A resolution everybody can make for 2010

SOCIAL STUDIES - Published Monday December 28th, 2009

Ah the proverbial nothing day.

Christmas is over, the weekend is over, New Years is still a few days away. This is one of the slackest times of the whole year.

Did you take down your lights? This is my personal pet peeve. Everyone begins celebrating Christmas as soon as Halloween is out of the way, and then on Boxing Day it all gets packed up again.

Everyone remembers the 12 days of Christmas, right? Well, day one is Christmas and it lasts until Epiphany, or the eve of, on Jan. 5. That is when we should be celebrating! Christmastide is the season, a little over a week long, that comes after Christmas.

The most popular Christmas song of all times, perhaps because it is one of the oldest, even lays out the presents you should buy for each day. Oh, and in case you did not do the math, if you got everything that they sing about, all those maids a milking and geese a laying, you would have 364 gifts; or one for every day of the year; and lest you run right out and buy it; the PNC Bank publishes a price index each year for current market prices of buying all the gifts in the song and the 2009 figure is $21,465.56.

But I have a less costly solution which I hope, accomplishes the same thing. And I would like to suggest that as you sit around waiting for New Years and all those resolutions, you consider the song, the Twelve Days of Christmas, as your starting point.

What if our resolution was to fill the next 364 days with reminders of the love and grace and nostalgia and joy we feel at Christmas?

What if we could bottle the Christmas Spirit into a way of life for 2010?

You see, I was talking to someone this past week who pointed out that 2009 was a terrible year; for many, many people. Perhaps it was that the economy tanked. Perhaps it is that the weather has really been horrible. Perhaps that whole Copenhagen, climate change, end of the world sort of thing is finally starting to edge its way into our subconsciousness.

Whatever it is, I think almost everyone would agree that we need a do-over.

And if we are going to do the year over again, then why not do it over in Christmas style?

It seems I quote Charles Dickens in almost everything I write over the Christmas season, but there is a reason, he said it perfectly when he said: "I have always thought of Christmas time, when it has come round, as a good time; a kind, forgiving, charitable time; the only time I know of, in the long calendar of the year, when men and women seem by one consent to open their shut-up hearts freely, and to think of people below them as if they really were fellow passengers to the grave, and not another race of creatures bound on other journeys."

And it is so true, people will hold doors for each other, people will stop fighting, people are more generous, everything seems a little more festive and a lot more hopeful. But this is not something that needs to be mired in one block of weeks come late November. With very little effort this could be a year long way of life.

There was a movie and a movement a while ago called "Pay it Forward." For those of you who missed it, the concept was simple, do something nice for someone because someone has done something nice for you.

I know I am using too many quotes, but here is the concept as explained by the character in the book:

"You see, I do something real good for three people. And then when they ask how they can pay it back, I say they have to Pay It Forward. To three more people. Each. So nine people get helped. Then those people have to do 27." He turns on the calculator, punches in a few numbers. "Then it sort of spreads out, see. To 81. Then 243. Then 729. Then 2,187. See how big it gets?"

It almost sounds too good to be true, but it is not.

Want a simple experiment about the power of suggestion? Go into a crowded room, yawn, and then wait. People will start to yawn. Even reading this, odds are that you are going to yawn.

The same thing is true of a smile. It is contagious.

So how about Christmas cheer? Let's pass it on and make it contagious.

If you cannot think what you could possibly do, here are a few suggestions. Hold the door open for more people. Let people pull out into traffic all the time. Buy the coffee, without even telling them, of the person behind you in line at Tim Horton's. Randomly give people gifts. It can be as large a gesture or as small as you can imagine.

And we all know it would work. If you win a free coffee, how does it make you feel? Realistically it only saved you a couple of bucks you were going to spend anyway, it is no big deal, but the whole world looks a little better when even one insignificant nice thing happens.

So there it is, while you are finishing putting away Christmas, and as you wait for New Years, make this your resolution: 2010 will be better than 2009. I will do what I can to make it just a little tiny bit better for everyone I can. Christmas never really has to end.

You deserve it.

The date isn't important, the meaning is

Faith Today - Published Saturday December 26th, 2009

Well, today is the second day of the season of Christmas, turtledove day if you know the song, or Boxing Day for those of us who live in countries that maintain a little British Empire in us.

Boxing Day is one of those bits of culture and religiosity that has totally gone by the wayside. Most people don't even know what it means.

In Victorian England it was the tradition to take leftover food and durable goods and distribute them to the poor on the day after Christmas, or St. Stephen's Day. These donations were boxed up and delivered; thus the name.

There are a lot of things that are just "traditions" being carried forward.

If you think about the church and the way we do things, the way we schedule things, and our calendar, many of the days and dates are just set because of convenience.

Boxing Day, for example, made me think about Christmas. There is, I suppose, a 1/365 chance that Jesus was born on December 25; but it is unlikely. The story doesn't fit with the cultural norms; for example, shepherds and sheep wouldn't be out on the hills in December in Palestine back then.

The Orthodox Christians celebrate Christmas on January 6, for example. Was that Jesus birthday? Again, you are probably looking at a 1/365 chance that it was.

Am I saying Jesus was not real? No. Am I saying the church is lying? No.

It is a very modern and very North American thing that we have confused details for the truly important intent behind stories.

Here is the thing, there was this guy named Jesus, who happened to be born into a poor and humble family. The original word for Jesus' father's occupation was tekton, which meant he was probably a stone mason, but perhaps he was a carpenter... he was a tradesperson who worked with his hands in a backwater town.

We know from historical Roman records that there was someone who got the people all riled up, and that later, his followers were blamed for some fires in Rome.

But unless you are an emperor, your birth date was not really all that important back then.

So why the 25th of December?

Well, some people claim it is because that is nine months after Jesus was conceived (again, this is just a guess -- I am not even 'exactly' sure when my own daughters were conceived) but it was also the date of a very important Roman Festival which corresponded with the Winter Solstice, the shortest day of the year.

The Romans had a feast in honour of the "Sun" to remind it to come back out and warm things up; since it was getting darker and darker.

This sounds extremely sensible to me, by the way.

And when Christianity became the official Roman religion of state, some 300 years after Jesus taught it to his followers, the idea of the sun bringing light to darkness was shifted, ever so slightly, to the son bringing light to darkness and, voila, Christmas.

The church just took something that everyone already understood and gave it a Christian meaning. It was not contrary to what they already wanted to say, and it was convenient.

Just like having a long weekend in May is convenient to celebrate the birthday of our monarch in the British Empire, whether or not it is their birthday in reality.

Does it make the story any less powerful because it also happens to fit perfectly with the understanding of the Roman winter solstice?

Or does it become even more appropriate when you realize that what we are trying to celebrate is not just one man, Jesus, but the way of life and faith that Jesus brought us to understand -- one that every culture had pieces of already?

There are people out there who think that those of us who have faith are ignorant of science, and history, and psychology and the real things of the world.

Quite the opposite is true. We just know that there is something with deeper meaning than a calendar, and that truth has nothing to do with accuracy, it is about the bigger picture.

Of course Santa Claus is real and with us!

SOCIAL STUDIES - Published Monday December 21st, 2009

I believe in Santa Claus.

It is as simple as that. I see no evidence for the non existence of Santa Claus. Quite the opposite, in fact, Christmas is as filled with magic and unexplainable moments as any day can be.

Even if I told you my life story, which is fairly recent, there would be some myth, mixed with interpretation, mixed with magic, tempered with reality. It is no different for Santa, whose origins can be traced back to Turkey, of all places, and Saint Nicholas.

His wealthy parents, who raised him to be a devout Christian, died in an epidemic while Nicholas was still young. Obeying Jesus' words to "sell what you own and give the money to the poor," Nicholas used his whole inheritance to assist the needy, the sick, and the suffering. He dedicated his life to serving God and was made the Bishop of Myra.

Bishop Nicholas became known throughout the land for his generosity to those in need, his love for children, and his concern for sailors and ships.

Under the Roman Emperor Diocletian, who ruthlessly persecuted Christians, Bishop Nicholas suffered for his faith, was exiled and imprisoned. The prisons were so full of bishops, priests, and deacons, there was no room for the real criminals -- murderers, thieves and robbers. After his release, Nicholas attended the Council of Nicaea in AD 325. He died Dec. 6, AD 343 in Myra and was buried in his cathedral church, where a unique relic called manna formed in his grave. This liquid substance, said to have healing powers, fostered the growth of devotion to Nicholas. The anniversary of his death became a day of celebration, St. Nicholas Day, Dec. 6.

The fact that most of Western Culture has been shaped and influenced by Christianity is dying out. Every generation wants to believe that they invented the wheel; and I suppose that is just the way of the world. However, when we throw out our knowledge of the past, we start to be able to dismiss reality as Faerie Tale, which are also all true, by the way.

Santa Claus was and is real. Almost every sailor who found themselves storm tossed on the malicious ocean can tell you that Nicholas, patron saint of sailors and children, was there on deck as the waves tried to sweep them over. He answered their prayers and they found themselves surprisingly safe in port.

Vikings who converted to Christianity and sailed to Greenland dedicated their Cathedral to him; Columbus, after supposedly "discovering" the New World named a Haitian port after him; Spanish Conquistadores named a town in Florida St. Nicholas Port (for some reason we changed it to Jacksonville); and most importantly, Dutch Settlers, who had claimed Nicholas as the Patron of Holland, brought him with them to New Amsterdam; better known to you and me as New York, while the Germans brought him to Pennsylvania.

If you have ever seen a European Santa Claus, and you all have, you would recognize the long flowing red robe with an ermine sash, along with a hood trimmed with fur as well. Those are the robes of a bishop. Think about the Vatican and the different coloured robes that each level of cleric wears; the priest in black, the bishop in dark purple, the cardinal in bright red and the pope in white. Each colour gets lighter and closer to the purity of God . . . Santa is somewhere in between a bishop and a cardinal with his dark red robes.

In the late 1800s; at the end of the Industrial Revolution, the world was changing dramatically. Prior to this, children were seen almost as slaves, especially poor ones who often worked back breaking hours in mills and mines. Charles Dickens wrote books like Oliver Twist to try and change this and at the same time he wrote books about Christmas to help us embrace the values of the season, like Hope and Joy and Peace.

They also began to link the patron saint of children to this new idea that childhood was sacred, and since his Holy Day was in December, well, why not combine the two?

Then there was a poem; "A Visit from Saint Nicholas" which became "Twas the Night Before Christmas" that brought to light the nocturnal activities of Christmas Eve which heretofore had only happened while people slept. Washington Irving started to illustrate Santa Claus as a little more elf like, smoking a pipe, just like the poem suggested. A few years later Norman Rockwell and others changed the outfit and associated him with Coca Cola, changing the colour of the robes to the colour of a Coke logo.

By the way, Santa Claus is the way we English speakers struggled to mispronounce the German for Saint Nicholas, Sankt Niklaus.

There are those who want to dismiss Santa as just being made up to sell Coca Cola or adorn Hallmark cards. But the tradition goes back to very, very Christian origins; just like the rest of Christmas.

Martin Luther, who started the Protestant Reformation in Germany in the late 1500s and is one of Christianity's greatest theologians put up the first Christmas tree; but that is another story.

There are others who say that if Santa ever lived, it was almost 2,000 years ago and doesn't matter now.

Well let me tell you, I have seen presents under my tree that I am pretty sure my parents would never have bought. I have seen strangers inexplicably have their hearts melted and help each other. I have seen Santa in a shopping mall moved to tears by the requests of hurting children. I have seen ordinary fathers put on a red suit and be magically transformed into a Jolly Old Elf.

I have seen starving families fed and fighting families reconciled, homeless people sheltered and benevolent programs funded. I have seen whole villages in the developing world given wells, or farms, or schools.

Don't tell me there's no Santa Claus.

Walt Disney's world born in humble beginnings

SOCIAL STUDIES - Published Monday December 14th, 2009

OK, so I love Walt Disney World.

It has been over two years since I have gone and I am suffering from withdrawal. This week was also the 'birthday' of Walt Disney. He was born on December 5th 1901.

I will not bore you with too many biographical details; but Walt's life story is really interesting.

He was born in Chicago, Illinois, his father, Elias Disney, was an Irish-Canadian. His mother, Flora Call Disney, was of German-American descent. Walt was one of five children, four boys and a girl.

Raised on a farm near Marceline, Missouri, Walt became interested in drawing at an early age, selling his first sketches to neighbours when he was only seven years old.

Mickey Mouse was created in 1928. He made his screen debut in "Steamboat Willie," the world's first fully-synchronized sound cartoon, which premiered at the Colony Theatre in New York on November 18, 1928.

Walt's drive to perfect the art of animation was endless. Technicolor was introduced to animation during the production of his "Silly Symphonies." In 1932, the film entitled "Flowers and Trees" won Walt the first of his 32 personal Academy Awards. In 1937, he released "The Old Mill," the first short subject to utilize the multiplane camera technique.

On Dec. 21 of that same year, "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs," the first full-length animated musical feature, premiered at the Carthay Circle Theatre in Los Angeles. Produced at the unheard cost of $1,499,000 during the depths of the Depression.

During the next five years, Walt completed such other full-length animated classics as "Pinocchio," "Fantasia," "Dumbo," and "Bambi."

In 1940, construction was completed on Disney's Burbank studio. The staff swelled to more than 1,000 artists, animators, story men and technicians. During World War II, 94 percent of the Disney facilities were engaged in special government work, including the production of training and propaganda films.

The story goes on, and on, but you can see that Walt was responsible for single handedly changing most of the animation industry -- he also changed tourism forever when he built the fist theme park, Disneyland, in 1955 as a fabulous $17 million Magic Kingdom.

A pioneer in the field of television programming, Disney began production in 1954, and was among the first to present full-color programming with his "Wonderful World of Color" in 1961. You might also remember "The Mickey Mouse Club"; I can still sing the song even though I have not seen the black and white show in perhaps 30 years.

So Walt was a success. One man, whose drawings were originally rejected by an animation company, went on to create an empire.

Here are some interesting statistics to chew over about the Walt Disney Corporation today:

There are over 300 licensed Disney characters all brought to you by over 100 separate business brands. To give you an example, Walt Disney Pictures also own Miramax, Pixar and Touchstone. Then they own ABC, the television network. They have cruise lines, travel bureaus, condominiums, product lines.

All of which lead the company to a staggering 12 million dollars a day in profit; or four and a half billion a year.

Interestingly enough, the majority shareholder in the Disney Corporation is Steve Jobs, founder and owner of Apple Computers. He owns seven percent and is on the board of directors.

So consider this: every day Steve Jobs could potentially be making $ 840,000 profit from the Walt Disney Corporation, essentially just because he was clever with his investments. In case the math staggers you, that is over $300 million a year.

But most statistics about Disney and its theme parks are staggering. Four percent of all photographs taken in the United States are taken inside one of the two Magic Kingdoms -- Walt Disney World or Disneyland; Walt Disney World is larger than the city of San Francisco, covering about 4000 acres of land.

There are 240,000 pounds of laundry done each day while some 32,000 costumes are dry-cleaned.

And even if I don't make it down to Disney this year, some 47 million other people will (and they will drink 75 million cokes.)

Sorry, I just find all of this to be fascinating. I also find it reassuring to think that if you put your mind to it, and you are creative enough, you can succeed, sometimes beyond your wildest dreams.

But more importantly, this entire conglomerate of influence and imagination is based on the concept of leisure and make believe.

There is something extremely important buried within this basic idea. We live in a world where we will pay millions and billions of dollars to escape.

We go to Disney World and pretend to be pirates, or astronauts, or princesses, or race car drivers. We watch movies and television to immerse ourselves in other realities, we buy books and make up and gym memberships; all to escape the here and now.

Walt was onto something when he tried to make people smile with a funny little mouse.

We need those temporary ways out; we need to relax more; and we need Disney World.

It is the one place where hardened adults suspend their disbelief and allow themselves to be swept up in a dream; one that the cynical part of us has long given up on.

I will never fly with Peter Pan; but I have. I remember the first time the little boat I was sitting in lifted off the ground, flew out the window, and over London. I was a troubled little kid... it was magic. It was magic when I did it again at 40.

I will raise a glass to Walter Elias Disney this week. He died shortly before the Magic Kingdom ever opened. His dream lives on and inspires the rest of us. Thank God.

There must be a better way to organize our society

Social Studies - Published Monday December 7th, 2009

Work and kids and family; running a household and having hobbies; it seems hard to talk about these things without getting in some sort of trouble, but I think it might be necessary for us to rethink some things.

I do not think the way we live is the way we should be living.

Not that we are not trying as many different variations as possible. I could use my own family as a subset here. I have four brothers, and they have amazingly varied careers. Some have remarried and created blended families as my own father did. Some are professionals and some are just starting out.

Out of the five of us, or 10 if you count spouses, nine people work.

I have seen possibly every variation of having to figure out work schedules and household management and day care that you can imagine; from which I have determined that there are no good answers.

My wife and I tried working opposite each other for a couple of years. I would work one day and she would work the next, or she would work from eight to four, I would work from four till midnight; and then we would switch. Then there is the five days of day care. Even when one spouse does not work, as is the case for one of my brothers, the other spouse works hard and long enough that you still never see each other.

I do not want to raise the hackles of the feminists who think this is going to become a sexist rant -- but I don't think society should run like this. One income should be enough to run a household. It should not matter which person works.

Mind you, I don't think anyone should have to work any more than 35 hours a week to earn enough money to run a household. So perhaps both could work, but only work half time.

You may think this is just crazy dreaming, but for the most part economics are completely made up and we could in fact change the prices of things, or the wages earned, to make it work. An example of this would be my house. My wife, kids and I live quite comfortably in a three bedroom house on the Salisbury Road, which costs us exactly one quarter of a three bedroom house in Dieppe.

You have to trust me on this, but I am pretty certain there is no real explanation for the $300,000 dollar price difference.

The truth is that our economy is completely based on artificial measures of what things are worth -- the so called, 'market value' which really means what someone can get away with charging. At some point the amount charged began to make it impossible to live decently on your salary.

We are talking about 10,000 years of settled human history before someone decided to start making it nearly impossible to raise a family, own your own house, and get around. Never mind the astronomical price it would cost to take a vacation.

Also false, by the way, a little over a decade ago I went to Walt Disney World, stayed in a hotel, bought food in restaurants, bought souvenirs, and spent a little over $2,000. Now the same trip would run about $10,000.

So two people almost have to work; and then the kids need to be in day care. But we also have to work longer and harder than ever, with more economic and cultural stress; so for the two hours we do get to see our own kids every day we are either too tired, too stressed, or too rushed to be genuinely present.

It is a never ending circle too; we end up too tired at the end of the day to figure out how to get supper on the table; and if you are leaving work at five to rush to get the kids across town at five, and they are going to bed at seven -- how are you possibly going to cook within a reasonable amount of time? So you go to a restaurant.

Now, there is a costly way to escape stress and an unhealthy way as well. Better get a gym membership to use for those two or three hours you might manage to have for yourself. But the restaurants and gym are costing so much now you need to work even harder . . .

I am not suggesting we go back to a divided world in which men are the breadwinners and women run the household, but there has to be a better way to find life balance, and I think it has to begin with how we work. Or at the very least, what we earn.

Or perhaps we need to reassess what we 'have.'

Do we need as much stuff? Is that what is causing us to have to work so hard? Maybe it is the new car every couple of years, or the cost of replacing electronic gadgets every two years. Perhaps it is because we all need to instantly have furniture right out of Better Homes and Gardens.

There are a number of things that have gone out of whack in society to be sure. The problem is that we really have no idea what the long term consequences are. We already know that there are more divorces, more latchkey kids, more violence, and more crime than ever before. What will it be like when the next generation of kids, the one that has no real attachment to family or place, and any long term traditions or history, ends up taking over?

I was so looking forward to capitalism failing; and now they seem to be resurrecting it. I really wish we could all wake up and find a better way.

More openness and some humility will move us ahead

SOCIAL STUDIES - Published Monday November 30th, 2009

Opinions being what they are, there is always something to write about.

I have not written in a month, in that period I have been taking some time to reprioritize my life and my thoughts, so I would like you to indulge me if for my first column back as I turn inwards instead of out.

You see, while writing these columns I am always thinking about what is currently happening in the world around us; be it as universal as global warming or as local as the causeway to Riverview. As an opinion writer I search for a position that I think I could uphold morally and ethically and then write it as definitely as I can -- hoping for two things, to get people thinking, and to get discussion started.

Many of us have opinions. Oh, who am I kidding, all of us have opinions. Many of us can voice them eloquently; while still more of us can voice them passionately. From what hockey team to cheer for right up to who to elect as a leader, each of us chimes in within society to try and make our voice heard. Or, at the very least, to try and get our friends to think like us.

Deep within our consciousness, I believe each and every one of believes we are right. Absolutely, universally, right. For some reason I believe I know how to solve the economic woes of the country. Despite the odds I know for certain I could run the government better. Heck, I probably even believe I could cure my own diseases better than my doctor.

Does any of this ring true for you?

Does any of it sound sort of ridiculous when you stop and think about it?

I do think this is the way most of us think. We act like and interact with people as if we could do their job better than them. Every day we believe that we have a better system or idea than the experts who are trying to solve problems.

Have you ever heard of Albert Einstein? He was one of those people who thought outside the box. He revolutionized physics. He played a huge role in developing atomic concepts (as in the atom bomb and nuclear energy). If we ever get time travel or teleportation down it will be because of Einstein's thought and work.

When they did an autopsy on Albert they found out that he had a brain defect. It turns out that the regions involved in speech and language were smaller, while the regions involved with numerical and spatial processing were larger. He simply thought about the world differently. He was a one in a billion random genetic mutation who could grasp space and time better than almost every other human being.

In many respects, he also failed. Albert would be the first to tell you this. He had a failed marriage, failed relationships, and even many, many failed scientific theories.

It is because of his failures, more than his successes, that Einstein said some of the wisest things I have ever read; one of which is this: "No problem can be solved from the same consciousness that created it."

I have decided to make this one of my personal credos.

For me it means two things, first, it means freedom of expression. Second, it means humility.

Let me explain. What we need in the world is more honest communication about deeper issues with each other. We need a free press that can challenge conventional wisdom, and we need everyone speaking up about what they believe.

Although it sounds easy, there is an obstacle: this requires honesty.

When someone asks me how I am, I have to admit that I am a little messed up. I am sick, or sad, or lonely, or stressed . . . I cannot understand the instructions to put together the table I just bought, the weather is bringing me down, and I wish we could rethink capitalism.

At least, that is what is in my head. What I actually say to people is "fine."

How are we ever going to have authentic dialogue and learn to trust each other if we gloss over almost every aspect of our lives as we interact? We need to free ourselves to communicate with each other on simple things to make it easier to talk about the harder things.

Which is all wrapped up in the second part of my solution to the world's problems: when we are open about our thoughts and feelings we will discover that we cannot really solve all the world's problems. We are just one person, and we need help.

I came across another great quote this past month, this one from an even more unlikely source, the DJ of the original Woodstock concert back in 1969, Wavy Gravy.

According to Wavy Gravy, "We're all bozos on the bus, so we might as well sit back and enjoy the ride."

How is that for a philosophy? From the cleverest neurosurgeon to the happiest bus driver, we are all just bozos on the bus. We have our own idiosyncrasies and problems, we are geniuses about something, and idiots about something else, and we all stumble through life and make mistakes. We are human.

The good thing is we also all do incredibly miraculous wonderful things.

But we need to remember that we are just bozos.

So every week I write about something I believe in. I try to change the world in my own little humble corner of Monday morning's paper.

But the philosophy behind why I do things is tied up in these two statements -- sometimes it takes the views of a different person to help us see our life a little bit more clearly; and we are all bozos making our own mistakes.

When we operate from there and are truly open to each other, I am convinced everything will change.

Visit to past reveals path to future

RELIGION TODAY - Published Saturday November 21st, 2009

This past weekend I attended a wedding.

My step-brother, recently converted to the Orthodox faith, got married in a Lebanese Orthodox church in Halifax.

Curiously, for all my travels and education in things religious, I have never before attended an Orthodox Christian service.

It was fascinatingly interesting to see your own faith from another perspective.

Here is a quick primer on church history.

Things went downhill from the point that Emperor Constantine made Christianity the official religion of the Roman Empire.

It used to be that all of us looked back at that as the beginning of the glory days, but that was the point where the religious movement dreamt up by those followers of Jesus suddenly became more political than social.

Rome had so much political intrigue throughout its life that you almost could not help but get caught up in it.

And here is where church echoed state.

There were, in essence, two capitals. In the early fourth century, having just made Christianity the religion of state, and having just united a divided Roman Empire, Constantine rebuilt the Greek city of Byzantium, named it after himself and tried to make it the capital of the empire . . . and thus the church.

Five hundred years of bickering among the bishops of rival cities eventually led to further and further division and the church of empire divided into two churches, East and West, Roman and Orthodox.

The Eastern Orthodox Church of today has over 225 million members and traces its roots and theology back to Paul, the author of most of the books of the New Testament.

In fact, most of the churches founded by Paul are now clearly orthodox, in orthodox countries.

From all accounts, it just might be us westerners who broke away from the true church and went off on some tangents.

But back to the wedding; it was both familiar and unfamiliar. Some of the readings and prayers were in Arabic and some were in English.

The stories from the Bible were pretty much the same ones you have always heard read at weddings.

There were three stunning differences to me.

First, the biblical stories were connected so concretely to present life.

For example, it was pointed out that he couple getting married were just like Abraham and Sarah getting married, and God would continue to be faithful to the promises which were made to that couple -- lots of children and long life.

The married couple was compared to Isaac and Rebecca; the celebration was compared to the marriage feast at Cana where Jesus first performed miracles. It just all tied together.

Secondly, there was a confidence that this was the right thing to do and that God was present in the moment.

No wishy-washy 'God will be with you as you journey through life;' more like 'God is here right now watching and God says, honour each other or else!'

And lastly, there was such a concrete connection between family, church, friends and God.

These two people were not getting married in a church and then running off on a honeymoon and that would be the end of it.

They stood there as part of a 2,000-year-old tradition.

The community was agreeing to see them as man and wife, to treat them this was from now on and to help them be a family.

God was really present within the church, the family and the community and always would be.

There was no individualism here, it was all part of a larger whole.

I think all three of these things were once part of our religious heritage as well.

As little as 30 years ago it would have seemed much more familiar.

But individualism has crept into our church culture as well.

The modern way of thinking of everything as having to do with 'me' has separated us from the larger whole.

I for one am going to try and figure out how liberal Protestantism can reclaim some of what it has thrown away with the bathwater.

We have perhaps forgotten our roots and our traditions. Sometimes it takes seeing the way someone else does it to realize you can do better.

APOLOGIES

This Blog went neglected over the fall. I was off work on medical leave and did not get to it. I am going to be updating it regularly from now on. Thank you.

It is hard to believe the statistics on literacy . . .

SOCIAL STUDIES - Published Monday September 14th, 2009

Okay, so the new literacy statistics seem unbelievable to me.

I have been thinking about it for three days, trying to figure out what is bothering me so much.

At least one third of New Brunswickers who live in urban centres and have access to university education are illiterate. Move to the north of the province or out of the cities and it rises to three quarters of all people being illiterate. Three quarters!

Can you imagine that this is true?

All told it means that more than half of us have no hope of ever getting a high school diploma, or even earning a decent living.

I want us to think of this from two different angles.

First, whose fault is it?

There are certainly many people who analyze the world and see it from an individualistic viewpoint who would answer that it is their fault. Stay in school or pay the consequences. That way of looking at everything blames the individual for not pulling themselves up by the bootstrap.

The world is certainly not black and white, and it is true that there are people who choose certain things, a life of crime, living on the streets or to put career ahead of family. Some people do choose to drop out of school and leave the world of education behind, to be sure.

The other side would say that society is to blame.

We do not educate our young properly. We do not treat people equally and so create social stigmatization. We do not put tax dollars into education. We are so self focused that we do not do things for other people.

Again, all of this is in fact true, while not being the single mitigating factor for anything.

Life is a combination of problems and the truth is that there are so many areas in which we as individuals and we as a society are falling down. We all make bad decisions, but too often we hide behind policy or blame others instead of trying to figure out how to do it better.

So I think people should buck up a bit and take life seriously enough to want to learn to read; but I also think we should buck up a bit and make this a place where we help each other want to succeed.

Which brings me to my second major concern; ultimately I think it will not happen.

You see, I have a sneaking suspicion that it could not have become this way without someone wanting it to be so. I mean, over half of the population unable to master the basics of their own language? There has to be a conspiracy here.

People who cannot read probably cannot easily vote. They cannot easily write letters of complaint. They cannot double check facts when a politician speaks. They cannot read the fine print on their cell phone contracts. The list could go on and I am sure many of you could come up with reasons that those in power would want a less 'able' society.

I am only being half facetious here.

I cannot believe that there are that many people that cannot read. I cannot understand how or why that could even begin to be possible. As far as I remember almost everyone I knew could read quite young. In fact, the targeted 'reading age' when you write things for mass consumption is a grade six reading level. To read a newspaper, or a novel, or a political tract, you really don't need a vocabulary beyond grade six, and everyone goes to grade six!

And another thing, why are we at the lowest end of the literacy stepping stone while it continues to get better and better as you go west across the country?

Take a look at the map yourself if you want to see a visual representation: www.ccl-cca.ca/cclflash/proseliteracy/map_canada_e.html

How can it be that as soon as you pass Winnipeg literacy keeps on climbing as you go west?

I don't have an answer to the real reason it is like this. I suspect there is truth in everything I have said so far, including the conspiracy.

What really gets me though is that the world is not as I imagine it to be. I must be incredibly naive, I suppose, but I figured almost everyone could read this column if they wanted to. I thought that for the most part everyone who wanted one could get a job. It does sound pretty naive, eh?

What is stopping society from working though? Capitalism was my first thought, but Marxists did not fare any better; and National Socialists even worse. Apparently almost every commune, communal work farm, and open marriage is doomed to failure as well.

Someone has to come up with a better system really quickly. Because I fear things are just getting worse.

Perhaps it helps just to have the literacy stats before us. Perhaps this will force the government to step up and ask why we should be content with allowing this level of problem.

If we are truly going to make New Brunswick the place it should be, progressive, industrial, metropolitan, and a leader in every field, we are each going to have to take a good hard look at our misconceptions. Then we are all going to have to shoot a little higher and give the hand out and step up to those who need it the most.

Future belongs to those who can blend vision, reason, courage

Religion Today - Published Saturday September 12th, 2009

Are you a glass half full or a glass half empty type of person?

Are you religious?

You do realize that the first question should be a no brainer if you answer yes to the second.

Religion by very definition is optimism as a system of belief.

In social scientist speak, the question is do you believe in the tragic vision of humanity or the utopian vision of humanity?

The tragic vision is, unfortunately, what seems to rule the day in most western cultures.

Humanity is basically completely flawed, and so we have to create rules that curtail human activity and bring society together.

A classical Christian way of saying this would be that humans are inherently fallen, and we need God's intervention and boundaries in order to help us be 'adopted' children of God.

If we follow the Ten Commandments, usually out of fear or in order to gain some reward, then we will be good enough.

Fear of God, a sense of awe and reverence, a knowledge that we will be punished for wrongdoings and rewarded for right all make up this idea of how the faith is.

Whenever people have a problem with those who are religious, they usually have a problem with these folks... and here is the reason, it never seems to pan out.

Good folks have terrible things happen to them. Evil folks prosper.

Atheists do good deeds for no reason. Faithful people cheat on taxes. You get the idea, it just does not explain the reality of creation very well.

That is because religion is supposed to be utopian. It is a glass half full type of way of seeing the world.

In a utopian way of seeing things, it is the social system that is flawed, not necessarily the people. In fact, it is up to us to work together to fix things.

This is far more in line with the way that Buddha, Mohammed, Confucius, and Jesus saw the world.

We have the potential to do anything; we could move mountains if we believed we could and, together, we are working to make the world, which is fallen, into what God intends.

There are strains of this in the political world as well, the Kennedy family being a good representation.

Ted Kennedy, the senator who so recently passed away, said this at Robert Kennedy's funeral in 1968: "All of us will ultimately be judged and, as the years pass, we will surely judge ourselves on the effort we have contributed to building a new world society and the extent to which our ideals and goals have shaped that effort.

The future does not belong to those who are content with today, apathetic toward common problems and their fellow man alike, timid and fearful in the face of new ideas and bold projects.

Rather it will belong to those who can blend vision, reason, and courage in a personal commitment to the ideals and great enterprises of society."

I am tired of being labelled as someone who lives in the past, who does not believe in the world, who is against progress.

That is not what it is all about at all. When people ask me why I go to church, let alone work for one, the answer I give is that I believe in the power of organization to allow us to change the world.

That is what Jesus wanted of his followers when he refused to be worshipped or to allow them to focus on following the rules.

It is about love, it is about how we treat each other, it is about working together to change everything that is wrong from the economic system right on up.

I think some of our biggest disagreements come from the fact that we do not communicate end goals, but focus on day to day problems.

If the end goal is to be co-creators of the world as it was intended to be, we are almost all working towards it.

Do restaurants understand why we are eating out?

SOCIAL STUDIES - Published Monday September 7th, 2009

If you follow along at home you may notice I eat in a lot of restaurants.

Call it an occupational and social hazard. First off I have two careers which keep me a little busy. Secondly, I have two young toddlers which make it sometimes necessary to eat out as a family to conserve energy. Third, I am a bit of a foodie and love to experience new tastes. Lastly, I am a military brat who has never lived more than five years in the same house and so I take 'field trips' to stay sane.

It is not an insane number of times, probably two suppers, one lunch and a breakfast every week. The thing is that I try to make the experiences as different as possible.

I have given this a lot of thought and I believe there to be a huge disconnect between restaurant owners and patrons. Here is the number one problem:

Owners are chefs, or like the food they serve, and think you are coming for the food. Patrons are looking for an experience and go for the atmosphere.

Hear me out.

If I am away from home on business, I am looking for someplace to relax and feel comforted. If I am taking my kids out it is because I am stressed and tired and need someone else to take care of things in the kitchen. If I am out with friends I am looking for a sense of fun and adventure. If I am on a date I want romance and attention to detail.

There are very few cases in which the food is the top priority. I go to the same pizza joint because I like their dough; I go to the same fast food place because I am addicted; I go to my favourite Vietnamese place despite the atmosphere because I want their imperial rolls. Most of the time, however, I am looking for a little help from the service industry to make me feel special.

I don't think people who work in and own the places understand this.

I offer this as a list of tips in case you happen to be in the food service industry. Or as a list of pet peeves that some of you may identify with.

When I sit down at a table, bring me something; a glass of water, a crayon, anything to make me feel like you know I exist; it will go a long way.

Make suggestions. I always ask my server what they would eat and some of them treat it like it is the strangest question. It is not. You see this stuff day after day, if you would still eat it, I know it is good.

Kids of any age have a short attention span. If you can't get me their food in 10 minutes, fill the time with other things, even crackers. Also, it does no good to rush their food out to them if you are still going to take 30 minutes to bring my food and I have no time or space left to eat it because they are done and crying.

Water. Every five minutes. Same with coffee. Every five minutes. I am not kidding. There are places I will never go again because I do not like feeling like I am trapped on the Serengeti.

If you are having a bad day, that is fine, tell me. I will be more forgiving. Impatience, rudeness or sloppiness are not what I am paying big bucks for.

Last, but the most serious, bring me the check. I can't tell you how many times I have sat for what seems like hours waiting for someone's attention in order to get out of the place. Once I have the check in hand, I can decide when to pay you, and I feel like you have empowered me to make my own choice about leaving.

That is the quick list, there are of course 100 stories I could tell, from the time we had no cutlery and the waitress decided to just throw a pile of knife and forks on the table and say "here;" to the myriad of times when I actually thought we must have been forgotten.

Don't get me wrong, I have had some of the best moments of my life in restaurants as well, times when the chef came and sat down at the table and talked about the food; or the waiter made me feel like I was the most important person in the universe.

Unfortunately, bad service is becoming the norm.

And that is the thing, ultimately. I go to a restaurant to feel special, to have an 'out of the ordinary' experience, and when you fail to provide it I am not coming back very often, even if it was the most amazing ribs, steak, salmon, or nachos I have ever eaten.

I think the people that work there have become so self-involved and self-important that the customer is no longer anything but a means to an end.

Here is how I handle it. I am a generous person, but I know a tip is a tip; it is an extra for value added. Mess with me and you get nothing. Smile at me and you may get 10 dollars at a coffee shop. I think if we stopped just automatically tipping some appropriate amount to people who don't deserve it, things might change.

Secondly; I tell managers that Lucy Loo has to go. I write letters.

Last but not least, restaurant owners need to become aware of the power of social networking. I tweet where I eat.

I talk about how I was treated and 500 people in Moncton read that and make their own choices. They also talk to their friends. I post on Facebook with actual photos of what I eat. We need more honest critique of the industry.

There is nothing like a good meal in a great restaurant. It is simple to make an impression, and even simpler to have it be the wrong one.

What we can learn from foreign foods

Social Studies - Published Monday August 31st, 2009

Last summer I wrote a book review for Canadian Dimension magazine of the book "The 100 Mile Diet." I also, you may recall, mentioned it in a column.

The idea is that eating locally is an ideal way to remain healthy, support regional ecological differences, and at the same time, filter most of your money back to local producers.

There are huge benefits. It forces you to eat in season, while at the same time allowing you to get to know your eco-region at a much deeper level.

We are fairly lucky here; there are very few things that are not grown within 100 miles; although oranges and olives spring to mind.

This summer, I have been experimenting with the complete opposite.

In the last week I have been touring around the Maritimes eating in ethnic restaurants that I have found. The more authentic, the better.

In Saint John I ate at the Northern Chinese restaurant, where the women did not seem to speak any English. I had a soup which was among the worst things I have ever eaten. It was a vinegar broth with three types of dried chili, as well as fried tofu chunks and some kind of chili oil floating on the surface. It was so spicy I cried the whole time I ate it. The second dish was actually among the best noodle dishes I ever had. Thick egg noodles in a brown onion sauce.

This week I went to Halifax and had, in no particular order, Transylvanian Goulash with huge chunks of paprika sausage and sauerkraut in a creamy stew at Cafe Chianti; Moussaka and stuffed peppers washed down with a Greek red wine at the Taverna Opa; Nachos and Propeller Bitter Ale at the Economy Shoe Shop, and the best sushi ever at Hamachi House; with some warm sake, of course.

It would be a good bet to say that almost nothing I have eaten in two weeks came from within 100 miles; unless it was eggs at Chez Cora.

Even the snacks I have been eating have been from as far away as you can imagine. Yesterday I bought some pistachios from Iran, Dates from Greece, and washed them all down with a burdock and dandelion beverage I found from England.

Now, you might ask, so what?

Well, here are three things that have occurred to me. First off, the world is changing, astronomically. It used to be that the most popular accompaniment in Canada was ketchup. In short order the number one accompaniment for most Canadians has become salsa. As the world changes, the foods from the less developed and southern countries are replacing the old standby items.

I would wager more people in the Maritimes eat rice, grown in the tropics, than potatoes, grown in our own mud.

Secondly, and perhaps more importantly, did you know they grew pistachios in Iran? I didn't. All I knew about Iran is that their leader is evil; or is supposedly evil if CNN is to be believed. But here I was eating some of the best pistachios I have ever had, and actually thinking about who grew them, and where, and what life was like for them, and how they managed to get the pistachios so rich tasting. All of a sudden Iran was a real place with a real immediate impact on me.

I realize that I should care about them anyway, and I do; but this somehow made the Iranians more a part of my actual world. I could not imagine that the farmer who looked after this crop was any different than my neighbour growing corn.

Eating the food of another country is a way to immerse yourself in that culture. If you don't believe me, take a drive up St. George and go to the convenience store across from Wesley United some day for lunch. There is a great Korean couple who own the store, and while the guy tries to teach me Korean words, the wife cooks up a fabulous lunch with red chili sauce on noodles and barbeque pork. It makes you want to know more about them.

Third, and most importantly, when you stop and think about it, all of this food tasting from around the world says something very strange about how wealthy I am.

You see, before the Americans wiped out half of the world's economy one of the big news stories making the circuit was that the world was facing an impending food shortage. Then all we have heard about for a year was that the economy was ruining the average person's life. Something strange was going on in the background though . . . nothing.

Nothing has changed for the rest of the world. There is still a shortage of food. Most people in most countries where I have been eating food from could not afford, or even find, the food I have so easily come across in the Maritimes.

So in one sense my culinary adventures have brought me closer to other cultures. In another sense, I could not be further away from the day to day reality that the majority of the world faces. Despite the fact that we all spice things differently, food is the one thing we all have in common. Not only that, but we have so much in common it is interesting.

Every culture on the face of the planet has something sandwich like, for example. Whether it is beef wrapped in a fajita, lamb in a pita, duck in a pancake, or cheese between two slices of bread.

The other thing we have in common is that food is hard to come by. It seems simple right now because we are used to cheap transportation, storage, and mass farming. But the time is coming, for all of us.

We have to realize that we are all in this together.

Love is great, but there’s also the healing power of fear

SOCIAL STUDIES - Published Monday August 17th, 2009

You have heard it said that you should do something every day that scares you. For the last few years I have been dealing with infants and toddlers in my household, so every day was new and scary. Recently, I have discovered that the age old adage is in fact good advice.

I got a tattoo this week.

I always wanted one. By the time I was able to make my own decisions about such things I was luckily usually too broke to afford it. Luckily, I say, because had I have chosen an image to represent my late teens or early 20s I would most certainly regret it by now.

Not that others are not capable, it is just that when I left home I was pretty rebellious and angry.

I would probably have made the mistake of tattooing the name of some now long lost girlfriend, or my favourite band's image from the 1980s, either of which would have been monumental mistakes.

Now, it scared me to even consider getting a tattoo. It is permanent, it is societally frowned upon and sometimes (and more importantly) it is painful.

I was scared when I made the appointment and I was scared waiting the month for it to roll around, which seemed to me plenty of time to back down. I was so scared that I posted on Facebook that I was going to get a tattoo in order to make sure I went through with it. I was scared when I walked into the shop, and I was scared when I sat down in the chair.

Could you think of something that scares you that you could do? Every day, or even say once a week? What about public speaking, or bungee jumping?

There is an incredibly interesting program in the United States military right now which takes soldiers returning from Iraq -- especially heavy combat role soldiers -- and forces them to do adrenaline rising, risk taking, and yet mostly safe activities once a week after returning from combat.

So for example, they go bungee jumping, and white water rafting, and sky diving. It's usually something they have never done before is likely to scare them.

The theory is that these people have become adrenaline junkies, living in constant stress for the entire time they are in the operational zone. By teaching them safer ways to get an adrenaline 'fix' -- and also weaning them slowly off the need for stress and adrenaline --you integrate them back into the 'real world' in a safer way.

I imagine this will do wonders to minimize post traumatic stress. It will certainly teach them a safe outlet for the pent-up rage and fear that come along with adrenaline highs.

In a larger way the success of this endeavour would also show us something else; that fear can heal you.

Healthy expressions of fear are there for a good reason, and when we confront them, deal with them, overcome them, and figure them out we can become better people.

My tattoo experience was amazing for a number of reasons, not least of which was that it was psychologically and spiritually healing. Somehow, watching this happen, all of my passions, art, expression, writing, rebellion, merged into one thing and were given expression in a physical reality.

Because I was afraid of it, I put off getting a tattoo until I was totally ready to do it, and when I did it, it was just 'right' and instantly allowed me to do a lot of 'head and heart work' to reconcile who I am now with who I have been at different stages of my life.

Let me suggest to you that we fear things because they are important; we do not fear the trivial and so, besting that fear, we work through it and move beyond it. This is real growth.

It is not just about the adrenaline, it is about recognizing how you feel about things. Fear is not about what you think; it is about what you feel. The guy doing my tattoo jokingly said that it lets you know you are alive.

He might be on to something there.

We spend far too much of our time in our heads, criticizing, rationalizing, prioritizing . . . and there comes a time when you have to get outside of that and feel what you are doing. Perhaps you need to jump off a bridge with a rope around your ankle, or you need to watch a hypodermic needle puncture your skin 10,000 times, or you might just need to get up the nerve to say 'Hi.'

When the breath is caught in your chest, and it seems your heart is beating loudly enough for everyone to hear, when the sweat breaks out on your forehead, when that shaky feeling takes hold of you; you will truly know that you are alive.

More than that, you will be doing something that matters, truly matters, not just to you, but to the universe. It is in those moments when fear meets passion that creativity and art find expression. It is in the expression of our deepest held convictions, the ones that scare us, that we begin to create a world where we are truly being ourselves.

I think we really should try to do one thing that scares us each day.

It could be simple, or it could be complex.

It could change everything.

Facing down the mirror, and facing the truth

SOCIAL STUDIES - Published Monday August 24th, 2009

Have you ever seen a photograph of yourself?

It could just be me, but when someone takes a photo and I see it, the person it portrays is not the person I see in the mirror each morning. I don't mean that existentially or anything, I am being quite literal.

I do not look that old, or that overweight in the mirror.

My expression is more 'happy go lucky.' I am more muscular and certainly better looking.

Not in the photograph, however.

Which leads me to the concept of truth.

There are those out there, from every walk of life, who would like to think that he world is black and white. They would like to believe that the concept of truth is irrefutable; that there are certain things that never change. My suggestion is that they take a good long look in the mirror.

You see, even within the deepest recesses of our minds, truth is malleable. Our brains work more like Photoshop than like some safety deposit box.

All the info we store there is adjusted by feelings, attitudes, emotions, correlations, and comparisons. Thus my self image is happier, stronger and lighter than I really am, and voila, that is what I see in the mirror. I have edited the 'truth' to be what I want it to be.

I remember a beginning psychology course where we discussed the 'halo effect' of falling in love. In essence when we fall in love we blur the edges of reality. The bad qualities get swallowed up by this halo of goodness that comes from passion, or infatuation, or what have you. The truth of who the other is has been edited away by our minds.

The problem with this is that it sounds like it gives us licence to dismiss the concept of truth; which is the exact opposite of what I am trying to get to. I believe that because truth is a concept that is in flux while being part of our relationship to our selves, we have even more responsibility when it comes to what is true.

Truth is individual, but that does not mean we should not own up to it.

That woman who was kidnapped, or rather, who drove to Toronto for God knows what reason and then decided she would say she was kidnapped in order to avoid responsibility for her actions, is a case in point.

For some reason a lot of people think that whatever they like to say or believe is valid, as long as the end justifies the means. Truth being malleable, what is a little white lie, like saying we have been kidnapped. Just in case you are not sensing the irony; it probably cost you, the tax payer, quite a few thousand dollars in police investigation time, while allowing real criminals to get away with things while the police were diverted.

It also, on a personal level for the individual, did a lot of damage to this woman's credibility.

We create fantasy for a lot of reasons. It is better for my conscience to believe I am a good 50 pounds lighter, for example. The fact that reality often fails to measure up against fantasy is even more dangerous.

Take our relationships with the people we love, for example. At some point we are going to have to realize that what we fantasized our lives and relationships were like just does not measure up under the constant stress and scrutiny of running a household, raising children, and managing a career.

I think this is why the divorce rate is so high.

It all starts with the wedding; $50,000 buys you the fantasy that the prince and princess ride into the sunset in the white coach and live happily ever after.

"I have dreamt about this moment for my whole life," says almost every bride.

Well, did you also dream about what it will be like when you lose your job? When you first have to hold your husband's hand while he throws up into the toilet with the flu? Was it your fantasy to go a whole year without sleep or even talking to your spouse after that little bundle of joy comes along?

The truth of life is far closer to a Buddhist aphorism: "All life is suffering."

Which does not mean life does not have its moments of absolute joy.

The only way to find those moments is to take responsibility for our own truths. The fantasies we have are just that, false and twisted realities that do not help us to adjust to just how powerful our lives could be lived if we engaged authentically with the truth.

Instead of creating fiction, we need to accept reality for what it is and work together with those we love to rise above the suffering and find what we need to be happy.

To many people think that whatever they feel or think is reason enough that it should be that way, and so they are okay with the little lies, or even the downright truth altering of saying you have been kidnapped when you have not.

It is not easy to get out of bed in the morning and look around yourself with a sense of having to admit that this is as good as it really is. But that is where we find the power to change.

As long as the fantasy has the upper hand, we will never engage the world deeply and find a new way to be the people we always thought we were anyway.

Or to put it in a simpler way; tell the truth, accept the truth, work with it; it will make life so much easier.

No matter what dies, that death is a tragedy

SOCIAL STUDIES - Published Monday July 20th, 2009

here was a story this week about three cougars being shot in recent days in Princeton, B.C.

Before I go any further, I think I should point out that this is an unusual story. It seems the cougars were actually stalking humans as prey; almost unheard of. In one case the cougar looked like he was about to pounce on two girls who were floating down the river in tubes.

Everyone involved thinks this is very unusual and perhaps the three cougars were siblings.

It seems that the RCMP and the animal conservation people were very reluctant to kill the cougars, and the language of the news reports, both on radio and in print was very balanced.

Now, all of that being disclosed, and at the risk of getting myself into real hot water; there was a sentence in the news reports, in almost all of them, that speaks of something different. The RCMP officer who was quoted said, "We had to do it before anything tragic happened."

Why is it that the killing of three cougars is not seen as "tragic"?

Now I don't want you to think I am heartless and misunderstand how tragic it would be if some girl in a tube got eaten by a cougar; It would be absolutely heart wrenching. At the same time, can anyone define just why the cougar's life is less valuable?

One of the cougars was shot by a hunter who decided it posed a threat. Again, I was not standing in his shoes, but I imagine that I would have no way of judging if a cougar was a threat or not. I know nothing about the psychology of big cats; I know nothing about cougars in particular. And I am going out on a limb here, but he probably did not either.

For that matter, neither would any single RCMP officer.

Sure, if a cougar were actually attacking my daughter, I would kill the cougar if necessary. Of course, if a person were attacking my daughter I would be just as likely to kill them if necessary. In both cases I would feel extremely bad about ending a life.

I would however, do everything in my power, in either case, not to kill them.

I firmly believe that this is our major problem on the global stage; we as a species have not truly come to terms with our own arrogance.

There are theories that place the human race at the bottom of the totem pole; after all, we can be seen as nothing but a scourge on the face of the planet. We cause the most destruction of habitat, ecosystems, and even ourselves. Of all the species of life that exist, we serve the least purpose, we do not contribute to the life cycle of any other creature in a positive way, except by choice.

A cougar, for example, lives in an interdependent family and covers a hunting range of over 300 kilometres, and its main diet is deer and elk. Their niche in the ecosystem is to control the elk population; and they do not even waste any of it. Once an elk is killed, the cougar covers what it cannot eat with debris and continues to feed on it until it is all gone.

In a pinch they will eat up mice and smaller animals too; keeping the population down.

Like us, however, a cougar is an apex predator; no one feeds on cougar meat.

There are a few examples of them attacking humans. It is rare, but it is possible the three in question needed to be killed to preserve more human life. I am not arguing that; I am simply objecting to the concept that the loss of a human life would be tragic, while the loss of a cougar life is merely necessary.

In this, you should read everything from cricket to house cat, from cow to African elephant. Death is tragic, no matter what is doing the dying.

As long as we can easily separate ourselves from the results of death, as long as we can justify it without peering too deeply into the dark recesses of consequence, then we are doomed to continue in our own self destruction.

Those three cougars were hunting; which means they were providing. If, as has been suggested, they were siblings, they are part of one family unit. If three hunters of one family unit suddenly go missing, there is a strong possibility you have just killed off any number of female and young at the same time.

So here is the thing. If we can start to see ourselves as 'one' of the occupants of the planet; neither the most important nor the most useful; then we can start to interact in a better way with the others.

If we can begin to have empathy for just what it might be like to be a cougar, or an eagle, or a butterfly, then perhaps we can start to see a better way to coexist with all other life.

It is tragic when a plane goes down and kills 150 people. It is tragic when a river is polluted and kills 150 fish. It is tragic when a family dies in a motor vehicle accident. It is tragic when cougars are shot because of human encroachment.

I am not reducing things ad absurdum; there is a better way to understand the interrelatedness of the ecosystem. One step along the way is to see ourselves for who we really are, just one part of the whole organism.

Violence is directly related to meaning

SOCIAL STUDIES - Published Monday July 13th, 2009

Violence is directly related to meaning.

We have probably all heard sayings about how dangerous a cornered animal is, or that violence is the last resort. The thing is that when we think of desperation, and how it often leads to violence, what we are really talking about is resolving cognitive dissonance.

That is a big fancy way of saying a crisis of meaning.

If you look back at almost every period of violence you will see that something huge was on the horizon. Back in the day when empire's ruled the world, the most violent period was when the barbarians were at the gate. Taking Rome as an example, because they are our cultural ancestors, there was a time when the barbarians were at the gate.

Almost before anyone realized just how precarious their future was, the culture began to become more violent. Crime rates soared; violent spectator sports like gladiatorial games gained prominence; and sexuality became a bigger and more confused part of daily life.

Almost without the populace knowing it, they were living in a state of confusion because the world was changing around them in ways they could not, in the moment, recognize.

But do you realize that the 20th century was also the most violent century of human history?

Over 100 million people were killed in two world wars. Many smaller wars claimed hundreds of thousands of lives.

In fact, a survey completed for research at the Harvard medical school puts deaths during war at 378,000 people every year from 1985-94.

An estimated 170 million civilians were murdered by their own governments during this century. Places like Afghanistan, Rwanda, Kuwait, Bosnia, Kosovo, Yugoslavia, Chechnya, along with others, experienced unimaginable violence and bloodshed. Words like holocaust, genocide, terrorism, and mass suicide entered our common understanding for the first time in the last few decades.

In America, the later portion of the 20th century witnessed a dramatic increase in violence. From 1960 to 1993, violent crime increased by 560 per cent. In 1987, the U.S. Department of Justice estimated that eight out of 10 people will be victims of violent crimes at least once in their lives. Even more alarming, violent crimes committed by children ages 10 to 17 increased 400 per cent since 1960.

Canada actually has had a more stable couple of decades in terms of violent crimes; with the exception of the rate of murder, which is increasing every year.

All of this is not even including domestic and international terrorism.

The rhetoric of the politicians tells us that we must fight a war on terror, that violence as political act is increasing; but what we never hear any discussion of is what is behind the increasing desperation of people that leads to horrendous acts of violence.

What must have gone wrong with the world around you to lead you to the conclusion that the best possible next step is to kill as many people as possible.

And no, before you jump in with an answer, these people are not crazy. They have a genuine belief that there is a problem with the political and societal world and they must draw attention to it in such a dramatic way that change actually occurs.

Just to give a tamer example, next time you encounter someone with piercings, tattoos, a Mohawk, or some other counter-cultural expression of self, remember that this is the exact same thing they are trying to draw attention to; something about our culture is so wrong that it needs to be shocked out of its present state of being.

It is all about a crisis of meaning.

The American Civil War, or, if you own property south of the Mason-Dixon line, the War of Northern Aggression, was one of the most violent wars ever; it was fought between friends and family, because the definition of "America" was changing. Was it a collected band of individual states, or was it a unified nation with central government?

The two World Wars did not "just happen" to occur at the end of one of the longest periods of western colonialization. All of a sudden having colonies was no longer possible, so how did you define yourself as the biggest and best?

And what about right now; not only are there violent wars happening all over the place; plus genocide in two or three countries lately; but violent acts are up everywhere. People are walking into schools and shooting, there are terrorist bombers, and suicide rates are skyrocketing.

In the middle of that, every current economic system has dissolved. First the socialist economics of communism failed, and after the whole world became capitalist, that system is also dissolving around us.

I do not often agree with the current Pope. Well, that is an over statement, I think I have never agreed with anything he has ever said, until now.

The Pope, of all people, has called on the governments of the world to consider that this might signal the time for a major sea change. He concludes in his latest encyclical on the economy that we should be looking at "the very foundation of our system -- and to build on the bedrock of ethics rather than the sand of determinism."

I don't know what he has in mind, nor do I have a better idea than the way things are. But I do know that any casual student of history would be a little wary about the future.

To quote another great philosopher, Bob Dylan, "The times, they are a changing."

What we have to keep in mind is that our way of thinking about things, our way of feeling about the world, and the meaning we derive from things is all in a state of change.

It is a scary time, but it is also an exciting time. If we are creative enough, the future could be extraordinary.

Are there too many, or to few, rules?

SOCIAL STUDIES - Published Monday July 6th, 2009

Our intrepid editor, Norbert Cunningham, suggested a book for me to read; it is called "The Blank Slate" by Steven Pinker.

Part of my reading in the book reminded me of some old school social/political philosophy I learned back in the Mount Allison days of my youth.

So today my column will be based around a fictional argument between Jean-Jacques Rousseau, the French philosopher from the 1700's and Thomas Hobbes, who wrote way back in the late 1500's.

OK, so here is how Hobbes saw the world; he said that ". . . during the time men live without a common power to keep them all in awe, they are in that condition which is called war . . ."

The thing is, Hobbes believed that left to our own devices, we would all be violent and miserable; what we really need is someone to take control and force us to act in ways that would benefit us.

In the other corner, we have Rousseau who argued that ". . . nothing can be more gentle than him in his primitive state . . ."

Rousseau had the belief that indigenous people, when not corrupted by society and modernization, were essentially peaceful, selfless and happy.

But let me put this a different way; do you think people are naturally good, or bad?

What makes people different?

Now, a lot of people would tell you that it is entirely the environment, that upbringing and opportunity, and social status, and any number of factors make us turn out the way we are.

Others will tell you that they know people who are simply bad apples.

It seems to me that it is impossible to test this theory. There is absolutely no way to have two people raised in exactly the same way -- even birth order makes a huge difference in how we treat our kids. So perhaps the argument is not worth having.

If we cannot prove that environmental factors make a difference, and we cannot prove that people are born the way they will turn out, why argue about it?

Well, think about it this way, are there too many, or too few rules?

If we look at life one way, it is the rules that get in the way of our happiness and if we just could get back to nature, back to basics, life would be perfect.

From the other side, it is only the rules that corral us into being a workable society. What we actually need is better and stronger laws that force us to abandon our evil ways.

As you can guess, Hobbes' theory that we are all pretty incapable of rising above violence and need rules has always won the day. Witness the laws about seat belts and the taxes on smoking and alcohol.

I am honestly never sure which way to go with this. The Americans, it seems to me, fall more into a Rousseau camp. Although, it never pays to remind them that most of their political philosophy is based on the French.

Freedom of the individual is one of the most cherished institutions of the United States. Thus you should be free to own a gun, to drink yourself to death, not wear a motorcycle helmet and many other interesting things.

It is not anarchy; however, there are still speed limits and no smoking signs. There is still a sense that we need rules, but there is a sense that there is less that we should give up our freedoms for. There is certainly less trust that the institutions that make rules, be they police officers or government, are doing so for the common good.

So what do you think? Should you be free to drive a motorcycle without a helmet even though you are almost 100 per cent likely to be brain dead after an accident?

Should cigarette smoking cost almost nothing even though it causes some of the harshest and most expensive diseases our health system faces?

Do you trust everyone around you to make wise choices most of the time?

Or do you trust that the law will constrain them from doing what they naturally want to do?

There are tests all the time about this; remember a little over a year ago when they were doing a secretive survey to see what city was the most honest, and what city was the most helpful. Metro Moncton ranks pretty high when you consider how many lost wallets are turned in and how many strangers will stop to help you change a tire.

But is it because we are naturally nice or because our Maritime parents kept at us and taught us how to behave civilly?

The truth, as always, is probably somewhere in between.

To be open to the possibility that it is not black and white might be really helpful. Sometimes there are people we encounter who are who they are because of bad circumstances; sometimes there are people who are just born that way; but most often, it is a combination of everything that has brought them to this point.

Society is. There is no point in arguing against what has already happened as it is part of where we find ourselves. The real trick is learning to understand how it functions and why. The better handle we have on that the more capable we are of navigating the sometimes mysterious world we live in.

Religion believes we can all be better

RELIGION TODAY - Published Saturday July 4th, 2009

We are about as far away from Christmas as possible, so I thought it might be a good time to bring up "Holiday Trees."

Season's greetings, happy holidays and all the rest are touted as the best way to make the celebration of the winter solstice into a universal holiday for everyone. Fair enough; but are there also specific rights and rituals for individual religious practices that we need to honour?

Would we want to change the menorah candles into "candles of light"? Should we really have "Holiday Trees"?

I got thinking about this sort of thing this week because of a broader conversation in my head, the civic function of religious observances.

You see, I did a funeral last week. Most clergy of whatever faith do funerals on a constant basis. Many times we do funerals for people who have no religious connections of their own -- so we either get called in as the religious care providers for the supporters, or because there really is no "one" person who should do it, and we are next on the list.

So that is one side of the coin; since only some 20 per cent of the people out there go to church, 80 per cent have no church affiliation and all of a sudden need one. People expect to have a funeral.

I have no problem with this. The 'Rev' said the words at the OK Corral when the gunfighters were put in the ground, and they had never been to church either.

One of my roles as a clergy person is to perform a civic duty.

The thing is, it is getting harder. For example, who is a funeral for? In the real sense of what is going on, it is a service 'for' the survivors; be they friends, relatives, co-workers or neighbours. It is both a celebration of the life lived, and a formalized way to say goodbye.

It is also, in almost every case, a religious rite.

How do you balance these two things in today's society, when half of the people there may never have been to church, when a third of the people might be from another culture or religious background?

Should you?

A church is one of the few places that tries to appeal to at least five different "generations" of people, from net gen right through to builders, the people who actually gave birth to the baby boomers.

That in itself is an impossible task; tack on to that the idea that we must be the public keepers of religion in an increasingly anti-religious society and you are really making it difficult.

So to borrow a phrase, what would Jesus do?

Well, for one thing, believe it or not, Jesus never forced anyone to listen to him, and was not one for overt evangelism. When people came and asked him questions, he responded. When crowds gathered to listen to him talk, he preached. When people came and asked to be healed, he had compassion.

So there is thought one: when someone asks, be prepared to tell. The role of the religious person in society is to be able to answer religious questions.

Secondly, Jesus always challenged people to be better than they were acting. Religion is at its core a belief that we can all be better. So in every situation where it is possible, expect more from people. Not in a bitter, or confrontational way; perhaps it would be easier to say, expect the glass to be half full, and invite people to live into your expectations.

Last but certainly not least; Jesus always lived faithful to what he believed. This did not mean that he was a monk, or that he lived in a cave. He ate good food, he drank good wine, and he went to parties and travelled around talking to people. He took days off and had time alone. At the same time, he walked the walk. He was open, honest and understanding.

I think that to be a religious person in the modern world requires us to live in just this sort of way; and be willing to be who we are in a way that shows the best of what religion offers -- peace, love and hope.

Trying as hard as we can for positive change

SOCIAL STUDIES - Published Monday June 29th, 2009

Friedrich Nietzsche once said, "Mistrust those in whom the urge to punish is strong."

While driving this week I saw a car with two bumper stickers; one in French and one English, which said: "I do not trust Shawn Graham."

Instantly I thought of the flurry of activity around the switching of the cabinet and how huge the sigh of relief was that Kelly Lamrock was no longer in charge of the education portfolio.

I have always been involved in organizations that are trying to make a difference. In university it was Greenpeace and Amnesty International, later I worked for Peace Brigades, and on it went. In almost every case the return on investment has been dismally small.

What I mean to say is that no matter how hard you work for change, what you actually see change is slow, minimal, and long term. I liken it to changing the direction of a 100 car freight train by hanging off the back and leaning. It will make a difference, you just might not notice it as the train is going.

Politicians must necessarily be self-assured people.

To believe that they personally can make a difference and be the voice of thousands of people, some level of humility has to be left at the door. At the same time, it is a job that one could not possibly do for more than a year unless you believed in it.

Now, imagine for a moment that you invest all of your energy into something, that you sacrifice higher paying jobs, that you leave your family home alone most nights of the week, say, to try and make the educational system better.

Now, imagine that the response to this is almost entirely criticism and hatred.

I maintain that individual ministers, individual governments, individual countries, work within political systems that are very hard to change.

Almost universally when someone tries to colour outside the lines, by changing the health care system concretely like Obama, by revamping the educational system like Lamrock, people turn on you.

Don't get me wrong. I am literally quaking in my boots that my daughter has to go to school in two years. I wonder how to get her educated and not destroy her innate intelligence. I am pretty sure our educational system is off the rails.

But, back to the bumper sticker, "I do not trust, Shawn Graham, Kelly Lamrock, Stephen Harper," whoever you wish to place in that category; and why it is wrong.

Trust is a judgment on the personal morality of the individual. When we say it in regard to politics, it is a judgment on the morality of the motivation for the political action.

In almost every single case I can think of, I trust that the politician was doing what they believed to be the best policy for the most people.

This does not mean they were right. Sometimes they are blind to certain aspects of a decision, sometimes too many advisors stir up too much dust and cloud the issue, sometimes they rely on trusted officials who have separate beliefs.

Just think about this; when Bush signed an order to invade Iraq he trusted there were weapons of mass destruction; and thought it was the best and safest reaction.

The intelligence community thought that Iraq was causing problems and either believed there were weapons, or thought there could be some day and the right thing to do was attack.

Whether most of the reasons behind the attacks were fabricated or not, there is no reason to make a moral judgment against the people at the top levels of government for doing what they truly and wholeheartedly believed would save the most lives.

Turns out that their decisions were wrong; a lot of mine are too. That does not mean I cannot be trusted.

To base the entire personal worth of a politician on the outcome of decisions that they make, perhaps that they are forced into by circumstances, is wrong.

Of course, it happens every day. Too often we judge the worth of people on the wrong criteria. Look at the United States and their almost constant sex scandals. It would seem that every politician down there has an affair at one point in their lives. Almost instantly they are deemed morally unfit to be in office.

Are they really?

Does anyone making these judgments compare them to the achievements done while in office? Does anyone doubt that the stress and personal attacks, and family sacrifice lead one to have to make tough personal choices?

I am not saying that everyone who offers themselves for public office should have carte blanche on morality.

I am, however, suggesting that they might not need it if we could just learn to separate the person and what they are truly hoping for from the decisions that they have to make.

Despite what we would hope, in the last few decades there have really been very few changes to anything on the political front, and most of the changes that have been made have been for the better.

We fight the wrong battles. We make issues like taxation a defining characterization of individual politicians.

Anyone who wants to raise the GST is greedy, right?

Most of us could not hope to do any better at rationing money to shifting priorities, or maybe we could. . . if so, do we have the courage to run?

Someday my children will be old enough to not need as much of my time, and I will try on different hats to continue my quest to make the world a better place.

I know that I will be attacked for doing so; it is part of the price of admission.

Perhaps we all need to learn to be a little gentler and stop assuming the worst motivations.

Most of the people we ever meet are trying as hard as they can, politicians included.

Instant global communications constitute a revolution

SOCIAL STUDIES - Published Monday June 22nd, 2009

If you are not a cartoon character and you call yourself "Supreme Leader" you are already headed for trouble.

That is just one of the many comments about the Iran election protests which can be overheard right now on Twitter.

The New York Times, the Washington Post, the Huffington Post, The Business Review and the Globe and Mail, and the Times & Transcript have all had news articles in the last few days talking about the "revolution that is happening online."

By that, they do not mean that online things are revolutionary, they mean there is an actual revolution; and it can be seen through social networking.

The quick recap behind all this is that Iran has a governmental system that is different than ours, with a Supreme Leader who elects a 12-cleric Guardian Council, who oversees the Parliament. On June 12 the current President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, was re-elected with 66 per cent of the vote.

Almost immediately the opposition, headed by Mir-Hossein Mousavi, alleged that there had been vote tampering and that the election was not legal.

There have been almost constant rallies in Tehran since then, pro- and anti- the current government, and with it has come a lot of violence.

I might be getting a little cynical this week, but can you imagine this happening here?

I mean, no one expected Harper to win the last election, and yet. . .

Perhaps I have trouble imagining tens of thousands of us taking to the streets in protest. After all, only about 64 per cent of us even bother to vote; and out of that, there isn't even a clear majority.

What we have in Canada is more like a disagreement about which sibling should make the decisions this month; not a real politically active conflict.

Provincial and municipal elections are even worse. Few people vote in these and yet they affect us more.

We live in one of those few places where our personal opinion matters without the necessity of bloodshed and rebellion and yet we throw it away as if it did not matter.

Iran, on the other hand, is a place where voicing an opinion can get you killed.

Imagine what it would take to stand up and be counted in a world where doing so might mean instant and painful death.

Enter Web 2.0.

There has not been such protest in Iran since the 1979 Islamic revolution; and the protest has almost become a global movement, fought on and fuelled by the world wide web.

And it all started on Twitter.

Remember, last week I said that Twitter could change the world; well, it has proved to be an extremely effective way for activists to post rapid-fire updates on the situation on the ground in Iran.

Iranian Twitterers, many writing in English, posted photos of huge demonstrations and bloodied protesters throughout the weekend, detailing crackdowns on students at Tehran University and giving out proxy web addresses that let users bypass the Islamic Republic's censors.

By Monday evening, it had become such a movement that Twitter postponed maintenance scheduled for the wee hours of the morning, California time -- midday Tuesday in Iran.

The maintenance was rescheduled to be between 2-3 p.m. in California which happens to be 1:30 a.m. in Iran.

A couple of Twitter feeds have become virtual media offices for the supporters of Moussavi. One feed, mousavi1388 (1388 is the year in the Persian calendar), is filled with news of protests and exhortations to keep up the fight, in Persian and in English. It has more than 15,000 followers.

Mr. Moussavi's fan group on Facebook has swelled to well over 50,000 members, a significant increase since Election Day.

Now, in support of Iran, many of the users of Twitter, Facebook, and other networking sites have changed their icons to dark green, the colour of support for the people if Iran.

Here are two things that I see coming out of this; first of all, I knew nothing, or next to nothing, about the politics of Iran three days ago. I am someone who follows news, I knew who the president was, I knew that the U.S. seems to have a bad opinion of him, but after that, nothing.

Now I know so much more because of links provided by people both inside and outside of the country.

Not only that, but I know, albeit virtually, some Iranians; and I have to admit that they are not a unified, anti-world bunch of terrorists like they have been painted to be.

Secondly, I see a united front towards human rights. There are lawyers, artists, writers, actors, doctors, surveyors and everyone else, who have shown their support for these people and their freedom. They are from every country that I can imagine, and they all are trying, in their own small way, to make a difference.

Sure, it is token support, but it is also forming a community of people who care enough to get involved, perhaps in small ways, but it is a step in the right direction.

What you surely have here is international leverage that did not exist before. The American State Department even got involved asking Twitter not to shut down for maintenance.

The thing is, the way we communicate is getting even faster, and even more complex. At the same time, the power of communication is getting even simpler to understand.

The thing is, we have to start caring more and more about the information we receive. Other people are willing to die for what they believe, and that message in itself can be a powerful motivator to help us stand up and be counted.

Why are some things legal and others not?

SOCIAL STUDIES - Published Monday June 15th, 2009

Why are some things legal and others not?

Alcohol is legal, even promoted, while marijuana is illegal, for example. Alcohol does go back in recorded history a little longer. Apparently beer first came on the scene during the Neolithic period around 10,000 BC. Wine is first seen in Egypt around 4000 BC.

At the same time, Marijuana was first used "medicinally" in 4000 BC in China. Zorastrian and Hindu religious practices dating from 3,000 years ago liberally use marijuana; and the first European use seems to have been around 500 BC when the Scythians brought it north.

As recreational drugs they are probably about on a par, and they would probably cause an equal amount of strain on the health system as both destroy the body in some way.

So why is one legal and one illegal?

How about prostitution?

This has always seemed rather stilted to me. Think about what I am allowed by law to sell in terms of my own body. I can be a labourer and use my strength to make a profit. I can use my mind and fingers to type this column. I can volunteer for psychological and medical testing. I can cook for someone, or even become a taster. I can sell my sperm, or my eggs, or become a surrogate mother; I can even choose to leave my organs behind after I die. Heck I can get paid for taking off my clothes, but if I want to use any sexual skill I might possess it is illegal?

The point I am trying to make is that a lot of laws are as much cultural as they are legal. North Americans have a real problem on the whole with sex and so most of our swear words are sexual, and most of the "worst behaviour" we can imagine revolves around sex.

Europe, by contrast, has different hang-ups and so sexuality is not seen us such a terrible thing. Prostitution is legal or just ignored in a lot of places.

If you don't think that laws are influenced by culture, just look at slavery during the 1800s. It was totally legal almost everywhere. Not only legal, but the vast majority of people could not even fathom a world without slaves. It was only when culture began to change, first in England and then in North America, that slavery went out of fashion and then became illegal.

Although I very much believe that we would eliminate many of society's problems by legalizing prostitution and marijuana; for example, unnecessary court and prison time; secondly it would reduce violence; third it would give prostitutes legal rights they do not have right now: the main point of using them as an example was simply to say that our cultural norms decide what is legal and what is not when it comes to things that are based on "moral" understandings.

Not only that, but what is written down as a law and the importance we give to that law is based on our feelings more than on any quantifiable test.

For example, speeding in a subdivision when children are playing is really, really wrong. Speeding on a four lane highway, is really not so bad.

I bet any one of us could come up with other laws, or variations of laws that we feel really aren't "bad" to break.

And so we do not condemn people with outraged voices when they break laws we think are silly anyway.

There were a slew of philosophers in the Enlightenment who took this on as a hobby. What they eventually got to was that there must exist certain axial laws or understandings that are primal. There must be laws which just have to be true. Some believed there were, and some argued that it all comes down to practicality. For example, it is easier to stay alive if you do not kill other people. Once you start killing, someone is going to come after you, so it is a practical decision not to kill.

In the end, rules are a socially agreed to contract that are based on the idea that we have to keep our group moving together with as little friction as possible. We all somehow agree to certain rules in order to make it work better. Do not steal helps us to keep a handle on ownership. Do not kill helps us to guarantee our old age. Do not walk on the grass makes landscaping easier. Keep your dog tied up means less dog bites or destroyed gardens.

The question is, do we blindly follow the laws of the past, or do we consciously rewrite them to fit our current societal norms?

This is no abstract question. We are in a period of great change and uncertainty. For the most part people seem to be trying to fix the world's current problems by re-invigorating the rules and laws already in place. No one seems to be stepping outside and taking a broader view and asking, if it brought us to this place of war, environmental destruction, and economic ruin; might there not be a better way to live?

I hope someone starts coming up with the answers. Perhaps if we all work together we can bring about a cultural shift in the way we see the world and everything will be all right.

Euripides, a Greek playwright in the 400s BC wrote something we need to adopt as our slogan: --Question everything. Learn something. Answer nothing."