Monthly Archives: May 2022

Two Possible Paths

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I live in a funny household. My wife is a devout Christian, I have no particular faith, and yet we live quite harmoniously.

She grew up in a Mennonite community and still has strong feelings of community relating to that crowd.

I was raised as a Catholic with decreasing strength of dogma as we all got older and the cognitive dissonance between the pulpit and reality became increasingly glaring.

Where appropriate, we support each others’ practices in search of making society a little better than it was when we first got here. We discuss, mostly in abstract terms, both religion and politics, but there never has been any proselytizing.

My wife is actively involved in several initiatives aimed at palliating the rampant poverty both at home and abroad. I pitch in occasionally, but I’ve long had the sense that charity is an excuse to continue with the outsized disproportion in economic benefit that characterizes our global economic and social system.

To that end, I have, for some decades now, been involved with groups whose aim is to build a more peaceable, caring and sharing system of distribution of goods and services, along with incorporating all people into the business of society with dignity and sense of belonging.

Both causes have, thus far, proven to be exercises in futility, giving rise to questions of the usefulness of both charitable work, and of efforts to eliminate the need for charity.

No answers, thus far, but we can let each other know when we find evidence of a better path.

Confronting A Dark Past

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Photo by Yann Allegre on Unsplash

One of the gravest defects of religion is that it can be used to keep the poor contented with their lot, which is very convenient for the rich.

—Bertrand Russell

This morning, according to a Globe and Mail headline, Prince Charles pointed out that Canada must confront ‘darker’ aspects of its past, just the sort of gratuitously obvious statement one would expect from a royal speaking to the colonials about indigenous relations, and, in particular, the history of residential schools.

Yes, we Canadians need to confront and redress the harm done, and I wouldn’t presume to say how that needs to come about, given that more august personages than I have already chimed in on the subject, and in full knowledge that there is a long and likely painful path for all of us to get to a point where First Nations feel that they have achieved their rightful place in the life of this land. The process is complicated by the presence of a slice of the population who would just as soon ignore the issue and continue with business as usual, particularly in those instances where major adjustments might need to be made in the way we do business and in the way that the benefits of doing business get divided up.

However, it strikes me as a little tone deaf for the future king and descendent of Queen Victoria, to be lecturing anyone on the perils of failing to confront the ills of past empire. In the good old Kipling days of White Man’s Burden, the sun never set on the British Empire, and where there was empire, there was a bleeding off of resources and personnel to serve said empire and its principals, at the top or which pyramid sat Charles’ forebears.

Yes, so, the House of Windsor can speak from a position of authority based on personal experience and hand out free advice to others will have to bear the brunt of any real reconciliation before skipping back to that green and verdant island for a few chukkers of polo. The same applies to the Archbishop of Canterbury, and our progressive Pope. They seem to all be endowed with the same propensity for high-sounding rhetoric devoid of any real meaning whose greatest local proponent would be none other than our current Prime Minister, though there would be many others vying for a position at the top of that scale.

The monarchy, the papacy and the corporate hierarchy represent power and money, both of which are notorious corrupters of any notion of morality (the possible exception being the theocratic republicans wrestling for some notion of the soul of the US, Canada, Hungary, Poland and other jurisdictions where notions of fairness and equity are seriously on the wane) exactly because the deed of reconciliation, all over the World must imply a different way of conducting the business and different outcomes relating to the distribution of wealth. This in not a comfortable notion for those holding the economic and power cards as currently dealt.

Misplaced Priorities

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So Mr. Horgan will spend the better part of a billion dollars on a rebuild of the Royal BC Museum and tout it as a vital step in reconciliation with First Nations…

I believe that it’s a good thing for a society to maintain artifacts that document its history and cultural antecedents, but this project speaks to a level of extravagance that defies comprehension. We have to wonder how much consultation there was with First Nations about the disposition of such a large whack of provincial funding at a time when the health system seems to be coming apart, when forestry is in ruins, when there are staffing crises in most sectors of the economy, and where civil service bargaining is on the horizon.

Is this the way that FN would choose to spend the loot? might there not be a need to reorient forestry and mining jobs to focus on a truly ecologically sound economy (Clean BC and current forest practices being basically business as usual)?

Here’s a cheap start: take the Royal moniker off the establishment. The Crown continues to be exploitative and contributes nothing other than some phony cachet to our institutions. We may not do so terribly well at governing ourselves (look at the two parties that have alternated in power and their tweedle-dee, tweedle-dum approach to multiple existential crises), but the need for this other layer of Crown interference perpetrates a long tradition of colonial exploitation and pomp that helps to exclude the little folk from the business of governing (as opposed to the political shenanigans that take up the bulk of question period).

Also, lest anyone think of this as an endorsement of any party currently active in BC, let the intellectual net be case a little more widely. The Green caucus has emitted a steady diet of common sense and bold initiative that is a marked contrast to either Liberal of NDP sludge, but a caucus of two and the lack of a coherent party apparatus (which may be what allows the quality of thought to seep through) eliminates the possibility of a government in any foreseeable future. The NDP has dropped the ball on so many fronts that they become almost indistinguishable from the Liberals who preceded them, and the current version of the Liberal Party seems to be just chomping at the bit to get their faces once again fully immersed in the trough of public largesse.

The prospects for both near and distant future become increasingly bleak with each advancing session of the legislature, and wandering off in the weeds with a cool billion is emblematic of our current willingness to bury our concerns in a stinking heap of indifference and vanity.

Addendum: note that Mr. Horgan, following cancer treatment is less filled out than he once was previously. This puts me in mind of a quip from Bertrand Russell that I quoted a couple of times to Scott Fraser when he was our MLA and held ministerial portfolios. The first time it was cautionary, the second in anger at the two-faced nature of the government in relation to Indigenous Relations and to all aspects of environmental policy. I’m feeling the same way with our current MLA and Minister of Municipal Affairs, Josie Osborne:

“No diet will remove all the fat from your body because the brain is entirely fat. Without a brain, you might look good, but all you could do is run for public office.”

“No diet will remove all the fat from your body because the brain is entirely fat. Without a brain, you might look good, but all you could do is run for public office.”

—Bertrand Russell