Do we dupe ourselves with our generosity?

SOCIAL STUDIES - Published Monday December 29th, 2008

Okay, I realize that I will get in a lot of trouble for this column; but it comes out of a couple of experiences and conversations I have had lately.

The first experience was going online to shop the World Vision Catalogue and see what it is possible to buy for people in developing countries. It is an amazing catalogue. My father is a doctor, so we decided instead of buying him a Christmas gift we would "stock a medical centre" in his name.

It is kind of cool, and yet, the first thing you notice in browsing the site is that spending $100 is like a drop in the bucket. The need is so great, and the impact of our giving so small, that it is truly heart wrenching.

And I know for a fact, having spent a month in a Guatemalan Refugee Camp that these are the type of people who would give their last meal to you if you showed up as a guest.

The second experience I recently had was a serious conversation with a friend who feels a little "Scroogy" about the whole Christmas scene. The real problem came about 15 minutes into me trying to get her into a more jingle bells sort of mood; when I realized much to my dismay, that she was right.

Here is what got to me: I wrote a feature about generosity in the city and discovered some pretty amazing things about how generous we all are; I was feeling pretty good about it all.
After all, we give enough to enable 1,700 Christmas baskets to be distributed by Headstart. We have donated more than 4,000 turkeys through the annual Sue Stultz Turkey Drive. It is all great, right?

But here is a quick reality check. What about the New Year?

If a family can't afford a turkey dinner at Christmas, how are they going to celebrate the change of year? Or in fact, pay for heat in February?

You see, 4,700 turkeys says a lot about generosity, but not a whole lot about justice. What kind of a world is it that has at least 5,000 people in Moncton unable to meet basic necessities like a turkey? Why is poverty so rampant?

If you look in the homes section of the paper you will find that it is hard to buy anything under $200,000 and that the average home that they feature runs in the $400,000 range. Even these homes are only three bedroom and two bath. I heard the other day that the average housing tax bill in Moncton is just over $2,000 a year, which means that the "average" Moncton home is worth a little over $200,000.

Yet we allow such extreme swings in income that people don't have the money for food.
Trust me, it is not that these people have done anything wrong, or at least, most of them have not; they simply struggle day by day to eke out an existence in a world that truly makes it hard for the average person.

I have heard many a people look down their noses at others who are poor, or on welfare, or in trouble. I have been all three in my life; and I have also been wealthy and secure. I can tell you without a doubt that it is mostly random chance that causes one's life situation.

I was born in North America to wealthy parents and I was generally healthy. Did I deserve any of that? Or did I just luck out? And because of my luck I now live an affluent lifestyle. Sure, some of it is the old me pulling myself up by the bootstraps. I went out and worked for what I have.
But I also realize that happiness is a razor wire away from despair; and there is not much I can do to tip the scales one way or another. A random car accident for example, might change everything.

So back to generosity at Christmas; the problem with which is that it is so short-sighted. In fact, it is incredibly short-sighted; so much so that it allows us to feel we have truly made a difference and therefore walk away.

I give a turkey once a year and that excuses me from all manner of social injustices; right?
We all realize how silly this sounds. We are all capable, however, of fooling ourselves into believing that being nice once a year is all it takes to change the world.

Me too; I have always argued that Christmas is the best of what our consumerist culture is capable of; and proof that deep down we are all generous and big hearted. But I am beginning to allow doubt to creep into my overly cheer filled view of Christmas giving.

I don't mean to point fingers, and I certainly don't want to stop any of the good work that is done at Christmas. I do, however, believe we have to re-examine the idea that it is enough.

If we are going to survive as a species we need to do some serious soul searching around values and identity. We need to stop thinking there is such a thing as us and them. We need to realize that to have justice and equality we really do have to give something up.

I for one believe we can do it.

Story Picked up on the Newswire

A little divergence from the regular posts... I wrote an article on Christmas packing, and everytime I google it it is appearing in a different newpaper across Canada... I dont understand the newspaper world enough to know how one gets a "newswire" story... But this is my first...

you can check it out from the "parent" company here:

http://dailygleaner.canadaeast.com/search/article/522747

Facebook offers sense of community back

SOCIAL STUDIES - Published Monday December 22nd, 2008

Here is some exciting news from the world of the Internet. For perhaps the first time since the whole World Wide Web thing has caught on; pornography is not the number one use.

This fall, the use of Facebook and other social networking programs surpassed the use of online nudity for entertainment.

For those who have so far managed to avoid it, Facebook is a site where you can create a profile with information about yourself you would like to share. Those profiles are searchable, and also categorized using your history. For example, mine says I went to Kennebecasis Valley High School, that I went to Mount Allison, that I went to McGill and that I belong to the Professional Writers Association.

So if you are searching for Mount A grads, you just enter it and a list of anyone who ever went to that university shows up. It is a great way to find old friends.

And then there are games and quizzes. Imagine finding an old friend and then challenging them to see who remembers the names of more 1970s actors. Or who can identify the most companies by their logo, or even which superhero is better, stronger, and faster.

Or you can collect cards and trade them; send virtual gifts to each other; and even compete in word games.

From my perspective the more interesting application is that whenever you log on you can change your "what are you doing now" line. Sometimes I enter absolutely useless trivia -- as I write this it says "Brett is tired."

So if I look back on my profile, it works out sort of like a journal. I can see what I felt was important enough to share over the last few hours, days, weeks or even months. My friends are free to comment on my status and ask questions -- or make snide remarks -- or even wish me well.

Now, the naysayers of the world will tell you that this self involved navel gazing is the worst sort of waste of time. I had a friend, a senior executive at a company; tell me that she thinks every Type A executive in the world is playing Rat Pack on Facebook. She could be right, but she was laughing as she said it because so was she.

You see, I think that Facebook could be our salvation, not our downfall. There is just something about it that is restoring meaning to life.

First off, by forcing yourself to actually write down what you are doing, and perhaps even what you are feeling, you are engaging in one of the oldest of psychological and spiritual tools -- the self evaluation. By doing it publicly you are becoming more accountable to those around you for who and how you are. You can no longer get away with answering "fine" to people unless you are willing to back it up if they ask.

So there is one benefit; it gives us meaning in a world where meaning is hard to come by. It allows us to take stock of what is important and keep track of it -- all while having a little fun.

Now the second and equally important benefit is that of community. It may sound, I don't know, corny, to believe that an online group of past friends and present colleagues forms a community; but it really does. I know quite a lot about some of the people I have become re-acquainted or further acquainted with. I know when they are happy, sad, what types of books they read, and shows they watch. As they share the trivia of their lives it comes alive in a more complete picture than I have ever known.

Of course, back in the day you would have talked to your neighbour, and communities were formed around geographical location. This was also the day when you could count on having a lot in common with that same neighbour. You probably were about the same income bracket, you probably were both married with 2.5 kids, you probably looked the same, dressed the same, talked the same, bowled in the same league and last but not least, grew up together.

None of that is necessarily true in today's society. In fact, many of my Facebook friends are more like me than the people I live beside. Not to mention the fact that you can choose whether or not to allow them to be friends with you -- unlike your neighbours.

You see, I have moved around a lot. I have lived in a lot of provinces, in cities and small towns, held jobs ranging from manual labour through to professional and everything in between. I know that it is very hard to find community in today's world.

Workplaces have sexual harassment laws and reduced budgets, which is not a bad thing by any means, but it does make it harder to have social events and Christmas parties. Neighbourhoods are made up of double income families working opposite shifts and managing day care and life responsibilities so there really is not much time to get together for pot luck. We need Facebook for the community it is capable of.

A lot of businesses have begun to limit access to social networking sites, I think they are wrong. I say this for two main reasons.

One, back in the day when I took psych courses I discovered that we use very little brain function to do any one activity. Just think about driving a car, listening to the radio and thinking about the business meeting; we multi task well.

Second, it can create corporate community.

If you can't beat em, join em, as the saying goes.

I for one am glad it came into existence.

Remembering that sometimes life isn't about me

SOCIAL STUDIES - Published Monday December 15th, 2008

A lot can be said about New Year's resolutions. Most of us make them, in one form or another, and perhaps we are not being overly serious about them; but I think we all feel that there are things about us we would like to change.

What are some you have made over the years? Lose weight? Have you ever decided you are going to stop drinking, smoking, swearing, or losing your car keys? How successful are you at that?

I think the problem is that we make resolutions that are so specific, and so pass or fail, that we have doomed ourselves from the beginning.

This year I have decided to take a completely different tact. I am resolving to remember that it is not about me.

I think this is a potentially life changing affirmation that we could all make and therefore go into 2009 in a way that would ensure it was the best year ever. So let me explain.
There are countless things that happen to me in the run of a day that really make me feel badly. Imagine, if you will, a hypothetical day in my life.

I get up and things are so stressful, my daughters will not co-operate with anything because they are rebelling against me and don't respect me. My wife is in a rush to get to a meeting and I misinterpret her stress. Then the Tim Horton's employee is snarky with me, probably because I am not handsome enough to bother with. The RCMP officer who pulls me over for speeding doesn't even listen to me because I am obviously a moron. Over at the Superstore I can't get anyone to help me because I am not dressed well enough and on it goes.
I am sure you have all been there.

My reaction in each of those circumstances is to believe that somehow they say something about who I am, fundamentally, deep down. What if we approached the same events from a new perspective, using my new resolution that it is not really about me?

My kids hardly sleep at all these days and it seems they don't eat enough. They probably wake up grumpy because of that. My wife and I aren't even getting as much sleep as they are so perhaps that is why we are gruff. Perhaps the manager just said something hurtful to the Tim Horton's cashier before I came. I am pretty sure the RCMP woman found out that very morning that her father was dying of lung cancer. While the Superstore person has now worked 17 hours because their replacement did not show up and every second person is trying to get 27 items through the under 15 line.

Is that not every bit as likely as my original assumption that every person is out to get me for some reason?

Imagine if we could somehow this year resolve to have just enough self confidence to feel in our hearts that most people have their own problems too, and whatever they are saying or doing with us is filtered through their own emotions, pain, stress and even joy.

Imagine what the world would be like if we did not jump to conclusions; and if we stopped thinking that no one likes us. But rather lived our lives knowing that we were of value and could probably do something to help the other people feel better.

I guess I am sort of suggesting an emotional "pay it forward" scheme. The easy way to change the world in 2009 would be for us to actually start engaging one another "for real" and then maybe we could start seeing the others around us for who they are; as genuine people with their own problems and concerns.

Who knows, if I am right, all those other people, from Tim Horton's right through to the Superstore employees might just be nicer too if they take the time to think that the people they encounter have problems too.

Alas there seems to be so much that stands in the way of such a simple solution. Most of us carry over into adulthood some form of childhood trauma. This could be as little as being the last person picked for the baseball game; which I often was. We tend to remember the girl who rejected our offer of a dance at the school sock hop and let it scar us for life. Or we watch television, pick up fashion magazines, or start comparing ourselves to the people around us.

All of these activities which I categorize under the heading of being human force us to build walls around ourselves. These walls eventually make it hard to see the forest for the trees and we begin to misinterpret people and jump to conclusions. Not only that but if you are at all like me you find it hard to break out from within the protection of those walls and actually check the facts.

So there we go; we have a plan for the New Year and a resolution that could make the world of difference. Don't get me wrong, this is not going to be easy. As a friend recently pointed out I resolved last year to run a marathon this year. I have a long way to go if I hope to accomplish either.

Is doing nothing for a month the best?

SOCIAL STUDIES - Published Monday December 8th, 2008

always try to be writing about something different; something out of the ordinary. There are so many people who write about, or even who express their opinion about politics, for example. So I have tried to be a voice about society in general, and less specifically about the governance.

Of course, I am an opinion writer and I would not be one if I did not have very strong opinions.

So I am going to wade into the current political controversy -- carefully.

I have always understood that the possibility of a non-confidence vote was in effect the corrective to dictatorship. I think of it as a majority veto. In the American system there are more checks and balances then you can shake a stick at. It doesn't always work, but at the same time, there are multiple ways that a bill can be vetoed.

We simply do not have as many checks and balances, we have a more distributed power system -- or perhaps a less distributed one, but what we do have is the possibility that the party which holds the power looses the confidence of the House.

I think that is very important. No one seems to be reminding anyone of this, but Joe Clark lost the confidence because his party proposed an 18 cent per gallon tax on gasoline.

I hold that up simply to state that governments in our country have been toppled for less than fiscal mismanagement on the brink of economic collapse. I am disappointed that somehow the Harper government has sidestepped the issue of whether or not they have the confidence of the House.

This is an important distinction, and one that Harper himself is ignoring, what matters here is the confidence of the House, not the confidence of the voters.

I say that he is ignoring this because he has consistently stated that the opposition party, or the coalition, does not have the support of the voters, his party does.

We do not, however, vote a person into power individually; we vote a party into power until such a time as the people who represent us deem that they have failed.

For the first time, a Canadian government has managed to simply escape the fate of this decision by doing something that is worthy of Robert Mugabe -- deciding that things are not going their way and then changing the rules.

The reason given is that the people have spoken.

But this is simply not true. Our definition of representational government is not that we elect people to power and then feed them the answers. Our MPs do not have to have opinion polls in their riding before a decision is made. Instead, we elect the person who we think would make the best decisions on their own, and we send them off to do it.

They represent us only in the sense that we empower them to act on our behalf. It is more of a proxy vote then a direct democracy of the people.

Because of this there are hundreds, nay millions, of things about Parliament and the nitty-gritty of running a country that most of us have absolutely no idea about. Nor do I have the time or desire to know about most of these details; that is someone else's job; in my case, Brian Murphy's job.

So if Brian Murphy believes Harper is doing it wrong and deserves to be removed -- then I will have to trust Brian's judgment. After all, he knows far greater than I what should have been done.

In a sense this all boils down to trust. We forget that what we are called to do is elect people who we trust have the skills to do the best job; once we elect them we should set them free to act. We also elect people who are trustworthy to do the right thing. I know popular opinion leads us to believe otherwise, but at the time that is what we are thinking.

I am not really trying to sound a rallying cry to kick out the Conservatives. Nor am I trying to suggest we leave them alone. What I, and I am not alone in this, am wondering, is why something more decisive did not happen one way or another.

Is a vote of non-confidence a hollow threat? Is there no sense in which governments are accountable for their actions in between elections?

So what happens next? I have literally no idea except that we wait for over a month while everyone supposedly just goes home and celebrates Christmas.

Meanwhile, the economy continues to slide into despair; friends and family of each one of us continue to lose their jobs; stock markets crash; all because Stephen Harper advised the Governor General that the best thing to do in a crisis is nothing.

Remember there's a plan

RELIGION TODAY - Published Saturday December 6th, 2008

In many churches, the four weeks before Christmas are the season of Advent.

It comes from the Latin word "Adventus" which means "coming" and it really is a season of preparation. In my church, we have blue candles and pulpit clothes which set a sombre mood -- a mood of expectation and longing.

This year that sombreness seems closer than ever; there are so many things that seem to have gone wrong with the world -- from global warming right through the economic meltdown there seems to be nothing but bad news on the horizon.

I am not sure about you; but I think I have seen more stressed out people this fall than I remember from ever before. The religious question in all this becomes "where can we find God?" and perhaps we also ask "Is there any hope in these troubled times?"

The season began some six days ago with a prophet of ancient Israel yelling to God, asking that the heavens be torn open so that God would make the earth shake. "Anything to make us believe that there is more than this!" he seemed to be asking.

That is Advent.

And we have all stood at the precipice of grief in one way or another and looked into that personal abyss. We have all had things happen to us that make us question -- question the goodness of the world, question our values, question God.

We have all had to begin again; and we begin with expectancy.

I love the stories of Advent. Of Gabriel whispering in Mary's ear, silently changing Joseph's mind. The visit of Mary with her cousin Elizabeth; a story which to anyone who has ever seen a pregnant woman rings so true to life, as they are overjoyed with their expectation. Even John the Baptist with his rough camel skin clothing odd dietary practices brings something interesting to the table.

All of these characters remind us that the time is not now. They are all looking to the future. Joseph and Mary are starting a family, Mary and Elizabeth are giving birth, and John is making the rough places smooth. In each story, we are asked to imagine ourselves looking around at what we see, and knowing that God has something else in store.

So what does God have in store for us? I am certainly not the type of person who believes that God controls the outcome of every roll of the die, at the same time, I believe in divine purpose. Which is to say the universe is unfolding "for" something; there is a plan of sorts; just not one that says that God pre-ordained there to be snow this Christmas.

What I mean by plan is more like this: spring is supposed to follow winter. That is the way it was designed. The universe and all the characters that fret and strut their way across its stage are supposed to be living in peace and harmony and love. It is just the natural order of things.
The fact that there seems to be a lot more stress than love right now is a pretty good indication that we are living in the "not yet." We are living in the season of Advent.

We are not waiting to be rescued, or at least we shouldn't be. We are not waiting for that one way ticket to heaven; because there are no guarantees. We are waiting to be reminded.

In a few different ways, the Bible says that Jesus came into the world to remind us of God. Another way we can say this is that Jesus came to remind us about love. Not romantic love, but true, deep down, heartfelt compassion. The kind of love we figure would be behind making the world such a beautiful place.

We tell the story of that love being born into the world in an unexpected way; as the son of a young girl and a carpenter in a stable in an out of the way desert province of the Roman Empire. We aren't waiting for that to happen again. But we should be on the lookout for an even more unexpected way that love becomes the centre of our world. God will remind us, somehow, somewhere, during this season; what it is to be human.

That is worth waiting for.

What if you don't care that you don't care?

SOCIAL STUDIES - Published Monday December 1st, 2008

I heard a new word this week: Acedia.

Apparently there are words in the English language that come and go from time to time. It seems that we change enough as a society that some words just have no relevance to us anymore and we drop them. I am not trying to step on the toes of "Lex Talk"; just trying to justify to myself not hearing about a whole word.

Acedia is a word derived from ancient Greek describing a state of listlessness, of not caring or not being concerned with one's position or condition in the world. It can lead to a state of being unable to perform one's duties in life.

Now originally it was brought into our vocabulary because of monks. Think of it this way -- if you are suffering from acedia you don't care about anything; you don't even care that you don't care. So if you are a monk and what you do today is the same as what you did yesterday and the exact same as what you are going to do tomorrow and well, it is all just one repetition and you all of a sudden start thinking, "what is it all for? Nothing ever changes?" you might just be suffering from this condition.

I am not immune to depression. Not only do I know a lot of people who suffer from it; but it affects me from time to time. I am one of the lucky ones; when I get depressed more often than not it is situational and after any combination of time, rest, medication, and therapy; I seem to recover.

So far, there has been no acedia. As opposed to not caring, I realize I am getting depressed when I begin to realize that I do not enjoy.

I am quite an "experiential" person. I eat things because I want to experience them, for example. It really would not matter whether I liked them or not, I would still want to try them. I travel for the same reason. I love to experience life in all its fullness and so really pay attention to even the bad and painful things because they offer different experiences that I simply cannot get while everything is going well.

So every now and then there comes this time when something really good will happen to me, or I will get the chance to experience something absolutely new and different; and try as I might, I just don't seem to feel happy about it.

Did you know that 20 per cent of people in Canada will suffer from depression in their lifetime? Suicide alone kills 25 per cent of our young people and 16 per cent of adults.

This is important to realize because suicide is the result when depression goes as far as becoming acedia.

Think about it, if life no longer holds any meaning, if you truly do not care, and you do not even care that you do not care -- why go on?

This is a true danger for many people. And it is becoming more and more prevalent; which is why the word is coming back into common usage. I truly believe that one of the major problems that face us today is meaninglessness.

It is quite easy to start asking what meaning life has for you. It is even easier to ask that question once you realize you have most of the things you want. As long as life is about getting the house, getting the spouse, getting the kids, getting the good job, getting a boat, getting a big screen television you can at least substitute future goals for actual meaning. Most of us do this.

There comes a time though when you look around the house and realize you have most of what you imagined you would. Then what?

Traditionally we might call this a mid-life crisis. I think this is probably because it takes us about 40 years to get everything in order and then realize there must be more to it than this. But it could happen at 15, 20, 30 or 60.

It might lead to doing crazy things to try to bring meaning; like hang gliding or buying a Porsche.
But we soon realize that more things are not going to fill the hole. That is often when depression kicks in.

And if we do not do anything about it -- becomes worse and leads us to acedia which can lead us to suicidal thoughts.

There are countless people around you right now suffering from depression. Trust me. But the problem is that we have attached such a serious stigma to this, and we do discriminate so much that most people hide their own problems.

I don't know if it is superstition, lack of knowledge and empathy, old belief systems, or a tendency to fear and exclude people who are perceived as different; but stigma and discrimination have existed throughout history. They result in stereotyping, fear, embarrassment, anger and avoidance behaviours.

They force people to remain quiet about their mental illnesses, often causing them to delay seeking health care, avoid following through with recommended treatment, and avoid sharing their concerns with family, friends, co-workers, employers, health service providers and others in the community.

I just think that we should realize that life is hard. And that most of us are going to have times when we need help to get through it.

There is no shame in that.

A whole new understanding takes hold

SOCIAL STUDIES - Published Monday November 24th, 2008

Are you familiar with the term "paradigm shift"?

The term was first coined back in 1962, in a book called "The Structure of Scientific Revolution," written by Thomas Kuhn. He argued that scientific advancement is not evolutionary, but rather is a "series of peaceful interludes punctuated by intellectually violent revolutions," and in those revolutions "one conceptual world view is replaced by another."

Things change quickly and permanently. Think of a paradigm shift as a change from one way of thinking to another. It's a revolution, a transformation, a sort of metamorphosis.

I know, this is not easy to grasp and unfortunately I am going to complicate it further in a minute. Right now let me give you an example of what I am talking about. Primitive society was changed completely by agriculture. The first peoples existed for centuries roaming the Earth constantly hunting and gathering for seasonal foods and water. However, by 2000 BC, Middle America was a landscape of very small villages, each surrounded by patchy fields of corn, beans and squash. There was no turning back.

Here is the thing; we are in the midst of another scientific paradigm shift that is changing the way we are going to see everything. It is a shift that comes to us from the world of quantum physics and is best illustrated through chaos theory.

So, what we first have to wrap our head around is the fact that chaos does not really mean that something is out of control. What chaos theory really says, in its simplest form, is that no matter how random it seems, order will emerge.

Quantum physics changes what we have thought for the last 350 odd years, ever since Newton defined the world as a well-oiled machine.

Here is how the world used to work, you could predict it. Throw a ball in the air and it will fall back down; add heat and you convert something to gas; trip and you are going to fall down. Isaac Newton said we have to believe in cause and effect.

But what if it is less about scientific rules, and more about the way things interact?

The thing about quantum physics is that it does not focus on the way things work; rather, it looks at the way things relate. It turns out the world does not so much resemble a machine as it does a living organism.

And because it is alive, there is a whole lot of chaos, just like life. Things cannot always be predicted.

Think about it, you plan to go out for the evening and get the stomach flu; or the perfect vacation ends up to be filled with rainy days; no matter how hard we try to predict what is going to happen to us tomorrow, everything can change.

But, when things change, something new emerges. We get sick and spoil the perfect date with our spouse, and they make us soup and put us to bed and rush out to buy some Tylenol and show us that they love us in a hundred deeper and more real ways then the dinner would ever have accomplished.

There is a new order that emerges in the chaos.

There was an experiment conducted in 1987 by Craig Reynolds in which bird like objects called "boids" were created to simulate bird flight. They were given three simple rules: fly in the direction of other objects, try to match velocity with neighbouring boids, and avoid bumping into things.

Now here is the thing that should not have happened: the boids flew in formation and when they broke apart to avoid bumping into objects they soon regrouped into a new formation even though they were not programmed to do this at all.

So what chaos theory suggests is that because the world is continually evolving and organizing itself in new ways, if you set a group of people in motion, each one following the right set of three or four simple rules, they will spontaneously self-organize into something complex and unexpected.

There is another interesting example of this in which a junior high school decided it would just have three rules. So all the teachers and students got together and decided they would all agree to this: "take care of yourself", "take care of each other" and "take care of this place."

These rules may seem simple and common sense; but when it comes right down to it, if you followed them everything would work out. How you chose to live out those rules would develop into new patterns of behaviour.

Okay, if you have read this far; thank you. I realize that even quantum physicists' eyes glaze over after about 15 minutes of this stuff. But I really do have a point; and it is this: the world is changing.

Yes, you know. I know. But do you really know?

Do you realize that kids today think e-mail is a slow and old fashioned way to communicate?
Do you realize that learning no longer means retention of facts, but rather it means acquiring research and communication skills?

Do you realize that most of what we held to be true and inviolate is actually just a working theory, and probably wrong?

Do you realize that out of the chaos we tend to create the world will adapt and find new ways to exist?

That is a paradigm shift, and we need to get on board.

Because from everything we are learning about reality, it is never going to go back to the way things were, and the future is not going to be what we predict.

Support for farmers is woefully lacking

SOCIAL STUDIES - Published Monday November 17th, 2008

A few weeks ago I was in a meeting with Jennifer MacDonald, who is a second generation beef farmer, VP of the NB Agricultural Alliance, chair of a new task group set up to make recommendations to the premier around farming labour issues, Maritime representative to the National Board of the Charolais Association, and also works with the marketing association for beef farmers.

She was there to talk to a group who works on social justice issues throughout the Maritimes and what she had to say was interesting, to say the least. Perhaps we should even call it disturbing.
Here are some quick statistics she shared:

More than 70 per cent of beef farmers in Canada have to have an off-farm job to keep going. Twenty per cent of the world's fresh water supply is in Canada, and we are wasting it, taking it for granted. In 1999 there was a food reserve in this country that would last 119 days, now there is only 56 days. Farms are still the anchors of many communities, but they are dying: in 2006, there were 2,776 farms in New Brunswick, down by 629 since 1996.

One of the problems that she pointed too was the lack of belief in farming as a viable career. Guidance counsellors hardly ever suggest it; and who can blame them?

Most people do not want to take on a job that actually causes you to go deeper and deeper in debt with no way to repay. No one is getting rich, only six to seven per cent of the price of food in the grocery store goes back to the farmer.

But what is going on?

Why do we devalue such a basic and life giving occupation that literally none of us would exist without?

We are in serious trouble, and there are many sides to it.

For one thing the negative image has caused a labour shortage; so much so that we often require seasonal workers. Their availability directly relates to the "amount of product" a farmer is able to sell. Most farms could plant a lot more food, but there is no one to harvest it.

New Brunswick is currently working on a plan to share work with migrant workers who work in Nova Scotia, where there is an earlier growing season; but there is a lot of red tape which prevents such an easy solution.

What we are ending up with is a lack of experienced workers in New Brunswick. There are very few vegetable farmers left in New Brunswick, although we still have lots of potato farmers.

Offshore labourers involve red tape, barriers, attitudes, and a host of other problems not limited to losing our own expertise in something we were once really good at.

One good idea that came out of a recent farming summit recommended that we look for tax incentives for people to work part-time in agriculture; this might become something that interests those who are retired, or on welfare, or need part-time work for personal reasons.

Look at it another way; agriculture employs less than two per cent of the population, on two per cent of the land, and is the number one revenue generator in our province. We are also the province that processes more of its own product than any other province; think of how many potatoes go through McCain's for example.

Would a renewed interest in agriculture save us from the economic downturn that threatens to destroy our economy? It is certainly something that might lend a hand, but we have let it slide, and treat it as completely unimportant.

Back to our beef farmers; did you know that 75 per cent of Canadian beef is exported, so a free market for beef is something that would help our farmers greatly. At the same time, to open new markets, we import beef as well. The average beef herd is only 55 cattle, and many farms also do grain and other crops to boost profitability.

The different agriculture areas are interdependent -- also dependent on the larger society for support; which is where we are letting them down.

We need to take a good hard look at just how hard it is to be a farmer, and understand that this way of life is dependent on the variability of climate, and other uncontrollable factors. Money for agriculture is an investment in the future.

And we pay far too little for our food.

Government subsidies have led us to believe that food is cheap. Even when grocery prices have risen sharply in recent months, we are still not paying anywhere near what it is worth.

Did you know that we now spend considerably less of our income to pay for food than people ever did before? Have you ever stopped to think about how much labour, water, grain, energy, and even oil goes into making one $12 T-bone?

We need to start thinking about it, because as Gwynne Dyer has said, any future wars will probably be fought over food and water!

Another truism of Keynesian economics is that every time you spend a dollar on local products, there is a $7 multiplier back to the community; which is to say that we need to buy locally, we need to support our farmers, it is good for them, but it is great for us.

Remembering the depth of war experiences

SOCIAL STUDIES - Published Monday November 10th, 2008

Some days I feel like Henny Penny. Writing an article about the state of the world can often seem like running around screaming "the sky is falling" while everyone patiently ignores you. There are times when I write lighter fare just because it always seems that I have a negative slant on society.

In truth I am just caught up in the massive change that continues to surround us. Last week City Views columnist Aloma Jardine wrote about how much Moncton has changed in the last four years that she has lived here. She is absolutely right, but we also have to look at the global scale of change. Part of my doom and gloom attitude comes from the realization that we cannot possibly adapt to change as fast as it is occurring.

I am not going to rehash a list of everything that has or is changing, we all realize it to be true whenever Christmas rolls around and they try to sell us all new everything. We realize it whenever we try to talk to someone who is either a decade older or younger than we are. Massive change causes stress. It also affects things we never even stop to think about.

Remembrance Day is an example.

My grandfather was a Bren machine gunner with the North Shore Regiment and invaded Dieppe, France. Sometime in the first few weeks after that he was shot in the head and left for dead, only to be found and nursed back to health. I am not sure which side found him; he never talked too much about it.

He was a train engineer until that bullet paralyzed the right side of his body. He re-trained, became a teacher, became a principal, and changed lives.

I visited him a year or so before he died and he looked out the window of his apartment and said that it was a day just like this one when the Allied planes accidentally bombed his platoon. That was some 50 years later and the temperature, the quality of sunlight, the wind . . . something reminded him of that moment so clearly that he was lost in memory.

That is Remembrance Day. It is not that we are looking back at glorious victory. It is not even that we are keeping the reality of war alive so that we never go there again.

Remembrance Day is a moment to allow for the reality of lost innocence. It is a time to acknowledge the pain, hardship, loss of life, and continuing haunting nightmares of generations of our best and brightest.

So here is the thing; my grandfather is dead. Almost everyone who fought in the First World War is dead. We can go watch Paschendale and perhaps get some voyeuristic understanding of trench warfare. Most of the people who fought in the Second World War are nearing the end of their lives. Perhaps the movie Saving Private Ryan gives us a taste for the horror of a beachhead invasion or the loss of loved ones and companions.

None of that creates memories.

We are losing our memory of the actual taste, sight, sound, feel, emotion and horror of these events. What will the world be like when that memory is gone?

We have other battles that we have been involved with, or peace keeping missions, even Iraq and Afghanistan. I would argue these do not have the same overall emotional impact in our collective memory as the times when the whole world seemed at war.

There are horrible moments in every conflict for those involved. There are memories that never escape us even if we are only involved in limited military actions for even more limited times.
Remembrance Day is something else though.

It is when each of us who were not there can see in the eyes of those that were there a glimpse of something so horrible that we know we should never again engage in that level of hatred and warfare.

Without seeing my grandfather, without seeing his comrades, without witnessing their struggle and pain, what will it mean?

You see, without the veterans of the great wars that we fought for King and country, we as a people have lost a collective part of ourselves, and we have changed. I am not exactly sure how.
I have a guess that theirs was the last generation that truly believed that the needs of the world, of the country, of their fellow human beings were greater than the needs of the individual. I imagine that we have become too individualistic to fight for something else without a clear sense of how it benefits me.

There are still people who sacrifice for others, there are lots of them. In fact, people serving with the Canadian Forces are disproportionately from the Maritimes, which should make us proud.
We have managed to keep some of the sense of honour and connectedness alive.

Again, I imagine that this is because of those who were our elders and who passed on the depth of their experience. Those strong family and clan ties we all have keep us connected.

These are the same elders, the same veterans that we have almost lost.

In the midst of the change that surrounds us, I hope we do not forget them.

FDR's sage advice rings true even today

SOCIAL STUDIES - Published Monday November 3rd, 2008

Everyone I know is afraid of the economic collapse.

Add global warming and the non-renewable fuel crisis and the truth is it looks like we are screwed.

Of course, when I was a teen the world was about to end any second with the USSR or U.S.A. keeping their finger on the button of nuclear destruction.

I am sure 50 years before that everyone thought Bismark or some other world leader was going to upset the applecart of security and we were all going to die.

Still, it is hard to come to terms with the fact that the world seems to be changing overnight again.

Although very few say it out loud, it does seem to me that the closest comparison for where we are today is the Great Depression of the 1930s.

Keeping this in mind I stumbled across some political speeches out of America from that era which seem to me to say everything that needs saying to us today.

In his 1941 State of the Union address, Franklin Delano Roosevelt talked about his idea of four universal human freedoms: First, the freedom of speech and of expression; second, the freedom of belief; third, the freedom from want; and, finally, fourth, the freedom from fear.

At the time, one clever newspaper journalist commented that these four freedoms are not created equal. Two of them are basic, original freedoms; the freedom from want, and the freedom from fear.

The other freedoms we enjoy really are only made possible by having enough to survive and being safe enough to speak. Then we can worry about what we believe and how we say it.
Which is to say that people who are hungry, who lack clean water, who lack shelter from the elements, who live daily with the fear that they will die too young from curable disease or military aggression, will always eagerly trade civil liberties for bread to eat and political freedom for safety. This helps to explain the rise of European fascism three quarters of a century ago and the rise of fundamentalist regimes in more recent times.

To put it in far more blunt terms, if you want for food to eat, the exercise of free speech is not all that important. And, if you live in a war torn region, with the perpetual threat of danger to life and limb, having the freedom to compose, say, poetry loses a lot of its value.

The Four Freedoms speech was a powerful address opposing American isolationism and calling on the citizens of the United States to accept, in Roosevelt's words, "personal sacrifice" in order to battle the illiberal forces of fascism that threatened the entire planet.

However, it was in a speech that FDR delivered eight years earlier, as the United States faced not the rise of fascism abroad but financial ruin at home, that he linked fear and economics, beginning his first inaugural address with those defiant words, "The only thing we have to fear is fear itself -- nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance." Taking over a country with its economy in shambles, at the deepest pit of its greatest depression, Roosevelt named the fear that gripped the hearts of Americans.

The problem is, fear is a hard thing to overcome.

Psychologists will tell you it is a hard wired part of our ancient reptilian brains, and so whenever we get scared we act a whole lot like ancient cavemen and cavewomen.

Fear, the primal emotion, is such a powerful emotion. In extreme cases of sudden fear, our brains fill our bodies with powerful chemicals causing us to have a fight or flight reaction. In other cases, fear can paralyze us. People who live with chronic anxiety suffer from all manner of health ailments and can even manifest many of the symptoms of a heart attack, so great is the power of anxiety.

So how are you doing with all of the news these days? Is fear getting to you? I can come up with consequences from all of this that scare me; from job loss right through the loss of paid health care. Whether my daughters will know what an orange is when they grow up or whether in fact they will live under the ice.

Dan Savage, a cultural commentator, tried to write a book about greed and ended up talking about our addiction to fear. He spent several weeks visiting depressing river boat casinos in the American Midwest. In the essay he discovers that greed does not lead people to the casinos; rather, greed leads people to build casinos. He writes that life in North America is basically safe for a whole lot of people, and that this safety is monotonous, and that people go to casinos to add a contrived element of risk to their fairly safe lives. He points out that after September 11, business at the casinos was first non-existent and then sluggish for months on end. If you are already on edge, you don't need go to the casinos in order to stimulate your brain chemicals by risking and losing money in the slot machines.

I would like to suggest that there are a whole lot of people still trying to use fear to motivate us to make rash decisions. I have said it about advertising and now I say it about the current crisis.
Roosevelt offers the answers to the people of the United States in the midst of the depression; and we would do well to hear them now.

"Happiness lies not in the mere possession of money; it lies in the joy of achievement, in the thrill of creative effort. The joy and moral stimulation of work no longer must be forgotten in the mad chase of evanescent profits. These dark days will be worth all they cost us if they teach us that our true destiny is not to be ministered unto but to minister to ourselves and to our fellow men."

Faith is how we live

RELIGION TODAY - Published Saturday November 1st, 2008

I have been thinking a lot about money. I am not alone in this I am sure. We recently got a statement of investments that said the average quarterly earnings were minus 12 per cent and I am sure this is actually a pretty good return these days.

We don't talk about it much, but money and faith are totally related.

Economy is derived from linking of two Greeks words, Oikos, meaning "household" and Nomos, meaning "law." Economy, then, literally means the laws of the household. I want to suggest you hear the word law as meaning values. Economy is actually how we use our values to live out our household responsibilities.

I think we tend only to think of economics on the macro-level: Gross National Product, the strength of the dollar, interest rates, the rising and falling of the markets as indicated by green upward-pointing arrows and red downward-pointing arrows that scroll across the top and/or the bottom of the television screen. If you stop to think about it, all of these massive things, Derivatives, Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, the Wall Street bailouts--can be difficult to reconcile with the day to day.

For one thing, it seems out of our control. In a way it is, of course, but it does impact us. Most of all, the economic chaos of the last few weeks certainly makes us rethink how we live our individual lives and what, ultimately, do we value the most.

Like it or not, there is a moral dimension to how we use our pocketbooks.

Whether we are talking about our own, or a church, or the cities of Greater Moncton, or Canada as a country, a budget is a moral document. Think about it, whenever we make a budget type decision we are asking moral questions; what do we owe, to who, at what cost? What are and should be our priorities?

So, whenever the government makes a decision about funding medical services at hospitals, or providing services to families with special needs children, or choosing to cover a procedure for those on Medicare, or sending international relief to another country, or funding scientific research with the goal of curing a disease or better harnessing renewable energy, or funding the arts, those decisions are moral decisions.

A minister down south of us once wrote in a sermon "Don't tell me what you believe. Show me where you spend your money and I will tell you what you believe."

There are all sorts of ways to spend money, save money, and invest money in ways that reflect our values. Some of us are fortunate enough to be able to choose the neighbourhood in which we will live and this decision speaks to a certain set of values and priorities. We choose to buy certain types of groceries. We may buy goods from some companies that generously support causes we believe in and avoid buying from other companies that support causes we do not believe in. We value education and so we put away money in our children's education fund. We value the symphony, or the art museum, or the theatre, or public radio. We care about the priorities of a politician and give money to that candidates' campaign. We value this church and voluntarily support it. Family is important to us so we save for a trip to visit a relative living in a distant city. How is it possible to deny that our own day-to-day financial decisions shine a light into our values?

The word faith comes to us through Middle English, but goes back to the Latin root fides meaning trust. Putting the two words together, an economy of faith would be the laws of our living that reflect what we pledge fidelity to.

In the times ahead, I truly think we need to start considering each and every decision along this line. Faith is not a Sunday morning type of thing, faith is life and how we live it.

Exorcising our demons by celebrations

Social Studies - Published Monday October 27th, 2008

I remember when I went to High Kennebecasis High School in Quispamsis, while living in Hampton that Halloween was the absolute best time of the year. First off, you got to dress up.

There was freedom to be someone else for a moment. Secondly, you got candy!

I also remember that cars were lit on fire, houses vandalized, and a lot of small town angst was worked out by us unruly teenagers.

I do not know how it changed, but Halloween traces its origins to a completely different beginning than candy corn and vandalism.

Some 2,000 years ago the Celts celebrated the New Year on Nov. 1, the day which marked the end of the warm, growing, harvesting season; and the beginning of the cold, dark, dying season.

They also believed that on the night before the changing of the seasons the veil between the two worlds, physical and spiritual, was weakened. This made it easier to see the future and to determine where fate was leading you. So they built bonfires, wore animal skins, danced, prayed, sang and celebrated.

By A.D. 43, Romans had conquered the majority of Celtic territory. In the course of the 400 years that they ruled the Celtic lands, two festivals of Roman origin were combined with the traditional Celtic celebration of Samhain.

The first was Feralia, a day in late October when the Romans traditionally commemorated the passing of the dead. The second was a day to honour Pomona, the Roman goddess of fruit and trees. The symbol of Pomona is the apple and the incorporation of this celebration into Samhain probably explains the tradition of "bobbing" for apples that is practiced today on Halloween.

By the 800s, the influence of Christianity had spread into Celtic lands. In the seventh century, Pope Boniface IV designated Nov. 1 All Saints' Day, a time to honour saints and martyrs. It is widely believed today that the pope was attempting to replace the Celtic festival of the dead with a related, but church-sanctioned holiday. The celebration was also called All-hallows or All-hallowmas from Middle English Alholowmesse meaning All Saints' Day and the night before it, the night of Samhain, began to be called All-hallows Eve and, eventually, Halloween.

Even later, in A.D. 1000, the church would make Nov. 2 All Souls' Day, a day to honour the dead. It was celebrated similarly to Samhain, with big bonfires, parades, and dressing up in costumes as saints, angels, and devils. Together, the three celebrations, the Eve of All Saints', All Saints', and All Souls', were called Hallowmas.

I am fascinated by history, which I believe we ignore at our own peril. But history also allows us to see that even when we have forgotten the origins, all of the things that we do come from somewhere.

Although the roots of the festival of Halloween began in an agricultural way, there was always that aspect of the unknown, of the scary, of believing that this was one of those times when ghosts might just walk the earth.

I believe that we need moments like that to take seriously the darker and more mysterious parts of our psyche.

Humans have certain innate qualities and we have a certain balance to us. If we are going to end up being happy, then we have to make room for sadness, and if we are going to feel safe, there has to be something to compare it to; so we need to feel afraid.

Fear seems to be one of those things we are born with, babies develop a sense of fear around seven months whether they have anything to be afraid of or not. According to Leon Rappoport, professor of psychology at Kansas State University, we need to be afraid for the same reason we all want to go to amusement parks to ride roller coasters.

"It goes all the way back to sitting around the campfire telling ghost stories and folk tales," Rappoport said. "It's a very prevalent, deep-seated, human characteristic to explore the boundaries where they can tolerate fear and anxiety, and then master that fear and anxiety by working through it."

Rappoport says that Freudians and analytical thinkers believe that the more we develop and progress as a civilization, the more repressed problems we have. "The more civilized we get the more we repress our sort of uncivilized nature," Rappoport said. "And one way to release that is through festival occasions, vicariously enjoying horror movies and all sorts of related things."

So, I would like to argue that it is necessary to indulge in a little fantasizing about the dark side every now and again. It helps us to recognize ourselves for what we really are and to not push everything below the surface.

So go put on a mask, go watch a creepy 1950s movie about a haunted house, go and believe, at least for one night, that there is more to this fear of the dark than we are letting on. Sometimes we need an excuse to explore those darker instincts. It is not an excuse to do things you would never normally do, nor am I talking about hurting anyone, or vandalizing anything, which does not accomplish the real goal of Halloween.

Halloween is a very real way to let out some of the demons that this stressful world forces us to keep locked inside. So have fun, stay safe, and get scared.

'Don't worry; be happy' and other inalienable truths

SOCIAL STUDIES - Published Monday October 20th, 2008

The election is over. Now what can we worry about?

Well, there is still no political direction, food is unsafe to eat, milk apparently can contain poison, the icecap is melting, and oil is running out, capitalism is failing, kids are increasingly violent and sexualized, poverty is rampant and death seems to be winning.

Cheery is it not?

I heard an interesting phrase this week, "the tyranny of the small" which I have decided is a great corrective for some of the negativity I get towards the state of the world. In this context I am choosing to interpret the phrase to mean that sometimes problems that really should only take up a small space in the corner of our mind blow up and become consuming.

Don't get me wrong, I realize that any one of the problems I listed above is likely to destroy us all. I also realize we need to take them seriously and make concrete changes in the way we live, work, and relate.

If, however, we allow ourselves to become consumed with the dark side of life, we fail to appreciate all of the good that surrounds us.

Anyone remember Baz Luhrmann? Probably not, he is most famous for a spoken word song from the eighties called "Everybody's Free (to wear sunscreen)" which was hugely popular. The song is supposedly the text of a high school commencement speech, spoken aloud, while catchy techno-pop music plays lightly in the background for effect.

It was popular in part because it actually contained some of the most profound wisdom most of us had ever heard. One stanza in particular speaks to me in light of our nation's recent political gambit.

"Accept certain inalienable truths, prices will rise, politicians will philander, you too will get old; and when you do you'll fantasize that when you were young prices were reasonable, politicians were noble and children respected their elders."

Well, that is the thing isn't it? How do we keep our negative cynicism from taking over our lives? How do we get from the point where we think it was so much better in the past and that today is so terrible to the point where we begin to see life right here, right now, as being okay?

In case you have not guessed this already, I am one of those rare people who find the autumn gloomy and dark. I know everyone else seems to love the cool nights and coloured trees. Give me 12 hours of sunshine and 25 degrees any day. So what I am saying is coloured by a tinge of oncoming seasonal affective disorder, but really . . .

The truth about the tyranny of the small is that we as a species cannot seem to function without something to worry about. Perhaps that is why we talk about the weather so much.
I am writing this column as a form of therapy to advocate a forgotten way of seeing the world; the good old, "glass half full" philosophy of life.

Yes, the days are getting colder and shorter; but that could mean more time for romance in front of a fireplace. Yes, the ice caps are melting and the water rising; but just think of the great surfing. Sure, the stock markets are crashing but pretty soon I will own IBM.
I'm kidding --- sort of.

Later in the song we find this verse, "Don't worry about the future; or worry, but know that worrying is as effective as trying to solve an algebra equation by chewing bubblegum. The real troubles in your life are apt to be things that never crossed your worried mind; the kind that blindside you at 4 p.m. on some idle Tuesday."

How true is that? A few weeks ago I had a "spell" that I thought was a heart attack. Heart attack had not even been on the radar of things I was worrying about until that moment. It could have been the last thing I ever worried about. Of all the things I had been worrying about that day, and wasting energy on, none of them have ever materialized.

Another song that became hugely popular in the 80s by an artist that never really released anything else into the mainstream was "Don't Worry" by Bobby McFerrin. It was catchy, but perhaps a little more pie in the sky than the sunscreen song.

He wrote, "Ain't got no place to lay your head. Somebody came and took your bed. Don't worry, be happy. The landlord says your rent is late. He may have to litigate. Don't worry, be happy."
I don't know that I am capable of letting go of all my worry. Perhaps some people are. Again, I hear this as a reminder not to let the worry overtake you. Do not give in to the tyranny of worry.

If, somehow, you can manage that, then you will be able to make a lot of decisions and do a lot of things in a freer way.

It is not likely the world is going to be a better place next year. If we are stuck in just being frightened and worried about it, though, nothing will ever change. We need a worldwide positivism movement. I'll try to start.

Another Feature Article to Read

http://timestranscript.canadaeast.com/lifetimes/article/451188

Look around, discover our good fortune

SOCIAL STUDIES - Published Monday October 13th, 2008

I still think the American Thanksgiving myth has a lot of power as a story. Imagine being part of a failed expedition, starving on the banks of an endless ocean which separates you from home.

That first winter north of Boston, way back in 1629 was a tough one. If it had not been for the Massachuset Tribe of natives everyone would have died.

If you want an equivalent Canadian story, in 1576 Martin Frobisher failed to find a Northwest Passage through the ice above our fair country; but took the time to stop in Newfoundland and have a large celebration of Thanksgiving for safe passage -- we could think of this as our Canadian Pilgrim story.

Or there is the story of how during the difficult winter of 1606/1607, in a tiny wooden palisade at Porte Royale, on the Annapolis Basin in Nova Scotia, Samuel de Champlain created what was arguably a very good approximation of the idea behind Thanksgiving. He called it L'Ordre de Bon Temps -- The Order of Good Cheer -- and it only lasted that one winter.

The story goes that the first year they spent on St. Croix Island saw the death of two thirds of the crew from scurvy. No one knew what scurvy was, or that they needed vitamins, but it was Champlain's genius to suggest that good food and friendly camaraderie would go a long way towards curing the medical problems of his small and struggling colony. So he instituted the Order of Good Cheer. Under the rules of the Order, special meals became the personal responsibility of individual colonists, who then went on to try and upstage each other.

All of a sudden you had great meals decked out with the finest fish and fowl, and game. Entertaining tended to raise everyone's spirits. Good food brought better health.

These stories resonate with us because they remind us of how tentative life can be, and how easy it is to celebrate the good things that get us through.

I spent the week before Thanksgiving driving across half of our country. To make a long story short my youngest brother is going to Korea to teach and I have inherited his car. Since he lives in Indiana I flew out to Hamilton and drove the car back; a remarkably cheap way to move a vehicle.

It was also a whirlwind tour of the Eastern half of Canada. I discovered that New Brunswick has the best fall leaves and the best Tim Horton's coffee. I had time to think about all that I am thankful for and just how much I take for granted about Canada; which includes, by the way, my ability to choose a new leader.

I noticed a few other things in my travels.

First off, Toronto is huge. The scale of it makes you think you are in a science fiction movie where industrialization has taken over the planet. I drove along the Don Valley Parkway in the dusky twilight and there were times when all I could see in any direction were the glassy steel reflection of skyscrapers blocking any possible view of the countryside.

I also realized that despite architectural differences, life was pretty much the same. I passed the same malls, people cut me off with the same regularity, and the election signs even looked the same. I saw school buses and delivery trucks, transports and minivans; and everyone looked like they were happy or worried or indifferent for the exact same reasons that I encounter in Moncton.

The same was true in Montreal. Only replace the skyscrapers with urban sprawl and cars. There are more cars on the road in Montreal city than there are people on the planet. I don't know how that can be true but I am sure it is. It took a good two hours to drive 20 kilometres. Again, however, if I looked in any one of those vehicles, or over to the side at a playground, or apartment complex, the people were just the same as you and me.

The best election ad I came across was a billboard in Montreal. Half of the sign was factories spewing smoke with a gray sky and the word "Stephen" the other half was a forest, with the sun shining through the trees on dappled flowers and the word "Stéphane" emblazoned across it.
If you were commuting down the highway, choking on fumes, a nice nature scene might speak to you about the possibility that Stéphane offers hope for something different.

Of course, I still maintain that the Conservative and Liberal parties are two sides of the same coin and that if we actually wanted change, which apparently very few people really do, we would vote NDP or Green.

Interesting coincidence though, everything falling on the same week means that no matter where you go in Canada you find we are all the same, and we are all closing cottages, getting ready for winter, preparing a fall feast, and about to elect new leadership.

It is worth taking a good hard look around you today before you go out to vote tomorrow.
Too many of us stop paying attention to how good we have it here in Canada.

We forget to be thankful and also forget to participate in the basic decision making tools that are our constitutional right.

Although this may be an election that is being fought over nonexistent issues as opposed to the ones that really matter to us; it is worth taking this day to pause and reflect on what really is important to you, and how is that reflected by those people who claim to speak on your behalf.

First Feature Article in Times and Transcript

you have to go to their site to see the pictures that go with it: An article on Kitchen Safety in all it's glory...

http://timestranscript.canadaeast.com/lifetimes/article/441097

Coping with change like never before

SOCIAL STUDIES - Published Monday October 6th, 2008

When you read this I will already be 40.

Intellectually I know that every year is a different one, and that aging just happens to every single thing on the planet. Somehow decades hit me harder though.

I remember being completely stunned when I turned 30. My life pretty much ended. Not literally, but figuratively. I left behind the career I believed I was training for, I left behind the way of life I was living, and in the process discovered that the next decade was going to be better and better in every way.

I am sure this will be true for the coming decade as well, that it will be the best 10 years of my life so far; but as I get older and more set in my ways I am finding it increasingly difficult to navigate the change in the world.

I have heard it said that this past decade has been the fastest changing in the recorded history of humanity. Think about it; from the Second World War until the 1960s there was a relative period of stability in terms of invention and social structure. Two parent, multiple kid homes, with a male breadwinner and a female homemaker. Everyone had a radio, then a television, a phone, a car and most likely a travel trailer.

Sure, things happened. The Cold War comes quickly to mind. But the things that happened did not change the lay of the land all that much.

Then the hippies got involved. Vietnam and the Love Children changed everything and we have been on a roller coaster ever since.

I am commonly slotted as a Generation X individual; in other words, I am different from my Baby Boomer parents. Since the 60s however, you can't even count on your two children seeing the world the same way. We have three generations in the last 25 years, Y, Net and Millennium being the terms some people use.

What it means is that anyone born a few years from now will see the world completely differently, because the world is changing that fast.

I had to learn the battle of Hastings took place in 1066 in England. I had to memorize that incredibly useful bit of information for some reason, along with countless other facts. My youngest brother belongs to a different generation, he just looks up facts on a computer. He is trained to see patterns, not facts.

So much has changed though, hasn't it?

My personal favourite is digital television; "high def" at that. I remember watching the Wonderful World of Disney in black and white. Now I can put in my DVD and watch computer generated monsters eat digitally enhanced heroes for breakfast.

The smoke detector was invented in 1969, digital music in 1970. Acronyms that did not pre-exist me include the MRI, GPS and even digital DNA fingerprinting.

Think about what we have done in terms of health, creating laser and microsurgery, pacemakers that control so many different heart functions, artificial everything and even Prozac and Viagra.

We have learned all about wind and sun and wave power even if we are just scratching the surface.

We have put a man on the moon, built a house in space, and searched for life on Mars.

I want you to consider it took humanity about 2,000 years from planting a seed to creating a plough, and that the leap from copper to bronze took generations. In the last decade in terms of communications alone we have gone from standard telephones, to portable, to wireless, the Internet, to text messaging, to VoIP.

I remember the first time I went to Walt Disney World as a kid and when you got off the Space Mountain ride you rode a moving sidewalk past displays about the "future". What was on display was essentially the video disk. Some day in the future they would create a shining metal disk that would hold data and could be used to watch movies.

It was all true within a decade.

The last time I was down there they were talking about beaming objects from place to place just like a Star Trek transporter. Does that mean that this technology is less than a decade away? Perhaps it does.

All this reminiscing has a point though, and the point is psychological.

To say that 40 is in fact any different than 39 is strange. The decade is just an artificial marker. Not only that, but each stage of my life has brought both pain and joy in equal amounts. There are some things I have to let go of as I age; for example, I am not going to be an Olympic athlete, or in fact a professional athlete of any kind. My reflexes are shot. On the other hand, I took up running just last year and I hope to run a marathon while I am 40.

How we see ourselves and our surroundings makes a difference.

Psychologists believe that our attitude changes our action. We've all seen immature 30 year olds and vibrant 80 year olds so I think we can relate to this concept. I want to be the type of 40 year old that is wholeheartedly engaged in the process of living life as a 40 year old. Adapting to each year of life is actually quite an adventure.

Change is not only constant and inevitable, but it's now coming at us faster than at any point in human history. Who knows what the world will look like in 2018 when, God willing, I celebrate my 50th birthday. One thing is for sure, the changes we'll see in the next decade will dwarf those we've seen in the previous decades, and probably in ways we can't even begin to imagine.

Driving brings out opinions, but. . .

SOCIAL STUDIES - Published Monday September 29th, 2008

Nothing brings out opinions like driving. Each of us, for some strange reason, feels that we are the best driver on the road; the only driver that knows the right way to do things.

Consider for a second that the last time you or I ever actually studied the rules of driving we were 15 and focused not on learning to drive, but on getting the parents' car. I have forgotten more than I ever knew about those rules.

I have also lived and driven in some of the worst places. Boston, Montreal, New York and Toronto come immediately to mind. I drove for at least a decade on the highways and byways of Montreal, so if nothing else, I am a survivor.

Back to the opinions, what makes driving very difficult is that each of us is an expert in our own mind and can justify anything. I clearly have the driving skills to type this article while on a cell phone and in a merge lane. Everyone else I see on the phone while driving is clearly less capable than I am. That's how we all feel.

Moncton has a bad reputation though. Look back at how many times driving has come up in this paper alone. Everyone seems to feel that we are terrible drivers. I have even written about my failure to understand what the hurry is. We live and work less than 15 minutes away from anything and drive it like we are two hours late.

I don't think drivers have to take all the blame. I also blame the engineers. Take merge lanes for example. Our merge lanes were designed by people with attention deficit disorder.

On Vaughan Harvey alone you find two completely different examples. If you go south and turn on to St. George you find yourself in a decent enough merge lane that lasts about 10 car lengths and merges into two lanes of traffic. It is easy. Go North and turn on to Mountain Road and the merge lane ends at the corner and hurls you into oncoming traffic if you don't stop and look over your shoulder.

Can we really be blamed for not knowing whether to speed up or slow down when we go around a corner? Add to that the exponential growth in traffic our city has experienced as it bursts its seams.

Our engineers did get one thing right though, roundabouts. Love them or hate them the truth is that the roundabout reduces delays by up to 65 per cent over a traditional intersection. It may seem you are waiting longer if you happen to be one of those lucky individuals who normally get to sail through green lights at every corner. Roughly half the time, however, the light will not be green. Done properly roundabouts force you to slow down but almost never stop.

Roundabouts are also safer. Almost 50 per cent of all traffic accidents occur at intersections; and although I cannot figure the math, experts insist there are 56 different ways to have an accident in an intersection and only 16 in a roundabout.

I have also learned two surprising things. First off, tailgaters are less likely to have accidents, especially during highway driving. Consider this, all of us reach for something while driving, the Tim Horton's, the cell phone, the radio knob, a Kleenex; and for the most part these interruptions take us less than two seconds to complete.

It happens a lot. The average driver adjusts the radio 7.4 times per hour of driving and searches for something 1.8 times per hour.

When we are following closely behind another car we do it quickly and effectively. When we increase our distance to about three seconds apart we start to get over-confident. We spend too much time adjusting the volume, looking at the map, or staring at the text message. All of a sudden we are ploughing into the car in front of us.

Don't try this at home as my tailgating expertise comes from decades of practice.

The second thing I learned is about merging. Yes, merging, that bane of most Monctonians. Think about this, if you were driving and saw the sign, "Merge Right" what would you do?

Most of us do consider ourselves polite, and rule abiding, and so we would pull into the right lane at the first available opportunity. Then we would curse those people who speed right by until the last possible second and squeeze in. There is actually an engineering term for all of this, the "early and late merge".

Believe it or not, the late merge seems to work better. If you put up signs encouraging the late merge, like "Use both lanes until merge point" and everyone gets what you are trying to do; you first of all eliminate road rage, because you do not get angry with the "cheating" driver; secondly you compress what could be thousands of feet of potential merge, and accident, space down to a single point. This increases traffic flow by over 15 per cent.

Now don't get me wrong. I don't want to get a call when everyone tailgates, merges, and crashes.

I am just talking about statistics; which depending on your perspective either lie, or tell the absolute truth.

Either way there are more effective ways of driving, and most of them stem from paying more attention. Attention to the drivers around you as well as the way the road was built.

Faith provides source of love

RELIGION TODAY - Published Saturday September 27th, 2008

What does faith mean to you? I used to have people tell me it was personal confession of faith in the saving power of Jesus Christ. But that never made a whole lot of sense to me. Faith to me has nothing to do with getting into heaven.

Let me tell you a story. It is about what might have been the scariest moment of my life. The birth of our first child went beyond the usual fear to downright panic. She was born immobile, blue, not breathing or moving. My wife asked me if she was okay, and I did not have any way to respond -- fear had paralyzed me. One gruff nurse almost seemed to yell, "She will be," and all hell broke loose.

Positions shifted as cords were cut, chairs pushed aside, and machines kicked into overdrive. They lifted her away to the other side of the room and started suctioning her lungs. Horrible sounds, when all we wanted to hear was a cry. Almost before we knew it she was gone, down the hall to the cavernous, dimly lit reality of Natal Intensive Care. For the first time in my life I felt lost and alone; I was out of place with nothing to do; and powerless -- and I need to be in charge.

By 4 a.m., some three hours later, we still had no idea how she was doing, and were told we should get some sleep. It had now been just about 24 hours since the last time we had closed our eyes and reluctantly we made our way down to the room to wait.

God takes care of people -- that is what I have always thought. Yet here we were as far away from being cared for as I can possibly imagine. The room was dark and I lay on my back seething with anger, at the hospital, at life, at God -- springs of the cot cutting into my back, dry air of the hospital taking its toll on my lungs and eyes. Finally I got the courage to cry.

That is when it happened. The silence deepened. The darkness closed in. God was there. I have always been a religious person of sorts; and have certainly always tried to do the right thing by God. I had never, however, felt anything like this. I could actually feel God hugging me. It was not so much that the arms were wrapped around me, just a pressure open me that somehow whispered into my soul "I am here."

Almost immediately another thought came unbidden into my mind, "It will be all right." Now I knew in my head that this was no guarantee of health; it might very well be God telling me that even if she dies, it will be all right, somehow. But with that thought came such a moment of peace, such an overwhelming understanding that I need not be in control, that I fell instantly asleep.

My daughter is now three. She doesn't eat her vegetables and she talks back to her mother like you would not believe. But she was born dead -- and is now alive. God told me it would be okay. Although I have never before nor since felt the presence of God in that way, nothing will ever separate me from the very real knowledge that God is not abstract. Rather, God shows up in unexpected ways at unexpected times and reminds us that no matter what happens, it will be okay.

It has very little to do with whether I confess faith in one dogma or another, whether I am of one faith or another. The power behind the universe is love. And because of that there is hope. That is faith.

What we can do to lessen violence, abuse

SOCIAL STUDIES - Published Monday September 22nd, 2008

In my university locker room there was a sticker. Someone had pasted it onto the side of a row of lockers in such an obtrusive way that every time you walked in you saw it glaring at you: "one out of every three women will be raped in their lifetime."

I was in a presentation the other day where the statistics were that one out of every four women will be abused.

Although the hardened professionals in the room just nodded their heads sagely, it was evident that most of us would like not to believe in this statistic. At the very least we wanted to say that we don't fit the norm.

I live in a house with three women. I did the math.

How about this: 33 per cent of all murders of women are committed by their "intimate partner". In case you are wondering only seven per cent of men are raped and only four per cent are killed by their spouses.

Or this, 40 per cent of all abuse cases start with the first pregnancy, and a pregnant woman is twice as likely to be abused as a non-pregnant woman.

We spend billions of dollars in terms of lost wages, mental health care, and emergency room trauma care every year as a result of abuse.

None of this takes into account the secret cost of depression, of fear, of pain. This does not look at the fact that abused children are more likely to abuse their children.

I am throwing out these statistics to make it seem a little more real.

This is one of those hidden problems of society; although given the prevalence it is hard to imagine we do not see it. And like it or not, it is a hidden problem because it is a woman's problem. Most men have absolutely no idea just how violent the world is for women -- simply because we do not experience it.

When I walk through a park at night I know that there are only a certain percentage of people in the world who are bigger and stronger than me -- a small percentage at that. I also know that unless they had a gun and were seriously intent on using it, I might be able to take them. I don't really worry too much about being alone.

My wife, for example, is half my size, and most men are physically larger than she is. That simple fact alone leads to a massive difference in how we experience the night.

But why is violence such a part of everything?

One reason might be the change of status that has affected almost everyone in society. In one generation we have gone from families where the husband was the bread winner and the wife took care of the children, to two parents working straight out while strangers care for the children; or many one parent families struggling to make ends meet.

We have struggled with gender roles to the extent that while I was growing up the only thing expected of me was that I would play sports, drink heavily, hunt and hang out with the guys. Everything else would be her problem. Now we realize that life is a struggle for everyone and we try to be equal partners.

But no one taught me how to be any different, and the role models on television and the movies don't always exhibit the best behaviour, although most of them are pretty good, come to think of it.

We have been brought up in a world that is changing so rapidly that we often no longer know our place in it. At the same time, that change makes us uncomfortable and we often feel powerless. We owe too much money, other people decide so much about what is going to happen to us, sickness and death are uncontrollable. In a world that seems so unstable and in which we seem so powerless, we want control.

Psychologists would tell you that abuse is almost always based on control. That the violator acts out because they are seeking to retain control. This is not simply control of the victim. It could be that their work life is out of control, or the finances, or the children, or an aging parent. . . and because you feel powerless to change those other things -- you act out in the one place that you do have power.

The scary thing is that this seems to be getting more and more common for younger and younger people. Teenagers are more likely to be abused in relationships than adults. Given the reasons I have been explaining this makes total sense. How many young people feel in control of their future, or their present for that matter?

So what can we do?

First we must recognize this is a real problem. It is not going away, and the world is not getting any less violent anytime soon.

Secondly we have to urge people to take it seriously. This is a billion dollar problem that affects a significant portion of our population and never makes it onto the campaign trail, for example.

Lastly, we have to pledge to live differently. Each of us has the ability to recognize our own power, in the workplace, in society, and in our individual home. Each of us has the responsibility to use that power in constructive ways.

To use a quote by Ghandi in a different context, we need to be the change we wish to see in the world.

Stand up, demand more from politicians

SOCIAL STUDIES - Published Monday September 15th, 2008

There are over 11,000 millionaires in Atlantic Canada.

I realize there is a lot of poverty out there as well. But even if we take our "average" household income, we are looking at the $63,000 range.

I have to admit to being surprised by the number of people who have a million dollars. Apparently there are even a few billionaires out there. It is not, however, what I have been led to believe for my entire life.

We are all poor, aren't we? This is the end of the Earth. In some sadistic way I think we New Brunswickers actually revel in the idea that we have it bad. After all we are all illiterate, we are all uneducated, the only thing we know how to do well is hunt and drink beer; right?

Our frontier attitude to poverty is one of the things that keep us from embracing New Brunswick as one of the best places in the world. We have natural beauty, we have world class industry, we have U.S. fashion stores, and we even have good sushi.

I have often wondered as I drive around Moncton how we keep this illusion of our poverty as a province in place.

First off, it seems to me that everyone else owns a Lexus. Those that don't go in for the Land Rover that is.

Secondly, every house being built in this city seems to be in the half a million dollar range. Don't get me started on why a two bedroom, two bath house costs $400,000, which is another story.

One of my family members, I don't know who, maybe they all said it, would always talk about the fact that if you say it enough, it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. I totally believe that this is true.

To put it in this context we will never rise above as a province until we accept the fact that we really are as good as anyone else.

If you doubt this, take Newfoundland as an example. For most of the last century Newfoundland believed itself to be the worst place in the world in terms of poverty, education, and perhaps "awkwardness". Somehow over the last decade they have turned that around, elected charismatic leadership, and are poised to become the richest province in the country.

Another thing we used to say in my family was that if you don't want to start fights, don't talk about religion, politics, or money. But really, there is nothing more important to us than those three things. Religion is about what we believe in our hearts. Politics is about what we want the world to be like. Money is about our place in the world and how we survive.

I may be trying to pick a fight. But I think we need to talk about this.

First off because of what I have already said, our thought that we are a "have not" province keeps us from celebrating who we are.

Secondly, however, and I realize this is a bit of a contradiction, even while we are rich; we are not able to live well.

You can go online and check your household income against the world. There is a site called the Global Rich List to help you put some perspective on your salary. I am the 36,690,488th richest person in the world! Which may not seem all that great at first, but consider, there are a little over six and a half billion people in the world, which makes me in the richest 0.6 per cent; almost everyone is poorer than I am.

Why does this matter? Because I am an upper middle class Canadian with the requisite two kids and two jobs, house, car and dog and am really well off. But I still have to think twice about whether to spend the gas to drive to Saint John to visit my in-laws, and I wonder whether or not to buy fresh vegetables at the supermarket. The cost of living is going up so fast that even when you used to have enough money it seems tight all of a sudden.

I guess what I am trying to balance is the idea that being proud of your accomplishments allows you to have the confidence to do more with the fact that realistically appraising the poverty level of the average middle class family can almost instantly overturn that confidence.

Not to say that I don't count myself lucky not to be one of those six and half billion who have to scrape by with less. I cannot even imagine how most Canadians can balance car, food, house and child care. . . let alone how people living below the poverty line can do it.

Someone has to talk about this stuff in their political campaign if they want my attention. Cutting diesel fuel so that some manufacturers can stay afloat is not a campaign promise aimed at the majority of people who wonder whether or not they can drive to grandma's house. Adding a ridiculously low level of new day care spots when people wish they did not have to work two jobs just to afford day care does not buy my vote.

You see, I think we have everything we need to succeed as a province and individuals -- but I think we dole it out wrong. Or perhaps we use it wrong.

Whatever the case, it is time for us to realize just what we have here in New Brunswick and to seize the momentum of the current election to actually stand up and say -- we expect better.

What people are looking for in leaders

SOCIAL STUDIES - Published Monday September 8th, 2008

I wish I was my father. Not necessarily for most of the reasons you might suspect. He is a permanent alien in the grand old United States of America; and I wish I could cast a vote down there. Not since John Kennedy became the most quoted politician ever have we seen such great speech writing from an American politician.

I would vote for Barack Obama just because of this line from his keynote speech to the Democratic National Convention, "There is not a liberal America and a conservative America -- there is the United States of America. There is not a black America and a white America and Latino America and Asian America -- there's the United States of America."

You can even buy a coffee mug with this question from one of his addresses, "Do we participate in a politics of cynicism, or a politics of hope?"

You have to admit, these are the types of rallying cries that make you want to see that person in charge. I do not think we have the same level of passion in our politics north of the border.

What we do have, is a system based on seeing what you can get away with before you are voted out of power.

It is unfortunate for the Conservatives that during the last election they hitched their wagon to the idea of moral superiority. One should never shine a spotlight on others unless you are absolutely certain no one is going to accuse you of leaking state secrets, hanging out with biker chicks, and bribing government officials. You just can't recover if you have already said you are beyond reproach.

That's what I remember liking about Chrétien and Trudeau. They played politics but they never claimed to be outstandingly ethical, always doing the right thing, sort of people; which is as it should be.

I want my politicians to be politicians. I want them to know how to run the country, to gamble in international politics, to manage vast quantities of money, and to make things happen in whatever way is necessary.

We have teachers, philosophers, poets and priests to help us see the other parts of the "big picture" and we need politicians to be the ones who know how to get the job done.

Don't get me wrong, the reason I like Obama is that he seems to be capable of maintaining the balance between working a system and still having dreams, vision, and most of all hope about the future. That is the type of person I would elect.

Do you remember the campaign slogans from the last election? The Conservatives asked us to "Stand up for Canada" while the Liberals said, "Choose your Canada"; the NDP were "Getting results for people". The two strangest slogans were the Bloq Quebecois stating "Thankfully, the Bloc is here!" and the Green Party simply saying "We can".

Obama campaigned on the slogan "Change we can believe in!" It might just be me, but these seem to elicit a lot more excitement about the prospects of the future than our parties manage to do.

But then again, despite the fact that so many of us complain about them, there are not that many of us who actually go out there and elect politicians no matter what the slogan. 64 per cent turned out the last time according to Elections Canada. Not bad I suppose, but consider this, first time voters are four times more likely to vote in an election than people eligible to vote a second time, and it continues to decline.

I suspect cynicism again.

Jean Ralston Saul wrote in Voltaire's Bastards about how the people that really run governments are the civil servants. Elected officials are more like movie stars, subject to a cult of personality and there mostly for show. I am not sure he is right, but the cynical side of me says that whether we elect Liberals or Conservatives not much is different.

So why do we vote one way or another? Sometimes it is to punish the party in power. But most times I suspect it is because we always have. You vote Conservative because you always have, because your parents always did, because you are Conservative.

Of course, that is not true.

Not many of us actually belong to political parties, those of us who do vote because of ideology I suppose.

But for most of the population we would be better off to forget about how we voted last time, how our parents voted, or even the current "promise of the day" of those hoping to be elected.

What we should do is look at the overall philosophy of the party involved. Historically what do they believe and how have they made it happen? How is that party going to make this country what it is supposed to be -- the best country in the world -- over the long haul?

We need to ask these sorts of questions because most of the election platforms we vote for don't really pan out.

Vote for me and I will lower the GST is great unless it means cutting social aid programs so we pay out even more money to the government in a different way.

We need to divorce ourselves from knee-jerk reactions to promises, and from the cult of personality of individuals. I don't care whether Stéphane Dion, Jack Layton, Stephen Harper or Elizabeth May were to become our next Prime Minister. I would have some questions if Gilles Duceppe made it. And even though I don't care which one is in charge, I do care very much which party wins.

Like Obama, I want "Change I can believe in."