A pause in our discontent

Something exceptional occurred last week as so many of us watched flames, smoke and water ravage the iconic Notre-Dame de Paris cathedral.

As the steeple fell and the roof collapsed there was a brief pause in the disharmony consuming western society. People, no matter what their attachment to the cathedral - cultural, religious, aesthetic or something else - melded into one focussed community.

It was exceptional because our society has become so unfocussed and so divided. We are an angry society that is becoming increasingly violent.

The evidence of anger and violence is easy to find. It is seen in daily news reporting from different countries, not just the United States where gun violence is an hourly occurrence. (Roughly 40,000 people died in shootings in the U.S, in 2017; close to another 100,000 are wounded in shootings every year).

Canadian shooting deaths have been on the rise for the last few years. Gunshots are pretty much a daily occurrence in Toronto.

In the UK, where there are serious gun restrictions, knifing crimes totalled 40,147 in the year ended March 2018. A London police report says that knifings in schools are up 25 per cent, and that the number of children carrying knives at school has risen 50 per cent.

More children are being troublesome in our society’s schools. Suspensions have risen dramatically in Britain and more than 7,700 children were expelled in 2016-2017.

Growing aggression among children also is seen here at home. A 2017 study  by the Ontario English Catholic Teachers Association found that 85 percent of teachers polled said classroom violence is increasing. Nine out of 10 said they have experienced or witnessed violence or harassment in schools.

Another sign of the discontent in western society is rising suicide rates. The overall U.S. suicide rate rose 26 per cent during the 10 years ended 2017.

It is difficult to get clearly understandable Canadian statistics on anything, but suicide rates here generally are up as well. Federal agencies list suicide as the ninth leading cause of death among Canadians.

Politics figure largely in our society’s discontent. Surveys show that more and more people feel that our  governments and institutions are failing us.

You see evidence of that in the yellow jacket riots in France, the Brexit chaos in Britain, the Trump absurdities in the U.S. and the bickering and demonstrations in Canada over pipelines and carbon taxes.

Our discontent even shows up in entertainment delivered through our telcom-television services.

The Canadian Commission for Complaints for Telecom-television Services (CCTS) reports that it accepted 9,831 complaints between August 2018 and January 2019, a 44-per-cent increase over the same period the previous year. The biggest issues for consumers: billing disputes, misleading contract terms or non-disclosure of information and poor quality of service.

Simmering anger now is a dominant tension in western society. Opinions on why are numerous and varied.

Some point to a general decline in moral standards. Others blame entertainment that is more violent than instructive or soothing. Still others blame politicians who promise to satisfy the demands of every single voter, while knowing they do not have the means to do so.

To me, the anger and other ills of our society can be found in the foundations of our western culture. Our culture is one of individualism, in which a person is an independent part of society. Individuals look after themselves first, measuring their success on material achievements. Looking after themselves leaves little time to hear, to understand or to  think about others.

The pause in discontent that came with the Notre Dame disaster was a welcome respite. We need to pause more often, but not just because there is a tragedy.

We know how to restore our damaged structures. What we need to focus on is how to repair our damaged society, perhaps with less emphasis on individual achievement and more on understanding that the individual is a critical part of the overall society.

To do that we need to choose visionary leaders who possess the desire, and the courage, to act in the interests of the collective society instead of their individual selves and their individual political organizations. There are not many of those around these days, and there needs to be.

The miracles of spring

I am walking in the almost-spring woods, hoping not to slip and fall on one of the remaining icy patches left by the melting snow. If I do, I can’t phone for help because I have left my ever-present smart phone at the cottage.

I did not forget the phone. I left it behind deliberately.

These handheld marvels of digital technology give access to acres of information, but nothing as informative as the spring woods. Out here, cell phones are just an unwanted intrusion.

The spring woods are alive with information about life and living. The information is all genuine. There is no fake news here. This is the place where you see, hear and smell the miracles of life on this planet.

A couple of turkeys huddle nervously beneath a heavily-boughed spruce. They appear weak from hunger, which is possibly why they have decided to hide rather than run.

Turkeys are not good flyers, which explains why they suffer through the cruelty of our winters. How they survive the minus 20 and minus 30 temperatures in snows that bury most food sources is a miracle of the woods.

Smaller birds like chickadees flit from tree to tree, appearing frantic in their search for food morsels. 

They are not as desperate as we might think. They survived the winter by preparing for it. They searched out roosting cavities protected from icy winds and blowing snow and stored food in hidden caches.

Their advance planning, plus thick winter feather cover and the ability to lower their body temperature to conserve energy, got them through conditions that an unprepared human would never survive.

The trees they flit through stand stark and still, appearing hypnotized in the early morning chill, but there are signs that they are beginning to warm and awaken.

The oaks, maples and beeches are truly miracles of life in the woods. The early morning sun caressing their crowns glistens on bud shells soon to burst, giving birth to a new year of foliage. How do they know when to bud, or when to drop their autumn leaves to save energy?

More advanced than any of the trees are the small willows that already bear buds - furry grey-white catkins that reminded some earlier people of small cats, or pussies. Thus the ‘pussy willow,’ an important symbol of Easter in some traditions and the alarm clock that tells the other trees and plants it is time to wake up.

The greatest miracles of the spring woods are tiny and unseen unless you bend low and concentrate on looking for them.

A little ant runs across the face of a rotten log that has been thawed by the sun. I brush away some dead leaves beside it and see green shoots pushing through the moist dark earth. Some seeds, no bigger than flecks of black pepper, have landed here, and encouraged by water droplets from melting snow and the sun’s warmth, are creating another miracle of new life.

There is no antonym to accurately describe the opposite of miracle but I see what one word cannot picture when I walk from the woods and out onto Highway 35. A discarded cigarette pack rots in a wet ditch and nearby an empty beer can rocks in the morning breeze.

The beer can is a new addition to the garbage tossed from car windows along this stretch of highway. It wasn’t here an hour ago when I walked past.

“Who would be drinking beer at 9:30 in the morning?” I ask myself, before remembering that politicians are encouraging more alcohol consumption. Ontario has just allowed licensed establishments to start serving booze at 9 a.m.

I think of that tiny ant on the log back in the spring woods. Its brain is smaller than a grain of sand yet, unlike so many humans, understands its place in nature and the importance of trying to keep it natural.

I can’t think of an ant without thinking of E. O. Wilson, the American biologist and expert on insect life.

“If all mankind were to disappear,” Wilson has said, “the world would regenerate back to the rich state of equilibrium that existed ten thousand years ago. If insects were to vanish, the environment would collapse into chaos.”

Let there be white!

The plan this week was to write a column about the SNC-Lavalin political madness whipped up by the muddled minds of the nation’s political elite.

Plans change; this one because my mind refused to waste one more millisecond reading or hearing about political incompetency and corruption.

The SNC-Lavalin scandal, which could have been avoided with some honest moral leadership, continues while the critical problems of climate change, the opioid epidemic, the growing poor-rich chasm are lost in a fog of political war. It’s like kids screaming at each other over a broken toy instead of working together to fix it.

So I decided to write about my new car instead of the SNC-Lavalin mess.

Some months ago my wife and I agreed it would make sense to trade our aging car and 11-year-old pickup truck for one new vehicle.

It is a nice car. Smooth, frisky and smells good inside. The only complaint is that all the bells, buzzers, blinking lights and computerized thingies are almost as annoying as the politicians arguing whether corporate criminal acts should be ignored in the interest of saving jobs.

What is strange about our new car is its colour. It is white.

Many years ago I vowed never to drive a white car. It was a vow developed from a childhood trauma.

The trauma occurred the day my father came home with our very first family vehicle. It was a brand new boxy 1956 Chevy with pimple tail lights, and should have been the envy of a neighbourhood of rusting, slouch-back 1940s models.

It wasn’t. It was totally white and without an inch of chrome to give it some personality.

The neighbourhood kids were on to it immediately. Their taunts were devastating.

“Hey, there’s an ambulance at Poling’s house!”

“No, it’s theirs. His old man bought an ambulance.”

The adults were not any kinder.

“Did it come with a siren?” the next door neighbour asked.

“How much would it cost for a rooftop red light option?” asked another.

The jokes shouted across the lawns and the whispers and smirks at his workplace parking lot were too much for dad. One day he brought the Chevy back to Port Arthur Motors where he had bought it. It came back the next day with a painted blue roof. No longer could it be called The Ambulance.

All those memories washed over me as I drove our new, white car from the dealership. Would friends and neighbours start calling it The Ambulance?

Then after a couple of days on the road I realized that I was not alone in having a white car. Many of the vehicles around me, even trucks, were white.

Some research uncovered a startling fact: In recent years white has become the most popular colour for new vehicles. Every second car now imported from Asia is white. Worldwide, 37 per cent of all new vehicles in 2016 were painted white.

So instead of being laughed at and called The Ambulance my new car is lost in a sea of white cars out there on the streets and highways.

One reason for the trend to white vehicles is that some people consider them safer. Surveys show that black vehicles are 12 per cent more likely to be involved in an accident than white. Grey vehicles are 11 per cent more likely, and silver 10 per cent.

There are disadvantages to having a white vehicle. It is difficult to find in parking lots where the majority of vehicles seem to be white.

Also, there were times this past winter at the lake when I thought our car had been stolen. I would get up in the morning, look out to the parking spot and could not see it. It was indistinguishable in the fresh-fallen snow.

But my car’s colour is not simply white. No car colour these days has a name that is plain or simple. Blues, for instance, are no longer simply blues. Your new blue vehicle might be listed as Estoril, Indigo, Blu Nettuno or some other florid appellation dreamed up by marketing ninjas.

No, my new car is not a plain and simple white. It is Blizzard, which likely is why I had so much trouble finding it during the winter.

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Politicking in Anger

Many years ago I was coached not to write anything in anger. Anger allowed to chill makes for cooler thoughts and prudent words. 

I have tried to follow that advice over the past week.

What sparked my recent anger was Premier Doug Ford’s unintelligent and short-sighted remarks about mainstream journalists becoming irrelevant in today’s Ontario society. He accused journalists of being “far-left” and intent on deliberately distorting the messages of politicians. 

He said he bypasses professional news media and delivers his government’s news and views directly to the people through social media – Facebook, Twitter, Instagram etc. 

That’s a common howl among the world’s demagogues – a twisted opinion that unfortunately is spreading during a time of huge change and trauma in journalistic organizations. And it is an opinion supported by little evidence, and certainly no facts, except for those that demagogues invent for themselves. 

I am a part of a family of journalists, have been a journalist all of my life, have many friends that are journalists and have worked with journalists whose health and happiness has been damaged by their dedication to doing their job. So I find Ford’s remarks insulting and hurtful. 

People could care less about how those remarks affect me or any other individual journalist. They should, however, care about how they affect journalism, a fundamental element of democracy. 

The journalist’s job can be explained in two simple words: Observe and report. And observe and report as fairly and honestly as is humanly possible. 

Journalists are not perfect and sometimes slip off track. So do doctors, truck drivers, lawyers, grocery store clerks, or anyone doing a job. But in any job, deliberate intent to distort and do damage is rare. 

And because people are not perfect, there are checks and balances in their jobs. The work of journalists is monitored by editors and by press-media councils that administer codes of practice and investigate complaints from the public. Most journalistic organizations work under some form of code of conduct. 

There are no editors, no codes of practice, no monitoring for facts and fairness in social media. Social media can be a helpful connecting point between family and friends, but generally is an open sewer often used by people with diarrhea of the brain. 

It takes zero research, little critical thinking, and just a few seconds to write a 240-character blurb on Twitter, or a fast post on Facebook. It takes hours of interviews, research and writing to produce a 500-word balanced report on government changes to autism funding.

Many politicians don’t like the traditional, professional media because it does not always produce stories they like. They want to see and hear only stories about them that have favourable spin.

John Stackhouse, former editor of the Toronto Globe and Mail, addressed this back in 2013 before the Ontario Press Council: 

“It is the responsibility of journalists to document facts that perhaps those leaders don’t want to be known. . . but the voting public and society at large needs to know much more than what elected officials want published. Ultimately it is up to the public to decide what to do with the information, but journalists need to be impartial witnesses and publish as much reasonable and defensible information as they can so that citizens, who do not have access to the same resources to question and challenge authority, can make up their own minds.”

Stackhouse made that statement while responding to complaints about Globe and Mail and Toronto Star coverage of the Ford family.

Certainly Premier Ford does not want to read or hear the stories questioning the fairness of having a buddy appointed commissioner of the OPP. Nor would he have liked the reporting of the public criticism that forced his government to back down on changes to autism funding. 

Getting the government’s news and views to the public through social media didn’t seem to help him in those two instances.

My guess is that those two cases had him angry when he stood before a convention of conservative thinkers last week and said professional journalists are losing the battle to inform people. 

I guess he never had a coach who warned him about writing or speaking in anger. Anger and bias are poor substitutes for critical thinking and facts. 

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