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.

...one of those days...

Do you ever have one of those days? You know the kind....

One of those days when the overwhelming weight of the world just seems to be bearing all of its deep gravity well down on you? When all of the culpability of the species just seems to be unfucking avoidable and you have to own it, hold it to you at the same time that you're trying to tear it out of you?

One of those days when you can't resist to the urge to take on the sins of your race, your country, your gender, your species? When every story, every song, every image reminds you of the incredible fuck up this all is, all of it, in spite of the good things, because of the unmitigated horror of the bad?

When the black hole is so dense that it's hard out get out of bed, off of the floor, out the door? When the sunlight hurts and smiles feel like razorblades? When the thought of peace, the ephemeral unlikelihood of it, the whisper of its possibility and the truth of its goddamn improbability, reduces you to tears?

When you want to slap every child you see push another down, ram your car into every self-involved driver that didn't see the person they almost ran over, strangle every self-serving politician you watch lie, again and again and again, destroy every person that ever hit their spouse in anger, knowing the whole time that it's the wrong answer to every one of those situations and not caring?

Knowing that even if you could, the shame would just be worse afterward?

One of those days when you can't see the hope through the fear, or the love through the hate, or the intelligence through the ignorance? When bigotry seems to be the rule and tolerance – not even real acceptance, just tolerance – looks like it's about a million fucking light years away from being possible?

When laughter makes you want to cry, crying makes you want to scream, and honesty makes you want to smash every mirror in the world?

One of those days? Do you know the kind I'm talking about?

I'm having one.

Sometimes it's good to just sit in awe and fucking own it for a day.

S'okay though. It's just a day. Tomorrow's a new one, and things'll be better. It's just one day.

There is no ‘them’. There is only ‘us’.

This is the bad news:

We are violent, bigoted, racist, exclusive, divisionary, biased, cynical and greedy. We just need to fucking own that.

That politician that is so slimy that he is defending himself after trying to sell a senatorial seat? He’s part of us. So is that Prime Minister that seems to think it’s okay to suspend democracy when things aren’t going his way. So is that Imam that manipulates people into suicide bombings. So is that minister who is so ashamed of his own homosexuality that he demonizes every other gay and queer. So is that CEO that is willing to sell out an entire ecology to make a quick buck. And the list could go on and on.

These people are all part of us. They aren’t part of some magical ‘them’, the existence of which will allow us to be different than them and therefore, by some twisted acrobatics of denial, the ‘good guys’. They. Are. Us.

We live in a world that’s in trouble. We live in a horribly divided and manipulated culture. We live in an age where profit is more important than the good of the species. We live in a society where many of us think that it’s justified and acceptable to divide us based on race, or religion, or culture, or how much money we have. We live on a planet where it’s somehow okay for two billion of us to live on less that two bucks a day. This place where these things are ignored so long as some of us can remain cloistered in our comfortable little enclaves is our world. We are the ones responsible.

But there’s good news too:

We are also peaceful, inclusive, tolerant, accepting, generous, courageous, altruistic, idealists, hopeful and empathic.

The good news is that that guy, the social leader that preached non-violence and led so many people in a protest against racism? He’s one of us too. So is the religious leader from Tibet that preaches love and inclusion and religious tolerance. So is that catholic nun that embraced poverty so she could reach out to the impoverished. So is that social leader that led thousands of Indians in non-violent protest for their right to self-determination. So is that politician that still is still idealistic and has integrity (I know of at least two, so don’t say it can’t happen).

These people are part of us too. We get to own the good part of us even as we have to, absolutely must, own the bad parts as part of us. It’s a package deal and we can’t forget it. Ever.

This is what I want to believe, what I choose to believe:

When we get past the binary of ‘us’ and ‘them’ there’s good to go with the bad, and bad to go with the good. Past the binary there’s a place where there’s only us. We don't get to pass the buck there. We get to try to pick up the pieces in that place. In that magical and daunting land we have to make peace, find a way to accept each other, embrace each other.

In spite of the differences. Because of the commonalities.

We are all us, and it’s all we’ve fucking got. Maybe it's time for us to quit wasting time. Maybe we could quit pointing fingers and just get to fucking work one of these days.

“Think not forever of yourselves, O Chiefs, nor of your own generation. Think of continuing generations of our families, think of our grandchildren and of those yet unborn, whose faces are coming from beneath the ground.” Peacemaker, founder of the Iroquois Confederacy, (ca. 1000 AD)

(Like the For Gaza post on July 9, this post is in support of Bloggers Unite, a blogger cooperative in support of several blog-worthy subjects throughout the year. Today’s post is specifically in support of International Youth Day, August 12, 2010.)

I’m a 43-year old guy with no kids of my own. Raised as an adopted child in what ended up being a broken home, and with a somewhat less-than-mainstream perspective, I grew up a little sour on the idea of having kids. I saw an exploding global population that didn’t need any extra human units, was afraid of doing to children some of what I’d experienced, and just never felt that overwhelming urge to pass on my genes.

I have, however, tried to find my own ways to influence generations subsequent to my own over the years. I’ve coached hockey, worked with ‘at-risk’ children in foster care and their own broken homes, volunteered with youth and even now, while I’m admittedly self-focused on completing the novel that is at the foundation of my life-inversion, I volunteer at a local climbing gym working with birthday and school groups. I’m also fortunate to be friends with the son of a close friend, a 15-year old young man I met 4 years ago with whom I share a love of goaltending.

My close friend was courageous enough to send that young friend out for a few days visit last week. I was honored enough back in the day when she picked me to be a ‘positive influence’, more honored when he decided to gift me his friendship, and floored that the friendship is still of any interest to him. I consider it a responsibility, this opportunity to have even a small say into the life of an intelligent, caring, funny and talented 15-year old. That close friend has done a great job of parenting herself (leaving me wondering what there is for me to contribute), but I’ve appreciated the chance to be a friend, to help him with his goaltending (in whatever small way I can do that), to talk about his education and hopes and dreams, and even discuss something else we both seem to appreciate – writing fiction. We hung out, talked about all of the above and I spent an afternoon introducing him to another love of mine – climbing. There was no pressure, just being friends. I hope that he enjoyed it as much as I did.

Because my head works in a certain way, I was and am reminded in such moments that we live in a world that needs help and that he and his peers will the ones to whom falls most of the responsibility to try to fix things. There are things we can, should and must do now, today, but most of the real solutions are over my temporal horizon, somewhere wonderful beyond my allotted 80 to 100 or so years. Seeing a real solution to problems like inequality, racism, carbon emissions, ecological degradation, political corruption, corporate and social greed, war, etcetera, etcetera, won’t come in my lifetime.

Don’t get me wrong - we need to start actually taking the steps to start the change that needs to take place now, but it’s going to take our generation and the next, and probably the next after that for any fundamental change to truly happen.

So yeah, obviously, I think our youth are pretty important.

They are smarter than we are, more open to change, less aware of cultural and racial differences and more aware of the things that we have in common. They think our greed and bigotry are stupid and foolish. They have a healthy skepticism that will serve them well if they can also remain hopeful. They have a hatred of lies and love of truth that is inspiring.

The truth that they embrace imperils our generation’s commitment to greed and avarice. Their truth scares the shit out of us, and we’re far better at denial than change. They’re uneasy with the complacency and self-centeredness that typifies our generation. They’re interested in solutions and critical thought. For as long as our species has been passing wisdom from one generation to another, we’ve been encouraging the next generation to not make the same mistakes as we did, and to consider the generations that will come after them as they make choices. It’s a concept that, frankly, our species gives a lot of lip service to, but generally fails to honor. But I remain hopeful.

The other day a friend asked her Facebook universe how it is we might imagine raising our children so that they will think self-critically and be more empathic than our generation is proving to be and more than the one before us was. The conversation ended up in a place where the concept of generational solutions seemed more viable and rational than any unrealistic hope that we might affect profound change within our own generation. Not that anyone felt that abdicating responsibility to the next generation was appropriate, but that the job was too big for the few that see it, and that the change would have to be manifested in a new generation of empowered and educated humans. Our realization was that we have to do all that we can now, but that too many people are too invested in denial, in simply not seeing the truth, to ‘get there’ in one generation. So while we have to ‘do’ now, we need to pragmatically focus on the next generation and actually encourage a profound generation gap that creates a better species.

They have some advantages, the ‘next generation’: Our technological age of global connectedness has taught them, far better than we seem to have learned, that it’s a small planet. They know that the other side of the world is part of their world. Our social myopathy and ecological hubris seems ignorant and illogical to them. They have grown up with friends from around the world, from different religions and cultures and socio-economic circumstances, and they don’t recognize our small-mindedness as viable anymore.

My young friend is certainly this way. He’s still young, but his heart and mind are already miles ahead of where I was at his age. He understands the importance of an absence of borders; of equal opportunities for all; of the possibilities inherent in inclusion.

Honestly, I have a fear that we will fail them completely and leave them no further ahead in terms of vision than we are, and with a deeper hole to dig the species out of. I fight it, but it’s there. I have no fear of what they can do though. They’re the hope that keeps me young.

International Youth Day is August 12. Pass something positive forward.

(UPDATE: While writing this, I listened to an interview with economist and author Jeremy Rifkin on CBC 1. His latest book, The Empathic Civilization – the Race to Global Consciousness in a World in Crisis, recognizes the requirement for a generational shift. He suggests that the fundamental shift that has to occur will require a recognition that the age of enlightenment concepts of extreme individualism, competition and social Darwinism are leading us to economic and social bankruptcy; that only a society that embraces the need to cooperate and recognize our inter-connectedness – that embraces empathy – will be able to survive the challenges that currently face the global society. Just for reference…)

It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it. Aristotle

I was talking with a friend today about how we ingest media these days, and specifically, how critically we take in the feeds that we receive from fourth and fifth estates. We both agreed that our suspicion of the 'party line' had increased exponentially over the last while with the effect for both of us that we ask very specific questions whenever we hear 'news', and pretty much regardless of the source. We now wonder what it is we're not supposed to be looking at when we see the disingenuous stories that seem to dominate the headlines, or at least the biases that dominate the way those headlines are reported.

We grow up (or perhaps grew up – my smart, young friends seem to be suspicious far more naturally these days) thinking that the news we receive through the mainstream sources are credible and unbiased by default. These are, after all, the professionals – the epitome of journalism and, ostensibly journalistic integrity. I grew up in the then-present mythos of Woodward and Bernstein, the Pentagon-Papers, war-journalists embedded in Viet-Nam, before the movies but just after the breaking news, when journalism was held up as the last great defense against corruption.

I don't feel that way now. Maybe (probably) I just grew up a bit. I've grown to believe that cynicism is a natural response to seeing the world the way it is. Psychologists routinely report that depression is statistically linked to a more accurate perception of the world around us, the world as it truly is. Being hopeful, resisting an unadulterated strain of that disillusioned perspective, requires either denial of the truth or a stubborn choice; a refusal to give up on what could be. Denial shouldn't be a viable option anymore, so that leaves making daily choices. Hard ones.

This isn't even about which side we take. I'm a firm believer in passionate disagreement and debate. I entertain dreams of that kind of respectful yet strong discussion occurring here one day, comments from honest and open people on both sides of an argument. I wouldn't for a second suggest that I'm detached or completely objective in the perspectives that I hold, but I hope that my opinions (because that's all they are) at least show that I've taken the time to investigate and think through both sides of an argument. My conclusions usually end up in relatively the same place: perhaps an inevitable destination because of my biases, or perhaps because of the logical result of the investigation – most likely (hopefully) at least a bit of both.

But we shouldn't be afraid to ask the questions. I've used the Descartes quote before: 'If you would be a real seeker after truth, it is necessary that at least once in your life you doubt all things.' This should be - has to be - the attitude that we take when looking at the world around us. So much of the world that we are presented with through the media, by our politicians and social leaders, is presented through a biased and manipulative lens, that we have to doubt what we see. Have to.

To not do so is to deny the simple truth that we all create our perceptions of the world through our own, auto-biographical narratives – that we are constantly being tempted to see the world only through the lens that we find most comfortable; the one that feels safest. We seek others that think like us, talk like us, are passionate about topics like us. It's so comforting to surround ourselves in group-think cocoons so that we never have to face the possibility that our perspective is wrong. Being committed (and continually renewing that commitment) to questioning what we see and how we choose to see it is part of our responsibility as citizens.

It's not easy, especially when we find ourselves in a comfortable place, that place where we feel at home and accepted and amongst friends. Ironically, that's when a questioning, self-cynical perspective is the most important. It's at the exact moment when we feel safe and included that we need to ask ourselves the hardest questions: What are my prejudices here and now? What is this place of apparent comfort encouraging me to not see? What biases are my deeply held beliefs fostering in me? How is my perspective encouraging me to dehumanize people who don't agree with me? Am I in danger of becoming that which I hate?

That kind of soul-searching and the constant state of imbalance it can create can be very disorienting, but it's honest. When we think that we're standing on concrete is when we should be most concerned. The world is made of sand, constantly shifting and never stable. Simply recognizing our inclination to try to delude ourselves into thinking it's solid when it isn't is an enormous challenge.

Our responsibility as citizens, if we care about ever evolving past war and greed and the creation of arbitrary differentiations between 'us' and 'the other', is to get comfortable with being off balance; with choosing to stay off balance in so much as we are constantly re-evaluating our beliefs and assumptions, constantly trying to see past ourselves.

It's a hard place to live, but nobody ever said that anything worth while was easy.

“How is one to live a moral and compassionate existence when one is fully aware of the blood, the horror inherent in life, when one finds darkness not only in one's culture but within oneself?... There are simply no answers to some of the great pressing questions. You continue to live them out, making your life a worthy expression of leaning into the light." Barry Lopez, ‘Arctic Dreams’

Until the early 1990’s I had never heard of the Residential School system in Canada. It had, after all, been dismantled in the 60’s, and the Canadian government had done a pretty good job of trying to bury the horrific truth of what had happened.

The Residential School System was an official national policy, enacted by the Federal Government and solely designed to destroy first nations culture and ‘integrate’ first nations peoples into our European culture. Starting in the 1840’s and continuing for over 120 years, First Nations children were forcibly removed from the homes of their parents for ten months per year, subjected to punishment if they spoke their own language, subjected to unsanitary conditions that resulted in tuberculosis epidemics and, in some cases, a 69% mortality rate. And, of course, most infamously, there was the rampant incidence of sexual and physical abuse perpetuated by the Catholic and Protestant ‘teachers’ that the Federal Government farmed the actual task of assimilation out to.

It is, in my opinion, the darkest episode of Canadian history. The schools, funded by Federal grants, mandated with the systematic ethnocide of a people by the Federal Government, and knowingly staffed with sadists, pederasts and pedophiles by the willing churches tasked with that ethnocide, are a dark stain on Canada's history.

Awareness has grown over the last fifty years as courageous First Nations people brought the issue to the forefront of public discussions. It was a fight. The evidence was overwhelming that the abuse, that the ethnocidal policies had existed, but the ability of a government and a nation to live in denial should never be underestimated. It took until 2008 for a reluctant Prime Minister Harper to offer a long-overdue official apology from the nation to the peoples they tried to destroy.

A decade before that apology though, way back in 1998, perhaps as a way to try to silence the protests, or maybe as a form of bribe to shut them up, or perhaps, just possibly because somebody had a sane moment and thought it was the right thing to do, the Canadian Government provided funding for an organization named the Aboriginal Healing Foundation. The original funding mandate was for eleven years. It was extended last year to make it twelve. But this year the Federal Conservative administration of Stephen Harper has cut all funding to the AHF effective March 31. Not all of the programs that the AHF funds and supports will be closed because of the AHF’s funding being cut, but many will, and all of them will suffer. Many of the programs that the AHF funds are the most progressive and successful residential treatment programs in existence, and the AHF has received praise and commendations for being one of the most fiscally responsible organizations of its kind in Canada.

To be fair, the Federal Tories say that other systems and programs will be mandated to fill the void left by the AHF, but those programs are not run by First Nations peoples and have a far broader mandate than to focus on the victims of residential schooling. They may care, but they won’t care enough, aren’t mandated to care enough, to do the job right. The organization that does care enough to do it right, that has been doing it right for twelve years, is being gutted by a government that, in spite of that fake apology a couple years ago, apparently still doesn’t give a damn.

And in case you’re tempted to walk away from this thinking, “that damned Harper government again”, remember that we still all own a piece of this. If we get to be proud of the soldiers in WWI and II, if we get to be proud of our Peace Keepers, if we get to be proud of the Penticton Vees and the National Junior Team and the Olympic Gold, then we also have to – HAVE TO – own this disgrace as well.

And it lives on, every time we turn our head instead of look at a person living on the street, every time we ignore articles about things like the end of funding for the AHF or think that it’s not very important, every time we grumble over the entitlements provided to First Nations people in terms of education or taxation. And even every time a First Nations person assumes what a person of European descent thinks about them. The old prejudices still exist in all of us.

It’s part of our heritage. It’s part of what makes us Canadian. It’s part of what makes this our home and native land.

I don’t believe much in the value of guilt, but I do believe in remorse. Guilt holds us frozen, trapped in our own self-flagellations, but remorse shows that we see, that we can learn and change. I have a hard time not feeling guilty about what my ancestors did though. I try to focus on the remorse, to focus on learning and supporting change, to focus on leaning into the light as Mr. Lopez so eloquently puts it, but damn… some days it’s hard.

****

You can find out more
here,
here,
here,
here,
here, among others places. Try a Google search if you want more.

You can also find a petition through this Facebook page.

I don’t think that our government’s responsibility, our responsibility, is fulfilled yet on this subject. Perhaps we can apply enough pressure to make them do the right thing for a change.

‘Can this Onion Ring get more fans than Stephen Harper?’ Facebook Fansite Page, 02.04.10

Yesterday a Facebook group started asking this very question and inviting people to join up. By the time I found it yesterday afternoon membership had already exceeded 45,000. This morning it has exceeded 64,000 fans and is growing at a rate in excess of 1000 fans per hour.

"The more freedom we enjoy, the greater the responsibility we bear, toward others as well as ourselves." Oscar Arias Sanchez

The comments and dialog from the last few days reminded of this quote. It, too, is a great reminder that whatever grace or truth or freedom we’ve been granted involves as much responsibility as it does liberty for ourselves.  One interpretation is the cultural one; that in a ‘free’ culture or nation we have a responsibility to individuals or nations that do not enjoy our measure or version of freedom. That one scares me a bit.

That same logic can and has been used as an excuse for fairly overt imperialism since World War II by all of the Super Powers, so while I do believe that it is valid to a degree, I also think that we need to keep our eyes wide open to the fact that politicians use it to manipulate us. It doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t come to the aid of those less fortunate on the international stage, but let’s be honest and realistic about why our governments are imposing their definition of order and democracy on other parts of the world.  I mean really, we could do a lot more good in Darfur than in Afghanistan, don’cha think?

The definition I prefer for this quote, the one that means the most to me, involves a more internalized application. Whether our personal freedom is social, political, economic, intellectual, spiritual, emotional, etc.; whatever that freedom or combination of freedoms amounts to, in that regard we have a responsibility to give from that place of freedom to others.

It’s the same general concept as the geopolitical application, but the opportunity for it to be abused is dramatically lower because this is something that we monitor ourselves, that we have the opportunity to gauge and check continually based on whatever moral or ethical guidelines direct the way we live our lives.

We can call it paying it back or paying it forward, either one works for me, but I try to remind myself of what it is I’m thankful for on a fairly regular basis and give out of that. Since February of this year, when I made choices to dramatically simplify my life and go in a completely different direction, that list is pleasantly short - a list of needs with very few unnecessary clutter – but the things on it are weighty. It makes me think about how it is that I want to pay back, in the now and in the future, al the little ways I can be generous (without money) to the people I love and the ones I don’t know, and what I’d like to do in the future if I ever manage to finish and publish ‘the novel’. And I honestly get more excited thinking about that than about what new gadget or comfort I might want to buy next.

Who said responsibility sucks?

That’s not the question. This is: What is the freedom or freedoms that you are most thankful for, and how do you pay back or forward? What are the big or little ways that you give from whatever freedom you enjoy?