The Politics of Natural Selection, Continued

"OdogThewise", who commented on Warren Kinsella's piece in today's Sun, reinforces my point beautifully.

Here's what he had to say:

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The world is full of Lions and Lambs.........
Fordbsgtrek is a lion......... And a True Patriot!
Urbansurvivor is a lamb who would not survive for very long if the anarchy he condones ever does come to this country........
He forgets that we right wingers have the tools, the talent and the will to truly survive.
And if...... (heaven forbid) we ever see a collapse in law and order in this country due to any number of causes........ We will remember those who pushed for Canada to be so light wristed.
Left wingers will promptly be put on "gathering" duty in a lawless society.
If they are to be included at all.
The slowest buffalo will once again go to back of the herd to become prey for the wolves. And the fastest will set the tone.
Be careful of what you wish for Urbansurvivor...... It can all be over with a simple push of a button.

Survival of the fittest.  With the fittest being those who have the skills to survive through aggressive competition.  He talks about tools (weapons, I'm guessing - there's that guns in everyone's hand escalation bit again), "gathering" duty (my grandpa's a Holocaust survivor so I know exactly what he means) and pushing the weak to the back of the pack to be eaten by wolves.  That's not about society - it's about biological evolution, selection of the fittest.

The "slowest buffalo" of course would include the crippled, the mentally ill, the blind/deaf, people with breathing disorders and even wounded soldiers.  See, some of these "slow buffalo" are slow not from anything nature's given them, but by what's happened to them in a social context.

Odog finishes off with "It can all be over with a simple push of the button."

By button, of course, he means the one that launches nuclear warheads and brings a radioactive end to all human life as we know it.  Cockroaches would inherit the earth because, under that scenario, they're physically stronger than we are.  Odog isn't thinking that far ahead, though, because strong emotions are fixated on end goals - that' why they exist, to get us past an immediate threat.  They aren't meant to be sustained over the long term.  That, naturally, leads us back to mental health.

But we would never have had a button to push is we hadn't had collaboration, foresight and a bit of altruism.  Where did the West's Cold War science brigade come from, again?  Take it a step further - how was the telephone invented?  What have "slow buffalo" like Stephen Hawking contributed to society, when accommodated?  All of society's great accomplishments have come from moving in the opposite direction Odog would see us go - through collaboration, communication and innovation.  In society we don't get rid of problems; we turn them into opportunities.

Ouroboros.  Society isn't about endings - it's a continual cycle of old begetting new.  And that's the true circle of life.

If you want to go fast - go alone.

If you want to go far - move together.

The Divine In Us All

A human being is part of a whole, called by us the “universe,” a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings, as something separate from the rest — a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few people near us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.

   - Albert Einstein

"We can't do this; every man for himself is not going to work.  And if we can't live  together - we're gonna die alone."

   - Jack Sheppard

There's just us, folks.  Us, as individuals, all the way down to our cells and all the way up to the ecosystem.  We are part of the divine nature of existence; that means it's part of each of us, too. 

There's just us.  But we have an urge to be part of something bigger than ourselves, don't we?  Humans are hard-wired to seek meaning - in the spiritual, the mystical, in the stars.  We look everywhere, it seems, but at ourselves.  The reason for this is that we still cling to fear more than we're willing to hope.  We still feel that success is something that is wrenched from others or imposed, not collaborated on.


When we trust, understand, plan and work together, it's enough.

To love another person is to see the face of God.

Does Community Belief Trump Individual Freedom?

"Please consider the implications for all when legislation is enacted that overrides the deeply held beliefs of any faith community, and intrudes on its freedom to act in a way that is in accord with its principles of consciences," said Thomas Cardinal Collins.

"Why is a piece of provincial legislation being used to micromanage the naming of student clubs?" asked Thomas Cardinal Collins, Archbishop of Toronto.

I would suggest it's the Cardinal who needs to tread carefully.

The issue isn't the Province micromanaging the naming of student clubs; Minister Broten is trying to empower students to choose whatever name they feel suits them best.  Within the clubs, there would need to be consensus.  The issue here is the Church and Catholic Boards trying to micromanage the options of students to name clubs as they please.

Youth in Ontario are in a rebellious mood.  They are being told to expect diminished opportunities in the future while their present is being dictated to by well-heeled individuals and institutions.  They're being told to strain preparing for standardized tests, yet watching their parents, weaned on those tests, still stress out at work (if they have work).

Rightly, students are questioning whether the institutions of yore are designed to serve their best interests tomorrow.  When there is doubt, those institutions are finding themselves under tight scrutiny and even become the focus of protests.  As these institutions push back, the movement is gaining support from across society.

Across the board, the phrase of the day is "there's no money."  People are pushing government to spend less but, as the odd scandal or story of waste springs up, the demand is switching to efficiency.  give up the ideologies, policy-makers, start working together across the system and reduce duplication, gaps and overlaps.  More than once it's been asked if we should be funding this many school systems.

As young Ontarians try to claim their stake and all Ontarians start agitating for more streamlined, broadly representative services and an end to silo-based duplication, it's the Catholic Church that needs to consider the implications of their actions.

They can start by asking one simple question.  What would Jesus do?

Does the EQAO Accomplish What It's Meant To?

I'm all for public education, metrics and accountability.  I just think we need to consciously consider what the implications of a given system will be.

EQAO is a recitation game; absorb info, recognize question, insert info for response.  Done, move on.  It puts a lot of pressure on teachers, who are personally held accountable, on principals, who are judged on results but most of all it puts pressure on students.  If they don’t learn and respond to the question in the right way, they’re failures.

Some argue that’s a good test – life is stressful, you need to learn how to manage stress.  I suppose there’s validity that, but it’s like saying “lifting stuff is heavy, get used to having sore arms.”  We can teach our kids how to do heavy lifting, but we can also nurture their critical thinking and creativity and teach them to formulate different solutions to existing challenges.  Like, say, a lever or pulley system.

Innovation isn’t stressful – it’s fun.  People like making new things and gain satisfaction from doing so.  Society benefits, too – especially now, when innovation is what the economy is seeking, we should be thinking ahead to how we can better and more efficiently get the results we want.  When we teach people how to be stressed, they stay that way.  They stay that way in gridlock, when they get home, when they're at work.  The goal shouldn't be to train kids how to be uncomfortable, but how to be resilient, adaptable, proactive turning potential stresses into opportunities.

The Politics of Natural Selection

Below is a (granted) generalized list of extreme positions held by people on the far right of the political spectrum.  If you ask someone at the end for their viewpoint on any given issue, there exists a rational justification for their stances that might sound something like these:

Position:                              Abortion is bad.

Rationalization:                 A fetus is a living thing that deserves to have the same rights as any individual, including right to life.

Position:                              Birth control is bad.

Rationalization:                 Sex is about reproduction; irresponsible sex undermines the institution of marriage, loosens people’s morals and is ultimately disruptive to traditional society.

Position:                              Big government is bad.

Rationalization:                 Strong centralization stifles the individual by either restricting their capacity (regulation), take away their resources (taxation) or discouraging them from meaningful work (EI).

Position:                              Public education is bad.

Rationalization:                 Why should I pay for your kids to get an education?  Do we want Big Government indoctrinating our youth with heretical ideas?  Institutionalized education is just another step towards One World Order.

Position:                              Social Services are bad.

Rationalization:                 Same as Big Government is bad – propping up society’s dead weight weakens the whole system.  Giving people “easy outs” makes it harder for them to learn how to pull up their bootstraps and succeed on their own.  The best way to get people to swim is by throwing them into the deep end 

Position:                              The “traditional family” is the best model            

Rationalization:                  It takes a man and a woman to make a child, so that’s the only model we should have.  Women have to breast feed, etc, so they are designed to be primary caregivers.  That should be their role and men should be breadwinners.

Position:                              Free Market capitalism is good

Rationalization:                 There’s a natural equilibrium out there – the only thing that keeps society from achieving it is regulation.

Position:                              The right to bear arms is important

Rationalization:                 If it was good enough for the Founding Fathers it should be good enough for us.  If everyone has a gun and knows everyone else has a gun, too, people will be less likely to use it.  It’s about leveling the competitive playing field.

Position:                              Be tough-on-crime

Rationalization:                 People should be free to do whatever they want, without regulation.  When they act out of turn, though, they must be punished.  It’s by reacting to anti-social behaviour that we discourage it from happening in the future.

Position:                              The death penalty is good.

Rationalization:                 If people are such a fundamental risk to society, get rid of ‘em.  We shouldn’t subsidize living for people who do nothing by disrupt social function.

What happens when you take all of these positions in aggregate?

You would end up with a society focused on competition for dominance.  Sex would be less of a form of social interaction and more strictly about reproduction.  In competition for resources or access, males would compete, bringing their best weapons out as threat displays and occasionally wounding each other in the search for dominance.  There would be a dominant male, who would then claim a disproportionate control of resources thanks to that position of dominance.  If one individual is acting in an anti-social fashion, they would be ostracized or at worst, removed.  In theory, this would remove that behaviour from the social mix and discourage like behaviour in the future.  Without any coordination or incentive for collaboration, progress (innovation) would be achingly slow.

Yes, this is a model for society – the kind of model you might see on The Nature of Things.  I recon the Far Right don’t understand this, but all the extreme positions taken together form a picture of Selection of the Fittest.

Of course, this isn’t a model that could ever last.  Socialization – mutual support, activity coordination, altruism, etc are essential for social continuity and more to the point, are hard-wired into our brain.  The more urban we become, the more our socialized brain is stimulated.

It’s no wonder the Far-Right takes issue with evolution.

The Conscious Revolution: Mental Health and Education

Two strands that are linking for me this morning:

Almost half of all Ontario high schools are still charging students course fees, despite guidelines introduced by the province last fall telling them not to, says an annual report on the state of education to be released Monday.

Schools are tapped for funds; these days, everyone is.  As such, everyone is looking to squeeze a bit more out of each other, or spend a bit less themselves, to keep programming sustainable. 

Yet, there is enough money out there - like blood it exists in sufficient quantity, the question is how well is it circulating between systems. 

Instead of trying to squeeze money from families on tight budgets and in addition to the traditional ask for more money from government, why don't schools think outside the box a bit?  What are the other services that parents pay for their kids to access and how can you profit from them?  Look at after-school programming.  What if, instead of parents racing from work and fighting through gridlock to get their kids and shuffle them between piano and language lessons, those were offered at the schools where the students study? 

Schools could lease space, after-school service providers should charge parents, parents could save on gas and frustration, knowing their kids were in a safe place and still getting useful knowledge.  For families that don't have so much money, there could be other activities in the school that are free or pay-as-you-can.  There's a working model in here.

Story #2:

Mental-health problems cost Canada at least $50 billion per year, the report estimates, which amounts to 2.8 per cent of the country’s gross domestic product.

People fundamentally don't get mental health.  The mind is a black box, as it were, with notions of individuality and self-control all locked up in the equation.  The idea of mental health is stigmatized, although nobody would suggest they don't have a mind (indeed, "brainless" is an insult implying stupidity).

Because we aren't spending time exploring our mental health or figuring out how to build our mental fitness, we're essentially using a computer as a hammer and getting frustrated when it doesn't respond as commanded.

This stigmatization is costing us billions, fostering a culture of short-term decision making and adding more stress to an already-stressed population.  When you get right down to it, student protests, ORNG, how employment works and is retained is about mental health, too.

The common denominator here is that the system that's carried us thus far is straining under the weight of the new challenges being placed on it.  This strain is not without precedent - look at the Green Revolution. 

As I watch strands unfold in multiple sectors - health reform, democratic engagement, education, the economy, foreign affairs, technology, etc - I can see where all these roads connect.  We are in the process of unlearning our accepted limitations and starting to look more favourably on out-of-the-box solutions.

Burqa Slut, Product Placement and Idea Sex

As the city’s major protective service, the Toronto Police have perpetuated the myth and stereotype of ‘the slut’, and in doing so have failed us. With sexual assault already a significantly under-reported crime, survivors have now been given even less of a reason to go to the Police, for fear that they could be blamed. Being assaulted isn’t about what you wear; it’s not even about sex; but using a pejorative term to rationalize inexcusable behaviour creates an environment in which it’s okay to blame the victim.

Following last month's call by the Muslim Canadian Congress to ban the face-covering niqab, or burka, about 30 Muslim groups across Canada denounced the proposal. Their basis: The state has no business dictating what a woman should wear, nor infringing on individual freedoms.

I'm hardly the first person to draw a line between, on the one end, women being told to cover up and on the other, women being told to hide less.  I can't say I've ever heard an argument being made one way or the other with any seriousness about men.

That's something we should really dwell on for a second.  It's a sad fact - we still live in a male-dominant society, though women are slowly gaining in access and influence (funny enough, that rise is paralleled by a decrease in violence and an increase in productivity and qualify of life).  Men are still looking to make decisions and comment on female sexuality even when an attempt to bring male sexuality to the limelight was viewed as distasteful and inappropriate.

Absent from this conversation is the concept of self-control for men.  Look at it this way - do we tell store owners who face theft they should lock all their goods behind glass to keep away petty thieves?  Do we chastise property owners for having walls that get grafittied?  No.  We expect people in a society to treat the property of others respectfully. 

A woman's body is her own property.  What happens within her body is her responsibility, too.  We don't force parents to give their children innoculations, even when the broader social consequences (illness for the child, illness spread to others, healthcare costs, etc) are well-understood. 

There's an imbalance, here; people need to have freedom of choice, but those choices happen within a social context; ideally, we want people to think about the impact of their choices on others, too.  Displays of the female body are one example - driving habits, smoking in public, hiring and firing practices all fit within the same ruberic.

You can't have complete, individual freedom without society being damaged; you can't have strict social rules without atrophying individual differences, which are what society builds on in the first place.

How do you square this circle?

With education.  Broad, empowering, engaging and fun learning.  Sex ed, language ed, history, society, gender, gender politics, religion, ethnicity, all of it.  Do some in school, do some after school, do it in your free time, at home - you can even do it in public.

Funny enough, the more you understand things and the ways you react to them, the more self-control you have.  The more you absorb on multiple levels, the more likely you become to share.  That mixing of ideas is the propagation of society.  What is innovation, after all, if not just idea sex?  You learn more when you share with others than you do innovating all on your own.

We always fear what we don't understand - and fear leads to suffering.  When you empower yourself through learning, you have nothing to fear.

Not even beauty.