WHAT WOULD YOU DO?

conservatives in general, american conservatives in particular, are just people who are afraid of change. they are so afraid of it that rather than trying to control it, which could occasionally be useful, they just straight out resist. where this voice comes from more-or-less the sidelines there may perhaps be some utility to their actions but where they dominate and control the actions of government they are regressive, and this at a time when change is necessary to aid survival of the whole human fraternity.

but there is a second thing some conservatives indulge in and when they do they are truly dangerous — existentially dangerous — they indulge in magical thinking, they ignore, distort and lie about the very facts that decisions must reflect. and they refuse to examine examples of actions that have been tried successfully in other parts of the world outside their nation. this is more than confirmation bias. it is faith-based thinking and faith-based thinking, along with us-and-them ingroup/outgroup hostility, is ultimately fatal. if they lose their battle they are vicious, if they win we will all suffer hardship and ultimately, death.

what do you do about people like that, people who do not believe in reason or objective truth or the danger of faith-based conviction? i think lying about objectively verifiable facts and events should be a crime for every elected official, and should be prosecutable for any media attempting to spread false information. these are crimes against civilization and they are more dangerous than many of the behaviors we routinely prosecute. they are also more dangerous than any so-called restrictions on our rights to free speech that protect these false statements from censure.

THE LIES

the lies, the lies; i am so sick of the lies. one could make a great start on a new direction for politics if any person elected to any office had to swear to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, just as any person addressing a court of law must do. how can it be acceptable, accepted, commonplace, that when politicians speak we reflexively try to assign a sort of 'truth quotient' to everything they say? declarative statements are either true or untrue. i don't think we need to bother about what they say to their spouses, or children, or neighbors, but what they say to voters — both the ones who put them in office and the ones that tried to keep them out — that should be sacrosanct; there, the truth only should apply, and the penalties for lying (which is often only too easily proven) should be the same as for perjury; it's at least as important as that.

GROWTH ON A FINITE PLANET

in nature, unlimited growth without regard to its utility for the organism as a whole is called cancer. for the humans of earth to cling to a belief in a permanent state of growth model, such as the model that fundamentally underpins capitalist economies, social systems and their politics, is suicidal.

the countries and regions that evolve a more pragmatic and flexible view of systems will be the ones that survive and prosper, if indeed any can prosper in future on such a small planet; a planet which, at the moment, is dominated by mindless adherence to what amount to baseless beliefs.

alternative facts will not save you, us or anybody.

PROBLEM ROOTS AND ROOTS THAT NOURISH

the root of the problem with the present iteration of capitalism lies in corporate culture. some people accept as a given the arcane notion that a corporation's only obligation is to its shareholders, that the only or overriding goal of a corporation is to maximize profits. this idea is worshipped by capitalists without a sustainable strategy or social conscience as if it came down from the mount on a clay tablet. absurd. it was proffered, accepted and promoted by private capital accumulators and their apologists and it has disfigured the system and its supporters, as it is now busy ruining the culture that spawned it.


the real obligation of corporations — as it is the real obligation of all associations of humans, voluntary and involuntary — is to promote the welfare of the society entire and all the people who make up its population, together with the geographical area it controls and the biosphere within. this longterm interest can only be promoted by a sustainable best practice toward the earth and its living inhabitants of every description. and the most important element in ensuring sustainability at every scale of organization is the only, and final, excuse for any state more organized than anarchy, and that is egalitarian justice, stripped of confirmation bias and all impediments to rational thought, from whence peace and reason only can be born and nourished.

NOTES ON PRIVILEGE

there is something in social/political/economic systems that enshrines privilege. this quality of inequity has various roots in surviving custom and by conscious design and is ubiquitous. why is that? is it inherent in the human animal and therefore inevitable? i don’t know the answer. i have tried to observe not only humans but also other animals of our planet, without conclusive results, but tentatively i would have to say that i think such a condition is most likely evolutionarily designed, that it is rooted in the species’ common urge to survive and procreate.

ideas, like individuals, also compete. one idea that seems to run against the current is the idea of limiting ideas that compete with present mores. much effort is given to thwarting new thought by those who administer and profit from present assumptions and practices. this seemingly contrary behavior may endure because it promotes stability at the expense of adaptability, that change is in itself dangerous and needs to be controlled for the safety of the species. or it might endure simply because some are selfish and concerned more with their own survival, comfort and pleasure than their society in total. in my experience i would have to say the latter reason is supported by more evidence, though even if true it may have ineluctably produced increased fitness.

whether anything can be done to effectively make cooperation, more than competition, a fundamental first principle in the minds of the peoples of earth i am not sure, though i do think that, to the degree humans have survived to dominate the planet, that domination is not largely the result of competition, unbridled or otherwise, but owes its success much more to the continuing (and growing) influence of cooperation.

AAH, GIVE ME SCIENCE

there is more philosophy implied in molecular genetics and the study of animal behavior than there is in hemingway, joyce or faulkner and, among others, kant, hegel and especially, freud.

FERRON

i went to a ferron concert on saturna island last night. she is a great feeler and thinker and singer about life, and more particularly the life she has lived, an uncomfortable life. this life lies beside a knife-edge that separates it from the life of someone very comfortable in her own skin, and it is from the sharp and dangerous edge of this knife that her best thoughts and songs emanate; a singular, original and very beautiful experience for anyone lucky enough to be within earshot.

DON'T ASK

i am walking in wild grass heavy with spiky seedtops
i don't ask the grass 'why did you decide to be grass?'
there is a sleek robin there perched on a stick looking smoothly beautiful
i don't ask the robin 'why did you decide to be a robin?'
there is me thinking these words.

WRITING LIKE HEMINGWAY

i made my little sanctuary. it was beautiful in the sun. it was beautiful in the wind. it was beautiful in the mist and fog and drizzle and rain, my little sanctuary. it was snug and it suited me and i suited it. i made it myself and it suited me.

APPROPRIATION OF VOICE

let me add a couple of cents worth of support for the poor beleagured writers of canada who are enduring an infection that is silly and stupid — appropriation of voice is an incredible nod to narrow tribal thinking at a time in history when we know so much more. i have alot in common with fruit flies. i share emotions with honeybees and fish and all animals. i share affection like slugs, and like slugs i remember these experiences in the same way, with the same brain processes. how big a stretch do you think it is to write about a woman if you are a man? to write about an old man if you are young? why aren't we being ostracised for doing that? why aren't we being ostracised for any fiction? i'll tell you why: fiction is just another tool for getting at the truth, as is imagination, empathy, mirror neurons, group contagion and other manifestations of social thought, dangerous or not.

loosen up, guys, and have a look over your shoulder — you are on the wrong side of history, truth, knowledge and progress.

CURIOUS

there is a curious mixture of sense and nonsense on the radio news that upon reflection i have concluded is a fair typification of the human condition. mixed with news of mr trump these days, in ever smaller proportion, are other news items: of cyberhacking — this time data ransom attacks around the world —  from the vatican, of miracle sightings and canonization, of trump supporters defending their man, to name a few, along with reports of saudi princesses abusing other humans compelled to serve them and chicago mayors all serving jailtime. 

wait a minute; where is the good stuff? come to think of it, it may not be much of a mixture after all. the poor well-fed well-informed well-cared for beleaguered literate middleclass citizen must be barely clinging to life these days. how terrifying.

COMPETITION VS COOPERATION

why are all sports competitive? there didn't get to be seven billion humans on the planet because we are good at competition, lots of failed animals failed while competing with their own kind; more it was because we learned to cooperate. i don't think it takes alot of imagination to conjure up ways people can play a game toward a higher score by means of better cooperation — games where everyone playing is essentially on the same team and cooperation is rewarded, as it so often is in life. 

the highly competitive among us are and always have been mostly doing things that make life better for themselves, and often, much tougher for others. is that really still so valuable to us now, now that what threatens us is not lack of fitness but lack of cohesion?

fighting fires is all about cooperation; the enemy is not a person. the team wins if they can, but there is really no opponent who loses, the fire being a phenomenon without a will. 

soon the earth will be on fire. what do you think can save it for the creatures? competition?

i don't think so.

NAMING IT

the healthcare debate in the US is already tiresome. i hear alot of talk from rightwing politicians who speak for all the world like ideologues. the problem is not only that they are not truthful in anything they say, not only that they abandon pragmatism as well as truth, not only that their agenda is (slightly) hidden from a naive constituency, the real problem is that their ideas are stupid, and if allowed to prevail will soon hurt the people they profess to represent (as opposed to the people they truly represent, of course).

really, we should call them idiotlogues, because that is what they are.

DANGEROUS IDEAS

when i was a young kid, a little catholic kid, i was told by my perfectly sweet shy mother what a shame it was that my friends, who were mostly protestant (along with a jew or two), would never get into heaven. i couldn't believe what she was saying and as was my habit i called her on it. but to her it was a matter of faith, and authority, and one did not question one's faith, or authority in general. she also believed in experts, believed they somehow had a direct link with the truth.

these are dangerous ideas. Us and Them is the most dangerous idea on the present planet earth and the world's only military superpower has just installed at the helm an Us and Them damagogue of epic proportions, who is surrounding himself with others just like him.

this does not bode well for anybody. it is way past time for people to stop rooting for themselves, in any guise, and start rooting for the survival of the planet.

BIAS

humans have frailties that make them vulnerable to extinction and one of the most problematic is confirmation bias. believing that your country, your religion, your city, state or region, your sex, color, generation, even your hockey team, is better than others is just another way of believing you are better than others. and that is a fundamental problem for the species. 

LATE TO THE PARTY

there is a fundamental struggle going on in america which i think could have been resolved about five hundred years ago; that is the struggle for cultural dominance between religion and the scientific method. this debate has been resolved most successfully in europe and parts of the east, and it leaves america deeply late to the party. 

this is dangerous; when the world's only military superpower is embedded in a fractured and still unevolved ethos it will be tempting for them to continue to enforce domination in world affairs by increasingly bellicose military means. 

this is an existential threat to them and the world entire. if americans cannot step up to the reality bar quickly, President Loser, the new demagogue of hate installed in the whitehouse, will have to be stopped by people outside its borders, and that is a threat to the planet of epic proportions.

GAMES PEOPLE PLAY

the people who live within the world of finance are addicted to a game. it is not a game of survival against the elements of the cosmos that are hostile to life, it is not a game of self-reliance or belonging in a global enterprise — what i would label the real games of life — more it is a game like a boardgame. i wish it weren't so, but i am afraid the tired old game they insist on continuing to play is the depression-era game of Monopoly, a game whose ideas and principles were long ago, at least morally, discredited. and like the game, this modern capitalist system will end just as surely as the game of Monopoly ends, and in precisely the same way, when one combatant has acquired all the capital and there is noone else left standing with anything to lose. 

and like people in all places through all time, when there is nothing left to lose, people get ugly.

PRESIDENT LOSER

mr trump is forgetting the first principle of elected office — try not to piss off the people. let's hope it continues. he is a dangerous fascist racist whose constituency is not now and has never been the people, except in the sense of whom to fool, his constituency is corporations and elites around the world.

EARTH MODEL 2003

(from a talk given at a writers' night at the Saturna Café November 02 )

First I would like to erect a model of an earth worthy of our children— second to consider how our current situation differs from that model—third to suggest how our present sorry path can be deflected toward it.

THE MODEL

The place I would like to see my children live in is free of intimidation destruction and murder— it is free of any institutional inequality between individuals and also free of any semblance of group rights or privilege including rights of corporations or religions or political parties and other non-individual entities presently treated as individuals under the law.

In this imagined place the rights of individuals (the only human rights) are enshrined in international law without regard to sovereignty of nations and enforced by the United Nations. Earth itself and the biosphere are also protected by international law which supersedes all regional and national laws. The right to bear arms is restricted to the UN. All weapons of mass destruction— including and especially armed forces— are prohibited to any group smaller than that.

No other laws beyond individual, earth and biosphere rights are declared or enforced by the UN. Regional cultural and ethnic uniqueness are matters of individual choice as are methods of local governance or absence of governance provided international laws are not violated by custom or in practice. (In adjudicating these customs and practices there is no escaping the conclusion that any form of institutionalized privilege is inimical to justice. And justice not peace is always the goal and in fact is the only path to lasting peace.)

There is no attempt at enforced homogeneity. Differences that do not result in institutional inequality are tolerated. The free exchange of ideas is encouraged. With the free movement of people care to control the rate of flow at least initially and for a period allowing the peaceful and non-disruptive movement of individuals is needed. There should be no destabilizing and hence destructive shift of population but rather a gradual diminution of regional inequities through transfer payments such as exist in the European Union and Canada. This will have a retarding influence on migration for most people, who naturally love their birthplace.

The enforcement of rights by the UN— including the free right to life health and education— includes the UN’s right to taxation of nations according to ability to pay and of individuals worldwide without regard to nationality. This will necessarily involve some arbitrary limits on the growing disparity of wealth among the world’s regions as well as its individuals.

This means that the wealthy will not continue to get wealthier but ultimately with the end of military expenditures and costs of reconstruction no person anywhere will ever be forced to live in jeopardy. This does not mean that charity will be forgotten as long as inequities persist but that no lives will be ultimately dependent on it.

If this seems utopian so be it. It is obtainable when once the mighty have been subsumed in the family of mankind. To this end the Thoreau-Gandhi-King ethic of non-violent non-cooperation has proved itself more powerful than propaganda and armies combined and is the only technique necessary— or in my view even possible.

THE PRESENT

Preaching any war of any description for any purpose intended to make peace is doomed by definition— war is not peace. The idea that Mr. Bush is going to Iraq to give the people freedom ignores the obvious, that the first right of any peope would of course be freedom from invasion.

The UN has already fashioned an international bill of human rights more than fifty years ago. It needs the ability to enforce these rights not only between nations but internally within nations without regard to custom or status either historical or by reason of power and wealth. And its charter already expressly forbids acts of aggression by states upon other states, which it also needs the ability to enforce either by arms or preferably by international isolation of responsible leaders. This prohibition should be widened to include any occupation by any foreign power either militarily or by any other means of intimidation or threat, with the sole exception of the UN itself.

No nation today, least of all the United States, could exist in its present form without the cooperation, willing or otherwise, of other nations. The power of non-cooperation should not be doubted. The United States once isolated from its markets, for arms especially, would experience rapid economic decline more certainly than if it were deterred by force (which in any case could prove fatal to all). The US economy and standard of living depend on arms exports and control of oil. This requires a climate of fear and conflict to continue. Peace, no matter how they posture as a peace-loving nation, is inimical to the whole American enterprise— a terrible predicament for them and indeed the whole world— and they are going to need outside help in the form of overt pressure in order to restructure and thence reduce the insecurity of the world, including themselves. In this our interests are the same no matter how differently perceived.

The world must help the US help itself. It must be weaned from this dependence on arms and armies— on intimidation destruction and murder— and the crime of murder, which is the ultimate denial of individual rights, cannot be suspended just because some leader(s) declares a military action a ‘war’. It also must be made an international crime of the most serious magnitude to profit from violence in any way at any scale— another task for the world court.

What are the rights of war? And where does the human (animal) notion of rights of any kind originate? I have a strong life-long feeling that I inherently own the right to my own life. I think all rights flow from that primary feeling. If this is true then individual rights, being the origin of all rights, must remain sacrosanct — and an idea like immunity from prosecution for any persons on the earth is an affront to all. The right of any person or nation to make war whether on its own citizens or others must be eliminated as individual reprisal has been eliminated between citizens under the rule of law within nations.

DEFLECTING THE PATH

The first step we must take in deflecting the current destructive path of history toward a model of equanimity is to strengthen the UN and to enshrine the Individual Bill of Rights in international law, at the same time giving the UN the sole power to enforce it — and only it — over the whole of the globe. We must wean nations gradually of absolute sovereignty, starting with adoption of the world court jurisdiction as the world entire and continuing with granting the UN the power of taxation, then on to the gradual lock-stepped dismantling of all the nations’ armed forces in favor of a small highly mobile UN peacekeeping and peacemaking force of conventional arms comprised of small representative forces from a majority of willing nations.

As a first step in reducing the world’s national armies, the right to conduct military operations should be restricted to the territory legally owned by each nation, including the area of its fishing rights, up to the first two hundred miles of surrounding ocean where shoreline exists without conflicting claims and along some midpoint between nations where jurisdiction might otherwise overlap. This would allow for a less disruptive shift in internal structures of power, including both political and economic power, within nations. Ultimately, the only forces in the world that will be legitimately mobile will be UN forces.

No nation can seriously call its military forces defense forces which is involved in invasion or occupation of any other nation on earth. Those are offensive actions, in both senses of the word. And how long can it take for all the world’s peoples to recognize that if no-one can leave the home territory there can be literally no-one to defend against except the UN, which will have such constraints against its actions as to be a most unlikely adversary. In any event, this position of allowing national forces as long as they stay home will be only a transient structure, and as the expense of keeping large forces will be a serious detriment to economic participation in a global economy, should die of its own weight, if in fact democracy is a workable system of governance.

This fundamental change in power will necessarily involve restructuring the UN so that veto status is eliminated and voting power reflects population with a qualified majority along the lines of the new EU constitution (with perhaps the addition of a ‘taxation’ factor). It should be understood that only nations in good standing would be accorded any vote at all and that to remain in good standing nations must comply with all UN qualified majority decisions and pay their taxes. This means the end of international unilateralism.

In game theory ‘tit for tat’ works out to be the cleanest simplest and most effective strategy of cooperation. Perhaps some modified less destructive version of that will prove useful in developing protocols for the new UN. But whatever system of control evolves it will have to focus mainly on national governments. They have done most of the killing and suppressing of rights throughout history and certainly lack any claim to legitimacy however they have arrived and for however long they have ruled. Only individuals have an inherent right to protection under international law— every group is suspect that is smaller than mankind and must prove itself worthy of international support by its egalitarianism and its actions.

Even mankind is too small a group. The biosphere— earth itself— is vital. The goal is to sustain life on earth indefinitely— not for one species or nation or region or generation but for all.

EPILOGUE 19 MARCH 2003 (after the invasion of Iraq)

I remain skeptical that these features of a world government can in fact be implemented without a possibly cataclysmic confrontation among the world’s nations— a confrontation that it is not at all clear we can survive. But whether this vision of our world will be brought about gradually through diplomacy or suddenly in the aftermath of a deadly war that some manage to survive, I also have no doubt that by the beginning of the next century if any of our progeny do indeed still exist they will live under the auspices of some form of world democracy, and absolute sovereignty with its concomitant right to bear arms will be a relic of history.

That is the real business of the twenty-first century. It is time we got down to business.

(from 2007) THE UNITED CITIZENS OF EARTH

There is a fundamental problem with the United Nations and that is the recognition of sovereignty of nations above the rights of individuals. This has effectively eliminated the possibility of the UN ever bringing justice to all the world’s people and that effectively eliminates the possibility of ever bringing peace. The United Nations was the start, and the only possible start, of the formation of a true world government and it has gone as far as it can go within the constraints of its original charter. It is time for a new or radically altered body— it is time to make the individual the basis for rights and obligations under the world body. It is time for the UN to become the United Citizens of Earth.

To make this fundamental shift a reality does not mean the elimination of nations. They are a (sometimes) legitimate form of regional government and many things presently under the control of nations can best be determined at that scale. Similarly, the division of powers within nations into smaller regional areas, even down to cities and towns and rural areas, each with its own government controlling issues that affect its citizens at that scale, is also workable. What is needed is a new definition of ultimate rights. Ultimate rights must originate with the individual and migrate upward, not in a hierarchy but a circle, so that the individual is not only closest to the most local governance but on his other side to the most global governance. The individual becomes the point on the circle from which all other rights emanate.

In practice, the defense of the individual’s rights, including and especially his life, would be the joint responsibility of the entire circle of governance and would remain paramount. Under this structure, whatever threatened the rights and life of the individual would be protected by other bodies of the circle and if one member of the circle was threatening those rights it would be the obligation of other members to protect them from the threat. In this arrangement, the exisiting practice of local governments being subject to regional control and regional governments being subject to national control would be extended to include national governments being subject to world control.

In nations at present local laws are similarly subject to regional laws and regional laws are subject to national laws. This hierarchy too must be extended to global laws, perhaps limited to individual and biosphere rights, which will supercede all national laws. And an international justice system whose jurisdiction is the entire globe must be part of any new charter.

This may sound simple, even obvious, but it will be an enormous struggle of the will of the people everywhere to prevail and bring to heel those powerful individuals within national governments that have been accustomed to controlling the power of societies, both economic and military.

Once accomplished, it will become apparent that while local police forces may maintain civil order in towns, cities, states and nations under the rule of law, none of these police forces will have any jurisdiction outside their geographic areas. The same must apply to so-called armies kept by nations. No national army should have any legal right to act in or occupy any territory not legally its own, no matter what the pretext. Only the army of the United Citizens would have legitimacy over the entire globe, and then only to defend the rights of individuals and biosphere threatened by national forces within or between nations. National armies would effectively be police forces employed only to prevent violations of rights not protected by more regional bodies, never to gain territory or expand influence, either political or economic. And national territorial boundaries in particular could only legitimately be altered by negotiations ratified by majority decisions of the world body in a full and free vote.

Failing this, global problems such as atmospheric warming and the newly expanding nuclear threat cannot be effectively resisted. The last decade has seen the increased militarism of powerful nations emerge, including the threat of widening the arena to include the space above our atmosphere. This is likely to be a greater threat to us in the near future than even global warming, and like global warming its pace is accelerating.

If we can’t restrain the powerful individuals in powerful nations I have no doubt we will all die together and the meek who inherit the earth will turn out to be cockroaches or viruses. What a failed experiment we will have turned out to be— what an epitaph written of us all.

The prospect of inaction or endless fractional infighting in the cause of protecting privilege is very real and the most likely impediment to survival. Whether the instrument of our demise is global warming or a nuclear cataclysm, or some other unforseen problem, the cause of our demise will have ultimately been the same— the inability of individuals to recognize the equal rights of all and to forego the domination of others.

IGNORANT AMERICA

this is the face of ignorant america. the mean, the cruel, the degenerate are inspired by this public display of sociopathy. if the american right wing wants to survive their demagogue and not be decimated by history, they must stop the man, stop supporting the man, stop enabling the man, not in time for the next elections in four years, nor in two years, not tomorrow, but now.

NATION-STATE

the theme of the new book i have begun is to me more fundamental than global warming or overpopulation. it is time to redefine and rejustify the concept of the nation-state:

there is only one excuse and one rationale for anything beyond anarchy as an organizing principle of humans and that is the pursuit of justice. peace is not a goal. peace is the natural outcome of reciprocal justice and unless and until that becomes the bounding principle of every state on this earth and every action taken in the name of that state, we humans of earth will have failed to secure a viable future.

which means to say, pretty much, since the idea that states all over the world will somehow reform themselves without coercion is without evidence, we are likely doomed as a species unless a world government can emerge with controlling oversight of nation-states.

HOLLYWOOD AND THE TAR SANDS

i think it's time the great hollywood blockbuster film took its rightful place beside the tar sands of alberta. they are both huge blights on our planet and our culture, sucking the air (and the carbon budget) out of the room of their respective fields of human endeavor and making it difficult for more worthy projects to replace them.