12:48 AM - 31.03.05
Waste not Want not
There was a storm warning last night. The wind itself didn't arrive until later in the morning, but I woke up feeling like my head was about to explode - weather migraine. No sense of balance, fever and still with the sore throat as well, no voice to speak of or with. Called in sick again, sweating about the loss of pay that means. One of the recruiters from the agency I work for called back about an hour or so later. Don't feel bad, most people are needing 3 or 4 days to recuperate from what's going around. Great. The good thing, I suppose, is that it motivated me to file my taxes on-line today. Did my youngest's as well and number four son's later. My youngest was thrilled because he gets everything he lost from his election cheques back. Not that he made much, but the principle mattered. My refund should just get my debt ratio back to zero. Good enough, I guess.
Today, I was thinking a lot about a conversation I had with one of the European supervisors I had during one of my contracts last year. We were talking about the differences in how citizens perceived their governments and how governments operated as a result. Theirs are considerably more socially conscious and pro-active, as well. Her comment was that everyone in continental Europe was a loser during World War II regardless of which "side" they were on. The voting populations' values are still strongly influenced by the tremendous suffering that all parties experienced. They value and are willing to pay more for more intrinsic things like wellness, family life, and social responsibilities such as the environment, because they still personally remember what it was like not to have any of that as a given. Hence, the European Common Market in all its variations since 1945.
The idea of inclusion as the central theme of a society, instead of the practice of exclusion that is predominant in North American or Middle Eastern societies, for example. Whether by geography, race or creed I think it is critical to consider such an approach, if the global community is ever going to find some sort of release from the internal and external wars between "classes". I was discussing the issues in the Middle East with one of my co-workers the other day. I had read a book "The Psychology of Power" about the spending that those countries had invested in arms for the decade of the eighties - exclusive of Israel. The publicly acknowledged cost of non conventional and conventional arms had been 3 trillion dollars. At the time I read it I couldn't even conceive of how much money that was. $20 seemed like a pretty hefty price tag at that time in my little world. Yet here were these governments complaining that their citizens were starving and lacked the basics of life, because of their country's "poverty". They blamed the Western and European nations, the Israelis and just about everyone else except themselves. This wasn't an issue of defending their homes or families either. Those weapons were only used for acts of aggression or oppression against their neighbours - Arab, Palestinian (Philistine is what one Iranian I know called them as justification for the abuse)and Israeli alike. My comment was that I couldn't understand how someone could look at a baby or small child and think it was more important to have the capacity to blow it up rather than feed it.
Then there is the former state of Yugoslavia - the birthplace of two world wars (assasinations of two of their heads of state at almost identical points in time separated by a couple of decades) and very nearly a third not so long ago. August is just not a good month for them, I guess. Same bloodlines and history, but when we were interviewing survivors of the concentration camps from the 80's, the same point of origin used for the excuse to pursue genocide was always cited, regardless whether it was the current perpetrators or victims who were speaking. "My great, great, great,... grandfather was murder on the field of the birds (ravens) by "my enemy" and I must take revenge." When did the massacre of the field of the birds happen? 1349 ad. 656 years ago. Living in the past means one can never claim their future - unless all that future means is death.
On the bus the other day one of the young women I ride with on occasion, expounded on that point of view with her comments on the eastern european country of her origin. She started the converation as soon as she arrived at the bus stop and would not stop it until she debarked, despite several attempts to change the subject. She allowed that she agreed with Nikolai Ceaucescu's policy of genocide as it related to the gypsies. She didn't think he should have been removed from office, let alone be held accountable for his actions. She ignored the fact that it wasn't just that ethnic community that was being systematically exterminated by his government, either, although even one community snuffed out is too many. She insisted that all the bad things that were done in their country was because the "gypsies did it" or made others do bad things as a reaction. She stated that she believed even their children should be killed so that the rest of Europe would stop hating them (the Romanians)for hosting the gypsies' presence. I think she was referring to the Common Market's refusal to let Romania join the union, but that is because of their continued human rights violations and some of their economic practices. My parents and brother had some fairly negative experiences when they visited Italy in 1990 that had to do with the gypsies in Rome. The thought of Romania never even occurred to them, and their only comment was that the children never had a chance, since they had no access to schooling or a stable family environment. What the speaker was ignoring was that if a person or ethnic community is excluded from all access to any other way of making a living or from resources like education, health and social support then there is no other outcome likely other than resorting to crime to survive. The intensity of her rage against that community was so strong, that she was actually shouting by the time we got downtown. There is nothing uglier than a face that is filled with unreasoning hate, even on the prettiest of people.
In North American countries, even with our great wealth, there are still huge pockets of people living in poverty, excluded from the social contract. Some turn to crime because they have no other way of gaining the level of income that gains "acceptance" in our societies either. Then add in the intraracial/cultural exclusions and the principle of exclusion becomes even more intractable, driving the development of communities and government policies in ways that encode and enshrine the dysfunction. In our part of Calgary blocs of voters from other countries often determine who will win an election at any level of government. That wouldn't be so bad if the voting was predicated on values such as safety, security, family life and such. Instead what we see is the warring blocs - such as the Marcos and Aquino Philipinos, the Hindu and Muslim East Indians and so on ad nauseam - voting in blocs in a way to demonstrate their "superior" numbers/power at the expense of the best interest of the communities, who end up with a political representative who is willing to play that game of exclusion instead of representing all citizens equally. The other exclusion is the one expressed through my co-worker the other day with respect to "tokens" in the one ethnic community or of the continuing internecine battle between "real",bill C-31, and metis first nations people. Got me to thinking about Peter Tosh's song African.
Can't we just accept that a child born within our midst is truly a gift and that we are stewards of their lives regardless of their backgrounds? Why do we continue to cut ourselves off from so much human potential because of features or factors over which an infant has no control. In any case where I have visited a new born nursery in a hospital I have never been able to point to any child and say "that one is less than the others". They are all perfect at birth just as they are with their god given talents and abilities just waiting to be nurtured. How did we come to be such a blind and wasteful society? Remember that one M*A*S*H* episode where Alan Alda played a few tricks on the man who wanted to be sure his blood transfusion was only the "right blood"? The one where the patient would have died without it, but still wanted to exclude certain people from providing the essence necessary for his very survival? As a society we are getting very close to the point where we will choose to destroys ourselves rather than accept the very gifts that will save our lives that only those we have deliberately excluded from within our own circle can provide.
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