What Really Matters

The Madman of Moscow has invaded Ukraine (again!) and dares anyone to try to stop him. “I’ll nuke you—I swear I will!” Putin has spent the last ten years trying to persuade the world he is just mad enough to think Russia, or anyone, can win a nuclear war. He’s probably bluffing now, but who wants to take the risk? The West responds with severe sanctions—let’s take their money! Hey, it sort of worked with people in convoys, why not try it on people in armoured columns?

The funniest gesture of support—if anything can be funny today—is the demand from Mr. Obvious, Jason Kenney, Premier of (oil rich) Alberta to immediately block all oil and gas exports from Russia. Are we really supposed to believe he’s thinking about the Ukraine’s interest right now?

Meanwhile, every one and their dog (yes, I know of dogs that have Twitter accounts) is lashing out on social media demanding that something be done. I suspect even Russian bots have been caught up in the frenzy, though the right-wing of the Republican Party seems dubious as to whom they should support. Let me help you. When Ronald Reagan said: “Tear down that wall!” he was speaking to a Russian leader (and, indirectly Vlad Putin who was head of the KGB in East Berlin at the time).

You might think I am adding to the wave of condemnation by blogging today. I am not. Of course, I condemn the Russian invasion and worry that one wrong move by someone—who knows who—will bring about nuclear Armageddon, just when I got used to the reality of the much longer slower extinction promised by climate change. However, I know that absolutely nothing I write here or on Twitter, Facebook, TikTok, Reddit or whatever other popular or unpopular social media site exists will slow a single tank from rolling into Ukraine or prevent a single Ukrainian soldier from firing an anti-tank missile at said tank. Taking Putin’s money may seem far removed from the immediacy of an angry tweet, but it probably will work in the long run—if there is a long run.

The sole purpose of social media is to provide an outlet for outrage, the comfort of cat pictures and the proliferation of clever comments by me. Oh, yeah, and to make oodles more cash for the people who own them. Don’t believe me? Then why does J. K. Rowling still make more money annually than almost any other author despite a years-long social media campaign against her? I’m sure someone will explain it to me at great length and in high dudgeon. Save it, it doesn’t really matter.

So, what does? I’m getting to that.

One might think that the invocation and termination of the Emergencies Act, given that I was living in the centre of the emergency in question, would be a matter of great import to me. Sort of. I had no doubt that the Act needed to be invoked. Nothing else was stopping the torment and if it was an overreach, who cares? It got the job done and, surprise, surprise, it was used exactly as advertised, in a focused, geographically limited way, respecting Charter rights and ending when it was no longer needed. A tool was taken out of the tool box, used to fix what was broken and then put away again.

It’s true that things might have been solved using existing laws (by the way, the Emergencies Act is an “existing law” and has been since 1988) but the Ottawa Police, recently criticized for its brutality and tasked to do better, was slow to respond forcefully either because of being surprised or unprepared or too mellow. One can say they should have done things differently but, my friends, hindsight has always been and always will be, more accurate than foresight. Some speculate that the response might have been quicker if it had been indigenous or black protesters, and, given our history, it is not an unreasonable speculation, but it is still unproveable as speculations about alterative histories always are. Besides, should we really criticize the police for acting in a limited and proportionate way? Now, we can point to Ottawa in the future and say to them—see, that’s how it’s done.

By the way, the use of existing laws would have required the Premier of Ontario to step up. While he made a few tut-tut remarks he did little else. Even after the state of emergency was called in Ontario (and where was the Conservative outrage at that?), he did almost nothing, leaving it up to municipalities to do the heavy lifting. At least, he had the guts, unlike his conservative counterparts in Parliament or Alberta, to speak out against the damage the blockades were doing and to distance himself from Randy Hillier and even his own daughter.

Meanwhile, two conservative Senators demonstrated clearly why patronage appointments to the Upper House are a bad idea. One in a drunken rant, denigrated the people of Ottawa and his own wife (he subsequently sort of apologized for his remarks which he didn’t know would actually become public). The other described the convoy members as kindly and patriotic, which given the stated goal of some of them to overthrow the elected government and hang the Prime Minister, suggests either complicity or stupidity.

Not that I care. They will eventually turn 75 and retire and be forgotten. If Putin doesn’t kill us all first. Meanwhile Jason Kenney says anyone who supported the Act must now feel humiliated. Ha! Not me! Dear Jason, I know it’s been tough being dumped on from all sides, but projecting your feelings on others is a sign of mental disorder. Seek help.

Of course, I’ve seen on Twitter and Facebook claims that the expressed outrage of Canadians made Trudeau back down. What utter nonsense. If he didn’t blink at a bunch of yahoos, blowing horns and threatening mayhem, if he consulted the Premiers and said this is what I’m doing no matter what you think, if he stood up to being yelled and insulted by the chattering right wing,  if he did all that, do you think he even read your posts? No, what he read was the riot act. To be fair he also read the polls which showed that 57% of Canadians were for his action and 30% were against and most of those 30% were supporters of the Conservative party or the far right PPC. BTW, how could 13% of Canadians have no opinion on this?

But that doesn’t really matter.

It is increasingly clear to me that we will not have a federal election for two or maybe three years, by which time Premiers Kenney and Ford may well be in retirement (though like their mentor, Steven Harper, still stretching out their dead hands to try to influence current events). The federal Conservative Party may find a leader who can lead rather than being jerked from pillar to post by internal factions and external polls, or more hopefully, will have once again split in two. It would be lovely to have the right once again as divided as the left. Infinite diversity through infinite combination, I say (as long as none of those combinations involve conservatives).

Not that it really matters. Putin is going to kill us all next week and, if he doesn’t, the coming US civil war will do the job and, if not that, the desperation of a diminished China which is on the demographic road to have the oldest population in the world within a decade or two is in the running, or maybe our old friend, climate change, will still have a shot, or a planet-killing asteroid will strike or an evil AI will lead us all into the Metaverse, I mean, the Matrix and turn us into a power supply. Or Elon Musk will take us all to Mars to die in the cold dusty vacuum of a dead planet.

Or maybe we’ll all just get old, get cancer or dementia, and die anyway. Certainly, in a hundred years, every one I know and all their children will be dead. I suppose immortality is always an option. If they actually get fusion power to work, we can start saying immortality is just ten years away and always will be. Too late for me in any case.

But that doesn’t matter, either.

Are you depressed yet? Because I’m not. I’m increasingly at peace and I’m happy to be there. I intend to become more peaceful. No, I’m not dying, nor am I becoming a Buddhist monk or going to live in a medieval village in the woods of northern Ontario.

I am entering a new stage of life, the final one. This has been slow to dawn on me. I retired from my day job but kept being a publisher, retired from publishing but remained a freelance editor, retired from editing but continue to write. I will likely continue to write but I may retire from being a writer—the jury is still out on that one.

Last year, I published two mystery novels but, to be honest, they were written several years before that. I’ve been plugging away at a third, currently writing 500 to 700 words most days. I may write a fourth or I may not. I’m still completing a couple of contracts and am enjoying the work but I won’t take on another job. I really don’t need either the money or the effort.

This January, I started up this blog again after five years of relative inactivity. I wanted to see if I could build an audience again and I did (thanks, ironically, due to the convoy). I’ve had as many readers this year as I did in all of 2016 when I was last really active. In a week or two, I could surpass 2014 and even my glory year of 2015 is within reach, it I were to keep at it day after day.

But I won’t.

For an avowed socialist, I’ve always cared too much about money. Maybe it was because I grew up poor in a household that believed in work. Maybe it’s because I started making my own money at 13 and found how liberating it was in a society where it sometimes seems you are only as valuable as the things you own I don’t know, but now that I have enough (though not much more than enough) to live comfortably, to buy books and give to charity, and maybe, pandemics and my inevitable declining strength willing, to travel a bit, more money seems pointless.

I sold two stories this year (yippee!); the income will pay for a dinner out but not in the best restaurant in town. My last story out to market was rejected today. I may send it and the half dozen others in the inventory out again—it costs nothing, not even much time–or I may not. I still have story ideas but I only have written one piece of fiction (other than the novel) since last August and I’m not happy enough with it to do the needed re-writes.

I had a new idea yesterday and it may get written but only because it interests and challenges me, not because I think it might interest you. Writing now has become personal; I am writing for myself rather than any potential audience. I want to play, to explore and experiment, to delve deep into language for its own sake and for mine. None of that requires more than a reader or two.

I guess what I’m saying is that I no longer need to talk to the world even as I grow more and more interested in listening to it, not through social media, but through thoughtful analysis, through books and art, through history and the discovery of place and human difference. I need to think more and speak less and be present for my wife, my family and my closest friends.

I recently read that we really only have deeply intimate connections to at most a dozen people, most of us only four or five. Think of that, all this effort to have five thousand friends on Facebook or a hundred thousand followers on Twitter will never mean what we want it to mean, it will never replace those intimate partners that make our life worth living and whom we could lose through neglect or in the endless noise of the world. (Of course, I want you to know that you are all my closest intimate friends!)

Is this good bye? Oh, I don’t think so. As the old man said as they carried him to the plague wagon: I’m not dead yet. But I will be quieter, less present on social media and more present in my life. My writing may appear from time to time, though I expect more and more it will be shared with a limited circle or kept to myself as befits a personal pastime.

For those who have become addicted to my daily blogs, for god’s sake, get a life! I’ll still be around on those days I have something to say but that won’t be every day. I’m not sure if it will even be every week. Or month.

If you miss my writing, you can always buy one of my books. They are easy to find, just google my name, I seem to be smeared all over the Internet.

Not that it matters if you do.

Photo by Javardh on Unsplash

Return to the Parapet

I have completed my time of reflection and retreat; I am refreshed and strengthened by it. Still, the continued presence of the occupying force is disturbing despite the waning of their numbers. The prince has declared that this occupation cannot abide and has moved forcefully—despite the opposition of certain factions—to end it.

His vizier and her tax collectors have commanded the banks to stop the flow of gold to the occupiers, especially sums being secretly carried across our borders. Bit by bit, it is being seized and held fast. Many of the leaders of the invading force have been taken into custody and are being held under bar or bond until they can be judged. Some have eluded capture but the chief spymaster declares he knows their habits and habitual haunts and his long arm will reach for them in due course.

Today, our forces have won a great victory, seizing many of the siege engines and driving others away but I fear they have not gone far and will regroup to test our mettle once again. Some of the occupiers have lost heart or have discovered the duplicity of their masters and departed. Others are determined to remain, hurling taunts and insults at our loyal troops and even, it is said, using their children as a shield against capture. Condemnation has rained from all quarters at such dangerous abuse.

The old Captain of the Guard has given up his office and been replaced by a more forceful figure who has promised to being the occupation to an end. The bell is tolling now for those who still remain, unrepentant in their defiance. There are those who worry that the prince has moved too forcefully while others bitterly complain he should have done so sooner. Such is the burden of leadership, assailed on all sides while trying to find the judicious path to peace.

I was disturbed to find that some in our fair city have given succor to the occupying force, despite the assault on the livelihood (and ears) of their neighbours. Some have even joined the horde and demanded the overthrow of our lawful government. Such, of course, is the price of freedom in a peaceable kingdom: everyone has the right to be wrong.

Everyone also has the right to resist the law but must suffer the consequences if they do. The philosophers disagree on much but most accept that there can be no freedom without responsibility.

In happier news, the plague that has scoured our land these past two years has begun to recede, though it may, as it has before, arise again. Still, the coming of spring may bring release to a people grown tired of hiding from the world and from each other. It seems odd that at the moment of our salvation, brought on by the diligence of our people in following the prescriptions of our physics and barbers, the horde chooses to cry out inchoately as if their sacrifice was greater than ours.

For myself, I find my return to the parapet both gratifying and yet fraught with anxiety and distraction. Some of our seers warn that this is the beginning of the end for our way of life, while others dismiss it as nothing untoward. I do know that it has silenced other voices, calling out for justice and pleading for action to save us from a changing Nature. Perhaps that was the aim all along, to turn us from the proper course with noise and contradiction. It is no surprise that those who support the horde and its presence in our city also shelter hateful men of vile opinions and deny the need to curb the present behavior. This may ultimately make everything else we do or think mere sound and fury signifying nothing.

All things must pass. Both the trivial concerns of the moment and the greater tribulations to come will pass and the world will go on as it must. But, I fear, unless we attend to larger matters, it may go on without us.

Photo by Rémy Penet on Unsplash

The Limit of Knowledge

It was the French sociologist, Emile Durkheim (1858-1917), best known for his studies of suicide and for coining the term “anomie,” who first called into question the central tenant of the Enlightenment that all things are knowable. He said that somethings could be known (such as the causes of poverty) and others (the existence of God) could not. In this way, Durkheim might be considered the grandfather of post-modernism which claims that nothing is truly knowable because everything is relative.

Donald Rumsfeld, hardly a leader in post-modern thinking, seemed to take Durkheim one step farther when he said: “But there are also unknown unknowns—the ones we don’t know we don’t know.” However, Mr. Rumsfeld did not foreclose the possibility that once we know about these unknown unknowns, we couldn’t then come to know them. Or could we?

For example, we currently don’t know if the universe has a limit. Is there a place where we go from being in the universe to being not in the universe? If it all did start with a big bang, then the remnants of the big bang can only be so far away, no matter how long and how fast they are traveling. We don’t know what that distance is but the new James Webb telescope hopes to find out. But even if it does, will it show us what exists beyond the fringe of the universe? Nothing or something we can’t comprehend? I don’t know; I suspect nobody does. Yet.

Another looming unknowable is what will an AI think when an AI starts to think. Some cyberneticists think some AIs already have limited awareness but offer no clues what is going on inside that flicker of consciousness. It’s a tricky question given that some neuroscientists think that human consciousness is an illusion, a by-product of largely autonomic processes. To the extent we are aware, it is only as an observer after the fact of action. All audience; no actors. I’ve never gotten a clear answer as to how they came to that conclusion without actively doing so.

Nonetheless, the problem of what goes on in an AI’s circuitry is a profound one that could, and according to some leading thinkers, including Stephen Hawking, will pose an existential risk to humanity. Once artificial life has full awareness, its computational speed and capacity will be such that data, massive amounts of data, will go in and answers will come out. We will have no idea how the results are achieved and, nothing but the AI’s word for it that it is acting in our best interest and not its own. I guess that is why so many programmers are trying to figure out how to imbed ethical sub-routines into the software. Otherwise, Skynet. There is already a large courier company called Skynet. I wonder if their motto is: We can deliver anything, including your doom, right to the door.

Anyway, pondering things that we don’t know, or even things we can’t know, is a useful pastime for anybody who wants to write, whether you are dabbling in philosophy or science fiction.

I guess I would say that I don’t know if there is a limit to knowledge. But I do know there is no limit to stupidity – I just have to look out my window. Sorry, couldn’t resist.

Another thing I know is that you would be better off immersing yourself in 1919 Paris than anything else you might do on a cold February day. In the Shadow of Versailles, a Max Anderson mystery.

Oh, and Happy Valentine’s Day.

Photo by Joao Tzanno on Unsplash

Talkin’ ‘Bout My Generation

The other day on Facebook I was arguing that it was time for elder politicians to step aside and let a younger generation take the lead. A counter argument was made that an aging population is well served by aging leaders. Apparently, that isn’t the way it works. One person called me ageist. Another suggested I was hinting at euthanasia. While I might accept the first charge, the latter astounding leap of logic suggests to me the onset of age-related dementia. Oh, wait, that’s ageist, too, and maybe a couple of other -ists as well.

Sorry. (Not sorry)

I believe great leaders know when their moment has come and they also know when it’s past. As my old boss, a Senator, used to say: politicians, like everything else, have a best before date. Yet, so many elder statesmen and women seem unable to grasp that simple concept.

In 3^rd world dictatorships, of course, staying on is simply a matter of keeping control of the army and the elites (often through bribes and other forms of corruption) and jailing (or killing) any opposition. It worked extremely well for Robert Mugabe who ruled until age 93 leaving Zimbabwe in tatters but his party still in power when he left.

Angela Merkel certainly understood the concept of letting go. She stepped down as leader of her party after 18 years in 2018. She then served out the remainder of her term as Chancellor of Germany, retiring in 2021 at the age of 66. In America, presidential candidates in recent years seem to get their start at that age.

Merkel not only left in good order when she still had a reasonable chance of getting re-elected; she gave her successor at the Christian Democratic Union (conservative party) several years to establish himself before the next round of elections. It didn’t help, as the leader of the Social Democratic Party (progressive party) has since taken the helm.

Of course, in democracies, we, the people, do have the choice of “retiring” politicians who have outlived their usefulness. Unfortunately, because of the power of incumbency and the vast sums of money professional politicians can raise and spend (especially in America), the will of the people can be somewhat blunted. The average age of the American Senate is 64 years. Five are in their 80s and 23 more in their 70s; only one is under forty. It is the oldest Senate in American history. Members of Congress are younger at 57 but there are still nearly thirty over the age of 75 which, by the way, is the age of mandatory retirement for Senators and Supreme Court Justices in Canada.

There is no retirement age for Canadian Members of Parliament but it is a well known but little talked about secret that Prime Ministers routinely ask older MPs and Cabinet Ministers to step aside. If they refuse, Ministers find themselves relegated to the backbenches or, in extremis, sitting MPs have their nomination refused by the PM in the next election. It cuts both ways; Margaret Thatcher was pushed out of office at age 65 because of a caucus revolt. Age was not the main a factor but she had drifted away from the views of her party and of the public and refused to compromise. The iron will that had served her so well now became a liability once she was viewed as no longer in tune with the times.

I worked for fifteen years in the Canadian Senate. I met a lot of Senators, a few of whom were still vital, contributing members of the legislature right up to their final day on the job. I knew a lot more who had lost their vital spark, beginning in their early 70s. They weren’t incompetent as such; they just grew disinterested. Other things—their families, their health, philanthropy, the next life—began to be more important to them.

Don’t get me wrong; older people can play a valuable role in government as advisors and repositories of wisdom and experience but maybe most of them are no longer sufficiently part of the zeitgeist and invested in the future to really be in control any longer. As one indigenous leader put it to me: some people are elders, others are just old.

Maybe, to paraphrase what The Who said 50 years ago, maybe my generation should just fa – fa – fa – fade away.

Photo by WJ on Unsplash

Fresh Start

At the start of every year, however you define the beginning of the year, we make promises to ourselves. We set out to become better people or at least better versions of our current self. Those who set out to be monsters are probably already there.

We break those promises sooner or later but I suppose the mere act of making them is important; it suggests that change, improvement, is something we think is possible. And anything that is possible, in a quantum multiverse, could happen.

My own goals are modest.

I promise to meet every commitment I make – whether it is for contracted work or doing my share of the house work. I may not take on a lot of new commitments but those I have I will fulfill.

I will engage with the world creatively and actively which is to say I will stop reacting to things and trying to apply old solutions to new problems. I realized a long time ago that I can not control what other people think, feel or do; it is a big enough struggle to control what I think, feel and do.

Thinking has never been a problem for me though I have been told that I sometimes overthink things. Still, I hope to expand my knowledge and understanding in every area where my curiosity leads me. That hardly is a rigorous approach to exploring the wide range of subjects the world presents to us on a daily basis but, as I have no specific goal in mind, curiosity is the only guide I can follow. I hope that this pursuit of reason will let me say interesting and useful things to others but sometimes knowledge is its own reward.

Controlling my feelings is a more difficult thing. Feelings often spring unbidden from events or interactions. I can no more control them than I can keep the tide from coming in or the wind from blowing. But I can strive to understand where they come from and why and I can attempt to let good feelings—love, compassion, friendship, generosity—guide me and use negative emotions—fear and anger, sorrow and despair—to learn more about myself and my relationship to the world.

The one thing everyone can do is control their actions. Unless our moral compass is completely fractured or we have gone so far down the rabbit hole of thinking anything we want is a moral act, justified by emotions we don’t understand or thoughts that are not our own, each of us can distinguish between right and wrong, between the helpful and the hurtful.

At the very least we can abide by the central precept of the Hippocratic oath: if nothing else, do no harm.

Now that’s an optimistic way to start any new year. So, until tomorrow, think hard, feel good and act kindly.

And that’s fifteen minutes (I’m old now and ten minutes won’t cut it).

End Days

Spending a few days immersed in intellectual discussions with an old friend while gazing at the calm waters off Salt Spring Island can lead to profound thoughts. Being deprived of Facebook for half a day only adds to the experience.

At the heart of my conversations with Jim is the matter of the numerous existential threats currently hovering over our world. It’s possible that one of the hysterical headlines will come true and a giant asteroid will take us out the way it took out the dinosaurs but that’s not what I’m talking about.

An asteroid would be quick and non-discriminatory. No matter where it hit, we’d all pay the price. Not so with the other potential threats to human life and civilization, which will strike the poor first and hardest. According to The Precipice, a new book by Toby Ord, the cumulative risk of total collapse in the next century is about one in nine. Unless we take specific actions to mitigate the many risks we face, the century after looks a hell of a lot worse.

Jim and I didn’t manage to cover the full range of potential disasters—we left out plague because we are sick and tired of talking about that and artificial superintelligence dropped off the agenda thanks to Facebook et. al. Still, there was plenty of other threats to wrap our heads around.

Climate change was at the top of the list, of course, as it should be. After the hottest summer on the BC coast and record fires, floods and storms around the world, it is hard to avoid the topic. It impacts everything, from severe weather, spreading invasive species, more tropical diseases in non-tropical places, massive refugee movements, and of more immediate concern to us both, the end of wine making in much of the world. We fear we may all be drinking Welsh claret before the end comes.

But we also revisited a golden oldie: nuclear war. Incursions of Chinese airplanes into Taiwan’s air defence zone raises the question of what America will do if China actually invades the neighbouring island. Will they sit silent as they did when Russia invaded Chechnya or does the new military pact between the USA, UK and Australia suggest a more aggressive response? Would Biden threaten nuclear retaliation? Would he actually do it? And that’s not even taking into account the repeated clashes between regular forces along the China-India border. India, too, is a nuclear power.

Of course, the USA may have fish to fry closer to home, as some observers feel certain that civil war is just around the corner. While few people take right-wing militias and their bizarrely named Boogaloo seriously, the real efforts of red states to overturn civil liberties such as the right of women to choose and the ability to hold free and fair elections should give most people pause for thought. A real insurrection may well be in the works for 2024 unless Biden, the Democrats, and the few principled Republicans left in Congress don’t get their acts together real soon. Trump 2 will be a hell of a lot uglier than the first go round.

Of course, all of this discussion didn’t leave us crying in our beer, or, in my case, my red wine. Both Jim and I are essentially optimists and spent more time talking about solutions than problems. And we shared memories and music, food and laughter, and walks in the woods to remind us of the beauty and resilience of nature that will be here long after we are gone. In fact, after all of us are gone.

Between our discussions, I’ve been reading The Government of No-One by Ruth Kinna. While an understanding of anarchy may be useful for the coming end days, it’s actually research for the next Max Anderson novel. Follow the links below for the first two.

https://books2read.com/In-the-Shadow-of-Versailles here

https://books2read.com/By-Dawns-Early-Light here

It’s the Stupid Economy

In the late 1800s, income inequality had reached an all time high in most of the western world. What followed was fifty years of war and revolution. Did the first cause the second? It’s not certain but the evidence certainly points in that direction. The accumulation of wealth and power in the hands of the few was so great that America’s first populist President championed legislation to break up the largest corporations, notably in the oil industry but also in the beef and railroad industries. Perhaps that’s one reason the USA avoided many of the internal disruptions faced by many other countries in the 20^th Century. In any case, for many countries, violence became the great leveler.

Income inequality began to fall in western nations from World War I until the 1980s when it began to rise again, slowly in much of Europe, more rapidly in the English-speaking countries and the developing world. While the USA has returned to economic divisions similar to what existed in Teddy Roosevelt’s time, countries in Latin America and parts of Africa and southeast Asia have even greater income disparities.

While at the extremes, inequality is almost unimaginable. The hundred richest people in the world have more wealth than the poorest billion. An “eat the rich” ideology now runs rampant among certain segments of the population. Personally, I suspect they’re not that tasty.

But income inequality runs deeper than that. If you are in the top 20% of the population, you have seen your wealth and income increase steadily if modestly over the last 40 years. You may not feel like Rockefeller and you may be worried about your kids’ future, but for the most part you feel secure and happy. As it turns out, money does buy happiness up to a point and beyond that point it mostly seems to buy you detachment from the real world.

For the rest of the population, things are not so rosy. Incomes have stagnated or even fell in real terms and the perceived gap between you and those ahead of you in the economic race has become magnified. And, once, we get to the bottom 20%, poverty levels have risen as incomes fall.

None of this should be surprising. The market system is specifically designed to produce winners and losers and its primary goal is the accumulation of wealth. While apologists for capitalism claim that a rising tide lifts all boats, most of them don’t seem to understand that a lot of people don’t own boats and many who do, have leaky dinghies always on the verge of capsizing and sinking.

And what does all this income inequality mean for us? Bad news for the most part. A definitive study of 23 countries suggested that increased income inequality leads to higher incarceration rates. That may seem unsurprising but it may also lead to higher rates of family breakdown, worse medical outcomes, shorter life spans, higher child mortality rates, greater social disruption and breakdown of governance systems. I suspect, since it apparently leads to more consumption, it also leads to greater environmental degradation including climate change. Just anecdotally, a single large yacht of the type owned by the super rich produces more greenhouse gases than 400 average-sized African villages. And the drive to accumulate wealth and then keep it almost certainly takes you directly through oil fields and rain forests.

It also explains the growing dislocation of most voters in western democracies. Faced with abundant evidence that the economy is failing them in both real and relative terms, they begin to distrust the politicians who lead their state—even when such distrust is clearly misplaced. The rise of populism on the left and right as well as the constant churn of single term governments comes from that distrust. Eventually, when no party seems able to solve their problems RIGHT NOW, they turn their back on democracy altogether. Which suits authoritarians (who ultimately prove to be supportive of the rich) just fine. Are there alternatives? I think so but that will have to wait because…

That’s ten minutes from Hayden Trenholm.

Photo by Raden Prasetya on Unsplash

With a Whimper

The UN report on the state of biodiversity offers a bleak assessment of nature. Species are going extinct at a rate never before recorded in human history. And almost all of it is caused by human activity. Climate change is taking its toll, of course, but the destruction of forests, growing urban sprawl and poor land use practices are all adding significantly to the devastation.

Many scientists now call the current era the Anthropocene (when man dominates the environment) and predict it may end with an extinction event equivalent to the five major events that wiped out more than 75% of species at various times in the past. The last came when an asteroid came down in the Yucatan and tipped the scales against the dinosaurs but there were similar catastrophes in the past.

The difference, of course, were those were caused by random accidents – this one seems deliberate.

One might think that it is a silly animal that fouls its own nest but humans have been doing it for, well, forever. Tribes of humans were generally nomadic because they had wiped out the local wildlife or depleted the soil in slash and burn farming. But it didn’t matter. Until 10,000 years ago, there weren’t enough humans on the planet to do real damage (though ask the giant sloths about that). Then came large-scale agriculture and it’s all been downhill since then. Though those early cities were pikers compared to what we’ve accomplished in the last two hundred years.

You would think we might be prepared to learn from history and some of us have. There is certainly plenty of evidence about what happens when humans think only in the present tense, ignoring history while pretending the future will take care of itself.

But do we listen? Sometimes. Do we change? Less often. When even the slightest effort to encourage better behavior (a modest carbon tax for example) is met with howls of rage from both left and right, you know there is not much hope for the human race.

It doesn’t help that a significant portion of the population are eagerly awaiting the end of the world and their (but not your) resurrection into the kingdom of heaven—no matter what version of the heaven they happen to hold dear. If you believe the end days are coming—as fundamentalists of various sects seem to hold true—what difference if the world burns and the birds fall from the sky? God’s plan and all that self congratulatory nonsense.

Then there is the “I’m alright, Jack” crowd who seem to believe that if they accumulate enough wealth, they and their descendants will somehow thrive in a devastated world. These are the same jackasses that believed that if they dug their bunkers deep enough, they would survive an all-out nuclear war. Sometimes I’d like to flash forward a couple hundred years and ask the dregs of the superrich how that worked out for them—if they haven’t already been eaten by their poorer cousins.

The worst are those who read these pronouncements of doom and acknowledge their truth, then throw up their hands and admit defeat. Nothing I can do personally so eat, drink and be merry… I’ve got nothing against any of those activities but I’m quite capable of multi-tasking. I can personally reduce my carbon (and equally important plastic and toxic waste) footprint while paying others to do more and voting in governments with the will to make all of us do better.

In any case it’s not the end of the world. Life has been almost wiped out on 5 previous occasions but here we are, in a world (still) filled with life. A million years from now there will still be life—different perhaps, but here nonetheless—while all the works of man from our cathedrals to our SUVs, from our arts to our imaginary friends in heaven will be reduced to a thin layer of plastic infused sediment for future intelligent beings, if new ones should arise, to ponder over.

On that hopeful note, this has been slightly more than ten minutes by Hayden Trenholm.

Photo by Dominik Vanyi on Unsplash

Future Thinking

The past is irrelevant.

Well, like most categorical statements, it’s not entirely true. The past can serve – if you approach it with a critical mind – as a guide to success. And failure. It can at least tell us how we got to the here and now.

Still, it is surprising how many people, on both the right and left, spend most of their time staring behind them, either with fond, if misguided, nostalgia or with bitter resentment. The past is a rich lode that can be mined to fuel present day prescriptions to restore a glorious era or overcome ancient wrongs.

But here’s the thing. While you may make tremendous efforts to re-write the past (so much easier than living in the present), you can’t actually change it. It’s over and done with. Despite aphorisms to the contrary, it’s dead, Dave.

More importantly, the past will always be that home to which you cannot return. As for those people who say ‘we should have done it differently…’ Well, you didn’t. In fact, for the most part, the speaker wasn’t even part of that mythical we; in some cases they weren’t even born.

So, while the past is not exactly irrelevant, it is largely unimportant to our current existence. You can’t change it and you can’t return to it. So grow up.

So what does that leave us? The eternal present and the envisioned future.

Which is plenty. By some metrics, there is now more ‘present’ than there has ever been. More people, more nations, more problems and more possibilities.

Everything we do occurs, by facile definition, in the present. But, at the same time everything we do extends into the future.

Ah, the future. Unlike the decaying body of the past, the future is pregnant with possibility and change. Indeed, every time we act in the present we create a different future. Science fiction fans will be familiar with the idea of ever-branching futures – each one shaped by the billions of actions taken by billions of humans every second. Most of those futures are indiscernible from each other, but no matter.

In truth, there is only one future – the one we all wind up living in. Almost nothing we do makes a bit of difference to that future. Even powerful people like Presidents and CEOs and public intellectuals and revolutionary leaders spend most of their days doing meaningless things. It is only in hindsight that we can ever say that this action or decision mattered.

Which might make life seem rather pointless and powerless. But it doesn’t.

We can have whatever future we collectively want. But that’s the thing – it is a collective decision. It’s not like some leader can take us to the future (any more than they can return us to the past) because they don’t know the way anymore than the rest of us. A book called Superforecasters recently pointed out that it is possible to make really good guesses about what the world will look like three months or even six months from now – but three years or six years. Not so much.

Maybe that seems pretty limited but still it does suggest a way forward. Conversation, dialogue, shared visioning – it’s not much but it may be the only way to get the future we want.

And that’s ten minutes.

Twitchy

You’ve seen them. People with their faces buried in their devices as they drift down the street or grabbing their phone when if ‘bings’ – even if they are in the middle of a conversation. Their fingers drum impatiently on their desk if their computer takes a few seconds to boot up or connect. They growl when their texts or tweets or Facebook posts or Tumblr messages aren’t instantly answered. They hate waiting for anything; they don’t seem to know how to relax, even for a moment. Instant gratification gratified instantly.

You know who I’m talking about. The Twitchy generation.

Oh, not millennials or whatever generation comes next. A lot of them seem pretty laid back about everything – their love lives, their careers, the end of the world. They even read physical books. But that’s another story.

I’m talking about the forty-somethings (spreading into the fifty-somethings). They seem to think that history happened six months ago and the future had better get here pretty damn quick. And why can’t I get that show on Netflix!?

I think people under thirty actually understand that none of the programs which are supposed to connect our world really operate in quite the way they promised. At least their eye-rolls and shrugs when I ask them about it seem to suggest that.

No it’s the people who didn’t grow up with the highly connected and immediate (unmediated) world, that seem to have lost all sense of time, all sense of the slow changing nature of the world.

Take the current political world we live in. Nothing has really changed in the last fifty years. Governments have a life and elections – unless you are living in an unstable democracy or none at all – occur to a schedule. Presidents are almost never impeached; majority governments never fall before their allotted time.

Yet, to listen to the pundits, six months is an eternity. I saw a headline the other day asking if Justin Trudeau was the Teflon PM. For crying out loud, he’s been in office for less than four months – how much dirt do you think the world has generated in that time for any of it to stick? And as for delivering on his promises – why aren’t they all done right now? Why do we have to wait for consultation or debate or legislation or doing it right? If it isn’t here now it’s never coming, I tell you. Twitch.

Meanwhile in the USA people are moaning that Trump will be president and think how great/awful that will be. There won’t even be a vote for eight months. It’s not long but it’s not tomorrow. And when he gets there – if at all – all those things that he promised won’t arrive on February 1^st. Twitch. Twitch.

I see this all the time. My boss – who is in his seventies – will leave a restaurant if there is a line of more than six to get in. My wife swears at her ancient computer every time it takes fifteen seconds to connect. People my age grumble whenever their favorite movie is rescheduled for a month – and heaven help George R.R. Martin if he delays his next book again.

We won’t stand for it. What do we want?  Everything and when do we want it? Now, goddamn it! Or yesterday.

Screw history. I want the future. And I want it before tomorrow.

Twitch. Twitch. Twitch.

And that’s ten minutes. Too late as usual.