this is our one demand

It was a busy, irresponsible summer full of visiting and hiking and revisions. But not much in the way of blogging. I’m not apologizing, I’m bragging. Just to be clear. There may or may not be in increase in posting now that the weather may or may not be getting less cooperative. Then again, there’s hockey to play.

Today, however, I came across the following - a creative, subversive, beautiful, and heart-breaking response to media complaints that the Occupy Wall Street movement has not stated specific goals. That they are just protesting, willy-nilly and all, and don’t have enough direction to their dissent. How dare they not have a published set of reasons! How dare they not have made a list!

This is their response, as copied and pasted from wilderside.wordpress.com: 

This is the fifth communiqué from the 99 percent. We are occupying Wall Street.

on Japan, weddings, and politics

It was a weird, horrible, wonderful, encouraging, terrifying, heartbreaking, heart-mending week.

On Thursday, a friend finished (I mean finished) her first novel. It made me smile big smiles, and it also lit a fire under my ass. I might get to read it, but not before I finish my own damned manuscript. On the same day (Friday for them) the earth shook in close proximity to Japan though, so my joy was tempered.

I drove to Vancouver on Friday morning after a pit stop at Mom’s for coffee. I was driving to my Bio-Mom’s place in Surrey. So it took me around five hours and 500 kilometers to get from my Mom’s place to my Mom’s place. I’m guessing that puts me in a relatively small club. Not too small, but small enough.

I spent a good part of the trip thinking about Japan. That’s a large club – those thinking about Japan – from the minority-hateful club highlighted on Facebook who were equating an earthquake and tsunami with Pearl Harbor; to the larger demographic who are directly affected, hoping to hear a word that will never come, hoping to survive long enough for help to arrive, hoping that the scars won’t be too deep; to the majority club around the world that were/are just trying to think positive things, and empathize, and hope for the best. The “best”, at this point, would seem to be “anything that is not the worst”.

The radio says that we still don’t know the magnitude of this tragedy; that the estimates of destruction and depth keep jumping every hour. The truth is that we’ll never know the magnitude of this tragedy, no matter how exact the numbers, how specific the radiation counts, how large the dollar amounts. Some tragedies can’t be measured. All we can do is be dumbfounded and then try to lean into the light again.

That’s what I tried to do as I drove into Surrey; grab the light I was driving towards and lean into it. I was visiting to attend my brother Travis’s wedding after all.

Saturday morning Travis picked me up on the way to the Abbotsford Airport so we could pick up our other brother, Troy. (Aside: My birth name, before the adoption, was Thomas – Mom had a theme all planned out.) Then the three of us drove back to Mom’s to let her bask in our perpetual three-way ribbing. And then we spent the day together, the three of us, until it was time for the wedding. This happens only once every couple years these days, so it was precious.

There were moments, whole, long sequences of seconds and minutes when I actually forgot about Japan.

The ceremony itself was simple. Trav and his fiancé Kate were insistent that it meant nothing. They have no plans on celebrating March 12. It’s a formality in anticipation of a wedding in Mexico next month, and having a signed, authorized license back here in Canada makes the legal part of things much easier. So we gathered at Kate’s parent’s home, just family, eight of us, and ate too much. Some of us drank too much, but we forgive them and had made plans for safe drives home. And in the middle a Justice of the Peace arrived and we had a little ceremony.

Kate and Trav had championed the “this means nothing” theme, and yet everyone shed at least one tear. Kate was gorgeous in her laughing tears, Trav handsome in his stoic ones, and the room was full of love the way incense can fill a room; in the way that it makes you pull back and say “wow” involuntarily.

I had several profound moments of gratitude. This was a family I had never known eighteen years ago. Trav and Kate’s love has already overcome things that would make lesser mortals coil back in fear. Gratitude actually seems like a really small word. After all, words are just symbols we use to shorthand an idea. Ideas like gratitude or love deserves volumes, encyclopedias, libraries.

It’s cool that we can condense an idea like that into five or nine letters, depending, but there’s a disservice in the accomplishment too. Both gratitude and love deserve words with more gravitas. It’s typically Western: Our accomplishments sometimes go too far. We do because we can, and do not, often enough, ask whether we should.

I drove back Sunday morning and Japan still dominated the news. There was more information on the Fukushima reactor. The numbers were ugly and getting uglier with no end in sight. There was no way to measure it on a heart level, but the astronomers said that our days are now 1.6 milliseconds shorter because the rotation of the Earth sped up, and another expert is saying that, according to GPS measurements, Honshu appears to have moved almost 2.4 meters. The whole thing. Eight feet.

And then, in the mountains, I lost radio and enjoyed silence for a couple hours. When I came out Tapestry was on CBC. Karen Armstrong was on, talking about compassion. She won the TED prize in 2009 and wished for the Charter for Compassion, a wish she got and is getting. The Charter is an amazing idea.

They also talked about the attack ads that the Conservative party is running right now in Canada

I read a very funny op-ed in McLean’s by Scott Feschuk in which he said:

“Are there really people out there so ideologically fragile that a 30 seconds of dubious accusations are enough to alter their worldview? …Intrigued by this phenomenon, I have conducted painstaking research to develop a theory that offers insight into the precise mechanism by which attack ads are able to affect popular opinion. My theory is as follows: People are dumb. …I am not saying you’re an idiot if you switch parties because of an ad you saw on television. But I am thinking it.”

I know, not very compassionate, is it? The world is complex, what can I say? We can grieve for Japan on the same weekend as a joyous wedding, even while simultaneously hoping that our species can learn to embrace compassion as a benchmark, and yet laugh at a one-sided article insulting the voting population of my country.

Nobody said any of this would be simple.

Oh, somewhere along the line I lost an extra hour. Let me know if you see it. Every hour is important. If I can’t have it, I’d like to at least know that it went to a good cause.

whispering really loud

Sunday afternoons are quickly becoming one of my favorite times of the week. First, it marks the end of my weekly sojourn into hell, er, I mean, my three shifts at the casino. Getting off work is always an enormous relief.

Then I have the satisfaction of knowing that I’m driving home to Aikido practice. It’s a strange contradiction, squishing the place that I hate the most right now with the practice that I love the most. If I were #amwriting instead of #amrevising, I might not feel that way, but the two hours on the mat every Sunday night is like a bit of heaven, even better than the climbing at the moment.

Yeah, I said it.

Finally, my commute home Sunday afternoons blissfully coincides with Tapestry on CBC Radio 1, and the hour or so of driving feels a bit like a cocoon in which amazing people talk about amazing things with a degree of enlightenment that is always moving.

Last week, for instance, they were talking to ministers and pastors who had lost their faith, some of whom were still struggling to perform their duties in that absence of that faith, still working as ministers and pastors. I think that would tear me to pieces.

This week, host Mary Hynes was speaking with Pakistani musician Salman Ahmad, of the band Junoon (which translates as ‘obsessive passion’). Ahmad spoke eloquently of his love for Led Zeppelin and Suffi mystical traditions, and he quoted Iqbal: 

“The whisper in the heart has strength; it may not have wings but it has the power to fly.” 

He talked about the creative spark within us, all of us, being our connection to the source, the base layer, or the divine. And also that it unites us; that it is the spark that, if we acknowledge it, connects us through art.

And then he said: 

“We all have that whisper of the heart, but the world is so loud that we can’t hear unless we really try.” 

It seems to me, at times, that it’s the other way around though; that our culture works so hard to not hear even when the natural arc of the universe, to steal one more quote, curves towards justice.

If we’d just get out of the fucking way and let it. Or maybe the artist’s truth is to be an amplifier; to scream that spark so loudly that nobody can ignore it. Maybe that’s part of breaking the ceiling too.


P.S. (Because I forgot) - http://www.cbc.ca/tapestry/ 

lest we forget (A Bloggers Unite post)

Today, January 27, is International Holocaust Remembrance Day, a day it is imperative to remember. This is a Bloggers Unite post.

The date itself was chosen by the UN as it marks the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau in 1945.

During World War Two one sub-demographic of a culture, a group in a position of extreme power, utterly dehumanized another cultural group to the most extreme degree. That example of bigotry and prejudice now lives in infamy as an ultimate twentieth century example of man's inhumanity to man.

The point of this day of remembrance is to sear into our memory the vivid, horrid example of that inhumanity, to remember the millions of lives lost due to an utter failure of empathy, and to pay them respect. To me, it is also about remembering that it was and is not an isolated incident; that we continue to perpetrate acts of genocide upon each other today in parts of the world; that we have not learned the lesson well enough yet.

Empathy is not culturally specific. It is not a light switch that can be turned off and on depending upon who it is we are talking about, or which cultural group we are referring to. Empathy requires that we see all humans as equal and valid, and apply the same measure of respect and/or outrage to each situation regardless of who oppresses, or who is oppressed.

This is the lesson: That all life is precious; that no life is less valuable than any other; that when we drift towards a belief that a group of people are less valuable or worthy of life than another, then we are drifting towards genocide; that, in doing so, we lose ourselves; and that to remain silent is tantamount to doing it ourselves.

Respecting those who suffered and died in the Holocaust requires respecting all peoples, especially in defense of those oppressed by a power that does not recognize this fundamental lesson – that we are all human, and all worthy.

"Denying historical facts, especially on such an important subject as the Holocaust, is just not acceptable. Nor is it acceptable to call for the elimination of any State or people. I would like to see this fundamental principle respected both in rhetoric and in practice by all the members of the international community."

United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, Press Conference SG/2120, 14 December 2006

the conundrum of moral orienteering

On Saturday, when I heard about the Arizona shooting, I was writing this:

Who are you? I mean, if someone walked up to you at a party and asked, “Who are you, really?”, after you raised an eyebrow and maybe looked at your shoes for a second, what would you say?

The always sparkly Judy Clement Wall said this on her always delightful Friday List post:

I was wondering what would happen if we sought only meaningful connections. What if we tried, always, to see the person and not the title – neighbor, parent, cashier, waitress, mail carrier, homeless guy, child. Would it be exhausting to live like that? Would we long for the freedom of not really caring? Would we crave superficial conversation, goodbyes that don’t hurt? Or would we feel alive, surrounded by love, connected to each other in a big, beautiful, messy human tapestry, each of us a piece of the breathtaking whole?

I responded with this:

I hate how, so often, we ask what people do instead of asking who they are. I hate that, just as often, when someone inquires about who we are, we answer by saying what we do. I am not what I do. I am me, more than the sum of my actions.

And then I heard about a supermarket parking lot in a warm place and thought about little else all week.. There were long stretches of soul searching, periods of despondency, frustration, anger, a couple arguments with people I generally respect, and a relapse of the cold brought on by too many sleepless nights. Yesterday I crashed and slept for thirty out of thirty-four hours, so I guess I needed it.

The arguments centered on whether this was a time for recriminations or reparations, division or peace. I find the blame game incredibly frustrating right now, and appreciated that Mr. Obama worked hard to avoid it yesterday. The only blame I think we should be laying is on ourselves; all of us, regardless of political, social, religious, or sports affiliation.

I said Saturday that I thought – think – empathy is the key to getting out of this place of polarization. If we could spend a bit more time wearing the shoes of other people, even if just in our head and just for moments, then we’d be less inclined to despise them unreasonably.

We’d still disagree; at least I hope we would. Growth, progress, enlightenment - these depend on the grain of sand stuck in the shell, causing friction and forming those pearls we need to pull out of the mud and make our own. But we wouldn’t hate as much. We’d see people across the aisle, street, border, and ocean instead of enemies. We’d see faces instead of silhouettes; individuals instead of mobs.

It was tempting to get lost in the spiral of confusion about what we’re doing these days, to think about how little empathy there is instead focus on the evidence of it that fills my life. I think yesterday’s physical collapse was as much about rebooting emotionally and mentally as it was about being physically sick. I just shut down, had to, needed it like I needed the soup and liters of water and the absolute quiet. It was a migraine of the soul that I was getting over.

I also think that the identity issue is a key. People who know who they are tend to be empathic. They’ve done or are doing the work, or have simply been blessed with a better internal compass, and there is no question about what it is that defines them. They give strange answers when people ask them what they do instead of who they are, intentionally trying to confuse the interviewer. If we don’t speak the language of self-awareness, we don’t understand.

I read an article last week about how new studies are redefining how language affects the way we interpret the world around us. One example they gave involved Aboriginal peoples of Australia, how they don’t have words for ‘behind’ or ‘front’ or ‘beside’. Their language evolved in a world that was wide and expansive and centered on the sky and the stars and the sun, so all of their directions are based on cardinal points. They don’t say, “I was standing beside him when the kangaroo jumped out”. They say, “I was standing to his east when the kangaroo jumped out of a bush to the north”.

When they tell a story, their hand gestures are always cardinally accurate to the event. If they describe the arc of a person falling out of a boat they were in, they don’t gesture relative to themselves, but relative to the compass position, so that if they tell a story facing north one time, and south the next, the gestures will adapt to show the exact direction of the fall in cardinal space.

And, for these people, it’s not just language. Put them in a dark room, blindfold them and spin them around, and they’ll still, infallibly, point to north without hesitation. Perfect sense of direction is built into them so deeply that they can’t help but know where north is.

I wonder if it’s even possible to have a moral compass so right and so sure that everything we say would be true to it, infallibly, unassailably, perpetually.

I don’t know, but if it is, I want that super-power. I call dibs. 

polarization, empathy, and the shooting of Gabrielle Giffords

As I was sitting here, writing about identity, about who we are not being the same as what we do, news broke about the Arizona shooting today that took the life of a child and resulted in the shooting of several other people (specifics are still sketchy) including Arizona Democratic Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, members of her staff, and Arizona Federal Judge John Roll (also deceased). I was in a great mood, optimistic, hopeful, full of good-natured inspiration. Now, not so much.

Insanity.

When two people sit in the middle of a teeter-totter not much happens. But when they slide out to the ends things can get violent, even when one or both people have the best motives and intentions. It’s just the physics of polarization.

We’re at the ends of the teeter-totter right now. It’s uglier than usual and I honestly can’t begin to imagine how it’s going to play out. I hope that empathy wins out, the kind of courageous, fully spent, "damn the torpedoes" empathy that my favorite people advocate, that I love the idea of. One where we see people for their hearts instead of for their clothes or titles or the cars they drive or the party pins they wear on their jackets.

Somebody reaching for that kind of empathy would not have used a gun on a crowd of people today in Arizona. They just wouldn’t have. Somebody embracing that kind of empathy would be repelled by violence and insanity. People that are committed to looking into others and identifying with them as human beings don’t use guns to express a point. They aren’t cowards or murderers.For them, violence is anathema.

Events like the one today are like having a giant mirror held up in front of us, collectively, as a people, a species. Whatever Jared Loughner’s motives, we still have the opportunity to recognize that our culture of violence, extreme polarization, and extreme hate plays a part in creating people like him. We all get to own that, have to own that, and use it as motivation to keep reaching for the kind of empathy that would make hate obsolete. Or at least endangered. 


I'd settle for endangered.

I listened to the following speech earlier and just had to sit back and shake my head. It’s amazing and as applicable today as it was then. I’ll leave you with it. Please take care of and with each other.

fa lala lala

Here I am again, happy that I didn’t put “go to sleep at a reasonable time” on some list of things to do today (or yesterday, I guess).

It is December 24 and I’m caught in that strange limbo between my churchy upbringing and my decidedly anti-churchy adulthood again. I’ll be driving to Mom’s later today to partake in the family tradition of Eve celebration. Mom has a tremor in her hands these days. We think it’s a side-effect of the anti-anxiety medication, but we’re going to make sure and ask the doctor next visit, just to cover the bases and be sure.

We always did it this way, the Eve thing. Mostly, I think, so that I could have an extra bit of alone time with my new toys. That only-child thing came in handy as a kid – I was usually pretty spoiled. I was also a loner, so the 25^th tradition of hosting friends, or being hosted at friends’ homes, for the big tryptophan overdose was a chore. I was always much happier with the thought of making up imaginary stories for my action figures to battle through, or reading my new books, or playing my new games, than I was being social with kids that I didn’t identify with, or adults that I got even less.

I shirked off the illusion of Santa at an early age. Mom said I was three when I looked up at them one Eve and said that I knew the Santa thing was a crock, and that they didn’t have to pretend on my account. They laughed, she told me, but it was a sign of things to come.

That’s kind of how I feel about the religiosity of the whole season too, or rather, the attempt to impose a religious reason for the season. When I was eleven or twelve, around the same time that the church we had gone too unintentionally ostracized Mom for being in a failed marriage (how dare she!), I started to peel back the curtain and see churches for what they really were – country clubs for the religiously mobile.

I remember reading for the first time the opinion of scholars that December 25^th was an unlikely date for the birth of a Jewish messiah, if the little tyke had indeed been born during a census as the story goes. The Roman empire, being as continentally expansive as it was, included some pretty damned cold and snowy places, and the middle of winter would not have been a good time to ask all of the citizens and subjects to head back over hill and snowy dale to descend upon their home towns for the census taking. They were reasonable, those Romans, and conducted their censuses in the early spring, after the snow and before serious planting season. If there was a historical Jesus born in an historical manger in his foster-dad’s historical home town during a census, the smart money is on it happening some time in April or early May, closer to Easter than to this charade of a religious holiday in early winter.

I’ve never been able to take “The Reason for the Season” seriously since then. It was the first of many disillusionments when it came to all things x-ian. Others, like the fact that most of our Judeo-Christian holidays are simply neo-versions of pagan holidays superimposed over the old celebrations as a way to churchify the days people were going to celebrate anyway, or the fact that so many pre-Jesus pagan deities share so many instances of serendipitous coincidence with the Jesus mythology, just cemented the deal. The added fact that this holiday, more than any other, typifies our western obsession with turning everything into a reason to shop, helps my cynicism too.

It’s not that I’m a Scrooge. I enjoy the happiness that sometimes overpowers the stress of angry shoppers playing full-contact consumerism down the toy aisles. I take a bit of consolation in the fact that more of my friends do secret Santa variations instead of wholesale shopping one-upmanship. An informal survey of climbers at the climbing gym this week (I was covering so that my friend, the owner, could get some well-deserved R&R) revealed that more than half of the more regular and serious climbers do a present-sharing scheme version of some sort, limiting their over-consumption. This may be because we tend to be counter-culture a lot.  Or maybe because we’re simply less affluent than many. The two probably kind of go hand in hand. Either way, we’re all happy. Hell, we’re often silly we’re so happy.

But still, I have a level of frustration as I watch drivers share their xmas spirit by fingering each other as they race from mall to mall, or other friends participate in the race to see who is least cheap, and most “generous” (like it’s a competition or something), credit be damned, the stress of anticipated card bills already dancing like obese sugar plum accountants just behind their fake smiles.

I wonder if the sardonic humor I feel coursing through my veins is just a world-weary reaction to the foolishness I’m watching, or whether it’s something darker; something more Freudian.

When the first real experience of religious disillusionment kicked in, back in my pre-adolescence, I was angry about it; angry at the church and at god for the way Mom was treated so callously by the church; angry that god had simply not shown up in such a profound way. I stayed angry about it all through my teens – angry and depressed. Then, when I fell back into religion as an adult, through most of my marriage, I was told that god had not failed – I had failed; my faith had failed. I was encouraged to read Job a lot. Have you read Job? Wonderful morality tale, that Job is, if amazingly depressing, and a very sophisticated apologetic for the shitty things that happen to people. And for a while I believed it all again too, silly me.

When I walked away the second time, the curtain pulled back one more time to reveal the gears and machinations behind the holy veil, I vowed that I wouldn’t throw the baby out with the bath water. There are amazing things about faith that have nothing to do with religion at all. My faith remains a living, breathing thing. I’m not sure what my faith is in any more – certainly, it’s nothing to do with the specific mythology of western religion – but I can still feel a breath of belief in me. And a strong one too.

Like Ramakrishna, I now believe that all religions have truth in them, in their innate humanism. It isn’t coincidence that most world religions have a version of the golden rule. Science and atheism can’t explain everything out there any more believably than any religion can. In a sense, science can be a religion too, with its high priests in white garb, test tubes in hand – our gatekeepers to a better understanding. I don’t have faith in science, as interesting as new discoveries are, just like I don't have faith in religions with their old explanations. Both are corrupt, flawed by the need of institutions to control people, and control information, and keep people dumb and in the dark.

Faith, to me, is sacred: The ongoing search for an understanding of things as a whole. Science isn’t an answer – it’s a path. Same with religion. And all paths, potentially, even when they are corrupted by the intrinsic nature of institutions, can lead to the roof. That’s what Ramakrishna said. Who cares how we get there, so long as we move in that direction. 

I just prefer no path. I like bushwacking. A bushwacking kind of faith isn't very defined. It doesn't mean that you can't get anywhere - it's not being directionless - it just means that you have to scrape through the burning bushes, and wade through the seas. Nothing is done for a bushwacker - we do for ourselves.

I have faith in the knowledge that we don’t know everything. I have faith in the truism that the more we know, the more we should know that we don't really know. I have faith in the thought that empathy might win out one day, and that our species will actually become what we’re capable of being. I have faith in the ability of my fellow humans to transcend the bullshit, only occasionally sometimes, but at other time, in some people or in some places and times, on a scale that is truly miraculous and marvelous to behold. I have faith that we could do that more, and that if we could, it would change everything.

So yeah, I still have a semblance of faith.

Sometimes, when I think about how anti-tradition I am, it bothers me. I wonder if I’m just being kooky and unjustifiably recalcitrant. I wonder how much easier it would be to just go with the flow. I wonder if the reason that so many of the high profile atheists seem so goddamned angry all the time is because, like me, they still feel the sting of their lost religion and the comforts it provides. Is that why I’m prickly about this topic? Because I’m still angry that I saw behind the curtain and the truth robbed me of all my comfortable illusions?

Maybe it is. At least, maybe it still is a bit.

And then I remember that I’m not generally inclined to swim with the current at the best of times. Certainly, in the face of so much cultural and self-deception, it’s unreasonable for me to expect such behavior of my self. I’m that guy that goes up the down escalator some times, just because. This is who I am. I like being the wrench in the works, when the works need wrenching. Seeing behind the curtain, through the veil, was probably kind of inevitable. Seeing behind one too many times, in one to many milieus, has made me skeptical and cynical a bit, I know. I have to live with that.

Honestly, I try not to push it too hard. I'm no better at being an anti-church evangelist than I was at being a pro-church evangelist. Ask me, I'll tell ya. Otherwise, you probably would barely notice. I’m okay with mostly letting those around me enjoy the season. I’m not a humbug kind of cynic, but I don’t keep my mouth completely shut either. Christmas doesn’t make me sour, just thoughtful, and very observant.

And glad I don’t have to go to church.

So tomorrow I’ll go to Mom’s and help make dinner. We’ll open a couple presents (I’ve talked her into simple things with practicality, and no sweaters, but I can’t talk her out of it entirely). I’ll even have a little gift for her and Miriam to open, just cuz. And then, after they go to bed at their early hour, I’ll sneak up the stairwell and spend a bit of time thinking on the roof and staring up at the stars.

I’ll hope that maybe we’ll all reach out for our best selves a little more this year. I’ll wish for a pervasive empathy to settle like a swaddling blanket over the human race just a touch more than it ever has before. I’ll believe that we’re capable of it, and that, in itself, will be a little miracle for me. I’ll try to see things the way they really are and still be hopeful. Up there alone. On the roof.

Because that’s what matters – getting to the roof and having your eyes open enough to appreciate it when you get there.

At least that’s what I think.

Happy Seasons and Merry Greetings, everyone.

my lack of empathy: on laws and DUI's and the loss of profits

There’s a new law here in BC. It lowers the legally acceptable blood-alcohol level for drivers of motor vehicles from 0.08% to 0.05%, gives police more authority to require breathalyzer tests and, in the absence of compliance or the failure of the test, impound cars, suspend licenses and give tickets. Even refusing a breathalyzer is now an offence. It’s making a big stir.

Why, you ask? I mean, it’s only 0.03% difference, isn’t it?

Yes, but that difference translates into an actual, practical difference when it comes to managing one’s state of impairment in anticipation of driving home from the restaurant or club or pub or casino. 0.05% means that, to be legal, we could have one drink with dinner, and then only if we wait half an hour or so after finishing it before we get in the car to drive home.

This difference has many restaurant, bar and pub owners up in arms. Apparently, this is going to hurt profits in a big, big way. The government, it is argued, has just impinged on the right to make money. Revenues will suffer. Jobs will be lost. It’s not fair.

Imagine my ambivalence.

Don’t get me wrong: Where people actually will lose jobs, I understand the stress and complication that eventuality will cause. I’m all for employment.

And I have nothing in particular against business owners making their profits…

(…even if I also think that most of them could do better things with said profits than get fat and own Hummers from which they phone into the radio station to complain about their lost revenue due to new blood-alcohol level laws in direct contravention of the other BC law that prohibits the use of handheld electronic devices while they drive.)

It’s just that I don’t see a real downside to this law that can be argued without said arguments making us all look like real dicks. (Because, remember, there is no ‘them’; there is only ‘us’.)

Here’s the thing: Laws are society’s way of managing the behavior of those of us who don’t care enough about our neighbors to do the right thing. If we were all reasonable, intelligent, compassionate human beings, then we wouldn’t generally need many laws. Pretty much every religion/belief system/philosophy recognizes the simple validity of the golden rule (or a version thereof): Act towards those around you in the manner that you would have those around you act to you. In “I-learned-everything-I-need-to-know-about-life-in-kindergarten” terms, this means that we should all play nice in the sandbox. If everyone could do that – hell, if even almost everyone could do that – there would be fewer laws. Common sense and empathy would prevail.

But we aren’t all reasonable, intelligent, compassionate human beings, so we need negative reinforcement to encourage us to play nice. We need the looming, impending doom of the law to try to keep our baser instincts in check.

And in this case, the law has been changed because too many of us bent or simply ignored the previous law. We did it when we didn’t imbibe responsibly. We did it when we over-served without giving a fuck. We did it when we didn’t take keys away and make people take taxis.

For the record, I’m guilty of all three charges. I got away with it. I know people though, people that weren’t so lucky.

And people will try to bend and ignore this law too. We’ll drink too much, get behind the wheel of our cars and trucks, and then we’ll drive, sometimes home, sometimes to other places for more drinks, sometimes to other people’s homes where various lascivious acts may or may not take place. Many of us will get away with it.

But some will not. Some will be caught. We’ll lose our cars and have our licenses suspended. We may even face jail time. It will be inconvenient for those of us that get caught. Life changing.

Some will have our lives changed in a different way. We’ll be the drivers, passengers, and innocent bystanders. We’ll be counted among the injured, the paralyzed, and the dead.

For families and friends, it will have everything to do with absences – lonely visits to graves, terrifying anniversaries, and gaping, monstrous, bleeding voids in our lives that will never, ever completely heal.

In time, the number of those that think we can bend or break the law will diminish because of those of us that try and fail. In time, the law might make a real difference. Not soon enough, but in time.

So if my compassion for those of us who make our livings selling alcohol is somewhat restrained, you’ll understand why: That inconvenience is somewhat minor compared to those of us that will be injured, or die, or remain behind after someone we love is killed. That inconvenience, in the face of all the suffering, is simply selfishness.

My apologies, forgive my lack of empathy.