Sunday, May 31, 2009

Pentecost breaks through artificial barriers

RELIGION TODAY - Published Saturday May 30th, 2009

Last year I wrote an article on Pentecost in which I transferred the scene to an outdoor café here in Moncton.

To refresh your memory, here is a central paragraph from that article:

'A fair chunk of time after the believers had last heard a message from God they were having coffee together at Timothy's. It was a beautiful day and they were sitting out on the street side café.

Suddenly, inspired by what could only be called a spirit of truth, they began to talk about their faith to each other.

Now it happened that there were people from all kinds of faiths and all varieties of Christianity living in Moncton and as the people moved along the sidewalk and overheard this heated conversation each of them recognized something tugging at their own hearts.

Whether they were Baptist or Jewish, Roman Catholic or Islamic, Presbyterian or Buddhist, United Church, Wesleyan or Baha'i, each of them heard this small band of believers talking about what they themselves believed.

And it shocked them.

'What if,' they ended up saying to each other, 'what if God is bigger than we thought? What if God speaks to all these other people too and we are not as different as we always thought?'

Believe it or not, this one paragraph stirred up quite a few responses.

So here we are one year later and the Festival of Pentecost is rolling around again.

Perhaps some background is in order.

According to legend, 50 days after Moses led the people out of captivity in Egypt God dictated a set of rules for the community which became known as the Ten Commandments.

Historically and symbolically, this was related to the Jewish harvest festival of Shavuot. It was a celebration of thanksgiving for the guidelines that united the community of followers.

Now, in an equivalent story, 50 days after the events of Easter, the Holy Spirit comes to the disciples who were gathered in Jerusalem and gives them words to say -- in every known language -- that would define what it means to be a Christian.

Moses says, I will not always be with you, but don't forget the rules that bind us together.

Jesus says, I will not always be with you, but don't forget the philosophy that binds us together.

There is another historical way this fits into the theology of the church.

Thousands of years before any of this happened, so the story goes, everyone spoke one language.

They decided to build a tower to show how great they were, that they could do anything.

And it was quite the tower.

In fact, it got God's attention (or perhaps the attention of the gods, go look it up, there is a lot of dialogue between different heavenly beings that is curious in the book of Genesis).

God decided that we should not be that powerful, so 'confounded' our language, making it impossible for us to understand each other or work together in any meaningful way.

But now, eons later, The Holy Spirit reverses this, by making it possible for everyone and anyone to understand Jesus's message on that first festival of Pentecost.

Just so you know, Jesus made it really simple: Love everyone. And yes, that includes loving yourself.

I think that is what always riles everybody up.

Pentecost really is about breaking through the artificial barriers we put in place that keep us thinking we are 'better than them.'

When you retell the story in any given context, we see people who we just don't want to believe we are supposed to love.

In your own family it means loving crazy Uncle Harry and that cousin twice removed who looks kinda creepy.

At your workplace it means loving the gal who can't stop complaining about everything and the person who refuses to stop eating garlic.

On your street it includes the dog that won't stop barking and the neighbour who refuses to mow his or her lawn.

And in the world at large it means everybody; everybody, every race, colour and creed; every religion, philosophy and stigma.

As long as we refuse to follow this simple teaching, the spirit is not aflame within us. It is as simple as that.

Tuesday, May 26, 2009

Ted is one of Internet's best kept secrets

SOCIAL STUDIES - Published Monday May 25th, 2009

One of the best kept secrets of the internet is Ted.

TED stands for Technology, Entertainment, and Design.

Way back in 1984 it started out as a conference bringing together people from those three worlds. Since then its scope has become ever broader. What happens is that the annual conference brings together the world's most fascinating thinkers and doers, who are challenged to give the talk of their lives in 18 minutes.

Those talks are recorded and made available free on the internet. It is even easy to remember, www.ted.com. I have watched an extreme sports fanatic talk about jumping off buildings, I have seen artists who are recreating the genre, I have listened to philosophers explain human nature. It is fascinating beyond belief.

Some of it is also so science fiction like that it makes you realize that none of us truly understand what the world is really like.

For example, today I watched a presentation by a man named Jonathan Harris that a friend of mine sent me the link to. Jonathan is a Brooklyn-based artist who uses the internet to create artistic representations of the feelings of its occupants.

In essence he has created a program which scans every single blog entry in the world looking for the word "feel". When it finds the word, it 'captures' the sentence; copies it, associates any photo that was posted with it, and compiles it.

Then there is a beautiful coloured representation with thousands of little dots on the screen. Each dot has a different colour for the type of emotion. For example, let's say all anger is red. The ball is larger or smaller depending on what the computer program judges to be the intensity of the emotion. Each bouncing ball is attributed a sex, a location, a time, and even the current weather all based on the person who wrote the blog.

Now for the amazing part; go log on to the site: wefeelfine.org and launch the program. You can watch and compile statistics about the world's emotions right now. You can see what pictures people are posting of themselves on blogs. You can look at a map and see where people who are "feeling" are in the world.

You can also see how today's feelings rank with normal. For example, when I checked during writing, people in the world were feeling "younger" at 19 times the normal level today. Of course, it is a nice day throughout much of the world.

On the one hand, this is incredibly cool; for many reasons; ranging from voyeuristic to scientific. What if you are feeling blue, all you have to do is ask it for others and you get a list of everyone who feels blue and you can read what they have written. I guarantee the reason we feel blue is because we feel like no one else feels like this.

Have you ever wondered what people really feel like when it is raining? Well, now we have a statistical and empirical tool to actually check. Or how about whether he weather affects women more than men? We can check whether people in Africa, Europe, Asia, or South or North America are happier.

It is astounding.

Of course, there is also a scary element to this to those of us who do not always think about how far what we say goes. It should serve as a warning that whenever a word leaves your mouth; either verbally or in print, there is no way to take it back.

This is especially true of what you publish to the Internet. Not only is it permanent; but literally anyone anywhere could access it. Be careful kiddies.

However, I still think the more emotions we can have out there the better.

Someone has described what Jonathan is doing as actually giving a soul to the Internet. Perhaps that is true, it certainly captures the emotions in a way we never would have thought of or believed. Now we have a global way to resonate with the people who use this medium; a sense of shared emotions, concerns, problems, triumphs and troubles that could help unite us.

How come it is so easy to write what you feel on a blog and not tell the person sitting next to you?

I swear we need to start talking more about emotions. My back hurts, I pulled something. I have a cold on what is arguably the nicest day yet this year. "I feel fine" seems like such an incomplete answer.

Especially when the wefeelfine web site lists literally thousands of ways to feel: from abandoned to zonked and everything in between. Imagine how much better our interpersonal relationships would be if we learned this language.

Are you happy? What if we responded, "No, not happy, I guess I feel fatalistic; like this is just how it is going to be forever?" Would that not open up a whole new kettle of fish, so to speak?

I truly think we sweep too many emotions under the rug, we fail to realize how much others have to guess about us; and how that means they make assumptions about us.

So let's start a worldwide revolution -- the next time someone asks you how you feel; do not say "fine." Then next time someone asks you how things are, do not say "good." There are a thousand possible answers and the more truthful we can be, the better we all are.

Wednesday, May 20, 2009

We're Maritimers . . . there is no 'down' for us!

SOCIAL STUDIES - Published Monday May 18th, 2009

I am still a little amazed at the number of people I see driving around in new cars.

Not just any new cars; Dodge Challengers which run around $45,000, or even Dodge Calibers, a cheaper alternative, but still, a new car. There are a ton of Mustangs on the road these days; which start at $24,000. And there are Porsches, BMWs, and Infinities all over the place.

About a year ago I wrote in a column that I could not believe how many high end cars there are in Moncton. Well, this is different, I am not really complaining, since they are nice to look at, but I cannot believe how many new high end cars, or low end cars, people are driving this spring.

This is the worst economic crisis the world has faced since the 1930s, right?

Every store in Moncton is packed though, from Terra Verde to Wal-Mart. Everyone here is driving a new car. Reservations are required almost every night at our restaurants; and there seem to be just as many people sucking back their no-fat, no-whip, double caffeine, macchiato if you ask me.

The hotels are full this weekend, and apparently already full for concert weekends where they are charging over $250 for a standard room in every bed in town. So people are willing to fork out over $100 for tickets, $500 for two night's rooms, and food and alcohol on top of that; probably 60,000 people at that.

Last week I spent a few days in Halifax and the restaurants there seemed as full as the hotels. Everyone was lined up at the coffee shops, and Spring Garden Road was packed with sun seeking shoppers, most of whom were carrying lots of purchases in shiny coloured bags.

Why is it that every single person I know to the west and south of us is scared senseless that they will be living in their car and eating from dumpsters next week when we are living better now than we did last year?

I have a theory.

There is no down for us.

It is as simple as that. Life in the Maritimes is already and always has been far more practical and frugal than the rest of North America. We have been living through decades, maybe centuries, of economic hardship and doing it just fine thank you very much.

Think about it, there are not 1,000 extra houses in Moncton. There are very few jobs that are just "make work projects." For the most part we tend to buy one luxury item after thinking about it for a very long time. I bought a laptop after wanting one for five years, for example. I will buy a brand new LCD television when my serviceable old fashioned one dies. Of course, I pray for lightning to strike that one power cord every time it rains.

I believe there are lots of people here who are adversely affected. I know there must be some of us who are losing jobs. I swear groceries cost exactly double what they did this time last year and that cannot be good for anyone who wants actual vegetables, meat, or milk.

What we do not have, is any sense of fear. We have all been here and done that. Mills have been closed, mines shut down, fisheries terminated, schools have been closed, towns abandoned, military bases closed, trains re-routed, you get the picture.

I left the Maritimes in the 1980s on purpose, trying to find my way out into the big bad world. In many ways, I never felt a part of any of the other places I found myself, and eventually conspired to come back home.

Part of that was the attitude I found in other places. Sometimes I encountered people who seemed to think they were entitled to the better life. Sometimes I found people who were always seeming to say "woe is me" and in either case it rang hollow in Maritime ears.

We have always been the type of people who think we have to work for what we get, and deserve only what we have earned. This is also the type of place where most people say, "well, complaining isn't going to help, so let's just get back at it then."

Okay, I am waxing romantic. I have heard my fair share of complaints about things, and I have also known people who seem spoiled. But I am talking about general mindset. I am speaking of a culture which has always worked from the bottom up.

We know how to take care of one another, we formed co-ops and credit unions first, we have always had extended family support, and we always knew each other's business.

Now, are we in for more trouble ahead? Perhaps; but I think there is no place I would rather weather an economic storm than here. I say this for all of the above reasons, but mostly because I trust the people around me to do the right thing, and make it work.

I am still not sure how everyone affords the luxury cars; believe me I wish I knew. I have decided I want a Dodge Journey for family trips, A Dodge Caliber for commutes, a Dodge Challenger for sunny weekend days, and a Harley Nightster for me.

Of course, I am a Maritimer; and so I know I have to be more practical; maybe just the Nightster.

Tuesday, May 12, 2009

Society and individuals often lacking in empathy

SOCIAL STUDIES - Published Monday May 11th, 2009

Imagine for a second that there is this low throb in the back of your mind. What if you could continually hear the same note being played without it going away for the rest of your life? How about sticking a pin in the back of your hand and leaving it there forever?

The other day I had a fabulous conversation with a local author, Ruth Maclean, about chronic pain. Following a gall bladder surgery 20 years ago she has suffered from chronic pain that occasionally leaves her flat on her back.

But that is not the worst thing; the worst thing is that there is never a moment without pain.

Chronic pain is not well understood by the average person. There is a stigma attached to it. We seem to all have this ingrained response which says we should toughen up and just get on with life.

I wonder? If something like I described in the opening paragraph was actually true for you, how well could you get on with your life?

Before I continue I should point out that depression is a similar problem in the way it is treated by society. Everyone tells you that you should be stronger than this, that it is all in your head, and you just need to toughen up, have a stiff upper lip, and get on with it.

Either that or you are imagining things. It is never as bad as you think it is, right? That is what we all hear all the time even if we have a cold. And in that case, it is going to be all over in a week.

One problem Ruth pointed out is that almost all of the time the people giving you advice on how to live with your chronic pain have never experienced it. "Imagine," Ruth told me, "learning to drive from someone who had never even sat in a car."

The real problem is not even the pain; it is the destruction of self image, the isolation, the lack of self confidence, the uncertainty and the frustration.

I know that people who suffer from depression feel the same way. So do most cancer victims, not to mention rape victims, abuse victims, and even people who lose their jobs.

I am not trying to diminish any of these things by lumping them together, rather, I am trying to point to a glaring error in the way we live our lives, and that error is a lack of compassion.

For whatever reason it is always easier to ignore someone who is having troubles; it is common place to minimize the troubles of others and tell them everything will be okay. Well, no, they probably will not.

Whenever something bad happens to us, it changes us, it takes something away.

And the rest of us go through life trying to pretend there is nothing wrong.

Imagine the courage necessary to pick up the pieces. Imagine what it would take to reinvent yourself after most of the things you understood to be true are destroyed. Imagine having the emotional courage to begin to trust yourself when everyone around you tells you that you are crazy.

One out of every four people in Canada suffers from chronic pain. That is, pain that lasts more than a few months and probably will never go away. Since each and every one of you out there knows more than four people; one of them is suffering right now.

What have you done about it? What have you done for them? How do you seek to understand them?

This is one of those things that all of us have to spend some time on. We need to educate ourselves so that we can get beyond the stigma, and beyond the expectations that are just silly.

For example, people in chronic pain have good and bad days. One day the background hum might just be one note, and they can overcome it enough to do something like work in the garden. Another time the orchestra of pain might swell to such an overwhelming crescendo that they collapse under the weight of it.

In the midst of that realization, these people move on. They love and are loved, they create and accept, they interact and empower, and they are right next door.

I wish I was a better person. I wish I could tell you that I am always sympathetic and full of empathy for the people I encounter on a day to day basis. The truth is, I am not, almost no one I know is. But each and every day I do try harder.

The only path forward is to continue to try and find ways to put yourself in the shoes of other people. That old adage, "there but for the grace of God go I" is more true that any of us would like to admit. I only hope that when I need people to understand me, I have given enough of my own understanding to the world to warrant the return favour.

Wednesday, May 6, 2009

We very much depend on interconnections

SOCIAL STUDIES - Published Monday May 4th, 2009

A pandemic flu virus shows us something that we often overlook. The whole world is connected.

That should be obvious by now, but for many of us, the immediate surroundings constitute our entire understanding of the world. Even if you travel, or have friends in other places, there are days when "here" is the only place you think of.

It is hard to think of everything; but consider how far flung the swine flu has become in just a few days. This is almost entirely accounted for by travel. People from every country come in contact with people from every other country in a relatively short period of time.

This is very much like that old party game, seven degrees of separation. You might remember the game; you can connect yourself to any person in the world, supposedly, in seven steps. For example, my brother is a producer and used to work for Salter Street Films. One person I know he had drinks with once is Jason Priestly. That pretty much makes me two steps away from half of Hollywood.

A few weeks ago I had a great conversation with Bob Hallet, a member of Great Big Sea, who of course works with Alan Doyle, who is friends with Russell Crowe. Again, only three steps. I know a senator, Lois Wilson, who knows the prime minister, who knows the American president. Only three steps.

Most of us could do something similar. Which I am using simply to ask the question, how many steps away from someone who has been to Mexico in the last two weeks do you think you are? I bet not many of us are more than three steps away.

Even more importantly, half of the food we eat in our winter deprived land of produce comes from Mexico. I have asparagus from there in my fridge right now. I also have oranges from Spain, which is another country where the flu is spreading.

What do you think would happen if we closed the borders of any given country in the world? The answer is simple, chaos.

Conservatively, Mexico exports over $200 billion worth of merchandise to the United States alone. Some of this is stuff we would never have thought of. Here are some of the top exports out of Mexico: Crude oil, car parts and accessories, video equipment, passenger cars, electrical apparatus and parts, telecommunications equipment, computers, tin, gold, sugar, natural gas, and zinc.

There are many more. This just serves as a reminder of what one country exports to others in our global economy. I cannot possibly imagine what an actual pandemic is going to do to us. Imagine for just one second that everything in Mexico stops for one week because they all get sick. Even if we assume everyone gets better, a one week stop in any given place would put the entire world so far behind in terms of import/export that everything would be affected.

It is not just the global world that is interconnected. It is the local world as well.

Consider this. The government recently reduced its funding for a program run out of the YMCA called RECONNECT. Essentially this was a street based aid program that provided a couple of social workers to help out people who were at the end of their rope.

Don't kid yourself, we could all be there tomorrow, and as the economy tanks these are the first programs to get killed, while the need grows exponentially.

RECONNECT provides services to 2,500 people in Metro every year. Yes, 2,500 people who are homeless, or living below the sustenance level of life. I am sure they are not getting everyone. Harvest House helps, oh wait, their funding has been cut too.

How many of us will cut our own donations to food banks and helping agencies as we tighten our belts?

Back to my interconnected bit, do you think that it would make no difference to any of us if the 3,000 or so people in our city are not cared for? Who do you think will be there to help us when we need it the most? What will get cut next?

So here we have a stalled and destructive economy, which although it is not hurting Moncton like other places, has definitely caused a change in the price of groceries, for example, and created a work climate of fear.

Then we have a global pandemic on the rise which, if it actually hits, could cause a third of the people of the world to be off work all at once.

In the midst of that we are cutting back on our social safety net.

Personally, I have been shown over and over that I need other people. In large and small ways the people around me contribute to my ability to get through this challenging life. I have no doubts that we live in a very complex interconnected system where any change or pressure on one part of the web causes ripples.

I guess what I am hoping is that we can all take it a little easier on each other in times like this. We need each other; and no one I know of is having an easy time of it. Every day seems to get a little more scary.

But together, we can make sure we get through.

That is what Maritimers do.

Is it wise for companies to lay off people now?

SOCIAL STUDIES - Published Monday April 27th, 2009

I am not sure what the weekend will bring, but it seems to me that the last week was a very slow news week for our province. In fact, if it were not for the continued wars in Afghanistan and Iraq as well as the economy, there would be almost no news in the country.

Sometimes, however, there are news items that slip by us and we never even notice. I have a computer program that "feeds" news stories to me and I then look back over the major stories from a number of sources to see what is happening in the world. Every now and again there is something that makes me shake my head; which did not get the type of press it deserved.

The issue that did not rise to the surface this week has to do with women who are fired while on maternity leave.

Technically, this is illegal. Philosophically, it is immoral. Practically, it is easier. That something is easier does not make it right. Apparently the amount of women who have their employment terminated while on maternity leave has quadrupled in the last few months.

Now, when push comes to shove the companies involved will tell you that it is the economy that is to be blamed. Perhaps the job became redundant during the year you were off. Either way, it is supposed to be protected, and we are supposed to value motherhood and family and children.

I am beginning to wonder if there is not just a whole lot of underground misogyny that has never been dealt with in our society.

I will come back to that, but let's talk about job layoffs for just a second.

A couple of weeks ago Statistics Canada released information that the unemployment rate jumped to a seven-year high of eight per cent last month and the economy has lost 61,300 more jobs. This means we have seen the sharpest five-month employment decline since the 1982 recession.

On average, economists had forecast 55,000 jobs would be lost, though some estimates had been for as much as 90,000. Now, I am not an economist, that is for sure; but I simply fail to understand this. Economic downturns, recessions, even depressions are short-lived scenarios. Historically they last three months on average. Admittedly, this may be one of those year and half to two-year deviations from the norm, but still.

Are companies letting go of workers just because other companies are letting go workers? What about the looming crisis in employment when the last of the baby boomers bows off the stage? I think most of our companies will be scrambling in six months to find employees, and in the end, they might even end up having to offer more incentives and higher wages to attract a workforce.

This does not make any sense. Of course, I am naïve enough to believe in George Bailey Economics from the Ole Bailey Savings and Loan in the movie "It's a Wonderful Life." His argument during the Depression was that we should all hang in there together, share what we have, and each of us will come out the other side with a roof over our heads, and food on our plates.

All by way of explaining where I am coming from with the maternity leave issue. Why do we always seem to be hurting our poorest, our weakest, and our most vulnerable? Why would we fire people as they end maternity leave just to make a few bucks?

Let me make it clear that there are three issues at play here for me.

First, women are not treated as equals in our society. Like it or not they have to go through a whole lot more than men do. If you do not believe me, drive around in the passenger seat of a car with a woman driving for a while and see how many people cut them off.

You could also try finding a woman who does the exact same job that you do and see what they have to do extra that you do not in order to be treated the same as you.

My second issue is it takes two adults working full-time, and then some, to provide for the average family. No matter how much rhetoric we have about family first initiatives, they are a lie. If we valued family we would make it easier to have one and to take care of one. If we valued families, milk would not be five times the price of soda pop. If we valued families health and education would be at the top of the totem pole in terms or political issues, not business and economy. There would also be more family friendly restaurants, attractions, shopping establishments; all of which are only tokenly designed for families.

And my third and final point is this. Women really do have to choose between career and kids.

Most of the time they probably thought they could leave their jobs and come back safely, as the system was designed to allow, but even so, when you take time off for kids you do not get as far advanced in your career, you lose a year of experience and a lot of other things.

The fact that it seems even less safe now to have a baby is not going to make women feel any less vulnerable. When we create tiered systems in society we are depriving everyone of their right to a share of equality.

One thing is for sure, we need to pay more attention to the fallout as society changes, there are things happening that will make it worse for everyone.

Hope guides us through life's valleys

FAITH TODAY - Published Saturday April 25th, 2009

There was a pastor in the southern United States who wrote a blues song a few years back called the Post Resurrection Blues and here are the opening verses:

Thomas woke up that morning,

The sky was really grey,

it fit his mood exactly,

he said, "Aw what the hey...

Chorus:

I got the blues,

those low, down, dirty post-resurrection blues,

(now ain't that news!)

I'm so listless and unfocused,

I'm gonna need some Hoc Est Pocus

I've got the blues.

"What should we do - Now that the resurrection's over?

We should be feeling high --

like standing in high clover.

Peter said, "Let's go fishin'"

I said, "we might as well,

I've never been one to dance,

and it's too wet to plow.

And back to the chorus once more . . .

I know that as you read this the temperature is supposed to climb to 22 degrees Celsius and we will have the first sunny Saturday of what might be a great season of sunny Saturdays.

But in terms of faith, in terms of the church world, this is the beginning of nothing.

I hate when Easter ends.

Easter is the most important festival of the church; a high holy holiday when we talk about miracles, about new life, about hope.

It is filled with lilies and sunshine, power hymns and new hats.

Or something like that.

There is actually a reasonably well-known term for it; Easter is the proverbial mountaintop experience.

But here is the thing they never tell you as you are climbing up that mountain: you can't stay there. Pretty soon you are tumbling down the other side.

Most of our lives are lived in the valley.

And the thing about valleys is that they are not that special; if you have seen one valley you have seen them all.

And valleys tend to obscure the sunshine. They tend to be dreary and ordinary and, well . . . not mountains.

And while you are slogging through the valley you can no longer feel the sunshine.

This is an article, and not a sermon, so let me tell you why I am waxing so poetic about all of this. When you are a part of a church, you have a long lead-up to Easter. It is a build-up, really, about how wonderful this event was, about how salvific Jesus's death and resurrection was.

I've come a long way beyond thinking there are any simple answers to Easter.

But still, I expect something.

And what I see year after year is that as soon as it is over, we move on to something else -- most likely to Sunday School closing and heading to the cottages.

So what real meaning does it have anymore?

What does it mean that we believe there was some sort of event 2,000 years ago in Jerusalem?

Let's go back to the song:

So there was Jesus

he'd fixed us some brunch

he figured we'd be there,

just call it a hunch.

We no longer wondered

what we were to do,

cause after the resurrection

He would still see us through . . .

2nd Chorus:

I'm no longer blue,

lost my low, down dirty post-resurrection blues.

(now that's Good News!)

We're back at the banquet table

and we're ready, willing and able

and no longer blue.

I like to think of it this way: Easter is about knowing while in the valley that the mountaintop beckons.

It is about hope and even if that hope seems to fade really quickly, it is still there. The disciples found themselves locked away for fear and loss and into the midst of that came Jesus with the promise of new life.

It is hard to hold on to Easter.

It is hard to hold on the good times when things seem to have gone bad.

There is, however, a timeless truth here.

It does not take much to get us through; sometimes it is just a memory.

Hope is what it is all about.

Where are the real leaders in the world today?

SOCIAL STUDIES - Published Monday April 20th, 2009

There has been talk lately about leadership. I suppose some of it stems from the relatively new slate of leaders that have cropped up in the international political world. In many ways these leaders have proven not to have been what people expect.

Take Nicolas Sarkozy, the president of France, or Gordon Brown of England, for example. Both of them have been roundly criticized, mostly for not being the leaders of the past.

And it is not just them, comparisons abound. Is Stephen Harper the type of leader Canada used to have? Are the CEOs of companies anywhere near what the Rockefellers or Carnegies were in their day? Are the presidents of universities the powerhouse orators they once were? What about explorers? Does anyone rank anywhere up there with Sir Edmund Hillary? For that matter, where are the Ghandis and the Florence Nightingales, the Stalins and Gueveras?

Heck, we don't even have criminal masterminds like Al Capone anymore.

The reason I bring this up is that in many circles lately I have heard the argument being made that leaders do not exist anymore.

Or rather, that the people we look up to are not the type of people we once looked up to. What do you think?

If I asked you to name someone famous, who would be the first person to pop into your mind? I am willing to bet it is either an actor or a sports star.

If we had a contest and asked who you would most like to have dinner with, it would be or perhaps Hugh Jackman or Jessica Alba. Or maybe you would choose Anna Kournikova or Sydney Crosby.

Honestly, how many people chose Ban Ki-Moon?

As Secretary General of the United Nations I am sure Ban would make a much more interesting dinner companion. Even though he is chosen as the representative of "Earth," he is not even known to most people.

Ashton Kutcher has a contest going on right now. If he can get a million people to follow him on twitter he will donate 10,000 malaria nets. When you think about helping out in the Third World the first person that might cross your mind is Angelina Jolie.

Never mind the fact that for six decades we have had the United Nations Relief and Work Agency, which helps out over four million refugees, has 4,200 health workers in the field, and operates the largest school system in the Middle East.

The Commissioner- General of that organization is Koning AbuZayd; and I will readily admit I had to look all of these facts up myself -- which embarrasses me.

I know more about celebrities than leaders, and I think we as a society have confused the two.

This is to say, as has been argued in other circles, what we as society value is not what we used to value. Where once a person was valued for their skills as a speaker, for their take charge attitude, for the way in which they understood complex issues, for the moral certitude they exemplified; we now value individual finesse and theatrical stunts.

But how does this translate into the real world?

Let's start with kids. Do any of us dream of our children growing up to be world leaders? Or do we hope they never have to go through that? Do we dream of them being morally perfect, or of them making lots of money? Do we try to encourage them to think of others first, or to compete and be the best?

And what about we who have grown up?

Since we have more trust in celebrities than real leaders, how do we participate in the world? Or do we? Almost no one votes anymore, and I would argue it is because we have no faith that it makes any difference. It is better to see movies and buy albums so that the people who actually make a difference in the world can become rich and famous enough to do it well.

I guess I blame Bob Geldof for this. This is unfair, it is not really his fault, but way back in 1985 he organized the Live Aid concert to raise awareness and funds for Africa. Then there was the song, "Do they know it's Christmas?" and the whole genre of musicians and actors with social conscience was born.

Now Bono, lead singer of U2, has more clout that most world leaders. He can instantly get in to see anyone from the President of the United States to the Pope.

As an aside, both of these people are Irish. Which makes me think I should go back and read the book, "How the Irish Saved Civilization" which talks about the fact that during the dark ages of medieval history Ireland became an "island of saints and scholars." The monks and scribes that lived there laboriously, lovingly, even playfully preserved the West's written treasury while the barbarians sacked Rome. When stability returned in Europe, these Irish scholars were instrumental in spreading learning, becoming not only the conservators of civilization, but also the shapers of the medieval mind, putting their unique stamp on Western culture.

Back to the real point: We are not cultivating a climate of leadership and we should be. I have nothing against celebrities, I want to be one, and when I am rich and famous I want to use my powers for good; so good on those who are.

At the same time, I want people like Winston Churchill, or John Diefenbaker; even a Kennedy to rise up and lead us, not just maintain the status quo or worry about their investments and legacy.

Perhaps Obama is such a person; we will have to wait and see how he rises to the occasion.

We need to place our value in more lasting understandings of fame and purpose. When we do, perhaps our children will grow up to make a difference.