Two Tiered Justice and Cognitive Dissonance in Canada

Yeah, there's no need for the provinces top law maker to wade into a suggestions there are two levels of justice in Ontario.

Warmington could be referring to the fact that City Councillors are getting slapped on the wrist for DUIs while everyone else suffers real consequences.  Or he could be referring to the fact that Toronto's Mayor Ford has made a mockery of the high office of the mayoralty.  He could even be referring to the hypocrisy of our Prime Minister, speaking out of one side of his mouth about the need for accountability at the highest levels among his opponents, but still clinging to the story that he knew nothing and has no responsibility over robocalls, the Senate scandal, etc, etc.

But no.

No, with this line Warmington is referring to Idle No More protesters, blocking a train.  I would agree with Warmington that they are breaking laws - laws which are meant to protect and defend them, but are failing to do so.  The Federal government has declared that it's too bad if Aboriginal women keep going missing or are murdered without justice - they've thrown some money at the problem and that's all they have to do.  It's too bad if Aboriginal youth are denied the starting-point opportunities of other Canadians - again, the law isn't about creating an even playing field, right? 

Add to that young people who pay big bucks for skills but can't find work, Somali-Canadian mothers with dead sons and no justice, civil rights groups and individuals that have been declared Enemies of the State and suffered consequences for that branding, etc., etc.

"CN is very disappointed that the Crown has elected not to prosecute, while recognizing that a crime has been committed."  Get in line, CN. 

We have a very skewered sense of justice in this country.  The political right, ironically enough, wants individuals to fall in line and work within a system that is asymmetrically designed.  So what if you're marginalized? the message goes; work harder, it's up to you to overcome your own social-created plight.  If you can't, it means you haven't tried hard enough to overcome your ethnicity, your gender, your sexuality, your name or your postal code.  If you push back against social and legal injustice in a way that inconveniences the system (and the wealthy/influential who run it), you deserve punishment.  It's Dickensian.

The political left, the socialists, are the reverse - they want a system that enables individuals, providing but not empowering.  For these supposed socialists, it's the structural flaws of society that are at fault, and individuals are made to suffer.  However, strong societies are made up of strong individuals; when we don't empower individuals, we doom society to decay.

When there are innocents that are persecuted and criminals who walk free; when there are skilled people who can’t find work, or unskilled people who can’t get training; when there are sick people who cannot access healthcare and when our democratic governments are supported by fewer and fewer votes, this cannot be called justice.

Canada is not a "1st world country" - there has always been pockets of extreme poverty dotted across the landscape, ranging from small rural communities without service access to massive urban slums and of course, out-of-sight, out-of-mind Aboriginal reserves.

There has never been social justice for all in this country.  People are weighed as individuals based on societal experiences and prejudices over which they have no control.  A disproportionate number of those from groups who have been marginalized throughout history are facing the sword, not the scales.   We have never had an even playing field.  People like Warmington who must surely be ignorant through personal experience or choice about these inequalities see justice as the thing that his class has and others are trying to take from them.  People like every Idle No More protester I have spoken to see justice as a thing that exists above them, out of reach. 

The more people with access and affluence choose to turn a blind eye to the two-tiered nature of justice we already have, the closer we slide into dystopian territory.

It's an uncomfortable reality we deal with; it's uncomfortable to think about.  It's far easier to find new ways to blame others than to accept that maybe our approach and own narrow view is part of the problem. 

We've seen a decrease in crime in this country - that has made us complacent.  It'd be a great tragedy if our own inability to think and act proactively leads us to a reversal of that trend.

Which leads us to that other piece of dissonance we are facing as a society; as we return to a mentality where bosses feel it's their job to threaten their workers into doing their job, leading to greater marginalization at the bottom, we have grassroots organizations steadily increasing the severity of their pressure on government. 

It's a cycle we have seen before and seem doomed to repeat.

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.

The Conscious Revolution: Peering Into the Looking Glass

Globally, the economy is in a precarious place.  The traditional models of wealth generation and circulation are proving unsustainable at all levels.  People on both ends of the increasingly polarized social spectrum need to take a hard look at what they value, what they feel they deserve and what their commitment to society should be on the macro and mirco levels.

There’s a mental health crisis that’s been recognized internationally, too – suicides, anxiety and depression, increased awareness of and empathy for those suffering from conditions ranging from bipolar disorder and schizophrenia to ADHD and post-partum depression.

Social media is connecting the world in hyper-kinetic ways.  As of right now, we really do have a networked intelligence – the question is, how consciously and effectively can we harness it?  How well are we leveraging our global information transfer network?

Everyone is talking about the challenges and need for significant change in our economic, political and social institutions.  The classes that have led the Capitalist system through boom and bust are trapped in models of yore, uncertain what to do next.

They are turning to social entrepreneurs (the creative types who see money as a base-line for sustainable living and are more interested in creating social meaning with their work) for solutions.

The models that are successfully empowering and promoting social entrepreneurs (Google, CSI) take an active approach to workplace wellness and cognitive workplace design – there’s a whole emerging field just starting to crackle that will combine psychology, kinesiology and interior design in developing the cognitive workplace, spaces designed to enhance creativity and productivity.  

Globally, the increasingly focused (and centrally coordinated) efforts to address mental illness are going to collide with the economic and social challenges in ways that might be surprising.  Poor work design and an education system that focuses on mass-produced rote-learning actually foster anxiety and depression, while not developing the practical skills needed for success in tomorrow’s economy.  At the same time, we are still feeling our way through alternative cognitive ability diagnoses and accommodations, with a long way to go before we get it right.  We can’t afford to be losing productivity and having so many people reliant on the healthcare system.

What we need to start doing is tap into these potentials effectively; we can no longer afford to have the future Steve Jobs’, Albert Einsteins and Winston Churchills succeed by luck of timing or geography – we need everyone to reach and harness their full cognitive potential.

Society is being forced to change the way we view work and education to support the latent talents that will fuel the Knowledge Economy.  The natural source of inspiration and ideation for this cognitive revolution will be the social entrepreneurs – people who on the whole are concerned about the environment and looking at sustainable practices that also create business opportunities:

-          Increased integration through social media

-      A shift towards shared, networked-learning that encourages students (and employees) to be active participants in planning and executing their education

-          Increased critical thinking in politics, vs model-based partisan loyalties

-          A growing reliance on social entrepreneurs and horizontally integrated idea-sharing as a vehicle for growth and policy directions

-          Mental health care begins to become more proactive, with appropriate accommodative measures built into work, education, etc.

-          The Cognitive Revolution, like the Industrial Revolution before it, will reshape our society around a more conscious Capitalism.

Welcome to the 21^st Century; welcome to the Conscious Society.

The Politics of Indifference: Are We Repeating History?

Tightening The Screw

An article in today’s Toronto Sun boasts the headline “Bogus Refugee Claims on the Rise.”  The article asks us this question: “with all the hostility and turmoil in the world, why would more than 20% of all refugee claimants to Canada last year be coming from the European Union?  Is Hitler back? Tito? Mussolini?” 

The article goes on to say that nearly “half of last year’s bogus European refugee claimants were from Hungary."  The suggestion is that these are economic migrants, seeking better job opportunities or, perhaps, are hoping to milk the Canadian system.  A disproportionate number of these claimants are Sinti-Roma, often referred to as “Gypsies.”  Canada’s Federal Immigration Minister Jason Kenney has singled out Sinti-Roma, suggesting they, as a social group, are actively attempting to abuse the system. 

Reading headlines like these, it all seems so much an over there problem.  We’re here in Canada, worried about jobs for our youth, the viability of our pensions and whether there will be a doctor available when we need one.  With debt crises and unemployment challenges, we’re already worried; we don’t need to add anyone else’s woes to our mix.  In short – we are anxious enough to be receptive to messages that validate our fears.

This is a big part of why Canada has recently elected a majority government whose key campaign theme was protecting Canada against “troubles lapping at our shores.”  In Ontario, the Conservative Party’s recent election campaign focused on pointing accusing fingers at “foreign workers” for stealing local jobs and “foreign students” for taking opportunity away from local students.

Does this sound familiar?  It should. 

What Has Happened Before…

During the lead-up to and beginning of World War II, Canada embraced a closed-door immigration policy that stigmatized foreigners and “special interest” groups specifically.  Canada’s Director of Immigration (Equivalent to today’s Immigration Minister) of the time, Frederick Charles Blair, focused in particular on Jews.  Between 1933-1939, while anti-Semitism and hate-crimes were on the rise, Blair allowed less than 5,000 Jews, mostly European, into Canada.  A shameful example of his blatant refusal to assist a persecuted people was the turning away of the MS St. Louis and its 907 Jewish emigrants.  Apparently, Blair once asked a prominent Jewish Torontonian "Why don't you people learn to live with your neighbours wherever you are?  Why are you hated?"

Canada confabulated justification for ignoring people in need with essentially the line that it wasn’t our problem; we had enough concerns of our own to worry about.  In fact, we did even worse – fearful of the enemy without, we started to look for enemies within.  Nazi Germany had its Concentration Camps and Soviet Russia had its Gulags, but Canada had Internment Camps of its own.

I can only assume that the Frederick Blairs of the world actually believed that external firewalls and internal containment were in the country’s best interests.  I would certainly question who from our populace they saw as true Canadians.  That was a different time, though, when we had less understanding of genetics and largely viewed “ethnic groups” as Others posing built-in threats because they were different.  Surely we’ve learned since then? 

… Will Happen Again

It doesn’t seem like it.  We have Kenney’s railing against Roma-Sinti immigrants, giving plenty of generalizations and half-truths to justify his position.  Internally, he’s finding palatable ways to put constraints on minorities.  His colleague Vic Toews is pursuing a new anti-terrorism strategy that will target any group of “vulnerable individuals” with issues “based on grievances – real or perceived.”  Prime Minister Stephen Harper questions the patriotism of any group or individual who disagrees with his positions.  This all sounds familiar, too.

I’m not trying to invoke Godwin’s Law, here.  My goal is never to point fingers, but to identify concerns and present solutions.  Here’s the problem I want to raise today.  Canada is cycling back to political divisiveness.  As economic uncertainty fosters social anxiety and as competing media (both old and new) fight for dramatic headlines to attract an overwhelmed audience, we are putting on blinders to what’s happening beyond our shores.  As our politicians attempt to outdo each other with feats of policy muscularity, our vision is becoming clouded with fear and anger.

What’s happening as a result of existing anxieties and political jockeying is that we are falling into a predictable, unfortunate political cycle of contracting tension and explosive release.  As we become more insular in our focus, we are confabulating reasons not to look at and address the challenges that surround us.

Hungary

The Sun asks us, has dictatorship returned to Europe?  While it poses the question sarcastically, what if that is actually the case?  There are real concerns being expressed not just by Hungarians, but by the EU and the US that Hungary, under the reign of the Fidesz Party, is on the slippery slope towards dictatorship.  Power is being increasingly consolidated in the hands of a few; the voices and opportunities for expression of opposition are being suppressed.  A noose is slowly closing around the neck of dissent.  At the same time, there are questions of state-facilitated racism, labour camps, etc.  Beyond Hungary, racism and anti-democratic sentiment is on the rise in Europe, fueled by the Eurozone crisis.  The Roma-Sinti are being targeted now just as they have been before.   

The Canadian government is not demonstrating any interest in raising concerns over the democratic processes of a foreign government.    Doing so doesn’t fit into the theme of “trouble lapping at our shores” as well as Islamic terrorists or the threat of war with Iran do.  More to the point – if Stephen Harper were to denounce the slide from democracy in Hungary, how much credibility would he have?  He has repeatedly dismissed Canada’s democratic laws and tradition to further his own ideology – he has given Canada a glass roof when it comes to commenting on respect for democracy.

 Feeding the Beast

This is where I part company from many detractors of the Harper regime.  I’ve no interest in calling Harper a dictator, nor branding his Ministers as racist.  Labels like that brand and isolate the problem without doing anything to provide a solution.  To me, the Harper team is victim of the same structural flaws that people around the world have twigged on to.  That's where our focus needs to be.

Our political system is a zero-sum game; one player’s success can only come at another’s expense.  This makes it a survival of the fittest contest.  To the victor go the spoils – therefore, the ends justify the means; all else is collateral damage.  Under this banner, I have seen Parties of all political stripes embrace wedge-issues they knew were detrimental to the interests of their constituents, eat their own young to strengthen or save the people at the top and ignore the issues that mattered in deference to the issues that had traction.

It’s an exact repetition of what’s happening on the national scale.  I don’t see this as coincidence – I believe that the polarization of politics is informing the polarization of the populace in general.  Seeking shocking headlines, the media is simply feeding the beast.  So long as the worst of the problems are “over there”, we feel we can get away with this.  In doing so, we are abdicating our social responsibility to make the world a better place than it was as we found it.

My grandfather is a Holocaust Survivor.  Through a tragic twist of fate, he was one of 168 Allied Airmen that ended up in Buchenwald Concentration Camp.  Having signed up to fight for a cause he believed in – stopping the Nazis – he ended up witnessing first-hand just what mankind is capable of when we make the choice to either ignore or give in to fear and hatred.  Another survivor of Buchenwald, Elie Wiesel, drew this lesson from his experience of the Holocaust:

“The opposite of love is not hate, it’s indifference.  The opposite of art is not ugliness, it’s indifference.  The opposite of faith is not heresy, it’s indifference.”

“There may be times when we are powerless to prevent injustice, but there must never be a time when we fail to protest.”

I have been to Buchenwald.  I have talked to Jewish survivors of the Camp, to political prisoners who survived the Camp and to Sinti-Roma survivors of the Camp.  I don’t believe I’ve spoken to homosexual survivors of the Camp – there weren't many gay survivors.  I have also talked to the children and grandchildren of these survivors and asked them this question – “what’s it like today?”

The answer is disheartening.  Racism is on the rise.  Disenfranchisement is on the rise.  Suppression is on the rise.  There are political challenges happening not just in Hungary, but elsewhere in Europe, too.  Of course, the Eurozone is in crisis and more than a few nations (and nationalists) are pointing fingers of blame at each other.

It is wrong for us to willfully ignore the problems of our neighbours, be they across the street or across an ocean.  All the justification in the world cannot undo the damage that is done when we turn away from the suffering of others.  Sticking our heads in the sand doesn’t isolate us from the problem – instead, it brings it that much closer to home.

We have to care about the state of democracy, here and abroad.  We have to speak out with our votes and our words and our dollars against any system or group that would tell us security trumps diversity or that success comes only at the expense of others.  It’s our responsibility to let our politicians know we do care – about our political processes here in Canada and about the problems of friends, relatives and even complete strangers abroad in places like Hungary.  It means telling the world that Canada wants to be part of the solution, not a contributor to the problem.

This isn’t about tackling insurmountable problems.  It’s not about pandering to the weak or interfering in the lives of others.  Simply put, it’s about learning from past mistakes so that we don’t relive them.  My grandfather, like so many grandfathers and grandmothers, was victimized by the Holocaust, which happened because people around the world - including Canadians - decided what was happening in Nazi Germany was not our problem.  People to this very day are being slaughtered, beaten, starved and oppressed – because our inaction lets it happen.

Don’t let our grandfathers’ sacrifices be in vein; don’t force our sons and daughters to relive them.

Building the Social Animal: Society, Politics and the Mental Health Solution

 “I think we need to understand where we’re going with those programs and whether or not we have solutions — programs that actually bring about solutions.” – Senator Vern White

In raising mental health (phrased another way, cognitive function) as a top social priority, White hits the nail squarely on the head.  As I’ll get to later, I think a proper understanding of what “mental health” actually means and what role cognitive function plays in social dynamics will enable us to bridge a number of social inequity barriers and inefficiency gaps, including the challenges facing First Nations.  Ironically enough, as economic growth is seen as the biggest factor in determining social and individual success, I believe that our challenge and our promise are both a reflection of neurological innovation.

There's a general rule that application always lags behind innovation; you get a new computer model before you've mastered how to use the last one, then there's a mobile device, etc.  When it comes to practical usage of what’s new, we're always playing catch-up (“you can’t teach an old dog new tricks” is simply a colloquial description of the cons of myelination).  This is as true in biology as it is in technology, even moreso in a social context.  The fine-motor capacity of our bodies lags behind the demands put on it; we simply aren’t designed for long stints of sitting at desks or chronic keyboard use, yet that’s what society demands of us.

We have only just begun to fathom the depth of what this principle means to society and individual biology.  One quick example – you don't find ulcers in zebras because zebras don’t face chronic stress; they face biochemical stress in short stints, after which they are either dead or free to live another day.  Humans, on the other hand, are constantly hitting the stress button; in gridlock, in meeting work deadlines, in facing the schoolyard bully or the micro-managing boss, in domestic challenges, etc.  The closest equivalent to the level of chronic stress our species faces would be small, skittish creatures that exist in a constant state of reactive-readiness to respond to predation.  These aren't species that tend to live very long lives.

Thanks to the collective benefits of society (healthcare and security in place of aggressiveness/defensiveness), humans are living increasingly long lives and being exposed to an ever-increasing amount of stressors.  These come in both physical (keyboards, cramped subways, isolation through living in single-family dwellings, long work days spent sitting, shifts that interfere with biological rhythms of sleep and eating, etc.) and less apparent but no less impactful, psychological (email flow, traffic jams, cubicle farms, micro-management, stigma) forms.

In the grandest of ironies, much of the issues that plague society, ranging from physical diseases like asthma, repetitive stress injury and cancers are caused or exacerbated by the conditions of society.  As in all things, the benefits of social living are offset by its negative consequences.  While our bodies are designed for certain degrees of social functioning – hands designed for tool use, parts of our brain built for tool design, throats designed for speech and minds capable of fabricating language), the innovations of society are always a couple steps ahead of our biological, neurological capacity to adapt.

Where this conflict (the growth and well-being of society vs the growth and well-being of the individual) stems from is neuro-biology.  The reason we are social creatures at all is due to the development of the prefrontal cortex.  The prefrontal, or “neo” cortex is the part of our brain responsible for, among other things, planning and executive function.  The reason that we have more individualized interests is due to our reactive, limbic mind that encourages us to go for instant gratification regardless of longer-term consequence.

I cannot over-emphasize how pervasive this simple biological reality is in our daily lives, or the general functioning of society.  Even political, ideological differences seem to be social manifestations of these two basic drives – individual interest vs. collective interest, or biological evolution vs social evolution.

Think about it - the neo-cortex is the root of executive functioning (central coordination) and pro-social behaviour (the collective benefit of the whole).  Does that not sound like the basic premise of the ideological Left?  The left wants a solid social safety net managed by a strong, central government that inevitably bleeds away from individual (provincial, municipal, agency, individual) independence.  It’s growth through collaboration.

On the other hand, the limbic system is all about individual strength and the ability to react required when there is no social safety net - does that not sound like the decentralized, individual strength and independence that forms the basis of Right-Wing thought?  The Right is all about individual success stemming from competition.

We are social creatures – the interconnectivity of humanity is such that, thrown out into the wild, most people would be unable to survive independently (and note the correlation between support for individualism and independence and rural living vs. support for specialization and social opportunity in urban environments).  Yet, the pressures of fully-integrated social living are more than we can handle; individually, we suffer from an increasing series of physical and psychologically-related stress factors and socially, we face systematic inequity. 

What happens in society is the same thing that happens when the body faces any stress, be it extreme temperatures or the threat of physical danger; we ramp up the appropriate internal system, taking energy away from others to do so. In society, the greater the duress we face, the greater the internal inequity we face.  You can see it happening now, right here in Canada – the polarization of our politics and the disappearance of the middle class are an exact parallel to physiological responses to stress, with “trouble lapping at our shores” standing in for a hungry lion.  The “cold war” was aptly names for reasons we didn’t fully understand at the time.

When I look at this whole process from the viewpoint of evolution, it’s fascinating – watching the disparate elements of humanity become increasingly integrated is like watching how complex organs like an eye or complex internal systems like the respiratory system developed in real-time.  In fits and spurts, we are building a social ecology, an organism that is greater than the sum of its parts.

At the same time, the practical reality is that the process is subjecting us to micro and macro stresses that are not conducive to quality-of-life.   On the individual level, we have depression, anxiety, road rage and the whole suite of repetitive stress injuries.  On the macro level, we have the problems facing First Nation communities and the increasing likelihood of war with Iran, the isolation of North Korea or the return of fascism in Europe.

Where we are is where we are – the human evolutionary trend is leading towards increased socialization and inter-dependence.  Our evolving consciousness of this fact is only going to speed up the process.  At the same time, we simply aren’t ready to be wholly integrated as a society; we need individual capacity to succeed at both the psychological and physical level.  So, then – what do we do?

As in all things in life, the solution is to be found not in the political left or in the political right, but through the balance of each (which is probably why duality and balance has been such a consistent theme in societies the world over, my favourite example being Lao-tzu’s Tao-te-Ching).  We need both the left AND the right – the two inform each other and, in so doing, eventually arise at the compromises that find the balance between the needs of the one and the needs of the many.

Which brings us back to why a better understanding of mental health is necessary for a properly functioning society.  Just as understanding the why behind a phobia or a craving makes them easier to manage, understanding the cognitive motivation behind everything we do will enable us to do it better.

Which is also why there’s a growing trend towards both social collaboration and a focus on mental health; we need both.  Consciously, we can get there faster, more efficiently.  Having spoken to politicians, social and business leaders representing multiple facets of society, I can say with confidence that the majority of our leaders already have the right intent – all they need to do is follow-through.