The North West Passage

Following up from the last post:

Notwithstanding the protests against public service budget cuts in various American states, notably Wisconsin, I think that a movement for democracy like the one in the Arab world is very unlikely in the Western world. There are several reasons why I think this.

One is that we believe we already have democracy. We have a vote; we have a multi-party system; we have a free media and free markets; and for many people, that’s all the democracy we need.

Another is that too many people are apathetic about politics: they think that nothing anyone could do will change anything. (I know lots of people who, for reasons like that, don’t vote). Or, they care more about the price of gas, and the price of imported consumer goods like clothes and cellphones, than they do about the way indentured labour in foreign countries keep those consumer goods cheap. Or, in their apathy they simply don’t care enough about social justice or the suffering of other people to do anything about it.

A third is that lots of people here believe in values that separate rather than unite people, such as competition. Too many people believe that the poor and oppressed are lazy, wasteful, incompetent, or stupid, and therefore deserve their poverty. The libertarian point of view, expressed for instance in John Hospers’ Libertarian Manifesto, is that if someone else’s misfortune is not your fault, then you don’t have to do anything about it if you don’t want to. You don’t have to share your food with the starving, if you don’t want to: and this, according to libertarians, is freedom.

Overall, not enough of us treat the values of humanity, like friendship and love and care, as universal values. Not enough of us treat the values of integrity, like dignity and trust and courage, as universal values. Not enough of us have a sense of wonder, by which we can see the good in things, or imagine life as different than it is.

So, in addition to a fear barrier, we may also have an apathy barrier. Readers, I invite your comments on this thought.

We’ve been told for over a decade now that Arabs, and Muslims generally, are all terrorists. We’ve been told that we have to support Arab dictatorships in the name of security. But with courageous democratic uprisings happening all over the Arab world right now, I think the Western world now has a chance to understand Arabs better, and to understand why we need not fear them. Indeed the more I read about the Arab democratic movement, the more I find myself admiring Muslims instead of fearing them.

A lot of people I know are looking at the events in North Africa with a cynical ‘wait and see, it might become corrupted’ point of view. But I think we should be studying the movement very carefully. We can learn from it how not to be afraid.

On 18th January 2011, Asmaa Mahfouz, a 26 year old Egyptian woman, decided that she had enough of the corruption in her country’s government and the brutality of the police. Therefore she posted to the internet a video in which she described her intention to go to Tahrir Square, in downtown Cairo, and start protesting, and she invited others to do the same. A certain amount of fear attended her decision. Later on she told a journalist: “I felt that doing this video may be too big a step for me, but then I thought: For how much longer will I continue to be afraid and hesitant? I had to do something,” Ms. Mahfouz is a very visible example of leadership by action. A single person’s initiative and bravery became the most important link in a long chain of cause-and-effect which resulted in removal of Egyptian Presiden Hosni Mubarak from power, only twenty-four days later. It is important to note that in all the democratic uprisings in north Africa in the first two months of 2011, the Islamic fundamentalist terror group Al Qaeda played absolutely no role whatsoever. Nor did the protesters in those countries use violence to achieve their goals. They simply occupied major public squares in their cities and refused to leave until their demands were met. Mariam Soliman, another Egyptian activist, described herself as follows: “I am not socialist, I am not a liberal, I am not an Islamist. I am an Egyptian woman, a regular woman rejecting injustice and corruption in my country.”

There was violence at these protests. But it was overwhelmingly instigated by the corrupt politicians attempting to cling to power, again through the use of fear. Mubarak of Egypt, for instance, hired poor people from rural parts of Egypt to come to Cairo and beat up the protesters. And Muammar Gadaffi of Libya claimed that the protests were caused by Al-Qaida, and by drugs in young people’s coffee. In the first few days of the protest he deployed snipers on the rooftops of buildings, killing at least 15 people; he also destroyed the minaret of a mosque full of protesters using anti-aircraft missiles. The governments of these countries used fear to maintain their rule: fear of Islamic terrorists, primarily, as well as fear of their own police and military. But this kind of fear cannot be effective forever. As Mahfouz said, “Everyone used to say there is no hope, that no one will turn up on the street, that the people are passive. But the barrier of fear was broken.”

We, the people of Western world countries, continue to live in an environment of fear. We fear being attacked religious extremists, both foreign and domestic. We fear the loss of political rights, a loss of privacy, or a loss of freedom, taken by big governments (if you happen to be right-wing), or by big corporations (if you happen to be left-wing). We fear foreign immigrants with their strange customs, coming to our neighbourhoods to take our jobs, drain our welfare state, or commit crimes. We fear being injured, robbed or attacked, being judged by others, or neglected, or left unloved. We fear succumbing to an exotic pandemic disease. We fear the social breakdown that abortion, divorce, and same-sex marriage will supposedly cause. We have existential fears such as the fear of death, fear of freedom itself, fear of the afterlife, fear of being ‘unreal’ (a surprisingly common one, although difficult to describe), and fear of loneliness and isolation. We might boast of having none of these fears. Yet we immerse ourselves in escapist mass entertainment. We support fanatical politicians and preachers. Our politicians support dictators and tyrants in the name of “security” and “stability”. We arm ourselves to the teeth, and pray to God to be saved.

You might not feel constantly afraid of things all the time. But there is a part of you which knows what boundaries cannot be crossed. You believe, for instance, that bad things will happen to you if you speak out in favour of a just but unpopular cause. And so we supervise ourselves. Thus even when we say we have no fear of these things, fear still governs our minds.

But life does not have to be that way. We can liberate ourselves from the labyrinth. There are better ways to live. Someone has to take the initiative to break through the fear barrier. Someone has to take the initiative to love and trust her fellow living creature, and set us all free.

Will it be you?

________

Links related to this story:

Mona El-Naggar, “Equal Rights Takes to the Barricades” The New York Times, 1 February 2011.

Scott Shane, “As Regimes Fall in Arab World, Al Qaeda Sees History Fly By” The New York Times, 27 February 20111.

Volkhard Windfuhr, “Rural poor paid to attack opposition supporters” Der Spiegel, 4 February 2011

“Libyan snipers fire on mourners” CBC News, 19 February 2011

“Gadhafi blames al-Qaeda for Libyan riots” CBC News, 24 February 2011.

Friends, “the relationships book”, or “Number Six”, as I have been calling it for the last two or three years, now has a publishing contract!

Early this week I was offered a contract to publish “Circles of Meaning, Labyrinths of Fear” with OBooks, or by its new pagan imprint Moon Books. (Well, we might still change the title. But that’s the title I used in the proposal.)

For those curious to know what it’s about: well, if you are a regular listener of my podcast, then you already have a bit of an idea. Draft versions of some of the chapters were used in my segment of the show.

To give you more info: here’s the draft of the back cover copy:

You’ve heard of sacred places, writings, relics, and rituals, holy days and magical times of year. But these are actually representations of relationships that people have with each other and the elements of the world.

Some of these relationships environmental: they involve landscapes, animals, and the streets of your home town. Some are personal and individual, such as families, friends, and elders. Some are public, such as the relation between musicians, storytellers, medical doctors, and even soldiers. This book studies twenty-two of them, from a variety of traditions, and their place in ‘the good life’.

Yet these relations are always fragile and vulnerable. At every turn they are threatened by fears, from the fear of loneliness, to the fear of the loss of personal or political freedom, to the fear of death. To escape from these fears, people often trap themselves into ways of life that are bad for everyone, including themselves. This book studies how that happens, and how to prevent it.

More than beliefs, laws, and teachings, our relationships are the true basis of spirituality and freedom.

A release day has not yet been fixed, but it looks likely that it will be in early 2012. I’m delighted! More news to follow as the situation unfolds.

Thorn Coyle and I have a lovely chat about self knowledge, loneliness, and spirituality in Episode #38 of “Elemental Castings” podshow. I enjoyed recording it with her; I hope you enjoy listening in. 🙂

Here’s the link: http://www.thorncoyle.com/podcasts.html

Well friends,

If it isn’t the guns that kill people,

And if it isn’t the thousands of hours of hate and fear on TV and radio that plants into the minds of (unbalanced) people (who have guns) the idea of murdering large numbers of people in public places ….

Then what is it?

Never been to the symphony, or the opera?
Want to go Outward Bound?
Can’t afford the Gaia Gathering, or a seat at an NHL game?

Brendan Myers, author of “Loneliness and Revelation”, is offering you a chance to attend any conference, convention, festival, sporting event, concert, theatrical performance, or community gathering of your choosing, anywhere in the world! Let Brendan know what event you have in mind, and if you win this contest, he’ll buy your ticket!

Here’s how to enter. First, take a photo of yourself reading or holding Brendan’s latest book, “Loneliness and Revelation”. Next, post the photo to your favourite social network, along with a link to the book’s web site, lonelinessandrevelation.com

Third, send a message to Brendan to let him know that you’ve done it, with a link to where he can find it. Brendan can be reached via Facebook, or via the book’s web site, or via brendanmyers.net

On March 31, 2011, Brendan will randomly select a winner, and announce the winner on his blog, and on the book’s fan page, here. (By the way, if you want a better chance to win, post more photos of yourself with the book! Each photo will be treated like a contest entry form.)

Brendan will also share the most interesting, artistic, or funny photos to the book’s fan page (with, of course, the permission of the photographer) as they come in.

Friends, I hope this contest does more than help promote my book. I hope it also helps people ‘reveal’ themselves to each other (read the book and you will know what I mean), and give someone a chance to experience a little more of their local culture and community. And if this contest turns out to be a success, I’ll do it again in the summer. Let’s see if we can make the world a little less lonely.

Haven’t got a copy of the book yet? Order one from your favourite local bookstore, or shop online at:
Amazon.com
Amazon.co.uk
Amazon.ca
Barnes & Noble
Chapters.Indigo.ca

Yes, this is for real. Spread the word!

(The fine print: The contest organizer (that’s Brendan) will purchase a gift certificate for the event of the winner’s choice, up to a value of $100 (Canadian). Alternatively, if circumstances warrant, the contest organizer will pay for the ticket personally if the ticket is equal to or less than $100 (Canadian) in value, including the cost of taxes and postage. The contest organizer will not pay cash to the winner directly. The prize does not cover the cost of additional services which may be made available for a price inside the event, and does not cover transportation costs. The event selected by the winner must be an event that takes place between the dates of 15th April 2011 and 31st December 2011. The contest organizer cannot be bribed with offers of fine wine, rare philosophical books, or vacations in the French Alps. But you are welcome to try. The winner must select an event to attend within enough time to reasonably allow the contest organizer to purchase the prize and deliver it to the winner. The contest organizer will not reimburse the winner for the cost of an event already attended by the winner in the past. The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog. The contest organizer reserves the right to exclude photos which appear to have been edited with Photoshop or other photo-editing software, and to exclude photos which the organizer judges offensive. The contest organizer will not refund or reimburse the winner if the winner is unable to attend the event, for whatever reason. I’m not a rich man, after all. This fine print is not your fine print. But it could be your fine print. I’m on a horse. If you read this far, well done!)

I have decided today to write up the proposal for my sixth book, and send it on to the publisher.

This is not, of course, a guarantee that the book will be published. I don’t normally chase after publishers until I have a complete first draft. This way, I can write at my leisure, with no deadlines.

However, the manuscript as it stands is about 130,000 words, which is a lot – almost 50% longer than the standard length of a nonfiction trade paperback. It’s also very close to being finished. Of the 24 planned chapters, two were recently cut, to be saved for a future book. A further four are so very close to being finished that I could be done the first complete draft in a few weeks.

I’ve therefore decided to start sending out proposals to publishers. I plan to start with O Books, which published three of my previous five books. O Books is the largest MBS publisher in the United Kingdom, they provide excellent marketing support, and they have treated me very well so far. If they reject it, I’ll look elsewhere; but I’m feeling confident that they will accept it.

I can also tell you now what the title of the book will be:

Stay tuned to this blog over the next few weeks (and months) to see how it goes!

Here are a few words and phrases that I’ve overheard people saying in public places which, in my judgment, must die. Uttering them can damage the speaker himself, because they reinforce ignorance or callousness or cold-heartedness, or other dispositions that do nothing to improve the quality of one’s own life. Uttering them can also cause harm to others, damaging relationships or engendering discontent and malaise in the minds of the hearers. Malicious words can weigh like a stone in the mind. Friendships, even casual friendships, can be stressed or broken by them, even when both parties have good reasons to like each other.

I’d like to start an informal campaign to stamp these ridiculous and belligerent phrases out of our language. I’m promising you here and now that I will never use them anymore, and I invite you to remind me of this blog post if you catch me using one. I urge all of you to do likewise. And, if you are courageous enough, when you hear others using them, try telling that person that he just used a word or phrase that must die, and try to explain why.

Here’s my list, so far.

• “Don’t worry, it all works out in the end.” A rhetoric of non-responsibility. For the end never comes.

• “Don’t think of it as a setback or a loss. Think of it as an opportunity”. But when you look on the world through rose-coloured glasses, you do not see it as it truly is. You see it only as you wish it were. But the world as-it-is, and the world as-wished-for, are not the same worlds. Indeed they are never the same worlds. The obsessively optimistic person’s vision is thus equally as distorted as the cynical or the malaise-ridden person who sees the world only in shades of grey. To be blunt: most crises and tragedies are absolutely not opportunities in disguise. Treating them as such almost always produces an escapist fantasy instead of a real solution. I’m really not sure what opportunities are available to a man who, in the recent collapse of the international banking and financial system, lost his house, his job, his insurance, his car, and his retirement savings.

• “I’m sorry you feel that way.” and “I’m sorry you doubt me.” One of the surest signs of a narcissist is that he utters these ridiculous phrases. For in truth it apologizes for nothing at all, and turns the blame for some incident back on the victim.

• “I don’t mean to be judgmental, but…” …but you’re about to be judgmental. Really, nobody is fooled by that one.

• “That’s just the way I am. Take it or leave it, but what you see is what you get.” Another rhetoric of non-responsibility. It tells the person who you have just offended that he or she should have known better than to talk to you, if he didn’t want to be hurt by you. This turns the responsibility for your belligerence on to your victims. It’s also, curiously, a rhetoric of weakness and impotence and spiritlessness — especially when coupled with the phrase “I can’t change who I am”. If someone says this, he is also saying that he is too weak-willed, too lazy, and too uncaring of others, to change his ways and become a better person. Set aside a little pity in your heart for the loss of his willpower and his freedom.

• “I have strong and controversial opinions”. Translation: “I want to be able to say whatever I want, no matter how offensive, without garnering any criticism. After all, I don’t really want to enter into a rational dialogue with you. I just want to hear myself talk, and be agreed with. Those who disagree have weak opinions anyway, and are not worth my time.” When I hear people say this, I make a mental note to find a way to politely excuse myself.

• “It makes me sad when you say that.” This one presupposes that one’s emotional state is caused by other people’s words. It would be fine to say this in response to deliberately abusive words: “You’re worthless”, or some such. But it is quite another thing when the offending words are the expression of a rational judgment on some topic, even a topic that is not especially controversial: “Passive euthanasia should be permissible”, for instance. In such cases, this particular phrase passively-aggressively diverts the discussion from the actual statement itself to the annoyance you feel when you share space with people who think differently from you. It pretends that the speaker of the first statement caused harm to the other by having his or her own opinion. But this is nonsense. Remember, a difference of opinion is not a personal attack. It is possible for people to disagree with each other without hurting each other. It’s time for us all to learn how.

• “It’s a free society, I can do what I want, and nobody forces me to do anything.” Often used as a way to avoid being called on to account for harms that the speaker has caused to others. It’s also shockingly ignorant. Sure, in this modern society our minds and values need no longer be controlled by laws, armies, thought police, and prisons. But instead we are managed in more subtle ways with peer pressure, status anxiety, credit agencies, religious fanatics, banks, insurance companies, oil and gas corporations, drug companies and pharmaceutical suppliers, marketing agencies, the entertainment media, and the desperation which arises from poverty. We are managed in our lives by forces like these so well, that we think ourselves still free.

• “You should see things from both sides”. When this comes from someone whose mind is dominated by self-interest, by narcissism, or by hate, it really means “You should see things from my point of view, and no one else’s.”

• “That’s my opinion, and I’m entitled to my opinion”. Notice the absence of any standard of excellence by which we could tell whether a given opinion is worth having. Notice, also, that it tends to prevent rational and critical discussion of whether the opinion is worth having. People use this phrase to remain complacent in their ignorance. They don’t let even the facts of reality get in the way of their opinions. Finally, notice that it’s easily reversible: with exactly the same logic, you could reply with: “You’re an idiot, and that’s my opinion, and I’m entitled to my opinion.” (But I don’t recommend replying that way, of course. Responding to a phrase that must die with another phrase that must die, will only kill us all.)

Friends, I know that lots of people, including lots of otherwise good people, use these phrases all the time. That’s because most people in the world don’t know how to communicate well. But I’m here to tell you that we don’t have to communicate by means of violence, belligerence, neglect, and abuse. It is always better for everyone when we communicate with humanity, integrity, and wonderment. So let’s start living better lives by cleaning up the way we speak to each other. And this is something we can all do without lifting a finger.

How many more phrases like this can you think of?

The release of the contents of the US Embassy cables via the Wikileaks organization has recently fascinated me, not only in terms of the content of the cables themselves, but also the way that governments, mainstream media organizations, and individuals have responded to them.

I love knowledge, and I love knowing more about what’s really going on in the world. I’d love to work for CSIS some day, although I know perfectly well they won’t have me (I don’t have a driver’s license, among other reasons.) So I read about six or seven different newspapers around the world every day.

So, some of the contents didn’t surprise me. I already knew, for instance, that most Muslim countries are more worried than you are about Iran getting a nuclear bomb. But I suppose I was surprised to learn that China might be prepared to accept a unified Korea, and might not help protect North Korea if war broke out between the North and South. I was also surprised to learn that Muamar Gadaffi, President of Libya, travels with a “voluptuous” Ukranian nurse. Why this particular item of interest has made so much news is an essay in itself, but probably one with a thesis about sex, rather than free speech, at its heart.

But what has surprised me most is the way in which certain individuals responded to the fact of the cables’ publication. For example, various people, including US Senator Joe Lieberman, are calling for the death of Wikileaks founder Julian Assange. Similarly, Sarah Palin demanded that he be “hunted down like Al Quaeda”.

With that in mind, let’s think back a few weeks. It seems that almost everyone was outraged by Arkansas school board trustee Clint McCance who cheered on the suicide-deaths of gay teenage boys. Some of you may also recall Donal Blaney, the chief executive of a group called the Young Britons Foundation, who openly described his organization as a “Tory madrasa”. In some barely concealed weasel-words, he called for environmental activists who trespass on private property to be shot.

Whatever your politics: under any other normal situation, it is regarded as gravely immoral to demand the death of another human being. I think we should not allow each other to become too flippant with demands for death. When you make such demands, you might feel as if you are taking a serious stand on a serious issue. You may also be egged-on, and socially rewarded, by people who appear to have some real courage with their convictions. But that bandwagon, my friends, has a very dark destination.

Getting back to the topic of Wikileaks: here’s a second concern of mine. It’s worth noting that organizations like Amazon, PayPal, etc., which severed computer links with Wikileaks, thus making it harder for Wikileaks to carry on doing what it does, are private companies, not government agencies. They can do what they want with their own domains. They can add or remove people in accord with their own “terms and conditions”. Nor is there any demand that they be consistent in how they apply their terms. A big bookseller like Amazon could cease hosting WIkileaks whilst still selling books written by hate-mongers and racists; and a money changer like PayPal could cease transferring donations to Wikileaks whilst continuing to allow donations to political organizations with an openly racist agenda. So I suspect that some of the ire presently directed at the US government for censorship probably should be directed instead at the private entities which have made it harder for people to read what they want to read, and say what they want to say.

I think these decisions, by these companies, can be taken as evidence that the internet is not a public commons. Although millions of people use such virtual spaces as if it is a public commons, we don’t vote for the landlord, and he isn’t democratically accountable to us. (Our ‘consumer sovereignty’ by which we ‘vote with our dollars’ is a kind of illusion, really, because some people get more votes (i.e. more dollars) than others.) So the landlord, who we didn’t really vote for, can kick you out for whatever reason seems good to him. We don’t accept this in our politics. Why do we accept this in our economy?

Here’s a third issue. I’m also concerned about how, in the future, people in positions of access to controlled information may be much less willing to share that information, even in the service of a noble and humanitarian cause, if they fear seeing that information in the public sphere in a very short amount of time. Information about human rights abuses, for instance, often gets out to the world only by means of secret or confidential channels. We might never have known about what really happened in places like East Timor, for instance, if prospective informants feared for their lives.

On another, related level, it’s easy to imagine that some leader might be offended enough by things said about him in those cables to retaliate. Imagine if President Gadaffi felt offended by remarks made by US embassy staff about his Ukranian nurse. Might he be sufficiently offended to launch a Lockerbie-bombing style attack on the United States? It is possible, perhaps, that keeping a few things secret, in matters of international diplomacy, is a good thing.

For reasons like those, the Wikileaks revelations may thus end up actually harming the pursuit of world peace and human rights, rather than furthering it. So when you think about the Wikileaks cables, you may have to weigh up the merits and risks of the secrecy that the government sometimes needs to preserve so that it can do its job, versus the public’s need to know what its government is doing so that it can pass a judgment on the government at the next election.

But then again, we should also ask who is reading the cables, now that they are in the public arena. In a straw poll of students in one of my classes last week, only two in a class of 25 knew that the leak had happened. Perhaps the public cares more about what Oprah is wearing today, and the next scandal to hit the participants of Jersey Shore, than about the prospect of a new war in the Middle East, or the fact that Silvio Berlusconi has so many wild parties at night that he is often too tired the next morning to do his job. “The price of peace is eternal vigilance”, said the Irish politician John Philpot Curran – but it seems that most of us are not paying attention.

I’m not sure which worries me more.

Lots of responses to my last blog post (the one on parenthood / non-parenthood).

Maybe I should start blogging more often again.
🙂