Christmas is supposed to make one feel sad, especially if one is not with one's family (or doesn't have one), and so on.  A liberating outlook is to consider the silliness of the whole thing (a red-nosed reindeer!  Give me a break!)  and to feel one wouldn't be caught dead having anything to do with the whole preposterous charade.

Life in many third-world countries is a daily round of frustration.  Western institutional ways of doing things, which are in reality mechanisms of conflict avoidance, are, for various reasons, not in place.  This situation breeds two related attitudes, especially in any contact with authority or bureaucracy.  One is an assumption that any such contact will be conflictual.  The other is that of a sense of pervasive powerlessness.  The person takes it for granted that any situation is an unchangeable given, and therefore that situations exist to serve existing interests, rather than his/her interests.  The person therefore conceives of any contact as necessarily fraught with conflict.

The problem is in a sense magnified when people immigrate to Canada or other Western countries.  The newcomer finds themselves in a situation where they have major problems (as opposed to relatively minor ones they faced at home), yet with a perception of powerlessness (inherited from their background) to solve them.  The person continues to proceed according to the old rules of behaviour.  The result is that the person appears hostile and demanding.  They lack the apparently simple knowledge that one will likely be listened to if one complains or makes demands.  This, of course, creates much unnecessary social conflict and personal unhappiness.  Appropriately-expressed needs may help reduce the need or chance for conflict.  Just imagine yourself growing up and becoming an adult in a place where you have no control over anything . . .

Those who oppose social spending on grounds that it is just spending money on some else and not on themselves, should realize that the kind of society they live in is not something that has nothing to do with them.  Their children will have to live in a society damaged by their parents' lack of social responsibility.

In his speech to South African MPs, excerpted in a Toronto newspaper on May 25, Nelson Mandela made the following points, among others:

(1) "My government's commitment to create a people-centered society of liberty binds us to the pursuit of the goals of freedom from want, freedom from hunger, freedom from deprivation, freedom from ignorance, freedom from suppression, and freedom from fear . . ."

(2) "Consequently, we are assured that the business sector can and will make a significant contribution toward the structuring and management of such reconstruction and development funds, toward the effective identification and implementation of projects and by supporting the financing of the socioeconomic development effort."

(3) "We must end racism in the workplace as part of our common offensive against racism in general.  No more should words like 'Kaffirs,' 'Hottentots,' 'Coolies,' 'Boy,' 'Girl,' and 'Baas' be part of our vocabulary."

The "people-centered society of liberty" will pursue negative liberties -- freedom from hunger, deprivation, and so on.  Goals of communal liberty appear to be beyond the program's self-imposed limits.  In fact, such liberties may be excluded by the positively liberal nature of the slogans -- "people-centered society of liberty"!  Give me a break!

The people will not be given a chance to determine the direction of social development.  Decisions about what is good for them will be taken by the business elite, who will be in charge of determining the goals and nature of the reconstruction program.

But as no-one will be called a Kaffir anymore, society will obviously have undergone a revolutionary transformation!

Immigration and Refugee Matters

The issue is not compassion versus hatred, hard-heartedness, and so on.  The issue that the above covers up is the real reasons for governments allowing immigration.  The correct, scientific, and rational way to proceed is also the compassionate way.  This is similar to doing "compassionate" things -- like "feeding kids" -- in order to avoid doing what needs to be done -- making hunger obsolete by redistributing power in society.

As for refugees, a "genuine refugee" (a person that the Canadian government cares a lot about) is a person who is persecuted by a government, that is, usually some kind of activist.  Removing such a person from the context of their activism amounts to that person's political death, and helps to weaken the opposition.  This may explain why Western liberal governments are so pro-human-rights, and so eager to remove refugees from politically volatile situations abroad.

Figurative Speech and Civilization

In rock videos, everything is literal -- and not only in rock videos.  The reason that Jag Bhaduria, the Canadian Member of Parliament who was accused of having misrepresented his educational background, got into trouble was that he appeared to have done something that looked like what people look like they are doing when they are presented as crooks.  A Reform Party MP was criticized for having a quote from Hitler in his literature, although the quote was clearly not meant to imply his support for Hitler -- if anything, just the opposite, for it was meant to warn people of individuals like Hitler.  But, as in other similar cases, all that mattered was the appearance.  The state of the language itself is another ominous indication.  Idioms are lost -- no-one seems to know, for example, what "begging the question" means anymore.  At "best," they imagine it means requesting to be questioned!  Attention is limited to appearances and surfaces, without any apparent comprehension of what may lie beneath them, or even that anything might lie beneath them.

But culture and civilization begin where appearances end -- though this statement itself is probably incomprehensible to a modern audience.  Postmodernism as a self-fulfilling prophecy?

There were reports recently that "repressive governments" have substituted executions and disappearances in many cases for imprisonment, due to Amnesty International's activities.  AI can hardly mount campaigns for release of dead or "disappeared" people.

The whole concept of AI is wrong, a fact that is brought out again by the above.  AI is based on two illusions:

(1) That a country's ruling class can be shamed into becoming decent.

(2) That the ruling class of country A can be made to oppose actions of that of country B, independently of their own (and their common) class interests.

That point, and the link between (1) and (2), is that the ruling classes of both "good" and "bad" countries act for non-moral reasons, and they cannot be made to act according to moral reasons.  So, if you try to mobilize opinion against them, they, and their cohorts in other countries, will simply find less visible, but equally (if nor more) immoral means to pursue their aims -- helped all along by "good" governments.

The good is rational

Banks generously give billions of dollars to Ted Rogers for a merger that will destroy thousands of jobs, but are stingy with small and medium-sized businesses -- which are the biggest job creators.

Our fear was what it would be like in a world where decisions were made by computers; also we feared the marginalization of ordinary, non-elite, people -- we would become totally dispensable and dispensed with.

The fear was that computers will replace people.  But in a rationally computerized society, run on a basis other than greed, computers can serve and enhance people's lives by allocating resources in a rational manner.

At some point in the future, the logic of the machine may radically contradict the logic of the socioeconomic system.  At that time, company presidents and executives better watch out, because they may be the ones who will be judged obsolete, and dispensed with.

From the point of view of workers' interests, computerization may be the best thing that ever happened.  In the computer, the rational animal may finally meet himself, and rejoice in the reunion.

To the real conservatives out there

Let's call him Don (not his real name). 

We had run into each other almost daily for months, but he had never spoken to me.  The other day he finally addressed me: "So, what is your nationality?"  having overheard his conversations with my non-visible-minority colleagues, I had some idea of his Reform-Party-oriented mindset, so I just said: "Canadian."  This not being the kind of answer he wanted, he said: "Yes, you're a Canadian now, but what is your real nationality?"  I just repeated my original answer.  Given the chance, though, I would have told him:

Yes, Don, I do have a dual nationality.  But I want you to get to know me as a person first, and then as an immigrant.  Don't you, Don, want people to know you as a person first?  Don't you want to be judged according to the values you uphold, rather than the place you happened to be born?

Don, you are worried that immigration is diluting what you think of as Canadian values.  I know you love this country, and you are concerned about its future.  So I dearly wish you will try to understand what I'm trying to tell you.  That's because I think you, as a conservative, can contribute to saving the real Canadian values.

The real Canadian values, it seems to me, are centered around the idea of peace.  And peacefulness goes hand-in-hand with tolerance.  There are few nations more tolerant of differences than Canadians.  The Canadian people's willingness, and even eagerness, to listen to people with opinions different from their own is a precious quality.

An enlightening way of looking at Canadian values is to compare them with American ones: the rights to life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness.  Canadian values are all of these and more, but in each case tempered with tolerance and equity.  Unhampered individualism is un-Canadian.  Communal peace and social equity define Canada.

So you see, Don, I think a concern with equity is just as much a part of being Canadian as a concern with social peace and harmony.  If you are worried about the deterioration of communal peace and harmony in Canada, you should realize that the deterioration of the other half of the equation, social equity, is partly to blame.  Some powers-that-be are even trying to take away medicare and unemployment insurance.  They want to discourage average working people from immigrating to Canada.  I think you, as a conservative, should try to do something about it.

By pushing people like me away from you, Don, you are serving neither peace nor equity.  If you join the rest of us and embrace peace and equity, you would in fact be confirming Canada.  Canada has been receptive to immigrants and refugees because it is Canada.  A Canada that rejects them would no longer be the Canada that you know and love.

If one our of every four or five people is either unemployed or underemployed, and far more people than ever depend on welfare and food banks to survive, is it possible for the economy to be doing well?  Twenty or thirty years ago, low unemployment and poverty levels indicated economic prosperity.  Today, we mostly hear about the deficit and inflation.  What has changed in the meantime is that economic priorities are now controlled by the "contented" class.  They include not only the wealthy, but also a much enlarged segment of the middle class.  They are generally happy with the way things are, or at least fearful of change.  Government policy in North America reflects their priorities.  Their basic concern is their earnings.  They are opposed to taxes that support social programs, and to inflation that erodes the value of their earnings.  Social programs have been trimmed "to fight the deficit," that is, to reduce the need to tax the contented.  A monetarist policy of high interest rates has discouraged spending, lowering inflation.  The alternative policies of fiscal management of spending and taxation have been rejected.  The choice was a political one.  Economic theory itself has been manipulated through the ages to serve controlling interests, which calls for sensitivity to the political essence of economics.

Even "liberal" observers of the scene have deep roots in the culture of contentment.  They know it from first-hand experience.  At the same time, their own contentment makes it impossible for them to recognize its deeper nature, and the actual cure for it.  After all, a physician contented with a disease is not the best person to diagnose or prescribe for it.

As even various disaster scenarios are unlikely to jolt the contented our of their complacency, faith in the workings of the "modern industrial economy" is not justified.  It is a myth that with just the right kind of government intervention, and by the grace of the contented giving up many of their privileges, we will be save by the flexibility of the modern industrial economy.  The same groups who are blind to portents of disaster will not suddenly agree to the implementation of progressive policies.

It is necessary not only to acknowledge the existence of class struggle, as far example in discussions of the "underclass," but also to admit class struggle as an actor in the drama.  Contentment is a tranquilized state brought about by fear of change.  Contentment is a negative reaction to class struggle.  A symptom of this is the contented's need to feel morally justified in their desire for wealth and their denial of responsibility for the poor.

It is not enough to utter platitudes about the need for economic aspiration, with the usual lessons-to-be-learned-from-the-Japanese-and-the-Germans.  The true opposite and remedy for contentment is the desire for radical social change.  This is the underlying issue that is avoided at everyone's peril.

It is fine to try to understand the economic and political forces and actors that have created the economic mess in North America.  Yet the very obsession with forces and actors precludes attention to systemic causes and remedies.