Tuesday, November 25, 2008

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.

Wednesday, November 19, 2008

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.

Wednesday, November 12, 2008

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.

Thursday, November 6, 2008

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.