Technology and literature are changing

SOCIAL STUDIES - Published Monday March 30th, 2009

The other day a friend and I went to see the movie "The Watchmen."

I am a bit of a superhero geek; always have been. I wanted to grow up to be Wolverine for most of my life. Perhaps I still do. It was interesting because we met for a drink before hand and the waiter asked us what we were going to see. When we replied "Watchmen" he gave us this blank stare that seemed to last a couple of minutes until finally something broke the spell and he said "Oh yeah, great movie!"

It was strange; until we saw the movie.

My friend turned to me after and said, "Now I understand the blank stare." After a few moments we came up with the answer for when people asked us how it was: "If you are into the apocalypse, dismemberment, and practically constant full frontal male nudity, it was great!"

In truth, however, it was a fabulous movie. The fact that it was science fiction, as I have argued before, allowed the writers to make a graphic novel about American foreign policy, manifest destiny, aging, love, finding your life purpose, and the depths of society in a way that normally does not register.

Now, I went home from the movie and began to read the graphic novel. I have read comic books all my life, mostly as escapist fun; but have never read a graphic novel. For those who don't know, that means it is an adult oriented, up scaled, comic book.

I was brought up in a bit of an elitist way and I always thought that literature was literature and trash was trash. In fact, I have made some snide comments to Brian Cormier for taking American Idol seriously enough to write about it. It is half in jest, but seriously, I have never allowed myself to watch any reality television for the same reason I have never read a graphic novel; there are correct and meaningful ways to do art, and there are cheap and degrading ways. Or so I have always been led to believe.

I think I owe the world an apology.

Having read the Watchmen, which, in case you have not, has a better ending than the movie although the movie is remarkably faithful to the book; I can honestly say it is one of the best novels I have read; and I have read a lot.

It is sort of like rock music. My father thought Billy Joel was the end all and be all of musical genius. Billy could rock out the sentiments that went on in his baby boomer mind in an emotionally jarring way; sort of the way Third Eye Blind does for me.

My dad would hate Third Eye Blind. His father hated Billy Joel. Music adapts, it grows, it is reinterpreted. As are novels, as are films, as are paintings.

The thing is that if we ignore the new medium and its power over the current generation, we do so at our peril.

Imagine this, for example. Would Vietnam have engendered the protests it did were it not for the television broadcasting the war into the living rooms of the United States?

The way we interact with the world and with each other is constantly changing, it is evolving and at the core of that evolution has always been the way we tell stories.

Ashton Kutcher, of all people, recently wrote this comment on Twitter: "I strongly believe that social media, search, and Web sourcing is a hell of a lot more valuable these days than the Dewey decimal system."

He later replied, "It's not an underestimation of the value of literature it's an adaptation of the way we source it. Educational Darwinism."

Twitter, for those who don't know, is a way to communicate random bits of information. I have a program called tweetdeck on my computer, and I have a list of contacts who I think are "interesting" for one reason or another. Whenever they think to type 140 characters about life, it shows up on my screen; which is how I got the above quote from a famous movie star.

I have a mixed bag of folks -- actors, writers, comic book illustrators for Marvel, philosophers, the CEO of Ecko clothing. By being able to watch their random thought process my mind is enlightened, or amused, or changed.

Then I copy the stuff onto my Facebook page or print it in a newspaper, text it to someone on my phone, or write it on my blog.

Communication is now far more instant, far more personal, and far more universal than it has ever been. And like Mr. Kutcher says, it is changing everything.

Are we going to adapt, or are we going to go the way of the Dodo and Dinosaur before them? That is the real issue.

That, and who watches the watchmen. . .

Just for the sake of saying it out loud, an entire comic book premised on a quote from a Roman poet who wrote at the end of the first century, in his work The Satires, "Quis custodiet ipsos custodes".

Who says literature is dead?

We should be celebrating our differences

SOCIAL STUDIES - Published Monday March 23rd, 2009

In order to solve the problems of society we have to have individual change of hearts.

Canadians tend to believe that statement wholeheartedly. Trust me, I know we are not alone in this, but we believe in the old pull yourself up by the bootstraps, solve your own problems, type of attitude.

So, if someone is racist, we think that if we can just convince them to change, or have them meet someone of another race they respect, that will be the end of it. You can add any "ist" to that; sexist, classist, religionist; anyone who has a problem with other people based on stereotypes is thought to be individually deviant and in need of change.

A second way that we confront the bad behaviour of our society is by individually choosing not to be these things. I am not sexist or racist or elitist, or anything that I can think of; so clearly there is no problem.

In case I am explaining this wrong let me try another angle. We Canadians seem to have convinced ourselves that we are nice. This is a friendly, open, accepting country and there are just a few bad apples who act badly, right? We are clearly not like that!

I would like to argue that we use the above arguments as a defence mechanism to make sure we never have to confront the reality of what we are like as a society. We believe in individualism so much, and we believe in equality so much, or we say we do, and so we never have to really change.

The truth is that the problem is not individuals. The problem is culture, it is society, it is norms, and it is historical.

I am a modern, somewhat metrosexual, mostly liberal, mostly equal person. I try never to judge or to base judgments on the things I see. However, I instinctively do. When I see the way a person is dressed, or the car they drive, I make snap judgments. When I am talking to a woman I expect certain behaviours from them and I prejudge whether they are going to like World of Warcraft, or Star Trek, or that sort of thing.

I am sure most of us could add a lot to this list. Homosexuals are overly emotional. People of other races are culturally totally different; which we then create sub racist categories for, Arabs are violent for example. Women can't drive. Try it, I bet you can name your own 10 within a minute.

The thing is, no matter how hard I try to escape this, I cannot. I try to be open and up front and not fall into stereotypical thinking; but then I see an ad for something and realize that women are there as sexual eye candy. Or I see a sitcom and realize that homosexuals are all funny and emotional. Or watch a movie and see that all people of colour are poor.

What bombards us every day from the world around us destroys our ability to see people for who they really are, changing me as an individual is a cop out --- I need to work at changing societal norms. I need to fight against the way this is all influencing my daughters. I need to admit my own racist, sexist, classist, tendencies and work from there.

The other side of this would be to get rid of our post liberal understanding of equality. It just no longer serves us well. I don't want to go back to feelings of superior and inferior, but we need to return to a sense of true difference.

Men and women are different. Our minds work differently, our imaginations work differently, our emotions work differently, and our bodies work differently.

As long as we ignore this truth, we are actually making sexism worse. What we should be doing is admitting the differences and saying that in almost every way that we equate with status, those differences do not matter. Women CEOs bring something to a company that no male CEO can. And by forcing either one of them to abandon their sexual identity to become like the other, we are making the world worse.

This is true of every division we witness. And, it is true of divisions between even the most homogenous of groups. Ever had someone of Scot descent and Irish descent in the same room? How about French and English? And yet, these four peoples are as close together as Ontarians and people living in New Brunswick. There should be practically no difference, and yet . . .

The differences are the things we should be celebrating. In a perfect world we would allow people who are from different cultures, from different religions, from different languages, from different ages, men and women, straight and gay, rich and poor to influence each other and interact with each other in so many ways that we come to realize that we need all of them in order to make the world what it should be.

As long as we think that it is OK just to try to be nicer; as long as we can find someone to make the fall person and say it is because of their racism; as long as we fail to admit we all have a problem; we are not going to get anywhere.

Setting aside differences show maturity as a species

RELIGION TODAY - Published Saturday March 21st, 2009

I have an acquaintance whose father was an Orangeman.

See, I am writing this column on St. Patrick's Day and although you will not read it until Saturday, I thought it made an interesting jump off point.

For those who do not know, William III lived in the last part of the 17th century and early 18th. He was the Prince of Orange by birth.

From 1672 onwards, he governed as Stadtholder William III of Orange over Holland, Zeeland, Utrecht, Guelders, and Overijssel of the Dutch Republic.

In addition, from 1689 onwards, he reigned as King William III over England and Ireland and as King William II over Scotland. He is informally known in Northern Ireland and Scotland as "King Billy."

A Protestant, William participated in several wars against the powerful Catholic King Louis XIV of France in coalition with Protestant and Catholic powers in Europe. Many Protestants heralded him as a champion of their faith.

About 50 years later, the Orange Institution was formed in Northern Ireland, and then Scotland, and then most commonwealth countries like ours. It is also called the Orange Order, and the Orange Lodge. The hallmark of this organization is that they are fiercely Protestant.

Really, if you read the history, this Order was formed on the back of sectarian violence in Northern Ireland. Unfortunately, that conflict spilled over and, wherever it touched down, the Orange Lodge seemed to promote anti-Catholic sentiment.

It came to Canada in 1830 and Orangemen were active in the war of 1812 as well as the Louis Real Rebellion.

Anyway, from stories I have been told, we were not immune to the violence and often St. Patrick's Day was a time of rioting, hatred, and perhaps even murder.

Now, isn't it funny that almost no one today even associates St. Patrick's Day with Catholicism?

Sure, it is Irish, he was after all the patron saint of Ireland, but we are all Irish on St. Patrick's right?

Or at least we are all willing to pretend. Any reason to celebrate life is a good one; and any reason to eat corned beef, in my opinion, is a good one.

There are two conclusions to this. The first is that things change. Once upon a time Catholics and Protestants would have nothing to do with each other and now we participate in a lot of things together.

Once upon a time religious differences seemed to be the order of the day and more and more we are realizing that we all have an incredible amount of things in common.

I don't think this is a small-scale fad. I think it is development towards maturity as a species. We are coming to realize that some of the things that divide us are not so big as we might at first have thought. We are becoming capable of more empathy; perhaps because the margins of our world are getting closer. Nothing is as homogenous as it once was; most of us now know and regularly interact with people of different faiths, different races, different sexual orientation, different class, different languages and many other differences.

It is too bad that there are some areas where we find it harder; especially where the cultural divide is a little larger.

So for this month, I wish you all a Happy St David's, St. Piran's Day, and St. Patrick's Day (Christian). Happy Mawlid-al-Nabi -- (Muslim), which commemorates the birth of the Prophet Mohammed in about 570 C.E.; Happy Purim (Jewish), celebrating the deliverance of the Jewish people in the days of Queen Esther of Persia; Happy Magha Puja (Buddhist), which commemorates the occasion when the Buddha predicted his death and recited a summary of his teachings and a code of discipline; Happy Holi (Hindu) which begins with a bonfire to celebrate the death of Holika, the demon of winter; Happy Hola Mahalla (Sikh), the Festival of martial arts. And finally, Happy Nanakshahi (Sikh), the New Year which takes its name from Guru Nanak, who founded Sikhism.

Do we have a society that depends on war?

SOCIAL STUDIES - Published Monday March 16th, 2009

Have you seen the billboards around town with the fancy new military helicopter on them?

The message touts the benefits of defence contracts to the economy of New Brunswick; to the tune of some $130 million, and growing.

At the risk of biting the hand that feeds us, I am going to complain about this. Not that we are getting jobs, but how we are getting paid.

The Canadian Forces cost us about $19 billion a year. The Conservative government's first budget after taking office in 2006 increased defence spending by $5.3 billion over five years. The 2008 budget further committed to automatic annual increases in defence spending of two per cent, ensuring predictable funding and enabling long-term strategic planning.

It is actually hard to get a concrete figure on defence spending and contracts; as it is spread out quite a bit. Even Tim Horton's operates in Kandahar. We know, however, that hundreds of millions are channelled into companies that make anything from plastics to fighter jets.

Although we only spend a little over one per cent of our GDP on defence, by contrast Ottawa's current foreign-aid level is about 0.28 per cent of GDP.

These numbers sound miniscule, but it is important to keep them in mind, especially the fact that military spending is four times the spending on development work. That alone tells us about foreign policy. The stats are even more skewed in other countries. In truth, our primary method of relating to each other is through the military, not through any peaceful sort of initiative.

Of course, the United States spends the most on its military and defence of any individual country. It staggers the mind to think how much money is spent on current military operations every single day. When I last looked the cost of the war in Iraq alone for the U.S. was listed at over $604 billion dollars, and rising at $341 million per day.

And just for laughs consider that the U.S. Government Accountability Office had examined 95 major defence projects in 2008 and found cost overruns totalling $295 billion.

The U.S. military is the single largest consumer of energy in the world. It burns more jet fuel and diesel gas, for example, then the entire country of Nigeria.

The Roman statesman Cicero once said, "Nervos belli, pecuniam infinitam." ("Endless money forms the sinews of war.")

Our economy is dependent on us being at war. Way back when George Orwell predicted a world in his novel 1984 that actually manufactured war to keep the world running smoothly. I wonder if we are already there.

Just War Theory says that there must be a direct proportional response to any sort of provocation. Simply put this is a complex form of an eye for an eye. So 2,974 people died in the attacks on 9/11. This prompted the so-called war on terror which led to the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. The stats on how many Iraqi and Afghani citizens have been violently killed as a response come in at a low figure of 180,000 and a high, as researched by the English Medical Journal Lancet, of over a million.

The reasons given for the invasions were firstly to capture Osama Bin Laden; which has not been accomplished, and secondly to wipe out the weapons of mass destruction, which never existed in the first place.

So we have military conflict based on non-existent reasons, in a non-proportional way, costing us our livelihood.

To what end?

I know most people have heard conspiracy theories galore about all of this. Maybe there is a secret cadre ruling the world, who are fighting over God knows what. Or perhaps this is all about oil and nothing else.

Maybe the war is meant to distract us from what is really going on somewhere else, sort of a sleight of hand.

I am not an actual conspiracy theory sort of guy, most of the time, so I want to suggest that the reason is as obvious as the billboard.

That $130 million is a good chunk of change to spend on companies in New Brunswick. And we are by no means alone in this. I wonder if there is a single company in the Western hemisphere that does not somehow profit from military spending. Oil companies certainly do. As do food providers, construction companies, trucking and transport, as well as infrastructure.

The entire Interstate system in the United States can partly be blamed on needing an internal military supply route in case of invasion.

Without wars, most of us would have nothing to do. That is perhaps overstated, but also very real, and very frightening to those who depend on all this spending.

Do we have any chance of ending conflict? Certainly not until we solve the problem of economic dependencies, and really, what incentive is there to do that?

None of us want the economy to get worse, so, let's make sure the fighting does.

Challenging your concept of reality. . .

SOCIAL STUDIES - Published Monday March 9th, 2009

Did you know that according to the legal realities of the media world if you use the word "probably" you are probably safe even if what you say is not totally, shall we say, honest.

But I want you to read the article. So I need a sensational lead. That is the problem with trying to get thoughts across on paper -- the first rule is to get the reader hooked. If you cannot do that, then they will not read very far. People skim these days. What you do to compensate is pump up the emotionality of the story to get readers' interest, and then you work in the information that they need to know.

This is not morally wrong, and it is not the same as lying. Instead, it is countering the idea that "literal" is the same word as "true." All written articles, even news stories, are just that, stories; in which facts such as who, what, where, when and why are woven together with narrative to keep the reader engaged.

On the other hand, when I write the sensational lead I believe it to be true.

There are scientists who already feel we have done enough damage to the environment that there is no turning back, that we have reached a tipping point from which the natural world will not recover.

To be fair, others believe that there is still time to change, and have set a cap on how much global warming would be possible before that tipping point; two degrees.

That might seem like an incredibly small difference. If the world was two degrees warmer would that make any difference? Well, yes, imagine what happens to you when your body gets two degrees warmer.

On an environmental scale, bugs would live longer or not hibernate or die at all; many food sources like rice, wheat and corn might not flower or pollinate; disease might mutate and thrive as well.

The point is everyone has a unique view to get across and what you as a consumer of knowledge have to do is sift through my views, challenge them, absorb them, in a way that helps you determine your own views. I write to make people think.

Because even if we can go so far as to agree on a premise, such as the world needs to change to protect the environment; then there are infinite possibilities for what to do next. And thousands of ways we could disagree. The four major camps within the green movement, for example, are these:

"¢ Bright Green, which to put it simply means that you believe that sustainable innovation is the best path to lasting prosperity, and that any vision of sustainability which does not offer prosperity and well-being will not succeed.

"¢ Light Green environmentalists tend to emphasize lifestyle and behavioural change as key to sustainability. We are talking about change on the individual level. The thinking is that if you can get people to take small and relatively easy steps like new light bulbs and cloth shopping bags. The hope is that they can begin to make a difference while also heading towards larger changes.

"¢ Dark greens, in contrast, tend to emphasize the need to pull back from consumerism (sometimes even from industrialization itself) and emphasize local solutions, short supply chains and direct connection to the land. They strongly advocate change at the community level. Think, the 100 mile diet, as a quick example.

"¢ Grays, of course, are those who deny there's a need to do anything at all, whether as individuals or as a society. They range from the most blatantly dishonest and self-interested people like climate scientists who take oil company money to dispute the clear scientific consensus on climate change, to principled, smart people who lack the facts or whose world views are just too set in an earlier way of thinking to understand the present-day realities.

You see my point? Even within the environmentalist movement there are broad divisions. Obviously, you can't divide people's thoughts neatly and simply into categories. In fact, a good case can be made for ideas which float back and forth between the categories.

I suspect that almost anyone who thinks seriously about the big planetary problems we face tends to pick and choose various ideas from all three schools of green thought and blend them together.

My real point, however, is to ask the question, "Who are you going to listen to?" and "How are you going to listen?"

It is unfortunate that newspapers are getting less and less of the market share for information propagation. I say this because it is a medium where different versions of ideas are presented at the same time with the understanding that it is up to reader to weave a position from disparate viewpoints.

Far too many people want to be told "facts" and not be bothered thinking them through.

It is incredible how much broader our own understanding can be through reading opinion.

I offer you one more example. Fact: The United Nations has issued an arrest warrant for Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir through the International Criminal Court (ICC).

Now if you look, as a friend of mine pointed out, at the New York Times paper for March 3 you will find two guest opinion columns, one from Archbishop Desmond Tutu arguing for the arrest warrant; and one from Franklin Graham (Billy Graham's son) arguing against the arrest warrant.

If you read all three, two of which are contrarian opinions as opposed to factual reporting; you will begin to have a clearer understanding of the issues at play.

I promise to keep my sensationalism within the bounds of reasonable fact. But I implore you, the reader, to delve deeper into the world you find before you.

Don't settle for one-sided views of reality.

And recognize that what I am doing is arguing from the heart for a position in as black and white a way as I can to challenge your concept of reality.

We should expose our shame, not hide it

SOCIAL STUDIES - Published Monday February 23rd, 2009

The battle for the Plains of Abraham has been called off.

Well, okay, the re-enactment of that battle has been scrubbed.

It makes me think about guilt; about our ability to face the things in our past that have caused us pain.

We all have them as individuals. We come from abusive families, we have a history of abuse, we pulled the fire alarm for kicks one February night . . . . Whatever the skeletons in our closet, we are fairly reluctant to pull them out and exorcise them. Which any psychologist would tell you is unhealthy.

Part of it, of course, is that we are comfortable with the illusion. Other people have problems but we do not. As long as everything remains calm, and beneath the surface, it will be all right. There is the whole Scottish stoicism, British stiff upper lip type of behaviour which I am sure most cultures have in spades, which does not help either.

All of this explains why we take so many pharmaceuticals for so many psychological reasons. Schizophrenia and depression, social anxiety disorder and addiction, fatigue and insomnia are all the growth industries for all industrialized nation's medical profession.

I would like to argue that it is because we do not re-enact the battle between the French and English which overturned the first majority government of our fair colony.

Look at it this way: in the United States almost no one has any idea that any soldiers have died in the wars in Iraq or Afghanistan. Okay, that might be a bit of an overstatement -- but it is certainly not publicized, and the death toll is not in the papers. Instead, we have ludicrous statements about winning unwinnable wars.

Every single foreigner who has ever sent troops into Afghanistan will tell you -- they will wear you down. Every single battle fought over Middle Eastern nations by forces from outside has been a complete disaster from the Crusades on. I think the last person who could legitimately claim to have conquered anyone over there was Alexander.

And yet; even though it is pretty easy to think back to the Russians pulling out en masse; or how the United States has not actually completed a ground incursion since the Second World War; leaving divided and broken countries like Korea, Vietnam, Cuba and Panama in their wake; we still think everything is fine.

Bread and Circuses. That was what they called it back in Nero's day. Keep the Romans from remembering that they had been at war for generations, often with each other, by distracting them with free food and violent entertainment. It served the same purpose, it glossed over any semblance of memory.

We now watch more reality television than anything else. How does Dancing with the Stars make you a better person? It does make you forget, for at least one hour, pretty much everything. And that is the point. You can even get through a whole day of drudgery by keeping the single thought that Survivor is on tonight in your mind to compensate for all your pain.

And because of it, we are not whole, we are not healthy, and we are not living life fully.

What can be said of the individual can be applied to the country.

Imagine for a second that you are an American. Did you know that more Americans were killed during the civil war between the North and South than any other of their wars? Did you know that it pitted father against son, brother against brother and sister against sister? Do you know how many people lived after having their legs torn off by cannon fire?

But almost every weekend some group of hundreds of people is re-enacting some famous battle between the north and the south for all to see. It is actually a fairly healthy way for them to deal with the most violent episode of their past.

But don't give them too much credit, they bury almost every other part of their nefarious history just like the rest of us.

The French and English in Canada have been having this Hatfield and McCoy sort of feud ever since that famous Plains battle. I imagine part of the reason is that we have never really dealt with the fact of how terrible we have been to each other over the ensuing years.

With some just cause, of course, our country is actually founded on the backs of two warring nations. But we never acknowledge it. We never actually sit down and say, yes -- there is a history of violence between us; now, what do we have to do to exorcise those demons?

Shame leads to depression. It is as simple as that. Part of the problem for us as a country is that we are depressed. Think about it -- we are always negative about ourselves; we find it hard to get motivated to do anything, including electing someone to run our country; we are riddled with self doubt about every major decision from gay marriage to economics; we snap at each other for no good reason. All hallmarks of a depressive episode.

Sigmund Freud once said that those who do not remember their history are doomed to repeat it. We can all buy into that, and have probably said something similar about our families, or ourselves, but what if it applies to the nation as well?

Karl Marx put it another way, "the reformation of consciousness lies solely in the awakening of the world . . . from its dreams about itself."

I wonder, if we turned off the television and went and stood outside of Quebec City, if we read the story, heard the speeches, and watched the battle, would we not somehow reclaim a part of who we are? Would we not then be able to actually reach across the divide we have created and start to heal? I wonder?