On Turning Sixty

I ponder the prospect of turning sixty next year. My life, my mortality, my existence is coming into focus. This is no longer a rehearsal for what I will do when I grow up. This is it. This is my life. How I put one foot in front of another every day is how I lead my life. There is no escape. I am here. Now. I am responsible for the over fullness I feel when I eat too much. I am responsible for seeing my life as a rehearsal, instead of the real thing. I am responsible for the judgments I make. I am responsible for focusing on the shadows rather than the light that creates them. I am responsible for every particle of my existence. Every step, every breath, every thought. It is up to me to appreciate and experience, or not. It is up to me to choose to be awake and alive in every instant, or not.

Lies, Damn Lies, & Statistics

I heard that somewhere, not sure where though.

This came to mind as I read today two very different presentations of statistics. First, from Dan Gardner, a columnist I often enjoy to read in the Ottawa Citizen. "Cheer Up", he tells us! "Things aren't nearly as bad as they seem." He then quotes recently published statistics from the United Nations Human Development Report 2010.

"Most people today are healthier, live longer, are more educated and have more access to goods and services. Even in countries facing adverse economic conditions, people's health and education have greatly improved. And there has been progress not only in improving health and education and raising income, but also in expanding people's power to select leaders, influence public decisions, and share knowledge."

He informs us that the report's findings tell us that:

-. All but three of the 135 countries have a higher level of human development today than in 1970.

-. A baby born today in almost any country can expect to live longer than at any time in history.

-. If children were still dying at the higher rates prevalent in the late 1970s, 6.7 million more children would die each year.

-. People around the world have much higher levels of education than ever before. ... No country has seen declines in literacy or years of schooling since 1970.

-. Since 1970, 155 countries -- home to 95 per cent of the world's people -- have experienced increases in real per capita income. The annual average today is $10,760, almost 1.5 times its level 20 years ago and twice its level 40 years ago. These increases are evident "in all regions."

-. Between 1970 and 2010, China's per capita income rose 21-fold, Botswana's more than nine-fold and Malaysia's and Thailand's more than five-fold.

-. The share of formal democracies has increased from fewer than a third of countries in 1970 to half in the mid-1990s and to three-fifths in 2008.

-. Overall, poor countries are catching up with rich countries in the HDI.

And then, later in the day, I pick up from the library the book The Bridge at the End of the World, by James Gustave Speth, where I read the following on the first couple of pages:

Half the world's tropical and temperate forests are now gone. The rate of deforestation in the tropics continues at about an acre a second. About half the wetlands and a third of the mangroves are gone. An estimated 90 percent of the large predator fish are gone, and 75 percent of marine fisheries are now overfished or fished to capacity. Twenty percent of the corals are gone, and another 20 percent severely threatened. Species are disappearing at rates about a thousand times fasther than normal. The planet has not seen such a spasm of extinction in sixty-five million years, since the dinosaurs disappeared. Over half the agricultural land in drier regions suffers from some degree of deterioration and desertification. Persistent toxic chemicals can be found by the dozens in essentially each and every one of us.

Human impacts are now large relative to natural systems. The earth's stratospheric ozone layer was severely depleted before the change was discovered. Human activities have pushed atmospheric carbon dioxide up by more than a third and have started in earnest the dangerous process of warming the planet and disrupting climate. Everywhere earth's ice fields are melting. Industrial process are fixing nitrogen, making it biologically active, at a rate equal to nature's; one result is the development of more than two hundred dead zones in the oceans due to overfertilization. Human actions already consume or destroy each year about 40 percent of nature's photosynthetic output, leaving too little for other species. Freshwater withdrawals doubled globally between 1960 and 2000, and are now over half of accessible runoff. The following rivers no longer reach the oceans in the dry season: the Colorado, yellow, Ganges and Nile, among others.

No wonder so many of us are confused. But then...maybe it isn't so confusing after all. Maybe the reason the United Nations can report such a variety of improvement in human development indices is a direct result of humankind's gorging itself on the environmental riches of the planet, as described by Speth. Oh, some of us may be better off, for now. But, can it last?

Criticizing Capitalism Inside and Through Capitalism

A friend of mine regularly emails to a wide network of people articles that he finds of interest. Some of them are from more "mainstream" media such as the Globe & Mail, etc., while others are from the "alternate" press, such as Open Democracy, TomDispatch, Yes Magazine or Asia Times. He includes the full text as well as a hyperlink. I can only assume that he subscribes to Le Monde Diplomatique for when I click on the provided link, I am confronted with a paywall. I am, of course, grateful that my friend has provided the full text in the email for my reading pleasure.

The latest such article is titled "What's Left of the U.S. Left" written by Rick Fantasia. I appreciated his analysis and wanted to share it with friends. Over the past year or so I have usually found Facebook to be a quick way to share interesting links. But, of course, in this instance, the link takes you to a paywall. Now, ordinarily, this wouldn't bother me much. I understand that, the old adage of things being worth what you pay for them is usually true. And, certainly, good writing and critique has value. However, the crux of the argument being presented in this article is that there are "two lefts" in the U.S., which he describes as the "included" and the "excluded". As I read the article, I was beginning to wonder if the divide he described might have something to do with which side of the "paywall" you were on.

In his article he describes the "excluded" workers, otherwise largely known as the disenfranchised low waged non-union workers. He recounts how more than 15,000 activists of this group were in Detroit in June this past year as part of a U.S. Social Forum gathering. Participating in the event were representatives from the Excluded Workers Congress, the Domestic Worker Alliance, the Taxi Alliance, the Alliance for Guest Workers and the National Day Labourers Organizing Network, amongst many others. More than 10,000 of them marched through the streets "full of militancy, anger and colour". He laments that

"(t)here was almost no media coverage of the Detroit Social Forum in the US press, before or after, though the media had been saturated through the summer with reports of rightwing Tea Party rallies (some of which drew just a few hundred people."

He then rhetorically asks,

"Although the Forum took place in the heart of the auto industry, where were the auto workers?"

The answer, of course, lies in the fact that they, the auto workers, are part of the "other left", otherwise known as the "included" workers. They are part of the organized labour movement that has been far more successful in securing better wages and protection from the ravages of the economic downturn. As he points out

while their numbers have declined there are still some 50,000 auto workers and 128,000 retirees.

Fantasia then discusses the activity of this "other left". They were represented most recently by those who showed up at

a large demonstration in October in Washington DC called by a coalition of "progressive" groups, including the AFL-CIO (the country's biggest trade union confederation), the NAACP (national Association for the Advancement of Colored People), the national Council of La Raza, and the national Gay and Lesbian Task Force. This was the established institutionalised left, led by the main labour federation, the official labour movement that was able to bring well over 100,000 workers and others to Washington to show strength and draw public attention away from the Tea Party.

Fantasia pointed out that there

was little attempt to stir up the crowd, no march organized and no real sense of political urgency.

He concludes that these well organized groups have been

too close to power too often to want to jeopardize the position of their institutions.

His analysis certainly speaks to me. He is describing the notion of how power corrupts, regardless of the circle. From the smallest block party organizer to multi-national unions and corporations, for some people, power goes to their head and they often see the world only through organizational or "me first" eyes. Individuals and groups buy into the power trip, and we always need to be honest with ourselves about when it may be happening.

This, of course, brings me back to what "stuck in my craw" as it were, about not so much what this article was saying, but how I came across it. Here was an excellent, and intriguing article that criticized capitalism as well as pointing out that even within the "left" there are the "excluded" as well as the "included". Yet, it was posted behind a paywall that, by virtue of its existence, excluded many. Might one say that those who can afford to read it, don't actually need to, (as they are amongst the educated, financially privileged converted), while those who perhaps most need to read it, the "excluded", can't afford to? What a conundrum.

So, I posed this criticism to my friend, as I questioned why Fantasia was hiding his critique behind a paywall. He quickly came to the defense of Fantasia and Le Monde Diplomatique, saying that it was a struggling "progressive anti-capitalist co-operative" that deserved our support. While I couldn't disagree, I simultaneously wonder how we get the message out to those who most need to hear it, when they can't afford to pay?

I toyed with the idea of posting the article in its entirety, on my blog, but have, for now decided against this course, at my friend's behest. This led me to think of another topic; money, income, and how much is enough. It is rare, if ever, that people in our society are prepared to reveal their income, and what they spend it on. It is considered a "private" matter. I am beginning to think otherwise. I truly believe that, for the most part, we have reached the stage that "enough is enough". Welling up within me is immense criticism of those who draw bulky salaries or fat pensions whose biggest complaint (other than the airport lineups they must endure as they embark on their semi annual vacations), is that their taxes, and welfare rates, are too high. But, yes, that is another topic.

My "Mea Culpa" on Consumerism

I was in the midst of composing a "mea culpa" of sorts, regarding my sense of shame about being a part of western consumer society when I received this link to an article written by Dan Hamburg. He is a former Congressman of California's First District. These words were like a pie thrown in my face.

We're stuck in a culture (ie., a way of thinking), now roughly three centuries old, that has finally proven itself inadequate. All the way up through the years of my childhood in the Fifties and Sixties, this culture (i.e., western bourgeois) was not only acceptable, it was unassailable. It's core tenet has been the inevitability of progress and the "fact" as Margaret Thatcher put it during her reign as British prime minister, that "There is no alternative (TINA)."

If she's right, we're f**cked. Because while globalized capitalism has brought unparalleled comfort and power for the few--conquering the chronic limitation of space and time as never before--the contradictions of TINA thinking have become too odious to ignore.

We humans are literally destroying our own habitat. While a few feast, billions suffer malnourishment, illness and death from preventable disease and lack of basic necessities of life. (Have you ever attended one of those Hunger Banquets first conceived by the international anti-hunger organization OxFam? The top 15% are served a sumptuous meal. the middle 35% eat rice and beans. The leftover 50% help themselves to small portions of rice and water.)

This is the world we live in and these trends--global environmental collapse and mass poverty--are steadily worsening.

Contrary to a popular view, this state of affairs is neither "natural" nor unavoidable. The logic--resulting from a misreading of Darwin but powerful nonetheless--that we humans are creatures who "naturally compete" for scarce resources has finally revealed itself to be illogic, since its consequence is the demise of our entire species!

I read this nodding my head in a knowing fashion. This is me. This is the world I grew up in and the world I have perpetrated for most of my life. I am part of that top 15%. I get the best food, shelter, education and opportunities. I feed at the trough that is constantly replenished with cheap goods and services provided by the bottom 50%. I was discussing this recently with my brother and I thought his words captured our situation best.

We baby boomers as a group have become so obsessed with the accumulation and conservation of tangible assets that we are willfully blind to the environmental carnage and social justice issues which such accumulation causes. (Wal-Mart has big screen televisions on sale for $300. They're built by people who are essentially slaves in factories which cause massive environmental damage? Who cares, they're cheap! Oh, and yeah, someone should do something about that - so long as it doesn't cause me any inconvenience or increase my taxes so that I have the money to buy the $50 blu-ray player to go with the new TV.

This comment strikes at the core of the problem of our western society. Let's be blunt. We know what the problem is: it is us, the baby boomer generation and our offspring whom we have imbued with insatiable desires. We have fallen, hook, line and sinker for the admonitions of the post-war marketers who redefined citizenship to embody a consumer oriented ethic.

Everywhere I look, I see outrageously obscene consumption and an incredibly greedy sense of entitlement, as David Dingwall so selfishly points out to us.

Our demands are far out of proportion to what we should reasonably expect to be anything close to our fair share of the world's wealth. We have adopted the attitude that if we have the money, we have right to acquire whatever we want with it. Well, that approach is killing us, and it must be turned around.

The problem is clearly getting worse, as the gap between rich and poor widens, whether in the U.S. or Canada. We pay ever escalating millions of dollars every year to individual grown men who are "playing a game" in professional sports, yet somehow can't imagine paying sufficient taxes to ensure adequate housing for everyone. We whimsically change our decor to make the latest fashion statement, tearing out perfectly adequate bathrooms & kitchens while complaining about the price of gas. We are never satisfied because we seem incapable of accepting the notion that sometimes "Enough really is enough!" We are stuck in a rut of borrowing money we do not have, to spend on things and experiences we neither need nor appreciate.

I say this, not to mock others, but to recognize this in myself. This is how I was brought up in suburban, middle class Toronto. It is what my loving parents taught me, and, although I offered occasional token resistance, I followed the same path. I got sucked in by the branding, and the pummeling of my senses with advertising. Whether it was my make of car (Volvo or Saturn), sporting equipment (must be MEC!) or how I identified my trips, (I'm a traveler, not a tourist), I continued to hang much of my identity on what I possessed, and how I could obtain more.

In my most downtrodden moments when I review this, I feel like I have lived almost 60 wasted years of consumerism. When I look around at the plethora of "stuff" that fills my modest home, and flip through the memories of acquisition, I am terribly saddened.

We must hold a mirror up to ourselves, and recognize what we have done. What I see is not pretty. We need to find ways to break this downward death spiral of consumerism. What we are doing is obscene. As Hamburg concludes, we need a

"new narrative...a narrative that celebrates community over competitiveness, stewardship over exploitation."

I continually see sparks of light as I look around, but, unfortunately, they are not anywhere near a forest fire yet, but mere shooting stars. These "points of light" are the untold millions of us around the world trying to come to terms with our imbued "sense of entitlement". Unfortunately, there are still ever greater numbers of us who continue to cling to the old paradigm that money ultimately solves everything and that all poor people around the world need to do is acquire more of it. Then, they too can live like us. If it were only that easy.