WITHOUT ENEMIES

i have spent a great many of my adult years to cultivate a life without enemies. i can’t imagine why it is not a common path. confronting life directly rather than through association seems to me a simple and truthful proposition. there is me, a physical manifestation of the cosmos, and there is everything not me, also physical manifestations of the cosmos. 

what earthly good would the fracture of this simple unity provide?

THE NATURAL FALLACY

just as it is false to think of a person as embodying a brain/body dichotomy, it is also false to think of a nature/human society dichotomy in a larger context. 

first, the brain is physical and literally a physical part of the body — thoughts are physical also, in the same way actions are. life is physical. death is physical. ideas about life are physical. ideas about death are physical. 

society is equally part of nature, as are all things in the cosmos. cosmos includes within it the word ‘nature’. just as our brain is not separate from our body, there is no nature separate from us, nor is there anything we can view from a distance. nature surrounds us, including us, our insides, our brains and our thoughts, and the limits we may perceive of nature out there are merely the shadows of our own conceptual limitations projected onto it.

IT WOULDN'T ALL BE GONE

i was out on the south deck just now doing my first morning stretches, looking around at the grass, sky, mountains, sea, the cap cloud resting lightly on mount baker in the morning sun, trying to imagine it all gone, everything, the result of my mortality. 

i realized i was smiling, quite benignly. of course it wouldn't all be gone. why should mount baker disappear just because i can't see it anymore? why should the grass? the soft autumn air? the drone of a passing plane far off? it would all still be here. the other creatures around me, my family and friends not far off — all still here. 

how proper. how correct. how wonderful!

this mortality is only an imaginary calamity. we just bump up against the wall of our cranial capacity, like any creature of this earth; we cannot imagine nothing.  

but we don't have to. there is no nothing to choke our benign serenity. there is a vast continuum. this story is a chain reaction. nothing may be a long time coming for the cosmos. and even after that...

it wouldn't all be gone.

BRUCE

what is it with the universe and endless repetition? why this endless duplication, of people, fruit flies, of stars, black holes and galaxies? i can’t get my head around it.

i remember bruce bacon, a kid i went to junior high school with who wound up at RISD in the same class as me. he was a terrible painter, a terrible drawer that everyone kept rooting for anyway. something about him made us all yearn for him to succeed. and when he did, finally, with an oil portrait that was really great, we were beside ourselves with excitement and relief. ‘so now you know you can do it!’ i said with great enthusiasm. he looked at me with a combination of flatness and an expression of philosophical ennui. ‘isn’t that great?’ i said, my forehead furrowing slightly. 'your reward is that you can keep going, brucey; this is just the first one.’ ‘why would i do that?’ he said. ‘i’ll never do that again. i proved i can do it. i’m done.’ ‘you’re not serious’ i said, slightly astonished. but looking at him i saw that he seemed to be.

he committed suicide soon after. 

so maybe you think he was crazy. maybe he was, by the usual definition. but maybe there is just a way of seeing things different than the way we seem to be collectively seeing things.

AMERICA VS REALITY

one of the more depressing aspects of american foreign and military policy is that, as it has been for most of a century, it is still based entirely around energy hegemony, and that means, to the americans, oil; this at a time when anyone with a brain larger than his wallet understands that oil is done, that it is toxic to the planet, the world economy and all the inhabitants of the biosphere.

who is going to fight this world view? not the brits, not the soviets. i can think of a couple of candidates: the european union and china. 

i am naive enough not to be prejudiced toward any future saviors of this little orb, though i have a very clear favorite; the european model is the wounded beginning, along with the undermined united nations, of the only possible future of a civilized mankind.

THE MISSING COMMANDMENT

thou shalt not hate. 

KARMA

there's one time when i understand karma; when humans suffer self-inflicted wounds. i've been hearing too much from the US lately — too much of the political discourse, which unfortunately will likely affect the entire globe. the level of ignorance, the level of error and falsehood blanketing the entire public sphere, cannot augur well for anyone's future. at a time when the anthropocene era is threatening to end life as we know it, the primitive thinking involving both some leaders and many of the public, is as shocking as a look back into american history can be.

this is one thing i am afraid mr whitman got wrong; the US is not the great nation of the world. it has not been the great experiment in democracy (although it was a large-scale experiment in capitalism). if it keeps on its present course it will be the great threat to democracy's survival.

COMPARISONS

this morning i have both watched the final episode of a series from denmark called Rita and finished the final chapter of a book titled This Life, by martin hagglund. I found one affective and effective, the other neither affective nor effective. 

the problem with books by academics is that their authors seem to have spent too much time reading books by academics and not enough time looking around. if mr hagglund had looked around much, one of the first things he would probably have deduced is that the universe is profoundly darwinian, profoundly ad hoc, and does not follow anyone’s preconceived notions but develops notions as a product of assembling itself, just as every organism within it does. the building instructions do not come first but are part of the construction and are a natural consequence of the act of building. 

that is not only the way life in the universe assembles itself, it is also the only way social changes occur. for anyone to become so enamored of their own ideas, a version of themselves, that they truly think they have written a directive for change — which is a spontaneous and continuing, neverending quality of cosmos — is folly. 

i will forget mr hagglund and his outdated notions soon, Rita not so soon. 

i hope to remember this lesson too.

ENDS AND MEANS (AGAIN)

the old end justifies the means argument rests on the assumption that neither one is fictional.  in reality the means are everpresent and ruefully if not brutally real while the ends never arrive, but are always just one more action away, retreating apace as the troops advance, like the mirage they are.   

SEEMS SIMPLE

I've been watching a number of miniseries lately, as I have written one based on a novel of mine, THE UNSAID, and I am discovering a fairly simple principle that seems to have escaped much of history (and entertainment): you can't make a good world by doing bad things.

READING THE PLAGUE

am re-reading Camus' The Plague after many years absence. I see once again what I learned a long time ago when I first read it: for a serious writer there are two jobs; one is to tell the truth, the other is to know what the truth is.

THE BOOK OF MY SURROUNDINGS

i am sitting in the teak chair 
on the grass in front of my cabin 
a place i go often to read. 

but today no book accompanies me. 
it is january and as it has been most of the month 
it is springlike today. 

the nettles in the draw 
are big enough to eat. 
all the grass hills are green. 

i listen almost more than looking. 
i love my eyes 
what they can bring to me

but as much as that 
it is the sounds that reach me 
the tiny pressure changes. 

i think taken together it is a book 
always new always familiar 
the book of my surroundings.

DAVID ADAMS RICHARDS

there are nasty people in the world. i have no business with them. i have no interest in writing about them. they do not fascinate me. they teach me nothing, except to perhaps remind me of what i am not. 

david adams richards can have my share. he seems to favor them. 

me, they just bore me.

RIGHTS OF PROPERTY

we have rule of law in canada. this includes limits on the rights of property — all property. it is not a racial issue or an issue of injustice when the government expropriates land for the common good. it often involves rights of way, usually highway expansion or other infrastructure initiatives. the idea is to respect the right to be paid for value given/taken, and in the case of pipelines and hydro grid often the title of the land does not transfer to the government or private ownership and the government or company involved compensates for the agreed devaluation of the land by paying to attach a covenant while leaving title in the hands of the original owner. 

the first nations in BC have made claims to more than 100% of the land in the province. this does not reflect either the present reality of life in this province or even the history of land use here. 

there is a common good that most people can agree with. without that, governance would break down and rule of law would be threatened. large-scale projects will continue to be developed in this province for at least the near future and for a very small group of hereditary (read birthright) chiefs of first nations, nations who even in total represent only a very small cohort of the modern province in which we actually live, to block activity on narrow grounds and historical ambiguity is a flawed and ultimately doomed action. 

we all negotiate just about everything in our lives. absolutism, inflexibility and obstructionism are only successful in the long run when they protect something for which there is widespread agreement among the population as a whole. 

in the end, rule of law will be upheld in canada. for that, all of us on all sides of any issue should be grateful. the alternative, anarchy, which really just means the voluntary association of people, we are a (perhaps infinitely) long way from being ready for. we are selfish and not honest enough, kind enough or generous enough to make that a working reality.

WHAT THE MAN IS

an earth animal

a human

a male

an observor

a seeker of truth

of justice

a sometime loner in the midst of nature

in north america

in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries

born middle-class

educated

white

against violence
against killing —

a survivor.

PATERSON

jim jarmusch has written a film which quietly puts the lie to just about every other film out there, that life is best portrayed as a series of large-scale extraordinary episodic events. his recent film Paterson depicts the mundane daily routine of an ordinary couple living modestly in paterson new jersey. it is repetitive in exactly the way life is, routinized and mostly unsurprising.

though it is unashamedly rigged and in some respects unlikely (as was de Sica's Bicycle Thief early in the neorealist movement), it manages to reveal an inner poetic and meaningful aspect of everyday life that anyone can relate to, because in one fashion or other, like all animals, we nearly all nearly all the time really live this kind of routinized life. and what that means is that we are none of us really ordinary, that life without embellishment is touching, rich and meaningful and, if you like, extraordinary.

to me that is still the most important use of film as a vibrant contemporary art form of singular importance in our time.

ASSUMPTIONS

out walking in a sunfilled late morning along a levee south of vancouver with a dear but departed friend (not expired, just gone from view) the topic of global warming and the future of humanity came up. she, who is degreed in biology, engineering and research ecology, decreed that humans are fucked. about this she was unequivocal. i had thoughts but initially said nothing, as the time and place were beautiful and i wanted to inhabit both a little longer. but i filed away my simple thoughts for perhaps another time and place.

it occurred to me that any talk of the future necessarily involves assumptions and i immediately noted two in her pronouncement: one, the notion that the technology needed to survive global warming will not continue to evolve along useful lines and: two, a corporate-dominated world economy and governance model is the last form of organization earth humans will ever employ.

the evidence for both these assumptions is just not there, in my view. on the contrary, i find ample evidence that: one, technology does continue to evolve along useful lines. but whether that will happen, and whether it will lead to solutions to the major existential threats to earth's biosphere — nuclear war and global warming — is not at all clear. and precisely because it is not clear, it is most useful to assume that something can and will be done about it. otherwise, why try? and two: there is a time for every organizing principle and i think a good case can be made for the time when competitive private enterprise and private capital is probably the most efficient way to exploit new conditions. but every time imposes on its people new sets of requirements that demand new solutions more suitable to the present and near future.

in our near future, global problems will need to be overseen by global institutions that ultimately have a controlling interest between and even within the corporations and nation-states of today. this is inevitable unless tragedy obviates the need for any governance of any kind. 

we don't need to learn these lessons from history, as any real thinker knows (with the possible exception of historians) but nevertheless the lessons are there for the concerned who need reassurance.

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 individual and 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.

YES, EVOLUTION HAS AN ARROW

when defending egregious behavior among the humans, many resort to the claim that it is only human nature that men (especially men) do this or that, (like making war and other intimidation displays) as though somehow so-called human nature is not evolving continually like every other phenomenon in the universe, that using the past to justify the abysmal present is normal and correct.

it is not. it would be better for individuals, society and the prospects of both if we would try to consult the near future, with its obvious known challenges, in order to assess what behavior is likely to be the most useful, or at least the least harmful, in the present moment.

HALF A TWO-BIT PHILOSOPHY

here is one bit of two-bit philosophy for you:

i have watched over the years some people who are hypercritical of others, even and maybe especially their so-called friends. it strikes me that underlying this depressing behavior it is quite likely they are primarily and mainly critical of themselves.

these opinions of others are almost always framed around actions and motivations, and condemnation is justification for not liking or respecting them.

it took me many years to understand that it is quite possible to love people while not loving all the things they do.

i think that might be the same for oneself. the two cases are probably more inextricably linked than the hypercritical among us understand.

anyway, it's worth a try.

HEARING MR KAVANAUGH

hearing mr kavanaugh testify yesterday afternoon was a revelation. he sounded angry, childish, petulant, beligerent, uncomposed, unthoughtful, and worst of all, entitled. i suspect that is what he is.

those qualities may resonate with mr trump and people like him — including much of the republican old guard, who are themselves largely privileged men used to their eminence, but they are not going to resonate with the majority of americans because those are not the qualities america needs in its elected official representatives of the people, for starters, and they are certainly not the qualities needed to serve those same people on the supreme court, which is the ultimate judicial arbiter and safeguarder of american rights, both collective and individual.

HUMILITY NOW

mr pinker, in his poorly titled Enlightenment Now, has based his optimism on some dubious assumptions, the principal one being that mankind and the earth will both be well-served by humans becoming about ninety percent urban and that is where we are heading.

in this work there are a number of unsupported declarative sentences about the future (example: the sun will expand in a billion years). this book is better (but not unarguably better) at portraying the past, but in conceiving of the earth and humanity as a single economic system (though he is not an economist) and assuming the future is inevitable, he has polluted the entire roster of conclusions and remedies that might have made a book of this scope useful. real solutions lie elsewhere:
reducing the production of useless things to satisfy aggrandizing humans' consumption of both energy and material; reducing runaway expectation in favor of more thoughtful lives, more peaceful lives; reducing on a personal level one's own carbon footprint (something you can do alone without the need of meetings and endless talk). 

the problems are not technological. humans are great at technology. when humans fail, the failure is ultimately one of intent, of understanding what life is; the errors are philosophical and the remedies can be found in scientific enquiry.

nuclear powerplants cannot fix this planet. everyone living in cities, removed from the natural world, cannot secure this planet or its people a future, at least not a future free of catastrophe. we should not blithely assume that large-scale problems will abate spontaneously, that markets somehow have a magic quality of super-intelligence. we need a different kind of attitude, a different more inquisitive, more open and patient response to our self-created problems. we need, not to tell the earth what we will do, more to ask the earth what we should do. and that inquiry, that is the real role of science, which predates and postdates the enlightenment with its emphasis on humanism. unless humanism is widened to include all life — something that was not done during the enlightenment and is not yet done today — it is itself just another form of blindness. 

the most satisfying part of this book is the section on science. the least satisfying part is the section on the environment. mr. pinker wants us to feel good about doing nothing, or doing the wrong things because they are generated spontaneously without informed guidance. if one really internalizes the assumptions of Enlightenment Now — that life on earth is all about humans — we are dooming all life here to oblivion. you could argue that one little nuclear picnic or a fatally polluted planet in the cosmos is a trifle of no importance on the grand scale of events, but i don't think that will comfort many in their quest for reasons to remain optimistic in the face of existential threats.

LITTLE THINGS AND BIG THINGS

this morning i am smiling because it has just occurred to me that i can put some gel insoles in my slippers, slippers i wear around the cabin during the morning and evening — which cabin has a cement floor and may not be the best for my ageing knees. 

writing at my desk, making notes wherever i am during the day, i spend time trying to wrestle the big ideas to the ground (though i don't waste much time on the questions that can never be answered) and i consider it worthy of my time, but the things i do that cheer me in the moment are more the little things — the things that improve and perfect my personal life. that is the best antidote i have found for the general malaise of our changing times. that is the balance i need in order to confront the big ones, which so often seem, sadly, to be retrograde.

I'M ALRIGHT, JACK — NOT GOOD ENOUGH

there was a time when private capital was the fastest way forward at the scale of nations (though one can point to some very fast, if brutal, forward leaps made in the early twentieth century by communism) but at the moment the effects of capitalism on societies at large represent a retarding force for progress. the system was never meant to produce equality — it is founded on the principle of inequality, which is the gravity in the system that makes things move — and the most pressing need now all around the world is a more egalitarian order, one that gives equal access and equal justice to all its members and produces less useless stuff and less movement of same.

for that, a whole new system of governance, production and distribution will have to be cobbled together from the remains of a shredded world order that has produced or at least not abated endless divisions, rivalries and hatred, and failed utterly in what should be the prime goal and duty of every nation and all nations collectively — égalité.

the costs of division are unmeasurably high; the costs of nations fighting nations both in trade and war, corporations fighting corporations, religions fighting religions, ethnicities fighting ethnicities, are killing the future.

we have an opportunity to free mankind from most tedious work, to free us from most disease, ignorance, prejudice, to free us from the past that clings to us so destructively, the past that retards the natural evolution to new and better paradigms and leaves us stuck on a path to destruction.

the old order is dying. we can try just endlessly fixing it but i am skeptical. the people in positions to do so are the very same people who have profited from the old system and few are willing to give up even a small modicum of privilege that all should have a better and more sustainable life, even if it means wiping out all of mankind in the bargain, themselves included. and you cannot reason with people who do not decide what to do based on objective reason or what is best for the planet.

a new order may emerge before the final calamity makes it all inutile. we can hope. it beats despair.

ONE SIGNAL BENEATH THE NOISE

can we cut to the chase here? at the base of a pile of problems deep enough to sink the planet is the inability of humans to identify with a group containing all humans, even all animals, all living things, all things both living and non-living in the cosmos.

there was a time (being a darwinian enforces this view upon me) when identity of origin, tribe, nation, religion, caste, ethnicity, politics, school ties and country clubs must somehow have aided our survival. otherwise, why have it?

but what i have seen in my time with my eyes is that all these divisions are contrary to natural sense and honest science. there is only one story called 'life' (thank you, molecular geneticists), there is only one animal called 'human' (thank you ethnologists). acceptance of others on equal terms with ourselves is the obvious conclusion of a less narrow understanding of life and in an increasingly populous and energetic world it is becoming obvious that these past divisions that cling to so many will only bring ruin on us all.

it's time to be honest. it's time to be fair. it's time for justice, truly egalitarian justice, to become the guiding principle of all human organization. 

a friend once exclaimed to me, 'i'm so proud of my grandchildren!' my automatic response was, 'i'm proud of everyone's grandchildren.'

STORIES

everything is too simple. stories. they all want to have bad guys and good guys. it's not really like that. we all do some bad things and some good things. sometimes we don't know which is which. not that we are confused. we just really don't know. we don't think we are confused. but we are. we really get it wrong. our good things are bad. or our bad things are good.

i want to read stories like that. i'm sick of simple bullshit. if we have to write bullshit, at least we could make it subtle. complicated. surprising. i want to read stories where you and the characters aren't so damn sure who is right and who is wrong. and when.

WHY I DON'T LIKE THE PIPELINE

the pipeline debate in british columbia and canada fails to account for what exactly this pipeline promotes — the use of tar sands oil. proponents of the pipeline say that if we don't use tar sands oil it will just be replaced by oil from saudi arabia. i wish that were true. saudi arabian oil, while we still need some during this transition period, is much cleaner, cheaper and safer to extract, refine and ship. the worst oil in the world from a pollution perspective, in both production and shipping, is tar sands oil from alberta. unfortunately, it will actually be replaced if it can be stopped, by fracking shale oil in the US, which is nearly, though not quite, as harmful.

why does the federal government in canada insist that this is good for canada and the canadian people? by any rational yardstick this is not in canada's interest. most of the ownership is american, norwegian, chinese and other. canadian ownership is actually minor. even the pipelines are not candian owned. the only thing remotely canadian about it from the getgo has been its accidental location on the earth and its labor force. well, we need massive amounts of labor right now to help us transition to wind and solar energy. this is the biggest growth industry in the world and every dollar wasted on obsolete energy production could be redirected toward that end. that might not only save alberta, and canada, it might even save the planet we ignorant humans cling to.

BIAS

it is sometimes difficult to see our own blindness. there is much acceptance in most of the industrialized world that guns have potential for much harm and should be highly regulated. in canada it is safe to say that much harm has been done by alcohol, not only but particularly among first-nations communities, but there is not much acceptance for the idea of highly regulating this behavior. is there some reason to ignore the possibility that regulating alcohol more highly might improve the lives of many? 

most canadians have never considered the idea that more information and education about the dangers of guns might be all that is needed. they assume regulation is necessary regardless of any information program. but they do not feel the same way about alcohol. i wonder why that is.

in assessing my own bias, i notice that i do not think most activity humans engage in should be regulated by prohibition. making illegal certain substances like alcohol and even all drugs has always seemed to me the wrong way to go. so why do i feel it is right and proper to limit public access to firearms by prohibition?

i don't know. the argument is advanced that alcohol over-consumption mainly injures oneself, whereas guns represent a threat to others. but first, others are greatly impacted and often injured by one's alcohol consumption and, second, most gun deaths are from suicide, a self-inflicted injury. 

there is more overlap between guns and alcohol (or all drugs) than is comfortable to admit.
i wonder why that is.

could it be that alcohol injury usually takes place over a protracted time and presents many opportunities for self-regulation and improvement, whereas gun injury can be sudden and instantaneous and often impossible to redress, that the sudden finality of gun injury makes it much more difficult to address with programs of education to improve awareness?

MAN AND MOSQUITOES

man constructs himself exactly the same way mosquitoes construct themselves but he does not invent himself any more than mosquitoes do.

ELITE POWER

elite power is the single most retarding force resisting the necessary changes in the human endeavor on earth. it is poor in most nations, bad in china, america, russia, most south american countries; it is horrible in places like syria, saudi arabia, egypt, iran and many of the countries of africa. forgive me if i have forgotten notable offenders, but you get the idea: social democracy truly needs to be tried somewhere at least once beyond scandinavia and new zealand before we give it up and look elsewhere. 

and don't talk to me about capitalist democracy, an oxymoron. private accumulation of capital is a system entirely structured around endless growth on a finite planet with a limited carrying capacity. when i was a small child there were less than two billion living humans on earth; now that i am old, there are over seven billion. do you think the small children alive today will see a growth factor in human population of four by the time they are old? do you think we are heading for a planet of twenty-five or thirty billion?

think again. and think again about elitism, including its growth-dependent private capital iteration.

LOOK UP

listening to american public discourse one would imagine there are no other countries on this planet. they never seem to look up, look out and see what other nations are doing when there is a problem america is handling badly. 

health care comes to mind. gun ownership comes to mind. there are many places on this planet where people have better health outcomes for much less expenditure, there are places very like america, in terms of history of democracy and modern technology, capitalist nations like great britain, who not only have a more efficient system of healthcare but also have very little gun violence, in schools or anywhere, including one of the saddest results of the availability of guns in the US, gun suicide.

A LEAST HARM VIEW

beneath the superficial left-right political dynamic resides a fundamental personality difference (in varying degrees) in most people. it is reflected in one's ability to embrace change. citizen/voters are basically born with a left/right divide, and the tendency to lean left or right depending on how insecure one feels in the light of the great searchlight of change approaching has a genetic component. if you are fearful, nervous, reluctant to change your ideas and your behavior — insecure, maybe sometimes verging on the paranoid — you will reject new ideas from wherever they come, left or right, and you will consider your own needs much more than the general good. if you are more confident, secure and open in your basic personality you will consider new ideas — one would hope rationally — and be willing to accept and promote change that seems to solve emerging problems for the majority of people.

the middle, if there is one, is where the pragmatist who changes his alignment depending more on issues and perceived need than ideology exists.

in the end, darwinian nature is profoundly pragmatic and the model that best suits that understanding of life in all its forms is to think of public actions and political directions from the vantage point of the 'least harm model'. there are times when to hold to the existing way of living against threats of change is the safest path. there are times when to hold to the existing way of living is suicidal. it is up to us to think about it, to think about what is truly needed, not for ourselves alone, but for the majority and the planet.

[though debate is healthy, natural and necessary, selfishness rarely does improve society. greed is seldom good. more thoughtful and empathetic people already know this. it is time for protectionist, nationalist gun-owners, and other single-issue citizens, along with all those megalomaniacs, to stop shouting and step aside.]

MR TRUMP AND TRUTH AND UNDERSTANDING

the salient feature to remember about mr. trump is that he is not very bright and not educated and not really intellectually curious, and his ideas about what america should do are naive in the worst sense of the word. for instance, he says if a shooter knew that a school had armed teachers in it the shooter would not enter, because shooters are cowards (who presumably want to save their own skin). this is a comical assertion; potential school shooters are, if anything, patently not rational actors acting objectively in their own interest, they are sick individuals, and many of them are suicidal (incidentally, gun suicide is one of the worst features of a country awash in weapons). it's just as likely that knowing a school has many arms in it might increase its desirability as a target to someone in the particular state of mind it takes to want to mow down your peers. it certainly is no solution to the problem, which is precisely that there are so many many guns in america.

emma gonzalez, the student who, in a reasoned and passionate and effective speech, called out mr trump, a man who defends the NRA's interest in selling guns and the politicians and citizens who support him in doing so, has done what the corrupt american political system has failed utterly to do — she has simply told the truth.

THE OTHER NAOMI

naomi klein has been an important and useful individual in the war against reason in this world, especially the american corner of it, whose tentacles reach almost everywhere, and she has a great ally in the form of naomi oreskes, an academic with an uncommon ability to inject common sense and even a sense of humor into the struggle. her knowledge and deep understanding of the politics of special interests, along with an irrepressible optimism, is precisely what the public, the american public, and especially the american student public, needs most in this time of trumpism, a tired and not-at-all new set of assumptions that have never been less elegantly promoted or less appropriate or useful in addressing the very real existential threats that exist today.

WHAT DO HUMANS DESERVE?

i can't imagine a more poorly managed or frightening government than the present iteration of the US. and the fact that this nation controls half the world's military and most of its nuclear weapons, along with much of the global economy, is truly incredible. the childish, narcissistic and profoundly unintelligent racist hate-monger who apparently has ultimate control of this military edifice and its potential for annihilation is a disgrace not only for the people who support him, and all americans, but for all the world's complicit people and governments.

this is a profoundly poor time for anyone anywhere to cling to a past order that is patently incapable of solving the problems of the present or the future. people of the world, if you are waiting for your government to save you, you are doomed.

are we a race that even deserves to survive? we have lately acquired so much knowledge of the natural world and its history in the cosmos, we have solved so many critical problems of continuing life on earth and we know now so much about who we are, what life is and what we must do, it should be easier than ever in our history to put earth and all its life on a sustainable path.

time to prove we can do it. and, unfortunately, it seems to depend on the poorly educated and often deliberately misled american public to anoint the process that is necessary to make it happen; another frightening thought.

APOLOGIES

sorry to be saying this and it may undo alot of what i have been trying to do in the way of objectivity, but i am afraid i face an inescapable conclusion: it does not serve the world well to have followers lead.

NEW RULES, NEW RULERS

as gore vidal famously said a long time ago, america is ruled by the wealthy for the wealthy. any person who votes for the status quo who is not truly wealthy is voting against his own interest. 

a lot of conservative votes seem to be based on a kind of faith-based thinking, ideologically driven rather than employing a pragmatic understanding of both the global situation and the personal. this is maddening. one cannot reason with a voter who is not voting based on reason.

this was not the situation (quite) when i was young. in the US nixon proposed a negative income tax in the early seventies; in canada stanfield proposed it in the sixties. both these men were old-fashioned conservatives who just believed in going forward with changes to governance cautiously. they did not resist all change. sadly, they have little in common with what passes for conservatism in the present political climate.

looking for solutions to the present malaise, in north america at least, suggests ridding ourselves of the influence of money in elections especially and in governance more generally. whether the fault lies with individuals or corporations (who are also made of individuals) is not important to discern — the solution is the same in any case; elected representatives of the people need to represent all the people and political parties need to renounce absolute control of both the system of governance and its elections in favor of temporary coalitions based around shared beliefs in solutions to specific problems as they arise.

that we can identify these problems and so easily conceive solutions is the best, maybe the only, sign of hope for a viable and sustainable future on this declining little orb. that we seem, so far, unable to implement these changes is the worst.

THE TRUE ELEPHANT

how can any country in the world prosecute acts of terrorism involving a handful of people and then engage in war? the national armies of the world account for nearly a hundred per cent of the human-caused terror on this planet, yet they are legitimized even at the level of international law. 

this is truly the most enormous elephant in a not-well-hidden corner of human society and anyone with an even slightly detached and rational voice would necessarily come to the same conclusion — war is the single most destructive deadly criminal and unethical activity in the history of the world. anyone in any government waging war for any reason outside its borders should be tried as a criminal actor in a world court. any people in any government waging war against its own people for any reason should also be tried as criminal actors in a world court. 

the rights of individuals supersede the rights of nations. the rights of individual people are primary and universal, and they are the natural rights from which all other (group) rights derive. anyone, no matter in what uniform or flag they are wrapped, who harms or kills other people is a criminal and the size of the offense is the size of the damage they do to others. instead of being lauded as heroes, the people who plan and execute these large-scale atrocities should be condemned and their efforts dismantled.

how will order be kept at the scale of nations? a world body (which is already present in its nascent form) is the only organization capable of ensuring war between nations will not occur, and it should be the only organization allowed to maintain a standing army, a small mobile force to be legitimately deployed to arrest perpetrators anywhere on this globe as soon as they even attempt to acquire the technical means to wage war, or even by threat attempt to usurp the rights of others. belief in the rule of law is widely understood and there is less to be feared in this arrangement than any other we have tried on this planet, as long as men continue to attempt to dominate and harm one another.

whether we come to this arrangement after a global conflict that devastates much of the planet, or we come to this in our maturity as an ethical actor, i cannot say. that we will come to it, provided we survive as a species on a viable planet, i have no doubt.

CORPORATIONS (AGAIN)

corporations need to be conceived, constituted and regulated in different ways than they are presently; they need to make central the value of utility at the level of society entire instead of just at the investor level; they need to evolve around a core value of usefulness to society instead of the narrow and unethical focus on themselves. as they presently operate, they are sociopathic, even psychopathic, and that is a sickness that needs remedy. 

however, the idea of eliminating corporations is not a useful reaction to their present inutility. though they are certainly not individuals in any sense of the word, either morally, ethically or (properly) legally, they are naturally occurring manifestations of emergent organizational principles and have proven to have many practical uses that ensure they should be preserved as long as their natural life cycle permits. they just need to be regulated, and regulated by an independent collective societal voice that is not owned or regulated by them.

GOD IN THE UNIVERSE

intelligence and understanding are global not atomistic properties of mind. they no more exist — nor are they concentrated — within a single neuron or small circuit of neurons as overseers than a termite colony building a mound has a single architect or building committee, and noone has a set of drawings or any form of plan that exists prior to and separate from the action that creates the thing. the same is true of the way entire single organisms self-assemble; there is no architect and there is no pre-existing plan, there is just the continual division into ever more complex assymetrical structures arising out of the simple actions of the simpler structure that preceded it; the plan is an integral and emerging property of the organism that is developing and is parallel to it. ditto the cosmos.

so much for god in the universe.

GENES, HISTORY AND CULTURE

there are people in the world who think that certain populations are prone to certain maladies of behavior. they say things like 'chinese people all lie and cheat' or 'italians are all loud' or iranians are all 'fundamentalists' or 'christians are all this, or jews are all that...' (i could go on). they think it is somehow bred in the bone and they apply it to whole peoples. how then would they explain the germans? after the second world war (it seems strange that we even own that phrase) the east germans were supposedly known to enthusiastically denounce each other with accusations of being anti-government; the same is true of the north koreans. how then would these people explain the fact that nothing of the sort was going on in west germany and it is not going on now in a unified germany on either side of the old divide? same for korea. these german and korean people share an identical gene pool; in fact, many of them are related across borders. the chinese people share the same gene pool with the japanese, koreans and many other people of asia; not only that, the whole world shares the same gene pool. you who are reading this, that is you and me.

it is true that different countries with different governments and different histories manifest different cultures and that some governments and some cultures are more brutal and some people more inured to a hard life, but this is historical and situational, not genetic; there is nothing unique about the individuals living there compared to individuals living elsewhere. you could find your counterpart in any country; you could find someone with opposite views of life and society in any country.

it is a dangerous form of ingroup/outgroup hostility which is more likely to be believed by people who have not known enough people from other places and cultures, or who are themselves rather fundamental in their thinking. it does not promote harmony and understanding on this tiny little orb, and promoting harmony and understanding on this tiny little orb is the only thing that will save it (and the mostly similar individuals who live on it) from oblivion. 

if you are hoping armies and power and domination of others will save you, or your country, you are hoping in vain.

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.