills. At a mass rally in Pyongyang on Thursday, tens of thousands of North Koreans protested the U.S.-South Korean war drills and sanctions.

"But nobody helped them because they were so focused on themselves and their families."
 

 

With China on the slippery slope towards pseudo-capitalism, North Korea is really the last Cold War Communist State left.  The more isolated they become, the more frightened they get, shoring up their firewalls and threatening any trouble that might even possibly think about lapping at their shores.  Alas, North Korea reflects all that went wrong with the Stalinist Experiment - corrupt leaders that feel entitled to their frills, poorly-informed decisions, resource inefficiency, a suffering populace and the thing that irks me the most - waste.  Waste of materials.  Waste of talent.  Waste of opportunity.

 

Opportunity, of course, lies in change, adaptation, growth.  You can't have progress without change, which requires a certain personal flexibility and a willingness to listen to and work with others. 

 

Progressives, as we know, get branded as pinko lefties by the political right; trying to force social contracts and new ideologies on the people who are just fine as they are, thank you very much.  Libertarians in particular are anathema to centrally-generated, centrally-imposed policy, particularly where it comes to their right to do whatever they please with their resources on their land.  "Back off, government," say the landowers - this is our land."  Libertarians can get pretty belligerent when they feel their personal and territorial liberties are being threatened. 

 

One of those personal liberties they cherish, of course, is the ability to protect their territory.  While the Second Amendment was about having a populace armed to protect against external threats, the political right, led by the NRA, have reinterpreted it to be about the right to bear arms and protect personal property, including self.  There are lots of threats lapping at the castle walls, a man's got to be able to defend his family, or something to that effect.  The NRA spends a whole lotta money fighting for the individua's right to bear arms. 

 

When innocent people die because of those arms, the NRA is quick to point out it's not their ideology, but external threats that are the problem.  Their Spokesman Wayne Lapierre issued a statement that was carried by Fox News to every corner of the US:  "In a race to the bottom, media conglomerates compete with one another to shock, violate and offend every standard of civilized society by bringing an ever-more-toxic mix of reckless behavior and criminal cruelty into our homes—every minute of every day of every month of every year.”

 

But wait a minute. 

 

Anti-change, anti-external imposition, the desire to keep people off your land, protect it with guns and thump your chest at anyone who comes near your territory?  That sounds awfully familiar.  It sounds something like North Korea.

 

Ah, but I'm only saying that because I'm a lefty, pinko progressive.  I'm either incapable of understanding how things really work or am choosing to ignore the facts.  True libertarian/politically right people aren't interested in ruling over big territories or other people, they just want to be left alone to their own space.  You don't interfere in their business, they won't interfere in yours. 

 

It just so happens that because we have a corrupt, socialist system in place, the world isn't working the way it's supposed to.  Which is why people like Randy Hillier proactively work to get out the non-freedom lovers like Norm Sterling to make room for properly anti-government libertarians like Jack MacLaren.

 

Ditto Rob Ford - the Lord Mayor was so upset with the corruption and entitlement of leftist Mayors that he had no choice but to do whatever it took to win office and set things to right.  We're very lucky he's there - he's all that stands between us and the leftists on City Council.  He's also the only hope the kids of Don Bosco have of getting ahead in life.  Mayor Ford, you see, knows the right way to motivate people to be independent, so long as they listen to him.  Those he can't help, he can shout down - or incarcerate, or run out of town. 

 

The checks and balances of a democratically elected government and an impartial bureaucracy have helped to filter out some of Mayor Ford's policy approaches.  One wonders what he'd be up to, as leader, if those checks and balances that infuriate him so didn't exist.  Then again, he does have the undying love and support of Ford Nation in his corner.

 

Power is about getting and maintaining control.  Libertarians want control of their own lives, but in a social context, that absolute freedom has to come at the expense of someone else's freedom.  Totalitarianism is basically libertarianism at the state level.  Both libertarians and totalitarians want the freedom to exercise their control in their territory however they please and think that they're the ones who have all the answers. 

 

Despite what they tell themselves, freedom from others isn't the goal - control of territory and resources is.  People, after all, are territorial animals.

 

Like all animals, people maintain territorial control through threats and, where necessary, strength.  Handguns are to people what horns are to bulls or rhinos - and nuclear deterrents are the same thing at the state level.  Costly and expensive propaganda is the state-level equivalent to the peacock's tail.  Control is about preventing external incentive to change, which is what progress is all about.

 

Knowledge is progress.  The handgun and the nuke are the products of progress, as are all weapons and fences that help protect one's territory.  All aspects of society, in fact, have been engineered not by isolationist individuals or regimes, but by collaborative people.

 

Progress isn't about forcing change, so much as libertarianism is about stopping it.  Just like the North Korean regime keeps trying to do.  Fortunately for both, progress is like time - you can't stop the inevitable.

 

 

Ignorance, Personal Freedom, Social Responsibility and Tom Flanagan

 

“It is a real issue of personal liberty, to what extent we put people in jail for doing something in which they do not harm another person,” he told those gathered at the University of Lethbridge after his previous comments on child pornography were brought up by an audience member.

 

 

We live in a world that encourages bullet-point messaging and bare-bones detail.  It's expected, we're told, that if people want to dig down a layer deeper into whatever topic's being discussed - the impact of poverty on self-confidence, the social cost in foreign countries of our Western addiction to cheap products, etc - they'll ask.  To assume they want to know is to be disrespectful of their time.

 

The devil, though, is in the details.

 

Tom Flanagan is simply the most recent, egregious example of how this narrow-focused, one-step approach plays out.  Flanagan is focused on the surface layer, individual freedoms - it is wrong for society to tell an individual they can't look at child porn.  People should have a right to view whatever they want.  If you disagree with his perspective, well, you're wrong and deserve to be dismissed or isolated.

 

Of course, nothing comes from nothing - you can't look at pictures of exploited children unless those children were exploited in the first place.  It's kinda like saying that it's okay to be a cannibal, so long as you didn't kill what you're eating.  When you refuse to think about where the kiddy-porn pictures you feel you have a right to consume come from, you are isolating the victims at the far end of the production chain.  That makes you part of the chain of culpability.

 

Think about that for a second - what are we directly and personally responsible for these days?  We don't grow and slaughter our own food.  We don't harvest resources and make our own clothes, homes or personal goods.  We've even managed to physically remove ourselves from the wars we fight.  Teachers educate our kids, doctors manage our health - we are simply too busy these days to be all things.  There are costs to each of these products and services that we aren't covering with our dollars, because they're being taken out of other people or natural resources in other ways.

 

Somewhere along the way we've taken to justifying our ignorance by declaring ourselves apex predators - consequences are things born by lesser creatures, like our unseen neighbours.  Or perhaps we feel our lifestyle is the only godly one, so the Other needs to be vilified - no in-depth understanding required. 

 

Whether you describe this dehumanization of the Other by calling them the 47% or a political brand, it amounts to the same thing - stigmatization.  There are lots of other terms that describe this perspective including bigotry, racism, homophobia, xenophobia, hatred.

 

None of us want to accept that we are bigots or willfully ignorant - so, we bridge this cognitive dissonance with confabulated notions like Flanagan's.  That's why it's possible to be both libertarian and anti-gay marriage, anti-government and yet micro-manage bureaucracy or pro-transparency and yet intentionally mislead the public.

 

We do this by falling back to the safe ground of "I've got rights" - including the right to ignorance, intolerance and inaction.  We do this at the expense of social responsibility.

 

The problem with the personal rights trump all approach is that no person is an island - in fact, we all live in the same place.  What impacts one of us impacts all of us, to one degree or another, in myriad ways.  We can't afford not to pay attention.  Not when the consequences can be so dire. 

 

If Edmund Burke were writing today, he might say "The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good people to decide they're too busy."

 

Or as Adalbert Lallier put it: "I pretended not to have seen, I pretended not to have heard because I didn't want to be responsible."

Sorry, Tom, but ownership isn't laissez-faire and you don't get your freedoms at the expense of children - and trying to turn government into security guards only makes the world a prison.

Thoughtful Sex

Outward circumstances or conditions do not determine what our lives become nearly as much as the thoughts that dominate our minds and the people we surround ourselves with.

 

After reading that, watch this Ted Talk on sexual desire and long-term relationships.

 

Then, consider Matt Ridley's notion of Ideas Having Sex - innovation as social procreation, as it were.

 

Finally, read Rabbi Brad Hirschfield's piece on the desire for connectivity leading to pilgrimage, religion and as a byproduct, civilization.

 

Does desire bring people together in an equitable way?  Not really.  Desire, be it for power, for resources, for sexual gratification brings with it the need for domination.  It's why a balanced "free market", otherwise known as "selection of the fittest", doesn't work in an interdependent social context, which we undeniably are (unless you are able to make your own clothes, grow your own food and sustain your own public infrastructure, which would be quite a feat).

 

Conversely, responsibility - the apparent opposite of desire - is about what you give back, not what you receive.  When people collaborate in an understanding, trustful way (this can be a married couple, a company of soldiers or an office team) they create something that has greater reach through space and time than can an individual. 

 

Who do we choose to surround ourselves with?  Most of the time, those choices are out of our hands; we can mistrust the Other and live in desirous suspicion, or we can love our neighbours - a theme repeated throughout world religions.

 

Which makes me think of the Sufi maxim - "God is great, there is nothing but God, therefore I am God."  Which is an ecstatic thought that can occur to people having dopamanic manias, pushing their pre-frontal cortexes beyond normal, beyond even individual safety.

 

But society isn't about the individual - it's about the social whole, a new system that's greater than the sum of its parts.  You can't sustain a system if its components aren't properly maintained or pushed too far past their limits, which is what's happening in our society.  At a point of increased tension, polarization and social friction, we're beginning to turn towards leaders who know how to serve as bridges, not battering rams, looking to see what places they can bring us to.

 

It's all fun stuff to think about - and share.

Have ADHD? Pay Attention to this:

“It is primarily the (drug company’s) responsibility to monitor the safe use of their products,” Health Canada told the Star.


Dr. Derryck Smith, an ADHD specialist in B.C., says monitoring side effects is the government’s job. “That’s why we have Health Canada,” he said. “There’s no point in making the reports if (the regulator is) not going to be monitoring.”

What's the message here?  It's that people suffering from ADHD, their families and the dedicated front line service providers doing their best to assist them are on their own.

When you have people killing themselves, that's just not damned good enough.

From the CornwallFreeNews:

For my second column for the Cornwall FreeNews, I thought about picking a lighter topic.

But honestly, where's the fun in that?


Assisted Suicide and Pandora’s Box by Craig Carter Edwards – June 25, 2012

“All we have to do is decide what to do with the time that is given to us.”
- Gandalf, Lord of the Rings

CFN – B.C Supreme Justice Lynn Smith has ruled that assisted suicide is legal. In her ruling, Smith argues existing provisions in the Criminal Code that make assisted suicide illegal are an infringement against an individual’s rights to life, liberty and security of person. In her view, right to life seems to include right to death; liberty includes the ability to impose the ultimate limitation on oneself and security includes the ability to permanently protect oneself against pain.

If you haven’t guessed yet, I’m not in favour.

“If you can’t run, you walk. If you can’t walk, you crawl. If you can’t crawl, you find someone to carry you.”

The Truth Will Set You Free

"Imagine a scenario where your 'anonymous' comments on a newspaper website or in an online chat forum, could be tracked back to you personally, simply by linking your IP address and browser data across multiple platforms."

- Dr. Ann Cavoukian

There is great fear that the immediacy, reach and memory of the Internet is destroying anonymity.  The implication in this is that anonymity is desirable.

I can see why not everyone is interested in being under the microscope.  While an understandable concern, I don't think it's as much of a risk as we have convinced ourselves.  If everyone was on TV all the time, there wouldn't be anybody left to watch - the same applies here.

There's another side to this, though.  Anonymity is about the individual not having responsibility in a social context.  That approach has failed - now, people are demanding more.  The theme today is of the individual being accountable in a social context; the notion of responsibility is something that is gaining in resonance, globally. 

Personally, I see this level of transparency as a positive response to urban living.  When time was, you always had to mind your manners; smaller communities meant less anonymity and greater social accountability.  The Golden Rule has been repeated across time and cultures, for good reason.

This level of transparency is, ultimately, liberating.  When you aren't weighing the pros and cons of doing something you know is wrong, or of not thinking an action through, you're spending more time doing what you know to be right and making sure you've thought through the consequences.  That's better for the individual and better for society.

As they say - the truth will set you free.

UPDATE: The FBI is apparently looking to develop an application that would allow for them to monitor social media. This is the kind of thing that makes people's spines shiver - government sneaking looks into your personal lives.  It's Big Brother McCarthyism meets Minority Report. 

There's a flip side to this coin, though - with the Internet and social media, the playing field is increasingly equal; information can and does find the means to go both ways.  Hence, WikiLeaks.

We're all going to be holding each other to account, which is how it should be.

UPDATER: Another story about how the content and context of a Twitter comment led to an unitended consequence.  We're all being forced, by public accountability, into thinking a bit harder before we open our mouths or strike our keys.  This is a good thing.

UPDATEST:  #tellviceverything.  Need I say more?

Updated-ier: Robocalls.  Crime might pay in the short term, but there are fewer and fewer dark corners in society to hide in.  The light of transparency shines ever brighter.

And Rounding Out 2013:

The Tables Have Turned: Now We're Watching the NSA

And closing off 2014, courtesy of #ghomeshi:

I predict that, just as the accusations made by Anita Hill against Clarence Thomas ushered in a sensitivity to sexual harassment many years ago, the Ghomeshi saga will create a sea change in Canadian’s views toward abuse of power in the workplace and the responsibilities of everyone involved.

 UPDATE #elxn42, Fall of 2015:

In the past, such incidents would have made the news for a few days but not necessarily caused resignations or event cancellations, he said.

"Things that would have boiled and disappeared now have a more immediate fallout."