LIFE RULES

Thanks for your rules of life. I think it’s worthwhile to ponder how we live and what we’re trying to do in this world. Of course, right living is probably far too complicated to be reduced to three rules, though I do like Mary’s suggestion that it might be reducible to one. I suppose that’s what John was getting at when he said “God is love.” (1 John 4:16) Nevertheless, here are my three suggestions:

Be humble. – We human beings are infinitesimally small, live only an instant, and know almost nothing. So it seems only reasonable that we strive to be as modest as possible about everything we think we know. In fact, come to think of it, we may be bigger, live longer, and know more than we think. And that’s one of the really cool things about humility; it allows us to revise.

Be worshipful. – I don’t particularly mean the kind of thing we do in church, though it happens even there on occasion. I mean an attitude to life that springs from humility and issues forth in wonder, gratitude and praise. Whatever we imagine is behind all this, even if nothing at all, existence is amazing. It would be a shame to be here for a lifetime and miss that.

Don’t be afraid. – Fear has its place in the evolutionary scheme of things but, beyond helping us stay around long enough to transfer our genes from our parents to our children, it’s mostly a problem. Fear makes it hard to love and trust, and without love and trust what’s the point? I believe that one of the greatest philosophical and psychological insights ever made happened when the Apostle John talked of love as opposed to fear rather than hate. There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear... 1 John 4:18

Fear is a great motivator, which is why it’s a favourite theme of preachers, politicians, and so many who seek to have influence over people. But they are playing with fire. People who are afraid will do the most horrific things. But the best things in the world are done by people who make up their minds to not be afraid.

Supplementary comment:

I was watching an interview with Wendell Berry, a very down-home, humble, Kentucky farmer and philosopher who writes about life and the world around him. Toward the end of the discussion he was asked what he would say if he could sum up everything in a “last word”; similar to what we’ve been doing here I suppose. His response was thoughtful, as all his responses tend to be, and quite consistent, I hope, with the spirit of our discussion.

“I don’t think I know anything that’s reducible to a ‘last word’... What really interests me is the possibility that we humans can make sense... We’ve had two generations of college-bred people now who have been indoctrinated with the idea that every big problem has a big solution. And I just don’t believe it. The big problems we have now are going to be solved, if they ever are solved, by hundreds of people accepting local responsibility for small problems... People who make simple solutions always make trouble, and they’re always surprised by the trouble they make. So, to hell with the last words. Let’s try to make one sentence that’s rightly positioned within a manageable context so that we can utter it to somebody else and they’ll understand it. And we’ll be, then, on the way to defining a job that we can actually do.”

Again, thanks for your thoughts.

MISSED ME AGAIN.

For some time now I’ve been going on about the census form and saying I had no intention of answering all the questions this year. I won’t go over it all, since a few of you expressed a fair amount of weariness with the subject, and one got fed up enough to tell me off in no uncertain terms. Nevertheless, I expect a few may be wondering what actually happened when I came to fill out the form. Well, I’m a bit embarrassed to admit it, but nothing at all happened.

When the census came out this year we were in transition from our home in Edmonton to our new home in North Bay. We were visiting with my wife’s sister in Victoria, but on the actual day the form was to be filled out we were away in Parksville. When my sister-in-law filled out the form, because we weren’t actually there, she didn’t include us. So we are numbered among the thousands of Canadians who didn’t get numbered this year.

It’s all pretty anticlimactic, but it does make my point that all the fuss about the long form census this year, and the fear that the data would be compromised, was a lot of political hot air.

The census is of great value, not because it’s a perfect picture of the make-up of the country, but because, as a survey, it is hundreds of orders of magnitude more exhaustive than any other survey of the population. But, in the end, it is an approximation. Misinformation, disinformation and no information are just realities of life in the survey world.

If it bothers anyone that the census was a few ciphers out this year don’t worry about it. Nothing’s perfect. I know a man who has voted in every federal election for decades even though he’s never been a Canadian citizen. He says he’s just covering for one of the thousands of Canadian citizens who fails to vote. For every goofball like me who didn’t get counted someone who shouldn’t have been probably did. And once again we have a picture of the Canadian population that’s approximately perfect. That’s stats.

THREE RULES OF LIFE

A while back I was watching an interview with Jerry Seinfeld. People tend to love him or hate him. Personally I’ve thought he was very funny ever since I first saw him in the early 80s. But my point isn’t really that Seinfeld’s funny, but that he had some interesting things to say in this interview. People who think about things for a living, writer’s and comedians in particular, generally have interesting things to say if you can get them to stop “performing” even a little. Robin Williams interviews are, predictably, a waste of time.

Anyway, Seinfeld was asked about a graduation speech he’d given, and he said he’d tried to come up with three life rules. (Enough Rope with Andrew Denton part 3 – for those of you who are not Seinfeld fans it’s bout 7 minutes in.) His were: (1) bust your ass, (2) pay attention, (3) fall in love.

By “bust your ass” he said he really just meant, whatever you do, do it as hard as you can. In his opinion nothing bad can come of hard work. Sounds good to me but what would I know?

By “pay attention” he meant, just make it a practice to notice what’s going on around you. Similar, I suppose, to what Satchel Paige meant when he said, “It’s amazing what you can see by just looking.”

And by “fall in love” he didn’t particularly mean romantic love, but that capacity to give yourself to a moment; a really fantastic cup of coffee for example. To not be afraid to really love the beautiful things of life, no matter how small they may seem.

I think these are interesting suggestions, but I wonder what your rules might be. Please click on comment and share your three rules of life. Of course, you probably don't have three right now, so just make them up. It's what I'm going to do, but not till a few others have had a chance.

Life in North Bay

It’s ninety-four days since the movers carted our belongings off to a warehouse in Calgary and we headed for the west coast on our way to Ontario. And now we’re in North Bay. We’ve unpacked almost everything and, except for the disaster in the basement, the place is in pretty good shape. There’s very little in our pile of stuff to which I’m particularly attached, but as we reassembled it in our new location it somehow created that mysteriously comforting quality called “home”.

We’ve been here two months and we’re discovering that North Bay is a very nice place to live. It’s relatively small, only about 56,000, situated on the north shore of Lake Nipissing. – In Ontario it’s hard not to be situated on the shores of a lake as there are 3,899 of them, counting only those of 3 sq km or more. In fact, we actually live in a district of North Bay called Trout Lake, because that’s the name of the lake we’re closest to.

Apart from mugginess, which I remember disliking from my Kentucky days, the weather has been beautiful. There are more than enough stores for nonshoppers like us, and enough nice restaurants to keep us till we can get away to Toronto. Regardless where you live in North Bay you’re within a twenty minute walk of a Tim Hortons, and if you want a better cup of coffee Twiggs is a nice Starbucky place just a five minute drive away. (Nothing in North Bay is much more than a five minute drive away.)

We live in a three bedroom, “semi-detached” town house ( it’s on the end of the row). Not a high class place. But, as in Kansas City, you can walk to the privy on a rainy day and not get your feet wet, so we’re not complaining. And, best of all, it’s an eight minute walk from our front door to Maggie and Esther’s front door. We came here to be a full time grandparents and it looks like we’re perfectly situated for the job.

And it’s a great job too. For example, at the beginning of July Maggie had her 4^th birthday and her mother made her a monkey-face cake. We were all wondering what fifteen month old Esther would say when she saw it. She loves monkeys so we figured she’d laps into monkey sounds or something of the sort. Well, her daddy picked her up and showed her the cake. “What’s that?, he asked. She pointed, laughed, and squealed “Grampa!”

To quote Simeon, “Now, Lord, you can let your servant depart in peace.” I mean, does it really get any better than that?

The country hasn't changed that much.

A sober-faced journalist peers from the TV screen into my living room. “If the election were held today...” she intones, and then tells me who would win as she recites the results of the latest poll. The introductory phrase is intended to create the impression that what she’s saying is of great significance, but the one thing we all know for sure is that the election won’t be held today. Between the dropping of the writ and election day there’s always six to eight weeks of campaigning. And, as we’ve just seen, campaigns matter.

When the campaign for this latest federal election began I was one of those who expected little change. I thought it was possible that the Conservatives would get the majority they were hoping for, but only by the slimmest of margins. And that all else would probably remain essentially unchanged: Liberals, NDP, Bloc, and perhaps one Green. But, as I’ve said, a lot can happen is a few weeks.

The Conservatives did get their coveted majority winning 166 of the 308 seats. But the rest of the Commons was also radically redrawn. The Liberals were cut down from 77 seats to 34. The Block was decimated, going from 49 seats to 4. The NDP soared to an historic high of 103 seats, and the status of official opposition, up from 37 seats in 2008. And the green got their leader, Elizabeth May elected; their first seat ever.

I hope the country will benefit from the stability of knowing there won’t be a change of government for at least four years, and it will be interesting to see Quebec represented in the House of Commons by a federalist party. The Liberals need to be reminded that the “natural governing party” in a democracy is the people. And a lonely “green” voice, that says it hopes to be a voice for civility, can’t be a bad thing, provided Ms. May can survive that much loneliness.

But, we need to note that there has been considerably less change than the realignment suggests. Our system amplifies small changes, and often produces results that have little to do with voter sympathies. Theoretically, for example, in a five party race, one party could take 100% of the seats with just over 20% of the vote. The likelihood of this actually happening is vanishingly small, but the eccentricities of the system should be kept in mind when analysing what actually happened.

In Quebec, the Bloc lost over 90% of it’s seats, but this is not the wholesale rejection we might imagine. It actually represents a mere 15% decline in popular vote. The NDP, on the other hand have increased their representation in Parliament 278% with an increase of less than 12.5% in voter preference. The Liberals have plummeted to third party status for the first time in their history, with a decline of only 7.3% in their vote share. And the Conservatives have taken control of the House of Commons, taking 53.9% of the seats, with only 39.6% of the votes, and a mere 2% increase in their voter share.

The country has not changed nearly as much as some are suggesting, and not nearly as much as the House of Commons. Relatively small changes produced this startling result, and small changes could turn it all back.

Good Long Weekend

My goodness! An awful lot has happened since April 8, my last blog, but it was really that April 30 - May 2 long weekend that did the trick. That 72 hour period saw the demise of Michael Ignatieff, Gilles Duceppe, and Osama bin Ladin, and the rise of Stephen Harper and Jack Layton. Well, you can’t have everything, but I think, all in all, most would say it was a pretty good weekend. Of course, some might be insulted that I’ve lumped the demise of Ignatieff and Duceppe in with that of bin Ladin, but those al-Qaeda folks complain about everything. Who cares what they think?

And I might as well admit right off the top, I do believe bin Ladin is dead. The US government says he is, and al-Qaeda has confirmed it. Admittedly, both these organizations have lied to us in the past, but not usually about the same thing in the same way. There is, of course, the bit about the body they dumped in the ocean, the picture they won’t show us, the DNA evidence that only a half dozen people can vouch for, and the fact that only a half dozen people can actually claim to have been there when they killed him. Well, I still think he’s dead.

There are people who don’t believe it. One guy on a phone-in show said he’d buy it when they produced the death certificate, but then backtracked pondering whether it might be created by the same people who created Obama’s birth certificate. Perhaps it was Donald Trump, but I don’t think we should pay any more attention to him till he comes clean about what’s happening to his hair.

And, on a more serious note, I do think it’s interesting that there seems to be a tacit admission by the Americans that this was a kill, not a capture mission. It’s understandable if it was, of course. Indeed, it would be hard to imagine that it wasn’t. But that does make it an assassination, raising the spectre of the CIA’s worst historical practices. And it’s a violation of both International and American law. This is a bad thing. And, if he was captured and murdered, it’s a war crime.

Now, it’s not that I want a fair trial for bin Ladin. I want a fair trial for me, and much more, for all the people he and his friends terrorized and murdered over the years, for the families of his victims, and even for those who were sympathetic to his cause.

Trials, with all their limitations, have a way of bringing to light things we could never otherwise know. And it’s a shame that such a dark figure, and such a dark period, should end shrouded in the obscurity of a covert military operation. The rule of law is a hindrance to the great powers of the world, and a protection for the little folk. We’re all little folk, and we deserve more than a confused account of what happened, even if it comes from “the good guys”.

I’ll leave my comments on the federal election for my next blog. Right now I’d like to hear your response to this bin Ladin affair.

Do you think it matters that he’s gone?

Do you believe the story the Americans tell of his demise?

Do you believe it matters that there will be no trial?

Have you felt safer in May than you did in April?